by Jimmy Guieu
The time explorers looked at one another with a strange feeling. The transparency serum had taken effect.
Their bodies—except for the eyes—were now see-through. The only thing they wore was tight-fitting shorts of a gray, plastic material and a wide belt whose buckle contained a small two-way radio no bigger than a pack of cigarettes. The microphone, the size of an aspirin, worked like a laryngophone, a throat mic, and simply had to be pressed to the larynx. A thin ribbon of transparent plastic around the neck kept it in place. The wire connecting it to the transmitter was no more than 1 mm thick.
The Retro-Timeship stopped silently at the edge of the strange airfield, that is three or four miles from the first buildings that could only be seen by their lighted windows since the terrain had no signal lights.
One GI was assigned to guard the ship. His duty was to receive and carry out to the letter whatever orders came in over the radio from the pioneer visitors of this epoch.
The transparent men, the commander following the scientists, stepped onto the ground and in close formation marched bravely forward. They crossed the huge, deserted airfield until they came to a corner of a building with wide bay windows. A gigantic, square metal tower was built on top of its roof. As curious as could be imagined they stuck their faces to the bluish windows.
It was a spacious room with desks and metal furniture—file cabinets undoubtedly?—in front if which some very tall men and women were consulting documents made of shiny material. Complex machines—electronic brains?—fitted with blinking screens sat in the corners of the room.
On the left wall a big relief map was being examined by three men, real giants at seven feet tall, give or take a couple of inches. Dressed in a blue jacket, narrow at the waist, and tights that hugged their muscular legs, they were watching four points of light that were moving in different directions across the relief map. The heads of these strange people were covered by a round helmet that, in shape, looked like a swimming cap but very thick and with a peculiar mechanism with a flexible stem sticking out of the top.
In front of a tilted control panel next to the mural map—only six feet away from the window through which the explorers were spying—a round screen lit up, framing the face of a young, blonde woman, marvelously pure and charming.
The three giants looked down at the convex glass displaying the ravishing girl and in perfect unison they brought their right hands up to their left shoulders. The girl answered the salute with the same gesture and started talking excitedly. Her deep blue eyes sparkled with intelligence. Her dark red lips poured out a flood of words that our friends could not hear.
“Except for being much taller than us and their weird clothes these Earthlings are like us,” Streiler observed.
Without taking his eyes off the radiant blonde beauty Kariven looked puzzled. “Earthlings? Hmm… I don’t know about that.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ll have time later to discuss our origins, Streiler,” he hinted at something ambiguously. “Let’s call them ‘Lemurians’ until we know more. If we can crack open the door maybe we can hear their language?”
“Why not,” Professor Harrington agreed. “If we stay quiet we won’t be noticed. At least I hope so.”
Kariven felt around for a moment looking for the knob or the lock of the oval door. At last he noticed a twinkling point in the frame to the right that hid a photoelectric cell. He waved his hand in front of what he believed to be the beam but the door did not open. Defeated and weary he simply pressed the lighted button… and the door opened silently.
The new men struggled in vain to understand the conversation of the giant Earthlings—our ancestors!
None of the “Lemurians” had noticed the quiet movement of the door. Kariven preferred to go back to the window. He pressed up close to it again in order to watch the screen where the pretty blonde could be seen, helmeted like her three comrades.
The time explorers expressed their astonishment by nodding their heads and whispering in each other’s ears. All of a sudden some of the Lemurians, particularly the three giants talking with the girl, furrowed their brows in interest. They looked around as if they were searching for something or someone.
“These creatures look suspicious of something unusual,” Kariven whispered almost inaudibly.
When he finished saying this, even though he was sure the Lemurians could not hear him, Kariven saw their faces turn to utter surprise. The blonde girl was irritated and called her comrades who responded to her looking both anxious and embarrassed. The Lemurian girl then raised her eyebrows and shook her pretty head while saying something that the 20th century Earthlings heard but could not understand. She brought her hand up to her helmet and her fingers pressed different points of the device wrapped in a transparent material with the flexible stem sticking out.
“What are they doing?” Professor Harrington whispered. “They can’t see us or hear us so I can’t understand why they…”
“Thoughts!” Kariven pointed to his forehead. “They’re reading our minds with an ability that we don’t have: telepathy!”
“That’s possible,” Streiler admitted. “But how can they understand our thoughts when we’re thinking in English? We can’t understand a single word of their language, just like they surely can’t understand ours.”
“That’s a logical conclusion but false,” Kariven whispered. “These beings don’t translate the words but the ‘ideographic’ images of our thoughts. For example if I say ‘spaceship’ I see mentally a ship able to move in space. This psychic image is then interpreted and translated immediately by these beings endowed with a telepathic sense. An abstract concept like the theory of relativity, the fourth dimension or the philosophy of nirvana would be a lot harder for them to interpret by reading minds.”
The giants looked at one another, completely astounded. They had, indeed, heard and understood the thoughts that were put into words by the transparent Earthlings. Once again the giants talked with the girl before giving an order to the other Lemurians and pointing at the two doors of the room.
“They’re obviously going to search the buildings,” Kariven said. “Let’s get out of here!”
Putting his words into action they bolted toward a strip of tall grass bordering the airfield, ready to dive down in case the giants decided to light up the terrain. The Lemurians shouted other orders and along with five giants went to hunt for the “invisible” thought transmitters.
Suddenly a series of multi-colored lights near the buildings lit up. The Earthlings dove into the tall grass less than 10 yards away from the farthest signal light. Thank God the refraction index of their transparent bodies was so small… as long as nobody looked at them too closely.
Face down in the grass, on the lookout, the Earthlings were panting hard. The Lemurians had stopped and were scanning all around. After half an hour, having found nothing, they went back, as puzzled as they were overexcited.
The Earthlings did not wait for them to reconsider—they ran full speed back to the Retro-Timeship. “I don’t think we have any reason to be scared,” Taylor huffed as he, like his companions, put pants and a khaki shirt on his still transparent body. “Nothing proves that these guys mean us any harm. Let’s put ourselves in their place. What would we have done if we heard voices nearby and couldn’t explain where they came from?”
“That’s right,” Kariven agreed. “But when in doubt, refrain, as the sage said. I figure it’d be better to know a little more about Lemuria and its inhabitants before making contact with them.”
“I think so too,” Professor Harrington agreed. “So let’s explore the continent. There should be other cities where we might be able to get to know the natives and without them knowing.”
“I wonder what those three Lemurians were doing in front of that relief map and why they were getting upset before our ‘psychic intrusion’? Because they looked as worried and preoccupied as that pretty blonde.”
“You mig
ht be able to ask that pretty blonde soon enough,” Commander Taylor joked. “She knocked you out, didn’t she?”
“Bah,” Kariven smiled. “She’s been dead for 45 million years. I’m not some romantic smitten by a ghostly muse.”
All four of them broke out laughing and sat in their seats while the Retro-Timeship shot up into the sky. The ship soared away from the white city toward the west at only 1,000 feet altitude. It was flying over a dense forest when Commander Taylor slowed it down and hovered at a fixed point.
“There’s a round spaceship in this jungle… Look, to the east, between those bushy trees by that chain of rocks.”
“It must have crash landed,” the Austrian engineer remarked. “Its landing tripod is off to the left instead of being underneath. It probably tumbled onto its side. There was an accident.”
“So that’s why the Lemurians and the young pin-up doll were worried.”
“The four round spaceships that took off right after we flew over the city must have gone out looking for us. They didn’t find anything. But we have to do something for the survivors. They might be wounded and need help inside the damaged spaceship. Let’s land,” Kariven advised.
Commander Taylor frowned, “Land? Easier said than done. The jungle’s too thick. I don’t see an inch of open space. The only solution is to hover over the trees and go down on the elektron ladder.6“
“OK,” Streiler seconded. “Let’s go!”
The Retro-Timeship vibrated slightly as it floated six feet above the treetops that reached over 150 feet tall.
“Here we go,” Streiler said, watching his hands turn from transparent gray to murky pink. “We’re soon going to be perfectly visible to the Lemurians. I hope they aren’t aggressive… or xenophobic!”
Lieutenant Clark opened the hold and let down the extensible elektron ladder. The end of the ladder almost touched the crashed spaceship.
The sun was starting to set on the horizon and the sunlight was rapidly declining behind the equatorial latitude. Commander Taylor, as the government attaché, had demanded that everyone carry a Thomson machine gun and a Colt 45 with two extra rounds. This precaution, although fitting for a soldier, made Professor Harrington smile, being the pacifist he was.
“Don’t you know that according to international agreements tourists should not carry weapons of war?” he said sarcastically.
“Yeah,” the officer grumbled. “You built this marvelous ship, that’s a fact, but when it comes to prudence and military discipline in unknown territory you’re under my jurisdiction. Hold on to the guns and don’t forget that we’re not tourists.”
Realizing that he was taking it a little too seriously Commander Taylor laughed raucously and went first down the ladder swinging in the open air. Two crew members kept watch at the edge of hold. Kariven grabbed the narrow bars and followed the officer, just before the other members of the space/time expedition.
He moved aside a leafy branch where the Commander had been entangled and joined him on the green soil that blanketed the feet of the tall trees. The day was gloomy in the thick of the jungle. The rays of the setting sun barely scraped the horizon.
“It took a weird fall,” Commander Taylor pointed to the spaceship and its twisted landing gear. Under the ship an airtight hatchway had been half torn off and was hanging on one hinge.
When the members of this improvised rescue mission were all on solid ground Taylor and Kariven got down on their hands and knees and climbed into the spaceship. Their Thomson machine guns were too unwieldy so they had to sling them over their shoulders to slip through the opening.
Standing up in the cabin that was dimly lit by an electric light the two men remained motionless and wary. They gestured to their friends to keep silent. Cautiously they approached the interior hatch that led to another cabin. An unexpected noise, like lapping water or a clicking tongue mixed with fast, heavy breathing attracted their attention.
Taylor and Kariven stood on tiptoes to see over the hatch. What they found in the cockpit froze them with horror.
Their puzzled comrades saw them climb over the rectangular opening and quick as lightning rain a hail of bullets at a target that was hidden by the broken wall. An awful, inhuman scream rang through the air in the dreary metal chamber.
Taylor and Kariven, gritting their teeth, sneering with disgust and gripping their Thomsons tightly, shot off a second round that emptied their guns. Another croaky grunt cried out, broken off by muffled panting.
The petrified explorers in the first cabin of the mysterious spaceship suddenly got goose bumps!
CHAPTER THREE
At first baffled by the behavior of Kariven and Taylor, Streiler and Professor Harrington ran to the circular door that their two partners had just entered. Walking on the wall that was now the floor of the crashed spaceship lying on its side, they stepped through the doorway and were in turn riveted by the emotional scene.
In the center of the tilted cabin a monstrous being was dying—covered in red fur, with a huge, shiny head and an enormous, single eye in the middle of its bulging forehead. Sharp fangs stuck out of the upper lip of its disgusting mouth full of red drool. It must have been over eight feet tall and for the most part looked like a gorilla with a vaguely hominoid face. Its muscular chest showed the bloody traces of the machine gun fire.
Next to it lay the corpse of a young, white girl, torn up by fangs. Savagely torn up. The body of the poor girl had been fodder for the monster hungry for human flesh.
“Could this girl have been flying the spaceship alone?” Commander Taylor wondered aloud.
“She wasn’t alone,” Kariven remarked. “These shreds of clothing lying on the floor—or rather the wall of the cabin—don’t belong to the victim. They come from the clothes of the other Lemurians who were with her. And this girl was obviously conscious when this monster attacked her. Her hands are still clutching the red fur that she ripped off her attacker before being eaten.”
“What a disgusting animal!” Commander Taylor said with a sickened grimace.
“It’s not an animal,” Kariven corrected, “but a primitive being, maybe the Missing Link7 in the evolutionary chain of the terrestrial species… It’s got a crude loincloth made of plant fiber around its waist and on its left arm is a bracelet of twined cane. These are not ornaments found in the animal kingdom. Except for its cyclops eye this primitive may not be so different from the Telanthropus that lived in the south of Africa 800,000 years ago. Unfortunately since no bones from these monsters have survived from this sunken continent it’ll never be discovered. My paleontologist friends have no chance at all of finding their remains.”
“For a Lemurian it’s a lot different from the ones we saw at the airfield,” Streiler said.
“Let’s not stay here,” Kariven suggested. “We can’t do anything for this poor girl. Let’s go looking for her companions instead… if we’re not too late.”
They climbed back up the ladder into the Retro-Timeship as night started falling on the jungle. The space/time ship rose up and zigzagged low over the forest. After 15 minutes the time explorers spotted a big fire burning in the middle of a clearing. Commander Taylor brought the ship down to hover silently just 100 feet off the ground. Several dozens of cyclop monsters were waving their arms and grunting around a campfire.
“It’s ghastly,” Professor Harrington gasped, nervously clenching his fists.
A Lemurian, captured by the hairy cyclops, had been tied to a long spit that was turning slowly in the flames. Devoured by the fire the unfortunate thing was no longer alive.
Nearby three Lemurian males and two females of the white race in their torn clothes were being held tightly by the cyclops. Apparently they were going to roast them one by one.
The prisoners struggled, but in vain because their executioners had a strong grip. One captive girl managed to wriggled free from her guard by slipping out of the remains of her clothes but the monster caught her by the hair and dragged her roughly back
to her friends.
“Open the hold!” Commander Taylor barked into the microphone. “Grab your weapons, Clark, and get your men.”
Like a battleship at arms the Retro-Timeship was soon echoing with frantic footsteps. The occupants ran down the walkways of the lower deck and in no time were in the holds that opened by remote control. Kneeling at the edge of the opening Kariven and his friends were anxiously watching the cannibal horde howling 100 feet below. The monsters had eyes only for their living food or for the girl being roasted so that they did not seem to have noticed the presence of the Retro-Timeship.
“Shoot at the group huddled around the spit,” Kariven ordered. “In the meantime I’ll take care of the cyclop slave drivers.”
Commander Taylor nodded and on his signal he sprayed bullets over 60 monsters jumping around in front of the fire. The other machine guns joined in and blasted furiously.
Kariven shouldered his gun, aimed carefully and shot one by one. The six monsters guarding the captives collapsed, fatally wounded. Five others came to the rescue to seize the two young women but Kariven, thumbing over to automatic, spat a rain of bullets at the newcomers who straightaway bit the dust.
“Land!” Commander Taylor shouted.
The background microphones transmitted his order to Lieutenant Clark who had stayed in the cockpit. Next to him a GI was calmly filming the battle while chewing gum.
Giving up all thought of getting their prey back the surviving monsters ran off into the jungle, leaving a great many corpses scattered around the clearing.
Disoriented and not really believing their eyes, the captives looked up at the strange, heaven-sent spaceship. Still carrying their weapons Kariven and his friends jumped to the ground and rushed over to the prisoners.
“Follow us!” Kariven enjoined, guessing that he would be understood by telepathy.
The Austrian engineer helped the girl who had been roughed up by the cyclops while Commander Taylor assisted the other Lemurians to climb through the hatchway. Kariven and Professor Harrington, with their machine guns ready at the hip, watched the surrounding area and guarded the boarding of the survivors. They got in last and immediately went to the cockpit where Commander Taylor was already at the controls and taking off.