by Jimmy Guieu
“But haven’t these Earthlings ever gone to Shâmali?” Streiler asked in surprise. “Haven’t they seen your ultra-modern, super-evolved base set up on the continent where they live? Such an anachronism must be astonishing to them!”
“Don’t kid yourself, Kurt,” Glanya clarified. “These Lemurians have explored several times up to the edge of the lagoon where Shâmali lies, but they couldn’t see our base because it’s protected by an invisibility field. They ran into an invisible wall that stopped their progress. If you were able to enter our city it’s because Time and Space mean nothing to your ship. Otherwise you never would have found us. Being blocked by an invisible obstacle threw the Lemurians into utter confusion, especially since they couldn’t explain the strange phenomenon.”
Through the cockpit window Kariven observed the precision with which the Bimkamian spaceships flew in triangular formation.
At the edge of the thick jungle, on a plain bordered by high mountains to the west, he saw a city come quickly into clear view. Two or three-story houses stood with their chimneys and their “attics” like our ancestors had built. The narrow streets of the poor areas contrasted starkly with the wide boulevards and the open courts of the so-called “bourgeois” neighborhoods.
A weird building formed of three giant obelisks supporting a platform that served as a base for a red sphere, rose up in the middle of the city. Glanya explained to her friends that it was a temple dedicated to the Lemurians’ deity, the Kosmos-God, symbolized by a sphere.
In a panic, men, women and children with light brown skin were running all over the place and tumbling into the main street. Riders mounted on animals that looked like a cross between a pony and a bovid were spurring on their animals and driving through the crowd to flee even faster. Carriages and carts attached to these creatures, and even vehicles being drawn by quadrupeds no bigger than a wolf-dog, were blocking the street in an indescribable traffic jam.
In the widespread panic very few people had noticed the weird balls flying over the city. But all of a sudden the mob cried out in a single voice of horror.
Cyclops had just appeared at the other end of the boulevard. Their massive bodies, covered with red hair, and their huge, bulging eye made them look unreal, terrifying. They moved forward, roaring like raging wild beasts.
On seeing the Lemurians they grunted inarticulately and took off after them. Some still held onto bloody limbs—arms or legs—that they had ripped off their victims.
When the prey heard the croaking grunts they fled all the faster, in mad hysteria, stampeding each other in their attempt to escape the monsters.
Torka’s spaceship started dropping straight down. Only 30 feet from the ground he bore down the street and from the disintegrator cannon in the nose of the forward cabin shot a ray of bright light, as blinding as a camera flash.
The cyclops horde looked petrified. The ray swept through them, from the front ranks to the rear. All of a sudden the monsters lit up and in a few seconds the street was illuminated by a million spotlights before the blinding glare disappeared, in a heartbeat, and the regular light came back.
The street was deserted. The only thing left of the horrifying cyclops was a blackish stain on the asphalt. They had been evaporated by the disintegrator ray.
Seized by a superstitious fear before these “flying dragons that spit lethal fire,” still hesitating to accept their miraculous salvation, the inhabitants of Balkum did not know what to do.
Not lingering on this spot in the city the ships split up to clear out the other districts invaded by the monsters. Once in a while gunshots echoed through the streets. A few citizens were defending their families with what rudimentary weapons they had. But these sporadic attempts were of little use. For every cyclops shot down, ten more rose up or a hundred, to slaughter everything in their path in a minute.
After disintegrating a few more thousand monsters teeming at intersections Leyla and Torka decided to land in order to finish off the cyclops for good. In small groups the monsters were breaking into the houses and pitilessly butchering the terrorized, powerless inhabitants.
The spaceships and the Retro-timeship set down on a wide-open space to the south. The Bimkamians, under Torka’s orders, ran into the embattled city through the boulevards around it. In companies of 100 men armed with big disintegrator guns they advanced, shooting all cyclops they came across.
Kariven and his friends, wielding their Thomson machine guns, joined Leyla. At Torka’s side the Grand Instructor was firing away like a rebel at the barricades!
The city echoed with gunfire and the crackle of the disintegrator rifles. The battle for the streets was in full swing.
The Bimkamians crept down the alleys, slipped into the buildings, one after another, and came out only after making sure all monsters were down for the count.
Leyla, Kariven and Torka, working together, witnessed a scene that was abominable from the human point of view but natural for the “struggle for life”9 in the animal world. All three of them had just entered the second floor of a house and automatically leaned over a spiral staircase in the corner. That was when they saw the despicable scene: in a courtyard a 10-foot tall female cyclops and her two “children,” as big as full-grown men, were greedily devouring a brown-skinned girl. The poor thing was still groaning in agony while the “baby” cyclops tore at her bloody legs. The female pounced on the victim, but just as she was about to sink her fangs into the throat, Leyla’s rifle shot its ray at the same time as Kariven gunned down the monsters. The man-eaters were riddled with bullets and instantly evaporated. The dying young girl finally saw an end to her suffering. The awful wounds in her belly, unfortunately, left her no chance of survival.
Only the shadows of the vanished bodies remained on the ground. Leyla wiped her forehead with a shaky hand. The disgusting scene had shaken her up. Kariven put his arm around her as they searched the rest of the house, which turned up empty. Its occupants, luckier than the poor girl, had time to escape.
In spite of their great number the Bimkamians had to run through the city all night long. The monsters had taken refuge on the roofs, sometimes carrying some of their prey with them. Often enough the Earthlings and Bimkamians came across gruesome remains: feet, hands, arms or legs, and other bits and pieces of humans left behind by the cyclops.
When the Lemurians were brave enough to come out of their cellars they saw—with such relief!—that the monsters had gone. The weird flying dragons, whose timely arrival they could not explain, had mysteriously evaporated them into thin air along with their no less mysterious rifles.
The Bimkamian squadron and the Retro-timeship made one last tour over newly freed Balkum before making their way back home. This time Leyla left the command to Torka so she could be with her friends from the Future.
“This fight won’t be over for months,” she sighed in her psychic voice. “And we won’t be sure to finish off all the monsters. We’ll have to skim over their lairs and spray them with disintegrators…”
“There will always be some families who will hide away in the mountains and breed a new threat for some time later,” Streiler remarked.
“There is a way,” Kariven intervened, “a radical way you haven’t thought of: an epidemic! Spread a deadly epidemic among the cyclops to decimate them without a fight.”
Leyla thought about it and saw her lover’s cleverness. “I have to admit that we never thought the problem like that. However, if this is the only way we have, we’ll have to learn about the monsters’ physiology to make it work. We’ll be forced to capture one of them and when we know what virus they can’t produce anti-bodies for, we can cultivate the microorganisms and spread them all over their territory. But we’ll also have to make sure that the virus does no harm to the Lemurians or to ourselves. Only the cyclops must be affected by the epidemic.”
“We’re ready to help you if you want,” Professor Harrington offered. “Our ship is at your service. But allow me to make a suggesti
on. Instead of capturing one cyclops to study its physiology, capture a dozen or more whom you could inject with the lethal virus you find. These infected monsters could be sent back to their fellows and contaminate them in no time.”
“Bravo!” Commander Taylor cheered. “Original germ warfare, and it’ll take place millions of years before our old H bomb and its ancestor the A bomb!”
“I’ll call the council of biologists together tomorrow,” Leyla declared, “and tell them about the idea. The chemists and physiologists will also be present, as well as the cosmobiologists specialized in the study of endemic illnesses and their distribution zone in different solar systems occupied by our race. These scientists will soon have to make a ruling on the plan and after dissecting a cyclops they’ll head up the research in a well defined direction.”
Kariven asked point blank, “Do you know what happened to the Bimkamian who was watching over Balkum? He’s the one who alerted the Shâmali base when the cyclops attacked, right?”
“He was,” Leyla answered telepathically. In the event of this kind of problem or of social troubles that are always possible, the building he lives in is equipped with a basement that leads to a well where a rocket is waiting to evacuate him automatically to our base. He locked himself into the basement but did not deem it necessary to flee, trusting in his refuge. He just warned us over the viewer. Torka, the Military Operations Chief, got in touch with him after our battle with the cyclops. Since he wasn’t found out by the Lemurians in Balkum, he continued his secret surveillance mission among them for the benefit of all.”
When our friends woke up, late in the morning, and after they had showered, the viewer on the wall lit up in each of their rooms and Leyla was on the screen. A tight-fitting bodysuit, lilac with gold and silver sequin, hugged her delicate form perfectly. The emblem of Grand Instructor sparkled on her breast, sculpted by the strange metallic tissue.
Presently the viewers perceived that her thoughts were being broadcast by the viewer, a marvelous machine that transmitted them directly to their brains.
“I met with the different scientists concerning your plan of the germ war. They said they were ready to study the details of breeding microorganisms when we get them a cyclops for dissection. Torka and I have decided to leave today in search of the monsters.”
Before she had finished explaining, Kariven and Streiler, at the same time, completely spontaneously, asked, “What time are you leaving?”
They looked at each other and started laughing, quickly joined by Leyla who agreed to meet them after lunch.
The Retro-timeship took off with Leyla, her twin sister and the Earthlings on board, heading for the cyclops territory. A Bimkamian ship piloted by Torka with a group of giants on board, accompanied the timeship.
Half an hour later, cruising comfortably at 1,000 miles per hour, the two ships reached the jungle. They slowed down to 30 miles per hour, lowered their altitude and watched the forest through the trees.
“There they are!” Commander Taylor shouted, pointing at a clearing on the bank of a river.
A few crude cabins of intertwined branches made up the village of the small cyclops tribe. 20 monsters and their 6-foot tall “babies” were squatting in a circle, staring at a fire where a long-eared mammal, the size of a pony, was being grilled.
“When they feel safe,” Leyla explained, “these filthy creatures take the time to cook their prey, but during the tribal wars or the raids on the cities they’d rather eat devour their victims on the spot, raw.”
“Very charming,” Kariven smirked.
Leyla touched her clear plastic helmet and sent a message to Torka. A minute later her meditative face woke up and she informed her friends psychically, “We’re going to drop an anesthetic mist. When the monsters are knocked out we’ll land and bring them on board. The operation will take less than an hour. Look there…”
The Earthlings gathered round the dome and eagerly watched what was happening.
The hatch in the Bimkamian spaceship opened and Torka appeared, holding a transparent sphere that he tossed into the air. The ball dropped like a stone and crashed barely 30 feet from the fire that the monsters huddled around. It did not make a loud noise but the gas, suddenly freed, whistled out.
The cyclops jumped up, growling, probably expecting an attack from a hungry tribe tempted by the smell of the “well done” prey. The red hair bristled on their square skulls and on their spines; their eyes spun furiously in their sockets; their claws were ready to tear at the enemy; their nostrils quivered. They bumped into each other looking for the attackers.
Gradually their movements became slower and their growling less ferocious. A few baby cyclops wobbled and fell to the ground, their eyes closed. The males and females approached their offspring cautiously before they, too, collapsed unconsciously. The anesthetic gas had done its job.
The two spaceships descended slowly and landed 40 feet from the village. The giant Bimkamians, armed with disintegrator rifles and the earthlings with their Thomsons, all faces protected by gas masks, stepped forward. The robust Bimkamians split into groups of four and carried the sleeping cyclops straight to the ten armored cages in the ship’s hull. 25 minutes later the 20 adults and nine babies were shackled in their special cages brought for the occasion. 10 feet high and wide, 15 feet long, with 4-inch thick bars of steel hardened by ultrasound, they would stand up to the most violent efforts of the captives.
For three days the big laboratories in Shâmali echoed with the cries and roars of the maddened cyclops. Their cages were lined up in a metal hangar that vibrated from their constant violence. The frantic monsters, in fits of rage, shook the bars and howled hideously. They only calmed down when a Bimkamian at the wheel of an electric tractor brought them fresh meat that they pounced on, groaning in pleasure.
Physiologists, biologists and cosmobiologists had submitted the results of their research. The dissected cyclops and the one that had been tested for vulnerability to possible microorganisms had proved to them that the bacillus NZ 14 was lethal without being communicable to humans. The germ war to decimate this monstrous race was about to begin.
In front of the cyclops’ cages Leyla, Glanya and the Earthlings avidly followed the telepathic report of the envoy from the research center. The Bimkamian who was responsible for taking care of the monsters was getting ready to leave on his electric tractor when they heard him cry out in terror. Everyone turned around but they were too late.
One of the cyclops, a particularly fierce male, had managed to grab the steel lance that the guardian carried and had stuck it into Leyla’s back. Her eyes dilated by the unbearable pain, she wheezed out a death rattle as the bloody point of the lance came out the middle of her chest. After skewering her through, the raging cyclops pulled her to him and gripping her panting body he crushed it against the bars of his cage and sunk his fangs into the blood-streaming corpse.
The harrowing scene lasted only a few seconds. Petrified by horror, wild-eyed and mad, Kariven drew his Colt and pulled the trigger. One bullet struck the monster in the heart and two others exploded his skull. The filthy creature let go of his victim and slid down between the bars of his cage.
Kariven dropped the smoking gun and with his eyes filled with tears he fell sobbing over Leyla’s body.
The woman whom he adored would no longer answer to his love.
Through the guardian’s carelessness, getting too close to the monsters, she had died, casting one last look on the man she loved.
Her body, pierced by the steel lance and crushed by the strong arms of the cyclops, lay on the floor of the hangar where the explorers stood motionless, tortured by sorrow. In the face of this horrible death Glanya had fainted in Streiler’s arms.
CHAPTER SIX
Overwhelmed with grief, Kariven decided to devote himself to the extermination of the hairy monsters, the nightmarish creatures who threatened the Lemurians and who had killed the woman whom he held dearest in the world. He and his fr
iends offered themselves to Torka, the Chief of Military Operations, to actively participate in the germ war.
Two days after the tragic death of Leyla, the vials of NZ 14 were ready in abundance and the bombs containing them were loaded on the Bimkamian spaceships as well as the Retro-timeship.
In their armored cages placed around the hatch openings the contaminated cyclops were making an infernal racket.
While the ships got ready for takeoff the viewer on board informed them that Myln’ha, the Grand Instructor who would succeed Leyla, had just left the distant planet Bimkam and was heading toward Earth. In 48 hours her interstellar spaceship would land at Shâmali where she would start her functions right away. On her arrival the inauguration ceremony would take place in the huge amphitheater reserved for the assemblies of the “Dragons of Wisdom.”
The message aggravated Dr. Kariven’s grief. Glanya, the twin sister who could have been Leyla’s double, had no less effect on him. Kariven felt a shock every time he looked at her. He lied to himself sometimes, saying that this gorgeous blonde was Leyla, the girl he had held in his arms and whose lips he had tasted passionately. But when this “copy” of Leyla put her head on Streiler’s shoulder, he looked away so that he would not become unjustly jealous by the deceiving appearances.
Torka finally gave orders to take off.
The squadron of elliptical ships shining brightly in the sun soared off to the vast jungle that covered the interior of Lemuria. When they sped over the riverbanks and were in sight of the place where the empty cabins of the captured cyclops stood, Kariven raged inside; this was the place that held the roots of his affliction.
In the lush vegetation, among the high branches and intertwined vines, huge insects puttered out of the way of the ships skimming over the tops of the tall trees. Groups of monkeys with reddish fur leaped from branch to branch, screeching loudly.