The Sol 3 Agenda
© Brian J Kitchen 2020
Brian J Kitchen has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 2020
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organisations, places, events and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
This novel is dedicated to the late Andy Potter, Radio Presenter with BBC Radio Derby, who gave me my first interview and put a very nervous man at ease and took a genuine interest in my work.
Chapter 1
Cornwall, September 1969
If it hadn’t been so warm for this time of the year, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but slogging along the dusty road, with an ex-army rucksack loaded to capacity was doing John in. He knew that he shouldn’t have had that extra pint in the pub, but the beer they brewed down here in Cornwall, was equally as good as the beer brewed in his hometown of Trentbury in the Midlands. John’s friends who worked in the breweries there would however no doubt dispute it.
John had travelled down overnight to London, so that he could catch the first train out from London Paddington to Penzance. There had not been enough time to get something to eat in London, but as there was supposed to be a buffet car on the train all the way to Penzance, John hadn’t been unduly worried. Besides which, an apprentice’s pay didn’t go far when paying London prices and even though he had his two weeks holiday pay, he would have to stretch it out if he was to enjoy two weeks in Cornwall.
The train had not surprisingly soon lulled John to sleep. He didn’t have a cushy job in the Brewery like his mates, who bragged about all the free beer they supped and how they slept during night shifts. John, like his dad worked in the Iron and Steel foundry and was training to be a core maker like him. He’d worked a full shift yesterday and by the time he had got on the train in London, he’d been awake for well over twenty-four hours.
John had awoken with a start just outside Liskeard and looking at his wristwatch he realised that he’d been asleep for nearly five hours. He got out of his seat and went to find the buffet car, but found to his dismay that for some reason it had closed at Plymouth. So, by the time the train did arrive in Penzance about two hours later, John was tired and weary, hungry and thirsty. He soon found a nice pub near the station however and had a pint or two, or four, if the truth be known. Then he’d found a fish and chip shop and as he ate his Cod and chips from the newspaper they were wrapped in, down by the sea front, he decided that his dad was right, fish and chips did always taste nicer at the seaside.
Deciding to see if there was a bus from Penzance to St Buryan, John found out that he’d just missed the last bus and that there wouldn’t be another one until the next morning. He couldn’t afford a taxi fare and so John decided to walk and having looked at his Ordnance Survey Map decided to head off down the A30, thinking that he might be able to hitch a lift somewhere along it. John knew he’d have to turn off the A30 onto the B3283 near to the hamlet of Catchall, which would then take him onto St Buryan. So off he’d set.
John soon found out that there wasn’t much traffic on the road, but then, the school holidays were over now and so there wouldn’t be so many holidaymakers about. Never mind he thought, St Buryan was only supposed to be just over 5 miles from Penzance, and it should only take him a couple of hours to walk there at most. There was supposed to be a campsite near the village, and he should get his tent pitched before it got too dark.
After John had been trudging along for a good hour or more, his rucksack feeling heavier and heavier, he realised that what he hadn’t anticipated was that it would fall dark so soon. He’d had no luck with a lift either, the traffic whizzing by him as though he was invisible. Suddenly, over the top of a hedge he saw a large standing stone, or Menhir, as the archaeologists called them. What had drawn his attention to it he wasn’t quite sure, it was after all getting quite dark by now. He was fairly sure however that he wouldn’t normally have seen it.
Something compelled him to go and take a better look at the Menhir, but how he was going to do this he wasn’t sure. There wasn’t a gate into the field that it stood in, but then by luck he spotted a hole in the hedge. John tried to push through it, but with his rucksack on it wasn’t possible. He took his rucksack off, leaving it by the side of the road and was then able to squeeze his way through the gap in the hedge, into the field. He approached the Menhir, which must have been over 10 feet high and it was then that he saw that part of the stone seemed to be glowing.
Walking cautiously nearer to the Menhir, he saw a hand shaped depression in the surface of the stone which glowed with an intense blue light. Before he could stop himself, he’d moved up to the Menhir and put his hand on the depression. What John could only describe later as being like an electric shock, passed through his hand, right arm and then the rest of his body. Unlike the electric shock he’d once experienced as a child, when messing about in an old outbuilding at his friend’s house, the shock wave that passed through his body didn’t throw him backwards. Instead he was unable to move his hand from the stone at first and a good 30 seconds or more must have passed by before he could. Then he suddenly felt very tired and before he knew it he was sinking slowly to the ground. His eyes felt very heavy and he couldn’t stop them from closing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
John woke up with a start and for a moment or two he didn’t know where he was. Then he realised that he was lying in a field. Turning his head sideways he saw the Menhir and noticed that the hand-shaped depression seemed to have disappeared. Nor was there now any sign of the glowing blue light. He tried to get up but was unable to and began to panic as he seemed to be paralysed. Then a bright light shone in his face and looking upwards he saw a bright light in the sky coming towards him.
As the bright light got closer, he saw that it was coming from a triangular shaped craft. It couldn’t be an aircraft he thought, panicking even more. John had an interest in aircraft, especially military ones and knew all the types of British, American and Russian aircraft that were currently in service and to his knowledge there wasn’t anything like this. As the craft neared him, he realised there wasn’t any engine noise coming from it and that it was far bigger than he’d at first thought. Suddenly another beam of light shot out from the bottom of the craft.
“Bloody Hell,” John swore, trying to scramble up to his feet. He still couldn’t move and could only wait fearfully for the beam to reach him. The next thing that he knew, the beam of light was passing over him, starting at his head and travelling slowly all the way down his body. When it had passed over his feet, John felt a jolt and a strange tingling sensation, then he rapidly lost consciousness.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The next thing that John knew he was lying on his back in a small, circular chamber. He still couldn’t move, but turning his head from side to side, he saw that the chamber’s walls seemed to be made of a shiny metallic material. He must be on board the craft, whatever he was. John had heard of so called alien abductions, but had always disbelieved the stories. What worried John, however, was that there didn’t appear to be a door anywhere in the chamber, so he had no way of getting out. After a moment or two however, part of the wall of the chamber slid open and a humanoid-like figure stepped into the chamber.
John was about 6 feet tall, but the new arrival in the chamber was a good three inches taller than that and appeared to be some kind of robot. Instead of eyes, it had a slit in its oval shaped head that glowed with a green light. It had quite long arms and hands with five digits. Its legs ended in in what looked like boots, with thick
soles. The torso of the robot reminded John of the type of moulded armoured breast and back plate a knight might have worn, but all seamlessly moulded into one.
Terrified now John tried to move out of its way as it silently approached him, but John’s limbs remained paralysed, and he was powerless to do anything. The robot reached down and grabbing him by the front of his Parka, effortlessly lifted him up, holding him out at arm’s length.
“I will stand you on your feet and you will come with me. It would be futile to resist, for I can easily render you unconscious again.” The robot spoke to him in English, but with a rather precise and mechanical tone.
“What do you want with me?” John anxiously demanded. “Why have you kidnapped me?
“All will be revealed to you at the appropriate time, John Trevaskis. We have a journey to make and it matters not to me whether you are conscious, or unconscious for the journey.”
“How do you know my name?” John taken by surprise wanted to know.
“All will be revealed to you at the appropriate time.”
“Who are you?”
“All will be revealed in good time, John Trevaskis, but you really must come with me now,” the robot said, more insistently.
“All right, I’ll come peacefully,” John answered this time. Now convinced that he was on an alien craft of some kind; John was surprised to find that he was very intrigued to find out what this was all about. An adventure also appealed to him, as long as it didn’t involve nasal probes, or any of the other horrible things that had allegedly happened to alien abductees, in all the books he’d read on the subject.
“Then follow me John Trevaskis,” the robot ordered, and John now found that he was no longer paralysed. Getting to his feet he found he could walk normally and so he did as he was told and followed the robot.
The robot led him out of the chamber and down a long corridor. The wall at the end of the corridor slid open and John followed the robot into a semi-circular chamber and then gasped in surprise at what he saw before him. At the far end of this chamber John could see out through an oblong section of the wall and found himself staring out at the stars. Then the scene changed and some symbols that John didn’t recognize flashed across what he now realised was some kind of screen. The scene then changed yet again, and John saw the Earth getting smaller and smaller in the distance as the craft he was on accelerated away from it. He was on a space craft he realised and was probably the first Briton to have travelled on one.
“Sit there,” the robot told John pointing to a chair, similar to the one that Captain James T. Kirk sat in on Star Trek, the new Sci-Fi TV series that the BBC had started showing this year. Looking around him, John saw another four chairs similar to the one that he’d been asked to sit in, but they were all vacant. John sat down as requested. The robot remained standing a short distance from John, on his right-hand side.
“Who sits in those chairs?” John asked, indicating the vacant chairs.
“At present no-one,” the robot answered.
“Yes, I can see that,” John answered back.
“There is no need for sarcasm, John.”
“All right, I apologise.” Why he was apologising to a robot, John didn’t know, but his mother had always insisted on him being polite.
“All will soon be revealed,” the robot answered.
John looked around the semi-circular chamber. There didn’t appear to be any controls anywhere. In fact, apart from the other four empty chairs and the chair that he was sitting in, the room was empty.
“Where are we going? And who’s flying this thing? There’s no controls anywhere.”
“We are going to our base on what you call Iapetus, one of the moons of the planet that you call Saturn This thing as you call it, is an interplanetary Deltoid and is on automatic pilot. Would you like to see the controls?”
“Yes please,” John replied and immediately in front of where he was sitting and within his reach a transparent panel with strange, but vaguely familiar symbols on it appeared in front of him. “Wow, it’s transparent.”
“Holographic,” the robot corrected him. “Touch the symbol on the bottom row, far left.”
John looked at the symbol which looked like three discs in a circle, superimposed on a triangle, which had had its points rounded. He reached out and touched it as requested and immediately the Deltoid’s speed increased.
“What does that one for?” John asked pointing to a symbol, that looked like a very ornate crescent with a fancy V-shape superimposed on it.
“Don’t touch that!” the robot ordered sharply. “It operates the weapons systems.”
Looking at the symbol again and then some of the others on the panel, John was even more sure that he’d seen them somewhere before, but he still couldn’t remember where. John yawned, he was very, very tired, but tried to fight the tide of sleepiness that had suddenly come over him. He didn’t want to miss a second of this amazing journey.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sol 6 Base, September 1969
John suddenly woke up with a start and realised that despite all his best efforts he must have dropped off to sleep.
“You’re awake again John Trevaskis. Just in time, as we’re nearing the end of our journey,” the robot told him.
John’s eyes widened in surprise as he saw the huge gas giant that the Deltoid was rapidly approaching. The control panel had disappeared and so the craft must be back on automatic pilot he thought. The gas giant looked familiar and John was sure that it was Saturn.
“Is that Saturn?” he asked for confirmation.
“Yes John, you are correct in your assumption.”
“Are we on automatic pilot?”
“We are and will soon be landing on Iapetus,” the robot answered
Soon they were approaching Iapetus and very shortly the Deltoid started to make its descent towards the moon’s surface, John was surprised though to see no sign whatsoever, of any kind of base.
“Where’s the base?” He asked.
“You’ll shortly see,” came the robot’s reply.
The Deltoid was nearly at the surface, when a large, square section of the ground below the craft slowly opened up beneath them.
“It’s underground,” John said excitedly.
“Correct.”
Down the Deltoid descended for some considerable time far below the surface into a vast chamber. When the Deltoid reached the floor of the chamber, it slowly moved forward past several other Deltoids and John now saw that the rear of the Deltoids was shaped almost like a human mouth and had what he thought must be three exhausts for whatever engines powered the craft.
“What is that?” John asked pointing to a much larger craft, at least 50 times bigger than the other Deltoids.
“It is also a Deltoid, but it has the capability for interstellar travel,” the robot explained as they passed by it.
Soon the Deltoid that John was in came to a halt.
“Come,” the robot instructed. “I am to take you to the base commander.”
“What for?” John asked, but the robot ignored him. John shrugged his shoulders, got up from the chair that he’d been sitting in and followed the robot.
First, they exited the semi-circular chamber and then went down the corridor again. They continued past what John thought had been the chamber he’d first been in on his arrival on board the Deltoid and instead went into another one. This one had racks of what looked like space suits, well, that’s what John assumed they were and also what could be weapons. It also had racks of other equipment; the purpose of which John had no idea. In the wall of the chamber was an open door, with a ramp leading down from it, to the surface of the chamber the Deltoid had landed in.
John followed the robot down the ramp and then across the vast chamber, which John assumed served the purpose of being a hangar for the Deltoids. He took a better look around it as they walked along it. John couldn’t see either end of the chamber and straining his neck to look up, he calcu
lated that from ground level to the roof of it must be at least three hundred feet high. What did strike him however was how busy it was. What John thought were more traditional robots, some shaped like small dustbins, were working on the Deltoids and others were obviously ferrying supplies to them.
The robot led John over to the far side of the chamber to a door that silently opened as they approached it. Going into the box-like room beyond it, John soon realised that it was a lift. The door closed, and John tensed himself as at great speed the lift descended into the bowels of Iapetus. How far down they’d gone before the lift stopped its descent, John had no idea, but it must have been a very long way. When the lift finally stopped, John followed the robot out of the lift and into a corridor. They only walked down it a short distance, before the robot stopped before a large door.
“I have John Trevaskis, Commander,” the robot announced.
“Enter,” came a new voice and to John’s surprise he realised that the voice sounded human and female. The robot’s voice had always sounded mechanical, a bit like the Daleks in the Doctor Who TV programme, that John had first started to watch whilst still at school. The robot walked in followed by John.
He gazed around in astonishment at the room they were now in. One wall was a vast screen which showed a close-up view of Saturn. The same symbols that had puzzled him before were displayed along the bottom of the screen. Suddenly the screen separated into two sections. One still showed Saturn, but the other half of the screen showed a Deltoid rising up from the surface of Iapetus. Looking further around the room, John saw that someone was sitting in a chair, similar to the one that John had sat in on the Deltoid. Their back was towards him, but whoever it was, was also humanoid.
“Sit in that chair John, we have a lot to talk about,” the chairs’ occupant swung around indicating a chair close to where they were sitting.
“What the!!” John nearly used the F-word for he now saw that the occupant of the chair was a very beautiful woman with short ginger hair, a similar colour to his own. She looked several years older than him, possibly in her thirties, but John was useless at judging people’s ages. John was seventeen years old, his birthday being in November, but he looked well over eighteen years old now and more like twenty, which is how he got away with being served alcohol in pubs.
The Sol 3 Agenda Page 1