The Zondon: Terrorists and Aliens (an International Suspense Thriller)

by RobCharters

  In those days, all knowledge was that of the good sort. The more of this kind of knowledge he found, the smaller it made him seem to himself to be until he quite forgot about his largeness of size and often had to be reminded. This was heightened by the magnifying power of his eyes that made small things appear big to him. Also, he would always be stooping down to address others on eye level until he would fancy himself being the same size as they.

  In short, he was intensely admired by all, but he knew least of anyone why that should be.

  But there did came a time, it seems, that he was reminded once too often about his size, and his noble attributes. That was as he was embarking on a trip to observe the Gleamon, the only creatures in the universe larger than he. He went on his way to the outer perimeter of that solar system, thinking to himself, 'What a wonder it is, that I, of all creatures in the universe, save the Giant Gleamon, should be the largest and most noble of all!'

  The Giant Gleamon lived on a planet forbidden to all but they. Zokdraheen would sit in his ship, just beyond the confines of their outer atmosphere, and observe their graceful movements and try to make out the sound waves released into their atmosphere by their speech and their fine music.

  He watched and he listened. As he did, he thought to himself, 'Indeed, I am of larger size and more noble than all my fellows, but here I see creatures larger and of greater knowledge than myself.'

  The wizened king of the Giant Gleamon, Vantbrot, heard his thoughts, for they were thought with an intensity that could be heard all the way to the planet's surface.

  At this point, it must be stated that the Gleamon were not as highly possessed of knowledge as Zokdraheen was given to believe. It only seemed that way to him, as the knowledge they had was different from his own. In his innocence, he hadn't taken to measuring himself according to his own knowledge and abilities, but only recognised the attributes of others. He readily took note of what they had that he had yet to learn. Thus, it was easy to conclude that the other was the wiser.

  Indeed, the Gleamon didn't so much as possess the means to travel beyond their own planet. Their knowledge of physical things consisted in the art of damming and diverting the flows of molten lava on their largely liquid planet, and harnessing its power, both utilising the heat energy and the force of its flow.

  The Gleamon, both the Giants and the Lesser Gleamon, were indeed beautiful, graceful and musical creatures. Once-upon-a-time, Gleamon music was so fine that the Supreme One Himself would delight in visiting the planet. Vantbrot, being the finest musician, one day found he could lull the others through his music, and thus began manipulating them into following him as their leader. Then, there came a day that he even attempted to lull the Supreme One. After that, their music ceased to be beautiful to His ears. Knowing that their music would be a snare to the other newly formed species in other parts of the universe, the Supreme One forbade the others from visiting the planet of the Vortex.

  King Vantbrot was not even the largest of the Giant Gleamon, but was of the smaller and faster sort. Realising his own swiftness of speed and agility, he began to use that to his own advantage. Using both his power of seduction and his brute strength, and fought, beguiled and bewitched his way to the top. He was the first creature in the universe to be called a king. Before that, only the Supreme One was considered worthy of such a title.

  Vantbrot also increased his own beauty by having large gems embedded in his scales. Some that had been torn off in fighting, were replaced with large flat rubies, sapphires and emeralds. Also he had pipes and other instruments of music built into his body.

  He lived in a magnificent palace on an island in middle of a lake of molten lava, reachable by a retractable bridge. He had literally grown the palace by allowing magma to push it's way upward while regulating its formation into vertical six-sided beams, thus forming its basic structure, which he embellished with gold and every type of gem. The lava of the lake retained its molten state through an intricate system of channels and pumps that maintained the flow to and from the lower sphere on which the continental plate floated. There on his island, in the midst of the multicoloured fountains of fire, Vantbrot would make his enchanting music.

  Under Vantbrot's kingship, the nature of life changed. Others coveting his position, had begun to consume more and more food to increase their size. With greater size, naturally, they required more food, until soon the supply began to diminish.

  Vantbrot had earlier found that by consuming creatures of the other species rather than trees and fruit, he could both vanquish them and gain that much more in strength himself all in one go. Thus he maintained his position as king. As others began to follow his example the population was soon divided between the fruit and tree eaters, who increased in size, and consumers of meat, who gained in strength.

  Now, Vantbrot had reached the top. With no more to conquer, he saw Zokdraheen as his only hope of ascending any further, so he seduced him into entering the forbidden solar system.

  'What harm can there be in paying a brief visit, and learning of our knowledge for yourself?' King Vantbrot asked Zokdraheen.

  'It would be a joy to do so, except that your planet is forbidden to all but your noble species,' answered Zokdraheen.

  'Oh, but certainly, one so large and noble as your good self would be well suited to our planet. It is only the smaller and less noble creatures that have been forbidden, because such knowledge as we have to impart would quickly go to their heads!'

  Many other arguments, the king made to Zokdraheen, and sometimes he would make music for him. Every day, as the face of the planet was turned towards him, Zokdraheen would converse with king Vantbrot. Finally, after much persuasion, against his better judgement, he ventured into the atmosphere of the forbidden planet.

  Had Zokdraheen seen the Giant Gleamon consuming one another, he would have been horrified, and would certainly never have entered. For this reason, Vantbrot had attempted to control what he saw by decreeing that eating of flesh could only be done on parts of the planet facing away from where Zokdraheen's ship was situated. Not all the Gleamon were so obedient, of course, so Vantbrot also made some of his finest music which distracted Zokdraheen from the truth.

  As it was, by the time Zokdraheen realised the shocking truth, he had already become so inebriated with the new sort of knowledge he was now gaining, that he saw it as a necessary adjustment he would have to make for the sake of flowing with the new wisdom.

  Now he had begun see that his size and knowledge were assets that could be used to his advantage. The concept of kingship was also intriguing, and he began to covet the title for himself.

  What he didn't realise was that his own ability and wisdom far exceeded that of the Gleamon, but Vantbrot kept that fact carefully hidden from him. Indeed, had he known it at the time, Zokdraheen could have displaced Vantbrot as king of the Gleamon. He only realised this once Vantbrot, through guile, had siphoned into his own brain all the knowledge known to Zokdraheen.

  Because the Giant Gleamon were too large to fit into a ship, Vantbrot sent his essence into the body of his most trusted servant among the Lesser Gleamon, a slender creature named Nakhash. In the body of Nakhash, Vantbrot travelled with Zokdraheen to his home planet and from there, the two laid the foundation of what we now know of as the Glaat empire.

  The beginnings were slow and gradual. In those days, Zokdraheen was more patient than he was in latter years, because of his relative innocence. He worked slowly, seducing one person at a time among his circle of his closest friends. Those who wouldn't come under his influence, the Gleamon taught him how to destroy. He was less subtle at first, but then that was not a problem, as in those days, the Glaat were too innocent to suspect they were being destroyed.

  So, all his friends were either seduced or destroyed -- all but one, Zantrid, who had learned early to mix innocence with discretion. He began to warn others, and with those who accepted his warning, formed an alliance known as the Glore
en. They held out against the expanding influence of Zokdraheen and Vantbrot.

  However, for two reasons they were not able to stem the tide: because the Gloreen were so few in numbers to begin with, and because of the crafty strategy of Zokdraheen, taught to him by Vantbrot. Before he began to attempt conquest of any sort, his first move was to plant seeds of self admiration. Influenced by his subtlety, the Glaat began to measure themselves according to their own knowledge and ability.

  Even though the knowledge they measured themselves by was still of the pure sort, having not yet received the lower wisdom of Vantbrot, nevertheless the self appraisal brought with it other things. Not only did they begin to admire their own wisdom, but the pure admiration they once had of others was mixed with a comparing of the other with themselves. This led to dissatisfaction with their own state and an ambition to become better than the other. In a way, this was really the beginning of their downfall, as their well of pure wisdom was poisoned with pride and ambition, thereby hardly differing from the dark sort. It was only a matter of time that Zokdraheen was able to offer them the knowledge of Vantbrot as a means of achieving their ambitions. By then, all wisdom appeared the same to them, so they readily accepted it.

  Zantrid had realised the danger of self admiration early on, and so had the other Gloreen. By resisting the trend, they were immune to the poisonous words of Zokdraheen. But, at the same time, they appeared too unimposing to have any influence on the others, who would now only listen to those who projected their knowledge and ability in a way that could be admired and compared. After they had warned all who would listen among their fellow Glaat, they allied themselves with the Zish and became the teachers of the Zondon, who in those days were largely ignored by those under Zokdraheen's influence.

  As the evil empire expanded, travel to and from the forbidden solar system became common. Because of the knowledge gained by the Gleamon through their interaction with the Glaat, the Gleamon became a danger to themselves and to the Vortex. Should the Vortex be destroyed, time, material space and energy would cease to interact and the entire universe would collapse.

  Thus, the Supreme One saw fit to send a meteorite to destroy life on that planet, and start anew. The only one of the Giant Gleamon to survive was evil King Vantbrot, but not in his original body, as he had taken up residence in that of Nakhash.

  Alas, Vantbrot's Giant Gleamon body, with the pipes and bejewelled scales was destroyed, along with his palace and all trace of Gleamon civilisation -- all but the scant remains of a Gleamon city that can still be seen on the coast of one of the larger islands, thought to be a natural rock formation.

  Nakhash, having foreseen the coming destruction, had refrained from taking residence in that body, and had hidden himself in Zokdraheen's ship as the two departed the planet for the last time.

  Because Nakhash's body was really his own, and not Vantbrot's, he could repossess it at any time. He also knew that the other two had great knowledge that would be useful to him also. Being the ambitious and crafty creature that he was -- and still is, Nakhash saw his opportunity to gain prominence by allowing his body to be used by the other two, and by playing them against each other, and carefully manipulating them so that neither ever gains absolute power over the other. Thus, they exist to this day as three force fields interchanging between two bodies.

  In that way, they are a crude simulation of the Supreme One, who is Three Lights united in One: one of these being the Primary Life Force which is downward, called the Pure Breath; the second being the Primary Life Force which is the Middle Pillar, who is called Wisdom and Understanding; and the third, the Upper Primary Life Force, Who is hidden in secret, in Him exist all the Primary Life Forces (the Pure Breath and the Middle Pillar), and all that is light.

  In contrast, the three evil force fields, Zokdraheen, Vantbrot and Nakhash, embody all that is darkness. However, their power is vastly limited to what they can take and hold -- unlike the Supreme One, whose influence is universal.

  Ibrahim wanted to relate the story to someone, but the one he most wanted to tell, Ernie, was away. Later that morning, he found Rabbi Simcha sitting alone in his study room. He was a willing listener, so Ibrahim told him, beginning with the first two parts of the story Zizz told before the Zondon embarked on this mission.

  Rabbi Simcha listened intently, and said, if Ibrahim were ever to remember the third part, he wanted to hear it. He believed it would include bits and pieces of what he knew.

  Chapter 46

  They went for a two prong approach. May Lin and Thomas ran all over Seoul trying to contact whomever they could in North or South Korean intelligence to get word through to P'yongyang that their rocket at the Musudan-ri launch site had been tampered with. They represented themselves as Israeli intelligence, but either they could get no one to believe them, or those who did didn't know how to contact P'yongyang. Finally, on their second day of running around, someone did manage to get through, only to be told that they wouldn't be able to get anyone over to Musudan-ri to check it until tomorrow -- just in time to close the stable door, Thomas noted.

  * * *

  No one at all notice the two casually dressed Irishmen wandering about the high security area inside Kunsan U.S. Air Force Base, one of them with a large green crystal attached to his forehead. This was because they were projecting a zeta field in such a way as to make them, not invisible, but unnoticed. They could thus go into places, making as little noise as possible, and people would pay no more attention to them than they would the cleaning lady coming in to collect the cups.

  Their biggest challenge right now was finding their way about. After some looking around they found where the planes were kept, in a place accessible to the air strip. To get to them they had to go through a high security fence. At the gate they went and stood near the guard post and waited until someone with clearance came along.

  The guard just stood there, not showing the least bit of curiosity about the giant crystal perched on Ernie's forehead, let alone the fact they didn't look like they were on any official business.

  'Lovely weather for fly'n i'nit!' said Les to the guard.

  'I'll say it is,' he answered casually.

  Presently a couple of captains walked up to the gate, showed their passes, and went in. Ernie and Les followed as though they had expected to meet one another there.

  'Top o' the mornin to ya,' said Les to the guard.

  He waved pleasantly in return.

  They followed the two captains to where a fleet of stealth fighters was parked. These ones looked like double-seaters.

  'Make sure they've got enough petrol,' said Ernie.

  'I think that would be jet fuel,' Les corrected.

  'Whatever. I think this one has a full tank.'

  He scanned the whole plane with meefa vision, and instantly understood how each part worked. All the data went from his sight to his Zondon analytical senses and were communicated to Les, so he immediately knew how the controls worked.

  They climbed in. Les took the flight controls. He would exert the zeta field to supplement the stealth features of the aircraft, while Ernie with the crystal would stand by to use meefa vision and use the dyni beam on the rocket when they found it. Only the one actually using the crystal could use meefa vision, as it worked through one of its facets.

  They needed an access code to get the controls to work and start the jet engine. Using a dyni beam, Ernie bypassed the code lock. The engine engaged, and they started down the taxi way.

  Using a zeta field for passing unnoticed works well for a person walking about on foot, but when the jet fighter began taxiing towards the runway without clearance from the control tower, alarms began going off everywhere. However Les was quick to get the craft to the appropriate part of the runway, and immediately began to take off, just as security personnel were scrambling for position. Then they were airborne.

  A guided missile began following them, but Ernie deflected it with a dy
ni beam -- good practice for use on the big one.

  As they got out of visual sight of the air base, Les projected a zeta field that would dissolve any radar or other signals that would try to pin-point their whereabouts. The stealth features of the craft also helped.

  It was now coming up to 12:00 noon. There was still some distance between them and the launch site. The hills, fields and villages continued to speed passed below.

  About 12:06, they were circling the site in a wide circle, just close enough for Ernie to get an accurate view of the missile, but not so close as to alarm the people at the missile base. The settings, from what Ernie was able to observe were the same as they had seen them set the day before.

  The first job: disarm the warhead. This was a complicated procedure.

  12:07, exactly, smoke began rising from the silo. Ernie had to pause and let the missile begin moving upward at a steady speed before finishing his work.

  The missile was airborne. Les turned the nose of the jet straight up to get a head start.

  Ernie went back to work.

  Now, the warhead was disarmed, but it would still land in central Tokyo and inflict damage, and possibly still cause a major enough incident to initiate Operation Nostradamus.

  Ernie began to work on moving the latitude vector away from Tokyo, somewhere a bit to the north. But it would still hit inland, a nasty situation if it landed in a village or destroyed infrastructure. He began working on the longitude vector so it would land in the sea beyond. It was going too fast and too high to make it land short of Japan altogether.

  But there wasn't enough power to send it into the ocean.

  Wait -- there was a hatch built into the side used for launching satellites. Just inside was, not a satellite, but part of the warhead. Set the hatch to open, and loosen the fastenings of the warhead -- there.

  The missile was now out of range, and the jet was about as high as it could possibly go. Already, the rocket was releasing stage one.

  Such a primitive method of leaving one's own planet.

  Now, the job was done. They flew at that altitude for a bit just to observe and make sure the rocket jettisoned part of the warhead. It did, shortly after releasing stage two and firing stage three. The pieces would probably come down somewhere on land, but they were too small to be picked up on radar. The thrust left over in stage three was enough to make it clear Japan.