"There was—is—one more test. The Japanese used secret agents on a long-term basis. They would plant their people in a foreign land for years. They were part of the local community, a fifth column, so to speak. Then, when Japanese forces made their moves, they always had amazing knowledge of defenses and how to get through them. By now it was getting obvious we had some kind of agent on our hands." Buck shook his head. "There was one phrase that kept repeating in my brain. It wouldn't go away, and the more I heard it, the more I was convinced I was right."
"And what was that phrase, Rogers?" Logan asked.
Standing to his right. Dawn Noriega was visibly shaken as scenes of violent death, fire, and destruction reached out to her from Rogers.
Buck took a deep breath and looked directly at Black Barney.
"Remember Pearl Harbor," Buck said.
"I'm still not convinced," Black Barney said stubbornly. "You don't hang a man on circumstantial evidence, no matter how strong it seems."
"Admiral, when you were a SEAL and with Special Forces, including sabotage missions behind the Mongol lines, you and your men always had a recognition signal, an expression, a phys-
Buck Rogers
ical move that was ingrained deeply into your subconscious."
"That we did. In fact, it was so deeply implanted in our subconscious that we could never use or make the signal unless it was being used as a code."
"In other words, Admiral, you couldn't practice that signal or just casually demonstrate it to someone, could you?"
"Absolutely not."
"Tell me, Barney, what was that code with the SEALS?"
Barney started to speak. A moment later, face flushed, muscles quivering, he leaned against the wall for support.
"I can't,'' he gasped. "If ever I break the code without good reason, it's like a blow to the heart. I can't say it. Buck. I'd die first after the conditioning we went through."
"Did the enemy, especially the Mongols, use the same system?"
Barney nodded.
"If someone used that code on you, did you respond automatically, without thinking?"
"We did. It was pure reflex. We couldn't do an3d:hing else."
"Then if I'm right about Inoyue, wouldn't he have been trained the same way?"
"Absolutely"
"Do you know the secret Mongol sign of recognition among their agents?"
Barney shook his head. "Not by a long shot. Not that we haven't tried, but we never got it."
"Barney, did you know that back in my time I was assigned to Intelligence?"
"Yes, I knew that."
"Did you also know that I spent time on Sakhalin Island, well north of Japan and a major Russian base, with full Mongol security forces guarding the missile-launching complexes?"
"No, I didn't know thatr
"Again I ask you: If the code is given to a hypnotically controlled agent, he must reply, as trained, from his subconscious?"
"Yes."
"No doubts?"
"What are you getting at. Buck?"
"Takashi Inoyue is here, working in a comm center. I'd like to have him come up here with everyone watching."
A Life in the Future
"Why?"
'Tou'll see soon enough."
Inoyue appeared soon, curious but relaxed. "Takashi, will you please stand over here, facing me?" Buck asked.
The Japanese nodded and did as requested. He and Buck stood face-to-face.
"Takashi, I wish to demonstrate to our friends here an old Tibetan greeting. It dates back to when the Mongols first invaded China, from 1260 to 1368 A.D. There were few people on this planet at this time who had the courtesy or culture of Tibetan society. They would even greet one another in a ceremonial way."
They watched, astounded, as Buck moved his head forward, stuck out his tongue, and held his palms open at his waist.
Without thinking, reacting to Buck's strange movements, Inoyue performed a mirror-image movement of hands and body. His face whitened and he reeled back as if struck by a physical blow.
"Seize him!" Buck ordered. Dawn Noriega was already prepared, a pistol in one hand. She fired, and a thin, snakelike steel cord lashed out, swinging around and around Inoyue, pinning his arms helplessly to his body. "Give him another," Buck prompted, "The legs this time." Another shot, and Inoyue collapsed to the floor, fully awake, unharmed but helpless.
Buck turned to the group. "The ceremonial greeting you just witnessed was originated by Zhunche Liang of the First Mongolian Cavalry. He was a brilliant strategist, and he developed a fifth column against all his enemies.
"The greeting is ritual, a sign of great courtesy. The tongue is extended, exposed to show its natural color, for if it were black, that would be a sign that this person speaks evil and poisons all whom he meets. The open hands at the waist prove the absence of weapons. The greeting has been in existence, unchanged, for many generations. Only the men and women of the Secret Society ever know it."
Buck turned to President Logan. "Now that we can close the leak in our security and keep the Tiger Men guessing, we may have a good shot at a future in which we can learn to live with each other."
"I'm amazed, Rogers," the president said slowly. "Amazed and
Buck Rogers
grateful ... I am in awe at your determination to follow through on your hunches and beliefs. Is there any similar greeting from your post we can teach our own people?"
"Sure," Buck said, but he wasn't smiling.
"Remember Pearl Harbor."
la'l)Mt§^:^x#¥■
iieii^^^'*^®ai&^
POOR old Jules Verne! He took a look into the future and all he saw was the possibilities of the Airplane and the Submarine. The real facts of science — the tremendous advances in invention which were to include such amaT^ ing devices as the jumping belt, interplanetary rocket ships J the rocket pistol, inertron and all the other amaT^ng developments of the twenty-fifth century — which Buck Rogers herein describes — -Jules overlooked them all. Now listen to Buck Rogers.
BUCK ROGERS IS A TRADEMARK OF THE DILLE FAMILY TRUST
© 1933, 1994 THE DILLE FAMILY TRUST
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE USED OR REPRODUCED IN ANY MANNER WHATSOEVER WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE DILE FAMILY TRUST.
1994 PUBLICATION BY EKTEK, INC., ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI
PRINTED IN THE U.S A
Buck Rogers
By Phil Nowlan and Dick Calkins
* *
, BUCK ROGERS, am the only man alive, so far as I know,whose normal span of life has been spread over a period of five centuries! I was just twenty years old when the great World War of 1914-18 ended and I was mustered out of the Air Service where I had served for eighteen months on the battle fronts of France as a Pursuit Pilot. Soon after returning home I got a job surveying the low levels of an abandoned mine located near a great city. Deep in this mine, I was cut off from return by a cave-in, and succumbed to a curious and unidentified radio-active gas I had descended to study. I sank into a state of suspended animation in which I was "preserved" in all my youth and vigor until, five hundred years later, some shifting of strata once more let air into the ancient workings— and I awoke.
I had no idea, at first, that I had been unconscious for more than a few hours. But when I staggered up out of the mine a shock awaited me. Gone was every handiwork of man that should have met my eyes, swallowed up in a ^^^y^y v
4 BUCK ROGERS IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY
forest obviously centuries old, though the contours of the valley and the hills opposite were familiar.
I shall pass over the days of mental agony that I spent in the attempt to grasp the meaning of it all, days in which only the necessity of improvising crude traps and clubs with which to secure food preserved me from insanity, and begin with my first glimpse of a Twenty-fifth Century American.
A TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY AMERICAN
I saw her first through a portion of woodla
nd where the trees were thinly scattered, with dense forest beyond, from which she had just emerged. Overjoyed at the prospect of human companionship at last, I was about to shout, but something in her tense, alert attitude warned me.
She was clad in rather close-fitting garments. Around her waist was a broad belt, and above it, across her shoulders, a sort of pack, of about the proportions of a knapsack. She wore gauntlet gloves and a helmet.
She was backing cautiously away from the denser section of the forest, step by step, when suddenly there came a vivid flash and a detonation like that of a hand grenade some distance to the left of her. She threw up an arm and staggered a bit, in a queer gliding way.
Then recovering, she retreated more rapidly toward me. At every few steps she would raise her arm and, it seemed, merely point here and there into the forest with a curious type of pistol, from the muzzle of which there was no flash nor detona-
BUCK ROGERS IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY
5
tion. But wherever she pointed there was a terrific explosion deep among the trees.
After firing several times she turned quickly toward me, and leaped desperately, and to my amazement, literally sailed through the air, between the scattered trees for a distance of fully ninety feet; though at no time during this jump did she rise higher than about twelve feet ofT the ground.
But as she completed her leap her foot caught on a projecting root and she sprawled gently forward. I say '' gently'' for she did not crash down as I would have done, but slid in a weightless sort of way, though when she finally collided with the trunk of a great tree, she seemed to have plenty of horizontal momentum. For a moment I stood gaping in amazement. Then, seeing that blood oozed from beneath the tight little helmet, I ran to her, and got another shock; for as I exerted myself to lift her I staggered back and nearly fell, quite unprepared for the lightness of her. She weighed only a few pounds, perhaps 4 or 5.
For a moment I busied myself trying to stanch the flow of blood. But her wound was slight and she was more dazed than hurt. Then I thought of her pursuers, who by this time must have come up within shooting distance. I heard no sound, however.
SHE FELL SLOWLY TO EARTH
6 BUCK ROGERS IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY
THE PURSUIT
I took the weapon from her grasp and examined it hastily. It was not unlike the automatic to which I was accustomed. With fumbling fingers I reloaded it with fresh ammunition from her belt, for I heard, not far away, the sound of voices, followed almost immediately by a series of explosions around us.
Crouching behind a tree, I watched, accustoming myself to the balance of the weapon.
. , , 1 THE EVIL FACE
Then I saw a movement in the branches of a tree. The face and shoulders of a man emerged. It was an evil face, and it had murder in it.
That decided me. I raised the gun and fired. My aim was bad for there was no kick at all to the weapon, and I struck the trunk of the tree several feet below the girl's pursuer. But it blew him from his perch like a crumpled bit of paper. And he floated to the ground like some limp thing lowered gently by an invisible hand. The tree, its trunk blown apart by the explosion, crashed down.
Then I saw another one of them. He was starting one of those amazing leaps from one tree to another, about forty feet away. Again I fired. This time I scored a direct hit, and the fellow completely vanished in the explosion, blown to atoms.
How many more of them were there I don't know, but this must have been too much for them, for shortly afterward
BUCK ROGERS IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY 7
I heard them swishing and crashing away through the tree tops.
I now turned my attention to my newly found companion, and observed, as I carried her lightly to the nearby stream, that she was gloriously young and beautiful, and that her apparent lack of weight was due to the lifting power of the strange device strapped across her shoulders; for though slender, she was well developed, and there was firm strength in her lithe young body.
She moaned softly as I gently removed the close fitting little helmet, and there were orange-gold glints of fire in her hair where the little beams of sunlight, filtering through the forest foliage, fell upon it.
Her injury was really trifling, though the blow had stunned her. Still holding her lightly in my arm, I washed away the blood with water from the stream. At the refreshing touch she moved a bit, and half opened her eyes, and looked at me, it seemed, without the full realization of consciousness. Then she sighed and relaxed. "Thanks," she murmured. "That f-feels good. I'll—I'll be all right in a moment." And unconsciously she snuggled a bit closer in my arm.
THE AWAKENING
Then I felt her body stifl^en, and she was looking at me with wide, startled blue eyes. For a moment she was as one paralyzed with amazement. Then, in one sudden whirl of violent motion she had torn herself from me and landed some ten feet
BUCK ROGERS IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY
RAISE YOUR HANDS
I"
away facing me in tense, alert hostility. In her hand was the gun, which I had put back in her holster, and there was no doubt about her readiness to squeeze the trigger had I made
the least nervous movement.
"Raise your hands!" she commanded in a cold, hard little voice. And I reached for the sky without argument. "You're one of them," she accused. "And I'm taking you in. Where are the others?"
I tried to grin, but fear it was a sickly effort, for the gun in her hand looked businesslike, and the blue of her eyes was as cold as ice now. "You mean the man who—who attacked you?" I asked. "No, I'm not one of them. In fact I think I disposed of a couple of them for you—with your gun, which you see I gave back to you."
At this she seemed less sure of herself; but no less suspicious. "Put down your hands if you want to," she conceded. "But at the first break ..." There was a wealth of meaning in the unfinished sentence.
"Now then," she said, advancing a step, "Who are you? What are you doing here?"
"My name is Buck Rogers," I replied. "And I'm not doing anything much except trying to keep alive with the little game I can catch around here."
"Your clothing is strange," she mused, looking me over from head to foot. "There's something queer about all this.
BUCK ROGERS IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY 9
There lies that outlaw over there. You must have captured him, because I didn't. All I remember is making a big leap, catching my foot in something, and then—I saw stars!"
I explained exactly what happened while she gazed straight into my eyes, her glance never wavering.
"I believe you," she said finally, and after a moment's hesitation, put away her gun. She took a single easy "step," covering the entire distance between us, and said simply; "Thanks for saving my life. Now what's the rest of the story?"
There was no way out of it. I couldn't invent a yarn successfully to fit conditions in a day and age of which I knew nothing, and I certainly did not expect the girl to believe that I was centuries older than she. But I had to take a chance. she listened incredulously
She listened patiently; scornfully incredulous at first, but with more tolerance and growing amazement as I went on. And when I had finished she looked thoughtfully at me for some time.
WILMA
"That's all very hard to believe," she said at length, "but I do believe you. Buck Rogers." She held out her hand. "I am Wilma Deering, of the East Central Org, and I'm just finishing my turn at air patrol."
lO
BUCK ROGERS IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY
"Air patrol?" I queried. "But you have no plane here, have you? I don't see how you could use one in this forest."
For a moment she looked puzzled, then laughed. "A plane? Oh yes. Wasn't that what they used to call the old-fashioned airships centuries ago?
"No, I haven't one here, but we have aircraft of many types and all are greatly superior to those in use in the ancient civilization you knew. You don't need the
m when you have a jumping belt''; she indicated the pack across her shoulders; "unless you're going a long distance. What I mean is, I'm on patrol or guard duty to givewarning—with rockets—in case any raiding aircraft of the Red Mongols come this way. But come Buck," she added in a most friendly manner. "We must return at once to the city. And I promise you some amazing sights if the knowledge we have of life as it was lived here five hundred years ago—back in the 1330's—is true. Great scientific marvels have been brought about since then."
^T,c"^^"^
BUCK USING JUMPING BELT
BUCK ROGERS IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY n
Quickly we stripped the jumping belt from the fallen outlaw. Adjusting it properly on my shoulders, Wilma showed me how to leap with it. My efforts were crude but soon I caught the knack of it, and, although I could not match Wilma for speed or distance, we made rapid progress and at last came in sight of a city so amazing in its magnitude and seeming complexity that my astonishment was boundless.
CONQUEST OF GRAVITY
I found myself in a world in which gravity had been conquered by means of truly marvellous inventions. Science had accomplished wonders.
The mysteries of the jumping belt were explained. It was made of inertron, a synthetic element of great reverse iveight Y^hich. falls away from the center of the Earth instead of toward it, and which counterbalances all but a few pounds of the wearer's weight. I learned to leap great heights and distances with that pleasant and effortless ease that made aircraft and other vehicles in the i.'^xh. Century unnecessary, and indeed undesirable, for personal transportation, except where speed or protection from the weather was required, or where crowded conditions precluded the use of the jumping belt.
Buck Rogers- A Life in the Future Page 36