Great Short Stories

by Stan Mason

  ‘Yes, a hundred-and-twenty to a hundred-and-forty years I would say,’ returned Gorin calmly.

  ‘And what if the time schedule is out of sync?’ demanded Sir Martin Colchester steely-eyed.

  ‘Then it will take two hundred years,’ retorted Groin with irritation in his voice. ‘What does it matter anyway on a project of such high-standing!’

  ‘How many bio-spheric cities do you reckon there would be?’ asked Linda Walker, her hopes rising with the spirit of the outline of the plan.

  ‘I really have no idea,’ returned the scientist frankly. ‘It

  will all depend on the development of the operation. I’m only providing an initial outline today.’]

  ‘So that’s how it ends, does it?’ demanded Sir Martin Colchester with a wry expression on his face.

  ‘No, it doesn’t!’ riposted Gorin arrogantly. ‘There’s still the final stage. Because the planet lacks bacteria, plants and trees which absorb carbon dioxide and excrete oxygen, there cannot be a breathable atmosphere suitable for human-beings. However, micro-organisms might create soil for plants to live in. then oxygen could be excreted from the carbon dioxide. Furthermore, let me say that there are millions of tons of oxygen bound up in carbonate rocks and deposits of iron oxide.

  With huge space mirrors and furnaces on the planet’s surface, it’s possible that iron oxide could be mined and heated breaking it down into iron and oxygen. The process could provide thousands of tons of oxygen every year. Although some will escape into space, gravity would retain most of it. Ponds, lakes, streams, rivers, and small areas would appear and hardy trees could thrive on a thin layer of organic soil. When

  the temperature rising further, although it will still be somewhat cooler than that on Earth, the permafrost and polar ice will melt. Rushing streams, rivers and large lakes will form and oceans will be carbonated albeit they won’t be salty. Equally, rain will fall regularly. In the thicker atmosphere, millions of trees could be planted, wheat would thrive where desert previously existed and the red planet would become moist green. As a result of the long summers, farmers could harvest several crops. In due course, it would become totally suitable for human habitation. And that, my fellow colleagues, in the briefest of terms, is my plan for the colonisation of Planet Mars. If you have any further questions, I’d be delighted to answer them.’

  ‘Bravo!’ shouted the Prime Minister, applauding loudly. ‘Does this mean you accept the appointment?’

  ‘I suppose I’ve already done so,’ returned Gorin smiling.

  ‘I knew we’d selected the right man for the task. It’s a brilliant scenario. Something we didn’t expect for months and yet you ran it through within twenty-four hours. Naturally, there will be a lot to discuss to plan and to budget for. But with the main elements in mind, we’ll be able to accomplish it.

  ‘I’d like to offer my congratulations to you, professor,’ declared Colonel Perrano warmly. ‘My superiors in the United States will be very happy with a report of this nature. I’m sure you’ll let us have everything in greater detail in a written report shortly.’

  ‘If that’s what you want I’ll be happy to comply,’ retorted the scientist gladly.

  ‘Have you discussed your plan with anyone else?’ asked Sir Martin Chichester eagerly.

  ‘Of course not,’ returned Gorin sharply. ‘I was told yesterday that secrecy was of vital importance. I thought everything out last night on my own without conferring with anyone else.’

  Colchester nodded thoughtfully, apparently satisfied with the answer. ‘Well,’ he added, ‘I think you’ve done admirably in such a short period of time. Congratulations!’

  Gorin eyed him strangely. The man was acting oddly... completely out of character. He seemed to resist the plan all the way through. Now he appeared to be over the moon about it. The rest of the committee gathered up their notes and left the room but Colchester stayed behind, closing the door behind them. The scientist watched him closely with a number of suspicious thoughts passing through his mind.

  ‘Well,’ stated Colchester, holding out his hand as a gesture of friendliness, ‘it all seems settled, doesn’t it?’

  The professor declined to shake the hand of the other man and turned away. ‘You have something in mind to say to me,’ he ventured, ‘otherwise you wouldn’t have closed the door. However, before you utter another word, let me tell you that I believe you’re one of the aliens who’ve incorporated with human-beings on Earth.’

  ‘How do you come to that conclusion?’ asked Colchester with a slight smile touching the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Aliens have one defect,’ continued the professor, staring straight into the other man’s eyes. ‘The palms of the hands of human-beings are perfectly flat when they turn them over. Those of aliens project outwards showing a large bump in the middle. That’s why I declined to shake your hand. I’m positive that your palm projects outwards.’

  ‘You’re very perceptive. Despite that, you realise I can’t let you continue with the project to Mars.’

  The professor stared directly into the other man’s eyes. ‘Why not? What’s so important that you can’t let it happen?’

  ‘Mars is the location of my people,’ explained Colchester. ‘It’s the stepping off point for Earth. We have hundreds of thousands of units... people... living there mainly in the series of gorges known as Valles Marinaris. They exist in encapsulated shelters with their spaceships alongside. UFOs as you know them. WE too have a yearning for space travel and colonisation of other planets. If this project proceeds, it will interfere seriously with our programme on Mars.’

  ‘What are you going to do about it?’ asked Gorin plainly.

  ‘I’m going to used my power to make you forget all about the planet and everything to do with it. You’ll not ever remember you were summoned here.’

  ‘And what about the others on the committee?’

  ‘I’ll deal with them all in the same way within the next twenty-four hours, including the Prime Minister. I’ll shall make certain they remember nothing.’

  ‘And the American? What about him?’

  ‘He’s a problem. I shall arrange for him to send a message back to his superiors in the United States to say that the project isn’t feasible. That should be enough to put a spanner in the works.’

  The professor then found himself looking directly into Colchester’s eyes. A beam of light appeared to pass from the alien to the scientist. It lasted for some five seconds before fading away. Then the alien walked to the door and left the room smartly. After a short while, the scientist sat down heavily on a chair gazing at the far wall of the room with a blank expression on his face. When the chauffeur arrived to take him home, he staggered to the vehicle and groggily fell inside.

  He awoke the following morning feeling quite alert. He suddenly felt an urge to retire from work. Naturally, he would keep in contact with colleagues involved in space travel and he intended to give lectures on the subject in universities and institutes. The topic of the planet Mars never entered his mind for an instant. He was destined to continue his life never thinking about the subject. It simply hadn’t happened. However, he would always cling to the idea that aliens existed and that they were living among human-beings on Earth. Of that much he was still certain!

  Battle Stations

  Life is extremely contrary: it is full of superlative winners and desperate losers. Inevitably, most people bless the glory or detest their plight, many are quite aware of what is happening but feel helpless to do anything about it, while others fail entirely to notice any absence of achievement by them during their passage through life. In effect, the world is made up of heroes, criminals, villains, victims, do-gooders, the innocent, the successful, the unsuccessful, the wannabees, and a multitude of nonentities whose names will never be recognised in the annals of history because, worthy or n
ot, they never made a serious contribution to make themselves become noticed. It is a sad reflection on destiny, perceived as the inevitable or necessary fate to which a particular person or thing is destined... the preordained or inevitable course of events considered as something beyond human power or control. As a result, most people are carried along like flotsam on a sea of troubles during the short period they spend in this world never to become recognised, renowned or even remembered.

  This was the case of the life of one particular man... Evan Hargreaves... just an ordinary person being carried along by the momentum of humanity in the twenty-first century. Sadly, he had little by which to commend himself, being poorly educated as a result of living in a depressed area, unemployed, and almost totally unemployable. He showed no talent for anything in particular, not even sporting activities, and sat at home drinking beer and watching television for most of the day. He had lived with a number of female companions during the past few years but even they eventually got fed up with his disinterest in everything in life except for making love to them. Nonetheless, he was an avid reader of newspapers, following all the topical news especially when it concerned wars which were being fought in one corner of the world or another. He had no specific reason for such interest. After all, at the age of thirty-three he had never joined the army, navy or airforce, and he had no desire to belong to the Territorial Army. Yet wars fascinated him beyond belief although he could never fathom out the reason why he felt that way. After all, he had never been religious, he cared nothing for national or international causes, and he was not enchanted by any one set of people or another. It mattered little to him if the Irish Republican Army hated the British, or if the Israelis and the Palestinians fought each other to the death, or whether North Korean tried to conquer South Korea, or if the forces of Communism were pressing to become a threat to Democracy and Fascism. He was simply an addict of the effects of war and the organisation of the services of the different nations of the world who were foolish enough to participate in such activities. It was a joy to him to weigh up the odds of any assailant winning a war, as well as determining the numbers of aircraft, tanks, armoured vehicles, and personnel down to the last detail, the data of which he gained from various newspapers. He analysed the strategy of each army, worked out the tactics that he, personally, would employ and, inevitably, came to a conclusion of how the war would end. However, in due course, the element of interest in such a pursuit from the comfort of his sofa was hardly enough to satisfy him. He wanted to become part of it... to fight in a foreign land, on foreign soil, with a strange militia in a war against an enemy, whoever it was, wherever it took place.

  He picked up the morning newspaper and turned to the foreign page, reading at random as his eyes hit the right page.

  “The tail-fin of an American-made rocket stood at an angle on the ground like an incongruous leaning redundant tree stump. It had been fired into the camp in an attack by a helicopter gunship in which many people had been killed. The growl of an armoured personnel carrier grinding up the dirt road behind us signalled that the enemy were advancing to a new position, closing down the last access route in and out of the camp, sealing it off to the outside world. It was a textbook ambush before the start of house-to- house fighting against guerillas who knew every inch of their own terrain.”

  To Evan Hargreaves, this was riveting stuff. He could imagine himself standing in the field of battle at the theatre of war with the bombs exploding around him and bullets whining past his ears. It was all so exciting even when reading about it in his bed-sit in a remote place in Britain. That was the problem. He was far away from any war and from all of the risks and dangers which servicemen were forced to endure. At one stage, a friend to whom he had divulged his interest suggested that he might consider playing War Games with model soldiers and cannons on a large table. This was accompanied by a comment about using a computer-oriented game which players could compete against each other by matching sets of armies who went into battle against each other. Evan turned up his nose at both ideas. They were simply synthetic operations. He was interested only in the real thing. And, most macabre of all, he seemed to relish in reading about the number of dead and wounded in each battle. It was his custom to scour the print in the national newspapers totalling the amount of those reported killed as if it were important to him. Little did he think that some eight million people lived on the planet. The issue which filled his mind was the small number of people who died in each skirmish. It was a ridiculous fetiche but it seemed to mean a great deal to him.

  Not for the first time that night did he dream of himself going directly into battle. Dressed in a camouflaged flak-jacket, heavy boots and a protective helmet, and carrying a loaded machine-gun in his hand, he saw himself running through a verdant green forest with shells exploding all around him, spewing the jagged bits of their fragmented cases in all directions to kill or wound the ground troops. He hastened to a broad tree trunk and stood quite still for a short while breathing heavily through the exertion before renewing his strategy in the advance to meet the enemy face to face. He was a front-line soldier right in the thick of the fighting. This was no place for weaklings or the undedicated. It was war at its fiercest and no single soldier could even think of making plans for his future because it was quite possible his demise would come within the next ten seconds. Such was the nature of conflict where the hand of fate decided indiscriminately who would live and who would die. It was hardly necessary to fathom reason. It was a matter of allegiance, whereby every individual involved swore an oath to his flag or country from the start, or dedication, which was forced on all personnel by mere dint of the need to survive. Either that or one was a mercenary being paid for his efforts. A single bullet slamming into the tree just above his head alerted him to the presence of a sniper. He spun round staring at the leafy abundance above spotting a light red flash of cloth protruding from beneath a branch. He fired fifteen rounds from his machine-gun and the body of the sniper fell heavily from the branch to the ground. It was his single contribution to a death toll which, by the end of the day, was likely to be high. He proceeded on through the forest ducking down whenever an explosion came close. By this time, his adrenalin had risen to its highest level for days as he pushed on towards the enemy camp. And then, suddenly, there it was! The jungle ended to display a number of huts housing the foe. A few soldiers were sitting around a fire outside drinking coffee. Moving quickly into the open, he raised his gun and began firing at them watching them fall where they sat. Using the element of surprise, he raced across the compound and pushed open the door of one of the huts by the force of his boot. There were two men inside who had been cleaning their rifles but they had got to their feet at the sound of gunfire. Evan shot them both dead within an instant. Then, running to the next hut, he forced his way inside. An exchange of fire with three soldiers left him wounded in the thigh and left shoulder. By this time, five soldiers had emerged from the last hut. Standing in the doorway, Evan fired at them from a short distance, sending all five into the next world in a few seconds. After he had been released from hospital, he stood in front of the regiment waiting to be awarded a medal for his bravery, and that was where the dream always ended. It was just a dream!

  However, it wasn’t simply a whim or a token interest in war which made him feel and think that way. He desperately desired to be a part of the action and had made some serious attempts to do so in the past. He had attended interviews at the army recruitment centre on no less than three occasions. They had seemed extremely interested in him the first time always preferring young recruits. At the age of twenty-one he was an ideal candidate. On arriving there, he had completed all the forms they had given him and then went on for the medical. Physically he was deemed to be perfectly all right. It was the mental test on which he was failed. A few days afterwards, at his request, they sent him a copy of the psychiatrist’s report which stated ‘over-zealousness and excessive willingness t
o submit himself to unnecessary risk in the field of battle even before service training. The psychiatrist added that ‘he might end up being a loose cannon in a critical military action’. Unnecessary risk? A loose cannon? How could they possibly fathom that out after talking to him for only one brief session? It was ridiculous! Couldn’t they see how keen he was to get involved with fighting an enemy? Didn’t they recognise his enthusiasm and dedication to kill? Nonetheless, the rejection didn’t stop him from returning to the same place exactly one year later. He presented himself at the centre as bold as brass demanding to be recruited into the army. The recruitment officer checked his name on the computer and, after finding it there, Evan was shown the door once again. On the third occasion, almost a year later, he revisited the same place using an assumed name in the hope of fooling the authorities. He reached the medical stage and passed the physical examination with flying colours but then, to his misfortune, he came across the same psychiatrist for the mental test. The man recognised him immediately and reported him to the Commanding Officer who advised the potential recruit to hightail it out of the centre and never come back again. This time Evan took the hint. In any case, he was by now becoming too old at nearly twenty-four to consider joining the army.

  That evening, he visited his local inn and sat at the bar drinking a pint of his favourite ale. He was soon joined by Greg Walters, a man he had known from the past. Very shortly, they became engaged in conversation and Walters, who was fully aware of Evan’s fetiche, decided to broach the subject.

  ‘It galls me,’ declared Evan tiredly, looking down at his glass of beer, ‘just to think that there are wars going on in which I take no part. No part at all. If someone would recruit me for the army or the navy, I would train and go out there to kick some butts. That’s what it needs.’