by Alex Raymond
Martin murmured an amused comment.
“And then there was the time Colonel Gordon and I were involved in a space probe around the Galaxy Aleph. Cracked up on the polar ice cap of an infant planet a dead ringer for Earth, but only one thousandth the size of it. People were the darnedest things you ever saw. Felt like Gulliver, I tell you.”
“Yes, indeed, Hans. Well, we really couldn’t tell you about the Four-Ess thing because of security.”
Zarkov stared. “Oh. Well, we’re on the right track now. I’m sure I can do the job.”
“The Secretary of Space Development thinks very highly of you.”
“St. George? Madison St. George? Humph,” snorted Zarkov. “Okay in the science department, but he talks too much. You know?”
Martin suppressed a smile. “Now, I’m to brief you before our pilot arrives, so if you’d like to sit down with me over here, Hans—”
“Sure, sure,” said Zarkov, following Martin to two chairs along a trestle table piled with photographs, graphs, and computer readout rolls.
Martin lit a pipe and puffed a moment. “Well, the first of the Four-Ess probes went up some time ago. It was a success from the beginning. We got data every minute of the time the first six probes were out until we brought them down.”
“Read about it,” boomed Zarkov. “You don’t need to treat me like a novice, Horace.”
Martin nodded. “What you don’t know about—or at least have only assimilated by rumor—is the fact that the last twelve super-sophisticated space-probe satellites have simply vanished without a trace in the atmosphere.”
Zarkov nodded. “Heard about that, of course, but this is the first official word. Vanished, huh?”
“That’s right. Vanished without a trace.”
“How did the others—the first six—react to our controls?” Zarkov asked.
“You mean the ones we got back?”
“Yes.”
“They responded immediately. We simply manipulated the drone navigational system from here, on this very computer”—Martin pointed to a large machine in the corner of the laboratory—“and brought the Four-Ess down within hours after summoning it.”
Zarkov nodded. “When were you aware there was a malfunction in the first one that disappeared?”
“We weren’t aware of a malfunction,” Martin explained. “All systems were being monitored routinely when suddenly the entire communications pack went out.”
“Just like that?” Zarkov said, snapping his fingers.
“Just like that,” Martin repeated.
“But it could have been a malfunction,” Zarkov persisted.
“I think we would have gotten the red light on one or another of the control panels,” said Martin, glancing across the room at the big Four-Ess console.
Zarkov nodded. “Okay. I’ll buy that. Then, in other words, what you’re implying is that something outside of the drone navigational system cut off the power.”
“We’ve analyzed it that way.”
“Okay. And now we come to the Unidentified Moving Object that has intruded into our solar system.”
“Yes,” said Martin. “You’ve obviously heard those rumors?”
“Oh, yes. But what you’ve told me is the most complete information I’ve heard.”
Martin rummaged in the papers on the trestle table and came up with one of the photographs taken by SSSS Number Seventeen before it vanished.
“Here.”
Zarkov stared at the photograph. “What does the computer readout say on this?”
“It won’t give us an answer.”
“Certainly it won’t give you an answer on identity or purpose. What I mean is, is there a chemical and physical breakdown of the object?”
“Sure. It’s around here somewhere.”
Martin stood up and burrowed through the rolls and finally came up with a bulky computer sheet.
Zarkov studied it carefully for a long silent moment. “Humph,” he said finally, throwing it aside. “Mineral and water and atmosphere. Not too different from us. But there’s no sign of vegetation.”
“Right.”
“Computer says there’s water and rock.” Zarkov frowned, picked up the sheet again. “Look at that! Plenty of iron! And look at the salts and oxides! And carbon! Fascinating!” Zarkov frowned and scanned the readout. “Look at that! There’s gold on the damned UMO, too! Gold!”
“Most of the elements we have on Earth,” said Martin.
“What I’m interested in is the magnetic field. And it’s very strong, Horace, I see here. Very, very strong.”
“You think the UMO attracted the Four-Esses and crash-landed them on the surface?”
“Could be.”
Martin nodded. “Not an illogical hypothesis, actually. I think Dr. Hendricks once proposed that.”
“Hendricks sounds like an intelligent man,” said Zarkov. He stood up and paced back and forth, glancing out through the porthole toward the giant electronic astro-telescope mounted outside the Space-Probe Control Center. He stood stock still. “Does that thing work?”
Martin smiled. “Sure, it works. But it isn’t powerful enough to sight the UMO.”
“Okay. It was just a thought,” boomed Zarkov. He resumed his pacing. “We’ve got twelve space probes that have been dragged into the magnetic field of a roving UMO which has invaded our solar system. Right?”
“Right,” said Martin.
“And the government’s howling at the expense. So we’ve got to do a little human investigation—a little eyeball-to-eyeball probing, if you will—and find out for ourselves—one, what happened to the wandering SSSSs, and two, who’s living on that Unidentified Moving Object in our system.”
“That’s it.”
Zarkov turned quickly to Martin. “How far have you tested the Pandora Probe?”
Martin blinked. “It’s gone through the first phase tests, Hans. It’s performed abnormally well. And it’s passed its Phase Two requirements. That leaves Phase Three relatively untested.”
“It’s Phase Three that checks out the electronic applications,” Zarkov said absently. “And you’re sending me up there without knowing if Pandora will be able to resist the magnetic field of the UMO?”
“Hans,” said Martin uneasily, “there’s nothing else we can do. Washington wants that probe started immediately. And we haven’t got the time to run through the whole checklist of the Phase Three tests.”
“But I’ll be sucked into the gravitational grip of the UMO and that’s the end of it. You’ll know back here what it’s all about through my communications system. But I’ll be stuck there to the end!”
“Pandora is a two-man rocket system, Hans.”
Zarkov looked startled. “I didn’t know that. Who’s going with me?”
“Colonel Gordon.”
“Flash?” Zarkov’s eyes lit up. “Great! I haven’t seen him in months.”
He wheeled around.
“Pandora! Isn’t that the girl in mythology who was curious about the contents of a box she carried around with her?”
“Right.”
Zarkov shook his head. “I had a feeling that’s who it was.”
One of the computers suddenly came to life and chattered and chattered, unrolling readout paper from its output slot.
Martin strolled over and glanced down at the writing.
“Hans! It’s Number Eighteen.”
Zarkov came over fast. “You mean Number Eighteen Four-Ess that was lost?”
“Yes!”
“What does it say?”
Martin frowned. “Well, it doesn’t say anything actually. It’s just a series of minuses and pluses.”
Zarkov stared at the sheet, trying to decipher the message. Suddenly he blinked and held the sheet from the readout away from him, squinting at it with one eye.
“Horace!”
Martin turned to him, startled.
“Look at this!”
Martin took the sheet and stared at it
uncomprehendingly.
“It’s not a message. It’s—it’s—a picture!”
“A picture?” Martin repeated, weakly.
“Yes! Look!”
Martin stared. Then he saw that the repetitions of the two different figures all taken together did form a sort of shadow silhouette of a—of a human being!
“It’s a man!” said Martin.
“Not necessarily a man,” said Zarkov. “It’s more like the kind of stick figure a child would draw.” He stared at it thoughtfully. “What do you make of it?”
“Somebody’s trying to communicate with us,” said Martin in a hoarse voice.
“Somebody? But they don’t seem to be very advanced intellectually. This is the drawing of a six-year-old.”
“Well, maybe it’s a planet of babies,” said Martin.
Zarkov chuckled with glee. “Oh, fine. They’ve stolen our satellites and now they’re using them for toys.”
Martin shook his head. “How did they transmit this message, anyway?”
“Obviously from the downed Four-Ess,” said Zarkov. “That means the Four-Esses haven’t been wiped out, but have been captured. Maybe they’re all there, functional, but not working. And one who used to transmit this ideograph to us.”
“Well, you’ve simply got to get up there in space and find out what’s going on.”
The computer began chattering once again.
Martin and Zarkov moved to the output slot, staring in astonishment.
Finally Zarkov pulled the sheet off at the end of the message. They both looked at it. It was obvious what it was this time. There were lightning bolts and a burst of energy.
“Explosions,” said Zarkov. “A warning?”
“Seems like it to me.”
Zarkov tugged at his beard. “Nobody can scare me. The more it’s tried, the less I scare.”
Martin nodded.
Zarkov was moving around again, striding up and down the room. “When are we going to get going, Horace? I’m sick and tired of all this waiting around!”
“You only just got here,” Martin smiled.
The computer began chattering again.
This time the readout showed the little man lying on the ground.
“Son of a gun,” said Zarkov. “It’s a warning, all right.” He frowned. “I don’t scare easy, punk,” he growled at the unseen being on the invisible UMO. “You wait and see.”
CHAPTER 3
Inside the spacious cabin of the Pandora Probe rocket sat two men, calling off items from the blast-off checklist to one another.
One was tall and slim, with athletic shoulders and a muscular build. He had a permanent tan, blue eyes, and curly light blond hair. Although he was hardly a youngster anymore, he had a boyish grin that was disarming and candid. Yet now Colonel Flash Gordon was all business inside his blue astronaut suit, his gloved hands moving quickly over the controls and buttons at the console in front of him.
Dr. Zarkov sat opposite him, pressing buttons and flicking toggle switches on and off as the reading of the checklist continued. Occasionally a red light would flash somewhere in the maze of instruments on the panels and one of the two astronauts would call back to Space-Probe Ground Control for a readout on the trouble.
Generally speaking, there was really nothing wrong with the big spacecraft. Soon the checklists were finished and Flash and Zarkov leaned back in their seats, spun around, and grinned at each other.
“I guess that does it, old buddy,” said Flash.
“Right you are. Hey, SpapGroc,” called Zarkov on the outside line. “What’s the countdown?”
“Two minutes and forty seconds, Doc,” said the voice of Dr. Martin, manning SpapGroc. “Anything you guys want in there?”
“Give us a good burn, Doc,” said Flash with a grin. “I’m anxious to get up there and take a look at that weird UMO.”
“Aren’t we all,” said Martin.
Zarkov flicked a button or two and Flash turned to read a figure on a digital tape to Control.
“Minus five seconds and counting,” said a monotonous voice from SpapGroc.
“Here we go, Doc,” said Flash to Zarkov.
Zarkov stuck his right thumb up.
“Three, two, one, and—”
The force of the suddenly ascending rocket smashed them into their seats and for a moment Flash lost vision, hearing, and consciousness. Almost instantly, he was back in control of himself, and glanced around the cabin at the rows and rows of dials and buttons.
Zarkov turned and winked. “How does it look, SpapGroc?” muttered Zarkov to the Space-Probe Ground Control.
“You’ve got a lift-off there,” said SpapGroc. “It looks real good. The computers are purring right along. No sign of any red.”
Flash nodded. “How is our flight direction, Ground Control?”
“We’ve calculated a correction coming up in about five minutes, Colonel Gordon. Otherwise you look real pretty.”
Zarkov chuckled. “Routine, routine,” he growled into the rocket-to-ground radiotelephone.
“Just sit tight, guys, and we’ll let you know when we want that burn. You read me?” Martin asked.
“We read you,” said Flash.
And it was like that all the way into the outer atmosphere. They broke earth orbit several revolutions later, and soared out into the path laid out for them by the computers in the big Space Research Lab. Flash could see the stars and several of the planets when he looked out the porthole, and he could see the big green and blue Earth they had left down there behind them, beaming like a big happy smile in the dark and dreary sky.
Zarkov decided to play chess with Martin, and Flash watched with interest as the two men kept a game going through the first twelve hours of flight—one move every fifteen minutes. There was not much else to do except fire a correctional burn every four or five hours. Flash turned on the stereo tape and listened to some orbital music, and then dozed briefly.
The second chess game started after Zarkov trounced Martin late that night.
It was during the third game—just when it was getting exciting and Zarkov was one piece ahead of Martin—that it happened.
Actually, it had begun to happen a little before that moment. Flash had visually sighted the dark, mysterious UMO out there earlier on, during the first moves of the third game.
“Hey, Doc,” he said. “Take a look.”
Zarkov was annoyed at having his concentration interrupted, but he took the infrared glasses Flash handed him and peered through the forward porthole.
“About nine-o’clock medium,” said Flash.
“I see it,” said Zarkov. “Dark as a pit.”
Flash nodded. “But those balls do look like lights around it, don’t they?”
“I can’t see that well yet.”
And Zarkov went back to his game.
Finally Flash shook him by the shoulder. “What about it? Do you think we should turn on the electronic telescope and take some photographs?”
“Wouldn’t hurt,” Zarkov muttered.
He got up and moved over to the telescope’s control panel. As he did so a red light flickered for an instant on the main console.
“What was that?”
Flash stared. “Power pack failure? It just flickered and then came right back on.”
“What’s wrong with the power pack?” Zarkov asked, his voice tight.
“Nothing,” said Flash soothingly. “Take a look through that electronic scope and see if you can make out the shape of the thing.”
Zarkov peered into the eyepiece and moved the digital dial for a proper setting.
“The infrared filter helps, but it still doesn’t look like much,” said Zarkov. “Want me to shoot a few?”
“Yeah. I’d like to see what that baby looks like on paper.”
Zarkov nodded and flicked the photographic lever several times. Three film packs slid out of the readout. Flash waited the requisite thirty seconds and broke the first Polaroid shot. He st
ared at it. The UMO was obviously a planet of some kind.
“We were right. It’s a gypsy planet that just wandered into the system.”
Zarkov leaned over his shoulder. “Yeah. That’s pretty much what it looks like.” He peered closer. “What do you think of that?”
“What?” Flash asked.
Zarkov pointed to what looked like flashes of white in the picture. “Well?” Flash said. “What about it?”
“What do you think those marks are?”
“Some imperfection in the film, maybe.”
Zarkov shook his head. “I don’t think so. Open up another and see if the same spots are there.”
Flash opened the second film packet and peered at it closely. He realized now that Zarkov was right: the white flaky spots were not imperfections, after all. The same “imperfections” were in the second photograph.
He handed it to Zarkov silently.
“What makes those white flashes?”
Flash shook his head. “Beats me.” He studied the first picture again. “The planet’s dark all right. It doesn’t have any light at all. Those pinpoint flashes might be light, but I doubt it. It looks more like—oh, say a burst of energy.”
“Like a puff of rocket exhaust, maybe,” Zarkov mused. “Perhaps that’s the way the UMO propels itself through space.”
Flash snorted. He opened the third pack and removed the inside covers. The same little puffs of light were there too, covering the surface of the gypsy planet like tiny and weirdly shaped pockmarks.
Zarkov was looking at the first picture again. “Those big satel-lights are plenty strange,” he punned, stroking his beard through his open astro-helmet.
“Right you are,” Flash agreed. “Since the planet doesn’t have any light, I suppose they might be a kind of three-dimensional lighting system. What do you think?”
Zarkov shook his head.
Flash glanced over at the cabin vidscreens that scanned the stern of the rocket and straightened with shock.
“Doc!”
“Huh?”
“The rear-vision vidscreen scanners have gone dead! All of them!”
“I’ll be damned,” snorted Zarkov, turning from the photographs and staring at the vidscreen panel. “Now what do you think caused that?”
“I don’t know,” said Flash, “but I don’t like it. According to our briefings, the space-probe satellites suddenly all lost their power just like that!”