[The origin of the short story that follows is something of a mystery. It appears to have been written at great speed circa 1950 by a now-forgotten hack writer who was desperately trying to meet a deadline. Indeed, some experts believe that the story was written so quickly that it momentarily exceeded the speed of light, causing it to break out of its local space-time continuum and spontaneously reappear in cyberspace 50 years later.]
“EARTHQUAKE!” shouted Steve Slick, swiveling around urgently in his swivel chair. With lightning-quick reflexes, the other man in the room, Terry “Tiger” Tompkins, threw himself to the floor and rolled under the nearest instrument console.
“Hold on a second,” Tompkins urged. “We’re on a spaceship. How on earth can there be an earthquake on a spaceship?”
“Not here, stupid,” Slick grinned. “I mean the sensors have just registered an earthquake down on the uninhabited planet about which we are in orbit, and which we have had under surveillance for the last two days for the purpose of a routine galactic survey.”
“Oh,” said Tompkins. He picked himself up and carefully scrutinized the instruments. “Just a minute!” he exclaimed. “That earthquake could not have been natural. It must have been triggered by a nuclear weapon of previously undreamed-of force! But wait -- that would indicate the existence on this seemingly lifeless planet of an alien intelligence of unimaginably great intelligence and possibly also equally great evilness.”
“Yes,” Slick breathed. “That is exactly the thought I had just now. We must land on the planet immediately to investigate and if necessary wipe out this very real threat to life and civilization.”
So the three-man survey ship “Queen Victoria” broke out of its orbit around Alpha Herculis IV and went into a landing run. Expertly piloted by Steve Slick, it came in effortlessly over a lot of oceans and mountains and rivers and stuff, and finally landed on a flat piece of desert near the earthquake zone, which seemed a likely place for the evil aliens to have a secret laboratory.
After testing the atmosphere to six decimal places and reviewing their plan of action, Slick and Tompkins emerged from the ship and descended to the alien soil. And also the third member of the crew, who was called “Guts” Garamond.
For a few seconds the three Earthmen scanned the alien desert around them, and then they bent down and began to scrutinize the alien soil looking for clues.
Suddenly, Slick heard a sound behind him and instantly swung around, displaying lightning-quick reflexes. He saw that they had been snuck up on by thirteen strange alien creatures, which resembled nothing so much as a bunch of mean-looking grasshoppers.
“Take us,” Slick intoned slowly to the meanest-looking alien, “to your leader.”
“Enough of this idle talk!” grunted the alien, and then the thirteen aliens jumped on the three men and started to clobber them. The Earthmen pulled out their blasters and began to blast the aliens.
There was a long and exciting fight, and for a long time it looked as though the Earthmen were losing. They were really having a very bad time of it, but in the end they won, and stood surrounded by thirteen dead aliens.
“Well, that confirms your theory that evil aliens were behind the earthquake,” Tompkins gulped. “But where,” he scratched his head, “did they come from?”
“I don’t know,” Slick agreed. “They appeared to appear from nowhere. But I’ve got a hunch there’s some connection between the aliens and that huge stone castle about two hundred yards away over there, rising out of the surrounding barren desert like a sore thumb.”
“You might,” Tompkins realised, thumping his right fist into his left palm, “be right. Anyway, it’s all we’ve got to go on. We’ll have to take the chance.”
The three men ran swiftly to the castle and quickly located the entrance. Over the gate hung a sign saying “This entryway is protected by a lethal force-field which will kill any living thing which attempts to pass through it. It is also effective against unconscious living things, so you needn’t try that old trick.”
“It’s a bluff,” snorted “Guts” Garamond. He rushed at the opening and was instantly charred to a little cinder, approximately 6 inches in diameter.
“Gasp,” Tompkins said.
“A brave but foolish gesture,” Slick observed. “However, I have a hunch that the force field will need a few seconds to recharge during which it will be inactive. Thus if we go through immediately, we will get inside unharmed.”
Slowly, cautiously, and with great wariness the two Earthmen stepped through the gateway into the castle, and just as Slick had predicted they were not charred to cinders by the force-field.
Breathing heavily, they waited for their eyes to become accustomed to the dim lighting inside the castle. Then they were able to make out a sign in front of them saying “To the laboratory,” with an arrow pointing down a corridor to the left.
Slick and Tompkins quickly ran down the corridor and burst into the room at the other end. It was huge laboratory, half-filled by an immense complicated-looking machine built of metal and glass and wires and stuff. The sole occupant of the room stood confronting the Earthmen as they entered.
The creature was another strange, evil-looking alien, but different from the previous thirteen in that he was a little less strange and a lot more evil looking. He was wearing a white lab-coat and looked a bit like Peter Lorre, but with big pointed ears and four arms.
“Ah, welcome, Earthlings,” the alien greeted sarcastically. “You are just in time to witness the destruction of your much-loved home planet of Earth. Allow me to introduce myself - I am Zolon Phang, Junior, and I was the greatest scientist of the planet 70 Ophiuchi IX. However, ten years ago I was exiled for being evil, whereupon I came to live on this uninhabited planet, stopping on my way at the slave-trading planet of Beta Delphini III to purchase thirteen mindless savages to do the housework and gardening for me. This left me free to develop a nuclear weapon of previously undreamed-of force, the recent test of a small version of which is no doubt what brings you here.”
Phang stepped closer to the Earthmen. “And as I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, the full-sized missile will be launched towards your beloved home planet in just ten of your Earth minutes.” The evil alien grinned evilly. “Needless to say, the destruction will be total. Ha!”
Slick jumped backwards, horrified, and bumped into the huge machine filling half the laboratory. “What’s this, Phang? Is it the despicable launching mechanism for your ghastly missile?”
“Oh, no,” the alien contradicted. “That’s my time machine.”
“Time machine?” Tompkins wondered. “We don’t have those on Earth. How does it work?”
“Ha ha,” Phang laughed. “The mind of an Earthling is as puny as that of an alarm clock compared with my own vast intellect. Of course you don’t have time travel on Earth — you’re too dumb to understand the really difficult principles involved. But since you asked so nicely, I will attempt a vastly oversimplified explanation. In crude terms, the machine breaks down the body of the time traveler into its component quarks and leptons, which are so small they can slip through the tiny little holes in the very fabric of time itself. When all the particles have fallen through to the other side, they join together to re-form the time traveler, who then simply walks along to the 17th century or the 31st or wherever he’s going. Then he is broken down into quarks and leptons again, to pass back through the fabric of time and be reassembled in the real world. A brilliant idea that no Earthling could have thought of in a million years.”
“Gosh,” Tompkins breathed. “And your time machine really works?”
“Well, no, not actually,” Phang muttered. “That’s it’s one big flaw. But I’m starting to get the bugs smoothed out, and it really is a brilliant idea that no Earthling could have... But enough of this idle chatter. In three minutes my missile will be launched against Earth, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it!”
“That’s what you think!” Slick cried triumphantly. “In the nick of time I remembered that there was a fourth crew-member on board our survey ship, namely our Scottish engineer Duncan MacDunk, who is normally so insignificant I keep forgetting him. While Tompkins was distracting you so cleverly just now, I was communicating with MacDunk via the Morse transmitter in my first right lower premolar and the radio receiver implanted in the temporal bone just in front of my left ear. I have ordered him to use every weapon at his disposal on your hideous missile as soon as it is launched, thus destroying the missile, this castle, the whole planet and your loathsome self. It is unfortunate that we two (or rather three) Earthling heroes will also perish, but this brave act of sacrifice will save our home planet of Earth, making it all worthwhile.”
Phang narrowed his eyes grimly. “I was afraid you’d try something like that,” he said. “That’s why just a moment ago I secretly launched two identical missiles from the other side of the planet, both of which are now safely on course for Earth. It appears that I have definitely out-thought your puny Earthling intellects, eh?”
Phang paused for the horrified reactions of the two Earthmen, but just at that moment there was a loud bang as the third missile, having been dutifully shot down by Duncan MacDunk just after launch, exploded prematurely, destroying the whole planet and killing all three (or rather four) living creatures on it, and also re-killing the thirteen grasshopper-like aliens and the six-inch diameter cinder which had until recently been “Guts” Garamond.
On Earth, Captain Harry Jackson stood in the headquarters of the International Organisation for Defence against Alien Invasions, and looked grimly at the two small dots on the radar screen. He knew as well as anyone that each of those seemingly innocent dots represented a missile with a nuclear warhead of previously undreamed-of destructive force. The missiles were traveling relentlessly toward Earth at a speed of 60 billion miles per hour, or a hundred times the speed of light.
Jackson turned to the other man in the room, Captain Harvey Johnson. “Mind if I smoke?” he asked. Johnson shook his head.
Jackson put his left hand in his left pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes. He opened the flap and withdrew a cigarette with his right hand and put it in his mouth. He closed the packet and put it back in his left pocket with his left hand, and then felt in his right pocket with his right hand and produced a box of matches. He pushed open the box with his right hand, took out a match with his left hand, and closed the box. Then he swapped over the objects in each hand, struck the match on the side of the matchbox, and lit the cigarette. He shook the match briefly to put it out, threw it away and returned the matchbox to his right pocket.
Johnson, who had been looking nervously at the radar screen for some time, could contain himself no longer. “But sir, what are we going to do about them?”
“I don’t know,” Jackson mused, taking a long drag on his cigarette. “I’m sure we’ll come up with something in the nick of time, but I’m darned if I know how.”
Copyright © 2003 by Andrew May