Menace of the Saucers Page 5

  “By myself,” said Thane quietly.

  “You?” exploded Eggerton. “But last time you were here, with that Venus rocket piece, you told me you’d never touch flying saucers with a ten-foot pole.”

  “I found an 11-foot pole,” said Thane humorlessly. “What I said then and what I’m saying now are horses of two different colors.”

  Eggerton was still shaking his head. “Hard-headed old Thane Smith a saucer sighter. All right, hand over the photos first. If they aren’t good, it’s a wash-up right away.”

  Thane handed over the stills. Eggerton scrutinized them carefully. “Not bad. But then I’ve seen UFO photos just as striking that were faked.”

  “You have my word that these are authentic,” said Thane.

  Eagerly now, Eggerton began reading the sheaf of typed papers. He whistled now and then, during the first half. After he finished, he slammed down the manuscript. “Dammit, man, you know we don’t use science-fiction.”

  “Every word is true,” said Thane tightly.

  Eggerton fixed him with a cynical eye. “I don’t know what your game is, Thane, but you don’t honestly expect me to publish—or believe—this brainstorm, do you? It can’t be true. You dreamed it or drank the wrong rot-gut. You’re a victim of illusions, delusions, hallucinations…”

  “Skip the psychoanalysis, Bill,” snapped Thane. His voice turned soft “It’ll sell a million extra copies of Pictorial.”

  “It’ll get us a million subscription cancellations, you mean,” roared Bill, banging his fist on the desk. “Utter drivel, nonsense. We’d be the laughingstock of the nation.”

  “I’ve got movies to back it up, Bill. Better than the stills.”

  “All UFO movies stink,” retorted the editor.

  “How about this?” Thane held up the piece of metal. “Analyzed as an alloy of lithium and potassium in an atomically locked state. Superior to any metal on earth. I have the signed statement of a competent chemist.”

  Eggerton pushed aside his hand. “I don’t care what you have. The whole story is ridiculous to begin with. It just doesn’t have the ring of truth to it.”

  “Prove that, Bill,” challenged Thane. “Call in some outside person and let him read it. Not one of your editors, who might be as prejudiced as you, but someone not connected with Pictorial.”

  “All right,” agreed Bill, snapping on his intercom. To the puzzled receptionist he said: “Miss Blaine. Go out in the corridor and ask the first person who comes along to step into my office. Tell them it’s important. I’ll explain the rest.”

  While waiting, Thane mused that all was not lost. If the third party made an objective reading of his manuscript and gave one bit of approval to its matter-of-fact style of presentation, Bill would probably agree then to look at the movies, which should swing him.

  “Yes, what is it, sir?” came a feminine voice back of them.

  “Oh, it’s a girl that Miss Blaine rounded up,” said Bill.

  Thane turned, and nearly fainted. “Miribel,” he stammered, “You?”

  It was unmistakably the red-headed girl of the Vigilante saucer, only dressed now in earth-style clothing so that no one would suspect she was not of this world.

  Her eyes turned on him coldly. “I beg your pardon. My name is Myrna Darby. I was returning from an appointment with my lawyer when a girl asked me to step in here.”

  “But aboard the saucer where we met…”

  “Saucer? What are you talking about? We have never met before—anywhere.”

  “What are you trying to pull, Thane?” said Bill, eyeing him wonderingly. “You are seeing things.” To the girl he said: “Please forgive me. I need your help. Will you read this manuscript and tell us whether you believe what it says? I’ll pay you for your time.”

  Though surprised at the unusual request, the girl agreed.

  Thane watched her face as she read, especially when she came to the last half describing how he had met Miribel, the saucer girl, and their trip into space.

  Not a flicker crossed her face. Not a sign of betrayal of her new pose as an earthgirl. She smiled as she finished. “The way you describe this Miribel, I’m flattered that you mistook me for her.”

  “But you are Miribel,” insisted Thane. He went on desperately. “Surely you’re not going to make a liar out of me. One word from you and my story is proved….”

  Thane choked off. He remembered now Miribel saying, “We are just as anxious as the Morlians to keep the presence of our spacecraft on earth a secret.”

  “Do you believe what you just read, Miss Darby?” asked Eggerton now.

  She shook her head. “If you mean is it convincing, no. I don’t believe a word of it. Whoever wrote it must have a vivid imagination. It doesn’t have…well, the ring of truth.”

  Bill Eggerton looked triumphantly at Thane. “Thanks, Miss Darby. Sorry to trouble you. Leave your address with the receptionist and we’ll send you a check.”

  “That won’t be necessary. Glad to have been able to help.” She went out without a backward glance at Thane, who stood slump-shouldered and defeated.

  “Listen, Thane,” said Eggerton in a kindly voice. “When you begin to imagine UFO dogfights and rides in saucers, and when you imagine that any strange girl going by is your ‘Miribel’…well, why don’t you see a doctor, old man?”

  Without a word, Thane picked up his pictures and manuscript and left, his face burning. Humiliation and anger both burned in him. He rushed out in the hall. The girl was just getting in the elevator. Thane squeezed in just before the doors closed. They were alone.

  “Miribel,” accused Thane, bracing himself for a possible slap in the face.

  “Yes, Thane?” she said sweetly. “How nice to meet you again.”

  She touched his arm, sympathetically. “I’m sorry, Thane. It had to be. It is too important. We must remain unknown here on earth.”

  “But why?”

  “For your world’s own good,” said the girl sincerely. “You must believe me. Someday, perhaps, we will explain why it is not permitted to make ourselves known.”

  Thane could not remain angry with her, despite what she had done. As they stepped out of the elevator below, Thane asked, “Do you have to rush back to…wherever you hide out? Can you take time to have lunch with me?”

  “It’s the least I can do to make it up to you,” she said, taking his arm.

  At a quiet restaurant, Thane stared at her curiously. “I know better than to ask leading questions, Miribel. I’ll only get that it-is-not-permitted-to-tell routine. But can you at least tell me something about your home world? Where it is and what it’s like?”

  “It is permitted to tell that,” she laughed. Her face became dreamy. “Our world is a beautiful world. We’ve had almost a million years of civilization, you see. It is all like one big park or garden. We live in roaming homes that can waft anywhere we wish, via anti-gravity forces.”

  “What planet is it, of what star?”

  “In your earthly terms, it’s just one of the many distant stars with numbers—B-Beta-148. It is 787 light-years away, in your earth terms.”

  “Then you’re more than 787 years old, if you traveled here at the speed of light. Or do you use some space-warp or dimensional short cut to travel swiftly across the universe?”

  “You’ve been reading John Sheel,” said the girl. “We did too, as we read all earthly books about UFO’s and keep tabs on how close they get to the truth. Our method of space travel may be described as teleportation.”

  “Instantaneous travel?” marveled Thane.

  “Yes. Space and time are different than you think, here on earth. You have not discerned the truly basic laws of the universe yet, in which there is an Nth dimension that crosses all points in space at the same place and ti
me.”

  “Whoa,” said Thane, “go slow. You’re way over my head already.”

  “There is no simpler way to describe it. Briefly, we transpose our spaceship into the Nth dimension, then settle down on earth which is close by, as all worlds are. It takes a very intricate chart, however, to find your chosen destination out of so many, all packed together.”

  “You really travel in one instant across 787 light-years?”

  “It does not even take one instant. There is no time in the Nth dimension. It is like de-materializing on our world and then materializing on earth, at the same time.”

  Thane nodded. That was like so many sightings listed in Sheel’s book, where the UFO seemed to suddenly appear in a hazy mist, out of nowhere. Also, many saucers seemed to fade away instead of flying away. It tied up one loose end of the UFO riddle, if nothing else.

  “What do you think of earth?” asked Thane, curiously, expecting a reaction of disdain or worse, in comparison to her far-advanced world.

  Surprisingly, Miribel said: “I like earth very much. The people are warm inside. Good stock, as planetary races go. And it’s amusing, really, how provincial earth-people are, resisting the belief that there are countless other worlds in space superior in science, technology, culture, and social progress.”

  “I guess we’re sort of arrogant,” Thane agreed humbly, ashamed at how ‘provincial’ he had been only five days before.

  “It’s just that your civilization is so young,” said Miribel soothingly. “You have barely emerged from prehistoric savagery in the past 10,000 years. That is a mere tick in the time of planetary evolution. In a few thousand more years you will be a mature member of the United Worlds.”

  “United Worlds?” Thane was intrigued. “What’s that?”

  “A galactic organization of advanced worlds…” The girl put a hand to her mouth. “But it is not permitted to tell more.”

  Thane groaned. It was exasperating to get a hint of so many vast new revelations out in the macro-universe only to have all further illumination cut off abruptly.

  “I like your earth food too,” volunteered Miribel, digging into a dish of Moo Goo Gai Penn with relish. “Spicy, strong, carelessly cooked, but it has a vigorous quality.”

  “Everything we do is backward?” winced Thane.

  She turned her limpid, indigo eyes on him in quick understanding. “Don’t feel so bad. After all, the child has to grow into the man. The human race will gain wisdom in time…hopefully.”

  “You mean—?”

  “Not all races, humanoid or otherwise, develop in the right way. The wrong twists and turns in their history and they become maverick worlds, like Morli.”

  “The men-in-black?”

  “Yes, their world pursues its own evil ends, as do many other wayward planets. Remember, out of millions of civilized worlds they cannot all follow the right path toward a morally matured society. That is why the Galactic Vigilantes were formed.”

  “I’ll ask no more,” grunted Thane. “Verboten.”

  After paying, Thane strolled out with the girl. “I’m heading back for Kennedy Airport,” he said. “And you?”

  “Oh, I’ll just wander around the city until dark, when I’ll be picked up by a scout saucer.”

  “Want to join me in a taxi ride to the airport?”

  She agreed and Thane hailed a cab. After they stepped in, the girl suddenly tensed. “I feel danger,” she said. “Close by…the driver! He’s a Morlian!”

  A bland, ‘average’ face turned and grinned mockingly at them. In his hand was a tubular device from which a violet mist belched, straight into their faces.

  “Sleep gas,” gasped Miribel. That was the last thing Thane heard as his mind plunged into a black pit.

  Chapter 10

  When Thane’s mind struggled awake, he saw clouds rushing by at a dizzying rate. He was in a plastic bubble dome on top of a wide flat saucercraft.

  “A Morlian craft,” came Miribel’s voice beside him. She had already come to. Across the chamber were three Morlians, manipulating button controls. Miribel pointed down. Thane saw endless waters rushing beneath. “The Pacific Ocean,” she continued. “And I have a hunch…”

  Suddenly, the craft tilted downward. “We’re going to crash at sea!” gasped Thane in alarm.

  But to his surprise, he felt no jar as they contacted the watery surface. Instead, the saucer slid smoothly under the waves and simply continued.

  “All saucercraft can submerge and sail down through the ocean,” said Miribel casually. “It makes no difference to an electromagnetic propulsion engine.” Thane recalled now that Sheel’s book had listed sightings of ‘diving saucers’ many times.

  “How far down are we going?” wondered Thane as the light died and a powerful searchlight beam stabbed ahead.

  “Perhaps to the bottom,” shrugged Miribel.

  Thane blinked. “Five to seven miles down, without trouble?”

  “This plasto-dome and the craft’s hull are impervious to any pressure,” nodded Miribel. “Morlian saucer technology is close to ours. We are perfectly safe. But at least I’ve learned something. The Morlians have one base at the sea bottom, here on earth.”

  She pointed down and Thane saw a glow of light that grew into a huge plasto-dome resting on the oozy ocean floor. As the saucer tilted and dived at breakneck speed straight toward the dome, no door or hatchway of any kind opened. Though turning pale, Thane said nothing this time.

  There was a peculiar sensation for a moment, as of strings vibrating without sound, and the next micro-instant the saucer was inside the dome, coming to a neat landing on a platform.

  “How was that miracle performed?” asked Thane weakly.

  “They simply changed the vibrational rate of the whole craft and oozed through the shell of the dome. The saucer, in effect, had become a cohesive mass of X-rays which simply penetrated through the domes solid material. Clear?”

  “As mud,” responded Thane. “I’ll take your word for it, since we’re safely inside the dome. It’s aerated, I suppose?”

  It was, for they were ushered out into breathable air, within the dome. The Morlians nudged them onto a square platform which then floated free and gravitated to the door of a square chamber within the dome.

  “Highman ZX-22 wishes to see you,” said one of their captors.

  “Highman means leader or commander of this dome,” explained Miribel. “And the Morlians have no names, by the way, only numbers.”

  “Are they perfectly human?”

  Miribel nodded. “Perhaps more perfect than we are, for all Morlians look alike, at least to our eyes. There are only slight differences in complexion or size, but otherwise they are millions of peas from the same pod.”

  “Weird,” said Thane, seeing that Highman ZX-22, before whom they stood, looked quite like the average man too.

  The Morlian commander glanced up from a small desk, smiling in a fatherly manner. “We have captured two prizes,” he stated. “One of the top Vigilante agents, and the earthman whose sighting we had to suppress. You are both dangerous to us.

  “Yes, this is one of our many secret bases on earth,” the Highman continued. “But you, girl Vigilante, will never return to reveal it.”

  He said it almost jovially, despite the chilling threat.

  Miribel said nothing, only paling a bit.

  The Morlian fixed his eye on Thane. Only there in its depths lurked a hint of ruthlessness. “You, earthman, will be easily brain-altered. What is the earth term? Oh, yes…brainwashed. Then you will be an aid to us, instead of a hindrance. “That is all,” finished the Highman. “Take them away.”

  The other Morlians separated them, prodding Thane onto a square float-platform, while Miribel was led the other way.

  S
he turned her face and suddenly, silent words leaped into Thane’s mind. “Thane! I’m using a closed telepathy beam so the Morlians cannot hear me. Do not give up hope. The Vigilante forces will scour the world for us. They’ll find us…if we’re lucky.”

  With a last brave ‘au revoir’ from her indigo eyes, she turned away.

  Thane’s float-platform, plus one Morlian guard, wafted across the dome to another chamber. Within, a Morlian in a white jacket, as indistinguishable as the others, stood up.

  “Brainwash Thane Smith, UQ-77,” said the guard, leaving.

  Thane’s sinking feelings sank even lower. What could he do? Here he was isolated in a sea dome miles down in the lightless ocean depths. Nobody on earth knew of his trouble. Nor would it do any good if they did. Probably even the Galactic Vigilantes had no clues to go by.

  This ‘brainwashing’—what would it do to him?

  Thane suddenly panicked. As UQ-77 came toward him, Thane lashed out with his fingers, held stiff, poking them violently into the Morlian’s throat. He gagged and staggered back at this judo trick.

  Thane ran out and kept running until he came to the edge of the undersea dome’s shell. Panting, he turned like a trapped rat.

  The Morlian, now recovered, came floating toward him. “That was foolish, earthman,” he said like a father reproving a child. “Where do you hope to go?”

  Thane slumped. Even if he somehow broke through the dome shell he would meet the enormous pressures of sea bottom waters that would crush him flat in an instant, even before he had time to drown.

  Escape was a meaningless word, here in the dome.

  Thane allowed himself to be led back, docilely. This time, the Morlian aimed a tubular device at him. A brief whine and Thane felt himself paralyzed, standing stiffly and unable to move a muscle.

  “That’s better,” said UQ-77, rubbing his hands. “Now we will place this over your head…so.” It was a metallic bucket helmet. Then the Morlian stepped back and shot another ray at the helmet. Thane felt his voluntary senses slipping, sliding, falling down a steep slope into a dreamy pool.