Posts filed under ‘Elmo’s Sojourn’
ELMO’S SOJOURN: CHAPTER 3, ELMO ARRIVES ON ROTH
ELMO’S SOJOURN
CHAPTER 3
ELMO ARRIVES ON ROTH
When Elmo awoke, he had no idea where he was. His eyes beheld a landscape both strange and beautiful, a rolling countryside of vegetation and a nearby dwelling, but unlike any he had ever seen. Then, he recalled entering his time-space machine with his newfound friend. As he ran his fingers through his thick black hair, he wondered where he was. His body felt youthful. He must be forty years younger. He contemplated the shift in time and enjoyed his renewed youth.
Waiting to be transported back to his basement, Elmo had no way of knowing his adventure had caused the greatest blackout in history. He was hesitant to move and change the coordinates he had entered into the time-space machine sitting in his basement. Eventually curiosity won out and he began to explore his surroundings. At the same time, he felt a growing fear. He wondered if this journey was a good idea and if he would ever see Mildred again.
As he stood near his traveling companion, he saw the creature’s funnel shaped mouth form a grin, happy to be home. The soil was the color of the soil back home with green vegetation, but vegetation that defied what he knew of plant life. There were trees in the distance, but they towered like mountains over the landscape. The giant redwoods he recalled from his vacations would reach only a third the way up the trunks of these behemoths. He stood in a tiny bare spot of ground. Stepping upon a green field, he heard tiny screams and immediately retreated. Vegetation was obviously advanced on this planet, felt pain, and could utter distress. There were trails leading everywhere so that one could avoid walking on the plant life. He must remember to tread lightly on this planet. His eyes left the landscape and gazed at a brilliant lavender sky studded with crimson clouds although it was not yet dusk. Crimson must be the normal color of clouds in this world. Elmo also found that here a small hop would carry him far. His companion, too, was much more active in gravity one-fourth than of earth.
This newly youthful Elmo sat down with his traveling companion at his side and studied the landscape for a very long time and thought of his journey. He noted that although his age had noticeably changed, the appearance of the creature next to him had not. This must indicate a longer lifespan. Then he smiled, realizing that if the journey had been made with a Galapagos tortoise, the effect would have been the same. Elmo considered the implications, both scientific and personal if his theory about age was correct. The personal consequences made his eyes run with tears. His companion seemed to understand his grief, and its tiny arm hugged his shoulder. Elmo once again gazed at the sky and drank in the glory of another world. Dusk approached, and the sky held three moons of varying diameters. As the sun set, the crimson clouds held hints of green, becoming a deep emerald as darkness approached.
Night fell. Lights began to dot the landscape. In the darkness, the door to the nearby structure opened and a tall, gray-skinned figure approached Elmo and his eye-roving friend. Elmo’s first reaction was to run. But where would he go? He knew nothing of his surroundings, and, after all, this adventure was meant to learn about alien life. The approaching creature was clad in a flowing, blue robe-like garment. As it came closer, Elmo’s traveling companion began to execute flips and emit sounds similar to the purring of a cat. Suddenly Elmo realized what he thought was the dominant life form was actually a pet.
As the strange being approached, Elmo appreciated its height, which was well over seven feet, and its regal bearing. The head of the creature was very large, larger than his seven-foot plus height would require, and completely hairless. Its ears were mere holes in the sides of the head, the nose being a simple hole also. Its eyes were the most amazing aspect of its face. They were huge, elliptical and able to rotate on their center. The eye movement of this planet’s inhabitants was strange indeed. The being who now stood before Elmo and the fire hydrant-shaped creature smiled and patted the creature’s head, causing its purring to increase and leading Elmo to believe he had brought the little fellow back home.
The tall, gray-skinned figure did not seem at all surprised at Elmo’s arrival. “Receiving visitors from other worlds must be a common occurrence here,” thought Elmo. “There are so many questions I want to ask. But how do I communicate?”
Thoughts raced through his mind, and Elmo soon found himself unable to concentrate. That was when the breakthrough occurred. As his mind went blank, Elmo’s head was suddenly filled with thoughts that were not his own. His emotions went from shock to disbelief to understanding. These beings communicated by thought transference! When his mind was full of his own thoughts, there was no room for the thoughts of another. He must clear his mind to receive the thoughts of this being. Instead of alternating between thinking and listening, they alternated between thinking and making their minds a blank slate. When his mind had been racing, he’d noticed the alien wince and wrinkle his brow; now he knew why.
“I am Valmid, and this is the planet Roth, third planet from our sun,” it said. “Thank you for returning Zytex. He has been with our family for many years, and I was sad at the prospect of losing the little fellow.” Zytex’s eye wandered around his head as he purred incessantly, taking in Valmid and Elmo.
“You must meet my wife,” thought Valmid, and with that he turned towards his home. He next emitted a sound that reminded Elmo of a high-pitched turbine, interrupted by a clicking noise. Out of the house came a figure even taller than Valmid but obviously female.
ELMO’S SOJOURN: CHAPTER 2, ELMO’S ADVENTURE BEGINS
ELMO’S SOJOURN
CHAPTER 2
ELMO’S ADVENTURE BEGINS
As Mildred returned her thoughts to the present, she wondered if the lights dimming had anything to do with Elmo’s shouting. What she didn’t know was that the lights had also dimmed in most of that region of New York and most of eastern Canada. The electrical company had never experienced a power drain like this before and was struggling to get things under control.
Now, as she opened the basement door, Mildred wondered if perhaps all those years Elmo worked in the basement unsupervised was really a good idea. She peered down the stairs He began jumping like a little boy, not the seventy-five-year-old man that he was. “I don’t have a problem. I did it! I did it!” he shouted over and over.
“I completed my first experiment,” Elmo answered and pointed to the Plexiglas chamber. Through the mist Mildred began to detect a shape. At first she thought it was a large fire hydrant but then it began to move. The fire hydrant was mottled red and green with skinny arms ending in suction-cupped fingers. Its tiny legs also ended in suction cups. The creature’s mouth resembled a funnel, which constantly opened and closed. It was breathing.
The most peculiar aspect of this creature was its eye. It had only one and it blinked constantly. As Elmo and Mildred talked, the eye followed their conversation, traveling from one to the other, as the eye physically moved around the perimeter of its head. Mildred watched as the eye moved from one side of the thing’s head to the other. She giggled as she imagined a stadium full of these creatures following a tennis match but soon got control of herself. Actually, the single eye wandering all over the alien’s head was starting to give her the creeps.
“You can’t keep it,” she said.
Elmo responded, “I don’t want to keep it. I want to go back with it.”
“You’re kidding Elmo, and where did it come from anyway?” asked Mildred.
Elmo explained, “You see my dear, you and I and all living beings in the universe are a series of chemical reactions. The cosmos is one huge chemistry set. I thought that if there was a star, similar in size to our sun, and if there was a planet with a distance similar from that star as the earth is from the sun, that life might exist there. These days, astronomers are always discovering new planets revolving around distant stars. So, I just waited until one was discovered with the right conditions and aimed my time-space machine at that planet and the results are in the chamber. But notice how our friend can barely move his arms or legs. The gravity on his planet must be much less than it is on earth. I need to go back with him and see what it’s like.”
Mildred shook her head. But she knew arguing with Elmo was useless.
“I’ll show you how to run the machine, but first get our camera,” Elmo said.
By the time Mildred found the camera and returned to the basement, Elmo had entered the chamber and had his arm around the visitor. Mildred took a picture, then another for insurance. Then Elmo exited the chamber to demonstrate the workings of the machine to his anxious wife.
“Okay dear, first you turn the machine on with this switch. Next, you turn this rheostat. To get him here, I had to set the rheostat to half maximum. To get us back, you’ll need to turn it to full. Give me about ten minutes and then bring me back.”
“I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” muttered Mildred.
“Don’t worry Mildred, I’ll be back before you’re done cooking dinner.”
Elmo entered the chamber and Mildred followed his instructions. As soon as the rheostat reached max, there was a blinding flash, the chamber filled with a milk-white fog, and Elmo and the creature were gone. Shortly after they disappeared the lights in the basement went out.
Mildred sighed. “Oh Elmo, you may be gone a little longer than you expected,” she muttered and climbed the stairs to fix dinner.
What Mildred didn’t yet know was her town, the entire state of New York, along with most of the northeast, a good portion of the Midwest and a large part of Canada were also without power. Fifty million people were plunged into darkness. Elmo’s experiment had precipitated the largest blackout in history. He was going to be very very late for dinner.
ELMO’S SOJOURN: CHAPTER 1, CELLAR SCIENCE
ELMO’S SOJOURN
CHAPTER 1
CELLAR SCIENCE
“I have a problem! I have a big problem!” Elmo shouted from his cellar laboratory. Mildred shook her head, wiped her hands on her apron and headed for the basement door. After fifty years of marriage, Elmo never ceased to amaze her at the trouble he could get into.
“Could he garden like other men his age? Oh no, he has to do physics experiments,” Mildred muttered as she walked down the cellar stairs.
* * *
They had moved into this rural house in Upstate New York ten years ago, right after Elmo had retired from his job at Los Alamo Laboratory. He was a physicist at the laboratory, part of a think-tank that planned experiments. But Elmo enjoyed the lab work too. He had accumulated a lot of ideas and discarded equipment. Mildred gazed out the window of her country home. Nearby, tall electrical towers obstructed some of the bucolic scenery, but Mildred liked the house just fine. Elmo brought along the junk he had accumulated over the years, mostly discarded apparatus from failed experiments, equipment useless to everyone except Elmo. The items included large magnets and four six-foot-tall Tesla coils, specialized high voltage transformers three feet in diameter and wrapped with miles of thin copper wire. They resembled giant candles, coming to a point with electrical connections at the apex. Elmo transported all this equipment into the basement and fiddled with it for years. He then had a large Plexiglas chamber built, which set them back a bundle. He stood the Tesla coils in each corner, then mounted the magnets in the floor.
The next step in the construction of Elmo’s experiment Mildred found most undesirable. Elmo told Mildred, “I’ll need a great deal of power for my research. Soon I’ll need your help making the electrical connections for the project I’ve been working on.”
A few days ago, a truck had delivered a huge spool of heavy insulated wire, another great expense, and now Mildred was getting a bad feeling. Once it was dark, Elmo emerged from the basement wearing rubber boots and heavy rubber gloves. “Get your coat Mildred, we’re going out.” The spool of wire was in the bed of Elmo’s pickup. They drove to the base of the nearest electrical tower and parked.
“What are you going to do Elmo?” Mildred asked in a voice full of apprehension and a touch of impatience.
“I’m going to climb the tower and connect this wire which you’re going to feed out,” came his reply. Mildred shook her head and wished Elmo would act his age.
After that illegal task was accomplished, Elmo spent most of his time in the basement tinkering with his invention. He called it his Time – Space Chamber, and when Mildred asked just what he was doing Elmo explained, “I’ve always thought that if I could create an electrical field, then move those electrons in a magnetic field to approach the speed of light, I could create a wormhole to a distant time and place. I could aim at the wormhole and transport matter. The secret is the size of the magnetic field. It must be small, not like the giant cyclotrons they construct in the desert.
All Mildred could say was, “If it makes you happy dear.” It kept Elmo out of her hair for years.
ELMO’S SOJOURN IS COMING
ELMO’S SOJOURN IS COMING
In the next series of posts, you will have the opportunity to read my novella, Elmo’s Sojourn.
Recently you were introduced to Elmo in my novella, Elmo’s Invention, in which he was a scientist working at Los Alamos. But his love for science did not stop when his day’s work was done. It never stopped. In that novella Elmo’s invention was a time machine. You can read past posts to see how successful he was.
In Elmo’s Sojourn, Elmo is now retired but his love for science has not ceased. Now his efforts are consumed with travel in space using wormholes. Follow Elmo’s adventures, and misadventures in the upcoming posts offering the novella.
Elmo’s Sojourn has quite a publication history. It was first accepted for publication by Bewildering Stories and was published online in 2006. Next, Mélange Books, publisher of my novel New Moon Rising, accepted the novella in 2010 and published it in a print anthology, Curious Hearts and as an eBook. Also, totally by accident I discovered that the first two chapters of Elmo’s Sojourn were published in China in an English language science fiction publication.
I hope you read the upcoming posts and enjoy the story.
ELMO’S INVENTION: CHAPTER 13, THE FUTURE OF THE TIME MACHINE
CHAPTER 13
THE FUTURE OF THE TIME MACHINE
Kingsley continued.
“Then there are political races. Knowledge of the winner, prior to an election, would be devastating. It would result in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Why vote if the winner is known?
“The insurance industry would collapse. Insurers of property and life could look to the future and see which policies would cost them money, and how soon. Of course, all life insurance policies would eventually result in a claim but how soon would determine if it was worth issuing a policy.
“These are just a few of the instances where your machine could determine the present by knowing the future.
“Then there is the bigger picture. In science fiction, whenever someone travels into the past they make sure not to change a single thing. Step on a beetle and you could come back to a different world. But you see, even when you are traveling into the future you are trespassing on someone’s past.
“A traveler into the future could return with viruses and bacteria unknown to the world and cause world-wide epidemics. Or coming from the past could reintroduce diseases long eradicated, for which there is now no defense.
“I’ve been thinking about H.G. Wells book The Time Machine. Of course it was fiction, but the future looked dismal for mankind. When the time traveler traveled into the distant future the planet was inhabited by giant crabs. I know this is only fiction, but do we really want to know what the distant future holds?
“Elmo, I’m afraid the society of the world, as we know it, would not survive the impact your machine would produce. The change in the fabric of society would also be devastating and disruptive in the lives of you and Mildred. Devastating to all the world.”
Kingsley’s opinions carried a great deal of weight with Elmo. He sat in silence and then said, “All that work for nothing. I’m a failure.”
“No, you’re not. It’s just that your efforts could produce knowledge the world would be unable to handle. I know it isn’t much, but I’m proud of what you accomplished. Perhaps there will be a time when your time machine will serve a useful purpose, under strict control, but I’m afraid that time is not now.
“The final choice is yours, Elmo. I can only give you my advice and opinion.”
Kingsley then stood up, put his hand on Elmo’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze, and walked upstairs. He saw Mildred in the kitchen. “I think Elmo needs to be alone for a while, but he also needs you.” Kingsley left and Mildred knew the discussion did not go well.
She waited and then walked down the cellar stairs. Elmo was wheeling his time machine to a corner of the cellar and covering it with a tarp. It now stood next to his transport chambers. Whenever he looked at those chambers a slight smile would wrinkle his face wondering at the location of the wandering teacup. Mildred walked up to her husband and gave him a hug and a lingering kiss.
He said, “Well, Mil, we won’t make our fortune off my time machine after all.”
Mildred responded, “I don’t need a fortune. All I need is you. It’s getting late. Let’s go to bed.”
They walked up the stairs and put out the cellar lights. In the darkened corner stood the time machine which someday might serve a purpose, but not now.
Elmo vowed to Mildred that he was done creating or even thinking about another invention. Never again would he waste his time on another useless project. But ‘never’ ended in 1995 with speculation of the existence of wormholes. The now retired Elmo could not get wormholes out of his mind. Think about how they could be used for space travel. He thought wormholes, dreamed wormholes. With pad and pencil in hand he began jotting down ideas and drawing sketches of an invention he, of course, would never produce. What would be the harm in dreaming?
THE END
This concludes my postings of Elmo’s Invention. I hope you enjoyed the novella and getting to know Elmo.
Soon I will begin sharing another novella featuring Elmo, Elmo’s Sojourn. In Elmo’s Invention you learned of Elmo’s interest in time travel. In Elmo’s Sojourn you will learn of Elmo’s interest in space travel.
Elmo’s Sojourn has quite a publishing history. Soon I will tell you about that history and give you some information about Elmo’s Sojourn.
RETURN OF THE BLOB (BLOBS)
RETURN OF THE BLOB (BLOBS)
In my post on January 12, I discussed shapes of aliens and how, in three movies, the usual mold was broken and said the answer to who the aliens were would be given to you on January 18. That revelation is moving to January 24. Gives you more time to see the movies.
This post is for anyone who has an imagination and would like to try their hand at writing a story.
Not long ago I mentioned that I watched the movie, The Blob, staring Steve McQueen on YouTube. My imagination went into high gear when I coupled the end of the movie with the current condition of our planet. The Blob can be immobilized by freezing. So, the end of the movie has the Blob being transported by plane to the arctic and parachuted on a pallet. I imagined, upon hitting the ground, that it fractures into hundreds, perhaps thousands of pieces. I feel there is definitely the possibility of a sequel. However, I am too busy to write one, therefore, what follows are a series of ideas for anyone who wants to write the story and has my full permission to write the sequel.
Here are my ideas for a future story for the Blob.
The Blob lands in the arctic and has broken into pieces, and due to climate change, the area where it landed in the arctic begins to warm and all those pieces of the Blog come back to life. Now you have hundreds of Blobettes (my term) looking for someplace to go. The obvious place they would return to, I picture, is where they landed on Earth, Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.
What happens along the way to their considered home is where your imagination takes over along when what happens when they get to Phoenixville.
I might mention that I wrote a novella, Elmo’s Sojourn, which contains a hint of what could be involved in the ending of your story.
Elmo is a retired Los Alamos scientist and tinkers in the lab he has in his cellar. He thinks it is possible to travel to distant planets through wormholes. He builds a device and tries it out which results in a creature appearing which is obviously from a distant planet. It has the shape of a fire hydrant and has a singular eye which travels around the top of the creature’s body. Elmo decides to return with it to its home planet and discovers it is not a creature of vast intelligence but is someone’s pet.
If someone does venture to write a story let me know. Now, back to work
ELMO’S SOJOURN, CHAPTER 14
ELMO’S SOJOURN
CHAPTER 14
THE FUTURE FOR ELMO AND MILDRED
The three stood in front of Valmid’s house. Elmo admired Mildred’s youthful body and long blond hair. Mildred also admired the feelings of her body and experienced for the first time in years the pleasures of youth that old age had robbed her of. She had not expected to make the same transition that Elmo had made on his first trip to Roth, because he’d been going back and forth so many times since then and had not changed a bit.
“Elmo, I can’t believe it! I’m as young as you.”
“Welcome to Roth my dear.” He reached for her hand. “Let’s take a short walk. Then we will go inside, and you’ll meet Cal, Valmid’s wife.” They walked towards the rise that would afford a view of the ocean. “We’ll have so many adventures, Mildred. We’ve got so much life to live. Once we have something to eat, I’ll show you to our bedroom.”
Mildred noticed a twinkle in Elmo’s eyes that she had not seen for a long time, felt a thrill she had not felt for years. The sky was darkening, the day was ending, and pinpricks of light began to populate the night. Elmo squeezed Mildred’s hand excitedly as they walked hand in hand toward an emerald, green sunset made more beautiful by thoughts of all the tomorrows they would share.
THE END
I hope you enjoyed my novella, Elmo’s Sojourn.
ELMO’S SOJOURN, CHAPTER 13
ELMO’S SOJOURN
CHAPTER 13
ELMO RETURNS TO EARTH
Mildred was watching TV when she detected footsteps coming up the cellar stairs. She immediately knew the sight that would soon greet her: a young Elmo and his alien friend. She also knew Elmo had returned because he wanted her to go back to Roth with him. Could she? Could she leave her family and friends to live in an alien world with Elmo? What would Elmo do if she said no? Would he willingly return to the body of an old man and finish their life together in this house? All this ran through her mind as the cellar door slowly opened.
Out stepped young Elmo and the alien. This time Mildred was able to handle their appearance much better. Valmid went upstairs to entertain himself with the computer and Elmo asked Mildred to join him at the kitchen table to discuss their future. They sat there for a long time, going over the pros and cons of staying on Earth or returning to Roth. Elmo finally said, “Mildred, the stay on Roth does not have to be permanent. We could return to Earth any time we wish. The residents of Roth time-travel with the ease of our driving to the store.” This argument pushed her over the edge. She replied, “You know Elmo, during all the years we’ve been together, I’ve done plenty of crazy things with you. This must be the craziest, but I’ll give it a try.”
“Mildred,” Elmo responded, “the last time I was this happy was when you said you would marry me. Let’s go explore the universe!” Elmo headed upstairs to get Valmid. But before returning downstairs he sat at his computer and typed out the following e-mail message.
My name is Elmo Baker. I am a retired scientist formerly employed at Los Alamos. What I have to say is unbelievable but true. I have traveled to the planet Roth. There I found that during the early twentieth century, monsters from the planet Gylex invaded Earth. The purpose of this invasion was to obtain women for the survival of their civilization because a virus had killed most of the females of Gylex. Unfortunately, all the women captured are no longer alive. I have included two attachments. One is a detailed report on how to protect the Earth from further invasions because it’s likely that these monsters may be returning soon. The second attachment is a video of one of the monsters attacking a house on the planet I visited. Please believe me and take action.
Elmo sent the e-mail to The New York Times, The Washington Post and every other major newspaper he could think of. He then shut the computer down and headed downstairs. As he entered the living room, he found Valmid laying out two time-space machines on the floor. Elmo told Valmid, “I’ve alerted some of our major newspapers. I hope to God they heed my warning.” Valmid then had Mildred stand in one of the machines, handed her the control box and told her to push the start button. With a face full of apprehension, she followed his instructions and was gone in a flash. Elmo and Valmid entered the other machine and made their exit from planet Earth.
ELMO’S SOJOURN, CHAPTER 12
ELMO’S SOJOURN
CHAPTER 12
ELMO HAS HIS HOMECOMING
The four stayed up late into the night. Rolack described how she was made pregnant three times, felt the joy of motherhood as a new life stirred within her body and was filled with revulsion at the sight of the tiny, winged monster she delivered. She never met any of the women from Earth but had heard talk of them. They had not she learned, survived for very long on Gylex. Because they were physically so much smaller than the women of Roth and Gylex, they often died during pregnancies in which they carried fetuses much larger than an Earth child. Labor and delivery killed the few that survived to term. All that was left were stories and bones scattered among the trash of the prison.
Valmid and Cal could not take their eyes from their daughter, couldn’t believe she was back, and that the planet was safe from more women suffering her fate. Valmid explained to Rolack how Elmo had traveled to Roth and how his visit led to her freedom and that of her companions.
After a while, Valmid and Elmo decided to take a walk and let Cal and Rolack have some of the mother-daughter time they both desperately needed. Valmid sensed also that something troubled Elmo and thought perhaps a stroll in the early morning air would ease his mind and loosen his thoughts.
They walked for a while, enjoying the peaceful countryside. Then Elmo began, “Valmid, before I arrived on your planet, I was a retired scientist just puttering around in my cellar. Then I hit on the concept that brought me here. Back on earth, I have a wife with whom I have spent most of my life. But that life is over, and I can’t return to it. Now, I’m a young man. I have a future again. I cannot go back to Earth and resume my retirement. There is so much I want to learn from you, from your planet. I want Mildred to journey here. She is my life; we share a history. I need her to share my future on Roth. If I cannot convince Mildred to come here, I don’t know what I will do.”
They walked on a while more before Valmid shared his thoughts. “Elmo, your knowledge has already proved indispensable to Roth. Who knows in what ways my planet could benefit from the knowledge you have of Earth? And if there were a problem on Roth that can only be solved by making a trip to Earth, I would find it difficult to blend into the population. I have discussed all this with the elders of the planet, and we all reached the same conclusion: We want you to stay.”
They continued their walk in silence until Elmo asked the question that he had been nagging him whenever he thought of making Roth his home. “Valmid, if Mildred agrees to come here, could she travel through the wormhole that I first used? If she could, we would both be starting a new life on a new planet.”
Valmid considered this, “If she agrees to come here, I see no problem in granting your request. I think we should return to Earth and try to convince Mildred to spend time on Roth.”
ELMO’S SOJOURN, CHAPTER 11
ELMO’S SOJOURN
CHAPTER 11
ELMO’S OFFER IS ACCEPTED
The argument went back and forth between Elmo and Valmid, but Valmid finally succumbed to Elmo’s persistence. “I accept your help my friend. We shall leave when the devices are ready.”
In a few days the six new Freon throwers were ready and tested. Valmid called the five other Rothians to his home. The seven warriors were ready to depart. Elmo noticed that each member of the team carried a pouch in addition to his Freon throwers on their backs. Elmo was also given a pouch.
“We are taking as many time-space machines as we can carry. We have no idea how many women we will be freeing and returning to Roth. I’m afraid there is little hope of rescuing any of the women abducted from Earth, for the abductions ceased there almost sixty years ago, when the Freon level reached intolerable levels for the Gylex monsters.
“Our plan is to journey to Gylex, hopefully arriving at a deserted area. Then we will try to follow the thoughts of the captive women.” All five of the Rothians and Elmo nodded and prepared to leave. Elmo joined Valmid in the center of his machine; the other five occupied two machines facing back-to-back in preparation for a hostile greeting.
In a flash the most dismal landscape imaginable surrounded them, along with four Gylexian monsters. Three were quickly dispatched, surprise being on the side of the Rothians. The fourth began flying away, thanks to the weaker gravity of the planet; Elmo was able to leap high enough to douse the creature and it abruptly fell to the ground.
After the initial excitement, the travelers had a chance to inspect their surroundings. Elmo thought, “If there is a hell, it must look something like this.” The Rothians were unfamiliar with the concept of Elmo’s hell, but they all shuddered at the scene before them. Everything was colored shades of gray and black. The landscape was dotted with miniature volcanoes no more than a few hundred feet high, most in a constant state of eruption that spewed heavy columns of smoke and ash into the air and shed an eerie glow from the magma seeping down their sides. The atmosphere was thick and oppressive. The party had timed their arrival for daytime, but a faint twilight was all that greeted them. The only vegetation visible were huge trees, not unlike those found on Roth. Their trunks disappeared into the unbroken mantle of black clouds that filled the sky; their leaves seeking the life-giving light denied the planet’s surface.
The rescue party could see larger mountains in the distance; their sides honeycombed with openings. Occasionally a winged Gylexian would fly in or out of apertures; these must be their cities.
The six Rothians stood still and quietly concentrated, seeking the thoughts of the women they had come to rescue. It did not take long for them to sense Rothian thoughts and then locate their origin on a distant part of the planet. They set up their time-space machines, again standing back-to-back and ready for an attack. They were sure there must be guards at their destination, and to eliminate them by taking advantage of the element of surprise.
In a flash the seven were standing before a Gylexian hill, somewhat smaller than the hill they first had seen. Perhaps this was the prison where the women were being held. At the same time, they also found themselves standing before five guards armed with weapons resembling crossbows. Before the Rothians could react, one of their parties was shot in the neck and collapsed. Freon spray quickly took care of the guards, but not before they sounded an alarm that brought more guards flying out of the prison, also to fall to the ground as the air filled with Freon. Three of the party, along with Elmo, remained outside to guard against further attacks. Valmid and the remaining member of his group entered the prison to free the women. The sight inside sickened them. Corpses of ten to 15 Rothian women littered the floor of the forbidding structure. As they proceeded farther into the dark, dank hallways they came upon the cells they were seeking. Each cell held two or three women in various stages of pregnancy. As Valmid had anticipated, there were no women from Earth, only women from Roth. Valmid searched wildly from cell to cell looking for his daughter, calling her name, “Rolack, Rolack.” He stopped at the entrance of a cell holding two women, then choked back tears and cried, “Rolack!”
A woman inside stood and cried, “Father!”
Valmid had found his daughter. In short order, the keys to the cells were located and the women released. They made their way out of the prison, the women breathing free air for the first time since their capture. One of the women collapsed by the body of the fallen Rothian, crying for the husband she had not seen for years and who had died trying to rescue her. Valmid ordered everyone to unfurl the time-space machines and, in twos and threes, quickly occupy them. Two Rothians carried the body of their fallen companion to the last machine and gently laid him down. Then Valmid distributed the preset control boxes, and the group disappeared in a series of flashes, bound for Roth.
Once on Roth, the women cried, laughed and even collapsed when united with their families. Those who returned pregnant wanted most to immediately cleanse their bodies of the demon cargo they carried. Valmid, Elmo and Rolack entered their home to find Cal crying out at the sight of her daughter. The three family members hugged and cried while Elmo stood to the side and felt an emptiness he could no longer deny.
