The Challengers of the Cosmos
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January 2, 1999
Prequel:  eginning in the Foxhole, Charles Sinclair's mansion in New York
City. The Challengers find rings with their initials on them, left to them
by Commander Cloak, who was last seen on the Titanic. (He was an Irish
hero who, upset by the Challenger's insistence that the Titanic sink, had
them imprisoned by the crew.) Raveen notices a flash in the sky, in the
directions of Mars. When the rings are pressed, they ring an alarm in all
rings.
Frost: "  o, no sooner had we stopped Shazhad's scheme to sell sweetwater to the
Europeans in exchange for weapons to conquer Morocco than we stumbled on a
new mystery: a great steel structure mostly buried in the sand. Astro
snarled 'Marcronian', and Raveen gets all tense. It seems that the
Valusians are at war with the Marcronians, who come from Mars, and this is
one of their vessels. Leet and I watch out for returning aliens, sand
devils, or Riffians while the rest of the group goes into the ship. As
soon as Leet and I enter the place, we don't like it. It doesn't smell
right, and there are rows of open shackles all over the place, like it's
designed to carry away slaves. I don't think I'm going to like these
Marcronians either.
Raveen tells us to watch out for the invisible Grontarks, the watchdogs of the Marcronians. Leet and I decide to go hunting for Marcronians or Grontarks while the rest of the group talks about it. Leet and I sniff something strange on the other side of a door. Before I can open it, the Infidel is there, confident of his ability to deal with the noise. He tenses up, and smartly raps on the door. "There! The problem is solved - the noise is gone!" So is our chance to surprise them, but if we smelled them, they smelled us anyway. Leet won't go into the room without a direct order, and when she slips in, she's bushwacked by what looks like a Grontark. Before I can harpoon it, Raveen jumps on the Grontark, and Dr. Mystery lassoes all of them together. Sinclair lifts the Grontark off Leet, and the Welder throws it some dried meat. The Grontark becomes visible. It's ugly, but intelligent and not hostile while it's chewing on our rations. It then points to a door and whines at us. Inside the next room is a set of bare metal planks, standing off the floor at angles. A man in a silver suit is sleeping on one, but he's wincing in his sleep, and it's clearly a gun he's holding to his jaw. Raveen takes the gun, and tells us it's a freeze gun. The Marcronian has frozen himself for some reason, probably to conserve food. Raveen and Astro unfreeze the guy so they can jump all over him, asking why he's here. He's a cool one, not nervous in the least that he's outnumbered seven to one, with a hot gun and a cold gun both pointed at his head. He calls himself Drakkan Bok, and claims to have crashed on the Earth. He seems hurt that only one Grontark is still alive, but as soon as he greets 'number 9', it's obvious why - the beast is a slave, not a companion. Leet bristles, and I take an immediate dislike to him. The rest of the Challengers find him regular enough, and vote to return his weapon to him. Raveen reluctantly hands it over, and the Marcronian casually mentions that the engines are leaking Ravocite, so we must leave it immediately. This is confirmed by our feelings of weakness, so we leave and head for the Excelsior. Captain Astro has decided that Drakkan must be given over to the Solar Council. Two days along our journey to the Moon, we spot an enormous space squid. The Excelsior's Radio Ray has little effect, as the squid attacks the ship. Rivets pop, and black oily horrors rise from the buckling hull, sprouting tentacles and a dun eye. We smash the things, and leap out the airlock in space suits. The Scarlet Infidel strikes with martial skill, and buries his arm halfway into the squid's eye. While Dr. Mystery attempts to hypnotize the monster, I harpoon it neatly in the other eye, while the Infidel reaches in an pulls out a chunk of its brain. The squid floats away in space. Raveen and Drakkan identify the creature as a Black Beast of Quarnus, a legendary creature, and it is inside the Moon's orbit. Somehow, it has breached the Solar Council's screen. I know enough magic to understand this. My people tells of the Cold Woman, an evil goddess of winter who would freeze all of the people each winter. The shamans keep her away with magical protections, but if a person violates a taboo, the protections are lost, and the Cold Woman comes to kill all. The violater must be set adrift on a floe for the good of the people. If we can find out who broke the taboo of the Solar Council, we can figure out how to fix it. The moon reminds me of home, in a strange way. The ground is covered in powder, it is always night, and it is death to leave shelter without the proper clothing. There are a cluster of silver igloos, the insides of which are too civilized for me. We are met by a woman in silver underwear named Elsie Vond, who takes us to Spacebase central. Dr. Mystery and the Scarlet Infidel toss a coin for the privilege of who will romance her, and Mystery wins. Evidently it is a short courtship, as Mystery pays her little attention after the first evening. When we meet Commander White, he is also very hostile to the Marcronian. Charles gets his back up, and challenges White for the authority to make such decisions. He says he will bring the matter up with the English authorities and the League of Nations, but a telegram later that night convinces him to accept the Council's authority as real. White tells us that the planets need Ravocite, and Earth and the Moon are the best sources left. To prevent the Valusians and Marcronians from stealing it, the Council placed the screen, and left Earth to the Earthlings. Would that there were such things available for Alaska, Africa, and Asia! We are then introduced to a brain in a jar, which seems to be alive, and a young man who escorts it. The brain is Pierre Curie, and the young man is Ambrose Bierce! It is very exciting to meet my inspiration, a man who walked away from all the hypocrisy and lies that civilization entails. I ask Bierce if it is possible to walk outside, and if a suit could be contrived for Leet. He and Curie assemble one, and Bierce, Leet, and I wander outside. Bierce's suit is armored, and reminiscent of the mechanoids employed about the base. He calls himself "Monitor" when he wears the suit. We see "Thematoids" on a distant mountain - these are the native moon people. While Monitor, Leet and I enjoy our freedom, we see a ship depart from Earth. Monitor calls the base, and discovers that no ships are supposed to be leaving Earth; the screen isn't working. Surely the taboo has been spoiled! We rush back to base, only to discover that the generators have been damaged by a saboteur. We rush to the generator room, only to discover it infiltrated with black slimy saboteurs that can impersonate men. Raveen, several guards, and I start the fight, and the creatures are soon dispatched, but not before Monitor gets his first exposure to the Scarlet Infidel's style of battle. The Infidel feels it's not fair to the creatures to fight them, so he decides to battle them with one hand tied behind his back, and a blindfold over his eyes. Monitor decides the Infidel is mad. Although the saboteurs are defeated, the generators are broken and the station crew does not know how to fix them. Drakkan knows the machines, and with much misgiving by Commander White, Raveen and myself, he is allowed to try to repair them. To our surprise, he succeeds. While Drakkan works on the generators, Monitor and I scout out other important locations around the base to see what other sabotage has been done. The base seems intact, but there is a fleet of hostile Marcronian vessels headed for us. We rush for the Excelsior, and take off. Her sister ship, the Dauntless, is destroyed by a Marcronian Negetron cannon, but it is clear by the tentacles that flail around the Marcronian ships that they are all possessed by Black Beasts of Quarnus, the evil space-squids we fought on the way to the Moon. We cannot fight inside the Excelsior, and the Radar Ray is not effective enough. We put on space suits once again and jump out of the ship to an attacking vessel. We want to try to capture one, to use in the battle, but as we get close, we realize the hopelessness of such a task: the ship is literally filled with squid-things. We will never reach the control room in time. As each of us hurls squid-things off into space, the Welder melts the Negatron cannons of the vessel, and Dangerman, standing on the bottom of the ship, unleashes his full strength (as Dr. Mystery, who had accompanied Dangerman, frantically leaps off into space). In two punches, the ships engines explode and destroy it utterly. All three Marcronian ships are out of the fight. One hulk is towed in. There are no Marcronians alive aboard any of them; all have been taken over by the horrible, slime-squid creatures. Aboard the ship is a mystery device, not powered by the usual Marcasite. One of the Space Blazers of the moon base discovers that these are the devices that penetrated the screen. So the taboo wasn't violated after all-Cold Woman has found a new trick! Unless this evil from outside is stopped, all of Earth may be in danger. Aboard the Excelsior, Charles and the rest of the Challengers extend me an official invitation to become a Challenger. I am honored to be one of this band of heroes as we battle the threat of the slime-squid-creatures." Quotes: We hear sounds behind a door. The Infidel says, "I know how to handle this!" He confidently walks up to the door, feels it, listens carefully, and knocks it smartly several times. "No more sound!" he proudly announces. The Challengers take a vote to return the freeze gun to Drakkan. He confidently smiles and extends a hand to Raveen, who giggles. "You didn't think I'd listen to the men, did you? You have been away from home a long time!" The Infidel, on the moon: Do you have any charts of charted space? How about uncharted space? The Infidel, shadowing the phony repairman. He presses the ring, which alerts the Challengers. Dangerman calls on the intercom: "Where are you?" The Infidel asks the suspicious repairman he is shadowing: "What section is this?" Fred: "Due to technical difficulties, this punchline has been cancelled." Bierce, to the Welder, who's trying to blow up the Negetron Cannon that we're trying to capture: "Didn't listen to me, did you boy?" "No. I'm not a Challenger, and I don't like your suit, either." Written by: Roger Frost (aka Bob Dushay) |