Forbidden Planet

by John E. Muller, Lionel Fanthorpe, Patricia Fanthorpe

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

Charles Fort, the great American Rebel Philosopher, believed that every man had the right to doubt. He aimed his merciless shaft at scientists and religious leaders alike. No dearly cherished doctrine was safe from Fortean criticism simply because it was old and accepted. Fort wanted proof. He wanted more proof than any scientist could give. He demanded to see with his own eyes, to hear with his own ears. Just because a telescope indicated that a certain astronomical fact was very probable was no proof to Fort that it was Fact. He would not have accepted that the earth was 93,000,000 miles from the sun until he had run a measuring chain across the intervening space!
There will be men like Charles Fort in every age, on every civilised planet. They will want proof. They will want to see and hear alien races for themselves. They will fly their valiant exploring ships to every corner of the universe. They will live. They will die. They will fail. They will succeed. This is the story of one of their journeys.

Release date: December 19, 2013

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

THEY were quite a friendly, pleasant, average-class tourist party on board the great space liner, ‘Silver Eagle.’ The ship was very much a run-of-the-mill tourist vessel. She had comfortable and adequate accommodation for somewhere in the region of five hundred passengers and about seventy crew members. She was equipped with the usual facilities for entertainment on the voyage and she had an A2 Space Worthiness Certificate, which was enough for her requirements.

The ‘Silver Eagle’ plied her trade round that particular sector of the cosmos which was known on navigational charts as ZG3/M2. Nobody but a professional astronaut had any idea of what ZG3/M2 really signified. Most of the passengers on board the ‘Silver Eagle’ were, however, fairly familiar with the planetary chart covering the sector itself. They were inclined to be rather parochial in their outlook. They were aware, of course, in a rather vague and general sense that the boundless universe existed for countless millions of light years in every direction outside sector ZG3/M2, but it was with their own sector, and more particularly with their own planetary system that they were most concerned.

The star systems of the sector were relatively close packed, close packed enough, in any case, for a rocket-drive type ship like the “Space Eagle” to be able to reach most of them within a reasonable length of time. Time which, although it might cause various complaints, was not so long that it was prohibitive to sentient beings with a life span in excess of a hundred years. Humanoids of reasonable means were able to visit any planet which they chose, without having to count the cost in time terribly seriously.

The “Space Eagle” operated at several degrees below the speed of light, but her rocketry was fairly efficient, and within her sub-vidic limitations she was not a ship to be sneered at. Charts of sector ZG3/M2 were prominently displayed in various parts of the ship as much for the education and edification of passengers as for any useful purpose which they might serve to members of the crew and would-be space navigators.

There were a total of sixty-four habitable planets federated to the Intergalactic Convention in sector ZG3/ M2. Four of those worlds which were labelled on the chart as A7, A8, B7 and B8 occupied the top left-hand corner of the chart and revolved around the star Alba. In the centre at the top of the chart, the six planets which revolved round Gloria were designated as A4, 5 and 6 and B4, 5 and 6, respectively. The chart was split up into a grid reference system. The whole galaxy, for that matter, on an enormous, three-dimensional astrogator’s chart, could be split up into an extremely complicated grid reference system with three sets of co-ordinates, plus a variable time co-ordinate; all operational concurrently. But as so large an area was outside the reach of most humanoid ships, these smaller sector charts were far more popular. Berin occupied the top right-hand corner of the chart, and its six planetary attendants filled in respectively squares A1, 2, 3, and B1, 2, 3. On the left-hand side below Alba, nine planets revolved around the star Ranor, and were designated respectively as C6, 7, 8, D6, 7, 8, and E6, 7, 8.

Occupying by far the largest area of the chart was the giant star Quen, with an attendant planetary following of no fewer than fifteen. These occupied grid squares C, D, E, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

Nine-planet systems seemed surprisingly frequent in this comparatively small sector of the galaxy, for below the giant Quen were two more nine-planet systems, belonging respectively to Phenon, occupying the astronautical grid references 1, 2, 3, F, G, H, and Arax, whose attendants occupied references F, G, H, 4 5 6. The dwarf star Galk with her two small planetary attendants was almost squeezed out by her larger neighbours, but the grid showed that F.7 and F.8 were occupied by these two small planets.

The bottom left-hand corner of the map gave pride of place to Psi, and her four attendant planets revolved through grid references G, H, 7, 8. It was an extremely simple chart, and yet despite its simplicity it had a grandeur, a sense of purpose, balance and achievement which never ceased to captivate the passengers. Should its captivation ever have failed there were the evergreen entertainments of the “Silver Eagle”. Not least among the professional entertainers on board was “The Great Mystico”.

“The Great Mystico” was the stage name which Johnny Denver used for his telepathy and conjuring act.

Johnny Denver was a tall, striking-looking man with a regal, kingly, nobility. He had a crop of flaming red hair which further served to distinguish him from his less noticeable contemporaries, and which singled him out as a singularly noteworthy character. Johnny Denver had been born with a problem. It had been fortuitous, as far as he was concerned, that the problem had provided its own solution. Johnny Denver was a telepath, an extremely strong telepath. Under the Articles of the Intergalactic Federation Rules, telepaths of his potency had to be kept under continual supervision for security purposes. Not that people, or even Governments for that matter, disliked or distrusted telepaths. It was simply that a man whose mind could probe unbidden into the most secret quarters of government security must, both for his own safety, and for the safety of his sector of the Galactic Federation, be kept well away from any possibly hostile powers. A telepath not under surveillance was the answer to a Government’s prayer, or to a Federation’s prayer that carried out the project of spying.

Johnny Denver was just as patriotic to his country, his planet, and to his star system, as any other member of any Galactic Federation group anywhere in the cosmos. But Johnny Denver was a man who loved freedom. It was one of his chief boasts that his family history could be traced back in unbroken line to the days when the remote ancestors of all the humanoids now populating the Galaxy, and indeed, a large section of the entire cosmos, had sprung from the tiny planet Earth, far, far away on the Galactic Rim.

The humanoids of sector ZG3/M2 were something like thirty million light years from Earth. Thousands of years had passed since the first questing humanoid ship had landed colonists in sector ZG3/M2, and those on that ship had remembered Earth only as a very hazy, almost legendary dream. It was a kind of celestial Garden of Eden, a mother planet to which the humanoids had been confined for many thousand years, but so adaptable and successful were they, that once they had begun to extend themselves through the galaxy and through the cosmos, there was no stopping them. Their adaptability made it possible for them to live on planets which were nothing but death to weaker races, and their reputation, for strength, ingenuity, stamina, and their tenacious grip on life, had soon established them as one of the four dominant cosmic powers. … Of the four they were the youngest and the most vigorous! But the rivalry between the powers was a moderately friendly one, each knew that the strength of the other three was too great to smash. Each had a measure of respect for the powers of the others. The older races envied the vigour, tenacity and drive of the effervescent humanoids. The humanoids admired the scientific culture, the technology and the mental powers—not to mention the almost god-like maturity—of the older races.

These older races who were able, in those places where the environment permitted them so to do, co-existed with the humanoids, to the mutual advantage in commerce and trade, of all four.

The race who most frequently contacted the humanoids and who despite their strangeness and alien nature were more closely related to Homo sapiens than the other two, were the Zurgs. The Zurgs had the power to travel through the 4th dimension. It was a power which they guarded very jealously. It had its limitations, because they used some kind of Warp-doorway. It was as though they had discovered the entry to hyper space. Humanoids and the other two races had tried for a long time to crack the Zurg secret, but it stubbornly refused to be cracked. Perhaps it was some mental power inherent in them, which no other race could imitate, until genetic mutation decreed otherwise, but whatever the reason the facts were unsurmountable. Although rather lacking in sheer scientific progress and technology the Zurgs, who were four-legged hairy beasts with rather horse-like faces and soft feet, had the power to travel through the 4th dimension, and nobody else had.

The third great race, slightly older and more powerful than the Zurgs—although considerably less numerous; and far less numerous than the humanoids—was the Garaks. The Garaks had the power of teleportation. But their teleportation bore little or no resemblance to the 4th dimensional transport which was at the disposal of the Zurgs. The Zurgs, for example, progressed, via their 4th dimensional transportation, in a rather odd manner. The Zurgs on planet A1 had been known to cross ZG3/M2 sector in a surprisingly short time by a surprisingly odd route. They had left A1 which circled around Berin with its five neighbours, and having travelled through the 4th dimensional hyper space warp, had miraculously reappeared on another of the Berin planets, B3. Disappearing again on a 4th dimensional visit, they had next seen the light of day on D4, which the grid showed to be one of the fifteen planets of Quen. On the Quen planet D4 they had vanished, to reappear on one of the nine globular children of Arax, which was designated F5 on the chart. From there they had travelled 4th dimensionally to another Arax planet, H6, and thence they had travelled, to the amazement of all who were watching the progress, to the smaller of the two Galk planets which was delineated as F7, upon the chart. From there they had vanished yet again to reappear on one of the four Psi planets which was indicated in the square H8. They had thus crossed the entire ZG3/M2 sector.

The Garak transport was a great deal more spectacular and a source of continual amazement and occasional chagrin to humanoids who were unable to emulate it. Just as humanoids and Garaks were unable to emulate the Zurg method of mobility, so humanoids and Zurgs were unable to emulate the teleport transport of the Garaks.

A Garak wishing to make the same journey from A1 in the Berin system, to H8 in the Psi system, would simply have disappeared on A1 and reappeared on H8. Magnificent as this almost instantaneous feat of locomotion would appear to both Zurgs and humanoids, there were definite limitations to the Garaks’ transportation.

These giant, ant-like teleports seemed limited as far as direction went. In fact there were some planets which they had never visited at all. Those who did not fully understand the race, were of the opinion that something in their metabolism made the other planets completely anathema, perhaps even fatal, to their structure, yet the odd thing was that the Garak race itself had been subdivided into two distinct species as fa. . .