Posted on January 3, 2026January 5, 2026 by YarriThe Ultimate Collection (continued . . .) Forty lunar years before these events took place— before Trigo had founded the great city and empire that bears his name—a small caravan of settlers were passing across the barren and inhospitable Desert of Vorg. Suddenly ! . . . Alarm ! Alarm ! The wild ones are coming ! . . . They came !—shrieking their wild war-cries ! Hi-yaaaaaahhh ! Death to the intruders ! The settlers fought for their lives—and most of them fought in vain ! The few who survived the savage onslaught were made prisoner of the Wild Ones. The smallest and weakest of these wretched prisoners was a lad named Lipka. But there must have been a great will to live within that skinny frame—for Lipka was the only one to survive the cruel captivity. In the long years that followed, Lipka was a slave to the proud and savage warriors of the desert, who covered themselves with ornaments of the yellow metal that was prized all over Elekton. Indeed, Lipka himself laboured to dig out the yellow metal from the secret places known only to the Wild Ones. Lipka was a grown man, hardened by years of slavery and deprivation, when he managed to escape from his cruel captors. Later, in a frontier town, he told his astonishing story to an interested party. You say that you know where the Wild Ones dig out the yellow metal ? Yes. I could take you there. It’s perfectly safe, for the Wild Ones have a super- stition that only allows them to dig for the yellow metal on one day a year. The ex-slave and his new- found friend journeyed into the wilderness where, for many lunar years, they dug out the yellow metal. It was after his companion died of the bite of a venomous nobra that Lipka decided to return to civilization. There can be no one in all Elekton who possesses so much of the yellow metal. I must be the richest person alive ! It was the selfsame Lipka—the richest person alive on the planet Elekton—who confronted the kidnapped scientist Peric in the palatial mansion near Trigan City. So you are Peric, the Supreme Scientist of Elekton. And you I recognise as the multimillionaire Lipka. But, tell me, with all your boundless wealth, what has driven you to crime ? Lipka replied . . . Peric, for the greater part of my life, I owned nothing but the few rags I stood up in ! I spent a childhood of deprivation, without a friend or a toy ! I had nothing ! . . I did not even own myself ! . . I was a slave ! Now all that is changed ! Come ! I will show you things that will fill you with wonder and disbelief ! Come ! This instalment was originally published in Look and Learn issue no. 729 on 3 January 1976.
