“Alone in the stricken weather station, with all about me dying, I sent my message out across the ether.” Help me, please . . . someone . . . help! “Somewhere out there, a substratosphere passenger cruiser picked up my feeble call.” Hello, hello, weather station . . . receiving you . . . what is your trouble? “I can imagine what took place between the captain of the cruiser and his second pilot.” Sir, they’ve got the virus fever aboard the weather station! Practically everyone is wiped out and the signal operator wants us to land there and bring him off. There’s only one thing for it. “Instead of taking the decision himself, as he should have, the captain consulted eight frightened people.” So there you have it. Do we land on the weather station and take off the survivor, at the risk of ourselves contracting the virus fever? . . . I put it to the vote! No! No! No! And I add my own vote . . . No!“Picture my horror and despair when I received their verdict.” Cruiser’s Captain speaking. I’m sorry, friend, but we have taken a vote, and we think the risk is too great. No! No! You can’t do this to me! You can’t abandon me! “The sole survivor on an abandoned city in mid-space, with everything I needed to sustain life—food, drink, warmth, purified air—everything but freedom. Nothing but mind-bending solitude.” Five lunar years have passed. I think another five will drive me insane! “My sanity was saved by my discovery—in one of the many well-equipped workshops—of a damaged air craft. In the years that followed, I worked on the craft, to repair it.” One day, I’m going to have this fit to fly. Then it’s back to Elekton . . . . . . and vengeance! “Years later . . .” It is ready! And now, to find those who condemned me to all those years of terrible solitude . . . . . . and to pay them back in kind! His story finished, the speaker regarded his prisoners. The ten year-old crew and passenger list told me all I needed to know. Further investigation revealed that two of those persons had died in the meantime, but that eight remained, including the captain of the cruiser . . . . . . Now Marshal Rossu, Chief of the Trigan Air Fleet!
This instalment was originally published in Look and Learn issue no. 759 on 31 July 1976.
