The camera on Tony’s PJ swung around. It was being directed by one of the technicians in the com center. Jonathan turned to him, “Navin, did you see were that came from?”
“I think I have the basic area. Let’s see…there it is again. There. See?”
Jonathan could see. A battery on a low hill. “Tony, so you see that? Can you get PJ’s 7 and 8 to attack it from their rear?”
“I’m on it.”
Another green bolt beamed. A huge bolt. It seemed similar to a ray gun’s beam but about forty times more powerful. It was firing at the Indian jets. So far the Indian rockets had been effective and their jets were fast. They would make a pass, fire their rockets and get out of the area.
The PJ’s were closer to the ground and if they didn’t stay in any one place for long. The ray gun beams from the ground could not have a sustained blast to punch holes in the metal of the transport ships. The small arms fire from the conventional weapons also proved less than effective on the skin of the puddle jumpers.
Tony was in PJ 3 and it was the command ship. PJ 7 and 8 peeled off and flew to towards the enemy battery. They could not do much as they only had ray guns and some hand held rocket launchers which had been donated by the Indian Military. They would have to hover behind the enemy battery let down the ramp and fire way. That they would be vulnerable was something Jonathan didn’t want to ponder.
The huge green beam hit one of the Indian jets. The jet was disabled and both pilots ejected and their parachutes opened.
Jonathan was frantic, “Tony. Do not let those pilots land. They’ll be in the middle of the slave army.
“Tony, this is Terry. We’re out of ammo. I’m going to get the pilots.” PJ 2 disengaged from attacking the mother ship and sped directly toward the parachuting pilots. They watched from Tony’s command ship.
It occurred to Jonathan that maybe they could position the PJ under the pilots and they could land on the top of the transport ship. There were no hand holds and it would be a difficult ride but it did appear feasible. However, this was not on Terry McNeill’s mind.
“Everybody, strap yourselves in,” McNeill was heard to yell.
As he flew toward the closest pilot he turned the ship. As he did this he opened the ramp. The PJ was almost perpendicular to the ground though still over a thousand feet in the air. It hovered. With some jockeying of position it was directly under the descending pilot. He made it to the cabin of the transport ship. Not a pretty landing but an effective one.
The PJ leveled off and headed for the other pilot. Those in the cabin unstrapped themselves and assisted the pilot out of his parachute and strapped him into the transport seat. They then strapped themselves and waited for the next boarder. This went more smoothly then the first and both pilots were safe. The two other Indian jets had discharged all their rockets and were now headed home.
“Tony, looks like we cannot do anything more here. Head back to India.”
Jonathan turned to Sasha, “I’ll be in the Chair. Connect me, okay?”
“You betcha.”
Prezlee wondered just how he would explain this.
CHAPTER FOUR
Hello, I’m Dr. Jonathan Prezlee.” He paused. He realized this was not going to be easy.
“What you have seen was a real attack on a real…ah, space ship. This is not some fiction or sci-fi show.” He paused again. He smiled. Outside of those in India who is going to believe him. He shook his head.
“It sounds fantastic. Well, it is fantastic. Two years ago our planet underwent a global catastrophe. It was not a natural catastrophe.” He put it in his mind not to be pedantic or overly didactic. Straight to the heart of the matter.
“You are watching this broadcast from a communication center on one of the space ships these aliens arrived on. We, that is, the Earthland Security Force, commandeered it.”
“The transport ships you saw are from this and several other…what we call mother ships. We believe there were originally seven of them. The one we…attacked and seemly disabled was the fifth. We believe there are two others out there. One had been parked around the Indian/Pakistan border. The Indian government, probably the least devastated government on our planet, was able to engage and fight off these aliens. That is why the three planes you saw in action with us had Indian Military markings.”
“Though I intend to talk to and thank the Indian Prime Minister and the Parliament in person I’d like to take this opportunity (where in the world did I come up with crap like that?) to thank them for all the assistance they rendered in this engagement.”
“We also had two thousand of their troops but with the odds so heavily against us on the ground I decided not to send them down nor the three thousand troops in the Earthland Security Force.”
“I have to tell you and I suppose you’ll not believe me, but we, the survivors of the catastrophe, are in a war for our lives. The Peeds, as they call themselves, came here to either enslave us or kill us.
He paused again. Who in their right minds would believe this?
“These aliens had been from this planet. They are human. Though the dating of their being taken off this planet is unknown it is thought to have occurred around thirty or forty thousand years ago.”
“A few of these humans learned a great deal from the benign aliens. These benign aliens apparently recognized the potential for a real natural global cataclysm and thought in their kindness to take a few humans to safety…and it seems some animals and plants as well. They found a suitable planet for these humans to thrive.”
“On the way to the new home planet for these rescued humans some of them learned aspects of the technology of these aliens and when they arrived at the new location they enslaved the others and created a slavemaster controlled society.” Probably not too different from Plato’s vision.
“Seems the world they were on after many thousands of years was going to experience a global cataclysm so a number of them decided why not return to their original home planet, Earth. They assumed no humans would be found on it.”
“One of their technologies is a tractor beam, or at least that is what we call it. Seems to be, at least in part, an exceedingly powerful magnet. More powerful than anything on Earth. We’re still trying to figure it out.”
:Anyway, they used it to bring to our planet meteors from the asteroid belt. They figured if they caused a huge global catastrophe then few of us would remain and they would have little difficulty in taking over.”
“Well, I guess they didn’t kill enough of us.”
Jonathan talked about what he and the others on the Australian Airways Airbus and those survivors on Vancouver Island and the city of Vancouver underwent for survival. How they found out about the aliens and what they have learned and done to date.
“We are at a disadvantage. Our society here and in many places just doesn’t exist in any cohesive manner. We’ve had to survive without any of the benefits of our civilization, our former civilization. In some cases, many cases, governments ceased to exist. Communication between countries and communities had been eliminated.”
“We must work together to keep the Peeds from enslaving us. We must develop our democracy to once again have a government which can organize resistance to this threat.”
“No one from our U.S. government in Washington DC has survived. Most died from radiation poisoning. Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court were in session when the meteor swarm hit. Our planet underwent a global tilt, we’re now around twenty degrees of inclination to the plane of elliptic, and that caused the huge tsunamis, violent earthquakes and volcanic activity. As far as we can tell every nuclear weapon or device including power station reactors exploded.”
“The areas where this occurred are uninhabitable. We’re not sure but we think there’s less than three hundred million to possibly four hundred million of us left. Some countries were incredibly devastated.”
“The polar ice cap is gone and without a thick envelope to obscure t
he sun it will not reform or form very slowly. Therefore, we have had a significant rise in our ocean levels. This means we have less land to live on. Every coastline in the world has been altered. The eastern United States has already lost a minimum ten miles to the ocean. Nearly fifty percent of Florida is under water.”
“The reason the Arctic Ocean will not reform its ice cap is because the solar radiation will warm the surface of the water. It certainly will not be the Riviera but dark water retains heat and will keep it too warm for ice to form. The ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica have shrunk and continue to recede. All other glaciers on our planet are gone.”
“It was estimated by earth scientists and others that if all ice sheets and glaciers melted we would see an increase of twenty feet in our ocean levels. Even if this is somewhat inaccurate it will still be monumental. One aspect of the change of our axis, or tilt, is that the temperate zones have increased. We think an increase of a hundred miles in both directions, north and south, has occurred. It may be more. The desert zones will shrink. The Sahara Desert will shrink from the north and North Africa though it may not blossom as in the hipsithermal or climate optimum period will be able to grow more crops and sustain more people.”
“You can see, even if we had no war to wage we will have a lot to do to recreate our countries and societies. But we do have a war so our effort to reestablish our governments and societies will be hampered and doubly difficult.
“We plan on sending reports, such as a news program, and keep you informed. At present we seem to be the only ones with the ability to reach so many people. We are still learning the technology of these aliens and hopefully in the near future we can develop a worldwide communication system.”
“We are going to rebroadcast the attack on the alien mother ship in China. If you know anyone who has a television or a radio with working electricity keep tuned to this frequency.”
Jonathan paused. “You must be aware of our enemy. That he is human means he is adaptive. And they have adapted. Today we witnessed a weapon we had not seen before. They have altered how the implant beacons can be monitored so we do not know where these Peeds are at present.”
“These are vicious people. They kill without remorse or pity or thought. It does not occur to them that what they are doing is wrong. People to them are nothing more than things, items or objects. If they thought torture was helpful they would apply that as well. They have no conscience or sense of decency. They are single-minded and believe what they do is in their best interests.”
“That it is not in the interests of others has no meaning for them. Though they may be under the radar, so to speak, they will not stop or turn back from their cause. They are tireless in their efforts. They will conquer and control us if we do not stop them.”
Without realizing he paused and reflected. He had just described Hitler, Stalin, Cheney.
Jonathan rubbed the stubble on his chin and wondered; well, we’re two for three. Will we be three for four or two for four? He had no answer as the broadcast ended. He whispered to the blank screen, “hey bad guys, you can run but…”
THE END…or is it just the beginning
By Peter Butterworth
Essay
*Ideology versus Scientific Ethics
The easiest way to look at the problem regarding the theory of Gradualism is through its inability to explain the four problems associated with the frozen mammoths of Siberia.
Scientific ethics is really simplicity itself. In this case it is this: a theory which does not explain reality cannot be correct. Period.
There is no wiggle room, there is no gray area. Either a theory explains reality or it does not.
A good example of this is the greatest adage known to man. For thousands of years it was the only dictum everyone on the planet could agree with. And that is: whatever goes up must come down.
The experience of everyone for thousands of years had this as a truism of reality par excellence. Yet, that statement is incorrect. 100% incorrect as far as scientific ethics is concerned.
It does not matter that in 99.9% of all cases this adage remains true. However, the statement does not say 99.9% but infers 100%. It is now a statement which does not explain reality.
Therefore, it is an incorrect.
Charles Darwin in the late 1870’s was asked about the frozen mammoths of Siberia. It was not a frivolous or trivial question. The frozen mammoths were a major interest to the English public at the time. And since Darwin’s cousin was helping one of the newer generation of thinkers, an individual named Evans, prepare his lecture at the Royal Academy of Sciences Charles Darwin was a very likely person to query.
It must be understood that the phenomena of the frozen mammoths of Siberia was not limited just mammoths or Siberia. Everything which can be said about the mammoths also is true of other animals and everything which can be said about Siberia can be said of Alaska. However, it’s easier to limit ourselves to what Darwin and his contemporaries knew. The evidence regarding Alaska came later.
The phenomenon of the frozen mammoths was not new in 1878. It had been around for about two generations. Two generations in which Gradualism failed to explain this reality.
But there were new thinkers, Evans and Klee being the most prominent, which had captured the imagination of the English public.
Everyone at that time knew the four basic problems of the frozen mammoths.
1, The animals were eating temperate zone plants at the time of their demise,
2, All postmortems showed the animals died of asphyxiation which in most if not all cases was caused by toxic gases and not by drowning,
3, The animals were entombed in muck immediately upon death and frozen immediately upon entombment,
4, And the animals remained frozen since that time, no thawing and decay or refreezing.
There have been many attempts by the scientific establishment to explain this problem. Some theories were flat out retarded.
The one which inhabited the text books for many years was a slow moving glacier (on flat ground moving a couple of inches a year) encircling the luckless animals.
This is what I call a Limbaughism [20]. It is a statement meant to deceive. It was an idiotic statement even for that time (the early and early-middle part of the 20th century).
This statement was accepted by most people. No one questioned it for many years. Yet, the statement did not address any of the four problems.
To compound this lack of intellectual honesty and lack of integrity, illustrations would show a wholly mammoth trumpeting as a huge glacier closed off the avenue of retreat and safety. And, the illustration would go so far as to show very a green, lush grass sward. In the middle of the surrounding glacier!!
Do you not readily see the problems? How can green, lush grass grow next to a glacier and just where was the daily food, three hundred pounds or more of vegetable matter, going to be found near a glacier for one mammoth let along millions of them?
This is the inherent detriment of ideology; a pernicious disinformation of retarded thinking supplanting scientific ethics and logic [21]; unbiased logic, logic not derived from ideology. Integrity and intellectual honesty just does not exist for ideologues.
When Charles Darwin was asked about the frozen elephants of Siberia he did not stoop to utter a Limbaughism such as the Mammoth Steppe theory. He did not shy away from the subject or utter half-truths in an attempt to deceive.
He said simply (a paraphrase), ‘if Gradualism cannot explain the frozen mammoths of Siberia then my theory and Gradualism will just be minor theories’ [22]. Darwin had integrity.
The Mammoth Steppe theory was the latest, greatest attempt to explain the frozen mammoths. The originator of the theory was neither a climatologist nor a meteorologist. Since this theory was in the purview of both disciplines these scientists went to work and each group found fatal flaws. The research by the climatologists and the meteorologists was published in their peer reviewed journals for
each discipline.
And yet again, the Mammoth Steppe theory failed to address three of the four problems which have plagued the scientific community for over one hundred fifty years. Never even considered these three other problems. The one problem which the theory did address was the animals eating temperate zone food in an area known today as an arctic zone. However, even this problem was hindered by ideology and therefore without merit.
So, let’s delve into The Case of the Frozen Mammoths of Siberia with the facts known through forensic science. And, as with any Perry Mason case it is not without a certain amount of deduction any investigator might use after seeking and finding all the known clues and facts. Therefore, I submit the facts as Perry Mason might. The conclusion will be readily apparent – assuming you’re NOT an ideologue.
Forensic science is quite informative on the phenomena of the frozen animals: firstly, the food these animals ate (they were actually snacking at the time of their sudden demise) is well known and as luck would have it for the gradualists, the food cannot grow where these animals are found in situ. The leaves of trees and bushes, flowers and grasses are not arctic flora. Hundreds, even as much as a thousand miles to the south, are where the plants the elephants were grazing on are grown in their natural climatic zone (of our present era).
Plants are extremely particular. Turns out plants of one climatic zone will not grow in another climatic zone. If the mammoths were eating temperate zone plants then these animals HAD to be in a temperate zone. Scientific ethics demands this conclusion.
It is irrefutable. This cannot be argued away. Nor can it be ignored; at least if you accept scientific ethics and the research as regards to plant science and agronomy.
THERE WAS NO arctic zone at the time of the animal’s demise. This is an impossibility. The mammoths of Siberia at that time were temperate zone animals living in a temperate zone. There was no tundra or permafrost.
First problem eliminated and Gradualism is found wanting.
Secondly, it is well known how the animals died: asphyxiation - overcome by gases or drowning. Since, to my knowledge, water has not yet been found in the lungs of these animals [23] then only toxicity and death from gases can have occurred. What was the gas and how did it occur over such a huge area of Siberia (larger than the continental U.S.)?