Galaxy Slaves

PROLOGUE

Biblical scholars, historians, scientists, ufologists, and students of the first visit to earth by alien astronauts cannot agree if the period of time when they first came was recorded as UT spaceship time or planet time. This may not be important as evidence of the visits is still available on earth. Many believe that when earth scholars are allowed to study in alien universities they will find records substantiating the movement of spaceships through time and space on their voyages to earth. They do agree that it had to be some time during the Mesozoic Era on earth, and that they were from a world known as Zoran in a galaxy beyond the Milky Way.

To reach earth a Zoran spaceship must attain speeds greater than the speed of light. Once it exceeds the speed of light time speeds up on Zoran in relation to spaceship time or so it seems to the astronauts. It takes a ship’s year to reach earth and a ship’s year to return. On Zoran hundreds of years have passed. The further a spaceship travels or the faster it goes beyond the speed of light the more time has passed on its home planet and at its destination. If a person on earth looked into a telescope and saw Zoran they would be looking hundreds of years into the past.

On both worlds sometimes a person is born who can communicate with their minds with another person having the same telepathic ability. When a person on Zoran is found with this ability they are trained in the word of God and become Ghost Talkers. By Zoran law all Ghost Talkers become public servants. Some are trained as astronauts and travel on spaceships while others serve in the shrines and temples of the people, so that instant communications can be maintained with the astronauts traveling in the universe. They also serve in all Zoran courts to certify that any person testifying is speaking the truth. Robots can communicate with Ghost Talkers by telepathic means but as they can not lie their testimony is accepted by the courts as factual.

The Zorans have been searching for other warm-blooded people for thousands of years. When they first discovered how to control gravity by tapping Dark Matter and using Dark Energy to propel their spaceships they started exploring the universe. Their first goal was the constellation Aquila. As they neared the star Altair they met another spaceship that was also on an exploration quest from its world known as Altairon. The Altairons or Dragons are reptilian; a cold-blooded people who eat only live warm-blood meat animals. Humans are raised on Altairon for food like cattle with a few trained as Cow Boys or Judas Goats for placing the fattest ones in a food pit for eating during feeding times.

When the two space travelers first met the Zorans were very lucky as they had two other spaceships with them, and all were armed war vessels. The Altairons thought that the Zorans were runaways or wild cattle, and they had never met cattle or humans who would resist capture. This time they were wrong. The Altairon spaceship was destroyed but not before it had sent a report to its home planet about a wild new food source that was fighting to avoid capture. From that day on the Altairons started hunting humans for food. The human cattle tested like wild game, and the hunting was now a fun but dangerous sport.

The Zorans never won a battle or avoided capture after that first encounter. They soon realized that the Altairons or Dragons had to be destroyed or another galaxy found to which they could move their families if the Zoran people were to survive. It would have to be a planet that had an atmosphere, temperature, and be about the same size as Zoran in a galaxy far away from the Altairon’s food planets. Earth came to their attention because it met all the requirements, and there were no humans living on it at the time.

When the Zorans first visited earth it had only one large landmass. They established a large spaceport where the survey flying saucers crews could rest as they studied and mapped the land. As the mapping continued, more and more spaceships arrived bringing supplies, equipment, and workers. The base soon became a large city of thousands that became known as Atlantis. A spaceship circling earth for landing could see lines and signs that had been constructed pointing toward the spaceport. The spaceport and signs could still be used today if the land mass had not broken up and drifted apart.

The Milky Way was a new Galaxy for the Zorans, and had not been mapped or had all the asteroid courses been plotted that traveled through it. It came as a complete surprise when an incoming spaceship reported locating an asteroid with a diameter of 55 miles and was on a course that would collide with earth in less than a planet year. The spaceship making the report was thirty days from reaching earth, and the only other spaceship available to help them was preparing to depart Atlantis within a few days. A flying saucer was sent to observe and plot the point on earth where the asteroid would hit. The projected point of impact was on the coast a few miles from the spaceport.

When it was first found the asteroid was already on a collision course and was too large to be moved or destroyed. The city of Atlantis and the spaceport could not be saved. The king of Zoran sent orders through his Ghost Talker for the city to be evacuated. Five hundred people would board the incoming spaceship and a thousand more would leave on the spaceship that was loading for the return to Zoran.

The flying saucers started taking people from the city to points all over the land area and dropping them off. The idea was to disperse the people to wherever there was a chance for survival. There were twelve Ghost Talkers stationed in Atlantis, and they would lead twelve different groups or tribes of Zorans. Each tribe was to be made up of one thousand people including their Ghost Talker, and they were instructed to live off of the land until rescue spaceships could return for them.

Each tribe would have to keep a Ghost Talker and Shrine with them as they moved about so communications could be maintained with the other tribes and with the rescue spaceships when they came. No matter what happened, it would be four hundred planet years or longer before the next spaceship would reach earth. Each Shrine was actually a G1G2 type robot that was designed to communicate with Ghost Talkers and other Shrines throughout the universe. Its base was packed with enough nuclear explosives to destroy a city if it was invaded by the food gleaners of the Altairons. One tribe of people redesigned the G1G2 robot by removing the explosives to reduce the weight of their Shrine so it could be carried. It became an Ark holding their Torah scrolls. A G1G2 robot Shine draws its power from the sun and can be carried by four men. When the people stopped moving the ark was placed into a tent designed as a temple for God.

Eleven of the Ghost Talkers and their people were taken to locations on earth as far away from the coming disaster as possible. Many other people left Atlantis on foot and by flying saucers with their families when word of the coming asteroid was announced. Ten days before the collision there were no one left in the city. When the asteroid hit, the earth shook and stood still for a second; then came the earthquakes and volcano eruptions. The earth shifted three degrees on its axes causing the land to break apart, separating into many continents and islands which started drifting away from each other. The destruction was so complete that all the dinosaurs and large animals were killed outright. Each tribe was soon isolated from the others. The tribes were on their own, and their only contact with each other was through the Ghost Talkers and the G1G2 robot Shrines. The Shrines could still contact other Shrines on Zoran reporting the people’s needs to the King. The Shrines with the explosives were very heavy and impossible to move without the use of antigravity lifts. As time passed it became necessary for the tribes to move to new locations to find food just to survive, and one by one the Shrines were lost, abandoned, and forgotten.

Three spaceships arrived almost a thousand planet years later looking for survivors to rescue but none could be found. The Zorans believe in one God who would one day have a Son who would save them. The leader of their Ghost Talkers was called a Profit of God. Not even he thought to look at the animals to find those who needed rescuing. Four thousand years after the asteroid hit everyone had reverted to animal status just to find food. Only those living in God’s Garden of Eden kept humanity about them. The descendants of the Ghost Talkers would someday become witch doctors, rabbis, saints, preachers, priests, and prophets. Only the tribe that had made their Shrine into an Ark was able to communicate with their King until it too was hidden and lost. None remembered how to speak to each other or to the spaceships when they came.

Thousands of years later the Zorans visited earth again and talked to the people who now lived there. They found people all over earth speaking different languages. When they visited Egypt the priests drew pictures of them wearing their space helmets, as did the Mayans when they visited Mexico. Wherever the Zorans visited the priests and prophets left written records in their writing of the visit. No one they spoke with or tested could tell them who they were except the pharaohs of Egypt. Believing they were related to God each pyramid had a small shaft built into it that pointed directly from the tomb to Zoran, so that in death their sprit could find its way home.

Even with this evidence the king of Zoran ruled that humans were now so warlike and fierce that they could not be related to Zorans. The people of earth fought each other over and about everything. Even though they were human the king ruled that no earthman or women should ever be allowed to visit Zoran. All this time the Zorans were still being hunted for food and no spaceship escaped the Altarions after the first contact. The Altairons or Dragons had won every battle and eaten every human they captured.

The last group or tribe of people who left Atlantis believed that the asteroid would cause the earth to explode and elected to leave for Mars. The transport spaceship they were on could not go faster than the speed of light and would not be able to take them out of the Milky Way Galaxy. It could get them to Mars and maybe to another planet that they could live on. A byproduct of the engines was water, and the spaceship’s duplicator could provide food for many years. The trip proved to be a hardship of death and misery almost beyond belief.

Getting to Mars was not too difficult, but it proved unsuitable as a permanent home. They had to go on and one-day years later they came upon a planet that circled two suns. The suns were smaller than the one giving light to earth but the two suns gave new earth enough light that it never really got dark. Grasses and trees grew on the land. There were clouds and even an ocean with fish. First they called the planet new earth but some said that this wasn’t earth and needed a new name. It had two suns and no moon. Then they asked the Ghost Talker if he could give their new planet a name. He had the Shrine contact the other Ghost Talkers on Zoran and asked the king for his advice. There was only one small problem with the new planet. It was close to the tail of the Milky Way, which made it closer to the Altairon world than earth. The king ordered that the location of this world should be kept secret to protect the people from being hunted and eaten by the Dragons. He told the Ghost Talker that as they were Zorans the New World should be called Zion, so they would always remember where they came from.

Thousands of planet years passed with Zoran spaceships visiting both Earth and Zion. The only difference was that the visits to Earth were in secret and the visits to Zion were open with the exchange of ideas developing between the two worlds. Zion had its own space program and had even developed a tourist culture. The spaceships of Zion were shaped more like long tubes and some were miles long. They were like large moving cities or universities that moved continually between the planets. It was as if it was a vacation cruise line changing passengers and crew every few years.

The space war with the Altairons was fast approaching a point where the Zoran world could become the next cattle or food ranch for the enemy. After Zoran, then Zion, and finally Earth would become a food source for the Dragons. A Battle Captain was needed to lead the fight to carry the war to the enemy. Of the three worlds that had humans on them only on earth were the people ready, willing, and looking for a fight. They would fight anyone, anywhere, and at any time. The king of Zoran ordered the spaceship Adventure to search the area around Roswell, NM and find them a Battle Captain.

A US Army pilot named Steve LaBaron was captured and recruited as a Battle Captain of Zoran. Later he fell in love and married the daughter of the king of Zoran, Princess Morning Light. Moon Base Earth was established and became the home spaceport of the warship Defender. It was the most powerful armed spaceship in the universe. The Defender’s crew consisted of the Battle Captain Steve La Baron, Zorans warriors, Earth astronauts, and robots. They had all signed on to defend Earth and Zoran against their common enemy the Altairons.

On the last battle of the space war the Defender led the attack on the Altairon space fleet. The battle ended with all the spaceships of the enemy being destroyed. The Zorans lost all their spaceships except the Starship Searcher and one warship that were damaged but both were able to return home. The warship Defender fought to the end. It was lost with all the human astronauts and warriors except for six robots and the earth Battle Captain Steve La Baron. The Battle Captain was unconscious and injured when he was placed in a deep sleep capsule aboard an escape pod along with the memory disks of the all the robots. The escape pod’s master was an E3B2 robot called Tinwoman assistant to Princess Morning Light, the Warlord was an E3B2 robot called Tinman, assistant to the Battle Captain, and the four Z1M1 robots called Purser, Surgeon, Weapon, and Navigation Officers.

Just before the battle started the Defender’s Shrine’s G1G2 robot had reported that a series of nuclear rockets had hit in a line between Cairo and Israel on earth. The rockets came from the desert North of Az Zarqa in Syria and from the desert area of Jordan. There were so many atomic explosions that the ground between the two areas became molten lava. Once again the earth staggered for a second or two. Scientists were reporting that the atomic explosions were causing earthquakes and volcano eruptions. Armageddon had really happened. It was Atlantis all over again but this time it wasn’t an asteroid but man’s weapons which were causing the earth to tremble.

ALTAIRONS, sometimes called Dragons, are a cold-blooded alien life form from a planet near the star Altair.

1. Reptile. Cold blooded. Dark green in color.

2. They have scales and no hair.

3. They have round dark spots where the ears are normally.

4. Their eyes were black under ridges of bone.

5. The upper and lower jaw extended forward from the eyes about 10 inches. They had two nostrils that are at the end of the face and above the mouth.

6. The mouth is full of teeth but no grinding ones. All are sharp teeth for tarring of meat. Some are outside the mouth like tusks.

7. Walks upright and has a five fingered hand.

8. Has a wide foot with four toes. Wears a very wide boot.

9. Breaths air the same as humans but needs a hotter climate, and their spaceship’s interiors are around ten degrees hotter than human spaceships.

10. The male weighs from 200 to 300 lbs and are 5 to 6 feet tall.

11. It has a short thick tail that looks like a large rump and is used to store fat. It only eats once a day but can go for over a week between meals. The longer it goes without eating the shorter and thinner the tail becomes.

12. Young Altairon’s tails have shrunk so much they can walk upright like a human with a large butt. Their chairs have the back cut out so their tails or butts can stick out the back.

13. It eats only live warm-blood food. It is never cooked.

14. They hunt humans for food and treat them as cattle.

15. Females can lay up to 100 eggs per year and are larger than the males.

16. It uses a space suit and when in a space ship or on a planet, wears shorts with a webbed crossover belt to carry its tools and weapons.

17. Their space suits have longer helmets but are similar to humans.

18. Weapons consist of a flat club made of leather, loaded with rocks, and is at least 3 feet long. It carries a short sword, a blaster pistol, and a whip on its belt. Some also carry a throwing, weighted net for catching humans to eat.

19. Their spaceships are designed to capture food (humans). Their weapons are used for gathering and capturing live food.

20. They only kill humans for sport or if they are attacked. They have ranches and preserves on their home planet where they raise and develop humans for their food markets.

21. Their home planet’s population is growing, and they are running out of land for food farms. Now they are looking for new food-planets.

DEFENDER ESCAPE POD #1

It was black, cold, and silent. I could feel the energy, see the colors, and sense the movement of the stars and planets as I looked at the universe spread around and before us. It was an awesome sight to be able to see back into time. The stars looked like bright white lights of different sizes with some dying as I watched. They would blink out as if God had turned them off while others were turned on. Some were turning into suns, and the colors ranged in brilliant whites, yellows, and reds. There were even different shades of amber and blues. The problem was not before us but a new black hole that had appeared just behind our escape pod where the spaceship Defender had once fought bravely.

All of the spaceship’s nuclear weapons had detonated when the G1G2 robot Shrine and the engines; which ran on dark energy, had joined together causing a supernova explosion. The three enemy warships that had tried to board and capture the Defender joined the new black hole one by one. As I watched, the rim of the black hole’s horizon turned bright white then brilliant yellow with the expanding gases showing a deep red as the damaged spaceships rushed to be swallowed by the expanding black hole. The gravity field surrounding the center of the explosion was increasing in size and strength by the minute. If I didn’t want us to join the new black hole I had to steer the Defender’s escape pod through a debris field that extended for fifty thousand miles around the site of the space battle. Ahead were parts of broken flying saucers, spaceships, shuttles, and fighting spacecraft of every description. There were small bits and pieces, including bodies of men and women in spacesuits, all rushing toward and taking an orbit around the new black hole waiting for their turn to enter it.

I am Tinman, an E3B2 robot and now Battle Captain or Warlord of the Defender’s Escape Pod #1. Steve La Baron the Battle Captain of the privateer warship Defender is in the deep sleep capsule of the escape pod, and I am acting as its Warlord while he is recovering from his injuries. Space, water, or air, are all the same to me; but I am still a general-purpose robot and assistant to the Battle Captain. My job is still to record all conversations, take pictures, and furnish information to the sleeping Battle Captain.

Even if the spaceship’s escape pod can never exceed the speed of light, the horizon of the black hole is small enough that we should be able to stay ahead of its expanding gravity field if we are not slowed down by collisions with the wreckage of other spaceships or get touched by the gases coming from the explosions of warships entering the black hole. Our escape pod is hundreds of spaceship years away from Moon Base Earth but it will never need to be recharged. The escape pod can draw and store power from any light source including light from the stars. Both Tinwoman and I have the same capability, plus our visual senses can also project a moving holograph while at the same time sending or receiving messages from other robots. The other thing that saved us was Princess Morning Light’s foresight in installing a particle beam projector on my top, and by removing all restrictions from my program on the use of the weapon.

Steve does not own me. I am not a slave or a machine that can be turned into parts. The Battle Captain had all the robots on the Defender assigned as part of the spaceship with the rights and privileges of a crewmember before our last battle to save humanity. I am one powerful E3B2 robot and Warlord Protector of the La Baron Clan.

Our spaceship had led the Zoran Starship Searcher with two of their warships and their flying saucer’s escorts into the largest space battle ever fought against Altairon warships. Like all space battles, it was over in just a few hours, but one Zoran warship and all of the flying saucers were completely destroyed. The Starship with its other spaceship escort was heavily damaged. It would take the crews a ship’s year making repairs before they could use light speed again.

The Ghost Talkers of the spaceship fleet had reported the victory to all the Ghost Talkers in the universe. The threat of being eaten by the Altarion or Dragons was gone. Humans were no longer wild game to be hunted by the Altarion Gleaners. The enemy still had farms and ranches where humans were raised as cattle but Earth, Zoran, and Zion were safe. The hunters would someday become the hunted. The Ghost Talkers reported that the Defender was destroyed in the space battle and all the crewmembers killed, but this is not true. Just before the battle started I sent a message capsule with all the CD records and recordings of the Defender to an Earth‘s orbit. If we lost the space battle the people of earth needed to know that the Altairons would soon find them.

All Zoran and Earth warriors were killed except for the Battle Captain who is in a deep sleep capsule waiting for his wounds to heal. A copy of all the computer chips and memory disks of every robot on the Defender are also stored in the escape pod along with the spaceship’s master computer and fire-proof computer disks. Defender Escape Pod #1’s Master was Tinwoman, the E3B2 robot assistant of Princess Morning Light, and I am its Warlord and assistant to our Battle Captain. The pod is twenty feet long with a ten foot beam, and we are all that remains of the warship Defender. I am taking us to Moon Base Earth for new robot bodies and a new spaceship. Until then Escape Pod #1 is the Defender. Escape pods cannot travel beyond light speed and are designed so that rescue spaceships can locate them in case of an accident. It will be a thousand ship years before we get to the earth’s moon if we can outrun the grasp of the new black hole growing just behind us.

Tinman, don’t make any turns, just make this thing go faster until we get away from that black hole. Blast everything in our path while I route all the power to your particle beam, Tinwoman sent.

I didn’t bother to answer as some of those fingers of exploding red gases were flashing on both sides of the escape pod. I was already using my particle beam separator to its maximum, only pausing long enough to keep it from burning out. If any more junk showed up we were going to be in deep trouble. The way things were going it would still be nip and tuck to see which happened first: the black hole’s gravity would equal our forward thrust, wreckage from the battle would block our escape, or one of the exploding fingers of gas would reach out and touch us. I don’t think that the Defender’s targeting computer could have located, calculated, or fired as fast as I was doing just to clear the escape pod’s path. Tinwoman always did tell me to do what I was already doing. Actually, Princess Morning Light used to do the same thing to Steve.

Finally, I could see that the red fingers were snapping just behind the escape pod’s tail and realized that almost ten-seconds would pass after the firing of the weapon. Tinwoman, we’re going to make it. You had better reroute power back to the deep sleep capsule. I sent.

Everyone knows that. I adjusted the power control five minutes ago. You don’t have to tell me something I’m already doing. It’s a good thing that robots don’t have hair or I’d have pulled mine out long ago.

It was twelve hours later when Tinwoman adjusted our course toward Moon Base Earth. It did it a little sooner than I would have, as the new black hole was still growing but now very slowly. I think that it will actually continue to grow until it swallows the entire galaxy. It may take a few billon years for that to happen. I wonder if humans will name it the Defender’s Black Hole. It’s shaped like a rubber sheet that someone has thrown a bowling ball onto, forming a cone with its gravity pulling everything down into the cone where it’s compressed into gases. The escape pod is still so close to the black hole that we can’t see the Starship Searcher or its escort. There is no way they can see us or even guess that we have survived. Tinwoman, do you think we should contact the G1G2 robot Shrine on the Searcher and tell it where we are? I sent.

No, the last thing Natasha told me before she ceased functioning was to be sure that the Battle Captain was taken to Moon Base Earth. Why Tinwoman believes that Morning Light and Natasha aren’t dead I do not know. It always refers to humans as if they were robots. They were members of the La Baron Clan and all of them are dead.

The new black hole will hide us, so they will never know we survived.

For the next four hundred and thirty ship years it was quiet with only the stars keeping us company until I noticed what sounded like clicking. I soon realized the clicking sounds were messages being sent by a G1G2 robot.

Tinman did you get a bearing on that G1G2 robot Shrine? Before I could answer Tinwoman added, Do you know the Shrine or its Ghost Talker?

It’s coming from that small sun and cluster of planets ahead. The Shrine is moving, so it must be on a spaceship, and I haven’t heard the Ghost Talker yet. I asked Tinwoman to change our course towards the nearest planet. I wanted something to hide behind if we needed to stay out of sight. A week later we were hearing every message clearly but they didn’t make much sense, and the answers to the messages were just as bad.

They sounded like tourists or school children sending messages about places they were visiting or family matters. We still hadn’t heard a word from the Ghost Talker; however, there were a few messages which gave us the name of the spaceship and its Master. It was a Star Cruiser from the planet Zion, and the name of its Master was Ruth. The spaceship was on a scheduled visit to Zoran, Moon Base Earth, Mars, and return to Zion with a viewing stop at this newly discovered black hole. It was now 430 years since it started forming, and its gravity horizon was very limited. When you considered that it would take billion of years to grow large enough to swallow a star and larger yet to crush a Galaxy, one had to wonder what it fed on. I sent a message to Tinwoman that maybe the black hole would soon close.

If robots could snort or laugh, Tinwoman would have. Instead, it sent the information as if I didn’t know. Our escape pod’s dark energy monitors were showing that dark matter and energy were flowing into the cone of the black hole. The black matter was being converted into a dark energy gravity force that was squeezing everything entering the black hole down to nothing or so it seemed. I think that the escape pod’s instruments can’t read a force that great, and that accounts for the zero readings but I’m sure not going to ask Tinwoman.

Tinwoman had moved the escape pod into a close orbit around one small planet that was circling a star. Look! There it is! Tinwoman sent. The spaceship had appeared about fifty thousand miles away heading in our direction. It was three miles long with five decks, and I estimated that it must hold at least six thousand passengers plus its crew aboard. No wonder there were so many messages being sent by the G1G2 robot.

It’s a mystery why there hasn’t been any contact from the Ghost Talker yet. We had not even picked up his thoughts or transmissions to anyone since the start of our surveillance.