Whenever I see an image of Tallid, I am reminded of a line in Dr. Johnson’s Rasselas, which says “ to swim is to fly in a grosser fluid, and to fly is to swim in a subtler”, for this is precisely what the “Reasonable fish” appears to do. He has the ability to float about in what are presumably Earth-like atmospheres as though he were moving in a liquid. He bears some relation to Kolvorok, physiologically, in that they both appear to have some inbuilt buoyancy , as Kolvorok also appears to have little weight and to be born up by some internal lighter-than-air gas, though in his case he has a neutral buoyancy and needs contact with the ground . Tallid however is of a species that can   free themselves entirely from the ground and float about like a self-controlled helium-balloon. If not of the same species, then they are probably of the same Genus or Family. This interesting villain make two appearances in the Hawke series, first in OVERLORD where he is part of Chalcedon’s coterie of villians and secondly in OVERLAND. In OVERLORD he

displays an aptitude for subtle persuasion, flattery and clear-thinking, essential skills when dealing with hotheads like Chalcedon and Doghead. He is the logical member of the gang who keeps the plans on track, but nonetheless he suffers as many insults from Chalcedon as Kolvorok gets from His excellency. Their plans finally thwarted, Tallid and Chalcedon   are led before the Executioner , who , for lack of evidence cannot execute them, but sends them to trail at the Galactic court.

Sadly , after OVERLORD we have to wait quite a while for Tallid’s next appearance, as for the next few times that we encounter Chalcedon he has a new sidekick , namely the Hood, who certainly doesn’t possess Tallid’s incisiveness and quick-thinking . We finally encounter “The reasonable fish” once more in OVERLAND. His previously whispered words to his co-conspirator at the end of OVERLORD that he had friends in high places , seemed to have had some truth in them as he now appears second-in-command of the Galactic police, Kolvorok’s old job! Even more bizarrely Chalcedon has inveigled his own way to the very top of that organization ( largely, on his own admission, by assassination of rivals).

By the end of the story , after the judge has stepped in , Kolvorok has been re-instated . Surprisingly , Chalcedon retains his own post and Tallid only suffers the mild punishment of having to take extended leave. Skipper Prossitt

 

Below is the concluding part of the last ( and unpublished) Jeff Hawke story, written by science writer Duncan Lunan. We heard in the last part how Fortuna learned the history of the aliens’ presence around Uranus and how the renegade alien leader , in suspension for aeons has now grown to fill much of the hub.  Duncan takes up the final part of the story:

“To keep him alive for so long and supply his growth, the robot processing units have extensively mined out the ground below the hub. Unwanted ice has been processed to fill up the lower part of the hub: with the energies of the electrostatic weapon directed inwards on to the base of this ice core, a propulsion system analagous to the Ice-Needle will be operational. This was all planned by the followers before the end.

So our alien villain now has the means to blast off from Umbriel and go sunwards, and a very powerful weapon to use when he gets to Earth, ‘to put its eye out’ as Mclane has partly done to his.   Afterwards, no doubt he has the means – cloning or whatever – to propagate his species when he gets there.   The only thing holding him back hitherto has been that the Japanese captives, who didn’t know about C-Day, told him before they died that there’s a very powerflul high-technology civilization to resist him. But in the process of the mental battle to let the Task Force get away, Fortuna and Lance have given away the fact that this is no longer the case: Earth is vulnerable.
So he reconfigures the electrostatic system for propulsion, and takes off.   However, he still has his mental link to the old scientist on the Ice-Needle, and as the latter comes around in orbit, he fires the rocket motors and rams the habitat hub amidships, piercing the giant alien with the remaining spike of the ice. The whole thing cartwheels and crashes back on to Umbriel. I leave it to you
whether the scientist dies a glorious Kamikaze death, to assuage the shame of having brought this threat upon mankind (and death to his colleagues), or whether Fortuna persuades him to bail out and be rescued.   As orbital velocity around Umbriel will be low, that could happen after the ramming.

(NB) The alien can’t use the electrostatic weapon to stop the Ice-Needle from ramming him because he’s reconfigfired the system for propulsion.)”

My thanks to Duncan for  generously providing the above story , which otherwise would probably never have seen the light of day. Skipper Prossitt

 

 

14 January 2018

Some thoughts and observations by Sydney’s wife Jan  on their recent trip to the Reggio Emilia comic book show where Sydney was guest of honour.

“Getting through customs at Bologna air port was easy compared to the carry on at Gatwick and Sydney and I were relieved to see two cheery faces waiting to greet us and take us in a warm car to our destination and hotel in Reggio Emilia. Our driver Silvio did not speak too much English but Giovanni his companion thankfully did. After a wash and brush up in our very modern hotel room with the biggest bed I have ever seen We met for dinner .Giovanni, and Silvio, and were introduced to Paola (the president of Anafi) there were around a dozen other people that we shook hands with some of them were publishers and also a few other artists.I have to say these were among the most friendly and helpful people I have ever met and nothing was too much trouble for them. We found out that the people who had invited us to the convention were all volunteers and passionate about comics. after a tasty supper we retired to bed.
The next morning we were whisked off to the convention and were amazed at the size of the buildings and the huge variety of comic books, paintings, models, and inevitably a food hall with every kind of delicacy on sale particularly the parmigiano reggiano cheese for which the area is famed The group had fifeteen years previously published a coloured book of Jeff Hawke stories based on the work modified for the American market. Sydney signed the remainder of the books to sell on their behalf. Almost immediately and before we could properly set up the stand we were inundated with fans of Sydney’s art. some had books to sign that they had kept for years others wanted to buy some original art or copies thereof and some just wanted their photo taken with Sydney. I am never ceased to be amazed at the adoration that is bestowed on him in Italy, Paola said “Sydney is a myth… well I had never heard that before. As the day progressed the interest shown in the Jeff Hawke artwork remained high. I was heartened to meet again many of the fans that had been in Lucca the previous year some of whom had travelled a significant distance to be at the convention. On one of the breaks Sydney and I were able to go and look at the other stands and it is clear that in Italy the home grown product is holding its own against the influx of American style super heroes. We travelled out for lunch where we met among other fascinating people,a literary critic from Venice whose grasp of life and letters gave the strongest clue as to how the comic reading public in this remarkable country has formed their appreciation of the Jeff Hawke saga. Back at the conference the stand continued to attract a steady stream of fans and we were kept busy answering the many questions levelled at us. Again the day ended with a splendid dinner at which the talk and the wine flowed!
Sunday it was a beautiful sunny day and we had to give it our best shot as we were leaving that afternoon to go back to our cottage and two dogs. Sydney was taken to an interview room where he was prompted to talk about past projects and future ones as well. We were taken again out to lunch and a journalist turned up and proceeded to ask Sydney questions; they ended up on the road outside and Sydneys lunch got cold.
Back for the last stint on the stand before we were escorted to our waiting car and transported back to Bologna airport under a glorious Tuscan moon.
The friends we made and the people we met confirm yet again that in Italy Jeff Hawke has found his spiritual home.”

Jan Jordan

1 January 2018

Herewith ,part 3 of the ICE NEEDLE, the last unpublished Hawke /McLane story. The Hope crew have made  contact with  the  expedition leader in the Ice needle   but Fortuna can sense that he is being monitored by the alien presence on the Uranian moon. Her telepathic powers also allow her to learn something of the Aliens. Duncan Lunan, the writer of ICE NEEDLE takes up the story:    ”

Fortuna learns the full story of the artefact and its occupants.   The mission of the wheel was to establish the ET’s form of life in the Solar System, but if they found a life-bearing planet, their ethic was to colonise only the outer planets and leave the inner system alone.   If intelligence did in due course arise in the inner system, and develop space travel, no doubt by the vast timescales of the Universe the visitors would be then have dispersed or died out, so there would be no undue influence. However, they had one renegade among their leaders, who wanted a return to the sort of wars of conquest which they used to pursue in the past.and were now ashamed of.

He and his followers had put a lot of effort into modifying the electrostatic defence of the habitat so that it could be used as a weapon. To keep out cosmic rays, you can cut the mass of a torus habitat by a factor of four to ten, depending on the hull material, if you don’t then have to surround it with a five-metre thick layer of rock or build the habitat out of five-metre thick prestressed concrete in the first place. The system was designed as an option for the ‘Stanford Torus’ space habitat project in the mid-1970s.   For it to shield the whole structure electrostatically against cosmic rays, the charge required would be huge – 15 billion electron volts.   For a habitat as big as this, designed to move across interstellar space, the mass saving would be colossal. The system requires the hub of the habitat to be hollowed out as a ‘well’ for high-energy electrons (Fig. 9) and have an emergency discharge system to make the whole structure electrically neutral. (Richard D. Johnson & Charles Holbrow, eds, “Space Settlements, A Design Study”, NASA SP-413, US Government printing Office, 1977.)   If discharged along a beam of gas or plasma, however, it would be.a devastating weapon. (Ben’s comment at this point: “It makes the Annedoti trick look trivia1!”)

At the point when this issue came to a head, a colony had already been established on Miranda, leaving the population on the habitat relatively low – i.e. still several million!   But the warlike faction staged a coup, and turned the weapon on Miranda, to destroy the colony. Unfortunately, unknown to them, Miranda was near breakup due to tidal stresses. (This is what the astronomers
think really happened to it, perhaps several times in its history, because of interactions between the right-angled pulls of the planet and the Sun – though there aren‘t any mathematical models yet.) With this colossal bolt of energy from the habitat sinking deep into Miranda, it was enough.to trigger the break-up.   The effect was to create big broken lumps of Miranda in orbit plus an expanding ring of debris – like the situation in the Earth-Moon system after C-Day, but even worse.
The habitat tried to take shelter on the far side of Umbriel, that being as far as they could get in the time.   But because Umbriel is so small  (750 miles diameter) the trick didn’t  work: chunks of debris came round the curve of Umbriel and broke the rim and the spokes, and
the rim fell. In the process, although its spin rate was very low, it suffered terrible damage because of the momentum it had due to its mass: another big factor was that as it crashed on to the surface, Umbriel’s gravity was at right-angles to the spin-generated artificial gravity, so everything loose plunged to what is now the bottom of the rim.

Factions of survivors ( from Miranda) tried to attack and reclaim the hub, but it was still upright and intact, and even at low power the electrostatic weapon was devastating against individuals in spacesuits. At the end of the conflict the leader of the renegades had himself placed in suspended animation until his surviving followers got organised: but they didn’t, they died out, and he’s been in cold sleep for a million years or more – not completely suspended, but growing in the low gravity so that he now fills a substantial part of the hub. Not to be a repeat of Cthulhu, he’s roughly humanoid in shape, but with one central eye, and two tentacles instead of arms. I see him as grey, but at any rate he shouldn’t be green, not to repeat Cthulhu.”          Part 4 to follow shortly  .  Skipper Prossitt