Here is an outline of the second Jeff Hawke story from the pages of Junior Express weekly , entitled THE

PLANET OF FIRE. After establishing a peace between the robots and the humans on Rea, Jeff and co are once more whisked away in the Shining ones’ saucer for another mission to bring justice and peace to a far flung part of the galaxy. They are told by the Shining ones   that they are to act as their agents and are placed in suspended animation until their new destination is reached. When they are at last awoken by the Shining Ones’ robots they see through the viewing panels, a planet riven by earthquakes and violent volcanic activity. They are told however that it is not intended that they should land there but rather on one of the fire planet’s moons. They are given spacesuits and oxygen by the robots and instructed to explore the caves on the cold, airless moon, where they will encounter the people that they have to help. Jeff, Bill and Dick are set down on the moon whereupon the saucer disappears.

Exploring the cave systems they discover a large vaulted gallery in which rests a gleaming spacecraft. Shortly after this

they are captured by a group of hostile humanoids wearing strange spacesuits. They are taken to the groups’ headquarters which are sealed of from the rest of the cave system and with breathable air inside. Jeff is taken to their leader Zirk who, as I mentioned in a previous post, looks almost identical to the New Martians in Sydney’s MARTIAN INVASION. Zirk soon comes to realise that Jeff and his friends have been sent by the Shining ones to help them. He explains to Jeff that his people come from the planet of Fire, which has become increasingly unstable for the past 200 years, with increasing earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. He plans to build a fleet of spaceship to evacuate his people from the fiery planet to a safer world and he and a group of his engineers have made an expedition to this particular moon in order to mine a special metal , needed for the construction of the spaceship engines. The mining complete, Zirk and his team, together with Jeff and co, head back to the planet of Fire   to complete the evacuation fleet. Jeff supervises the completion of the ships though not nearly enough will be ready before the planet becomes uninhabitable. So Jeff devises a plan whereby the few completed ships will ferry Zirk’s people in relays

up to a series of giant space rafts that have been placed in orbit. Jeff and the crew that he has trained take off repeatedly in the teeth of seismic quakes and volcanoes until the whole population has been lifted off the planet’s surface and ferried to one of the stable moons. Just as the last batch are set down in their new home, the planet of fire destroys itself in a cataclysmic explosion. Zirk explains that from this

moon his people can set out to find a new home planet.

Skipper Prossit