Dan Dare: The First Story

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This story ran in the original Eagle comic from Volume 1, Number 1 (Dated 14 April, 1950) to Volume 2, Number 25 (Dated 28 September, 1951). It was drawn by Frank Hampson.

[edit] Synopsis

Earth is suffering from a global food crisis, with people dependent on artificial vitamin blocks. Scientists believe that there is fertile soil on Venus, and the Earth's Spacefleet is attempting to send a mission to that planet to investigate. A complication has arisen: the ships have all exploded in space during their final descent.

Dan suggests an answer: the last words from the last ship, Kingfisher, suggested that the explosion had started in the fuel tanks. The fuel used is impulse: a wave energy that can be beamed from Earth, Mars or the Moon. There must be a force field around Venus that is hostile to the impulse waves, so he suggests using rockets to reach Venus.

Sir Hubert agrees to try this, gives permission for Dan to go, and, with his experience of rockets, opts to join the expedition himself. Digby will accompany Dan, and Hank and Pierre are called up as well. Professor Peabody is also sent to test the Venusian soil.

Three ships are carried to the rayfield by the mothership, Ranger, with Dan and Digby the first to try to go through the field. Too late, they discover that their impulse-powered radio is also vulnerable to the waves, and only just reach Venusian atmosphere before the ship disintegrates.

Dan and Digby discover that Venus is teeming with life, and set off to the rendezvous point they agreed with the others. En route, they are captured by some Venusians -- humanoid, but with blue skin and lumps on their foreheads, who take them to another Venusian, a very tall green biped called a Treen, whom they treat as a master. The Treen speaks English, as all Treens speak all Earth's languages. He shows Dan and Dig their companions' ships on a televiewer.

Pierre has realised the mistake over the radio and jettisoned his, but he and Hank are heading straight for the flamebelt -- a ring of burning gasses that divide Venus at the equator. Their ship vanishes.

The Treen takes Dan and Dig by a fast 'Electrosender' (a type of transporter) to Mekonta, the capital of North Venus, which is built in a lake on several floating islands. They are told that they have been taken there for research, and the Treens refuse to discuss the Earth's food crisis or allow them to talk their ruler, the Mekon. As the Treens prepare to run experiments on the Earthmen, news arrives that the third rocket has landed on the lava plains on the north edge of the flamelands.

Sir Hubert and Professor Peabody land in boiling quicksand, trapped in their sinking ship. The ship also comes under threat from the Silicon Mass, a lifeform that exists on the lava plains and can consume mountains. The Treens decide to let Dan and Dig go to rescue them, so as to obtain two specimens for dissection, and to test the impact of fluorine sprays on the Mass. They are to be piloted by a Treen called Sondar.

The fluorine works, and causes the Mass to recede long enough for Sir Hubert and Peabody to be rescued by rope ladder, but the ladder is then caught by the Mass. They need their helicopter to dive to give them slack to jettison the ladder, but Sondar panics and climbs instead. Dan punches him out of his seat, and they escape. When Sondar comes around, he loses a fist fight and control of the helicopter, which heads south.

The Mekontan Treens use artificial tornados to block the way. Sondar explains that they are wanted back for experiment -- himself included, as his panic was a fault in a supposedly emotionless Treen. The humans try to take on the tornados, and crash. In the jungle below, Sondar is terrified again when he is attacked by a giant snake, and is saved by the others. This act puts doubts in his mind about the Treen way of life.

Meanwhile, the Treens send troops to capture the humans, and meet them at the top of a huge waterfall. Sondar sides with the humans in the ensuing fight. Sir Hubert accidentally hits Dan with paralyzer gas, and Dan falls over the waterfall. The others are overcome and recaptured.

In Mekonta, the prisoners adopt a tactic of saying the opposite of what they think, to confuse the Treens. They are sent to the Mekon, who explains his plans: a new weapon called a telezero beam, which can destroy a city in seconds. With this he intends to conquer Earth. He intends to use the captives to test the extremes of human resistance.

Meanwhile, Dan, submerged without breathing apparatus but protected by a metabolic stasis caused by the para-gas, has been carried away by an underground river. He emerges south of the flamebelt, and finds a city -- utterly deserted. He follows a self-propelled road and finally meets intelligent life: a boy with brown skin and blond hair, who speaks a little English. The boy takes him to meet those who taught him: Hank and Pierre.

The brown-skinned southern Venusians are called Therons, and they have been helping Hank and Pierre repair their ship, so that they can contact the Ranger. Dan seeks Theron help to rescue his friends from Mekonta, and to supply food for the Earth. A Theron called Volstar agrees to take Dan to the Theron President. En route, he explains the history behind the Treens:

Venus was always divided by the flamebelt, so the two hemispheres developed independently. Long ago, the Therons had a technology more advanced than Earth has now, but in the north, the reptilian Treens had developed a barbaric and brutal culture full of savage internecine tribal wars.

About 100,000 years ago, the Therons used aircraft with refrigerated cabins to explore the north, but were attacked by the Treens. The Therons eventually triumphed, and taught the Treens all they knew, but the Treens enslaved themselves to their new technology.

The Therons had also been interested in Earth, and later sent an expedition there, landing in what was then a landlocked valley, seeking to help the friendly natives. But the Treens followed, looking for slaves and scientific specimens. The humans, called Atlantines, rebelled, and eventually, the Treens fled. The Atlantines turned against the Therons, who also fled. The Atlantines captured a Theron ship and smashed it up, not knowing about the atomic motors the Therons were using. The resulting explosion split the mountains that kept the sea out of the valley, which was drowned, and the Mediterranean Sea was created. This caused the Atlantis legend. The blue-skinned men are Atlantines, descendants of the humans kidnapped by the Treens. The Treens still wish to conquer the Earth.

Dan persuades the Theron President, Kalon, to help him rescue his friends, warn the Earth about the Treen threat, and provide food for the Earth. He has himself turned blue to resemble an Atlantine, as disguise for North Venus. Kalon provides him with three items: A submarine to travel along the river, of which the Therons were previously unaware, and the Treens still are; a wig, which provides Dan with a forehead lump and a translator device to enable him to understand and speak Atlantine; and with a device to deactivate the Treens' magnetic motors. With these, he sets off back to the North.

Meanwhile, Hank and Pierre try to contact the Ranger in their repaired rocket, only to discover that the mothership has already left. They are attacked by Treen interceptors, and use a Teron homing device to return to the south. The device also activates a rayshield, which destroys some of the Treen ships. The Mekon responds by declaring war on the Therons, and calls for the mobilisation of all Atlantines.

Dan arrives in an Atlantine village in the North, where the inhabitants are arguing whether or not to resist conscription. Dan's ignorance of Atlantine customs lead to him nearly being lynched as a spy. Crucially, though, he loses his wig, and the Atlantines immediately start treating him as a god-like figure called Kargaz. The village elder explains that Kargaz lived long ago, before the forehead lump evolved. He successfully defied the Treens, and died a free man. Most Atlantines think he was the only Atlantine ever to lack a lump, and that, in Dan, he has returned to free them. He persuades the Atlantines not to resist -- yet -- and joins the Treen army.

Back in Mekonta, Digby, Sir Hubert, and Peabody have been put through a series of tests, and are then placed in a gas chamber. The Mekon has second thoughts, though. His plan involves building a telezero station on the moon, and the results of the tests show that modern humans would make this very difficult -- and with the Theron war as well, virtually impossible. He therefore decides to try to trick the Earth into letting -- indeed, helping -- the Treens build the station. He will agree to feed the Earth, but claim that Venus has a different atmosphere from the Earth, so a transfer station on the moon will be needed. He offers the captives a chance to live a few more years in a mine if they will pose for some photographs and make some recordings to assist with his confidence trick. They reluctantly agree.

Dan, meanwhile, has arrived in the Atlantine barracks, and is immediately recognised by the Dapon -- a sort of Atlantine sergeant-major -- as a man who knows how to put on a uniform. On seeing Dan's forehead, he promises to help Kargaz with all his strength. He hand-picks some Treen-hating soldiers to join him and Dan in guarding the humans. They arrive as Sir Hubert tries to persuade the Mekon to spare Peabody from the mine. The Mekon orders Dan to kill him, so Dan shoots, and destroys the Mekon's flying chair. With the unconscious Mekon as hostage, Dan's group are unmolested by the Treens, but find themselves trapped in the Mekon's palace. The only way out is by the flying chairs that only the Treens can operate.

Fortunately, Sondar's cell is nearby, and he agrees to pilot the chairs to the Treen Spaceport. There, the Mekon comes around, and escapes, but Dan's party seize a spaceship, and also escape. The ship is a telezero reflector, one of a set of three that can reflect the beam around the curve of the planet, which means that the telezero is a useless weapon against it. The Mekon wants it destroyed, and so, for defensive reasons, do the Therons.

The reflector ship is attacked by Treen fighters, but fights back. The Theron fleet notices this, and informs Kalon. Pierre realises that Dan must be on board. The Therons are now ordered to protect the ship, and Kalon sends a second bigger fleet to help. The Treens manage to badly damage the reflector, severely wounding the Dapon. The escapees are evacuated into the Theron command cruiser, while the Therons salvage pieces of armour from the wreck. With the Telezero nearly ready, the Mekon decides to turn it on the Theron fleet, but, before he can, the Dapon returns to the reflector and crashes its remains into the telezero transmitters, destroying them. The fleet is safe, and all survivors reach the safety of the South.

Next morning, Kalon arrives to explain a new situation in the Treen war. With the pieces of reflectorship they salvaged, and Sondar's help, the Therons would have a defence against all Treen weapons before the Treens could rebuild their transmitters. Now a strange situation is developing. The Therons assisted the escape from Mekonta by using counter-rays to jam the Treens' radar and television. Now the Treens have jammed theirs. The same is happening across the entire field of electronics -- in a few hours nothing on either side will work. Even old-fashioned firearms will be useless. The only place motors will still work are in the powerhouses both sides possess, hidden behind many layers of protective alloys. Eventually, a new weapon will break the deadlock, but it might be a Treen weapon. In the hours remaining, the humans will have to go back to enlist Earth in the war, and warn it about the Treen fleet already well on its way to Earth.

The Treens on Earth put the Mekon's plan into effect, and it appears to work perfectly, with Earth readily agreeing to help build the Lunar station. However, when Digby's Aunt Anastasia is played a recording he made, she immediately notices something wrong with it. He says he is in a hotel-like hospital, which reminds him of a holiday they once spent in Sunnymouth -- May Day Sunnymouth 1978. Anastasia knows that he went there in August, without her, and was arrested for a crime he had not committed, because he looked similar to a known wanted criminal. "May Day Sunnymouth 1978" must mean "SOS wrongfully imprisoned". Acting Controller O'Reilly launches a surprise raid on the Treen ships as they prepare to go to the moon, and so the Treens' plan to attack Earth is defeated.

Dan and his friends, including Sondar, Volstar and several Atlantines, reach Earth soon after. At an emergency meeting of the UN government Dan and Sir Hubert explain the crisis on Venus. The Prime Minister says that Earth will assist the Therons all it can, out of a moral debt and the need for the food supplies that Peabody has reported are abundant. Dan suggests a plan. The Treens are quite helpless without their machines, whereas humans have an irrational habit of enjoying things for their own sake. Earth therefore has plenty of able-bodied people who can supply what the war needs: cavalry and archers. People from around the world join up to fight.

So it is that Earth forces invade North Venus by glider and parachute. The Mekon hastily gathers a Treen army, armed with whatever they can find. Earth's infantry lead the Treens into open country where the Treens are met with a huge volley of arrows and a thunderous cavalry charge. This is the Battle of Patrock Hill. The Treens, in mass panic, break up and flee back to Mekonta, to find the Atlantines in armed revolt.

Against all this, Dan, Digby, Hank, Pierre and Sondar use canoes to reach the entrance to the Treens' ray powerhouse. Tricking their way past the guards, they enter the main chamber, where firearms will work, and destroy the equipment with grenades. This opens the way for a full Theron invasion with modern weapons.

In Mekonta there is a massive rebellion of the Atlantines, who would have killed every Treen in Mekonta, until the Earthmen call for quiet.

The Mekon is missing, and the Treens surrender. They are ordered to free the Atlantines, vacate their laboratories, and accept Sondar as governor. They accept, and offer Earth all the food they can produce.

[edit] Notes

• This story is untitled, but is often referred to by fans as The First Venus Story. It is also sometimes called Pilot of the Future because the subtitle "Pilot of the Future" was not used in the next story.

Preceded by: First Story

List of Dan Dare stories

Followed by: The Red Moon Mystery