Operation Saturn (Dan Dare)
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Operation Saturn was a Dan Dare story that ran in the original Eagle comic from Volume 3, Issue 47 (Dated 27 February 1953) to Volume 5, Issue 21 (Dated 21 May 1954). It was drawn by Frank Hampson.
[edit] Synopsis
Mysterious objects called "Black Cats" have been appearing from space and attacking Earth installations. They self-destruct on close examination, but Spacefleet now knows where they are coming from, as a scientist called Blasco has used a new radar device to track them to Saturn. He is now in charge of a scientific mission to find why the Cats are being sent, and Dan, Hank and Pierre have been selected as its pilots. Digby is also in the crew, and Peabody has been assigned to Blasco's team.
Saturn is beyond the reach of Spacefleet's standard fuels, but Blasco has discovered "locking waves" that can hold steady the volatile monatomic hydrogen. The waves are unbalanced by take-off, but Blasco has created a tuning device to counter this. Dan's first job is to use test-ships to practice how to use the tuner. He has just completed this task when Blasco arrives on the project's island. Cat activity has increased, and Blasco's ship, the Valiant, is to take off as soon as it is loaded. When a spaceman, loading Blasco's possessions onto the ship, notices something in a broken chess piece, the scientist kills him.
A Black Cat attacks the stores of monatomic hydrogen, and Dan and Digby use a helicopter to lead it away. This works, but the Cat causes the helicopter to crash, and, in a hospital, Dan and Digby miss the Valiant's take-off. They give chase in a spare test-ship, which Pierre has them fly the into a giant airlock.
Peabody tries to pass on a warning about Blasco, but is seized by his henchmen before she can do so. The Valiant is then surrounded by a squadron of Black Cats, which do not attack. One, however, enters the ship through Blasco's waste airlock, and Blasco addresses it in a strange language. He then has his henchmen construct a special radio from his chess set, and only then does his "ally" give the order to attack. As the Black Cats attack the ship, Blasco leads his men in a raid on the bridge. Armed with a para-gas that can cut through space helmets, they soon overcome the crew.
The Cats herd the crew into the hold as prisoners. There, Blasco explains to them the truth: he picked up Saturnian radio signals years ago, and has been in regular contact with the rulers of Saturn ever since. Saturn is not itself populated: rather it is the system of moons that are inhabited. The moons are ruled from the largest, Titan, by an aristocracy called the Rootha. They are also ruled for the Rootha: all the lower classes are their slaves. Blasco, who is of an old and noble family, has decided that Earth should be ruled in the same way, with himself as Emperor. The Rootha are helping him achieve this, and he has kept the crew alive as a goodwill gesture to them: they will make an unusual spectacle in the Saturnian bloodsports.
Dan realises that the crew have one slender hope: Blasco has chosen to put the crew in the hold that has the test-ship stored in it. Seizing undamaged space suits from their guards, Dan and Digby escape in the little ship: they have just enough fuel left to reach the outermost moon, Phoebe.
At first, Phoebe appears to be a globe of water, but Digby soon discovers that it is in fact an extremely dense, but breathable, atmosphere, in which humans can swim. Sinking the ship down to the real surface, Dan and Digby find that Phoebe is a primitive place, populated ay blue-skinned hunters. It is also a place where the Rootha's army capture the locals for their bloodsports, and Dan and Digby bear witness to such a raid. They are amazed when one tiny Saturnian recognises them, and calls for help, in English.
Dan and Digby rescue the Saturnian, who is called Nikki, and run, pursued by the Rootha's ships. Nikki was once a radio and Black Cat -- or, more correctly, "Kroopak" -- operator, who learned English from Blasco, but he hated the Rootha and fled to Phoebe. There, a group of outlaws have organised a rebel force, led by a red Saturnian called Tharl. Nikki tells Dan that a radio set capable of warning the Earth is kept on Titan.
After escaping from the pursuing ships, Nikki leads Dan and Digby into Tharl's secret city. There, they are arrested and accused of being Blasco's spies -- they are wearing space suits with his badge on them. Dan persuades Tharl of his innocence, but Tharl refuses to let him go to Titan until his fleet is ready for its attack on the capital, in three weeks' time. This is too long to wait, and Dan and Digby try to take a ship from him. Inside, they are amazed to meet Sondar, the only survivor of a Venusian expedition -- the Rootha want to invade all of the inner planets. Dan's captured ship is soon overcome when Tharl uses a telesender to beam himself aboard.
On Tharl's ship, Dan challenges Tharl to a sword duel, which he wins, and demands a ship to Titan. Tharl agrees, but says a ship would be suicide. He never thought Dan was a spy, but has a secret way to Titan that the Rootha would do anything to discover. Now that Dan has passed his test, he can use Tharl's secret way -- a long-range telesender. He, Digby and Sondar are given mind-patches of the Saturnian language, Thork (which is also the name of the Saturnian people) and are then disguised as Thorks. In return for his help, Tharl asks them to perform a mission for him.
Word then arrives the the Rootha are attacking Tharl's city. He must return immediately, and sends Nikki with Dan, Digby and Sondar. On Titan, they are to contact Tharl's agent, Pelario, and tell him that "The sword is out".
The four are beamed into a slave shanty a few miles from Titan City. They soon find their way to a moving roadway, on which is a cage taking prisoners to execution. It contains the crew of the Valiant. Dan realises that his first task must be to rescue them. The "execution" will take the form of one of the Rootha's bloodsports -- prisoners, armed only with spears, are sent into the arena to fight giant beasts, a fight in which they have no chance whatsoever. Blasco tells Peabody that she, Hank and Pierre will be first on.
Dan and his group trick their way into the arena. From the stands, they see a giant "torch-lizard" being brought into the arena to attack their friends. Dan's group capture some flying "fish-horses" from the arena guards, and attack the lizard with para-gas. This only gives them a few seconds to rescue the three prisoners, but, when it revives, the lizard goes on the rampage, setting the arena on fire, and attacking the Rootha's guards. This enables Dan and company to get away, and ensures that the rest of the Valiant's crew will be safe for the time being.
The group are attacked by Kroopaks, and Nikki and Digby are thrown by their fish-horse. They land on the back of the torch-lizard, which has escaped from the arena. The others are soon captured by soldiers led by Blasco and one of the Rootha, but are spared: Vora, "the sacred one", who is more powerful than the Rootha, wants them alive. They are taken to Vora's floating palace, above Titan City. Vora turns out to be a squat, hairy creature. He is the last of the sacred ones, who came from outside the solar system, and rules Saturnia through the quisling Rootha, just as, he reveals, he intends to rule the inner planets through Blasco. This is the first Blasco knows about the fact that he will be no more than a puppet, but he remains firmly on Vora's side.
Meanwhile, Digby and Nikki have been safe on the back of the torch-lizard, but unable to get off due to a group of watching Kroopaks. They are finally able to escape when the wreck of a space ship plunges to the ground, destroying the lizard and Kroopaks when it lands. Digby and Nikki are now safe to find Pelario.
In his palace, Vora is furious: the ship was the flagship of the squadron he sent against Tharl's city. The Rootha had badly underestimated the size of Tharl's fleet, and all the other ships are lost. Blasco suggests that Vora can get better intelligence about Tharl from Dan, and they decide to torture him. He refuses to give in, and Vora decides to torture Peabody instead -- she has no information, and can die under torture.
Digby and Nikki reach Pelario's base and give him Tharl's message. At night, they join Pelario's men in starting the revolt in the heart of Titan city. This rocks Vora's palace above, enabling the prisoners to overcome their captors -- except Vora, who activates a force-field in his suit. He is about to shoot his prisoners, when Digby and Nikki arrive in the palace in a captured courier ship, knocking him overboard. The Rootha and Blasco are recaptured and locked up. Dan and his friends then fly down to join the rebels.
The rebels now hold much of the city, but not the radio station, or Kroopak control -- and now the Kroopaks have been sent against them. They are virtually indestructible, and the rebels begin to think that their cause is lost. Destroying Kroopak control now will do no good: the machines will continue their attack, obeying their last orders. The only hope is to capture the control centre intact, and order the Kroopaks off their attack.
Dan and Digby attempt such a raid, but are sucked up into a ship, which turns out to be Tharl's flagship. Kroopak control is impregnable against ground attack, but Tharl has a new weapon: "Katabolic Bombardment", a barrage of isotopes that cause the kroopaks to self-destruct. As his fleet attacks, Vora, who survived his fall by clinging to the kroopak control tower, brings in his own fleet against Tharl. Outnumbered, Tharl leads his fleet into retreat. However, he has an exact copy of his flagship hidden in a cloud, and it is this that leads his fleet away, with Vora's fleet in pursuit. The flagship then returns to fight the Kroopaks alone.
Vora now realises that he has only one hope: he orders the Kroopak operators to turn every Kroopak in Titan City against the flagship. Alone, it is slowly overcome and starts to break up. Inspiration hits Dan, who has all Thorks abandon ship. He then takes the manual controls of the flagship and sends it on a crash landing -- straight into the Kroopak control tower. As he and Digby escape from the wreckage, the Kroopaks continue to attack it, obeying their last order. The fire in Kroopak control causes a huge explosion, which destroys half the city -- including the radio transmitters that could have told Earth about Blasco.
As the rebels celebrate victory, Pelario appears, with grave news: Vora and Blasco have escaped to Mimas. There, Vora has a fleet of Kroopaks ready to attack the inner planets, and is striking now, before Earth can acquire katabolic projectors. All the ships in the city have been destroyed, but the Valiant was parked outside the city, and had been repaired on orders of the Rootha. Recovering his crew, Dan gives chase in the Earth ship.
As the Valiant nears Vora's ship, Vora uses a device in his suit to disrupt the Valiant's locking waves. Dan manages to have the monatomic hydrogen jettisoned before it explodes, but his back-up rocket fuel is not powerful enough to overtake Vora. When the Valiant reaches Mimas, it is too late: Vora and Blasco have left with their fleet, and all Thorks on the moon have been slaughtered. Valiant has hardly any fuel left, and Vora has destroyed all there was on Mimas. It is now impossible to give chase.
A squadron of Tharl's ships arrive, to inform the Earthpeople that the last of the Rootha's fleet has surrendered. Its commander has orders to help Dan in any way, and all the power units are stripped from his ships and loaded into the Valiant, which can now give chase. When the Valiant gets close enough to Earth to establish radio contact, Dan lears that the invasion has started: Kroopaks have laid waste to much of New York.
Dan tries radioing the Kroopak control ship, threatening to destroy it unless the Earth attack is called off. But Vora tells Dan that he is too late: orders for a general assault have already been given. Dan, Digby and Sondar then cross in space suits to Vora's ship and cut their way in. As Blasco breaks from demanding surrender to put on his space suit in the leaking ship, Sondar approaches the Kroopak control. Vora appears with Blasco, and Dan and Digby fight them in a desperate bid to give Sondar time to complete his message. In the fight, Blasco loses his helmet and suffocates. Vora, knowing he has lost, then turns his suit's rays on himself, and vanishes. Around Earth, crowds cheer as they watch the Kroopaks obey Sondar's order -- and self-destruct.
[edit] Notes
- "Groupy", and old man who appears briefly in this story, would play a major role in the next story, although his name would then be spelled "Groupie".
| Preceded by: Marooned on Mercury |
List of Dan Dare stories | Followed by: Prisoners of Space |
