When Parallel Worlds Collide!

"B ut Tom, it was Roger who bent the steering vanes so that we crashed into the Atom City monorail tracks and caused the Express to be six days late! Why are you taking the blame?!?"

"Astro, it was my responsibility to keep an eye on Roger. Captain Strong specifically asked me to do it after he was laid up indefinitely in the Space Academy infirmary because of Roger's little prank with the lubricated condom cut open and nailed on the doorsill of our bunkroom. But I was distracted by that weird guy we found out in space, that Cadet Happy. Keeping him out of trouble is an even taller task than keeping Roger on course at full space speed, with reactant feeding at the D-9 rate!"

"Cadet Happy! By the asteroids of space, Tom, where do you think that joker actually comes from?"

"I don't know, Astro. He claims to come from an artifical planet called Terra, but there's no such place! I even had Alfie Higgins use the Academy's Electronic Brain to search all known records, even the distorted ones from the Interplanetary Atomic Wars era."

"Maybe he's a spy from another solar system, Tom! By the craters of Luna, I don't trust that ski-nosed runt half an Angstrom unit."

[Tom faces the camera.] "Or maybe, just maybe, Astro, he's from a parallel universe! A universe where the Solar Guard never came into existence. Where an artifical planet was constructed on the opposite side of the earth's orbit. Where the rocket ships look like Flash Gordon's instead of like good old German V2s."

"Tom, you're blowing space gas! I think he's just some kind of con-man. And that laugh!"

"Get used to it, Astro. Since I've been sentenced to the Rehabilitation Asteroid for 50 years because of that monorail crash, you'll have to take care of him for me... and look after Roger too!"

"Take care of him! Look after Roger! By the green bog dragons of Venus, Tom, I'm going to wish Happy off on Roger and Eric Rattison, and I'm going to form a new unit with Alfie and that gorgeous new cadet, Jet Ordway!"

[Meanwhile in the office of Commander Arkwright, we find the stern but just commanding officer of the Space Academy pulling a long ribbon out of a black-painted cigar box mounted on a pedestal, while a "ticker-tape" sound effect is played. As usual, he is looking worried.]

"Dr. Dale reporting as ordered, sir!"

"Oh, Joan, I'm glad you got here so fast. With Captain Strong laid up, you seem to be the only other faculty member at Space Academy. What happened to the thousands of Solar Guards on duty all over the solar system, I can't explain, but we're getting weird reports from the outer planets, and so you'll have to investigate personally!"

"But sir, I'll miss my lecture this afternoon if I blast off immediately in my rocket scout."

"Let The Brain...uh, I mean, Cadet Higgins, take over for you, Joan. He knows more about cosmic solar-atomic astrophysics than you do, anyhow. This is serious. We have reports from Pluto, Neptune and Uranus of a gigantic space ship, much larger than our Solar Guard cruisers, yet with a crew of only two men. The men are wearing what look like mid-20th Century Army surplus uniforms, and football helmets from the same era, adorned with antique telephone operator headsets! Their insignia have lightning bolts, like ours, but without the superimposed rocket. Their behavior is quite inexplicable! They've landed at several spaceports, investigated briefly, and performed citizens' arrests of a variety of criminals and evildoers. They've even blasted down some known perpetrators we ourselves didn't have enough evidence to arrest."

"My goodness, Commander, are these men space pirates?"

"We don't know. They haven't committed any robberies themselves yet, but when approached by officials they will only give what are obviously fictitious names. One calls himself Captain Video, and the other says his name is The Video Ranger. They were last reported headed for Saturn's moon Titan. Get out there, Joan, and find out what these suspicious characters are really after!"

[Meanwhile, out on the vast concrete plain of the Space Academy spaceport, Roger Manning is crouching behind a reaction-mass tank.]

"Blast it, I hope I gave those space heroes the slip!"

"Is that you, Manning?"

"Uhhh, hello, T. J., I didn't see you over there. Heh, heh."

"You wouldn't be trying to avoid me, now, would you, Manning? You wouldn't be jealous of my high marks in radar and solar communications, or of the fact that I'm next in line to be assigned to the Polaris unit when your sorry carcass is booted out of the Academy for some shenannigan or the other?"

"Whatever gave you that idea, space-shrimp? The day I have any worries because of a sawed-off squirt like yourself... uh, who is that with you?"

"Meet Cadet Happy. He's a guy Astro and Tom picked up drifting in space, in a space suit like no one has ever seen before. His bubble helmet was one solid piece, not held together with office binder clips like Solar Guard helmets."

"Another space hero, no doubt. This is certainly the place for him. Why, he can even have my bunk and lap water out of my bowl!"

"Smoking Rockets, you guys are sure nice to me! Say, dress styles really changed while I was lost in space. When I left Terra the girls wore skirts that stopped just short of a moon, errr harr, harr, harrrr (snort!), but now all the girls I've seen have skirts below the knee!"

"Blast me for a Martian mouse, is that you, Manning, you space bum? You've got a lot of nerve showing your arrogant mug around here."

"Hello, Astro... I thought you and the other space migrants were all heading back to Venus to pick swamp cotton for the Spring Harvest. All we need is to have that ace of the spacelanes Corbett here, and we'll have a corner on every righteous character at the Academy."

"Thanks to you, Manning, Tom is in a prison hulk headed for the Detention and Rehabilitation Asteroid."

"A crook, huh. Why don't they rehabilitate him right here at Headquarters with the good old Brain-O-Graph?"

"The what? Say, fellah, by the rings of Saturn, who are you, really?"

"I'm a cadet, like you guys. What I think is, I went back in time somehow. T.J. just told me this is 2353, but last time I looked at the calendar, back at Space Patrol Headquarters, it was the year 2953! I'm sure Commander Corry will be here looking for me in the Terra V pretty soon now. This must have been one of Baccarratti's plots to maroon me in time once again. Without the XR-C rocket and its multidimensional time-drive, I'm sure stuck here for the time being, get it, err harr, harrr, harrr! (Snort!)"

"Do you guys understand a word this joker said?"

"He's got either space fever or Zero-A fever, if you ask me, Roger."

"You oughta know, Astro, you've had both."

[Roger and Astro make some fistic passes at one another, before being pulled apart by T.J. and Happy.]

"Cool your jets, or you guys will have more demerits than Ed Masters, legendary Academy renegade! Say, Hap, I understand you're a kind of Command Cadet. I'm a radar deck man, and if we could find a good engine deck man we could form a new unit, and if I do say so myself, with my inherent excellence we'd be the best unit in the Academy. They call me, ahem, 'The Mighty Mite.'"

"Leaping space lizards, nice of you to ask, T. J., but I already kind of halfway committed myself to joining up with those two new recruits that showed up yesterday. You know, the one that sorta looks like Tom Corbett and the one that sorta looks like Manning over there."

[Manning, T. J., and Astro all moan loudly.]

"Awww, come on, you guys, those fellas are gonna make fine Interstellar Officer Candidates. What were their names? Oh, yeah, Lawrence Fechtenberger and Muggs Mellish."