The Voltarian Soltan Gris has a confession to make. The mission has begun. Some call it satire. Gris calls it the real story of a very Black Genesis.
They’re here. And they’re all eyes. The Voltarian scouting party—illegal aliens extraordinaire—on a top-secret expedition led by Jettero Heller, Royal Officer of the Fleet.
His mission: rescue the planet from pollution—and make it safe for the upcoming invasion.
His problem: Soltan Gris is out to sabotage him at every turn. One way or another, Heller is about to undertake a journey of discovery and it’s a real trip.
Between the Mafia wars and the brothel whores, between the ruthless IRS agents and the crazy cab drivers, between the muggings and the weapons of mass destruction, he’s on one heck of a roller-coaster ride. And before it’s over, all Heller will break loose in the name of Black Genesis.
“Ironic, exciting, romantic and hilarious.” —Orson Scott Card
“He breaks all the rules.… The old master has created a new genre and a veritable blockbuster … and moves the art of science fiction into a new realm of entertainment as well as education.” —The Herald
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
L. Ron Hubbard not only broke all the rules but blazed a new literary path when, in August 1981, after less than eight months of writing, he completed the monumental 1.2 million-word bestselling saga Mission Earth. Working with exceptional speed, discipline, and skill, he produced a remarkable interweaving of deftly plotted action, adventure, intrigue, and espionage, all seasoned with scathing social satire.
PART TWELVE
To My Lord Turn, Justiciary of the Royal Courts and Prison, Government City, Planet Voltar, Voltar Confederacy.
Your Lordship, Sir!
I, Soltan Gris, late Secondary Executive of the Coordinated Information Apparatus, Exterior Division of the Voltar Confederacy (Long Live His Majesty Cling the Lofty and All One Hundred and Ten Planets of the Voltar Dominions), in all humbleness and gratitude am herein forwarding the second volume of my accounting of MISSION EARTH.
I am still relying on my notes, logs and strips to record everything as you requested. In this way, I hope to prove to you that my incarceration in your fine prison is well founded.
At the same time, I’m sure Your Lordship will see that nothing was my fault, especially the violence described earlier. Jettero Heller is to blame for everything that happened. Until his appearance, I was merely another Secondary Executive in the Apparatus. That I happened to be the head of Section 451 meant little. Section 451 had only one yellow dwarf star that had only one populated planet (Blito-P3) that its inhabitants called Earth.
Like many other planets, Earth was on the Invasion Timetable. It wasn’t to be conquered for another century, so there was no urgency about the scouting mission sent there. (Scouts are still used because other methods, such as reconnaissance satellites disguised as comets, work fine as general fly-by probes of systems but they can’t get air, soil or water samples of particular planets.)
That was how Jettero Heller entered my life. Heller led this particular scouting party to Earth. They slipped in, got their information and left unnoticed. And even if seen, there was no real problem. Earth governments very conveniently disclaim the existence of “extraterrestrials,” explaining away every sighting and keeping everything a secret. (Anyone who poses a threat is diagnosed by a psychiatrist, which is a profession funded by Earth governments to keep the riffraff in line.)
When Heller returned to Voltar, he filed his report and that was when all Hells broke loose.
My task as the head of Section 451 was to make sure that all such reports were altered, so that no attention was drawn to Blito-P3. The reason was the secret Apparatus base in a country called Turkey. But Heller’s report got by me and ended up before the Grand Council.
What he found was quite alarming: Earth was polluting itself at a rate that would destroy the planet well before the still-distant invasion. That meant the Grand Council would have to order a preemptive strike, a very unpopular idea given the costs and resources. But it was even more unpopular with my boss, Lombar Hisst. He wasn’t happy being the head of the Apparatus. He wanted to take over Voltar and the base in Turkey was the key that he would lose if he didn’t act fast.
That was how Lombar created the idea of MISSION EARTH. He convinced the Council that rather than ordering a full-scale invasion, a single agent could secretly infiltrate the planet to introduce some technology that would arrest the pollution. It was a simple and cheap idea, the Grand Council loved it and I thought the matter was done. Then Hisst gave me the first bad news. He planned to send Heller who, as an officer of the Royal Fleet, epitomized everything we despise in the Apparatus: honesty, cleanliness, discipline. The second piece of bad news was that I was to go along and sabotage Heller’s mission.
We briefed Heller at Spiteos, that dark mountain prison that the Apparatus has secretly maintained in the Great Desert for over a thousand years. That was also where Heller met, much to my regret, the Countess Krak.
I couldn’t understand why he was interested in her. Yes, she’s tall and beautiful and from his home planet, Manco. But she was also a convicted murderess.
They drove me crazy. I was trying to get Heller ready for the mission and he was acting like some lovesick calf, showering her with gifts, cooing to her over canisters of sparklewater and plates of sweetbuns. They would sit for hours relating that stupid Folk Legend 894M about how a Prince Caucalsia fled Manco and set up some colony on an Earth island called Atlantis. That’s all they could talk about. I couldn’t take it.
Then when Heller finally got around to picking the ship for the flight to Earth, he wasn’t satisfied with one that could make the 22½-light-year voyage in a safe, reliable six weeks. Oh, no! He found Tug One. Powered by the dangerous Will-be Was time-drives, it would cut the trip to a little over three days. That, he said, gave him time to prepare for the mission.
But that gave me time to make my own preparations. When we got to Earth, I would have to keep track of him because I would be operating from the base in Turkey while he would be in the United States. The solution was micro-bugs that could be surgically implanted next to the audio and optic nerves. With a transmitter-receiver, I could tap Heller’s sight and hearing. With the 831 Relayer, I could monitor Heller from 10,000 miles away.
My real genius was how I stole them and implanted them into Heller without his knowledge. They worked beautifully. I could see and hear everything Heller was doing and he didn’t have the faintest idea that it was happening. But that just goes to show what an amateur Heller is and what a professional I am!
For further assistance, Lombar Hisst gave me Raht and Terb, two Apparatus agents operating on Earth, to help implement a plan that guaranteed Heller’s quick failure. Lombar’s scheme was to give Heller the identity of the son of the most powerful man on the planet—Delbert John Rockecenter. Since there was no such offspring and since everyone knew and feared Rockecenter, as soon as Heller used the name, he would be finished!
Finally, Tug One was loaded and ready. I naturally expected a quiet lift-off, one befitting a secret mission operating on Grand Council orders.
Then I happened to look out of the ship.
People were pouring into the hangar area! Construction crews were assembling sprawling stages and soaring platforms. Lorries were pouring in with food and drink. Vans were unloading dancing girls and bands!
Heller was throwing a going-away party!
That’s when I found the IG Barben bottle and took the Earth-drug called “speed.”
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Suddenly, everything was beautiful.
I didn’t care about the thousands of people, the five music bands or the dancing bears. I even enjoyed the fireworks display twenty miles up and the 250 spacefighters that filled the skies. I was even pleased that a Homeview video crew was beaming the festive send-off of our secret mission to billions of people around the Confederacy.
I watched in dreamlike color as a fist fight blossomed into a full-scale riot. Cakes, pastries and canisters flew. Gongs, sirens and blast signals from scores of ships, airbuses and lorries blended with screams, shouts, profanities and snarls (from the dancing bears) while two fifty-man choruses gave a stirring rendition of “Spaceward, Ho.”
I didn’t even care about the assassin that Lombar said was following me to ensure that I didn’t mess up. Besides, I wasn’t messing up. This was a party!
Heller announced it was time to leave and retired to the local pilot seat. I dutifully struggled to shut the air lock but my hands weren’t working. Heller didn’t wait. He lifted us from the pad while I dangled out of the open door until someone pulled me in and slammed it shut.
Suddenly, my euphoria was gone. I realized what had happened.
This was the most UNsecret secret mission anyone had ever heard of!
I had to find Heller and handle this!
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