“But what kind of alien energy is it, Daniel?” enquired Millie Drake.
“That is just the problem, love,” I replied. “We do not know. Even our best instruments back at our City headquarters have not been able to identify it. The energy is definitely extraterrestrial, and quite powerful, but its origin has been somehow masked from all our sensors.”
I was driving my specially-modified canary-coloured Edwardian roadster (affectionately known as “Lizzie”) and clad in my usual finery -- including a frilled poet shirt, velvet suit, jungle boots, sunspecs, and one of my favourite opera capes.
My companion, Millie, is an exquisitely beautiful young lady -- petite and perfect with luxurious chestnut hair, lovely violet eyes, and sun kissed skin. The purple dress she wore only served to highlight the graceful curves of her slender teenage figure.
Our mobile personal computer, the catlike Kit-10, had stayed behind, since we did not know if the unknown energies we would be facing might have some negative effect on her systems.
“So what is this event called again?” Millie asked. “This one where the energy readings seem to be coming from, I mean.”
“It is called the Edgewood Heritage Festival,” I answered. “Its purpose, apparently, is to celebrate the history of this town of Edgewood. Ah, here we are.”
We had just pulled up at the outskirts of the public park were the festival was occurring on that hazy day. I parked the car and Millie Drake and I strolled over to the entrance of the event area.
“Oh my gosh, Daniel!” suddenly cried Millie. “Look!”
I glanced around to see what had so upset her. It was the people attending the festival. Many of them were men with shaved heads, dressed in fake military fatigues. They also sported swastika armbands.
“By the Eternal Spires!” I swore in disgust. “The Edgewood Heritage Festival is really -- a neo-Nazi rally!” …
My name is Doctor Daniel Rumanos. I carry within my blood the vastly superior genes of the legendary Watchers of Algol, the most intellectually advanced race in all of the known galaxies, whose technology is so sophisticated it appears to be miraculous to lesser beings.
Whilst most Algolites live in elitist seclusion from the rest of the Universe, I am an operative for an organisation known as the KOSMIKOS. Assisted by the beautiful Miss Millie Drake, I protect Earth from all manner of menace. I am -- The Daemon-Star!!! …
“Nazis, at a public festival?” wondered Millie. “Daniel, how can such a thing be allowed?”
“Sadly, such things are becoming increasingly common these days,” I said. “Anti-Semitism is on the rise here in the United Sates of America, and things are becoming quite similar in some areas to what happened in Germany back in the 1930s.”
“But surely an event like this needs to be approved by local politicians, doesn’t it? They wouldn’t allow something like this!”
“Probably not -- unless they had been influenced by someone with remarkable powers of mesmerism, hmmm?”
“Daniel,” Millie returned, “you don’t think it could be… ?”
“Now, Mills,” I admonished, “let us not speculate further about such things until we have gathered more evidence.”
I reached into my jacket pocket and retrieved the transonic turnscrew, an highly-advanced scientific instrument in physical form somewhat resembling a writing pen, then using it to scan the area.
“What does the transonic say, Daniel?” asked my companion.
“Hmmm,” I mused upon looking at the resultant readings before returning the device to my pocket. “There is evidence of the alien energies being utilised in the area, but their true nature is still expertly masked. I wonder if…”
Then, the sudden sound of several rough voices approaching us interrupted my investigation.
“Look at them two!” said one of them. “They look like a couple of freaks!”
“Worse than that,” said another. “I think they is Jews.”
It was five men, of the hideously working-class type that seemed to be the festival’s only patrons. They all had numerous cheap tattoos that showed fascist and racist symbols.
“Yeah, they is Yids alright,” said the first of them. “You can tell from they clothes. They think they is elites, y’know. They think they better than us!”
“What!” bellowed the other. “They is not better than us! We is the master race! We is the ones built this country!”
The five men had by now surrounded Millie and me, and then they all violently rushed upon us at once!
Millie Drake and I quickly took our standard back-to-back fighting position in order to properly face our assailants. The first two of them went down easily -- one of them to my punch that shattered his nose and the other to Millie’s kung fu high-kick to his jaw.
The other three then continued their attempted assault, with one actually getting a couple of punches in on me before I took him down with a quick kick to his midsection followed by an open-handed chop to his neck.
The remaining two had ganged up on Millie and she was just barely able to defend herself against them. Rushing to her assistance, I sent one of them unconscious with a jujitsu hold and then turned to the other -- only to see that he had already fled in fear.
“Are you all right, my dear Mills?” I enquired concernedly.
“Yes, I’m fine now,” she replied. “We… Oh my goodness! Look!”
Millie pointed at a figure that was approaching us -- the figure of a man clad in a black uniform of the type once worn by the highest ranking officers of the Third Reich. Around him played shimmering flashes of a grotesquely incandescent blood red light.
“Good afternoon, Daniel Rumanos and Miss Drake,” he spoke, his voice a familiar mockery. “My supporters and I have been expecting you.”
He was seemingly of middle years, his face still showing signs of handsome distinction despite being marred with the effect of lifetimes of extreme ungodliness. His hair was long and dark, and his countenance decorated with a thin moustache and goatee beard. Most of all, his eyes shone with an absolute hypnotic glare. Of course, I recognised him immediately. I recognised him as my oldest and most obscenely dangerous enemy, the Algolite renegade who has become the most evil criminal in all of Time and Space.
“Don Wingus!” I said his name. “I should have known. So you did escape from Williamsport -- and are still possessed with the powers of the ancient Wotanian alien known as Torr!”
“Indeed I am, Rumanos,” chuckle Wingus evilly, the light flashing weirdly around him. “Indeed I am, and I shall use the powers of Torr to rule this world!”
“When we last met,” I continued, “you had obtained these powers from a device you had stolen. It was the device known as the Hammer of Torr, actually a filament from an old Wotanian spaceship engine, containing a residue of the energies used by that ancient race to power their way across the void -- energies that were actually harnessed from the centre of a star.”
“Indeed I did,” agreed Wingus, “and I retained those powers even after the Hammer of the Gods itself was taken from me. I retained them and have now integrated and enhanced them with my own Algolitish consciousness.”
Millie spoke, “That explains why we couldn’t tell what the energies were.”
“You are correct, Miss Drake,” affirmed the villain. “I have taken the energies of the Wotanian spaceship engine and have made them a part of my own mind. I now have complete control over them and now -- aided by these ‘white supremacist’ types who worship the Wotanians as the ancient gods of the Nordic Race -- will assert myself as supreme ruler of Earth! I shall create an empire; an empire of extreme power that shall be in total domination over all!!”
“Wingus, you are insane as ever,” I charged. “Even you know little of the true properties of the Wotanian energies. You may not be able to control them properly, hmmm?”
“Oh, but you are wrong in that, Rumanos!” returned Don Wingus, the blood red energies around him now gaining in strength. “You are wrong, and you shall now see the true extent of the powers I have obtained -- powers that I shall now use to destroy you!!”
With this, and with a laugh of utter madness from the wicked Wingus, the Wotanian energies suddenly shot forth; they shot forth like a burst of demonic force beyond anything of this world; they shot forth with the sound as of a thousand storms; they shot forth directly to-wards Millie and me!
“Now, Daniel Rumanos,” proclaimed Wingus, “feel my power as it brings you to your end! Feel my power -- the power of the God of Thunder!!!”
Do you recognise the demoniacal horror, forsooth the unspeakable satanic terror of this bizarre situation, my dear friends and most loyal readers? There we were -- the beautiful Miss Millie Drake and me, Doctor Daniel Rumanos -- facing the obscene Algolite criminal known to eternal infamy as Magister Don Wingus. There we were, facing him as he sent forth an eldritch blast upon us of the very alien energies that he planned to use in order to found a fascist empire over the entire planet!
“You will die now, Daniel Rumanos and Miss Drake!” repeated the insane Don Wingus. “You will now both die and shall thus interfere with my plans no longer! You will die, and I shall utilise the Wotanian energy in concert with my own mind in order to subjugate this planet to my will! I will rule this world and others! I am Don Wingus, the rightful supreme master of all Creation! I am Don Wingus, and the power of Torr -- the God of Thunder -- is mine!!”
As he spoke, the baleful blood red energies of the Wotanians hit Millie Drake in me with extreme power -- extreme painful power that we knew we could not long endure!
“Daniel,” cried Millie, “what are we going to do?’
“Hold tight, my love,” I counselled. “The moment has been prepared for.”
I then quickly took the transonic device back out of my pocket and held it aloft whilst activating a certain setting. At this, the bloody red energy that had been focussed to-wards us suddenly reversed its direction -- and returned at lightning speed to Don Wingus!
“What have you done, Rumanos?!” bellowed the villain in outrage. “I have lost control of the Wotanian energy!”
“I activated the transonic to switch its polarisation, hmmm?” I explained. “You see, I have had the chance to thoroughly examine the ‘Hammer’; the spaceship engine filament. It was de-powered, but its mechanism was understandable. I utilised its sequencing to program my transonic device to emit an opposing frequency -- a frequency that could be used, should we ever again encounter Wotanian forces, to turn the energies against their user. I just had to wait for you to fully manifest the powers in order to access them via my device.”
“No!” shouted Wingus as the energies pummelled him. “No! No! No! You cannot do this to me! I am Magister Don Wingus! I am the rightful ruler of worlds! I am… I am… !!”
And with this, the voice of the intergalactic criminal trailed off and he vanished from sight, along with all vestiges of the blood red Wotanian powers.
“‘God of Thunder’ indeed,” I satirised whilst returning the transonic device to my jacket pocket. “Millie, all is now well. The alien energies are gone.”
“So was Don Wingus destroyed when the energy dispersed?” queried Millie Drake.
“Possibly,” I pondered, “but who knows? As you know, he has escaped such things in the past by having his Time and Space ship hidden near by, or by utilising the matter transmission technology of those certain alien races with which he has oftentimes allied himself.”
“So we may have to deal with him again,” shuddered the young lady.
“Perhaps,” I admitted, “but for now everything seems to be at peace. At least his hypnotic control over the local politicians will now be at an end, so there will be no more Nazi rallies disguised as funfairs, hmmm?”
“Well, that’s good to hear,” smiled my lovely companion.
Millie and I looked around and, seeing that all the festival-goers had by now fled the area in terror, we began to return to our car.
“Let is leave here at once,” I said as I started up Lizzie’s motor. “We shall return to the city and find a good kosher delicatessen immediately.”
***** DANIEL RUMANOS AND MILLIE DRAKE SHALL RETURN
