Sci-Fi Film Fiesta, The Swingin' 60s - Volume 6: Spaced Out Magic Carpet Rides by Chris Christopoulos - HTML preview

John Stone as London Delegate

Jeremy Wilkin as Launch Control Technician

In The year 2069, one hundred years after mankind’s first manned moon

landing, the European Space Exploration Council sends two astronauts

on a joint European-NASA mission to investigate a mysterious planet

located on the opposite side of the sun.

After only 3 weeks, followed by a disastrous crash-landing, one of the

two-man crew awakes to to find himself immersed in a mysterious and

unsettling set of circumstances.

Eventually he begins putting the pieces of a puzzle together only to

discover that things are not as they seem……..

In an undisclosed location, a lone dishevelled figure sits in a chair in the middle of a depression in the floor area. The once powerful and influential individual now appears as a solitary diminutive figure within the brutally efficient confines of an interrogation chamber. The man in question is former EUROSEC director, Jason Webb. A spot light suddenly slams its harsh glare upon him as he prepares for yet another round of seemingly pointless questioning from a series of disembodied voices he doesn’t recognise. No face or flicke of humanity accompanies the voices.

(Voice) Tell us again about the “leak.”

(Webb) Look, I’ve told you again and again. Why go on repeating the same things over and over?

(His chair automatically and abruptly turns to face another direction)

(Voice) Tell us again about the leak!

(Webb) Alright….Dr Hassler evaded security procedures and managed to obtain photos of the results of the Sun Probe One mission by means of a miniature camera concealed in a false eyeball.

(Voice) Yes, it was also very inventive on your part to claim that arrangements were made to take care of this security leak...permanently. And yet there is no evidence that exists that this individual had been spying for the other side and they’re certainly not admitting to it. Wasn’t he in fact just a patsy you used to justify the obtaining of three-thousand million pounds for whatever purpose …….

(Webb) No! No! At The 67th meeting of the European Space Exploration Council our purpose was to discuss the unexpected findings of the Sun Probe One mission in which its camera was “set to take one picture a minute for the duration of the flight” focusing on the far side of the sun.

“Now, at this point in the flight, a strange thing happened. The gyro mechanisms aboard were influenced by another magnetic field and the capsule slowly started to rotate.” The cine camera was panned off the sun towards whatever was attracting it. (Chair swivels)

(Voice) And what was that?

(Webb) You know! I told you already.

(Voice) Tell us again

(Webb) Very well. The force of the gravitational pull of another planet. We also had “the first complete photographic evidence of a new planet. A new planet in our solar system.” It was...is “in the same orbit as Earth, but directly on the opposite side of the sun” with an “orbital speed precisely the same as ours.” That is why it has remained undetected.

(Voice) I’m afraid to disappoint you Mr Webb, but the photographic evidence you speak of does not exist. I put it to you that this was just a ruse to obtain funding to mount a fake manned mission to a fictionalised new planet!

(Webb) Don’t be ridiculous! You can’t fake something like that on such a scale, I mean….

(Voice) You’d be surprised what can be done, Mr Webb. Well, good sense almost prevailed when the delegates at that virtual meeting fortunately baulked at the monstrous price tag of three thousand million pounds sterling. Naturally your British ethnocentric ego placed the blame on the French and Germans along with the weak-willed Europeans. Ah! Perhaps the Americans would provide a life-line by contributing to your financial scam? “If they contribute, the rest might follow.” It is recorded that you said of NASA’s David Poulson “watch me take a man for one billion dollars.”

(Webb) No! It wasn’t like that. You’re making me sound like some kind of a criminal mastermind or “egotistical megalomaniac.” And how the hell do you know what I said in confidence in my own office?

(Voice) How indeed, Mr Webb. A lot more believable than your bogus spy plot by a double agent. And so how did you begin to “take” this American from NASA? The wonder of discovering a new planet in our solar system? Perhaps the “military and scientific implications beyond comprehension” The fear of someone else getting to this planet first? Which then nicely leads us to this security leak you conveniently concocted. Simply give Hassler enough rope by widening the access restriction to include him and serve up some enticing and incriminating information to this “prime suspect” of yours before nailing him. Isn’t that so, Mr Webb?

(Webb) Well yes...Hassler was the source of the leak and through him the existence of the new planet would be known outside Europe and the States and that preparations for a manned flight would likely be underway by somebody else…..

(Voice) So with Paulson convinced that there had been a leak he would’ve been prepared to recommend that the United States would contribute one billion dollars to a manned flight conducted by EUROSEC with “full information sharing guaranteed.”

(Chair swivels)

And what of our clandestine friend, Hassler, Mr Webb? He seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth? You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?

(Webb) You know I do and why….. We traced the messages Hassler had been sending and they led us directly to his laboratory where it was arranged to ...

(Voice) Terminate him? Sadly he is no longer with us and therefore cannot incriminate you.

(Webb) He was a bloody spy…...a double agent! What did you expect me to do.

(Voice) We expected you to do just that and a lot of other things, Mr Webb. Let us now turn to this mission of yours into which such vast sums of money were to be devoted toward. We understand there was a stipulation to have an American astronaut placed on the team, their “most experienced” with “fifty days of space flight” and “two manned projects to Mars” under his belt – Colonel Glenn Ross. A co-conspirator of yours? A patsy like Hassler? An unwilling accomplice? Whatever the case, he like the good Dr Hassler is no longer in a position to speak on his own behalf. Funny about that, don’t you think, Mr. Webb?

(Webb) No! You’re being ridiculous. Unless you and your lot, whoever you are…..

(Chair swivels)

(Voice) Are we being ridiculous Mr. Webb? Apart from Colonel Glenn Ross, you cleverly arranged for EUROSEC astrophysicist Dr John Kane to be assigned to the mission as well. Too bad he too isn’t around to to shine some light on your nefarious activities.

Isn’t true that you needed “someone more flexible…..in terms of knowledge,” someone who could “take full advantage of any findings on the ‘new planet’ however bizarre and unusual they happened to be?” Reading between the lines, it seems that you wanted someone loyal and malleable to do your bidding no matter what ? What findings could possibly be derived from a non-existent planet on a bogus mission, Mr Webb?

(Webb) This is utter rubbish! You’re distorting everything and turning it into a giant conspiracy theory orchestrated by me! You can’t fake something like this mission that’s on such a huge scale. It just can’t be done. People would know.

(Chair swivels)

(Voice) People can be bribed, Mr Webb. They can be threatened with death. Most have loved ones they wouldn’t want to see harmed. They can be made to sign non-disclosure agreements and be threatened with national security provisions. People have secrets they wouldn’t wish to be revealed to the world. Evidence can be manipulated and made to disappear. People can be made to see and believe what others wish them to see and believe by means of the clever use of technologies at our disposal. Tell a lie often enough and people will come to believe it…..remember that, Mr Webb.

(Webb) Someone, somewhere would blow the whistle on something like you’ve been trying to convince me of having done.

(Voice) Certainly not your two astronauts, Mr Webb. It seems that you had them both worked almost beyond the limits of physical and psychological endurance during their training for the mission. It was particularly hard on Dr Krane whereas for the better prepared Ross, you placed faith in the knowledge you had concerning the marital difficulties he and his wife Sharon were experiencing. Something about their inability to have children with America’s top astronaut possibly being sterile. Imagine what that must do to a man emotionally and psychologically, being told by his wife that he “went up there a man” and “came back there less than a man.”

Yes, Mr Webb, we know about this personal matter just as you did and in the same manner as you found out. A wife who plays around and deceives her husband and a husband who strikes his wife in anger and frustration. Just imagine what kind of manipulation could you exercise over a man who’s in such obvious internal psychological and emotional turmoil!

(Webb) OK, I was aware there was some trouble between Ross and Sharon, but I knew he was professional enough to deal with it and compartmentalise it.

(Voice) With one astronaut struggling with your “crash course in space preparation” and the other worrying about him, in addition to the parlous state of his own marriage, you then decide to turn the screws some more by putting the launch date forward…..two weeks! Those two men would have been in a very suggestible state of mind and be prepared to do, see and hear just about anything you wanted them to.

(Webb) “You don't understand. In Germany, budgetary troubles. In France, political troubles.” Someone was bound to suggest withdrawing from the project at any time.

(Chair swivels)

(Voice) Oh, but we do understand, Mr Webb. Especially when it comes to money, power and influence. Please tell us once more what happened after pre-flight training at the EUROSEC Space Centre in Portugal.

(Webb) As I already told you again and again, Ross and Kane successfully blasted off in the Phoenix spacecraft. They then entered artificial hibernation for the journey to the new planet. The Heart-Lung-Kidney machines maintained their vital functions for the three week duration of the flight.