The Interplanetary Visit

Area Sixty-Six

Back at school, Miss Katherine and the other teachers were telling the local law investigators details of the teachers' deaths shortly after Ken left. The remaining two teachers were later poisoned by the injected IDS Martian poison that the young male teacher took from the burning necklaces when Ken left. The whole school was excited, especially the students, who were mostly cheering instead of crying.

The teachers who died were mostly unreasonable and that fact contributed to the cheering. Nobody noticed the fact that Ken was missing. The reason Miss Katherine gave to Derek when Derek inquired was that Ken had a terrible headache and was permitted to go home.

Police and paramedics buzzed around in the school like flies. It was irritating for the teachers. All lessons were stalled because all teachers were witnesses. Students cheered happily, as not only did they never again have to see those monsters of teachers; they got to skip lessons for a pretty good reason.

For a good while, the school would be closed by the local authorities due to suspected food poisoning that resulted in the death of three teachers that had sandwiches from the school canteen. There was no danger of the poison being discovered. IDS toxins were to break down into normal body substrates in a matter of minutes after death. There was also no danger of blowing the Martian cover in an autopsy as Martians are highly similar to humans and an autopsy would not include detailed genetic screening, just slightly abnormal looking organs that could be attributed easily to the poisoning. The Martian rebellion force would do whatever it took to ensure that their cover was not blown.

Ken looked at his pod. He blinked his eyes, making sure of what he was seeing. His pod was multi-connecting and multi-tasking at the same time. It was what he would call multi-multi-tasking. The pod was hacking its way into the attack controls at the IDS computer, running checks on Area Fifty-One, Area sixty-six, analyzing information retrieved from the hacked computers and communicating with him.

The pod must have gone through an update, he thought. Quickly, he asked, "Pod, have you been updated?"

"Yes, a second update came. Communication systems enhanced. Weapon systems upgraded. Power efficiency up to ninety-six percent. Physical invisibility mode available."

"Wow," mused Ken. "Continue the fleet report," Ken ordered, gaining his composed look.

"Fleet is traced to take off from a region in the Himalayas. It is the IDS launch base and the largest single launch site in the entire galaxy. It is believed that advanced weapons are in use there. No Jupitian probe pods had been sent there yet. It was..."

"Hold it," Ken interrupted. "We should go there now; it might be the second base. I'm not sure if the IDS spy was misleading me on purpose, but since the fleet had taken off from that location, we should investigate it. Do you have enough resources available?"

Beeps came from the computer. It soon faded as the pod's voice came back reporting, "Resource usage up to forty percent. Sixty percent of resources available."

"Wow, that update must be something. All that multi-tasking with only forty percent. Sounds perfect. Okay then, let's go."

The pod floated up above the clouds where it sped to the Himalayas in hyper-speed. Moments later, the Jupitian pod was hovering above cloud level in full stealth mode and physical invisibility. It looked down though gaps in the clouds.

"Anti-gravity shield in progress. Pod gravity power on." The pod reported as the pod spied on the heavily magnetically-shielded area. It appeared that the launch had been completed. There was no IDS warship in sight.

"Does the PEIDB or any of the secret government know of its existence or purpose?" Ken asked, looking through the screen at the wild landscape before him. Below the pod, the entire mountainous range looked just as a mountain range should look. There was nothing to indicate it to be an IDS launch site.