The depression didn't seem to be bottoming out. 1934 seemed the worst year so far. Those with jobs for grateful to have them. Many more looked in from the outside, hungry for diversions to take their minds of their misery. , Hollywood was still making money and was always up for stunts that would awe and amazed the public. Such an event as a major studio sponsoring the trans-polar air race. Doris Dowd carried her portable typewriter as she walked up the stairway to board Ethel Andres' Curtiss Model 57 Teal. As a reporter for the New York Call she would be traveling with the crew to report on the big race from the inside.
Ethel was a glamorous pilot who always produced good copy. The plane, normally carried a standard crew of three but an extra wide seat had been wedged into the craft. Ethel would be flying along with her financial backer, navigator, and often rumored lover, the dashing Chet Powell. Doris was not the kind of reporter to harp on minor details such as the fact of Chet Powell's marriage to department store heiress Joanna Huston.
In the shared small seat next to the slim, dark haired reporter was aviation mechanic Pete Brown. Pete took one look at the lovely Doris Dowd and was instantly smitten. For much of the rest of the trip he kept referring to Doris as "Doll." Doris just rolled her eyes at him. Beautiful, urbane, and sophisticated, Doris had her pick of many of New York's most prominent men. Doris had made her way into the gossip columns a few times herself. Once she was spotted with a prominent polo player, another report linked her to a certain New York baseball player.
Doris took one look at Pete and immediately wrote him off. Oh his job was glamorous enough, and he was reasonably attractive, but Pete himself was aggressively blue collar. Doris thought it no shame for a man to get a little dirt under his nails, so long as his morals and breeding did not also track through the filth. Pete was the kind of guy who was always found himself attracted to Doris. She was movie star pretty and always dressed sharply. Too many guys were like moths attracted to the flash but who had nothing, either intellectually or physically to offer the slim reporter with jet black hair.
Pete had gotten things off to a dreadful start by comparing Doris Dowd to Snow White. "I'm not your cartoon pin up," replied Doris, "I'm a serious reporter who wants to focus on her work." It took Pete until they were halfway through Canada to take the hint and stop badgering the dish of a reporter. His boss, Ethel Anders had also told him to shut up. Quietly Pete fumed while he watched a small breeze flutter at the hem of Doris's electric green skirt.
The flight had been exciting so far. Ethel was firmly in third place. One of the German zeppelins had circled the airfield before the planes took off, and the weather had been perfect. Doris watched, fascinated at the interplay betwixt Ethel and Chet. Chet was all man. Despite the fact that he controlled the purse strings and ran the publicity campaign for Ethel, there was no question that he deferred to her at all times while flying. Doris hoped to land a man like Chet someday. In fact, if the opportunity presented itself, Doris was not above, slipping the millionaire playboy her own phone number. She cast an icy glance at a now cowed Pete Brown, "Why do I always end up sitting next to jerks?" she thought to herself.
Suddenly an orange fireball loomed out of the arctic gloom. At first Chet thought is an unusually large sun dog, but it seemed to be following Ethel's plane with obvious intelligence. Ethel tried to fly above and around the object. The fireball kept closing. The plane was suffused with a blinding white light, Ethel banked right and, to Doris's utter horror, the seat she and Pete were strapped to detached from the frame of the aircraft and tumbled across the fuselage and out the door into the open air!
After recovering from the shock of the arctic chill, Doris had time to wonder just how big her obituary would be in the Call, then the wind and the chill vanished utterly. Doris blacked out for a second and awoke, still strapped to her seat inside a cavernous airborne structure of some kind. Pete awoke a moment later and assailed Doris's ears with every predictable question. They very same ones she had asked herself. Despite his bravado, it was obvious that the young mechanic was terrified.
"Greetings earthlings!" came a deep voice that seemed to emanate from everywhere at once. "Make yourselves comfortable. We will reach our destination of the planet Turga shortly."
In an eerie yellow light Doris and Pete sat thunderstruck. The distance between them was not great. The need for human touch, caused Doris to press her right leg against Pete's left leg for comfort.
"What the hell does, 'destination of the planet Turga' mean, Doll?"
"My name is Doris, you oaf, and I think it means we have been kidnapped."
"By Martians?"
"Something like that, except these are Turgans or perhaps, Tuganians."
Doris noted that she still had her purse, (and oddly, her hat) so she extracted one of her notebooks and began jotting down impressions.
"What are your doing, Doll?"
"Obviously, you dullard, I am taking notes. If I am going to journey to a new world , it will be the story of the millennium. Too bad that I lost my typewriter and that ream of paper."
"Milleni .. what?" asked Peter, confused.
Flabbergasted at the ignorance on display, Doris stated, "Mr. Brown. I assume that you are a gifted mechanic or else Ethel would never have hired you. However, you seem incapable of the simplest intellectual conversations. Do us both a favor, when we meet the Turgans, allow ME to do the talking."
For the next forty five minuets there was a dull metallic hum. Pete and Doris felt motion. The large chamber they occupied was warm. Doris had a sudden need to use the bathroom. Seconds later a commode and a concealing curtain materialized to the front of them . Doris unbelted herself and made use of the new facilities. Pete followed suit.
Doris decided to walk about the chamber and began to try and summon up other things. She wished for a typewriter and paper. She wished for a window, she wished herself home a dozen or more times. Every wish went unfulfilled.
At last their journey came to an end, pounding sounds and a switch in the feel of the gravity indicated that the object they were inside of had at last landed. Seamlessly the wall of the chamber opened revealing a greenish sky and a white ramp leading to an open plaza.
"Exit the craft, humans." came the same voice from everywhere.
Her reporter instincts coming to the fore, Doris was first down the ramp. Above the plaza, seated on the throne, a slim gray skinned man who wore a harsh, impatient expression. He wore the accouterments of power and was obviously in charge. For one of the few times in her life, Doris was rendered speechless. Pete was similarly awed but was more fascinated by the many flying craft darting about the pale green sky. With no obvious propellors, Pete wondered how the pretty little things stayed aloft. He pegged the gray skinned ruler, as the same sort of officious jerk he ran into all the time, the type that expected him to jump, fetch and roll over on command.
They gray skinned man gazed down at Pete and Doris and asked,
"This is the immanent threat to galactic peace?"
An officious looking creature stepped before the throne, genuflected and said,
"Our agents tell us that in less than a decade these beings will solve the mystery of splitting the atom."
