Mission: Earth "Black Genesis" by Ron L. Hubbard Read Free Book Online

place. And, factually speaking, while he might know engineering and space flight, he didn't know a ten-thousandth of what I knew about my own trade: covert operations and espionage. He would learn that to his sorrow in due course.
    But I said, "Just to the left of the center of Turkey, there is a large lake. See it? That's Lake Tuz. Now look to the west of it and slightly south and you'll see another lake. That's Lake Aksehir. There's some more lakes just southwest of it. See them?"
    He did. But he said, "Point out Caucasus."
    Oh, my Gods, here we went on that stupid theme. "Over there, just east of the Black Sea, there's an arm of land that comes down and joins Turkey. That's Caucasus. Way over on the horizon is the Caspian Sea and that
    bounds Caucasus on the east. But you can't go in there. That's communist Russian country. Georgia and Armenia are right there on the Russian side of the border. But Caucasus is out of bounds. Forget it. I'm trying to show you something."
    "Very pretty planet," said Heller irrelevantly. "You mean nobody can go into the Caucasus?"
    I let him have it. "Listen, northeast of Turkey and clear to the Pacific Ocean on the other side of this planet, that's all communist Russia! They don't let anybody in, they don't let anybody out. They are a bunch of mad nuts. They're run exclusively by a secret police organization called the KGB!"
    "Like the Apparatus?" he said.
    "Yes, like the Apparatus! No! I mean you can't go there. Now will you pay attention?"
    "That's awful," he said. "A piece of the planet that big being run by secret police. And it's such a pretty planet. Why does the rest of the planet let them get away with something crazy like that?"
    "Russia stole the secrets of atomic fission and it's a thermonuclear power and you have to be careful of them because they're so crazy they could blow up the whole planet."
    He was busy writing on a pad and, unlike him, was saying the words as he wrote: "Russia crazy. Run by KGB secret police like Apparatus. Could blow up the world with stolen thermonuclear power. Got it."
    I finally had his attention. "Now get off this Caucasus fixation and pay attention."
    "So poor Prince Caucalsia even lost his second home! The Russians got it!"
    I raised my voice. "Look west from Lake Tuz in a straight line across the top of Lake Aksehir and about a
    third of that distance further west. That is Afyon. That's the landmark!"
    Well, I had gotten him unfixed from that stupid Folk Legend 894M! He obediently reached for a control panel and the whole scene swooped up at us. I felt I was falling and grabbed hold of my seat.
    "Oho!" said Heller, staring at the enlarged scene. "Hello, hello, hello! Looks just like Spiteos!"
    Actually, I sometimes wondered if that was why this base long ago had been chosen by the Apparatus. But I said, "No, no. Just coincidence. Its name is Afyonkarahisar."
    "What's that mean in Voltarian?"
    I wasn't going to tell him the real meaning: Black Opium Castle. I said, "It means 'Black Fortress.' The base rock rises 750 feet. The ramparts on top of it are the remains of a Byzantine fort which replaced the original built by the Arzawa, a tribe of an ancient people called the Hittites."
    "It would probably be blacker if it wasn't for that factory near it pouring out white dust."
    "That's the cement plant. Afyon is a town of about seventy thousand people."
    He pulled back the scene to get a wider view and sat there admiring it. There were still some white streaks of snow on the taller mountains around Afyon. The tiny outlying villages were a patchwork. None of the savage winds which came down from the high plateau were felt from such a height as this. Turkey is a pretty brutal country for the most part.
    "What's all this yellow and orange?" He was looking at the vast panorama of flowers which blanket the valleys. And before I could stop him he twisted the controls and we were looking at them very close. It made me feel
    awful, like I'd fallen five hundred