Chapter 38: O Mother, Where Art Thou?

The zigzag bombs plus the zigzag shields are really getting on your nerves, and so when everything goes white and the aliens disappear, leaving you again looking up at a strange set of stars, you breathe a sigh of relief. Melvin suddenly reappears in the loading chamber. “Aww, I was just about to hit one of those red flying saucer things, too,” he whines.

“Sorry the Administrator interrupted your fun,” you say dryly.

“That guy wouldn’t know fun if it played jump rope with his tail. Say, what do you think those red saucer things are, anyway? They don’t seem to… do anything.”

You’ve been wondering the same thing. “At first I thought they were command ships, or something, but… blowing them up doesn’t seem to bother the invaders at all.”

“Jeez,” says Melvin, “I hope it’s not, like, an ambulance, or something. Or… a school bus! What if it’s a school bus?”

“What would a school bus be doing in a war zone out in… the infinite multiverse or wherever we are?”

“Oh yeah,” considers Melvin. “I guess you’re right. Still, it’s weird. It’s too small for any of those invaders to fit in.”

“Yeah. But… I mean, what even are those invaders? Are they robots? They don’t seem like aliens, they seem more like something… purely digital.”

Melvin rolls his eyes, not that he has eyes. “Everything here is digital. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I know… but some things seem more digital than… oh, forget it. We should probably go back inside.”

“Ha, yeah,” says Melvin. He peers out the window of the laser cannon, at the fresh set of stars. “These new stars are pretty beautiful.”

You look up at the wonder of this mysterious new universe. The stars here are… weirdly colorful. Each one is a pulsing, vibrating rainbow. You’ve never seen anything like it. “Yeah… we sure do get to see some cool things.”

Melvin points, not that he has fingers. “Yeah! Like look there! Those stars are moving!”

You see some little grids of bluish white dots, not pulsing at all, but instead moving in formation. “Uh… Melvin, I don’t think those are stars.”

“Then… what?” He squints, not that he has eyes. “Some kind of comet?”

“Melvin, I think we better go inside right now.”

You open the airlock back into the Mothership. The Administrator is flipping switches with one hand, turning knobs with another, and rifling through papers with his tail.

“Hey, greenie!” says Melvin. “You seen those stars out there? Like rainbows! And some of ‘em are moving!”

“Yes… yes…” mumbles the Administrator nervously, continuing his frantic activity. Suddenly, you hear a rumbling. Just outside the massive floor to ceiling window that looks out on the laser cannon and the surface of the Mothership, an enormous hatch opens up, and a rocket suddenly launches out of it toward the moving stars.

“What was that?” shouts Melvin, alarmed. The Administrator’s frantic activity has stopped, and his tail is mopping his brow with his handkerchief. “That’s protocol 39G. We’ve entered a universe that may have hostile activity, and so I’ve launched a scout rocket to investigate.”

“So now what?” asks Melvin.

“Protocol 39H.”

“What?”

“Stand back.” He pushes a button. You are standing in the center of the floor of the main hall, on top of the huge blue, white and gold seal that represents the League of Civilized Planets. You scramble back as the floor opens up, and a huge screen rises up. On the screen you see rainbow stars racing by. “This is the camera view from the scout rocket,” explains the Administrator. In the center of the display is a bluish white grid of what you thought were stars, but as they are quickly getting larger, you think they might be… ships?

“Those aren’t stars,” says Melvin, “those are flying saucers!”

As the rocket gets closer and closer, you see the grid suddenly break formation, and start flying apart from each other every which way, in patterns that seem random. Suddenly, one of the saucers flies quite close to the camera, and you see it fire two red blasts of photon energy. They come right at the camera, and suddenly the screen is all static, and then goes black.

“Oh dear,” says the Administrator. He hits another button, and a large green display of concentric rings appears.

“What’s this?” asks Melvin. “A putting green?”

“This is a map of the area around the Mothership.”

“Where are we?” asks Melvin.

“We’re in the middle,” the Administrator explains.

“I don’t see us,” says Melvin.

The Administrator sighs. “That’s because we’re invisible!”

“What?”

“Do I have to explain everything? The Mothership is invisible at a distance, so enemies can’t find us. Those saucers should not be able to see us, but they have been moving straight toward us since we got here.”

“So… back in the laser cannon?” you ask.

“No, there are too many of them, and those photon blasts are much too powerful.” The Administrator uses his tail to pop two pills into his mouth, and takes a nervous drink from his glass.

“So, make with the button presses! Get us to a new universe!” yells Melvin.

“It’s not that simple!” The Administrator booms. “We just did a jump, and it takes time for the jump cells to recharge. We have no alternative but protocol 97F.” He turns a big wheel, which reveals three buttons, one blue, one white, and one gold. Using both hands and his tail, he pushes all three of them at once.

Another hole opens in the floor, and a battle console rises up. It faces the big screen, and features a large chair, a joystick, and red button. “In any case where the mother ship is under threat of direct attack, we have three squadrons of powerful defense ships that can be piloted remotely.”

“Remotely?” cries Melvin. “If these ships can be piloted remotely, why did we have to fly all over the galaxy chasing Zylons?”

“Remote control only works at short range. When you battled the Krylons, you were warping tremendous distances. But this is no time for a lecture in galactography. Player, those saucers are headed straight for us. If you can’t defeat those invading saucers, I fear that we are lost.”

You look at the battle console. It is painted blue to the left, gold to the right, and white above. You sit down and make some experimental manipulations. Both on the radar screen and out the window you see the blue, white and gold defense ships heading out to intercept the alien fleets.

“Your ships will be invulnerable,” says the Administrator.

“That makes me feel better,” says Melvin.

“Unless their blasts go down your gunsight – that’s your only vulnerable spot.”

“That makes me feel much, much worse,” frowns Melvin.

“It’s okay,” you say. “These controls are a little strange, but there are only six saucer fleets. I think we can do this.”

Melvin and the Administrator watch your every move intently, and you try not to glance out the window, where you can see the alien fleets getting closer and closer.

Place the Space Attack cartridge into your Atari 2600. Set both difficulty switches to a. Play until you are able to defeat all six saucer fleets and win the game. Post a link to a video in the comments section of yourself completing the challenge.