Chapter One
Notes: All characters are copyrighted from either The Andy Griffith Show or Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. except Attorney Evans, Mary Ann Harper, the entire Lodge family, Private Brandon Mallerby, Professor Merriweather, Nancy Merriweather, Professor Grant, Dr. Holden, and the secretary Alma. These characters are copyrighted by the author. Officers Hansen and Kelly are from the Disney movies "The Shaggy Dog," "The Absent-Minded Professor," "Son of Flubber."
This book is entirely unofficial, but it was written for fun and fans of the show and NOT for profit. (So please don't sue me!)
"DO I believe there's life on other planets?"
Sergeant Vincent Carter was startled. He hadn't expected that question.
Private First Class Gomer Pyle nodded. "Uh huh. That's what I asked, Sergeant—do you believe there's life on other planets."
"Oh, sure I do, Pyle," Carter replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "And I believe there's a lost city at the bottom of the ocean!"
"What Vince is trying to say, Pyle," Corporal Charles Boyle said, amused, "is that he doesn't believe in life on other planets."
Gomer was disappointed. "You don't?" he said to Carter.
"Actually, Pyle, I don't. Do you?"
Gomer shrugged. "Well, I'm not sure. I don't know why it's not possible. Little people really could be living on other planets. Maybe they find it hard to believe that there's life on Earth." He turned to Boyle. "What about you, Corporal? Do you believe there's life on other planets?"
"Well . . . so many people have reported seeing aliens. They couldn't all be having hallucinations," Boyle responded thoughtfully.
"What's all the interest in aliens all of a sudden, Pyle?" Carter asked.
"Oh, well, let me tell you about that, Sergeant," Gomer said enthusiastically. "I just finished watching this movie about an alien who came to Earth—and he looked just like us!" Gomer paused. "Well, I don't mean he looked like one of us here in this room. I just mean that he looked like a human."
"I know what you mean, Pyle," Carter said impatiently.
"Well, anyway, it was a real good movie," Gomer continued. "It was called The Day the Earth Stood Still. I think it was first shown in theatres in the early 1950s."
"Nineteen fifty-one, to be exact," Boyle supplied. One of his closet friends—Attorney Earle Evans—was a movie buff, and because of his fondness for movies, Boyle had learned about almost every film that had ever been released since the beginning of the film industry.
"So that's how come I've been so interested in aliens," Gomer concluded.
"Well, Pyle, I do not believe in flying saucers or aliens, and until I actually see either one, I'll have my reservations," Carter said with finality.
Gomer looked doubtful. "Well, alright, Sergeant."
Carter turned on his transistor radio and a loud, ridiculous chorus of a song blared out at him. "Swe-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-t Adeli-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ne!" He tried to snap off the radio in disgust, but somehow the knob got stuck and wouldn't budge.
"Boyle, help me with this thing!" he yelled.
Boyle and Carter both tried to turn it off, and Gomer tried to help too, and finally the knob broke right off.
Carter and Boyle stared at the severed piece of radio in astonishment. "What in the world?" they exclaimed in unison.
"Sergeant, this radio doesn't want to turn off," Gomer declared.
"Pyle! The radio doesn't have a say in the matter!" Carter burst out. "It's not alive!"
"Well, how do we really know, Sergeant?"
Carter groaned. He had a feeling that he was about to hear another strange down-home idea.
"There's something called the ‘inner life,'" Gomer began. "Objects like cars, chairs, desks, radios, typewriters—" Boyle looked at his gray manuel typewriter "—everything like that, is alive, because of this thing called the ‘inner life.'"
Carter was disgusted. "Where did you ever get such a crazy idea, Pyle?"
"Well, back home in Mayberry, they have this visiting guru from Tibet who teaches Oriental philosophy. It's real interesting," Gomer said excitedly.
"I've heard something about that," Boyle spoke up.
Carter turned to look at him. "Oh, Boyle, don't tell me you actually believe that kind of nonsense!"
Boyle shrugged. "Who knows, Vince?" His lovely dark brown eyes had an amused sparkle in them, meaning that he was just teasing.
The latest copy of the newspaper was laying across the Corporal's desk. Gomer picked it up curiously, leafing through it. Presently he stopped at an article about flying saucers.
"Look at this, Sergeant!" he said, pointing.
"So it's an article about flying saucers," Carter said after he'd taken a brief glance. "So what?"
"Well, this happened right close by, in Oceanside." Gomer began reading. Carter wasn't really interested, but Boyle listened attentively.
"‘At two A.M., a man by the name of Quentin Campbell saw a large, saucer-shaped object hovering over his barn. He called the local Air Force base to investigate, but by the time they got there, the object had vanished. It had left a piece of paper of some kind, however, with a strange language on it that had never been seen before on Earth. And the paper material contained no elements known on Earth.'" At the conclusion of the article, Gomer folded up the newspaper and laid it back on Boyle's desk. "Isn't that ominous, Sergeant?" he exclaimed. "It really must have been little people from another planet, maybe even in another galaxy! And the paper must have been theirs!"
Carter was incredulous. "Maybe it was some guy's new invention and he's created some new elements that aren't recognized yet," he suggested.
"That's possible, Vince," Boyle agreed, "but it doesn't mean that there aren't flying saucers."
Before the conversation could be continued further, the telephone rang. Boyle answered. "Hello, Company B, Corporal Boyle."
"Hi!" said a cheerful four-year-old. "This is Denise! Can you come baby-sit us?"
Denise Lodge was one of three children whom Gomer, Carter, and Boyle often tended. The Lodge kids' mother was a friend of Carter's date, Bunny Olsen, and that's how they met the Lodges in the first place.
Boyle glanced around the room at Gomer and Carter. "Well, I don't know."
"If you could, then Mom and Dad would be a lot happier," Denise pleaded. "And besides, they left us here alone and told us to call you."
Boyle was appalled. "Not again! Why do your parents keep doing that? It's not the least bit safe."
"They just keep having to immediately dash off to meetings," Denise replied. "We'd be just as content to tend ourselves, but it's been a while since we've seen you. And Mr. Fritz wants you to ask him some more history questions."
Boyle grinned. "Well, just a minute. I'll see what Vince says."
Placing a hand over the receiver, Boyle said to Carter, "It's Denise Lodge. Mr. and Mrs. Lodge have left the kids home alone again and told them to call us."
Carter looked annoyed. "Not again! We've got other things to do!"
"But, Sergeant, we can't just leave them there all alone," Gomer protested.
"Well, of course we can't!" Carter said, his voice softening. "Tell the kid we'll be there shortly."
So Boyle got back on the phone with Denise. "We'll be there as soon as we can," he told her.
"Yay!" Denise cried, doing a little dance with the phone. "I hope you'll be here real soon!" She rattled off a goodbye and hung up to see what Samantha, otherwise known as Sam, and Louis were doing.
"Everytime we come here we always wind up in some trouble," Carter complained.
"Well, then, let's just hope that nothing happens this time," Gomer said resolutely.
"Who knows what will happen?" Carter rushed right on, not paying attention. "Someone could be kidnapped, the house could collapse, a typhoon could come in, the sink could overflow . . ."
"Vince!" Boyle's amused voice broke into his thoughts. "Aren't you overdoing it a little?"
Sam flung the door open. "Hurry in!" she called frantically. "Denise decided to see what would happen if she cooked the phone book! You're just in time to find out!"
"See? What did I tell you?" Carter said to the others as they dashed in. "Instant disaster!"
In the kitchen, Denise was stirring a kettle of something nondescript on the stove range, and was playing a song on the radio called "Denise." "Hi! I'm cooking the phone book!" she said proudly.
"Shazam! Why in the world would you want to do a thing like that?" Gomer exclaimed.
"So's I can see what happens," Denise answered.
"Well, kid, that's not the best idea in the world," Carter said, trying to convince the girl to give up her VERY strange whim. "Who knows what could happen! You might set the house on fire!"
"Your momma might not want you to cook the telephone book," the Private said gently.
"Oh, this is an old phone book," Denise replied with a wave of her hand. "From last year. The new phone book came yesterday, and Mom doesn't like to keep the old ones. 'Sides, we've done this before, and she hasn't minded. Just as long as there's adult supervision."
"Kids," Carter sighed, addressing Boyle.
Boyle grinned slightly, then turned to Sam and Denise. "One time, back in my hometown in the Midwest, this young cousin of mine decided to roast an old ZCMI catalogue from Utah over the fireplace like a marshmellow. He wanted to see what would happen."
Denise paused in her stirring. "Really? What happened?"
"Well, my Aunt Betty found him and told him that the catalogue was from the year 1901 and was worth a lot of money. So he decided to take it to an antique shop instead."
"Wow!" Denise exclaimed.
"We've got some old catalogues up in the attic from the Roaring '20s," Sam said excitedly. "Let's go up there and look at them!"
The girls instantly abandoned their phone book project and raced up the stairs, followed by their three baby-sitters. Gomer stopped at the second floor to get Louis out of his crib.
"This house is really old," Sam declared as they neared the top. "It was old even in the Roaring '20s."
"Golly!" Gomer exclaimed.
"It was built in 1869," Denise added.
"Well, that means that this place is over 100 years old," Carter realized.
Sam opened the attic's door. The rusty hinges let out a protest as everyone trooped inside. Turning on an old Tiffany lamp, Sam and Denise made their way to a battered trunk in a corner. "Here's where all our old catalogues are," they explained, lifting the lid.
The Marines looked wonderingly around the tiny room.
"'Lectricity was added later," said Denise, noticing how they stared at the lamp.
Meanwhile, Sam was digging into the trunk. She lifted out some 1927 Sears Roebuck catalogues and some 1929 issues of Cosmopolitan magazine. "Look at these! They're probably worth a lot!" she stated.
"Are you sure your momma would want you to sell these things?" Gomer asked.
Denise nodded. "Oh, she wouldn't mind. She told us when we were moving in that she didn't give a hoot what happened with these things and that we could do whatever we wanted with them. We originally wanted to keep them because the pictures were so interesting."
"But we definitely want to sell them now," Sam added quickly. "They're worth millions!"
Boyle grinned. "Well, maybe not quite that much."
Denise noticed an old dressmaker's dummy in another corner and grabbed the feathered hat it was wearing. "Hey! This is pretty!" she announced, glancing at her reflection in a mirror.
While Sam was finding some 1915 prayer books, a loud sound was suddenly heard right above the attic roof.
"Shazam! What's that?" Gomer exclaimed. "It sounds like some big object is going ‘whoosh' right over our heads!"
Carter and Boyle ran to the small window and peeked out. "What in the world?" they said in unison.
"What?" Now the girls' curiosity had been aroused.
"There's some strange green light out there!" Boyle replied.
Everyone dashed over to the window. "Wow! That's some light!" Sam acknowledged.
Denise was already heading for the door. "Come on! Let's go out on the third floor's terrace and get a better look!"
Everyone followed.
Out on the third floor's very large terrace, the Marines and their young charges could see the green light clearly, but they couldn't see the source.
"Maybe it's a flying saucer!" Gomer said fearfully.
Carter glared at the Private. "Pyle! Don't scare the girls!" he hissed.
"Oh, we're not scared," Sam insisted. "We hear this kind of stuff all the time. We're fascinated!"
"That's right," Denise agreed.
"It's probably just some natural thing," Carter countered, "like a meteorite or shooting star."
"I've never seen a green one before," Boyle replied. "Back home we used to see lots of meteorites. One would fall almost every night. They were always white or bright yellow or purple. But never green."
Carter looked at Boyle as if to say, Are you going to start up now too?
The green light slowly moved across the sky. After it had reached the area where the town's park was, which was at the limit of their vision, it abruptly disappeared.
Gomer gasped. "It's probably a flying saucer with little people and it's landed in the park!"
"Pyle!" Carter exclaimed, exasperated.
"Well, Sergeant, it happens," Gomer responded, shrugging.
"Or maybe it's still flying only we can't see it," Boyle suggested.
They all stared for the longest time at the sky, wondering if maybe perhaps they had witnessed a flying saucer. Even Sergeant Carter subconsciously considered the possibility.
