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25th September 1956

The Railway Shooting

by Samuel Marlowe

After some much needed R&R post Fish Creature nightmare, we are called into Mr Smith's office and he throws a Melbourne newspaper down in front of us.
It's an article about a shooting on a train near Ormond in Melbourne. Thankfully no one was seriously injured in the shooting.
The CSIRO wants us to investigate this, while claiming that they no longer have any military ties. Strange that Mr Smith should keep laboring that point.
In fact, it hurts my head just thinking about that.
Mr Smith tells us that he wants us in Melbourne in under 3 hours and he is coming with us. So it's off to our houses and back inside an hour.
 
We meet back at CSIRO and are led to some sort of super secret underground railway station.
This weird train floats in to the station. Yes FLOATS!!! What the hell is this? What's holding the thing up?
Frank and Sam reluctantly follow the others onto the train and sit down.
The train leaves the station and the tunnel walls outside flash past at faster and faster until the walls are a blur. I can hardly even stand up from the chair.
Rosemary reckons we must be doing 300mph!!
After only about 75 minutes, we arrive in Melbourne and Mr Smith enters our carriage from his.
Time to get to work.....
 
We head down to the crime scene and start to investigate.
The team has fond a bunch of bullet casings, an SMG and a shoe print from a very small shoe - maybe 6"long. All around 30' from the train line.
We then proceeded to the maintenance shed to take a look at the carriage. The team found maybe a dozen bullet holes in the side of the carriage. It seems like the shooter was around 4'tall.
Further investigation of the carriage uncovered a piece of paper with some strange symbol placed on the underside of one of the seats. (It was some pyramid shape with an eye in the middle)
The police guarding the carriage mentioned that one of the witnesses - Mr Hardy - thought that he saw someone else he knew watching as well.
We then retired to our hotel for the night (after dealing with Frank's growing psychosis regarding radiation).
 
After breakfast the next morning we headed off the Parkdale to interview Mr A. Hardy. There are 3 A.Hardys in the 'phone book.
After one false start, we found the Andrew Hardy that was on the train when the shots were fired. He seemed somewhat put out and was reluctant to talk to us.
Strange thing is that while we were speaking at his door, Andrew's son , Angus, ran downstairs to speak to Rosemary, claiming he had been taught by her. Rosemary has no recollection of this.
Angus told Rosemary that he saw the little girl who shot at the train and wanted to tell us more. There's something a little odd about that boy.
Just as we were about to leave, a white Thunderbird pulled up outside and 2 men pointed weapons at us.
After taking out the passenger and disabling the driver, we went to check on them. The driver looked at us, yelled "For Vladimir", and then bit down on something, frothing at the mouth, and dying.
Checking on Angus, he told us that those 2 men turned up to drive away the little blonde girl who "just appeared out of nowhere and shot at the train".
Angus' eyes rolled back into his head and he called out a girl's name - Leisl.....!!!!!
 
Discretion being the better part of valor, Frank, James and Rosemary took the assassin bodies back to the CSIRO Melbourne office in the T-Bird. Sam, Alice, and Klaus followed in the company car.
We started a debrief with Emmy, describing what happened at the Hardy house. She was somewhat surprised but not too taken aback.
Mr Smith is currently meeting with the Romanian science minister.
While we wait for Dr McSwain, we go back to the garage to check out the T-Bird.
Looks like these guys were equipped by the Ruskies.
We also found some red mud on the car.
Klaus took the bodies of the men who shot us to a laboratory to perform an "autopsy" on them. Strange thing is that their blood has coagulated much more than what would be expected for bodies only recently deceased.
While we were investigating, Dr McSwain gave us some bad news. A few days ago, Leisl was abducted and Tawney, her carer has been murdered.
We were referred to Dr Stanton to discuss the red mud found on the car. Apparently the dirt came from Maralinga. But the T-Bird doesn't have enough miles on it's odometer to have driven from there.
We decided to investigate the Hardy residence to see if we can find anything of interest.
In the fireplace is a stack of wood in the shape of a pyramid like the symbols we found. Behind where the eye would be there was a loose brick with a note behind it - "Take Leisl to the Rendezvous Point"
We went back to the CSIRO where a plane has been made available for us to fly to Maralinga in. James planned a route to Maralinga via a refueling stop at Wilcania.
After taking off from Wilcania, about halfway to Maralinga, James notices something unsettling and problematic - two World War 1 German biplanes heading towards us.....
 

Continue reading...

  1. The Railway Shooting
    25th September 1956
  2. The Trip to Maralinga
    4th October 1956
  3. The Answers are in Canberra?
    8th October 1956
  4. The other Sydney.....
    Late July 1956
  5. The Return
    15th-16th July 1956
  6. The Return (Part 2)
  7. The Return Part 5
    15th November 1956
  8. The Return Part 6
    20th November 1956
  9. The End or a New Beginning?
  10. The Arrival...
    ?????
  11. The Arrival (Part 2)
  12. The Arrival (Part 3)
  13. The Arrival (Part 4)
  14. The Lake Investigation
    13th-14th July 1956