Helen of Troy

     The Trojan War began with the abduction of a woman, i.e., of Helen of Sparta by Paris of Ilium. The Goddess of Discord, miffed at not being invited to a feast in Olympus (Now be reasonable – who in their right mind would invite discord to a party?) in retaliation rolled a golden apple into the assembled deities, labeled “To the Fairest”. Of course, all the Goddesses were sure the apple was meant for them, but only three were powerful enough to make their case before Zeus – Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. Possessed of infinite wisdom as he was, Zeus was NOT about to fall for that trap, so he instructed the three lovelies to present themselves before the mortal Paris, who would judge between them.

 The Judgement of Paris, by Henri Pierre Picou

     So off they went. Not wishing to leave things to chance, and definitely not trusting the judgement of this foolish mortal, each of the Goddesses decided to bribe Paris in hopes of his deciding in her favor. Hera offered to make Paris the King of the World, while Athena would bestow upon him wisdom and skill in all his endeavors. Aphrodite, however, knew the surest way to a man’s heart and promised Paris the most beautiful woman on Earth to be his bride. Apparently without the slightest hesitation, Paris awarded the apple to Aphrodite.

The Rape of Helen, by Francesco Primaticcio

     There was, however, only one tiny little, almost too insignificant to mention, problem. (Isn’t there always?) The most beautiful woman in the world was already the wife of Menelaus of Sparta. And although Aphrodite had technically offered Helen to Paris, she seems to have done nothing to actually procure her for him. He had to abduct her himself, and drag her by force off to Troy. What follows is, as Paul Harvey used to say, “The Rest of the Story”…

     In like manner, the action proper in The Skylark of Space begins in earnest with the kidnapping of Dorothy Vaneman, fiancée to Dick Seaton. Stymied in his first attempts to gain a monopoly over Seaton’s discoveries, DuQuesne decides on “indirect action”. That is, he will kidnap Dorothy, spirit her away in a duplicate of Seaton’s spaceship, and hold her for ransom – the ransom being sole possession of everything Seaton and Crane have learned about the mysterious Metal of Power and its applications to industry and weaponry. And so he does, and everything goes precisely according to plan… for about the first 15 seconds or so.

Not Dorothy Vaneman, but definitely captures what must have been 
Dorothy's mood at being hauled off  by DuQuesne.

("Helen of Troy" by Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys)

 

     Dorothy, in her struggles to avoid being tied up by DuQuesne’s henchman Perkins, kicks him straight into the spaceship’s control panel, causing his body to by chance drive the acceleration lever all the way to its maximum setting. The resultant extreme G-force causes everyone to black out, and before you know it they are hopelessly lost in interstellar space, hundreds of light years from the Earth.

     Naturally, Seaton and Crane set off in hot pursuit, and the greatest adventure ever imagined by anyone, ever, anywhere (or at least until 1928) begins.