Le Trio de l'étrange

Book Series infobox
Series = Yoko Tsuno
Name = Le Trio de l'étrange
Type = Comics
Author = Roger Leloup


Background = Orange
Released = 1972
Genre = Bande dessinée
Pages =
Publisher = Dupuis
This Book = "Le Trio de l'étrange"
(1972)
Next Book = "L'Orgue du Diable"
(1973)

"Le Trio de l'étrange" ("The Trio of the Bizarre") is the first book from Yoko Tsuno comic book series written by Roger Leloup and published in 1972. (ISBN 2-8001-0666-2)

tory

The story begins at the TV studio where Vic and Pol are working on a documentary about dreaming. Ironically, Pol has fallen asleep at his camera and nearly wrecks the recording.

On their way home late in the night, Vic and Pol witness a crane moving by itself on a construction site and depositing a female figure in an office building. Reacting quickly, they climb after the woman via the crane and corner her and a couple of men - but as it turns out, the young woman was actually hired to break into the building to test a new alarm system. Intrigued by the girl's expertise in electrical systems, Vic decides to hire her for the station, and the girl - by the name of Yoko Tsuno - readily accepts.

Some time later, Yoko, Vic and Pol intend to make a documentary about the course of an underground river. For this purpose, they are equipped with scuba equipment and a special non-toxic dye with which to trace the river to its point of exit. But soon after the dye has spread in the river, the water level suddenly rises. As the three attempt to swim back, the water suddenly falls again, sucking them down a tunnel - and right onto a grill, which is under the supervision of a highly advanced, blue-skinned humanoid race, the Vineans!

Yoko, Vic and Pol are quickly taken captive and brought to a place where they are given translator headphones and meet two people of importance: Khany, a high-ranking official, and Karpan, head of the Vinean security. When Karpan attempts to take the trio away and manhandles Khany, Pol and Yoko impulsively help her out, Yoko nearly getting killed by the vengeful Karpan in the process.

In order to take them to central control and to its controlling unit, the Central Computer, Khany takes Yoko and company to a nearby vessel (called 'magnetophysil') where they meet Poky, Khany's younger sister. During the journey, Khany tells them of their people's origins in the M33 galaxy and their coming to Earth. But soon they have hostile company: Karpan has sent two of his men after them in a tunnel-boring device, in order to eliminate them.

Inspired by a complaint by Pol, Yoko, Pol and Khany climb into space suits and proceed to separate the hind part of the magnetophysil to defeat their pursuers. They just manage to do so as the vehicles are inside a vast cave whose bottom consists of a pool of magma. But in the process, Khany's breathing equipment is damaged and she passes out. Yoko frantically manages to contact central control, and the person answering advises them to push a certain button. But as Vic reaches for it, Yoko suddenly realizes that she has understood her contact person "without" her translator (she had taken it off to check Khany's heartbeat) and just stops Vic in time. Khany comes around to warn them that the button would have opened the cockpit and thus exposed them to the volcanic gases, to kill them by asphyxiation.

Arriving at the central control, Yoko and the others are taken for mind-probing by the Central Computer. Yoko chooses to go first and uses a meditative technique to hide her thoughts from the computer, making the probing impossible. Just as the Vineans intend to take Yoko away, Pol holds them at bay with a disintegrator he had taken along as a precaution. Khany takes them to a living module (usually used to adapt Vineans to Earth conditions) to keep them safe.

Later that night, Yoko finds Poky sneaking into the module and warning them about Karpan and someone she calls "the one who talks but cannot be seen". Yoko follows Poky, who takes her right to the core of the Central Computer, where she runs into Karpan (whom she knocks out) and the Central Computer. But to her horror, the computer is actually a sentient being which is subtly controlling the Vineans for its own ends and now intends to do the same with humanity - starting with Yoko and her friends. With the help of Pol's and Karpan's disintegrators Yoko and Vic manage to defeat the computer by cracking its protective hull and thus releasing its substance: pure living energy.

Just then Karpan threatens to blow up the Vinean realm by detonating a thermal bomb. Cornering Yoko, he fires at her several times but hits the support legs of a power accumulator instead, which falls right on top of him. Yoko and Vic drag him out of the wreckage. Defeated, Karpan admits that it was the computer that had answered her call above the lava lake and urges them to leave the grottos, as they ostensibly contain a gas which proves fatal to earthlings upon long-time exposure.

Khany and her friends quickly arrange for Yoko and the others to return to the surface again, giving them several gifts: special translator headphones which also work as telepathic communication devices, and a crystalline orb which is supposed to signal them when the gas has been neutralized. With a promise to see each other again, Yoko, Vic and Pol part from the Vineans as friends and return to the surface.