Judge 6.1: Nordo

Turn on the Philco console and let it warm up while you dim the lights—it’s time for Ricochet Silent Radio! Yes, Ricochet’s home for radio show fantasy and fanfiction takes to the air with the second act of Judge 6: No Fear of Flying!

(Voice of Judge Mental): “Over Ricochet’s silent airwaves, I’ve handled atomic bombs, killed a squad of orbital pirates, stolen the Soviet space shuttle, and prevented a new Civil War. But nothing could prepare me for man’s ultimate challenge: a crazy ex-girlfriend who’s out for revenge. She became famous, went way farther left than AOC, and adopted a criminal identity that’s on the edge of endangering the entire world. Hey, we’ve all been there. But why me?”

Announcer: Last week, we met Andrew “Limey” Moulton, the heir to one of Britain’s family fortunes, the still-thriving remnant of a 19th-century empire of greenhouses. In 2025, Andrew Moulton is wrapping up his philanthropy, but he’s not above a quip here and there.

Hero with a dark edge? Or a lively, funny thinker who is instinctively one of us? “Limey” Moulton is a transatlantic ally of the secretive Ricochet Online Guild. The ROGs (“rogues”) include Arahant, the Rhodys, Matt Balzer, and Percival; Thelonius and Jason Rudert from Salt Lake City’s friendly religious dominion, and Judge Mental. They’ve all flown to London to join Moulton at a London air show, and the televised opening of a new museum of technology.

And now, the second part of Judge 6: No Fear of Flying.

Judge Mental: We cleared customs at Heathrow by mid-afternoon, and there was Andrew Moulton with the promised line of vehicles. Most of the gang was ferried directly to Thursday night’s big event, a lavish charity ball at Alexandra Palace in north London. Andrew Moulton and I were dropped off at Heston Aerodrome, a preserved 1930s airfield, to be photographed together at the sunset arrival of an airship that would dock there overnight to play a major part in Friday morning’s celebration. We’d join the party when the photo session was done.

But the helium blimp was seriously late. The photographer finally made his apologies and left. It was nightfall when the ungainly giant came into view. There were only a handful of workers on the field, preparing for tomorrow’s crowds. We were alone on the reviewing stand, waiting for a ride to the hillside party, in line of sight of here. A 1930s Tannoy loudspeaker horn, part of the nostalgia display, blared the ground-to-air radio channel. But the pilots were having trouble. I couldn’t understand them. Some kind of medical issue? I heard “Nordo, nordo,” but the radio was working. Then the engines stopped.

Judge knows aviation. “I didn’t like this. I left the stands and wandered off for a smoke. The airship nosed around aimlessly. Suddenly I was gripped by the strangest, strongest sensation, like I was suddenly upside-down. It went away. But when the airfield’s rotating beacon light came back to me, so did the intense sensation of dizziness. I had no time to think or wonder about it. Very strange.

The pilot’s voice was erratic, garbled, frightened. The ship was now overhead, drifting in the wind. The loudspeaker called out urgently, “Everyone! Leave the field at once! At once!” The airship crew abruptly bailed out, barely above parachuting altitude.

The pilotless ship’s tail backed into a light tower, ripping a hole in the canvas. “That can’t be good,” I thought, and then the breeze carried an ominous smell.

I had just enough time to turn towards Moulton and say, “That’s not helium,” and then the airship EXPLODED, filling the skies with horrifying flames. It fell towards us, faster and faster as the two of us ran frantically, diving for cover when the burning steel framework of the huge ship hit the ground.

I heard Andrew’s voice. “Are you hurt? Are you all right?” I pulled myself up. We both stood there, in the heat and the glare of orange flames. He said, dispassionately, “That was no accident. You know that, right? They wanted to eliminate someone. Specifically, you and me.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. He’d sized it up right. The kindly gardener wasn’t quite as unworldly as he looked. Moulton had a certain shrewdness to him.

“There’s a railway station about a mile from here.”

The rest of our friends were totally unaware of all this. They were at Alexandra Palace, a Victorian monument on a hilltop, commanding a view of all of London. We didn’t dare approach them; it was clear by now that Andrew Moulton and I were being singled out and someone sinister was watching for us. So we took a tube to Muswell Hill, next to the “Ally Pally” and made phone calls from a pub nearby, the John Logie Baird at 122 Fortis Green. I reached Matt Balzer. Nobody knew much yet. Our pals understood that Moulton and I were in danger and wanted to help. The London papers were already on the streets: “Heston Airship CRASH. ‘Pilot Irrational’-Authorities.”

Andrew’s contacts were hunting down whoever “Nordo” was. Hank and Percival and the Ricochet gang, intercepting pieces of the investigation, were on the case of a mysterious Mr. Sutton Coldfield.

But they were all wrong. I could have told them that “Nordo” is a pilot’s term; it means “no radio.” There had to be something that the pilots wanted to tell us. Something connected to the mysterious waves that caused the airship disaster. Connected to when I was dizzy and disoriented in that rotating beacon of light. They couldn’t use the radio, or they warned us not to use it. We might never know.

But as for the other mystery? I asked, “Who is Sutton Coldfield?”

“It’s not a who, it’s where the BBC–to be accurate, the Post Office, in charge of the nation’s television transmitters–placed a powerful broadcasting relay station in the early Fifties. Alexandra Palace, where our friends are sipping champagne, is the other big one. This puzzle is an arrow, pointing north, somehow related to television, to its earliest moments.”

“Looks like a train journey is in the cards.”

“Can I suggest the kind of more traditional train you don’t really see anymore — the ones with swing doors and bench seats and compartments? There’s tradition to be upheld, you see.”

We boarded an overnight coach and tried to sleep. The railway porter brought a meager breakfast at daybreak. I looked to the opposite bench at my traveling companion. We barely knew each other.

He said quietly, “I had a strange dream that we were on the lam.”

“Sounds realistic.”

“We found refuge at a Little Chef motorway restaurant. Do you know what that is? They were everywhere, but they aren’t around anymore. It’s like a Howard Johnson’s, I suppose. Thing is, there was something “off.” The cars outside, you’ve never heard of them, a Vauxhall Cresta, an Austin Se7en, and a Morris Minor. I was sure it had to be real. That 1961 jukebox, the menu, the high-heeled waitress with a beehive hairdo…the overflowing ashtrays…we are back in time. Now this was voodoo.”

“Odd dream. Like someone was messing with your head. You were only about thirty yards from me; maybe you caught a touch of the Mystery Mind Ray and didn’t know it.”

The railway porter opened the compartment and cleared the breakfast dishes. He handed a telegram to Andrew. “Wire for you, sir.” When the porter left, he opened and read it. He was expressionless, but then he’s English. They have a gift for it.

“My boys at CITRON have been busy. MI5 now knows it was a directed energy beam of some sort. That rotating beacon light reflected some of it down, but the chaps in the airship got it full blast. Poor blokes, never had a chance,” he said softly. After a pause, he added, “The authorities would like us to let them handle it.” His tone of voice indicated that he did not necessarily endorse the idea.

“By the way, shouldn’t I be calling you “sir,” or “your grace,” or something?”

“We Moultons always resisted the idea of taking a title. Not every neighbor was as principled. Hence, just 'Mr.' will do quite nicely, thank you.” We rolled through a less attractive stretch of barren land. A forlorn playing field was overgrown and abandoned.

“Part of Tiddly Tilden’s estates. They play dirty rugger here, I can tell you. You may never run across a more wretched hive of scrum and villein-y—”

“How long have you been waiting to make that joke?”

“Since I thought of it just now.”

“When did you glom on to something being wrong here?”

“When Phoebe, the new Lady Tilden, was announced as a patroness of the Heston Aerodrome’s fundraiser. Lord Astor and Lady 'Psycho' sponsored the airship. They had to have known that we would be separated from the others and taken to the airfield.”

“You mean you already knew that the Tildens were going to pull something? That there’s something deeply un-kosher about this entire set-up?”

“My dear fellow, I’ve been on to his Lordship’s current racket, if I may call it that, for nearly two years, but like the Scarlet Pimpernel, he’s been rather elusive. Until now. Your presence in our sceptered isles appears to have thrown their timeline akilter. So much the better.”

(Network announcer): You are listening to Nordo, the second act of Judge 6: No Fear of Flying. We pause for local identification.

(Local announcer): This is KRCH-AM 870, Ricochet’s voice in southern California. (Female autotuned chorus “R-r-r-Ric-o-chet!”) The time is ten o’clock.

You know, Mental fans, with the AIM Awards coming up soon, your friends and neighbors here at KRCH would positively love it if you would drop a postcard to AIM saying you listen to our programs. Just address it to the Academy of Imaginary Media, Hollywood, California. You’ll be glad you did, and so will we.

(Network announcer): And now back to Judge 6.1: Nordo.

(Program Announcer): During his rise to power, antagonizing even members of his own family, Lord Astor Lenox Tilden was “credited” with a ruthless, financially successful reign at ICI, Imperial Chemical Industries. It was then that he acquired the nickname he hated forevermore, one that he would never shed, “The Icy Eye.”

(Andrew Moulton): “Don’t get the wrong impression. The Tildens may have a bit of a bad streak in them, but they weren’t all a bad lot, not at all. It must be said that in times of national emergency, Tildens and Moultons permitted themselves to be photographed together, smiling with various degrees of sincerity, of course. Why, in the Second World War, the newsreels showed young Miss Catherine, the Lady Moulton, sewing 500 small compasses into 500 jackets for airborne invasion forces, the first of 500 women to do so. Lady Tilden was the second.

“The feud between the families was a settled issue for most of a century. Until it became a dormant but settled one. And then, with the newest Lord Tilden, because there was money to be made in the conflict, bit by bit, it didn’t seem so settled anymore.”

We took a zig-zag railway path all day and changed trains at a sleepy regional junction. A shop that served fried potatoes with sausage seemed like culinary heaven, and there was even the luxury of a radio playing in the background. “They must have noticed us missing by now,” Andrew murmured politely.

---“And that was 'Live at the Jive Live,’ Coming up in a quarter-hour, 'Hovercraft UK.'” Five beeps, top of the hour. “This is BBC Radio 4. In national news, authorities are not certain of the location of English philanthropist Andrew Moulton, or of his apparent traveling companion, US computer expert and former astronaut John Mantle, who was 'outed' as being the avenger, Judge Mental. They were now known to have survived a strange zeppelin accident in Hertfordshire.

"Mr. Mantle, or Mental, was scheduled to be part of a celebration of world technical heroism there. He and Mr. Moulton are still scheduled to appear in Bradford on Sunday night. Two nights ago, a Moulton-sponsored event celebrating historic video recordings opened with a party at the Alexandra Palace on Muswell Hill.”

We heard the conductor’s warning whistle and ran back to our train. I got to our compartment first. There was a telegram waiting on the table. I glanced down at it and read a few words. I suddenly realized two things: unlike the other telegram, this wasn’t in a sealed envelope, it was just lying out. The other thing was, I didn’t hear the door lock’s ‘click.’ That realization came a fraction of a second before I was sapped behind the ear and hit the floor, unconscious.

When I came to, Andrew was there. “Can you speak? What happened?” I told him about the telegram, which was, of course, gone.

“I saw it only for a moment before I got slugged over the head. It was your CITRON intercepting a Tilden text that said, or seemed to say, ‘Likely to Fail.'”

“Very reasonable memory under duress, considering you had only a moment to read it before you got knocked out, Judge. But I think it probably said, “Ilkley to Falkirk.”

“Ilkley?” “Posh suburb. By the standards of the North, it’s like your Beverly Hills. It’s near our destination in the city of Bradford.”

“Are we done with the spine of Britain travelogue?”

“Ah, magnificent bridge, don’t you think?” Then he dropped the tour guide act. “The unsealed envelope means 'they' may have read it. Here’s where we must jump off the train.”

“Oh, swell.” If it hadn’t been Andrew, I would have used a markedly stronger oath. As if it were the most normal thing in Moulton’s dignified world, we walked to the end of the train car, leaned out into the wind, and jumped. We made it, with only a few bruises. Our clothes got dirty. We’d live.

Announcer: Hiking across northern England, after a surreptitious look around, the two hungry vagabonds eagerly steal a few berries. It sends Judge Mental into a hungry soliloquy. “Blackberries. Always been my favorite, from when we were kids going blackberry picking on my cousin’s farm. The vines in the garden were off limits; belonged to my aunt for pies, preserves and such.”

“Judge, I am truly surprised. I had no idea you were part of this part of life.”

“I say we went picking, but we never brought back a single one, just ate them as fast as we picked. Big, juicy, perfect berries. Like we’re doing now.”

Andrew: “There’s a particular sort of sweet plant that attracts the prothonotary warbler. My distant ancestors knew the high value the world placed on that rare quality. Sweetness, but natural, not forced. Worth searching the globe for it. By the way, that’s why we endowed the music colleges. To further the cause of bringing beauty into our lives.”

We got to Leeds on foot. It’s a big, anonymous city. We got rooms at a small hotel near the railway station. “Looks like it’s chow time. Let’s eat. Where should we go?”

Andrew (shuddered), “Not that Scottish place, I hope.”

“Oh, cut it out, Andrew. That gag worked for Malcolm McDowell in 1979, sure, but now there are, let’s see, 15 McDonalds within 400 yards of here.” We ended up going to a curry shop. I had a fine vindaloo. Andrew stared at his naan, pushed it away, then brightly pulled an orange out of his coat pocket, kept for culinary emergencies like this.

We took a black cab to a tailor’s shop. Within a short time, we were furnished with clean clothes: suits, shirts and ties. All Andrew said was, “We’ll be needing this.” He offered the Moulton credit card, but the staff wouldn’t hear of it. “Your money’s no good here, sir. Best of luck to you, sir.” They understood.

As we entered our tourist hotel with the tailor’s boxes and got our keys, I looked over someone’s shoulder at the TV set in the lobby.

“BBC West Yorkshire. In Bradford, a gala 100-year tribute to critical developments in radio, television, and computation opens tomorrow night. VIPs of tech companies are gathering in the historic city of North Central England, ostensibly for the Electronic Century Exposition, but a great deal is also happening behind the scenes. It’s a time of great turbulence in the world economy and Big Tech is fighting back.

“The efficient regional airfields are handling the overflow of private business jets. 'We are open for landing and open for business,' emphasized West Yorkshire Airports. Arrivals are lined up on the apron, wingtip to wingtip. There are always elite social events as part of any meeting at this level; it’s never all business. There are closed briefings, a swarm of midnight conferences that we only know about because the rooms, staff and security teams have been booked according to law.”

Andrew frowned. “There’s far more there than meets the eye, and no error. This isn’t Tiddly Tilden’s style at all. The old Icy Eye does his evil deeds himself, employing no flunkies to take his orders.”

I looked at the TV images of billionaire tech CEOs laughing it up on the tarmac and rendered Judge’s verdict: “Unless this time he’s the flunky taking the orders.”

(Musical cue)

Judge Mental: “I didn’t want to play games. I wanted to solve the puzzles and get out of there. I always find a way. But it’s not so easy when a dame is involved and lives are at stake. This time, the stakes would be higher than I could have imagined.”

Announcer: So remember, tune in next week for the exciting finale of Judge 6: No Fear of Flying! That’s Monday, June 30^th! Exclusively over the Ricochet Silent Radio Network!