Dr. Zachary Smith

Full name: Zachary Smith.
Birth date: November 6, 1945
Height: 5 feet, 11 inches
Weight: 190 pounds
Eyes: Green Hair: Brown-gray
Rank: Colonel
Hobbies/interests: Opera, chess, gardening, gourmet food and wine

Colonel (Dr.) Zachary Smith was the United States Space Corps' staff psychologist and environmental expert prior to his unexpected departure from Earth.

He spent his earliest years in lower Manhattan (New York City), until his parents were killed in a boating accident. The young Smith then went to live with his Aunt Maude and Uncle Thaddeus in Marietta, Georgia. "Aunt Maude was the matriarch of the Smith family, and she raised Zachary with a stern hand. In his own words, the doctor admitted that sometimes he had 'a tendency to be lazy,' but the determined lady pressured him into obtaining reasonable grades at school. Through her considerable social connections, she managed to obtain Marshall scholarships for the entrance of both Zachary and his cousin Jeremiah to Oxford University."

At Oxford, Smith worked on his degree in psychology, and became the Grand Master of the Oxford Chess Society for three years in a row. He later entered Harvard University, where he earned his doctorate. After graduation, he joined the United States Air Force.

Over the next 16 years, he had "an exceptional career as a military psychologist," and was stationed at a number of U.S. military bases in the United States and Europe. He was promoted to Colonel in 1995, and then transferred to the recently formed United States Space Corps. The USSC sent him to its Houston (Texas) Training Center, where he went through an extensive retraining program. "The training combined his expertise as a psychologist with a new branch of medicine dealing with the stress and pressures that would be put on future space colonists." Only about two dozen people in the world specialized in this field, known as Environmental Space Psychology.

Smith was involved in the artificial intelligence programming for the Jupiter 2's Model B-9 robot. He reviewed the psychological fitness of potential pilots for colonization missions, as well as volunteers for the missions, including the Robinson family. Smith performed the final stress-analysis examinations of the Robinsons before they left Earth.

The above information was taken from the standard USSC personnel file. But there was another side to Zachary Smith, which Alpha Control officials pieced together after they began to suspect that Smith's disappearance at the time of the Jupiter 2's ill-fated launch was more than a coincidence.

Smith's Aunt Maude's husband, the late Thaddeus Smith, was an eccentric, superstitious and bizarre person who had a bad influence on young Zachary and his cousin Jeremiah. It was discovered that Smith's high grades were largely due to cheating and bribery, and that his entrance to Oxford was due to a bribe paid by his prosperous Aunt. Zachary and Jeremiah hadn't wanted to attend college in England, but Aunt Maude convinced them by promising that whoever graduated first would inherit her fortune. Within six weeks of entering Oxford, Jeremiah was expelled for gambling and returned to Georgia. Shortly thereafter, Aunt Maude died mysteriously. Jeremiah disappeared.

Under the circumstances, the terms of Aunt Maude's will were revised so that the last surviving Smith cousin would receive her fortune. Zachary, without the comfortable income he had become accustomed to, dropped out of Oxford for a while, and traveled around Europe "as a common drifter." During this period, he apparently was contacted by an intelligence agent--whether of a country that considered itself an enemy of the United States or a hostile alien civilization isn't clear--and was offered a substantial sum of money to act as a future plant within the United States Air Force.

Smith returned to the United States with a degree from Oxford (now known to be forged). His intelligence contacts saw to it that he was admitted to Harvard.

Smith later used his position as a military psychologist to learn classified information from his patients, using hypnosis and other means. "His cover was obviously a good one, for while Smith never made many friends with his caustic personality, he did develop an excellent reputation as a doctor, and no one ever suspected his true purpose within the military."

During his military career, Smith's tastes became very expensive, and he pressured his intelligence contacts to get him a position that would gain him greater income. They installed him as an operative within the USSC, along with several other operatives already there, collectively known by the code name Aeolus Umbra. [Note: "Aeolus" is the Latin name for the god of the winds; "umbra" is the Latin word for a ghost or spirit.]

The destruction of the Jupiter 1 in 1993, which was officially attributed to a fuel system malfunction, was probably due to sabotage by these agents. Although Smith was not involved in that disaster, he undoubtedly had help from other agents within the Space Corps with his attempt to destroy the second colonization ship.

After the launch of the Jupiter 2 on October 16, 1997, Smith's behavior became increasingly bizarre and childish (according logs that John Robinson left on interstellar fuel barge F-12, which were later retrieved by Alpha Control). Within a year, Smith was a mere shell of his former self.

The final paragraph of the Alpha Control profile of Smith reads as follows:

"Now that the investigation into Col. Smith's background has been concluded…the decision is up to the President as to whether Smith should be tried in absentia for murder, attempted murder, espionage, etc. Considering the negative publicity such a trial would receive, the current mental condition of the man, and the simple fact that Smith will probably never return to Earth to have whatever sentence he received carried out, we can only recommend that the man not be brought to trial unless he returns to his home planet."