Space 1999 - The Time Fighters

by Michael Butterworth

  She had tried frantically to get to him, to die with him, but Koenig wouldn’t let her.

  ‘Look after her now, Commander,’ her father called out from the flames. ‘Don’t let her come to me.’ And then his face had gone, consumed by the fire. He hadn’t even cried out in pain.

  Koenig had dragged her away. She had screamed. Screamed.

  ‘MENTOR... MENTOR...!’

  But it was to no avail. The room was still shaking. The hazy outlines of Helena Russell appeared over her face and she lost all sense of who or where she was.

  ‘No, Maya...’ came firm, urgent, gentle, beseeching words. The whiteness above her swirled. Arms shook her. The room shook. ‘Maya... we’re not on Psychon now...’

  Helena was crying.

  Vincent dragged himself to his feet and staggered over to where the two figures of Helena and Maya lay. They were entwined in sheets on the floor amid the chaotic furniture.

  The quaking grew less. Gradually, it stopped. He walked in the sudden silence, half-expecting it to re-start.

  ‘Helena...’ he called. ‘You okay?’

  He shook his head to clear the blockage caused by fear. Helena stirred and rose from the floor. Her hair was disarrayed and her face was tear-stained. She fell against him weakly and he took her weight

  ‘What the hell was it?’ he asked. ‘What the bloody hell did that?’

  She pushed herself away from him. ‘We better try to contact Command. You see to Maya...’ She moved unsteadily toward the wall monitor. It was still switched on. The disturbance had stopped, but Carter’s face was gone. His seat was empty and his console top was covered with rubble and papers in disarray. She placed her finger on the communicator button and kept it pressed.

  Dust covered the entire Command Centre. It had seeped down from between the insulation tiles on the ceiling, many of which were hanging derelictly or had dropped off. The floor was a mass of litter and debris. The computer banks and the other essential electronic equipment seemed to be functioning normally, flashing and winking and humming through the dust motes. Around the screen a small group of staff and operators had gathered. Elsewhere in the Centre, Maintenance Personnel were clearing up the mess and repairing the damage.

  Alan Carter was sitting in the Command Choir – his rightful place when Koenig and Verdeschi were absent from the Base. On the Big Screen was a picture of stars and deep Space, and a frightened, worried look was on his face.

  ‘I said, get Eagle One on the screen,’ he repeated to Sahn.

  The operator was the only one at her console. She looked perplexed, and her fingers hovered over her controls in indecision. ‘Alan, I can’t locate them,’ she said, tightlipped. Her puzzlement turned back to fright. She stared frozenly at Carter. ‘What was that earthquake? We still don’t know.’

  Carter shook his head and made a gesture of helplessness. He wasn’t accustomed to handling emergencies of this magnitude entirely on his own. Usually either Koenig or Verdeschi was present to cope with them. His easy-going Australian manner, with his easy-going avoidance of trouble, was being strained to intolerance. ‘I’m not sure yet,’ he replied to Sahn. ‘Just keep trying to get that Eagle.’

  They continued to watch in deathly silence as Sahn scanned the heavens.

  ‘Nothing...’ Sahn said again after she had tried for several tense moments. ‘I just can’t get a fix on them.’ She stopped suddenly, struck by a terrifying thought. ‘Oh, no...’ she whispered. ‘No... I’ve just realized, whatever caused that shaking might have...’ She broke off, unable to finish.

  The pale faces turned to her, some seeking confirmation of the same thought, others totally mystified and afraid.

  ‘Might have what, Sahn?’ Carter asked impatiently.

  Eagle One hung in the starry firmament next to the wrecked space craft. The two craft were a fraction away from each other, their attempted link-up abandoned in the drama of the moment. They were partly embraced – the macabre embrace of the rotten by the good, motionlessly awaiting judgment of their guilt. From the eye-sockets of the Eagle two gold lights shone warmly out into the vastness – two tiny points of life amid bleak space. There was no sign of the Moon. They were completely and utterly alone.

  Verdeschi stared blankly at the screen. He was numbed with horror and with an acute sense of loss. Not only his home had gone – but so had Maya, too. Perhaps she would never have survived anyway; but now there was no doubt that she would not. Pictures of the warm, sun-drenched fields of his youth in rural Italy, back on Earth, flashed through his mind. She had reminded him of these – of his youth. Now she – and both homes – were gone.

  ‘There’s only one answer, Tony,’ Koenig spoke quietly from his side. He was ashen. He was riveted by the sudden awareness of their vulnerability to the cold, sparkling vastness round about them. His voice was tight with emotion. ‘They must have gone through the Space Warp... and all the time we thought it would be us!’ Grief-stricken, he slammed his hand on the console in front of him.

  Verdeschi found himself operating; he found the practice of years taking him over, the intense military training paying off now when he would otherwise have lost his head completely. With a dazed air of unreality he unconsciously responded to Koenig, his eyes flicking down to his controls and taking in the fuel reading. ‘They could be billions of miles away from us and we’ve got fuel for less than a million,’ he commented dully. His voice sounded remote, not his own.

  The final irony of what had occurred tinged Koenig’s reply with bitterness. ‘It might not make any difference if we had all the fuel we needed...’ He fought down the paranoid fear that tried to claw its way up inside him. ‘We wouldn’t even know in which direction to go.’

  ‘Now, we’ve got to take this calmly,’ Carter began, sensing that his first task was to quell the endemic terror that was spreading through the Command Centre. ‘Everyone back to their posts.’

  The small group of personnel remained where they were, staring fixedly at the Big Screen, at Carter, at each other. For a moment they were rooted to the spot, unable even to comprehend his command. Slowly, awkwardly, they began to disperse towards their consoles.

  Carter trembled, watching them go.

  He had to keep them calm. This one thought – his responsibility, his rank – kept him from coming completely apart. When they had sat down he set them to work, calling out instructions.

  ‘First, locate the position we occupied before we went through the Warp,’ he told Sahn.

  The operator went back to her work. This time it took the computer some moments while it identified the strange, new patterns of stars which now formed their sky. It had to work out whereabouts the Alphans would last have been in order to have seen the stars in their familiar patterns – a mammoth task, comprising many millions of single computations. At length a tiny white indicator dot appeared on the screen among the distant, burning suns.

  ‘That was our position before we went through the Space Warp,’ Sahn announced. She went back to her punching. A second white dot appeared on the screen. It pulsated rapidly, some distance from the first. There was another lengthy pause while the Main Computer worked out the vast distances involved in their journey through Time and Space. The Operator peered intently at her readings and gravely read them out. ‘We’ve moved five light years in a matter of minutes.’

  Carter was grim. ‘Then as we thought, there’s no chance of John ever making it back to Alpha.’

  ‘Unless he finds a window to the Space Warp,’ Helena’s choked voice suddenly burst into the Command Centre, startling them. She was listening in. At first, like the others, she had been mentally stunned. She had been doubly affected. Without a Commander, the Moon Base could at least limp on. But without Koenig, she could not. A new resolve had saved her and fired her into action – the resolve to cling to every last straw of hope in order to re-locate the lost Eagle Ship and deliver its crew safely back to Base.

  Carter shook his head doubtfully. ‘The cha
nces of finding the window are pretty remote... but we can try.’ He turned again to Sahn. ‘What’s our present velocity?’

  ‘Back to normal.’

  He thought about the so-called window. The Space window was just what it sounded like. A window in Space, on Space. The crack in the Space Time fabric. The passage through which the Moon had plunged when the Space Warp opened all around them. Tamed and captured, the powers that had brought the window into existence, that elsewhere bonded the Universe together, would have provided the ability of Time Travel. It would have enabled them, in time, to re-find and reach Earth. But erupting by chance as it had, it served only to act as a bottomless pit that dragged them inside itself and spewed them out randomly. There could be no controlling where they were spewed out; but the window, having let them through, usually stayed stable. And while it stayed, it usually stayed in one place.

  He made a snap decision. He leaned forward and opened a channel with the Eagle Launch Centre. Bill Fraser’s surly face appeared on the screen. ‘Get ready to launch a refuelling Eagle,’ he ordered.

  The other Eagle Pilot nodded and his face faded out. Carter turned to Sahn, aware that she was staring at him with an incredulous expression on her face.

  ‘Okay, so it’s a long shot,’ he said. ‘But if he does find that Space window, he’ll need refuelling to catch up, won’t he?’

  They continued staring at each other, both of their gazes quite hopeless.

  Helena left the video monitor on the Medical Centre wall, satisfied that all that could be done was being done. The rest could only be left up to prayer, she thought. She turned towards where Vincent was already starting to clear up the mess, helped by a few Medical Orderlies. He had got Maya back on her bed and was bending over her, resting his hand on her forehead. The Psychon was writhing about, rolling her body from side to side.

  ‘Mentor – I’m coming for you...!’ Maya moaned in a low, urgent voice. ‘Don’t give up... don’t give up... I’m coming for you.’ Abruptly she sat bolt upright and stared about her, wild-eyed.

  Helena rushed over, drawn by the need of one human being for another. Her feelings for Koenig paradoxically served to increase her feelings for her patient. ‘Maya..!’ she called out in alarm, realizing what the Psychon was trying to do. But she was too late to intervene. She watched helplessly as the woman’s rigid form began to ripple and glow with the fierce light of transformation.

  Vincent stepped hastily away from the spindle of light energy that had formed directly above the bed.

  ‘She might hurt herself...’ he gasped.

  The shimmering light pulsated brightly, changing into neither one thing nor the other. The inborn Psychon ability to change molecular shape at will wasn’t working properly. She wasn’t going to manage it.

  At the last moment the weak outlines of some impossible creature – probably a Psychon animal dredged from her childhood memory – appeared. It had two short hind legs and a wrinkled, grey carapace. It stood on the bed, gazing in bewilderment at them from moist brown eyes. Just as quickly as it had appeared, it faded away, its unstable composition converting back again into the energy spindle. Gradually, that too faded and Maya’s normal form re-appeared, her eyes straining, her skin covered in sweat from the exertion. She sagged back down on the covers again and Vincent and Helena ran forward to catch her.

  ‘Did I try to...?’ she asked them weakly. She was breathing heavily, scarcely able to keep hold of her sanity.

  Helena nodded, soothed her brow with a moist cloth and attached a thermometer to her. She began reading off her ternperature from the meter dial among the clutter of life-saving medical apparatus that had been hastily regathered by the bedside. ‘You have been in a delirium.’

  ‘Oh...’ Maya began. A look of intense alarm had appeared on her face. ‘You must be careful... the nightmares are beginning to take over...’

  Helena stared at her for a moment in awful realization. ‘You mean...?’ She turned to Vincent. ‘Prepare a sedative.’

  Maya shook her head. ‘A sedative... won’t do. Helena, I’m beginning to lose molecular control... I don’t know what might happen...’ She looked worriedly about her. ‘You’ve got to put me in restraints...’

  ‘Maya, I can’t do...’

  ‘Helena, I’m telling you – I can be dangerous... put me in restraints...’ Her eyes closed and she began losing conscious control again.

  Helena looked startled. ‘Ben, give her a sedative first and then put the restraints on her.’

  Vincent nodded. ‘I hope it works.’

  Helena didn’t comment. She moved back to the monitor on the wall. She stabbed at the button and brought Carter’s face back on the screen.

  ‘Command Centre,’ he announced.

  ‘Alan,’ she began gravely. ‘We need a double guard outside the Medical Centre immediately. It’s urgent.’

  She snapped off the set and looked apprehensively at Vincent, who was bending over the still form of Maya. He was holding a hypodermic. Maya was right – the injection wouldn’t work on her brand of alien body cells. Helena remembered finding out that human drugs only worked on the Psychon woman if Maya herself willed them to work. In other words, unless fantastically strong, the drugs did more or less what Maya wished them to. In a state of semi-madness, what they would do to her was anyone’s guess. But Helena found herself unable not to prescribe some kind of treatment. She felt that she had to try something.

  She wondered whether she had done the right thing as she left Vincent working and started off along the corridor leading to the Command Centre. She reasoned finally that the injection probably wouldn’t have any effect at all. After all, Maya ought to know her own peculiar brand of body chemistry better than anyone else on board the Moon Base. She only hoped that the unfortunate woman’s mental breakdown wouldn’t be too severe. She shuddered to think of the consequences if it were.

  The thought was displaced from her mind by the urgency of her concern for Koenig. She found she could not rest until she had satisfied herself that there was more positive information about his well-being and whereabouts. She refused to believe that he had died. She walked into the Command Centre, looking distracted and worried.

  Maintenance staff and cleaners were still busy tidying up, but the main bulk of the work was done and the Centre was looking more normal than she imagined it had looked half an hour ago. Sahn and Carter were behind their consoles and she rushed over to them. Sahn looked dismayed when she saw her condition.

  ‘You’re the doctor, Helena,’ she said. ‘So forgive me for prescribing, but you need some sleep. You look terrible...’ She arose from her console. ‘You sit down. I’ll get you some coffee.’

  Gratefully, Helena did as she was bid. She suddenly felt tired too.

  Carter spoke. ‘If there are any developments, Helena...’

  ‘You’ll let me know,’ she finished for him. ‘I know. But, I... what are the chances, Alan?’

  Carter evaded the question. ‘You know John. He won’t give up.’ He looked away.

  ‘What are the chances of him finding that same Window in Space?’ she persisted. ‘You know what I mean.’

  He hesitated. ‘It depends...’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On luck,’ he admitted, reluctantly. ‘It was a good idea you had, but it’s all down to luck.’

  ‘Luck? In Space?’ she asked, mortified. ‘Then his chances are a billion to one!’ The coffee arrived, but she didn’t notice it. She stared sightlessly in front of her.

  ‘Here...’ Sahn nudged her, exchanging a helpless look with Carter. ‘It’ll make you feel better.’

  Helena shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I have to get back to Maya.’ She arose and smiled unconvincingly at them. ‘Thanks for the coffee.’ She turned away from the console and walked out.

  She realized that she wanted to be on her own; away from people, away from things, away from worries. But the worry of leaving Vincent to cope on his own with Maya kept naggi
ng her and she hurried back. As she neared the Medical Centre and saw the two Security Guards she had requested standing outside the doors, she realized with a start that she had neglected to tell the others of her fears. Nor had Carter asked why she had wanted the Guards – probably because her mood of dejection had distracted him.

  Because of her selfishness the security of the Moon Base and everyone on it had been put at risk.

  Angry with herself, she increased her step, intent on getting Carter back on the Medical Centre monitor before anything serious happened.

  She was too late.

  Before she had quite reached the Guards she noticed their trained bodies tense and their heads turn fractionally towards the doors they were guarding. They were reacting to some noise or commotion from within. Their hands leaped automatically to their lasers and withdrew them. They spun round to face the doors.

  The doors parted and a deep-throated growl issued from within. It was the growl of some large creature in pain or rage, and it was followed by a succession of blood-curdling noises.

  She watched in fearful fascination as the Guards backed away and commenced firing their lasers through the open door. The howls of pain and rage increased as the burning lances stabbed home, goading instead of killing their prey. The creature’s ferocious cries rose to a fury and a moment later its horrendous, enraged form appeared framed in the doorway.