‘In the burial tradition of my species, I have ejected my crew members out into Space and at the conclusion of this report I will join them.’
The Commander of the Menon fell silent. His face twitched nervously again. Then his image faded out of existence.
The two Alphans felt the sense of dejection grow. What had happened to the alien Commander and his Mothership had happened with them and the Moon Base. In a dissimilar but equally effective way it had also happened with the Moon Base and Mother Earth.
‘If it’s any consolation to him... we know how he feels,’ Verdeschi said numbly.
‘We owe him for pointing the way,’ Koenig said respectfully. But there was no time for any feeling more befitting. ‘Cartridge 26?’
For some reason the cartridges were un-numbered and he had to count them out. Uncomfortably he realized that Cartridge 26 was one of the ones which he had already viewed and which had been almost completely incomprehensible to him.
Security Guards armed with lasers flashed down the long, gleaming corridors of the Moon Base. TV monitors in the walls kept a total vigil of the stricken area. All personnel who were non-Security had been ordered to stay behind their locked doors.
Carter touched the buttons on his control console, keeping himself visually in contact with the emergency. The Launch Reception Area appeared on the monitor and he watched the tight semi-circle of Guards waiting in front of the Travel Tube doors. The Tube had been reported as being in operation. He watched the doors gape open and the Guards tense. But they had no need of fear. The Tube was empty; Maya had well and truly managed to lose herself. He scowled with annoyance and worry and snapped the screen off. He punched another control and got through to the Life Support Centre.
A technician appeared and stood dutifully before the screen. ‘Life Support,’ he announced.
‘Anything?’ Carter asked him.
‘It’s not in this area, Mr Carter.’
He cleared the screen and punched a general channel. ‘Attention all Security Personnel. Corridors are clear, Travel Tubes clear, Life Support Area clear, Levels C and D clear. Check levels A and B.’
His voice boomed out to all corners of the Moon Base, above and below ground. He turned anxiously to Helena, who was standing behind him. ‘It’s got to be somewhere on this Base.’
The doctor’s drawn face looked deeply thoughtful. ‘If Maya’s still in control... if her brain’s still feverish,’ she pronounced at length, ‘she’ll still be trying to get to Psychon.’
‘The Launch Pads are sealed off. She can’t get an Eagle,’ Sahn commented from her console.
‘It might take a little time, but we’ll get her,’ Carter promised unconvincingly.
Helena nodded, keeping up the wretched pretence that none of them felt. A far deeper, for her a more pressing thought haunted her soul. What about John? WHAT ABOUT JOHN? the dwarfed voice screamed out inside her, but it might never be answered.
The locust-like visage of the Menon Commander was back on the screen. Unknown to Koenig, Cartridge 26, which he had briefly examined, also contained instructions from the alien interspaced in the perplexing chart diagrams and calculations. Presumably the dead Commander had reasoned that his instructions would help whoever tried to decipher them, but they only threw Koenig and Verdeschi into worse confusion.
‘... this stage of the operation is critical,’ his whispering voice told them. His face was replaced momentarily by another of the meaningless diagrams, then re-appeared again. ‘However, the rest of the procedure is relatively simple.’
‘Simple!’ Verdeschi retorted. ‘Perhaps if we had Maya here.’ He gritted his teeth at the sudden feelings he had unwittingly dredged up inside.
‘Well, we haven’t,’ Koenig said calculatingly. ‘I understand a part of what he’s trying to say... We’ll take the instructions across to the Eagle and study them.’
‘It’s a long shot...’ the Italian commented dejectedly.
‘It’s a shot – now let’s find that Warp Locator.’
Once again they started searching the lockers and compartments of the Menon.
At length they found what they were after.
It was a complex set of probes which at one time had been attached to the exterior of the ship. Long ago, they had been brought in for repair. Whether or not they had been fully repaired, the Menon Commander had neglected to say.
Now another thought struck Verdeschi. ‘John... even if we break through that Space Warp to the other side... we can never catch up to Alpha before we run out of fuel.’
Koenig did not answer until he had started climbing back into the various parts of his space suit. ‘Tony, it is my hunch that everyone on Alpha is working on that contingency.’
A waste of stars appeared on the Big Screen in the Command Centre.
The two marker dots which had been superimposed on the picture to indicate the present position of the mad, hurtling Moon and the point of its Past emergence from the Time Fault, had drastically increased in distance from one another. A tiny, almost invisible dot of light lost among the stars had been marked with a red circle. It was the Eagle which had been left to greet Koenig and Verdeschi if and when they managed to make it.
Carter called to Sahn while carefully studying the screen. ‘Patch me into the Refuelling Eagle.’
Helena’s presence was a continual reminder to him that as well as a rampaging out-of-control Psychon on their hands they still had the tragedy of Eagle One.
Sahn obligingly punched a button. ‘Moon Base Alpha to Eagle Three... Moon Base Alpha to Eagle Three...’
‘Eagle Three to Moon Base Alpha,’ a glum voice replied. ‘Go ahead.’
Sahn punched more buttons and the image of the Eagle Three Pilot was transferred to Carter’s screen.
‘What’s your position, Eagle Three?’ he asked.
‘E.T.A. to rendezvous point, seven minutes, twelve seconds.’
‘Rendezvous point, we hope,’ Helena spoke softly to herself. Then to an absent Koenig: ‘My darling.’
Carter brought a more detailed picture of the Spacial Area on to the screen. Now there were three marker dots on it and the marker circle. The area of Space had been enlarged to include the estimated position of the Moon before it had entered the warp, and was marked by the third dot.
‘When you reach rendezvous point, cruise the area,’ Carter told the listening Eagle Pilot.
‘For how long?’ the other asked.
‘Until you’ve reached the point of no return,’ Carter answered cryptically.
But the Pilot understood. He nodded and broke off the link. Just as he vanished, the monitor started bleeping furiously again and the pale face of a Security Guard came on the screen.
‘Mr Carter, we’ve cornered the animal at Airlock 7,’ he reported breathlessly. ‘It seems hell bent on getting out of Alpha.’
Carter nodded. ‘On our way,’ he said.
He and Helena rushed from their positions towards the exit.
Perhaps fortunately for them all, Maya’s present manifestation, although more physically violent than the others, didn’t seem to enjoy basking in the laser beams quite so much. In fact, it pointedly avoided them. It had avoided the Travel Tubes, which it knew to be heavily guarded. It had chosen instead the airlock. But in a way, this was by far a more serious situation for the rest of the Alphans than the first.
This thought was what compelled Helena and Carter to run so fast. They arrived exhausted at the scene, appalled by what they saw. A group of Guards were bunched together in the passageway, each aiming a laser at the horned creature which was mauling the airlock and shaking it violently.
Between Carter and the Guards were gored bodies, cut and gashed and lying in pools of their own blood.
‘It’s still trying to get to Psychon,’ Alan said, sickened. ‘It’s getting more desperate.’
‘If she smashes the airlock, explosive decompression will wipe out everyone in this section of Alpha!’ Helena cried. T
hey raced towards the Guards.
‘You set on stun?’ Carter asked them. They nodded. ‘Then fire!’
The guns blazed out, once more enveloping the creature in a blaze of burning fire. But it shook the effects off and continued battering the airlock.
Helena moved swiftly back along the corridor to the nearest wall monitor. She punched the frequency that would link her directly to the Main Computer. ‘Open inner door to Airlock Seven,’ she instructed it. She turned and watched the insensate Maya still on the attack. Slowly, the doors drew open of their own volition, responding to her instruction. Frantically, the creature moved inside and recommenced its assault – this time on the outer door.
Carter, who had been watching with the Guards, turned round and looked at her in alarm. ‘What are you doing?’ he demanded. ‘If she gets out of that airlock on to the surface, she’ll die instantly!’
Helena ignored him and turned back to the monitor. ‘Computer – close inner door to Airlock Seven.’
She turned and watched the doors close, trapping Maya.
Carter was sprinting towards her. Before he could protest further she got Vincent on the screen.
‘Medical Section,’ he announced.
‘I want an anaesthetic gas cylinder down to Airlock Seven. Make it fast!’ she snapped.
‘Right – I’m on my way.’ The connection broke and the screen went dead. She moved swiftly back to the airlock, followed by Carter, who now understood what she was trying to do. She activated the airlock screen and they soon had a picture of the enraged creature battering the outer doors.
‘In that confined space the anaesthetic should have an immediate effect,’ she said.
‘It’d better,’ Carter commented darkly. ‘Don’t forget she’s a different animal now from last time.’
The airlock doors were thick and strong and kept the deluded prisoner absorbed until Vincent arrived at the head of the corridor pushing a trolley at a break-neck pace.
He charged through the Guards and brought the trolley containing the small cylinder of gas to an abrupt halt in front of the airlock doors. Carter grabbed the tank while Helena opened a small flap in the wall which read: ‘Emergency Air Supply – Airlock Seven’.
They screwed the cylinder adaptor nozzle into the receptor beneath the flap and switched on. A sharp hiss of escaping gas, muffled by the piping, told them that the anaesthetic was being administered.
They watched the airlock interior gradually fill with a fine mist. The horned being inside momentarily switched its attention from the outer door to the hissing nozzle. Its single eye swelled out and shone warningly. Its body of burnt hair shuddered as it inhaled the gas. Then it turned obsessively back to its door-breaking task. Its movements were slower, and its banging had grown weaker.
‘It seems to be working,’ Helena observed cautiously, remembering the mistake they had made last time.
The anaesthetic gas now grew so dense that they could not see inside. They tried to peer through the cloud, watching with frustration to see if the gas had finally been successful. Carter snapped on the monitor’s audio switch so that they could hear the animal as well as see it.
Immediately they were assailed by a series of growls and roars of a terrifying magnitude. They were far from being the cries of a being that was collapsing into unconsciousness.
Amidst sudden breaks in the mist they saw that the contrary seemed to have happened. After the first few moments of its exposure to the gas, far from being sedated, the creature appeared to have been stimulated. It worked with a renewed ferocity at the door.
Its horns levered the cracks. Its weight repeatedly smashed against the metal. Its calipered hands hammered incessantly, all the while emitting the awful roaring.
As they watched, a sudden explosion of swirling gas occurred.
The outer doors gave way and gas and creature were sucked out into the rocky airless passage which led up to the Moon’s surface.
They observed in horror as it was bashed against the rock and thrown heavily to the passage floor. But they stared in outright amazement as it then staggered to its feet and began tottering unsteadily on its hind legs into the lunar darkness.
‘It must have an air store the same way as a camel stores water!’ Vincent exclaimed, his eyes nearly falling out of his head.
‘But how long will it last?’ Carter asked shakily.
Helena sobbed out: ‘It doesn’t matter, does it? Maya can only hold that form for an hour!’
The cold, cleansing darkness engulfed the shambling awareness of the frightened, determined creature.
A million thoughts flashed randomly in its head. A million directions to take. A million choices. A million decisions to make.
Mentor’s face hovered in the midst of them.
In the disorientated madness of the creature the wan spark that was still Maya fancied that the great gulf between the Moon world and her father’s planet had been bridged. She fancied that the journey was over.
In breaking down the airlock doors she had undergone a kind of re-birth – an impossible journey to Psychon.
And her father was here, now, waiting for her.
In her mind she saw the scarlet and blue volcanoes of Psychon – the myriad varieties of flora and fauna that lived at their feet. She saw the fabulous cities of her father’s lost youth – proud cities that once had ruled a galaxy.
He was standing among them, beckoning her.
She ran on across the wastes of the Moon.
The shambling, mixed-up creature staggered weakly over the rocks and boulders, gashing itself and letting the vacuum and the cold into its tough body.
Its strength waned.
Gaping, deadly craters miles deep waited to receive it where it perilously stumbled.
CHAPTER FIVE
The blistered, craggy surface of the moon stretched away towards the star-filled firmament. It was airless and barren. Contrary to some former theories about the Moon’s genesis, Life had never lodged there – in any of the varied and unlikely forms Life is capable of adopting. It was as barren and bleak and inhospitable now as the day, countless millions of years ago, when it had condensed from the same primal cloud of matter as had the Earth and the Sun. But then, the Moon had been young. Now, it was old.
It was old and it was riddled through with cracks. Its land surface was unstable and likely to collapse. The atomic explosion in 1999 had weakened its structure further, and only a miracle had prevented more damage being done to it than had been.
Sahn used the Moon Base’s powerful exterior cameras to survey the surface. She switched to a high magnification and resolution, and the picture on the Big Screen immediately clarified.
A large crater appeared, rimmed by terrifying peaks miles high and surrounded by land pock-marked with many smaller depressions and outcrops of jagged rock. The giant Copernicus crater and the rest of the lunar surface was cast in deep shadow. Since the barren planetoid had been blown out of Earth Orbit away from the life-giving Sun, it had been illuminated only by star-light.
Sahn switched to infra-red camera. The same picture reappeared, only this time it showed the scene in heat contours –all deathly cold except for two points of moving pinkness. One point was smaller than the other, and took the lead. It moved erratically among the boulders and ravines. The other point of light was slightly larger and followed behind, catching up the first. It was larger because it comprised the heat of two people instead of one.
‘It’s approaching area Copernicus of the Copernicus Depression,’ Sahn’s voice crackled over the tiny radio receiver inside Helena and Carter’s helmets. ‘Its pace has slowed and you’re catching up fast.’
‘Its air supply must be running out,’ Carter commented in alarm. He squeezed the acceleration control of the tiny Moon Buggy that he and Helena were sitting in, but he couldn’t get any more speed out of it. Anyway, it would be dangerous to have done so. The Buggy had been designed with the Moon’s low gravity strictly in mind.
They had set out five minutes after Maya’s dramatic escape. They had come on their own because Helena had insisted that too many pursuers would panic the horned creature.
The open Buggy careered round rocks and bounced from side to side, almost throwing them from their small seats at a top speed of five miles an hour. Its headlights blazed in front of it, lighting up the shadowed rock formations and occasionally catching distant glimpses of the lunatic creature staggering about the boulders.
There were so many obstructions in their path that it took them some time to catch up. At length the creature’s pace slowed so much that they were able to corner it in a gully-like clearing in the rock protrusions.
Realizing it was trapped, it turned on them.
Its burned body moved clumsily in the low gravity conditions; its tall white horns almost upset its balance as it bent down and, with its two calipered forelimbs, hauled a huge boulder out of the lunar dust. With soundless roars of rage it raised the boulder above its head and launched it at them.
Carter yanked round the steering assembly of the Buggy, almost tipping it over, and swerved out of the way. The creature stooped down again. Frantically it tore up more boulders and jagged shards of rock and hurled the missiles at them. Carter responded by guiding the Buggy through the hail. Unable to deal with them all simultaneously the vehicle was eventually struck forcibly on the bonnet and its headlights smashed.
The Buggy went out of control with the two space-suited figures inside it and slammed into a rock face. A numbing jolt shook Helena and flung her clear. Carter’s body smashed against the rock.
Helena felt herself sail effortlessly through the air before striking the dusty ground and slowly cartwheeling over and over. At last she lay still, praying that her suit had not been snagged or her Life Support Pack damaged. Painfully, she re-orientated herself and sat up. She looked down at her suit through her visor, scrutinizing it as best she could in the starlight. At the far side of the clearing she made out the dark shape of the creature. Noticing that she had fallen from the Buggy, it was bounding silently towards her through the cold vacuum, hefting another of the massive boulders above its head. Its evil, coloured eye glowed with a sullen intensity.
Space 1999 - The Time Fighters Page 5
