Space 1999 - The Time Fighters

by Michael Butterworth

  Maya stared frozenly at her, paralyzed by recognition.

  The weapon spat out a violet ray and Maya crumpled to the floor, engulfed by it.

  She lay ominously still.

  Helena stared, aghast. Too late, Carter and the two Security Guards drew their own weapons. They were about to return the fire when Sahala unexpectedly threw her gun to the floor in a gesture of surrender. Her eyes blazed wildly and her breasts heaved violently as though from great exertion.

  Helena turned on her. Her face was ashen. ‘What have you done?’

  Sahala’s beauty grew intense. It seemed almost to be a living, independent thing that existed symbiotically with her, like a soul.

  ‘What I had to do,’ she replied, with such burning fervour, with such utter conviction that they felt devastated.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘Why did you do it?’ Verdeschi stormed, pacing in agitation up and down the small, well-guarded detention room where Sahala now sat.

  ‘Because she is a Psychon!’ Sahala shouted, in such a tone as to imply that it was the right of all rational beings everywhere in the Universe to kill Psychons on sight.

  ‘And that gives you the right to shoot her?’ the Chief yelled angrily. ‘Just because she’s a Psychon?’

  ‘Yes!’ she exclaimed passionately. ‘Because of what they’ve done to my people... we were...’

  ‘I don’t care what you were,’ Verdeschi remonstrated wildly. ‘If Maya doesn’t come out of this, you’re going to remain in detention for the rest of your life!’

  They were going round in circles. They had been holding this interrogation for several hours. Each time he had had to leave her to cool down. Each time he had gone back. He realized he was prejudiced by his own personal feelings for Maya, and he shouldn’t have been the one to interrogate her. But there was no one else with sufficient authority and the strength of mind to do it. Helena was busy saving Maya’s life. Carter was obviously the wrong person. Koenig was absent. Maya was... Maya was... He turned angrily to the communicator and stabbed at a button. Helena’s white face appeared on the screen.

  ‘Not a thing,’ she reported. ‘There’s not even an indication of decay. Just a kind of... suspension. I’ve never come across anything like it.’

  He turned on Sahala again. ‘For the rest of your life!’ he yelled at her, red-faced. Her arrogant beauty, her seeming lack of concern or care for what she had done, enraged him all the more. He felt like striking her.

  ‘Please...!’ she beseeched, unconvincingly. ‘Let me tell you...’

  ‘You can’t tell me anything!’

  Carter stepped forward. ‘Tony, give her a chance!’

  Verdeschi was livid. ‘She gets nothing.’ He spun on his heels and stalked out of the room.

  Carter stood helplessly before her, drawn by her radiantly unnatural looks, confused by her uncompromising hatred of Maya. He couldn’t understand her. Helpless feelings of tenderness arose inside him. Intuitively, he realized that she had been mistaken and wronged by Verdeschi, that she had a genuine grievance, that she had an explanation.

  ‘Thank you for trying to be kind,’ Sahala purred mournfully to him in a voice so silken soft that he had to forcibly suppress his desire to hold her to him.

  ‘Well, it’s not that I’m a better listener than Tony,’ he spluttered foolishly. ‘It’s just that Maya means an awful lot to him.’

  She nodded. She arose from her seat and walked theatrically about the room. She looked so pained, so hurt, so misunderstood, and so overwhelmingly sad.

  ‘The Croton System is made up of many peoples and many planets,’ she told him, ‘of which my planet, Norvah, was one. Over thousands of dekons it has been cultivated into a peace-loving federation...’

  ‘The planet Psychon... was that a member?’ Carter asked gently.

  She shook her head. Her cold blue eyes looked faraway and a violent and tempestuous emotion welled inside her again. ‘We didn’t know of its existence until the arrival of one named Dorzak...’ She pronounced the name ‘Dorzak’ with such graceful scorn and vehemence that Carter was taken aback. ‘He came in a space ship with other Psychons. They begged for refuge, stating that their own planet was about to be destroyed.’

  A sudden memory struck Carter. ‘Maya knew that some of her people had left Psychon before it blew up, but she never knew if they made it to another star system.’

  She gave a bitter shrug of her smooth, bared shoulders. ‘We welcomed them on Norvah. Technologically they were very advanced and for a time we thought ourselves lucky. But in time we realized that the Psychons were a virus that would destroy our society.’

  Carter frowned. He tried to sound reasonable. ‘You’ve got something off-balance. Maya’s no virus.’

  ‘You don’t know Psychons like we do!’ she exclaimed. ‘Their power is insidious. Dorzak incited to violence people who had been at peace for thousands of years.’

  ‘But you said Dorzak’s the prisoner on your ship...?’ Sudden realization dawned.

  ‘Yes. We developed a weapon to defeat him... and the psychology to use it.’

  ‘The weapon you used against Maya...?’

  She nodded. ‘The staser.’ She had been facing the wall with her back to him. She was driving him to distraction with her beauty, not just confined to her face, but in every centimetre of her fabulously slender and well-proportioned limbs. Her sparse, but delightful gown seemed calculated to arouse the maximum stimulation in him. She abruptly turned and faced him, her tousled beauty too much for him to bear.

  ‘Please help me,’ she begged.

  He reached out a hand to touch her and she took hold of it, pressing it warmly to her breast.

  A fire spread through him and he knew that he believed the woman implicitly. But drawing him back from the brink of his devotion were his other loyalties and his training. He hesitated. ‘If Maya doesn’t recover...’

  She seemed surprised. ‘Crotons don’t kill. That was our weakness against Dorzak.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘I can bring her back.’

  Carter nodded, relieved. ‘Do that and you will get Tony on your side.’

  ‘She’s in stasis.’ Sahala hesitated. She looked uncertain. ‘The only way to control a Psychon. You don’t realize the danger we face if I have her out of it.’

  Carter looked pleadingly at her. Pleadingly because he loved her, and above all other things he wanted her freed. He wanted her to be cleared so that he would be in a position to declare his love more openly to her. ‘You must release her from it. That’s the only way I can help you... if you bring her back.’

  Reluctantly, she conceded, and Carter reached enthusiastically for the monitor.

  The Medical Centre filled with people as Sahala, under strong escort and led by Carter, entered the room to perform her restorative work.

  She carried a small, pencil-like instrument which she had been allowed to obtain from her ship. Helena and a group of nurses were already in attendance around Maya’s bed. Next door to Maya lay the young alien, Yesta, still unconscious. She had been operated on and rebandaged.

  Maya’s body was attached by electrodes to a complex array of monitoring instruments measuring her heart-rate, perspiration rate, blood pressure, brain waves and other vital functions. All her readings were down and she lay quite motionless. Already severely weakened from her ordeal with her breakdown, her system now had had to put up with another effrontery.

  Helena looked scornfully at the Croton Commander as the latter bent down over the prone figure. She clenched her fists, wondering whether to intervene and call the whole operation off. She didn’t trust the Croton one bit.

  A golden ray, pencil-thin, emanated abruptly from the instrument. Sahala began playing it over various parts of the Psychon’s body, as though practising an advanced kind of acupuncture. As she worked the Alphans watched Maya’s face anxiously for signs of life.

  At length, and without looking, the Croton proffered Verdeschi an open hand. ‘Staser?’ she
asked, with all the style of a professional surgeon.

  Verdeschi hesitated, filled with suspicion.

  Sahala turned to Carter. ‘Can you convince him to trust me?’

  ‘Let her prove you wrong, Tony,’ Carter pleaded. ‘I’ve spoken to her...’

  Verdeschi decided. Tight-lipped, he handed over the gun, then beckoned to his Guards to draw closer.

  Sahala took the gun and made an alteration to the dial at one end. She then placed its nozzle at the centre of Maya’s forehead. As though anticipating trouble at this she turned to Verdeschi and caught him starting forward to arrest her. But Carter stopped him with a touch on the shoulder. Carter smiled at her encouragingly. She smiled slowly back at him in acknowledgment. Once more she turned to the Psychon, and this time pressed the control. In front of the stunned assembly Maya’s body began pulsing with the eerie, violet light.

  Helena turned in alarm to her instruments, but her agitation turned to pleasure when she took the first reading. ‘Her heart... I’ve got a pulse!’

  Relief surged round the bedside. They were even more assured when Maya’s eyelids fluttered open. Helena moved back to her. She placed a hand on her forehead. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘I... I feel fine...’ Maya began, faintly. There was a puzzled tone in her voice. She sounded surprised that she had recovered so quickly. She sat up and spied Sahala and her puzzlement turned to indignation. ‘Why? Why did you do that?’ she shouted at the Croton.

  Sahala’s countenance had now completely changed. For once her beauty took second place to the strong feeling of revulsion that rose inside her. ‘You’re a Psychon. I have had experience with Psychons.’

  Maya recoiled. ‘Get her away from me!’

  Carter stepped forward diplomatically. ‘Wait a while, Maya...’ he began lamely, his arms outstretched to the two women in an appeal for calm. But Maya would not be calmed.

  ‘GET HER AWAY FROM ME!’ she exploded. The energy drained from her and she collapsed weakly back on the bed.

  ‘Easy, Maya,’ Helena crooned after a shocked silence. With a nod of her head she indicated to Carter to remove Sahala.

  ‘I want her back in detention,’ Verdeschi added. He looked hatefully at the Croton.

  Sahala glared resentfully at him. Carter tried to protest, but to no avail. Brutally, Verdeschi continued: ‘With a Guard outside her door at all times.’

  In despair, Carter took Sahala’s arm, but she shook him off and paced angrily out of the room. Carter threw his hands up in the air in frustration, his attempt at reconciliation shattered, and followed her out.

  Verdeschi turned back to Maya and said, gently, ‘Maya, one of the space ships that escaped from Psychon before your planet blew up... it seems that it made it to the Croton system.’

  After a moment’s reflection on his words, sudden joy swept through Maya’s frame. She opened her eyes and propped herself up on her elbow. ‘But that’s wonderful!’ Her delight faded when she saw that they did not share her optimism. ‘Isn’t it?’

  Helena explained to her. ‘Apparently they didn’t behave very well when they got there.’ She paused. ‘Dorzak...’

  ‘Dorzak!’ the other cried excitedly.

  ‘He turned on them,’ Verdeschi told her. ‘Tried to take over... according to Sahala.’

  Maya looked outraged at mention of the Croton’s name. ‘She’s lying!’

  ‘He incited an insurrection on her planet, Norvah.’

  ‘She’s lying, I tell you. Dorzak was a philosopher, a poet, a man of peace. He would not change.’

  ‘The claim is he caused great suffering on Norvah. He’s a prisoner in Sahala’s ship. She’s taking him into exile.’

  Maya sat up wildly again. She sounded almost feverish. ‘He’s alive? He’s here?’ She clasped Verdeschi’s arms. ‘Tony...? I want to see him! I want to see him!’

  Carter trailed unhappily after Sahala as two Guards marched either side of her on her way back to detention. Women! he thought to himself, annoyed. No matter how intellectual or rational they aspired to be they always fell back on their feelings and buggered things up. It was impossible to appeal to them to be rational.

  Now Sahala was feeling sorry for herself, and he already felt like a long-suffering husband to her.

  ‘Am I so much a leper I must eat alone?’ she asked him when they had sat down again and a tray of food had been brought her.

  ‘I wouldn’t think of it,’ he replied, hooked. He began to help her eat her meal while he thought what to do.

  ‘There’s only one way I can thank you for your kindness...’ she said. She paused in her eating, and stroked his hand. He stopped chewing, electrified.

  ‘You’re very easy to be kind to,’ he said with his mouth full.

  She continued, ‘And that is by continually warning you of the danger you are in.’ She paused again, in some difficulty to explain herself to him in case he took her the wrong way, like the others. ‘Your Psychon, Maya, she will do her best to free Dorzak.’

  Carter thought about what she had said for a moment. ‘No.’ He shook his head emphatically. ‘Maya will do nothing she is not permitted to do.’

  Sahala persisted. ‘Their loyalty to each other transcends all other relationships.’

  ‘You don’t know Maya,’ he said, defensively.

  ‘All right. I don’t know Maya, but I know Dorzak. I know the power of his mind, it’s hypnotic power. Even stasis isn’t enough of a barrier to the use of that power.’

  He stared at her incredulously. ‘You mean he’s telepathic?’

  She nodded, wide-eyed. Her golden curls shook. He mulled over this new piece of information. Finally, he said, to her disappointment, ‘Sahala, if you want to get Tony on your side, don’t over-state your case. No being can operate from stasis.’

  ‘Even in stasis he’s dangerous!’ she retorted, fiercely beautiful. ‘One of my crew is dead and another near dead. They were specially selected for their ability to resist his psychological attacks. But even so he got through their defences...’

  ‘How?’ he asked her, irritated. Even he was beginning to be conscious of the way in which her alluring presence interfered with his rational thinking processes.

  Her eyes grew dreamily far-away again. It seemed that the last thing she was thinking of was her command responsibilities. Yet she said to him in her haunting, melancholy voice, ‘I can see that I’ll have to tell you everything. I didn’t want to weigh you down with my problems...’

  Intrigued, he rested his fork and settled back to listen to her. As she narrated her tale she buried her head in her hands, and almost wept.

  ‘The trouble began when we were half-way to Theselena – the planet to which Dorzak was exiled. We were thrown off course, as you know. At the same time, the fluctuation in Time must either have increased Dorzak’s powers... or weakened Clea’s resistance...

  ‘Clea, Yesta and I were the sole crew. We were used to making the trip, or similar trips. In his stasis, we considered Dorzak to be perfectly safe. The living quarters of our ship are designed around a large, circular room where we have our private quarters. The Theselena trip is the longest we make, and apart from the presence of Dorzak we had to face the psychological stress of this very long flight. We call it the Boredom Trip...

  ‘I was able to pass the time working on my art displays – off duty I create kinetic art – but the other two were a bit of a problem. They were less easy to keep occupied, and they slept a lot. I sometimes wondered what they got up to when they were on duty and I was sleeping – we take it in turns to do watch.

  ‘We were quite close to your Moon, and we’d set the controls to get us back on course again, when Clea must have had her relapse. Yesta and I were asleep. Attracted by Dorzak’s mind she released him from stasis...’

  Clea moved mesmerically from where she had been attending to one of the malfunctioning photophasers – the vital energy controllers which guided her ship’s light-driven engines and gave it time-travelli
ng speeds. They had been altered earlier by Sahala at the start of her shift, but now controllers – and ship – were drifting off course again, and needed adjustments making to them. She had been doing this when she felt the first, hypnotic pull of Dorzak’s mind. She knew it was Dorzak who called her because there was no-one else on the ship capable of using such force of will. At first she had fought him off, but then his persuasive power had grown too strong.

  She moved silently past the alcove beds of her two crew members, past Yesta’s intricate half-finished mural on the wall, past the silent light machinery which Sahala used when she created her masterpieces. She arrived at the entrance to Dorzak’s cell. She pressed her hand against the decorative wall that stood in front of it and watched the wall slide back, revealing the metal-lined recess of the stasis chamber.

  Inside the chamber, behind a transparent force-field of orange light, lay the sleeping body of her master calling her from his anguished dreams, reaching silent telepathic fingers of thought into her mind.

  She looked at him in undisguised admiration. She raised her delicate fingers to the control panel and watched with satisfaction as the forcefield shimmered out of existence. She crossed the threshold of the chamber and soon she was staring down at Dorzak, fighting down a passionate desire to touch his lips. Instead she let her fingers play sensuously over his ageless face. Unable to resist his command any longer, she held his passive, sleeping head in her hands and bent to kiss him on his lush lips. As the intensity of the kiss deepened and she felt herself abandoning herself completely to his wishes, a sudden, urgent bleeping sound came from the ship’s computer.

  A moment of guilt gripped her, then she felt Dorzak releasing her so that she could attend to her duties.

  ‘Computer to crew, computer to crew; I wish to communicate,’ the Computer’s voice sounded out, threatening to wake Sahala and Yesta. She rushed from the chamber, closing the panel behind her, and ran back to the flight deck.

  ‘Speak,’ she said, out of breath and annoyed. She had always loved Dorzak. She had loved him when she first set eyes on him when he and his fellow Psychons had arrived. She had kept her love a secret from everyone – except Dorzak. Now he was using her, knowing that she loved him; but when the power of his mind was turned on her like it was, she didn’t care. She welcomed his forceful authority, to have the excuse to express her yearning love.