Space 1999 - The Space-Jackers

by Michael Butterworth

  The other frowned deviously. ‘You’re asking me to hazard a guess?’

  Koenig’s patience began to break. He took a deep breath. ‘When we first came to this planet, our scanners showed no life forms...’

  ‘Perhaps your equipment was malfunctioning?’ Vindrus suggested coolly.

  ‘There was nothing wrong with our equipment!’ Koenig snapped. ‘Until this... this accelerator was repaired, there was no life here.’

  Vindrus nodded, a little sardonically. ‘And admirable deduction, Commander.’

  If Koenig’s temper was being tried, Verdeschi’s had long since boiled over. He had kept his feelings inside him. Now he strode forward and shouted tempestuously at the alien. ‘Let’s cut the game! It’s your anti-matter against our matter. You used Shermeen to get that generator here. You made it work, and then you sent her into your world so that you could come into ours!’

  ‘We know it was the only way you could do it, Vindrus – you had to maintain the balance,’ Koenig got in before the alien could defend himself.

  ‘Another admirable deduction,’ Vindrus said calmly.

  ‘Fact. We want her back,’ Koenig demanded harshly.

  A thin smile of amusement appeared suddenly on Vindrus’s face. While he stalled them, he reached surreptitiously behind him in the darkness. He inserted his fingers into the empty eye sockets of a gargoyle-like carving by the door.

  With a grating sound, the heavy wooden door began to draw to, shutting out the daylight. The Alphans reacted quickly, and raced towards it. Except for Maya, who managed to run through to the steps, they were too late.

  Koenig whipped out his bleeping commlock, seconds after the door thudded shut. Maya’s breathless face appeared on it. ‘Commander...’

  ‘Maya!’ Koenig called to her, but before he could instruct her what to do, the set went dead. Enraged, he turned to Vindrus, and levelled his laser at him.

  Verdeschi raised his laser also. The alien merely smiled patronizingly at them, unperturbed by their display. Angered further, the two Alphans fired their guns in unison, but all that the guns emitted was a futile click.

  ‘Sorry,’ Vindrus said apologetically – and meant it.

  Koenig seethed. ‘I want Shermeen back.’

  ‘Impossible,’ Vindrus shook his head. ‘Shermeen and I effected a perfect exchange.’ He walked past them towards a wall illuminated by a weird spotlighting effect. Sadly he touched one of the scorched human outlines. ‘The result of a previous attempt. You were right – our generator failed.’

  ‘Destroying everyone...’ Koenig prompted him guilefully. He battled to keep an iron control over his feelings and so catch their captor off guard.

  Vindrus nodded. ‘But we from the anti-matter world suffered an equal loss.’

  ‘Then why are you so anxious to get into our world?’ Verdeschi asked him. He had caught Koenig’s intentions, and as he spoke glanced around, seeking a way to create a diversion or a route of escape. With Shermeen, and possibly Maya at stake, it was too risky to chance physically overpowering Vindrus just yet – which is what he felt like doing.

  ‘In your world, Time goes forward,’ Vindrus explained. He walked from pillar to pillar, indicating the evolutionary frescoes with dramatic sweeps of his hands. ‘You emerge from primaeval slime and evolve upwards... always towards a higher species. But in the world of anti-matter, Time goes backwards... maintaining the balance.’ A bitterness had crept into his last words.

  ‘If anti-matter is regressing, your people are on their way down...’ Koenig extrapolated.

  ‘Back to the slime...!’ the other declared sardonically. Koenig met Verdeschi’s eye and signalled for him to commence a distraction.

  Vindrus continued, oblivious of them. ‘My coming here is an act of self-survival. If it was the other way round, you’d do the same.’

  Verdeschi stepped forward affirmatively. ‘No! You’re wrong. What about Shermeen’s survival?’

  The figure snorted indignantly. ‘She can expect an anti-life of hundreds of years!’

  ‘What you’re really saying, Vindrus, is that Shermeen is only the forerunner,’ Koenig said, edging around the alien. As Vindrus turned his head to follow Koenig, Verdeschi slipped into a position behind him.

  ‘How many more of us do you need?’ Koenig asked him engagingly. ‘Certainly not just us. Not even just Moon Base.’

  Vindrus raised his head and spoke loftily, carried away with his visions of a future. ‘Eventually we will establish machines such as this throughout the universe.’

  ‘Throughout the universe!’ Verdeschi exclaimed from behind him. The alien spun round in surprise. As he did so, Koenig moved into action behind him. Sensing trickery, Vindrus pulled out a hand-sized ray gun and wheeled back on a surprised Koenig. He fired a warning shot at the floor next to Koenig’s feet, sending a shower of granite chips into the air.

  He backed away until he was covering them both, a wary, rueful look in his eyes.

  Koenig smiled weakly. ‘We’re no good to you dead, Vindrus - you need us alive to make an exchange.’

  Their captor smiled in confirmation. ‘Be sensible,’ he said. ‘Accept change - both of you. I promise as individuals you’ll have an extended life span.’

  ‘And as a species?’ Koenig asked bitterly.

  Vindrus nodded in grim acknowledgment of the inference. ‘Doomed...’

  Something in the alien’s manner suggested that he did not relish the task he had set himself, but both Koenig and Verdeschi could see that it would be useless trying to appeal to him. As they watched helplessly, Vindrus withdrew his medallion. He held it aloft in front of their eyes. It shone and twinkled brightly, and made them feel drowsy. Resolutely, he advanced towards them.

  ‘Tony! Don’t look at it!’ Koenig cried out. Just in time, Verdeschi averted his gaze. They shielded themselves from the hypnotic light with their arms and retreated among the shadows and the pillars, each taking a different route.

  Vindrus followed them with the medallion, now his primary weapon.

  Beyond the matter accelerator, the temple interior was bisected by the huge, triangular wall they had seen from the outside. Where the wall rose through the roof, a narrow slit of daylight was visible. A small face appeared, framed against the brightness, and peered inquisitively down.

  ‘Maya!’ Koenig exclaimed to himself, with more than a trace of relief.

  The face drew the rest of its body into view, and a small tree monkey dropped down to the temple floor. Vindrus heard the light sound of impact that its pads made, and whirled round. Confused and angry, he fired his ray gun, but the searing blast of light missed the agile creature.

  Koenig and Verdeschi saw their chance and began playing their game of nerves again. They hugged the shadows, catching Vindrus in a cross-fire of words.

  ‘An apparition, Vindrus...’ Koenig spoke softly, as the alien advanced towards Verdeschi. Vindrus turned again, in the direction of the voice, his medallion poised ready to flash. Behind, Verdeschi’s mocking laughter sounded.

  ‘You’re seeing ghosts,’ the Security Chief taunted.

  ‘...we’re the only life forms here, Vindrus...’ Koenig countered from his side of the dark temple. Vindrus moved cautiously now, seeking them out. The hysterical chatter of the monkey sounded from yet another direction, and he turned nervously to see what it was doing.

  ‘Vindrus?’ Koenig called. An inspiration hit them. As much a taunt to him as an instruction to Maya, he added, ‘Shermeen is coming back...’

  The monkey leapt briefly into sight, then disappeared behind a pillar. Vindrus turned towards Koenig, confused. ‘She’s coming back,’ Koenig repeated.

  ‘Impossible!’ Vindrus snapped.

  ‘Oh, no it isn’t...’ Verdeschi replied like a living echo.

  ‘She never fully reached your world,’ Koenig elaborated the theme. ‘She only went half way...’

  Vindrus sounded amused as he realized that he had almost been deceived by thei
r trick. ‘She couldn’t have done,’ he said. But he sounded unsure, too.

  ‘We knew what you wanted,’ Verdeschi improvised rapidly. ‘We worked it out from pictures of the temple that Maya took on her video. We programmed the generator...’

  ‘No use, Vindrus... she’ll be back... she’ll be back...’ Koenig jibed.

  ‘Vindrusssss...?’ A female voice, Shermeen’s, hissed hollowly from behind one of the pillars.

  Vindrus froze. He twisted around towards where the voice had come from, his face a mask of utter disbelief. As he watched, Maya/Shermeen stepped into view. She began floating smoothly among the pillars.

  ‘Come, Vindrus.’ her voice echoed emptily off the walls.

  Vindrus stared first at her, and then at Koenig and Verdeschi in turn, to assess their reactions. They looked gravely at him, and a first look of fear came to his face.

  ‘I’m here, Vindrus... follow me...’ Maya implored him. She beckoned over her shoulder to the stricken alien who was clutching his medallion uncertainly. ‘Do not be afraid...’

  Vindrus was transfixed. Koenig sprang forward and tore the hypnotic charm from his grasp. Before Vindrus could react and reach for his gun, Koenig reversed the medallion and shone it deep into the alien’s eyes.

  ‘We have to go back...’ Maya sang softly. ‘They’re waiting for us...’ Her floating form led them to the cabinets. ‘We want you...’

  She beckoned him forward, into the cabinet. His face was a mass of raised veins, revealing the tension underneath as he fought the power of the medallion. Try as he might, he was unable to break its hold over him. Then, a deathly wailing began from the direction of the accelerator. It was the unearthly, chilling moaning of the tormented inhabitants of the anti-matter world, warning him to fight. The strength of a mad super-man possessed him. With his evil gaze still snared by the charm, he forced his hand to his holster. In tortured slow motion, he withdrew the deadly gun and stuck it in Koenig’s belly. With his last remaining strength, his fingers tried to squeeze on the trigger. His body shook and trembled violently with the strain of finding the last gramme of energy that he needed – but he could not muster it. Visibly, he sagged, and the gun clattered on the floor. Verdeschi, who had been unable to intervene on account of the medallion’s fierce hypnotic rays, picked the gun up and tossed it into the shadows.

  All fight seemed to have gone out of Vindrus now, and he followed Koenig and Maya like a man broken. ‘In here, Vindrus... here...’ Maya crooned, and he followed the voice to his doom.

  The wails of protest and anger coming from the cabinets grew louder as he stepped sluggishly inside the one that Maya had prepared for him – the one in which Shermeen had disappeared.

  ‘Get the door shut – fast!’ Koenig yelled. He pushed the alien completely inside and slammed his prison door shut on him.

  ‘We must hurry... hurry...’ Maya continued to croon melodically as she bent over the controls of the generator. She turned it on.

  A loud humming started up and they stepped back to watch. Koenig still held the medallion, keeping it pointed at the transparent door of Vindrus’s cabinet. His twisted, sweat-soaked face rolled back and forth in agony at the beck of warring matter forces inside him.

  The hum rose to a high-pitched whine and the cabinets began to emit a pulsating corona of light. The light reached a peak and burst, explosively bright in front of their eyes. Gradually it faded away and the humming sound ceased.

  The Alphans ran forward to the second cabinet, trying to see inside it. They had no way of knowing what manner of creature would have been returned to them in Vindrus’s place by way of compensation. It was a matter of balance – and they hoped to find Shermeen.

  ‘Commander... help me...’ a terrified, muffled voice sounded from inside the door.

  ‘It’s Shermeen!’ Maya exclaimed. She reached forward and opened the door. The small, cowering girl crouched inside. When she saw that she was indeed back in the land of the living, she threw herself out at them, crying for joy and sheer relief.

  The wailing of the anti-matter people grew plaintive and resounded through the building from the empty cabinets. Vindrus’s body had completely disappeared, reclaimed by the phantom mob whom he had once hoped to deliver into a new world.

  The wailing creatures threatened to get through by sheer force of numbers, and Koenig looked up, startled. ‘Tony... get Maya and Shermeen out of here. I’m setting this to self-destruct!’

  Verdeschi looked aghast. ‘Do that and the whole planet will become radio-active!’

  Koenig spoke impatiently, ‘Do we have a choice?’

  ‘What about Vindrus’s people? We can’t destroy them... nasty though they sound,’ Maya shivered.

  ‘We won’t,’ Koenig replied. ‘Just the accelerator. Only matter will be destroyed. Not anti-matter. Now... move!’

  Verdeschi and Shermeen fled to the door and opened it as Koenig turned to the nuclear generator. He pulled a small tool kit out of one of his pockets and with a screw driver began to take off its outer casement. The inner casement would have to be cut off with his laser. With that out of the way, he would be able to get at the delicate controls inside and modify them. He would convert the generator from a peaceful energy-provider into an atomic bomb of colossal might.

  The ghostly voices murmured mournfully, threateningly, while he worked in the dim lighting. One by one, the spotlights in the temple were extinguished by the unseen forces.

  Coloured lights and shapes began to flit about him in the shadows. Their icy fingers clawed vainly at him, their voices shrieked in his ears. He withdrew his gun, and tested it against one of the walls. A brilliant beam of white-hot light shot from its nozzle and began melting a hole in the rock. Grimly, he turned down its power and set to work on the inner casement. One slip with it and the generator would be rendered inoperable. Sweating, he burned off the corners and edges. With his gloves he pulled back the metal panels. Inside lay the complicated circuitry of the would-be bomb. Inside that, the twin cores of deadly plutonium were housed.

  Fumbling and scrabbling, he set to work, bending very close to the circuitry in order to see it. It seemed that an army of ghouls and spectres had entered the room. Banshee wails and the shrieks and moans of desperate anti-life filled the temple with unbearable sound. He fixed the last wire crudely into place, praying that it would hold and that the ghouls round about would find no way of dislodging it. Then he arose from his cramped position and forced his way through the claustrophobic atmosphere of colours. He ran up the steps and across the turf and past the roaring Thaed/Death into the interminable forest.

  The temple in the clearing began to glow with a white light as the generator overheated. A fierce wind was sucked into the area and the trees began to bend and writhe in an agony they had never known. Many crashed down in the foliage near to Koenig, their shallow roots easily snapping under the strain. Stung, bruised and whipped by the lashing vegetation, he broke into the clearing where the two Eagles stood like giant, majestic thunder lizards, waiting to take him away.

  Maya beckoned from the open hatchway of Eagle Two. He ran breathlessly towards it, and flung himself inside.

  ‘Tony and Bill are taking Eagle One,’ Maya told him as they were admittd through into the Passenger Section. Koenig raced to the Pilot Module and jammed himself into his seat.

  ‘Tell them to lift off!’ he yelled at her. With practised desperation, he began to operate the controls. A blast of heat from the melting land round about the Temple smote the flanks of the Eagles and sent the atmospheric sensors soaring. The powerful rockets exploded titanically to life, and in unison, the two ships rose, not a moment too soon, from the imperilled surface of Sunim.

  ‘Eagle Two... Commander, this is Moon Base Alpha. Can you read me?’ Sandra Benes, one of the computer operatives at the Command Centre, radioed them as they headed safely towards the Moon.

  ‘Loud and Clear, Moon Base!’ Koenig called back. He glanced happily at the Section Screen, w
here spider-like traces of light indicated the distant explosion. ‘We’re on course for home...!’

  He cast smiling looks at Shermeen and Maya, standing behind him.

  ‘Don’t congratulate yourself just yet, John!’ Sandra said to him. Her compressed face on his console monitor smiled cheekily.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, frowning. ‘I never congratulate myself! But what is it? Spill the beans!’

  ‘Double trouble, by the looks of things,’ she said more seriously. ‘We’ve been trying to contact you for some time about two things – one an occurrence, the other a sighting.’

  ‘Oh?’ he asked seriously. He sat up straighter in his seat.

  ‘The occurrence is in the form of fifty-three unidentified flying objects which have just latched onto the Moon trajectory...’ She paused, waiting for Koenig’s reaction. A groan came and she continued. ‘The sighting is a cloud of some kind. It’s too far off to worry about yet... but I think it needs looking into.’

  ‘Just our luck!’ Koenig sagged visibly. ‘I was hoping to warm up the Tiranium search a bit...’

  ‘’Fraid not, Commander sir,’ Sandra replied.

  Koenig brought his mind back down to the hard, cold facts of space again... away from the lovely, warm rest he had promised himself on some idyllic planet in a sector of space as far removed as possible from the accursed floating hunk of lifeless rock it was his inescapable lot to manage.

  ‘OK’, he said with resignation. ‘Let me see the pictures. I’ve nothing else to do.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The pictures were sharp and clear.

  ‘Like a swarm of space bees...’ Helena volunteered from her post in the Command Centre.

  ‘And every one with an atomic sting in its tail, maybe,’ Simon Hayes put in cheerfully.

  Koenig strode into the Centre and seated himself in his Command Chair. They had got back from Sunim – the drifting particles that it had been reduced to – several hours ago, giving him just time to change and wash and grab some refreshment at least. ‘Range?’ he asked, dutifully, eyeing the ‘swarm’ on the Big Screen.