She held Cantar’s eye and stepped in front of him. The rebel’s face was contorted with sudden hatred as she spoke to him in an intense, but inflexible voice – neither humble, nor supercilious. ‘I have come as you wished, Cantar.’
‘Ragnar! I want Ragnar!’ Cantar screamed out, enraged.
‘Ragnar is dead. Long dead,’ the old lady replied. ‘I am Mirella – Chief Counsellor of Golos.’
This took Cantar by surprise. His jaw dropped without him realizing it. ‘His daughter?’
‘His descendant,’ Mirella informed him to his further consternation. ‘Ragnar died over three hundred years ago.’
‘Of course...’ Cantar spoke dumbly as he absorbed the idea. ‘Your world continued while we floated in space...’
‘In Ragnar’s time you were cast out for crimes against our people. Now you come back with weapons and threats of destruction...’ She turned to Helena and Verdeschi. ‘Are these your allies?’
‘Their captives,’ Helena stepped forward. ‘Like you we’re here under duress. They used our energy supply to get here...’
Mirella turned back shrewdly to Cantar. ‘Two of you can’t hold all Golos to ransom for ever...’
‘Two of us now... but there will be more,’ Cantar smiled.
‘At Moon Base Alpha we have found the ideal platform to recover our people,’ Zova rejoined.
Helena snorted contemptuously. ‘You think John Koenig will co-operate?’
Cantar turned on her, a hard, wicked expression on his face. ‘Zova will make sure he does.’
Koenig paced in agitation up and down in front of the Big Screen. From time to time glancing sideways at the boiling, brown mass of space dust and other planetary particles that were depicted on it. They had finally caught up with the Space Cloud... or rather it had caught up with them. He wasn’t sure which way round it had happened. The picture was a blow-up taken from at least a hundred thousand miles away, but the Cloud was now close enough for their scanners to tell them that it was extremely dangerous. Providing it maintained its course, the Cloud wouldn’t hit them; it would miss them by a few thousand miles. But damaging unknown radiation that was pouring off it would bring about the same result as if it had – it would cause the death of all Alphans. Eagle Six, manned by Mackinlock, the Chief Eagle Pilot, had been sent up to investigate, but they had lost contact.
Sandra Benes had videoed the news of the Space Cloud’s arrival soon after he had left the Power Room. Not much later, reports began to come in from the Medical Centre – the beds were filling with casualties. Now, they must assume Mackinlock was dead.
Koenig paced up and down as though he were in some kind of mental nightmare, a disintegrating psychic monster trying desperately to pull all the loose bits together. The one calming factor seemed to be the ordinary, the mundane, the soothing calm of Helena’s bust which he had placed on his console. That at least was a sign of stability within the raging storm.
‘Okay, send her in,’ he told Sandra, who was sitting at her console efficiently, effectively and, thank God, calmly.
Zova appeared in the doorway, perhaps an arbitrator who could restore sanity and order. At least her presence proved one thing – Helena and Verdeschi weren’t entirely lost. She was a link, however tenuous.
‘Commander Koenig,’ Zova announced, as she walked over to his console. She positioned herself almost pointedly it seemed, next to the clay bust ‘I think we should talk. You recover our people – and we return Helena Russell and Tony Verdeschi.’
The whirl that Koenig felt did not show when he spoke. He appeared totally calm and collected as he settled purposefully into his Command Seat and gazed levelly at her. ‘You do know how to show gratitude,’ he said.
Zova took a torch-shaped transmitter from her belt. ‘Contact is possible... can I give Cantar your answer?’
‘You’re asking me to destroy Moon Base Alpha,’ Koenig stated with no small degree of scorn in his voice. ‘The energy needed to beam you all wherever it is you come from would drain us completely. No, I won’t do it.’
Zova smirked. ‘You forget we have Doctor Russell...’
Koenig leaned forward and grabbed her by her tunic. ‘And we have you,’ he said, forcibly trying to shovel his hate back down inside to avoid strangling her there and then.
Even in his grasp, she laughed contemptuously. With a sudden, equal hatred for him and his kind, she grasped the still soft clay sculpture of Helena’s head. She dug her nails viciously into the clay and scoured them down the delicately wrought face.
A sudden, chilling scream of agony rent the Command Centre air, and Koenig let go of the alien girl, aghast. The scream was Helena’s. Wildly he wondered where it came from. Zova sadistically squeezed the clay until it oozed between her fingers. Helena’s screaming mounted and became even more excruciating, and finally Koenig was able to bear it no more. Deception or not, he shouted at the girl to stop.
Slowly, smiling triumphantly, Zova took her hands away from the clay. The screaming died away and developed into an agonized sobbing.
‘Well?’ Zova asked.
‘All right,’ Koenig said weakly. ‘You win.’
‘A word of caution then, Commander,’ Zova continued. ‘Your Life Support System is now tuned to my mental process. I can destroy it by simple concentration.’
‘And you would, of course,’ Koenig commented grimly.
Zova nodded, evilly. ‘If you give me cause...’
‘We will recover the remaining containers,’ Koenig said slowly to her. ‘Begin preparations right away.’
Zova nodded. She turned and left the Centre, heading for the Eagle launch area.
Koenig turned to a white-faced Maya, and gestured to her.
She rose and together they followed the wicked blackmailer who had the whole Moon Base in her grip.
The tranquil, dignified ruler of Golos moved gracefully and unhurriedly towards her throne in front of the Control Dias, despite the ever-growing impatience and arrogance of Cantar. He prodded the gun in her back.
‘Tell them... tell the people we are now the new rulers of Golos,’ he told her savagely.
‘People of Golos...’ Mirella began to speak slowly and calmly into some kind of a broadcasting device built into the dias. ‘Three hundred years ago our ancestors exiled the rulers of this planet...’
Helena nudged Verdeschi, as Cantar’s attention was partly distracted listening to the announcement. She whispered urgently to him. ‘I’ve just had a thought. The protective membrane Cantar and Zova both wear... it must be responsible for preserving their lives for over three hundred years.’ As she spoke, she looked down at her carefully manicured nails. They were painted, long and sharp knives. She showed them to Verdeschi, who nodded. ‘Divert him,’ she said. ‘Just give me three seconds.’
Verdeschi reacted instantly, stepping forward and smashing his hand down heavily on a bank of controls on the dias. With a loud crack of electricity, the console erupted into flame. Cantar spun round, firing his gun. As he did so, Helena leapt forward and dug her nails deep into his cheek. Determinedly she raked them down his skin, making sure that she ruptured the strong, life-supporting membrane that covered his body.
With a wild scream of rage, the child who she had redelivered into the world in her hospital bed hurled her aside and brought his hand to his face. When he brought it down again he saw that it was covered in blood.
A peculiar, dreadful feeling swept through him as he felt his life energy leaving.
Across thousands of light years of space, the screaming, dying voice of his energy being travelled. It reached the Eagle Ship in which his beautiful, empathetic wife Zova was overseeing the collection of their blood brethren from their orbiting tombs.
She, Maya and Koenig had donned space suits and were poised at the edge of the airlock door, ready to step into space.
‘ZOVA!’ Cantar’s invisible energy body struck the craft and engulfed her with pain. She writhed, knowing that he was dying.
Koenig, seeing his opportunity, wrenched the fire axe from the wall of the airlock and severed the girl’s safety line. He and Maya pushed the screaming body back into the malignant womb from which she had come, and closed the doors on her forever.
As Zova had felt the loss of Cantar’s life, Cantar felt hers, and he began to grow even weaker. But in his fury he could not understand that he was dying.
‘Koenig... she’ll die for this,’ he raged burning up his energy. He turned on Helena with blind hatred. ‘She’ll die for what you’ve done to Zova!’ He aimed his gun at her and fired. But Helena had moved behind a screen, and the screen shattered.
‘Cantar...’ Mirella called out to him. She arose from her seat and, aged as she was, tried to wrestle the gun from him. He was still strong enough to hurl her fragile body to the ground. Stumbling and shambling, he advanced on Helena, raising his gun and pointing it at her again. She backed away into a mass of glass tubes and tanks. He fired, and missed again, breaking open more of the precious life-support containers. Clouds of more of the coloured vapours erupted into the air.
Verdeschi struggled groggily to one knee. He had been hit peripherally by the stun gun when he had diverted Cantar’s attention.
‘Time is running out, Cantar,’ Helena called out to the raving exile. She moved rapidly around the room, from place to place, so that it was impossible for his slowing reactions to keep up with her.
‘Time... not much time...?’ the boy repeated questioningly. For the first time his wrath allowed signs of his fear to poke through. Frantically, he reached for his face with his hands. Where once he had touched fine, smooth skin, a sign of his youth, now he touched wrinkled carapace. Aghast, his eyes caught the rucked backs of his hands. He reacted in terror. He denied the evidence he saw before him, and he raised his gun once more and fired at where he thought Helena stood. ‘I’m young!’ he screamed hoarsely. ‘I was young when Ragnar was alive – and I’m young still. Nothing’s changed!’
‘You are over three hundred years old,’ Helena taunted from the shadows of the darkening room.
Cantar was shooting out the lights one by one – of the room, and his life.
‘NO!’ he roared in a mixture of bitter anguish, rage and pain. He fired again, exploding more of the tubes.
‘Look at yourself Cantar!’ Helena continued with her own brand of merciless, psychological warfare. ‘In less than ten seconds you’ve become an old man!’
‘NO!’ Cantar shrieked violently. ‘I tell you... it can’t happen!’
The man who had lost everything, who had never lived the part of his life for which he most yearned, his youth, stumbled drunkenly amid the equipment, firing his gun randomly. He was taking with him to his death as much of other people’s lives as he could. Eventually, his hair long and grey, and his skin drawn like a dried prune’s, he collapsed on the floor and lay still. Even then, Time had not taken its full toll of him. Before their eyes he aged further, beyond the grave; crumbling away into a fine dust that blew aimlessly about in the draught of the ruptured life tubes.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘Space is infinite. It is dark... Space is neutral. It is cold... Space does not threaten. Space does not comfort. It does not sleep; it does not wake; it does not dream...’ Words which Koenig had read long ago in some forgotten book in some forgotten Time, on Earth, returned to him again now. Space was none of those things. It was all of them. It was beautiful. It was deceptive...
The powerful Eagle which bore him through it – while its energy supplies lasted – landed. He and Maya stepped gladly out into the travel tube, and sped back to the Command Centre. Not that there was much to be glad about. Helena and Verdeschi had returned ahead of them, courtesy of an aging and grateful monarch, but all else at the Moon Base was sadly awry. There were no energy reserves at all. What little power they had left in the Life Support Core would run out in a few days’ time – then Moon Base would die.
He felt sick.
Long periods of time seemed to pass, when he intermittently saw the corridors and the Section doors as they passed them on their way to the Command Centre. The Big Screen abruptly loomed into view before him. On it writhed the brown Cloud, belching its foul aroma at him. His purpose was to keep order... He struggled to pull himself round, but the rays and the emanations which had harmed his heart pulsated out at him from the brown mess. His puuuuuuuurrrrrrpussssssss was to keeeeeeeeeeeep orrrrderrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... hordahhhh... he told himself.
‘John!’ Helena’s alarmed voice sounded somewhere at the side of him. ‘John, you’ve had enough... You’re coming with me to the Med-Centre whether you like it or not! Tony’s in command now... now... now... now...’
‘NO!’ he fought vainly. ‘THE CLOUD! I MUST...’
He felt clear, cool hands pass through him, and strong, firm sheets, and then... peace, purrrrfect peacessssssssss...
‘He’ll be all right,’ Verdeschi told Helena to ease her mind. He didn’t convince her though, perhaps because he didn’t convince himself. Koenig was the latest victim to fall prey to the lassitude, depression and loss of will which seemed to have struck the Moon Base. He patted Helena on the shoulder. ‘It was coming to him for some time.’
‘We don’t know how the illness is caused,’ Helena complained. ‘If we knew that, we could help them.’ She stared around in distress at the full beds. She and Ben Vincent had suddenly found themselves plunged into a nightmare of work. The most worrying aspect of all, was that the Moon Base was functioning on a skeleton staff. There was hardly any energy left – and they were at their weakest ever ebb. All that was needed to bring them to an untimely death was the intervention of some maurauding alien or other.
The monitor bleeped on the Medical Centre wall, and Sahn’s face appeared. Sahn was a standby operator who had taken over the two posts normally manned by Sandra and Yasko. His smiling face struck the one happy note on the whole of Alpha.
‘What is it, Sahn?’ Verdeschi asked him.
‘Eagle Six – we’ve picked it up!’ the Indian replied cheerfully.
Tony and Helena looked at one another in astonishment. Eagle Six was the ship Koenig had sent up to reconnoitre the Space Cloud and lost contact with.
‘Impossible!’ Verdeschi exclaimed. ‘I’m coming right over!’ He waved to Helena and dashed from the room.
Maya, still functioning, met him in the Command Centre. She and Sahn now looked worried, and he frowned questioningly at them.
‘We can’t make contact,’ the Psychon told him. Anxiously, she stabbed at a button on her console. The Centre was dominated suddenly by the impressive bulk of the Eagle Six. It hung in space as though directionless and without energy. The Cloud from which it had come wasn’t visible at this magnification, indicating that the ship was close to its lunar berth and about to dock. As Verdeschi tried again to make contact with the pilot, Maya operated her console.
‘Tony?’ she looked up suddenly. Now she looked really anxious. ‘My sensors pick up no life forms... alive or dead.’
‘What!’ Verdeschi moved to his own console and called Helena. ‘Helena, I’ve got to try to speak to John.’
‘If he moves, Tony... he’ll fall apart. I’m sorry. It would be no use.’
Quickly, Verdeschi explained what was happening and cut her off. He called Security and had one guard posted at the Travel Tube and requested another two at the Command Centre. These were the only three guards left on duty in the whole of Alpha. He motioned to Bill Frazer, and together they ran from the room.
The Eagle was already in the process of docking, and he hoped to be there when it settled – right at the air-lock door. If the sensors registered no life, then he wanted to find out just what the hell was controlling the ship.
They collected the guard at the travel tube doors and piled inside. The doors slid to behind them and they began speeding along the curving bore. At the launch tube they stepped out and waited outside the sealed outer doors while the Eagle docki
ng mechanism made an air-tight connection with it. Verdeschi glanced at his watch impatiently. ‘It should have docked by now...’ The doors fell silently apart in front of them, as though at his request.
They waited tensely, staring into the Passenger Section of the ship for signs of movement. There was no hint of life. The ship was deathly quiet and seemed deserted.
‘Either our sensors are on the blink, or she’s come down by remote control,’ Frazer reasoned as he and Verdeschi moved cautiously inside, stun guns drawn.
The Section lighting was off. Dark shadows piled among the silent consoles and lockers. Verdeschi motioned Frazer toward the Pilot Section, and they positioned themselves in the gloom outside the closed doors. The doors were air-tight and there was no sign of light around their edges. The Security Chief brought out his commlock and aimed it at them. Before he had time to press the button, the doors began sliding apart on their own. They opened slowly, blinding them with a sudden, bright wedge of illumination.
‘Mackinlock...?’ Hayes squinted, nervously calling the pilot’s name.
There was no reply.
Instead, the blackened outline of some massive creature came unwelcomely into view.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The monstrous Cloud Being was part human, in that it stood on two hind legs with the bearing of a fully erect, powerfully-built eight-foot man. But there, the resemblance to Humanity unfortunately ended. The other, predominant influence in its genetic architecture was reptilian. It had a mindless froglike head, and huge partly-webbed claws that looked like they could have opened the side of the ship in which it trespassed with no difficulty whatsoever. A ferocious, gill-like crest stood out on its head, and its skin glistened with scales that gently rippled from the movement of its ebullient muscles beneath them.
The Alphans froze in stark terror, while the demoniacal creature stared coldly at them. The lizard-like blankness of its gaze destroyed the hope they had that it might be civilized. Nevertheless, Verdeschi controlled his impulse to shoot, and stepped bravely forward. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.
Space 1999 - The Space-Jackers Page 14
