Without any perceptible change of expression, and without replying, the creature moved towards him.
‘What happened to Mackinlock?’ Verdeschi swallowed dryly, resolutely staying his ground. The space lizard continued to bear down on him. It seemed sluggish, drugged.. But there was no mistaking its intentions as it raised its huge claws suddenly in front of it. ‘No further, or we stop you!’ Verdeschi shouted, threateningly.
A chilling outrush of breath escaped the creature’s jaws –sounding like the amplified wheeze of a man who has just lifted a heavy weight. Its eyes cape suddenly to life, shining with a fierce redness. It’s body now possessed a frightening rapidity.
‘FIRE!’ Verdeschi just had time to scream out before the outlandish monster was upon them. He, Frazer and the guard all fired their stun guns at once – and gazed aghast as the white-hot rays of laser light bounced harmlessly off its scales. In a frenzy, the Cloud Being clutched up the guard and began tearing and crushing him to death. Verdeschi tried to help, but he was flung violently aside. He picked himself up just as the creature was beginning to divert its attention from the mutilated body of the guard towards him and Hayes.
‘RUN!’ the Italian yelled.
Frazer needed no telling. Both of them stumbled through the darkness of the Passenger Section into the launch tube. Behind them they heard the loud rushing wheezing sound that the monster made as it sped swiftly after them. They flung themselves into the Travel Tube and fumblingly operated the controls. The sturdy outer doors closed in the nick of time. Accompanied by the loud, tortuous sound of ripping, tearing metal as they were torn angrily apart again, the Tube sped off on a final, one-way journey.
Verdeschi threw himself exhaustedly into a seat and tried to regain some composure. His commlock bleeped, and bore Maya’s anxious face. ‘Tony... are you alright?’
‘Yeah... for the moment.’ Amidst pauses for breath he explained what had happened.
‘There’s something following your Travel Tube...’ she said, horrified. ‘It’s close behind you.. it must be the...’
‘It can’t be..!’ Frazer exclaimed in dread amazement. ‘Not at the speed we’re moving!’
‘After what we saw, nothing will surprise me,’ Verdeschi commented, still shaken. ‘Maya, any more details?’
‘According to my sensor, it’s big, powerful and catching up fast.’
‘Tell Security I want them at the Travel Tube... armed with heavy rocket guns...’ Verdeschi ordered. ‘On the double.’
As they departed from the Tube a few moments later, they heard the sound of more metal being rent, accompanied by the windy shrieking sound of the perpetrator. Hurriedly they closed the heavy outer doors – doors that had been designed to withstand the most severe attacks coming from the lunar surface.
The two security guards whom Verdeschi had positioned at the Command Centre came running breathlessly down the corridor towards them. As they had been directed, they carried two of the large fat-barrelled rocket guns, and as soon as they arrived they began to set them up.
‘Anything comes out of that tunnel... fire your rockets... remember... no hesitation...’ Verdeschi commanded them. He ran with Frazer towards the Command Centre.
The thick, vaporous Cloud on the Big Screen seemed denser and more virulent since they last saw it. It glowed and pulsated with a sickly rhythm, casting a sombre brown shadow over the Centre.
‘Give me a fix on its position, Sahn,’ Maya requested as Verdeschi and Frazer entered. She looked white.
They came and lent over her shaking shoulder, studying the computer printouts. A sudden clipped voice came over the Screen’s audio system, making them jump.
‘Our relative positions are of little consequence,’ the voice boomed at them.
Verdeschi leapt towards the Command Chair and stabbed at a button. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded harshly.
‘Who we are is too complicated for your comprehension,’ the cold voice replied supremely.
‘Try me,’ the Security Chief challenged it.
‘Time does not permit,’ the voice countered.
‘We’ve got time... a lot of it,’ Frazer spoke from Maya’s console.
‘You are in error. You have very little time.’
‘What do you want?’ Verdeschi tried another line of questioning.
‘Your Life Support System.’
A stunned silence fell on the few Alphans who were left in the Centre. Verdeschi laughed nervously. ‘You mean we just give it to you?’
‘We have sent somebody to take it.’
‘You can’t... we can’t survive without it!’ Maya cried indignantly.
‘Neither can we... so we must deprive you of it,’ the indifferent Cloud replied with a ruthlessness that made them shiver.
Sahn looked sharply at Verdeschi. ‘Tony... trouble at the Travel Tube.’
The Cloud laughed. ‘See? I will return your screen to you to observe!’
The brown, amorphous tentacles of dust and other horrendous matter writhed out of existence on the Screen. In its place appeared a picture of the Travel Tube doors, guarded at a careful distance by the two security men. The guards had set up their rocket guns on short tripod supports, and they were waiting tensely behind them, their fingers positioned on the controls.
The Tube doors shook and rattled violently. As Verdeschi and Maya watched, they began to buckle and bend, crumpling up like paper. One of the creature’s claws sliced through. The other claw appeared, and together the two horny appendages drew the plate metal apart like a curtain. It stepped out, hissing loudly, its scaly, rippling skin gleaming with unearthly psychedelic colours. Its great, neckless frog’s head jerked, and with its blazing-red eyes it spied the trembling guards. It sprang lithely at them. Before it could reach them a violent explosion erupted around it, and the Screen filled with dense white smoke and flame.
Triumphantly, Maya gripped Frazer’s hand. Verdeschi smiled twistedly. Nothing could have survived the two shells. The rocket guns were the most powerful light artillery they had.
Their expressions faded though, first to incredulity, and then to outright horror. As the smoke cleared, they saw the imperishable outlines of the monster reappear. It had not even been grazed, but the corridor walls and the rest of the Travel Tube entrance had been completely wrecked. With a sibilant hiss it leapt on the first guard and tore him to shreds. The second guard raised his rocket gun and tried desperately to club the creature down, but he was picked up and wrenched in two. His decapitated body pumped blood over the walls and camera lens, and the watching Alphans in the Command Centre turned away, sick with horror.
‘We’ve got to do something...’ Frazer whined.
‘We’re going to do something.’ Verdeschi told him in a voice of grim desperation. ‘We’re going to save our Life Support System, to save Alpha.’ As he spoke, the killer reptile on the Screen dropped the two halves of the guard’s body and began looking intolerantly at the corridors and walls. It appeared to be trying to sense its bearings, not tear them down.
‘Get down to Medical Centre,’ Verdeschi snapped at Maya and Sahn.
‘But Tony...’ Maya began protestingly.
‘Don’t argue... just go,’ Verdeschi shouted at her viciously. He called Helena as Maya and Sahn moved reluctantly from the Centre. ‘Helena... urgent. Let me know as soon as Maya and Sahn get there.’ He cut her off and glanced fearfully at the reptile on the besplattered Screen. It was moving out of view, heading the right way for the Life Support Centre. Tensely he and Frazer watched, waiting for Helena to call back. When she reported affirmatively five minutes later, he sprang towards one of the computer consoles.
‘Computer... this is priority one,’ he spoke into the voice decoder. ‘All doors as of this moment are non-operational. Repeat... all doors are to remain locked... to be opened only at my voice command.’
‘Your efforts are futile,’ the cold, amused voice of the Cloud boomed again into the Centre. The Security Chief whirled round
to watch the boiling brown mass on the Screen. It spoke again. ‘Give up your Life Support System, and die peacefully.’
Verdeschi gritted his teeth. ‘We don’t die on request.’
‘It is not our intention to be violent...’
‘Obviously,’ Verdeschi interrupted scathingly.
‘... unless our needs are denied.’
Verdeschi turned from it in anger and disgust. He motioned to Frazer. The two men ran hastily through the empty Command Centre towards the main doors. They were too late. Stalking towards them was the Cloud’s assignee.
‘The other exit!’ Frazer backed away, pulling Verdeschi with him.
Rapidly, they moved back through the consoles and through the far door. A tremendous rattling commenced in the Command Centre as the creature hammered on the main doors. Verdeschi watched through the window of the second door as the reptile broke through. Contrary to his expectations of it, it began prowling around, examining the consoles. He saw the creature look towards the Big Screen and realized that it must be receiving instructions off the Cloud. A moment later it turned and headed back the way it had come – towards the Life Support Centre.
Verdeschi clenched his teeth in apprehension. He turned to Frazer. ‘We have to split up here.’
Frazer nodded. ‘I’ll fix up a defence at the Life Support Centre...’
‘I’ll decoy him. Good luck.’ He didn’t know why but he extended his hand. The other took it, and they squeezed each other’s hands long and hard.
Frazer set off down the corridor, on a short cut to his destination, while Verdeschi travelled in the opposite direction in the hope of heading their assailant off at an intermediate point. Most of the Moon Base’s Centres, though quite separate from each other, were well and efficiently linked together. The creature had taken the usual route, but there were emergency routes which its controller obviously wasn’t aware of.
The fog of unreason that clouded Koenig’s mind cleared with the use of the drugs and the rest treatment which Helena prescribed for him. But he was still weak. For a long time he had been unable even to sit up. Maya and Sahn sat by his bedside. At his insistence, and against Helena’s instruction, they had brought him up to date on the developments, and the implications of these acted as strongly as the drugs on his ailing constitution.
He struggled from the sitting position he had gained and swung his legs off the bed. An incapacitating wave of nausea swept over him and he slumped back down again, impotent with frustration.
‘You don’t have the strength yet, John,’ Helena came wearily over to him. The Medical Centre had about a hundred patients in it, most of them lying on the floor and all in a bad way. A hundred or so others who had reached a convalescing stage had been sent back to their quarters and told to lock themselves away. The epidemic seemed to be caused by a type of ’flu virus, probably the Cloud’s doing, though how and when the virus had been introduced she didn’t know.
‘Sure I have the strength,’ Koenig muttered weakly with his eyes closed.
‘Tony ordered me to stay away,’ Maya told Koenig distraughtly. ‘You’ve got to make him let me help him.’
Helena cut her off more viciously than she intended. ‘Killing him...’ she indicated Koenig, ‘... won’t help Tony.’
‘If we don’t help Tony we’ll all be dead!’ Maya snapped back. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added almost immediately.
With a massive effort of will, Helena forced herself to see Maya’s point of view. Love was at the root of their bickering, and it was only understandable that the Psychon should try to protect Tony – just as it was only understandable for herself to protect Koenig.
Koenig forced himself up to a sitting position again. ‘Helena... a hand... please...’ he requested faintly.
Helena hesitated, then helped him climb to his feet. With her assistance, he walked towards the door.
‘Your commlock please, Maya?’ he asked. He took it from her hand and pointed it at the door. Unsteadily, he pressed a button. The commlock bleeped. The door didn’t open. Koenig frowned. ‘Tony must have ordered the computer to lock all doors.’
‘Then none of us can help,’ Helena commented.
‘If that creature is what you say it is, Maya, Tony did what he had to...’ Koenig gasped. He began to faint, and they helped him back to his bed.
Alan Carter, who had been overhearing their conversation from his blanket on the floor at Koenig’s bedside, raised himself on his elbow. He had got over the worst of the strange illness and was nearly able to walk, but he was taking advantage of the rest. ‘Give me the commlock,’ he said. ‘I’ll find out where Tony is, then you may be able to get him on the monitor.’
Gratefully, Maya handed over the communicator. He punched Verdeschi’s frequency, and waited. After a lengthy pause, the Security Chief’s face appeared on the tiny screen.
‘Tony – what’s the situation?’ Carter asked him.
‘Desperate, Alan.’
‘What can we do to help?’
‘Keep everybody out of the way.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Techlab Five. I’m trying to get that creature into the vacuum chamber.’
Carter motioned to Maya. She rushed to the Medical Centre monitor. In a few seconds she had the picture of Verdeschi. Techlab Five was a small room where space suits were tested and repaired. Inside it was a large stainless steel door marked DANGER. HIGH VACUUM CHAMBER. Verdeschi was standing by the Chamber door, tapping out a sequence of buttons as he prepared to open it. As he worked he spoke to Carter on his commlock which he had strapped round his wrist.
The heavy door, about six inches thick, swung open and Verdeschi moved away from it. He disappeared off camera to peer into the corridor outside the laboratory. He returned a moment later looking tense. He spoke softly into the commlock. ‘I got trouble, Alan.’
‘Don’t take chances.’
‘If this works maybe I won’t have to take any more chances,’ he smiled wryly.
He raised his laser and fired – at the invader. A frightening blur of colour streaked in front of the camera. The watching Alphans in the Medical Centre drew in their breaths sharply. The blur resolved as the creature that had caused it came to a stop, revealing its hideous aspect for the first time to many of the onlookers. There were cries of alarm and panic.
Acute anxiety swept through Maya. She watched with a destracted, demented gaze as Verdeschi cowered in front of it. She tore herself away from the screen and began pacing like a caged animal around the Medical Centre, seeking a way of escape.
Verdeschi backed slowly away from the razor sharp claws and the wheezing, gaping maw. The Cloud Being’s bulging frog eyes blazed. They blazed hatefully down on all they saw. Its rippling, scaly body, emblazoned with colours, radiated an intense heat. The smell of overheated metal wafted acridly up Verdeschi’s nostrils.
The courageous Italian backed rapidly inside the Vacuum Chamber and the enraged creature followed him. The cylindrical Chamber was about fifteen feet high by about ten feet in diameter. Through the open door beyond the body of the advancing reptile, he could see the glinting dome of a glass pressure sphere standing on the Techlab work bench. Quickly, he aimed his laser gun at it and fired. The dome exploded with a loud report, causing his distracted aggressor to pause in mid stride and turn its ugly head towards it. Verdeschi saw his chance.
He ran past the creature, out of the Vacuum Chamber. Before the creature could discover what was happening to it, Verdeschi punched the door-closing button and watched with satisfaction as the heavy, half-ton seal clanged shut.
Hammering started up instantly on the door from the inside. The steel trembled, almost imperceptibly, and quickly proved to Verdeschi’s overwhelming relief that it could withstand the reptile’s batterings. There was at least one place on Alpha that could contain it. Shaking with delayed shock and sweating profusely, he punched more of the buttons on the Chamber control panel, and watched with satisfaction as the vacuum gauge ne
edle next to it slowly sank, indicating that all air had been evacuated from inside. Then he collapsed, exhausted, into a chair.
The hammering on the inside of the door began to decrease. Gradually it stopped altogether. Heaving a heavy sigh, Verdeschi withdrew his commlock and called Helena.
‘OK, brave one,’ the Doctor smiled wanly at him. ‘We’ve been watching you on the monitor. That should fix it...’ She looked very weak and pale, probably because of the phenomenal amount of work she and Vincent were coping with.
‘Helena, can I talk to John?’ he asked her.
‘Sorry, Tony...’
‘Nothing to be sorry about...’ he grinned weakly. ‘Let me talk to Alan...’ As he spoke, he watched Helena’s eyes close, and her face disappear from view. ‘Helena...!’ he called out in alarm.
Carter’s face appeared on the screen, looking strained but distantly happy. ‘She fainted, Tony,’ he said. ‘She’s got the sickness... and not too soon if you ask me. She would have worked herself to death.’
‘Take care of her, Alan,’ Verdeschi said softly. He turned nervously to the Vacuum Chamber door, expecting the creature inside to somehow survive and tear its way out. He turned to Carter. ‘I’m going to open the Chamber door. We’ve got to make absolutely certain that it’s dead.’
Carter nodded grimly. ‘There’s no doubting that it will be. Nothing can live in a high vacuum... But we must check. Can’t you let me out now and...’
‘No,’ the Italian replied firmly. ‘I’m going to see this through on my own... Maya? Is she OK?’ he added more gently.
Carter nodded. ‘She was when I last saw her.’ He noticed Verdeschi’s alarmed look and explained hurriedly, ‘She turned into a mouse and ran into a ventilator grill... we couldn’t stop her.’
Verdeschi swore. ‘The stupid...’ he began. But there was no sense in wasting energy. He cut Carter off. Mustering his strength and will, he turned once more to face the Vacuum door. He clenched his hands until they were white. He grated his teeth until they ached with pain. Rising from his seat, he reached out his hand and jabbed at the button that would flood the Chamber with air again. He stabbed it quickly, so that there could be no going back on his decision. With equal thoughtlessness he jabbed at the lock-release button. Slowly, the door began to swing open.
Space 1999 - The Space-Jackers Page 15
