‘I can’t understand it,’ Verdeschi punched more buttons, trying to trace the rampaging creature’s progress. He glanced in fear at the main doors. The creature did not appear to have followed them. Desperately he punched another set of buttons, linking them to the corridors leading to the Life Support Centre. There he found the Cloud Being. It was stalking along on its great, webbed feet, only five minutes from its intended goal. There appeared to be no outward signs whatsoever of the massive drug dose that had been injected into it.
‘What the hell’s keeping it going?’ Carter stared horrendously at it. He seemed close to break-down. ‘What will kill it?’
An amused, amplified chuckle boomed into the Centre. They spun round and noticed that the Big Screen was alive with the writhing brown tentacles of the Cloud. ‘Why does your species resist the inevitable?’ the Cloud asked. ‘Can’t we convince you that we don’t want to inflict pain?’
They were too weak and overwhelmed with the apparent hopelessness of their situation to do more than fling an insult at it. But unwittingly, the Cloud’s taunts served to strengthen them. Its boastful confidence that it would succeed in its scurrilous aims increased their determination to fight back at a time when they might otherwise have been inclined to give in.
Against all odds, against crippling, mind-destroying despair, they staggered from the room in a last ditch attempt to head off the scaly agent of the Cloud.
The bright, gold energy core at the heart of the Moon Base beat strongly. Its life-giving power was like a sun, spreading its goodness constantly and uniformly wherever it was needed. But unlike the myriad suns which radiated their heat and light throughout the universe, it was not self-consuming. It was not self-supplying. It was dependent entirely on the efforts of humans to stoke it with Tiranium. Though it now continued to provide a steady, liberal flow of power, as it would continue to do until the last atom of Tiranium was utilized, it was very nearly depleted. It would provide Life for only two more days. Then it would benefit nobody – human or alien.
‘I can’t understand... I can’t understand...’ Verdeschi repeated to himself in his mother tongue time and time again.
He and Carter crouched down behind the rocket guns that Frazer had erected behind the electrified fence. Frazer stood tensely by their side, his hand in readiness on the buzz bar power box on the wall. They had managed to delay the Cloud, Being in the Hydroponics Section by trapping it inside a growing compartment and flooding it with lethal chlorine gas – lethal, that was, to a human. But once again the creature had proved his imperviousness to such drastic treatment, and smashed his way out. They had no option now but to concentrate their last resources on defending the Life Support Centre itself.
‘Something’s coming...!’ Frazer whispered fiercely.
They froze, their eyes glued unwillingly to the intersection at the head of the corridor. Many of the lights had been broken, and the usually shadowless passageways were now filled with dark patches and shapes. One such shadow was moving, bobbing about grotesquely on the wall, telling them that the something was about to move across the intersection into view.
‘Get ready..,’ Verdeschi whispered. ‘And good luck.’
The sound of footsteps echoed hollowly down the corridor. Verdeschi frowned. They were slow, staggering footsteps. He was about to advise caution to his men, when the ghostly form of Maya rounded the corner. She looked semi-deranged.
Verdeschi’s eyes nearly fell out of his head in disbelief, then his face contorted with anxiety for her safety. Coming from somewhere behind her, around the corner, they could hear the unmistakable wheezing sound of the Cloud Being.
Resisting the urge to cry out and risk alerting the creature, he sprang from behind his gun and climbed through the cable fencing. He ran down the corridor towards the ghostly bandaged figure and snatched it up.
‘For the sake of the Holy Mother...!’ Verdeschi cried angrily to her once he had got Maya safely back through the fencing.
Maya looked deathly pale, and sank weakly to the floor. ‘I had to tell you...’ she whispered faintly.
‘Tell us what?’ Verdeschi asked her hotly.
He watched her take a syringe from a box she was carrying. Her hands trembled and shook as she snapped off the neck of a phial and poured the contents into the syringe. He could see now that she was desperately trying to get herself into a fit state to tell them something of importance.
Checking that the approaching reptile hadn’t yet stalked into view, he knelt down beside her and took the syringe from her. ‘Here, let me help.’ He motioned Carter who rose from his post and came to help. ‘Squeeze her arm,’ Verdeschi instructed.
Hurriedly, the Australian did as he was bid, and Verdeschi slid the needle into her vein and injected her. Her eyes fluttered, and a flush came back to her cheeks. She was about to speak, when a sudden, frightened yell came from Frazer.
They crouched down behind their guns once more and looked with panic-stricken gazes through the fencing and down the corridor at the creature. Its sickly colouration now seemed to blaze excitedly to life. Its eyes shone like red torches in front of it, lighting up the shadows, as it hurled itself wrathfully towards them.
‘Activate the circuit!’ Verdeschi screamed, but Frazer was standing in a kind of frozen paralysis, staring mindlessly at the advancing monster. Verdeschi swore violently and hauled himself to his feet. He dragged Frazer away and yanked down the buzz bar, not a second too late.
The reptile came to a wary halt in front of the heavy cables that blocked its path. It looked through them and hissed demoniacally at the Moonmen. Its burning eyes gazed through them into the open Life Support Centre. For a moment its metabolism appeared to seize up as important signals reached its oversized brain, telling it that there lay its goal. Then, snorting and wheezing in a kind of incensed frenzy it grasped at the live cables in front of it, intending to tear the last impediment out of its impatient way. Instead, it erupted in a spitting, crackling ball of white light. Its whole body began to glow fiercely white, then it was flung violently back on the corridor floor.
Trembling uncontrollably, Verdeschi and Carter moved forward, daring to allow a spark of hope to enter their fevered brains. But they were not to be gratified. More aroused and enraged than ever, the impossible reptile clambered agilely to its feet and mounted a second assault at the fence. Long past the point where they believed what their senses told them, the Alphans stared at it in stark terror.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
‘How can any life form take that?’ Verdeschi demanded, beside himself. In the face of the impossible, his Italian anger had found its vent again. It enraged him that such a creature should exist, and be able to defy all the laws of science.
‘Tony... It isn’t a life form...’ Maya pleaded desperately. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. It’s a robot...’
‘A robot!’ Verdeschi repeated loudly, almost scornfully. ‘It doesn’t...’
‘I know it doesn’t look like one,’ Maya cut in. She had risen to her feet, and swayed alarmingly. She steadied herself. ‘When Eagle Six came back my sensors showed no life form...’ She eyed the creature behind the fence which was preparing itself for its third attack. ‘It lived in a vacuum. Lasers, chlorine, electricity... nothing affects it...’
With an immense explosion of sparks, the reptile again struck the cables. This time it was not thrown back. It clung on, and with a mighty wrench tore the thick steel wires from their hooks. Then it flung the still electrified, melting mass at Frazer and Carter. The shock was sufficient to bring the two Alphans back to their senses, and they dived out of the way to the rocket guns. One after another, they fired the guns off, causing a mammoth explosion of fire, smoke and buckled metal in which the creature floundered. Together with Verdeschi and Maya they fled into the Life Support Centre and closed the doors behind.
‘It’s a robot, Tony...’ Maya pleaded again.
Verdeschi looked confused and flustered. In the sh
ort time that was left to them it didn’t matter what it was. ‘It doesn’t matter what it is...’ he cried. ‘If it takes that core...’
‘We can defeat it, Tony,’ Maya implored him.
‘How?’ he asked angrily, as a million different conflicting forces and thoughts waged miniature battles inside him.
‘If we can get to its control centre...’
‘We don’t even know where it...’
The doors crumpled open with a rending, tortured sound, and the hissing, bulging face of the Cloud Being poked through. Its throat had swollen out horribly, whether as a result of all the electricity it had ingested or not, they couldn’t say. Verdeschi grated his teeth, perversely satisfied that the creature seemed at least to have been mildly affected by their endeavours to kill it.
The creature knocked Frazer and Carter aside, and stalked with unerring accuracy towards the banks where the Life Support Core was housed. Now that it had come so close to achieving its goal it appeared not to care about the Alphans. Its prime object now was to secure the core and leave.
Verdeschi drew his laser gun and fired it at the rippling back of the lizard. He played it on its scaly skin until it turned in irritation, and lashed out at him. He drew it away from the core, giving Carter and Frazer time to rise and arm themselves with whatever implements they could find that would serve to delay their aggressor.
‘Get its throat!’ he yelled at them in the last hope that if they concentrated, however feebly, on what appeared to be a weak point they might yet defeat it.
Maya frantically searched the Cloud Being’s formidable body for signs of a control centre or any other clue that might reveal its electronical nature to her. In her own mind she was absolutely convinced that it was a robot.
She watched, horrified, as with one massive blow of its webbed arm it felled Verdeschi, then turned and meted out similar punishment to Frazer and Carter, knocking the puny implements that they had found from their grasp. Undeterred, it stalked back to the bank containing the Core. It stooped down and grasped the long, fat cylindrical housing unit containing the Core, and drew it carefully out.
The great Moon Base came to a complete stop.
Its mechanisms ceased. The life it sheltered began to die.
For an instant, the Life Support Centre was plunged in total darkness, then weak emergency lighting flickered on. The unwieldy creature turned, carrying its delicate prize to the door as the figures of Verdeschi, Carter and Frazer struggled groggily to their feet again. Shouting and shooting at the creature to attract its attention, they caused it to whirl around again, hissing and wheezing. But this time it was unable to stike them back. It carried the Core. For a moment, it seemed to be confused. It seemed to freeze momentarily again, in order to pick up fresh instructions. Then, resolutely ignoring the aggravation of the Alphans, it turned its back on them and stalked regardlessly from the room.
As it turned, Maya’s intense, questing gaze fell on a small, dark orifice in the side of the reptile’s head. The hole was surrounded with a thick lip of protective membrane. She guessed that the opening was its ear, and that if she cohld somehow get inside it she might gain access to the centres of control that she sought.
She summoned up the strength to convert herself into a small wasp, and flew after the Cloud Being and the trio of helpless Alphans who followed it.
The ear channel was dark and narrow – too narrow even for her slim wasp body to crawl up it. As soon as she had entered though, and felt the smooth metal walls she knew that her hunch had been correct.
It was hot, and the choking aroma of burnt and cooling metal assailed her. As she moved blindly upward, the channel began to fill with a weak red light source emanating from somewhere in front of her. The light grew stronger, and soon she found herself amidst a mass of complicated circuitry. The circuits were scorched and blackened with the intense heat which the creature had withstood, yet somehow they continued to function, perhaps because they had been extremely robustly constructed. Ironically, a few more electric shocks and rocket blasts might have done the trick.
She began crawling amongst the advanced electronical control centre of the Cloud Being. As she did so, her intruding body caused a rash of short-circuits, and the unstoppable reptile at last began to waver out of control.
Verdeschi, Carter and Frazer ran in front of the Cloud Being. They ran backwards as it advanced towards them with its precious load. They fired their lasers at its bulging, throbbing throat.
Breath howled and shrieked out of its snarling jaws as though it were experiencing pain. Its scarlet eyes flickered and dimmed. The over-rich polychromatic colours of its scales faded to a dull, listless grey.
‘It’s stopping... it’s going out of control!’ Verdeschi shouted warningly. He ran forward and grasped at the Life Support Core before the creature dropped it. But it shook him off and with a sudden burst of strength hurtled unstably down the dim corridor. It was now only moments away from the demolished travel tube leading to Eagle Six, and they ran desperately after it.
But they had no need of running. Its last burst of life had been the result of the determined Cloud in its inexplicable need for the Life Support Core. Long before it reached the wrecked doorways of the Tubes, the reptile seized completely and moved no more. It keeled over with a resounding crash, its innards as wrecked as the destruction it had wrought.
‘They’ve done it... they’ve done it!’ Koenig cried out deliriously from his bed in the Medical Centre. The dim, yellow emergency lighting went out, and the bright main lights came on again. Sahn ran over to the temperature gauge and watched with relief as it began to rise again. He remembered his new duty though, and turned on Koenig with a stern face.
‘Now will you go back to bed?’ he asked.
‘Bed? You’re joking! I feel fine... finer than I’ve ever done!’ Koenig declared expansively. He got up and walked about, demonstrating that he had indeed recovered. Many of the other patients began to rise from their beds, and Sahn realized that now that the Cloud’s creature had been conquered, its influence was waning.
Verdeschi’s face came over the monitor from the Life Support Centre. With him were Frazer and Carter... helping a very pale and shaky Maya. Their faces looked relieved. But, Koenig thought, they did not look as happy as they ought to have done. And he knew why. After they had explained how they had managed to overcome the Cloud Being, they informed the listening Alphans in the Medical Centre that the Moon Base’s remaining Tiranium stocks were sufficient to last them no longer than a day...
Space 1999 - The Space-Jackers Page 17
