RETURN TO EARTH?
The impossible happens! The Alphans receive a message from Earth. Humans in the Twenty-First Century have discovered how to contact Alpha and how to bring the space wanderers home through matter transmission. They have just thirty hours in which transmission is possible.
The operation begins, but the first Alphans transported find themselves on Earth not in the future but in the past. And the warriors they meet intend to kill them.
Can they get back to Alpha or ahead to the Twenty-First Century? Where in time and space can they find a safe haven?
FIGHT FOR LIFE
Like the Alphans, other forces in the Universe are desperately trying to stay alive. On one apparently barren planet, a lifeform disguises itself as gold ore in an attempt to seize the Alphan’s water supply for its own. An alien spacecraft manned by Dorcans attacks Moon Base Alpha. They want to use Maya’s body as a vehicle to perpetuate their own race. When at last, the Alphans locate a planet with an Earth-like atmosphere that is suitable for colonization, its unseen inhabitant sends them a message that means death...
YEAR 2
SPACE 1999
#6
THE
EDGE OF THE
INFINITE
BY MICHAEL BUTTERWORTH
Based on the dialogue and ideas of:
KEITH MILES
DONALD JAMES
JOHNNY BYRNE
-who wrote the original A.T.V. scripts for Gerry Anderson Productions Ltd., Pinewood Studios.
A Warner Communications Company
WARNER BOOKS EDITION
Copyright © 1977 by ITC Incorporated Television Company, Ltd. and Warner Books, Inc.
Ali rights reserved
ISBN 0-446-88346-8
Photograph section designed by Marsha Gold
Warner Books, Inc., 75 Rockefeller Plaza,
New York, N.Y. 10019
A Warner Communications Company
Printed in the United States of America
Not associated with Warner Press, Inc. of Anderson, Indiana
First Printing: August, 1977
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Prelude
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Moon Base Alpha Log—Dec. 25th. 2005 ETA
“The date on Moon Base Alpha is Christmas, December 25th, 2005. But on what ought to be a happy occasion, we are totally unable to celebrate....
“Since the moment, eight months ago, when we were ejected from the time warp, our instruments have told us that we are approaching the edge of the galaxy. For us, trapped on a runaway world, this might as well be the edge of our lives....
“Beyond the galaxy is nothing but space and emptiness for thousands of light-years. It is a barrier that we cannot cross in our lifetimes. There will be no worlds in it where we can replenish our life support materials, no possible site of landing to build a new Earth, no hope of contact with other living beings....
“In our desperation we have tried many ways to stop ar halt our headlong journey; but we have found no way of altering the Moon’s course. Our last chance of survival is to get caught in the orbit of one of the few star worlds that remain between us and the deep, although the rate of our progress is probably now too fast, and the chance of our passing close enough to one of these stars to be influenced by its gravity is less than one in a million....
“We are faced with no alternative but to prepare, instead, for the worst. We have taken every opportunity to stock ourselves with the raw materiais which we shall require to keep us alive. Our surveyor craft, Eagle Four, is out now on a reconnaissance, checking one of the last remaining worlds... one of the last remaining hopes for us....
“We are on the edge of the infinite....
“We are travelling where, most likely, no other men will ever follow. We are determined to stay alive as long as we can...”
Dr. H. Russell,
Chief Medical Officer,
Moon Base Alpha.
CHAPTER
ONE
A boiling, seething sphere of brown cloud hung in space.
To the Alphans watching it on the section screen in the pilot’s cockpit of Eagle Ship Four, the cloud seemed to lie almost in the trajectory of their runaway Moon Base, but in actual fact it lay more than a million miles from the point where the doomed Moon would pass it by.
Its edges were studded with stars where the celestial bodies glimmered through the brown cloud. Elsewhere in the endless vista of space, the stars were crammed in all their burning glory, luminous and inaccessible, remote and unknown.
The light of a weak, white sun fell on the cloud. Every so often its rays illuminated ghastly patches of the gray and anonymous surface of a planet concealed beneath its wild mass. Down there, on the barren, inhospitable world, the Alphans’ geological sensors had detected a wealth of vital mineral supplies.
“That’s, some cloud, John,” Alan Carter, the Eagle ship’s pilot commented softly to Commander John Koenig who was sitting next to him at the flight console. “We’re almost about to hit it.” Australian, fair-haired, optimistic and usually cheerful, he leaned forward to study the readings on the complex array of dials and meters. He made one or two adjustments to the controls, slowly turning the Eagle ship around. Its blazing descent nozzles began thrusting toward the planet, fighting the severe tug of the barren world’s 2 G gravity, reducing their staggering interplanetary velocity to a more manageable level.
“I almost forgot what clouds look like.” Koenig smiled casually as he braced himself to accept the strain. Shrewd, swarthy, he jabbed at a communicator button, connecting himself with the ship’s laboratory section. “Burn plus ten seconds. Full thrust developed any moment. Keep to your seats.”
The craft shuddered and shook under the force of its thundering engines. Once correctly oriented and stabilized, its full power was unleashed and gradually it slowed, screaming, trembling and descending through the burning layers of the planet’s murky atmosphere.
Beneath the cloud layer the planet was in gloom—a pale twilight erupting every so often into brilliance whenever the clouds rolled back and the bright sunlight streamed through.
The ground was clinkered and gray, cratered and pockmarked from the explosions of giant volcanoes in its past history. It seemed a dead and waterless world.
The Eagle touched down, melting the ground with its rockets, settling on its pads.
It shuddered once more and fell still. Its engines died.
In the intense silence it took a few moments for the crew to adjust to the gravitational effects. Then they began unstrapping and hauling themselves out of their cushioned seats. They staggered around on their feet like lumps of lead, resisting the urge to lie down once more.
Maya, the psychomolecular phenomenon and Moon Base Scientific Officer, returned to her instrument console inside the surveyor Eagle’s small laboratory. Coolly, deliberately, and beautifully she activated the geoscanner and life sensors. She was watched intently by geologist Dave Reilly not because he was overseeing her work, which was uncriticizable, but because he was trying to figure out how such a glamorous redhead came to be occupying her thoughts with laboratory hardware.
He was a lean, solidly built man around forty, with a rugg
ed, weather-beaten face. Refusing to wear a uniform, he wore instead a khaki-colored nylon shirt and a pair of creased and soiled trousers. Around his waist he wore a wide belt to which was attached an assortment of rock sampling tools and equipment pouches.
“We now have close visual contact,” Maya reported to Tony Verdeschi, the dark-haired Italian Security Chief, and his neighbor Dr. Helena Russell, the Moon Base Medical Officer. Both of them were on emergency standby and still seated. She pointedly ignored Reilly, who grinned lustily and crudely at her.
“The closer the better!” the geologist guffawed, bringing a frozen look to Helena Russell’s face and a stab of rage to Verdeschi’s.
The Psychon woman pretended not to have heard him, and said, “Too close too quickly could be dangerous.”
“Definitely!” Reilly agreed, his grin cracking into a broad smile as he placed both his arms on the console and brought his rough but not unhandsome face into close proximity with hers. He attempted to kiss her, but she turned quickly away and commenced taking readings from the life sensor.
Unseen by Reilly, Helena placed her arm on Verdeschi’s in an attempt to calm the Italian down. “She’s a big girl, Tony,” she reminded him.
He nodded sourly. “But loudmouth Romeos aren’t in her experience.”
Helena smiled reassuringly. “She’s a quick learner.”
He was debating whether to make more of it when Koenig’s voice came over the laboratory monitor from the pilot section. The Commander’s face smiled good-humoredly at them. “What have you got for us, Maya?”
“Geophysical scan confirms presence of large deposits of milgonite,” Maya told him. “Our initial spectroscopic analysis was correct. Looks like we can now make the parts Moon Base Alpha was running out of.”
Koenig nodded, pleased with the confirmation. He proceeded with his routine rundown. “Life signs?”
She looked at the print-outs that were only just beginning to chatter out and frowned. “Some kind of life form is registering... minimal and unidentifiable.”
“Life? ln that desert?” Reilly entreated incredulously. He peered at the circular screen on the geoscan and saw the dim outlines of a large, Verruca-like crater lying next to their ship. “I’ll lay a wager there’s not a monkey’s gobful of spit on the whole place.”
Koenig looked slightly uncomfortable for the first time as he continued, “Atmosphere?”
“Oxygen, nitrogen, inert gases, hydrogen... breathable,” she announced.
Koenig shook his head. “Even more puzzling.” They watched his head turn off-screen and heard his cautious question to Carter. “How much time do we have before Alpha is out of range?”
There was a slight pause, then Carter’s voice. “Three hours... plus a couple of minutes.”
Koenig nade a snap decision. “Reduce to minimum power to conserve energy.” His face reappeared on their screen. “Stand by. I’m coming through—and we’re going out.” The screen went dead.
Helena and Verdeschi began unstrapping and dragging themselves upright in the twice-normal gravity. Reilly loped across the room to the equipment lockers and opened one of thwm. Inside was his space suit and other gear. He pulled out a case and a Stetson ten-gallon hat, slammed the door shut, and turned around. He noticed Maya staring curiously at him.
“My lucky hat,” he grinned, securing it on his head. “You never saw one of these before, huh, Maya?” She shook her head.
“That’s the trouble with your planet,” he went on. “It never had the wonderful State of Texas.”
“Or an Irish cowboy,” Verdeschi put in sourly, moving threateningly toward him.
The two men faced one another, the one angry, the other shrugging in mock amazement at his colleague’s reaction. Once more their feud was broken, this time by Koenig wallking slowly and with effort into the room, trailed by an equally sluggish, complaining Carter.
“We’ve got about three hours,” Koenig told them all.
“Commander, in three hours we ought to collect enough milgonite to last Alpha indefinitely!” Reilly pronounced.
Koenig nodded and turned to Maya. “Program the timer for three hours.”
Maya’s slender, manicured fingers flashed out over a row of keys in front of her. Instantly, a high-pitched electronic bleep signal came over the air. After bleeping three times, a neutral, toneless voice sounded. It was the onboard computer, its countdown already under way.
“Minus three hours to lift-off,” it told them emotionlessly.
Koenig glanced at Carter, then made his way toward the heavy inner door of the airlock. “What are we waiting for? Let’s check out that life form. Helena, you stay here.”
The doctor gaped protestingly. “John, I should go with you... there could be environmental hazards...”
“Somebody has to mind the store.” He smiled at her disarmingly. The doors swung smoothly open, and he stepped inside.
She glared with a mixture of annoyance and alarm at the backs of the Alphans as they filed inside the airlock chamber, hefting their equipment behind them.
The landscape was dark under the heavy weight of cloud. The air was clear and warm—almost sweltering, forcing thern to take off their jackets and long for the air-conditioning of the Eagle.
They moved laboriously along in a loose group, scanning the dim terrain with their specialized instruments for signs of the precious minerals they were after. The ground was rermarkably smooth, covered with a fine layer of crystallized granules that glimmered weakly in the wan light. Overhead the clouds boiled in a brown, endless turbulence, heavy with water, yet releasing none of the fluid that the parched and dehydrated land below so desperately needed.
Every so often, in the distance, beams of yellow sunlight appeared, stalking through the gloom like the legs of giant creatures. Briefly, the cloud formations directly above them parted and they were bathed in the hot, yellow light. They noticed with surprise that the ground wasn’t gray—it was yellow. It was butter-yellow, and the crystals blinded them with a fierce, golden intensity.
In the momentary illumination they noticed several large, golden boulders scattered on the surface.
At sight of them, Reilly halted, as though struck. He raised his heavy hat from his head and mopped the sweat from his brow with a red-and-white polkadot handkerchief.
“Well, I’ll be blown to pieces!” he exclaimed incredulously. “Milgonite!... and just sitting on the desert. No need to blast it out!”
He strode painfully toward it, for the moment oblivious of the aching, overworked limbs that supported him. “That’s a beaut, isn’t it? Say hello to Big Dave.”
Koenig moved toward him. “If I can break up the romance between you and the rock...”
Reilly grinned good-naturedly at him. “Rocks understand me, Commander. None of my wives ever did, but rocks do. But I get the message.” He unclipped a miniature hand scanner from a holster in his belt. Pointing it at his arm he squeezed the control trigger, nodding with satisfaction when it emitted a flat, constant oscillation. He aimed it at the rock, now gray and plunged in gloom once more as the clouds above rolled back into place. The scanner emitted a similar, but higher-pitched, note. Again he nodded. He brought the butt of the scanner close to his face. Squinting through the dimness he altered one of its dials to read “milgonite,” then turned it once more to the rock.
“Get ready to dig for gold, folks.”
He squeezed the trigger. This time there was no oscillation. His confident expression turned to one of bafflement.
“What is it, Dave?” Maya stepped forward in alarm.
Reilly straightened up. “No milgonite. But it’s got to be milgonite....” He peered through the gloom at the rising rock face of the crater lip that lay not far away. “This must be a source of milgonite energy for this gold glow....”
“How about bringing a sample to the Eagle for computer analysis?” Koenig asked.
“Yeah...” Reilly agreed reluctantly, still puzzled and becoming frust
rated. He was no fool. He knew milgonite when he saw it. He played around with the scanner and tested it again against his hand. It was functioning perfectly.
Shaking his head, he reholstered it and withdrew his laser gun instead. He aimed it at the rock and fired.
A thin lance of light sprang from the gun’s nozzle and burned into the rock. The sudden heat caused the rock to fracture and a piece to crack off. Stooping down, he gathered the chipping and examined it minutely.
“Something’s off balance,” he commented after a moment. He transferred the fragment to his other hand and help up his fingers. They were coated with a dark, oily substance which looked as though it had leaked out of the rock.
“Let’s find out how off balance,” Koenig urged, worriedly. He began leading them back to the ship. Reilly might be an overbearing irritation at times, he thought, but the man knew his geology. If he thought something was wrong, then the puzzle had to be solved before they could proceed any further—and solved fast.
They were relieved to step back to the light and the coolness of the Eagle. Helena looked surprised to see them returning so soon. She stuck her hands on her slim hips and started to say so, then noticed the sample in Reilly’s hands. She backed hastily out of their way to let them through to the workbench. She had been about to diagnose milgonite when she noticed that the strange rock was far more golden than milgonite ore. It was gleaming as though melting. It had spread all over the geologist’s hands, coating them in a bright leafing of gold.
“Under the petroscope with it.” Reilly dropped the sample rather than placed it on the bench while he pulled out the observation instrument. He plugged the petroscope cables into the computer inputs on the console and placed the sample beneath the tube. Watched tensely by the others, he began analyzing it, looking for a response on the monitor. A straight, unwavering line ran across the oscilloscope screen. There was no registration at all.
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