“We’re not going to force our way in, that’s for sure,” he said. “How about Tony?”
Carter tensed. “What about him?”
The man beamed at him through his beard. “You don’t need to hide things from me. Is it true? You know that he’s cracked up?”
The Eagle pilot scowled in irritation, wondering how the big Pioneer Chief had got to know. The fact was supposed to have been kept secret, to avoid panic until more about the unpleasant occurrence had been found out.
“Don’t ask me!” he said more savagely than he intended. “Ask a doctor... if they find him... if he’s still alive...” He realized how worried he was himself. He noticed, also, the hurt expression on the other man’s face, and he apologized. “Let’s go back to work. We’ll make another examination of the building, this time looking for a finely sealed entry door.”
The flattened geodesic facets of the golf ball were optically disturbing when they were looked at closely, and Salkov had made the suggestion that they had perhaps missed a possible entrance as a result.
Once more they began moving around the circular track they had cleared at the base of the building. This time, they were rewarded.
“Found it!” Carter exclaimed. Salkov rushed over to join him and peered where the Eagle pilot pointed. His fingers traced the outline of a star-shaped hatch. The hatch’s surfaces were covered with the myriad solar cells, and it was identifiable only because of the line that ran between its edges and the other facets composing the building walls. Beneath it, they noticed a small box-shaped object attached to the baseline.
“The entry mechanism?” Salkov bent down and opened it. His sensitive fingers found two buttons and he pressed first one, then the other, then both together, but without result.
“But no power.” He looked up in frustration at Carter. His face brightened. “The solar cells...” He climbed back on his feet and cast his eyes over the golf ball. Most of its surface was draped in years of foliage, obliterating the rays of the powerful sun which beat down.
Carter caught on. He pulled out his comlock and got through to Koenig. “John, I think we’ve found a way into the alien structure.”
“Good,” Koenig’s tinny voice spoke back to him. The Commander sounded only half-interested.
“It seems to be powered by solar radiation,” Carter continued. “If we’re right, when the cells are charged... we’re in!”
“Okay, let Yuri deal with it. We’ve located Tony.”
Carter’s face broke into a wild grin. “Well, that’s what I call good news.” He stuck his thumb up at Salkov.
“We haven’t got him yet,” Koenig told him warningly.
“Oh. Then you don’t know his condition?”
“We will soon,” Koenig replied tightly. He sounded grim and fearful, and Carter’s smile quickly faded. He wondered what condition they had found the Alphan in.
“Alan,” Koenig added, “you and Vincent come and pick us up. I think we’ll need you.”
Carter nodded despondently. Looking helplessly at Salkov, he snapped the set off and strode away.
He knew by both the tone and content of Koenig’s instructions that he would have to take one of the Eagles over to pick up Tony—and that must mean that the Security Chief was in a really bad way.
He rushed back to the base where he knew Vincent had returned with Lustig’s body. When he got there, amidst the clutter of tables, equipment, and people he noticed Les Johnson, a medical technician, helping himself to some of the fruit-stuffs that he was supposed to be analyzing. Ever since the time when Maya and Verdeschi had been trapped on the planet Luton, at the hands of the merciless judges who had ruled that planet, and had found themselves sentenced to fight other alien life forms to regain their freedom, there had been a total ban put on the eating of any planetary produce whatsoever—until, first, it had been analyzed, and second, before the planet of its origin had been checked.
He fumed with anger, but was unable to do more than pass a warning shout at the man on his way to find Vincent. He searched among the tents, eventually locating the doctor. Together they set out for the berthed Eagle.
The trail to Verdeschi led across a stony, open stretch of scrubland covered with sparse, bush-like vegetation. They had found colored snags of his blue tunic caught on thorns, and but a moment ago, they had caught sight of him on his crazy run across the landscape.
They had watched him crash sideways into tall tree, then, angry with it, fire his laser at it, charring it to a smoking stump. From the power of the burn Koenig could tell that his gun had been set on Kill and not Stun.
Then Verdeschi had caught sight of them and backed away from the blackened stump, seemingly in fear. Now he had fled into a dense thicket of tall bushes and undergrowth.
“Hold it!” Koenig called out to the guards who immediately set off after him. “I’ll take him. You two stay here and make sure he doesn’t double back.” He set out toward the thicket.
“He’s armed, Commander,” one of the guards pointed out in alarm.
“Yes, but I don’t think he’ll use it on me,” Koenig called back confidently. He made his way into the thicket and quickly emerged in another stony area. Here he picked up a trail of blood drips and followed it.
In the distance he could hear the preliminary test roar of the Eagle ascent rockets, and he hoped that Carter would be able to reach him in time to save the Security Chief. Or perhaps, it might be he who would be needing the helping, he thought grimly.
But his fears were not proved.
A few moments later he abruptly came across Verdcschi. His collapsed, wasted body was slumped over a boulder. His tunic was ripped and torn. He was shaking spasmodically. When he turned him over, he saw that his face was badly bruised and cut and drenched in sweat, and his eyes were staring wildly up at the sky, glazed and fixed on the burning sun.
The sun had grown hotter as the day wore on. Soon, it was a blazing, high orb sending down rays of searing heat. The lush vegetation around the golf ball began to steam. But to Salkov, the sun was a blessing. The stronger it beamed, the better, as far as he was concerned.
Not so the two technicians he had roped in to help him clear the vegetation from the building walls. Their task complete, they were drinking thirstily from beakers of cool, crystal water they had taken from a nearby stream.
“Another couple of hours should do the trick,” he said to them as they drank. He added warningly, “You know you shouldn’t be drinking that yet, until it’s been tested.”
They shrugged and continued drinking while he shook his head and turned his attention back to the building. Since the obstruction had been cleared off the millions of tiny solar cells, it had become a giant, silent energy generator, producing electricity cleanly and efficiently, for free. Every so often he made the short walk in the sun to the hatch to see whether it would operate. He was contemplating the building’s purpose, wondering what new and strange things the electrical power would motivate, when he heard two sharp gasps, followed by two thuds behind him.
The two technicians had keeled over. They lay perfectly still among the foliage, their beakers fallen beside them.
He ran forward and turned one of them over. He checked the man’s pulse and discovered to his horror that he was dead.
The Eagle came, descending out of the steel sky. Koenig had radioed the guards, and together they helped carry Verdeschi aboard. Dr. Vincent was at the open hatchway waiting to greet them. He looked solemn. He looked even more despondent when he saw the state of the Security Chief.
Quickly, he supervised his conveyance to a medical bed he had prepared, and while Carter began taking the ship back to base, he began to work on him.
Koenig hovered nervously at the bedside. “Is there anything we can do?”
“He’s sinking into a deep coma.” Vincent was shaking his head, giving the impression that he thought that there was not much anyone could do. “I’ve given him a shot to stop him sinking any deeper...
but without proper medical facilities there would be brain damage.”
“Then we get him back to Alpha—right now.” Koenig pulled out his comlock to radio his intentions to the Moon.
He discovered that Maya had been just about to get through to him. She sounded very distressed, but he assumed this was because of Verdeschi’s condition. “John, Yuri Salkov has just called in. He’s been trying to get you personally, but for some reason he has been unable to operate on your frequency. Something happened at the alien structure...”
Koenig frowned in irritation. Her voice was crackling and the link was fading in static. Finally, her voice faded altogether and his comlock smoked and burst into flames. Astounded, he let it fall, still burning, to the floor.
A warning siren sounded from the control panel, and a red emergency light began winking on and off. As it did so, the ship, which was already quite high up, preparing to inject into orbit, began shuddering violently.
“Stabilizer gone!” Koenig shouted. He darted forward to the controls. “Switching to back-up.” He turned to Carter. “What the hell’s happening?”
The shuddering ceased.
“It’s holding,” Carter gasped. “Let’s hope long enough to get us to Alpha, or we’re goners.”
Koenig stabbed at the communicator button and re-called Maya. “We’re having trouble with the survey Eagle. Malfunctions...”
“Can you correct?” she asked worriedly.
“We’ll try, but if negative, we’ll head back to Base Camp and switch to Eagle One—” Before he could finish, ominous coils of smoke began rising from the control console. Again, Maya’s face faded away and the screen went dead.
He and Carter could only stare at one another, first in numbed disbelief, then in terror.
“Moon Base to survey Eagle,” Maya called out desperately. “Moon Base to survey Eagle, come in...” She turned to Helena. “We’ve lost contact again—not only with John, but Base Camp communications are also affected.”
“If they don’t get Tony to Medical Center, then... well, let’s hope they do soon.” Helena modified her words, noticing Maya’s distressed look. She herself was deeply upset, both for Koenig’s welfare and, for her own instrumental role in encouraging the expedition. She had to admit now that it looked like being a disaster... and that Koenig’s attitude had been the correct one.
Maya reacted in further alarm to a sudden stream of telemetry flashing across her monitor. “Full computer scan on the planet, quick,” she called out urgently to Sandra Benes. “And keep a trace on the survey Eagle.” She turned helplessly to Helena. “Something’s happening to the planet, Helena. The atmosphere readings have changed drastically...”
The Eagle ship slowly began to disintegrate. First one vital part, then another cut out. Or rather, they dissolved out. The circuitry seemed to be melting, and the electrical energy was finding the quickest way out it could—in the form of heat.
While Carter navigated as best he could, Koenig checked the ship’s main circuits. They were arranged in cassette form and pressed conveniently into a bank in the wall. He began pulling them out, one by one, examining them. In each case, they were badly corroded. Many were already useless. In despair, he turned to the standby sets he had located, wondering whether only the operational ones were being affected. But these, too, had been equally badly eaten away.
His eyes lighted on some metal controls in front of him. They looked dulled and tarnished. He scratched at them with his nail, easily stripping off the layer of oxide that had formed.
“All the metals—they seem to be corroding! Return to Base Camp, Alan. Quick!”
Carter wrestled with the warm controls, decreasing thrust and allowing the ship to drop back. He took it down as fast as he dared. But when he got it down to a few hundred feet it began to shudder again as the standby stabilizers went. The controls pulled off in his hands, and the ship began rolling and wheeling about.
It dropped into a dive. Last-second timing on its pilot’s part, increasing the boost on the front thrusters and levelling the craft out, prevented their diving to their doom. He managed to bring them down to a safer height, before all the controls cut out. He pounded on the controls frantically, but to no avail.
Flaming and smoking, and dropping bits and pieces of itself on the land below, the Eagle slewed down, skimmed a forest of trees, and plowed into the ground. It skittered along on the bushy, stony terrain, eventually coming to rest against a lone tree and a group of boulders.
“They didn’t make it,” Maya moaned. “Their controls disintegrated before touchdown.” She pressed the communicator but could get no reply at all now from either the Base or the Eagle.
Frantically she and Helena searched for their comlocks and tried to activate them—but they, too, failed.
It was as though the whole deadly planet had gone out of existence. But they could still see it there on the Big Screen, spinning, turning calmly on its axis, hanging in space as beautiful and welcoming in its looks as their own lost Earth.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Koenig awoke to find himself lying inside a rough, stone cavern. lt was the cave at Base One, he recalled suddenly.
Someone was leaning over him and calling to Carter. It was Sahn. Her dark, smiling features gazed down at him as though from out of another world. Carter and Dr. Vincent appeared suddenly beside her. Vincent began checking his pulse.
“Some landing...” Koenig grinned weakly up at them. As soon as he spoke, he started off a terrible thumping pain in his head. He realized that that was where he had been hurt.
Carter held up an apparently intact throttle control in his hands. “Got to admit, it wasn’t one of my best.”
“Tony...” Koenig frowned, suddenly remembering.
“He’s alive,” Vincent told him. “Right next to you.”
He raised himself on his elbows, ignoring the head pain which grew a hundred times worse. Verdeschi lay pallid beside him on another stretcher, motionless and still. “We’ve got to get him back...”
“Easy, John.” Vincent restrained him. “No one’s going anywhere. We’re stranded.”
“Stranded?” Koenig struggled all the more. “But Eagle One?”
Carter’s smile vanished. “Forget Eagle One, John. It’ll fall apart if we try to use it.” To demonstrate his words he took the throttle control in his hands, snapped it and tossed the pieces on Koenig’s blanket. “Everything metal on the planet has corroded.”
Koenig examined the badly corroded pieces of the throttle control, stunned.
“Something else,” Carter continued grimly. “Three of the survey team are dead.”
“Dead?” Koenig asked, appalled.
“Poisoned. Two of them drank water from a stream. The other one ate some fruit from a tree...” He broke off, mystified. “The odd thing is that the food and water had just been passed as safe.” He remembered seeing Les Johnson sampling the fruit; unknown to him, it had in fact been passed. He pursed his lips. “It killed them.”
“Tony... what got to him?” the dazed Commander asked as though in a bad dream.
Vincent had returned to his task of treating the Italian. “He’s got a few bruises on him. Probably a result of his scramble with Lustig... but nothing that could have affected him.”
Something affected Koenig right now. It was Vincent’s offhand, reticent way. He scowled. “But something flipped him.”
“I examined Lustig,” Vincent told him as he worked. “The laser beam killed him, but I found evidence of brain cell expansion—the kind of pressure that can first drive a man mad, then kill him.”
“The source of the pressure?”
“I don’t know.” He broke off thoughtfully.
“But do you feel Tony suffered the same kind of pressure?” Koenig asked in alarm.
Vincent nodded unwillingly. “I have a hunch that’s whatI’ll find upon further examination.”
“And if you do... can you help him?”
/> “I don’t know.” He sighed heavily. “I wish we had him on Alpha.”
Koenig shook his head in wordless grief. Too much seemed to have happened too quickly. He looked up at Carter. “Alpha is bound to know we’re in trouble. They’ll send help...” He had barely finished when it dawned on him that if they did, then the rescue Eagle, too, would fall apart.
The shock was sufficient to force him into a sitting position. “We’ve got to do something fast, radio them.”
Carter looked hopeless. “We can’t. I’ve just said, everything with any metal in it is useless—and that includes all communicators.”
Helena paced distractedly up and down the Command Center. She stopped and turned to Maya, who was working, white-faced, at her console. “Maya, how close were they before their controls broke up?”
She had asked the question twice. This time Maya heard her and muttered, “Close.”
“Close enough to have survived impact?”
“I can’t be precise,” the Psychon told her.
Helena wrung her hands, strung out. “You can predict, can’t you?”
“I can say what we both want to hear.” Maya looked up abruptly. Her face was tear-stained. “There’s a chance.”
“Are the results of the computer scan through yet?”
“I’m analyzing the data now.” She pored over the print-outs, scanning them with her quick eye. As she assimilated their information, she stiffened, bringing Helena rushing over.
“The planet... it’s an ecological disaster!” Maya cried out angrily. “The computer registers a massive build-up of poisonous elements...”
“But that’s not possible!” Helena spoke shakenly. Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. “We checked and double-checked before our people went down there.”
“I know. It was safe,” Maya agreed, disbelieving the evidence herself. “It started to change when ‘our people’ landed.”
Space 1999 - The Edge of the Infinite Page 13
