Space 1999 - The Psychomorph

by Michael Butterworth

  The two men ran forward and caught him while she swabbed the needle mark down. They dragged him back to the oblivion of his bed.

  After the injection his mind went on, swimming through the darkness.

  A terrible blackness stretched on and on in all directions, thick and impenetrable. Fields of blackness where nothing could ever grow. Or could it?

  His mind seemed strangely lucid. It seemed to be filled with infinite power... the power of God. He knew that he only had to think something to turn that something into a fact.

  The knowledge staggered him. It was knowledge wilder than his wildest dreams.

  As he moved through the blackness he found himself thinking of a star... to provide light.

  Instantly, a mass of blazing fire appeared in the distance. It was not a star as such, but it was a Light. It was Warmth... Life...

  Determined, he dragged himself towards it.

  The fire grew larger, until it floated before him like a huge, dancing monster. Its curling, licking tendrils writhed and mocked him.

  ‘I am not what you thought,’ a harsh, wicked voice sounded. ‘I am not Warm – I am Cold! As Death!’

  The centre of the blazing fire shook and heaved with mirth. An icy wind blasted off it and Koenig shivered, conscious that he was naked.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked the Fire.

  ‘That, you will never find out.’

  ‘Then why have you brought me here?’ he cried.

  ‘I am idle while my minions take over your Moon Base. I wish for some company,’ it replied sadistically.

  ‘You can wish only what I want you to!’ Koenig told it savagely. He began to concentrate, wishing the Fire out of existence.

  The cold, hating flames began to fade away. As the Fire obligingly died, it mocked and scoffed. ‘You might wish me out of your mind... but you cannot wish me out of existence! Looooooooooooook...!’

  Voice and flames disappeared in the blackness, and Koenig became conscious that he was sliding helplessly back to where he had come from. As he returned, the dark walls around him glowed with an unearthly light.

  They revealed a ghostly, lunar landscape, pitted and scarred with craters. Jagged mountains rose on the horizon. Directly below him, very close, the spoke-shaped buildings of the Moon Base came into Focus. They looked chillingly like the abandoned city of a dead race. No lights were on, and the grey, bleak surfaces looked totally lifeless.

  He fell towards them, his descent slowed by his struggling mind which was hypnotized by the sight, and struggled to take in the details of the deathly landscape.

  As he fell, a rocket ship rose.

  It blasted off from its launch pad, a spume of pale flame dripping from its tail. It was, he realized, the Superswift, and it carried the three misguided Alphans. A shock of cold fear swept through him as he realized that he was not trapped in some horrifying dream. Somehow, he had been taken into a kind of warped reality... a nightmarish version of the real universe.

  ‘Alan...’ he gasped, but his throat could make no sound. He struggled desperately to destroy the Superswift by the power of his mind. But this time the scenery could not be obliterated. It stayed, persisted hideously at the end of his senses.

  His terror was complete when he noticed three of the monstrous, alien figures he had seen in the Command Centre standing like grim sentinels on the lunar surface – the figures that Helena, Verdeschi and the rest of his crew thought were their friends!

  They were nothing of the sort.

  They were a species of disgusting, slithering jellies which scarcely had the energy to keep themselves upright as they ravenously, with complete freedom, wandered the Moon Base. They wandered and plundered it, as though it were their own.

  Koenig boiled with loathing and fury as he spiralled helplessly down into the blackness of oblivion.

  The blackness was absolute.

  The great, telepathic seas of the Space Amoeba heaved and rippled with satisfaction as it disgourged the fragile human leader back into his bed – to his death.

  In Alan Carter’s mind, lands of a different sort were forming.

  In the large Pilot Section of the Superswift – or what, collectively, he, Bartlett and Ehrlich took to be a Superswift – he was sitting rigid with the excitement and wonder of seeing the mother planet, Earth.

  He watched the smokey blue and green globe with its wisps of white cloud, with its real gravity, its wholesome air, its terra firma... and almost wept with joy.

  The long days in space, on the barren, lifeless lump of rock they had tried to make their home, were coming to an end.

  Secretly he had always nurtured the knowledge that he would return. Where many had lost their faith, he had always kept a tiny flame of hope burning inside him.

  Soon, that Australian outback obstinacy would be well-rewarded. Already he could smell the eucalyptus forests of his native State, and see the wide, curling combers as they rolled in from that great mother of a sea – the Pacific.

  ‘Did you ever see such a beautiful sight?’ he asked the other two proudly.

  Bartlett shook his head, over-awed. ‘It’s incredible...’ Disbelievingly he checked his watch.

  Ehrlich checked his watch too. He was staggered. ‘It’s only been hours, hasn’t it?... Or has it?’

  ‘That’s what they said the breakthrough they made was all about,’ Carter replied, laughing tears of joy. ‘Time.’ He kissed his fingers to the wondrous orb on the screen in front of him. ‘Don’t go away, blue eyes!’

  ‘I have to tell the guys back on Alpha about this again!’ Joe Ehrlich flicked out his comlock. He punched Verdeschi’s wavelength, remembering that it was useless to call Koenig.

  Verdeschi was returning to Koenig with Maya. He walked with confidence, buoyed up by the fantastic news. ‘Maybe this’ll convince John – now that someone has actually seen Earth again.’

  He held up a tape-recorder and grinned. He turned it on. From it, Ehrlich’s voice, drunk with delight, rang emptily about the corridors of the Moon Base.

  ‘I tell you, it’s just beautiful, you guys, just beautiful!’

  There was something unreal about it and Maya couldn’t prevent herself from shuddering.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The warm waves of the space field lapped languidly, hungrily throughout the Moon Base. They were like a great, sensuous sea, flooding it with psychic energy that grew hourly more forceful and persuasive in its effects on the Alphans.

  Likewise, the jelloid invaders that, with its dying genius it had created, were able to derive great powers of movement and achievement from its emanations. They were able to increase their deceptive, hallucinatory reign of Love and Terror.

  Helena Russell sighed and lay back on her bed. She had taken a few hours off-duty, allegedly to bring the Status Report she was responsible for keeping, up to date. Really it was for the chance to lie down for a few moments and savour some privacy.

  She felt completely at peace with herself and she couldn’t understand why she continued to get into her ‘states’. Verdeschi was right. Things would all sort themselves out. They would soon be home and her nightmare would be forgotten.

  ‘Moon Base Alpha. Status Report,’ she reported from where she lay. She had set the tape machine turning and it would pick up her voice quite adequately. ‘Nineteen hundred and fifteen days since leaving Earth orbit; Dr Helena Russell recording. Commander Koenig remains in a disturbed state. Since becoming irrational and crashing his Eagle he has not responded to treatment. It is possible that the use of the Brain Impulse Machine has worsened his condition. He reacted psychotically to the arrival of the Rescue Mission from Earth... and even though the first Alphans are already on their way back to Earth he remains convinced that the mission by our friends is somehow sinister and that evil forces are at work...’ She paused, staring unhappily at the ceiling. Bits of uncomfortable reality – Koenig’s genuine look of frustration and despair when they stunned him, the long list of coincidental incidents of
psychotic behaviour, the continuing presence of the Space Field which still no one had thought to re-examine. But these hard, cold facts were gradually washed away by the lapping sea of warmth and contentment. ‘There are some indications that the Commander’s condition may be contagious,’ she continued, rationalizing to herself. ‘Crewman Sandstrom made an unmotivated attempt to kill the Commander, and Technician Kander became irrational and tried to kill himself. The Commander remains in the Medical Centre where my old friend and teacher from Earth, Dr Shaw, has promised to have a look at him.’

  With a satisfied nod of her head she got up and switched the Report log off.

  A black shape moved in the chill reality of the Medical Centre. It shuffled and slurped painfully to where the motionless form of Koenig slept in liquid dreaming oceans.

  It stood about one and a half metres tall, putrid and translucent. It was shaped rather like a decaying, bedraggled version of a Portuguese Man o’ War. A tangle of ropy, worm-like tendrils trailed down its shuddering mass. By rights, it ought not to have stood erect at all. Only the intense telekinetic power of its creator kept it from collapsing.

  It shuffled and sucked its way forward across the floor, leaving a spore of wet, smelly patches in its wake. Reaching the bed with the jumble of bleeping, humming instruments surrounding it, it stopped and swayed.

  It passed air, obscenely filling the room with its vile, putrescent stench of rotting protoplasm. Then, with a final shudder of release, it collapsed in a shapeless, digesting mess over the prone figure of the Commander.

  Its glistening substance began to bubble and pop as the pressure of decomposing gasses built up and escaped. It had almost succeeded in its purpose to dissolve the life out of Koenig when the doors of the Medical Centre slid smoothly open. Helena and Maya appeared and walked purposefully towards the bedside.

  With great difficulty, the jelly unstuck itself and propped itself upright.

  ‘What’s your opinion, Dr Shaw?’ Helena asked it.

  The creature shivered and shook. The features of Dr Shaw implanted firmly in Helena’s mind, blanched uncertainly, concealing ill-projected anger and exhaustion. Dr Shaw swallowed and scratched an elegant finger under his chin as though deep in thought. ‘Physically, he’s very stable,’ he pronounced with great profundity. He turned to leave. ‘If there’s anything more I can do...’

  Helena smiled gratefully. ‘I’ll ask.’

  Maya stared belligerently at him as his smug figure departed. She castigated herself for not being able to break the spell that she knew intuitively hung over them all. She knew something was wrong, but she was almost as badly effected by the conditioning waves as the others.

  Helena turned to her. ‘Let’s try and wake John then. He may not be very rational.’

  Helena moved close to the bedside and shook Koenig gently. ‘John... Maya’s here.’

  Koenig’s eyes shook open. This time he did not look so lively. He stared around him, dazed, listening to Helen’s voice. ‘She’s got something she wants you to hear.’ She turned to the Psychon. ‘Go on, Maya.’

  Maya held up the tape-recorder she had been carrying. It had a spool on it of Ehrlich’s excited voice, but now she didn’t look so confident about playing it to Koenig.

  Reluctantly, she stabbed a button.

  ‘We can see Earth and it’s beautiful...’ the physicist’s voice sounded. ‘Blue... blue and beautiful. We’re getting closer by the minute...’ He sounded like he was on some kind of a drug.

  She switched the set off and told Koenig: ‘That’s Ehrlich in the pilot ship. Isn’t that wonderful?’ She tried to sound enthusiastic.

  Fortunately for her, the Commander was not so taken in. He sat up, alert and purposeful. ‘Maya, what do you see out there?’

  Helena sighed in quiet desperation. Maya hesitated, caught in a quandary. She didn’t want to side with Koenig in case he turned out to be genuinely ill – he needed every chance to recover, not get worse. On the other hand, she didn’t have enough factual evidence to support her own feelings. She shrugged. ‘People from Earth.’

  Koenig scowled in disappointment. ‘I was hoping,’ he said. ‘I thought your different brain structure might have resisted their telepathic control...’

  ‘Whose telepathic control?’ she asked, interested despite herself.

  ‘Maya, when you look, you see Earth people. When I look I see monsters from a different dimension.’ He pressed his hands on his forehead. ‘Please believe me.’

  ‘John, why don’t you let it go for a while?’ Helena begged him. ‘Please?’

  Koenig brought down his hands and tried a different approach. ‘Maya? One of us is wrong. Will you accept that it could be you?’

  ‘I must accept that as one hypothesis – yes.’

  ‘Right!Now let’s take it from there.’

  ‘It would mean, of course, that everyone else is wrong,’ she added. ‘That you are the only one who is right.’

  Koenig nodded, quite happy with the assumption. ‘In other words I’m unique. There’s another way I’m unique, too.’ He indicated the Brain Impulse Machine. ‘I’m the only one on the Base who’s been on that... I suggest there’s a connection between the two facts.’

  Maya was thoughtful. ‘Either the machine has distorted your consciousness...’

  ‘Or protected it,’ Koenig finished for her. He didn’t need to help her, though. She was way ahead of him.

  ‘Telepathic control,’ she stated matter-of-factly, although they were getting round to talking about what she had felt almost from the outset. ‘You mean we have been taken over telepathically by aliens.’

  ‘By the Force Field. That’s exactly what I mean,’ he replied. He was filling with the sense of relief which people on the verge of revealing world-shattering breakthroughs felt.

  ‘It is possible,’ Maya agreed cautiously. ‘I, too find it interesting that everyone from Earth is a friend. It is against probability.’

  Koenig was almost exploding with excitement, but he controlled himself. ‘Maya, I suggest that everyone is a friend because everyone is out of someone’s memory.’ He spoke with baited breath, praying that she would be permitted to follow his simple logic.

  Waves of relaxing energy began buffeting her mind, melting away the thoughts; waves that whispered romantically to her and told her to relax. She tried hard to fight the feeling. ‘Yes... they could have tapped everyone’s mind and projected what they needed out of what they found there.’

  ‘And they couldn’t project strangers because people we’ve never seen can’t be in our memories!’ Koenig went on eagerly.

  Helena interrupted. ‘But Maya sees these people too, and they can’t be in her memory.’

  Maya shook her head judiciously. ‘It would be possible for them to project images from the minds of others into my mind.’

  Helena’s mind grew confused, torn by the conflicting forces that had suddenly sprung up inside her. Unlike Maya, she felt strongly that their saviours were real. It was harder for her to accept that they weren’t... to accept that they were figments of their individual imaginations. Now Maya, whom she had no reason to suspect of being ill, seemed to have been swayed by Koenig’s cool-headed reasoning.

  She remembered dimly that the Space Field had almost taken over the Moon Base once before – by making people’s innermost wishes come true.

  She remembered that according to the last report which had been taken – how long ago? – the Space Field had been pronounced weak but still present. She remembered that was how Koenig had first landed up in a Medical Centre bed – trying to find out more about... the thoughts swam in her head. As quickly as they formed, they disappeared in the warm fog of unreason that washed over her, crippling her mind without her knowing it.

  Maya struggled too.

  The waves of psychic bliss seemed to be getting more insistent, but she fought them back. She forced herself to concentrate on Koenig’s words.

  ‘But there’s one thing they g
ot wrong!’ he pronounced, growing more confident by the minute. ‘Now think! If they really were our friends from Earth, they’d be hundreds of years older than they appear!’

  The logic suddenly seemed crystal clear to them both. ‘Of course!’ Maya exclaimed in annoyance. ‘That should have occurred to me!’

  Helena looked scared. ‘We’ve been in space for years. In Earth time that would be... generations...’

  ‘Right!’ Koenig thumped his fist into his hand. ‘It didn’t occur to you because you wouldn’t let it.’

  The hypnotic waves had rolled partly back, their power beaten by the strength of their own minds. They let in fear and terror, where fear and terror had not been before.

  ‘John... what can we do?’ Helena asked urgently.

  ‘Take these things off me,’ Koenig demanded, fingering the electrode leads that trailed from his head and arms. The two women obliged him and he climbed thankfully to his feet. ‘Now, I believe the reason they can’t control my mind is because that machine has somehow blocked them.’

  ‘There may be no causal connection... but it’s a tenable theory, yes,’ Maya agreed.

  ‘And what do you do with a theory?’ Koenig turned on them triumphantly. ‘You test it.’ He looked at Maya in particular. ‘Maya... will you help me?’

  The Psychon looked suddenly uncertain. The waves began flooding back again. She beat them off furiously. ‘Yes,’ she replied firmly. ‘If I can.’

  ‘Will you let Helena give you a concentrated dose of the treatment I had?’

  ‘John...’ Helena intervened. She squeezed his arm. ‘That could be dangerous.’

  Koenig ignored her. ‘Will you, Maya?’ he repeated instead, staring intently at the Psychon woman.

  ‘Yes, I see your point,’ Maya admitted unhappily. ‘To find out if it has the same effect on me.’

  ‘But a concentrated dose, John?’ Helena shook his arm. She looked at Maya, aghast, trying to convey to her the terrible consequences she knew could result.

  ‘I am willing,’ Maya stated. ‘If John is right it is a matter of utmost importance.’ She turned to Helena. ‘Someone’s got to do it.’