Space 1999 - The Psychomorph

by Michael Butterworth

  ‘Then I should be the one!’ Helena cried.

  ‘No.’ Koenig spoke with finality. ‘If I’m right about this there are things Maya can do that you can’t. Besides, I need you as a control so I know what the others are seeing.’

  There was little time to spare. Reluctantly, Helena began attaching the electrodes to her new subject’s skull.

  The Big Screen blazed with a life and vitality that it had not shown for more than five years.

  The partygoers, Alphan and Alien, intently watched the turquoise planet wrapped in its cloud of mystery.

  ‘Oh, you little beauty!’ Ehrlich’s voice, still extolling the virtues of his beloved Earth came to them across the gulf of space.

  ‘What’s the first thing you’re going to do, Joe?’ Alan’s voice next, a little more level-headed.

  ‘Find a golf course where I can’t hit a crater,’ the other joked. ‘You?’

  There was a bashful pause. ‘She’s called Jeanie. Jack, how about you?’

  Bartlett’s voice sounded next, tremulous and respectful. ‘Mine’s called Caroline.’

  ‘Oh-ho!’ Ehrlich laughed.

  ‘She’s five years old, and she’s got her mother’s eyes,’ Bartlett went on. He addressed Sahn in the Command Centre. ‘Hey, Sahn, what would you and Peter like as a wedding present from little old Earth?’

  She giggled. ‘Just to be there.’ She stretched out a hand and Peter grasped hold of it. Beaming with pleasure, they listened to the disembodied voices of the lucky travellers. Like the rest of the Alphans in the Command Centre they could have listened to the voices forever.

  ‘Will you look at that weather pattern!’ Carter exclaimed. ‘I’ll swear it’s snowing over California!’

  There was laughter.

  Ben took over Sahn’s microphone. ‘Smile when you say that, man!’ He turned to Louisa. ‘You ever known it to snow in California, small cat?’

  ‘Only in the mountains – and then very pretty!’ she pouted.

  Elsewhere in the Centre more exclamations of surprise about the presence of the Earth Rescue Mission were being made. They came from Frazer, the Eagle Pilot. He had returned from a mission. Till now he had been told nothing of the welcome news, and was dazedly being introduced to the newcomers by Guido.

  ‘You mean all this has been happening while I’ve been on the other side of the Moon? You really are all from Earth?’

  ‘That’s Louisa... that’s Dr Shaw... this is Diana.’

  ‘Woe,’ he gulped. ‘Hello, Diana!’

  She posed voluptuously. ‘Hmmm. Are there any more like you on the other side of the Moon?’

  Frazer grinned. Totally staggered, he turned back to Guido. ‘And you really can get us back home?’

  ‘You bet we can!’ Guido cried exaltedly.

  Their attention was taken by the Big Screen again. Carter’s voice came over loud and clear. ‘Here we go on the carousel!’

  It was the moment everyone had been waiting for. The picture of Earth was replaced with a picture of the Cabin Section of the pilot craft. The three men on board it were strapping themselves into their seats behind the controls, grinning lazily.

  Carter punched a switch. ‘Alan Carter to Moon Base,’ he announced formally. ‘We’re moving into orbital mode now, going for a landing any minute.’

  He pushed another button.

  ‘Hey, Earth down there – we’re coming through. D’you want us to fly this crate in? Do you read me?’

  The voice of the Controller came through, folksy, hillbilly. The silence in the Command Centre on the Moon Base was absolute. It was impossible to believe that such a historic moment was actually in the making – that the emotive voice of the Earth Controller was about to speak.

  ‘This is Phoenix Control, reading you loud and clear,’ the Earth voice announced. As he spoke, the Alphans were gripped with waves of inexplicable emotion. ‘We got you locked into the computer, you don’t have to do a thing. Just you sit back and enjoy the ride and don’t worry about a thing, you hear now?’

  ‘I hear you all right,’ Carter grinned. ‘Oh, Earthman!’

  There was a pause. Then: ‘Hey!’

  ‘Yes?’ Carter asked, leaning closer towards his communicator.

  ‘You ain’t got three heads now or anything else that’s going to frighten us poor critters down here, have you?’

  ‘No, just the usual two!’ Carter laughed.

  The bouncing blips of light on the oscilloscope shot rapidly across the tube’s surface.

  Unaware of the events happening in the Command Centre, Maya lay in a deep sleep, her only contact with reality the cold, clinical machine which had taken her over.

  Helena brought up her hand, gesturing that Maya’s time was up. Koenig responded, closing down the various parts of the intricate machine while she moved around the prone Psychon’s body, unsticking the electrodes.

  She shook the unconscious woman’s shoulder gently. ‘Maya...’

  There was no response. She eyed Koenig tensely.

  ‘Maya...?’ she called again, more insistently.

  This time the sleeper’s eyes opened. They opened instantly, and she sat up. She looked as miraculously well recovered as Koenig had when he had been given similar treatment.

  Helena sighed with relief. ‘How do you feel?’ she asked.

  ‘Normal. It feels like nothing’s happened. Well?’ She looked from one to the other expectantly. ‘Am I all right?’

  She swung her legs off the bed and stood up.

  ‘As always, you’re ticking over like a flawless machine,’ Helena almost smiled, such was her admiration for Maya’s Psychon biochemistry.

  ‘Good.’ Koenig was relieved. ‘Now...’ He moved towards the Medical Centre doors and opened them with his comlock. He waited by them. ‘Helena, would you mind coming here, please?’

  Helena moved obligingly to where he directed.

  ‘Look down the corridor and tell me what you see.’

  Helena peered cautiously round the doors. The psychic waves beat extra-powerfully against her, overcoming her resistance in a mad moment of desperation. She looked out and saw Guido, Sahn and Peter Rockwell walking towards her. The three figures stopped at an intersection, as though some serious aspect of their conversation had arrested them and needed more concentrated attention paying to it.

  The scene looked perfectly normal to her, and she withdrew her head and stared with perplexion at Koenig and Maya. She looked tired, pale and drawn; weary of the battle that had returned inside her head.

  She related to Koenig what she had seen.

  Visibly sweating, Koenig then turned to Maya. His entire argument depended on her. Without having to be asked, the Psychon moved towards the open doors. She glanced outside.

  Instantly, she stepped back inside again and closed the doors after her. She was white and shaking. A curious mixture of intellectual curiosity mingled with disgust was expressed on her face.

  ‘Well?’ Koenig asked impatiently.

  ‘Interesting... and distinctly frightening,’ she replied, grappling with her thoughts.

  Helena stepped forward in alarm. ‘Why?’

  Maya stared distantly beyond her, at the far wall of the Medical Centre. She spoke tonelessly. ‘They’re like the plasma that forms when certain organic matter starts to decompose...’

  Up in the space ship, Carter was leaning forward, staring out of the forward portal. They had lowered the ship’s exterior shielding material and could see the tall skyscrapers of New York City poking up at them many miles below. It was a deliriously welcome sight, but Carter and the other two were strangely quiet. They had expended a lot of wild energy already. Now they just wanted to take it all in, longingly – and imagine.

  ‘There’s bound to be a reception committee,’ Carter said.

  ‘Don’t they look good!’ Ehrlich shook his head in pride.

  Carter grinned at him. ‘Got your historic lines ready?’

  Ehrlich thought. ‘How a
bout... “It’s a small step for a man, but...”’

  Bartlett laughed. ‘Been done, old boy.’

  ‘So, who said we had to be original?’

  Bartlett turned to Carter. ‘What are you going to say, Alan? “Where’s the nearest john?”’

  Ehrlich thumped the arm of his seat. ‘Now that will make the history books!’

  The Eagle Ship began to land.

  Its great body descended gracefully on bloody tails of fire.

  Where delusive skyscrapers had majestically risen in the dreams of the Alphans, bleak, jagged outcrops of Moon rock etched themselves against a cold, harsh backdrop of stars.

  In the foreground, loomed the three dark domes of the nuclear waste dumps.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Blindly and servilely, Carter, Ehrlich and Bartlett donned their space-suits in the Passenger Section of the commandeered Eagle Ship. They walked stiffly, like zombies towards the inner doors of the airlock, and waited. In their gloved hands and attached to their suits, they carried an assortment of cutting equipment.

  The doors slid open and they were soon stepping down on the inhospitable lunar surface.

  Like sleep-walkers they bounded slowly and awkwardly across the rocky terrain, in gravity less than a sixth of Earth’s. They came to a stop by the side of a small, rectangular building positioned close to the domes. On a door leading into it was marked:

  NUCLEAR MONITORING STATION.

  NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL.

  Unaware of what he was doing, Carter brought out his com-lock and punched the correct frequency code.

  The door opened, revealing an interior of the deepest darkness that hadn’t been entered since the domes had first been erected, many years before the Moon Base itself had been built.

  The airlocks of the pilot ship had opened to reveal a large battery of media men, TV and movie cameras whirring, flash filaments streaking. Behind, in the background were the futuristic outlines of Kissenger Spaceport in New York where they appeared to have landed.

  The air was filled with the clamouring voices of the Pressmen and the roar of spaceport vehicles that pulled up outside. All around them lay the good, solid surface of terra.

  ‘Turn this way, Mr Carter...’ several glowing cameramen yelled at once. ‘What’s it like to be back...? Have there been any marriages on the Moon...? What did you miss most up there...?’

  Carter held up his hands to ward off the glare and the noise. ‘Easy... one at a time...’ He turned to Ehrlich, winking. ‘Hey, what did we miss most there?’

  Slowly, with dignity, they began their descent of the landing steps, helped along by eager arms and bombarded by a thousand anxious questions.

  Maya, Koenig and Helena stood tensely debating behind the locked and closed doors of the Medical Centre.

  Maya still looked pale.

  ‘Not a beautiful species, are they?’ Koenig asked her grimly.

  ‘You mean that wasn’t Guido and Peter you saw?’ Helena asked the Psychon.

  Maya shook her head in reply to both of them. ‘No. They were aliens. John, you’re right. My mind is now free of them. I can see them as they are.’ She turned back to Helena. ‘There are no friends from Earth among us. They are all aliens.’

  ‘Controlling us telepathically?’

  ‘Making you see what you want to see. For some reason your machine sets up a resistance to them in the mind.’

  Koenig agreed. ‘That’s why I wasn’t affected – because you used the machine on me after the crash, Helena.’

  ‘And now the machine has made me immune to them, too,’ Maya repeated, deep in thought. All along, she had known... but she had not been able to act. Horrified by what she had seen – reality stripped of manufactured illusion – she was nevertheless pleased with herself for at least being suspicious.

  Helena had to take their word for it. ‘What do they want?’

  ‘There’s only one way to find out,’ Koenig said toughly. He looked meaningfully at Maya.

  Maya raised her eyes in resignation. think I know what you mean,’ she ‘said wryly. She shuddered. ‘But must it be them?’

  Koenig looked painfully at her. ‘Maya, I hate to ask you...’

  ‘Their structure is repulsive to me.’

  ‘If there were any other way...’ Koenig tried to placate her.

  ‘There isn’t... I shall just have to be strong about it... yech!’ She screwed up her face in disgust.

  Her being shimmered with light energy and the power of the dead race of Psychons. It converted into its characteristic spindle-shaped aura. The aura pulsated wildly, and then faded away.

  Long before the final form of the awful jelloid creature had finished materializing, Helena stifled a scream of sheer revulsion. She gaped speechlessly as the full impact of her talks and contact with Dr Shaw, not to mention the packed Command Centre-full of repugnant invaders, hit her.

  Koenig’s jaws clamped firmly together, then he turned to her. ‘You see it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied in a small, weak voice that did not sound to her like her own.

  Koenig’s instinctive reactions told him to bring out his laser and drop the revolting, ponging transformation stone dead. He walked stiffly in front of it instead, and opened the doors. He peered out and then returned to the dripping Maya. ‘They’re still talking. Be careful now. They know you’re a metamorph, remember.’

  Maya raised a tentacle and shook her jelly. ‘I’d hate Tony to see me like this,’ she complained in a distorted, echoing whisper.

  ‘We won’t tell him,’ Koenig assured her. ‘Now hurry.’

  She oozed her way outside, sucking and shuffling, and trailing a band of smelly slime.

  A group of the sinister jelly beings stood at the intersection where, in a different mental state, she had seen Guido before. One of the group was larger than its partners, a full two metres in height at least. It was revoltingly shapeless and flaccid at its base, and swayed and wobbled threateningly, as though it were about to topple over at any moment. It was speaking to the others in the same distorted whisper that she had surprised herself with a moment ago.

  ‘We have not much timeeee...’ it breathed hoarsely. ‘Soon our creator will begin to dieee...’

  ‘Three of the creatures are on their way to the waste matter nowwwww...’ a second Alien informed. ‘Once they energize it our Creator can take his filllll...’

  The Leader Alien quivered. His tentacles twitched, as would a dog’s whiskers when it smelt something coming down wind. It could sense danger approaching, but it did not know what. Laboriously it turned its revolting, eyeless face at Maya’s unlovely form and scrutinized her.

  ‘All the Alphan creatures will dieeeee...’ another member of the putrefying group spoke.

  ‘They are of no consequenceee...’ the leader hissed, still ‘looking’ at Maya. Maya moved with characteristic effort to a new location on the fringes of the group.

  ‘Naturally they are of no consequenceeee...’ the Alien who had spoken replied. ‘Nevertheless, they will be happy before they dieee...’

  ‘It is necessaryyyyy...’ the Leader replied with something like regret. He turned with great effort to relocate Maya afresh. Sensing that she had been detected, Maya moved painstakingly away, hearing the Leader add as she went: ‘Which of our number is thattt...? Find out pleaseeee...!’

  She became aware of the whole rotten group of Alien faces turning towards her. A fearful, sucking, slurping started. They were following her en masse.

  She increased her speed, something which the Aliens, for reasons of their own, weren’t able to do, and reached the safety of a medical auxiliary room. She squeezed herself ungraciously inside. Out of sight of her pursuers she converted herself thankfully to her true form and walked briskly back into the corridor.

  Seeing no cause to stop her, the Aliens let her pass.

  ‘Don’t ever ask me to do that again!’ she cried to Koenig when she was safely in the Medical Centre. ‘They’ve got
the minds of geniuses and the instincts of vultures. And their molecular code! I thought I was never going to get out of that disgusting image!’

  ‘But did it work? Did you find out?’ Koenig asked her intently.

  She nodded. ‘They’re a species who live on radiation, or rather, their “Creator” lives on radiation. My bet is that he’s actually the Space Field...’

  ‘Radiation?’ Helena asked with deliberation. ‘That explains a few things.’

  ‘It’s the only kind of energy they can assimilate,’ Maya commented. ‘All species live on energy – it’s the one thing we all have in common.’

  ‘We get ours from food. They get theirs neat – from nuclear radiation. That’s what keeps them alive.’ Koenig pondered. ‘Why didn’t they stay on their planet?’

  ‘Their Creator? The Space Field doesn’t need a planet. But whatever’s wrong with it, it must get a huge intake of radiation soon, or it will die. What it wants are our nuclear waste dumps!’

  ‘If the dumps will help, they can have them!’ Koenig told her.

  Maya shook her head worriedly. ‘I’m afraid it’s not as easy as that. Remember when you crashed the Eagle? What the Space Field wants is the kind of violently intense radiation it would get from an actual atomic explosion.’

  Helena started. ‘But that would wipe us out!’

  ‘That’s why they’ve taken control of our minds – so we won’t know what we’re doing when we blow up the dumps.’

  ‘When we blow them up!’ Koenig exclaimed in consternation.

  ‘They have very limited kinetic energy; they can’t handle physical activity at all – probably because of the weakened state of the Space Field. They plan to manipulate us into exploding the dumps for them.’

  Sudden memory struck Koenig. ‘You’re right! I must have been the Space Field’s first guinea pig! I’ve just remembered! D’you know what I thought I was doing in that Eagle up there – when I was fooling around?’

  ‘What?’ Helena asked.

  ‘I was twenty years old and I was joy-riding in my father’s crop-sprayer – a little Gypsy Moth!’

  Maya nodded agreement. ‘Either it hoped you’d hit one of the domes to see if it would give it the kind of radiation it wanted...’