Space 1999 #8 - Android Planet

by John Rankine

  INTO THE LAND OF

  THE DEADLY ROBOTS!

  The mysterious planet Pelorus stares out of Main Mission Control's star-scanning system like a monstrous orange unblinking eye. Is it daring Alpha to make the first move?

  Or is Pelorus—millions of light-years from Mother Earth—their long-awaited new home?

  The Alphans make their fateful choice, and they are thrust into the heart of an android world where superhuman beings wield bizarre weapons. Their only chance of rescue is to trust a humanoid tribe whose friendly smiles hide a secret of devastating impact!

  The ten androids sat around the circular green table, still as metal castings.

  Eight shone with a stainless steel finish.

  Two—one male, one female—were a dazzling pale gold. These two metallic beings were so perfect that they seemed to have been cast by the hand of an alien-world Michelangelo. The golden male turned his eyeless oval head towards the Alphans. "You have been brought before the Council of Pelorus to give account of yourselves. You are deemed enemies."

  Mastering his anger, Koenig replied, "I am Commander of Moonbase Alpha, and you know that we come in peace. Yet you viciously attack our base and savagely attempt to blow us out of space. It is you who must account for yourselves."

  But the golden android turned his back on the Alphans. "You are doomed. We will destroy you."

  Books in the Space: 1999 Series

  Breakaway

  Moon Odyssey

  The Space Guardians

  Collision Course

  Lunar Attack

  Astral Quest

  Alien Seed

  Android Planet

  Published by POCKET BOOKS

  ANDROID PLANET

  Futura Publications edition published 1976

  POCKET BOOK edition published September, 1976

  This POCKET BOOK edition includes every word contained in the original edition. It is printed from brand-new plates made from completely reset, clear, easy-to-read type. POCKET BOOK editions are published by POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 630 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10020. Trademarks registered in the United States and other countries.

  Standard Book Number: 671-80706-4.

  This POCKET BOOK edition is published by arrangement with Futura Publications Limited. Series format and television play scripts copyright, ©, 1975, by ITC—Incorporated Television Company Limited. This novelization copyright, ©, 1976, by John Rankine. All rights reserved. This book, or portions thereof, may not be reproduced by any means without permission of the original publisher: Futura Publications Limited, 49 Poland Street, London, England.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  CHAPTER ONE

  The rhythm was long established. Simulated night followed artificial day in the sprawling complex of Moonbase Alpha. Memories of Earth planet were overlaid by all the living time that had been passed on the hurrying moon as she hurled herself deeper and farther into the vacant interstellar spaces.

  After so long on their unlooked-for journey, personnel had come to terms with a way of life that hung on the thread of the life-support systems. The black velvet star map on the direct-vision ports and the halls and covered ways of Alpha were part of the furniture of every mind.

  Commander John Koenig believed they would make out. Nothing in the action guaranteed it, or even supported it. But his sense of destiny was strong. Rightly or wrongly, he reckoned they could not have gotten this far to lose out to blind chance.

  Waiting for chance to turn up the right card was harder at off-duty times. When they were on load, working at the endless chore of staying alive in a hostile environment, the personnel of Moonbase Alpha had enough to do to keep their minds at a stretch. Hydroponics staff in the food-producing sector, medics treating the sick in the well-found Medicentre, engineers, technicians, service staff: all could believe they were doing their thing in any unit anywhere on Earth planet. The fact that their hurrying platform was plunging through distances to make imagination sick was an academic point. Life had to be lived where it was drawing breath.

  But when the watch changed and they went below, the plain truth was harder to ignore. There was no door to open. They were thrown back on their own resources. Computer could key them in to every kind of spectator pleasure, but it was no substitute for climbing the mountain or belting the ball for a full due down the fairway.

  As much as possible, they opted for what they could do firsthand. The Time Out Committee ran leisure like an escaper’s club. Some reckoned that the day would come when they would be found planning a tunnelling bid under the perimeter defence screens.

  Commander John Koenig kept the power of veto. He knew the value of morale in an isolated enclave, but he knew, also, that when the chance came, as it surely would, there might be only minutes between the right decision and a miss. He wanted his people ready at all times.

  When asked for his blessing on a theatrical venture, he gave himself a day to think about it and finally agreed with the proviso that they should pick something nonpolitical and that they should not ask him to be in it.

  Choosing the production kept Moonbase Alpha in a turmoil for a week. Victor Bergman, Scientific Adviser to the base, who had gathered together a useful orchestra, wanted grand opera—something to tear at the living gut like Bohème. Alan Carter, Commander of the Eagle Fleet and earthy, was all for farce with Sandra Benes and Tanya, elegantly leggy co-workers in Main Mission, falling about in black lace pants. He said nobody, but nobody, could get away with ‘Your tiny hand is frozen’ in the interstellar outback.

  Dr. Helena Russell, Director of the Medicentre, was quietly pushing for a little class and some costume drama, seeing, in her mind’s eye, this cool aristo in a sleek gown cutting down all and some with her barbed wit. So many men, so many opinions.

  In the event, it was sorted out without anyone knowing where the decision had come from. Gilbert and Sullivan were at it again, in a setting neither would have believed possible. The brisk rhythms of The Mikado began to be tapped, hummed and whistled from the outlying sections to the beating heart of Main Mission. Koenig found fans dangling from wrists, and hand-printed fabrics being hastily shoved out of sight under operating consoles. Sandra Benes, a natural for Oriental make-up, appeared at her desk with her hair in a bird’s nest and, clearly, only iron willpower kept her from speaking coyly from behind her fan.

  The small recreation area could seat a hundred at a push. It was to be a three-night stand. When the opening night arrived, Koenig turned out in ceremonial rig with a fluted metal cloth tabard and sat in the front row.

  Kano, who preferred playing chess with his computer, had elected to stand in with a scratch crew and keep Main Mission operational. He switched the endlessly searching probes to the monitor screens and had the interior of the recreation centre thrown up for all to see on the main scanner. They heard Bergman’s theatre orchestra rip smartly through the overture and saw the curtain rise to the pomp and circumstance of the Japanese scene. Kano left his desk and walked slowly to the observation platform. Unfiltered by an atmosphere, the stars were bright and steady like so many jewels thrown on a black velvet pad.

  Beyond the curve of the moon’s bleak horizon, there was a faint pallor that brightened and dimmed as the moon yawed on her axis. He moved smartly to his own desk and took a bearing. He wrote it out and shoved it over to the girl at Sandra Benes’s desk.

&nb
sp; ‘Leanne, see what you can find at two-nine-one.’

  ‘Two-nine-one, check, Controller.’

  The long-range probes swung from their random search and swept along the designated vector. There was a blip and a tiny, brilliant speck on the monitor screen.

  Kano said, ‘Main scanner.’

  The opening chorus dissolved and the cheerful beat of the music cut dead. Main Mission was silent. Heads turned to look enquiringly at Kano. They had seen stars enough to last them for a long lifetime and they believed it was all done to show that the temporary controller was cracking the whip.

  Kano’s face was impassive. He waited for Leanne to go by the book and bring up the signal. By this time, Sandra Benes would have gotten it sorted. But, although Leanne was slow, she was steady. She made the final move and threw a switch. It was all there. A crewman said, ‘Holy Cow!’

  Kano looked at it soberly. Set precisely in the centre of the big screen like a free-wheeling apricot was a small, yellow-orange planet, half screened by white cloud banks and circled by a glowing ring of pale viridian.

  Kano had a problem. He would be nobody’s friend if he sabotaged the show of the year for something that could wait a couple of hours with no loss. On the other hand, timing could be critical if the planet turned out to be the one they had been looking for.

  He left Paul Morrow’s command desk and slipped into his own vacant slot on the computer console. Data was already coming in. The outfall clattered and he tore off a tape.

  SPHEROIDAL BODY: EQUATORIAL RADIUS 4530.9 KILOMETRES: POLAR RADIUS 4500: MEAN DISTANCE FROM SUN 150 MILLION: REVOLUTION ON AXIS 21 HOURS EARTH TIME: DUAL PLANETARY SYSTEM . . .

  He let the digestive process rumble on and punched another stud. There was a question he wanted to ask. Rapidly, he keyed in, ‘Do we have any record of this system on the Voyager tapes?’

  A human operator would have said, ‘All right. Give me a break. I can’t do it all at once.’

  Moonbase Alpha’s master computer patiently disengaged a search circuit and began to whip through the archives. Material from the probing eyes of Earth’s automated search ship Voyager One had been incorporated in the memory banks. It was an off chance that she had passed this way in the interstellar wilderness.

  All of thirty-five seconds passed. In the computer room, the long panels flickered and glowed in a spasm of concentrated mental turmoil. Kano tapped the bland cowling close at hand and waited, conscious that all eyes in Main Mission had left the big screen and were on him. Somebody had to make a decision.

  There was a discreet rumble from the hardware as the tin man cleared his throat. Kano flipped a switch to have a simultaneous broadcast and printout.

  POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION. VOYAGER LOG: 6391143. SOLAR SYSTEM: OLYMPUS. PLANETS: PELORUS AND COPREON . . .

  There was a pause as a little matching went on and then:

  THE PLANET ON 291 IS PELORUS.

  The newcomer on the star map was gaudy as a lantern and Kano reckoned it would hang very well on the cyclorama. He used the commlock net for a one-to-one call to Koenig.

  The buzz reached Koenig’s ear under the umbrella of the Gentlemen of Japan rattling away at their opening chorus. He whipped out his commlock. On the miniature screen, Kano’s face was impassive as an ebony mask. Keeping his voice low and feeling like a conspirator in a ‘B’ movie, he said ‘Koenig.’

  ‘Commander. We have a solar system. Computer identifies. Voyager data on bank.’

  ‘Check. I’ll be there. Get a printout for all sections.’

  Neighbours on the row were looking their question. Even some of the actors had seen the move and were missing the beat. Koenig made it slow as a reassurance that Alpha was in no danger of structural collapse and walked for the exit. Outside, he ran for a travel-tube exit to cut corners and save a long trek through the sprawling base.

  The passenger tube clunked home and he was away, speeding for an entry point close to Main Mission. There was time to think that it was all beginning again. This was the way it would start. The long-range probes would pull in a picture. Sometime it would be the right one. Who could say that this might not be it?

  He shoved all that to the back of his mind. There was a lot of mileage to make with routine investigation before they got around to a decision on whether or not they left the raft and committed themselves for all time. But it was there as a factor to make him impatient with the short delay. His own face stared at him from the polished hatch panel as he waited for the docking sequence. It was a dark, saturnine job: black hair, level brows, lines deepening round the mouth. In some ways it was the face of a stranger, but there was no time to chase that twist of thought to its hole. The hatch sliced away and he was out at a run.

  Kano had gotten Pelorus nicely centred on the big screen, ripe as an autumn fruit. He said, ‘There she is, Commander.’

  Koenig came to a halt, feet astride, looking up at the screen. If the planet surface bore out the promise of its glowing colours, it would be something to see. First things first, he said, ‘What time do we have?’

  ‘Six days, Commander. Extreme Eagle range in twelve hours. We pass close.’

  ‘How close?’

  ‘Rough estimate only. Within the gravisphere. This will cause disturbance here and on the planet.’

  It was clear to Koenig that he needed the full Main-Mission staff on standby. He said shortly ‘General Alert. Command conference in fifteen minutes.’

  ‘General Alert. Check.’

  Strident klaxons sounded out in every outlying sector of Moonbase Alpha. Red telltales blinked on in every communications post. The base reacted like a disturbed hive. Victor Bergman stood on his podium with his baton raised, like a clockwork figure with a stuck spring. The auditorium emptied in an orderly stampede. A prudent stagehand brought up the house-lights and killed the floods. The bubble of illusion collapsed.

  Main Mission slipped easily into top gear. Back at his post, Paul Morrow in mandarin rig moved his team through the drills of check and counter check. Data sheets piled up on the clipboards. When Koenig gathered the top brass in the command office, there was enough information swilling about to keep a research unit happy for a decade.

  He looked round the circle of faces in some surprise. Except for Bergman, whose balding head and intelligent face was unchanged, they were all out of character. Helena Russell with kohl-rimmed eyes and a black wig looked all set to lure some Foreign Secretary to a diplomatic indiscretion. Making an effort, he stopped looking at her and started with a known and unchanged advisor. ‘Victor. You’ve had no time at all; but do you have any opinion?’

  ‘We’re lucky, John. The Voyager tape cuts some corners. Pelorus has a lot in common with Earth planet. It’s at a similar developmental stage. There’s a central core of iron and nickel, then a mantle of silicates supporting a thin crust. Atmosphere is twenty-two per cent oxygen. There’s some argon, some carbon dioxide, a whole lot of inert gas which I haven’t identified. If we can breathe it, there’s no problem.’

  Helena Russell said, ‘I’m working on that. I believe it’s all right.’

  Bergman went on, ‘The ring is an ionized layer. There could be trouble there, communications wise, if we get an Eagle onto the surface.’

  There was the big question and nobody was getting to it. Koenig asked, ‘Life signs?’

  Paul Morrow said, ‘Nothing on the monitors yet, Commander. But that isn’t conclusive. We’re a long way off.’

  Thinking aloud, Koenig said, ‘We’ll get closer and that could sort itself out, but every hour that passes gives us less time for an in-depth investigation. Optimum time for transfer from Alpha would be in seventy-two hours. At that point conditions could be rough. How about that? Victor?’

  Bergman flipped over a couple of data sheets and checked Computer’s prediction. He was not looking happy. ‘Either way, John, it’s going to be a stormy passage. This moon is travelling too fast to be pulled into an orbital path round Pelorus. But we’ll change
course, there’s no doubt about that. If there are seas down there, they’ll have freak storms that could wash out seaboard cities, if they exist. We won’t be welcome, that’s for truth.’

  ‘What about the effect on Alpha?’

  ‘Hard to judge. We’ve weathered some shrewd knocks. There’s no atmosphere to whip up a gale. There could be a shift of moondust.’

  Koenig left his command desk and walked to a direct-vision port. To the naked eye, Pelorus was now a brilliant dot lifted clear of the stark moonscape. When it came down to it, there was no substitute for a man getting off his ass and going to take a look. He walked slowly back. When he reached the desk, he had the decision clear. He said, ‘All right. This is what we do. Prepare for Operation Exodus. Evacuation of Moonbase Alpha timed seventy-two hours from now. Meantime I want a reconnaissance Eagle ready to lift off as soon as we have range. That’s for you, Alan.’

  Alan Carter, Commander of the Eagle Fleet, cracked his oriental make-up in a broad grin. He said, ‘Check, Commander,’ and was half out of his seat as Koenig went on: ‘Assessment team of six: Victor for technical feasibility; Helena, medical; yourself, Alan; Paul for survey and logistics . . .’ He saw the appeal in Sandra Benes’s wide eyes and added, ‘Sandra on communications . . .’

  Carter was clearly counting and had gotten five. He looked his question. Koenig said, ‘The sixth? I can’t let you have all the pleasure. I’ll be along to see you go the right way.’

  The conference broke up. Helena Russell, lithe and supple even in a voluminous kimono, came quickly to Koenig’s side and touched his arm. Her eyes were startling under the strange black wig, as she said, ‘What do you think, John?’

  ‘So far this planet is the best thing that’s come our way. I’m keeping an open mind.’

  ‘They’ll have seen us by this time.’

  ‘They?’