by Brian Ball
‘They’re in too close, sir!’ yelled a technician. ‘They’re going to smear themselves all over the surface! The G-forces are too much! They’re out of control!’
Kano was wrestling with the calculators, his fingers racing over the manual keyboard at an unbelievable rate.
‘John, there’s a discrepancy—the computer isn’t recording what’s happening down there!’
Koenig sighed. It was the greatest irony of all. The machine which revered perfection was itself malfunctioning.
‘How, John how!’ demanded Morrow.
‘G-forces increasing rapidly,’ said the now whitefaced technician. ‘They can’t live through it.’
‘And still computer says everything’s fine down there!’ called Kano, as he tore off a new read-out. ‘There’s a continuing and increasing discrepancy in every reading, John!’
Koenig made one last attempt.
Quietly, he said:
‘If you read this, Eagle Six pilots, pull out now. If you can make it, use emergency capsule ejection. You are in crash-dive configuration. The G-forces are seven above computer’s estimate. Get out!’
Irving turned. He hadn’t lost his impudent grin.
‘Now, Commander, what is all the sweat about? Anyone would think we have trouble. And have we, Ed?’
‘Trouble is one thing we’ve none of,’ said Barker confidently. He turned to smile at the watchers in Main Mission. ‘Little Bud here’s right. Now, we may be flying a little low for comfort, but it’s one great trip.’
‘Barker!’ said Morrow. ‘That can’t be Barker!’
‘Controller, just enjoy the ride with us!’ Irving called. ‘Just imagine it’s free-flight back on Earth!’
‘Be our guests,’ invited Barker. ‘And my diminutive co-pilot has it right again. Why, we’re regularly swanning down to that cool green planet, my fellow Alphans, and soon we’ll bring you a few chunks of it back!’
The long range scanners picked up the Eagle’s flight-track. Curved lines represented the sickeningly fast crash-dive.
‘They’ve gone mad,’ said Kano. ‘Space-happy—abort,’ he muttered. ‘Abort!’ And all of the Main Mission crew joined in the plea to the smiling pilots of Eagle Six.
‘Sailing clear and easy,’ said Barker. ‘Commander, there must be some kind of computer foul-up. We’ve no problems about rapid descent. In fact, I’ve rarely known an easier approach, sir.’
‘I just looked out at a little lake,’ Irving called gleefully. ‘When we get out, I’m throwing this suit away and going for a swim!’
Barker called out, just as eagerly:
‘Commander, did you see the tower? Did you see it?’
His voice was full of awe.
‘It’s the ejector now,’ Koenig said, his voice rocksteady. ‘You can just make it.’
‘But the tower—did you see it?’
Koenig humoured him.
‘We missed that, Ed. Now get yourself and Bud Irving out—fast!’
As he said it, the screen emptied.
A last whooping laugh came from the doomed ship. Hearing it, the watchers grew cold.
‘How does it read?’ Koenig asked Paul Morrow.
‘You don’t need a read-out, Commander,’ said Morrow tightly. ‘I doubt if you could find a piece big enough to hold in two hands. And Barker was good! The best! I just don’t understand it!’
He glared at Kano.
‘It’s the computer! We all saw the orbital velocity and the rate of descent. No ship could stand up to the G-factors the onboard computer sent us. If Irving or Barker hadn’t been ordered to stick to the computer fiight-path, they’d have seen they couldn’t make it. So why did your bloody computer send them to their deaths?’
Kano’s small, muscular body tensed.
‘Paul!’ Koenig rapped out. ‘Save the adrenalin. And you, David, cool it! If there’s a computer fault, it can be located. Nothing’s going to bring the pilots of Eagle Six back now. We just have to be sure nothing like this occurs again. Get to it, David,’ he ordered.
His gaze swept the brightly-lit deck.
‘We’ve lost two good men. I mean to find out why.’
‘How?’ asked Professor Bergman.
‘I want another survey Eagle to go down there.’
‘No!’ Morrow called out. ‘You can’t do it, John!’
Koenig said harshly:
‘I can, and I will! But this time, the pilots use onboard systems only. Computer stays right out of the picture until we find that malfunction.’
Morrow’s big face looked drawn.
‘You have to let me go, John.’
‘No! Send Carter and a good co-pilot.’ Koenig softened his voice. ‘I want you here, Paul, to monitor every stage in the flight. You will arrange a programme of fail-safes so that the pilots can cut out immediately anything goes wrong. And you will have a hook-up with fail-safe systems.’
Morrow’s face was still set in grim lines, but he appreciated the safeguards Koenig had ordered.
‘I’ll do it, Commander,’ he said. ‘And the first sign of trouble, I abort the mission.’
Koenig nodded in dismissal.
‘Now, Victor,’ he said to Bergman, ‘what do you make of the planet?’
Bergman stared at the computer read-outs, with their glowing forecast.
‘You know, it all becomes a little suspect.’
‘That would be my interpretation,’ agreed Koenig. ‘Well?’
‘I’d like to know whose ruins they are. And especially what Barker saw at the tower.’ Bergman crossed to the console at the big screen. ‘Let’s hear the last few seconds of transmission from Eagle Six,’ he ordered.
Koenig heard Barker’s low, insistent tones once more. The sense of loss and waste began to weigh heavily on him.
‘Now,’ said Bergman.
‘Commander, did you see the tower? Did you see it?’ came Barker’s voice.
‘Well?’
‘He knew you’d already seen it.’
Koenig was still thinking of the moment of impact. Eagle Six would be a smoking shower of fragments, the men nothing but ash and dust.
‘John, it’s important,’ insisted Bergman. ‘He knew you’d seen the tower. The way he said it on the re-run just now meant something different.’
‘So?’
‘Barker wanted to see what had happened to the tower!’
Koenig nodded.
‘We’ll find out soon enough. Controller Morrow, have you briefed the pilots?’
‘Ready now, Commander,’ said Morrow.
‘Then get them launched.’
The two pilots showed none of Irving and Barker’s zest for the venture; but there was no reluctance in their faces either. They were professionals, accustomed to facing danger.
‘Good luck,’ Koenig said. ‘And remember, you take no chances.’
‘Yes, sir,’ answered Carter. He paused for a moment. ‘They were friends of mine.’
Koenig thought of the smouldering wreckage they would find. He could think of nothing to say.
Suddenly, the planet seemed much less desirable.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
During the hours of the flight, Koenig checked and rechecked all the data so far received about the planet. The computer’s forecasts were now effusively optimistic.
His doubts remained.
While he was examining the relative orbital velocities of the Moon and the mysterious planet, a report came through from Eagle Three.
‘Carter here,’ came the voice. The screen showed both pilots. ‘We’re holding our predicted course, Commander Koenig. Checks with Controller Morrow agree our readings. According to our plot, we’re ready for orbital descent right above the site of the Eagle Six crash.’
‘They’re right down the line,’ put in Morrow.
‘Good work,’ said Koenig. ‘Carter, take the Eagle in.’
‘I can give you visuals now,’ said Kano. ‘We’re using long-range scanners right above the plane
t.’
‘Do that,’ said Koenig.
He tried not to show the inner tenseness that clawed at him. It was always the same when you had to send someone else out: you endured your fears and distilled them into a corrosive brew. It burned within you, and outwardly you had to maintain the appearance of confidence.
‘Still holding well,’ said Carter.
‘Confirmed,’ agreed Morrow.
His stubby fingers hovered over the console, which was a duplicate of the controls of the survey Eagle. Koenig saw the panic button glowing red. Morrow would abort the mission instantly if danger appeared.
‘Easy,’ he said quietly. ‘They’re not close enough yet.’
They saw the Eagle then, swooping above a belt of high cloud. Outlined against the whiteness, it looked frail. White flame gouted from its engines.
‘Cutting approach speed,’ reported Carter.
‘It looks good,’ Morrow told him. ‘You’re still right on line.’
‘Commander Koenig, I’m relaying direct visuals from the onboard scanners,’ said Carter. ‘You’ll see what we see from here on. Descent path now!’
The screen shivered with white light, and then filled with hazy blurs as the scanners tried to penetrate the cloud cover. And then there was no need, for the Eagle dived through and away from the great white banks of vapour and into bright sunlight.
‘Commander!’ yelled Carter. ‘Eagle Three to Commander Koenig—do you see it?’
Koenig had glimpsed something.
A great black tower. The remains of buildings, half-fallen and blackened. He blinked and looked again: a skeletal shape hung above a hillside.
‘It’s Eagle Six!’ someone yelled incredulously.
Carter’s voice boomed throughout Mission Control.
‘I see the ship, Commander—Eagle Six!’
Koenig couldn’t believe it, but nevertheless it had been there. Carter had reported it. The crew around him had seen it. Bergman was slapping his back, Morrow was pounding the console like a maniac, and David Kano was yelling to him that two men they believed dead must be alive down on the surface of the planet.
‘I get it in exactly, the crash-site location!’ Carter was yelling. ‘I don’t know what weird trick Ed Barker and Bud Irving pulled to do it, but they got the Eagle down!’
Morrow roared for confirmation.
‘Repeat this, Carter! You have direct visual sighting of Eagle Six?’
‘Confirmed, Controller—I see it hanging nose-down just a few metres above the ground. It didn’t crash—they’re alive!’
Bergman was frankly babbling:
‘It’s wonderful, John! I knew it—this is our planet. It’s the end of all that space-wandering. It’s going to be our home. A miracle like that is a sign to us—’
He stopped, and seemed to recollect his position as the cool intellectual whose reputation was based on emotionless cerebration:
‘That is, Commander Koenig, I think we should accept computer’s advice.’
Koenig frowned. There was too much elation throughout the whole of Moonbase Alpha. Yet Carter’s enthusiasm was irrepressible.
‘You just have to see this place, Commander! It seems so different when you get down close. Anything can happen here—’
‘Carter, I want a check on your report,’ he said loudly. ‘First, are you in communication with Pilots Barker and Irving?’
‘No, Commander.’ His tone had sobered.
Koenig turned to Kano:
‘Anything from Eagle Six?’
‘Not a word, Commander.’
‘Nothing direct to us, and nothing to Eagle Three,’ said Koenig. He spoke to Carter again: ‘Is Eagle Six still hovering above the planetary surface?’
‘It is, Commander.’
‘And have you a sighting of either pilot?’
‘I guess not, Commander,’ said Carter. ‘No, sir.’
‘And is the Eagle under power?’
‘John,’ said David Kano, ‘it has to be under power to hold that configuration.’
‘It has to be powered,’ agreed Morrow.
‘Answer, Pilot Carter!’ rapped Koenig. ‘Check with on-board calculators and sensor—what are the power-levels of Eagle Six!’
There was a pause of a full minute.
When Carter spoke, he was icily calm, the trained and alert Eagle pilot once more, not a man who has just found that his friends have not been uselessly killed on a strange planet.
‘Eagle Six gives no power readings, Commander. I have no contact with its crew.’ He waited and then said: ‘Orders, Commander?’
Koenig again felt the strong sense of alarm that had filled him when Barker and Irving had begun their crazy death-dive. There was a brooding eerie quality about the planet, an almost hypnotic deadliness. He shivered. It was as though tiny claws were driving deep into his mind. And he knew that it all centred on the rearing black tower.
He looked about the circle of men and women in Main Mission Control. He was surprised to see that they did not share his pessimism. If anything, the atmosphere had changed to one of complacency. Yet they were aware of his uncertainty.
He turned to the big screen.
‘Here are your orders, Carter. Remain on observation near Eagle Six. On no account land on the surface. Understood?’
The landscape of the planet faded. In its place came the sharply delineated forward deck of the survey Eagle. Carter was taking off his helmet.
‘Now, Commander, why be so uptight? One little look isn’t going to harm anyone—’
‘They’ve landed!’ Koenig exclaimed. ‘Controller Morrow, get that ship up!’
Morrow was smiling in an inane way. Koenig saw the same fatuous smile on Carter’s face.
‘Now, John,’ cautioned Morrow, placing a meaty hand on Koenig’s shoulders. ‘Take it easy! I knew they were going down—’
‘Carter, get that ship into orbit!’ roared Koenig. He pushed Morrow aside, and for all his size and strength the big Controller found himself moving fast away from the console. Koenig began to press buttons to get the Eagle into the blue sky of the strange planet.
Morrow was laughing. So was Kano. And Bergman.
Others joined in. There was a zany, indulgent good humour in their laughter. A fat technician doubled up over his console, holding his stomach against the pain of his jerking laughter.
‘Oh, John,’ boomed Morrow, ‘don’t bother—I’ve taken the monitors off. I had to give them a chance to see for themselves. Now wasn’t that fair?’
He was still chuckling as he returned to the console. He didn’t seem to resent the rough treatment he had received.
Koenig shook his head. Suddenly, he was in the midst of a crew of madmen. Anger rose up, but Professor Bergman spoke before he could try to bring the Alphans back to their senses.
‘John, Piri will be your home too.’
The words had an instantly calming effect, not only on Koenig himself, but on the laughing men and women in Main Mission Control. The fat technician sat down, still weak, but attentive. Koenig listened to Bergman with disbelief.
‘I think it would be an excellent plan for us all to go down to Piri, John. It is a most delightful place. I don’t wonder that the Eagle crews were anxious to be the first settlers. Neither they nor any of us can see any reason to remain on this tiresome satellite longer than we must.’
Bergman’s ascetic features glowed. He had an air of fanatical enthusiasm that sent alarm bells ringing in Koenig’s mind. The words were altogether alien to a man of Bergman’s calibre. He sounded like a glib child who has learned his lesson well.
‘Isn’t it marvellous, John?’
Helena Russell’s beautiful blue eyes stared up at him. He was astonished to see the longing in them.
‘You too, Helena? But how has it happened? I gave orders to Morrow and Carter, and they’ve both disobeyed.’ He looked about him. The Security men had the same look of infatuated delight. Clearly they would not arrest anyone.
‘This is such a wretched place for real people like you and me, John. Can’t you see that Piri is waiting for us? Look at it!’
Koenig looked.
The scanners were ranging closer now. They showed a beautiful landscape. No dust, no ash, no blackened rocks. In the distance, the tower was a great black sentinel. Peace and beauty, thought Koenig.
‘Well, Commander?’ asked Kano.
‘Yes,’ Koenig said, to his own amazement. ‘Yes, of course!’
Koenig appreciated the wonder of it all. Men and women smiled and nodded approval. Bergman waved to the screen as if making a marvellously philanthropic gesture. He seemed to be giving the planet to Koenig. Of course Victor was right about Piri, thought Koenig. What a fool he had been not to see it right away!
‘The best of climates and vegetation,’ Kano assured him. ‘Computer says so!’
‘Computer?’ said Koenig slowly.
Bergman smiled reassuringly:
‘Now, John, you’ve had more strain than any of us—but on Piri, that will all be over!’
‘We’ll be happy,’ whispered Helena.
‘It’s made for us,’ agreed Bergman.
Koenig felt slightly embarrassed. Helena was trying to nuzzle against him, whilst Morrow was beaming approval. If only the stray, needling doubts would go!
He repeated Bergman’s phrase:
‘It’s made for us? Made for us?’
And the alarm-bells shrilled.
‘Victor,’ said Koenig slowly, ‘how do you know the planet is called Piri?’
Bergman patted him on the back, as if remonstrating with an amiable drunk.
‘But what else should a planet like Piri be called? Piri is Piri—the planet of peace.’
He smiled benevolently.
And Koenig knew it was true.
‘Yes, Victor,’ he said. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘Then that’s settled, John,’ said Bergman briskly.
Kano looked about him.
‘This is one place I don’t want to see again!’
‘We can leave the rocks and the dust,’ said Helena, like a housewife contemplating a spring-cleaning. ‘John, I can’t wait to get to Piri!’
