by E. C. Tubb
THE SPACE DEMONS
The fantastic intergalactic odyssey of the courageous men and women of Moonbase Alpha comes to a terrifying climax when the space wanderers confont the ultimate alien world.
A silent planet of never-ending night, its smooth, mysterious surface is thick with an ancient space dust.
And buried under the cloak of darkness are innocent-looking pods. Are they the seeds of new hope for Alpha, or an incredible nightmare no one has ever dared imagine?
"Retreat!" John Koenig yelled. "Back off, all of you!"
Koenig waved his arms and, gestering, turned to face the crater.
And then he saw it.
And froze.
It was a creature from a nightmare—blurred and fiery, rising from the center of the huge crater. Space dust rose and fell from the flailing appendages, the starlight gleaming from something that looked like polished marble, ebony mixed with pearl.
And from above, the Eagle came diving down, laser flaring a beam of light so intense that Koenig, blinded, stumbled and fell. He could remember with horror the picture of the last thing he saw: a small figure swept from its feet, lifted, spacesuit and all, and hurled into the crater's angry mouth.
John Koenig waited for the end!
Books in the Space: 1999 Series
Breakaway
Moon Odyssey
The Space Guardians
Collision Course
Lunar Attack
Astral Quest
Alien Seed
Published by POCKET BOOKS
ALIEN SEED
Futura Publications edition published 1976
POCKET BOOK edition published June, 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: 671-80520-7.
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 E. C. Tubb. 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 Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
To my Mother—
a unique woman
CHAPTER ONE
Koenig heard the sound as soon as he stepped into the cavern and halted, eyes searching the dimly lit interior, finally locating the source among the cluster of men and women assembled at the centre of the open expanse. Bergman was among them and he turned, smiling, as Koenig reached his side.
‘A nice touch, don’t you think, John?’ He gestured to the object of their attention. ‘Somehow it belongs.’
Koenig looked at a fountain.
Someone with more than a touch of imagination had built a thing of beauty, setting it in a bowl of polished stone edged with concealed lights that threw a kaleidoscope of gentle luminescence on the arching fronds of transparent leaves. Entranced, he watched the interplay of colour, the water spouting high from the nozzles—an artificial rain that rose to curve to fall in musical cadences.
‘Do you like it, Commander?’ Nancy Coleman, the botanist in charge of Rural Area One, was justifiably proud of the installation. ‘Do you approve?’
Koenig nodded and looked at the walls of the man-made cavern in which they stood. They rose to merge in a common point high above the floor of the chamber that had been gouged from the Lunar rock. The floor was levelled, paths running between wide beds of loam; soil made of crushed stone with humus added, chemicals and minerals incorporated with other ingredients to fashion a familiar dirt.
In it, one day, would grow flowers, blooms serving no purpose other than to please the eye and nostrils. There would be grass on which lovers could stroll and games could be played. Bushes and even trees grown from precious seeds. A miniature forest set far beneath the Lunar surface, an oasis to which they could come to remind themselves of what they had lost.
Earth itself, their home, taken from them when the tremendous explosion of accumulated radioactive waste had blasted the Moon from its orbit and sent it on its incredible journey.
A black day in September 1999.
One he would never forget.
‘John?’ Bergman was watching him. ‘Do you want to give the order?’
As the commander of Moonbase Alpha it was his right, but a commander could have too many rights and it would be wise not to insist on those that held no real importance. Others must be made to feel as if they shared authority, as they certainly did share responsibility.
‘John?’
Bergman was impatient to see the culmination of his project, eager, perhaps, for praise—he was human enough for that.
Koenig said, ‘A moment, Victor. Nancy, who designed the fountain?’
‘Constance Boswell. Connie?’
She was young, lovely, her smoothly rounded face holding an elfin beauty. An electro-technician attached to Coleman’s staff. Koenig smiled at her as she came close to a halt, standing before him. Taking the commlock from his belt, he activated it, spoke to the face that appeared on the screen, then held the instrument out to the girl.
‘Here, Connie. You do it.’
‘Commander?’ Her eyes glanced upwards to the shadowed apex of the cavern. ‘You mean—’
‘I want you to give the order, Connie,’ he said. ‘You’ve earned the right. The rest of us just dug out this place, but you’ve beautified it with your fountain. So go ahead.’
For a moment she hesitated, a little smile quirking a corner of her mouth and then, quickly, she said, ‘Let there be light!’
Above a sun blazed into being; not a real sun, but something so near as to give that impression. A mass of lights radiating a carefully selected section of the electro-magnetic spectrum that closely matched that of Earth’s sun. Koenig felt the warmth of it, knew that if he stayed long in its radiance he would acquire a tan.
To the commlock the girl said, ‘Complete cycle.’
The light faded a little, then more, then died to create a simulation of twilight, of dusk, of final night. Koenig heard the inhalation of those watching as lights began to wink from the roof of the cavern, artificial stars set in a familiar pattern.
And then the dawn, a milky opalescence strengthening to a roseate glow, the brilliance of early sunrise.
‘Wonderful!’ A woman drew in her breath. ‘I never thought . . . Victor, thank you!’
‘There should be bird-song,’ said Connie as she handed Koenig back his commlock. ‘I could arrange it, light-triggered recordings and strategically placed speakers. Simulacrea, too, artificial birds set in artificial trees. We could place one there, and another just there, and two over by the far opening.’
She was talking more to herself than to him, and Koenig knew it. Taking the commlock, he watched as she moved away to halt at the side of a young man, her face animated, both laughing, both moving off with arms interwound.
‘Connie has a poi
nt,’ said Nancy. ‘And I’d like to do something with those walls. Some of the men suggested we fashion them into a likeness of the interior of a cathedral. One mentioned Chartres. Did you ever see it, Commander?’
‘Once.’
‘I never had the chance,’ she said regretfully. ‘And now I never will. I’ve seen slides, of course, and even a hologram, but nothing can convey the impression of antiquity and size, the dedication of those people who gave their labour for the love of God. Could we—?’
‘Within limits, Nancy, yes.’ Koenig softened his warning with a smile. ‘But you can’t use essential materials, power or labour. Yet if people want to use their recreation time working to decorate this place, I won’t object. However, don’t forget why we built it in the first place.’
Not for fun, nor for show, but as a place in which to grow food. An addition to the hydroponic tanks and yeast vats which, together with the algae tanks, provided the Base with sustenance. The cavern would serve a double purpose and later, with luck, could be turned into a park and garden.
‘I won’t forget,’ she promised. ‘And you won’t regret this, Commander. I—’ She broke off as his commlock hummed.
Paul Morrow was on the screen. He said, without preamble, ‘Commander, you’d better come at once to Main Mission.’
Dr Helena Russell picked up a card, looked at it for a moment, then placed it face down on the desk before her.
‘Star.’ The girl lying supine on the bed was thirty feet away across the ward in Medical Centre. There was no possible way she could have seen the design. ‘You want me to continue, Doctor?’
‘Please, Lynne, if you’re not feeling too tired.’
‘Tired?’ Lynne Saffery gave a chuckle. ‘How could I get tired just lying here?’
And yet there was strain as Helena had warned when, after her series of tests on the personnel had determined their extrasensory perception potential, Lynne had been asked to volunteer for further investigation. Now she was beginning to get a little bored.
‘Star,’ she said as Helena looked at more cards. ‘Circle, circle, square, cross, wavy line, star, wavy line, cross, cross, square, circle, star, star . . .’
A complete run of a hundred, each of five cards studied twenty times in random order. Anyone, by naming only one design, could achieve a success rate of twenty percent. Lynne had scored seventy-eight.
Helena pondered the figures as she made a notation on a sheet clipped to a board. One high score could be due to chance, two due to coincidence, but for more there had to be a reason. On a score of tests Lynne had gained results far in excess of the statistical average, a finding enhanced by other tests, many made without her awareness.
‘Once more, Lynne, if you please.’
‘Must we, Doctor?’
‘Getting tired?’
‘Bored, rather.’ The girl stretched then, smiling, said, ‘Well, why not? Anything to help the cause.’
Helena picked up the cards, shuffled them and, holding them face down, slipped the top card from the pack and laid it, still face down, on the desk.
‘Lynne?’
‘Star,’ said the girl after a moment’s hesitation. Helena made a notation, then placed another card face down on the first one.
‘Circle,’ said the girl after a moment. She sounded unsure. ‘At least I think it is.’
‘Please do your best to concentrate. And this?’
The girl’s voice gained firmness as the run progressed. At the end she said, ‘How did I make out?’
Badly, but Helena didn’t say so. Again she pondered her findings. The girl made high scores only when Helena looked at the cards, low when she did not—a fact which tended to eliminate clairvoyance and precognition; neither should be affected by the human intervention.
The girl smiled as Helena approached the bed, then looked warily at the machine as she pulled it towards the head of the cot.
‘More tests, Doctor?’
‘A few simple ones, if you have no objection. I want to take readings of your brain wave pattern on the encephalogram while you are under mild sedation. It is important to the success of the experiment that you be wholly relaxed. Have I your agreement?’
‘Why not?’ Lynne shrugged. ‘Go ahead, Doctor, a good sleep never hurt anyone yet.’
Within moments it was done, the girl lying at rest, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow. Quickly Helena attached the adhesive electrodes to various points on the skull. As she reached towards the controls of the machine, her commlock sounded the attention signal.
It was Koenig. He said, ‘Helena, we’re on Yellow Alert. Have Medical stand by.’
‘John!’ She stared at the screen, at the face with its peak of dark hair, the eyes that had seen too much, the mouth that betrayed the inner sensitivity. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘As yet we can’t be sure. I’m just warning you before the general alarm. Have you any emergencies?’
Helena glanced at the girl. Asleep she was no problem, and it was better to leave her that way than to jar her metabolism with the shock of conflicting drugs. But there were others, some due for surgery, none, fortunately, in a critical situation.
‘No, John. No emergencies.’ And then she added, because she was both a woman and human and therefore curious, ‘What is it? What’s happening?’
‘Probably nothing, but we can’t afford to take chances. There’s something in space heading our way. We don’t know what it is and, until we do, we stand ready for anything.’
‘For how long?’
‘Until It hits us, passes us, or we wipe it from the sky.’
‘John! Do you—’
But he was gone, the connection broken, the tiny screen blank. And, as much as she wanted to be with him, her place was in the Centre, which she controlled.
From where she stood before her instruments, Sandra Benes said, ‘No response, Commander. As far as I can determine, it is just a lifeless mass of rock. No answer has been received to the entire range of signals we have transmitted and there is no discernable radiation emitted from the located object.’
‘Kano?’
‘Computer agrees, Commander. All findings to date are consistent with the mass being a scrap of stellar debris.’
Rock blasted from the world to which it had once belonged to drift through space as the asteroids drifted around the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. A lonely wanderer as was the Moon itself.
Leaning back in his chair, Koenig looked at the direct vision ports. Beyond lay the empty immensity of the void, the stars that shone with a remote indifference, distant suns with their own orbiting worlds. Each was a possible haven for those who, trapped in the Moonbase when the explosion had occurred, had been left with no choice but to fashion a new life on the bleak and barren satellite.
His eyes lowered to study the Lunar surface, the ground pocked with craters, seamed with fissures, the hollows thick with a dust as fine as powdered talc. Airless, waterless, those essential ingredients of life having to be reclaimed from the Lunar stone; liquids and gases torn from their chemical prisons to be used, recycled, used again and again.
A closed ecology in which only power was plentiful, the atomic generators breeding their own fuel.
‘Commander?’ Morrow spoke without turning in the big chair facing the main console. ‘Your orders?’
Decisions, rather; always it was a matter of decisions and, always, Koenig was acutely aware of the danger that, at any time, he could make the wrong ones. A slip, a miscalculation, and the life that maintained a precarious hold on the razor-edge of survival could be pushed that little bit too far. Strained beyond the capability of available resources or faced with a threat it could not handle, Moonbase Alpha would become the tomb of hundreds riding a dead world.
Koenig glanced at the main screens. As yet the object was too small for even the high magnification to resolve, its presence known by electronic sensors. The lack of response to signals told against it being a vessel, but that was not con
clusive. It could be a potential enemy playing dead, or something so alien as not to use the same means of communication as the Alphans. Or, as Kano had said, it could be nothing more than harmless rock.
Harmless—as long as it didn’t come too close.
A hope that David Kano negated as he checked the computer read-out.
‘Bad news, Commander. Computer plots the course as being on an intercept path with Alpha.’ His dark face was sombre. ‘The estimated area of impact is within three miles.’
Koenig said sharply, ‘Potential damage?’
‘A direct hit would totally destroy the Moonbase. Even if it hit at the edge of the predicted area, the impact would produce internal stresses and the shock wave would result in extensive damage.’
Morrow said, ‘Red Alert, Commander?’
‘Not yet.’ They still had time. ‘I want to see what that thing looks like. Have Alan take an Eagle and make a close scan.’ He added grimly, ‘An armed Eagle. Full destructive and defensive equipment. Passive observation unless the Eagle is attacked or I order otherwise.’
As Morrow leaned over his console, Koenig rose and stretched and glanced around Main Mission. Like a well-oiled machine, It had met the emergency, each at their position, the Moonbase on full defensive standby. A good team, he thought, one trained by previous emergencies, knowing just what to do and how to do it. Crossing to a bank of screens, he studied the portrayed interior of the Moonbase. The Yellow Alert was in full operation; certain areas had been sealed and were guarded by purple-sleeved security men and other precautions had been taken, but its purpose was to instill an awareness of potential danger rather than an immediate hazard.
The touch of a button and he looked into Medical Centre. Helena, he noticed, was at her station and he watched the softly gleaming gold of her hair, the play of light and shadow over the strong contours of her face. A face with prominent cheekbones, wide-spaced eyes, a generous mouth and a determined chin. One which, at times, could be a mask.
