The grabbing claws seemed to tear whole sheets of his flesh away.
He clung grimly to his senses as his ship battled for its life against the fish-ship.
Then, he felt a sudden freedom.
He seemed to be shooting away through space at a delirious rate.
He realized gratefully, that Eagle Four had won the battle.
They were hurtling away from their aggressor. They had broken free.
‘We’re clear!’ Koenig gasped.
He turned around to face Helena and Hays who were climbing to their feet. Macinlock forced his body up off the smouldering console in front of him, his suit streaked with black carbon. He struggled to get the ship back under proper control.
They smiled at one another from behind their visors.
Hays stabbed at a switch, and the TV monitor burst into life again.
The surface of Psychon was speeding away. The sinister grey ship was now a remote speck hanging against it, and dwindling fast.
‘We’re returning to base,’ Koenig told them, ‘to get reinforcements...’
His gloved hands began to manipulate the controls. But then a sudden gasp came from Hays.
‘John... look. The ball of light...’
They looked at the screen again in alarm, their short-lived pleasure sliding off their faces.
The grey fish ship had converted into the pale, deathly sphere of turquoise energy that had captured Eagle One.
Koenig and Macinlock wrestled with the controls again. But the ball of light followed them swiftly.
Helena, Hays and Picard clung to supports as the pilots took the Eagle through a series of violent evasive manoeuvres.
But they were too late.
The ship seemed to stop.
Koenig stabbed at the controls, but they did not respond.
The screen was filled with the pale, greenish pulsating glow of underwater ocean light.
The strange light washed into the cabin and bathed them in its magic.
They felt completely at peace now... in their bodies and in their minds, and they struggled to fight against the beatific visions they were getting,
‘We’re dropping,’ Helena reported.
Through the green wash on the screen they saw Psychon’s volcanic peaks appearing again. The ship swung towards one of them, held in the grip of the sphere, and they began to descend smoothly into its vent.
The Eagle was carried down deep inside it, and now they looked in redoubled amazement at the scene that met their gaze on the crater floor.
It was a wide, greyish-white sea of ash.
In the ash were the half-buried forms of space craft, some recognizable by their design and insignia. But mostly they were unknown, alien craft. Ancient and new. Silent and dead, and there was nothing careful about the way they had been positioned. They lay almost jumbled about, as though by a giant hand.
‘... A cemetry of spaceships!’ Helena spoke, shocked.
‘And we’re right in the middle of it!’ Koenig told her.
The remains of the great ships were piled high around them.
There was a faint bump as the Eagle landed.
The green light faded away, and vanished, and they were left in the ship’s stark lighting of reality.
CHAPTER THREE
‘Eagle Four to Moon Base Alpha...’
Macinlock’s urgent words sounded into the mouthpiece of his commlock. They sounded mute in the tomb-like silence of the Eagle Pilot Section.
‘Come in, Alpha. Do you read me...?’
Helena, Hays and Picard stood in a grim circle around him. They had taken off their suits because of the intense heat that had built up inside them. They were being passed weapons from a rack by Koenig.
The cabin air still reeked of burnt plastic and console. White blobs of foam had been sprayed everywhere by the sprinkler system.
‘Can’t raise them,’ Macinlock said, disheartened.
‘Keep trying,’ Koenig told him. He handed a rocket rifle to Picard, and took a stun gun for himself.
‘Welcome to Psychon,’ Mentor’s deep, warm voice boomed out at them.
Koenig whirled round to face the monitor screen where Mentor had broadcast himself. The Psychon looked pleased with himself, and beamed benificiently at them.
‘Don’t be alarmed, Commander.’
‘I’m never alarmed when I deal with a man of integrity,’ Koenig quipped sarcastically.
The face of Mentor grew larger on the screen.
‘Ah... you are angry... and I must admit you have cause. But please bear with me and you will understand...’
‘I’ll understand anything you want me to understand... after I see my pilots...’ Koenig replied, keeping his anger under tight control.
Helena leant forward and gripped the Commander’s shoulder. The screen had changed abruptly, and now showed a picture of one of the missing pilots.
‘Your wish is my command,’ Mentor’s voice sounded over the picture.
Helena’s nails dug into Koenig’s shoulder as she reacted in horror at what she saw.
The usually friendly Ray Torens was sitting inside a hair-dryer like seat, in the area of Mentor’s room which housed the brain-like organs afloat in their nutrients. His face looked strained and tense. Wires had been attached to his head and above him hung a transparent hood, which was waiting to be lowered.
What was most horrifying were two ghoulish, zombie-like figures that held the Eagle pilot’s arm in place, so that he couldn’t move. They stood rigidly by his side, their bodies covered in a sickly fungoid-like growth. They were two of Mentor’s Overseers.
Two more overseers now brought in the struggling Bill Fraser and they tried to force him into a second seat.
Fraser had the presence of mind to notice Koenig’s image on the screen in Mentor’s room, and struggled more violently than ever to free himself.
‘... my actions are in both our interests,’ Mentor’s smug voice sounded again and the listening Alphans in the cabin of Eagle Four boiled with repressed rage at his goading words.
Suddenly, they saw Fraser escape from the Overseer’s grips and bound forward towards the screen. His face filled the screen.
‘He’s lying...’ his voice sounded, hotly.
He shoved Mentor out of the way and screamed out again.
‘Don’t trust him. He’s lying...’
Blue bolts of energy beamed out from behind an overseer’s eyes towards the desperate pilot. They struck him, and he fell to the floor, unconscious.
Koenig and the watching Alphans moved threateningly towards the screen. But there was nothing they could do to help... yet.
‘Forgive the interruption. Your pilot is in a feverish state,’ Mentor spoke, unruffled.
‘In that case I want to examine...’ Helena began fiercely.
‘You will, in good time, doctor... now please, remain in your ship until we contact you.’
The screen went dead.
Psyche’s deceptively warm and vibrant colours flashed and swirled.
Her fluids rose expectantly inside her thousand tubes, their atoms pregnant with the stored lives of the long vanquished race of Psychons.
She waited for the additional life energies of the Alphans to be fed into her — to make Psychon habitable again, to make the cancerous and clinkered surface of her creator’s planet teem again with life. In her, was the secret of life.
And in her, too, was trapped the same, restless energy of the Universe that had found its natural channel in her master.
She could no more avoid the energies than an animal could avoid breathing air — and they were her power and her failing. For if the sensitive electro-biologic mechanisms inside her were not treated properly, if they were damaged, then the power would escape her in the most direct way possible.
And now her billion particles quivered with fulfilment as she felt the energy of the Alphan enter into her.
Torens struggled violently in the seat below the domed hood,
but gave in, and sat still, exhausted.
Sweat streamed down his face. The hands of the two fungoid ghouls who had got hold of his wrists felt like steel bands. They were like the grips of robots.
He looked up at the ominous transparent hood and he wondered what Mentor was going to do to him.
He had stopped trying to struggle.
He had screamed himself hoarse, but it hadn’t helped.
At least he wasn’t dead, which was better than he had expected whilst on board the doomed Eagle One.
Fraser’s inert body lay on the floor in the room where the computer was... in the Grove, Mentor had called it.
A translucent, floor-to-ceiling observation window separated him from his friend.
Mentor’s large, robed figure stood by the side of the computer. His amiable features were hardened now, and Torens watched him speak an order to the two walking corpses who had killed or stunned Fraser. The Overseers walked mechanically forward, and lifted the body. They dragged it out of the room.
Mentor turned to regard Torens.
He moved forward towards the observation window, hands folded inside the great, velvet cuffs of his robe.
He looked sternly inside.
Something in the situation made Torens react again, and he began to struggle weakly.
‘I’m not a bloody monkey!’ he shouted.
Mentor shook his head sadly, as though he were a doctor staring at a patient for which there is no known cure. His arms unfolded, and he pressed a button on his belt.
A whirring noise sounded inside the hood above Torens. The pilot looked up at it, his face a mass of veins and contortions as he struggled all the harder to free himself.
The hood began to descend.
It dropped lower and he felt a vertigo inside his head as its awning mouth came closer.
It seemed to contain a powerful, numbing force.
He screamed as the vertigo grew, and a stabbing pain entered his head.
It seemed to split his skull.
Then, merciful blackness came to him.
The whirring hood completely covered his head, and he slumped forward in his seat.
Now, a weird screaming noise began to rise inside the Grove of Psyche where Mentor stood.
It was more like a whining, continuous shriek, part animal and part machine.
It was the sound of Psyche.
The fluids inside her tubes began to boil at a fierce rate. Their meniscuses shot up and down like pistons in their glass cases. A white swarm of bubbles and foam formed in the pressurized liquids, and streamed to the surfaces.
In their nutrient tanks, the brain-like masses began to glow and the light that came off them pulsated madly.
Beneath the hood, inside the Brain Transfer Unit, Torens’ figure jerked back into a kind of life.
It began convulsing violently.
His body jerked and shook. His eyes stared wildly open as though awake. They rolled upwards into his head. From his mouth ejaculated a hideous scream of pain and terror.
His pitiful mind was evacuated from his brain.
The pilot’s memories, his vital life energies were transferred to the glowing brains and Psyche sighed with a wild, ecstatic pleasure that manifested itself in the Grove as an unbearable electronic oscillation.
Mentor clasped his hands to his ears and gritted his teeth.
Then, the computer’s screaming died away.
The meniscuses quietened down and the glowing brains reverted back to their normal states.
Mentor lowered his hands.
He looked pleased, and crossed over to the nutrient tanks.
He studied a group of indicators.
Maya came in, and he smiled beneficently at her.
She walked proudly towards.the tanks and joined her father. She looked pleased at his evident success.
‘Ah... Maya... observe...’ Mentor swept her towards him, and indicated the readings to her.
‘An increase in Psyches’ power levels, Father!... how?’
She looked surprised.
‘The Alphan’s pilot, Torens has been in rapport with her... and this is the result.’
‘He agreed?’ asked his daughter incredulously.
‘Yes.’
‘And there are no harmful side-effects?’
Mentor pursed his lips. Behind his eyes there was a flicker of doubt. He squeezed her arm affectionately.
‘None!’ he said reassuringly. ‘Look... he’s tired... but I have instructed one of the Overseers to look after him until he is rested.’
Daughter and Father looked through the observation window. Torens had come round. He looked sleepy and drugged. The two Overseers were helping him to his feet and walking him out of the room.
Maya turned to her father, smiling radiantly.
‘That’s wonderful, father... will the rest of them help us too? They are intelligent people.’
Mentor turned away so that his daughter could not see his face. As he did so, he noticed the screen on the wall. It showed the figures of Koenig and the Alphans moving urgently down a subterranean passageway.
He answered her slowly. ‘Yes, I am sure they will...’
Abruptly he brought his fingertips to his temples. His brow furrowed with concentration, and the screen went dead — before his daughter had the chance to see the desperate figures on it.
The winding, subterranean passageway, hewn from the rock, led the Eagle Four crew steeply downwards.
The air was hot and acrid with the acid fumes of sulphur dioxide.
The walls, illuminated by their torches, were composed of the same multi-coloured mineral veins as the mountain ranges on the planet’s unstable surface.
They gleamed and shone with moisture and a dozen rare and unknown metals, amongst them Tiranium — the precious radioactive metal they had come to Psychon to find. Ironically it lay all around them, and now its acquisition was of secondary importance.
Nevertheless, Helena picked up loose nodules of the substance as they went along, and stowed them in her medical carrier. In a few seconds she had gathered enough to repair the life support systems, and last Moon Base Alpha for months to come.
She ran to catch up Koenig and the others who had now reached an opening in the dingy tunnel. Since leaving the Eagle Four, they had wandered for what seemed like hours in the catacombs, searching for a way into Mentor’s stronghold, and she was relived to see that they seemed to be getting somewhere.
Koenig held up his arm for silence, and she crept as quietly as she could towards the motionless trio.
They heard a volley of faint chipping sounds drifting through the steamy air.
Cautiously, they peered round the corner into the chamber.
A scene at once surreal and terrifying met their gaze.
The passage had opened into a huge, man-made cavern, heavy with swirling volcanic vapours.
Amongst the fumes, bizarre forms moved. They toiled with heavy mining tools which they used to hack at the rock faces.
They were life-forms of all shapes and sizes, of terran and alien origin.
A tall reptilian creature with a semi-humanoid fish-head, swung a pick listlessly at a boulder which had been blasted away from the face.
A squat, blue creature with an enormous head and bulging eyes, lethargically panned broken fragments of the minerals it had extracted.
A gross humanoid with green fur and misshapen limbs, stared vacantly about it with lidless, saucer eyes. It seemed at a loss as to what to do with itself. It seemed to be staring straight at the watching Alphans, but its gaze cut chillingly through them.
Lying on the uneven ground, almost completely immersed in the opaque vapours, was a very weird being indeed. Its lower quarters were composed of a vegetable, rooty system, but it had a humanoid, upper torso covered with a pitted, bark-like skin. It swung wearily and expressionlessly at the rock face, its eyes streaming an anguished mass of fluid.
Standing ominously about them were the decaying fi
gures of the fungoid Overseers. They stood stiffly with their arms crossed, and gave an impression of absolute authority.
The Alphans looked at one another, stunned.
‘Diverse life forms,’ Helena whispered.
‘They must be from the space ships we saw out there,’ Koenig conjectured.
Macinlock stared in horrified fascination at them.
‘The way they move... the way they look.’
‘They’re suffering from some kind of brain damage,’ Helena told him. She shuddered. ‘Now we know what Mentor means by “welcome”.’
Neither the slave miners nor the Overseers seemed to be aware of their presence, so they stepped into the open and began making their way across the cavern.
They entered another passageway, leading deeper into the planet.
The sound of the miners gradually faded, but then the silence was shattered by a peal of laughter.
It was an insane, chilling, sadistic sound that echoed mockingly from in front of them, and it froze their bones to the marrow.
It was followed by a scream of pain.
The scream faded away, back to silence again.
They looked at one another in fear. Holding their weapons in front of them, they continued onward.
Almost immediately they came to another cavern. This one was even vaster than the last, and contained many more of the shambling, disorientated slaves.
They moved warily through them, when suddenly, Helena gave a shout of alarm.
‘Torens!’
In their path wandered the ghost-like shape of the pilot from Eagle One.
His eyes were glazed and lifeless. He stared blankly ahead of him as he walked past them, carrying a container of ore.
‘Torens!’ Koenig shouted, horrified.
He reached out and grabbed at the pilot’s jacket sleeve.
But Torens tore himself away with his forward, zombie-like progress. He carried the ore to a larger container.
‘He doesn’t know us!’ Macinlock shouted.
Helena swallowed. She looked bone-white. She had seen symptoms such as these on only a few occasions, but she was quite sure what they indicated.
‘His mind has been destroyed,’ she informed them.
Concerned, Koenig rushed towards Torens.
‘Torens..’ he began.
Space 1999 - Planets of Peril Page 3
