They stood up.
She responded to his passionate declaration, her lips parted. She looked wildly desirable.
Koenig reached out his arms and took hold of her passionately.
They kissed savagely, feeling the glorious release from strain and tension melt away.
They held the heavenly embrace for as long as they could, parting breathlessly for air.
‘We know we’re being manipulated,’ Koenig gasped.
‘Yes, yes we do,’ Maya panted. ‘It’s just simply brain-washing...’
‘It doesn’t mean a thing,’ he said.
‘No, no it doesn’t,’ she moaned, her eyes closed and waiting for him to kiss her again.
She began to draw his head down towards hers.
But a sudden, blood-curdling howl sounded on the night air. The animal scream came again, from somewhere deeper in the woodland.
They parted, abject terror driving them from the trees towards the fire glow.
They were met in the clearing by a nervous Helena and Verdeschi.
‘What the hell was that?’ the Security Chief asked, his eyes wide with fear.
‘It came from over there,’ Koenig pointed back towards the trees.
The howl came again, louder and more blood-chilling. This time it was followed by a savage grunting sound.
‘It’s too close to our camp — we’ll have to see what it is,’ Koenig said.
They withdrew their lasers and moved cautiously forward through the gloomy trees crossing the white marker stones.
The trees gradually thinned out, and ahead of them they saw another glade lit by the moonlight.
Beyond the clearing, the valley side rose steeply upward and in its rocky, grass-covered slope they saw a dark cave mouth. In front of the gaping cave two bizarre figures strutted about grappling with one another.
One of the figures was large and ape-like, with bulging burning eyes and a ferocious black crest on its head.
Its opponent was a small, semi-humanoid crocodile-like creature with wide, slavering jaws and short hind legs.
The smaller creature was gashed and bitten in numerous places. Its scales glistened with its own blood, but it fought bravely, snapping at the ape creature’s legs causing it to howl and growl with pain and rage.
The larger creature had the upper hand though, and the Alphans watched tensely as its sharp claws, bearhugs and powerful fore-arm smashes gradually slashed and battered the smaller creature into an ungainly death.
As though sensing the watching Alphans the ape creature now stumbled round and spied Koenig.
It launched itself at him with a demented howl.
Koenig braced himself and fired his laser.
The thin beam caught the creature in its chest, and with a shriek of anguish its body began to erupt in a smoking, crackling mass of burning white flames.
Koenig turned the gun off, sickened by the sight and the smell of the charred shape that now lay on the ground.
He walked warily forward towards the cave mouth, flanked by the other Alphans.
‘These tracks...’ He stopped, arrested by the sight of the semi-humanoid’s footprints in the earth. There were many of them mixed with the spore of other animals, and they led towards the cave.
But he never finished what he started to say, for a sudden deafening crash of thunder sounded from the sky.
It was followed by a brilliant flash of lightning that zigzagged down, striking the top of a buried rock not far away from them.
In the fading rumble of the thunder, they heard the deep, swelling, vibrant voice of their Creator. It pulsated brokenly out of the sky, shocking them with its intensity.
‘You were forbidden!’ it roared. ‘Why do you disobey!’
They looked up at the sky, and shied fearfully away from what they saw.
Their Creator’s image had materialized. He looked thin and vaporous and swirled amorphously, but his wrathful features were unmistakable.
‘Go back!’ his face roared at them.
His giant robed arms waved them back.
‘Go back! Go back!’
Embittered and humiliated, they did as they were bid, moving slowly backward through the trees towards their unwilling enslavement.
A weak and watery dawn broke over their huddled forms.
The air was still chill, and the fire had long since run out of fuel.
They woke cramped and stiff, aware that they were being watched.
The tall figure of their Creator towered silently by their side, arms crossed, his long robe touching the ground, his long silver tresses flowing divinely on to his shoulders.
‘What is it about the human species that makes it so perverse?’ he asked in a chiding tone.
Koenig and Verdeschi scrambled to their feet.
‘That was quite a show you put on last night,’ Koenig told him. ‘What was it you didn’t want us to see?’
‘I forbade you to go outside this glade because I knew the dangers that were beyond it,’ the other replied. ‘I didn’t want you destroyed before we’d even begun.’
‘What do you call the dangers?’ Verdeschi asked. ‘The ape, or the other thing?’
Moses shook his head sadly.
‘Throughout the whole of its history your species has been notable for two things — asking interminable questions and injuring itself.’
‘You haven’t answered,’ Koenig reminded him.
Moses sighed.
‘You were homeless — I’ve given you a home; you were hopeless — I’ve given you hope.’
‘We were never without hope...’ Koenig corrected.
‘What more could you possibly want?’ their Creator asked.
‘Free will,’ Koenig replied instantly.
The figure snorted.
‘Free will! It’s a will-o-the-wisp. It exists nowhere in the Universe.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ Koenig said smoothly. ‘We had it until you took it away from us.’
Moses puffed himself up again, his wrath getting the better of him.
‘Your idea of free will is the right to say no,’ he boomed.
Koenig remained cool.
‘Can you think of a better definition?’ he asked.
Moses looked irritated.
‘It’s not my problem,’ he snapped.
‘Free will is also the right to walk out of this glade without you behaving like something out of the Book of Job,’ Koenig continued, making his point.
Moses paused and looked strangely at him. For a moment he looked as though he were off his guard.
‘It’s the right to try,’ he said.
Koenig started.
He eyed the white marker rocks, then Moses, then the rocks again.
Very deliberately he set out towards the rocks.
He made as though to step over them, but he never got his boot as far as the first rock.
A massive blast of energy accompanied by a searing flash of light flung him forcibly back into the centre of the clearing. It was a forcefield with a particularly nasty high energy composition.
He cried out in agony.
The Alphans ran to him and helped him to his feet. He looked white and shaken, and hopping mad.
He shook them off him.
‘I’m all right — we’ve met forcefields before,’ he said. He turned to Moses and snarled at him. ‘Congratulations, you big physicist!’
Maya looked angrily at the nonchalant super lord.
‘What is it you don’t want us to see out there?’ she asked him.
‘We already know there are other beings in this planet,’ Helena rejoined.
‘And sooner or later we’re going to get close to them,’ Verdeschi added through gritted teeth.
But Moses looked undeterred by their threats.
‘The ban is to protect you,’ he repeated simply.
Koenig waved arrogantly in the direction of the cave.
‘Last night — did it look as if we needed your prote
ction?’ he asked sarcastically.
Once again Moses seemed goaded by Koenig’s word, but he kept his wrath down. He spoke forcibly and, it seemed, with greater respect.
‘Commander Koenig, I am aware that to erect any kind of barrier in front of the human species is immediately to challenge them to cross it. However, this is one barrier that you will not cross.’
‘You can’t keep a forcefield up indefinitely,’ Koenig countered.
‘Indeed I can,’ Moses replied angrily. ‘I can ill afford the energy for it, but if you insist on behaving like children you must be treated as children.’
He turned abruptly, almost catching Maya with her scanning device pointing at him, but she managed to conceal it hurriedly from his view.
‘But let us not quarrel,’ he said in a more lordly mood.
He waved his arm, and a tray containing glasses and a jug of golden nectar appeared at their feet.
‘Please — enjoy yourselves!’ he smiled affably. ‘What was it they used to say on Earth years ago? “Make love not war”?’
He disappeared again with theatrical effect, and they were left to their own devices once more.
Koenig turned to the others, seething.
‘We’ve got to get out of this zoo,’ he said.
Helena looked worried.
‘Even if we could break the forcefield, anything we try he’ll know about like last night.’
‘How did he know?’ Verdeschi asked grimly.
‘By ESP?’ Helena hazarded a guess, but Maya interrupted her.
‘No, I don’t think so. I scanned him just now.’ She looked puzzled. ‘There’s some kind of power source in his body.’
‘You mean an organic source?’ Helena asked.
‘No, it’s an implant. It’s fantastically potent and I can’t tell how it works, but its mechanical.’
Koenig looked enthusiastically at her.
‘Mechanical?’ he asked.
‘It’s a device,’ Maya replied. ‘It means his powers are physical, not psychic.’
‘That fits,’ Verdeschi commented. ‘What did he say? He could “ill afford the energy”.’
Koenig was thoughtful.
‘His powers are beyond our imagination,’ he said. ‘But they can’t be limitless and he’s got a lot to do with them.’
‘Like what?’ Verdeschi asked.
‘Like holding this planet stable for one thing...’
He looked questioningly up at the sky.
It was now a brilliant blue, and the sun had risen above the horizon, sending out warmth and vitality. The pale orb of the Moon was also still visible, as it sometimes was on Earth.
‘The Moon is much bigger in relation to this planet than it was to Earth,’ Helena observed. ‘And very much closer.’
Koenig clicked his fingers.
‘Of course. The gravitational pull!’
‘Moses must be countering it, or this planet would break up under the strain,’ Maya commented.
‘And he must be doing something to stop anyone getting down to us from Alpha,’ Verdeschi went on.
‘He’s got his hands full,’ Koenig said. ‘If we could only get out and follow those tracks — the ones outside the cave. We need allies — maybe the thing that was fighting the ape has friends.’
He looked at the forcefield, an idea crossing his face.
He stooped down and picked up a stone. He threw it at the forcefield. There was a blinding, splitting crack of light, and the stone was flung back at them.
He threw another, this time higher.
The stone sailed unimpeded over the forbidden boundary. Koenig smiled triumphantly. He turned to Maya.
‘A bird could do it,’ he said to her.
She sighed, and smiled back.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Here we go again. Back to the falcon — for its eyesight!’
A pillar of light enveloped her, and she transformed herself into a falcon.
The bird took off gracefully into the air, and it flew safely over the top of the forcefield across the wakening woodland.
Alone on a distant part of the mountainside, the robed, cryptic Creator stood.
He was shaking with exhaustion, and sweat was streaming from his face.
The love and radiance had gone from him.
Weakly, he turned his wizened frame towards the rising sun. He raised his arms high as though in worship, and drank in its healing rays.
Gradually, he began to feel better, and he realized shakily that this time he had only just managed to last out.
If the humans didn’t tax him so much; if they would only behave themselves; if they would only understand...
But he knew it was useless to wish. They were what they were, and he had expected trouble from them from the start.
But these days, with his ailing powers and with the disorderly state of the Universe, he couldn’t afford to be particular. He had to take what came along.
The sun beat warmly on him, and he sighed with relief. Now he felt much better — he felt, and looked, all-powerful again.
He would have to accomplish as much as he could with his new lease of energy.
Exaltedly he began to walk around the land he had created — touching the brilliant petals of the flowers that hummed with early insects, and the wondrous hanging branches of leaves that nodded and rustled in the spring breeze.
A flutter of wings sounded overhead, and he looked up shielding his eyes from the sun.
He reached out his arm to the pure white bird, but frowned as it alighted tamely on his hand.
‘A peregrine...’ he said reflectively. ‘I thought you were all extinct here...’
He stroked it affectionately.
The falcon stared at him beadily, blinking its delicate pink eyelids.
The Creator shook his head in apparent wonder, as he launched the bird back into the air.
‘The more I learn, the less I know...’ he said benignly.
He set off once more on his journey of inspection, his attention already taken by the many other beautiful things of his creation.
‘You mean he caught you and let you go?’ Verdeschi asked Maya in amazement when she returned.
Maya nodded. ‘Which proves he’s a superman but not supernatural.’
‘What about the tracks?’ Koenig asked her urgently. ‘Did you find anything?’
‘I found the same ones — but inside this glade as well,’ she reported proudly.
‘Where?’
Maya pointed towards a dense thicket of bushes just inside the forcefield boundary.
‘There. They come out from the other side of that. They’re very clear from the air.’
Briskly, Koenig ran forward and began searching amongst the bushes. The others joined him, and it did not take them long to uncover a sizeable outcrop of rock buried in the foliage.
They dragged back branches and dead organic matter and found what looked like a narrow opening in the rock face.
But they saw bitterly that it was impassable.
It had been jammed tight with large boulders and huge logs of wood.
They watched helplessly for a while, then Koenig withdrew his laser and he nodded to the others to do the same.
They aimed their guns at the rocks and at a signal from Koenig they fired simultaneously.
The beams of concentrated light energy struck the blockage. The logs of wood began to smoulder. Then with a roar of shooting flame and billows of grey woodsmoke they converted to a white ash.
There was a rumble as the boulders fell in a dusty heap to the floor.
After the smoke had cleared they ran forward, and one at a time they crawled over the boulders and through the narrow fissure into the blackness beyond.
They moved in pitch blackness down a small passageway that led steeply downhill below the forcefield wall.
As they grew accustomed to the dark they noticed that the rocky walls gave off a natural, bluish phospherescence by which they were able to see their w
ay.
The tunnel widened and became taller, then branched into four separate directions.
‘Which way now?’ Verdeschi asked, confused.
‘Quiet,’ Koenig warned.
They listened. In the silence they could hear furtive, sinister shuffling and scurrying sounds coming towards them from one of the openings.
A high-pitched squeaking noise told them that something was advancing towards them — and fast.
They drew out their lasers and pressed themselves instinctively against the rock face, trying to cover all four of the subterranean openings at once.
The noise reached a peak and then stopped.
They had the uncomfortable feeling that they were being surveyed.
The scurrying noise started again, and Koenig whipped his head round to Tunnel One.
In the dimness he could make out a giant, rough-backed insect creature. It occupied most of the tunnel and had to force itself out at them, its waving antennae feeling blindly in front of it.
Unerringly it ran at them and when it had fully emerged they saw to their disgust and horror that it was a wood louse.
Its dull back was segmented, and below its armour hundreds of pale, jointed legs moved.
A strong smell of decay wafted from it.
Sickened, Koenig pressed the button of his laser and watched with even greater loathing and repulsion as the oversized creature sizzled and crackled in a mass of flame and stinking vapours.
Its charred remains blocked their way and they walked distastefully through it, its upturned legs shivering into carbon at their touch.
Koenig led the way through the cold blue lighting, up the second tunnel.
A sharp bend lay ahead of them, and another sudden sound made them stop.
It was a single, low grunt.
Koenig negotiated the corner cautiously.
A dark cavern lay ahead of them, more dimly illuminated by the phospherescence than the passageway.
The unexpectedness of it caught him off-guard.
A shape, which had been standing in a niche in the wall leapt out at him, grunting like an enraged boar.
Koenig felt strong claw-like hands grasp his arms, and a foetid, rasping breath on his face.
He fought determinedly back, but the creature was too strong and vicious.
It had long, slavering jaws and he dimly recognized the species of crocodile creature they had seen fighting the great crested ape.
Space 1999 - Planets of Peril Page 16
