Space 1999 - Earthfall

by E. C. Tubb

  “Yes.”

  “Good and bad both, eh, Mr. Koenig?”

  “That’s right, Mrs Debayo. Good and bad both.”

  She was laughing as she waved him goodbye and her smiles warmed him all the way to the Eagle where the neat, trimly uniformed stewardess took over. Deferentially she guided him to his seat in the passenger module.

  “We leave in thirty minutes, Commander. Would you care for anything to drink? Coffee? Tea? Something stronger? A magazine to read, then? A snack? Well, Commander, if there is anything you want just let me know.”

  “Thank you, I will.”

  “Don’t forget, now,” she smiled. “You are a Very Important Person.”

  As Simmonds had taken pains to make clear not only to her but to others. And he had been clever; her use of his regained title had a psychological impact as had the new uniform he found waiting for him in the vacant seat at his side. His note was brief, a suggestion that the uniform should be donned prior to arrival, a suggestion Koenig would follow. The Commissioner was not the only one who knew the value of first impressions.

  But, for now, there was nothing to do but wait. Wait as the Eagle lifted with a muted thunder from its jets, riding the blast of flame as the Earth fell below, seas and continents blurring, the curvature showing plain on the monitor screen set before his chair. Dwindling until it took on the appearance of a cell as seen through a microscope, a tiny fragment of living matter tinged with blue and hazed with white, illuminated by the eye-bright splendor of the sun as it rode against the star-shot enigma of space.

  The stars—lying like a double handful of diamonds tossed by some cosmic jeweller against the velvet of space—an analogy Koenig had read somewhere when very young but had never forgotten. As he had never forgotten the concept that they were candles burning on the altars of heaven. But the stars were not candles and neither were they diamonds. They were suns around which could circle worlds, other planets some, perhaps, similar to Earth. Would they bear the same type of life? Did their continents know the impact of feet, the weight of cities, the thrust of roads? Did their seas churn to the beat of oars or propellers?

  Questions which would never be answered in his lifetime unless science was made to change accepted laws or ways found of eluding their dictates. But, if he would never see the worlds circling the distant stars, he would tread again on the moon, Earth’s nearest neighbor in space.

  Thirty years ago, he thought, since Armstrong had made history back in 1969. Taking the small step which had opened the door to the universe. One man, but always there had to be a first. Now the Moon held hundreds of technicians housed in Alpha base. Technicians and, perhaps, something more; a virus, a plague, a madness which, according to Simmonds, had killed. And if the name of the disease was sabotage the treatment had to be the same. To find it, to root it out, to destroy it without hesitation or compunction. To kill, if kill he must, without mercy.

  “Commander?” Koenig stirred, conscious that he had been dozing, opening his eyes to see the smiling face of the stewardess, the container of steaming coffee in her hand. “Our ETA is 22.47 Lunar time. Thirty minutes from now. Commissioner Simmonds asked me to be sure and remind you to don your uniform.”

  C H A P T E R

  Two

  He was back home and was glad of it. Two years had made little difference; some small extensions of the working sectors, an enlargement of the living quarters, some added decoration, but the rest was as he remembered. The personnel: some familiar, other familiar faces no longer to be seen, their owners retired or returned to Earth, others new. The strangers glanced at him with wary caution uncertain as yet as to how he would operate. Those who had known him in the past made no secret of their pleasure at his return.

  “Gorski was hard, John,” said Victor Bergman. “A martinet. He had no time for weakness and regarded the rule-book as the absolute authority.”

  The office showed it. Leaning back in his chair behind the wide desk Koenig noticed the small touches, the little absences which betrayed character. The floral prints were gone, the blooms enclosed in crystal, the statuette from Greece delightful in its depiction of the female form. They, together with other things he had left, would have been stored and could be replaced. But Gorski had left nothing of his own, no items to remind him of childhood or his home. The office, once Koenig’s, then Gorski’s, now Koenig’s again, was strictly functional.

  “A product of his regime,” said Victor, quietly. He had noticed the movements of Koenig’s eyes and had guessed his thoughts. “A good man, but hard and brittle. There was nothing in him which would yield. He would break rather than bend.” Pausing he added, “He left you a mess, John. A nasty one. But I’m glad you’re here to take care of things.”

  “Not me, Victor. Us.”

  Professor Bergman smiled, thin lips curving in pleasure at the implication. A man nearly sixty, his hair sparse over a rounded skull, his eyes sunken beneath bushy brows, his cheeks marred by a pattern of deep-set lines. A scientist of the highest category. The head of the scientific department which continually worked to thrust back the frontiers of the unknown. An old friend and now a very worried man.

  “Things are bad here, John, perhaps worse than you have been told. Thirteen men have died, you know that?”

  “I do now. How did they die?”

  “In accidents which shouldn’t have happened, by naked violence—one man was stabbed to death and his attacker cut his throat, the rest by some kind of illness.”

  “Disease?” Koenig frowned as Bergman shrugged. Accidents happened even when they shouldn’t and the fight, the murder and suicide, could have been over a woman. The threat of disease was something else. Later he would look into it but, before he did, he wanted to be armed with all the information he could obtain. “Anything else Victor?” Then, as the other hesitated, he snapped, “I need it all, man. What about Meta?”

  “You know?”

  “I’ve heard rumors, nothing more. Some kind of signal coming from space, right? A strong pattern and close. Meta—why call it that?”

  “A code-name, John. We discovered the signal-source only a short while ago and have been trying to determine its nature. It originates from a point high above the plane of the ecliptic and is relatively very close. We are unable to gain a visual scan. The size and composition is a mystery and the only thing we can be certain about is that it has to be alien to our solar system.”

  “A visitor,” said Koenig. “A wandering scrap of interstellar debris. A planetoid or a cluster of meteors. Why make a mystery out of it?”

  “That wasn’t my decision, John.”

  The mania for Security which blanketed the moon and prevented the free flow of information. Meta could be nothing of importance or it could be of inestimable value. It could be a passing nuisance or, remotely, a dangerous threat. In any case it seemed unlikely that it had anything to do with the deaths afflicting the personnel.

  Rising Koenig unclipped the commlock from his belt. It comprised a video-transceiver and an electronic projector to trigger all doors in the complex and was standard equipment. Aiming it he pressed the stud, the wide, double doors separating his office from Main Mission opening to reveal the normal scene of controlled activity, which, at first glance, could be taken for confusion. Koenig knew better and stood watching for a moment before stepping towards the main console.

  “Commander?” Paul Morrow glanced up and smiled. “Your orders?”

  “Report.” Koenig stood, his face impassive as Morrow relayed the current condition of the base; information gathered by scanners and fed into the main console. “The disposal areas?”

  “All in the green. Radiation checks out at zero. No rise in temperature.”

  “Show me Area One.”

  A screen changed images with a momentary blur steadying to reveal a bleak moonscape dotted with truncated pyramids and ringed with slender pylons. A light pulsed from the summit of each as guardian electronic eyes maintained their ceaseless
vigilance.

  An excessive caution dictated by fear. Beneath the pyramids rested the sealed cans of radioactive waste buried in vaults gouged from the Lunar rock. It would take men and machines to dig them free, more machines to move them and the thieves, if any, would have won nothing but a dangerous headache. But radiation was the modern spectre and so men, time and material had to be used to protect the already-protected and unwanted waste.

  “Area Two.” Koenig glanced at another screen as Morrow obeyed. Like the other it was on the far side of the moon from Earth, the base itself hugging the edge of Tycho crater. This one was busy. As he watched an Eagle landed to drop its cargo, men and low-slung vehicles unloading the cans and taking them to their vaults. “Why is Two still a reception area?”

  “Orders from Gorski,” explained Victor. “It’s a matter of economy. He decided that it was less effort and expense to extend the existing installation than to construct a new one.”

  A logical conclusion and the economy would look good on his record. And the extension seemed harmless enough. It could have been sheer coincidence that all the accidents had taken place in or over the area and all the dead men aside from two had worked there.

  Coincidence or sabotage, but that was ruled out by Engineering when Koenig, back in his office, demanded a report.

  “Nothing, Commander.” Oliver Roache glowered from the screen as if he were a bulldog scenting a foe. “I’ve checked personally and there’s no trace of mechanical failure to be found. Every accident must have been caused by human error.”

  “You are certain?” Koenig was sharp. “Remember that you are accusing trained men of near-criminal negligence.”

  “I know what I’m saying, Commander.” The man was stubborn. “If there had been sabotage I’d have found it. This is a second-check and I was looking for anything suspicious. There isn’t a frayed wire, a loosened nut, a weak connection in any of the machines. There are no signs of acid having being used, no traces of explosives, no induced metal fatigue or faulty assemblies.” He ended, stiffly, “I take a pride in my work, Commander. If you want an answer to what killed those men I can’t give it. But my guess is that Medical can.”

  The Head of Medical was Doctor Helena Russell, an expert in space-medicine, a noted psychiatrist, a famous surgeon. She had studied in Boston, Moscow and Vienna and had a list of awesome degrees as proof of her skill. But the one thing the record hadn’t told him was that she was also a very beautiful woman.

  “Commander Koenig!” She rose from where she had been sitting at a microscope and came towards him, one hand extended. As their hands touched she said, “We haven’t met before but I have heard a lot about you. You instigated the simulated accident suit-drill here, didn’t you? To my knowledge it has saved at least seven lives.”

  Her voice was low, softly musical yet holding a timbre which could harden into steel. She was, he knew, almost seven years younger than himself, no shallow girl but a fully mature woman with hips and bust making no secret of her femininity. Her hair was short-cut above her shoulders, blonde, the color of sun-ripened grain, rich and soft in gentle waves. The eyes, wide-spaced, were a vivid blue. The cheeks were concave, the bones high and prominent the jaw firmly pointed. The lips were full, sensuous, the complete mouth tenderly generous. A Slav, he decided, or at least of Slavic descent and wondered if she and Gorski had held anything in common.

  He said, abruptly. “What can you tell me about the trouble here?”

  “You have my reports, Commander.”

  “Gorski had them,” he corrected. “Maybe he liked things put down neat and tidy, but those reports haven’t cured anything, have they? Can you honestly tell me why those men died?”

  “No, Commander, I can’t.” Then, as he made no comment, she continued, “All I can give you are facts. Thirteen men are dead. Two, I am certain, we can eliminate from the general pattern. The stabbing and subsequent suicide could have been due to repressed frustration or a sudden, ungovernable rage. The killer, regaining his mental balance, lost it again in a wave of remorse which caused him to take his own life. Of the others, some died immediately in accidents which have yet to be explained.”

  “Rule out sabotage,” he said. “And then explain how trained technicians could have acted so stupidly.”

  “I can’t,” she admitted. “Any more than I can explain this.” Koenig followed as she led the way into the intensive care unit. The place was eerie with a sombre blueish light; ultra-violet which kept the place sterile. The air held the acrid taint of ozone and antiseptics. Behind a transparent screen, monitoring devices on their supine figures, lay two, corpse-like bodies. “Sparkman and Warren,” she said, quietly. “Two of the crew which was to man the Stellar Probe. Three days ago they were perfectly fit. Now they are dying. In a few hours they will be dead. Why, Commander? Why?”

  “You are the doctor.”

  “But not a magician. I can give you the medical data on those two men as I can on the others who have died in here. Something has affected their physical coordination so that the cerebral micro-currents on which the balance of endocrine glands and secreted lymphs has been thrown hopelessly out of synchronization. Their brains, to use a more familiar term, have been riddled and burned and distorted in some manner. On the cellular level, naturally, but it is enough. Nodes have been destroyed and a general decay initiated. This much I have discovered but what caused it is a mystery.”

  “Did you report this to Gorski?”

  “I did. He assumed the condition was due to exposing to radiation.”

  “Nonsense!”

  “I agree, Commander, but failing a different explanation I could not convince him of that. Not even when others died and it was clear there had been no exposure to radiation or contamination of any kind. In any case the physical results of such exposure are well-documented and bear no relation to the present situation.”

  A lamp flashed on the panel and she moved towards it, pressing buttons and watching the signals from the tell-tales. Watching, Koenig saw remote control apparatus move into action, pumps pulsing as blood was forced through life-support apparatus, hypodermic syringes blasting drugs through skin and fat and muscle directly into the bloodstream, electrodes attached to the temples signalling the impact of current. A long, tense moment, then a lamp flared ruby and, on the oscillocopes, wavering lines flattened and flowed with monotonous sameness.

  Dropping her hands the woman said, dully, “You have just witnessed another of my failures, Commander. Warren has just died and Sparkman will follow shortly. Nothing I can do will save him.”

  “You will perform an autopsy?”

  “Naturally. Doctor Mathias will assist and so will doctors Harvey and Riden. Our report will be on your desk within a few hours.”

  “I don’t want a report,” he said, harshly. “I want results. I want something which will save more men from dying. I want to know what is causing this, I want answers, Doctor. Answers. And I want them fast!”

  He had acted unwisely, a display of emotion was always unwise, and Koenig, wondered why he had done it. The hair, perhaps? Had it’s golden sheen reminded him of Marcia and had he stormed at the doctor because of a simple mental transference? A facile explanation and one tempting to accept but he sensed there had to be a deeper motivation. Anger, yes, but not the spiteful anger of a rejected male. A rage born more of fear and the anticipation of failure so that he had lashed out in an effort to spur the woman to work harder, to solve the problem, to save his career and reputation.

  To save him from the necessity of admitting to himself that Marcia had been right. That he had been used and had been willing to be used. That he was a failure. That he had lacked the guts to fight the system on its own terms.

  But what could she have known of the moon? Of the magic which, for him, it held? Of the drive which had made it impossible for him to reject the offer, the chance of regaining and keeping his Command? The situation was a challenge he had to win and, while winning, make certai
n that he would retain his authority. So, not only must he find the answers he needed he must also fight Simmonds and those on the Council who would want to replace him. If nothing else Marcia had underlined the position he was in—one he had known from the start.

  He sat in his office, the sealed door making it an oasis of silent privacy and, rising, he leaned forward and touched a button. Immediately the air became filled with a peculiar sussuration; little pips, squeaks, rustles, scrapes against which came, sharp and clear, an irregular pinging. The noise of the galaxy serving as a background to the supposed signals from Meta.

  Gorski had left an almost full bottle of vodka and Koenig helped himself, pouring, lifting the glass to his lips, his eyes veiled as he listened to the music of the universe. It held no tune, no melody, but it was the stuff of life itself. Stars, suns, radiating, burning, exploding, collapsing, going through their own peculiar cycles of birth and growth and final death and, all the time, emitting the ceaseless radiation which travelled endlessly through space. Atoms created, burned, accumulated, dispersed in an eternal sequence and each time they touched or were born or died electro-magnetic radiation was produced. Radio waves which could be picked up and amplified and played over speakers to be heard by the ears of men and translated by their minds.

  But how ever to know the basis of the message they carried? How ever to guess at their secrets? How, even, to be sure they were just a blur of random noise and not the fabric of a communication beyond human comprehension?

  The glass was empty and he refilled it and sat still listening, still caught in the magic of the sounds and what they signified. A moment in which he could relax, to ease the strain of long hours and the necessity to wait, to allow others to search, to guide and direct and wait—always there was the need to wait.

  But, while waiting, he could listen.

  To the murmur of the universe.

  To the sharper sounds from an alien visitor coming close. Sounds which he related to the movement of particles drifting in a heating liquid medium, dancing, moving, rising and falling in the intricies of Brownian Movement. As tiny particles moved in the glass of vodka warmed by his hand, as the spirit burned his mouth in tiny, varying points of impact as if he had swallowed a mouthful of scintillating sparks which danced and burned and died even as they reached their maximum glory.