by Roland Starr
OMINA UNCHARTED
Roland Starr
© Roland Starr 1974
Roland Starr has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1974 by Robert Hale & Co.
This edition published in 2019 by Endeavour Venture, an imprint of Endeavour Venture Ltd.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER I
The shuttle-ship had made a perfect landing from its parent craft, and rested in the sunlight on the planet of Omina, situated in the Outer Galaxy. A dozen figures emerged from the small craft and spread out to look around, their first landfall in two years.
Max Vonner, the captain of the starship Orion, now in orbit around the planet, sighed deeply as he moved to a nearby grassy knoll in the company of Adah Morley, the starship doctor. His brown eyes were sparkling in the bright sunlight as he gazed around, and when he looked at the doctor he found her blue eyes glinting with pleasure.
“This is a great moment, Max,” she said lightly, and there was no trace now of the worries that had beset them over the past five days. “Do you realise that we have found the only planet so far that’s capable of maintaining human life?”
“I’m well aware of it,” he retorted, nodding, looking around. He could see a flock of birds whirling around in the bright air, and at some distance there were trees, and the glint of water. He shaded his eyes against the glare from the sun and peered at the shuttle-ship, nodding his head when Philo Curran and one of the security guards started walking towards some cow-like animals grazing about a quarter-mile away. “We were the fourth mission to set out. It’s fourth time lucky all right, although I wouldn’t have thought so a few days ago.” He tightened his lips as he looked around and spotted Ed Bardo sitting upon the ground and touching the grass and earth as if he had never seen such things before. His eyes narrowed. “I sure wish I could trust Ed. I need him. There’s a lot to be done here in the next month, and when we blast off again it’ll be two years before we reach Earth.”
“I’m not looking forward to the return trip,” she said softly. “The orders are that the brain-washing will be permitted to wear off while we’re on the planet. But it’ll be back to the processing the minute we pull out of orbit once more.”
He nodded slowly. The events which had taken place five days prior to their arrival here had revealed at least one big secret of their long flight. Ed Bardo, Lieutenant Commander Bardo, to give him his official status, had been the Second Officer on the flight until he had been struck down by space sickness. He had mutinied under the strange powers of the malady that was most feared by all space travellers, and before Vonner had regained command he had discovered that he and the whole crew of seventy-seven had regularly been mentally processed each month — brain-washed, as it was popularly called amongst the crew. They had been subjected to mental obliteration of all instincts and memory and recharged electronically with behaviour patterns relating to their duties aboard Orion.
Vonner still found it difficult to accept that back on Earth he and the attractive woman doctor at his side had been engaged to marry. During their flight of two years he had not been aware of his past, and it had come as a revelation to him when she had given him the facts to make him aware of the situation that had cropped up.
But Bardo was harmless now, although Vonner would not let him out of his sight. The heavy doses of mental reprocessing that Bardo had undergone after being taken as a mutineer had removed the danger that had sprung up at the most crucial time on the long flight. Bardo had almost wrecked the whole climax to the trip.
Vonner dragged his mind back to duty and reached with a sigh for his communicator.
“Duty calls!” he remarked as he prepared to open a channel to the orbiting starship. “We’ve had our first minutes together, Adah. Now it’s nothing but work, work, work!”
“Surely we’ll get some minutes to ourselves over the next month!” she protested. “The whole crew will need a lot of relaxation if they’re to get through the next two years, Max! We still don’t know what long term effects will arise from all this mental processing that’s been carried out.”
“We’ll all be on our toes after what has happened,” he remarked grimly. His eyes narrowed a little against the glare as he stared after Colonel Curran and the security guard, who were now approaching one of the grazing animals. “I’d better check with Quillon Reid and find out if he’s discovered the presence of other life forms here.”
He could see the Chief Scientist some distance from the shuttle-ship, busy with instruments, taking and checking readings, and he knew there would be a whole month of such work before they came to the moment of departure. But their findings and the action that would take place as a result would largely depend on one thing — the presence of intelligent life forms on Omina.
“Max!” Adah Morley spoke his name with a great deal of horror in her tones, and Vonner whipped his attention from his thoughts and glanced at her. “Curran walked through that beast over there!”
“What?” Vonner widened his eyes as he stared across the grass. He saw Philo Curran’s tall figure rising head and shoulders beyond the animal, which appeared undisturbed by the presence of aliens. The security guard with the Colonel was motionless a few feet away. “Surely the sun is playing tricks with your eyes, Adah! Remember that we’ve all been forced to short-sightedness over the past two years. None of us has been able to see farther than the end of the main corridor on the ship!”
“It was no figment of my imagination, Max!” she retorted, getting to her feet. “Look!”
Vonner was arising, still watching the two men near the peacefully grazing beast, and his teeth clicked shut when he saw Philo Curran apparently walk straight through the animal. For a moment he figured they were suffering from space sickness, which could strike without warning and in any of a number of horrifying mental ways. But his eyes were not deceiving him. He saw Curran reach out a big hand and make several passes at the grazing animal, which was not taking the slightest notice of his presence. But Curran’s hand passed right through the animal, and Vonner pulled his face into a frown as he reacted.
“Back to the ship, Adah!” he rapped.
“What’s happening?” she demanded, throwing him a startled glance.
He grasped her arm and started hurrying her back towards the shuttle-ship, still watching Curran and the guard. He saw Curran turn in his direction and lift a beckoning hand, and he waved an acknowledgement. At that moment the communicator on his belt gave a warning bleep, and he lifted it and opened a line to the orbiting Orion.
“Vonner here!” he said crisply.
“Captain, we’re getting interference on our scanners, and some unknown force is affecting the main drive!” Lieutenant Hanton’s voice was clipped and tense. It was the first time he had taken control of the ship.
“We’ve just discovered a mystery down here, Mr. Hanton,” Vonner retorted. “Prepare the ship for an emergency and put up shields. Stand by on red alert. I’D come back to you as soon as I can.”
He cut off the power and slipped the communicator back on his belt, still moving towards the shuttle-ship, and he signalled for Curran to join him. Ed Bardo, and the nurse in close attendance, looked up as Vonner and the doctor approached.
“Something wrong, Captain?” Bardo demanded.
; “Everybody back to the ship!” Vonner retorted. “Make it quick, Ed. Adah, warn the others, will you? I want to talk to Curran.”
He didn’t waste time but turned and started running towards the approaching Philo Curran. The big Colonel’s face was wearing a puzzled frown, and his stun-gun was in his hand. He was breathless as he reached Vonner, and they halted.
“You’re not gonna believe this, Captain!” Curran started, but Vonner cut in.
“I was watching you, Philo! What happened?”
“That thing over there looks like a cow from back on Earth. When we got close I figured it didn’t look real, although it sure had us fooled only a few yards away. But I walked right through it. Captain, what you’re seeing over there just isn’t there!”
“Let’s get back to the shuttle-ship!” Vonner glanced around, his brown eyes narrowed, his gaze calculating. “I’ve just had a call from the Orion. They’re getting interference! Something’s attacking them!”
Curran’s face went bleak, and the big man lifted the stun-gun as if he would start fighting all-comers. He shook his head as he looked around, half expecting an attack from somewhere.
“You figure Bardo could have been right about the trouble we can expect from this place?” he demanded.
“No!” Vonner shook his head. He turned and they started back towards the waiting ship, and figures were converging upon it as the alarm was given. “Anything Ed came out with was the product of his mind twisted by space sickness. He had nothing on which to base predictions. There were no facts available!”
They continued to the waiting ship, and were the last to arrive. The others had climbed aboard, and several anxious faces were peering at them from the port-holes. The guard entered the ship but Vonner paused and looked around, and Curran remained at his side.
“You figure there are people on this planet and they’ve just got around to finding out about us?” the Colonel demanded. He was sweating profusely, and shock showed plainly in his dark gaze.
“If there is an intelligent life form here then they knew about us before our landing,” Vonner retorted. “Tell me about that animal, Philo! Was it actually grazing?”
“No! It ain’t there at all, Captain! It’s going through the motions of grazing. It’s jaws are working, but it ain’t eating the grass!”
“The grass is real enough!” Vonner bent and grasped a tuft and pulled it, holding it up to examine it. “But that animal is not real.” He looked steadily into Curran’s flushed face. “What is happening here then, Philo? Is this entire scene just a fake?”
“You mean someone is projecting a vast panoramic scene on this landing point just to lull our suspicions and make us think we’re in some earthly paradise?”
“What else could it be but a picture!” Vonner shook his head, reaching for his communicator. “And it looks to me as if our brains have been picked for the information they required to make this scene familiar to us!”
“Then we’d better prepare for action!” Curran raised his weapon and looked around.
“They may be taking precautions just in case we are enemies,” Vonner replied. “Just relax, Philo!” He opened a line to the Orion. “Come in Orion! This is Vonner speaking!”
A dull crackle was emitted from the communicator, and Vonner threw a quick glance at Curran.
“They’re jamming us!” the Colonel retorted.
Vonner tried several times to make contact with the Orion, but failed, and he put away the communicator, his face grim.
“Stay here and keep your eyes open, Philo,” he ordered. “I’ll try the more powerful communicator on the ship. I want to put some questions to Reid, too.”
“Okay, Captain, but be ready for anything, huh? Maybe you’d better send a couple more of my men out here, and we could do with something more powerful than these stun-guns.”
“I’ll send out an Othic tube,” Vonner replied, and entered the ship.
A dozen concerned faces were turned towards Vonner as he entered the main cabin, and he firmed his lips for a moment.
“No need for panic,” he said, and singled out Aaron Maar, the Astrogator. “Aaron, try to contact the ship with the radio here. My communicator is being jammed.”
Marr nodded and went instantly to the rear of the cabin. His voice filled the background as he carried out Vonner’s orders.
“Quill!” Vonner looked at Quillon Reid, the Chief Scientist. “What have you been getting on your sensors? You said there was animation here on Omina. Philo walked through the bovine creature out there. It’s just a picture! There’s no substance to it.”
“I got normal readings from each of those animals you see,” Reid replied slowly, shaking his head in perplexity. “That was until you raised the alarm. Then all readings vanished from the dials. I’ve got nothing at all now!”
“Nothing? But there was air out there. We breathed it. The sun really is shining!”
“I agree as far as it goes, but I can’t account for the failure of my instruments.”
“Perhaps they’re being jammed.” Vonner shook his head. “I heard from Orion. It was picking up some form of active interference.” He glanced at Dalus Way-land, the Chief Engineer. “It was affecting the main drive too.”
“Mellon is a good lad. I think he’ll be able to handle everything as well as I would have!” Wayland nodded slowly, but he could not conceal the uneasiness which he felt.
“Sergeant Nevin, take a couple of men and an Othic tube out to the Colonel. We’d better be prepared, although we must try to contact the life form here, if it exists, and prove that we have come in peace.”
The sergeant nodded and departed, carrying the Othic Ray tube which was powerful enough to disintegrate steel. The air lock hissed as he departed with two men, and Vonner glanced at Marr, still operating the communicator.
“Any luck, Aaron?” he asked.
“The line is dead, Captain! There’s no response.” Marr put down the microphone and came back to the group. “It seems to me we shouldn’t have put too much trust in our instruments. We’ve been fed false information, deliberately!”
“That’s what it looks like.” Vonner glanced through a port and saw Curran pacing up and down outside, holding the Othic tube in an aggressive position. “I think I’d better take a search party out and look around. In the meantime, Aaron, you’d better keep trying to contact the ship.”
“Right, Captain!” The stocky astrogator turned away and went to the communications console at the rear of the cabin.
“I warned you there’d be trouble,” Bardo said suddenly. He was sitting on one of the front seats, a pretty nurse at his side. He’d been holding his head in his hands, but now he looked up, and his face was covered with a sheen of sweat, a grey pallor showing beneath it. “I warned you, Captain! Nobody took any notice of me when I said there’d be disaster. We’ll never get off this planet alive! You thought I was suffering from space sickness, but I knew. Now we’ve all got to pay for this landing.”
“Be quiet, Ed,” Vonner said tartly. He glanced at Adah, who was standing nearby, her attractive face taut and frowning. “If Ed looks like cracking up again then give him a shot of something to keep him quiet, will you, Doc?”
“Yes, Captain.”
Bardo’s face turned sullen, and Vonner motioned one of the remaining guards to keep an eye on the mentally sick ex-Second Officer.
“Let’s get back to you, Quill,” Vonner went on. “Before we separated from the Orion, what kind of readings were you getting about this planet?”
“Good, clear readings in all departments. There were no warnings at all!”
“Did you pick up any readings of closely collected life presence? Were there signs of any towns?”
“Nothing like that.” The Chief Scientist shook his head. He was a tall, slim man of forty, and his brown eyes carried perplexity as he stared into Vonner’s face. “There are life forms on the planet. The readings and sensors made that obvious, but I doubt if the sensors ar
e acute enough to differentiate between the various forms of life. It’s enough for us to know that life is here.”
“But not in the form of those cattle out there!” Vonner shook his head. “I wish we’d got some of our vehicles down here before contact with Orion was broken! If we’re going to make a search then we need to cover a lot of ground.”
“It was not intended that we should physically search the entire planet, Captain,” Quillon Reid pointed out. “Orion is photographing and mapping every foot of Omina from orbit, and we’re supposed to select the more interesting parts of this world to explore and search.”
“I’m aware of that, but those orders can’t apply in view of the emergency we’ve got on our hands. Somewhere on this planet something is affecting our ship and our communications. We can only assume that it is hostile!” Vonner kept his tones even and calm.
“Maybe we should blast off from here and rejoin Orion," Adah Morley suggested.
“I don’t want to do that unless trouble hits us. Now that we have a good landing site I want to stay and start getting some of the tasks completed.” Vonner let his mind run over the whole broad plan of events that had been scheduled back on Earth for this mission, and he knew that after arriving safely through countless millions of miles of black space he could not abort the mission unless it was imperative for the safety of the ship. “Tell me, Quill. If it is a projector giving us the scene out there, what size would it have to be to project on that scale and at that brilliance?”
“I couldn’t answer that question unless I knew the technology of the people who built the projector,” came the swift reply. “I am certainly not going to make any wild guesses. If that is a scene projected for our benefit then I’d say the people responsible for it are ahead of our abilities. So it would be impossible for me to surmise anything they have accomplished.”
“Thanks for being so precise and clear,” Vonner said. He let his glance take in Bardo’s hard face for a moment, and he didn’t like the expression on the man’s features. Then Aaron Marr spoke up.