Space 1999 - The Time Fighters

by Michael Butterworth

  ‘Oh, no...! Maya!’ Helena gasped, her voice lost in the roaring of the monster and the panic-stricken shouts of the Guards.

  The Maya Creature stood on hind limbs, fully eight feet high. Her feet were hooved and cloven, and the skin covering her sleek body shone and gleamed metallically in the artificial light coming from the passageway. Her head was high and horse-like, with long jaws and rows of sharp teeth, and her manner was arrogant and aloof. It was as though, in her evident pain, she was outraged that beings inferior to herself should have dared to engage her in combat. With a sudden forward movement she struck one of the Guards and sent him reeling down the corridor. She turned on the second Guard, who was still firing his laser at her metal hide, scarring it, and draining her magnificent body of its life. But the man did not wait to be struck. He dropped his gun and fled, before the deranged Psychon could reach him.

  Watching the Guard run for his life jerked Helena out of her trance. If the Guard raised the alarm before she had a chance to explain to Carter that the rampant creature was not a monster, but an out-of-control patient, then an alert would be put out for its death.

  ‘Maya!’ she called out sharply. She hid her fear behind her professional veneer. She advanced on the creature, which now directed its full ferocity at her. Its lips writhed away from its jaws, its front teeth stuck out aggressively towards her and a sibilant, macabre whinnying sound escaped its mouth. It was warning her to keep her distance.

  ‘Maya, please revert...!’ Helena called again, showing no fear as she approached, her hands firmly outstretched in a gesture of friendship.

  A sudden blur of movement occurred in front of her. She felt a stinging blow strike her shoulder as one of Maya’s great hoofed forelimbs lashed out. She fell to the floor, gasping for breath at the pain. The horse-like form reared above her and its polished hooves pounded at the air, seeking balance while some semblance of sanity that existed inside its head decided whether or not to finish her off.

  ‘No, Maya... No!’ Helena just had the strength to plead desperately from where she lay. Waves of blackness buffeted up inside her. She felt sick as she lost consciousness.

  The monstrous creature decided to spare her and lowered itself on to all fours. It kicked out its hind limbs in anger. Snorting and whinnying it galloped off down the corridor, its tough metallic body rippling and glinting in the light.

  Her body was sleek and powerful. Her strength was renowned amongst all her subjects who galloped and lived with her on the crystal plains of Psychon. It was only fitting that her exquisite body should be free to express itself in the way that came naturally to her...

  She should not have been chained.

  She should not have let herself be taken by the ruthless Invaders who plundered her planet and killed her people. Instead, she should have fought with the pride of her race. The Invaders should have been the ones who had been killed...

  She, Tharr, was all that was left. No-one but her remained to defend her line. It was her duty to make amends for the members of her race of Slahs who had cruelly died...

  She trotted along the strange thoroughfares of the Invaders’ home where she had been taken and her beautiful body held captive...

  The doors of the Aliens’ rooms, marked in strange ciphers, moved past her. She was one and they were many. She had to choose carefully which rooms to enter. Which of the soft-fleshed beings to kill first and thereby regain her nobility...

  The terrified, wild-eyed face of the Security Guard appeared on Alan Carter’s monitor. He was reporting from the Weapons Section.

  ‘Emergency in corridor, Level A,’ he gasped.

  He was pushed aside by Petrov, the Section’s Chief. The Chief was white-faced and bruised badly on his cheek. He held a white rag to a streaming cut. ‘There’s some kind of monster loose on Alpha. We’ve just been attacked...!’

  Carter turned gravely to Sahn. ‘Emergency in Weapons Section.’

  ‘I heard,’ the operator replied.

  ‘Lasers set to stun don’t seem to affect it,’ Petrov babbled.

  Carter thought fast. There was only one obvious solution. He hit a button. ‘All Security Personnel,’ he announced. His voice was carried electronically to Security Bases throughout the Moon Base. ‘There’s a dangerous creature loose on Alpha. Take no chances. Put laser guns on kill. Take no chances,’ his voice repeated loudly, urgently throughout the corridors. ‘Kill on sight.’

  The alien voices chattering to one another in the passageways and issuing from the rooms she entered filled her with a demented paranoia. They were all around her. They were everywhere. Perhaps one Slah against an entire Alien race had been a mistake.

  Her enemies seemed well-protected. Their stinging guns were an irritation, but the guns in themselves were no deterrent. It was the eyes of pity with their invisible telepathic rays which fought her off. Each time she tackled one of the Aliens she felt their weird power controlling her. It made her feel sorry for them, forcing her to release them on the verge of her victory.

  She did not realize that she could not kill them because they were her friends.

  With mounting anger and irritation she burst into the puny rooms, operating the primitive door mechanisms with a stab of her flashing hoof. Now the rooms were empty. The occupants had warned one another and they had fled to a hiding place. She cantered almost frantically from room to room, seeking their place of concealment.

  She stopped abruptly at the sight of two Alphans dressed in scientific clothes. They were cornered behind a bank of electrical equipment and she could see by the expression on their faces that they were in awe of her. They had hoped to evade detection. Their faces were white and one of them pointed a laser at her.

  She bore down on them, arrogantly raising her hooves to knock the gun away. Too late, the gun fired.

  This time she felt pain.

  She felt a numbing, paralyzing hurt explode outward from her exposed chest. Her precious life energy drained from her as the gun continued to burn her. She escaped from the room and fled off down the corridor.

  The darkness of Death fell on her, yet she kept on galloping blindly. Lucid flashes of her other life showed through the illusion. She saw Mentor standing amid the flames. Tharr, the Leader of the Slahs, was dead. In her madness she had impersonated her.

  Her father was all that counted.

  She had to get to Mentor and make him give up his Slah-headed obstinacy, so typical of the Psychons, and come back with her to the Alphans.

  But the pain crippled her. She had been damaged irreparably.

  Without the energy to change her shape back to her normal self she would die after one hour was up. She could not hold any form for longer than one hour. But she could at least save her father, if only she could get to him in time.

  The perspectives of the Aiphan corridor spun in front of her. She seemed to be sliding down it as though down a giant, lighted gun bore. An alarm was sounding somewhere. Voices were echoing harshly about her. Grim, uniformed figures had rounded the corner below and were running resolutely towards her.

  She turned down another corridor and ran on. A laboured age seemed to pass before she found an elevator door. Activating the locks of the doors she opened them and flung herself inside.

  Helena found herself reviving on one of her own beds in the Medical Centre. Vincent was leaning over her, swabbing a throbbing bruise on her head.

  ‘You got a nasty kick,’ he said, noticing her eyes opening.

  She struggled upright. ‘Maya’s changed into some sort of space animal and there’s no telling what she might do...’ She realized that Vincent must already know and looked at him to see if he had been hurt.

  ‘She’s already been doing it...’ Vincent began. He stopped abruptly as a sudden thought struck him. ‘Alan’s orders are to kill on sight.’

  Helena reacted with alarm. Vincent had finished cleaning her wound and she ran giddily off the bed towards the wall monitor.

  ‘Alan!’ she crie
d when the Eagle Pilot’s grim face appeared on the screen. ‘You’ve got to cancel that order to kill.’

  Carter looked at her as though she had gone crazy. ‘You don’t know the damage that’s been done by that monster... Look at your own head, for one thing!’

  ‘You’ve got to countermand that order,’ she insisted furiously.

  ‘Stun guns don’t work on it. The animal...’

  ‘The animal is Maya, Alan! She can’t control what she’s doing!’

  The incredulous, indignant look on Carter’s face disappeared. It was replaced with one of shock as the disclosure was made. His face immediately left the screen and she heard him putting out the hurried emergency countermand. Relieved and weary, she turned away from the screen and set about the formidable task of bringing Maya in.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The section screen in the cabin of the doomed Eagle Ship was a blaze of cold, eerie star-light.

  None of the stars that it showed were close enough to fly to. They were worlds of Life where Life was denied. Some of them were so remote that the light they emitted was already thousands of years old. Even if the Eagle had the fuel to fly to one of them and the provisions to last the long journey, the star might be dead or changed by the time it got there. The stars were separated from them not only by Space, but by Time... and not only by Space and Time, but by the equally indisputable provisions barrier. The Eagle had air and food for a matter of weeks, Earth Time.

  The only hope for the two men on board was to find the Space Window.

  The Eagle’s cold, logical guidance system had returned them to the precise point in Space where they had taken off several hours before. It had assumed the precise launch attitude that it had adopted on the firm lunar surface.

  ‘We’re just about where Alpha disappeared,’ Koenig announced to Verdeschi. ‘We’ve matched the velocity of Alpha, now let’s try to find that hole in Space. Commence random search manoeuvre.’

  Verdeschi began taking the Eagle through a series of slow yaws, pitches and rolls. Like a worm seeking its burrow the great ship blindly sought the rupture in Space.

  After it had cavorted for an hour or so, the Security Chief had to give up. ‘It’s no use,’ he said desperately. ‘We could twist around like this till we’ve used up all our fuel.’

  Koenig pursed his lips. ‘If that’s what we have to end up doing, then we’ll have to keep doing it...’ He paused, thinking of another idea. ‘I wonder if we can get Alpha on the screen?’

  It was an idea born of extreme desperation and neither of them believed for a moment that the Space Warp could have possibly regurgitated the Moon Base so close by. Nevertheless, Koenig activated the console monitor in front of them, programming it to the right frequency. But they were scarcely disappointed to see yet another tantalizing, desolate display of stars.

  ‘Well, I guess there are gonna be no miracles today,’ Koenig intoned blankly. ‘How about that derelict?’ He hit another button and the wrecked star ship appeared once more on the screen. They had moved a considerable distance and it was detectable as a tiny, revolving, tinsel-like shape among the blazing stars.

  ‘We might get lucky,’ Verdeschi tried to lighten the pattern of their conversation to relieve the heavy gloom that had descended on them. ‘Its power pods might be similar to ours. We might be able to use its fuel store, if it’s got any left.’

  That was another chance in a million.

  ‘Well, we came to check it out,’ Koenig commented wryly. ‘What have we got to lose?’

  Verdeschi forced himself once more to function, forced himself once more to operate the Eagle Ship’s controls, although now he felt more reluctant than ever. The predicament they were in was final. His mind screamed at him that there was no rational way out. There was no point in trying. But he grimly forced himself on, to over-ride the killing feeling of despondency, and the awful, numbing, mind-warping terror of the impending end.

  As the pressure grew, the responsibilities of being a Commander ironically became easier to cope with. When you had to do something, when your life depended on it, you soon found a way of doing it.

  Carter stood unhappily in front of the Medical Centre screen, watching the shoulders of the Security Guard who was speaking to him.

  ‘We got it out of the elevator and it’s on its way back towards the upper levels,’ the man reported, ‘but we’re staying clear as you ordered.’

  ‘Don’t lose contact,’ Carter told him, ‘but make sure you do stay clear. These tranquilizer darts are just about ready.’ He cut the set off and returned to the Preparation Room where Helena and Vincent were working.

  A jar of chemical and a small graduated flask of solution stood on a work bench in front of them. Vincent had broken open a pack of tranquilizer darts and he was shaking the fluid out of them, and then holding them steady for Helena while she pipetted in small but powerful quantities of the stronger drug.

  ‘Careful,’ Vincent told her, tensely. ‘Too little, no effect –too much, death.’

  Neither he nor Helena liked what they were doing. Only very strong doses of drugs had any effect on Maya’s system. The critical dose needed very accurate gauging.

  ‘We’re not going to take any chances on death, that’s a fact,’ Helena commented in deadly earnest. She kept her eyes carefully on the meniscus in the pipette. ‘Let’s hope that’s the right dosage.’

  ‘The stun guns had very little effect, Helena,’ Carter warned sceptically from behind them.

  ‘These darts have more of a kick,’ she assured him.

  They finished.

  Vincent picked up the large, air-operated anaesthetic gun that they normally reserved for felling large fauna specimens on planetary excursions, then loaded in one of the altered darts. He re-packed the remaining darts in case they were needed. Wordlessly he handed both gun and packet to Carter.

  As the Australian pilot took hold of them he was alerted once more by the bleeping of the monitor. They ran through into the ward.

  The Security Guard was back on the screen. ‘Mr Carter. The creature seems to be making its way towards the Travel Tube to the Eagle hangars.’

  Helena started. ‘When she was in delirium, Maya was hallucinating about Psychon, that her father was still alive, that she had to save him.’

  ‘You think she’s trying for an Eagle?’ Carter turned to her, frowning in alarm.

  ‘Yes, and if she gets one, she’ll be making a one way trip to a planet that’s no longer there!’

  ‘Stand by,’ Carter told the Guard. ‘We’re coming with the darts.’

  They took off out of the Centre in an attempt to reach the deranged animal in time. When Mentor and his creation, Psyche, the bio-computer, had been destroyed and the planet Psychon had grown unstable, Maya’s home world had gone completely. The planet had erupted and its particles been scattered anonymously and irretrievably throughout Space.

  The deluded woman still assumed the form of the horse-like creature, and they found her by the Travel Tube doors, surveyed by a line of Guards who kept a respectful distance. She was panting. Her jaws were hanging slack from exhaustion as she raised a hoofed foot to operate the door mechanism. Her metallic hide was blotched from the powerful, burning beams of the lasers. She didn’t look at all in good shape.

  Carter raised the gun to his shoulder and prepared to fire, but Helena nudged him to hold his fire. She stepped boldly forward.

  ‘Maya...’ she called.

  The large equestrian head paused, hearing the sound of its name once more. It froze, its glinting hoof poised in front of the button.

  ‘Maya, listen to me. You’ve got to let us help you.’

  The animal seemed to concentrate hard for a moment, as though the words had struck a nerve deep within it. Its head turned and gazed at her with a blank, expressionless look that made her shiver. Unknown to her, it debated whether or not to kill her; then it turned its attention back to the buttons instead and kicked at them. The doors slid open
and it squeezed its large, sleek bulk inside.

  Still aiming the gun, Carter squeezed the trigger and shot at its disappearing rump. The creature’s skin quivered as the dart buried itself deeply. He reloaded, but the doors closed, cutting off his sight. He cursed.

  ‘She’s making for the Launch Area,’ he shouted. ‘Back to the Command Centre.’

  Once more they set off on a mad race to save the last surviving Psychon from certain death.

  ‘It’s in the Travel Tube,’ Sahn announced when they burst inside.

  Carter rushed over to his console and looked at the Big Screen. The image of stars had gone; their search for Koenig temporarily stopped while they dealt with the more pressing of the two emergencies.

  ‘Cut underground power,’ he ordered, watching the bunched-up shape of the animal patiently waiting inside the Tube for its short journey to end. It seemed dead, as though the anaesthetic had worked too well, but he sensed that it was like a waiting crocodile – the merest threat or hint of movement and it would pounce.

  Sahn flicked a series of switches, cutting off the power. The lights in the Travel Tube went out and the creature inside was thrown roughly forward as its momentum was stopped.

  ‘All right, Helena,’ Carter turned to the anxious doctor. ‘We’ve got her trapped underground. She’s been hit with stun guns and a tranquilizer dart... and she’s still on her feet.’ He glanced back at the screen, watching the animal’s frantic, angry movements. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘We go in after her,’ Helena replied.

  A sudden sound of rending metal came over the loudspeakers.

  ‘Alan!’ Sahn called out sharply, drawing their attention back to the screen. They watched in amazement and awe as Maya’s adopted guise ripped its way out of the rear doors of the Tube with its hooves and cantered clumsily away into the tunnel. The life had gone out of it. The effects of the drug were at least making some impression on its complex system, but it continued on the sheer will-power of the woman inside its head.

  ‘If she gets into an Eagle and takes off, there’s no way we can help her,’ Helena declared in distress.