Six minutes had gone. Now he had six minutes to get back to the ship. He turned around and for the first time allowed himself to think of Maya and the Eagle.
The craft had slewed sideways into the ground.
‘Maya...’ he called desperately over his radio. ‘Can you hear me, Maya?’
There was no reply. Anguished, he began running. But then he stopped abruptly, brought up by the sight of Sandor.
He was standing in his space suit like a ghost, no more than twelve feet away.
Death and despair hung over Koenig as he searched in his mind for a thought, an idea to get him out of his predicament. Out of the depths of it came the reward of sudden, blinding inspiration.
Beneath the console was a tiny emergency homing device. When activated, the signal it transmitted would be powerful enough to reach Fraser in the returning Eagle... only first he would have to somehow de-activate the planetary defence shield.
Feverishly, he sought for and found the small round object, then he ran to the other side of the cabin and snatched up a small foam fire-extinguisher.
The shouts and whip-cracks were almost on him, and he moved rapidly with a new-found strength to the rent hole and peered out. About three of the Huntresses, with Elizia puffing behind them, had reached the edge of the grassland which adjoined the ship. When they saw him they gave manic cries of glee and began leaping across to him.
Quickly, he flung his body into the tree-filled Passenger Section, and began pushing his way out, blinded by the leaves and the branches. He reached the airlock door and stumbled through.
He started out across the turf once more, racing for his life.
Angry cries sounded from behind him, but his pursuers were not to be put off for long. They were soon hot on his tail again, no more than a few yards behind.
Detachments from the wide line of Huntresses who had fanned out to trap him now broke away and tried to head him off. Instead of fleeing them he ran at them and they faltered uncertainly for a moment before continuing. Their lithe figures were like those of ballet-dancers springing towards him. Their faces were set in expressions of mad lust. They were foaming at the mouth like mad cats, and as one they raised their whips to strike him.
He pointed the nozzle of the extinguisher at them and fired it.
A gush of thick white foam exploded out and struck them. Training it on their faces he advanced and wrestled one of their whips away from them. With the newly-acquired weapon firmly in his grip he ran on unimpeded across the grassland.
In front of him were the tall featureless towers of the penal colony and he ran deliberately towards them.
The great ugly spectre of Sandor – ugly to Verdeschi even when inside his space suit – swayed drunkenly towards him. His space suit was twice the size of anyone else’s – large, white, bloated and obscene, like a walking maggot.
As Verdeschi watched, the monstrous figure stooped down and wrenched a large rock from the Moon’s surface. He raised it above his head and hurled it at him. He ducked and the missile hurtled silently over his head. It came to land in the silo and disappeared into the deep black shadow inside.
The crazed man was upon him, his large gloved hands feeling for his air pipe, the insane, paralyzed face behind the visor pressed up against his. Frenzied desperation gripped Verdeschi. His only thought was to finish off Sandor so that the mad giant couldn’t remove the trigger; then to get back to the Eagle while there was still a slim hope of survival.
He allowed himself to fall backwards, risking damaging his Life Support Pack, to carry the forward force of Sandor’s charge. As he did so he brought his legs under Sandor’s stomach and kicked him up and over to help him along his way.
Caught unawares, the big welder’s grip relaxed. He unwillingly broke free and went sailing, spreadeagled through the red vapours towards the silo maw. The force of the throw must have knocked on his radio for Verdeschi heard him curse with rage at his misfortune. A moment later he heard his screams of terror.
He struggled to right himself so that he could see what was happening. He was in time to see the man sliding helplessly towards the gaping shaft, his clawing hands trying unsuccessfully to grip on to the loose rocks and dust in an attempt to halt his progress. But with another fearful volley of screams, he slipped over the edge and disappeared from view.
Verdeschi climbed to his feet, sickened, and began bounding towards the crashed ship. Sandor was not dead, and the death screams and moans rising from where he lay amongst the nuclear waste – ironically now a part of the thing he had striven so hard to defeat – rent Verdeschi’s head-piece as he ran.
Try as he might he could not turn them off. The channels were jammed.
He activated the airlock of the Eagle Ship and climbed inside. On board, he ran through into the Pilot Section. He saw Maya slumped forward, unconscious over the controls. He hauled her body off them and activated them.
The Eagle jumped into life. A roar, an explosion of rocket fire burst from her engines and she soared safely into the black sky of Space.
Ten thousand miles out from the Moon, the Eagle Fleet and the silent, hopeful population of Moon Base Alpha waited in the last tense seconds for the explosion to take place – the explosion that would decide their whole existence.
The sea of faces gathered in the Reception Hall bobbed and swayed. They were not the faces of the prisoners, but of the prison staff and the Huntresses. They were sickly pale, like slugs, like unhealthy suckers turning to him for blood he had but would not give.
He was standing in front of the Trans Beam Station entrance. At the other end of the black dais Elizia was standing, gazing frozenly at him, her throne vacated. She pointed a weapon at him.
‘Clever Koenig,’ she said in a high, shaky voice. ‘You were lucky that our planet’s slightly less powerful gravity gave you the edge over our runners. Clever to return here, to fight your way in with one of our whips, to get to the Transbeamer and reason that, once safely on Ellna, you could contact your people the better. But you have not been too clever for us. Transportation is only for those who outwit the Huntresses... and you have not.’
Koenig shook his head. ‘What is more important, Elizia... I have outwitted you.’
He stepped quickly inside the Station.
She levelled the gun to fire at him. ‘If you attempt to activate the Transmitter, you will be disintegrated.’
Instead of addressing her, Koenig turned to address the assembly of faces. ‘If she fires, she disintegrates the Transbeamer... none of you will ever be able to return home.’
There were general murmurings and nods of assent to that piece of logic.
But Elizia looked frightened. She seemed determined to fire.
The black-suited Interrogator who had been standing next to her quickly stepped in front of her. ‘Wait, Elizia. If there is no hope of return for the prisoners, we will be unable to control them.’
More nods and murmurings came from the Guards and Huntresses.
‘We’ll find another way,’ Elizia said coldly. She had failed to sport with Koenig and if she let him go now she saw the possibility that he might return and overthrow her for what she had done.
‘But what about us?’ Sares asked her angrily. ‘Some of us are completing our tour of duty. We are waiting to go home.’
The Queen Huntress hesitated, sensing the trouble she was heading for. But she still kept her weapon trained on Koenig so that he did not, dare to activate the Transbeamer.
‘The alien is full of tricks...’ Crael commented.
‘Yes, Crael,’ Elizia agreed with a wicked sneer. ‘He is devious and treacherous.’ She turned to her Guards. ‘Drag him out of the Transbeamer.’
But Crael waved her down and turned to the gathering. ‘Hear me first. There is talk among the prisoners that the alien claimed all are dead on Ellna.’ He turned to Koenig. ‘Is that so?’
‘It’s true. Everybody on Ellna is dead.’
A cry of outrage and anguish
rose from the prison staff. ‘Elizia knows this and has lied to you,’ Koenig continued, eyeing the object of his words shrewdly.
‘He lies!’ she screeched. ‘If all were dead on Ellna, why would he want to go there?’ The crowd nodded, agreeing with her. Many of them also looked doubtful and puzzled by the conflicting claims.
Koenig turned challengingly to them. ‘All right, if there isn’t death on Ellna, then Elizia can follow and bring me back.’
Now the Hall was thrown in an uproar.
Elizia instantly assumed a nonchalant, protective air. When the babble had died down, she shrugged. ‘We’ll let him go. He has a criminal mind. Ellna will send him back.’
Crael thrust himself aggressively in front of her, sensing victory and an end to her tyranny. ‘Unless he is telling the truth,’ he reminded everyone.
‘He lies, I tell you!’ she snapped angrily. She turned to her subjects for support. They stared at her with stony gazes. She turned to the Interrogator, the only other beside herself to know of the true nature of life on Ellna. But the black-suited cat woman shook her head with a mixture of sorrow and regret – sorrow not for Elizia, but for her bad management of the Colony.
‘Do you doubt me... and believe an alien?’ Elizia flared indignantly. ‘He lies, I tell you.’
‘There is one sure way to find out,’ the Interrogator said.
Crael nodded gleeful agreement at her. ‘You must prove to us that Ellna is what you say it is, otherwise...’ He leant forward and whispered cruelly to her, ‘they will flay you alive.’
A noticeable shudder ran through her. She had the pallid look of a damned and tortured person. She managed a weak smile of self-assurance, but it slid grotesquely off from her death mask.
‘And when I come back they will worship me again.’ She tried to sound convincing.
‘And if you don’t come back, they will curse you as a tyrant.’
‘Which do you desire it to be, Crael?’
‘Whichever gives us most hope.’
She nodded in a daze, smiling as though mad at the suddenly hostile gazes. Her reign had come to a sudden end.
Sudden wrath gripped her as she stalked proudly and impetuously to her doom.
Before she reached the Transmitter it glowed brightly as Koenig activated it and was dematerialized, for he did not want to travel in it with her.
After the glow had subsided, she herself stepped inside and followed him.
Once on Ellna and away from the force-field, Koenig pulled the emergency homing device from his pocket and switched it on. Immediately it started to emit inaudible distress signals on a wave-length that any of the Eagle Ship’s computers were able to recognize and pick up.
He walked away from the unpleasant piles of prisoners’ bodies, now beginning to rot, and sat down on the grass. He placed the homing device back in his pocket where it would be safe.
Now he could only wait and hope. Hope that Alpha wasn’t dead. Wait for an Eagle to pick him up.
While he waited, he passed the time by watching the proud and greedy, beautiful and deadly Mistress of Entra perform her last rites amongst the bodies of the unfortunate beings she had derived so much pleasure from.
The massive main plume of the nuclear explosion on the Moon streaked out towards the Eagle Fleet.
Greatly magnified on the Eagle Nine screen, Verdeschi watched it lick out towards them and miss by nine thousand eight hundred miles.
But at least it had exploded in the right direction – and the Moon looked as though it was still in one piece.
‘Mission successful?’ Maya’s weary voice sounded weakly from the seat where he had lain her more comfortably. Her eyes fluttered open and she struggled to sit up.
He turned and grinned. It wasn’t quite a grin of happiness. ‘Maybe... we still don’t know...’
The console monitor bleeped furiously and Helena’s overjoyed face appeared on it. She was speaking from Eagle Three. ‘Fraser and Sahn just re-established contact. They’ve picked up signals from John and they’re going to get him. John’s alive!’
‘Tony?’ Yasko’s cool voice was the next to come over. It came from the Survey Eagle which had been positioned at the edge of the fleet, keeping a careful check on the Moon’s behaviour during and after the explosion. ‘Our instruments establish that the Moon’s new trajectory is two point six zero degrees off its original course – travelling away from the star. It will miss the red planet by a mere fifty thousand miles and if we are lucky its speed and size will take it clear of any gravitational effects.’
‘And if we’re unlucky we’ll be stuck revolving round a vaporous, uninteresting mass of gas and ammonia for the rest of our duration,’ Maya retorted. ‘No better than Psychon was, if you ask me!’
The radio channels between the ships began to buzz with conversation and laughter – the well-deserved release of pent-up tension and acute anxiety.
Soon, Maya and Verdeschi were unable to hear themselves think and they turned off their communicators altogether. Their arms around each other, in silent, thoughtless love, they watched the awesome image on the section screen of the rust-coloured planet and the dark, almost blackened mass of their Moon pass each other by.
Space 1999 - The Time Fighters Page 17