Space 1999 - The Edge of the Infinite

by Michael Butterworth

  “Computer negative...” Koenig remarked disbelievingly. “That’s impossible... every rock has at least some form of response.”

  “I don’t buy it.” Reilly shook his head again. He looked absolutely stumped.

  They were still wondering about the phenomenon when a startled cry came from Helena.

  “There’s no sign of life forms now.” Farthest from the group clustered around the bench, she had been keeping a watchful eye on the life sensor at Maya’s console. It had stopped registering. Though obviously working, its screen, too, was now devoid of activity.

  An eerie feeling crept up on them as they found themselves reaching the unavoidable conclusion that in some way, somehow, the rock under the petroscope was alive. Or rather, it had been alive. Now it appeared that it was dead.

  It was a feeling they all had but hadn’t voiced.

  Nervously, Verdeschi pushed his way through the group toward the petroscope. “Stand back,” he ordered.

  They did as he ordered, except for Reilly, who wouldn’t leave his experiment. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  “Look at it,” the Security Chief replied grimly. He bent over the optical eyepiece of the instrument before the geologist could stop him. For an instant the Italian Security Chief looked like any other person who was conducting a microscopic examination. Then, abruptly, an orange tongue of light seemed to lick out óf the eyepiece. As they watched, horrified, the vivid light engulfed his head and then his body. His entire form was surrounded by the pulsating orange aura. Unable to draw his eye away from the instrument, he was frozen in one position. He screamed in agony as the light reached an intense, blinding peak. Then it died away and released the Italian’s body from its hold. He slid heavily to a crumpled, inert heap on the floor.

  “Tony!” Koenig sprang forward.

  Helena was by his side instantly and knelt down to examine the prove body on the floor. She rolled up Verdeschi’s eyelids, which had closed, to examine his eyes, then, trembling, took his pulse.

  She looked up in desperation at the grave circle of faces surrounding her.

  “He’s dead.”

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  The deadening weight of their bodies grew more unbearable in the sudden, shocked silence.

  Indifferent to their feelings, the toneless vôice of the computer reminded them of their deadline: “Minus two hours forty-five minutes to lift-off.”

  On its stand beneath the petroscope, the strange killer rock glowed a steady, sullen yellow.

  “Get that out of here!” Koenig exploded as he helped carry the lifeless Security Chief to the emergency sick bed.

  Carter went to do his bidding while Helena hooked up Verdeschi to the medicai monitor. She examined his body in vain for any sign of life. She switched on the various circuits, tears streaming down her face. By her side Maya assisted in whatever way she could, cradling the motionless man’s head. Her normally cool countenance was broken and she, too, was weeping openly and unashamedly while Reilly looked on, white-faced.

  “John... I’m getting brain wave reaction!” Helena gasped with sudden hope. The monitors had flickered to life and were now registering very weak, very tenuous, life signals. “The brain waves appear normal... his temperature is down only one degree!”

  “You said he wasn’t breathing,” Koenig said almost accusingly, “that he had a cardiac arrest.” He leaned over the bed to study the dials with her.

  “He did.” She sounded puzzled. “But I find no impairments of internal organs. all functions normal, except the heart. I don’t understand he’s still alive.”

  She acted quickly, increasing current through the stimulation electrodes attached to both sides of Verdeschi’s chest. His body abruptly shook and trembled with nervous spasms, arching upwards alarmingly and then flopping down again, exhausted.

  “This may shock his heart back,” Helena explained in taut, clipped words to the startled onlookers.

  “It might destroy the rest of him!” Koenig exclaimed in horror, backing away from the threshing body.

  “I’ve got to risk that!” Helena defended herself hotly. She kept her eyes trained on the heart-monitoring screen. The continuous white band running across the screen was soon interrupted by a small blip of light. She turned down the power and watched as the blip repeatedly traced an irregular pattern across the screen. It became stable, gradually forming itself into a regular pattern, and the faces gathered round the bed tensed with hope. But then the pattern broke up again and the continuous white band reappeared.

  Helena turned away dejectedly. “No use.” She shook her head with frustration.

  “But he began to respond—” Koenig shouted, rising to his feet and appealing to her.

  “I’m only a doctor, John—not a miracle worker! I can cope with the known... the unknown sends any doctor back into the Dark Ages. I daren’t give him more electric shock therapy, and there just isn’t anything else to do!”

  Maya had lifted her head and was gazing imploringly at the instrument console above Verdeschi’s head. “Tony’s brain is still functioning, Helena...”

  The doctor nodded, almost sarcastically. “One of the mysteries of Life, Maya.”

  “Minus two hours, thirty minutes to lift-off,” the computer’s inane voice sounded again. They snapped back to sudden reality.

  “I told you to get rid of that rock!” Koenig spun angrily on Carter. Like everyone else, the Eagle pilot had been affected by the bedside drama, and he hadn’t removed the ore.

  Helena stepped suddenly forward. “You can’t, John!”

  Koenig looked astounded. “You saw what it did to Tony!”

  “If there’s a cure, it’s in the rock,” she replied. “That I do know.”

  “If there’s a cure for Tony, you’ll find it back at the hospital at Alpha!”

  “It’s here, John, I know it.” She had moved closer to the rock and seemed adamant. “Call it doctor’s instinct.”

  Koenig looked darkly at her. He couldn’t take chances. Every sign so far indicated that keeping the rock on board was taking a big chance. On the other hand, he couldn’t discount her trained and specialist judgment.

  “Okay,” he capitulated with mixed emotions. He turned to face all of them. “But from here on, nobody goes near that petroscope. Nobody touches it—nobody looks in it.”

  He was distracted by Reilly, who was in the process of lifting his kit of instruments. Still wearing his rancher’s hat, the geologist began making his way to the airlock.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Koenig asked heatedly.

  “Out,” the other informed him. He indicated the planet’s exterior with a vague sweep of his arm. “Out there to find what I came looking for.”

  “We have bigger problems right now,” Koenig told him.

  “I know. I wish I could help, but you’re the Commander. I can’t do your job. I’m the geologist and you can’t do my job.” He paused, regarding them gravely. “Alpha needs that milgonite.” He turned away and reached out his arm to operate the airlock, then paused. Again he turned around. This time he fixed his eyes on Maya. They were warm, moist eyes set in a tough, rough face and showed the only emotion his kind of character was able to express. “Maya... I’m sorry he’s dead.”

  He hauled himself and his case back to the door. This time he opened it and stepped inside.

  Koenig followed him with a stony gaze before grudgingly nodding assent. Intently he turned back to face Verdeschi’s prone form. Helena had returned to the Alphan’s bedside and was encircling it, touching and feeling the electrode connections to make sure that they were attached correetly to his skin.

  “Isn’t there any way of reaching him?” Maya implored her. A new, desperate look was starting to appear on her face.

  “His brain is still alive... somehow,” Helena said, preoccupied. “There’s that hope....” She stopped what she was doing and looked anxiously at the rock. “All we can do if we aren’t
allowed to touch the rock is wait to see what develops.”

  But that wasn’t enough for the Psychon. She rose from the bedside, wearing a resolute expression. “No! I’m not waiting while he dies!” she told them fiercely. “If that rock is alive, then I’m going to talk to it!”

  Before they could stop her she staggered crazily out of the open airlock.

  The parent rock glinted scintillatingly in a brief burst of overhead sunlight before being plunged once more sinto the oppressive gloom of the deserta

  Strewn about it on the sand-like particles, the various bits and pieces of Reilly’s equipment were lying abandoned, the long rod of the auto-analyzer connected by spirals of wire to the small portable computer, cutters, calipers, and other implements.

  “Cussed thing!” the geologist muttered under his breath as he, Koenig, and Carter watched Maya start her transformation. He was in a bad mood, all his training being contradicted by the events that had taken place on this upside-dõwn planet. The rock looked like milgonite. It breathed milgonite and it smelled like milgonite. It was milgonite—yet the auto-analyzer had analyzed quartz... orthoclase... hornblade... augite... clivine... feldspar. Everything but milgonite. Now he was being shown up by a woman who was going to pretend to talk to it. A woman whom he felt strongly for, come to think of it.

  “It could be very dangerous, Maya,” Koenig told her from the darkness.

  “Then why let her do it?” Reilly turned angrily to face him.

  Koenig glared at the geologist. “There’s no other way.”

  “Because you can’t think of any—” the other replied truculently.

  “Got any suggestions?” Koenig growled.

  “Not off the top of my head.”

  “Then why don’t you give your mouth a rest?” Carter butted in.

  “Look—” Reilly began, moving aggressively toward the Eagle pilot. But he was pulled up by the irate Commander.

  “Discussion ended,” Koenig pronounced harshly. “Maya?” He spun around

  A bright light had burst and died at their side during the argument. Her transformation complete, Maya had now become the rock, her ingenious molecules with their unique ability of bio-mimicry copying the rock’s structure down to its smallest detail. Where there was once one there were now two identical rocks.

  Inside the small Eagle laboratory Helena waited for them to return. Once again she had been left on her own, logically, as she was the doctor and doctors had to stay by their patients. But this patient—she looked once more at the motionless, stiff form of Verdeschi poking through the blankets—was untreatable. There was nothing more she could do to help him. Koenig had been wrong. Verdeschi would be untreatable anywhere—even on Moon Base Alpha. They just didn’t have the understanding to cope with him.

  She gradually became aware once again of the room and the hostile rock fragment—her closeness to it and to the dead man, if he was dead. She felt an irrational fear consuming her and she longed for Koenig to return.

  The laboratory lights were bright. Abruptly they seemed to flicker, to grow brighter, and she knew intuitively that the rock had begun to glow. She turned to it and watched it pulsate goldenly on its stand under the petroscope. It glowed with a ferocious intensity, dazzling with its malign brilliance. As it glowed she became aware of a high-pitched electronic note emanating out of nowhere. She looked around, terrified, but could find no source for it. The note grew in pitch until it reached an earsplitting peak and then levelled out.

  From the corner of her eye she noticed Verdeschi stirring. Aghast, she watched his body, still pasty-white and rigid, levering itself into a sitting position. The high-pitched note faded away, its grisly job done, and the cadaver-like Security Chief stepped out of bed and walked woodenly toward her. His eyes were glazed like marble and stared straight ahead. In his dead hands he held his comlock and his laser gun.

  “Tony!” she gasped.

  He moved stifily past her toward the airlock door. The rock still flickered brightly. His white face was caught in the illumination, and he seemed to be made of solid gold. The door opened magically in front of him, and he walked through. After a short pause to give the outer door time to open, he stepped out.

  “Tony!” she yelled at him, forgetting her fear and thinking now only of the safety of Koenig and the others. She ran forward to the door but it closed on its own before she reached it.

  Desperatcly she withdrew her comlock and fired at it, but it still would not open. She hammered on the controis.

  She ran back to the communications panel and stabbed at the buttons. The screens were dead. The ship’s electrics seemed to have been blocked—or rather a part of them had, for the medical computer now began to show a sudden burst of hyperactivity.

  Helpless and confused, she turned to her comlock once more and punched out Koenig’s wavelength. With great relief she saw his reassuring face appear on its tiny screen. As she blurted out her warning to him, the golden rock glowed again. The laboratory filled with its triumphant golden rays striking out toward her in her prison.

  Koenig listened grimly to the message. For a wonderful moment he thought Verdeschi had come back to life. Then he learned under what circumstanccs the resurrection had taken place. He ordered Reilly and Carter to lie down on the sand out of view. He lay down himself. Together they peered through the gloom toward where the Eagle ship sat, trying to detect the approaching zombie before it detected them.

  The communion between Maya and the parent rock was still taking place, and the two rocks were alternately glowing, exchanging their thoughts. He glanced anxiously at them, wishing that they would hurry up so that if any trouble occurred, Maya would be in a less vulnerable position to deal with it.

  Soon, they were able to make out the sluggish form of Verdeschi. It was moving toward them, its body jerking involuntarily as the power that guided it tried to keep it upright in the heavy gravity conditions. They could not tell whether Verdeschi was aware of his predicament or not.

  Reilly drew his laser, but Koenig motioned to him angrily to put it away. They watched as the zombie approached. Instead of confronting them, it tottered past, its gun and comlock dangling from its arm, its blank eyes staring sightlessly ahead.

  It came to the two flashing rocks and halted. A groan of pain escaped its lips. With an abrupt, piston-like movement, its arm shot out and pointed the laser at the parent rock. There was a sudden, blinding flash of light as the gun fired and another large chip of the rock cracked off. Dutifully, it dropped down on one knee and gathered the fragment; then with a sudden exhalation of breath it forced itself back on its feet. It looked around as though bewildered. Still clutching the fragment, it set blindly off back to the ship, moaning and staggering through the dark.

  The raging, swirling ceiling of cloud bulged thickly downward, almost enveloping them with its clammy foulness. The brown twilight turned almost black, and the three Alphans clambered to their feet in alarm.

  A dark form loomed toward them.

  “Maya!” Koenig gasped.

  The cloud reverted to its usual consistency, and the wan half-light returned. They could see that only the parent rock remained. It was dull and listless. The Psychon woman had reverted back to her usual form and was standing next to them. Her face looked serious.

  “It’s friendly,” she said. “It intends us no harm.”

  “Then why?” Koenig asked, confounded.

  “Self-preservation. It’s been slowly weakening for months. If it does not get another energy source soon, it will die.”

  “What is its energy source?”

  “Water.”

  “But there’s no water here!” Reilly cut in.

  Maya nodded gravely. “It reached out to us... to take it to water.”

  Koenig was exasperated. “But it didn’t have to commandeer our Eagle. We could have helped it... taken it to a planet with water...” He stared angrily at the parent rock and the other rocks not far away. But the rocks did not, could not, r
eply. They looked inert and mute, like the dead, inorganic minerais they seemed to be. It was absurd.

  He remembered Helena.

  Urgently he raised his comlock and called her. Her pensive features appeared on the screen. “We’re tailing Verdeschi,” he explained. “We’ll try to get in to you when he returns that’s if he’s returning to the ship.”

  He snapped the set off and began to lead the way, back, squinting through the gloom for a sign of the afflicted Security Chief. Their bodies ached with the constant drag of the planet. They sweated in the dry air and their throats rasped for water. There was almost no breeze, despite the raging torrents of cloud above. They stumbled on, eventually catching sight of the grounded Eagle.

  They were in time to see a bright rectangle of yellow light spill out of the laboratory section. They saw the stark outline of a man silhouetted against it for a moment. Then the light disappeared in the dimness.

  “What the...?” Koenig exclaimed, reaching again for his comlock. But Helena had already realized that Verdeschi had entered alone, and the communicator began bleeping madly before he had even touched it.

  “I know!” he told her frightened face when it appeared on the screen. “He was so slow. how did he manage to...”

  “Please don’t, Tony.. don’t...”he heard her plaintive pleading voice speaking off-screen to the zombie. “John!” she spoke to him again, urgently. “He’s not interested in me... he’s put the new rock next to the old one. Tony, do you hear me?”

  “What’s he doing now?” Koenig asked sharply.

  “He’s... he’s returning to his bed, he’s lying down.” She sounded surprised.

  “Try to open the doors,” Koenig urged.

  There was a moment’s pause while her face vanished off-screen. A moment later she returned. “I can’t. The electrics still won’t work.” There was another worried pause, then: “The rock! The one Tony brought in... it’s fusing into... they’re both fusing together!”

  “Don’t go near it!” Koenig gasped in warning. “I’m going to try to get in.”

  They had reached the Eagle’s airlock, out of breath and almost collapsing from the exertion. Fumbling, Koenig cut Helena’s link and punched out the correct code for opening the heavy door. Holding the comlock at arm’s length, he fired it.