Space 1999 - The Edge of the Infinite

by Michael Butterworth

  While they waited on the strange and unknown world, they seemed to be watched by a thousand eyes, peering at them from behind the tree trunks—yet whenever one of the two men got up to search for fresh wood supplies, only the trees and the wind and the rain were there to greet them.

  Whatever attraction had been generated by the idea of returning to Earth had now almost completely disappeared. It was ironic that this should be the case, that after so many false alarms in the past, when the real thing came along, inefficiency and bungling should mar the operation.

  Verdeschi fumed silently inside himself.

  He had returned to the Command Center to plan a proper search campaign for the missing Alphans. The operatives were back at their consoles, hard at work with the assignments he had set them. The spectators who, not long ago, had been crowded expectantly in the research block had mostly returned to their routines. Dr. Mathias was standing before him, holding out a fat sheaf of print-outs folded over and over concertina-wise. He took them from him and studied them, following Mathias’s explanatory finger tracing its way along the squiggles and curves.

  “Pulse, heart rate, temperature, all normal, see?” the doctor told him. “Wait a minute...” He frowned as he traced one of the lines. “Normal except for Dr. Russell’s—that’s up on normal and rising.”

  “Rising? Are you sure?” Vcrdeschi asked him. He pondered the thought. “That might clue us into something.”

  He turned and faced the Big Screen where the picture of Logan’s laboratory was still arrayed. The lab had been cleaned up now and white-coated scientists were once more working calmly inside it, standing by the consoles.. Logan himself was there. Helped by Carla, he was still frantically trying to locate Koenig and the others and so make up for his error. He leaned over his own control console and made an announcement into it. “Dr. Logan to all search and recovery sections,” they heard him say. “I want you to run your sensors over the whole area surrounding Texas City. I want every inch of that desert covered.”

  The figure of the Earth doctor turned to Carla. “How’s that recalculation?”

  Carla shook her head. “Too many variables.”

  “Stay on it,” he ordered her. He moved over to another console and spoke to its operator. “I want a seismic unit to simulate that last earthquake effect.”

  Verdeschi watched stonily. At length he interrupted the doctor’s work by announcing himself on the neutrone communicator. Logan glanced up at him questioningly. Verdeschi told him the metabolism results.

  “Temperature change?” His eyebrows raised and he looked skeptical. “That could mean anything.”

  Verdeschi nodded.

  “I’m doing everything possible at this end,” the unfortunate man went ou. “I have search teams out scanning the desert—”

  “But Earth’s desert is uninhabited.” Maya, who had come over to join Verdeschi, protested.

  “They couldn’t breathe that polluted air. By now they’d be dead.”

  “You’re right, of course,” Logan replied wearily. “They can’t be on Earth.” He threw up his hands and his glasses slipped down the bridge of his nose. “Yet all our recalculations so far suggest they must be.”

  The fierce, wintry winds swept around them, fighting back the heat that tried to reach them from the dancing orange flames in front of them. Helena began to shiver uncontrollably. Like the others, she was unaccustomed to the severity of the weather, and though they felt bad enough, she had been affected worse and was starting a cold. It was the first common cold she had had for about twenty years... since the vaccines had been finally introduced on Earth in 1985.

  She sneezed violently. Koenig and Carter both drew closer to her, trying to shelter as much of her as they could.

  “Stay away, John,” she sniffed. “After Alpha’s germ-free environment, we’ve no resistance... a common cold could be as lethal to us as cholera or the Black Death.”

  They shuffled hastily away from her. “You’re the doctor, Helena,” Koenig told her.

  “There’s no immediate danger,” she said, somewhat offended. “But pneumonia’s a possibility.” A wave of faintness swept over her. Involuntarily, she pressed her hand against her forehead.

  Koenig looked worriedly at her. “Logan will be recalculating now. We’ll be on Earth before it gets that fax...” His voice trailed away as he noticed for the first time how white she had become. In the firelight she looked haggard and drawn. Her eyes were glazed, and her pupils were dilated like enormous saucers. And she was still shaking, badly.

  He turned in alarm to Carter. “We’ll have to revise our plans. Whether she thinks so or not, she’s in need of immediate medical help.” He stood up and peered through the trees at the distant fires.

  Carter nodded. “You’re right. We’ll have to chance meeting them.” He glanced down at his watch. “Twenty-three hours left. Theoretically we could get down into the valley, get help, and get back here in a few hours.”

  “Theoretically,” Koenig stressed, grimly.

  “No!” Helena cried out. She tried to rise to her feet. “I—I’m all right.” She stumbled, almost falling into the fire. Carter reached out and caught her in time.

  “Sorry,” he said, “but there’s no alternative. Come on.” He helped her to her feet.

  Koenig passed her a small flask of medicinal alcohol which he had procured from the inside of his jacket, still draped around her shoulders. “Here, take a swig of this.”

  Thankfully, she swallowed a mouthful. Resigned, she allowed them to lead her downhill through the trees, away from the fire.

  The effect of the alcohol and the sudden return of the full, furious lashing of the mind momentarily brought her back to her senses, enabling them-to make a reasonably fast descent.

  But their progress was quickly impeded by the sudden appearance in front of them of a band of ragged-looking men.

  The human figures loomed up out of the gloom and stepped out from behind trees. They wore long, wild hair and beards. Dirt-stained, kilt-like tunics covered their bodies. Their feet and lower legs were swathed in fabric and furs bound crudely around with rope.

  The Alphans instinctively halted and drew forth their lasers. The brigands in front of them produced evil-looking swords, protecting themselves with shields. Shouting and yelling, the fearful figures began closing in, waving their deadly weapons above their heads, their eyes glinting ferociously in the dark.

  Before Koenig and Carter could fire their guns they felt strong arms grab them from behind and the tips of cold steel press into their backs. They were soon completely overpowered and surrounded. They had no alternative but to drop the lasers.

  The seconds ticked tensely by in Earth’s first matter transmission laboratory. Now the room was deserted save for Logan, Carla, and a seismic engineer who was approaching them.

  “I’ve evacuated all personnel, Doctor,” the man informed them. “You’re quite sure you and Miss Cross have to stay?”

  “Quite sure,” Logan replied, piqued. “There’s no point unless we do.”

  The engineer nodded. “The explosives will give you the equivalent of a force beta zero quake. I can’t guarantee how the building will take it.”

  “We understand that,” the doctor told him. He turned with irritation to Carla. “All right, Carla, take up your station.”

  The attractive assistant moved to her console and seated herself behind it. She placed her hands in front of her and rested them there, ready to operate.

  The engineer left, shaking his head. Logan watched him go without remorse. Then silence fell on the room. It was complete and utter silence, the first he had experienced for many days. But for him it was a silence that could give him no rest. He could not rest until the three Alphans had been located. He clamped his jaws tightly together. Apart from his ethical conscience spurring him, he was also influenced by his threatened reputation. He had been given total control over the matter transmission project; a fantastic amount of money had be
en spent and labor supplied to get it this far. He himself had begged and pleaded with the Science Council to be allowed to develop the equipment so far, so fast. It had been he in the first place who had suggested that their remote ancestors, the trapped Moon men, be rescued in order to give the apparatus its first real test. It would look bad for him if the Moon men were now allowed to die, if he was not able to complete the lift before the communications corridor in space was blocked and all contact lost.

  He touched a button in front of him, and Verdeschi’s face appeared instantly on the neutrone screen, “Moon Base Alpha,” he reported, “stand by—we are about to simulate the Earth tremor.”

  Verdeschi almost sneered. “I hope you don’t do a wipe-out.”

  “If we do,” the other replied icily, “you’ll be the first to know.”

  The relationship between him and the fiery Alphan Security Chief had deteriorated drastically over the last few hours, so much so that he was beginning to wish he had lost Verdeschi rather than Koenig, with whom he had got on much better.

  “Alpha, give me a final reading,” he requested.

  Mathias’s face appeared on the screen. “Dr. Russell’s temperature rise continues,” he announced worriedly. “She must be quite ill by now. Wherever she is. Otherwise, quite normal.”

  Sandra Benes’s voice came over from off-screen. She was speaking to Mathias. “Doctor, how long? How long have they got?”

  Mathias turned grimly off-screen toward her. “In eighteen hours the eclipse will block out all communications.”

  “And there’ll never be another chance?” Sandra’s pitiful voice continued. “For them—or any of us?”

  “Not in your lifetime,” Mathias replied gravely.

  There was a long silence while emotions rose and people and things damned one another. Finally, Logan turned to Carla. “Ready?” he asked

  She nodded.

  He leaned forward and spoke to the engineers through his communicator. “Simulate seismic shocks.”

  There was a further tense silence as they all waited. Then there followed a dull, distant thudding sound, and the room began to tremble under the impact of the massíve charge of explosives that were going up.

  Dust spumed down from the ceiling once more. The consoles rattled and began moving away from their fittings. Logan and Carla clung to them

  “Now!” Logan screamed out above the din.

  They began working feverishly, altering and activating the gleaming banks of controls. More distant explosions sounded, and shock wave after shock wave struck them and their equipment. It became almost impossiblc for them to work, but they stayed at their task, observing the sparking meter screens through the clouds of dust.

  “Something’s coming up!” Carla yelled excitedly. “I’ve got a locationl”

  “What is it?” Logan shouted out. “I... I can’t get anything!”

  “Calibrating now.” She stabbed at a series of buttons in rapid succession. Lights flashed and winked on the shaking console. The dials of digital calculators spun figure after figure across themselves. Finally the whole bank of the equipment she was operating seemed to almost erupt in a series of loud retorts and flashes of flames and smoke. A long roll of graph paper chattered out of it. She dived down and tore it off and began reading it.

  Logan abandoned his console and ran over to her. “Where is it?” He could scarcely contain his impatience.

  “According to this read-out... they’re somewhere on Earth. Somewhere on Earth?” She jumped up, astounded. They looked at one another.

  “But that’s impossible,” he blurted out.

  “They’d be dead if they were on Earth,” Carla agreed, shaken.

  The explosions ceased and the tremors died away. A deathly stillness settled on the devastation once more, and Logan wrung his hands in despair.

  Verdeschi’s unrelenting voice sounded. “Is it possible your pollution didn’t affect everywhere on Earth—that somewhere there’s some freak valley. an air bubble almost? Somewhere they could still breathe?”

  Logan shook his bald head wretchedly. “Not possible. We’ve surveyed the whole of Earth’s surface for such a place for experimental purposes.” He shook his head with greater force. “Whichever planet they’re on, it can’t be Earth. We can do nothing but continue to relocate and hope we do it in time.”

  The guttural inflexions and intonations of a developed and half-familiar language rang and clamored in the night air about their ears as Helena, Koenig, and Carter were jostled and shoved through the last of the trees into the squalid outskirts of a small village.

  To their mystification they recognized occasional English words among the oaths and the boastful war cries. But they were in no position to reflect. They had been roped painfully together around their necks and were being jerked along, half-strangled, by the band’s leader—a big, hairy-legged man, dressed in a more prominent kind of kilt. Their captors marched triumphantly beside them, their weapons clanking as they moved.

  The village houses were little more than ragged leantos and tents made of animal skin. It was some kind of encampment—or slum. As the Alphans were dragged through, their progress was watched by more of the same ragged army who appeared at the tent flaps.

  Blazing beacons in grates on long poles and large, open fires cast a lurid, flickering half-light around the encampment.

  The tents and shanties eventually gave way to a high, stone wall, in which was set a dingy arch. They were pulled through into another area with an even greater density of tents, people, and fires. They were eventually dragged to a lofty and precarious tower-like building made of stone. Two of the party—the burly leader and another man—took the Alphans inside. They yanked them through a series of dark rooms with earthen floors. Finally they came to a crude split-timber door. Without ceremony, their captors opened it and pushed them inside, slamming it shut behind them. The sound of wooden-bar locks being thrown into position was followed by fading footsteps and then silence.

  They struggled free of their ropes and examined their prison.

  The dungeon-like room was large, cold, and damp. It was lit by a single torch jammed into a crevice in the wall above the door. Except for this wall, the other walls were composed of bare rock, indicating that this part of the building backed against a hillside. The floor was earthen, strewn mostly with straw, save for a rugged outcrop of rocks in one corner.

  “At least they didn’t kill us,” Carter began, alarmed suddenly by the sound of his muted voice. He moved around the walls, examining them.

  Helena groaned, and Koenig ran to her. She toppled dizzily against him, shivering violently. Taking her weight, he led her toward the rocks and sat her down in a natural hollow. He pressed the small hip flask to her.

  “Anything?” he asked Carter.

  The Eagle pilot tapped the walls with the handle of his pocket knife: He shook his head. “They’re at least six feet thick.”

  “Check the door,” Koenig told him. While Carter crossed the room, he looked down worriedly at Helena. Her condition had worsened, and her breathing had turned shallow and fast. He felt her forehead. It was burning hot.

  She smiled bravely at him, her face caught in the orange glow from the torch: “I know I look like a demon to you in this light,” she said, self-consciously. She smiled bravely at him. “Check your temperature, too, John. You, too, Alan.”

  Weakly, she lifted her wrist. On it was strapped a small watch-like instrument—a wrist indicator designed to chcck temperature and other bodily functions. She turned one of the tiny diais on it and its face came to lifc, emitting a small volley of colored lights.

  “I think you look great in that light,” Koenig told her tenderly.

  She nodded in pretense at play, “To another demon. What does it read?”

  He studied it. “A hundred and three point six.”

  Hc extended his arm and uncovered his own indicator. “Mine reads ninety-nine point two.” He turned to Carter. “Yours?”
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  “Normal,” the Eagle pilot replied. He was pushing up against the door with all his weight—in vain,

  “Alan, get the guards to understand we need some help,” Koenig called out desperately as he eased himself down next to Helena to keep her warm.

  Carter began hammering on the door and shouting. He beat at it, but with no success. “It’s no use. They’re not answering.” He turned away in exasperation and joined them. He gazed distraughtly at Helena. “We’ll just have to do the best we can.”

  “If we could just get her temperature down,” Koenig complained.

  She shook her hcad. “It won’t help... in the long run.”

  “I’m talking about now,” he said brusquely. “In the next hour, not the next week.”

  “So am I,” she said weakly. “My guess is viral pneumonia.”

  “Pneumonia? Are you sure?” He looked mortified. “What’s the cure?”

  She smiled sardonically. “Simple... if we were on Alpha. Here...” She shook her head, then stared directly ahead of her, transfixed.

  Perturbed, they followed her gaze. All they could see was the rocky wall.

  “What is it?” Carter asked nervously.

  “The fungus... growing on the wall. Scrape some of it off.”

  The Eagle pilot raised himself again and walked toward where she had indicated. In the dimness he was just able to make out several small clusters of greenish-white, club-shaped fungi. Her eyes, sensitized by her illness, had spotted them immediately. Gingerly he ran his knife along the ledges and cut away several clumps. Then he returned. He gave it to her.

  She sat up and began crushing the tiny heads, rubbing them about in the palm of her hand. She touched the tip of her tongue with her finger and then smelt the sample.

  “It could be,” she told them cryptically.

  “Could be what?” Koenig asked.

  “Fungoids are the basis of the barmycin range of drugs invented just before we left Earth,” she explained. “They’re the only known cure for viral pneumonia.”

  Koenig frowned, not liking the ides. “Supposing this is a variant of the same fungi, how do you go about preparing the drug?”