“We’ve got too much weight now—the wings will never carry us!” Maya screamed behind her. “Throw everything out!”
They were losing height rapidly, almost nose-diving into the thrashing sea of treetops below.
Frantically, Helena opened the cockpit lock and threw up its plastic hood. It was ripped instantly away, exposing them completely to the pressure of the freezing wind.
She began baling out the carefully prepared cases and blankets, the food packets and equipment: But she was not thinking now about saving anyone except herself.
Maya was grimly holding on the joy-stick, pulling it back as far as it would go in an attempt to regain some height and descend more safely. Its nose lifted appreciably as its payload was jettisoned and its weight was brought down. She heaved a deep inward sigh of relief. Now they were in again with a fighting chance.
The damaged craft skimmed perilously above the trees, then, by a miracle, above a stretch of comparatively clear land.
She could bring it down.
“John?”
Verdeschi’s bright, feverish eyes stared up at Koenig. His face, though, was still pasty-white and deeply lined with strain. His mind might be alert, but his body was close to death.
“Hello, Tony,” he said gently.
“How are we doing?” the Security Chief asked.
Koenig smiled. “Still a long way from home.”
“Lustig!” Realization suddenly snapped in Verdeschi’s eyes. He tried to raise himself.
“Easy, Tony.” Vincent laid a restraining arm on him.
“John, I didn’t kill Lustig...”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Koenig said gently, not wanting to rouse him beyond his body’s endurance.
“No, now. We got separated. I heard a shout, ran back: He was crazy, tried to kill me...”
“You tried to disarm him,” Koenig explained for him. “The laser went off... that what?”
“I was about to call in... and heard something weird noise...” With a gargantuan burst of energy he found the strength to tell them about the light globe and the brief, sharp memory of the other mind that he had glimpsed, then he drifted dreamily off to sleep.
Before they could make anything of this, a sudden hail from outside the cave attracted their attention. It was Maya’s voice. As Sahn, the only female of the Base Camp, was standing right next to them, that meant, impossibly, that it had to be Maya or...
They turned, startled, to see not only the Psychon, but Helena also. The two bedraggled women were standing in front of them, smiling.
“How the hell...?” Koenig began.
“A glider,” Helena explained to him simply. She extended her arms.
Impulsively, he ran toward her and they embraced. Maya walked forward anxiously. “Tony...?”
Overwhelmed and thankful for their appearance, Dr. Vincent stepped forward. He took her arm and led her to Verdeschi’s stretcher.
Koenig and Helena broke apart and followed them over. Helena knelt down by the patient’s side, realizing instantly, as Vincent had done, that he was in a bad way.
She examined him intently, peering under his eyes and feeling his head and chest. “There’s no sign of any permanent brain damage, but he is in massive shock.” She looked up incredulously at their gray faces. “It’s almost as if the will to live has been destroyed.”
Vincent and Koenig explained all they knew. In misery, Koenig finished, requesting that she just do what she could.
They were interrupted again, this time by Salkov triumphantly holding aloft another transmission disc.
“I must go,” Koenig told them. He glanced at Maya. “I’m sure Tony will be glad to see you. It may make the difference between between life and death.”
He rushed out with Salkov.
The dark storm clouds that had gathered overhead began to clear, and the raging gale stopped blowing. Fortunately there had been no rain, otherwise they might have all been killed when the poisons in it were absorbed through their skins or taken accidentally in their mouths.
Carter was waiting for them inside the dome. While Salkov slotted in the disc, Koenig told Carter about the daring arrival of the two women. Zoran’s features’ came back on the screen, and he began speaking to them.
“My attempt to communicate with the being has proved fatal. Yesterday I finally confronted it. I was protected by a suit specially designed to block its destructive powers, but the suit was flawed. A simple error in the eye section. And I was lost, insane. Now I follow the path of the others. I am lucid... record the details... knowing that I am soon to die.”
Zoran faded away for the last time, and they were left. feeling a mixture of respect for his bravery and sudden excitement at the information he had disclosed.
With the information they had gleaned from Verdeschi concerning the nature of the mysterious and dangerous creature who inhabited the planet, they were now able to work out a possible plan of attack.
Carter, who had been going over the dome and its contents with a fine-tooth comb, went straight to a locker and pulled out the suit. He held it before them so that they could have a look.
It was a weird, bulky suit made of a thick, glistening black plastic. It was designed to cover the entire body, including the head. The helmet part was the most thickly-shielded of all and was fitted with an internal microphone and two small speakers where the ears would be. The most unusual and unnerving thing about it was that it had no visor. Where the eyehole should have been it was thickly padded, to keep out the harmful radiations that the creature produced.
Koenig activated a switch he had spotted on the outside of the helmet. Instantly, a small orange light flashed on. “It’s active,” he announced.
“So is this.” Carter held up a tiny, cube-shaped transmitting and receiving device. They saw that it, too, was flashing.
“If we increase the protection around the eyes, maybe we will succeed where Zoran failed!” Salkov speculated enthusiastically.
Koenig nodded “Just what I was thinking.” He looked at Carter. “It’s Tony’s only chance.”
“And ours,” the Eagle pilot added.
They began to hunt around for more of the unfamiliar padding material that lined the suit, especially the helmet. They neither knew what it was or how it worked, but trusted that, however it did work, Zoran and his scientists had done their research thoroughly.
They located some, tucked away inside the locker where they had found the suit, and unravelled two extra layers of it. Then they tucked it inside the helmet.
Carter was about to volunteer to wear it, but Koenig stopped him. “No. It’s my responsibility, like Zoran’s. lt will be me who talks to the creature.”
Finally, after testing the helmet radios, they were ready to leave. Clutching the suit, they ran quickly outside the dome and made their way to the clearing where Lustig’s body had been found.
As they approached the bushes with red berries on them, the strange buzzing sound started up again. It was the first time they had heard it, and it stopped them in their tracks. They listened raptly to it.
“If I’m lucky,” Koenig told them grimly, “I’ll be able to contact it.”
“Don’t press your luck, John,” Carter told him. “Be careful. Don’t remove the helmet... no matter what.”
It was a deep, dark blackness that he stepped into. If he wasn’t careful, it would be the darkness of insanity and death.
He felt Carter’s and Salkov’s hands fastening the suit up about him. He heard their reassuring voices a moment longer, then nothing. His vision, his hearing, all contact with the outside world, except for touch, was gone.
After a long moment, the internal radio was switched on, and once more he heard their voices. Now, a complex orientation procedure started, and he was directed to move blindly, first one way, then the other.
“You’re in front of the bushes now,” Carter’s voice told him. “The sound it’s intense. We’ve had to move farther away, but
we still have you in our sight... To the left a bit... to the right a little. Now, John! Walk straight ahead. You’re in the clearing.”
He groped in front of him with extended arms, feeling the fallen tree trunk. Then he waited. He still could not hear anything.
But then, faintly at first, he did.
As the sound grew louder and the attendant Alphans were forced to flee away from the area altogether, he began to hear it himself. And he became aware of a light shining through to him, into the darkness. But was it shining through to him? Was the noise coming from outside, or was it all happening inside his head?
The sound became unbearable, and he screamed out in agony, clutching at his head in an attempt to tear it away.
“No! No!”
The noise seemed to subside, then he realized instead that it was fashioning words, mimicking him.
“No! No!” it screamed.
Dizzily, Koenig staggered about, finally falling to his knees. Finding that it was easier to lie down, he stayed where he was. Still racked with pain, he cried, “Who are you?”
“Who are you?” the voice mirrored back. It screeched in his ears. This time it sounded more like his own voice.
“Helena!” he yelled at it, to test it.
“Helena!” it called back.
“It’s uncanny... the damn thing’s...” he began to complain for the benefit of the listeners at the Base Camp. He was cut off by the creature’s imitation, “It’s uncanny. the damn thing’s...”
He tried another question. “What are you?”
“What are you?... No... No... Stop it... Helena it’s uncanny.”
The voice had become almost completely like his own. He realized dimly, that it must be trying to model itself on him. It was struggling to reach him, trying to bring itself down to his levei.
“It’s uncanny... stop it...” it continued, sounding almost desperate. lt changed suddenly in pitch and became less painful on Koenig’s ears. “You! Is it you?”
“Yes,” Koenig answered it.
“I have found the key,” the voice told him triumphantly. “We are in communication.”
“Who are you?” Koenig asked it again.
“I am I,” it answered somewhat naively, the Commander thought.
“You have no name?” he asked, puzzled.
“Name? Name, what is name?”
“A name... like a ‘sun’... ‘tree’... ‘grass’...”
“That is not a name. That is I—who I am. What are you?”
“A man... John Koenig.”
“You are a voice,” it stated emphatically.
“I am a living being—like you!” Koenig cried.
“There is none but I—and I am I.”
“No. You are one amongst many,” Koenig repeated, disbelieving what he was hearing, wondering whether the creature was trying to trick him. The creature sounded genuine.
There was a sudden silence during which the creature with no name appeared to be thinking. At length it asked, “You are John Koenig?”
“Yes.”
“You are more than voice?”
“Yes.”
“Reveal that which is John Koenig,” the creature requested. It sounded joyous now. But Koenig was beginning to feel uncomfortable.
“Why?” he asked.
“To know that it is more than a voice,” the creature said with more than an element of craving in its speech.
Koenig could not help sounding vindictive. “What about the others who have looked?”
“Others?” A hint of uncertainty crept into its voice.
“The ones you drove insane.”
The mighty creature fell silent again, contemplating perhaps for the first time in its existence that it might, unwittingly, have been the cause of suffering. In a gentler voice it said, “Trust me, John Koenig. Reveal that which is you.”
“It’s crazy!” Carter’s indignant, fearful voice sounded over the headpiece.
“John, no! Don’t do it!” Helena’s voice cried out. She sounded terrified.
“Don’t remove your helmet,” Maya’s voice pleaded urgently.
The voice of the creature pleaded, too. The clamor only served to make Koenig more determined to do what he felt was right—and remove his helmet. In the creature he detected a warmth and a sensitivity which the others could not. He realized, too, that the creature had finally understood that its previous attempts at communication with other life forms had been too damaging for their systems to cope with. That accidental destruction was not the creature’s fault. Because of its inability to communicate, it was also unable to know whether its methods were successful or not. Further, as no being had been able to get into verbal communication with it, it had logically assumed that only itself lived. Only it existed.
“I trust you,” Koenig told it.
Aware of the shocked reaction he was provoking at the Base Camp, he lifted his hands to his helmet and unfastened it. Slowly, he lifted it off.
Warm, bright sunlight greeted him. The clearing surrounded him—green and fresh and flowering. Whether as a result of the darkness he had been subjected to, or the presence of the creature, the world actually seemed brighter. It seemed warmer and more mellow than it had been. He realized slowly that he was enveloped in a faint, white radiance. A few colored wisps of some translucent, airy substance danced around him—a part of the energy creature’s body, he thought.
“There is truly more than I,” it said to him, its voice, as with its light intensity, modulated now at the right level so as not to injure. The voice sounded awed.
“Yes,” Koenig spoke softly, as though to a new child. “You are one of many. May I show you?”
“Yes, yes!” the creature begged ecstatically, such was its pleasure at having contacted friends at last.
Koenig shouted through the woods to the other Alphans. As it began to dawn on them that Koenig had succeeded in contacting the alien being without apparent harm, they stepped forward from their hiding places and cautiously assembled themselves about the clearing.
The creature seemed overwhelmed. Koenig could feel the complex emotional feelings washing off its semi-visible body. It was battling to sort them out.
“But, John Koenig, if I am not I, then what?”
“That is for each of us to discover,” Koenig philosophized.
“How is that done, John Koenig?”
The Commander shrugged, smiling. “I can only speak for myself—though I am one of many. If we understand others, in time I believe we come to understand ourselves.”
As he spoke, delicate, probing fingers of color meandered out from the halo toward the newly arrived Alphans. It examined them all. After it had withdrawn its probes and considered what it had found, it grew deeply upset with itself.
“I sense death,” it cried mournfully. “What is death?”
“The destruction of the most precious gift we have in common—life,” Helena answered it. She had been unable to avoid showing her fear when the creature’s probing pseudo-podium had examined her.
A kind of choked sob rent the air. “I have destroyed this gift?”
“Yes,” Maya answered. “Many have died because you were unaware of life.”
“It was our deepest wish to share the beauty you created here,” Helena added, unintentionally making it feel even more guilty.
The creature began crying.
Heaving, convulsive sobs of grief and pain filled the woodland air. Again Koenig felt the full force of its feelings. He felt infinitely sad and remorseful. He felt, as well, a strange, unknown feeling that troubled him more deeply and made him feel restless.
“That which I sought most of all the ages, you brought—and death was your reward. I cannot support this grief I feel.”
“Will you help us?” Koenig asked, moved more strongly than he could express.
“Yes. All will be well now. I understand now what I have done wrong.”
There was a moment during which the world seemed to
shine more brightly and more warmly than ever—during which they felt that everything inside themselves had been healed and all the wrongs righted.
Then a cold, wintery feeling swept through the clearing. It was a hateful, whispering wind that tore at their hearts and reminded Koenig of the cold grief-like emotion he had felt moments before when the creature had first realized its mistakes.
The aura around him began to fade.
“I that am I is no more...” were the fading, last words of the giant creature. “I that will be have much to regret...”
“No!” Koenig cried when he realized what it was doing. “Don’t! We can still live together!”
But it was too late.
In front of them, before their eyes and their beings, the creature that was probably the most powerful and most terrible and most unknown being that had existed at any time—the creature that, moreover, was perhaps capable of giving the most goodness of any being—fell away into oblivion, a victim of its own innate love.
The cold wind blew away and the sun smiled and the world was beautiful again.
Cold, unwelcoming space beckoned them back to the Moon and their runaway home.
They stood by the cave entrance watching Frazer’s lean figure walking bouncily toward them from the parked Eagle Three. He was waving and smiling broadly at them. He had come to take them back to Alpha.
“Ready to go home?” he asked. But the question needed no answer. It answered itself.
His Eagle was intact and sound—its metal had suffered no fatigue or decay.
The fruits and waters of the planet were now edible and refreshing to eat.
Verdeschi, who had been visited by the benevolent being just before it had died, had been healed, and he was the first to step forward to greet Frazer.
There did not seem to be much wisdom in returning to a world which was hostile to their existence, to a Moon condemned to wander the highways and space-ways forever, to the infinite deep that stretched from the shore of the galaxy and would surely devour them.
As Verdeschi and Frazer embraced one another warmly, the others looked around, curiously, testingly, to see whether, after all, they could settle on the new world.
Space 1999 - The Edge of the Infinite Page 15