Tony coded in his query and got the same blind worm of a line on his screen. He tried asking the diameter of the Moon... the days since leaving Earth orbit... the number of personnel on the base. Only the sine-wave fluttered before him.
Maya pushed her chair away and let her hands fall helplessly in her lap. ‘Either all the links to our computer have been blocked...’ she said, ‘or else its memory has been wiped clean. Either way, it’s paralysed.’
‘And so is the Moon Base,’ Tony pointed out, ‘and blind as well.’
Maya got to her feet and pointed a trembling finger of accusation towards the sky. ‘It was that damn machine! It has the same computer link as we have. When it came in here it gave an eradication command!’
The Command Centre doors snapped open and the pilot of Eagle One came striding in, looking worried. The expressions on the faces that greeted him didn’t make him feel any better.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been sitting on the launch pad waiting to hear from you.’
‘Our communications have been wiped,’ explained Tony grimly. ‘All of them.’
‘Jeez.’
Maya had a sudden inspiration. ‘What about the computer on Eagle One? Is that all right?’
‘Of course it is.’
‘Then what are we waiting for?’ shouted Tony. ‘Let’s get a squadron of Eagles together. The Commander and Dr Russell have been abducted aboard that Swift. We’ve got to get them back.’
Aboard the Swift itself, the screen suddenly cut off. Koenig looked across at Brian’s Tri-lens and saw the glimmer of amber in the tube below it signal that he was about to speak.
‘That’s a good crew, Koenig.’ The voice was bright with amusement. ‘You know what these boys of yours are showing? They’re showing loyalty.’ Brian’s cabinet rolled out a little way from the panel and back in again, as if it were doing a dance step. ‘Whahoo! I like it, I like it. I’ll make a note of that!’
Without warning the pilot’s screen came back on again. This time the view was a close-up of the Eagle pads near the base and Eagles One, Two, Three and Seven were blasting off. They lifted in a fast tight formation, flame gushing fiercely underneath them. It was a cheering sight to Koenig and Helena, but Brian didn’t seem bothered.
‘Hang on folks,’ he warned. ‘I’m going to slow down.’ Koenig wondered what the crazy little box planned to do next.
The pilot of Eagle One noticed that the Swift had fired it’s reverse rockets and seemed to be waiting for them to catch up. He pointed the fact out to Tony and Maya who were standing anxiously behind his chair.
‘It could be a trap,’ Tony suggested. ‘We’d better spread out and encircle it.’
The other Eagles angled away and moved off to approach the Swift from different directions.
Tony was just about to order them to close in when he was surprised by Commander Koenig’s grim face on the screen.
‘Commander Koenig!’ the pilot said in surprise.
‘Pilot,’ ordered Koenig. ‘You will return to Moon Base.’
‘My information, sir, is that you and Dr Russell are prisoners.’
Koenig nodded brusquely. ‘That’s so, but if you don’t return to Moon Base right now your computers will be blinded, and then you won’t be able to get back at all.’
In the background Tony could make out the lively voice of that damn smart-alec box yelling at Koenig. It said, ‘Tell them you’re okay! I’ll provide you with food and drink... whatever ya want. You want music... right, I got music!’
Koenig glanced off-screen and then back at the pilot. ‘We’re being... looked after,’ he said. ‘Now, acknowledge my command.’
With great reluctance the pilot sighed and said, ‘Command received.’
Tony leaned down to the screen before the contact was broken and asked quickly, ‘What is it that this mad hi-jacking fruit machine wants anyway?’
The voice of Brian came screaming through the receiver. ‘Fruit machine! Who are you calling a fruit machine, you pin-brained hairy meatloaf?’
Koenig interrupted before the Brain had a chance to do something rash. ‘Eagle One!’ he barked. ‘Return to Moon Base. Immediately!’
The pilot acknowledged the order once again and re-set the course to lead the other Eagles back to Alpha. Maya was thinking quickly, and a plan was taking shape. She would wait. When they had gone far enough away the Swift’s Brain would lose interest. Then she would make sure that they were protected from any radio eavesdropping. There might be a way to surprise that gaudy filing cabinet yet.
The Swift moved into an approach orbit for Planet D. The dull yellow clouds formed slow swirls below them, weakly reflecting the distant light of the system’s sun. Koenig thought that it must not have been a very appealing sight for members of the Star Mission. They could have hardly expected to make more than a perfunctory exploration and never imagined their visit would last forever.
Helena too was thinking how unattractive the small planet looked. Probably it would not have been bothered with if not for the fact it very obviously had an atmosphere. More than likely the stopover had been at the instigation of the mission’s astro-biologists to see if there were any specimens worth collecting.
‘What’s it like on the surface?’ she asked Brian.
‘Kinda like the Moon. Mostly dry surface... some ice.’
‘But it has air, an oxygen content?’
The Brain waited for a strangely long pause before answering. When it did the voice had a forced note of casualness in it, a flavour of deception. ‘Yeah, yeah, it sure does. There’s a kind of mist though. Those orange clouds go right down to the surface and they could be, you know, poisonous.’
Helena looked nervously across at Koenig. He was weighing up the information carefully himself, and Brian seemed to sense their suspicions.
‘Aw, come on folks!’ he shouted with forced liveliness. ‘Be happy. I’ve brought you together here. I can offer you all the time in the world. What more could you ask for, I mean, you love each other, don’t you?’
Koenig shrewdly caught Helena’s eye before replying, ‘No.’
‘Of course not,’ she said.
The panel lights down Brian’s front rippled thoughtfully while he considered their denials. ‘Do you mind if I test that?’ he asked. ‘I’ve got to be sure. We’ve got two airlocks in the Passenger Module. I want one of you in each.’
‘What if we don’t choose to?’ asked Koenig.
Brian didn’t bother to answer but there was a low humming sound and the interior lighting composition of the spaceship began to change. The normal illumination dimmed as Brian increased the strength of the ultra-violet wavelength.
The force of the light glared until the cabin was saturated in it and Helena shrieked with pain.
‘Shut your eyes!’ shouted Koenig.
‘That won’t do you any good,’ laughed Brian. ‘I can turn it up until your eyeballs shrivel.’
‘Please turn it off,’ begged Helena.
‘Will you get into the airlocks?’
‘Yes, yes!’ agreed Koenig. ‘Just turn this damn light off.’
The purple light disappeared as the humming ceased and normal lighting was restored. Koenig quickly followed Helena through to the passenger section. They found the inner doors of the twin airlocks standing open, ready for them. Koenig hesitated but remembered the savage agony of the ultra-violet and stepped inside the one on the right.
‘That’s fine Koenig,’ said Brian from the doorway. He had followed them through. ‘Now you lady, into the other one. Don’t worry.’
Helena set little store by the reassurance, but stepped inside and turned around.
‘Okay, good girl.’ Brian rolled backwards and forwards jauntily on his wheels. ‘Now I’ve really got to know about you two. I just have to know.’ He rolled closer to the airlocks. ‘Koenig, do you love this lady?’
‘No, I don’t,’ Koenig stared straightforward into the inquisitive Tri-lens.<
br />
‘Hmm, and Doctor Russell, do you love this man?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I told you I don’t.’
Suddenly transparent doors hissed closed across both airlocks, sealing them both. Koenig banged his hands angrily on the perspex. Brian’s voice came sweetly through the speakers inside the separate airlocks.
‘What I’m gonna do,’ he told them, ‘is let the air out slowly. Inside both airlocks you’ll find a black button...’ Koenig and Helena both saw the button set separately on a small panel of green and blue ones. ‘Now any time, folks, while the air is getting thinner, you can press your button and that will channel all your remaining air into the other airlock. You get it? If you press your button, Koenig, all the rest of your air goes to the lady. Doctor Russell, if you hit your black button, you give all your remaining air to Koenig, and he can live.’
Helena was gripped with icy fear. ‘John!’ she shouted at the dividing wall between the airlocks.
On his side Koenig was shouting too. ‘Helena! Helena, can you hear me?’
The Brain’s amused voice crackled through the speakers again. ‘I gotta tell you, you can’t communicate with each other. No way, folks. Ready? Here goes.’
Koenig and Helena both heard the snake-like sound as their air supply began to slither out. At first it was as much from the psychological effect as the physical one that they began to feel the ache of suffocation.
Helena pounded her fists pointlessly on the clear panel. ‘Brian!’ she shouted, ‘let me talk to John!’ She felt herself starting to pant.
Koenig too hammered at the wall, his eyes flicking desperately from the blank vision lens on top of the Brain to the panel on the wall with its’ neat black button. He could feel his lungs straining hard to draw in what was left of the precious air.
Brian looked back and forth to the scene in both airlocks, reading the pleading desperation on Helena’s face and the anger on Koenig’s. In between he could see the dials that recorded the air level in each lock, and the needles steadily sliding towards zero. Inside the airlocks Helena and John began to slide too, their legs losing the strength to hold them up. Almost simultaneously their hands jerked up and punched down the black buttons.
‘Wow-whee!’ whooped Brian. ‘Both at the same time! You can have all your air back.’
The delicious oxygen whooshed back into both airlocks and when the pressure was equalized, Brian opened the panels and Helena and John both slumped weakly out to the floor.
‘Folks, you love each other!’ Brian announced triumphantly. ‘Golly, all I gotta do is keep one of you hostage and that gives me an eighteen carat gold crunch on the other. Looks like I’m backing a winner!’
Koenig felt his blood boil as he raised his aching eyes and watched the hateful box roll back into the pilot section. He knew the Brain now had a pressure hold on them, but couldn’t imagine how he was going to use it.
Brian guided the Swift in for a landing on Planet D without any trouble at all, simply putting the programme from his first-ever visit into the guidance system. The vertical jets manoeuvred the Swift steadily over the old landing site and let it down gently on the shock-absorbing pods.
Koenig watched the screen as external cameras played across the setting outside. He could make out very little detail through the constantly drifting orange mist. He disliked the idea of going out there by himself without any idea of what he might find. Brian refused to say anything more about what had happened to the Star Mission’s crew, even though Koenig knew he must have more information.
Helena was even more worried than Koenig as she got one of the space suits out of the locker and checked that it was functioning properly. She had no idea why the Brain wanted John to go out there, but reasoned that there must be risks. Otherwise why hadn’t the Brain simply gone himself?
At least the suit was in good order. All the controls were functioning, the temperature regulator was operating even though Brian had said that wouldn’t be necessary, and the air supply was fully stocked. She wondered again what had been the fate of the man who once considered the suit his own, and whether John was about to be forced to share it?
Koenig stepped across to her and took the suit out of her hands, carrying it back into the passenger module to put it on. Brian followed Helena as she joined Koenig and helped him to get dressed.
‘Come on, come on, lady,’ Brian agitated. ‘Move faster.’
Helena fumbled nervously with the fastenings. ‘I’m doing it as fast as I can.’
‘I don’t believe you lady... you’re deliberately going slow.’ Brian was showing a glimmer of paranoid hysteria.
‘Why are you making John go out there?’ she asked angrily. ‘Why don’t you go yourself?’
Brian seemed caught for an answer. He rolled up and down nervously on his wheels and his Tri-lens swivelled around like it was looking for a diversionary tactic. ‘Umm, well...’ there was almost a pink blush in the hue of his amber vocal pattern light. ‘It’s just... it’s too bumpy out there. I told you I’m on wheels. I couldn’t cross the terrain.’
Koenig was finally into the suit. He ran a check of the controls himself and tested that the radio was working. Raising the helmet up and slipping it over his head he locked it into place, with the face plate still up.
‘One thing you haven’t told me,’ Koenig said as he stepped over to the airlock, ‘is why you want me to go out there at all. What is it you’re after?’
‘Yeah, right Koenig, right. Well, the fact is we’re landed about a hundred and fifty yards from my old Mothership. I want you to stroll on over there, unload the nuclear fuel store and bring it back here and stick it in my storage tanks. Real simple, huh?’
Helena shook her head. ‘Why fuel? You must have enough nuclear fuel here. Enough for a thousand years.’
‘Enough!’ Brian almost shrieked. ‘What the hell is a thousand years to me? There’s enough fuel on that Mothership to last me a billion years! I’m gonna live forever!’
There was no conveniently welcoming travel tube for Koenig so he had to make his own way down the side of the Swift by ladder. The surface was some thirty feet below him, lost in misty, ochre swirls.
As he descended his mind was full of the final severe warning by the Brain not to try a double-cross. He had warmed up the ultra-violet again, just enough to make Helena cry out in pain, as a grim reminder of what would happen otherwise. And of course the airlock test had given him an insight on how much Koenig would do to keep Helena safe.
As he went carefully down he kept glancing anxiously below him, trying to get a hint of what he was heading towards. He only wished Brian had been more willing to tell him exactly what the planet’s conditions were like. There seemed to be enough heat trapped in the atmosphere to make it comfortable for human life and according to the sensor reading on the space suit’s life support system, there was a high enough oxygen content to even make the air breathable. In spite of that Brian had insisted that he wear the suit and keep it fully functional. Therefore there must be another danger, a menace that wasn’t immediately obvious... and which had claimed the lives of the entire Star Mission’s crew.
Naturally enough Brian wouldn’t let Koenig get his hands on a weapon so he had to come out unarmed. God only knew what was waiting for him down there, and by the time Koenig could see it, it would be too late. He damned the encircling and unrelenting fog. If only he could damned well see!
At last he could tell he was getting close to the ground. Now it was the underbody of the Swift that was lost from view and he could make out the blue, jagged tips of rocks that rose up nearby. He reached out with one foot and tested for a firm foothold. The ground moved slightly and then firmed; the shifting feeling greatly similar to the dust on the Moon. He set the other foot down and turned slowly. So far so good.
With great care he moved forward, sliding the well-padded shoes of the space suit along the soil to avoid stumbling over hidden rocks or holes as the mist thickened and wrapped
around his knees.
He hadn’t gone far when there was an abrupt clearing in the cloud, just a peculiar natural gap so that he could see clearly for several yards all around him. That was when he saw the first one.
‘What is it, Koenig? What’s the matter?’ Brian’s urgent voice throbbed through the earphones in the space helmet.
Koenig realized he must have involuntarily gasped at the sight in front of him. It was one of the Star Mission crewmen. He was not wearing a spacesuit so Koenig could see clearly the twisted and agonized expression that had been the last sensation of the man’s life. The corpse was decaying slowly and Koenig could see that it showed no signs of dying as a result of violence. Because of the lack of evidence that the body had been interfered with, even after death, Koenig deduced that there must not be much on Planet D in the way of animal life. And because of the low rate of decomposition, not much in the way of micro-organisms either.
‘I’ve found one of the crewmen,’ Koenig said into the helmet’s microphone. He had only gone two steps when he found another; like the first, he was not space-suited, and had died in an agony that seemed to have no exterior physical cause.
By the time Koenig had arrived at the Mothership he had passed over fifty bodies. All of them were in exactly the same condition.
CHAPTER THREE
Helena stared futilely at the screen, seeing nothing but the shroud of fog into which Koenig had disappeared. If the instructions of the Brain had been correct he would soon be arriving at the Mothership... unless... She tried to force the fearful thought of the unknown danger from her mind.
‘I wish we could see him,’ she said to Brian.
‘Visibility is always a little on the low side on Planet D, lady,’ Brian told her, rolling alongside to peer at the monotonous view himself. ‘Don’t worry. As long as he follows instructions he’ll be okay.’
Helena looked around at the packing crate full of computer hardware and tried to reconcile what she could see with the bizarre, immortality-seeking personality that had kidnapped them. ‘How did you come to be made?’ she asked.
Space 1999 - Mind-Breaks of Space Page 3