Space 1999 - The Psychomorph

by Michael Butterworth

  The booth glowed and pulsed with its orange light. Maya turned the force field up to its fullest strength, but still the cards continued to be flung out of the booth. And each card was guessed correctly.

  ‘You play a child’s game, Doctor,’ Carolyn called out to Helena as she tossed the last card into the air. A change had taken place in her voice. It sounded cruel and arrogant. ‘Did you think I would be one of your children?’

  ‘All right, Carolyn,’ Verdeschi told her, leading his men forward. ‘Come with us.’

  The possessed woman turned and smiled in an awful rendition of sweetness. ‘Of course I’ll go with you, Tony.’ Her face abruptly contorted into a grimace of hatred.

  The freezing, shrieking wind that had helped bring Sanders to his untimely death, now howled around them. It rose to a fury, and blasted against the Guards, knocking them to their knees.

  ‘And as for you, Doctor Russell...’

  A pocket of wind gusted against Helena and threw her across the Centre. The sheafs of paper that she clutched were wrenched out of her grasp and tossed about in the air.

  She saw Carolyn as though at the end of a vortex of rushing mist. The woman’s face was set in the rigid lines of the insane and she was crying and screaming obscenities. As the words were spoken a hail of laboratory objects began to hurtle down the vortex towards where Helena lay, smashing and crashing all around her.

  Standing aside from the main path of the wind, and forgotten by Carolyn in her rage, Maya’s body began to shimmer and shake. At first, it seemed as though she too had been affected by the psychic storm, but instead of falling helplessly to the floor, she began to change herself. Guided by the art and biology of her Psychon forefathers, her body enveloped itself in a spindle of brightly spinning fire. The blaze of light reached a peak, and then gradually faded away. In its place, a snarling, full-grown tiger had been spawned.

  The cat hissed and spat viciously at Carolyn’s preoccupied figure, then launched itself at her and toppled her to the ground.

  Abruptly, the howling wind ceased. The room began to grow warmer and the beleaguered guards dragged themselves to their feet.

  Concerned for Helena’s safety, the tiger let its victim free. Foaming and screaming, Carolyn Powell stumbled from the Centre and sped away up the corridor towards the Command Centre.

  Transformed back into her usual self, Maya, Verdeschi and the guards crowded round Helena’s prone body, lying amid the debris of the missiles.

  As they watched her, her bruised and cut face stirred and her eyes fluttered open.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Maya asked worriedly.

  The Doctor swallowed and a faint smile crossed her features. ‘Just about. I guess I’m lucky to be alive...’

  With their help she climbed shakily to her feet: ‘Now we know the force that killed Sally and Mark. I must warn John...’ She tottered towards the wall monitor.

  Verdeschi muttered grimly. ‘Knowing it... and destroying it are two different ball games.’

  Helena stabbed at a button, and Sahn’s concerned face appeared on the screen. ‘Sahn, is the Commander...’

  Sahn shook her head. ‘He seems very upset. He’s back in his quarters – but he won’t answer any calls.’

  Helena blacked-out the screen and turned in despair towards the others. ‘We have to get to John. He’s got to know...’

  Accompanied by Maya and Verdeschi, she staggered outside.

  ‘John! Let me in!’ Helena hammered on Koenig’s door.

  The monitor outside his door had been activated, obviously in an attempt to communicate with them. But all that came over it were a series of low moans and anguished cries of despair.

  The doors were either locked or jammed.

  Verdeschi drew Helena out of the way and aimed his laser at the locking mechanism. It erupted with a shower of flames and black smoke. In determination he wrenched the doors apart, and he and Helena ran quickly inside.

  ‘No...!’ Koenig’s screams were louder now. The room was cold and the Commander was curled up in a tight foetal position on his bed. He was shaking uncontrollably.

  Helena bent over him and made a rapid examination. She turned in alarm to the Security Chief. ‘He’s bad...’ She took out her comlock and spoke urgently into it. ‘Full medical team to Commander’s quarters. Priority One!’

  The Medical Crew arrived with their trolley and equipment, and while they helped off-load Koenig from the bed Helena performed a series of preliminary examinations.

  A short while later they rushed Koenig to the Medical Centre and got him back into bed. He was still curled up in a resolute denial of consciousness. Verdeschi and Maya waited anxiously by for Helena’s verdict.

  ‘At the moment he’s in a state of complete catatonic withdrawal,’ Helena told them. She straightened up from her patient’s bedside.

  Verdeschi looked frustrated. ‘You’ve got to bring him out of it. I better inform my men...’ He turned and walked towards the wall monitor.

  ‘We can bring him round through narco-synthesis...’ Helena told Maya. ‘It’s old-fashioned, but it’s still the best and safest method to reach into the mind... let the mind jump all the hidden barriers it has built up within itself.’

  Verdeschi paused by the monitor. ‘So we’re right back to where we were – fighting two wars on one battle-front. You’ve got John... I’ve got Carolyn Powell.’ He smiled grimly to Helena. ‘I hope we both win...’ He hit the communications button. ‘Verdeschi to all Security Personnel. Carolyn Powell is to be found and restrained immediately. This woman is extremely dangerous. Stun on sight. Repeat – stun on sight!’

  Maya moved towards him pensively. ‘Tony, isn’t that a bit drastic?’

  Verdeschi shook his head darkly. ‘No, Maya. I think that bitch could destroy Moon Base Alpha just by wanting to.’

  He turned and stalked out of the Centre.

  The plasmic fluid of which the Space Amoeba was composed began to accelerate wildly inside its ever-changing boundaries.

  Its aged substance began to whine and shine again with lost power. It hungrily contemplated the coming oblivion that it would wreak on those competitive life-forms who had kept it from its rightful spoils.

  It had assumed Command of the petty creature who had fallen into its trap. Now, only one thing remained to be done – to ensure that the maximum amount of vital radiation was released when their world exploded, and its perpetuation was ensured.

  It ebbed and flowed rapaciously, rashly using up its resources and generating ever larger amounts of the psychic wave radiation...

  Deep in the cracked and ancient lunar rock below the Moon Base, in the disused levels where the Alphans’ desperate mining operation was taking place, Carl Renton grew into a Big Man.

  Consumed by the Waves and by his desire to succeed and save the Moon Base, he drove his buggy deep into a long-abandoned, unsafe shaft, and discovered Tiranium. He discovered sufficient of the bluish, radioactive ore to provide Moon Base Alpha with all the power that it would possibly need for months into the future. For this (unknown to him, calamitous) feat of gallantry, he was decorated and hailed as the real man he had always secretly aspired to be.

  The ore was rapidly processed, and the rare element extracted and loaded into the vital Life Support Core – the super-powerful energy heart of the Moon Base...

  The Devil was good to her. He was divine in the methods he used to cleanse her of her anxieties and problems – the little, niggling worries and stumbling blocks which had dogged her all her life and prevented her from being the clear, clean and simple person she had always wanted to be.

  Gone were her considerations for others – the feelings that had kept her from advancing.

  Gone was her survival instinct for her own worthless body which had always let her down and which had caused her endless trouble with its constant need for prettification.

  Here, at last, was her enlightenment – her opportunity to dominate, to control, to inflict pain a
nd suffering on the little worms who had been responsible for nibbling away at her existence.

  ‘Down and crawl!’ she shrieked to Verdeschi who had inadvertently walked into her trap as he sought to take over Command Centre.

  She was occupying Koenig’s chair, and she was beside herself with euphoric rage.

  ‘Crawl like a worm!’ she cackled.

  The Waves of destruction channelled by her mind beamed themselves into him and took him over.

  They paralyzed his thinking centres and brought him to his knees – a blubbering, babbling wreck who crawled to do the bidding of his new Mistress.

  ‘Crawl!’ she screamed ecstatically. She watched with blazing eyes as Verdeschi crawled and prostrated himself before her.

  His face was red with the exertion of fighting the thought Waves. His veins were swollen perilously out on his forehead under the strain. His tongue extended itself, trembling from his mouth to touch her proffered boot. In humiliation, he kissed it.

  She kicked his head imperiously aside and rose victoriously to her feet. ‘Now I command Alpha! Call me Commander!’

  ‘Commander...’ Verdeschi gasped, his mouth bleeding from where she had kicked him. ‘Commander...’ he croaked.

  Carolyn Powell laughed and her eyes flashed insanely around the silent rows of faces behind their consoles.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Unaware of the new developments, Helena and Maya still struggled desperately to halt Koenig’s mental deterioration. Their treatment was working, though slowly.

  ‘... five... four... three... two... one... zero...’ Koenig muttered out loud from where he lay. His eyes were closed, but his body had been made to unwind by the new treatment, and it lay more relaxed.

  Helena bent closer to his sweating brow. Evidently a battle was still raging inside him. ‘John... do you near me?’ she asked urgently.

  ‘Yes, I hear you.’ He sounded distant.

  ‘Sam and Tessa, John. Tell me about them.’

  ‘They were my friends... I left them to die. They want to kill me.’ His body threshed about violently, but the two women restrained him.

  ‘If they’re dead, how can they kill you?’ Helena’s voice droned. Her words cut into his unconscious memory with the intention of getting him to rationalize a fear he had always kept locked away.

  Koenig’s pale features crinkled now in puzzlement as he endeavoured to think rationally on the subject. But his thoughts were quickly abandoned again by a wave of mindless terror which swept through him. ‘They keep coming back... I see them...’ he shrieked.

  ‘What do they say?’ Helena asked firmly.

  ‘“You killed us John Koenig... You left us to die...”’

  The two women momentarily shrank away, aghast, as the ghostly voices of the dead scientists issued from Koenig’s lips.

  ‘How does that make you feel?’ Helena plucked up fresh courage.

  ‘I feel that I murdered them!’ he cried in anguish.

  ‘Could you help what you did?’

  ‘Nol No! I couldn’t help it, I had no choice!’

  ‘And they knew that?’

  ‘Yes, they knew that.’

  ‘And they were your friends...?’

  ‘My friends...’

  The Commander’s straining body seemed to relax once more. Helena glanced hopefully at Maya, then turned back to Koenig. ‘They were your friends and they knew you could not help yourself. They knew you did not kill them.’

  ‘They keep coming back...’

  ‘No, John. Your guilt keeps bringing them back!’ It was her turn to cry out. ‘You keep punishing yourself for something you think they blame you for.’

  ‘No! No! They hate me!’

  ‘Your ghosts hate you.’ She shook him hard, sensing she was close to victory. She needed to make sure he understood. ‘The ghosts you put in your mind...’

  Abruptly, lie sat up, staring deliriously around hire. His eyes looked insane. ‘I see them!’ he hissed. ‘They’re coming back again!’

  Once more his eyes closed, and the ghost-like voices sounded from his lips. This time there were two of them, and they held a dialogue.

  ‘“You killed us, John Koenig...”’ a young, male voice stated.

  ‘“You left us to die!”’ another, a young woman’s rejoined.

  ‘I SEE THEM!’ Koenig screamed in his real voice.

  ‘“You left us to rot away with Venusian plague...”’ the young man’s voice sounded again.

  Koenig screamed again. His eyes opened and he pointed a trembling arm in the direction of the doors. ‘They want me...’ He climbed out of bed and walked unsteadily towards them.

  Helena motioned Maya aside and followed him. ‘You can send them away... out of your life forever!’ she said with feeling. ‘But only if you stop punishing yourself! Tell them... Tell them!’

  Koenig’s somnambulent figure came to a halt in front of the doors. He reached out his arms to touch the hideous figures that only he could see. His mouth fell open, and he looked at them with a sudden new resolve. ‘You’re... you’re not Sam and Tessa.’

  He looked bravely at the decomposed ghosts. Their horrible figures advanced on him, their rotting arms outstretched towards his throat. But he stood his ground. ‘Sam and Tessa were my friends. They loved me, as I loved them. Wherever they are now, they’ve forgiven me. They understand. They knew I had to leave them. I won’t have you destroy that love. I won’t have you destroy me!’

  Helena watched pensively. ‘He’s coming out of it...’ she whispered to the Psychon woman.

  Maya smiled thankfully. She looked a trifle uncomfortable as a thought struck her. ‘Then I think he will want to be alone with you... I’ll go and help Tony,’ she said, and quietly slipped out of the Centre.

  The twisting, blotched features of the ghosts disappeared. Their deathly faces faded away and in their place Koenig saw the youthful, healthy faces of Tessa and Sam as he used to know them. The two faces smiled and waved at him.

  ‘Goodbye, John...’ Sam said.

  ‘Goodbye...’ Tessa repeated.

  With that, they faded away completely.

  ‘Goodbye...’ Koenig said softly. The outlines of the Medical Centre began to reappear in his vision. The knots in his head untied themselves and, suddenly, he felt a new man. New energy flooded back into his being. But he still felt confused. He stared around for Helena, and saw her. ‘What happened, Helena?’ he asked. ‘I feel as if I’ve been suspended... in a void.’

  Helena put her arm round him happily. ‘You’re all right now, John... it’s over.’

  ‘It was like a dream... I saw Sam and Tessa. They smiled...’

  ‘You’ve made peace within yourself, John. You’ll never be haunted by ghosts again...’

  Koenig held her at arm’s length and gazed deeply into her eyes. In this moment, he was like a child, she thought. He needed her. ‘Then everything’s all right?’ he asked.

  Helena nodded. She looked gravely at him. ‘Except for Carolyn Powell.’

  Koenig frowned as he remembered her name. ‘What about her?’ he asked, puzzled.

  ‘She possesses terrible destructive powers...’ Helena replied. ‘Somehow, she seems able to turn anger and hatred into violent physical force... the more she’s attacked, the stronger she’ll get.’ She broke away from him. ‘Are you well enough?’

  He nodded impatiently. He was getting back to be his usual self as his faculties returned.

  ‘Let me show you the results of some tests I made.’ She led him towards her desk.

  Guided by the Supreme Master, the semblance of Humanity that was Carolyn Powell began the final stages of her task.

  Verdeschi still lay, paralyzed, at her feet. The other Alphans were glued helplessly to their seats by the same all-powerful force. They looked on with stricken faces as the High-Priestess got Verdeschi to call out orders to the Life Support Centre. They were the orders of madness, and their sole effect, if implemented, would be to destroyAlpha –
to reduce it to its elemental components in a Tiranium explosion of stupendous proportions.

  She was busily engaged in this way when Maya entered the Command Centre. The Psychon was stopped short by the scene of degradation in front of her. Most humiliating was the posture that Verdeschi had submitted to, and the obscene glee with which his captoress now greeted the Psychon.

  Maya was too late to do anything useful. With a wave of her hand, Carolyn ensnared her also in the psychic control. She stopped her hellish work, her cruel mind fired with sudden imagination.

  ‘Amuse me, my little alien friend,’ she said to Maya. ‘Do some of your clever tricks for us – one or two shape changes?’ She laughed hollowly.

  ‘No! No... I... won’t!’ Maya fought for control, but the mental manacles that held her were too strong.

  Carolyn’s features changed instantly to rage. ‘You will change!’ she cried harshly. ‘Change into a monkey!’

  Helplessly, Maya was forced to change and undergo the same demoralizing experience as Verdeschi. As a tiny monkey, she jumped around on the floor.

  Carolyn laughed with delight. She clapped her hands. ‘Excellent! Now – a caterpillar!’ she instructed.

  Without will, the monkey changed into the small, vulnerable creature of the bitch’s wish.

  Carolyn made the caterpillar hoop towards her. She reached out her foot and placed it above it. She turned to Verdeschi. ‘Shall I stamp the life out of her?’

  Verdeschi underwent a paroxysm of strain as he struggled to speak. ‘Please... no...’ he gasped.

  Her foot descended, and then stopped, barely a millimetre above the squirming caterpillar. ‘I have a better idea,’ she said. She snatched at a transparent container and scooped the caterpillar up. She imprisoned it inside and held it up for all to see. ‘Such a pretty creature – and so fragile...’ she crooned. ‘It should become a beautiful butterfly.’

  ‘Not enough... air... she’ll suffocate...’ Verdeschi spoke painfully.

  An expression of mock seriousness crossed Carolyn’s face. ‘Not enough air? Suffocate?’ She tilted her head and looked again at the container. She pretended to muse, thoughtfully. ‘How much air does a caterpillar need, I wonder?’ She placed it down on the Command Console in front of her. ‘But suppose we find out? We can pass some of the time by watching Maya die.’