Space 1999 - The Psychomorph

by Michael Butterworth

  She laughed coldly.

  Koenig watched in agitation as Helena rifled hurriedly through her papers. He remembered the brutal death of the little engineer in the passageway near the Hydroponics Centre, and he wanted to bring himself up to date before he acted. He wanted to find and topple the rampaging killer woman who was somewhere on the loose in the Moon Base... and to save innocent lives.

  As she got her papers into order, Helena explained what she had been able to find out. ‘The sensitivity tests show that the Space Field has been acting as a psychic amplifier... stimulating the ESP powers in the human brain. And Carolyn’s potential was enormously strong...’ She handed the reports to Koenig 4nd he studied them.

  ‘So the field isn’t using Carolyn – she’s using it!’ Koenig exclaimed.

  ‘Sort of... though the field could be using her too, if it’s alive. And everything points to it being alive. Carolyn hated Sally – and then Mark. She wished them dead... the field boosted her hate so it killed them.’

  ‘Go a step further,’ Koenig continued. ‘Pete Garforth had survived a bad crash. Subconsciously he was afraid to fly another Eagle – and every one he worked on developed a malfunction. Carl Renton desperately wanted to be a winner –and suddenly he couldn’t lose.’

  Helena added thoughtfully, ‘Carl Renton discovered a big seam of Tiranium, too...’

  Koenig appeared not to have heard her. ‘The way it was with me and my ghosts... the combined powers of one’s fears fighting within oneself...’

  ‘The way it’s been since the time of Creation – a battle of the Forces of Good against the Forces of Evil...’

  The wall monitor bleeped, and Sahn’s face appeared on it. The Indian operative looked drained of life, like that of a corpse, and when she spoke, she sounded barely alive too. ‘Ca-ro-lyn Powell... to see Com-man-der Koenig...’

  Koenig reacted in alarm. He ran over to the monitor and punched at a button. ‘Commander Koenig will be there... tell Carolyn Powell that,’ he told the woman. He hit another button and the screen went dead.

  He and Helena glanced briefly at one another before rushing out of the Medical Centre at top speed.

  ‘Two ghosts down, one to go,’ Koenig shouted at her.

  ‘She’s very dangerous, John,’ Helena replied breathlessly.

  They sped along the deserted corridors and arrived at the Command Centre in record time. Koenig fired his comlock at the doors and parted them. They slid smoothly open.

  He composed himself, then walked calmly inside. He had a plan. ‘If hate boosts her power,’ he muttered out of the side of his mouth to Helena, ‘we’ll overwhelm her with our love.’

  Helena caught his meaning, and likewise composed herself. She smiled.

  Unmoved by the horrific scene that met his gaze, Koenig moved towards his Command Chair which the figure of the evilwomati had usurped. ‘You’re in the wrong place, aren’t you?’

  Carolyn Powell was visibly taken aback by his subdued manner. ‘You no longer command Moon Base Alpha,’ she told him. ‘Your authority has passed over to me.’

  Koenig smiled. ‘Has it?’

  She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She could feel something uncomfortable happening to her. It was her power waning.

  She asserted herself. ‘From now on, I decide. You obey.’

  Koenig shook his head. He advanced towards her, arms outstretched. ‘Carolyn, I know what you want,’ he said gently And he meant it.

  ‘Do you?’ she asked nervously.

  ‘You want us to hate you. To attack you so you can use the energy of our minds to build your strength...’

  Enthroned in her Chair of Power, she glared angrily at him.

  Koenig continued. ‘But it isn’t going to work. We don’t fear you, or reject you...’

  Helena moved to his side, and now she too began to work on Carolyn, just as she had on Koenig not an hour before. Even Carolyn, she now realized guilitly, was a patient and could be saved. ‘There’s nothing alien in your powers,’ she said comfortingly. ‘Some of it is in all our minds. I don’t think you meant to use it for evil – not at first.’ She paused dramatically. ‘We ask you to come back to us – use your powers for the good of Alpha.’

  The Space Amoeba heaved and shook in fury. The powers that it had gambled were being taken away. It quivered wrathfully. Noooo... it hissed in Carolyn’s mind. Nooooo... don’t let them deceiveeeeee youuuuuuu...

  Carolyn trembled. ‘You want to trap me!’ she screeched at Helena. ‘You want to steal my powers. I rule Alpha now – and I will destroy you!’ She glared hatefully at them, concentrating her thoughts.

  Protected by his feelings of Love, Koenig was able to overcome being controlled. He continued to move fearlessly towards her. ‘You cannot harm us, Carolyn. There’s no hate or fear for you to latch on to. The only one you can hurt is yourself.’

  Carolyn’s face twisted in frenzy. ‘Then hate me!’ she shrieked.

  ‘We can’t do that. We don’t have hate in us.’ He and Helena were within touching distance of her distraught figure.

  ‘Hate me! Hate me!’ The Amoeba’s fingers clutched spasmodically inside her, tearing her cells apart as its precious energy drained away from it.

  ‘We only have love for you, Carolyn... don’t we, Helena? –Tony? – Sahn?’ Koenig looked around the Centre for support.

  ‘I don’t hate you, Carolyn...’ Helena told her softly.

  Verdeschi climbed to his feet, free of enslavement. ‘I don’t hate you, Carolyn...’ he said. He now felt concern.

  ‘I don’t hate you, Carolyn...’ Sahn said tearfully from her console. Her being ached with Love for the Human side of the Death Woman’s mind.

  ‘Hate... me... you must hate me...’ Carolyn begged pitifully as she slowly sagged to the Command Console.

  The Centre grew alternately cold and hot. Sudden winds flushed through it. They abated as quickly as they had arisen, as Carolyn’s despotic madness gradually left her.

  She dropped to the floor, unconscious, and they picked her up and cradled her in their arms.

  Verdeschi snatched up the container that imprisoned Maya and released her. The tiny caterpillar converted to a bright light and the attractive Psychon, much relieved, resolved herself again in front of their eyes. She was gasping for breath, and the first thing she did was to embrace Verdeschi.

  From Sahn came a shout of joy. ‘The field... it’s dying!’

  Koenig left Helena with Carolyn and took over his command Chair. He noticed the readings. The bleeps of the oscilloscope got weaker, and as he watched they faded almost away.

  He spoke gravely to the others. ‘It’s still there. Whatever it is, it’s still there. We must have knocked it for six... but it could still revive.’ He came to a quick decision. ‘The only way to beat it is to join it and make some first-hand investigations.’ He got through to Alan Carter in the Eagle Reception Area.

  While the others stopped what they were doing he made an announcement which shocked them. ‘Alan, prepare Eagle Ten for immediate take-off.’

  PART TWO

  ‘Champions of Space’

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Space Amoeba ebbed, as though dead.

  Its listless seas of cosmoplasm seemed almost at rest... like the lull before a storm. Yet there was no energy left for a storm to be produced. There was only the smallest glimmerings of energy... tiny granules of power spread over its vast body.

  It had been defeated. Its devices had been foiled.

  It had only schemed to keep itself alive. It had no morals. It had done only what it had to.

  Even its anger had gone. It was too weak to show emotion of any kind. To all intents and purposes it was dead.

  Yet, a simple awareness of itself still existed.

  It was the awareness of the dying that they are dying and that they have to fight to stay alive.

  It was a crude, elemental impulse to gather together its wide-flung energy and concentrate it at its centre.


  It shrank in on itself. Its edges began to wither and break away.

  From a million, rarified kilometres in length it abbreviated itself to a mere fifty thousand kilometres of truncated explosive life-force.

  Its sentient thinking faculties returned and with the inspiration that is sometimes born of desperation – desperation formed from the knowledge that this would be the very last chance it would get to acquire the energy it needed to regain its lost youth – it became brilliant.

  The Endless Journey. The journey of the Runaway Moon over which they had no directional control – which swept them indifferently to their glory or their deaths...

  They were caught on a cosmic treadmill – unable to step off for fear of dying – treading to save their tiny, scrawny lives. The treadmill was the most vicious tester of perseverence and skills that any man had known. The Great Journey on which they had unwillingly embarked had to be appeased and satisfied by their struggles. It was like a god, demanding their energies and their faith and caring nothing at all whether they lived or perished.

  So Koenig philosophized to himself as he took Eagle Ten off the launch pad and rose among the billion stars.

  He was in a perverse, ironical mood. The irritation that had characterized him earlier, had gone. He felt, as he often did, curiously amused by the Alphan’s predicament. Irony was his protection from going insane.

  All around him lay the weakened Space Field. He switched on his monitor and gazed through it at the crowded stars. His instruments told him that the Field was emanating a Lambda Wave Formation so feeble that it could not affect a space bug... if such a thing as a space bug existed, he joked to himself. Yet, at any moment, it might erupt into life, and their grim battle for survival in the depths of Space would flare desperately again.

  In an intensive care cot in the Medical Centre, enclosed by a plastic bubble, another equally poignant drama was going on. It was a miniscule drama by comparison. The bubble kept out germs and impurities; it prevented any life-forms that might be detrimental to the creature within from entering.

  Helena Russell gazed dolefully at the helpless, mongol-like child inside. Carolyn Powell was sleeping. Her face was young and innocent-looking, uncreased.

  ‘For you, everything has gone,’ she said softly to the figure. ‘Your powers, your memory, even your speech. You’re like a newborn child. You’ll have to grow up, all over again...’

  After checking the gently humming faces of the electronic watch-dogs guarding and keeping her patient alive, she turned savagely away and clenched her hands tightly. She wished it were the other way round – she wished it were Koenig in the cot and Carolyn Powell in the Eagle Ten.

  Intuition told her that the Commander was in danger. Perhaps there were remnants of Lambda Waves lingering in the air that gave her the powers of precognition to know that something was wrong.

  She checked herself. Koenig was doing his job, just as she was doing hers; just as everyone on the Moon Base was doing his. In their perilous world there was little time, place or justification for sentiment... yet all the same, she wished desperately that Koenig had taken someone with him. True Commander that he was, he had refused to endanger more lives than necessary.

  She found that she was almost waiting for bad news – when it came. The monitor on the wall bleeped furiously and Sahn’s face appeared on it. White-faced, Helena streaked across the room to answer it. ‘Yes?’

  ‘The Commander is in some kind of trouble...’

  She didn’t wait to hear the rest but fled out of the Medical Centre.

  From the standpoint of Tony Verdeschi the picture that was coming in over the Big Screen was utterly insane. There was no two ways about it.

  He listened incredulously to the broadcast.

  ‘WHAYEEEEEEEEEI!!... WHOOOOOOOOO!!!.. WOWEEEEEEEEE!!!...’

  He listened with more than a degree of disapproval – and some worry. Primarily, he was overwhelmed by the sheer outlandishness and impossibility of what he saw and heard occurring.

  The manic shouts and screams of joy were coming from the Pilot Section of Eagle Ship Ten.

  Commander John Koenig, who was in it, seemed to have completely freaked-out.

  ‘WHAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!... WOWOWOEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!...’

  For a start, the whoops and exclamations were embarrassingly juvenile. Secondly, whatever had possessed their Commander was downright dangerous. Not only was Koenig acting madly – so was the Eagle Ship he was commanding. It was undergoing a series of wild yaws and rolls, each more reckless than the last. Every eccentric manoeuvre that it took brought the Eagle closer to the Moon Base buildings on the lunar surface – and closer to certain disaster.

  ‘John! Cut that out!’ he shouted angrily into the communicator on the Command Console in front of him. There was no response. The berserk pilot seemed not to be able to hear him. ‘John! Can you hear me?!’ he asked urgently. ‘What’s going on up there?’

  He turned to Sahn, who had been monitoring the whole operation while he had been in the Engineering Workshops talking with Pete Garforth. ‘What happened?’

  The attractive, dark-skinned operator shrugged and shook her anxious face. ‘He was OK... he made a number of standard reports...’ She flicked over pages on her note pad. ‘The last report he made was of an increase in the neutron count of the Space Field.’

  ‘Then what?’ Helena asked gravely.

  ‘Then... he went completely mad,’ Sahn nodded at the Big Screen.

  The Eagle bucked crazily and Koenig’s altered voice came over the loudspeakers again: ‘Woweee! You’ve got to try this! You really have to fly this baby!’

  ‘He’s gone senile!’ Helena told them, horrified.

  ‘Hallelujah! There are angels everywhere...!’

  The Eagle dived suddenly down, its retro-rockets blazing. It came to within a few kilometres of the Base and screamed upwards again.

  Verdeschi flinched, awaiting impact. Something had to be done. He spoke into his communicator. ‘Eagle Two stand by. Alan! Ehrlich! Full emergency equipment!’ He turned to Helena, but he didn’t need to alert her. She raced back out of the Command Centre to put her Medical Team on standby.

  Eagle Ten nose-dived again. Its reptillian snout careened Moonwards towards three large, dome-shaped structures well apart from the other Alphan buildings on the rocky lunar horizon.

  ‘He’s heading for the Nuclear Waste Dumps!’ Sahn yelled out.

  ‘He’s too low! He’ll hit one of them!’ Verdeschi rejoined. He screamed at Koenig down the channel he had open: ‘John – get out of there! That’s lethal!’

  Sahn struggled with her controls and managed to get a picture of Koenig’s face on the Big Screen. The Commander was grinning and shouting at the fuzzy image of Verdeschi on his control panel monitor. He was singing an old Salvation Army song: ‘Come and join us! Come and join us!’

  The Screen divided into two, and now on one half of it they could see Koenig; on the other half they could watch the Eagle’s chaotic progress. At the last moment it zoomed upward, missing the atomic domes by only a few metres.

  Verdeschi whistled with relief. While he was waiting for Eagle Pilot Alan Carter and Nuclear Scientist Joe Ehrlich to take off in Eagle Two, he called Jack Bartlett from the High Energy Physics Section. Bartlett, a big, authoritative Nuclear Scientist who was head of his section, arrived about five minutes later. He took one look at the screen and shook his big head in dismay. Koenig’s Eagle was repeatedly buzzing the three waste domes.

  ‘Jack, you designed those nuclear waste domes,’ Verdeschi said. ‘If he hits one, the Moon blows up, right?’

  Bartlett took a deep breath. ‘Fortunately, no.’

  Verdeschi looked puzzled. ‘A direct hit on a dome wouldn’t cause a nuclear explosion?’

  ‘No. That would need a specific stimulation with atomic fuel. An Eagle crashing into a dome could give us a radiation leak – that would be bad enough.’

  Verdeschi took in the informati
on. As well as the possible radiation leakage, there was Koenig’s safety to consider. Helplessly, he watched the screen. The berserk pilot was taking the Eagle on more hair-raising dives.

  ‘He can’t get away with it! He’s going to crash!’ he exclaimed. He got back on to the crew of Eagle Two. ‘Eagle Two, blast off!’

  As he spoke, a new angle appeared on the lower half of the screen. Eagle Two rose sedately from its launch pad. ‘Head for the Nuclear Waste Domes but stay out of his way,’ he instructed the pilots. ‘In case he hits a dome, you’ll need anti-contamination suits.’

  ‘It’s taken care of,’ Alan Carter’s disembodied voice came back to him.

  ‘And fire protection,’ Ehrlich’s voice added.

  Koenig’s face still occupied the upper half of the screen. His eyes burned with a strange luminosity... an innocence that they must have had in them as a child. He gripped the controls in front of him with whitened knuckles. On the lower portion of the screen his Eagle could be seen in the background, taking another nose-dive.

  Verdeschi paled. ‘John, can you hear me?’ he implored.

  Koenig’s mouth set in a thin, determined line. ‘Get your heads down, Big Daddy’s coming in!’ The Eagle buzzed the furthermost dome. This time, the tip of one of the legs hit the dome. It broke off, and the craft slewed round.

  Brought suddenly back to grim reality, Koenig began wrestling with the controls. The thin veneer of madness that had possessed him had shattered. But it was too late. Before he could cut out the powerful retro-rockets, the Eagle propelled itself along its new trajectory – into the lunar surface. In horror, the Alphans watched the survey ship bounce once, then disappear in a cloud of dust and debris. The lower half of the screen blanked out as communication with the ship ceased, and a deathly silence fell in the Command Centre.