He gasped and foamed. Helena moved quickly towards a trolley and loaded a syringe full of a powerful tranquilizer. She returned and jabbed it in the madman’s arm.
‘Destroy us all...’ he gurgled, and slumped in Vincent’s hold, temporarily gone from the world.
Vincent and Helena stared at one another, aghast.
The diminutive Professor Hunter fished deeply in his inside pocket and held aloft a small bottle of Glen Grant whisky. He poured a generous measure into Jack Barlett’s proffered glass. ‘Scotch!’ he informed the amazed scientist proudly.
The reunion was growing from strength to strength and glasses were out and chinking all around the Centre. In the main, the Alphans were content to drink the newly introduced brands, but some of the visitors were sampling Tony Verdeschi’s home-brewed beer – to everyone’s amusement.
Guido excused himself from Maya and Verdeschi, who were toasting one another. He was intent on getting more bottles from the store that had been brought of the Superswift, but instead he bumped into Diana.
‘Guido.’ She caressed his neck and shoulders. ‘Introduce me to the dish of the day!’
Guido grinned and turned back to face Verdeschi and the Psychon. He indicated his brother. ‘Certainly. This is my brother Tony. He comes with an order of ham on the side.’
He turned and moved off, sniggering.
Diana’s eyes had briefly scanned the Security Chief and taken in an extremely desirable male. They then rested vampishly on Maya and fixed her with their stare of deception. ‘I’ll have a double portion.’
‘D’you think you should?’ Maya flashed her eyes over the other woman’s figure, inferring that the other ought to be careful about her weight.
Verdeschi interjected hastily. ‘Oh, sorry!’ he apologized clumsily to Diana. ‘This is Maya; she’s a Psychon.’
Diana deliberately chose to misinterpret his introduction. ‘Don’t they have pills for that now?’
‘Psychon is another world,’ Maya replied coolly. ‘Like a great many other things it’s beyond your comprehension.’
‘Maya is the last of her species,’ Verdeschi informed Diana.
‘I’m not surprised.’ She turned her back dismissively on Maya and faced the Italian with a seductive smile. ‘Tell me – how do you manage to keep so fit up here?’ she asked pointedly.
He was about to reply when a sudden, bright spindle of energy consumed the irate Psychon woman. She transformed herself into a medium-sized, green dinosaur-like creature with rows of glistening teeth. She leered savagely at Diana’s back, her jaws dripping a revolting azure slime on to her skirt.
‘Maya!’ he chastized, ignoring Diana’s question.
Diana looked strangely at her partner, then slowly turned to see what magnitude of event had distracted his attention from her irresistable personage. Maya had changed back to normal, and smiled innocently at her.
The two women exchanged frozen smiles while Verdeschi looked around the Centre in embarrassment. Thankfully, he realized, that everyone had been too engrossed with one another to notice the little display of Dadaism.
Diana turned back to him questioningly, but before she could open her mouth, Guido returned. He was empty-handed. He seemed to have changed his mind about the drinks and instead of giving, he took. He winked at Verdeschi and linked Maya’s arm, intimating to his brother that two women were too much for one man. While Verdeschi looked on in helpless alarm, he moved off with her, charming her with a display of his seductive patter.
Verdeschi, who was no novice to social occasions of this sort, realized that by some sleight of communication Diana and Guido had somehow managed to work one on him. Feeling that his arts of diplomacy must have grown rusty during his long absence from Earth, he conceded defeat, and allowed a triumphant Diana to divert his attention back to her once more.
‘And tell me – what do you do for relaxation around here?’ she asked warmly.
Once more, he was prevented from replying, this time by an unplanned interruption. The monitor on his console bleeped urgently and Helena’s strained features appeared on it. ‘Tony Verdeschi urgently to Medical Centre, please,’ she announced.
‘Excuse me,’ Verdeschi muttered to Diana, brushing his way past her.
‘Surely...’ she murmured sourly to his departing back. She shrugged, and turned her parasitic attentions elsewhere. But, like many party vamps, she now found herself completely on her own, staring at her drink in frustration.
‘We are basically nuclear acids, of course,’ Maya explained the biochemistry of her fine, Psychon body to an eager Guido. ‘But not DNA or RNA, and not in helical spirals. You don’t really want to know about our biology, do you?’
Guido seemed almost to swoon. ‘Ah, I could listen to you talk about pig-farming in Nebraska!’ he exclaimed unromantically. But the point he made was intensely romantic.
Maya looked at him with amusement. ‘This is known as “flirting” or “making a play”, isn’t that so?’
Guido looked suddenly abashed. ‘Didn’t you have that on Psychon?’
‘No,’ Maya told him firmly. ‘What did you do then?’
Maya laughed. ‘If I got to like you enough you’d find out.’
One of the men who had been following her about ever since the party of Earthmen had first stepped out of the travel tube, now appeared on the scene. Ignoring Guido, he announced himself to her. ‘Hi! My name’s Steve – I hear you’re from Psychon. I’ve always had a special interest in that planet...’
Guido glared angrily at the nape of Steve’s neck. ‘You never heard of it before in your life!’ he growled. He was about to make more of the intrusion, when two more men arrived to join them.
‘I’m Harry Miles,’ one of them informed Maya with a broad grin. ‘I just heard you were from Psychon.’
‘Mac Stewart,’ the second man extended his hand to her. ‘They tell me you’re from Psychon...’
Guido threw up his hands in expasperation. ‘Mama mia!’ he exclaimed, and wandered off to find Verdeschi.
The Security Chief was watching Helena and Vincent skilfully tending to the Brain Impulse Machine, gradually bringing their Commander back into the world of the living. Thoughts of the reception party were far from his mind.
‘What happened to John in the Eagle – d’you suppose it could have anything to do with Sandstrom going crazy?’ he asked the two doctors thoughtfully.
‘It looks like we’re undergoing another attack of some kind,’ Helena admitted, absorbed by her task.
‘There’s no sign of... disease?’ he asked.
Vincent looked up at him briefly. ‘There was no sign of virus or bacteria in John’s blood samples... nothing contagious, if that’s what you mean.’ He studied the control panel in front of him, and with precision turned one of the controls a hair’s breadth. He sighed with satisfaction. ‘Now... if you’ll just hang on a minute...’ He motioned to Helena and she complied by altering one of her controls. ‘I think... we... should have some results...’
As he spoke, the wave impulses on the oscilloscope tube in front of him increased rapidly.
‘We have a normal heartbeat!’ Helena clapped her hands.
Anxiously, they leaned over the prone figure of the patient, watching for other signs of life. Koenig’s chest began to heave. They heard a regular exhalation of air from his parted lips.
He awoke quickly. To their surprise, he grinned at them.
‘How do you feel?’ Helena asked, taken aback. She glanced uncertainly at the others.
‘You tell me,’ Koenig replied.
‘You’re fine,’ she told him, pressing the palm of her hand to his forehead. He tried to get up. ‘Lie still,’ she said.
She and Vincent removed the drips and electrodes from his head and body. Then they patched up the injection holes in his veins.
‘All right,’ Helena said after they finished. ‘You can get up.’
Koenig sat up eagerly, as though his brush with death h
ad had absolutely no after-effects on him at all. He rubbed his arms. ‘Well, what happened to the ship?’ he asked her. Verdeschi stood in the background, too amazed to speak.
‘Totalled. What happ...’ Helena began.
‘How long have I been out?’ Koenig interrupted urgently.
‘Just over twenty-four hours...’
‘Twenty-four...!’ He stared disbelievingly at Vincent for confirmation.
‘You had a severe concussion. It’s astounding you’ve come round so quickly,’ Vincent told him.
Helena tapped the Brain Machine. ‘Without this it could have been weeks.’ A look of pleading came into her eyes. ‘John, what happened up there?’
‘What d’you mean “what happened”? Everyone must have seen – rocket malfunction!’ Koenig retorted. ‘Well, that’s what it was, wasn’t it?’ he asked when he noticed the puzzled glances they exchanged with one another.
Helena nodded. ‘We’ll talk about it later.’
Koenig accepted that the discussion was closed. He swung his legs off the bed and sat up properly. He smiled at them, noticing Verdeschi for the first time, and nodded at him. ‘So What’s new?’
Helena bit her lip. At first glance Koenig seemed whole and sound. Yet the rapid recovery he had made still confounded her. She decided that she would accept the evidence before her eyes. With a quickly conspiratorial grin at Verdeschi and Vincent, she replied to him casually: ‘Oh, nothing really... just a rescue expedition from Earth found us.’
‘Sure,’ Koenig nodded, grinning. ‘Just like that.’
‘They came in a sort of Superswift.’
‘A Superswift?’ he asked with mock surprise.
Helena laughed gaily, delighting in the game. ‘Tony’s brother captained it and Dr Shaw came along...’
‘Dr Shaw...’ Koenig repeated, nodding again. He rested his chin on his hands and nodded bemusedly at them.
‘You remember me telling you about Dr Shaw,’ Helena per sisted.
‘Very well indeed.’
‘And Sahn’s fiancé came...’
‘Sahn’s fiancé...’
‘And Professor Hunter...’
‘Professor Hunter...’
‘And Diana Morris...’ She waited for the reaction, which was quick.
‘Diana Morris! Don’t even joke about that barracuda!’
Helena simply looked at him steadily by way of comment. It was no joke.
‘Only... you’re not joking, are you?’ he asked, suddenly serious.
She shook her head. Her eyes were moist with tenderness.
‘You really mean it!’ Koenig jumped up. ‘You mean that they... and somehow something worked... you mean they’ve got it licked?’
‘Yes!’ Helena cried, flinging herself around his neck.
‘You mean they’re here!’
‘Yes!’
‘We can make it back!’
‘Yes!’ She smothered him with kisses. ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!’
He gave a wild whoop of joy and lifted her off her feet. He began swinging her madly around the Centre.
Exhausted, he put her down and turned to Verdeschi. ‘Is it true?’
The Security Chief nodded, grinning crazily. Koenig slapped him on the back. He turned to Vincent and complimented him in the same way. ‘Then let’s join them!’ he cried.
Together, arm in arm, they filed out of the Medical Centre.
The warm, bubbly aura of pleasure that seemed to wash in and around them as they made their way along the corridor kept them in high spirits.
‘What’s more, you never told me you had such a big thing going with Diana Morris,’ Helena teased Koenig. She squeezed his hand, and glowed happily when he returned the affectionate application of pressure.
‘I didn’t want to bore you with my romantic past,’ Koenig answered flippantly.
‘I wouldn’t have thought she was your type.’
He grinned. ‘We were childhood sweethearts.’
Helena threw him an admonishing smile. ‘Diana Morris was never a child in her life.’
‘We met in the jazz-ballet group at M.I.T.’
She punched him on the shoulder. ‘You liar!’
They had arrived at the corridor leading to the Command Centre. She was about to introduce him to the first of the visitors who were standing in groups chatting, when she felt Koenig suddenly stiffen.
She, Vincent and Verdeschi let go of him in alarm. His whole body had become rigid and he was shaking. He was staring at the groups of people who had noticed him and had suddenly grown silent. He was staring at them in terror... and disgust.
‘NO!’ he screamed. ‘NO-O-O!’
He put his hands to his face and hid the sight of them from his eyes. He stared dementedly out at them through his fingers. Verdeschi and Vincent moved towards him in concern, but he shrank away. He reached for his laser, but he found he hadn’t got one.
‘Stay back!’ he rasped out a warning. ‘Don’t come near me!’
Consumed with fear and now, the glimmerings of rage, he moved past the silent figures towards the Command Centre doors. When he got to them, he froze at the sight of something inside.
Perplexed, and frightened themselves, Verdeschi and the two doctors ran after him. As they were about to pull him round, the figure of Diana appeared and pushed her way confidently through the motionless crowd towards him.
Her face was a mask of treachery as she smiled disarmingly at him. ‘John! Darling!’ She held out her arms to embrace him.
Koenig’s fists clenched. ‘Stay away from me!’ he yelled out frenziedly. His face had grown deathly pale and beads of sweat stood out on his head. He looked extremely dangerous.
Verdeschi grabbed him firmly by the arm. ‘What’s happened? What’s the matter, John?’
Helena cried openly, distressed by the deterioration in Koenig. She knew now that she had made a mistake. She should not have let him leave his bed. ‘He was fine!’ she sobbed.
Koenig stood frozen in Verdeschi’s grasp, neither encouraging them nor holding them off. He seemed about to freak out.
Diana had come to an uncertain rest in front of him. Her closeness seemed to trigger something off and the threatened fit erupted.
With maniacal force he tore himself away from Verdeschi and began hurling people out of his path. Someone went carreering into a bank of equipment, smashing it in a gush of sparks and smoke.
‘GET OUT OF HERE!’ he screamed hoarsely at them. ‘CLEAR THE COMMAND CENTRE!’
‘John! Please...’ Helena grasped him. Vincent tried to pull her away, alarmed for her safety. But instead of harming her he seemed protective to her.
‘Helena, get behind me! Stay behind me!’ he shouted. His face had lost much of its initial fear and now he looked about him in the manner of one who has a particularly unpleasant task to perform. He marched warily towards his console and pressed a button. ‘Weapons Section!’
Maya appeared in front of Helena and Verdesclii. ‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know, maybe I got him up too soon,’ Helena replied miserably. She seemed to be recovering. But Koenig’s next words astounded them all anew.
‘Arm all lasers!’ he commanded grimly. His face was now as dark as thunder. He pointed to the Big Screen. ‘Destroy that ship!’ He snapped at Verdeschi: ‘Tony! Here, by me!’
He glanced paranoidly at Alan Carter and Joe Ehrlich, who were closing on him, trying to take him protectively by the arm.
‘John, it’s all right,’ Carter told him softly.
‘Alan... leave me alone!’ Koenig grated. He seemed to look almost despairingly around him. ‘Can’t you see!’
When they didn’t respond to his requests, he became violent again, and began shaking them off. Their bodies reeled backwards against banks of equipment, causing a series of crackling short circuits.
He ran over to Carter’s slumped body and withdrew his laser. He turned and straightened. He pointed the gun drunkenly at Guido. ‘You
first!’
A look of petrification came over the Italian’s face.
‘NO, JOHN!’ Verdeschi yelled. ‘I’M NOT GOING TO ALLOW YOU TO DO THAT!’
The Security Chief fired his own gun first. Unlike Carter’s, it was set to stun.
A look of anguished pain crossed Koenig’s features – the haunting look of a man misunderstood. He glowed momentarily with the laser’s modified energy, then slumped, unconscious, to the floor.
CHAPTER FIVE
By the time they had got Koenig back to his Medical Centre bed, he was struggling again, an insane determination to escape that chilled Helena to the core. He wore a rational pleading expression that she couldn’t quite ally with the madness she knew to have possessed him.
Deeply upset, she watched Vincent and Verdeschi restrain him while she mixed a sedative.
‘Got to get out of here...’ Koenig panted glassily. ‘Things to be done... answers to be found...’
‘Take it easy, John,’ Verdeschi said. ‘We don’t want to put you out again.’
Vincent managed to attach some of the electrodes back on his arm and head, and began taking readings of his vital functions.
‘Danger... All in danger!’ Koenig moaned. ‘Whole base... All the people...’ He was weak from his ordeal.
Verdeschi turned appealingly to Helena. ‘Can’t you do something?’
‘We’re trying, Tony, we’re trying,’ was all she could say.
‘His blood pressure’s up,’ Vincent commented. ‘His adrenalin level is very high.’
Helena seemed not to hear. ‘It could be he just wasn’t ready for the shock of the rescue.’
Koenig went suddenly still. He seemed to tense at the sound of her voice. His eyes cleared and his brow crinkled in alarm. ‘Helena!’ he cried.
She almost dropped the preparation she was making and turned to him, worried sick. ‘Yes, John, you’re fine,’ she tried to sound convincing and reassuring. ‘Just stay quiet.’
‘Those things out there – what are they?’ he asked, strangely calm. He seemed almost to have reverted back to his usual, rational self. But Helena knew that whatever had Koenig in its grip was playing tricks with them.
Space 1999 - The Psychomorph Page 10