Space 1999 - The Psychomorph

by Michael Butterworth

  ‘Or it was testing out what kind of control it had over us,’ Koenig finished for her. ‘It tried a more crude method first of all,’ he recalled, ‘by taking over poor Carolyn Powell. Unfortunately the Lambda Waves it produced in our minds made us all react oddly, so we were able to find out in time. Now it’s over-looked another thing – your machine.’ He turned to Helena. ‘But then it couldn’t have been expected to know about that when we didn’t even know ourselves.’

  Helena paled. ‘It’s terrifying! They can make us do anything. What did Sandstrom think he was doing, for instance, when he tried to kill you?’

  ‘More to the point... what do Alan and Ehrlich think they’re doing in that Superswift concoction?’ The pieces of the macabre jigsaw gradually began to fit together inside Koenig’s head.

  ‘I – I told you.’ Helena seemed suddenly confused. ‘They’ve... they were supposed to have gone back to Earth...’

  Without waiting for her to finish, Koenig ran over to the wall monitor and hit one of the communicator buttons. ‘That’s where the aliens have made them think they’ve gone!’ he shouted. The screen lit up and revealed a picture of the austere lunar landscape. Savagely, he punched another button. This time he got a long shot of the Nuclear Waste Domes.

  Even from this distance they could see the low outline of the Eagle ship crouched in front of the Monitoring Station. Koenig punched more buttons in rapid succession and gradually brought the scene closer. Now they saw the open door of the station and the tell-tale darkness inside gaping at them.

  ‘But that’s where they really are,’ Koenig commented grimly. ‘Still on the Moon. Superswift, rubbish!’

  ‘But that is the Superswift...!’ Helena began, referring to the Eagle. She realized that she was seeing the ship in a different light. To her it was still a Superswift. ‘All right, I believe you,’ she said, trying to calm herself.

  ‘Question is, what are they doing there?’ Koenig scowled. ‘Or is that a stupid question?’

  Maya frowned. ‘They can’t do any harm – at least not without atomic fuel.’

  Koenig punched yet another button. Another of the Moon Base’s surface buildings appeared on the screen. The legend on its door read:

  ATOMIC FUEL STORE

  He grunted, in some satisfaction. The doors were still closed. But then, to one side, he noticed an empty Moon Buggy. It had been used recently, judging by the careless way it had been parked.

  ‘There’s your atomic fuel,’ he said in alarm. ‘The Aliens are going to make Carter and Ehrlich explode the dumps.’

  ‘They won’t do it’! Helena said. ‘They can’t make Carter do something that is basically against his...’ She trailed off lamely, realizing that they could. The technique of the Telepathic Depth Hypnosis, when it had been simulated in the laboratory, had been known to cause test subjects to behave in direct contradiction to their will.

  ‘You’re right,’ she agreed, horrified. ‘They won’t know they’re doing it. They’ll think they’re doing quite different things back on Earth!’

  ‘We’ve got to stop them before they get to that...’

  He broke off, noticing that the doors to the Fuel Store were sliding slowly, irrevocably open. From the blackness within two figures clad in space suits emerged. One was Carter, the other looked like it could be Ehrlich. They were carrying a long cylindrical case of atomic fuel.

  ‘I should have had that old store closed down and that fuel buried a long time ago,’ Koenig declared hotly. ‘We don’t use it any more.’ He wracked his mind trying to think of their next move. ‘Where’s Bartlett?’

  ‘He’d be at the monitoring station preparing...’ Maya didn’t need to finish.

  They stood stock still for a few moments, watching the two figures on the small screen carry the large cylinder into the Moon Buggy. The figures dumped their load and walked back towards the Store.

  Koenig saw a way. He whipped out his comlock and punched out the sequence that locked him into contact with the Main Computer. The Main Computer was programmed to act on voice instruction when this frequency was used. ‘Close and lock entrance to Atomic Fuel Store,’ he ordered it. He watched with bated breath to see if his command was carried out. The old Store hadn’t been used much since Tiranium had been introduced, and its mechanisms might conceivably be malfunctioning.

  The doors obediently closed – just as the two figures crossed the threshold – sealing them inside.

  ‘We’ve got to go after them!’ Koenig turned from the screen and started for the Medical Centre doors.

  He was arrested by Helena’s fretful voice. ‘John! How are you going to get an Eagle? They won’t understand...’

  Koenig paused briefly. ‘Last time I behaved like a madman. This time I know what’s going on. They’ll see I’m rational.’ He opened the doors and ran out into the corridor.

  The Psychic Waves began buffeting against Helena’s mind again, and she gestured weakly to Maya for support. They clung to each other, the one in despair, the other sympathy, while they waited to hear from Koenig.

  The Waves of control beat against Koenig as he raced along the corridor, pushing his way past the ineffectual Jelly Beings that tried to block his path.

  An icy wind followed him as the straining mass of the Space Amoeba summoned the residues of its strength to overthrow him.

  A thousand alien thoughts blocked the Commander’s mind, but he remorselessly fought them off. His skin numbed with the cold, he fought an overwhelming desire to lie down and curl up and escape.

  As he reached the Command Centre, the shrieking wind dropped, and the Jelly Beings ceased to block his path. The Space Amoeba’s rippling ocean stilled. It tried another tactic.

  Koenig made his way through the obscene fraternizing mix of Alphans and Aliens and into the Command Centre. The noise of the grisly reception party died away. Koenig looked around the horror show and spied Verdeschi.

  ‘Tony?’ he said, in what he thought was a commanding, authoritative voice. ‘I want an Eagle for immediate take-off.’

  Sudden screams of panic came from the Alphan members of the party. Their eyes were on Koenig and they backed away in horror from what they saw.

  Verdeschi stood his ground. For a split second the figure of the Commander had looked like the old Koenig he knew and desperately needed. His hopes had risen through the wash of the pleasure bath that he and the other Alphans were immersed in. He hoped that there would at last be someone he could talk to about the doubts he had felt – and still felt to a certain degree – about the events that were taking place. But the moj mentary glimpse of rationality and coolness that he had caught in Koenig’s features were ruined in a moment.

  The Commander snarled. His face contorted abruptly into a horrific, savage grimace, and his eyes swept around the room in an enraged, demented glare. His whole body shook and he was frothing from his mouth as he spoke.

  Sudden anger returned to Verdeschi; not for the Commander, but for Maya and Helena, who had let him escape again, uncured.

  He rested his hand cautiously on his laser gun.

  Koenig faltered in surprise. The reaction of the Alphans had knocked him off his guard. They were reacting as if he were a Jelly Being, as if he were... realization dawned.

  He was probably being seen as something unpleasant. His mind thought rapidly. But there was nothing he could do now to alter the situation. There wasn’t time.

  He decided that whatever he looked like he would have to try to persuade Verdeschi. It was vital.

  As coolly and collectedly as he could, he walked toward the Security Chief, inwardly not a little unnerved by the latter’s itchy trigger finger.

  Verdeschi hesitated as the frothing madman that now bore almost no resemblance to Koenig, took several steps forward and then sprang at him. The madman sprang with the ferocity of a caged tiger attempting to regain his freedom. He fell on him, biting and clawing, and began throttling the life out of him.

  With a desperate burs
t of strength, Verdeschi threw him off. He clambered to his feet before the madman could stop him, and drew out his laser.

  ‘Stop, or I’ll fire!’ he yelled, fighting for breath.

  The madman faltered in his second attack, and stopped. ‘Tony, listen to me!’ he growled. ‘You must do as I say.’

  ‘You’re insane, John!’ Verdeschi trembled. ‘Don’t come near me or I’ll shoot you!’ Even now he did not want to shoot, and once more he hesitated.

  The slavering animal shot towards him and punched him in the stomach. With inhuman strength it rammed him up against a wall.

  ‘Tony!’ it shrieked in his ears. ‘I’m the only sane man in this base!’

  The snub nose of the laser was pressing into the creature’s stomach. Instead of replying, Verdeschi squeezed the trigger – enveloping them both in a burning, numbing globe of light.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Helena and Maya watched the unconscious Koenig being stretchered back into the Medical Centre. They wore expressions of shocked dismay.

  The Orderlies trooped in, supervized by a pallid, exasperated Verdeschi. ‘What are you doing letting him roam around?’ he shouted at the two women. ‘He could hurt himself, and us!’ He rubbed his arms which still ached from the secondary dosage of light energy he had received. The Orderlies helped Helena lift the stricken figure on to the bed.

  ‘It’s not a question of letting...’ Maya began angrily. A look of sheer paranoia was beginning to build up on her face as she thought of what Carter and the two possessed physicists might already be doing. But Verdeschi cut her off.

  ‘Maya – he could hurt you, too.’

  ‘He’s not unbalanced!’ Helena shouted at him from the bedside.

  ‘Not unbalanced!’ Verdeschi spluttered. ‘He...’

  Koenig was simply stunned and he would recover, Helena decided... if they now had a future left to recover in. She turned on Verdeschi. ‘There are things you don’t know.’

  Verdeschi snorted. ‘I know insanity when I see it.’

  ‘You don’t even know what you are seeing!’ she replied furiously.

  Verdeschi’s scorn turned to puzzlement. ‘What’s that...? I don’t what...?’

  Maya shook her head warningly at Helena, and the doctor caught her meaning. She stopped herself just in time. ‘Oh, nothing,’ she pretended impatience. ‘Just try to be a little less gun-happy, would you?’

  The Italian snorted again and marched from the room, fuming with rage.

  Maya and Helena rushed back to Koenig. They dismissed the Orderlies.

  ‘He wouldn’t have taken in what you were going to tell him,’ Maya said when they were alone again. ‘The Aliens control him like everyone else. He’d have thought you were mad, too.’ She peered in consternation at the Commander. ‘Is there a quick way of bringing him round?’

  Helena nodded, loading a syringe and squirting it in the air. ‘A short cut.’

  She slid the needle full of stimulant deftly into Koenig’s arm, and injected him. She withdrew the needle and slapped a plaster over the wound. She began shaking him, calling his name.

  They waited tensely. Slowly he came round, and opened his eyes. He stared around him in a daze, trying to re-orientate himself, then sat up. His cheeks were flushed and he was breathing rapidly.

  ‘Give me some more of that,’ was the first thing he said.

  ‘It’s the most powerful stimulant I have,’ Helena told him reprovingly. ‘I’ve given you as much as I dare.’

  With a great effort of will he swung his legs back off the bed and flicked his eyes back on the wall screen. It had been left on and was still trained on the Fuel Store doors. A sinister development had taken place.

  The three of them watched in despair as a circle of metal in the centre of one of the doors was pushed out. Carter and Ehrlich started to climb out carrying flame lances – the powerful cutting tools which had aided them in their escape.

  Koenig’s head swam. His senses still reeled under the impact of the laser, from which his system hadn’t yet properly recovered. He had to act fast, but his brain would not function.

  He turned wrathfully to Helena. ‘Alan is on his way to blow up the Moon. More!’

  Rapidly she broke open another phial and reloaded the syringe. With the same technique as before, she injected him in his other arm.

  He exhaled heavily, and shook with sudden elation as the drug was pumped round him by his blood. He felt sick and deathly ill, at the same time he felt excited and all-powerful. Ignoring the terrible strain his body was put to to achieve these effects, he staggered to his feet and began pacing up and down the Medical Centre, looking now like the tiger that Verdeschi had mistaken him to be.

  On the screen, the two saboteurs dropped their lances into the Moon Buggy and set out on their journey of destruction...

  With less overt malice, Carter and Ehrlich lowered a large picnic hamper in the boot of a small sports car.

  After the hectic reception, they had been put through by the Press, the scientists – even the President had spoken to them, commending them for their valour, and welcoming them home – and sundry curious bystanders, they had rented a small cottage in the country with the intention of taking a well-deserved break. They needed to experience their new-found freedom to the full, to get their minds adjusted again to the overwhelming feelings of joy and delight that returning to Earth had made them feel.

  The cottage was white-washed and set on a narrow, winding lane in the midst of rolling fields and woodland. It was part of a small, quiet hamlet of buildings. The air was fresh and clear and filled with birdsong; it was the ideal, idyllic kind of place on Earth which they remembered from their childhoods – a place and time that they thought had been lost forever.

  They re-entered the low, wooden door of the sunny cottage and re-emerged a few moments later carrying folding chairs and blankets. Carter closed the door behind him and they returned to the car. They dumped the gear inside the open convertible, and climbed inside. Soon they were speeding off into the distance, toward a skyline of mountains and forests and hidden lakes.

  Koenig thumped his fists on every object that he passed as he paced up and down.

  ‘How long would it take to process everyone on your machine?’ he asked Helena. ‘Make everyone on Alpha immune to the Aliens, like Maya and me?’

  ‘Days, weeks,’ Helena replied unhappily. ‘Even if you could get them to agree.’

  ‘We’ve got to get them back... break the Aliens’ hold on their minds.’ He resumed his pacing. It would be suicide, he realized, to step outside the Medical Centre doors again without a proper plan of action – no matter how close the Moon was to being blown into oblivion.

  ‘There could be a way...’ Helena began, hesitantly.

  ‘What? What is it? What way?’

  ‘I sometimes use a sonic anaesthetic instead of drugs...’

  ‘White Noise!’ Maya interjected excitedly. ‘It works by blocking certain nerve-paths and synapses in the brain!’

  Helena nodded, still uncertain. ‘In theory it’s possible it might also obstruct the telepathic input of the Aliens.’

  Koenig ceased pacing and a glimmer of hope brightened his dark features. ‘It would need to be amplified and transmitted to everyone on Alpha.’

  ‘It could be.’ Helena walked towards an ante-room and disappeared inside. A moment later she re-emerged, holding up a canister. ‘The experimental tape Ben used when he ran some tests with it. We got a good result...’ She showed it to Koenig, but adding the warning: ‘We had to stop because of a risk of side effects. We never got round to testing it on a mass sample.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter now.’ Koenig snatched it from her. ‘We either all get damaged – or we all die.’

  Hi-Fi sound surrounded Jack Bartlett as he lazed back on large silk seat cushions in the luxury apartment he had chosen as his retreat.

  The pad was quietly but expensively furnished, though there wasn’t much furniture. Every
room was carpeted wall to wall. In the bedroom was a heated, illuminated water bed. Cushions and low divan tables struck the style throughout. On the pastel-coloured walls hung expensive paintings and other forms of wall art. There were rows of spotlights for altering the lighting, sophisticated musical equipment and conveniently-situated controls for operating it all.

  He lay back in total bliss, depressing a button on the portable control panel by his side. Somewhere in the room a stylus dropped precisely into place on a disc, and the deep, vibrant notes of Jimi Hendrix’s Voodoo Chile started playing...

  Bartlett’s fingers turned the control knob labelled WASTE DOME THREE on the console in front of him.

  He was inside the Nuclear Monitoring Station.

  It was a small, technical room with a single console and, apart from the airlock, a row of three doors marked respectively, WASTE DOME ONE... TWO... THREE. After years of disuse both the console and the doors were functioning as though new.

  The airlock doors had been left open to the vacuum of space and the prickling stars. He worked methodically, step by step, preparing the third dome for its deadly conjunction with the atomic fuel core that Carter and Ehrlich were bringing. Like them, he worked mindlessly, faithlessly, unaware of the catastrophic, irreversible damage he was about to cause. When the dome exploded, the Moon, (already weakened from the previous explosions that had occurred on its surface) would likely crack in pieces.

  ‘The Aliens aren’t going to sit still for it,’ Koenig warned, as he, Maya and Helena ran from the Medical Centre, armed with lasers and the lethal White Noise tape. ‘They’ll have read our minds.’

  ‘They’ll fool people into trying to stop us,’ Maya agreed.

  ‘Make sure you’re set on stun if they do,’ he said, leading the way towards the Command Centre. Already the dark blobs of the Jelly Beings were converging assiduously on them from all directions – from behind, from in front and from the walls of the corridors where they had agglommerated in conspiratorial groups. The creatures were unable to move as fast as the Alphans but there were suddenly so many that it was impossible to escape them.