Space 1999 - The Psychomorph

by Michael Butterworth

  They heaved their way through the squelching, stinking carcasses, occasionally blasting them with their lasers. The air was soon filled with the acrid smell of burnt garbage and biological wind. Then, from behind came a series of loud yells and shouts.

  ‘Verdeschi’s men!’ Koenig swore grimly. ‘They’re after us!’

  Ahead of them the corridor stretched on for a good distance before curving, offering them no escape, They turned and faced the guards. It was ironic that the sector they most had to be wary of was the human one – and not the Alien.

  ‘Hold it!’ one of the Security Guards shouted, drawing closer to them. ‘Throw your guns on the floor where we can see them!’ He was part of a party of four, the most senior member. While the others covered him, he advanced. His face was expressionless. ‘Very well.’ His lips curled into an evil snarl. ‘Give me that!’ He extended his free hand towards Helena and opened it. He meant the tape.

  Helena’s gun was still aimed at him, now on stun, and she squeezed the fire button. Too late, he pressed his own, collapsing in a bright aura of light. His gun burned harmlessly upward before dying away.

  The other three guards activated their guns. Koenig and Maya dived to the floor, below their line of fire. The Guard who aimed at Helena, shot wide. Before any one of them had the chance to shoot again, they sagged to the ground, caught by the return fire dextrously played by Koenig and Maya.

  ‘The Psi Waves must be affecting their minds,’ Koenig muttered disgruntedly as they rose to their feet to avoid being smothered by a passing Jelly Being. ‘Either that or they’re out of training. They couldn’t shoot their own fingers off!’

  He knelt to retrieve one of the Guard’s lasers. He studied it, then threw it back. He turned grimly to Maya and Helena. ‘It’s on kill!’

  They sped on their way.

  As they drew closer to their destination, the corridors became more crowded with the obnoxious Jellies. Evidently they were spilling out of the Command Centre in an attempt to block the path by sheer force of numbers. But their plan didn’t work.

  The three Alphans burnt and melted a pathway through, and burst into the control room. Immediately, two deluded Alphan men hurled themselves at them. One came from either side, only to receive deft karate chops from Koenig, who was in top form by courtesy of the drugs.

  The men reeled to the floor and fell still. Koenig stepped over their bodies and positioned himself squarely in front of Verdeschi, who was standing by his console. The party had tapered off now and the room was mainly full of jilted Alphans wondering where their party guests had got to. He fired at one of the consoles near to him and it erupted in a small explosion of crackling plastic and smoke.

  The Alphans in the Centre froze.

  ‘The next man that moves,’ Koenig warned. He beckoned to the two women. ‘Helena, Maya – the tape.’ He jerked his gun at Sahn. ‘Help them.’

  Helena moved to Sahn’s console and together they started loading the tape into the special recorder.

  A Jelly Being by the side of Verdeschi slurped uncomfortably. It was Guido. Verdeschi stepped forward towards Koenig, blatantly ignoring Koenig’s threat. His face broke into a patronizing smile – the kind used to humour mental patients – and Koenig tensed. His finger tightened on the firing button.

  ‘Shut up, Tony,’ he said without ceremony, before the Security Chief had a chance to speak. ‘And keep back.’

  Verdeschi’s hand moved towards his own laser.

  ‘Don’t do it.’

  Verdeschi’s smile paled, and his hand froze in mid-air. He opened his mouth, about to speak, but thought better of it. His mind was thinking along channels designed to outwit Koenig when the first bars of a weird intense crackling noise emanated into the room.

  ‘There’s your White Noise,’ Helena turned to Koenig. ‘With as much amplification as I can give it.’

  A crease of lines formed on Koenig’s forehead. ‘Will everyone on the Base be getting it?’

  She nodded. ‘Everyone.’

  ‘What about someone on the surface?’

  ‘They’ll be getting it through their helmet receivers, but there won’t be a lot of power. If the Aliens choose to block it off...’

  Verdeschi was about to intervene again. ‘John...’ he began pleadingly. Without warning, the semblance of his brother Guido began to waver out of existence. He was replaced by the fearful jelly shape of an Alien. He gasped in horror as his mind gradually cleared, under the deconditioning effect of the weird noise coming from the tape recorder.

  There were similar gasps and more than a few screams from other Alphans as the familiar outlines of their beloved friends and relatives dissolved away into the reality of the Jelly Beings. Dr Shaw, Diana, Louisa, Burdette, Rockwell... all changed.

  Verdeschi was the first to come round from the shock. He ignored Koenig now and yelled at the Alphans instead. ‘Blast them!!’

  Koenig ran over to him and gripped his arm. ‘Tony, it won’t do any good...’

  As he spoke, the Jelly Beings abruptly vanished. All trace of them – their smell, their spore, the bits and pieces of their decaying protoplasm that had fallen everywhere – vanished.

  Everyone stared around them in disbelief.

  ‘We’ve... won?’ Helena asked uncertainly over the background sound of the White Noise and the crying and sobbing of Alphans who suddenly found their hopes of returning to Earth shattered.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Koenig said, puzzled. He called to Sahn. ‘Give me the Atomic Fuel Store.’

  Sahn punched a button and the picture of the Store flashed on the screen. The Moon Buggy was parked outside again, and Carter and Ehrlich were carrying out more of the long cylinders. The space-suited men dropped the cylinder into the Buggy and climbed inside. They began bumping slowly off across the uneven terrain of the Moon.

  ‘We haven’t stopped them,’ Koenig stared at the figures with an almost manic determination. ‘They’re heading for the Waste Domes! With the fuel,’ he added for the benefit of Verdeschi, who was gradually piecing together what had happened with an increasingly alarmed look on his face. He ran from the Centre, motioning Maya and Koenig to follow him. Helena stayed behind, caught in her role as Doctor by several of the Alphans who were unable to bear once more the pain of the Cold Light of Reality.

  The corridors looked clinical and cold in their normal lighting. They were bare and almost empty. Most Alphans had retreated to the privacy of their rooms, disorientated and distressed.

  Koenig sped along them, followed by Verdeschi and Maya. They stopped breathlessly at the entrance to one of the Travel Tubes. He punched the ‘door open’ button and they piled inside. Soon they were being swept away inside the Tube’s capsule, down the long, gleaming bore towards the Launch Pad of Eagle Five.

  ‘The Space Field knows about the White Noise,’ Maya commented as they entered the airlock of the Eagle Ship. ‘It must have abandoned us and concentrated all its powers on Alan and the other two.’

  They closed the hatchway hastily behind them and ran to their posts in the Pilot Section.

  ‘If that’s what it’s done, it can still control them,’ Koenig said, starting the powerful drive rockets of the craft. ‘It probably receives just enough energy from the normal radiation level of the Moon Base to carry on...’

  His hand slipped off one button and on to another. ‘Helena!’ he called urgently as her face appeared on the monitor. ‘Cut the power. All except communications.’

  ‘It means all Life Support Systems will be out,’ she warned him. ‘We can’t last long without them... we’ll freeze.’

  ‘If we don’t stop Alan and the others there’ll be no life on this rock to support,’ Koenig barked back.

  Her face disappeared. He hit another button. The Moon Buggy carrying the cylinders appeared. He announced himself to the figures over their helmet radios. ‘Alan, Ehrlich, this is Commander Koenig. Do you read me? Alan...’ Either something was wrong with the transmission, or th
ey weren’t willing to listen to him. Koenig’s intuition told him it was the latter...

  A cold breeze momentarily wafted into the faces of Carter and Ehrlich as they motored through tall pine-trees searching for a place to picnic.

  Ehrlich beamed happily at Carter. ‘I’m just happy to be alive,’ he said. He looked behind him in the back seat. ‘With these two gorgeous lovelies, who wouldn’t be?’

  Where picnic hamper and chairs had been dumped, now sat two stunningly beautiful girls. One was a blonde and one was a brunette. Neither looked as if they’d passed much time since leaving high school. In response to Ehrlich’s look of anticipatory ecstasy, they giggled nervously...

  ‘Alan, Ehrlich!’ Koenig tried again. ‘This is Commander Koenig. Do you read me?’

  There was still no reply. Verdeschi kept the ship on course while he radioed. Maya had taken up a post in the Passenger Section and began taking readings of the terrain below them.

  ‘Touch down in front of them, Tony,’ Koenig ordered.

  ‘No, John,’ Maya’s voice called out. ‘The ground below is crumbly. With the weight of the Eagle we’d go straight through the surface.’

  Koenig nodded. ‘OK. Drop me in front of them.’ Leaving Verdeschi in charge, he ran swiftly to join Maya in the Passenger Section. He pulled out a space-suit from one of the lockers and began climbing into it.

  He stepped into the airlock and waited for the inner doors to close behind him. He reported to Verdeschi. The Italian radioed back to say that they were in position.

  The airlock depressurized, and the outer doors rolled open on a vista of jagged mountains and starry sky. Quickly he attached two clips to his belt and slid over the side, taken gently down by two descent cables which held him at his centre of gravity by the clips.

  In the near distance he could see the Moon Buggy rolling and jerking towards him on its great spongy wheels.

  He touched ground and unclipped himself expertly. ‘Take her away,’ he radioed, not taking his eyes from the Buggy for a second. The immense bulk of the Eagle above him ascended, its rockets blazing down from their manifolds at each end, safely distant from him.

  It rose and hovered in space, waiting for further instructions.

  The Moon Buggy was now almost on him, and he could see the two helmeted drivers clearly. He kicked at the lunar surface, sufficiently hard to send him on a long jump that landed him in the immediate path of the vehicle. He waved frantically for it to stop...

  ‘What the...?’ Carter braked the four-seater sports car hard.

  In front of them, a masked gunman, concealed behind a bend, had appeared. He brandished a revolver at them and motioned them to stop.

  ‘Down!’ he yelled at the two girls.

  The girls screamed and did as they were bid while Carter grimly accelerated towards the waylayer, hoping that he wouldn’t be hit.

  The gunman opened fire, but the bullets sailed harmlessly past the car and he was forced to jump to one side – or be killed himself...

  Koenig clutched his laser, which he had set to stun, and climbed clumsily to his feet. He had rolled about six metres away. As he rose, he slipped again and the gun was sent arcing through the air into a crevasse. Once more he raised himself to his feet. He re-orientated and noticed that the Moon Buggy, far from keeping to its course toward the three domes, had commenced circling him ominously. It aligned itself with him and then sped rapidly towards him, travelling far faster than was safe in the airless gravity-less conditions.

  Again, Koenig side-stepped. This time he leaped on board...

  The gunman sidestepped and caught hold of the car, and Carter cursed himself for having returned. He should have driven off and left the man to it. But some foolish whim had prevented him from doing so.

  The girls were screaming and kicking at the intruder, trying to beat him off.

  Carter’s jaw tightened. Trusting to luck he put the car in a tight turn. The gunman was flung off by centrifugal force and rolled into the grassy verge by the lane side...

  Koenig rolled over and over, smashing into boulders and scraping against jagged rocks.

  The Buggy swerved and headed for him again. He lifted himself carefully to his feet and retreated towards the safety of a large outcrop of rock, using boulders as cover every time the Buggy tried to ram him.

  The transporter drove at him one last time, propelled by desperate forces that didn’t know when to stop.

  It accelerated dangerously, its glinting fenders and the crouched shapes of the two space-suited occupants bearing savagely down on him:

  At the last moment, he kicked downward and launched him. self up in the air. He arced over the top of the Buggy, knowing with anguish in his heart that the two luckless drivers would impact with the rock face.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘Drop me there,’ Maya called to Verdeschi over her helmet radio.

  Koenig needed help, and she had dressed herself ready.

  Verdeschi obliged, and once more brought the craft down, sparing no fuel on their desperate mission of survival. The rockets burned and thundered and Maya was lowered on to the surface. She unclipped herself and ran to where the three figures were fighting by the motionless Moon Buggy.

  The Commander was getting the worst of the beating, pinned down by Carter while an incensed Ehrlich tugged at his vital breathing pipes, trying to detach them.

  She acted quickly. It.was not worth risking defeat by adding herself to the affray in her usual Psychon form. She was no match for two posssessed men.

  A creature that had once existed on her home planet before it exploded came to mind. Originally evolved to breathe air, it had adapted over the years to Psychon’s dwindling surface atmosphere. As Psychons’ air had disappeared it had adapted itself to survive the cold and the vacuum. It had been able to survive without air or warmth for periods of quite considerable duration, before being finally forced back into its subterranean lair where breathable gases were emitted.

  Little had the creature known at the time that its stubborn resistance to racial extinction was to reap benefits for a race of beings it had never known, many years in the future, long after its own race had perished.

  Maya transformed her molecular structure into its pattern and she lumbered to the rescue of Koenig.

  She had a thick, tough hide to withstand the vacuum, and matts of long dark hair to withstand the cold. Her lungs were like steel cages that compressed and stored the air that had been fed into them by the oxygen packs. She stood about two metres tall, andwas powerfully built to give her the strength and endurance that she would need to escape to her lair. Two large, fierce horns stood erect on her round hairy head to protect herself from the attacks of other creatures like herself. A single eye encased in a tough, translucent membrane blazed sullenly from the centre of her forehead to give her unrivalled sight to see her foes.

  She came up behind Carter and Ehrlich and tore them violently from their victim. Ehrlich fell to the ground, and sagged his suit on a jagged rock. He lay helplessly, dying, waiting for the cold to get to him.

  Carter made for the Buggy, which, miraculously was still working, and backed it away from the rock face and drove off.

  The Vacuum Creature shimmered. She converted herself back to her space-suited form. She moved to Koenig and helped him re-attach his breathing tubes. He climbed to his feet.

  Ehrlich lay motionless a few metres away and they went over to look at him. Maya knelt besides him and located the rip. Inside his helmet Joe Ehrlich looked deathly white.

  ‘Repair his suit, Maya,’ Koenig’s voice crackled over to her. ‘Tony,’ he called up to the Eagle Ship. ‘Ehrlich’s lost most of his air. Get him back to Alpha; he needs depressurizing... that’s his only chance.’

  ‘Coming in now, John.’

  Above them, the blazing Eagle came in.

  Koenig turned to the horizon of domes where the Buggy had headed and calculated the distance it had gone. Judging that he would just about have time
to catch the vehicle up, he kicked once more at the ground and set out after it. When he landed, he kicked again, and bounded in a series of long, graceful strides across the lunar surface. The distance between the Buggy and himself reduced. But he realized with despair that he wouldn’t make it. Carter just about had the edge on him. He would arrive at the Monitoring Station in time to off-load at least a few of the cylinders and lock himself inside the building with Bartlett before he got there.

  As he bounded towards the domes he watched all that he had surmised, happen.

  The Semblance that was Carter activated the doors of the Monitoring Station, sealing him and the Semblance of Bartlett inside.

  Directed by powers behind his control, Carter unhooked the thermal lance he had slung across his shoulder and started it burning. As Koenig reached the outside of the doors and began madly pressing the button he spot-welded the doors together, making it impossible for them to function.

  The airlock pressurized, they stepped through. They dragged in three of the heavy atomic fuel cylinders with them into the inner chamber, now flooded with air. The doors behind them closed and they removed their helmets.

  Not taking any chances, Carter’s controller decided to have him weld these doors too. Then, via Bartlett’s silent motioning, it directed the two men to carry the fuel cores through the door marked WASTE DOME THREE.

  A short corridor of polished steel lay in front of them. It was flanked with about six of the Jelly Beings who stood motionlessly overseeing them. At the head of the corridor was a door marked with an indecipherable notice. They moved through the Jelly Beings towards it...

  Bartlett’s apartment had changed. The music had stopped. He was standing sometime in the Past, in a roof garden, carrying a small child. The child was laughing gaily as he charged around the little fountains and terraces with her on his shoulders. In the ornamental doorway leading to the stairs, his pretty wife stood watching them. She was dressed in the cotton print dress he always remembered her by. The scene was the last happy scene he remembered having taken place before his ill-fated assignment to the Moon Base...