by John Rankine
‘The people. If there are people living there. Imagine if we were back on Earth and a moon appeared. How would we react?’
‘By this time, we’d have worked out the likely effects. Cities drowned out. Devastation. We’d be opening deep shelters.’
‘How keen would we be to give sanctuary to travellers from the wrecker?’
‘We’d understand they had no part in it.’
‘Some would, some wouldn’t. It would depend on the culture level.’
‘The sooner we make contact the better.’
A blip from the communications post made a period. Sandra’s face appeared on the screen.
‘Commander?’
Koenig shoved down a stud.
‘Koenig.’
‘I have contact. Commander.’
Koenig raced down the steps to the operations floor of Main Mission. Pelorus was filling the big screen from edge to edge. Sandra Benes threw a switch and what she had conjured out of the wasteland was loud and clear. Main Mission throbbed to a fantastic electronic beat. It had time and it had rhythm. It was organised noise.
Victor Bergman, the specialist, said ‘Music! We’re dealing with an advanced culture.’
Privately, Koenig reckoned that some very primitive communities had gotten around to beating a drum, but before he could speak, he saw Sandra Benes close her spectacular eyes and slip sideways to a point of no return.
Paul Morrow saw the movement and was calling sharply, ‘Sandra?’ as he hurled himself across to catch her. He never made it. Mind blanked by the hammering rhythm, he reeled like a drunk and dropped to his knees. Kano slumped over the computer console. Tanya fell as she struggled to get to her feet. Koenig was a half stride from Sandra’s desk when black night filled his eyes.
Main Mission was filled with the insistent beat, but the top brass of Moonbase Alpha were wrapped in a cloud of unknowing. The Eagle command console blipped urgently and Alan Carter’s face appeared on the monitor.
‘Commander?’
He might have been calling in an echoing vault.
‘Commander? Do you read me? Eagle Six calling Main Mission.’
He went through the sequence again, thumping his console with a gauntleted fist in the best tradition of a highly technical service. There was no joy. Using a direct link, he called the duty team in the bunker below the launch-pad silo. ‘Jake?’
‘Captain?’
‘What’s with Main Mission? They don’t answer.’
Carter watched him try. He had a miniature picture of the inside of the bunker on the Eagle’s scanner. Jake Henshaw, a slow moving but meticulous operator, stood at the communications post and tuned for a view into Main Mission. The picture within a picture was so small that Carter was leaning forward peering into it. Small and sharp edged, it was a scene from an oriental tomb. Flat on the deck, Paul Morrow had one arm outstretched and the tips of his fingers were centimetres away from Sandra’s dark head. Kano, arms flung forward, was half lying on the presentation spread of his computer. Koenig had fallen and slid over the parquet, beating Paul to his target and touching the hem of Sandra’s kimono.
Before he could check on the others, another factor entered the composition. For him, the signal was weak, but Jake was getting it strength nine. There was a rhythmic beat and a curious singsong note that seemed to be boring a hole in his head. Jake was hanging on to the fabric of the communications post and slowly slipping down to his knees.
Carter forced his hands to move and hit the key to cut the link. Then he was drawing long breaths and sitting tall in his pilot seat to clear the last trace of nausea from his gut.
Hunting round the channels, ready to switch out at a split-second’s notice, he picked up the pilot’s duty room and got Harry Negus who was on standby and was filling the unforgiving minute improving his manual skills on a miniature bar-billiards table. The urgent bleep spoiled his shot and his cue ball whipped down the no-score exit. With his expressive black face creased in a scowl, he stretched out a long arm for the communications post and put himself on the link.
It was an unnerving face to meet on a scanner, but Carter reckoned it was a whole lot better than what he had been getting.
‘Harry?’
‘The same. What is it, Chief?’
‘Are you all right?’
Negus took a look at himself on the monitor. ‘Surely. All systems go.’
‘There’s trouble in Main Mission. Don’t switch on to their link. I’ll be right with you.’
The screen blanked. Negus used his commlock to open the hatch. The corridor outside was deserted. He shrugged and turned back to his table. It was all a mystery. He set the balls up again and was weighing the angles for a brilliant stroke when Carter was in with a rush.
‘Get into a spacesuit and close the external mike.’
It was not until he was ready to flip down his visor that Negus saw the problem.
‘Chief?’
‘What is it?’
‘When I close up I won’t hear a thing.’
‘That’s right, so listen now. As I understand it, there’s a signal going round Main Mission that’s knocked all the personnel for six. Sealed up we might get inside and switch it off. When we get there, I’ll go in and try it. I want you standing by outside. If you see me go under, you’re to get the hell out of it and make for the power section. Kill power to Main Mission. If that doesn’t work, you’re on your own. All right?’
‘I think so.’
‘Let’s go, then.’
Carter dropped his visor. Without the external pickup he was in the world of the stone deaf. They went at a run for the nearest travel-tube exit and hurled themselves into a cage as the hatch opened.
Out again and getting close to the heartland of the sprawling complex, there was more evidence on the ground that the cancer in Main Mission was spreading out. A group of Alphans at an intersection round the communications post had folded where they stood. There was a leggy girl from Hydroponics balanced like an advanced yogi on her forehead and the balls of her feet.
Negus raised a bulky thumb as a tribute as he raced by and then they were outside the Main-Mission hatch and Carter was warning him back.
Alan Carter used his commlock and the hatch sliced away. Mouth drying and a feeling of nausea building in his gut, he drove himself on. An etiolated whisper of the signal was getting through his acoustic barrier and he knew he could not take it for long. He made a beeline for Sandra’s console and whipped along the keyboard, shoving every stud to Non Op.
The picture of the apricot planet dissolved in silver rain and the screen blanked and then filled again with the blue and white waiting sign of Moonbase Alpha. Sick and shaking, he leaned with both hands flat on the presentation table. He set himself to count slowly and reached twenty before he could tell for a truth that the effect was passing off. Cautiously he raised his visor. Except for the click and whirr of Kano’s computer there was no sound in Main Mission.
Strangely, it had not occurred to him that they could all be dead. But suddenly the impact of the still figures made the point. Fumbling for the seals he tore off his gauntlets and knelt beside Sandra Benes. He zipped away the gay kimono, moving from ancient Japan to a very sophisticated, fishnet body stocking which was as good as covering the vital area with a grid reference. There was no need to plug her in to a life-sign monitor. The elegant Benes chest was expanding and contracting in a steady rhythm. She was still batting on the right side of the line that separates the quick from the dead.
Carter moved slowly back to the hatch and thumped Harry Negus on his dome to get attention. Harry was watching the still-life tableau round the communications post and was glad to be given free speech. He said earnestly, ‘What I don’t understand, Chief, is how she came to rest like that. That is a very cool position to come to rest in. Who is she?’
‘We’ll never know until she stands up and we can see her face. Just for now, there’s work for you. I don’t want to monkey with any cha
nnels in case that signal gets in again. Just take a look in the Medicentre and see what goes on there. If Mathias is operational, get him along here.’
Carter went round the set straightening limbs and laying out his living dead in greater comfort or decorum, as need was. He had completed the circuit when Koenig groaned briefly and sat up holding his head. He was seeing Alan Carter in double vision, but recognition was no problem.
‘Alan?’
‘Commander.’
‘What goes on? No, don’t tell me. There was a signal from Pelorus.’
Koenig was on hands and knees shaking his head slowly left and right. Still on all fours, he crossed the floor to where Helena Russell was lying with a cushion under her head. He was still seeing double, but to have two was a bonus, either one was food for vision. Taking a middle point his hands homed gently on her shoulders and the physical touch brought a change. She snapped into single focus, hard-edged and slightly numinous but one single figure.
Her eyes opened wide and showed something like panic. Holding her in a firm grip, he said, ‘Helena. Easy now. It’s all right.’
The set was coming to life. Main-Mission personnel straggled unsteadily to their feet. Paul Morrow jacked Sandra from the deck and sat her back on her swivel seat. Koenig said sharply, ‘Don’t switch in the long-range probes, Paul. Use the internal net. Call for an all-sections report.’
‘Check, Commander.’
Helena said, ‘It’s all right, John. You can ease off that bone crushing bit. I’m feeling better by the second.’
Bob Mathias, second in command of the Medicentre, was in with a rush followed by a half dozen orderlies with trolleys. With everybody mobile, he was as out of place as a nun at a coven. But he went through the motions. ‘Casualties, Commander?’
‘None here. Wait for the reports though.’
All Alpha sections were reporting in. Wherever a communications post had relayed the transmissions from Main Mission there had been the same effect. But, except for a broken arm in Hydroponics, where a technician had fallen awkwardly across a tank, there was no call on Medicare.
As the last report came in, Koenig said, ‘We can claim we were lucky. Kano, take it slowly and be ready to switch out. Have Computer run an analysis. Clean up and get into working rig. Command conference in ten minutes.’
John Koenig looked round the circular table in the command office and saw that the top brass of Moonbase Alpha were out of motley and back on circuit as a working team. It was unbelievable that less than one hour ago they had been on stage in a musical extravaganza.
Starting with Victor Bergman, Koenig said, ‘Let’s have it, Victor. What was all that about?’
‘Nothing so mysterious, John. Computer shows two elements. We all heard the rhythmic noise. I’d say it was the carrier. It made us attend to it and try to sort out a pattern. But there was another frequency outside aural range that had an impact which we did not know about until it did its work. The brain is an electrical machine. This frequency was like a jamming device on the higher nerve centres. I leave the medics to say how it worked.’
Koenig turned to Helena. Composed and efficient, she said, ‘That’s about it, John. The effect was much the same as an electronic stun beam. No permanent damage. I wouldn’t like to say that a very long exposure would be harmless. There’s a very delicate area where memory lives and the patterns could be altered or even erased. What the critical time would be is anybody’s guess without research on animal subjects.’
Koenig said, ‘So we have a planet, Pelorus, within range for six days. First reports showed we could live there. Then we get this. What is it? A warning shot? Stay away?’
There was a silence. Sandra Benes said hesitantly, ‘I think there is something we are forgetting, Commander!’
‘Which is?’
‘Our probes picked up the signal and brought it in. It was not beamed at us by a deliberate act.’
Alan Carter took it up. ‘That’s a point, Commander. For all we know, they don’t know that there is life on this moon. It could be a permanent protective screen that they put out.’
‘Whether by accident or design it puts long-range assessments out of court.’
Bergman said, ‘That’s so, John. But the data we have shows a planet with an atmosphere we can use. How many of those are there? I don’t have to remind anybody of the statistics against finding the requirements for human life. Can we let a chance like this go by?’
Koenig stood up and walked to a direct-vision port. Pelorus was a hard, unwinking jewel on the black velvet star map. It could be their future home. He said, ‘What about the other planet, Copreon?’
Kano had the answer to that one, ‘No dice, Commander. In the six days we have, it stays on the other side of the sun. Outside extreme Eagle range. It has to be Pelorus.’
They were all looking at him. The loneliness of the command slot was once more borne in on Koenig. He could ask for advice, and he got it in good measure, but, in the end, he had to make the choice. He walked back to the table and stood behind his chair. ‘Since we can’t stand off and make a judgement we have to go and look. Position as before except that we go in blind. The same party. But a different Eagle. Alan, take down Eagle Six and bring up an armed craft. Blastoff in twelve hours. Meantime, I’d like you, Victor, to see if you can cook up any kind of protective screening. Alan got some cover from space-rig. Any questions?’
There were none. Helena Russell hung back as the rest filed out. Together, they stood by the direct-vision port and looked at the distant planet. She said, ‘Can you imagine what it would be like, John, to walk about in sunshine on real grass.’
‘Hold it. Computer said nothing about grass.’
‘Grass and water and hills in a blue haze.’
‘For a scientist you have a romantic streak. Its as likely to be lichen or desert and lava dykes.’
‘You don’t really believe that?’
‘I’ll keep an open mind.’
‘As long as you leave room for hope.’
He ran his fingers under the elastic bell of honey blonde hair. ‘There’s always that!’
A buzz from the communications post made a period. Sandra Benes appeared head and shoulders on the screen, dark eyes like black milk and wide with alarm, ‘Commander!’
Koenig was through to Main Mission at a run. The big screen had the familiar picture of the moonscape around Alpha. But there was a change. Marching in from the horizon was a column of moondust, like a waterspout that a tornado might pluck out of the surface of a sea. It veered and twisted but maintained a course. It was set on a line that would take it across the centre hub of Moonbase Alpha.
CHAPTER TWO
Main-Mission staff watched the big screen as though transfixed by a malevolent eye. Koenig had to speak twice to get attention. ‘Paul. Controller!’
‘Commander?’
‘Figures. What speed does it have? How long have we got?’
Paul Morrow kicked himself into action and, once moving, took a count of five to get a printout. He put the test under the screen like a caption and it was clear for all to see.
CENTRE OF VORTEX APPROACHING AT 50 KILOMETRES IN THE HOUR. WILL REACH ALPHA PERIMETER IN 30 MINUTES.
Noise was building like the rumble of an oncoming freight train and a tremor could be felt through the deck. The power being generated was immense. They were staked out in the path of a juggernaut.
Koenig did the sum, but asked his question for confirmation. ‘Victor. What’s your assessment? Will the defence screens hold up?’
‘No chance, John.’
‘What’s driving it?’
‘A massive energy beam could be manipulated to create different pressure levels. Vacuum at the centre. Classic vortex effect. Once moving it could be bowled along.’
‘Controlled from the planet?’
‘We must believe that.’
‘To warn us off?’
‘More than warn us off. When that hits, we’ll hav
e no interest.’
Koenig hit a stud and klaxons began to sound out. Red telltales winked on in every communications post in the sprawling base. He said, ‘Red Alert, Paul. I want all personnel in deep shelter. Alan, Victor, with me.’
As the three raced for the command office, Paul Morrow’s voice began an all-sections call, ‘Attention all sections Alpha. This is an emergency. All sections shut down. Seal all pressure locks. All personnel proceed to deep-shelter stations. Hurry it along.’
Sombre faced, Victor Bergman said heavily, ‘It’s no good, John. We save our people. But for what? How do we feed them with the base in a rubble heap? How do we rebuild?’
‘It hasn’t happened yet. There’s one thing we can try. Meet force with force. Whatever set that up is using a simple physical phenomenon as a weapon. That’s something we can fight. Now why didn’t they use this beam as a direct threat to Alpha? As I see it, they knew it wouldn’t work out. Our antimeteorite screens would hold it off. So the storm effect is all we have to worry about.’
Bergman, watching the monitor on the command console, said, ‘That’s good reasoning and you could be right, but the storm’s still good enough to do their work.’
‘Suppose we set small controlled atomic explosions in its path—wouldn’t that break it up or deflect it?’
‘It’s playing with fire in that area. You never know what chain reaction we might start up.’
Carter said, ‘But it’s a chance and the best we have. How do we do it, Commander. Eagle Six is still sitting out on the pad.’
Koenig was thinking like a machine. ‘We still have some atomic-blasting devices that were used to excavate waste pits when Alpha was set up to dispose Earth’s atomic waste. There’s precise data on power, range and fallout. Victor, get a rundown from Computer on the minimum distance from Alpha where we can work without overloading the radiation screens. Meanwhile, Alan, get a detail loading Eagle Six. Fast. Every second pushes the crisis point closer home.’
The klaxons stopped, but Red-Alert signals went on. Light levels dropped to emergency systems. Moon-base Alpha was like a ghost town. Main-Mission staff, waiting for the last order to evacuate, watched the monitors and saw Eagle Six jack herself off her launch bed in a flurry of moondust.