by E. C. Tubb
‘Ivor! The controls!’
‘Too late!’ The man turned, foam at his lips, blood running from bitten flesh. ‘Wait for me! Please wait for me!’
Then there was nothing but a roar of confusion and an overwhelming darkness.
‘Eighty-nine hours, seventeen minutes and thirty seconds as from—now!’ Bergman threw the time-control on the chronometer then looked up from where he sat at his desk. ‘That’s how long it will take us to reach the same point as Alan did when he ran into trouble, assuming, of course, that the area remains stationary relative to this region of space.’
‘The Forbidden Area,’ murmured Koenig. ‘What caused the trouble, Victor? A barrier of some kind?’
‘It could be that,’ agreed the professor. ‘And, coupled with the warnings, I think that it is. A final deterrent, the last warning before whatever lies behind the barrier is reached.’
And what that could be was anyone’s guess. Restlessly Koenig paced the room. Normally he liked to spend time in Bergman’s laboratory, enjoying the touch of familiar things, seeing the rows of old books, the scrolls of proven accomplishment, the models and small items which Bergman had brought with him to the Moon back in the days when he had been a welcome visitor, an honoured guest granted the facilities of Moonbase Alpha to pursue his investigations.
Now there was no time to pause and linger, to step metaphorically back in time to when life was a matter of following routine instead of the continual challenge it had now become.
Pausing he stood before a chart hanging on the wall. It bore a mass of curves, symbols representing stars, a yellow swath their progress. His finger rested on the point where the Moon was at the moment, moved on to halt at a red smear. Knowing their velocity any schoolboy could have computed the time remaining before they reached it, but no one could know what lay beyond.
‘Did you manage to plot the extent of the area?’
‘No.’ Bergman shook his head as he came to stand beside Koenig. ‘The only way would be to send out a series of Eagles and wait for something to happen. It would have taken too long.’
And have been too expensive on men. Koenig glared at the chart, feeling the anger of frustration. A known enemy he could have faced—but how to fight emptiness?
‘Alan reported nothing visible as he approached the area,’ he said. ‘The monitoring verified his observations yet, as we know, something must he in that region. What, Victor? A field of energy of some kind? A destructive vortex? A transdimensional warp?’ His left hand made a fist. ‘What the hell are we up against?’
Bergman said thoughtfully, ‘I’m not sure, John, but perhaps it is invisibility.’
‘What?’ Koenig shook his head. ‘Invisible or not, substance still has mass. It has temperature. It radiates energy. It can be spotted on instruments.’
‘Not if it rested in a spherical field,’ Bergman insisted. ‘A bubble of force which rotates all received energy through a half-circle of one hundred and eighty degrees. It is a mathematical concept, John, which we used to play with at university. How to become invisible. You can’t do it by becoming transparent because any touch of dust or dirt will reveal you as it would a building made of glass. But if light could be rotated so that you saw not the object before you but the light it received from behind—’
‘Then you wouldn’t see it at all!’ Koenig punched his right fist into his left hand. ‘Of course. All light and so all visibility would be curved in a half-circle, so that you would look around the object and not at it. The same would apply to all bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. Our instruments are registering the energies received from beyond the area, the stars we see are really occluded but we can’t tell that and so, for us, space ahead is empty. But how, Victor? Magnetic fields?’
‘If so they must be of incredible density.’ Bergman was dubious. ‘It’s possible, but I’m inclined to think a spacial warp of some kind could be responsible.’
Lifting the commlock from his belt Koenig snapped, ‘Main Misson. Kano? Have the computer check on all stellar observations. I want special reference paid to any variation in apparent brightness or shift of position no matter how minute. Full scan in direction ahead and for one hundred and eighty degrees to either side. Top priority. Sandra?’
He waited until her face replaced Kano’s on the tiny screen.
‘Correlate all instrument readings for the past month against those presently received. I want detailed comparisons as to temperature and radiation fluctuations. In all future scans include Doppler compensations based on spectrum shift.’
Light had mass, it could be bent by gravitational or magnetic fields, but unless those fields were perfect there would be minor variations. If spotted they could plot the extent of the bubble before them. Light was similar to sound—advancing, it rose in pitch; retreating, it lowered. A shift to the red meant that a light source was retreating; towards the blue, that it was advancing towards them. Again they could only hope for minor alterations, but any information would be of value.
But none would solve the main question.
‘What’s in there?’ Koenig voiced his main worry. ‘Victor, what are we heading into?’
‘I don’t know, John.’ Bergman was coldly precise. ‘Only time will answer that. But there is another question which should be asked.’
‘How can we defend ourselves?’ Koenig looked at the other, his face grim. ‘I know, Victor. Any suggestions?’
He was aching and sore but alive and all in one piece and, for that, Alan Carter was grateful. Cautiously he stretched, feeling the nag of bruises.
Watching him Helena said, ‘Take things easy for a while, Alan. Some heat and massage will help.’
‘Ivor?’
He too was all in one piece and still alive but, watching him through the transparent partition, Carter would have wished that if he had been in the same condition, the instruments registering his physical condition would have dropped to zero. No man, while living, should adopt the appearance of a corpse. No pilot should be staring with dull eyes at the ceiling, his hands limply folded in his lap. No human should lie like a vegetable, unable to even smile.
Without turning his head Carter asked, ‘How long?’
‘Since the trouble.’
‘When the Eagle went haywire?’
‘There was nothing wrong with the Eagle, Alan. The fault was entirely human. Don’t you remember?’
He frowned, remembering only Ivor’s sudden madness, his own confusion.
‘Paul was monitoring,’ she explained. There was no need to lower her voice. Ivor, if he could hear, would make no response. If he did, it would be a step towards recovery, but even so she spoke in a whisper. ‘He saw Khokol rise and head for the port and you trying to stop him. There was a struggle and you were thrown to one side. Ivor turned back towards the door but, naturally, Paul had the Eagle on remote control and he couldn’t open it. He tried, God, how he tried, then suddenly he collapsed.’
‘And Paul brought us back to Alpha?’
‘Yes. You seemed to be unconscious and when you arrived back here—’
‘Seemed? I was out, surely.’
‘No, Alan.’ Helena met his eyes, her own direct. ‘You weren’t unconscious, not in the way you mean. You were disoriented and on the edge of catatonia, but you weren’t asleep or stunned.’
He said, attempting to be casual, ‘There’s a difference?’
‘Medically, yes, but we won’t go into that now. It isn’t important. I drugged you, gave you hypnotic therapy and some electro-stimulated sleep. Now it’s your turn to help me. What happened out there?’
‘You know what happened. Ivor went crazy and tried to step out into space. I tried to stop him and got hurt. I guess I was concussed—would that account for it? My condition, I mean.’
He was anxious and Helena could guess why. A pilot had to be fit, otherwise he was useless. A man given to psychic breakdown had no place in an Eagle.
‘Officially, yes.’ Her smile
eased his trepidation. ‘But there was more to it than that. Did you sense that the Eagle was out of control? Veering? Twisting, perhaps?’
‘Yes.’
It had maintained an even course at all times—his own sensory apparatus had been at fault, not the guidance systems of the machine.
‘Anything else? Dreams, perhaps? Odd visual effects? Sounds?’
‘There was confusion and then darkness. Nothing else.’
‘Are you certain?’
He said stiffly, ‘You’ve known me long enough and well enough to know that I’m not a liar.’
‘Alan, I didn’t call you that! But I need to know. It’s important. Can you remember anything at all after Khokol hit you? I’m not asking you to be factual—we know what happened within the Eagle, but only you can tell us what happened in your mind. You mentioned confusion. Was it visual? Did you hear snatches of song, for example? A voice? Did you experience a sudden, overwhelming desire of some kind? An urge to do something?’
He said dryly, ‘Like opening the port? No. I had no intention of committing suicide.’
‘What then?’
For a moment he remained silent and she gained the impression of a man struggling with himself, of overcoming doubts and fears, of surrendering some private citadel.
‘Ivor hit me and I fell,’ he said abruptly. ‘I was dazed and almost out. The Eagle seemed to be spinning and twisting—you said it wasn’t but that’s how it felt to me. It grew dark but there were lights and, yes, a voice of some kind. It was like when you are half asleep and barely hear what’s going on close at hand. The lights were flashes, dots in the shadows like stars and something moved against them. I was afraid, I think. No, I was afraid and yet at the same time resigned. There was nothing I could do. Then the darkness came and it was like falling into an ebon cloud.’ He added thoughtfully, ‘A fall which never seemed to end.’
‘The voice—what did it say?’
‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged at her expression. ‘I’m not playing games, Doctor, I simply don’t know. The words were blurred and almost as if they were foreign. I say “almost” because there was a familiarity about them, but I couldn’t make them out.’
‘The tone? One of rejection?’
‘More of negation.’ Carter frowned as he thought about it. ‘Someone or something saying a certain thing was not to be. Am I making sense?’
Before answering, Helena crossed to her desk and activated an instrument. Carter heard a blur of words, questions and answers, and realised that the present interrogation wasn’t the first. He had been questioned under hypnosis, taken from the Eagle, sedated, drugged, cross-examined. His anger died as quickly as it came. To each of them, his responsibility and the burden of responsibility carried by Helena Russell was far from light.
She said, ‘Alan, you were very young when your mother died. Correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you remember her.’
‘No.’
‘You remember her,’ she said again. It was not a question. ‘A person is a receptive organism and all that happens close at hand is noted and filed within the cortex. Now, those lights, the shape and voice you saw and heard. I suggest that they could have been the reflected illumination of an external source. The shadow that of a woman limned against them. The voice that of your mother telling you to be silent, perhaps. A common occurrence. You agree it might be possible?’
An ancient memory dredged from his subconscious?
‘Good,’ she said as he nodded. ‘As I suspected. It leads to the conclusion that the force responsible is one which triggers various rejective syndromes within the brain. If so, it accounts for the diversity of experience common during the warning periods. You were fortunate, Alan.’
‘Why?’
‘You returned to early childhood. If Paul hadn’t withdrawn the Eagle from that sector of space—’
‘Back even further?’ He had anticipated her reasoning. ‘Back to the embryo?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Is that what happened to Ivor?’
‘No.’ Helena glanced to where he lay, eyes open but unseeing. ‘He isn’t catatonic. Not in the true sense that he has retreated to early childhood to escape the pressures of being an adult, and then having to retreat even further because childhood is not a happy time. He has, in a sense, escaped, but in some different form. The fact he tried to open the port worries me. He must have known the danger, which means he was subconsciously trying to kill himself.’
‘Kill himself? Ivor?’
‘He belongs to a race in which the death wish is very strong.’
Alan glanced at the other, finding it impossible to believe that a man so strong and so fit should be eager to find death. And, if not one, then why not them both? Why had Khokol succumbed and he survived?
‘If all men were alike, Alan,’ said Helena when he put the question, ‘they wouldn’t be men, they’d be robots. How do I know? Yet it’s something we’ve got to try and find out and find it soon.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Within sixty-seven hours to be exact.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that’s when we will hit the bubble which almost sent you insane and wrecked Khokol’s mind.’ She looked at where he lay. ‘And what happened to him could happen to us all!’
CHAPTER FOUR
Nothing.
Koenig stared at the screens and felt the tug and pull of frustration. With an effort he kept his face a blank mask, his hands unclenched. To be a commander was more than to give orders. Always he had to present a confident aspect, always to radiate a confidence he might not feel and yet this time was harder than most.
How to fight an enemy unseen? A danger unknown?
Before him the stars glittered with their usual brightness, the bright expanse of the galaxy glowing as if a rich scatter of gems lay on the sombre velvet of a jeweller’s cloth. It was hard to realise that between he and they rested something destructive. A thing which threatened Alpha itself. An invisible killer edging closer even as he watched. A menace which had already caused the death of one man and had reduced another to a mindless shell.
For a moment Koenig had the impression of a crouching beast, alien, horrible, waiting with gaping jaws and venomous sting to grip, to hold, to suck intelligence and life from the hapless prey falling into its grasp.
A moment only, then the illusion was gone and, taking a deep breath, Koenig glanced at the chronometer.
‘Minus fifteen seconds, Commander.’ Paul spoke from his chair. ‘Full strength?’
‘Yes.’
‘For an indefinite period?’ Morrow’s voice held doubt. ‘The generators might not be able to take maximum load for too long.’
‘Full strength for five minutes. Cut for checking, then resume for fifteen. Check again, then operate at half power until we are an hour from impact.’
An hour from madness and maybe death and the time could be less if the bubble was moving towards them. Bergman doubted that it was. Koenig hoped that he was right.
‘Ready to activate,’ said Morrow. ‘Three, two, one—on!’
A shimmer softened the glow of the stars, a ripple made of broken rainbows which strengthened even as he watched and settled into a sparkling, coruscating bowl which covered the base. Electronic wizardry devised by Bergman and built by the technicians. Forces bent and twisted into channeled lines. Energies formed and held in powerful fields. A defence powered by the strength of the atomic engines, refined in the generators, fed through squat towers and terminals set about the area.
‘Loss?’
‘Two percent below normal, Commander.’
‘Reason?’
‘Maladjustment, I think.’ Morrow grunted as he sent his hands flying over his controls. Before him a digital readout moved, figures glowing with ruby flame. ‘A slight imbalance, Commander. Now compensated. Operational level one percent above.’
Under test, the screen had withstood the fury of exploding nuclear devices, but what they faced w
as no familiar form of energy. The screen might be useless and probably was, yet it had to be incorporated into their defences. Koenig glanced again at the chronometer. Two minutes remained of the initial period.
‘Boost to absolute maximum, Paul.’
‘Commander?’
‘Do it!’ If the generators were to fail it was better to find out now rather than later. ‘Lift and hold.’
The rainbow shimmer thickened, blanked the stars with its coruscating curtain, threw a lambent glow over the Lunar terrain, the surface installations of the base. Distant scanners gave an external view, an inverted bowl dotted with scintillating flashes like tiny explosions, local flares of energy escaping from the confining fields.
‘‘Strength failing,’ said Morrow. ‘Decay accelerating. Power loss nine percent . . . eleven . . . fifteen . . . eighteen . . . Commander?’
‘Maintain.’ A muscle twitched high on one cheek as Koenig watched the tell-tales on the consol. Any weakness had to be found and eliminated, suspect points strengthened, extra circuits incorporated if necessary.
‘Twenty-one . . . two . . .’ Morrow’s voice rose and he half turned in his chair. ‘A quarter down, Commander!’
‘Maintain!’
Hold the torrent of power as the gauges fell and the scintillating flashes grew, until they sparkled like a miniature battlefield over the glowing inverted bowl of the dome. Until the meters flashed red and the alarm stabbed the air with its warning snarl.
‘Cut!’ Koenig drew in his breath as the sound and flashing died. ‘Report?’
‘Fifty percent loss of retrieved power—total loss close to seventy-three percent. Reserve accumulators depleted by a third. Insulation damage on generators two and five. Terminal corrosion on points three to twelve, seventeen to twenty-nine.’ Frowning Morrow added, ‘I don’t understand this. The last regular maintenance report showed all installations at optimum level. Those generators should have stood up better than that.’
‘When was the last check made?’ Koenig nodded at the answer. ‘Before the last warning. I thought so. Can anyone really be certain what they saw and did during that time?’