‘You’re on your own,’ Carter told her as he turned to leave. ‘Play around with it for a while. Get as much information as you can for us. We’ll need it.’
He ran with Koenig back to the Pilot Section.
‘She’s doing OK, John, but don’t put too much on her,’ he said as he sat down, and began to set a new course.
‘It’s her own fault for being so good,’ Koenig grunted as he studied the section screen.
One of the alien moons now took centre position on it.
The Eagle ship began to swing in a wide orbit around it, and its surface came closer to them.
‘Energy level high for your people, Commander. Heavy metallic concentrations. No evidence of life,’ Maya’s faltering voice came over the speakers.
Koenig’s jaw muscles grew tight.
The surface scan had become more detailed.
Smooth, strangely rounded boulders of all shapes and sizes littered the planet floor. Because of the airless and waterless conditions and therefore a lack of natural erosive agents, it was difficult to resist the assumption that their rounded features had been produced artificially.
The camera panned over them abruptly. A series of massive, tower-shaped structures came into sight.
‘Hold scan,’ Koenig called out urgently.
‘It’s some sort of a station,’ Carter said with awe.
The picture was now held steady.
The towers were columns of some kind. They were broad and round at their base, with thinner central stems that broadened out into ovary-like platforms at the top. On each platform rested a huge silver sphere.
There were five towers in all, arranged in a perfect circle.
‘Maya?’ Koenig asked.
‘That’s it. The source of the high energy levels I’ve been getting.’
‘Take her down, Alan.’
The Eagle began to shake as the powerful landing rockets were fired.
They felt their bodies growing heavier as they began descending. Soon, there came a gentle jolt and then silence, as the ship’s four suspension legs met the alien surface and its atomic engines cut out.
There was no time to waste.
Koenig unstrapped himself and ran through into the Passenger Section.
Maya met him and helped him climb into a space suit.
‘Give me a camera helmet,’ Koenig said.
She handed him a helmet with a built-in lens above the visor. When he was ready, he motioned her to return to the Pilot Section.
She ran through the doors, just as Carter sealed them off, and joined the pilot.
A hiss of depressurization came from inside the section she had just left.
Koenig’s helmeted figure appeared on the TV monitor. He was standing in the Passenger Section in front of the hatch, way, waiting for the door to open.
‘OK?’ his voice asked Carter.
‘OK,’ the pilot replied. He stabbed at a button, and they watched the heavy panelling swing open. Outside, they caught a glimpse of the bright Moon’s surface.
The picture changed, and it was replaced with a full, exterior shot as Koenig activated his camera.
They had landed at the feet on one of the gargantuan towers.
Its smooth, wide surface stretched upward like a giant metallic roadway occupying three-quarters of the screen, without openings of any kind.
The picture blurred as Koenig moved around, looking at the rest of the scenery. By the time it had settled again they could see that he had walked right up to the tower’s surface. It’s expanse completely filled the screen.
‘I’m at the nearest installation,’ Koenig’s voice came over.
‘It appears to be a platinum tungsten alloy. No reading from interior,’ Maya told him, reading her instruments.
The picture began jerking about again as Koenig walked slowly round the base of the column.
Abruptly, an opening appeared in the strange surface, revealing a black interior.
Koenig stopped to examine it.
‘I’ve found an entrance,’ he told them.
The camera on his head panned down to show them a small, metal mat built into the floor.
‘Operated by weight sensitive pads,’ he added. ‘Radiation negative. Life form negative. I’m going in, cover me.’
‘I’ll get a suit on,’ Carter said.
The pilot left his seat, and re-opened the doors leading to the Passenger Section. He disappeared.
Maya was left alone in the Pilot Section, and gazed with sudden alarm at the screen as the camera in the Commander’s head-piece lurched towards the gaping vent in the column wall.
The screen dimmed, and showed a small, cell-like room. The Commander turned and the camera panned round the room. She saw the door he had entered sliding shut, sealing him off.
Lights came on from behind the walls of the cell, and the walls glowed with a dull green colour. The lights began flashing past the walls, disappearing at the top of the screen, and she realized that the cell was in fact a lift of some kind.
It was taking the Commander down.
After a while, the lights stopped flashing upward, and the wall facing the camera split open.
It revealed a breathtaking underground scene.
A huge cavern had been hewn out of the rock. It looked like a vast, underground car park.
The cavern walls were too far away to be seen clearly; the rocky ceiling was just discernible amidst a pall of gloom.
The floor of the cavern was artificial, and well lit.
Six tall metal posts stood on it, and on the top of each rested six more of the spheres.
The camera moved cautiously forward, and peered round the doors.
Its automatic eye revealed a control, or laboratory area of some kind, immaculate consoles looking strangely exposed and dwarfed by the scale of the surroundings.
The Commander stepped outside the doors. At the same time his voice burst over the speakers.
‘Atmosphere negative.’
He moved on towards one of the spheres.
The Commander’s hand appeared in front of the camera, pointing a sensor at the sphere.
‘There’s some kind of a...’ he began.
But his sentence was never finished.
Maya watched helplessly as a sudden, blinding flash of electrical energy leapt from the sphere and knocked the sensor out of his hand. The picture on the screen went haywire. Then it went dead.
Maya leaned forward, horrified.
‘Commander. Come in, Commander.’
She pressed another button.
‘Alan, we’ve lost contact.’
There was a moment’s pause. Then Carter’s perturbed voice came.
‘Mind the store. Decompress, will you?’
She looked frantically around the section, trying to remember where she had seen the decompression button. Eventually she found it. She sealed the doors leading to the Passenger Section and pressed for decompression.
There was a sudden hiss of air and she realized that she was completely alone.
Swirling patterns played in front of Koenig’s eyes.
A monstrous face was bobbing up and down somewhere. ‘John... can you hear me?’
His vision cleared and he felt the pain in his stiff body. Eventually, he saw Carter’s helmeted face on the other side of his visor.
‘Alan...’ Koenig lifted his shoulders off the ground and shook his head.
He had fallen flat on his back.
‘Are you all right?’ Carter called over the radio. He helped him climb to his feet.
‘Isn’t everyone after being hit with several hundred volts,’ Koenig replied dryly.
His head banged and he could hardly walk.
Gradually he loosened up.
Carter looked at the floor and noticed a charred, molten mass.
He picked it up.
‘My sensor...’ Koenig muttered in dismay.
‘Must have thought it was a gun,’ Koenig gazed around him at
the spheres.
‘That was the one that did it,’ he pointed at the nearest globe-shaped being.
Carter looked at it uncomprehendingly.
As they watched, it moved.
It trembled in its cup-like holder.
To their amazement, it jumped gracefully off its post and fell slowly to the ground. With ballet-like movement, it began bouncing in slow-motion towards the two men.
It jumped on to another post nearby, landing accurately on its perch.
Carter’s first reaction was to go for his laser, but Koenig’s raised hand stopped him.
‘What is it?’ Carter frowned.
The sphere jumped from its perch and bounced gracefully towards another post behind them.
They spun round.
The sphere seemed to be regarding them.
‘Some kind of probe... I think we’re being checked out.’
As though satisfied with its investigation, the sphere jumped down and began bouncing towards the control area where the consoles were positioned.
It jumped up on to a console specially fitted with a cup-like receiver, and rested there.
A large screen attached to the console lit up.
An illuminated circle appeared on it. Then a square.
‘Basic geometric figures,’ Koenig commented. ‘It’s an attempt to communicate.’
Another screen lit up by its side.
Koenig and Carter walked back the way they had come, towards the consoles. They soon reached the screens.
Koenig hesitated. Then he picked up an instrument shaped like a soldering iron, and proceded to draw with it directly on to the second screen. The marker left bright electrical traces. Carefully, he drew a triangle.
The triangle disappeared, and abruptly an illuminated triangle appeared again on the first screen.
‘We’ve made contact,’ Koenig said.
An unfamiliar pattern of stars appeared on the first screen.
‘A star chart,’ Carter said. He looked thoughtful. ‘It’s trying to find out where we come from.’
The first screen went blank. Koenig picked up the marker and drew a rough sketch of the Earth’s solar system, with the sun at the centre.
But before he could finish drawing it, the sphere had recognized the area of space.
A new chart, showing the Sun, flashed on to the first screen.
Koenig ringed the planet Earth he had drawn.
Then both screens cleared.
There was a short pause. A series of words appeared on the screen.
They were in English.
‘AS YOU ARE FROM EARTH. I WILL ARRANGE FOR SUITABLE ATMOSPHERE.’
Koenig turned to Carter incredulously. He was about to say something when a sudden inrush of air hissed into the cavern.
When the flow of air had stopped, Carter pulled out his sensor. He kept it away from the sphere, to avoid any further misunderstandings.
‘Good clean air,’ he said, after he had examined it.
They took off their helmets.
‘Feels better,’ Koenig remarked.
A low humming sound attracted their attention.
They turned to see another sphere in the process of jumping down from its post.
It bounced towards them and leapt adeptly on to a high post close by, adopting a commanding position.
‘I am sorry for the delay. It took some time to align to English.’ A deep, rich voice issued into the new atmosphere.
As it spoke, the sphere pulsed orange.
Koenig and Carter glanced at one another. ‘Some time’ took precisely five seconds.
Koenig turned to the sphere.
‘I’m Commander Koenig. This is Alan Carter.’
‘Welcome. I am Voice Probe 248,’ the sphere replied.
‘We’d like to talk to someone in authority,’ Koenig continued.
‘For what purpose?’ asked the sphere. There was no way of telling what the sphere’s feelings were, as it used the same rich tone of voice throughout their conversation. They could not tell whether their questions caused it concern or not.
‘We have a vital matter to discuss,’ Koenig replied.
The sphere pulsed brightly.
‘You must be more specific.’
Koenig took a deep breath.
‘My base and everyone aboard are heading directly for your planet. We will...’
But the sphere cut him off.
‘I am sorry. There is nothing I can do.’
Koenig frowned.
‘Then let me talk to someone who can.’
There was a long pause.
‘I am a machine,’ the voice said eventually.
‘A computer?’ Koenig asked.
‘Yes. I can perform no independent action without authority.’
‘Then I must contact your Masters.’
‘That is not possible.’
‘Why?’
‘The intelligent life form of the planet... my Masters... are not yet in existence.’
Koenig looked confused. He felt a sudden grim feeling descend on him as he realized that there was not going to be an easy solution to their quest.
‘I am waiting for the first of them to be born,’ the sphere said.
Leaving a stunned silence behind it, the talking sphere jumped down off its post. It began bouncing away.
Koenig looked up, gravely worried.
‘Wait... please...’ he said.
But the sphere had leapt back to its original position. It glowed fiercely.
‘You must leave,’ it said.
The humming sound they had heard earlier returned. ‘You are in great danger,’ the rich, deep voice said. ‘You must go immediately.’
‘Commander...’ Maya’s shrill voice burst in their ears.
‘Yes, Maya?’
‘The energy level is rising to a critical point.’
The throbbing hum from the spheres began to reach a crescendo.
With sharp, explosive cracks the electrical potential in the spheres set off a chain reaction.
Violent sparks started to arc from sphere to sphere.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Koenig yelled to Carter above the noise.
Hurriedly they began to clamp their helmets back on, and run towards the lift doors.
CHAPTER EIGHT
As the Eagle ship rose from the automaton moon, the five large spheres on the surface began discharging current. The sparks leapt in great jagged leaps from globe to globe.
‘A ring of moons, each one with a space station,’ Koenig conjectured grimly after they had got the ship well clear. ‘Let’s assume they’re all building a similar energy...’
‘Storing up enormous power in the spheres,’ Carter continued.
‘Right. Conclusions?’
Maya thought.
‘The system could behave like a ring of thunder clouds,’ she said.
‘When the potential has reached a high enough level, it discharges,’ Carter went on.
‘The equivalent of a gigantic electrical storm,’ Maya put in again. ‘Lightning arcing across thousand of miles between each moon in the ring...’
‘Producing an energy wave like a thousand H-bombs radiating out a million miles in every direction,’ Koenig added tonelessly.
‘And Alpha’s moving closer every second,’ Carter warned. ‘It’ll be totally destroyed.’
‘How long have we got?’ Koenig asked Maya urgently.
‘Assuming the same twelve-hour interval between explosions. just under six hours.’
Koenig thought quickly.
‘Take her down, Alan,’ he decided. ‘We’ll land on the planet itself.’
A world of rocks and mountains, submerged in a sickly greenish-yellow atmosphere of chlorine, flashed on to the section screen.
The choking, deadly gas swelled and heaved against the mountain peaks. Its upper layers were thinner and more translucent.
The ship shuddered and plunged into the dark sea of vapours. It settled on a ba
rren outcrop of rock, scarcely visible in the dark green gloom.
They were about to leave their seats when a series of tremors ran through the ship. They grew in intensity.
Then, imperceptibly at first, the landscape round about them started to rise into the sky. It rose faster as they watched the screen.
‘We’re sinking...!’ Carter cried, aghast.
He grabbed the controls and began to operate them.
Koenig and Maya started to rush into the Passenger Section to get their suits on.
‘Do not be concerned,’ a voice came over the screen suddenly. It was the same rich, deep voice they had heard earlier. ‘You are being taken to a place of safety.’
The dreary skyline of gloom had vanished, replaced by the surface of a smooth wall that seemed to be rushing upward. They realized that they had landed on a colossal ramp of some kind. They were being taken down a giant elevator shaft.
Eventually, the downward motion stopped.
On the screen was a shot of another large, underground space station similar to the first.
There was dead silence.
The Alphans looked questioningly at one another.
They had moved into the Passenger Section and were about to don their space suits.
‘Suitable atmosphere has been arranged. You may leave your ship,’ the voice came again.
Koenig hesitated. He didn’t like the idea of trusting the alien. But the programming that had been given to the spheres at least made them fair-minded, if ruthless.
He activated the hatch mechanism.
They walked out into pure, breathable air, with only a trace of chlorine.
‘Proceed,’ said the voice. It vibrated through the air, seeming to emanate from the closest of the five spheres resting on their perches.
The sphere glowed a deep crimson, and jumped down acrobatically.
It settled on a post near to them.
‘I am Voice Probe 748,’ it announced.
‘We’ve met 248,’ Carter explained.
‘The things it told us need explanation,’ Koenig said firmly. ‘Your Masters. Do they have physical form?’
‘Of course, but the atmosphere they breathe is chlorine. Your air is as poisonous to them as theirs is to you.’
Its voice echoed in the vault-like building.
Maya looked up at it worriedly.
‘We understand,’ she said, ‘but we must talk to them. We are in danger...’
Space 1999 - Planets of Peril Page 8