Space 1999 - Planets of Peril

by Michael Butterworth

  Helena...

  Helena would be checking over the vital medical facilities again, and seeing to it that nurses and rescue staff were at their posts,

  They would be going through all the motions, in the faint hope that the Moon would survive a blast five or six times more powerful than the last.

  In their hearts, they must know that it would not.

  The chlorine vapours swirled more thickly behind the glass front of the grotto.

  The voices were silent.

  There was nothing to talk about.

  Koenig waited tensely for the Guardian’s brother to awaken.

  ‘Commander Koenig...’ an older, wiser voice came without warning.

  He looked up, fresh hope surging through him. He felt now that he would be able to make his predicament clear.

  ‘I am the brother of the Guardian who you tried to kill. It seems your destiny is in my hands.’

  ‘I understand your need to defend yourselves, but we mean you no harm,’ Koenig told him. There was a certain shrewdness in his voice. ‘Let us pass in safety. In a few hours we will be gone forever from your planet.’

  The voice considered.

  ‘You say you are non-aggressive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A familiar argument, Commander. And yet you have attempted to use violence!’

  Koenig seethed with latent violence, but he kept it back. ‘A violence born from desperation,’ he explained.

  But the voice continued as though it had not heard him. ‘You ask us to drop our guard, but offer no valid reason why we should do so.’

  ‘One... you seek perfection,’ Koenig began, a hundred reasons flooding suddenly into his head.

  ‘Yes, we do, through logical progression. And logically my answer must be... No.’

  The lashing fury rose again in Koenig — the fury of a cheated, hounded animal. But again he contained it.

  And paradoxically he felt a sudden, bitter calmness of mind. The calmness that comes with acceptance of the inevitable. ‘Commander, you and your companions are free to remain. You will be safe here,’ the Guardian’s brother said to him. But Koenig wasn’t listening now.

  Nothing they could say, it seemed, could disgust or anger him further.

  He stared coldly into the swirling mess behind the glass.

  ‘I want to tell you something,’ he said simply. ‘I want to tell you that loyalty is better than logic, hope is better than despair, creation is better than destruction. I just wanted to tell you seekers of perfection that.’

  Then he turned and stormed angrily away.

  The ashen figures of Carter and Maya met him in the Eagle Pilot section.

  Carter seemed recovered, but he still looked ghastly pale, and his skin was still blotched, as though his system was propped up solely on mental energy.

  ‘We heard your speech,’ Carter said. There was a hint of pride in his voice, as in many men who faced death. ‘It sounded good. Maya and I agree that we would rather fly back to Alpha and die with honour than stay here and die in shame and cowardice. But...’ he sounded suddenly mortified, ‘it looks like we’ve missed the opportunity even to do that.’

  ‘Alpha’s beyond the Eagle’s range,’ Maya said in response to Koenig’s stricken gaze. ‘We don’t have enough fuel to catch it.’

  ‘So we’ll... never... make it back to Alpha,’ Koenig spoke falteringly, powerful emotions surging up inside him. ‘I...’ he began. But he could not finish.

  The voice of ‘A’ crackled from the screen.

  ‘To leave now, Commander, would be stupid. You can never get back to your base, which in any case is facing certain destruction.’

  Koenig looked hatefully at the screen.

  It showed the silent columns of the spheres standing in the vast underground park.

  Like a ghostly shadow, Helena’s hauntingly beautiful face superimposed itself over the alien scene, calling telepathically to him across the lonely gulfs of space.

  Impulsively, he bent down and picked up a heavy wrench that was lying on the floor.

  Blindly, fighting back the tears of anguish and despair and rage, he raised it above his head and hurled it with all his might at the image.

  There was a blinding flash of light and the sound of crashing glass.

  The small room was filled with a thousand shards of flying jewels, richocheting off the back of the imploded screen.

  For a moment it seemed to Koenig as though time had slowed down, and he seemed to stand forever in their magical, outwardly-flowing paths.

  Maya and Carter stepped back, shielding their faces from the blast with upraised arms.

  When it was over, Koenig looked at the destruction without feeling. Only minutes remained to them, and they wouldn’t have needed the screen anyway.

  Besides which, he felt better.

  Wordlessly, he and Carter moved to their seats.

  Maya stood behind Carter.

  The rockets of the Eagle began to pound and the craft trembled.

  They wasted fuel, taking her up slowly, so that Maya did not need to leave the section to strap herself in.

  The last hope of Mankind veered away out of the death planet’s gravitational pull and headed towards home.

  As it flew, vaporous voices chattered away inside their tanks of chlorine.

  Perfectly formed, naked bodies languished uncomprehendingly and unconcerned in the protective life-support systems in their world of plenty.

  But a new, puzzling conception had now entered their scheme of things, and momentarily it halted play.

  ‘He said... loyalty is better than logic,’ Voice A trilled.

  ‘Inexplicable, inexplicable...’ Voice B replied. ‘Inexplicable.’ But it no longer sounded sure of itself.

  ‘Come in, Alpha,’ Koenig spoke dryly into the console monitor.

  The face of Helena appeared on the tiny screen. It looked pale and haggard, weary with worry.

  ‘John...’ she called emotively. ‘We couldn’t contact you...’

  ‘We’ve left the planet,’ Koenig said. ‘We’re not half-way even, and we don’t have enough fuel to reach you. Prepare for detonation.’

  ‘Understood,’ Helena said, fighting back tears. ‘Go to red.’

  ‘Red Alert,’ Verdeschi’s voice sounded off-screen.

  The whooping Red Alert Klaxon started up.

  ‘John...?’ Helena asked again.

  Koenig gazed at her and closed his eyes to show how he felt. Their bodies yearned across gulfs of void to reach each other, but they remained motionless.

  ‘Patch me into the internal system,’ he said.

  ‘You’re patched,’ she said tenderly, after a moment’s pause.

  Koenig clenched his teeth.

  ‘This is Commander Koenig,’ he announced. ‘In less than a minute you will be hit by another energy wave... At this range Moon Base Alpha will be destroyed. If by a remote chance it isn’t, you will receive severe damage, large numbers of casualties...’ He paused, struggling for words. ‘Let the Log show I commend all personnel for their courage, fortitude and devotion to duty since we left Earth orbit. That is all.’

  Helena’s tiny image gazed at him admiringly. Her voice was cracked with emotion.

  ‘We’re ready, John.’

  ‘Countdown?’ Koenig asked.

  ‘Forty seconds...’ Yasko’s high, oriental voice sounded. ‘Thirty nine... thirty eight...’

  Koenig and Helena continued to face one another across the millions of miles of space.

  Their faces seemed to be bathed in a warm glow. In a moment of pure blissful existence, they seemed to have forgotten the catastrophic events that were about to take place. It was a question of experiencing life whilst it was there.

  They smiled beatifically.

  ‘Five seconds...’ Yasko’s voice sounded.

  They scarcely heard it.

  ‘Detonation positive,’ Maya sobbed, reading the Eagle instruments. Her incredible brain performed two l
ightning calculations. ‘The shock-wave will hit us in ten seconds. Alpha, eighteen seconds later.’

  A frown crossed Koenig’s face as he remembered his duties.

  ‘Blast positions,’ he said.

  ‘Five seconds...’ Maya’s brave count-down continued. Koenig and Helena both laid down their heads in front of their screens, arms folded.

  Four, three, two, one, zero... Koenig counted inside his head.

  He let himself relax.

  The Eagle began to rock, and he heard loose objects clattering and rolling about the floors and consoles and corridors of the great ship.

  A scream rent the air. It was Maya.

  But then the rocking stopped. It stopped as suddenly as it had come.

  The ship became still.

  For an eternity Koenig lay with his head down, waiting for the worst, but there was no further movement.

  He wondered if their instruments could have been wrong... if the blast was yet to occur.

  But there was nothing.

  Puzzled, he raised his head.

  Helena still had her head down. Maya and Carter were looking around themselves, awed by the silence.

  He felt a surge of joy rising inside him, but he waited to make certain that the news was good, before he let it out.

  ‘What happened?’ Carter asked, astounded. He looked as though he felt he ought to be dead.

  Maya checked the instrumentation.

  ‘It was limited...’ she gasped. ‘Controlled... Not enough to destroy us, but enough...’

  ‘Check it!’ Koenig told her eagerly.

  The Psychon checked the dials again.

  ‘...But enough to increase our speed to 804. It’s enough! We have the speed to reach Alpha!’ she cried.

  Helena’s face had raised itself in the screen at the sound of the commotion.

  She looked delighted.

  ‘John... is it true?’

  ‘It’s true!’ Koenig whooped.

  He got out of his seat and began leaping around the cabin. Maya and Carter joined him.

  ‘Hope is better than despair...’ Carter quoted at Koenig as they hugged one another and swung one another round.

  ‘Creation is better than destruction...’ Maya sang, laughing.

  From the monitor on the console came the sound of more rejoicing, as Moon Base Alpha went berserk.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Ten days of peace came to the Moon Base.

  Ten days in which to repair broken equipment and restore morale.

  Ten days in which to replace the damage done to the vital life support systems, many of which had packed up and were supplying some areas with bad air and no heating.

  In which the Hydroponics Section where the Alphans grew their own food and disposed of their waste in a praiseworthy and ecological manner, was restored to its former efficiency, in which they were able to enjoy decent meals again and not worry what was happening to it after they had eaten it...

  In which Helena was able to help restore the casualties’ health and get many of them back on to their feet, strengthening their severely weakened manpower...

  In which Helena and Koenig were able to indulge in a little loving...

  In which Maya and Tony Verdeschi made it together.

  In which life went on as normal in Moon Base Alpha, dependent on its wits and on its advanced technology, forced merely to exist, unable to live as it would really like to do...

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘For the sixth consecutive day, we have travelled through deep space in an area where the stars are so close we are constantly bathed in a lovely blue light,’ Helena dictated into her tape machine.

  She sat on the edge of her bed in her private quarters, deep in thought. She allowed the microphone to drop from her mouth, before continuing.

  ‘There are no patients in the Medical Section, all life support units are functioning smoothly, and the Universe about us is incredibly peaceful... which is a welcome change after the horrors I have described.

  ‘Our one overriding hope at Alpha has always been that we will one day be able to leave our lunar home and settle once more on an Earth-like world. Our sensors today have picked up a medium sized planet in the North Quadrant... with a surface rich in vegetation. It is our fervent hope that it might prove habitable.’

  She paused again, thinking what else to say. But she decided to wrap the session up, instead. Now that the time had become available to catch up on luxuries like diary entries, she had spent all day at it, and felt tired.

  ‘Moon Base Alpha... Status report... One thousand two hundred and twenty-nine days since leaving Earth orbit. Doctor Helena Russell reporting.’

  She snapped the switch off, and put the diary away.

  She went to her dressing table mirror, and looked into it. Her lipstick had smudged, and she made her mouth into an ‘O’, and ran her finger round her lips.

  She bounced her hair at the sides with her fmgertips, and twisted round and glanced expertly at her profile, raising a demure eyelash.

  Then she glanced at her whole figure and, hands on hips, she ran them smoothly and firmly down her body, feeling her hips and smoothing the dress fabric she wore.

  She would have to do.

  She unlocked her door — she allowed no-one to disturb her whilst she was recording — and walked confidently down the corridor towards Command Centre.

  Verdeschi’s face was on the screen, flashed from the Pilot Section of the overhauled Eagle One.

  Maya and a well-rested Koenig were with him, orbiting the new planet.

  ‘Maya... sensor reading?’ Koenig spoke into his monitor.

  Maya’s voice sounded from off-screen in the Passenger Section. ’Surface temperature seventy-three degrees, atmosphere breathable.’

  ‘Let’s put it down, Tony,’ Koenig said.

  Tony nodded, and he was about to operate his controls when a red emergency light began flashing in front of him.

  He looked mildly worried, more annoyed than anything. ‘Life support system,’ he said. ‘Oxygen leak.’

  Behind him Koenig’s shape hit the console buttons in a mad flurry. He tore off the read-out and stared at it.

  ‘Four hours until critical level. Damn!’ he said. ‘I thought this bloody ship was supposed to be overhauled?’

  ‘Do we abort the mission?’ Verdeschi asked, downcast.

  Koenig shook his head. ’No. I’ll return to Alpha and pick up another Eagle. You and Maya will have completed your preliminary survey on the planet surface by the time I get back,’ he said.

  Verdeschi looked surprised.

  ‘Me? And Maya? Say, is this my lucky day or something?’

  ‘It’s your field day. Now get going before I change my mind,’ Koenig told him good naturedly.

  Verdeschi didn’t need telling twice, and left his seat.

  Koenig stuck his face in front of the screen and winked at Helena.

  She smiled, understanding the mutual agreement they had made. She had persuaded Koenig to take the next assignment off, to be with her instead. And to give Maya a chance to be with Verdeschi. The Psychon and the Security Chief had gone head over heels in love, almost at first sight.

  ‘Moon Base Alpha to Commander Koenig,’ Yasko advised from her console, without waiting to be asked. ‘Alpha is ready to receive Eagle One.’

  She smiled — the smile of the beautiful and mysterious lotus flower.

  A lush, verdant land of rich foliage and flowers surrounded Maya and Verdeschi.

  The variety of greens were unbelievably fresh and intense, the radiance and variety of colours of the flowers, breathtaking and stunning.

  The air was heavy and fragrant with scents. It was warm and humid.

  They strolled wondrously, through hanging fern-like plants, touched by dazzling petals of an ethereal brilliance.

  Unbelievably sharp pangs of nostalgia overcame them, Verdeschi for Earth, and Maya for Psychon as her dead father had described it to her. They forgot thei
r mission. They forgot Moon Base Alpha for a few timeless hours, part of which they spent lying together in a clearing, drowsing and drifting in delirious dreams of happiness, and part exploring the land like two Alices in a new and happier Wonderland.

  It reminded them most of their remote childhood, when things had seemed so much better than they were now.

  They came gradually to realize that there were no bird-songs on the air, no lazy insect hums, no scamperings and crashings through the undergrowth.

  ‘No competition!’ Verdeschi laughed. ‘Seems perfect for us.’

  ‘Wait till we radio the Commander!’ Maya cried like a delighted child. She scanned the plants with her instruments.

  ‘Hmm. Edible,’ she said. ‘Some of those adorable looking fruits look like they taste nice too.’

  Verdeschi commlocked Koenig and told him.

  ‘What have you been doing?’ Koenig’s voice demanded. His irritated voice drifted through the balmy air. ‘You turned off your commlocks... that’s forbidden.’ He seemed to relent. ‘Yasko will contact you every thirty minutes, understood?’

  ‘Aye aye, Cap’n,’ Verdeschi snapped the switch off and grinned at Maya. ‘He knows now.’

  He looked at what the Psychon was doing. She was deeply engrossed in a cluster of bright purple berries.

  ‘We’ve not tried to eat anything yet,’ he said. He reached out and plucked them.

  He was about to put them into his mouth when a shrill scream of agony rent the air.

  The scream seemed to emanate from the bush that bore the berries.

  It rang throughout the silent woodland, and Verdeschi and Maya stood back, shocked.

  Verdeschi looked guiltily down at his hands. The berries which he had dropped had stained them purple.

  ‘Cannibals... murderers...!’ a thunderous, rumbling voice roared at them from out of the sky.

  They looked around them nervously, but they saw only the bushes, the flowers, and the trees cloaking a distant hillside.

  But the Eve-like paradise had taken on an ominous appearance.

  ‘You will be punished...’ the thunder voice roared.

  The voice seemed to emanate from the hills, and they looked to them in horror.