The alien flailed its thin limbs wildly about as it fell, helpless in the grip of gravity.
Eventually the dog reached the surface and bounded back up to where Verdeschi watched. It transformed back into an ashen-faced Maya.
‘Good girl,’ Verdeschi said to her impassively. ‘You’ve just reduced our adversaries to two.’
The alien was now irrevocably caught in the landslide’s grip, and its desperate, struggling shape was swept in a mass of scree over the edge of the precipice.
They watched it plummet from view.
A moment later they heard a single, muffled cry rise in the hot, sultry air. Then complete silence fell again.
As inexorably as Alien Invisible had climbed up, it had slid down, to its fate.
The world went dark.
It was a deep, frightening darkness in which he could remember nothing of his past.
Black, fleeting shapes rustled round about him, creeping malignly towards him with evil intention.
Somewhere in front of him was Maya, but he could not see her.
At least he thought she was there...
One of the hideous occupants of the world appeared out of the shadows and sprang towards her, long crocodile jaws cruelly gaping and alight with a hellish glow.
Verdeschi twisted about, trying to raise himself.
‘No...’ he gasped. ‘No... behind you... wait... no... you can’t...’
Something began shaking him. Then a voice, kind and soothing.
‘It’s all right... it’s all right,’ the voice said soothingly.
The darkness disappeared and the world became light again. Maya’s blurred face hung in front of him.
Gradually his eyes focused, and he realized where he was. ‘There now... better?’
‘What’d I do?’ he mumbled. ‘... Pass out?’
Maya checked his shoulder with concern.
‘You fell asleep,’ she put it nicely while she busied herself with the crude bandaging she had wrapped round him.
‘I’ll have to get water,’ she said. ‘Stay here.’
But his eyes had closed again, and he scarcely heard her speak.
She became a wondrous, white falcon again, and flew powerfully towards the river clutching a piece of Verdeschi’s tunic in its talons.
She beat a steady course out over the mountain slope and the vegetation that lined the foaming river. As she flew she kept watch for the two remaining alien lifeforms who threatened the existence of her and her loved one.
She alighted on a rocky shore by a waterfall, and stretched out her talon holding the guava-coloured cloth into the rush of crystal-pure and healing water.
She withdrew her claw and, standing on the cloth plunged her head into the cool fluid. She pecked at the water, taking small beakfuls to quench her raging thirst.
Then she beat her wings again and launched herself into the air.
There was a sudden noise of crashing vegetation nearby, and something shot out towards her.
She screeched shrilly, and pecked at the object. But her efforts were to no avail.
A great, muscular hand closed over her small white feathered body and withdrew her roughly into the foliage.
The swirling, numbing waves of limbo were washing over him again. Try as he might, he could not keep his eyes open.
He tried to.
He tried to stay on watch until Maya returned.
But he felt the coldness and the darkness grabbing him again, and he felt himself falling, his consciousness fragmenting into nothingness.
When he came to again, a loud raucous noise sounded close by.
It was shrill and sharp and like an alarm, or a desperate plea. He opened his eyes.
A large, irregular shape was towering above him.
It was carrying something in its hand, something which swung from side to side. It roared a long, loud, triumphant roar.
The creature came into focus but then blurred again as Verdeschi’s tired senses refused to function correctly in his dying body.
But he had seen enough.
Alien Strong, and the thing it was carrying was...
He struggled with his vision.
The alien snapped back into focus, and Verdeschi saw the silver mesh suit it had worn swinging in its hand. Trapped plaintively inside the mesh was the beautiful white falcon.
The bird screamed harshly and beat its wings at sight of him.
A sudden, abrupt pounding started inside Verdeschi as he watched.
The rage of a lover boiled inside him, firing seized synapses and powering numbed muscles with a flood of adrenalin. Alien Strong was on his own.
He held the trapped bird aloft, roaring, challenging Verdeschi to rescue it.
Verdeschi grasped the leather handle of the bolas, weighted with its sharp, heavy stones.
Such primitive instruments of war were used to bring charging bulls to their knees and he dragged it closer to him.
Then he forced himself unsteadily to his feet, stronger than he was, but by no means up to full strength. Whether he could make the bolas work for him, and bring down the bull, he did not know.
But first, he pulled out his commlock.
Drunkenly, he pressed a switch, whilst the giant, muscular alien bellowed at his side.
‘Judges of Luton...’ Verdeschi called into the communicator.
The three trees flashed on to the screen, and rustled their branches.
‘Free her...’ he said. ‘I will go down to fight him...’
‘We will not interfere...’ the thunder voice boomed at him. ‘We cannot. Those are the Rules of Luton.’
Verdeschi swore.
‘I will let him kill me...’ he said recklessly.
‘No!’ the thunder voice retorted.
Verdeschi looked desperate.
‘She can keep that form for only an hour. She will be crushed. Free her and he can kill me...’
‘We cannot.’
‘Why?’ Verdeschi shouted hoarsely. ‘You’re the Judges... you can do anything.’
‘It is against the Rules of Luton,’ the three trees chorussed together in a deafening crescendo of sound.
Their images vanished from the screen.
‘Come back... listen... please...’ Verdeschi called out pleadingly, almost out of his mind.
But they did not return.
He threw the commlock away in frustration.
Resolutely, he brought himself under control again and he looked up and faced the alien squarely.
Alien Strong’s face was a mass of lines and cracks, like a rock face. His massive, rugged muscles buckled like jagged mountain ranges under his greyish skin.
Each muscle was as big as a boulder in itself.
For all its grossness, the alien moved nimbly. It darted towards a large rock and stopped by it.
It looked at Verdeschi with its slate face and held up the net for him to see.
Gently, it deposited the bird safely on the rock. Then it stepped back to its previous position, and regarded Verdeschi stonily.
Its mouth cracked open in a black slit to speak.
‘We must kill,’ it said with difficulty. Its voice sounded like dry, cracking rocks and raging dusty storms.
It seemed to be hollow inside.
Its mouth closed again and it raised its heavy lance to its shoulder.
Verdeschi still tried to bargain for Maya, although he was perfectly ready to fight for her.
‘No!’ he cried. ‘We’re fools if we fight...’
‘I don’t want to kill you... but I must...’ the chilling, alien voice sounded again.
Verdeschi looked threatening.
‘Let her out of the cage... she will be crushed.’
But the rock creature shook its head.
‘It is regrettable but necessary that you both die... so that I may live,’ it called out again.
Then its mouth snapped shut in a line of finality.
It began to draw back its arm grasping the lance.
Verdeschi gazed calculatingly at it for a moment.
Then he turned and stumbled away, zig-zagging from side to side.
He heard the grunt of escaping energy as the alien hurled the crystal lance at his back
He changed direction again as rapidly as he could, and the lance flew over his shoulder and crashed against a line of boulders in front of him.
When he had reached the extremity of the small ledge of flat rock that he and Maya had concealed themselves on, he turned round and faced his opponent. Now there was fighting distance between them.
Alien Strong was bellowing with rage, consumed again by a primitive force, and advancing towards him.
Verdeschi mustered all his strength and skill and began swinging the bolas around his head.
Sweat and grime ran down his face and the patch of dirty blood on his tunic began to spread, pumped out of his body by the violent exertions he was making.
With a sharp cry, he let the bolas go, praying that it would find its target, for he would get no other chance to bring the alien down.
The stones hissed through the air, twirling around on the end of their leather thongs.
In its rage, Alien Strong ran blindly into them.
The thongs wound round its legs, entangling them, and it lost its balance. Its giant form crashed heavily earthward, its head smashing sickeningly against a protruding lump of stone. It groaned loudly and agonizingly.
It pressed itself up with its huge muscles, and arose almost to its feet, but then a band of pain seemed to twist its cracked and rucked face, and it collapsed heavily downward and lay still.
Cautiously, Verdeschi moved forward and peered at it.
Its head was cracked, and a black fluid was trickling out, flowing away down the mountainside.
‘Kill! Kill!’ The Thunder Voice boomed out of the sky. ‘It is not yet dead. Kill... and you will be freed.’
‘NO! I WON’T KILL!’ Verdeschi screamed, sickened by what he saw.
But the voice did not desist. It roared for blood.
‘Kill... the criminal... who committed murder on Luton,’ the voices rumbled.
Verdeschi looked wildly around him at the mountain plants. He pointed accusingly at them.
‘You’re the criminals!’ he shouted. ‘You could have stopped us before we tore the plants.’
The voices sounded reluctant.
‘You have defeated the enemy. You are free,’ they said.
Verdeschi looked faintly surprised, despite his condition. ‘Alien Transport...’ he began.
‘You defeated him, that is enough,’ the voices called. ‘That satisfies the Rules.’
‘You want to see things die...’ Verdeschi began shouting again. ‘...you would let everything here die to satisfy your lust for death.’
The rushes and mountain orchids and other plants round about him began to move and rustle with power.
‘Go. Go. You are free... those are the Rules of Luton,’ the thunder voices resounded along the edge of the horizon.
They faded away and rumbled into silence.
Verdeschi turned towards the captive bird.
He unravelled the silver mesh and let the bird free.
It fluttered raggedly into the air in a cloud of feathers. It began to change back into the form he knew and loved, and he let the adrenalin flow away and the synapses cease firing and he collapsed at the feet of his goddess in engulfing darkness.
Koenig brought the great Eagle ship around, and again he checked his instruments.
He looked at the section screen despairingly.
‘I’ve checked and re-checked, Alpha. According to Eagle’s computer, I’m at the planet — yet nothing!’
As he spoke, his console screen, which had been fixed on the area of space where he was sure the planet had once existed, changed from stars into a picture of a boiling cloud layer.
He stared at it aghast.
He pulled hard on the controls and the Eagle’s engines thundered and shrieked, trying desperately to pull the vessel out of her collision course.
She steadied almost at zero feet, above a mass of waving tree-tops.
He wiped the seat off his brow.
‘OK, Alpha,’ he reported, ‘I’ve found the planet... rather, it found me.’
The figures of Helena and Yasko looked at each other with great relief.
They didn’t ask how.
‘Tony and Maya... see if you can get through to them,’ Helena asked the oriental operator.
Yasko smiled her perfect smile once more, revealing a set of divine, pure white teeth.
‘Moon Base Alpha to Tony and Maya,’ she sang.
Maya’s face appeared on the monitor at Command Centre. She looked overjoyed.
‘Maya to Moon Base Alpha... go ahead,’ she called over her commlock.
‘Eagle Four is ready to touch down, if you will give your position.’
Maya’s face looked up at the sky and her figure made a happy waving motion.
‘No need, we have visual contact, Alpha,’ she cried. ‘See you soon!’
The screen went blank and the operator’s face beamed radiantly about her, filling the Centre with a great happiness and warmth.
But now, a more sinister pleasure came.
It pulsed in great space clouds of happiness and warmth from across the Universe.
And Maya and Yasko clung innocently together in its path as it bathed Moon Base Alpha in a beauteous, delectable ocean of bliss and ecstasy.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘A distinct sensation of well-being and love for our fellow men and women has mysteriously pervaded the Moon Base,’ Helena spoke into her diary.
‘It seems to originate from nowhere. There are no planets within range of our sensors that could conceivably have affected us in this way.The only possible conclusion seems to be that we have become collectively influenced by a mass psychological phenomenon — a theory which seems to delight and surprise the women and not surprisingly perturb the men!
‘Strangely too, Verdeschi’s shoulder has healed in only two days. There are no patients in the Medical Centre... a pattern which has remained consistent since our fortunate escape from the Masters. In fact all men and women — no children, because there is no room on the Moon for expansion — are radiantly healthy. Of course, I am pleased. I am pleased to be in love, too, and to feel it so strongly. But...’
She paused, reclining lazily on her bed.
There was something which worried her, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
‘Perhaps this “love beam” won’t last,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps that’s what’s wrong with it. It’s too good...’
A bleep sounded from the communicator by her bed, and Koenig’s face appeared on the screen. He looked exhausted but happy. The love beam had made everyone overwork and kept them awake.
‘Come in here, lovely,’ he said. ‘We’ve got something that might lay your psychology theory to rest.’
‘Coming,’ she said.
She snapped off her diary switch and sat up.
She yawned and stretched, then went to her dressing-table to freshen up.
The Command Centre was full of people, mainly couples, lounging and chatting on console seats and on benches near the coffee dispenser.
It was dirty and untidy too. Routine work had gone largely by the board. But at least everyone was happy, Koenig thought, as Helena swept into the room and gathered his arm in hers.
He brought his arm round her shoulders and hugged her and kissed her forehead.
Verdeschi and Maya stood beside them, equally entwined.
They were like young couples carried along by the urge to do what they felt was right in the face of convention and all other odds.
It was a kind of drug euphoria, Koenig noticed.
And although he didn’t let it show on his face, he was worried.
‘Tony’s found something,’ he said to her.
They crowded round Verdesc
hi’s console and looked at the monitor.
Two sine waves had appeared on it. They were running gracefully and evenly through each other. At regular intervals their rhythmic undulations froze, and their thread-like lines became jagged and uneven.
Helena frowned reluctantly.
‘Our scanners are fixed on a perfectly empty area of space, directly ahead,’ Verdeschi informed. ‘This happens whenever they scan a particular co-ordinate.’
As he spoke, there was a lessening of pressure in the air — a changing of the subtle atmospheric tension that had seemed to be a characteristic of the love beam’s influence.
They felt a slight coldness run through them — not a temperature drop, but the coldness of reality trying to poke its way through the rapturous miasma all around them.
Koenig raised an eyebrow at Verdeschi.
He gently freed himself from Helena and ran to his own console.
‘I want precise scanner readings on that co-ordinate,’ he ordered as he sat down.
He pressed a button and the Big Screen lit up in front of him.
It was a sinister mass of pulsating crimson and violet light.
It bathed the room in a lurid, flickering, glow that abruptly neutralized the last remaining traces of well-being inside them. They had come full circle; from Heaven to Hell in a matter of moments.
The Alphan operators returned quickly to their posts and began their scans.
‘John!’ Verdeschi called out in alarm.
‘I know - it’s happening over here too,’ Koenig replied, staring grim-faced at his console screen.
The readings had gone hay-wire.
‘We’ve been lulled into a false sense of well-being by someone... or something.’
‘The computers are undergoing some kind of break-down,’ Maya informed from her new post between Annette Fraser and Sandra Benes.
‘There’s something big out there, John,’ Yasko shrilled.
A single, continuous line was crossing her screen, indicating that her sensors were being blocked.
‘Put it on the screen...’ Koenig told her, although he did not sound at all sure that anything could oust the blazing red pulsar that dominated it.
‘I don’t.. seem... able to,’ Yasko complained, wrestling with her controls.
Then, as they watched, partly hypnotized by the boiling crimson hues and shades, they caught the briefest glimpse of a planet-like mass buried at the turbulent centre.
Space 1999 - Planets of Peril Page 13