They rolled over on the floor, watched by the horrified Alphans. But no-one dared shoot for fear of injuring the Commander.
But at last, Koenig and the creature rose.
Koenig was standing with his laser gun pressed in its back.
They could see bright, intelligent eyes staring out at them in bewilderment and fear. But there was also a trace of manic joy in them.
‘Please! Shoot!’ it cried out in a coarse but articulate voice. It cringed, ready to receive the blast.
‘What?’ Koenig asked, taken aback.
‘You would be doing what I desire,’ the creature replied, its long jaws opening and closing as it spoke. It still cringed.
Koenig recovered his senses and powered his gun.
‘I’m not shooting you,’ he said.
The creature stood upright again and looked balefully at him.
Koenig scratched his head.
‘Why did you attack us?’ he asked.
‘So that you might kill us. That’s why we sometimes fight the apes.’ The creature pointed upward through the roof of the cavern with a scaly arm. ‘He won’t let us die.’
‘Who is he?’ Koenig asked.
‘His name is Magus,’ the semi-humanoid replied. ‘He is a super-being, the last of a race of cosmic magicians.’
‘Magicians!’ Helena exclaimed. It was the last thing she had expected to hear.
The humanoid looked unperturbed.
‘They learned the ultimate secret of physics. They were able to perform miracles...’ it told them.
Verdeschi leaned forward earnestly.
‘You said he was the last of them,’ he prompted.
‘They over-reached themselves,’ the humanoid replied. ‘They challenged a mysterious being who was even stronger than they were. He destroyed them. Magus escaped because he was elsewhere in the Universe. He has always been a great traveller.’
‘What does he want?’ Koenig asked.
The creature paused, and there was what sounded like bitter sarcasm in its voice as it replied.
‘He wants the secret of creation — to be able to create life. Then he believes he can face up to the mysterious enemy who destroyed his species and who has this secret.’
Koenig looked intently at its unfortunate combination of lizard and human characteristics.
‘Where do you and the others fit in?’ he asked it.
‘We are the hybrids who have resulted from Magus’s attempts to discover the secret.’
‘How is that?’ Helena asked, a sympathetic look now appearing on her face as she listened to its tale of woe.
‘We’re the children of other species he has trapped and brought to this planet — the result of his genetic probing into our earliest fertilized cells.’ The creature sounded anguished, turning on the works for Helena’s benefit. ‘He won’t even let us die. He still thinks he may learn something from our mutilated genes. Down here is the only place we can get away from him. He’ll never come down here.’
‘What’s the source of his power?’ Verdeschi asked the creature gently.
‘I don’t know,’ it confessed.
They were silent for a while, unnerved and horrified by Magus’s grotesque and bumbling attempts at creation.
‘Can you lead us out of here, to the cave where the apes are?’ Koenig asked it.
Unwillingly, the humanoid nodded.
It turned and began to trot through the cavern.
As they went they noticed the ghastly shapes of many other hybrids moving about in the shadows and heard the moans and shrieks of the perpetual torment they had been cast into.
But they were not attacked by them, and soon they saw daylight coming from a yellowish disc of light ahead of them.
It was the cave mouth. As they moved towards it through the darkness it grew brighter and larger, its yellow hue disappearing. Soon they were standing in broad daylight again.
And standing in the centre of the clearing, waiting for them was the tall, terrifyingly angry form of the magician.
His voice cracked like a clap of thunder.
‘Deceitful pygmies!’ he roared at them.
They turned to flee, but he raised his arm and pointed it at Verdeschi.
From his forefinger a bolt of lightning-like energy sprang and struck the Security Chief in the back.
He staggered to the ground in agony.
Maya screamed out and ran towards him, but it was no use. Verdeschi convulsed and lay still.
The cat woman from Psychon screamed again, and now she turned towards their persecutor with a vengeful, hating gaze.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Seeing that more wanton violence was going to befall them, Koenig raced forward towards Maya and restrained her.
‘No, Maya,’ he shouted. ‘He’ll kill you too!’
He struggled with her, hoping that she would not convert herself.
‘Tony’s not dead!’ Helena called out from behind. ‘But he’s very weak.’
‘You heard what she said, Maya,’ Koenig shouted desperately. ‘Tony’s alive! He needs you!’
As though dazed, the Psychon turned about.
She stared at Verdeschi’s collapsed form, attended over by Helena, and she moved tremblingly towards it.
Koenig let her go, staring worriedly after her. Then he turned to face Magus.
‘An immature and irresponsible reaction!’ he stormed.
‘He is stunned merely,’ Magus replied haughtily. ‘You have taken me too lightly. You need a lesson.’
But Koenig turned away, disgusted.
He checked that Verdeschi was in fact recovering. He faced the magician again. He indicated the cave.
‘This is your Garden of Eden, is it?’ he asked bitterly. ‘Those are your Adam and Eves! You are going to use us like laboratory animals!’ He stabbed at the cave, enraged. ‘That’s what our children would have turned out to be like!’
For the first time a sign of remorse crossed Magus’s features.
‘No!’ he cried. ‘That is not my purpose with you! My purpose with you is to breed a new species of humankind — strong, resourceful, brilliant, dedicated; all the qualities you possess between you. And together we would work on the great mystery of creation as a team. I’ve realized now that I cannot solve it on my own.’
He sounded almost humble, pleading.
Helena looked up from her work on Verdeschi.
‘You claimed you were a creator. You’re a fraud and a liar!’ she remonstrated scornfully.
‘A harmless deception to gain your confidence...’ Magus countered. ‘You will thank me in the end. When the time is ripe, I will invest you and your offspring with the kind of powers I possess. Together we will work on the great secret of Creation!’
As he spoke, the sun began to descend once more below the horizon, and the day drew to a close.
Long shadows of dusk began to pall over the trees.
Magus seemed to grow nervous, and he moved towards them spreading out his arms.
‘But for now you must learn to obey me. Go!’ he shouted sternly. ‘Go back to the glade and stay there!’
Half-carrying and half-dragging Verdeschi they made their way back through the trees as fast as they could.
The wrathful magician followed them with upraised arms, waving them back.
His face gleamed with sweat, lined with sudden effort as the magic hours of daylight gradually waned and the barren darkness of the night returned.
They were left on their own once more, and they wracked their brains for a solution to their plight.
There was no enchanting music this time, and they left the fire unmade.
Verdeschi made a slow recovery under the expert guidance of Helena, and the mortified Maya.
‘I think I may have it,’ Koenig declared at last.
The others looked up at him expectantly.
‘A way out?’ Helena asked.
‘I’m not sure. Let me try it on you... Magus for some reason can
’t stand the dark.’
‘The superman afraid of the dark!’ Maya commented sarcastically.
‘Think about it,’ Koenig went on. ‘He left the minute it was dark last night. He won’t go down the caves. He left hurriedly tonight... just as nightfall was coming on. Remember the effect the laser had on him?’
‘He drew strength from it...’ Helena remembered as the obvious connection between the occurrences dawned on her.
Maya looked somewhat recovered. ’Of course!’ she exclaimed. ‘He needs light. His power came from light! Why didn’t I think of it?’
‘You had to think of Tony,’ Koenig told her. ‘But just think — at this moment he’s probably off on the other side of the planet where the sun is still shining!’
‘That implant I detected in him,’ Maya continued from strength to strength. ‘It could be a light detector!’
‘A what?’ Verdeschi groaned.
He had been listening to them, and now he sat up groggily, scarcely able to bear the touch of the ground upon his tender flesh.
‘Imagine light travelling at 186,000 miles a second...’
‘For you I’ll try...’ Verdeschi groaned again, and Helena eased him gently to his feet.
‘You find a way to slow it down to zero constantly, as it comes at you, and you harness the resulting energy!’ Maya exclaimed, now full of the inspiration of mathematics.
Koenig looked perplexed.
‘I didn’t think that was possible,’ he said.
‘It isn’t — for us,’ Maya continued earnestly. ‘But they managed to solve it and they became super beings. It’s probably a small crystal implanted somewhere in the brain stem.’
‘The energy would be instantly available...’ Helena deduced.
‘And it could be directed simply by thought,’ Maya added.
‘Almost limitless personal power... undreamed of by anyone except a few. It must be the nearest thing to being a god there is!’ Koenig declared with a mixture of awe and alarm.
‘How do we fight that?’ Verdeschi asked.
He stood shakily on his feet, leaning on Helena for support.
‘It’s obvious,’ Koenig replied. ‘Somehow we’ve got to find a way to block his source of power — that means we have to cut off the light... Hey!’ he declared slowly. A cunning smile crossed his features. ‘I’ve got an idea. How about eclipsing the sun... with the Moon?!’
‘An eclipse would strip Magus of his power,’ Helena agreed. But she looked doubtful.
‘Maya?’ Koenig asked.
The Psychon had joined Verdeschi again and was now helping to prop him up.
She produced a small astronomical instrument from her pack and raised it to the sky. She took a number of readings whilst the other Alphans watched on with increasing interest and hope.
She began to make a series of complex calculations in her head. She looked dejectedly at them.
‘No good,’ she said. ‘If our moon remains in orbit around this planet there will be a total eclipse... in thirteen months’ time.’
They looked downcast.
‘That’s no good then,’ Koenig said grimly. But already another thought seemed to be forming inside his head. He looked at each of them. ‘We’ll just have to make our own luck then. There must be another way we can provide Magus with his own personal eclipse.’
‘How do we do that?’ Helena asked.
‘He called us primitives...’ Koenig spoke thoughtfully. ‘So let’s be primitive! It’s the last thing he’ll expect. Up here...’
He moved away from the group towards a small, grassy mound in the ground. In its top was a fairly large, natural crack in the earth.
‘A tiger pit!’ Maya caught on. ‘To catch a genius?’
Koenig smiled deviously.
‘The obvious is the one thing geniuses never consider!’ he said, stooping down to examine the vent.
The fault was no more than a few inches wide, but it seemed deep.
It was barely visible in the dark, and they waited until the Moon rose before they began digging around it with sharp stones and sharp wooden picks made from the saplings.
Koenig and Verdeschi dug, whilst Maya and Helena wove a dense cover of interlaced brush, turf and twigs.
‘We’ll never dig this in time,’ Verdeschi commented after they had chipped and hacked away at the sun-baked walls of the fissure.
The loose soil was pouring away down inside it.
‘It’s funny, it never seems to be filling up,’ Koenig observed.
Verdeschi stared at the fissure.
He stuck his improvised pick down it and wiggled it about. ‘It’s pretty deep... I wonder if...?’
He looked up at Koenig. The two men nodded.
‘The tunnels,’ Koenig said excitedly. ‘The whole mountainside’s probably riddled with them. If it’s true, all we have to do is hack the sides to widen it.’
They attacked the vent with renewed vigour.
This time, they made faster progress, and slowly but surely the dark gap beneath them began to widen.
Dawn broke, and they put the finishing touches to their handiwork.
The vent was now some five or six feet wide, and in the growing light they could make out the bottom... ten or fifteen feet below, where a pile of earthen lumps and powder now lay.
The vent walls fell steeply into the gloom, making it impossible for anyone to climb out.
‘Let me down,’ Koenig told Verdeschi and the two women.
He had strapped an improvised rope made of belts and other garments around his waist, and gently he was lowered down inside the darkness.
He landed warily on the bottom, glancing on either side of him at the tunnel which disappeared into blackness. The rock had given way to earth here, and in all likelihood it was unsafe and no longer used.
Nothing came after him. He withdrew his laser gun to make sure.
‘Put the cover on,’ he called up.
The heavy, floppy cover that Helena and Maya had made was dragged across the top.
Disturbed earth trickled down the sides of the vent.
He heard rustlings from above. Then complete silence fell. And complete darkness.
There was no possible way that Magus could get his much needed light energy down here, he thought smugly to himself. All they had to hope was that Magus was unable to store his energy up and perform his tricks in total darkness.
The cover was pulled back, and he was hauled back up to the surface.
‘Magus will be here at any minute,’ Verdeschi warned. He glanced nervously at the horizon. ‘How was it?’
‘Perfect,’ Koenig nodded happily. ‘All we’ve got to do is get him into it.’
They covered the hole with the expertly-made vegetative matting. They stepped back and regarded it critically.
To the observant, the grass tufts that had been uprooted and woven into the branches did not look convincing. When viewed impartially, with distracted attention, the Aiphans hoped that its crude guise would work.
‘If he suspects, or if it doesn’t work it’s the end of all of us — Moon Base Alpha, too,’ Maya commented solemnly. ‘It’s got to work.’
A disturbance in the trees told them that Magus was approaching, and they moved swiftly to the charred remains of the fire and sat down nearby.
The hamper was open and they pretended to be eating breakfast.
The tall figure of the magician appeared in the clearing. They turned, as though surprised by his visit.
He looked at them radiantly. He was in an excellent mood, his entire being drinking in the sunlight.
Koenig arose and went to meet him, skirting the pit as he did so.
‘We’ve considered what you told us, Magus,’ he said to the smiling super man.
‘You will co-operate with me in my great work?’ Magus asked, surprised by the changed reaction he was getting from Koenig.
Koenig pursed his lips and looked hesitant.
He kept Magus waiting for an
answer.
‘How do we know we can trust you?’ he asked finally. ‘After all, we’re completely at your mercy.’
He turned away towards the pit, as though in doubt.
Magus took a step towards him, to press home his persuasion. ‘I need you! I can’t do it alone! That is your guarantee!’ he said.
Koenig still didn’t look too happy.
He backed away still further, hands on chin, as though deep in thought.
‘There must be no more experiments on the mutants if you want our full co-operation,’ he dictated. ‘Not even observation of them.’
Magus looked alarmed, and stepped closer.
‘Valuable things may still be learned from them,’ he declared indignantly. ‘One’s mistakes can often be more instructive than one’s successes!’
‘No,’ Koenig said. ‘They are to be left alone and they are not to be kept alive against their will.’
Koenig spun round and walked round to the other side of the pit. He positioned himself next to the others, as though making a demonstration of solidarity to back his spoken conditions.
Magus shook his head in disbelief.
‘As always, the arrogance of your species astounds me,’ he said. ‘As you say, you are in my power — yet it is you who lay down the rules!’
‘Those are our conditions,’ Koenig stated flatly. ‘They are not negotiable. Accept them or kill us.’
Magus became furious and he took several strides towards them, waving an admonishing finger.
‘And your friends on the Moon — do you take that decision for all of them... arrhhhh!’
He let out an enraged howl as his divine being crashed through the matting and into the pit.
‘Now!’ Koenig shouted.
They arose quickly and piled more turf and brush-wood on to the gap that had been torn in the mat.
Within seconds it. was completely covered over again. From below they heard Magus’s raging voice blaspheming them.
‘Idiots! Primeval imbeciles! Without me the planet will break apart!’
His voice took a more desperate turn.
‘Light! I must have light!’ it screamed out.
Koenig flipped his commlock switch.
‘Koenig to Alpha, Koenig to Alpha. Come in,’ he spoke urgently.
A distant rumbling sound rose into the air, and the ground began to quake as Magus’s prophesies began to come true.
Space 1999 - Planets of Peril Page 17