Space 1999 #4 - Collision Course

by E. C. Tubb

  LOST IN SPACE!

  A nuclear "mistake" blasts the men and women of Moonbase Alpha on a daring one-way odyssey to distant stars. Their only home is a wandering cinder heap. Their daily routine—outwitting the treacherous alien forces of the universe.

  There is a brilliant flash of light and a planet appears where none should be. A gift from the mysterious queen Arra? Or a deadly world where the present becomes as primitive as the past?

  The Alphans unlock more than the secret of life and death when they free an astonishing creature with the face of a diabolical angel!

  In the light of the ritual fire something moved—it was a tall shambling figure with blood on its head and unsteady feet. Next to it, wrapped in eerie robes, a woman stood. A low moan passed through her lips.

  "A death rite," Professor Bergman said softly. "Such customs are common among primatives. They consider a sick man already dead and so decorate his body with magical powders to ensure his safe passage into the next world. Then they put him into a grave or on a pyre."

  "Alive?" David said in disbelief.

  The robed woman lit a torch and held it close to the face of the helpless man. As she was about to ignite his bed of sticks, Bergman gasped, "David, that's Commander Koenig!"

  Books in the Space: 1999 Series

  Breakaway

  Moon Odyssey

  The Space Guardians

  Collision Course

  Published by POCKET BOOKS

  COLLISION COURSE

  Futura Publications edition published 1975

  POCKET BOOK edition published February, 1976

  This POCKET BOOK edition includes every word contained in the original edition. It is printed from brand-new plates made from completely reset, clear, easy-to-read type. POCKET BOOK editions are published by POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 630 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10020. Trademarks registered in the United States and other countries.

  Standard Book Number: 671-80274-7.

  This POCKET BOOK edition is published by arrangement with Futura Publications Limited. Series format and television play scripts copyright, ©, 1975, by ATV Licensing Limited. This novelization copyright, ©, 1975, by Futura Publications Limited. All rights reserved. This book, or portions thereof, may not be reproduced by any means without permission of the original publisher: Futura Publications Limited, 49 Poland Street, London, England.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  To John, Alan, Steven and Lisa

  CHAPTER ONE

  Somewhere a woman was singing, her voice high and clear and achingly poignant. Koenig recognized the famous aria from Madame Butterfly and paused to listen, wondering if Puccini would ever have dared to imagine that he would have had his music played so far from home.

  His music and the words which told so much.

  One fine day . . .

  The day when they would all find a new home. When the runaway moon and base could be abandoned to continue the fantastic journey an accident had started. When the men and women comprising the personnel could settle down to rebuild their shattered lives. One day. One fine day.

  Koenig hoped it would be soon.

  Sighing he continued his progress down the corridor and into the Medical Centre. Helena was waiting beside a couch fitted with monitoring devices and he slowed a little, aware of her presence, her beauty. Hair, cut neatly in a golden helmet, aureoled her features which held a haunting slavic combination of prominent cheekbones, concave cheeks and a strongly determined jaw. Her lips were full, the lower sensuous, her eyes deep-set and oddly direct. The uniform with its white left sleeve enhanced the lush feminity of her figure.

  Doctor Helena Russell, as Koenig had long since recognized, was a very remarkable woman.

  ‘You’re late, John.’

  ‘I was distracted.’

  ‘By the song?’ Her voice was deeply musical. ‘I heard it too. Cynthia has a beautiful voice but she should reserve it for more appropriate occasions. Now lie down on the couch, Commander. All the way, please.’

  ‘Helena, this isn’t necessary.’

  ‘The mere fact that you say it isn’t means that it is.’ Her hands were firm on his shoulders. ‘You’re not a machine, John, so don’t try to act like one. Too much depends on you for us to take chances. Regular checks may not be the full answer but they will help. Now just do what I say.’

  It was hard to obey, to fall back on the couch, to attempt to relax as the woman fitted the monitors. Hard but it had to be done. Command-judgements should not be made by a man dulled with the toxins of fatigue, and there were mental as well as purely physical strains. Tension, maintained too long, becomes a habit, almost a way of life and to such a man reality is slightly altered to distort relative values.

  Over three hundred men and women depended on Koenig for their very lives and he could never once dare to forget it. The black sleeve he wore signalled his authority, but the badge and symbol of rank did not make him a superman.

  ‘Relax, John.’ Helena glanced at the dials of the monitors. ‘More. Take slow, deep breaths, think of something nice, roses for example. You like roses?’

  ‘I used to grow them once. A long time ago now when I was studying on Earth. I had a box of soil and a few miniature hybrids and used to water them regularly each evening. The only trouble was that I could never keep the blooms. The other students used to raid the plants for gifts to give to their girls. Roses.’ His voice thickened a little. ‘Roses.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ll be able to grow them again soon.’

  If so it wouldn’t be on the moon, that he knew. They had no plants and even if they had the facilities were lacking. Soil and nutrients could not be spared from the essential task of food production to provide aesthetic pleasure. The hydroponic tanks, the yeast vats and algae cultures nurtured in the caverns dug deep below the base, warmed and illuminated by atomic power, demanded too much attention, too many precious man-hours of labour.

  Another worry to add to the rest.

  ‘You’re still over-tense, John,’ said Helena quietly. ‘I’ll have to adjust your blood-sugar content and equalize the endocrine balance. Of course the best thing would be for me to give you at least fifty hours Russian sleep.’

  It was a temptation—fifty hours of oblivion born of micro-currents applied to the sleep centre of his brain. Instant repose during which his body, relieved of all mental strain, could heal itself.

  ‘John?’

  Koenig realized the hint had been in the nature of a question. And where, really, would be the harm? No one, not even he, was indispensable, the others could manage without him, Victor could take over command. Fifty hours of induced sleep and he would be as good as new.

  ‘John?’ Helena was pressing. ‘It won’t take long to assemble, the equipment and I could complete the monitoring while you rested. Yes?’

  ‘No.’

  She sighed, but had guessed what the answer would be before the question had been asked. Checking the instruments she glanced at his face, the eyes closed now as he tried to relax, some of the deepening lines smoothing from cheeks and forehead. He had grown older since they had first met, not in chronological terms, but in other ways. Responsibility had helped, but the greatest burden had been concern. The need to care for others, those over whom he was in comm
and, those who depended on him for their continued existence.

  The welfare of a world, she thought bleakly. John. Koenig holds in his palm the welfare of an entire world.

  The moon which had been torn from its age-old orbit about Earth, to be thrown into the uncharted depths of interstellar space, to experience the impact of alien laws of incredible sciences. As yet they had managed to survive but each day brought a new chance of unguessed peril and, always, was the fear that all their efforts to date could be washed out in a moment.

  A blind man placed in a strange environment filled with spined and hooked objects, things edged and pointed and serrated with cruel indentations which could cut and tear and hurt at the slightest misstep. Or no, not a blind man, but a man born blind and suddenly given the gift of sight so that all he saw, all the colours he sensed, the shapes now grown abruptly unfamiliar, all would threaten his safety.

  As the safety of the Alphans was threatened in this new and terrible universe.

  The Alphans, the men and women who had staffed the base and who had lost their native world.

  ‘Helena?’ Koenig had opened his eyes and was staring at her with sympathetic concern. ‘You’re thinking, remembering.’

  ‘Yes, John.’ She was honest. ‘Remembering—and hoping a little.’

  Their hands met, gripped in a warm intimacy which required no words, the touch alone being enough. One day . . . one fine day . . .

  The hum of the commlock at his belt broke the train of thought. It was Bergman and his face was anxious on the tiny screen.

  ‘Commander?’

  ‘What is it, Victor?’

  ‘Trouble. The sensors have spotted something massive heading directly towards us. John—’

  Koenig snapped curtly, ‘I’m on my way!’

  Space was big but it was not empty. Stars, worlds, the fuzz of nebulae, the pale pulse of scattered galaxies all rested and moved in the overlapping energy fields of the universe. Dust gathered in opaque clouds in which suns burned like dying embers. Cinders drifted and enigmatic vortices gaped like monstrous traps to engulf anything, material or not, into their maws, to change it, to hurl it for incredible distances.

  And there were scraps of debris, the broken fragments of disrupted worlds; pieces as small as a bullet, others like bricks, mountains, satellites.

  The one heading towards Alpha was a jagged mass of rock thirty miles in diameter.

  ‘There’s no doubt, Commander.’ Kano, at his post, ripped the print out from the computer and handed it over. ‘It’s all here, velocity relative to Alpha, direction, probable mass—from the figures it must have an extremely high mineral content.’

  ‘Extrapolation?’

  ‘Impact within thirty hours. Potential energy-release based on assumption of homogenous density stated in ergs is—’

  ‘Save the science for Victor. Just tell me what the computer expects to happen.’ Koenig was sharp and he knew it, but there was no time to be otherwise.

  Kano pursed his lips then said, ‘Two possibilities depending on exact mass of the approaching asteroid. One—the moon will be shattered into several fragments of varying size. Two—the moon will remain whole but a vast crater will be formed at the point of impact.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Within fifty miles of the base.’

  Kano’s voice was flatly emotionless, but some things needed no emphasis. They were a target awaiting the impact of a celestial bullet. It would hit with massed tons of weight, potential kinetic energy which would be transformed into heat, itself and a chunk of the moon vanishing into converted radiation. Koenig had a vivid mental impression of a hammer striking a melon. If the hammer were light enough it would bury itself into the vegetable, heavier and it would smash it to pieces.

  And the base was in the position of a fly sitting beneath the approaching hammer.

  ‘Victor?’

  Bergman drew in his breath, eyes narrowed as he studied the figures. Of all the personnel at their posts in Main Mission he was the least disturbed. Not because his mind could not recognize and appreciate the danger, but because his mechanical heart did not respond to the gush of adrenalin.

  ‘Approximately thirty miles in diameter,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘That is about 3,400 cubic miles of rock. The probable weight based on the specific gravity of water would be . . .’ He reached for a slide rale and shook his head as he noted the answer. ‘High. Add velocity-mass to the total and we get—’

  ‘Curtains,’ said Morrow from where he sat at his console. ‘Don’t try to cover it up, Victor. ‘We’re all as good as dead and you know it.’

  ‘We’ve been as good as dead before, Paul,’ said Koenig sharply. ‘But we didn’t give up then and we’re not going to give up now. We still have thirty hours and have a choice of action.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Evacuation, diversion or destruction.’

  ‘Leave the target area, change the course of the asteroid or destroy it before it reaches us,’ said Morrow. ‘Commander! We can’t leave! We’ve nowhere to go!’

  ‘Which rules out the first possibility. Diversion, Victor?’

  Bergman frowned, his heavy face sagging into deep creases. ‘I don’t know, John. It’s barely possible but the time element is against us. By the time we get ready the asteroid will be too close and the amount of effective diversion too great.’

  ‘Check with the computer, David.’ Koenig waited as Kano fed in the question and read the figures. ‘Well?’

  ‘The odds are against it, Commander, in the region of a thousand to one against success. That is allowing for optimum assembly of nuclear explosive charges.’

  ‘Assembly and positioning,’ said Bergman. ‘We have no time to make certain that the mass of that asteroid is homogenous. If it isn’t we’ll shatter it into fragments and instead of diverting it we’ll be on the receiving end of a shotgun blast.’

  A rain of fragments any one of which would be enough to turn the base into molten slag. Even if they all missed the strains set up in the lunar soil would ruin the underground installations, smash the domes and turn the living and working quarters into wreckage. The end would be the same, complete and utter destruction.

  ‘Which leaves us with no choice,’ said Koenig grimly. ‘We must volatize the asteroid.’

  ‘Over three thousand cubic miles of rock,’ said Morrow. ‘And we have less than thirty hours in which to do it.’

  ‘We’ll do it.’ Koenig forced himself to sound confident. ‘Paul, instruct Carter to conduct a reconnaissance and determine the exact dimensions and material of the asteroid. Victor, get to work on the amount of nuclear explosives needed. Kano, search the computer files for all relevant information as to the placing of the charges, the probable results and the time-element of firing as applied to the optimum functioning of the base. Sandra, get me Anderson. Patch through to the communication post in my office.’

  Behind closed doors, shielded from the eyes of those in Main Mission, it was possible to relax for a moment, to drop the mask and let some of his anxiety show. A moment only, then as Anderson appeared on the screen Koenig was his usual self when faced with an emergency; a coldly determined man who demanded the impossible, confident that he would get it.

  The chief engineer frowned as he heard the problem.

  ‘We can adapt the Eagles, Commander, that’s no real problem. External grapnels and interior releases—a dozen can be ready in as many hours. But the nuclear charges—that’s something else.’

  ‘Victor will take care of those. He’s busy on the figures now, but I want you to start machining the casings and firing mechanisms straight away. We want fusion so we’ll need a fission detonator incorporating remote control releases. Have them all synchronized to one master switch.’

  ‘Safety factors?’

  ‘One only. Have it fitted to the grapnel so the bomb will be primed and ready to blow as soon as it is in position.’ Koenig shrugged at the other’s expression. ‘I know it’s not
what you’d like, but we have no choice. Time is against us. I want maximum crews and constant effort.’

  ‘You’ll get it, Commander,’ promised Anderson. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yes—you can pray.’

  Pray for a miracle to happen, for the threatening asteroid to vanish, to veer, to be swallowed up into the darkness from whence it had come. Pray that the charges and Eagles would be ready in time, that the figures would be correct, that the base would survive.

  In Main Mission the tension was like a violin string tightened to breaking point.

  ‘Eagle Eleven to Alpha. Nuclear charge in place. Mission complete. Returning to base.’

  The voice of the pilot echoed his fear.

  ‘Acknowledged.’ Morrow turned in his chair and reported to Koenig where he stood with Bergman at his desk. ‘Eagles Seven, Eight and Nine have returned to base, Commander. Eagles Ten, Eleven and Twelve have laid their charges and are returning.’

  Koenig nodded as he looked down at the model, on his desk. It was a replica of the asteroid constructed to scale, the surface marked with eleven pins each representing a nuclear bomb. In the main screens the actual asteroid could be seen, magnified, the ragged surface pitted and sere.

  It was a relief to look up at the space windows, to see the shapes of the returning Eagles as they grew large in the empty void. An illusion, the Eagles were not growing but coming closer and the void was not empty, soon the bulk of the asteroid would dominate the heavens.

  From his post at the computer Kano said, urgently, ‘Commander, Eagle One is in trouble. The schedule has not been maintained.’

  ‘Paul?’

  ‘I’m making direct contact, Commander.’ Morrow worked at his panel, grunted as Carter’s face appeared on the screen. ‘You should have placed that charge by now. You haven’t—what’s wrong?’

  ‘Malfunction in the main booster, I think. I can’t get the speed.’