Space 1999 #6 - Astral Quest

by John Rankine

  A confused noise of shouting and running feet made an interruption. A Darian, blood streaming from a head wound, burst in through the hatch. ‘Neman . . . the Survivors . . . they’ve broken in!’

  To give him his due, Neman never hesitated. He ran to meet the enemy with the two Darians behind him.

  Helena was stirring. Her eyes were open. Koenig knew he should be where the action was, but went to her, held her tightly for human comfort, said, ‘Helena. Relax. It’s all right. We’ll have you out of here in no time at all.’

  She was seeing him in double vision and his voice was coming from a long way off, but the message was received and understood. She said, ‘John!’ in a whisper and her eyes closed again.

  Remembering his own experience under a Darian drug, he reckoned she would be okay the next time round. He said, ‘Stay with her Victor,’ and went out, followed by Kara.

  The noise of battle had rolled into the Command Centre and when he reached the open hatch Koenig could see it was only a matter of time before the surviving Darians were overwhelmed.

  Neman had lost his blaster and was struggling chest to chest with a wild, half-naked Survivor. Over the man’s shoulder he saw that Hadin had gone to the gene bank and had plucked out the flat, oblong casket that held the glowing nucleus. In a surge of mad strength, the Darian Commander threw his opponent aside and forged through the press to save the most precious item on his world.

  He was almost there, hands stretched out to grab for it when Hadin swung round, sensing danger. One way was as good as another to kill a pig. Hadin slammed the gene bank in a crashing blow on the crown of Neman’s head. It shattered.

  Neman’s scream was not to recognise his diamond moment of death, but the despair of one knowing that the long years of guardianship had come to nothing and all he had done had been lost in a moment of time.

  Neman fell, dead, drenched by the viscous fluid in the container, wreathed by the blackened and dying strands of the Double Helix.

  Hadin saw the face. All his life it had been the picture of a god. Awed and terrified he said, ‘Neman!’

  Other Survivors took up the cry. There was a rush for out. Alan Carter had to beat a path through the tide. He saw Koenig and shouted ‘Commander!’

  Koenig’s voice stopped the rout, ‘Wait!’

  There was a pause, Koenig spoke into a sudden silence. ‘Listen. You can’t run from each other any more. If you people are to have any chance at all, you must come together. You must help each other.’

  Kara was kneeling beside her leader. Her face was a tragic mask. She said bitterly. ‘What future do we have now?’

  Pointing to the Survivors, Koenig said, ‘These people are your future. You have the knowledge. Use it well. Re-educate them. Prepare them so that their descendants will complete the voyage. There will be time for us to help you to re-establish the food chain. The rest is up to you. Both parties of Darians.’

  Hadin looked at Kara and their eyes held for a long beat. There was a lot to understand, but Hadin was nobody’s fool. He was catching on. His old authoritative bearing was back. There would be immense problems, but maybe there was a better future for his people. He strode forward and lifted Kara to her feet.

  ‘Is it true? Is it possible as the stranger says?’

  Koenig left them to it. He signalled to the Alphans. Nobody attempted to stop them as they went out. In the transplant room, he picked Helena from her bed and carried her across his arms on the long trek to the Eagle.

  In Main Mission on Moonbase Alpha, Sandra Benes who had refused all offers of a relief operator was first to see the pod on the alien spacer disgorge Eagle One. She called, ‘I have them! They’re coming out!’

  It was crystal clear on the big screen. Eagle One veered away from the vast ship and picked up a course for home. Kano called, ‘Main Mission to Eagle One. Come in Eagle One. Nice to see you . . . what happened?’

  Alan Carter flipped a switch, ‘Eagle One to Main Mission. Even nicer to hear you. Ask me again when you have a spare hour. I’ll tell you sometime.’

  In the co-pilot seat, Koenig said, ‘We can get in one trip before Daria goes out of range. As fast as you like, Alan. I’ll leave it to you.’

  He thumped the release stud of his harness. By this time Helena would be sitting up and taking notice. He wanted to be there. But Carter had a question that was bugging him, ‘Commander. If the same happened on Alpha would you have chosen differently?’

  It had been in Koenig’s mind also and it was difficult to give an honest answer. He played for time, ‘Let’s hope I never have to make that kind of choice.’

  In the rumble, Helena was sitting beside Bergman, eyes closed, looking pale and exhausted. Bergman moved over and Koenig took his place. He lifted her hand from the squab and put it to his mouth.

  She opened her eyes and looked at him. ‘We wouldn’t have done that would we, John?’

  ‘Who knows what anybody will do when they’re driven by a sense of mission. I’d like to think we wouldn’t do it for personal survival.’

  ‘It’s better for us to be on our own search.’

  ‘I’d agree to that.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Even the farthest reaching probes could no longer search out Daria from the interstellar wastes and bring her to the big screen. The Moon fled on, hurled ever deeper into the unknown. Koenig debated whether or not he should have pushed the idea of joining the Darians. But he told himself it was water under the bridge. He ought to clear the matter out of his head. Junk it. The past was dead.

  But the past was raising more than one spectre and he reckoned, irritably, it must be a sign of age. In some way, he had a feeling that the past was not finished with them and every day that went by saw the impression gaining strength.

  He found he was spending more time in the Technical Section, watching Victor Bergman’s patient progress with his prototype cold engine and envied him the scientific single mindedness which could cut out all the surroundings and concentrate on an idea.

  Bergman said, ‘The problem will be to find a practical, inexpensive fuel.’

  ‘Like coal?’

  ‘Coal could never be made over into a single crystal. Natural gas might serve. But as I see it, old fashioned petroleum has the edge. You’ll have to find a planet with oil reserves.’

  ‘There must be some.’

  ‘Not to refine into gasoline you understand. We’d set it up for naphthalene.’

  ‘Keep the moths out for a start!’

  ‘You can smile, John, but that’s the crystalline hydrocarbon I need. Cheap, clean, efficient. An industrial revolution without the smog.’

  Koenig roamed around the workshop. When he returned to the bench he had a question that was so far off the topic that Bergman straightened up and looked at him. ‘What’s your view of past time?’

  Victor Bergman wiped his hands on a wad of tissue. He could see it was important to his friend. ‘I thought you had something on your mind. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Helena has Calder under observation.’

  ‘Jim Calder?’

  ‘The same. He’s under stress. She’s been digging back in old reports. Maybe that triggered it for me; but I feel that the past is suddenly very close.’

  ‘The past is always with us in memory banks. Sometimes in more detail than we expect. I believe it has another real presence.’

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘Every scene, every act, every spoken word is a complex web of energy. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It goes on existing. I believe it is transmitted like a programme, as the ripples go on in a lake. It goes out beyond the gravisphere of Earth. Space is shot through with the drifting record of past time.’

  ‘And with delicate enough receptors your programmes could be played back?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘When you’ve finished your engine you should work on it. You’d solve all the archaeologists’ problems at one go.’

  ‘It isn�
��t as far fetched as you think.’

  Others on Moonbase Alpha were finding the past had a living reality. Maybe the blankness of the future had turned their minds to something more positive. Helena Russell, in fact, had a starting point in the medical case she was treating, but her interest had quickened and she was going into it in more depth than was strictly due.

  The work had spilled over from the medicentre and she was using free time in her own quarters to polish up a report which was taking off in her imagination like a novella. Surrounded by tapes from the archives and remembering vividly her own part in some of the events, she had a curious sense of reliving the period before the break, when the Moon was still on shuttle link with its Earth base and the Probeship Mission was priority one.

  She was typing the record, using headed paper that fitted the events—WORLD SPACE COMMISSION; sub heading, MEDICAL AUTHORITY: CASE REPORT NO. ALPHA /11/11R/7763 CAPTAIN CALDER (JIM).

  Where it would go when she finished it was anybody’s guess. But part of the reason she gave to herself for doing it, was that she felt she owed it to Koenig to try to understand Calder. Koenig and Calder had been the leading figures in the Ultra Probe Mission which had been to make a manned landing on the new planet Ultra that Victor Bergman had discovered beyond the then known limits of Earth’s solar system. When the mission had become an impossibility Calder had seemed to fall into apathy. Although he and Koenig had been close and were still friends, Calder was now operating as one of Alan Carter’s Eagle Captains and tended to keep out of sight, taking a solitary line.

  She read through her preamble. ‘It was the 877th day since our Moon . . . left Earth. We were between galaxies, drifting through empty space, when Jim Calder began to believe he was closing a second time with his terrible adversary . . .’

  Frowning, she tapped the sleek hood of her silent keyboard. It was not her usual style at all. She debated whether or not to begin again.

  The object of the exercise, Jim Calder, was sleeping fitfully in his own quarters. He had refused to stay in the medicentre and Helena had reluctantly agreed to his discharge.

  He was Koenig’s age and had some of the same qualities. Tall and massively built, he looked the rugged, outdoor type who would be most content leading an expedition over difficult country in the early days of Empire. For him, the unnatural confinement of Moonbase Alpha had been irksome and almost impossible to come to terms with.

  He was reflecting tension in his sleep. Hands clenching and unclenching, face contorted, with the struggle that was going on in his mind, he was close to some nightmare confrontation.

  There was a sighing in the room, an infinitely distant clash of discordant electronic sounds, a crackling intake of breath like a wind fanning flames in dry scrub.

  Suddenly Calder sat bolt upright, sweat in glistening beads on his forehead. His life was under threat and he had to move. Ducking suddenly and rolling out of bed, he was on his feet standing legs apart, looking around for cover. There was nowhere safe. He gave ground, weaving and feinting, until he was brought up by the bulkhead at his back. Palms flat on the fluted cladding, he traversed left until his searching hand hit the haft of a tomahawk in his collection of early hunting weapons.

  It made all the difference to his mental set. From being a naked ape, he had graduated to homo habilis and could face his adversary with a weapon in his fist. Some of the terror went from his face. His moves were concentrated and definite as he dodged and weaved looking for an opening. Despite the danger, he looked more relaxed, even as though there was some satisfaction in fighting it out.

  Calder dropped on one knee, paused, gathered himself and was in with a hoarse shout for a strike. The tomahawk wheeled in a glittering arc and thudded home on the console of the communications post. The noises in his head zeroed. Running with sweat and trembling from released tension, Calder stood staring at the quivering axe.

  A call from the duty medico had taken Helena Russell to the Medical Centre and she was in time to catch the computer print out. Calder’s monitors had peaked. She shoved down a call button on the communications post and heard the repeat of its call signal in Calder’s room.

  He backed away. For his money it was dead, but would not lie down. The call came again. He had reached his bed and picked up his commlock from the bedside table.

  Helena’s face in miniature appeared on the small screen.

  ‘Calder? Are you all right?’

  With an effort of will, he tried to steady his voice, but was only partly successful. ‘Yes . . . yes . . . I’m fine now. Thank you, doctor.’

  There was a stiffness in the dialogue that stemmed from more than the doctor-patient situation. Helena knew he did not like her and the feeling was mutual. Maybe she was resenting the special place he had in Koenig’s friendship. She worked at it to keep her voice soothing, ‘You had me worried. Computer raised the alarm. Your pulse and metabolic rate peaked into the red.’

  ‘It was a dream. Some kind of nightmare. Nothing for you to bother about, doctor.’

  ‘A traumatic experience?’

  ‘No. An absurdity. Nothing. Really, nothing.’

  ‘Then I hope you’ll sleep more peacefully.’

  ‘Thank you. Good night.’

  It was clear he wanted her to sign off. Thoughtfully, she stubbed the button and the screen blanked. Calder walked slowly to his direct vision port and looked out at the starmap. It was the same and not the same like a wave of the sea.

  A jarring electronic discord made him wince. Some of the fear came back to his face. He looked round his room as though he was seeing it for the last time and used his commlock to open the hatch. Outside, the corridor was at half light in the routine simulation for night on Moonbase Alpha. He padded out and closed the hatch behind him.

  In Main Mission, John Koenig was filling a part of the night watch by playing chess with Kano, an exercise that most Alphans avoided, because it was depressing.

  Running true to form, Kano said, ‘Check.’

  ‘You’ve been playing Computer all day.’

  ‘I was hoping for a real game, Commander. I beat Computer every time.’

  ‘You programme it.’

  ‘True. But I didn’t programme you.’

  Computer buzzed urgently and Kano stretched across, ‘Computer is protesting at the insult.’ As he tore off the read out, he looked puzzled. ‘Commander, this is for you. Jim Calder has entered the restricted area on launch pad four. He is not on duty.’

  Koenig’s reaction was instantaneous. Commlock whipped from his belt, he called, ‘Jim?’

  Calder had reached an outlet port marked EMBARKATION POINT and Koenig’s voice spoke to him out of the open commlock in his hand. He looked down at it and again at the illuminated sign. The voice was more urgent. ‘Jim? What goes on? Answer me.’

  Calder ignored it. Koenig was on his feet, a worried man. He was half way to Main Mission’s hatch as he called over his shoulder, ‘Kano, cancel his commlock.’

  It was done before Koenig was two strides on his journey and Calder’s slight hesitation had cost him the initiative. He flashed his commlock at the exit door and there was no joy. He looked at it incredulously and then thumped it with his free hand. There was still no action.

  Alan Carter, checking round his section, appeared and the sight of Calder in his pyjama slacks was novel enough to raise a grin. It was difficult for him having Calder in his section. The man had been high in the station hierarchy, but he could not say there had been any resentment and they got along well enough. He always tried to avoid any situation where it might be thought he was pulling rank on the senior man. He kept the tone easy, ‘Jim? What brings you out of your trundle bed?’

  There was no answer. Without looking at him directly, Calder moved close. Carter tried again, still keeping it, light, ‘What’s the problem Jim? Can’t sleep? I’ve checked the doors and put the cat out.’

  Calder had shifted his commlock to his left hand and his right swept across in a b
low to the side of Carter’s neck that left him out cold on his feet with the smile fixed like a mask. Before he had reached the deck, Calder had snatched his commlock and was using it to open the door.

  It was the outlet for the stand-by Eagle and a boarding tube was waiting to carry the duty crew. Without a backward look, Calder went forward, shoving down activating studs with casual precision as though it was a routine mission. Now he was calm and purposeful, doing a job he knew. The tube accelerated away, homed on the Eagle’s main hatch and he was on board.

  Efficient and professional, he sealed the hatch, raced through to the Command Module and flipped the master lever from Automatic to Manual. Now the ship was his and Main Mission had no power to override his operating console. Meticulously, he began the sequence of pre lift off procedures.

  Koenig had reached Carter and knelt beside him. His breathing was regular. He would be okay in the fullness of time. Calder’s discarded commlock explained a lot. He called Main Mission. ‘Kano. Jim Calder’s gone through to the stand-by Eagle. He’s using Carter’s commlock. Stop him.’

  ‘No good, Commander. Eagle is on manual control. Computer can do nothing.’

  Koenig raced for the hatch, thumbed down the stud on his commlock and met another snag. A warning pinger sounded out and the illuminated legend changed its message, NO ACCESS. COUNTING DOWN.

  Calculations raced through Koenig’s head. It would be neat, but he reckoned there was a small margin. He used his Command channel for a direct link and called, ‘Computer. This is a command order. Cancel safety regulations on launch pad four and give me access.’

  The boarding tube clunked home on station. Koenig was aboard and shuttling out to the Eagle. Calder saw the action on his screen and glanced at the digital count down. It stood at ten seconds and flipped to nine. Red alerts flashed on the console. Kano could not control the manual system, but he could still signal and ABORT LIFT OFF glowed across the screen.

  Coldly and deliberately, Calder hit the ignition button.

  Eagle Four’s motors blasted as Koenig’s boarding tube hit the hatch coamings. He was two seconds waiting for the all clear. As the panel came alive with AIR LOCK SEALED, he directed his commlock at the hatch and went through at a run.