Space 1999 #6 - Astral Quest

by John Rankine

  Fail safe mechanisms were beating Calder. With the hatch open, even manual switchgear had gone definitively to Non Op. The control spread was a barrage of red tell-tales. Jaw set hard, he thumped the release stud on his harness and heaved himself out of his bucket seat. He was coming through the connecting hatch to the passenger module and his hands were reaching up to the roof rack for a stun gun as Koenig hurled himself down the aisle.

  It was Koenig’s hand that closed on the first butt and the muzzle came into aim at point blank range less than half a metre off.

  Calder went still. He had a gun, but he had to move to use it. Eyes fixed on Koenig, he said, ‘Let me go, John.’

  They had known each other too long and too well for any hatred. It was a straight issue. He would go if he could and Koenig would stop him if he could. Calder had to try. The hand holding the gun whipped down from the rack.

  Koenig fired on reflex. Calder had no shade of a chance. He dropped face down on the deck.

  Helena Russell was partly blaming herself. She believed she should have taken Calder into her medicentre earlier. It was no help to know that she had been partly influenced by Koenig’s clear desire to play down any suggestion that there was a serious medical problem for his friend. The friendship, anyway, irritated her. It was a male club affair that excluded her and she felt it diminished her relationship with Koenig. There was also the plain, professional opinion that Calder was unstable and she couldn’t begin to understand why Koenig would not accept it

  With Bob Mathias, she ran a full battery of diagnostic checks on the unconscious man, glad to have the opportunity to do it without his active resistance or Koenig’s interference.

  She was not wildly pleased when Koenig came in at the tail end, obviously anxious and feeling bad about having to turn a stun gun on a long time comrade. It would be better to say what she had to say if they were alone. She said, ‘Thanks Bob. That wraps it up. I can take it on from there. It’s my watch. You can catch up on some sleep.’

  Not deceived, Mathias grinned at Koenig. ‘All right, doctor. I’ll turn in then. Good night. Good night, Commander.’

  Koenig nodded. He walked over to the patient’s bed side and looked at the monitors. Life signs were weak but regular.

  Helena joined him and anticipated his question as though she wanted the initiative to be on the medical side, ‘As well as can be expected after a point blank stun.’

  Koenig’s sudden wince gave her no pleasure. She hated to hurt him. But his expression, as he looked at the sleeping man, strengthened her resolve to have it out. She believed he valued Calder too highly.

  ‘I’ve been expecting something like this.’

  He would not be drawn and she went on, ‘He’s unstable, John.’

  This time she got a response. ‘He’s an individualist.’

  ‘I’ll never understand your admiration for him.’

  It was an invitation for a confidential report, but it didn’t work. Koenig said, ‘Spoken like a true medico. You doctors naturally resent those who don’t need you.’

  Taken in the context that Calder was unconscious and dependent on the hook up to life support systems, this seemed to her the nearest thing to nonsense she had ever heard from him. Partly on a professional basis and partly from personal pique at not being able to get through his pigheadedness, she took it further, ‘John, I can read the signs. He’s a text book case. He’s a suppressed hysteric. Where do you think he was trying to get to out there—in his pyjama pants? We’re nowhere. Three months Eagle travel to the fringe of the nearest star system. He didn’t even pack a toothbrush.’

  Koenig ignored the jibe and continued to look at the unconscious man. Driven to it she said flatly, ‘You’ve gone out on a limb for him. You kept him here when he should have been grounded. You’ve done too much. Your image of him doesn’t square with the medical record.’

  At last Koenig looked at her and it was a bleak, challenging stare. ‘You didn’t know him before the Ultra Probe was launched.’

  ‘That’s true, but I know him now and I’m being objective.’

  ‘Meaning that I’m not. A man doesn’t change all that much. He was probably the world’s best all round athlete. Arguably, the best poet of his generation; without question, he was the best astronaut to leave space base. He was one of the very few who excel both mentally and physically.’

  ‘I have read his file.’

  Koenig ignored the terse comment. He went on, ‘But something happened out there, beyond Ultra—something neither you nor I can understand. And he can’t understand it either. It’s haunted him. It’s destroying him. He does his job as an Eagle pilot, because he can do that with a tenth of the knowledge and the talent he has. I’ve no complaints. But I know him as he really is and he rates all the breaks I can give him.’

  Helena Russell hesitated. There was more on her side of the argument and she was gauging whether or not this was the time to come clean. She said slowly, ‘I know the Ultra Probe meant a lot to you, John. But the success of the mission was vital to Calder. He can’t take failure. For that reason alone, you would’ve been the better Commander of the Probe. Personal identification with a project at an extreme level is bad for clear judgement. You would have kept a better balance.’

  ‘Leave me out of it. Stick to Calder.’

  ‘Very well. I’d say he made a disastrous mistake in that Probeship. As the acknowledged ace and wonder man, he just couldn’t bring himself to admit it.’

  Koenig glared at her. ‘That’s just not Calder. You’ve got it all wrong.’

  ‘He may believe he’s infallible and that’s no good sign for mental health, but we don’t have to go along with it.’

  ‘Nothing was proved at the investigation.’

  This time, there was the suspicion of a defensive note in Koenig’s voice. He could not reconcile anything she said with his belief in Calder, but he also believed she was sincere. She recognised that she could take the case no further without a confession which would make her unpopular, but honesty demanded it. She walked away from Koenig to her desk. From there, it was an official communiqué, ‘John. At the time it all happened, I was one of the medical team that examined Calder. My report on the areas I was given to investigate, reinforced the case against him.’

  There was no doubt that it came as a shock to Koenig. He had been close to Calder. He was close to Helena. It took some adjustment to see that two parts of his own personal fabric could be opposed to each other. Maybe he would come round to the idea, but the time was not yet. All he could understand was that she had been responsible for the official destruction of his friend’s reputation.

  There was no improvement when she went on, ‘I presented the facts as I saw them.’

  Angrily, he snapped, ‘There were no facts.’

  She tried to ignore the slur on her professionalism. Keeping her voice steady, she put it on the line, ‘John, he is unstable. He’s a threat to the safety of Alpha.’

  Koenig’s voice was a shout, ‘Maybe you’re saying I should have used the laser instead of the stun?’

  Her resolution to keep it official took a knock. She had not been at the receiving end of his anger before. She moved towards him with some half formed intention to get things back on a personal level, where they could look at the problem from the same side of the fence. ‘John . . .’

  The appeal was lost. He was on his way to the hatch. As a parting shot over his shoulder he said, ‘Why not write another report to the Space Commission?’

  For her money it was all very unfair and, for that matter, unlike Koenig. Still, there was always work, the great therapy. She checked Calder’s monitors. There was no change. Physically, he would be all right. Another hour and he would be back on circuit. She wished she could understand him better for Koenig’s sake. But in spite of the sneers, facts were facts and the interpretation had been as honest and objective as she could make it.

  She stood at a direct vision port, looking out over the
bleak moonscape to the starmap. Nothing changed and yet there was a subtle pervasive feeling of strangeness in the quiet ward. Maybe it was heightened by the emotional tension of the conflict with Koenig? The past seemed very vivid and real. She returned to her desk and picked up Calder’s file. She could at least clear her mind by continuing the account she had begun.

  Calder stirred uneasily and she pulled a low chair to the side of his bed and sat with the file on her knee. She would make notes and type it up later.

  As she leaned back against the upholstery, suddenly conscious that she was tired, her head directly below the cluster of cables that hooked Calder to the monitor spread. She felt a slight tingling over her scalp and shivered. The old saying ‘Somebody walking over my grave’ went through her mind.

  Then the familiar outlines of the medicentre slipped out of focus and she was the unseen witness of a different time and a different place . . .

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Helena Russell could see the Technical Section, crystal clear as though she was present in it and from the NASA picture of Earth on the TV screen and the space news signature jingle, she knew the date was way back. The legend SPACE NEWS faded and an announcer was cued in, ‘Space News, dateline nine, three ninety-six, brought to you from Houston, planet Earth . . .’

  Calder and John Koenig, both wearing the uniform of Alpha’s reconnaissance section were deep in concentration on detailed plans of the Ultra Probeship and photographs and constructional drawings were pinned up on every vertical surface. Victor Bergman was there, at his own desk sorting through a stack of data sheets and computer read-outs.

  The two astronauts were too engrossed to take in the news flash, but Bergman paused in his work and watched the screen.

  As a backdrop to the announcer’s bland head, there was now a picture of the probeship herself, docked on a limb of the space station in orbit around the Moon.

  The announcer went on, ‘The Ultra Probe. Speculation mounts on who will command the ship. Anton Gorski, Commander of Moonbase Alpha is expected to be in a position to reveal the name at the end of this week . . .’

  It was nothing fresh to Bergman. He had all the imponderables he could handle. He left his desk and flipped a switch to cut the transmission. The onset of silence reached the other two and they looked up.

  Bergman said, ‘They’re still going on about who’s to take the Ultra Probe. One thing’s for sure, we need a decision. You know you both can’t go.’

  It earned him a blank look as though it was, in fact, a thing they did not know and he went on, ‘Well, you must see someone’s got to mastermind the whole operation from here. You’d agree, I take it, that you can’t leave it to Gorski?’

  There was a hard core of truth in that one and they looked at each other and shrugged. Koenig said ‘So?’

  Scientific to his finger tips, Bergman brought a coin out of his pocket and threw it to Koenig.

  Koenig fielded neatly, a tribute to his reaction time and looked at Calder, ‘Okay to you, Jim? Winner takes the ship, loser tells the Old Man.’

  He pitched the coin across the table and called. Calder trapped it on the back of his hand. There was a slight hesitation and Helena wondered how he would react if he was loser. But then he was thrusting it forward for Koenig and Bergman to see and his face was split in a delighted grin.

  He said, ‘At least the gods of chance know who’s the better astronaut.’

  Generous though disappointed, Koenig made it easy by keeping a light tone, ‘Nonsense, they know where the best brains of this operation need to be. That’s here on Alpha . . . All the same, I could wish they were less knowledgeable.’

  Bergman looked from one to the other, grave and unsmiling. It was a decision—which was good; but whether it was the right decision, he could not be sure. He said, ‘I take it that’s agreed, then?’

  The scene changed, dissolved and reformed. Helena recognised Alphans she had not seen since the Moon went off on its solitary junket. There was a crowd, milling around the entrance to the air lock at the embarkation point for the space station. It was a farewell ceremony for the Probeship crew. Koenig and Bergman were in the forefront shaking hands with the four astronauts.

  Calder was full of confidence. Photogenic and tough, he was everyman’s image of a spacefarer. Beside him were Doctor Darwin King and Professor Juliet Mackie. Slightly to one side, but watching her captain with clear admiration was the trim figure of Doctor Olga Vishenskya.

  Helena Russell was making notes on her pad. She accepted what she saw, as if it was a reconstruction in her mind’s eye. Launch date for the Ultra Probe was the sixth of June, ninety-six. Commander was Captain Jim Calder. Astrophysicist and Number Two was Doctor Darwin King. Radiation expert was Professor Juliet Mackie and Doctor Olga Vishenskya was responsible for medical, dietary and psychological well-being of the team. They were shuttled to the interplanetary space station where the Ultra Probe was docked.

  She could see it as if the big screen in Main Mission had set it up. The Eagle arrowed away for the short crossing and homed on a docking collar in the great wheel.

  Calder and his crew had a gauntlet of well wishers to run as the station personnel turned out to see them through to the hatch of the Probeship. Then they were inside and the hatch was slicing shut with a definitive click.

  Wasting no time, Calder strode through to the Command Module, leaving the other three in the spacious Ward Room. It was a rest area and a workshop both, stacked with sophisticated hardware and giving access to four cubicle cabin areas which would give each one a private base for the long star trek.

  Once aboard, they were all anxious to be away and they strapped into acceleration couches for the blast off. King checked around and called on his intercom, ‘Ready when you are, Jim.’

  Helena recorded it meticulously, ‘Embarkation and countdown proceeded without a hitch. Launch took place at twelve hundred hours. Exactly on schedule.’

  Once again, she saw the gleaming spacer jack itself into the starmap and join the myriad wheeling stars. She had a sudden sympathy with Koenig and Calder and the way they had thought about the mission. ‘The last Knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall.’ It was in the great romantic tradition, a gesture against the blank, vastness of the cosmos.

  The Probeship hurled itself on like a flung spear. Watches changed. Calder and King alternated in the command slot. The crew settled to their routine.

  Helena was recording again, unaware that there was anything strange about her dual role. ‘So the longest ever manned space flight began. It continued through eight months of uneventful routine, speeding like a shuttle on the thread spun by its computers and watched and checked by the support team on Moonbase Alpha. Nothing disturbed the measured pace of the voyage as the Probeship ate up distance beyond comprehension. No malfunction broke the monotony. Navigation was faultless.’

  Helena was conscious that Calder was stirring uneasily. She put a hand on his shoulder and he went still; but the narrow hospital cot wavered and merged into something else. She was sitting with him in the command module of the Probeship and, plate sized in the direct vision port, she saw what he was seeing. Dark, mysterious and beautiful, the planet Ultra was dead ahead, precisely where Bergman had predicted it would be.

  She could sense Calder’s emotion and knew that here at least there was no personal vainglory in it. He was proud to be representing Earth’s technological triumph, but he was rating himself as an agent and not the kingpin on which the enterprise revolved. There was another human emotion also to be counted. Olga Vishenskya, moving like a dancer, came in through the hatch with a cup of coffee for the top hand.

  She said, ‘The closer we get, the more beautiful it is.’

  Calder took the cup and touched her fingers. There was clearly a special bond between them. He said, ‘Thanks Olga. What does Computer have to say.’

  ‘Still mulling it over. But gravity, radiation, atmosphere—all look hopeful.’

  ‘Mankind
could use a fresh start. If we’re ready for it.’

  Darwin King ducked through the hatch and settled into the co-pilot seat. Olga went back to the work room.

  Helena recorded, ‘For days excitement mounted as progressive readings confirmed the planet’s condition was similar to Earth’s. Plans were made for a manned landing. Then for the first time, as the Probeship moved behind Ultra, all contact was temporarily lost with Moonbase Alpha. The landing was never made. The only record of what happened was subsequently given by Calder himself.’

  She had read the transcript and she had not been able to judge what was true and what was false. It had looked like a classic case of self-justification. Or it had been something dredged up from the unconscious mind to symbolise a man’s internal battle with the dark forces of his own nature.

  Now she was getting it first hand from the command module of the Probeship . . .

  The four astronauts were working at fever pitch, checking, analysing, searching for an optimum site to put down an excursion module. They were hardly aware that they were out of contact with Moonbase Alpha.

  The Probeship curved in a long arc for a proving orbit. Alerted by pin point traces on his radar scan, Calder tuned for magnification and called through the hatch, ‘Darwin, could you give me an opinion here, please.’

  There was something in the tone that brought Darwin King through the hatch at a run. The scan made no kind of sense. A puzzled man, he looked at Calder, ‘Metallic?’

  ‘You tell me. Small and stationary for sure.’

  King took reachings, ‘Orbital reference one zero nine.’

  ‘Beam scanners, sensors, the whole shooting match on one zero nine. We’re going to take a look.’

  There was the briefest hesitation from Darwin King, lost on Calder, who was totally concentrated on bringing the Probeship to a new course. Sensitive to all the nuances of the situation, the observer from future time knew what he was thinking. They were out of touch with Moonbase Alpha. Any deviation ought to be cleared with control or at least reported. But it was momentary. All tracking gear swung from Ultra to the new target. The Probeship turned and headed off.