Space 1999 - Earthfall

by E. C. Tubb

“And you added your own therapy?”

  Paula drew in her breath, unaware of how the action enhanced her femininity. “Yes, Doctor. I suppose you could call it that. It was unwise, perhaps, but we were alone and I’d been so worried and—”

  “You are in love,” said Helena. “I’m not too old to realize what that means. But you are old enough to know that work and pleasure must be kept apart. A nurse suffering from emotional stress is not as efficient as she should be. It might be better if you were to allow someone else to attend to Alan Carter should he need medical care.” Her hand dropped to the girl’s arm, the fingers gently pressing. “We understand each other?”

  “Yes, Doctor Russell. And thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For being so understanding. I’d thought—that is the impression was—I mean . . .”

  “There is a patient in ward three who could probably use a little assistance right now,” said Helena. “The back injury. He needs a little help to sit upright.”

  “Of course, Doctor.”

  Helena smiled as the girl hurried away, the smile dying as she remembered the confusion, the harsh implication the words had held. Was she a martinet? A firm disciplinarian, yes, but efficiency demanded that all under her command give of their best at all times. When lives depended on their care it would be criminal to ask for less. But a hard, firm, rigid and unyielding parody of an old-time hospital matron? Surely never that!

  A cabinet stood to one side of the chair, the sides smooth and highly polished, mirrors which reflected her face, the hand she lifted to touch her cheek. Once she too had been as young as the nurse, as soft and as eager to love and be loved. A love which had found roots in a marriage which had lasted too short a while. A marriage, so some had said, which had been doomed from the start.

  Yet, had there been children—who could tell?

  A time during which a dream had died. The need to study, to work, to adapt to the needs of a man who, basically, was unable to adapt in turn. Long hours, hurried meals, false hopes ending in the appearance of delayed periods and the final knowledge that, physically incompatable, the union could never bear fruit.

  Naturally she had taken the blame.

  Lee had been a sportsman, a health faddist, a creature proud of his physical abilities. For him to admit to any degree of inadequacy was impossible. She was a doctor and had access to drugs, the means of preventing and terminating any pregnancy which, obviously, was what she had done. Obvious to him, naturally, and to argue was useless. The divorce had been quietly arranged and, when the offer had come to take over the Medical Section of Moonbase Alpha there had been nothing to prevent her from accepting. The work had provided an anodyne for her pain, a substitute for previous hopes and aspirations. And, almost imperceptibly, the years had drifted past.

  Again her hand touched the contour of her cheek.

  Was she so old? Did she look so forbidding? So devoid of feminine understanding that the young nurses thought of her as a formidable dragon? Perhaps they were right. She too, when young, had thought of those prim and stately rulers of hospital wards as being something other than human. An unfair judgement as now she knew—but since when has youth troubled to be fair?

  She leaned closer to the reflecting surface, seeing her face gain odd configurations by the distortion of the panel, seeing too something other than her own reflection. A figure, blurred as if seen from beneath water, one arm lifted to support itself at the door, the mane of sparse white hair a frame to the face now tense with pain.

  “Victor!”

  He attempted to smile as Helena turned to face him, a grimace which ended with the sharp inhalation of indrawn breath. His lips were blue, tinged with cyanosis, and his left arm, lifted to press against the region of his heart, seemed to be paralysed.

  “Helena, my dear,” he whispered. “Please, if you could help me?”

  Once, when a child, Helena had seen a man die before her very eyes, the ball with which she had been playing rolling to drop unnoticed down the stairs as he had stumbled to drop to his knees, to stare wildly at her, one hand outstretched for the help she was unable to give, his face twisted with the pain which had torn at his heart.

  A small thing, so they had said, and one best quickly forgotten, but never had she been able to forget and, later, when deciding on a career, she had remembered her helplessness and, perhaps subconsciously, it had guided her decision.

  Now, despite her skill and knowledge, she felt again the helplessness, this time controlled, hidden beneath the professional mask she had so long ago learned to wear.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Sorry.”

  “Victor, you’re a fool!” He lay on a bed, calm now, eased of his pain, the sweat wiped from face and neck and brow, his hair no longer a lank straggle and his eyes clear, but the monitors told the story. “You know what’s wrong, of course?”

  “Angina,” he said. “I know.”

  “And did nothing about it?”

  “There was no time, Helena. There is no time. I must get back to work.”

  She caught the hand which attempted to throw back the cover and pressed down on the shoulders with practiced skill.

  “Helena! I must!”

  “Give it time, Victor. A few minutes at least to give the drugs a chance to take hold. How bad was the attack? Was it the first? How long have you known you’ve a bad heart?” And then, with sudden anger, “Why didn’t you come to me before?”

  “And have you report it?” His eyes twinkled at her expression. “I didn’t have to come to you, Helena. I’m a civilian and free of your official decrees. But if I had come and you’d have spotted it then what?” He supplied his own answer as she hesitated. “I’d have been replaced and we both know it. And, for a man with a bad heart, it was better for me to remain on the Moon.”

  An excuse, he wanted to stay, but he was right. The strain of the journey, the higher gravity of Earth, all would have taken their toll. With luck and had he nursed himself the weakness could have been kept hidden. Yet surely he could have trusted her to be discreet? They had been friends for so long.

  “When?” she said urgently. “When did you first know something was wrong?”

  He lay back, relaxing, thinking. It had been during an experiment when something, as gentle as the touch of a butterfly’s wing, had touched a place deep inside of him and, suddenly, he had been unable to breathe. His arm too had seemed devoid of feeling, his left shoulder, the wall of his chest, all had throbbed with pain and then, as suddenly as it had come, it was over and, aside from the sweat dewing his face and body, he was himself again.

  Until the next time when the attack, with savage fury, had sent him to lie grovelling on the floor, whimpering, conscious of the approach of death, almost welcoming it and angry only at his lack of dignity.

  And the time after when, again he had been alone, to sit and feel himself grow cold and old memories revive with their accompaniment of hope and pain. Would she be waiting? Would she know him if she was? Would they again know what they had once held and had lost? What he had lost? And, as the darkness closed in, he felt again the bitter anger at having survived, of being forced to live with the aid of drugs and surgery and machines when the darkness which had taken her waited just a moment away.

  Dear God, why her? Why not me?

  A question yet to be answered.

  He lay and watched as she lifted a hypodermic from a tray and checked it and rested it against the great arteries of his throat before touching the stud which released air to blast the charge through skin and fat and muscle into his bloodstream.

  “This will help, Victor, but what you really need is rest.”

  “I can’t rest.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  He said, flatly, “Within an hour we are due to be hit by the fragment of Meta hurtling towards us. It is a very large fragment. That alone presents an extremely high risk from kinetic energies alone. Add the fact that the fragment is composed of antima
tter and, well—”

  “We may as well all say our prayers,” she interrupted. “Is that it, Victor? Are you saying we are all as good as dead?”

  “We have a chance,” he said. “A slender one but all we have. It might just be possible to contain and, perhaps, even heterodyne the released energies. If so the area of destruction can be contained. Luck,” he explained as she stared at him. “I noticed something during an experiment—an odd and unanticipated field effect. We investigated and had even more luck. What should have taken months or years of painstaking research was won in a matter of hours by a fortunate accident.”

  He sighed, remembering the moment, reliving the euphoria. The drugs Helena had injected, of course, removing his pain and distending his arteries so as to allow easy passage of the oxygenated blood which was, even now, stimulating his brain. But, artificial or not, his uplift was real. As real as it had been when he realized that a breakthrough had been made and that discoveries were within the reach of his hand and mind.

  “I was looking for something to contain the scintillation from the waste disposal cans,” he continued. “A field or a restriction or a dampening force of some kind. I found it in the electromagnetic spectrum close to the magnetic region. The two are aligned. It seems that an intense magnetic field of tremendous intensity coupled with a resonance matched to a wave-form of suitable variables can build a heterodyning barrier. I am using clumsy words to describe a mathematical equation, you understand.”

  “I don’t care what you use as long as it will work. Will it?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Fortunately the disposal areas are surrounded with electronic devices. I’ve utilized existing installations to carry the power but the alloys may alter the nature of the field. It will have to be monitored, maintained.” Again he reached for the covers and, this time, she made no effort to restrain him. Instead she reached for a small box of capsules.

  “Here, Victor, you might need these. Take one if you feel any tension in the chest wall or the onset of any pain.” With bleak humor she added, “I should warn you about misuse and the dangers of an over-dose, but I guess that doesn’t matter now, does it?”

  “No,” he said, sombrely. “It doesn’t. If my field doesn’t work we’ll all be past worrying about things like that. Now I must get back to Main Mission.”

  “Give me a moment,” said Helena. “I’ll come with you.”

  The base was at war. The enemy was something incapable of feeling, devoid of hate or anger or the conscious determination to kill, but unless stopped it would destroy just the same and so, as it threatened life, it was the enemy.

  One, which as they fought it seemed to take on a sentient life.

  Koenig stared at it in the screens, seeing the pulse and flare of maintained destruction, the glowing fury of a miniature sun which was coming closer, closer with the ghastly inevitability of a monster of nightmare. As Helena and Victor Bergman stepped towards him he nodded and spoke to Morrow.

  “Accelerate missiles if possible, Paul. Kano?”

  “No change, Commander. Course as computed. Mass indeterminate because of radiation-interference but still in high register.”

  “Sandra?”

  “Temperature of area rising. Wide dispersal of radiant field. Strong magnetic indications. Ionic density intense.”

  Space filled with burst and burning atoms, broken particles venting their energy in sleeting storms of destructive radiation, shattered protons and electrons mixed in a hell-broth of other, lesser known components of alien matter.

  And the whole heading towards the Moon.

  Helena studied the screen, seeing Eagles rising like disturbed dragonflies, canisters and radioactive waste gripped in their grapnels, loads to be carried high, set on course, flung like stones towards the approaching menace. The first line of defence repeated in a hail of crude bombs each of which would explode with greater fury than any other man-made nuclear missile.

  Given time enough and space enough the hail might possibly reduce the alien mass, but there wasn’t enough time and space, on the Moon, was limited around the disposal areas. Even as she watched an Eagle veered, twisted, rose a little then seemed to tilt, to accelerate, to ram its nose hard into the Lunar rock.

  The nexus of a flame which gushed to spread, to flare in eye-bright splendor to diminish into glowing embers which contained the Eagle, the load, the crew it had carried.

  “Commander!” Alan Carter’s voice, matching the grim expression of his face as it appeared on the screens. “Eagle Nine just bought it. That’s the fifth so far.”

  “So?”

  “Five Eagles can’t all be crewed by idiots. My guess is that the scintillation is at work. Can you check?”

  Bergman said, before Koenig could answer, “The preventative field should be taking care of that, Alan. There could be another reason.”

  “There could be a dozen but I’m worried about one. If those damned cans are acting up anyone working this caper hasn’t a chance.” Carter swore viciously as another Eagle jerked to one side, to slam into another, both falling to destruction. “See that! Professor, check your field!”

  “It’s active,” said Bergman after checking a panel of instruments. “Maximum density. Those cans can’t be scintillating. They—” He broke off, frowning. “Alan, relay your instrument-reading on magnetic density. Hurry!” His frown deepened as he listened to the terse report. “It shouldn’t be so low. There’s fluctuation. The field—Alan. I’m sorry!”

  “Withdraw!” snapped Koenig. “All Eagles to leave the disposal area. Operation Bombardment to be abandoned. Relative sector of the Moon to be cleared.”

  “Right, Commander.”

  “How long, Kano?”

  “Ten minutes, Commander.”

  “Right. Paul, sound red alert. Full emergency procedure. Full filter-protection and all monitors to be on automatic.” And then, to himself, he murmured, “Here it comes!”

  A mass of flickering light now grown huge in the screens. A cloud of dancing fires like a display of brilliant fireworks; fountains, starshells, blazing candles all in a kaleidoscope of burning colors, trapped and broken rainbows which dulled the stars, the sun itself.

  Watching it Helena said, “Shouldn’t Earth be warned? If it hits the light-emission could damage the vision of anyone staring at it with unprotected eyes.

  “It’s being done.” Koenig jerked his head to where Simmonds was busy at a communicator. “He’s telling the media all about it.”

  Together with his heroism, Helena guessed, his self-sacrifice and nobility in rushing to help those under his charge now isolated on the Moon. Explaining too, no doubt, why no attempt had been made at evacuation, saying nothing of his own panic when Koenig had bluntly refused to entertain the idea. Not because of any desire to risk lives but because he’d had other uses for the Eagles. And because there had been no time to select the crews, their passengers and to ensure they would be safe in the radiation-torn area which space would shortly become.

  “Six minutes,” said Kano, and his hand caressed the carved amulet. “Five and a half, a quarter, five . . .”

  “Alan what the hell are you doing?” Morrow’s voice rose above the drone. “The orders were to land and secure. Have you gone crazy?”

  “I’m in observation altitude.”

  “Leave it.”

  “Don’t you want to know what’s going to happen?” Carter stared with stubborn defiance from the screen. “This will be the spectacle of a lifetime. The ground scanners will go out at once—how else are you to gain information?”

  Koenig said, “Back off, Alan. Gain distance and get to the far side of the Moon. Set up a remote relay and watch yourself.”

  “Will do, Commander. See you, Paul.”

  “Two,” said Kano. “One and a half, a quarter, one . . .”

  Sixty seconds—to what?

  Helena swallowed, conscious of the tightness of her throat, the tremor of her thighs. Time seemed to hav
e slowed and things to have taken on a peculiar sharpness so that she could see the little hairs at the nape of Morrow’s neck, the brown blotches on the backs of Bergman’s hands, the tension of the muscles at the corners of Koenig’s mouth. A clarity accentuated by the blaze from the screens, the glow and flash of signal lamps and tell-tales. Even the very air held a strange, pungent odor which she recognized as the effulvium of fear, the physical reaction betraying the terror of the unknown. Of the death they all were facing.

  “Twenty,” said Kano, unable to leave the track on which he was running, the necessity to spell the passing of the seconds. “Sixteen . . . twelve . . . eight . . .”

  “The field!” Bergman’s voice was sharp and high. “Something’s happening which I don’t understand. The flux—it doesn’t make sense! It—”

  Was over!

  The waiting, the tension, the strain. The dancing cloud of fireflies vanished from the screen as it dropped to fire, to meet the Lunar rock and dust.

  To blaze in an eruption of unrestrained fury.

  “God!” Far-set scanners relayed the scene from a different viewpoint, filling the panels with a searing, blinding light which sent a man staggering back from his station hands clamped to his eyes. “I’m blind! Blind!”

  Dazzled, more frightened than hurt, the filters had prevented worse injury but he didn’t know that. As others had no time to soothe his fears.

  “The cans!” yelled Morrow. “It’s hit the cans!”

  The antimatter hurtling from space to spread, to cover the area holding the massed accumulation of waste buried beneath the surface, attracted perhaps by the field designed to protect those working close by, eating now deeper to where the radioactives waited.

  Beneath her feet Helena felt the ground shift as if a giant had kicked at the Moon. A blow which sent men and women flying as equipment crashed in a jangle of shattered glass, plastic and ripped metal. Another, a third, and she heard Bergman, shouting, his voice incredulous.

  “Plasma! It’s hit critical temperature! The gas is burning!”

  A cloud which rose to spread, to burn, to bite, to bulge with the fury of a new-born sun. A man-made nova. A bomb of such incredible force that its effects were unknown. Power released in torrents, to hover for a nanosecond in stasis as if the very universe itself was holding its breath.