Space 1999 - Earthfall

by E. C. Tubb

  “John?”

  “What?” He jerked, aware that he must have dozed, drifted into an uneasy slumber while watching the blaze of light painting the curved dome. A tall figure stood over him, her hair silvered, her face, the curves of her body beneath the uniform with its starkly white sleeve, curves which identified her beyond doubt. “Helena! Is anything wrong?”

  “No. I came to find you and saw you lying there. You looked so pale, so still, that I thought for a moment you—” She broke off, catching her breath. “You should get more rest, John. Your face is haggard for want of sleep.”

  “I was never handsome.”

  “Don’t expect others to agree with that.” In the starlight her eyes seemed enormous, great pools of lambent reflection. The touch of her hand was warm and soft as she rested her fingers on his own. “Don’t undersell yourself, Commander.”

  “I won’t.” He sat upright, making light of her concern, leaning forward a little so as to ease the slight nausea he felt. A result of cramp, he guessed, or of doing too long without regular eating. A stupidity he would condemn in others. “What did you want to see me about?”

  “Raoul Anoux.”

  “I see.” He felt the weight of responsibility bow his shoulders. “Are you going to tell me he is a victim of society? That he is misunderstood? That he needs careful and delicate handling? That we should listen to him because he has something worthwhile to say?”

  She said, dryly, “It appears I’m late in the queue. Have they been telling you all that?”

  “I’ve heard it from too many sources.”

  Far too many for him to ignore. Anoux, it appeared, had made many friends or, if not friends, those who thought he had right and reason on his side. Too many for him to allow Volochek to have his own way even if he agreed. No convenient “accident” would be accepted. And he couldn’t hold the man without trial for much longer.

  Helena said, thoughtfully, when he had explained the situation, “Anoux is a focal point. Rita Cantry was anticipating something like this. A polarization of attitudes, she said, and she was right. I’ve felt it even in Medical. Little arguments which develop into nasty quarrels. An intransigence and a refusal to consider an alternate viewpoint. And work is falling off, did you know?”

  Koenig nodded. “Men refusing to go on shift. Women smiling but moving in their own good time if they move at all. The base is running down, Helena. If it goes on it’ll be lucky if we manage to maintain an essential environment.” Anger drove him to his feet, to pace the floor, one hand slamming into the palm of the other. “The fools! The blind, stupid fools! Can’t they see it’s their own throats they’re cutting? We work or we die—it’s as simple as that!”

  “For how long, John?”

  “Until—”

  “And who are ‘they’?”

  “Who? Why you, me, all of us!” He saw her expression and, as suddenly as it had come, his rage left him. As he dropped into the place at her side he said, quietly, “Is it as bad as that, Helena?”

  “It could be better, John.” Her hand reached out again to rest on his own. “That’s what I wanted to talk about. You’re overtired, far too tense with fatigue and strain. The brain isn’t at it’s best under those circumstances. You need to sleep and to dream. Especially to dream. If you don’t, then—”

  “I’ll become deranged, is that it?”

  “Medically speaking, yes. Your judgement is growing more and more confused. Soon you could be hallucinating and paranoia is only a step away. Can you honestly say that you are, at this moment, fit to try a man for his life?”

  “Is any man ever that? Has any man ever the right?”

  A question they had spoken of before when, in the beginning, when decisions had to be made, reward and punishment had been discussed. Koenig had been adamant.

  “The most heinous crime at the moment is waste,” he’d said. “We can’t spare a scrap of material and people must be made to realize that. For the first offence—”

  “A flogging?”

  That had been Roache, a suggestion Koenig had dismissed.

  “The forced wearing of a Fool’s cap. A second and a spell in the pillory—we’ll make one if we need it. A third and we’ll make sure the culprit lacks the opportunity to waste anything but sweat.”

  “Hard work,” said Hezekiah. “Working in a suit outside. I go for that.”

  “We’ve all got to work hard.” Volochek wasn’t impressed. “How about more serious crimes? Flogging?”

  “Beat a man and you lose his labor. No.”

  “And for murder?”

  A question Koenig had dodged. Now he said, “There’s no way to be sure, Helena. No way to be absolutely positive and, until there is, how can the man be punished? Always there will remain doubt and we shall have created a martyr. A source of continual trouble. And we can’t afford trouble. Not if we hope to survive.”

  “There could be a way, John.”

  “Chemicals?” He thought he guessed her meaning. “Truth serums? Try that and they’d swear he’d been hypnotized to give selected answers. Even if he confessed they’d say he’d been brainwashed.”

  “Electronics,” said Helena. “Peter Saxby has worked on an adaption of the Russian sleep mechanism. Remember him? He had an argument with Bob about the need to conserve sedatives and decided to do something about it. He’s made three units and we’re using them in Medical. Deep sleep guaranteed when you want and for as long as you want.”

  Won with a pair of electrodes attached to the temples and micro-currents sent to impact the sleep centre of the brain. Immediate unconsciousness which would last as long as the current was applied.

  “It’s a big step forward, John. With it we can eliminate the use of anasthetics in surgery. It gives us all the time we need to operate, avoids nausea and cuts out complications. A patient can be put to sleep until the healing process is well under way. Peter has a few bugs to iron out but he is certain they won’t cause any trouble. As it is we are using the devices to ensure rest for those in the wards who can’t sleep without the use of sedatives.”

  Something constructive for a change. A contrast to those who seemed determined to ruin what they had so painstakingly built. Then Koenig recognized the danger inherent in such thinking.

  “Be reasonable,” he murmured. “Do it my way.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing, Helena, I was just thinking.” He improvized quickly to remove the speculation from her eyes. “We’ve been how long in space?”

  “Since Breakaway, you mean? Since we were torn from orbit around Earth?” She frowned at his nod, thinking, remembering. “It must be almost four months now.”

  “Which means we have missed Christmas and are now in the twenty-first century,” said Koenig. “A pity, we missed the chance for a celebration. Our first Christmas in this new universe.”

  His voice was slurred a little, the hand he lifted to his face trembled, the fingers lax as he rubbed at his eyes. A man on the edge of total collapse, one who had driven himself too hard and for too long. A man who, medically speaking, was no longer fit to make valued judgements. A man ill with the need to sleep.

  The room was too small and too cramped and there was no need of it. There were other chambers which could be occupied and all the talk of conserving heat and light and air didn’t make sense. There were girls too, women who must be as eager as any man for the comforts of mutual association, but what chance did a man have when he had no privacy?

  An argument Max Kufstein had used before, not willing to admit the possibility that he might not be as attractive as he thought or that his crude, bluff manner, the result of insecurity rather than a genuine callousness, was instrumental in his lack of feminine companionship.

  And now, on the Moon, the women held the whip hand. They gave or you didn’t get and the one abortive attempt at rape had ended with the man being so badly beaten he’d been unable to stand. The women had done it, tearing at his face, his eyes, his genitals.
Providing a warning which others had been quick to heed. Dumped in Medical the man had held his tongue but Security, Max guessed, knew what had happened. Security knew damn near everything which happened, but they had taken no action and would take none if such a thing happened again. A thing the women knew somehow and they, the bitches, had arranged their own alarm system.

  To attempt rape now was to commit suicide.

  Angrily Kufstein slammed his fist against the pillow. He was too much alone. The shift system kept one bunk in the room unoccupied at all times and filled the other with a man he only met at brief intervals. Only during work did he have the opportunity for real companionship and Carl Jansen wasn’t his type and had an acid tongue. Only Raoul Anoux had shown him any real friendship and that had come after he had been willing to listen. The man made sense and had trusted him. And Kufstein, like a puppy, had responded to the warmth he had imagined rested in that trust.

  Now, rising, he stared down at the other man lying asleep in the room. Mark Lawrence, slimly built, softly spoken, a recent introduction to the compartment. He had been shifted, so he claimed, because of a fight he’d had with his other room mates. A statement he hadn’t enlarged on but Max could guess at what could have been the cause. Even in space men were not saints.

  The other man sharing the room was Brian Teal and he, like Kufstein, was a friend of Anoux.

  He had shown Max how to hide the gun.

  “Things come apart,” he’d explained, “and can be put together again with other parts in other ways. Like this, see? And this. And so.” His smile had been triumphant. “Now put it away and don’t even think about it. Not until it’s time to use it.”

  And the time was now.

  Anoux had been cooped up too long and God knows what they might have done to him. His demands had been ignored, the old ways still persisted and the modest improvements in living conditions and the other things weren’t going to be given. Koenig, damn him, wanted to be king. Volochek wanted to break anyone who dared to lift a voice. A chance to make a new start and all they could think of was staying at the top and living high off the hog.

  If not then why the cramped quarters? The slush they served as food? The endless work? The uncooperative women? The guards—the damned guards! Well, at least he could be the equal of those strutting pigs. He too had a gun!

  Lawrence stirred a little as Kufstein kneeled and thrust a hand beneath his bunk. For a moment the big man froze then, as the figure relaxed, began gently to probe the structure of the bed. A tube, lensed and capped, fell into his hand, the apparent flashlight not what it seemed. Rising he stepped to where the grill of the air-conditioner wafted a cool breeze into the compartment. Lifting it he thrust his hand into the opening and brought it out weighed with a small box fitted with a dial. The fake thermostat joined the false flashlight, to be joined by a radiation monitor, a tape player and a cassete of popular music. One other item and he sat, screwdriver in hand, his face intent. From the litter of dismantled parts he assembled the stolen weapon, swept aside the debris and, rising, tucked the gun into his uniform.

  As he left the room Lawrence turned, lifting one arm over his face as if to shield his eyes from the dim light Kufstein had left burning, whispering against the crook of his elbow.

  “He’s leaving.”

  “Armed?”

  “I think so. He assembled something.”

  “The gun, obviously.” The voice was a whisper from the transceiver buried beneath the skin behind his ear; his own voice carried by bone conduction. “Condition?”

  “Tense. Shall I move in?”

  “No. Retain your cover. We’ll handle it.”

  Volochek’s lips twitched as he heard the news—the stupidity of criminals never ceased to amaze him. From Anoux he had expected better but the man was not wholly to blame. Scientists and highly skilled workers made poor revolutionaries. Despite their intellectual convictions their gut-response was governed by personal comfort and a healthy respect for their own skins. It took a starving, desperate, dedicated fanatic who would willingly die if he could further the cause to make a real opponent. Such men had changed the world.

  Max Kufstein wasn’t one of them. He nursed a grievance but it was one based on a sense of personal affront rather than the wider pattern. He was moving now in response to stimuli implanted in near-hypnotic conditions by Anoux during their long, long talks. Given more time and training he might have become more dedicated and therefore more dangerous. As it was only the gun gave him strength.

  He touched it as he neared the thick doors leading to the reactors. The guard standing before them glanced casually at him then looked to where a young girl moved gracefully down the corridor. Her hair, hanging loose, caught the light and reflected it in a sheen of ebon. Her high-cheekboned face held an elfin charm. The thrust of her breasts was a challenge which created tingles in Kufstein’s palms.

  A distraction. Kufstein should have ignored her, keeping his eyes on the guard, scanning the immediate area for sign of other, possible dangers, concentrating on his task and nothing else. The instructions so carefully fed him by his friend who, like a mathematician, had worked out every step.

  Plans which crumpled to ruin as the girl, halting, turning, smiling and lifting her arms said, “Max! How nice to see you!”

  Arms which closed around him, trapping his own, her body pressing hard against the gun and making it impossible for him to snatch at it. A soft, scented body which made him prisoner until the guard, coming up from the rear, took over.

  “So you have the gun, Commander. My congratulations.” Raoul Anoux smiled from where he sat facing Koenig across his desk. “But, may I point out, you merely have a gun. One which, dare I say it, could have been planted on the poor devil you arrested.”

  “It wasn’t and you know it!”

  “How?” Anoux shrugged. “Was I present? Were you?”

  A point and Koenig had to concede it. At the time he had been lying in a ward, electrodes to his temples, lost in a deep sleep. Ten hours which, while not wholly restoring his energies, had at least cleared his mind.

  Volochek rumbled, “Don’t waste time with him, Commander. We have the gun stolen from Anyang. The man who carried it swore it had been given to him by Anoux. Anoux must have killed to obtain it. What more evidence could anyone need?”

  “Evidence?” Anoux shrugged. “Are such statements supposed to be facts? The unsupportable testimony of a man scared almost to death who would say anything you wanted. An assumption of my guilt made without the slightest grain of proof. I could as well claim that Anyang was murdered by his chief so as to produce this exact situation.”

  “Scum!” The flat of Volochek’s hand slashed across Anoux’s face. “You dare to imply such actions to me!”

  “Cossack bastard!” Anoux glared his hate, livid welts showing on his long, narrow face, a thread of blood trickling from his nose. “Are you so pure?”

  “Enough!” Koenig slammed his hand hard on the desk. “This is getting us nowhere. Raoul Anoux you will be tried by the Council and a jury of your peers. You may call witnesses and I will arrange someone to act in your defence. I—” He broke off, staring at the man as he smiled and shook his head. “What now?”

  “I do not recognize any court you may convene, John Koenig. I do not recognize any authority you may claim to hold.”

  “Too bad,” snapped Volochek. “But we’re going to try you all the same—and execute you afterwards. No filth like you can kill one of my men and get away with it.”

  He was displaying too much anger, too much determination and Koenig wondered why. Normally the Head of Security was calm, self-possessed, cool at all times. Was it to influence him by a display of what he and others felt? Or did he hope to intimidate the prisoner? With Kufstein such tactics would work but Anoux was of a different calibre.

  He said now, quietly, “You are a reasonable man, John Koenig and, I think, not immune to logic. When the Moon broke away from Earth you left any aut
hority you may have held behind with those who gave it to you. You rule now only by sufferance and we have had no opportunity to give you a mandate to determine our welfare. No right to make any rules and regulations. No right to act as a Dictator. Neither you nor he,” he glanced at Volochek, “have any moral or legal right to try me or anyone else, to punish me or anyone else, in this base. As there is no universally accepted law there can be no crime. An armed man was killed—so what? And, Commander, why was he armed in the first place?”

  Volochek said, thickly, “You’re like all your breed. You advocate the rule of the jungle.”

  “No.”

  “Of course not. It would be more honest if you did but since when have your kind ever been honest? You damned revolutionaries make me sick. You whine about misjustice but you don’t want justice you want power. When you get it you show your true colors. Repression? You are masters of the art. Lies, deceit, broken promises—I’ve seen it all happen before. Well, not again. Not here. Try it, Anoux, and I’ll promise you this. I’ll kill you with my own hands rather than see you win.”

  For a moment the fury of his anger shocked the prisoner to silence then, as he dabbed at the blood trickling from his nose, the man changed. It was as if the sight of the crimson on his fingers had released a spring or as if, at least, he could no longer contain himself.

  “You’ll see it, you pig! And you too, Koenig. You’ll see it and agree with it or none of you will ever see anything again. Did you think I was alone or dependent on that ignorant swine Kufstein? There are others.” Then, pausing, he continued, more softly. “Force can only be met with force, a lesson I learned years ago. Well, I have the force. Unless my terms are met the entire base will vanish in a cloud of radioactive gas.”