Space 1999 - Earthfall

by E. C. Tubb

  “I’d call it something else, Helena. I’d call it skill of the highest order. One day, maybe, I’ll be able to come close to it.”

  He looked down at the limp figure, the head crowned with the sleep-inducing electrodes, the face like a waxen mask. The torso was covered now but he had seen it bare, the chest cavity sliced open, the ribs and muscles retracted, the heart and lungs exposed in naked, pulsating helplessness. The heart which was obviously an organ long past its ability to function as it should, diseased, ruined, a lump of useless tissue. It was gone now, carried away in a tray for disposal, replaced by the miracle of modern biological engineering which had been so painstakingly attached with countless minute stitches to the appropriate veins and arteries and sinews, muscle rejoined, nerves guided and tipped with caps, the caps themselves fitted to the atriforg, the cavity closed, prophilactic measures taken, the system washed with antibiotics, hormone fast-healers injected, monitors adjusted, whole blood fed into the limp frame.

  Acts which had taken hours of dedicated effort during which, at any moment, a slip would have cost the life of the patient.

  A task which, once begun, could not be left until finished. A marathon of surgery which had drained them both of physical and nervous energy.

  “Helena?” Mathias glanced towards the couch on which Bergman lay. “Do you wish me to arouse him?”

  “A moment.” She closed her eyes and stood, reliving the operation, going over every detail, wondering if she had made a mistake, failed to do something which should have been done. A weakness as was her sudden need for the stimulation of brandy. A reluctance to face what must be faced now or later. “Yes, Bob, please.”

  Mathias dropped his hand to the sleep simulator. Without it the operation would have been impossible, Bergman could never have tolerated the anaesthetics, but with it he had slept like a child. Slept while his heart had been taken from him. The organ the ancients had believed had contained the soul. From somewhere Mathias recalled a fragment of poetry . . . “How can I live without my heart? How can I die without my soul?”

  The switch opened beneath his hand.

  “Victor!” Helena touched the flaccid cheek. “Victor!”

  “Helena!” Bergman smiled. “I’ve had such a wonderful dream. I was young again and—” A shadow touched his eyes. “Never mind. It is enough to know that she is waiting.”

  His dead wife and a belief held despite his scientific objectivity which made such a conviction a jarring contradiction. But she knew better than to kick at the crutches of his being.

  “How do you feel, Victor?”

  “Well.” He looked at her, following her with his eyes. “But you want to know more than that, of course. I feel surprisingly fit. No nausea, no pain, no sagging weakness. A little soreness but that is to be expected. And I feel a little lightheaded.”

  The hyper-oxygenated blood now passing through his brain and which would give rise to a headache which would need to be combated with drugs.

  “It will pass,” she assured. “Anything else? No sensation of tightness? No cold shivers, sudden flushes, sense of falling? Good.” She smiled as he shook his head. “You make an ideal patient, Victor.”

  “Could I be anything else strapped in like this?”

  “You’d be surprised.” Deftly she touched various parts of his body, her fingers relaying information as to his general physique. The skin tone was good, the temperature even, the muscles flaccid but showing no signs of reversion. The eyes were clear and the nostrils and mouth free of mucus. The lungs sounded well and the pulse of the new heart was strong. Monitors would have told her as much but the touch of her hand was more soothing than the impersonal contact of an electrode. “I’m going to put you back to sleep now, Victor.”

  “So soon?”

  “Why not? You’d rather dream than just lie here looking at the ceiling, wouldn’t you?”

  “But John—”

  “I’m the boss around here,” she said with mock severity. “And I want you to lie quite still and fully relaxed until all those stitches I put in you have a chance to settle down. John will have to wait.”

  He was doing it outside, pacing the floor, his eyes sunken and ringed with black. Eyes which matched her own in a fatigue common to both.

  “Helena?”

  “He’ll live,” she said. “He’ll make it.”

  “Thank God for that! When—” He broke off, knowing he was asking too much, demanding more than she could at present give. Victor was alive and would continue to live. When he would be able to work was another question. “I’m sorry, Helena. You look all in.”

  “I’m just tired, John. Just tired.”

  Then she was in his arms, crying, trembling as she clung to him, fatigue and tension breaking in a flood of tears as muscles yielded their strength as she found comfort in his arms, clinging to him as she would have clung to her father: a scared and frightened child.

  C H A P T E R

  Fifteen

  The thing was a metre long, half as wide and half as high, the body stuffed with batteries and radio-operated remote control apparatus. Wide treads carried it over the Lunar plain and, mounted on a turret, swivelled a single scanning eye.

  Morrow thinned his lips as he manipulated it. The treads were a little off balance and tended to slew the thing to one side. It was slow, the scanner badly placed for close-vision, the entire thing underpowered for the job it had to do. But he knew of the limitations and, at least, it served to give him a sight of the enemy.

  “Record,” he said as the darting flashes came into view. “Full electronic scan and radio accompaniment.”

  Sandra Benes nodded as she adjusted her instruments. It was good to be back at work again, good to have power at her command even if it was only a trickle of the normal flood. It made her feel a little like a stratoplane pilot would have felt when asked to handle an ancient propeller craft—competent but a little inadequate. And the wavering indecision of some of the dials irritated her.

  “Sandra?”

  “On record, Paul.”

  Morrow grunted and moved the slave-controls of the miniature tractor. The robot had been made in the workshops and Roache was proud of it. But Roache didn’t have to steer it; anticipating the terrain, compensating for dips and dunes, matching the bite of the treads and remembering all the time to keep the thing as invisible as possible.

  An Eagle would have done a better job. One quick pass over the area and the entire crater would have been photographed and valuated, but Koenig had vetoed the use of an Eagle despite Carter’s insistence. A veto Morrow could appreciate. As yet the aliens knew nothing of their true capacity for destruction and it would be unwise to show their hand.

  “Heightened activity in region of crater, Paul,” said Sandra. “Increased magnetic density. Radio-noise rising.”

  “Signals?”

  For answer she switched on a speaker filling Main Mission with the eerie blips.

  “Cut that!” David Kano almost snarled the command. “Are you crazy? The computer has determined the safe level of electronic emission and we are working close to the limit as it is. Use amplifiers and we could go over it.”

  “Sorry.” She cut the speakers. “I was forgetting.”

  A fault but a human one and he regretted his sharpness. But to apologize would be serving no useful purpose, she had made a mistake and he had told her about it and to try and soothe her ruffled feelings would negate the lesson.

  Morrow said, to ease the tension, “I’m approaching the crater’s rim. Any bets as to what we’ll see inside the bowl?”

  “A palace,” said Sandra. “One with spires and turrets like the thing you see in children’s story books. A fairy-tale palace with, maybe, a fairy-tale Prince. David?”

  “Something from home,” he said, entering into the spirit of the game, pleased to find she wasn’t nursing a grudge. “A kraal or, no, a herd of elephants. Big tuskers with their cows and cubs. I’d like to see some elephants again.”
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  He wasn’t joking, it had been a long time, and he sat remembering the sights and sounds of his youth; the smells and the warmth of the sun, the chatter of the women and the deep, rolling laughter of the men. A happy time and a happy people who believed that the young should enjoy themselves and that a child was a thing to be loved and cherished.

  God, what had happened to them?

  “David?” Morrow was waiting. “Is that all?”

  “Yes.” Kano swallowed, conscious of the high pitch of his voice, his nearness to tears. “Yes, that’s all. And you, Paul?”

  “An egg,” said Morrow. “The biggest goddamned egg in creation.”

  He was right.

  Only—it wasn’t an egg, not exactly. Nor was it a dirigible though it resembled one. Nor could it have been a blimp or a mammoth sausage or a gigantic pudding. It was huge and rounded and covered with glitter and, all around it, darted and wheeled the slender shapes of the brilliant torpedoes.

  “It looks like a slug,” said Sandra. “One without horns.”

  “Or a worm,” said Kano. “No, a grub of some kind.”

  “A raw French roll surrounded by flies,” said Morrow. “Hell, it could be anything. Keep recording, Sandra, I’ll try and get a closer look.”

  The image on the screen joggled as he sent the robot down the inner slope of the crater, hands tense as he manipulated the controls, grunting at the thing’s slowness to respond. The scanner lifted to show the sky, a brilliance lined and streaked with veins of transient color, dropped to reveal the monstrous swell of the thing lying in the crater, lifted again as a tread crawled up a rock, the image blurring as again it levelled.

  “Activity increasing, Paul,” reported Sandra. “On all levels.” She added, thoughtfully, “It’s as if they sense we’re prying.”

  “In that case back off,” said Kano. “Or at least kill the robot.”

  “Just a minute. I want—” Morrow cried out as a blaze of light flashed from the screen and turned, hands pressed to his eyes.

  “Paul!” Sandra ran towards him. “Paul, are you hurt?”

  “Dazzled.” He lowered his hands and sat, blinking. “Well, that’s the end of the robot. David!”

  Kano had known what to do. Even as Morrow spoke the lights died, the instruments, the screen, the gleam of tell-tales as, in Main Mission and the entire base, all power was cut.

  All but a tiny light from the battery-operated recorder Sandra had used in order to reduce electronic emission. A thin beam which came from the on-off switch and which threw a reflection against a mirror-like panel. One which jerked and flickered as they watched.

  “Vibration,” whispered Kano. “The beam and panel are acting as a seismograph. Whatever is lying out in that crater is digging its way into the Moon!”

  “There is no correlation.” Koenig looked again at the photograph in his hand. “The thing I saw wasn’t like this.”

  “Are you certain?” Bergman leaned forward in his wheelchair. “Can you be certain?”

  Koenig studied the photograph again, one taken from the recording made by Sandra Benes. It was rough, the detail blurred, the entire print vaguely out of focus but sharp enough for him to be sure. The swollen mound of the central mass, its very shape—how had that created fear?

  “A reaction to the totally unfamiliar,” said Bergman when he put the question. “You saw something in space—how did it get there?”

  “It came,” said Koenig, slowly. “There was something huge, at least it gave the impression of being that, a thing which seemed to be menacing. Then it changed. It twisted and turned and took on an odd perspective as if I looked down an endless tunnel or around a corner in some way. There was a tremendous display of brilliance and a movement. I saw something, an eye, a head, a creature, a tentacle, a crippled spider—” He shrugged. “Victor, I can’t be certain as to what I actually did see, but it wasn’t that thing. It looks as frightening as an egg.”

  “Which is something holding the most terrifying potential we can imagine,” said Bergman, sombrely. “Anything can hatch from an egg. You mentioned a spider—they come from eggs and many people are afraid of arachnids. Insects too. Crocodiles, snakes, scorpions—why do you think so many religions hold the egg as an important symbol? It isn’t simply because it represents the birth-ideal but because it also represents the eternal mystery of the unknown. And men have always feared the unknown and usually with good reason.” He took the photograph from Koenig’s hand and looked at it through a glass. A gesture, he had already studied it a dozen times before. “You’ve heard of hysterical blindness, John?”

  “Of course. Organically there is nothing wrong but the patient simply can’t see.”

  “Because—he doesn’t want to, John. It isn’t a matter of “can’t” but “won’t”. You appreciate the difference?”

  Koenig said, slowly, “I’m appreciating more than that. Either I saw something my mind was simply unable to accept and so all memory of it is blurred or I was unable to see it because of an external influence. One emanating from the thing itself. Possible?”

  “More than possible, John. In fact I think it is most probable.” Bergman dropped the photograph to his lap and looked over the compartment in which he had been working. Not conducting actual, physical labor, but directing the efforts of skilled technicians. One of them, a girl, smiled at him from the other side of the bench.

  “Do you want to study this section, Professor?”

  “Does it present anything novel?”

  “No. It’s the same as the others but from a different part.”

  “Then file it and run the usual check.” Bergman looked up at Koenig. “What you ran into was, most probably, a defence mechanism of some kind. Many creatures have them, either they adopt a false but frightening appearance or emit an unpleasant odor or even discharge an irritant vapor. The purpose, of course, is to scare off any natural predators. We aren’t divorced from such reactions ourselves, when in strange company and if a little uneasy we tend to adopt an aggressive attitude. I believe the thing you saw has a more sophisticated mechanism. It probably works on the basic telepathic level and induces a fear-reaction by actual stimulation of the brain by some form of paraphysical energy. You realize what this means, of course?”

  “I know what you’re hinting it means, Victor, but as yet there is no proof.”

  Bergman said, “There you’re wrong, John. There is. You brought it in for examination.” He lifted a hand and pointed at the bench, the things it contained. “The torpedo.”

  “Alive?”

  “Organic, at least. Push me towards it.” He waited as Koenig moved the wheelchair. “I’ll be glad to get out of this thing, but Helena insisted I use it for a while. That I use others to do the actual work, too, but there’s nothing like touching and feeling with your own hands. Pass me that section of outer rind.”

  It was dull, grey, the surface finely granulated, the interior of the curve slightly ridged in a complex pattern. Bergman hefted it, turned it to catch the light then struck it sharply with his fingernail. It emitted a clear, ringing sound.

  “Hard, John. Harder than tungsten alloy but, luckily for us, not as hard as diamond. I managed to section it after taking X-rays to study the interior. Note the granulated exterior. I believe that each tiny nodule is a force-field control of some kind. It probably works on the on-off binary system. There were no generators as we know them but the interior did contain a large amount of closely meshed fibre which held some of the attributes of condensers as found in electric eels. The rest of the bulk was made up of a reservoir of fluid, some of which leaked to serve as a seal, some strands of ganglionlike tissue which could have served as a rudimentary brain. A circulation system based on osmosis and a mass of complex cyst-forms which most probably served as a guidance and directional system.”

  “How about the weaponry?”

  “The nose held a wad of specialized fibres but that’s all we know. How the destructive force was discharged and
exactly how it works remain mysteries. One other thing; there are vestigial traces of organs which could have some bearing on reproduction.”

  “Any provision for the elimination of wastes?”

  “Not that we could find.”

  “And for intake of nourishment?” Koenig sighed as Bergman shook his head. “So what do we have? A creature which could be an alien life-form but one which doesn’t eat, pass waste, or reproduce. Three strokes against it actually being alive. So what do we have left? An organic construct which is fuelled and sent out and dumped when its fuel runs out?”

  “I said the organs were vestigial, John,” reminded Bergman. “As your own appendix is a vestigial organ. You no longer have any use for it because you no longer live on grass and cellulose. This creature,” he gestured at the bench, “could have evolved to the point where it can exist by the ingestion of pure energy. Those external nodes could be radiation-collectors. The inner tissue an energy store. It’s obvious mobility is obtained by the manipulation of force-fields and it needn’t require high amounts of energy to do that. In fact it comes close to a perfect design and could be a perfect machine.”

  For what? Koenig thought about it, remembering how the torpedoes had weaved and darted, moving like a school of restless fish, like the humming, circling, dancing swarms of bees he had seen as a boy.

  Bees!

  He said, urgently, “Victor that thing was alive in more ways than one. It must have had an individual awareness and also it belonged to a group-gestalt. It was a worker, a warrior, a scout. Something bred to a specific shape to do a specific job. Do you get the picture?”

  “Ants,” said Bergman. “Termites. Hornets.”

  “Bees! That thing out there is their queen and they’re digging in to make a new hive!”

  Amil Yagnik was a small, quiet man who had spent his life studying the small and alien. An agronomist initially he had turned his attention to the vast world of insects becoming a noted entomologist. A politician, eager for publicity, eager too that his nation should be duly represented, had managed to get him included in the detachment sent to the Moon where, officially, he had become supervisor of non-human life which, in reality, meant he took care of the laboratory animals and puttered about in a small compartment with his microscopes and slides.