Space 1999 - Earthfall

by E. C. Tubb

  Precise instructions, but how to implement them? Koenig realized that he had lost all sense of direction and was totally disorientated. Which direction was the wall? He could tell his right from his left and up from down, but had he twisted during the descent?

  He moved forward, arms and legs working as if he were in water, muscles protesting at the strain. Within seconds he was drenched with perspiration, his lungs fighting for air. The dust was too close, movement too slow, and he felt like a bug trying to crawl through treacle, a bird trying to fly through space.

  “Am I heading right?”

  “I can’t tell, Commander. The rope—it seems as if you’re heading to the left. The wrong way—you want to move right.”

  So he had twisted and wasn’t even sure now in which direction lay the wall.

  “Lift me up,” he ordered. “We’ll try again.”

  On the fifth attempt he made it.

  The bulk at first seemed no different from the dust then it moved and he felt solidity and the sudden transmission of a voice through the physical contact. A blur at first sharpening into words as he thrust his helmet forward to hear it ring against another.

  “Who is that? Heniochi? Is that you? But you— For God’s sake, who is it?”

  “Steady,” said Koenig.

  “Commander? But how? You—” The voice broke. “Thank God you found me! Thank God for his infinite mercy! Thank all the angels and the Saints!” The voice began to babble with a relief so great it verged on hysteria. “I waited and prayed, I knew that—but it was so long. So damned long!”

  An eternity in the darkness, supported by a jutting shard of stone which had caught in his suit-harness, beating against the wall with the butt of his laser in a desperate bid to gain attention. Waiting. Listening to the hiss of limited air. Knowing that life hung on a thread.

  And then the touch, fevered imagination supplying the image of an alien beast rising to grip, to tear, to feed.

  “Steady,” said Koenig, understanding. “You’re safe now.” Already he had attached a rope to the man’s harness. “All right, Mark, pull us up.”

  Helena Russell came from the ward, wiping her hands, dropping the tissue into a bin for later reclamation. Her cheeks were hollow, eyes sunken into pits of darkness, the gold of her hair dimmed a little by the weariness which had rounded her shoulders and caused her feet to drag as she crossed the floor.

  An exaggeration, thought Koenig, fatigue could not drain the shimmer from hair, yet he touched it as she came close, lifting a strand to better to expose it to the light.

  “John?” She looked at him, a little puzzled by his action. “Is something wrong?”

  “No.” He released the tress, conscious of the softness of it against his fingers, the urge to caress the strands causing his hand to tremble. Or, perhaps, that too was the product of fatigue. “How is Dudinka?”

  “He’ll live.”

  “And be sane?”

  “The human mind isn’t as easy to break as that, John. He was suffering shock and delusion but he’ll get over it. I’ll have Rita give him hypnotic treatment to lessen the trauma of the experience,” She added, slowly, “No hope for the other one?”

  “None.”

  Heniochi was dead—it was impossible for him to be still alive. He had died beneath the dust, held by the fine powder, lost beyond discovery. Koenig closed his eyes, reliving the efforts he had made, the search, abandoning it only when his own tanks had been exhausted for the second time.

  Helena said, “Keep this up, John, and you’ll kill yourself.”

  “With work?”

  “With the toxins extensive physical labor induces into the bloodstream. They won’t kill you, true, but they’ll slow your reflexes, dull your mind, cause you to make that one, final mistake. Carelessness, John, the same thing which sent those two men into the dust.”

  The human limitation which had killed one and driven another to the brink of insanity. Entranced by the splendor of the place they had taken one step too many, had slipped and fallen too startled to radio until it was too late.

  Koenig thought again of the water-like metallic powder, the helpless, cramping constriction, the darkness, the utter loss of all orientation.

  What would it be like to die in such circumstances?

  How had Heniochi felt?

  “Here.” Koenig looked down at the tablet Helena offered him. “Take it,” she urged.

  “What is it?”

  “An amphetamine derivative. I made up a batch while waiting in the lower levels. It’ll give you a boost.”

  “And after?”

  “You’ll pay for it,” she admitted. “But, for now, it’ll clear your head and relieve your depression. Later you can sleep.”

  Sleep—and dream of a man, lost, alone, frightened and dying.

  “Take it, John—that’s an order from your medical adviser.” She smiled as he obeyed. “Mark was telling me about what you found. Could you really utilize it as he thinks?”

  “Maybe. We could roof it with plastic once the place is sealed, induce an atmosphere, fit air-locks and gain ourselves a new home.”

  “We have a home, John. Alpha.”

  “The base.”

  “Not the base,” she corrected. “Alpha. The name of where we live. You don’t call a city ‘the town’ so why call this ‘the base’?”

  She was talking to him as she would to a child and he wondered why. What was so important about a name? And why, too, had the tablet she had given him accentuated his fatigue instead of feeding him a quick, chemical energy? Blinking he stifled a yawn then, with an effort, straightened his shoulders and met her eyes.

  “You lied to me, Helena.”

  “Not exactly, John.”

  “That tablet—”

  “Will relax you as I promised. It will also make you feel far more energetic after you’ve had a little rest.” Her hand touched his arm. “We need to talk and I want your mind to be clear when we do it. No,” she added, quickly, “no problems. At least not the kind which require immediate attention. Just things we need to discuss and things you have to know.”

  In her own way in her own time. The Garden of Eden, he thought, the temptation of the apple—or, no, not the apple but the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge—but a betrayal just the same.

  One she felt as she watched him head towards the door and out of Medical and one which she trusted that, later, he would forgive.

  Mathias looked up when she entered the laboratory. He sat, a pipette in one hand, reagents racked on the bench before him. A greased board held notations and she glanced at them, then at the test-tube at which he had been working.

  “Rita’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “Positive?”

  “Yes.” He met her eyes. “I’m not arguing with you about this, Helena.”

  “Am I giving you the chance?”

  “No.” He set aside the pipette. “I’m just stating the position. She and I both feel the same way about this.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it, Bob. I mean that.” She closed her fingers warmly on his arm, “And Nurse Kikkido?”

  “The same. Positive.”

  “Who?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No, but—” Breaking off she shrugged. “No, you’re right, Bob, it doesn’t matter. Not really. Certainly not now. You’ve offered her the alternative?”

  “Yes. She rejects it.” Mathias looked at the board beside his elbow, the test-tube, the reagents. “Does the Commander know?”

  “I’ll tell him when he wakes.”

  There had been monsters and dragons; creatures of childish nightmare which had risen to join other, more adult horrors. He had run across an endless plain pursued by things wearing the faces of men, feeling his legs sink into a sea of mire as they came closer, closer, the mire swallowing him, holding him with a constriction like the Hand of Creation, closing in the Judgement of God.

  Koenig woke, gasping, feeling the hammer-blows
of his heart. Sweat dewed his skin and caused the single sheet to cling to his naked body. The room was dim, lit only by the tiny glow of a tell-tale from one of the instruments, a point of electronic brilliance captured in toughened glass.

  He was not alone.

  Marcia? He reared up, catching the glint of golden hair, recognizing the old error for what it was. But Marcia had come to him in his dreams and Simmonds, and Tyde whom he had cursed and Anoux and Teal and . . .

  How many had gone?

  How many were left?

  “Three hundred and nine,” said Helena. “About equal sexes, thank God. You want the exact numbers?”

  “Who—? Helena—what the hell are you talking about?”

  “The vital stastics of Alpha. No, John, I’m not reading your mind. You were talking in your sleep.”

  And she’d listened and waited until he woke. But why had she come? What did she want?”

  “All in good time,” she said when he asked the question. “How do you feel?”

  “Fine.” It was no lie. He stretched, feeling young and virile, conscious of her presence, the curves of her body beneath her uniform. “Just what did you put in that tablet?”

  “A mixture. Don’t worry about it.” She moved a little, leaning forward, the dim light accentuating the hollows of her cheeks, the shadows around her eyes. “And don’t torment yourself with blame for the others. You didn’t kill them.”

  “Over a hundred,” he said, bitterly. “Twenty-five per cent casualties.”

  “Not too bad in a war for survival, John.”

  “But how long can we survive? You mentioned statistics—do you realize how many it takes to maintain our environment? How many hours to supply our food? We can contract only so far. Power has to be maintained, an atmosphere, food, water—once we hit a certain level we aren’t going to make it. We can’t afford casualties. There are no reinforcements.”

  She said, quietly, “You’re wrong, John. Rita Cantry is pregnant with Mathias’s child. Neither she nor Bob will consider abortion. Neither will Nurse Kikkido. She—”

  “A nurse! Pregnant?” Koenig reared upright on the bed. “Hasn’t she ever heard of contraceptives?” He added, quickly, “There are contraceptives? We haven’t run out?”

  “There are and we haven’t.”

  “Then what’s the matter with her? Pregnant! Who is the father?” He blinked as he listened. “She refuses to say? Why, for God’s sake?”

  “Why should she?”

  “Because he should—”

  “Marry her, John?” Helena smiled, genuinely amused. “How old fashioned can you get? Even before Breakaway that old idea had been thrown out of the window. A woman doesn’t need a man to support her and the child. Not then and certainly not here. She is an individual with the right to select the father of her child, to rear it in her own way, to take full responsibility. She doesn’t have to answer to anyone.”

  “You’re wrong, Helena,” said Koenig. “And you know it.”

  “The woman has rights.”

  “To hell with the woman—I’m thinking of the child! All right, I’m old fashioned, I believe in a thing called the family. Maybe it’s unimportant now but one thing isn’t and never will be. The happiness of the child, Helena. The child!”

  “And what has this to do with Nurse Kikkido?”

  He said, quietly, “She doesn’t have to marry him or him her—those old customs have no bearing now. But no one person creates a child, it takes two, and both have the right to be proud of their achievement. And every child has the right to know its parents if for no other reason than it needs to be oriented in the world. Even this world, Helena. And if you don’t know why ask Rita Cantry to explain it all to you one day.”

  “I know why, John,” said Helena and remembered a rumor she had heard about Koenig, his birth and upbringing. An adoption? The remarriage of his mother? Whatever it was it had left a mark. “And I agree—Nurse Kikkido is wrong. We need to know who the father is for the sake of the genetic record if for nothing else. We are too few to risk unintentional inbreeding. And there are others who might follow the same line unless pursuaded otherwise.”

  It was to be expected, he thought, and wondered why he had been so blind. Nature could never be denied and the simple act of intercourse, at times, wasn’t enough; the coupling had to have a deeper meaning than the attainment of physical pleasure. More even than the demonstration of love. There had to be something primeval at its root; the need to reproduce, to perpetuate the species—the single basic drive of any organism.

  “Babies,” he mused. “Children running about Alpha.”

  “Our reinforcements, John. New lives to replace the old.”

  The living to fill the places left by the dead—the normal cycle of all living things. Against it education and the superficial gloss of cultivated sophistication had no chance. The basic drive was paramount.

  Even to Helena?

  Koenig stared at her, his eyes appraising, sensing rather than seeing the femininity of her body. The breasts were more prominent than he remembered, the nipples more pronounced. Her thighs were soft and tempting curves demanding to be touched, caressed, parted. Her lips were fashioned for kisses. Her eyes held stars; the reflected gleam of the tiny light, but to him they shone with an inner luminescence.

  And he was a youth again, sitting beneath an apple tree in summer with a girl at his side and the fires of puberty burning in his loins.

  “John!” He felt the touch of her hand, the fingers warm and soft against his bare arm. “We need to talk about the situation. There will have to be changes, life will have to be adapted and—John!” His arms had risen of their own volition to embrace her. “John!”

  Later, in the dim glow of the tiny light, he looked at her hair spread over his pillow, the strands kissing the soft sheen of her naked shoulders. Beneath the sheet her body was as naked as his own, relaxed now in the aftermath of an explosion of unabashed passion which had turned them both into blind, rutting animals. Her eyes were closed and he thought she was sleeping then, as he kissed her, she turned a little so as to stare directly at him.

  “John?”

  “Helena, I love you!”

  “And I you, darling.” Her hand rose to trail fingers over his cheek. “From the first moment I saw you, I think.”

  “And said nothing?”

  “Did you? And what could I say? You seemed so cold and hard, so dedicated to your command.” Her fingers rose from his cheek to touch the curve of his eyebrows, the line of his hair. “Were you so very unhappy when a boy?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “The lines on your face.” Like moths the tips of her fingers followed their paths. “The stamp of loneliness and of rejection. Of hurt and sorrow and pain. Of loss and misunderstanding. You hide them well, my darling, but at times they show.”

  “The stigmata of weakness.”

  “The scars of resolution,” she corrected. “The mark of humanity.”

  Things hidden behind the mask which now was lowered. As her own, cold exterior had vanished; the Slavic peasant within shattering the icy image of scientific detachment to reveal the real woman, the child of Nature governed by the age-old need of her kind.

  “John, my darling!”

  “Helena! My love! My love!”

  For now and for always, the search ended, the aching need. Koenig felt the warmth of fulfilment and relaxed, body drained, eased with the culmination of desire. The sheet had fallen from the bed to lie in a crumpled mass beside her discarded uniform and he took her in his arms, cradling her, looking at the face resting on his shoulder. The beautiful face of a mature woman who had reached out and taken what she wanted.

  Deliberately taken.

  “John?” She met his eyes, aware of his scrutiny, sensing his thoughts. “Is something wrong?”

  “No.”

  “What is it? Darling, I need to know.”

  How to explain the haunting, inward fear? The nag
ging conviction that this was too good to last. The doubts any man of imagination had to feel when involved in a situation in which he was not wholly the master.

  “John?”

  “I was thinking of something an old man once told me. A proverb, I think.” Softly he quoted, “Those who seek to grasp too much end by holding nothing.”

  “I’ve another,” she said. “Take what you want, said God—and pay for it! Are you afraid of having to pay, John?”

  “No.”

  “But there’s something else, isn’t there? Something on your mind.” She moved a little in his arms. “Tell me, darling. We shouldn’t have secrets between us.”

  He said, bluntly, “Just what did you put in that tablet you gave me?”

  He felt her stiffen, heard the slight catch of indrawn breath before she said, lightly, “Complaining, darling?”

  “No.”

  “Then why ask?”

  “Because I’m curious. Why, Helena? Why did you do it?”

  The wrong question and immediately he regretted asking it. How much happiness had been lost by the inability to take what was offered without reservation?

  Then she said, quietly, “I wanted you, John, and I was afraid. Rejection never comes easy, the less so to a woman, and I couldn’t be sure how you felt. So I used medicine to help me—after all I am a doctor. I needed you. You and more.”

  “Such as?”

  “A child, John. Your child. A son.”

  C H A P T E R

  Twenty-Two

  They named him Michael and at eighteen he became a man.

  From her seat in the auditorium Helena watched as he took his place with others on the stage. Like all Alpha children he was tall and deceptively slender. His hair was rich with golden glints but Koenig had given him his eyes. Deep-set, thoughtful, at times even sombre. The mouth too, sensitive yet holding the ability to be cruel. She had seen it once during play when another boy had inadvertently hurt a smaller girl; an accident quickly recognized for what it was, but for a moment she had seen the iron residing beneath the bland exterior of her son.

  Now, looking up to where she sat, he smiled and she flushed with a sudden pride.