Space 1999 - Earthfall

by E. C. Tubb

  Skin which had grown too loose and too insensitive. Eyes affected by tribulations. Muscles and sinews tested beyond their limit and yielding to turn into disfiguring fat and watery tissue. Ears not as sharp as they had once been. Lungs and livers and kidneys all breaking down and drifting from the optimum pattern of the blueprint everyone carried in every cell.

  Age!

  A tree could grow old and still retain its natural beauty and function. A fish grew and held its form undisfigured by the afflictions common to Mankind. A lobster could regenerate a lost organ. A snake shed its skin. But a man grew tired and slow and disfigured and crippled as his metabolism slowed and breakdowns accelerated his final degeneration.

  But if the DNA molecules which held the pattern of what a man should be could be stimulated to repair cellular damage and adapt tissue to reach the optimum and remain there then—?

  “Immortality,” he said, and realized immediately the mistake. “No, not that, just a firm body and a healthy one until the end.”

  “Perhaps, John, yes.”

  “And when will that be?”

  He was asking too much and knew it. Anything she said would be surmise, any time she gave nothing but an educated guess.

  Three-score and ten, he thought. The term promised by the Bible and which had become fact. The normal life-span of seventy years which had long been an average in the civilized world. But other times had been mentioned in the Bible—those before the Flood which had encompassed centuries instead of mere decades. Could he, like Methuselah, live almost a thousand years?

  Would he be given the opportunity to find out?

  From the screen Morrow said, “Stand by all Eagles. Check and report. One?”

  “Checked and ready,” Koenig settled himself in the pilot’s chair.

  “Two?”

  “All set,” said Carter. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  He was impatient to be moving and Koenig couldn’t blame him. The black hole, now shockingly close, hung in the sky like a great, malevolent eye. The fuzzed circumference of the event horizon aided the illusion, giving the dark orb the semblance of lashes. As Morrow checked the other Eagles Koenig studied it, trying to see what lay inside, failing as he knew he must fail.

  Nothing could emerge from the event horizon and so no image could be gained. Without light there could be only darkless and light was held, firmly trapped in the cosmic singularity.

  “Right,” said Morrow. “All Eagles checked, Lift on five—and good luck!”

  Koenig tensed as the voice counted the passing seconds. At zero he fed power to the engines and sent the Eagle up from the Lunar terrain. Below it, held fast in the grapnels, rode a massive lump of rock, a portion smoothed and holding a humped mechanism, the remainder trimined to a roughly spherical shape.

  Every Eagle carried a similar burden—bombs to hurl against the enemy.

  It spread in the screens as Koenig sent his Eagle hurtling through space, aiming at a pre-selected point to one side. A distance from the event horizon carefully calculated by Bergman as being on the absolute limit of safety. The vessel aimed there had little to do but wait and try not to think of what a slip would mean, the destruction it would cause.

  How would it feel to plunge into the heart of the enigmatic darkness? Would he be riding blind? Would he feel the crush of fantastic gravitation? Or would he, riding in free fall, continue through the singularity to emerge—where? A contradiction—once caught he could never break free and so never emerge. If he fell he must either be compressed to an incredible density or continue to fall for eternity.

  “John!”

  He had been dreaming and the Eagle had veered a little from its path. At Morrow’s warning he made the necessary correction, saw the instruments shift again, re-corrected and realized he was close to the danger point.

  “Eagle One standing by to release. On five—mark!”

  The ship jerked as the count ended and the mass of rock, freed of the gapnels, hurtled on as Koenig swung the Eagle out and away from the sombre blackness. As he moved from position Carter followed, releasing his own burden, sending it after the other.

  Then others, a stream of them, masses on an invisible string like beads.

  A man who cried out with panic.

  “The grabs! They’re stuck!”

  “Divert and stand by to effect repair.”

  “I can’t! I’ve triggered the automatics. The damned thing—”

  “Abandon!” snapped Koenig. “Abandon ship, you fool!”

  “I’ll get him, John!”

  “No, Alan! Continue as planned! That’s an order!”

  Koenig thinned his lips as he sent the Eagle at top speed towards the one with the jammed load. A red lamp winked above the port and, as he watched, a suited figure jumped through the opening and moved with flashes from the suit-jets. The pilot, attempting to escape, knowing that it was hopeless.

  The suit jets were too weak, the black hole too close, his velocity still that of the Eagle he had abandoned. And he had waited too long—only by a miracle could Koenig hope to snatch him from the gravity well which already was making him a helpless captive.

  “Cut your jets. Cut them, damn you!” Then, as they died, “Curl into a ball. Protect your helmet with your arms. I’m going to sweep you into the lock.”

  A dangerous manoeuvre—any slip and the man would be struck by the edge, his bones shattered, his suit ripped, his faceplate smashed into fragments. But it was a risk Koenig had to take. To delay further would be to doom them both.

  The Eagle moved beneath his hands as they caressed the controls, veering, slewing, catching the curled-up figure of the pilot as a man would catch a flying moth in his hand, holding it firm, absorbing its velocity, bringing it safely to rest.

  “John!” Carter’s voice, steamed, anxious.

  “I’m on my way!”

  Power thrummed through the Eagle as Koenig hit the boosters, burning fuel with disregard to safety margins or component-damage. An emergency manoeuvre which sent blood thundering in his ears and piled massive weights on back and shoulders. Which filled his mouth with the taste of blood and sent darkness to edge his vision. A darkness which closed into a small circle illuminated with red and angry lights.

  A gamble—if he had judged correctly the Eagle would win to safety. If not then the hole would swallow him.

  Life, he thought, ironically. A thousand years—lost in a few seconds.

  And then, slowly, the pressure began to fade and the circle of his vision opened to show the panel, now winking green, the screens framing Morrow’s anxious face, the forward vision ports bright with the vista of stars.

  And, on the rear-vision screen, the one framing the black hole, the masses of drifting rock turned into lambent pearls.

  They blazed like captured stars, one after the other, each turning into a huge, shimmering ball of rainbow-brightness as the automatic switches closed and the force-screens came into being. They moved like a stream of floating bubbles towards the flicker of the event horizon, each bubble also flickering with a frequency which baffled the eye, each emitting a torrent of carefully determined energy.

  A bowl of milk to tempt the cat.

  A foot to stamp on its tail.

  “God, look at them!” Carter’s voice held awe. “They’re beautiful! Fantastic! Argosies against the stars!”

  Assembled nodes of energy which, with luck, would trigger whatever it was which moved the black hole. Aimed and gathered well to one side of the course followed by the Moon.

  Bleakly Koenig followed them with his eyes. A chance, the only one they had, one on which they had staked their lives. If the hole jumped then it could move in any direction. Previous movements had been ones covering relatively great distances—the only real danger if the thing should move at all was that it would move directly towards the Moon.

  “John! Alan! All of you!” Bergman was on the screen, his face drawn, his voice tense. “Return to Alpha immediately! Red a
lert! Return at once! At once!”

  C H A P T E R

  Thirty

  The sensors told the story, their dials flashing red, needles kicking, every tell-tale signalling the floods of energy which had appeared in space.

  “It began shortly after the first screens were established,” said Bergman, “There must be a resonance of some kind between the hole and the force-shields. A vortex of conflicting forces which has strained the continuum. Look!” He pointed to a screen, at the stars depicted on it, the bright points dulled now, wavering as if seen through water. “The entire electromagnetic spectrum is disturbed and it is logical to assume other forces are in a similar state of confusion.”

  “Our base-shield?”

  From his console Morrow said, “It’s in working order, John, and ready to be established.”

  “Then why not use it?”

  “Because once it is up we cannot receive information from outside,” explained Bergman. “You know that, John.”

  “Wrong. We have a flicker-effect incorporated.”

  “Can it halt a photon when down?” Bergman, shrugged at Koenig’s expression. “We could be blasted at any moment with energies beyond our comprehension. When that happens the screen must remain intact at all times if we are to be protected. But, while we have the opportunity, let us at least make a record of what is happening out there.”

  “We know what is happening. We’ve twisted the tiger’s tail in an effort to make it move.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “You tell me, Victor. Will we be any worse off than before?”

  “No, John,” admitted Bergman. “I suppose not. But we could enter a region of strange forces and suffer odd effects. Compression, expansion, dilation of a single dimension, reversal polarities, hyper-space phenomena—all are mathematically possible. Some we may, possibly, survive. Others will destroy us.”

  As a foot would crush an ant or a swiping hand a feeding mosquito. Death, it seemed, was everywhere and life itself nothing but a continual act of violence. Even the supposedly sterile realm of mathematics held terrors.

  “We’re facing a cosmic singularity, John,” explained Bergman. “When all the laws of physics are rendered meaningless then anything can happen. Anything. I suggest—”

  Sandra’s scream shocked him to silence. It rose to quell the usual noise of Main Mission, a shriek torn from a straining throat by surprise, shock, horror and naked disbelief.

  The sky boiled with vileness.

  Koenig had a glimpse of shattered bodies oozing internal organs, of freaks with human faces and insect bodies which capered and gibbered against the stars, of a foetid something which pulsed and looked with mournful, pleading eyes, of the dregs of nightmare and barely-remembered terrors, of ghastly things done and of worse things intended.

  Delirium!

  From the mind, of course, they had to be fantasies born of the mind. The delicate neuron balance upset by the flood of external energy, eyes seeing what didn’t really exist—when had this happened to him before?

  “The shield! Paul, establish the shield!”

  Morrow was cowering in his chair, head cradled in his arms, spittle edging his lips, his eyes insane. At the computer Kano was dancing, a stilted, symbolic set of movements, one hand lifted as if he held a spear, the other extended before him, fingers splayed. Beyond him a woman writhed in ecstatic abandon. Beside her a man screamed and fell to his knees and lifted hands to his face, the fingers curved to claw at his eyes.

  Against a wall a Security guard laughed and pounded and painted bloody pictures on the smooth plastic with his battered hands.

  “The shield! Establish the shield!”

  Koenig lunged forward, felt something hit him, snarled and thrust it away. Bergman went spinning as Koenig gripped Morrow and dragged him from his chair. As Sandra shrieked again he hit the switch governing the shield.

  It rose in a shimmering arc to isolate Alpha from the horrors thronging space. From the blasting radiations born of conflicting energies which threatened to destroy them. A wall of scintillating light through which nothing could pass.

  “My head!” Morrow winced as he held his temples, “What happened?”

  “Things!” Sandra’s mouth was open, her eyes still wild. “I saw—”

  “Hallucinations!” Koenig glanced at the woman who’d been in ecstasy. She was slumped over a desk breathing heavily, Beside her a man looked at the skin and blood beneath his fingernails. The Security guard was whimpering with the pain of his broken hands. “Get these people to Medical. David, how are you?”

  “Awake now.” Kano shook his head. “I was asleep, I think, and dreaming. I’m all right now, Commander.”

  “Victor?”

  “Bruised. You have a strong arm, John.” Bergman winced as he rubbed his shoulder.

  “What happened? Hallucinations?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Perhaps? For God’s sake, Victor, are you saying what we saw out there was real?”

  “How often must I tell you, John? In the area affected by a cosmic singularity anything can happen. Literally anything. Yes, those things we saw could have been actual, physical manifestations. Does that answer your question?”

  A node of creation spawning vileness—but no, that was unfair, a thing was vile only by a matter of opinion. Creation, then, that and nothing more. Knights in armor riding on endless tourneys, March Hares engaged in endless tea-parties, Humpty Dumpty falling off an infinity of walls. Men who had died now alive to walk again. Lost continents. Lost worlds. Monstrous reptiles lording it in steaming jungles. Cavemen blinking in wonder as they looked at jet planes in the sky.

  A totality of all there ever was and could ever be.

  “How long?” Koenig looked at the screens, the shimmer they displayed. “When will we be clear of danger?”

  “I don’t know.” Bergman cocked his head as if listening. “If the hole has moved well away from us we should be relatively safe now. If not—” He shrugged. “John, your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Guesses aren’t good enough!” Koenig staggered as the ground moved beneath his feet. A tremor, immediately repeated, crashing sounds rising above the warning sirens. Before him Sandra rose in the air, to hover for a moment, to fall sideways against a desk. “Paul! The shield—”

  “Holding, Commander!”

  A tiny place of relative safety but still influenced by the stresses wracking the Moon. Forces tearing at its substance, forming new craters to add to the old, fissuring the rock and releasing the inner magma. If the strain continued not even the shield could save them.

  “Power drain rising!” Sandra, shaking and bruised, was at her position. “Reactors developing full potential.”

  A torrent of energy drained by what?

  Koenig sagged as the lights dimmed, feeling weight pile on his shoulders and a hand grip his chest. It passed and he straightened, sucking air into his lungs, feeling a flow from his nostrils. A wetness which stained his mouth and chin with blood as a similar wetness bearded the others with carmine smears.

  “Paul?”

  Morrow was already at work checking the installation.

  “All sections intact, Commander. Some leakage from external compartments but all minor and sealing is in process of completion. No serious injuries; bruises and strains only. Some damage in kitchens and the hydroponic farms.”

  “Cut power to all unessential areas. Emergency lighting only. Maintain shield at all costs.”

  It had dimmed but brightened again as Morrow adjusted the flow of power. A brightness which yielded even as Koenig watched, the shimmering scintillations taking on a tarnished appearance dotted with transient holes.

  Something was out there, sucking at the shield as a man would suck at an orange, draining it of juice, of life itself. For a moment he had an impression of a tremendous beast with slavering jaws holding the Moon as it feasted. A concept which he dismissed as soon as formulated—the threat was real enough b
ut it held no familiar shape. It was the energy-sink of this universe which drained their power. A sponge which could never be filled.

  “Drain increasing,” reported Sandra. “Fluctuation reaching critical level. Commander! If we don’t cut the shield it’ll destroy the generator!”

  A feed-back which would leave them totally defenceless yet, to cut the shield, was to invite destruction.

  “Paul—”

  Koenig broke off, shuddering, feeling a peculiar sensation as if something had gripped his insides and had turned them inside out. A feeling joined to another as if he was at the end of a released rubber band. A sense of movement in dimensions previously unknown.

  A feeling shared.

  “What the hell was that!” Kano shivered and dabbed at his forehead. “Paul?”

  Morrow had no answer. Bergman, gasping, looked at Sandra who clung to her desk. Screens flared with questioning faces.

  And the big screens went dark.

  “The shield!” Sandra’s voice held hysteria, “It’s down!”

  Collapsed, the scintillating glory vanished, the shimmering defence replaced by darkness. A deep, ebon-like velvet which lightened to reveal a vista of scattered stars, a burning orb of brightness, a round, familiar shape.

  “The Earth!” Morrow was incredulous. “That’s the Earth!”

  It hung in space, a blue-white orb fleeced with cloud looking, so Koenig thought, like a living cell as seen through a microscope. A cell or the nucleus of one—an association he had made before but had never thought to make again.

  As he had never expected to see Earth again.

  “There is no doubt?”

  “None,” Bergman was emphatic. “We’ve checked the spectroscopic lines of the sun and they are identical with Earth’s primary. The planet too, the disposition of the continental land masses and the oceans, the extent of the ice caps—no, John, there is no mistake.”