Space 1999 #5 - Lunar Attack (8 page)

At the same time, Kano had a reading from his monitor and called Koenig, ‘Commander. Temperature drop registering.’

‘Source?’

Kano went for a computer print out. ‘Source—No identification. Area—Hydroponic Unit.’

Koenig called Carter, ‘Alan!’ They were on their way at a run.

Warren, a puzzled man, cautiously parted the leaves of the plant. Except for the constant shiver of the leaves there was nothing to see. Deeper in the foliage there was a hissing noise and a darkening as if a shadow rested there. The hissing had become a whisper and Warren jerked out ‘Who is it?’

The shadow was separating from its leafy anchorage. The whisper was louder, making sense to his ears. It was using his name. ‘Warren . . .’ It had more substance, it was male, in Alphan dress, something to be spoken to.

Warren began, ‘Who are . . .’ and stopped, mind swamped by a rising tide of fear. He could see a face, twisted and distorted by scar tissue, the ultimate nightmare visitor making a waking entrance. The lips were writhed away in a fixed deathly grimace, the hand that was stretching out toward him was a mutilated talon.

Warren tried to scream but no sound came. Not ten metres off, Laura Adams and the rest were still at work unaware of his mortal confrontation. When his rigid throat relaxed and his cry of terror sounded out it was amplified by the sudden clatter of Red Alert klaxons.

Before his nearest neighbours could reach him, Helena Russell was reading a print out from the medicentre monitors BOTANIST JAMES WARREN. LIFE FUNCTIONS TERMINATED.

Laura Adams and a cluster of lab techs were in a silent group round Warren’s plant which was blasted on its stem, shrivelled as though by a lightning strike. Koenig pushed through to the front.

Warren was dead. His face was set in a mask of lifeless terror. He sprawled at a crazy angle that told of a broken back.

Dan Mateo was a worried man. He was trying to think it through and Koenig’s hard line investigation was confusing him. He said, ‘Commander, I wasn’t even in here when he died.’ It was true but it sounded as if he was trying to convince himself.

Koenig’s eyes never left Mateo’s face. He was waiting for more. What more there could be, he could not guess, but he had a conviction that the whole sequence began and ended with Mateo in some way or other.

Mateo went on defensively, ‘It’s true I couldn’t stand the man . . . but kill him? You know me better than that.’

‘All right, no one is accusing you, Mateo. But you did quarrel with him—and minutes later he
was
dead.’

Koenig turned away. Personnel in Hydroponic Unit Two were trying to come to terms with the event. Laura Adams was watching Mateo. She thought she had known him as well as one human being could know another. Now the foundation of her trust in him was being kicked away. In some sense he seemed a stranger.

Koenig picked up a stylus and tapped a desk top. Three times we’ve experienced these temperature drops and each time what happens? One. You suffer some kind of mental attack. Two. Doctor Russell is terrorised by an Alphan who can’t be traced, doesn’t seem to exist. Three. Doctor Warren is killed.’

Mateo said obstinately, ‘I don’t see the connection, Commander.’

‘Dammit, man, nothing like this happened before your experiment.’

Victor Bergman had been examining the withered plant and came forward. He spoke quietly to Mateo. ‘Dan, did you know we’ve recorded the presence here of the very same wave pattern you were using in your experiment?’

Mateo looked startled. He said quickly, ‘That’s impossible, Professor. Your equipment can’t pick up that wave pattern. I’m dealing in micro units. It’s so slight it hardly exists. We’re talking about currents that rise in the human brain.’

Koenig said, ‘You’re wrong, Mateo. The computer has it logged. There’s a reading for each time the temperature dropped. That includes here when Warren died. You can check the record for yourself.’

Mateo looked from one to the other. He had to accept it as a truth and clearly it disturbed him.

Bergman said, ‘This wave pattern is common to living organisms. That would explain why computer couldn’t come up with a pin-point trace.’

Koenig was looking interested and Bergman went on, ‘How do you measure psychic energy? That’s what we’re picking up, a rare and magnified source of psychic energy. It’s present here on Alpha.’

It was difficult to see what it meant to Mateo, whether it was something he had expected or not. Certainly he was uneasy. He said shortly, ‘Do you want me any longer here, Commander?’

‘Not at this time.’

He stalked off without a look at Laura Adams who was waiting patiently for a piece of the dialogue.

Koenig had seen the plant but it contributed nothing. He decided to look again at the mortal remains. Maybe Helena had found some new data in the autopsy.

Bob Mathias and an orderly were drawing a sheet over the body. As Koenig came through the hatch of the medicentre, Helena herself was shrugging out of a surgical smock.

She was glad to see him. She said, ‘I’ve never seen anything like it before.’

‘What was the cause of death?’

‘You could call it fear. Fear generated to an unimaginable pitch . . . so intense that it shattered the spinal column.’

‘You’re positive no person could have done this? Could it have been a physical blow of some kind?’

‘Not to cause this. It was built up from inside. Nothing I know of could have caused this.’

Koenig looked at her. She had already been at risk. He had to find the answer. In their long journey they met hazards enough from hostile space. Their whole way of life was a struggle to survive. This time unless he could sort it out, morale would crumble. They could fight an enemy they knew, but how could they fight an enemy without tangible shape or form?

He crossed to the communications post and hit a button. Paul Morrow appeared on the screen.

‘Commander?’

‘Paul. Command Conference.’

Koenig made a slow, deliberate job of it, as though thinking aloud. He outlined the slender evidence they had and drew it together for a conclusion that seemed inescapable to him.

Each was taking it in his own way. Kano was serious, nodding with each stage of the argument; Sandra Benes was clearly very tense; Bergman was withdrawn, apparently following the theories in his own head; Helena was pale, intent, watching Koenig’s face. Alan Carter, who preferred to meet his problems in the command slot of a space craft, shifted about, uncomfortable, and was first to break the silence when Koenig stopped.

‘Commander. Are you asking us to believe that Alpha is being terrorised by some psychic being—an old-time spook?’

‘Call it what you like, Alan. Any name or none. What it adds up to is a destructive force which has killed once and may do so again.’

Paul Morrow put his finger on the problem that bugged them all, ‘Commander, most of us here are scientists, rational human beings, trained to look for physical cause and effect. What happened to Warren was a fact. Okay, an effect. Can we really accept that the cause was supernatural?’

It was a line of argument that would appeal to Bergman more than anybody, but even he put in a reservation, ‘Paul, as you know, the human animal makes effective use of less than eighteen per cent of its actual brain potential. In the unconscious, a man is a stranger in his own head. What happens in that other eighty-two per cent is anybody’s guess.’

Kano seized on that, ‘So you reject the idea that these events have a supernatural origin?’

‘Supernatural,
yes. Paranormal, no.’

There was a pause as they considered the implications. Helena Russell said slowly, ‘We know that Dan Mateo was copying a wave pattern which originates in the most primitive, inaccessible areas of the human brain. That pattern is created by electrical activity inside the brain. We know that people who are said to have psychic powers are found to possess this pattern in greater strength. Now I believe that something happened in Mateo’s experiment which boosted that pattern to a previously unknown degree . . .’

A practical girl, Sandra Benes cut in impatiently, ‘Does it matter what it is or where it came from? The important tiling is that it is here among us. How do we control it?’

Something of the same query was troubling Laura Adams as she moved into Hydroponic Unit Two for a duty stint. What had always seemed a pleasant and congenial work place was now ominous and scary. There was a light shining from the Unit lab and she went towards it partly to check it out and partly because she wanted company.

Through the glass screen, she could see Mateo, working feverishly like a man on a race against the clock. He was reassembling the gear for his experiment and his stubborn determination to go on with it made her suddenly angry.

She whipped round to the sliding hatch and went in. He looked up, reading her face before she spoke and treating her to a hard glare before he went back to work.

Voice tight, she said, ‘You’re . . . deliberately . . . disobeying . . . orders.’

‘I know what I’m doing.’

‘I’ll tell you what you’re doing. You’re destroying everything you’ve worked for.’

‘You don’t understand.’

She was close to tears. ‘Warren was right. This work is dangerous. You’ve got to stop it right now!’

He reacted to her tone and some of the hardness went out of his face. He stopped work, left the table and put his hands on her shoulders.

‘Listen to me carefully, Laura. It’s possible something did happen in here. If Bergman did record that wave pattern then we’re on the brink of some tremendous breakthrough. How it happened I don’t know . . . but don’t you see I must pursue it?’

She was searching his face trying to convince herself that nothing had changed in him. She said hesitantly, ‘Dan, I’m frightened . . . for you . . . for all of us.’

‘I have to go on. I must try to recreate what happened—to locate and identify this force if it exists. Don’t you see that?’

‘No!’

His grip tightened on her shoulders as he tried to force her to agree, ‘But it’s the only way we can understand what’s happening here.’

She pulled free, backing away from him and shaking her head.

‘You leave me no choice. I’ll have to tell Commander Koenig.’

Mateo’s face darkened. He said seriously, ‘Don’t, Laura. Don’t do that.’

‘Dan, there are other people on this base and they have a right to know what you’re up to here.’

She had not moved far enough before she spoke and one quick spring had him close enough to grab her again and she winced with pain as he shouted, ‘I’m
asking
you, Laura. Please don’t do it.’

She twisted free and ran for the open hatch, but he was there before her, blocking the way out and seizing her round the waist.

Using an old technique she hacked at his shins, but he was outside the reach of normal reflexes and hurled her back into the room. She tripped, hit the edge of his table and she fell on it scattering some of the equipment to the floor. It was in fact, the one thing that could sidetrack him. With a cry, he was on his knees gathering it together and the way out was open.

At the hatch she stopped. He had forgotten her. Working feverishly he was reassembling the device. She said, ‘You’re not responsible for your actions any more.’

Without looking up, he said, ‘Get out! Get out of here.’

She turned and ran down an aisle of luxuriant plant life making for the exit of the section. Behind her, he was watching her go, breathing hard, eyes narrowed and intense.

Blinded with tears she reached the main hatch and almost collided with a figure on the way in. As she looked up at the face to speak, she was suddenly gagged by horror. Seen plainly it was a creature of nightmare, the ultimate in dread made flesh. Twisted and mutilated by scar tissue, mouth in a grin of living death, claw hand reaching for her, hissing like an obscene snake.

Her scream of mortal terror tailed off and was followed by the blare of Red Alert Klaxons as computer in Main Mission reacted to the monitor’s record of a temperature drop.

A repeater in Koenig’s command office brought the conference to a grinding halt. Bob Mathias, speaking from the communications post called, ‘Doctor, Commander. The Hydroponic Unit. Immediate!’

There was no doubt that Laura Adams was dead. Very young, very beautiful, and very dead. The waste of it choked Koenig’s mind. With Bergman, he watched her being loaded on a trolley by Mathias’s orderlies. Mateo was there, face ashen.

Helena Russell visibly shaken, though used to death, said, ‘The same as Warren.’

Mateo’s harsh whisper reached them and they looked at him.

‘My fault . . .’

He went on with rising hysteria, ‘My fault. I wouldn’t listen. Now she’s dead. And I did it. Do you hear that!’

Koenig went up to him, ‘What the hell are you talking about, Mateo?’

‘This thing on Alpha. It is my fault. I raised it. It’s here now, in this place. Waiting to kill again. To kill us all.’

He buried his face in his hands. Koenig looked at Helena, ‘See to him, Helena. Try to find out what he’s talking about.’ Helena nodded and called an orderly to lead Mateo to the medicentre.

When she had him sedated and his panic held in check, she sat beside his bed. There was no doubt that he was still a frightened man, but he was coherent and she tried to get him to speak out and externalise his problem.

His voice was barely audible and she had to lean forward to catch what he said.

‘Ever since the experiment I’ve known. I’ve sensed the presence of this thing. I tried to convince myself I was mistaken . . . that I had imagined it. But it’s no good. It’s with me, everywhere I go, watching, waiting for something. You know I threatened to kill Warren?’

‘We don’t hold you responsible for Warren’s death.’

‘But he died only minutes after I threatened him. There’s psychokinesis—mind acting at a distance. Now Laura. Did you know I was trying to recreate the experiment? She was going to tell the Commander.’

His voice gained strength, ‘I tried to stop her . . . she wouldn’t listen.’ He paused and went on in a whisper as though he could not bear to put it in words, ‘A few minutes later, she was dead.’