Space 1999 - Earthfall Read online

“To hell with you—I’m thinking of the Eagle. Fools we can do without but that ship’s valuable! Paul! Use override! Take over and get that fool down!”

  He was too late. Even as he landed Koenig heard the scream, the manical babble torn from a throat constricted with terror.

  “No! Dear, God, no! I can’t—the nukes! Got to use the nukes!”

  Missiles he had already spent and he screamed again as the launchers failed to respond. Before he could switch to the other bank it was over, the Eagle crumpling like a ball of paper clenched in a closing fist, metal welded to a solid mass by sheer pressure, the ball flung to land far to one side with an impact which shook the landed Eagles.

  And space burned with a sudden coruscation of brilliance which dimmed the stars.

  Koenig crouched, shielding his eyes, hearing Carter cry out, the sounds of others dazzled by the magnesium-bright eruption. When he looked up he could see nothing for a while but dancing retinal images then, as they slowly cleared, could only see the stars.

  The aliens had gone. The enigmatic intruder, the Queen, the torpedoes and tentacular shapes—all had vanished.

  C H A P T E R

  Twenty

  “We were lucky,” said Bergman. “Tanya helped to save us, no doubt, and indirectly she did, but if that other thing had not appeared who knows what could have happened?” He looked again at the recording, the blaze of shifting colors, the eye-searing brilliance. “A diversion,” he murmured. “Similar to the ink expelled by a squid when under attack and making its escape. A smoke-screen to confuse and baffle its predator.”

  “But where did it go?” demanded Sandra. “I was operating all scanners at full power during the entire episode. One second it registered—the next space was empty.”

  “It vanished like the Earth at Breakaway,” said Morrow. “Only faster.”

  “And perhaps from the same cause.” Bergman reset the projector and again looked at the sequence. The others in Main Mission joined him, some frowning, all remaining silent. “A dimensional shift,” said Bergman as the recording ended. “It has to be that. The evidence tallies with the first appearance of the alien and certainly with that of the intruder. You said that it seemed to be peering through a slit in the continuum, John?”

  “Yes, but that could have been an illusion.”

  “And most probably was.” Bergman turned to the desk at his side and rapidly set up a crude enclosure with a slide rule, some papers, a book. Within it he placed a few objects; a stylo, a crumpled readout from the computer, other things. “This,” he gestured at the enclosed area, “is our space, the location where we are now. These,” he touched the objects within, “are us, the people and installations, the Moon, the base itself. Now imagine both the enclosed space and the objects within to be two-dimensional. They are completely flat and have no concept of height or depth.”

  “Flatland,” said a girl. She was young and glossy in her rich darkness and stayed close to Kano. “I remember that from my early schooling. We were dealing with orientation.”

  “Flatland,” agreed Bergman. Lifting his hand he swung it in an exaggerated arc to rest it within the area. “Now what would those people in there have seen?”

  “Something coming from nowhere, Professor.”

  “That’s right, Zetha. And when I do this?” He lifted his hand. “It would simply appear to vanish, right?”

  “The fourth dimension,” she said, slowly. “Is it possible?”

  More than possible, thought Koenig, grimly. Take a line, move it at right angles and form a square, move the square at right angles to itself and obtain a cube, move the cube again at right angles to itself and end with a tesseract—the three-dimensional presentation of a theoretical four-dimensional object.

  But Bergman was not wholly correct. If the aliens had been four-dimensional creatures they could have penetrated into an Eagle without breaking the hull, crushed a man’s heart without breaking the skin.

  “True, John,” he said when Koenig mentioned it. “The aliens themselves were three-dimensional, but they must have utilized the fourth-dimension to facilitate travel. It could be a built-in attribute as is the ability to fly in certain insects.”

  “Or the knack of walking on a ceiling,” said Morrow. “That’s a handy talent to have—the ability to walk upside down.” Then he added, thoughtfully, “But what drew the thing to us in the first place?”

  “Our mass.” Bergman leaned back in his chair. He looked fit despite the recent strain, his skin holding a healthy tinge, the cyanotic discoloration gone from cheeks and lips. “The Queen, and I think there can be no doubt the alien was analogous to such a creature, wanted a place to rest in order to breed. We were it.”

  A wanderer in a universe where tremendous insect-like things wafted themselves through dimensions as a man would pass through a door. Koenig looked at the screen, at the stars depicted on it wondering what manner of worlds could circle those distant suns. Giant hives, perhaps? The repositories of transient beings with extensions in spaces as yet unknown? Intellectual giants dreaming beneath the glow of monstrous orbs?

  He said, slowly, “Will it come back, Victor?”

  “I should say the odds are against it, John. We happened to be at the right place at the right time to suit the needs of the Queen. And such aliens can’t be that plentiful—dissemination in the void would spread them thin and, of course, there would be predators.”

  “Let’s hope none of them pay us a visit,” said Morrow. “We may not be as lucky as last time.”

  And nowhere near as prepared. Koenig stood, thinking, assembling priorities; the Eagles to be salvaged and repaired, the base to be made functional, new systems evolved, defensive measures taken—the list seemed endless.

  “Victor, can you gain anything from the recordings? I’m thinking of those force-fields the aliens must have used both for mobility and defence. Can they be emulated?”

  “With luck, experiment, patience and time, perhaps.” Bergman pursed his lips. “But I can promise nothing, John. It could mean mapping an entire new area of scientific technology and discovering laws which we have no knowledge even exist. It’s similar to—” he spread his hands in a helpless gesture “—to finding out exactly how levitation works and building a machine to produce the phenomena at will.”

  “Levitation or teleportation, Victor?”

  “Yes.”

  “And radio?”

  For a moment Bergman hesitated, then shrugged. “You are right, John. That, too, was a new technological advance into an unknown area. But Marconi and Faraday were geniuses.”

  “Don’t undersell yourself, Victor. After all you are the foremost scientist in the world.”

  “This world, John.”

  “It’s still a world.”

  “A small one.”

  “And vulnerable,” reminded Koenig, grimly. “We’ve got to change that so do what you can. Paul, ask for volunteers to accompany me to the crater. I want to find out what our visitor left behind.”

  At first it seemed nothing but a space, a long, rounded ovoid set in the floor of the crater and filled with shadowed darkness, then as a man threw a flare far over the rim to drift slowly down in a glare of blazing white, it changed.

  Patches became openings smooth and fretted, polished to catch and throw back reflections, light altering in hue as if the beams had struck oil, the white glare resolving into smokey rainbows.

  “It’s beautiful!” Mark Lawence, shaken from his usual, phlegmatic calm, stepped from the mould of Security agent to reveal himself as a man capable of appreciating pure artistry. “It’s fantastic!”

  And potentially dangerous. The Queen had gone but what had been left behind?

  “Keep alert,” warned Koenig. “Those openings could lead to cells of some kind. Take no chances.”

  He led the way over the edge of the depression, roped to the others, a laser hanging by its strap from around his neck. His boots hit the sloping wall and he skidded, jouncing, his helme
t ringing as it struck. More cautiously he completed the descent. The hollow was deeper than he had thought; large enough to have held the bulk of a dirigible at least—and it had only held a part of the alien.

  Tilting back his head he stared upwards at the walls.

  The flare had died but starlight gilded the smooth surface with silver, frosty radiance. It was pierced with openings, rounded, arched, starred, ovoid, triangular—a confusion of geometric shapes. In the starlight they held the semblance of eyes or of gaping mouths, then his imagination changed them and, again, he stood in the decayed ruin of the Colosseum looking up at the tiered arches, awed by a majesty which was no more.

  “Commander?” Lawence had followed the men who now stood waiting his orders. “How do you wish to operate?”

  “We spread and search.”

  “Total?”

  “No.” That, for the moment, was impossible; the area was too large, the men too few. “A quick scan and random checks. Set up the seismograph and check for vibration. We’ll start there.” Koenig pointed. “You know how to deploy the men.”

  He watched as they moved off in pairs, one to check the other to guard, then stepped towards an opening, Lawence at his rear. Their helmet-lights threw circles of brilliance on the smoothed stone, the discs breaking as they hit columns and went glancing into deeper openings, creating shadows which moved and turned as if alive.

  “A labyrinth,” whispered Lawence. “The whole place is a maze.”

  Tunnels which merged to branch and merge again. A series of interconnecting corridors which lay like a mass of spaghetti around the ovoid depression. Koenig paced them, halting to examine the walls, colors flashing in the beam of his light, smoothness flawed with fine lines which formed diffraction gratings on all sides.

  “Why?” Lawence halted, one gloved hand running over the stone. “What was the point?”

  Breeding cells, perhaps, repositories for eggs which later would hatch into specialized shapes, but Koenig knew that couldn’t be the answer. The tunnels were too regular for that. A drilling machine, set to run wild, turned loose and programmed never to cut too close to any other passage might have produced a similar result. But what was the purpose?

  Not aesthetic. Beautiful as it was the beauty lay in his own appreciation and how could that even begin to approximate an alien’s? The delicate scoring which produced the wash of colors must be the accidental by-product of whatever had gouged at the stone. The extent?

  Out and around, he thought, out and down, the tunnels designed to support the weight above. Had tendrils occupied the passages? Would the entire creature have burrowed itself a home in the rock if given time? Hiding as a slime-mould hid in a sponge? A hermit crab in an empty shell?

  Camouflage. A defence against predators. Or had the tunnels been dug merely to form an established hive?

  “Look!” Lawence swung the circle of illumination from his light “We could use this place. Chambers to act as recreational areas, others we could fit with soil and plants, more to use as bathing pools. It wouldn’t be hard to seal the entire area and equip it with power, and an atmosphere. Commander?”

  He was dreaming, entranced by the fantastic nature of the place, in imagination turning it into a castle of many-pleasured delight.

  “Later,” said Koenig. “Check with the others.” As Lawence obeyed he spoke to the man watching the seismograph. “Anything?”

  “There’s something, Commander.” The man sounded puzzled. “But I’m not sure just what it is.”

  “Strong?”

  “No. That’s why I didn’t call you.”

  To Lawence Koenig said, “Recall the men. We’ll rendezvous at the seismograph.”

  It stood on the bottom slope of the depression set on a solid area surrounded by the gaping maws of tunnels. Koenig checked it, watching the tiny mote of reflected light, the almost indiscernible vibrations which caused it to quiver.

  The movement of men could have produced such vibrations and he stamped, watching the jerk of the mote, stamping again as it settled.

  A knurled control governed the sensitivity of the device and he spun it staring at the light, seeing it jump as the men milled around or emerged from the openings. A touch and the light steadied as he compensated for superficial vibration. Then, as he watched, it moved again.

  “There.” The operator had waited, controlling his impatience. “I did all that, Commander. Compensated for expected quivers and the rest of it. But something remains.” He glanced up at the silvered walls, the enigmatic openings, then back to the instrument. “Something odd, Commander. I don’t like it.”

  Something which had, perhaps, been left behind. An egg which had hatched or a grub beginning to move—Koenig shook his head, annoyed with such speculation. Yet the temptation to draw analogies between the alien and familiar insect-life was too strong to be dismissed.

  Again he studied the shifting mote of light. A creature, burrowing, would have made a more regular pattern. A thing threshing wildly would have created larger peaks. Men working . . .

  He said, sharply, “Mark! Is everyone accounted for?”

  A moment as Lawence checked then, “Two missing, Commander. The fools! Didn’t they get my signal? Who are they?” He checked. “Heniochi and Dudinka. They took that section.” His gloved hand rose, pointing. “But why don’t they answer?”

  Koenig looked at the dancing mote of light, the regular pulse. “They could be in trouble. We’ll have to go after them.”

  He led the way into the maze, halting frequently to rest his helmet against the stone, finding the hiss of air a distraction and finally cutting the flow so as to hear any transmitted noise. The dull thudding grew louder as he pushed deeper into the labyrinth, heading downwards, dropping and sliding through shafts of shimmering beauty; glowing colors vanishing as the beams of their lights moved, replaced with new brilliances, turning to silver, to gold, to ebon black as shadows rushed to claim their own.

  “Commander?” Lawence looked at Koenig as he straightened, lifting a hand. “You’ve located them?”

  “Down there.” Koenig glanced back to where a gleam of light showed a waiting man. “They must have fallen into a fissure of some kind and are trapped. They must be hammering at the walls to attract our attention.”

  “But why don’t they use the radio?” Lawence was puzzled. “They aren’t stupid.”

  A question answered when they located the source of the noise.

  Koenig stood on the edge of what seemed to be a glistening sea, a flat plain of glittering motes which threw back the beam of his light in shimmering effulgence. A pit ringed with openings, walls which sloped sharply down, a roof which curved in graceful arches. A fretted cup of stone to hold the enigmatic sea.

  Lawence edged towards it, the rope tightening between himself and Koenig as he reached forward to scoop at the glitter with his hand.

  “It’s metal,” he said, wonderingly as a stream of particles drifted past his helmet. “Powdered metal. But how did it get here?”

  Koenig had a sudden, mental image of alien creatures burrowing into the rock, eating it, converting it into refined and concentrated energy. Storing it as food or fuel for the Queen.

  And the missing men?

  “They’ve fallen into it,” said Lawence, bleakly. “It’s blanking out their radios.” Pausing he added, “But how the hell are we going to get them out?”

  C H A P T E R

  Twenty-One

  The powdered metal was finer than talc and acted as if it was water. Anything thrown into it vanished at once and the surface, if disturbed, immediately regained its smooth, shimmering appearance. But it wasn’t water. It was metal and had density and mass and a thing immersed in it wouldn’t float upwards but continue to fall deeper and deeper until the weight compressed and crushed it out of recognition.

  Suspended above it Koenig looked again at the men holding the rope, the lights which turned the interior of the place into a lambent cave. From his suit ran a
long wire attached to Lawence’s helmet. If radios wouldn’t work direct transmission would. All that remained now was for him to be lowered into the fine powder.

  “Ready Commander?” Lawence was anxious. He had wanted to be the one attempting the rescue but had been overruled. Koenig had chosen to go. “Keep in contact—I’ll pull you straight up if there is any break in communication.”

  “You’ll wait for orders,” said Koenig. “Can you still hear them?”

  He hoped both men were still alive and, if the pit was shallow, maybe they were. But if it was deep— He preferred not to think of that.

  “Taps received in answer to our signals,” said Lawence. “We’ll keep sending and follow your own sound of descent. Good luck, Commander!”

  Koenig sucked in his breath as the rope slackened and his boots vanished into the metallic dust. An instinctive reaction immediately controlled and he exhaled as his knees followed his boots, his hips, the dust rising up his chest to reach his throat, to rise still higher and close over his helmet.

  “Commander, can you hear me?” Lawence speaking over the wire. He grunted as Koenig acknowledged. “Good. I’ll let out more slack.”

  There was no sensation of falling. The suit protected him to a degree from any change in external pressure and only by the dim instrument light within the helmet could Koenig be sure he was dropping deeper into the pit. Beyond the helmet he could see the dust rise up past his faceplate, tiny grains catching the dim glow and throwing it back to his wide-staring eyes. The helmet light itself was useless.

  “Ten metres,” said Lawence. “You should be close now. Keep talking, Commander.”

  “No.” Koenig had a better idea. “You can monitor my airflow. While you hear it I’m in contact. Agreed?”

  “It isn’t the same,” protested Lawence. “You could be dead and the air still flowing. Or—”

  “You’re too damned cheerful, Mark. Which way should I go?”

  “A little to your right, Commander,” said Lawence. “And closer to the wall of the pit.”