Space 1999 - Earthfall Page 29

  A precaution which had proved its worth but one third of the adult population now lay on the edge of death.

  Morrow didn’t need an extrapolated prediction but Kano gave it just the same.

  “If the present rate of new victims continues then within a week the number will have doubled and within two none but the children will be alive and active. After that point is reached—”

  “No!” said Sandra. “No, David, please!”

  She didn’t want to hear it and Kano could guess why. As yet her two children were unaffected and she found a comfort in hope. As he had once done before his son had fallen to be taken away to wait for the death which seemed to be inevitable.

  “There must be something,” said Sandra. “Something more they could try.”

  Drums and chanting, incantations and the sacrifice of beasts. Men with masks and knives which cut to release a rain of symbolical blood. The rattle of seed-filled gourds and the wailing of women. Charms and spells and noxious brews. Pain applied so as to drive out the destructive demons. Fires to burn clean by their heat.

  A virgin sacrificed to unknown gods.

  Panic!

  And yet, when all else failed, what was left? When the cold teachings of science had proved themselves to be inadequate and the wise had admitted themselves at a loss what other than to try everything and anything in a desperate hope that, something, anything, might be of use? And, if nothing else, they had an awesome and enigmatic object to worship as a god.

  Larger now, closer, but still safely to one side. A mystery which the superstitious could use to found a terrifying faith. The manifestation of the unknown which an active imagination could take and distort so that it became the central object of worship.

  If it came closer, thought Kano, all their troubles would be solved. The plague wouldn’t matter then, nothing would matter because, of the Moon and Alpha, nothing would continue to exist. An end. A complete and utter termination.

  His son, the grandson he would never have, himself and all the ancestors before him back to the beginning of time—gone! All gone!

  “David!” Morrow was staring at him. “Man, you look sick!”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Don’t worry about me, Paul. I was just thinking.” Of doom and death and utter destruction. Of existence and the futility of life. Things best not mentioned and a state of mind best kept to himself. Instead, “I was thinking of those last three victims. I’d better have their names for the computer. Could you get them for me, please?”

  Morrow busied himself at the console.

  “The old one was Carn Nielson, a technician. The others,” he drew in his breath then continued, flatly, “Selima, Rita Cantry’s girl.”

  “And?”

  “Michael—the Commander’s son.”

  C H A P T E R

  Twenty-Seven

  He looked as the others looked, flushed, his eyes glazed, his body a battleground for ravenous invaders. A metabolic citadel which had been taken by storm and was now losing the struggle. One which, unless given reinforcements, would die.

  Koenig looked down at him, one gloved hand touching that of his son. His face was impassive but a little muscle jerked high on one cheek and the lines of fatigue marring his face made him look suddenly old.

  “There’s nothing more we can do, John.” Helena had checked the patient. “Pulse, respiration, temperature are all following the usual pattern.”

  “And the end?”

  “That too, perhaps.” Her voice broke a little to immediately firm again as her medical detachment came to the rescue. “The lymphatic fluids will accumulate to expand the epidermis and apply pressure to the internal organs. There will be an enlargement of the liver and an enhanced secretion of bile. Kidney malfunction will be followed by cerebral complications. Capillaries will be blocked by dead tissue leading to nodes of local pressure and accumulations of pus. Increased fever, intense pain and final dissolution.”

  Within days. Koenig said, “Can’t you use cryogenic techniques?”

  “We are and have. Chilling the body helps, of course, but only delays the final stage. Alan is the only one who seems to have gained from it.”

  Carter who, incredibly, still clung to life.

  Outside Koenig crossed the floor to where the pathological laboratory rested behind closed doors. Mathias was inside, sitting with his head slumped over a microscope, one hand extended a little before him, the notes he had made a crumpled heap.

  “What—?” He jerked as Koenig touched his shoulder. “Oh, it’s you, John. You’ve heard?”

  “They woke me with the news. I’m sorry about Selima.”

  “She and Michael were close—if one got it the other couldn’t escape.” Mathias fumbled on his desk found a phial, swallowed three tablets without benefit of water. “Dope,” he explained. “Something to keep me awake. I’ve got to find a cure.”

  For Selima, for Michael, for all the others now sick and for those who would follow. For Alpha itself.

  “Look.” Mathias pressed a switch and light and color illuminated a screen. “I’ve stained a specimen without killing the organisms. See?”

  Long, darting, corkscrew-like shapes which twisted and turned and attacked the lumbering phagocytes.

  “They are formed like the spirillium,” said Mathias. “In that they bear a vague resemblance to the bacteria causing syphilis but no agent we know can touch them. Even when we destroy the host-tissue they continue to survive and I’m driven to consider the possibility they have certain associations with viruses. Certainly it seems obvious they have the power to remain dormant for an incredibly long period of time. They are proof against cold, dehydration, temperatures up to the melting point of iron and radiation appears to have no discernible effect.” The screen died as he threw the switch. “Their speed of propagation is fantastic.”

  “Have you tried vibration?”

  “Ultra-sonics? Yes. It doesn’t touch them. Neither does exposure to ultra-violet—I mentioned that radiation seems to have no effect. They appear to be indestructible.”

  If they were Michael was dead and every man, woman and child in Alpha with him.

  More bodies to add to those which had gone before; flesh fed into an atomic pyre in which not even the alien organisms could survive.

  “I’m sorry, John.” Mathias, despite his own grief, could still find room to feel pain for another. “I’d like to offer out hope but I can’t. With a hundred per cent death rate—”

  “No,” said Koenig. “Not a hundred per cent.”

  “But—”

  “Carter. You’ve forgotten Alan Carter. He’s still alive.”

  “But only just. It’s only a matter of time.”

  “Perhaps.” Koenig stood, thinking. Medicine was not his field but he held rudiments of knowledge and Helena had told him that he was more than half-way to being a doctor. A result of their close association when, lying together in warm intimacy, she had spoken of her profession and he had done his best to understand. “You’ve got him in cryogenesis, right?”

  “Cold applications and drugs to reduce temperature and rate of metabolism. We went as far as we dared.”

  “And it helped?”

  “He is still alive,” admitted Mathias. “But I’m in doubt as to whether or not its effective. A high temperature is normal with cases of infection and is a result of the operation of the defence mechanisms of the body. In that light it is beneficial. The danger is that it can rise too high.”

  “Is that why you chilled Alan?”

  “Yes, and others, but the treatment did them no good at all. In fact they died earlier than is normal with the disease.”

  “But Alan is still alive.” Koenig was thoughtful. “Why not cease the cryogenic treatment with him also?”

  “Because he is still alive,” said Mathias, bluntly. “I don’t know why but he is and I don’t want to make any alteration in his condition until I know what I
’m doing and why.”

  A man alive when by all logic he should be dead. A freak who had managed, so far, to resist the onslaught of the plague. It could be a natural immunity, in which case the active agent could be found and, if found, reproduced to form a vaccine.

  Something Mathias had already thought of.

  “I’ve checked him out, John. Tests of a hundred kinds with slides and smears to match. He has no natural defence.”

  “Then why isn’t he dead?”

  “Luck, maybe. I don’t know. These things happen. Why does one man fall a hundred metres and smash himself to pulp while another gets up and walks away with nothing more than bruises? Answer me that and—” He broke off as his commlock hummed. “Mathias here. Who? Yes, yes, in that case never mind.” Blankly he stared at Koenig. “That was Security. Victor’s taken one of the alien bodies we found.”

  Morsanne said, “When you’re ready. Professor.”

  “Now!”

  Bergman blinked as the laboratory changed before his eyes. It was optics, he knew, an illusion, but one so real that it seemed as if, again, he stood within the cavern-ship looking at the dead assembled around the table, the enigmatic artifacts littered before them. He walked around the board, the perspective changing as he moved and enhancing the illusion created by the hologram.

  “Professor?”

  “Very good, Morsanne. You are an artist. Everything is just as I remembered it.”

  “Thank you, Professor.” The man was gratified. “A little more brightness?”

  “Just a little. Thank you. You may leave me now.”

  Leave while Bergman wandered the floor of the empty chamber entranced in the display of light and color, the unsubstantial images which scientific magic had created. Again he circumnavigated the table, pausing to check on a point, to stand with eyes misted with thought before moving down the area to study the coffin-like box Carter had opened.

  He reached out to touch it and saw his hand pass through the image.

  Koenig said, “Now you’re supposed to recoil, Victor, looking amazed and unbelieving.”

  “John! I didn’t hear you.”

  “I came to see what you’re doing. Why did you take that body?”

  “For investigation.”

  “Medical examinations have already been made.” Koenig added, bitterly, “As we know to our cost.”

  “I’m not interested in a medical examination but a spectroscopic analysis.” Bergman waited until Koenig had joined him, stepping through the hologram like a ghost walking through furniture. “Look around you—just what do you see?”

  “A table, bodies sitting around it, a thing like a coffin—that, at least, is symbolical.”

  “And true. The box was a coffin, a mausoleum to contain the body of the dead, Now, knowing that, John, what are you reminded of?”

  “A wake.”

  “A farewell to the dead. A ceremony held at their passing. Yes, John, I think you have it. The last feast with what little they had left—nothing resembling food was discovered, remember? The precious objects set on the board before them. Doesn’t it remind you of the tomb-paintings found in Egypt?”

  Koenig said, flatly, “They were alien, don’t forget that.”

  “But human enough to bear a transmissible disease. So why not human enough for something else? Nobility, perhaps? Sacrifice? Must we deny them such attributes?”

  Bergman stepped to one side, walking through the colored shimmers, stepping through the organ-like console, the box, the table itself, a ghost stepping among ghosts and, suddenly, seeming to belong.

  “A group of travellers, John. They discover they have disease among them and only a very little vaccine. Who should have it? Their leader? Their Queen? The one who is, in a sense, their Goddess? The figure lying in the coffin was that of a woman. Alan is positive of that; the mammary development was unmistakable. But they are too late and she dies. The body is interred and, as a last gesture of respect, they place within her hands the vial and its container. Precious objects, John, but we did the same with our honored dead.”

  “And?”

  “The woman is dead. We can’t begin to understand what she meant to them but there is no need to try. There is something else. They are carrying a disease and even to them it must have been a thing of terror. If they landed it would spread. They had no more vaccine. Perhaps they sent for some and waited for it to arrive. When it didn’t they sank their vessel deep into molten lava or perhaps they had already done that and dared not emerge. In any case they were trapped. No more food, no hope of rescue, the disease making itself manifest. What else to do but assemble for a final commune and then to die.”

  “Suicide,” said Koenig. “Which means they had no hope even to survive the plague.”

  He stood, looking at the table, the images sitting around it as seemingly calm as they had been when they had taken their places. Knowing what was to come, accepting it as the lesser of two evils, displaying a cold logic which he could admire.

  “Damn them,” he said. “Damn them!”

  “John?”

  “They should have detonated their power-source and turned into incandescent gas. They could have flung their ship into the sun. Anything but sit here waiting for us to find them. To give us their damned disease!”

  “And the clue to its cure, perhaps, John. I think they gave us that too.” Bergman cried out as Koenig’s hand gripped his shoulder, the fingers digging hard into his flesh. “John! Don’t! I—”

  “Don’t play with me, Victor! Michael—just don’t play with me!”

  “Alan isn’t dead, is he?”

  “No.”

  “And what did he do the others did not?”

  “I—” Koenig shook his head. “I don’t know, Victor. I don’t know.”

  “He opened the coffin, John, and he breathed in the dust. We know the vial the body held contained xetal, only a trace but enough to show there had to be more. She had taken it and when the body collapsed some of it was lifted in the dust which Alan inhaled. Don’t you see? We’ve had the cure all the time.”

  It was too simple and Koenig shook his head. How could a metal cure a disease? An alien metal produced by an alien being?

  “There was an impurity,” said Bergman. “One I can add as soon as I have the final proof.”

  “Proof? You aren’t certain?”

  “Logically, yes, I am,” said Bergman, firmly. “But every hypothesis needs to be tested. The spectroscope will do that. Traces of xetal will be found is the dust taken from the coffin. None should be found in the ashes of the alien taken from where he sat at the table. If it is found then it means he must have taken xetal and it did not save him. If not then it’s proof that none was available and that it is a cure.”

  A guess, educated perhaps, but one on which Michael’s life depended.

  The life of Alpha.

  “No,” said Koenig. “We can’t be sure of that.”

  “But—”

  “There’s another way, Victor. Make your tests and, if they turn out as you predict, we’ll be on the way to finding a cure. But only one man can prove we’ve found it.”

  Carter opened his eyes and said, “Hello, John. Helena.” He looked behind them. “You too, Bob?”

  “A full medical team, Alan,” said Mathias.

  “The best. But where’s Olurus?”

  “Dead.”

  “And Kikkido? I like her.”

  “Dead.” Helena lifted the sleep-inducing circuit from his head. “You’ve been asleep too long, Alan.”

  “Maybe I should have stayed that way.” Carter shivered, “Why am I so cold?”

  “You’ll be warm soon.”

  “In hell?” Carter struggled to sit upright then winced at the pain stabbing his temples, the numbing ache of his bones. “Is this your way of telling me I haven’t a hope? If so why did you wake me? Why not just let me die and have done with it.”

  Koenig said, “We need your help, Alan. Victor’s worke
d out what he thinks could be a cure. It’s based on what happened to you in the cavern-ship. He could be right and I hope to God he is, but we need to be sure. The stuff could just as easily kill.”

  “What stuff?” Carter widened his eyes as Koenig told him. “Xetal? The stuff from the alien lair? That’s nothing but—”

  “We don’t know what it is,” snapped Koenig, conscious of the passage of time. People could be dying even as they argued. “Victor thinks the aliens in the ship gave it to that woman you saw as a vaccine to combat the disease.”

  “But she was dead.”

  “Exactly, and so it could be a lethal drug for all we know. An instant, painless poison.”

  “And you want me to try it?”

  “No!” Koenig realized he had shouted. “No, Alan, not that. But you may already have it within your system. If so, and if Victor is right, it is the only thing keeping you alive. The reason you aren’t already dead. So we want you to allow us to take it out. To isolate it as far as possible. If you get worse—well, it will be proof of a kind.”

  And if he got better—Koenig didn’t want to think of that. Michael must have his chance. They all must have their chance!

  “A guinea-pig,” mused the pilot. “You want me to agree to act as a guinea-pig. Drain my blood and wash it?” He frowned as Helena nodded. “And then what?”

  “Things,” she said. “Intestinal laving. Organic irrigation, but I don’t think that will be necessary. The xetal, if present, must be in the blood. Probably in the form of an extremely fine powder held in suspension and adhering to the walls of arteries and veins.”

  “Why not start with the bronchi? The stuff must be there or in the alveoli?”

  “You’ve been studying, Alan. Ursula?”

  “She wants to be a doctor. Is she—?” Carter relaxed as Helena shook her head. “You’re not lying?”

  “Ursula is fine. All the younger children are in total isolation and your daughter is among them.”

  “And Mirium? No,” said Carter before she could reply. “You don’t have to tell me.” His eyes veiled as he thought of the young woman, their brief romance, the single child born of their union. She had found love with another while he had returned to his one, true passion; space and the ships which traversed it. Now she was dead. Their daughter must not follow. “All right, Helena. Do anything you want.”