Space 1999 #4 - Collision Course Page 8

  Baxter was a tall, broad-shouldered man who had one love in life and who revelled in any chance he could get to exercise it. A natural-born flyer, he spent hours at the simulators, more hours painstakingly constructing models of ancient flying machines. A hobby with a purpose; if and when they ever found a habitable world those old machines could pay dividends in providing a cheap means of basic aerial transport.

  As he so often told those he managed to get to listen, ‘Eagles are fine while we have the power to operate them and the technology to make them, but what happens when we land and scatter and each family will want its own means of transport? We can’t all own an Eagle. We can’t build roads and we have no tracks. But the wind is free and we can make hydrogen and helium—so it’ll be back to low-powered airships. You’ll see!’

  Now he smiled at Carter as he dropped into the co-pilot’s seat and quickly checked the instruments.

  ‘Spin you for who takes her?’

  ‘You take her.’ Carter relaxed in his chair. ‘Just for once I want to be given a ride.’

  It was a good one, Baxter handling the controls with easy expertise. Carefully he set the Eagle down on the surface of the ovoid and watched as Bergman took a series of readings.

  ‘There’s something odd here, John,’ he reported. ‘The sonic scan shows a cavity within the interior. It’s a bubble set a third of the way back from the wide end.’

  ‘A freak?’

  ‘Possibly.’ Bergman checked his dials. ‘The surface is remarkably smooth, almost as if, at one time, it had been polished. And yet the albedo is incredibly low.’

  ‘The abrasion of spacial dust could have given it that finish, Victor, and we can find out about the albedo when we analyse the composition of the material.’ Koenig checked his space suit. ‘I’m going out. Each of you follow at one minute intervals.

  Leaving the ship Koenig was suddenly awed by the majesty of creation. He stood, looking up at the universe, the scattered stars glowing like a mass of scintiilent diamonds, the points of luminous colour as if other gems had been stirred among the crystalline whiteness, alien furnaces radiating their heat and light to warm equally alien worlds.

  Beneath his feet the surface of the strange ovoid curved sharply to all sides. The orb of the moon was close, like a withered, pocked old woman, scarred with time and splintered with fissures. The tremendous crater of the explosion which had forced it from its eon-old path gaped like a leprous sore.

  ‘John?’ Bergman was beside him, his voice clear over the radio. ‘Something wrong?’

  ‘No.’ Koenig gestured at the sky, the stars. ‘I was just looking and reminding myself just how small we all are on the scale of creation. And, Victor, if all this is just a part of a single cell—what manner of being must comprise the whole?’

  Bergman said, dryly, ‘Size is relative, John. What would one of the cells of your body think if it had the capacity of conscious awareness? Yet I agree that such a creature as you propose must be more than just an expansion of the normal. And yet, it too could be nothing more than a mote in the eye of an even greater being.’

  As he joined them Carter said, ‘Gentlemen, philosophic speculation is all very well in its place, but somehow I don’t think this is it. Now—where do we start digging?’

  They had power drills but the bits wouldn’t bite, the adamantine metal skidding from the surface as if they were toothpicks probing ice. Koenig frowned as he examined them, changed them for others of softer metal, but the results were the same.

  Sonic drills had no better luck; in the end they burned holes with lasers and filled them with explosive charges. Back in the Eagle Bergman stared his disbelief.

  ‘John! The surface has extruded the charges! It’s as if it has grown back beneath them and pushed them from the holes.’

  ‘We’ll try again.’ Koenig hefted a heavy-duty las-torch. ‘I’ll work alone and dig a couple of holes. When they’re filled I’ll head back and you blow them as soon as I’m in the lock.’

  A race, but Koenig wasn’t trying to be precise and it was a race which he won. A section of the strange material shattered beneath the pounding of the explosives; fragments flying off into space, others rapping against the hull of the Eagle. Metal shone beneath the lights in the crater which was formed.

  Metal embossed with a strange pattern.

  ‘This is artificial.’ Bergman held his light closer, the tip of one gloved finger running over the series of ridges. ‘John, this whole thing could be a fabrication, a sphere of metal overlaid with that rock we blew away.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘Impossible to tell. Millennia, certainly, from the appearance of the outer crust. But this pattern, it must mean something. A design in code, maybe? A message?’

  ‘For whom? And why should it have been covered?’ Baxter was standing too close. Koenig pushed him back and aside. ‘Careful, Victor, we don’t know what this is all about.’

  But they had to penetrate the metal, to see what lay beyond. Human curiosity could not be denied and they still had need of the heavy metals the ovoid must contain. The metals and perhaps other things of value.

  Bergman said, ‘I’ll try a pulsating sonic beam applied directly to the centre of the pattern. It could be a lock of some kind. Vibration might trigger it and certainly it will loosen it.’ A lamp glowed on the instrument in his hands as he threw the switch. For a long moment he held it hard against the metal without any apparent result.

  ‘The outer covering shielded it,’ said Koenig thoughtfully. ‘It could be actinically activated. Try a diffuse laser beam at the same time as the sonic vibrator, Victor.’

  ‘It could be a combination,’ Carter suggested. ‘Can’t we hook up light, and sound together to cover a wide range of combinations?’

  ‘A random-selective accelerated frequency modulator.’ Baxter was certain he had the answer. ‘I’ll rig one up while you keep at it.’

  It took him fifteen minutes and the door opened in two.

  Koenig looked at the thick panel as it swung on hidden gimbals, the bars edging the jamb, the thick pads against which it had rested. A door which belonged to a bank vault rather than to any ship of space. Something designed to withstand any assault, but which had yielded to the correct combination of impulses provided by Baxter’s jury-rigged tool.

  Beyond it lay a passage illuminated by glowing bands set into the material of the walls, roof and floor.

  Koenig entered it followed by the others and, as the last of the four passed the portal, the door swung shut behind them;

  ‘What—’ Carter turned, startled. ‘Commander, we’re trapped!’

  ‘No.’ Koenig stepped towards the door and tugged at it. The massive valve hesitated a moment then swung open. The balance and lack of friction were incredible. ‘Automatic,’ he explained. ‘There must be infra-red scanners picking up our body-heat. Let’s see what lies further in.’

  Another door, thinner this time, but just as well built. As it closed after them the lights changed colour and a trace of dust rose to plume about their legs.

  ‘Air.’ Bergman checked his wrist-instruments. ‘Pressure twelve pounds to the square inch. Oxygen, nitrogen, inert gases, hydrogen—John, we can breathe this!’

  Koenig lifted his face-plate. The air was dry, a little musty, but otherwise quite sweet. The passage, obviously, was an air-lock which made the ovoid far more than it had first appeared. Beyond the door now facing him at the end of the passage must lie the hollow they had. spotted, a chamber which could hold the answers to this enigma—or it could be empty—there was only one way to find out.

  ‘Baxter, see if you can open it with your device.’

  The co-pilot nodded and applied his crude instrument. A thin singing came from it, was caught and magnified by the door, the pattern it carried on its surface. The same pattern as marked the outer lock.

  The singing grew higher, thinner and then, with shocking abruptness, the portal burst outward in a release of explosive forces wh
ich sent them all slamming against the sides of the passage.

  ‘Baxter!’ Koenig knelt at his side. The man had taken the full force of the blast and had been hurled back up the passage to hit the intermediate door, to fall in an untidy heap. ‘Baxter?’

  ‘I’m all right, Commander.’ He rose and stood swaying a little. ‘Just a bang on the head.’ He straightened. ‘I’m better now. Let’s go and see what we’ve found.’

  A room like a sphere, the floor flattened, the sides adorned with paintings depicting scenes of torture, violence, destruction and death. Scenes from an inferno, all clear in the light which streamed from inset glowing plates.

  Light which showed a wide couch and a crumpled figure. A body which was twisted, hands which were upheld, a face which they partly covered.

  The body of a man with a face of a broken, tormented angel.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Helena checked the seals, activated a switch and relaxed as a lamp flashed on the panel of the amniotic tank in which the alien had been confined.

  ‘That’s the best I can do, John. The rest will have to wait until he’s back on Alpha.’ She nodded to waiting attendants. ‘Take him out and use all precautions. I’ll be with you as soon as you’re ready to leave.’

  Koenig said, ‘Will he live?’

  ‘If he does it will be a miracle. There must be terrible internal injuries and you saw how his face was cut and slashed. How did it happen?’

  ‘The door was booby-trapped,’ said Koenig grimly. ‘It had to be. Massive charges had been fixed around the jamb and they blew when we opened the door. The main effect was in here, naturally, but we caught the back-blast. Baxter was hit pretty badly and I think he should be looked at.’

  ‘He will be.’ Helena stared around the chamber. I can’t understand this. A man locked up in a tiny world, the doors sealed and rigged to kill whoever is in here when they are opened. And those pictures—’ She shuddered. ‘John, they’re horrible! Vile! I’m a doctor and I know something about the agonies the human frame can suffer, but those things are the product of a diseased mind. Did he do them?’

  ‘I doubt it. There are no paints.’ No paints, no books, no toys of any kind, nothing to offer distraction or to alleviate the utter monotony of the truncated spherical chamber, the glowing light, the paintings. A cell, thought Koenig bleakly. A prison, certainly, and something cold ran up his spine at the thought of whoever had designed it.

  ‘I’d better attend my patient.’ Helena hesitated as if expecting him to accompany her. ‘John?’

  ‘You go ahead. I want to look around here for a while.’

  Koenig began his search as Helena left. The walls, as he had found out before, were seamless, but he examined them again for a means of entry other than the door. It, like the outer port, was massive and he frowned as he mentally estimated the force of the explosion which had flung it so violently open.

  An explosion which had left the chamber almost undamaged. One intended to crush the solitary occupant, but which had failed in its objective. For a time at least, Koenig had read Helena’s expression and knew that she, like himself, had no hope of the alien’s survival.

  ‘Found anything new, John?’ Bergman entered the chamber. He was suited and carried a load of equipment, his face behind the face plate of his helmet intent.

  ‘Nothing new, Victor.’ Koenig waited until the other had opened his helmet and switched off his suit-radio. He always found it a little disturbing to hear a double voice and more so to hear himself as an echoed ghost on the speakers when talking naturally with the radio switched on. ‘Yet there must have been a way out of here other than by the door.’

  ‘Why?’ Bergman answered his own question. ‘In order to maintain the life-support apparatus, naturally. There must be machines somewhere in order to maintain the lights and atmosphere and he would need to eat and drink. Unless—’ He broke off, frowning. ‘No. That is inconsistent.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The concept that whoever built this didn’t want the occupant to live.’

  ‘Inconsistent or illogical, Victor?’

  ‘Both. To build a cell and not to provide its occupant with the means of survival is inconsistent with the concept of a cell, which is a place to confine someone who has done or could do you harm. And to build it in the first place when you don’t intend its occupants to live is illogical.’

  ‘By our terms, Victor,’ reminded Koenig. ‘But we’re talking about aliens. How can we tell if their concepts are the same as ours? To us, cooping a man up like this is incredible. A proof of a sadistic bent which we find disgusting. Kill him, yes, if he deserves it. Confine him, yes, if he needs to be confined. But this torture is worse than anything thought of in the dark ages. To be locked up and left for—’ Koenig frowned. ‘How long did you say, Victor? Millenia?’

  ‘That’s what I thought. Obviously I was wrong.’ Bergman set down his instruments. ‘Would you care to help me, John?’

  ‘No,’ said Koenig. ‘I want to see what luck Helena’s having with our mysterious friend.’

  She was attending Baxter when Koenig arrived at Medical Centre, the amniotic tank set to one side in the ward, a pulsating green light signalling the viability of the person inside.

  The co-pilot sprawled in a medical chair, his head thrown back, his eyes wide as he looked into the lenses of a binocular-like instrument.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong With me aside from a slight headache, Doctor. I took a bump, sure, but that’s all. I’ve had a dozen worse in my time.’

  Helena said, ‘Close your left eye. Now touch the tip of your nose with your right hand. Good. Now with your left. Fine.’ She lifted the instrument and swung it to one side. Stepping over to a small table she picked up something. ‘Catch!’

  Baxter grabbed for the shining object, a crystal vial, and missed. He picked it from his lap.

  ‘Thank you.’ Helena took it. ‘You do a lot of flying, don’t you, Mike?’

  ‘I did. I’d still like to.’

  ‘There aren’t many opportunities now, though, are there?’

  ‘No, but there’s always the routine check-flights and investigation probes when we have to make a search. And then—’ Baxter broke off and then continued, slowly, ‘What are you trying to tell me, Doctor?’

  ‘We all get old, Mike, and we all change a little.’

  ‘Not me.’

  ‘You too. That bump did you no good. I’m going to recommend that you take things easy for a while. A desk job in Main Mission. Your experience will be valuable when it comes to correlating flights.’

  Baxter rose from his chair. His face was grim, almost savage, his voice a tense accusation.

  ‘Doctor, are you telling me that I’m grounded?’

  ‘I’m recommending that you be given a rest.’

  ‘From flying? Who the hell wants that?’

  Koenig said, sharply, ‘Get a grip on yourself, Mike! Hitting the doctor won’t cure what’s wrong. That was a bad fall you took and it’s natural there should be after-effects. A few days and you might be fit again. For now you polish a chair and you like it.’

  ‘But—’ Baxter controlled himself with a visible effort. Swallowing he said, ‘I’m sorry, Doctor Russell. It’s just that you threw me a little. No one likes to be told he’s being scrapped.’

  ‘Not scrapped, Mike.’ Her tone was gentle. ‘Just rested.’

  ‘In my book there’s no difference. Have I the right to know what’s wrong?’

  Helena glanced at Koenig. He nodded.

  ‘It’s your eyes, Mike,’ she said. ‘The retinas are loosened and almost completely detached. We might be able to fuse them into place with a medical laser beam later on, but for now it’s essential that you rest.’

  ‘My eyes?’ Baxter sucked in his breath. ‘You mean I’m going blind?’ His voice rose a little. ‘Blind!’

  ‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘You aren’t blind and we can save your sight, given time. But any sharp blow such a
s you’d expect in a rough landing and you’d lose your vision. Already it’s faulty—you didn’t catch that vial. I’m sorry, Mike, but there it is. I can’t pass you fit to fly.’

  ‘I see.’ His voice was flat, emotionless. ‘Is that all, Doctor?’

  Helena sighed as he left. ‘You know, John, I’ve had to give bad news a thousand times and you’d think you could get used to it if you do it often enough, but I never have. Each time is like the first. If only there was something I could do, some hope I could give, but—’

  ‘Baxter is a man, Helena. A flyer. He’ll be all right.’

  ‘He may survive, John, but you know better than to say he’ll be all right. I’ve just ruined his life and you know it. Even if I can repair his eyes he’ll never be able to fly again.’ Helena shook herself, a woman who too easily felt another’s pain, the occupational hazard risked by any doctor.

  Koenig said, ‘What about our alien friend?’

  ‘I’m waiting for Bob to prepare the surgery.’ Helena turned as Mathias came into the ward. ‘Ready?’

  ‘As much as we’ll ever be.’

  ‘Good.’ Helena drew a deep breath. ‘If you’ve got a lucky charm, John, you’d better rub it. We’re going to need all the power it can give.’

  A supersitition, but he sensed that she wasn’t wholly joking. It was never easy to deal with the forces of life and death and now both she and Mathias were about to plunge into the unknown. Koenig watched as assistants wheeled the amniotic tank into the surgery, standing before a transparent partition, details sharp and clear beneath the brilliant cone of light over the operating table.

  Words rustled from the speakers like dried leaves swept by an October wind. Rapid instructions which sent men to unseal the tank, to open it, to reveal what lay within.

  A shape covered in crusted bandages.

  ‘Cutters?’ A nurse placed them in Helena’s hand. ‘I’ll open this cocoon, Bob, and we’ll see just how bad he is superficially. Then we’ll get him on the table and rig up some kind of life-support system. If the tank maintained his life it shouldn’t be too difficult—at least we’re winning so far.’