Space 1999 - The Space-Jackers Read online

  TOWARDS DESTRUCTION

  After weeks of uneventful flight, the Alphans once again journey into perils which threaten their imminent annihilation. The Moon Base becomes the target of unknown aliens determined to secure the Alphans’ vital power supplies to ensure their own survival.

  A bizarre, jewel-like asteroid containing the microcosmic Heart of Kalthon which demands vast energy supplies to convert it to its original size...

  An evil, ghost-like visitor from the Anti-Matter Universe seeking to materialise his dying race in the Positive Universe...

  Strange humanoid life-forms kept in suspended animation and doomed to die unless awoken...

  A mysterious dust cloud protecting a monstrous creature sent to steal the Alphans’ life support system...

  SPACE 1999

  THE SPACE-JACKERS

  At regular intervals in the walls, larger, roughly rectangular surfaces appeared. They looked like full-length mirrors, ground smooth from crystal. They blazed resplendently with all the colours of the rainbow, and seemed in some way to be linked with the high-pitched feedback noise. As he approached the first of the mirrors, the noise increased wildly. It cut through his senses like an invisible knife, forcing him to step away from it. Determinedly, he braced himself against the pain and thrust his arm in front of the mirror. The noise wobbled alarmingly. In the glass he saw his arm reflected back at him. There appeared to be no danger, so he stepped boldly in front of it. As he did so, the noise became a shriek. He was drowned in a barrage of pure sound. It was a living, animal sound, and with sudden panic he felt some vital part of his being stolen from him. It was too late to move. He was gripped in its power, his eyes hypnotically drawn to the reflection of himself, standing with its hands crammed over its ears, its face contorted in a hideous grimace of agony...

  After he had gone, the mirror surface shimmered, and smiled. Its patient, alien mind heaved a sigh of fulfilment. Deep in its liquid depths, Koenig’s reflection still lay...

  It had only one imperfection.

  Wolfishly, it smiled to itself as it stepped out of the glass and followed in Koenig’s tracks.

  Michael Butterworth

  SPACE 1999

  THE SPACE-JACKERS

  Based on the successful TV series

  A STAR BOOK

  published by

  the Paperback Division of

  W. H. ALLEN & Co. Ltd

  A Star Book

  Published in 1977

  by the paperback Division of

  W. H. Allen & Co. Ltd

  A Howard and Wyndham Company

  123 King Street, London W6 9JG

  Copyright © ITC - Incorporated Television Company Ltd

  This novelization copyright © Michael Butterworth, 1977

  Jacket and inside stills by courtesy of ITC

  Printed in Great Britain by

  Cox & Wyman Ltd, London, Reading and Fakenham

  ISBN 0 352 39648 2

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  CHAPTER ONE

  Space was beautiful – and often deadly.

  Like the rich, ferrous sands and the pale pink skies of Mars, space was a beautiful illusion.

  With no small degree of irony, Commander John Koenig reflected this matter to himself as he undertook the numerous checks and manual signals needed to keep his Eagle Ship on course.

  The brilliant, burning suns hung in space like swarms of motionless, crystalline fruit. They were layered in their trillions, each layer going ever deeper into the cave of unknown darkness. Each sun was a miniature cosmos in itself, spawning worlds of every different hue and character. Some of these worlds were dead, and they were often dazzlingly beautiful in their barren chemical artistry. Many of the worlds were like priceless lungs to the bizarre and diverse lifeforms they were heir to. All, without exception, seemed incredible beyond perfection.

  Yet space was devoid of warmth.

  It was devoid of air.

  The endless, boundless cavern of space through which he moved was devoid of any governing or life-supporting systems other than the inert tides of universal energy which perpetually ebbed and flowed through it. Many of the lifeforms and eccentric creatures it supported were hostile. To the men who had been forced to desert the relative sanctuary of its paradoxical, spinning worlds, living in it meant a constant, cruel battle for survival.

  He was hardened to the superficial beauty and bounty of space, to the constant hopes and desires it inspired inside him and inside the Alphans who were trapped on the runaway Moon. Its mystery held no charm for him any more – he had been tricked by its allure once too often.

  Space held only cold facts. Facts that were waiting to be discovered. Cold facts that would prove to be good, bad or indifferent in their significance to the lives of the Alphans who were in his charge.

  He depressed a button on the console in front of him to lock the ship’s anterior camera. Then, slowly, he slid forward the camera lens’s zoom control. At his touch, the stars on the communicator screen seemed to blur, and the ship’s visual senses leapt tens of thousands of miles through the vacuum. He let go of the control, and the senses came to focus on a strange, jewel-like asteroid, the outlines of which now filled the tiny screen.

  The sub-planet, like the Moon, was adrift in space... and it was a case in example, Koenig thought grimly. It was the most recent of the interplanetary occurrences that it was their dubious lot to contend with. This one, at least, had displayed one good fact among its many bad and indifferent ones. Aside from its resplendent looks, it had already shown that its colours were sinister. Its prime, and lesser ambiguity lay in the manner of its terrible effect.

  He turned to Alan Carter, the rugged Australian Eagle Pilot who occupied the seat next to him. Carter had already switched part of his attention from his controls, and was studying the screen. His fair, but austere features were set in a calm, unflinching gaze as he watched the oversized jewel for signs of activity. But at least the asteroid looked harmless. The two men exchanged grim, almost telepathic glances of suspicion.

  Koenig stabbed at another button. Instantly the big Pilot Section screen lit up and the familiar sounds and sights of the Moon Base Command Centre burst into the cramped space ship. Maya, Yasko and other personnel were sitting behind their consoles, busily engaged in a ground analysis of the asteroid. Tony Verdeschi, the Base’s Security Chief and Second-in-Command, was leaning on the Psychon woman’s console, pawing over the spewed-out entrails of chart records. He looked up hotly when Koenig blipped, his Italian temperament quickly fired by this latest interruption.

  Koenig was unruffled, however. He was all too familiar with the metabolic intensity at which Verdeschi seemed to prefer working, and he knew that Verdeschi was one hundred per cent reliable.

  ‘Any status on the power drain yet?’ Koenig demanded of the attractive, auburn-haired beauty at the Security Officer’s side. By contrast, she was the absolute picture of calmness and efficiency.

  Maya’s serious face looked up from her work and acknowledged the Commander. ‘Continuing and intensifying,’ she informed him gravely. ‘There’s also some other news, which may be good or bad. My scanners show a localized atmosphere down there. Area Zero D.’

  Koenig set more camera controls on his console, and moved the zoom control fractionally forward in order to close-up on the specified area. As he worked, he talked. ‘What composition is
it?’ he asked.

  ‘Exactly as on Earth,’ Maya replied, once more searching through the unruly coils of chart, helped by Verdeschi. ‘Oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen... in the same approximate proportions.’

  ‘Now that... does look to be too much of a coincidence.’ Carter turned to Koenig. He allowed a slight frown of suspicion to crinkle his eyebrow and forehead. ‘It seems like a bloody invitation!’

  Koenig stared undecidedly at the enlarged area of the cosmic gem which he had now managed to locate on his small console screen – Area Zero D. The description of the area sounded ominous because it was a computer’s designation and not a topographical account. But apart from the remarkable jewelled rocks and mountains, the asteroid’s surface looked singularly benign. ‘Well, if it’s an invitation,’ Koenig said eventually to Carter, ‘let’s accept it. That’s what we’ve come up here for.’

  He smiled sardonically. Carter nodded unhappily as he braced himself to expect the unknown.

  Together, the two pilots settled back into their seats. With practised hands they began to operate the flight controls. taking the Eagle Ship down.

  Rocky aggregates of tall, rhomboid crystals projected like chemical vegetation from the floor of the mini-planet. In parts there was a thin, misty haze through which rose diamond-like mountain peaks, glinting and flashing in the light of a nearby star. From the core outward, the entire asteroid seemed to be composed of the highly-compressed carbon structure of diamond. It was a space oddity, the like of which had never been encountered before by the awed watchers at the Command Centre. The Alphans wondered how such a beautiful – yet deadly – thing could have come to be formed.

  To Doctor Helena Russell, who stood in the doorway to the Command Centre, the fact of its existence held no such fascination. She gazed coldly, if somewhat distraughtly, at its image on the Big Screen. Her becoming looks were bathed unwillingly in the mysterious, gleaming light that it cast over everyone present. With mounting anger she resisted falling under its spell. The great jewel’s emanations were evil. Its rays had already sent Alpha’s Central Computer haywire and something on it was responsible for draining away their power.

  Because of it, the Moon Base was slowly being forced to shut down, and the lives of the nearly three hundred personnel in the colony were threatened.

  She brushed her hand through disarrayed, platinum hair in the characteristic gesture she made when under stress. She took a hold of herself and walked purposefully over to where she saw Verdeschi and Maya.

  ‘He’s dead!’ she stated in a low, tired voice. ‘Ben and I tried everything, but the heart machine won’t function properly and we couldn’t get a consistent current. That’s the second critical patient to go. No more can go because there aren’t any more critical patients in our beds, but God help anyone else who falls seriously ill right now.’

  She did not expect to get a response. Her patient had been one of the least valuable of men working on the Moon Base. He had been an octogenarian janitor who had gone past his best years, and in the present crisis there was concern only for the living. But Maya’s face looked frozen at the news, and Verdeschi scowled. Momentarily, they both appeared genuinely upset.

  ‘Time’s running out for everyone,’ the dark-haired Security Chief complained sourly. He kept his voice down to avoid spreading panic among the other Alphans who were still busy at their consoles. He looked down again at the chart that he and Maya were processing.

  A hundred and one problems grasped for his attention; problems caused in the main by the useless computers which were severely hampering their efforts to fight the drain. Fortunately for them all, Maya’s unique mind, with its congenital ability to compute, was coping with some of the frightening mathematical calculations necessary to keep the Moon Base operational... and sparing Verdeschi total nervous collapse. But now a thin line of sweat broke out across the Psychon’s satin brow. Her calm, practical approach began to crack. She turned to him in alarm. ‘The power output... It’s dropped by another twenty-five per cent,’ she gasped.

  Verdeschi felt a controlled explosion rise inside him. ‘That’s a fifty per cent drop in less than two hours!’ He dropped the print-out he was holding and ran to his own console. He grabbed at a note book and read from it. When he returned, still holding it in his hand, some of his temper had gone. Instead, there was a note of fear in his voice. ‘We’re down to ten megawatts,’ he said, shaken. ‘At that level we’re affected directly. We can expect the heating in the Command Centre to shut off completely.’

  Even as he spoke, a thin, icy breath of air began to fall off the walls. The severe cold of the lunar rock, which had so far been held at bay by the reduced heating, began to penetrate the insulation of the underground Moon Base.

  In alarm, the Command Centre Personnel looked up from their work and shivered.

  Helena stared aghast at the radiant, encrusted surface of the asteroid on the screen. It had loomed closer as the Eagle which was relaying the picture to them made its distant descent. It shone with an intense, hypnotic brightness. Its saturnine, unhealthy rays reached out into the room as though to consume them all in its cold, paralyzing fire.

  The rumbling of the Eagle Ship’s mighty engines died away, and the Pilot Section fell quiet. It was an intense, unnerving silence. They could almost feel the brilliant white rays of the jewel outside striking at the ship’s tough walls.

  Koenig and Carter sat motionlessly in their seats, contemplating the inevitable. Then they began to unstrap themselves from their safety harnesses, and soon they were on their feet.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Koenig said. He raised his commlock and fired it at the heavy, air-tight doors leading into the Passenger Section. The doors slid smoothly and magically apart, and the two men ran through.

  They passed the empty seats and tables that, in more certain times, had been crowded with talking, laughing people, and came to the gleaming, winking consoles of the onboard computer. Opposite it was the main hatchway, and near that were the grey service lockers which contained their space suits and emergency life support packs.

  In bright red lettering, an indicator above the airlock door told them all they needed to know about the environment and atmosphere outside the ship. Koenig hesitated by the lockers, reading the list of data.

  The indicator, and the automatic analyzers which supplied it with its information, had never been wrong.

  ‘We can live in it,’ he said to Carter after a moment. He reached out his arm and activated the airlock mechanism. There was a short pause while the Eagle’s computer double-checked the advisability of the action, then the inner door swung inward. They stepped through it, and there was a further wait while the door closed behind them and the outer door cracked open in front of them. Koenig nodded amusedly to himself at the ship’s programmed instinct to survive. If it could not account for the hasty follies of the men who ran it, at least it took no chances at all where its own safety was concerned.

  A wedge of painfully bright light appeared before them, and they raised their arms to shield their eyes from the glare. The door swung downward until it was at right angles to the ship, resting on the semi-transparent surface of the asteroid. It acted as both door and landing-steps, and Koenig and Carter paused at the top of the short flight, examining the blinding-white landscape through squinted eyes.

  The air was odourless and fresh – almost too pure to be true. It was a long time since their lungs had drunk such a heady brew, and they felt slightly beguiled by it.

  ‘It looks like ice,’ Carter commented in amazement, his eyes drawn to the smooth, clear blue floor. They could see the reflection of the giant star ship and other mysterious, swirling shapes deep in its crystalline depths.

  ‘But the surface temperature is warm,’ Koenig observed, holding out his hands in puzzlement. He looked up at the bright star that gave the asteroid light. It hung in the velvet blackness of space, and it did not seem powerful enough to provide either the light or the heat that they felt. �
��Must be some kind of internal power source.’

  The diamond mountains they had seen earlier on their screens stood some miles off, their fat, glinting bases rising up steeply into the thin layer of white cloud that seemed always to hang around them. There were other, smaller outcrops of the same crystal closer to the ship. Directly in front of the open hatchway was a sheet wall of crystal, its faceted surface gleaming and sparkling like a part of an enormous precious stone. Set in it, at ground level, was what looked like a jagged, black stone of some kind; perhaps of jet or of some form of unconverted carbon. Only slowly did Koenig realize that it was in fact a cave of dark shadow leading inside the crystal face.

  He frowned. There was a suspicious number of convenient events occurring. They were too convenient to be coincidences – the composition and freshness of the air, the uncomplicated landing on a planet that drew continuous and dangerous quantities of free energy from the Moon Base, and now, the open invitation of a cave mouth right on their doorstep.

  ‘Free energy!?’ He jumped. ‘That’s why the asteroid’s warm! That’s why it’s aglow with light! It’s our light and our heat!’

  He turned indignantly to Carter, but before he could continue, a loud, shrill warning note came from the klaxon mounted on the roof of the Eagle.

  ‘Malfunction alarm!’ he exclaimed in evident puzzlement. ‘That’s funny...’

  Koenig’s frown deepened, and now he looked distinctly worried. He seemed torn between two courses of action. ‘You handle it,’ he said at length to the Eagle Pilot. ‘I’m going to look around.’ He slapped him on the shoulders, and began to make his way down the landing steps.

  Shaking his head perplexedly, Carter turned and reactivated the airlock mechanism. The outer door began to rise, hiding him from sight. Soon, the ship was completely sealed shut.

  Alone on the asteroid’s shining surface, Koenig made his way towards the cave mouth. His eyes were used to the intensity of light now, and he was able to see more clearly. Underfoot, the ground gave a surprisingly good grip to his boots.