Space 1999 #5 - Lunar Attack Read online

  MOON TREK

  The daring space travelers of Moonbase Alpha face new terrors as they wander through the silent stars!

  A treacherous woman uses Alpha in an interplanetary war that's been stalemated for centuries . . . An innocent seance conjures up an invisible devil with deadly powers of possession . . . Alpha prepares to be engulfed by a living meteorite . . . And what seems to be Alpha's final battle draws to a close when Commander Koenig chooses certain death over life!

  Collecting samples of the "meteorite" was not easy, and Kelly knew his problems were just beginning. Seen up close, the foamy creature was shapeless. When he touched it, it stuck fast to his gloves. Slowly it crept up his suit, half covering his visor. On the brink of panic, he called his ship.

  "Alan, I can't get away from it! I'll need help!"

  "Alpha's just signaled for us to abort, Kelly," Alan Carter replied. "I'm on my way."

  Commander Koenig, racing into Main Mission, caught the tail end of the transmission. "Carter, no!" he screamed. "We've lost all trace of life signs on Kelly's monitor. He's dead, Alan!"

  "Impossible, Commander!" Alan Carter was stunned. "He's still calling out to me!"

  Books in the Space: 1999 Series

  Breakaway

  Moon Odyssey

  The Space Guardians

  Collision Course

  Lunar Attack

  Published by POCKET BOOKS

  LUNAR ATTACK

  Futura Publications edition published 1975

  POCKET BOOK edition published March, 1976

  This POCKET BOOK edition includes every word contained in the original edition. It is printed from brand-new plates made from completely reset, clear, easy-to-read type. POCKET BOOK editions are published by POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 630 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10020. Trademarks registered in the United States and other countries.

  Standard Book Number: 671-80305-0.

  This POCKET BOOK edition is published by arrangement with Futura Publications Limited. Series format and television play scripts copyright, ©, 1975, by ATV Licensing Limited. This novelization copyright, ©, 1975, by Futura Publications Limited. All rights reserved. This book, or portions thereof, may not be reproduced by any means without permission of the original publisher: Futura Publications Limited, 49 Poland Street, London, England.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  CHAPTER ONE

  Hurled from her ancient orbit, Earth’s moon was a wanderer in the interstellar outback, a tattered hobo on a walkabout with no forseeable end.

  The personnel of Moonbase Alpha had come to terms with a way of life where the unexpected had become the norm, where no experience, however bizarre, could be ruled out. They travelled where the writ of Earth-based logic no longer ran.

  Any landfall, however tough the options, would be fine in their book. They still had the means to get clear, if the computers in Main Mission could pick a viable homeland out of the cosmic hat. The remnants of the Eagle fleet were on stand-by round the clock, fuelled and ready to blast off. But time was not on their side. It would have to be soon. At the back of every mind was the growing fear that disaster was only a short step away.

  Commander John Koenig knew the score better than any one of his people. He knew the fears and tried to discount them every minute of the working day. He told himself it was better to travel hopefully than to arrive, but he was finding himself more hard to convince.

  When the red planet showed like a glowing jewel on the black velvet pad of the big scanner in Main Mission, he reckoned soberly it was an answer to an unspoken prayer. But he clamped down on optimism. They could think he was the cold-hearted bastard of all time, but he wanted emotion out of the equation. This time it had to be right.

  John Koenig left the command office and joined the operations team in Main Mission. He was in time to see Sandra Benes make a refined tuning ploy with slender, delicate fingers, that brought up a new feature to the screen. He thought bitterly that it had seemed too easy. There was the red planet. If they held course, their Moon would pass close enough to check it out. It was the best chance that had come their way in months. But the approach was under guard.

  Sandra was looking open mouthed at the screen. Anyone less beautiful would have looked plain stupid. But it was a measure of the surprise that held them all rooted to their desks.

  The three saucers, in echelon, which had appeared in clear detail between the hurrying Moon and the distant planet looked as venomous as wasps. They were military ships, strike craft. They would carry an armament that could disperse Moonbase Alpha and all it held as molecular trash.

  Koenig had his hands on the back of Sandra’s chair. Data was flipping through his computer. Assessments. He judged that the technology behind the oncoming fighters was similar to Earth’s. But he knew for a truth that his Eagles had nothing that would stand up to a head-on confrontation. He asked harshly, ‘Where did they come from?’

  It was an implied criticism of the watch kept by the scanner team and Sandra Benes said defensively, ‘There was no indication on long range. They came from nowhere.’

  Grim faced, Koenig turned to Paul Morrow, Main Mission Controller, ‘Still no reply from the planet?’

  ‘No dice, Commander.’

  ‘Keep at it.’

  Scientific adviser to the Alpha project, grizzled and balding, Victor Bergman had been leaning close, studying the detail of the approaching craft. His exclamation had Koenig turning his way. But what he said made no kind of sense. ‘They’re Hawks! They’re Mark Nine Hawks.’

  Koenig forced himself to keep it cool. Once the idea was out and about, it gave a reference line and now he could see that Bergman could be right. But it raised too many side problems for comfort. He said slowly, ‘Could be. It looks that way.’

  Chief pilot, Alan Carter had shoved back his chair and was on his feet. He had seen enough. ‘They’re war machines. That’s all we have to know!’

  He was asking for a command decision and Koenig gave it. ‘All right, Alan. Get going!’

  Carter was out at a run. Koenig shoved down an alarm button. Before he reached his command desk, Red Alert signs were flashing in every corner of Moonbase Alpha and strident klaxons were sounding out.

  Like a well-serviced machine, the sprawling base moved into high gear. There was some satisfaction in it for Koenig at his command desk. He could feel the hive organising itself to meet whatever emergency might come, in the long tradition of an embattled camp. It was a castle with the cross bow men hurrying to the walls and the mail shirts coming out of the armoury. But then he remembered that the main enemy was always found inside the gate. Where would that be in their special case? In their own minds? There was no time to pursue it.

  Paul Morrow’s voice was going on in a monotonously repeated call as he tried to establish contact with the planet surface, ‘. . . this is Moonbase Alpha calling on all frequencies. We are people from Planet Earth . . . Please acknowledge . . .’

  At intersection points, where Communications Posts were relaying the picture from Main Mission, groups of Alphans had gathered. Eagles were rising on elevators from underground maintenance bays. Their crews, bulky anonymous figures in space gear, were making for travel tube exit points. In the medicentre Bob Mathias and a couple of trim nurses were setting out surgical instruments. Others were preparing stretchers and beds.

  It was total mobilisation and Koenig flipping round his bank of m
onitor screens could find nothing to fault. He saw his own face on the polished panels of the hardware and it could have been a stranger. High forehead, skull cap of dark hair, rat trap mouth, it was a hawk-like composition. Maybe it should have been behind a helmet at that, with a jutting nasal and a boar crest?

  He saw the first Eagles rise to their launch pads and pressed a broadcast key to speak to all hands.

  ‘Attention all sections Alpha. Alien ships are approaching the base. Their intentions are not known . . .’

  He was sidetracked momentarily by a movement on the medicentre monitor and watched Helena Russell hurry in, moving easily with her bell of honey blonde hair surging elastically round her head. On the neighbouring screen, he had the command module of the leading Eagle and Alan Carter with his co-pilot Johnson were in at a run from their boarding tube.

  As the Eagles began to lift off with a thrust that sent vibrations through the base, Koenig went on evenly, ‘Eagle Flight One will take up intercept vectors. Flight Two move to readiness state one. Crash units on standby. Damage Control parties to stations. Medicentre stand by to receive casualties. Activate meteorite defence screens. Seal all bulkhead hatchways.’

  As he switched himself off, he knew it was something and nothing. He was going through the motions as he was bound to do; but if the Hawks had the armament they should be carrying, it was all completely useless. A single salvo would leave Moonbase Alpha a smouldering pit on the cinder heap of the Moon.

  Morrow called from the communications desk, ‘They still don’t reply, Commander.’ Kano came in from the computer spread, ‘Alien ships approaching at V fourteen point two.’

  It was not good and Koenig kept his comment to himself, ‘Nearly twice the speed of any Eagle we have.’ The corollary was clear and he put himself in circuit to amend the instructions for Flight Two. ‘Cut secondary checks. Move to launch positions as fast as possible.’

  Victor Bergman was whistling tunelessly, a habit he had when a problem refused to gell. Koenig said, ‘What have you got, Sandra?’

  Every eye tracked to the big screen as she juggled with angles and brought in a sweep of the opposed forces. The Hawks were closing in, very near now to the Moon’s surface. The three Eagles of Flight One were racing to intercept.

  Kano had it worked out and there was little comfort in it. ‘Alien ships within strike range for only forty-five seconds!’

  Koenig punched a button and called Flight One Leader, ‘Alan!’

  Carter’s face came up in an inset, hard and set as he concentrated to get it right for a once only strike. He said, tersely, ‘Closing fast, Commander.’

  ‘Fire warning shots.’

  Alan Carter was incredulous. ‘If we don’t hit them first time, there’ll be nothing between them and Alpha!’

  But it got him nowhere. Koenig’s answer was cold and final, ‘I said warning shots.’

  The watchers in Main Mission were clearly in Carter’s corner. As the Hawks stormed in, three searing pencils of eye aching light streamed out from the closing Eagles, deliberately aimed off target. Unchecked, the Hawks were through, making no signal, hell bent to strafe the base, taking the bonus as a lucky break. There was a murmur all round the desks. Whatever Koenig was at, they didn’t like any part of it.

  Koenig snapped out, ‘Get after them, Alan.’

  Kano’s interjection was almost a rebuke. ‘They have just thirty seconds, Commander.’

  Eagle Flight One was wheeling in a turn that shoved the crews to the edge of G tolerance. Carter’s lips writhed away in a snarl of effort.

  Kano was checking it off. ‘Twenty seconds.’

  They heard Carter grind out, ‘We’re locked on to them, Commander.’

  It could well be; but the Hawks were pulling away, as though the clumsy Eagles were standing still.

  Kano, fascinated by the sequence, said, ‘Fifteen seconds.’

  There was no whistling from Bergman, he was still deathly still, staring at the screen. He said urgently, ‘It’s an attack, John.’

  Koenig moved behind Morrow’s chair, ‘Still no signal?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Kano’s, ‘Ten seconds,’ chimed with the reply.

  Alan Carter’s voice, full of bitterness, cracked round the quiet room, ‘We can’t hold them, Commander.’ Thumping the desk, Bergman stated what was in every mind, ‘Alpha’s wide open!’

  ‘Five seconds.’

  He had left it late, maybe too late, but there was something niggling at the back of Koenig’s head which made him want to have it clear that the attacking force had been given every last chance to veer off. He called ‘Fire!’

  Reaction times on the Eagles were incredibly fast. With the harmonics still vibrating round Main Mission there was a triple flare from the cones of the hard-pressed Eagles. Brilliant lines reached out and seemed to pluck the Hawks off the starmap. Each one was instant trash, opening out like an exploded diagram, disintegrating, disappearing as though it had never been.

  There was a sigh from the watchers, a long exhalation of breath, compounded of relief and admiration for Carter’s team.

  Paul Morrow said, ‘Great work, Alan!’

  But Flight One Leader was looking puzzled. There was something that did not add up. They heard him speak to Johnson his co-pilot, ‘Too easy by half.’

  A quick call from Sandra Benes interrupted. Fingers flying over her console, she was bringing up a different sector. ‘Commander! A new contact!’

  They were not off the hook. Three more Hawks were arrowing in from another quarter.

  Koenig said, ‘Orbital reference?’

  ‘Three four eight.’

  ‘Where’s Flight Two?’

  Morrow answered him, ‘On the elevators now, Commander.’

  Anticipating the next question, Kano came in, ‘Alan can’t reach them.’

  Koenig leaned over Morrow and stubbed a button, ‘Flight Two! Cut procedures. Lift off.’

  Grim faced, the watchers in Main Mission saw the elevators level with the launch pads and the rocket motors deliver as the pilots went for a crash lift.

  Three Hawks in tight formation streaked low over the moonscape in a line for the complex.

  Koenig said heavily, ‘We’ve got ourselves a war.’

  It was a war Moonbase Alpha with its pressure domes and sprawling corridors was never designed to fight. A Hawk flew fast and low overhead as though picking its spot for a strike.

  Paul Morrow reported, ‘Eagle Four has lift off, Commander. Clearing Alpha now.’

  They saw it manoeuvring for sea room, climbing desperately and blindly as the Hawk dropped on it like a stooping falcon. One second it was there in full detail, the next, there was a white asterisk in space and wreckage was showering down onto the meteorite screens.

  White light brightened the direct vision ports. Every operator felt it like a body blow and Morrow had to work at it to keep his voice level as he said, ‘Eagle Five lifting off now.’

  It made all of two metres. The Hawk that blasted it, picked its spot with insolent ease. It was a funeral pyre flaring briefly from its pad.

  Koenig was watching Eagle Six as the elevator brought it slowly to the surface. He called urgently, ‘Now! Blast off now!’

  But the Hawk was already on station. The pad erupted in white light.

  Unseen by Main Mission, a corridor breached. Suction, in a raging gale, emptied it. Small trash billowed out onto the moonscape. Clawing and scrabbling, a crewman was lifted through and away, launched into oblivion from the jagged open end.

  Damage control telltales spread like a red rash on the computer desk.

  Working to the book, Sandra Benes reported the obvious, ‘All three Eagles are destroyed, Commander.’

  Beside her, Paul Morrow called up damage control units and reported to Koenig, ‘Explosive decompression in the end section. Area sealed off.’

  Red Alert klaxons were still sounding off, adding their harmonic of doom to a situation that was escalatin
g out of control. The stream of casualties to Helena Russell’s medicentre was turning it into a disaster zone, with trolleys still pouring in between already filled beds. She and Bob Mathias were back to old style medicine making a fast diagnosis and packing the victims in.

  Koenig was still trying, but he was fighting a rear-guard with the logic in his head that told him there could only be one outcome. He did not need Morrow to tell him officially that launch pads one and four were non op. He wanted to know where the Hawks had gathered and Sandra rapped out, ‘Orbital reference 307.’

  It was something to pass on to Carter and he raised his chief pilot on the communications scanner, ‘Alan. They’re coming your way.’

  ‘That I know, Commander. We have them on screen.’

  ‘Computer can give you performance data.’

  He was looking across at Bergman and got a quick nod as he went on, ‘Processing attack data now. Take any chance. Fire as you bear.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Other data was crowding Koenig’s network. A task force of moon buggies was outside, sealing off the broken limbs and Kano reported, ‘Airlock doors to pad four holding now at travel point fourteen.’ Morrow chipped in, ‘Damage control units already in that area.’

  ‘All right. I want damage reports on the launch pads and the Maintenance Section. Check minimum countdown to get the last laser-armed Eagle into action.’

  It was all he could do and he was free to make a call which he had wanted to make for some time past. Helena Russell answered the buzz, wide spaced eyes level and serious, running the back of a glove across her forehead to clear a swathe of honey blonde hair.

  ‘Helena?’—It was a pleasure even to use her name, ‘Give me a casualty report.’

  ‘Apart from Eagle crews, we’ve lost all technicians on launch pad four. Eleven other casualties so far checked in. Two men unaccounted for.’

  ‘Unaccounted for?’