Space 1999 #10 - Phoenix Of Megaron Read online

  Helena said, ‘And if it was negative?’

  ‘The Eagle would signal to abort the mission. There would be time for the fleet to get back. It would not cross the halfway line without a signal to come on.’

  ‘If there was no signal?’

  ‘No signal would read as negative. Abort the mission.’

  ‘And the Eagle would be written off?’

  Koenig said steadily, ‘And the Eagle would be written off.’

  Helena Russell knew for a truth who would command the ship and went suddenly silent.

  There was not much comment to be had. Sandra Benes looked across the circle to Paul Morrow. Like Helena, she had an emotional stake in who was to crew the reconnaissance ship.

  Long experience told Koenig how to read the silence. Nobody liked working to such a narrow margin, but given the situation, there was no other way to play. it. He said, ‘Well then, it’s a question of logistics. Phase One for Operation Exodus can start as of now. Controlled shutdown of all sections. Load the Eagles. Leave Alpha ready for reoccupation. Phase Two begins when the probe Eagle reaches the gravisphere of the planet. The Eagle fleet leaves Alpha. Phase Three is triggered by report data from the Eagle, allowing a maximum of six hours from the beginning of Phase Two. It has two possibilities. Continue to a designated landing area or backtrack and return to Alpha. Here and now, I put it on the line as a command decision: Phase Three is only confirmed by my signal. The absence of such a signal is negative. In the absence of a direct confirmation, the fleet must return. Is that clear?’

  He looked round the table.

  ‘Kano?’

  ‘Agreed, Commander.’

  ‘Paul?’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘Sandra?’

  ‘Agreed, Commander. But should there not be some backup help for the reconnaissance party?’

  ‘If an armed Eagle can’t handle it, we should be wasting more lives and resources. The answer has to be no. Victor?’

  ‘Given the circumstances, the plan is logical.’

  ‘Helena?’

  ‘I don’t like it, but I have to agree. Certainly, the planet seems to offer the best chance we have had so far.’

  ‘Alan?’

  Alan Carter lifted two thumbs for good measure. ‘Ready to go, Commander.’

  ‘Then it remains for me to detail the Eagle crew.’ Koenig switched in the auto log and made it formal. ‘It has to be small. Since the final decision is mine, I shall command and act as navigator. Pilot, Captain Carter. Scientific assessment, Professor Bergman. Two security men. Rufford and Jansen. Command of Alpha and Operation Exodus devolves on Controller Morrow. Any questions?’

  Helena Russell tried. ‘Medical assessment. I should go along.’

  ‘Not necessary. We already have a clear on medical data. You are needed on Alpha.’

  Carter said, ‘Eagle Seven is the stand-by, armed Eagle. She can be ready for extended flight within the hour.’

  ‘Eagle Seven it is, then.’

  Moonbase Alpha slipped easily into top gear. It was the payoff for all the emergency drills and the planning that had gone into the Operation Exodus file. Koenig was more than satisfied. Even after the longest duty stint that any space farers had ever endured, he still had a taut ship. It was going by the book.

  At a personal level, there was more of a problem. Helena Russell seemed to be keeping out of his way. The countdown clock in his head was beating round for Eagle Seven’s lift-off and she was nowhere to be found. He tried to be honest with himself and decide whether he had kept her out of the crew on a personal kick, to keep her safe, or whether it was the greatest good of the greatest number that had pushed him to a decision.

  Even when he was in the travel tube, sealed up in space gear and moving to launch pad seven, he was still mulling it over and no nearer a final answer. But she had successfully avoided him and he had to make a positive effort of will to clear her out of his mind and concentrate on the mission.

  Carter and the security details were already aboard. Victor Bergman, knowing his friend’s mind, said, ‘It’s not Helena’s style to hold a grudge, John. She knows you were right. She’ll be the first with a goodwill message, when we get under way. Exodus makes heavy demands on Medicentre staff. She has her hands full.’

  It was no more than Koenig had been thinking, but it was still no substitute for a personal leave-taking. In Eagle Seven, Carter was already working through prelift-off checks. Bergman went through into the passenger module. Koenig dropped into the co-pilot seat beside Carter and snapped down his visor. Paul Morrow’s face appeared on the scanner. ‘Main Mission to Eagle Seven. You are clear for lift-off.’

  Carter said, ‘All systems go. Counting.’

  Koenig felt the familiar surge of excitement in his circuits. Before all else, he was a spacefarer. Admin was a second role, which he did because he had been cast for it. The rising beat of Eagle Seven’s motors chimed with his mood. Moondust churned past the direct-vision ports and the ship jacked herself off her pad like a free-standing elevator. He began to call course data to the pilot.

  Watchers in Main Mission saw Eagle Seven hover half a kilometre above the base, turn to pick up a course and arrow away. Sandra had them on the scanner with the blue and white planet as a backdrop. She put a variant in her transmission. ‘This is Moonbase Alpha. We come in peace. The ship approaching your planet contains our leader, Commander John Koenig. There is no danger to you. We ask that you should meet him and hear what he has to say.’

  The halls and covered ways of Alpha were thronged with orderly lines of Alphans as Phase One of Operation Exodus began to bite. Faces were serious. It had happened before and there had been disappointments. Most were treating it as yet another training exercise, but there was a question mark in every head. Was this the one? Had they finally gotten to the end of the line?

  Aboard Eagle Seven, the hours peeled away. Koenig shrugged out of his harness and snapped open the seals on his visor. On-board computers had it sorted. Eagle Seven could fly herself, a bobbin on a string. It was time to relax and see what Rufford had managed to cook up in the miniature galley. His hand was on the hatch release to open up the passenger module, when the panel slid away. Framed in the gap was a bulky, space-suited figure, balancing a tray on one hand, which showed high-level motor control, even allowing for the Eagle’s gravity simulator.

  It was also a peace offering. The eyes behind the visor were part of the furniture of his mind. Helena Russell said, ‘Don’t blame Rufford, John. I told him it was a change of plan. He had no choice. I know it wasn’t fair, but I had to come along.’

  Koenig backed off and allowed her through. She set coffee and sandwiches beside Carter. He was more forthcoming. ‘Doctor Russell! Great stuff. I’m glad the commander changed his mind. Charm might do more good than diplomacy down there.’

  Koenig took his rations in silence. He could have said, ‘Look. What you’ve done makes a nonsense of command. You’re a senior executive. If you go your own way, how can you expect any crewman to follow orders? There has to be one voice or the whole shooting match falls apart.’

  To some extent, she was waiting for it, twisting the tray nervously and mad at herself for feeling like a junior about to be balled out by a consultant for leaving a swab in an abdominal cavity. She was as surprised as he was when he said, ‘How can I say anything, except that I’m glad to have you aboard?’

  In fact, the mildness of it was a more telling rebuke than anything else he could have said. She turned away, unable to answer.

  Koenig joined them in the passenger module, drank his coffee and watched the blue and white planet expand slowly in the direct-vision port. It was possible to see something of the land-mass distribution. Each pole had a dark, irregular cap. Then there was a broad belt of ocean. The equator had an archipelago of great continents, strung like beads on a chain. It would make for broadly similar conditions. Except for the polar regions, there would be no extremes of climate.


  Victor Bergman theorised, ‘All the equatorial land is close enough for interchange of populations. Wherever civilisations started, they’d soon be in contact. By this time you’d expect a single, homogeneous race of people.’

  It was Helena’s subject and she reckoned she could not stay silent and contrite forever. ‘But it would depend on how far development went, before they began to spread around. There could be as many ethnic types as we have on Earth Planet.’

  ‘But it’s the climate that makes surface changes. Subcutaneous fat gives an Eskimo a different face. Underneath, he’s blood brother to a lean and angular Apache.’

  ‘True for that; but you can’t explain away cephalic indices. Round head, long head, that’s not climate.’

  Relayed from Carter’s instrument spread, Paul Morrow’s voice joined them. ‘Main Mission calling Eagle Seven. Come in, Eagle Seven.’

  Carter answered, ‘Eagle Seven. What is it, Paul?’

  ‘This will be the last transmission from Moonbase Alpha. All sections closed down. Eagle fleet assembled and ready to go. Phase Two, Operation Exodus beginning in three minutes.

  Carter called through, ‘Did you get that, Commander? Any word for Alpha?’

  The operation was running like a machine, but it was still on a track with no visible end. Koenig said shortly, ‘No comment. We have no further information.’

  Carter softened it. ‘I read you, Paul. Say good-bye to Alpha for me. No change. The planet still looks good. Keep in touch.’

  Helena Russell could imagine the scene in Main Mission, lights dimmed, consoles silent, the hatch closing behind Morrow and Sandra Benes as they went to join the last Eagle. It had been home for a long time and in spite of the hazards, it had treated them well. They had all grown in stature and understanding. Few communities, anywhere, could have learned to live together so well. It should stand them in good stead when they came to establish their colony. On the other hand, once the pressures were off and life could go on, even without mutual support and cooperation, there could be a change. There was something to be said for an external threat. Facing a common enemy kept small differences in perspective. Politicians through the ages had known about that one. There was nothing like a war to unite people behind the government, and a constant battle against an environment that was as hostile as it could get was tailor made. It would all depend on Koenig and the lead he gave from the beginning. She was about to join him and share this seminal thought, when it occurred to her that her action in rocking the boat was not a good start. It would be wiser to wait.

  Victor Bergman broke into her reverie. ‘Helena. What do you make of this?’

  He had set up his own data-acquisition network with an independent computer to process the take. The printout he handed over to her was an analysis of radiation levels on the central land mass of the continental chain. It was the first setback, and the implications were clear.

  Helena said, ‘It’s a classic picture. There was an atomic incident. Epicentre, fallout. All a long time ago. Except for a small area, these levels are acceptable.’

  ‘Long term?’

  ‘There has always been radiation, from the Earth itself and from the Sun. The human race tolerates it, up to a point.’

  ‘This looks like a local source.’

  ‘And we have to ask whether it was natural or man made.’

  Koenig had joined them and took the paper from her. He read it in silence, then he handed it to Bergman. ‘Check all the land you can reach. What about life signs?’

  Helena said, ‘Still strong in some seaboard areas.’

  Carter took a spell. He walked through the passenger module to chat up Jansen in the rumble. Koenig plotted a course that would take Eagle Seven in a descending spiral and smooth out in an orbit to the north of the zero latitude line. It would cross sea and land and take in many maritime zones, where the specialists said there were life signs. In his mind’s eye, he could see the Eagle armada strung out over the star map. Already, some of the gloss was off the enterprise. Nothing ever remained straightforward for long. With even low-level radiation, there was the long-term genetic danger. The race, still batting on the surface, could well be mutated out of their five wits. He was even more sure that he had been right to insist on close reconnaissance. He called Morrow. ‘Eagle Seven to Eagle Fleet Command.’

  Sandra Benes, with her usual flair for meticulous detail, tuned herself onto the scanner, composed on the Golden Section, expressive eyes like pools of chocolate milk. ‘Eagle Fleet to Eagle Seven, I read you.’

  ‘Koenig. Put me over to Paul on a one to one.’

  There was no sense in spreading doubt at this stage. On a closed link to Morrow’s ear there would be no general transmission on the net. Paul Morrow’s face replaced Sandra’s. Aesthetically it was no gain, but Koenig knew his man. Paul Morrow was rock steady in any kind of crisis.

  ‘Commander?’

  ‘Any problems?’

  ‘None. All personnel in good shape. Right on schedule.’

  ‘Keep a low profile on this one. Nothing definite, but Victor has data on radiation. Still viable, but it makes for reservations. This is a one-off exercise and it has to be right.’

  ‘I read you.’

  ‘No hesitation at halfway house. There’s nothing spare on the clock.’

  ‘I know it, Commander.’

  ‘Good luck, then.’

  ‘One thing, Commander. Doctor Russell is with you?’

  ‘That’s right. She convinced me against my will. But maybe she was right. Her opinion on this radiation will be decisive.’

  ‘Good luck to you, then.’

  Heat shields on Eagle Seven were beginning to show signs of thermal agitation. They were moving into the extreme, etiolated layers of the planet’s atmosphere. Carter returned to the command cabin and Koenig moved over to the navigation slot. He spoke on the intercom to the passenger module. ‘Time to seal up. I’m closing the hatch. We do one orbit. Keep the data coming.’

  The hatch sliced shut at his back. Jansen unlocked the swivel of his gunnery island and made a three-sixty-degree turn with his hands on the firing grips of the stern lasers.

  Sensors shoved out a record of outside temperature: fifteen hundred Celsius, through a golden glow of charged solar particles; a gradual drop to one thousand and the spectacle of a multihued aurora; five hundred and Bergman was clocking a band of almost pure oxygen. There was a rapid shift to minus sixty, through a freak layer of heavy particles, and Eagle Seven was falling through the ionosphere.

  Now there was more to see. Main geographical features could be picked out. Mountain ranges, plains, the run of major rivers and a hint of colour. Temperature dropped again through a cold layer of ozone; dropped again to clock minus sixty and then pulled back to an even zero as Carter levelled out a kilometre over the highest peaks.

  Koenig called the expert. ‘Any comment so far, Victor?’

  Bergman was doing his best to keep his voice level and judicial, but there was no mistaking the satisfaction in it. ‘Sea-level temperatures around twenty-two Celsius. A Mediterranean climate, John. An orangery in every backyard.’

  ‘And every orange radioactive.’

  Helena heard it on the net and came in. ‘Not so, John. The radiation levels are tolerable. There’s heavier screening from solar radiation and less natural build up. We believe there were local atomic events, but way back.’

  ‘You’re saying conditions will get better and, in fact, they’re reasonable as of now?’

  ‘Right.’

  Carter sheered off from the mountain range and dropped lower, over a coastal strip edged with white lace, where the wine-dark sea pounded into shingle and sand beaches. He said, ‘Where have all the people gone, Commander?’

  Answer came as he went lower again and the landscape was peeling away below the hurrying Eagle. Helena Russell’s awed voice breathed over the intercom: ‘Only look at that, John!’

  Jacking itself up over the horizon was a pe
ntagon of immense towers. When it was all plain to see, the scale was enormous. Five tower blocks, each verging on two-kilometres high, were set round a circle to mark the limits of a five-pointed star. At ground level, the design was carried out in pale-green translucent walls. The beaches were empty because the people had gathered themselves together in one place. It spoke of strong government and positive planning. It also spoke of a level of culture where communication with a wandering asteroid would be no sweat.

  Alarm bells sounded in Koenig’s head. He was expecting interceptor craft to streak out and cut them down. Then he was staring at the nearer tower and the answer was plain. A jagged fissure ran two-thirds of its height. There would be no attack. They were in tumbleweed country and passing a ghost town.

  Carter said formally, ‘Do I land, Commander?’

  Koenig had the answer ready. ‘No. We go on. There’s no time. We land if and when we can talk to people. We need to know what goes on.’

  Eagle Seven’s angular shadow fled on. There was no challenge. Spaced out along the seaboard, the silent, empty cities of the planet were dumb shells. Whoever had built them had long gone.

  She crossed a wide strip of brilliant blue sea and began again over another continent. This time the pattern of building changed. It was still on a mind-bending scale, but the ground plan was less regular. There was evidence of harbour works and in one, a massive freighter was lifted out of the sea and chocked at a crazy angle against the foot of a tower block.

  Helena called the top hand. ‘John, radiation levels are right down. This is A-okay.’

  Before he could answer, Carter had something else on the forward probes. ‘Commander!’

  Koenig checked it out. The scanner had it plain. By comparison with what they had seen, it was a very small city, set on a peninsula between two river estuaries. But there was movement. Gnatlike air cars were rising from every quarter. Somebody at last had gotten on to the notion that there was an intruder approaching the hive.