Space 1999 #5 - Lunar Attack (9 page)

There was no more. He turned his head away. The sedative was taking firmer hold.

She waited until she was sure he was asleep and went thoughtfully to find Koenig in the Command office.

Bergman was with him and she told them both, ‘There’s no doubt in my mind. This force has some bizarre connection with Mateo. If he’s right, it feeds on destructive urges in his own mind and somehow carries them out in real terms.’

Koenig said, ‘You’re convinced?’

‘I saw this being. Yes I do believe it. So does Mateo. He wants to recreate the experiment to bring it out somehow into the open.’

It was a long shot and more than Koenig wanted to try. He turned away and looked out of a direct vision port at the familiar moonscape. God, as if they didn’t have enough to contend with.

He said shortly, ‘It could be dangerous.’

Unexpectedly, Mateo had an ally. Bergman said quietly, ‘Let him.’

Koenig turned round, incredulous. Bergman repeated it, ‘Let him, John. Let him recreate the experiment.’

‘Victor, my one concern is the safety of our people on Alpha.’

‘How can we fight this thing if we don’t know what it is? I say let him . . . this time giving all the help we can and putting in our own safety controls.’

Koenig looked at Helena Russell. Medical monitoring would be her pigeon. Clearly she did not like it, but the logic was inescapable. There was a chance. He read acceptance in her face.

‘All right, Victor, set it up.’

When they finally assembled in the Unit lab of Hydroponic Unit Two, it was an extended circle. If Mateo wanted high power intelligence on his net, he had it in good measure. Koenig, Helena, Bergman, Kano, Morrow, Carter and Sandra Benes were grouped round his table each holding an electrode tipped lead that ran to his reconstructed console. Small leafy plants in pots completed the company.

Outside lighting was low key. They could have been in a clearing in a forest with a pagan ritual of blood on the manifest. Following Mateo’s example each one fixed the adhesive electrode to a wrist.

Mateo himself was forcing himself to play it cool, but there was no disguising the strain in his voice as he said, ‘I have told you what to do. Please follow my instructions and do not break the circle.’

Mateo was between Carter and Sandra and held out his hands. They took hold and the others joined up until the circle was complete. There was silence. Carter and Morrow exchanged glances. For their money it was strictly for the birds.

Mateo’s breathing began to change. Eye movements were going out of control. He was trembling. The small plants were quivering. Koenig looked at the panel of the console. The red pointer was in a spasm.

Mateo moaned. He was shaking. Carter gave his hand a tug and got a silent negative from Koenig.

The stems and leaves of the plants were trembling more violently, an aureole of light was building round the console. Mateo was moaning constantly. A slight wind was stirring in the room enough to shift a swathe of blonde hair on Helena’s forehead.

She looked up, away out of the circle, past Sandra’s frightened face to the shadows outside the ring of light. Her fearful whisper had them all turning to look.

‘John!’

A shape was materialising out of the gloom on the perimeter.

Mateo was in pain, twisting and turning and crying out as though something was being wrenched out of his living being.

The wind became stronger. The plants were in a self-destructive frenzy. Metering dials on the console were in a crazy spin. The shape was becoming clearer, it was moving forward into the circle. The plants passed the edge of tolerance, withered to the root and fell as their tissue collapsed.

Now the figure was close, out in the open, clear to see. It was Helena’s nightmare attacker, but now she could see it plain. There was the scarred and mutilated face and the dangling claw hand, but now the other side was in vision and in the conjunction it compounded horror with horror.

It was smooth and unmarked like a death mask. And it was Mateo. It was a spirit Mateo, a zombie Mateo.

All were making the same judgement, looking from the moaning, squirming Mateo by the table to the lurching monster that was his spirit
doppelgänger
and met their stares with the eyes of the living dead.

The silence in the small lighted island was broken by a long moan from Mateo. His spirit self came nearer and Sandra Benes was almost at breaking point. Desperately she looked across the circle to Koenig and he tried to mime to her to hold on.

The figure circled the group, came to Helena Russell, paused and extended its shrivelled hand towards her hair.

Koenig felt her terror and broke the silence. ‘What do you want from us?’

The hand fell heavily to the side and the figure lurched on until it was positioned behind Mateo.

Mateo himself had gone rigid. He was staring fixedly straight ahead and his face was a mask of sweat. His grip on Carter and Sandra increased.

Victor Bergman asked quietly, ‘Can you communicate with us?’

The twisted mouth opened and a chilling voice that seemed to have no precise location said, ‘Yes . . .’

Koenig asked, ‘Are you Dan Mateo?’

‘I was once who you say.’

Any disbelief was long gone. Carter and Morrow who had gone along with the experiment expecting a nil return were as near to simple panic as their neighbours.

Bergman spoke, trying to keep his voice calm and factual, ‘Dan Mateo is one of us. He lives. But you—you have no existence here.’

The dead eyes focused on the speaker, ‘You took my existence from me.’

To make the point, the figure lifted its shrivelled arm and held it out in mute testimony.

‘See your legacy.’

The arm lifted awkwardly and the claw hand touched the scarred cheek, ‘Witness the result of your actions.’

The meaning was unclear but the action carried a certain pathos although grotesque. They were being saddled with guilt in some obscure way.

Koenig argued, ‘Your presence here is an accident.’

‘No accident! I have returned, that is all. My being cries out for vengeance. Vengeance for the collective act which destroyed my existence.’

It made no sense but Koenig tried another tack. He said strongly, ‘Go back! You have no existence here,’

The figure recoiled a step. The others picked up the cue. Bergman said, ‘Go back.’

They were all shouting. Helena repeated, ‘Go back.’ Carter said, ‘Leave us.’ Sandra was. almost screaming, ‘Go. Go away. Go.’

The dead eyes looked bitterly from one to the other, taking in this communal rejection.

Mateo himself seemed to have passed the crisis of his trance. He too was looking round the group and for a moment could not understand what was going on. It seemed to him that the yelling was directed at him. Then he became aware that their eyes were focused at a point behind him and realisation dawned.

Still holding his partners, he twisted round to look and was staring point blank into the obscene death mask of his spirit self. Terror and confusion registered on his own face, his agonised scream cut through the babel of voices and he was out cold, breaking the circle of hands as he fell.

The spirit figure was gone, winking out like a candle flame under a snuffer. The Alphans fell silent, breathing heavily and looking round at each other. Sandra Benes buried her face in her hands and began to sob. Morrow knelt beside her, holding her, trying to persuade her that the danger was gone.

Later, in the Command Office, Bergman tried to make a rational case of it.

‘Whether we believe in the occult or not, there is a tradition in our culture of ghosts, spirits, if you like, some force which continues to exist after death, coming back for revenge, justice or whatever. But this . . . creature that Mateo has summoned up, it’s come back to demand atonement for some terrible death . . .
its own death,
which has not yet happened!’

Helena Russell asked, ‘Does this mean that Mateo is somehow marked out for death—that this spirit manifestation is somehow warning him of his own destruction?’

Koenig said, ‘It draws its existence from him and seems to confine itself to carrying out his aggressive urges as though he could give life and action to his id. The present danger is restricted to just that. But what if it gets stronger, takes its own line, starts acting independently against us?’

Bergman hated to admit that any problem could have no solution. He played for time, ‘Aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves? The problem now is to keep him quiet, sedated, until we come up with some way to deal with it.’

There was one flaw in that and Koenig put his finger on it, ‘Sedation won’t stop his unconscious from functioning. Helena’s experience occurred when he was already under sedation. How do we deal with it, Victor? How?’

‘If it’s a traditional situation there is a traditional way of dealing with demons and spirits.’

It was hardly scientific and Koenig was sarcastic, ‘Bell, book and candle? Do you mean exorcism?’

It was too much for Helena, she said, ‘I’m on call. I’ll go and take a look at Mateo.’

When she had gone, Bergman went on, ‘Seriously, John. That is one way with the use of occult symbols like the pentagon. But that’s not what I have in mind. I mean we should extend those techniques. After all, this being uses a certain power and has energy. We know where this energy originates. It has a structure. What we have to do is to determine what that structure is and then maybe, just maybe we can find ways to deal with it.’

‘Work on it, Victor.’

‘Right away.’

Koenig remained at his desk. Nothing stayed simple for long. On this reckoning even death was uncertain. He spent a good hour on routine admin. But keeping his mind on it was a problem. The thought of Helena in the medicentre with Mateo was constantly there. He shoved back his chair. He would have to go and look for himself.

She was working at her console, her blonde hair hiding her face. As he came in she looked up, glad to see him. He could not imagine that any spirit form of hers could be anything but beautiful or for that matter anything but welcome.

‘How is he?’

‘See for yourself.’

She went across to an intensive care cubicle and slid aside the hatch. Mateo was lying on the bed, eyes open, staring dully straight ahead. As they watched, a single tear welled from his eye and coursed slowly down his cheek.

‘He’s in shock. Close to total breakdown.’

She slid back the panel and went on, ‘He’s under heavy sedation. But what happens when it wears off, when full awareness returns . . .’

The statement tailed off. There was no completing it. Koenig said, ‘Victor’s working on it. I can only hope he’ll come up with something. Look after yourself.’

Bergman was the next obvious port of call and he found him already deeply involved. He had a monitor screen set up and was prepared for a demonstration. Flipping switches on a control panel Bergman sent a line of energy pulses across the screen.

‘There you have it, John. This is the wave pattern we picked up when the spirit force was active.’

He shoved a cassette in a slot and said, ‘Now watch.’

Separated from the first bright line a new trace glowed on the screen. ‘That’s the same energy source. All I’ve done is to reverse the polarities. Look what happens when they make contact.’

He operated controls and the top line began to slide down the screen, approaching the bottom line of energy. There was a split second when they were both clear and distinct and then the screen whited out, both were obliterated, cancelled.

It made its own point. There was nothing to be said. Bergman switched off. He was first to break a long silence, ‘It’s worth a try. But you realise we’ll need Helena’s co-operation. He’s her patient.’

Koenig took it on himself to clear the lines with his top medico. He was asking her to act against all the principles of doctor-patient trust and was not surprised at her first, shocked reaction.

‘Mezadrine! John, that triggers all the most violent, aggressive responses.’

He said, carefully, ‘I realise that, but that’s just why it’s the only way forward. We
have
to do it. If we can summon this creature at a time and place of our own choosing, we might just be able to contain it.’

They looked at each other and she shrugged helplessly, ‘It
should
work out—but it might tip Mateo over the edge. It could destroy him.’

‘That must be my responsibility.’

She nodded grimly. It was minimum agreement. He went to work before she could change her mind, punching a button on the communications post and called the Main Mission controller, ‘Paul. Withdraw all personnel from Alpha section five and withdraw access for everyone, repeat everyone except Doctor Russell, Professor Bergman, Doctor Mathias and myself.’

Bergman was ready in his lab and they walked together to the medicentre past a stream of Alphans evacuating the area. Red alerts flashed from communications posts. Bergman had concentrated his equipment in a small case which he carried himself.

In the medicentre they were met by Helena and Mathias. Bergman said, ‘We’ll need Mateo out of there, Helena.’

She said, ‘All right. Bob . . .’

Mathias went into the intensive care unit and Bergman opened his box. He took out four small, identical beacon units and pulled out antennae extensions from their tops.

Mathias wheeled out Mateo in a reclining chair and Bergman indicated the centre of a clear space. When Mateo was set, looking fixedly ahead of him with dull, staring eyes, Bergman paced around and set out his beacons in a square with Mateo at the diagonal cross.

The last piece of equipment was a small control console and Bergman slotted in his prepared cassette.

He said quietly, ‘I’m ready.’

Helena looked at Koenig for the signal.

‘Go ahead.’

She went to her desk, picked up a hypo gun, checked the contents and approached the chair. ‘Bob, the straps.’

Mathias buckled restraining bands round Mateo’s waist and arms.

Mateo made no move.

Helena applied the hypo gun to his left arm and shot in the charge.