A Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons / Fireball XL5 story
By Clya Brown
Dedicated to the memory of
Keryn Grant
A true Fireball XL5 fan
0 - Introduction
1 - Prologue
Captain Ochre – that is Rick Fraser, formerly of the World Government Police Corps – was something of an enigma to his comrades aboard Cloudbase, and was seemingly content to remain one. He wasn’t actively unfriendly – and indeed, he was quite the reverse when the mood took him – but his fellow officers nevertheless recognised that he valued his personal space, and that he didn’t appreciate it being violated. Relationships with his male colleagues were affable without being convivial, while those with his female associates were convivial without being intimate. What little speculative gossip began to circulate among some of the women with whom he worked quickly died out for want of pertinent data to fuel it, and it was tacitly assumed that some traumatic event in his past life had left him wary of allowing anyone to get too close. The word was that there was one person in whose company he would often be found who might perhaps know a little more… but even were it so, any attempt to tap that source of information would be to no avail – because that person was Destiny Angel.
Any chit-chat, rumour or hearsay circulating within Cloudbase, inconsequential or otherwise, would be known to Destiny, but not one word of it would ever have originated from her. Personnel with problems would speak to her in the certainty that it would go no further. Instinctively more trusted than any personal physician, psychoanalyst or priest, she’d listen without either offering any opinion or passing judgment – and through listening, helped those who would confide in her more than even she herself could ever know. If anyone understood Rick, she did.
But if she understood him better than anyone else, the reverse was also true. When Scarlet’s body had been borne back to the base after the assassination attempt on the World President, it had been Destiny to whom Colonel White had assigned the task of formally identifying it. Her prior friendship with him was generally assumed to be the reason for the colonel’s choice, but Rick knew better. With the entire base in a state of mind-numbing shock at the inexplicable sequence of events that had so rapidly unfolded, he’d immediately understood that the colonel knew she could be relied upon to calm and rally her comrades after he’d broken the news that yet another of their front-line personnel had been struck down at the hands of their terrifying new invisible enemy – and she hadn’t let him down.
He’d been the only one not deceived by the dignified and respectful way in which she had carried out the identification, and had made a point of returning with her to her quarters once her designated task of offering comfort and reassurance to anyone who needed it had been completed. His instincts had proved correct: the moment the door closed behind them, she’d collapsed in his arms, sobbing hysterically and uncontrollably until there were no more tears left to cry. He’d waited patiently until she’d finished, then had gently picked her up and carried her to her bed, where he’d sat silently by her side until she’d fallen into a deep sleep.
The next morning he’d gone back to see if she’d managed to get through the night. With not one hair out of place, she’d answered the door promptly at his knock, and they’d walked together in silence to the mess hall. There, over a breakfast of orange juice, eggs benedict with smoked salmon and a black coffee, she’d listened quietly and attentively to her friends and colleagues telling her how much her courage and steadfastness had meant to them at such an uncertain time. When eventually they’d all left to return to their respective duties, she’d taken his hand and given it a little squeeze – after which, they’d never spoken to one another about the events of the previous twenty-four hours again.
And yet… even as the base had begun to take its first tentative steps towards attaining at least some semblance of normality, it had been discovered that it wasn’t over. Having responded to a terse summons to the Infirmary late the following day, she’d returned alone to her quarters, then sent Rick a cryptic message asking him to join her there as soon as possible. He’d hurried there at once, to find her sitting motionless and ashen-faced on her bed, staring into space.
“What is it, Destiny? What’s wrong?”
She looked at him blankly. “He is alive, Rick.”
He shook his head uncomprehendingly. “No… you’ve lost me. What do you mean, ‘he’s alive’?”
“I mean what I say: he is alive. I’ve seen him, and we’ve talked. We talked for twenty minutes, just over an hour ago.”
He looked at her uncertainly. “Paul? No, that’s not right… you’re not well – I can see you’re looking bad… look, let me call the Infirmary and get you something…”
“Rick, please listen to me! He is alive – but it is not him anymore! His injuries – they were so terrible that they killed him… I have seen them again today, and now they are healing – they are healing so fast that it is impossible! They have done something to him, Rick – and now I don’t know who he is! I don’t know what he is! Rick… I’m scared!”
He’d sat quietly with her until she’d recovered her composure once more, then taken her hands in his own. “We’ll get through this, Destiny. We can do it… we’re strong enough to get through this.”
The weeks and months that followed Scarlet’s death and subsequent incomprehensible recovery were to test Spectrum’s capabilities to the limit. Along the way, the relentless nature of the so-called War of Nerves had a far greater effect upon the psychology of everyone aboard Cloudbase than most of them would be prepared to acknowledge… sometimes even to themselves. The tacit recognition that every day might be one’s last served to induce in some a devil-may-care attitude to the development of interpersonal relationships, whilst in others the recognition that plans of a long-term commitment could be destroyed in an instant produced an instinct to shun such emotional ties altogether. Either way, very few people aboard the base found their attitudes unaffected by the war… and Rick and Destiny were no exception. But beneath those transient emotional shifts, each knew the other was there for them… and that was friendship enough.
Until the day of Spectrum’s first attempt to extend the hand of peace to the Mysterons, which was when everything changed.
2 - In Our Reality
“Who is the man in the high castle, Rick?”
Captain Ochre lowered his book just enough to be able to peer at her over the top of it.
“Dunno, Destiny… but then, I’ve hardly got into it yet. I guess I’ll find out by the time I get to the end… if I get to the end. I haven’t decided if I want to persist with this parallel Universe stuff yet. It makes for good sci-fi, but I’m not sure the concept really hangs together. I mean, if you were to change even the tiniest thing just one generation back, absolutely everything would be different from that point onwards. It’s obvious if you think about it.”
Destiny gave him a look. “It is not obvious to me! Perhaps you will explain?”
Rick put down the book and took a deep breath. “Okay, so… every single person on this planet is the product of an act of sexual union, right? That’s where an egg is fertilized by a single sperm… and that sperm is randomly selected from millions of them. There’s no way to predict which one’s going to get lucky – so even the most minuscule change in circumstances surrounding that one event is going to result in a completely different person being brought into existence… assuming of course that a new person gets brought into existence at all! A change in position, a change in location, a change in the year of the vintage champagne served up during the candlelit dinner beforehand… anything!”
“A propos de la technique de séduction,” murmured Destiny, “je pourrais être persuadée.”
“Er… just to change the subject for a moment, I’m actually quite a fan of vintage champagne,” Rick remarked conversationally. “Perhaps a few glasses of Dom Pérignon ‘53 would interest you? I’ve got a couple of bottles of the stuff back in my quarters…”
Destiny threw him a look of obvious disdain.
“I never drink de boisson alcoolisée during a meal before une affaire de cœur, Capitaine Ochre. I find it dulls the senses.”
Ochre peered at her uncertainly. “But I thought you just said…”
“Quelle idée! I was speaking of the dinner with the candles!”
“Ah… well, if that’s the only problem, I’ve got some alcohol-free as well…”
Destiny’s eyes widened in abject horror. “Du champagne sans alcool? Quel concept indescriptible! Une telle abomination serait totalement impropre à la consommation…”
Rick hurriedly held up his hands. “Okay, okay – let’s just forget I said it, yeah?”
He glanced round at the swishing sound of the door in the far wall opening, and raised his hand in greeting as Scarlet walked in, carrying a drink in one hand and a plate of sandwiches in the other.
“Come and join us, Paul? We were just talking about seduction techniques and parallel Universes.”
“As one does,” murmured Scarlet as he pulled up a chair and sat down. “And… have you come to any conclusions, Rick? About the parallel Universes, that is… because if so, the committee deciding the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics might want to get in touch.”
“None as yet,” replied Rick with a grin, “but then as I was saying to Destiny just before you arrived, I’m still on the third chapter of this sci-fi treatment of the concept. Have you read it?”
Scarlet shook his head. “As I see it, there’s more than enough weird science fact for us to try to get to grips with without trying to invent any more. What’s it about, anyway?”
“It’s an alternate history novel set in a world where the Axis powers won World War Two,” replied Rick. “The story takes place in a divided America, with the East controlled by Nazi Germany and the West by Imperial Japan, with a neutral buffer zone in the middle. Central to the story is a mysterious book describing an alternate history where the Allies won the war. I thought maybe it’d give me an insight into the technobabble that Doctor Kurnitz and his buddies use when they’re going on about quantum multiverses and the like – but if it does, then I’m sure as hell not seeing it.”
He tossed the book down onto the table beside Scarlet’s plate of sandwiches and sighed.
“The thing is, since I joined Spectrum I’ve had to rethink absolutely everything I’d previously taken for granted about the world and my place in it. Sure, things might have been a tad less dangerous back then for the planet as a whole… but life was one hell of a lot simpler those days.”
“You became older and wiser, perhaps?” asked Destiny.
“Older, sure,” he conceded, “but wiser? I don’t reckon you ever get any wiser. You just broaden your experience of the world along the way, then try to apply what you’ve learned up to that point to each new brand of shit that life throws at you. If you’re lucky, your success rate goes up over time. I guess that works well enough for most people just getting on with their lives, but…”
“Well, nobody ever said that life in this organization would be anything other than as tough as it gets,” observed Scarlet mildly. He reached for one of his sandwiches, prised it open slightly and inspected the filling before looking up again.
“But that said… I think you’re right, Rick. We’re trying to cope with something so completely outside our experience that almost everything we’ve ever learned about handling a crisis in day-to-day life is inapplicable. Space, time, consciousness – maybe even reality itself – it all needs to be rethought from scratch. How do we even begin to do that? It reminds me of Captain Brown’s last words before the crash that killed us both. We were talking about the Mysterons just before it happened… he was saying he wanted to understand the nature of the threat they posed. He wished they were more tangible – more three dimensional, as he put it – and I remember I was agreeing with him. A few seconds later…”
His voice died away, and the sharpness in his eyes faded once more for a few seconds. A moment later it was back again, and he nodded unselfconsciously.
“He was a good man… a good soldier. He understood that to be able to engage your enemy in battle with any expectation of beating him, you need to understand him. ‘Know your enemy,’ as Sun Tzu put it. Always good advice.”
Captain Ochre raised an eyebrow. “I thought that was Shakespeare.”
“Slightly earlier than that,” replied Scarlet. “Sun Tzu was a general and philosopher in China some two and a half thousand years ago. You’ll find just about everything you need to know about military strategy in his book, ‘The Art of War’. It was required reading at both Sandhurst and West Point.”
“That one never found its way onto my shelves,” observed Ochre. “Maybe that was because we didn’t fight too many wars during my time in the WGPC.”
“All the more reason to read it,” retorted Scarlet. “General Sun taught that the greatest victory was one that had been achieved without fighting. He also stressed the importance of deceiving your enemy as to your true strength, and keeping him in the dark about your capabilities. There’s a quote in it that goes something like ‘Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of your opponent’s fate’.”
“Are you sure that guy wasn’t taking lessons from the Mysterons themselves?” growled Ochre with a grimace.
“He’d probably have given them a run for their money if he’d ever faced them in combat,” acknowledged Scarlet with a wry smile. “Oh, I know… we’ve got deceptions of our own – you’ll be driving one of them to the airport tomorrow after we collect Doctor Kurnitz plus the pulsator from the Nash Institute – but I can’t ever shake off the feeling that they’re onto little technological ploys like that almost before we’ve dreamed them up. We know they can read each other’s thoughts. Maybe they can read ours too… who can say? If they can, then all the formlessness and soundlessness we’re able to muster won’t be enough to enable us to win this war.”
Destiny looked at him with a hint of admonishment.
“This is not like you, Capitaine Scarlet! Do you not tell us each time we defeat the Mysterons that we must continue the fight – that we must never give up? The people of the Earth, they need heroes in this time of crisis, yes?”
Scarlet looked at her with stoic eyes. “Heroics are the actions of impetuous fighters who should know better, Destiny – and most of them end up dead. ‘Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win’. That’s another of Sun Tzu’s – and as to going to war first and then seeking to win… isn’t that exactly the position Captain Black has left us in, thanks to that insane pre-emptive attack on their complex? But if you think a few inspirational words will help, I’ll do my best.”
He looked at each of them closely.
“Remember what he said about the greatest victory being one that has been achieved without fighting? Well, the three of us have our parts to play in a mission tomorrow. The objective of that mission is to stop this senseless war permanently – and if it can be achieved, that will be the greatest victory of all. Nothing must be allowed to stand in the way of it being attained. Nothing.”
§
Doctor Kurnitz peered uncertainly at the large cylindrical vehicle that was slowly reversing down the approach road connecting the rear entrance to his place of work with the main highway.
“A gasoline tanker, Captain Scarlet?”
Scarlet had witnessed a prospective passenger’s first reaction to Spectrum’s VIP transporter at least half a dozen times, and although it still amused him, at least he’d learned to keep a straight face.
“I think you’ll find it comfortable, Doctor.”
Even as he spoke, a cantilevered walkway began to descend from the middle of the back of the vehicle, to reveal an opulently furnished compartment within what to external appearances was the fuel container’s interior.
“After you, Doctor.”
The German electrophysicist acknowledged the invitation to precede the captain into the vehicle with a formal nod of appreciation.
“Thank you, Captain.”
As his travelling companion was walking up the ramp into the vehicle’s interior, Scarlet stepped briefly to one side to provide Lieutenant Green with an update on their progress.
“Doctor Kurnitz and I have rendezvoused with Yellow Fox, Lieutenant. ETA at the airport, minus twenty minutes.”
“S.I.G. A Spectrum helicopter will overfly the route to the airport. An Angel aircraft will escort your plane to Cloudbase.”
Having replied with a brief acknowledgement before closing the call, Scarlet followed his fellow passenger into the compartment, where the latter was settling himself into one of the leather armchairs with obvious relish.
“Very ingenious! We can drive in comfort and complete secrecy.”
“That’s right, Doctor: Spectrum have found the tanker very useful. As always in this line of work, secrecy is of paramount importance. Captain Ochre, Destiny Angel and I were discussing the matter just yesterday: keeping other humans in the dark about our operations is one thing, but keeping one step ahead of the Mysterons is another matter entirely. We know we’ve deceived them in the past; we’d like to think we’re deceiving them now.”
“I do not doubt that everything possible has been done to ensure it,” replied Doctor Kurnitz. “Speaking of Destiny Angel, will it be she who leads us to Cloudbase once more?”
“It is, Doctor. Destiny is one of our finest pilots: with her acting as our escort, our safety is assured.”
“I do not doubt it, Captain Scarlet. Ach! I have an angel to watch over me whenever I visit your base in the sky… here is a Biblical theme, I think! And yet with the project now entering its final phase, I still have never met her. This is not as it should be! I wish to be introduced to her when we reach Cloudbase, so that I may thank her personally.”
“She’s merely obeying orders, Doctor,” replied Scarlet, “but having said that, she’s every bit as committed to bringing about a successful outcome to this project as the rest of us. She and I have discussed your work here at the Nash Institute many times on Cloudbase. She’s taken a keen interest in it ever since Captain Blue, Lieutenant Green and I returned from Lunarville 7 with the pulsator, and I happen to know she requested this assignment specifically to enable herself to follow the progress of the project as closely as possible.”
He smiled to himself at a recollection from the early days of the project. “Just between the two of us, Doctor, I think it was the pulsator itself that triggered her interest! When we first returned to Earth, she was one of the first members of Spectrum other than the three of us to see the pulsator. When we passed it round for everyone to see, we had difficulty getting her to put it down again afterwards! What is it about women and diamonds?”
The flippancy was lost on his travelling companion, who regarded Scarlet intently.
“She handled the pulsator, Captain Scarlet? Without wearing protective gloves?” He slapped his forehead. “Ach! Of course – I forget! I feel it is only a few weeks that Spectrum first sought our help in discovering the secrets of the pulsator, but it was almost a year ago! We did not know then what we know now.”
Scarlet looked at him uncertainly. “About what, Doctor?”
“About the effect that direct physical contact with the pulsator appears to have on some people, Captain. For many months now we have always used a pair of tongs when handling it. It may be that I am over-cautious, but in view of how little we know about the Mysterons, I feel it is better that…better that we are safe than sorry – that is the right expression, yes?”
“It is the right expression,” confirmed Scarlet, “but could you elaborate, Doctor? This is the first I’ve heard of it. I handled it without gloves myself when I took the pulsator from Crater 101.”
“Perhaps the Mysteron characteristics that you retain within your physiology protected you from its effects, Captain Scarlet – who can say? The official report on the expedition notes that everyone else observed standard precautions… and indeed, it seems that not everyone experiences the effect. It is a sensation of being drawn to the pulsator, like a moth is drawn to a flame. Two of my assistants at the Institute – incidentally both female, though we do not know if it only affects women – experienced it during the early days of the project, both times during a test when the pulsator had been connected to a power supply. One of them had to have the pulsator removed from her clenched fist after she had been sedated, for she would not – or perhaps could not – release it while she was conscious. I immediately gave orders that the pulsator was never to be touched by anyone unless protective equipment was used; indeed, the case in which I am carrying it now contains a pair of non-conductive metal tongs for manipulating it when we arrive.”
“A logical precaution,” affirmed Scarlet. “What causes this effect?”
“We do not know, Captain,” replied his travelling companion. “We have carried out extensive tests on the pulsator, and I am satisfied that it produces no emissions that could be perceived by any of our known senses… but of course this proves nothing. The effect might be an instinctive reaction to a perception using a sense that we do not recognise we possess. This would be because in our normal existence we have no use for it, and therefore cannot understand the effect the pulsator has upon us.”
“You’re suggesting that this effect might be the product of extra-sensory perception? Isn’t that being a little fanciful?”
“Not at all, Captain Scarlet! As a species, we consider ourselves to be in possession of five basic senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch, yes? These senses have developed to their current levels of acuity within our species over millions of years of evolution. Why? The reason is simple: it is because they improve our chances of survival. It is absurd to think that there are no other senses, just because we do not recognise them as such! If a perceptive sense were not relevant to our survival as a species, then if we possessed it at all, it would almost certainly be beyond our comprehension.”
Doctor Kurnitz leaned forward in his seat and regarded Scarlet intently.
“I will give you an example of this – indeed, it is one that is very familiar to all of us! Consider the behaviour of a flock of birds during the migration season. How do they all know when to swoop and dive together as a swarm? We do not understand this ability they possess – because it is not an ability that is relevant to the survival of our species. But it is relevant to a flock of migrating birds, who stand a better chance of survival if they remain together. To us, what they do is magical! We look at them in amazement, and we wonder how they do it. To them, it is as natural as breathing.
“But out there in space, away from our home planet, conditions might – and indeed probably do – exist that have never impacted on the development of our species throughout the entire period of its evolution. And if such conditions exist, there is no reason why we should be able to perceive them using any of the senses that we recognise. It might be that we perceive them without understanding how we perceive them… or we might not perceive them at all. Until we physically encounter them, we cannot say.”
Scarlet frowned. “If we can’t perceive something at all, then to all intents and purposes it doesn’t exist! Why would we need to worry about it?”
Kurnitz put down his cup of coffee and looked at Scarlet thoughtfully.
“Can we perceive radio waves, Captain? They are extremely useful to us, are they not? But radio communication has only started to improve our chances of survival within the last few generations – and on the evolutionary scale this is almost no time at all! Perhaps in a million years we will develop sensory organs capable of perceiving and interpreting radio waves – who knows? But you asked why we might need to worry about something we cannot perceive…”
He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.
“Suppose, Captain Scarlet, that there was an object in deep space, around which the entire electromagnetic spectrum – including visible light – flowed around it, just as water in a stream flows around a stone. Suppose that object was so remote from any observable objects that its gravitational effect upon their movement through spacetime were so small that they could not be detected by Earthbound instrumentation. How would you ever know it was there… unless you got into a spaceship and tried to fly through it? Then – and only then – would you be able to answer the question of whether it exists. That is, if you survived!”
“Isn’t the notion of bending light in such a way a little fanciful, Doctor?”
Doctor Kurnitz opened his eyes and shook his head vehemently.
“I do not think it fanciful at all! Our present understanding of the forces that determine the motion of the visible Universe serves only to remind us how poorly we do understand those forces. For our most recent models to make any sense at all, we must conclude that up to eighty percent of all the matter in the Universe cannot be perceived by us!”
A faint memory of a rather boring seminar aboard Cloudbase sometime in the dim and distant past rang in Scarlet’s head. “Would that be what astronomers call ‘dark matter’, Doctor?”
“That is one of the terms that has been applied,” agreed his travelling companion, “but it is not the only one. There is so-called ‘dark energy’, also something that has been provisionally termed ‘dark fluid’, and I believe others have also been postulated. Do not ask me to explain the difference between them: I cannot, for astronomy is not my specialism. I try nevertheless to maintain at least a superficial awareness of the latest theories, so that I am not completely lost when my colleagues discuss them.”
He smiled wistfully. “It seems unlikely that I shall live to see these theories either confirmed or refuted. The research relates to the movement of galaxies that are so distant from us that I think we shall not go there in my lifetime. This is a source of much regret to me.”
“If we can’t see it,” replied Scarlet hesitatingly, “and there’s no other way to detect it… how do we know there isn’t some of this dark whatever-the-stuff-is a lot closer to us than the galaxies to which the theory relates?”
Very much in his element now, Doctor Kurnitz put down his cup of coffee and sat up in his chair, instinctively striking a pose that any undergraduate would have immediately recognised.
“We would be able to observe the effects of gravity fluctuations upon the orbits of the planets within our own Solar System, Captain. Such fluctuations have been sought for many decades now, and none has ever been observed! We may conclude from this that…”
His brows furrowed, and he lapsed into silence for a few moments before continuing, the previous lecturing manner now replaced by a more speculative tone.
“Of course, if dark energy had the effect of distorting spacetime, and also the bodies themselves were relatively uniformly distributed in a configuration perpendicular to the plane in which the known planets orbit the Sun, it is not impossible that our instrumentation might be unable to detect such an effect. It was, after all, designed using our present-day understanding of what gravity is – and that understanding might be flawed.”
His voice died away, and he eyed Scarlet with a mischievous grin.
“As you say, Captain – we do not know! And indeed, we shall not know… until we go there!
3 - Elsewhere
“Nostalgia sure ain’t what it used to be, Matt!” mused Steve Zodiac as he peered over the shoulder of his ship’s navigator, resident boffin and long-time friend. “I still find myself hankering after the good old days when we used to fly this ship using systems that looked like they were made from kids’ construction kits. But I reckon if Commander Zero ever gave us the chance to do away with all these modern gizmos, I’d say he’d flipped his lid.”
“And you’d be right,” acknowledged Matt dryly, glancing up at him through his reading glasses. “But I know what you mean, Steve. I guess I feel it too – probably even more than you. When I was young, I could check most of the outputs from the ship’s navigation equipment with a pencil and paper over a cup of coffee. These days I wouldn’t know where to start, even with a pocket calculator… on which subject, did you know that the cheapest calculator on sale at any gas station back on Earth packs more computing power than they had aboard the first ship to put a man on the Moon? That’s how fast technology moves – and you’ve gotta keep up if you want to stay relevant! When you get to thinking ‘why do I need this new-fangled whizzit?’, it’s time to retire – and I’ll need to learn how to grow marrows in my back garden before I can do that! No, siree… I reckon I’ll just keep on hitching rides round the Extrasolar Ellipsoid just as long as I can if there’s a ship going my way.”
“Always glad of the company, Matt! Having said which, I guess I was kinda lucky I managed to get you assigned you to the XL5. I thought Commander Zero was going to overrule me when the Institute first contacted Space City with your offer to collaborate with us on this navigation project. None of the other patrol ships have anyone with your level of expertise on board, and several of their pilots have way more pull than me. I imagined us saying a few quick words as we met going in opposite directions in the embarkation bay every couple of months.”
The professor chuckled. “Don’t you go thinking it was your sweet-talking the Commander that swung it, Steve! The Institute specifically requested a secondment on board a patrol ship in Sector 25 because that’s where the interplanetary dark fluid density is at its most extreme: it was just chance that the XL5 had been assigned to that sector. You and me knowing each other since that run-in with the Astrans on Mars all those years ago didn’t come into it.”
He frowned to himself. “How long ago was that, Steve? Seems like only yesterday.”
“Must be getting on for fifteen years, Matt. I can’t believe it’s been that long myself! And yet you’ve only got to look at the changes we’ve seen around here even during my time in the World Space Patrol to remind yourself how much has happened since then.”
He gestured expansively around at the banks of equipment lining the walls of Fireball’s navigation control centre.
“This technology wasn’t so much as a gleam in anyone’s eye when I got my space wings. Now we all wonder how we ever managed to live without it! Another few years and we’ll be a match for the Astrans any day of the week.”
“Best not to overstate our capabilities, Steve,” admonished Matt. “The Astrans have an interstellar propulsion system we’re decades away from perfecting. Compared to them, we’re still navigating our way around our own back yard – even if it is a mite bigger than we thought it was!”
He reached out to one of the tactile displays in front of him and slid his finger slowly from right to left across the bottom of the screen. The schematic image displayed on it zoomed outwards as he did so, to reveal a starfield overlaid with a gigantic swirling arc of multicoloured blobs.
“This is as much of Sector 25 within the EDFE as we’ve charted to date, Steve – and there’s plenty of it, that’s for sure! If we find any more, we’re going to need more colours to map all the various classes of planetoid than there are colours in the rainbow. I was in the middle of re-cataloguing them when you came in: the brighter they are, the more recent the discovery.”
Steve peered at one of the corners of the display, where a solitary orange blob was situated in the middle of an otherwise unpopulated portion of the screen. “What’s that one over there, Matt?”
Professor Matic squinted at Steve’s finger, and then followed the line indicated by it until it intersected with the region of the display within which the slowly pulsing orange blob was situated.
“That’s… er… that’s Cevena, Steve. It’s a small planetoid, about two-thirds the size and mass of Mercury, but located right in the middle of the densest tract of dark fluid within the Ellipsoid. The flashing rate indicates the skycurve radial density, and the colour shows the shift of the electromagnetic emanations out of the visual range. Judging from the trace we’re recording on our neutroni scanners, we’d be almost on top of it before it registered on our conventional navigation systems, and it would be invisible to human eyes almost until we were within its gravitational field. Not a good direction to fly if we were in a hurry and didn’t know it was there – even with the neutroni gear fully operational.”
He adjusted the settings of the instrument and positioned a pair of crosshairs over the rapidly blinking dot. The display was immediately updated to overlay a multicoloured contour map and a table incorporating a string of coordinates and time points.
“There… optimal route to Cevena, which would take Fireball three days, seventeen hours and thirty-six minutes from our present location, allowing for all projected skycurve fluctuations within that timeframe, positions and velocities of all known spacecraft in Sector 25, and also records of disturbances within the Ellipsoid caused by inter-planetoid collisions tracked by Space City any time up to the last two days. Even six months ago those calculations would have taken several minutes… which is way too slow. Now they take the time it took me to move those crosshairs.”
“Maybe you’d better slow the development work down a little, Matt,” replied Steve with a grin. “You’ll do yourself out of a job!”
“Collaborating with the World Space Patrol in the development of this system is the reason I’m here,” replied his friend with a fatalistic shrug. “I guess I’ve always known it’d make my role obsolete one day. At least talking about the work leading up to its deployment should keep me on the lecture circuit for a few years when this secondment ends.”
“Say, why don’t you write a paper about it, or whatever it is you boffins do when you want to tell everybody about something you’ve discovered?”
Matt looked up from his monitor and squinted at him through his reading glasses.
“I’ve been working on that almost since day one, Steve! It’s almost finished now – that is, unless some earth-shattering discovery blows a hole in its principal conclusions. I reckon I’m going to call it ‘Interplanetary Navigation within the Extrasolar Dark Fluid Ellipsoid’, as it’s all about the discoveries we’ve made during Fireball’s missions – and there’s been plenty, that’s for sure! Which reminds me, I’ve been meaning to ask if you’d agree to be a co-author.”
Steve blinked at him in surprise. “Me, Matt? I’m no academic! I’m just the guy who pilots this ship around Sector 25 keeping the natives from stirring up trouble while you make sure I don’t fly it into anything I can’t see!”
“Don’t underestimate the contribution you’ve already made to it, Steve!” admonished his companion with a waggle of his finger. “I couldn’t have written it at all without the data we’ve amassed over these last few years – and anyway, papers in this field are taken more seriously if they don’t look like they’ve been written by some obscure egotistical theorist who’s never even been into space. As an accredited astronaut of several years standing, your name would add a lot of credibility.”
“In that case, don’t you think you should ask Commander Zero too? He’s way more important than me, and anyway, you’ll never get permission to publish it at all without his say-so. Maybe it would be a good idea to massage his ego a little – because boy, it’s sure big enough!”
“I don’t think so, Steve,” replied Matt with a shake of his head, “although obviously I’ll include his name in the acknowledgements. If a list of authors gets too long, the paper starts to look like just an advertisement for the organization that submitted it, with all the contributors ingratiating themselves with their bosses by adding their names too, even though most of them had nothing to do with it. One of my early papers was a collaboration with several eminent astrophysicists from Cambridge University, England: it had so many co-authors we thought the publishers might just remove the last half dozen names – and mine was the very last on the list!”
“And did they?”
Matt’s brows furrowed at the memory.
“You know, the strange thing was that when it finally appeared in print, not only hadn’t they deleted any, but they’d actually added another guy called U.T. Cobley just before the ‘et al’, right at the end. Have you ever heard of anyone of that name, Steve? I wondered if maybe he was an astronaut.”
Steve frowned in thought, then shook his head. “I don’t think so, Matt – and I know most of them. More likely to be one of your theorists, I’d say.”
The professor grunted. “Oh well… if I ever meet him, I must remember to ask him what his speciality is. No, I don’t think we’ll include Commander Zero – but if I can add your name, that would be real boss.”
“Sure thing, Matt – I’m game,” replied Steve with a shrug. “Just so long as they don’t ask me to speak at the next International Dark Energy Symposium! I’d be way out of my league…”
Professor Matic shook his head.
“You might not be familiar with the theory, Steve, but you probably know more about the practicalities of interplanetary navigation than all those so-called experts put together – talking about which, we’ll be crossing the Granvenia tanker route very soon. Robert’s okay acting as autopilot in clear space, but the navigation systems aboard those ships can be up to a decade out of date – and sometimes they aren’t quite where they think they are. And at least as important, where we think they are.”
“Yeah, Matt – I guess it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had an unpleasant surprise at short notice! Okay – I’ll get up front and take over from Robert till we’re clear of the traffic. Venus will be chasing me for my daily check-up soon, so I guess I might as well be doing something useful while she’s plugging me into that illuminated brain-scrambler of hers.”
He smiled to himself. “You know, Matt – even though she’s a fully-qualified doctor of space medicine now, I still tend to think of her as the little orphaned eight-year-old kid she was when we first met her on Mars, all those years ago. Boy, has she grown!”
“That,” replied Matt wryly, “is the understatement of the century! But I know what you mean – it’s sometimes hard to see her as the very capable spacewoman she’s become. Not many patrol ships have a resident medic aboard: practitioners in space medicine are rare, and she’s a lot better qualified than most – as well as being a darned sight prettier! We’re sure lucky to have her aboard.”
He looked at Steve speculatively. “Was her assignment to the XL5 really just good luck, Steve? Because I’ve got to admit, it sure seems to me like one hell of a coincidence!”
Steve looked slightly embarrassed.
“Yeah, well… Dad admitted to me after a few drinks a couple of years back that he pulled a few strings there, Matt. It seems he called in a favour or two just before he retired as head of the USS to get her this posting after she graduated from medical school. Venus doesn’t know, and Dad made it clear to me that he wanted it to stay that way. He didn’t tell me why, but he was kind-of insistent about it.”
“No problem, Steve – I understand. I guess he’d have reckoned Venus would be embarrassed if she ever found out, and he’d probably be right.”
“Well, I guess that’s true enough,” replied Steve thoughtfully, “but I kind-of got the feeling there was more to it than that. Dad never let sentimentality get in the way of doing what had to be done: that’s why he was so well-suited to that role in the USS. If he didn’t want Venus to know he had a hand in getting her this assignment, there’ll have been a good reason for it. Where is she, anyway?”
Matt glanced up at the clock on the far wall of the navigation bay. “At this time in the morning? Getting Zoonie his breakfast, I guess.”
Steve’s eyes followed Matt’s in the direction of the clock. “Don’t you mean his lunch?”
“Nope – I mean his breakfast, Steve! That lazoon’s biological clock is twelve hours out of synch with the rest of us on board this ship – at least when we’re awake. When we turn in for the night it reverts to normal again.”
Steve grinned. “You’re telling me he’s always asleep, right?”
“Got it in one, Steve! Unless he’s hungry, of course – in which case he wakes up just long enough to eat whatever’s put in front of him. Then he dozes off again immediately afterwards.”
Steve frowned. “How come the entire lazoon population of Colevio didn’t become extinct sometime in the dim and distant past, Matt? I guess we humans arrived just in time to save them from mass starvation! Anyway, I’d better join Robert up in the nosecone before Venus arrives. Doctors don’t like their patients to keep them waiting…”
§
“How much longer, Venus? Is it necessary to do this every day? I feel fine!”
Venus regarded him with stoic patience born of much experience. Déjà vu – wasn’t that the idiom by which they referred to the phenomenon, even in English? Déjà been there, déjà done that at least a thousand times over, more like.
“You know what the regulations say, Steve! You have to have a medical check-up every day while you’re on duty!”
He peered sulkily over his shoulder at her. “Okay… you’re the doctor…”
That’s right, thought Venus irritably… I am the doctor! And since every time I say “this won’t hurt a bit” to him, he hears “what have I done to deserve this unendurable torture?”, maybe it’s best not to say anything at all…
“Ouch!”
“A-OK, Steve! All reactions normal.”
If he was in any way relieved to have just been given a clean bill of health, he certainly wasn’t going to admit it.
“Thanks for nothing! Which reminds me: Robert’s about due for a check-up. I must have a word with Professor Matic…”
Having heard its name, the robot sitting in the co-pilot’s seat tried – repeatedly and unsuccessfully – to interpret the sentence as a command to itself. Wryly observing the effect on its momentary lapse in co-ordination while its primarily circuits were otherwise occupied with attempting to resolve the problem it thought it had been set, Steve’s sullen expression broke into a broad grin.
“There’s no need to blow your top, Robert! I have a check-up – you have a check-up!”
The intercom crackled into life, and Matt’s filtered voice filled the cabin.
“Hey, Steve – I’ve picked up a lone object on the spacemagraph. It’s very strange: there’s enough movement over and above local gravitational drift to indicate self-propulsion, so it’s not an uncharted asteroid, but nothing like enough to suggest that it’s on its way somewhere. It’s almost like it’s just been flown into interplanetary space and abandoned.”
Steve threw an irritated glance upwards at the morass of wiring that connected Venus’s data logger to the contraption on his head, and leaned forward to peer into the viewing screen in front of him.
“Let me see if I can spot it.”
Something tells me this session just ended , thought Venus, as one of the connections fell out in response to his forward movement, and started swinging at the end of its wire by her knees. She retrieved it and put it back into its pouch, acutely mindful that he’d already forgotten she was still there. I suppose I may as well just convert that inaccurate perception into reality…
“Well, I’ve leave you two to your stargazing. I’ve got to make out my report.”
She made her way out of the command section and set off for her quarters, while Steve reconfigured Fireball Junior’s scanners for short-range visual scanning.
“That spacemagraph of yours has the edge over Fireball Junior’s equipment for this kind of work, Matt – I can’t see a thing. Could it be a space probe?”
The tone of the professor’s voice was distinctly noncommittal.
“Maybe, Steve… I won’t be able to tell until it’s registering on sensory equipment that we can interpret visually. All I’ve got right now is a mathematical projection: skycurve flux in this sector is among the densest in Sector 25, and whatever’s registering is still concealed within its lightstream envelope. Cevena’s still the nearest planetoid to our present location – but that’s several hours away at full thrust, and we’ve had no news of any activity from there recently…”
He stiffened as the holographic simulation of the obscured object faded from the screen, to be replaced by a conventional electromagnetic display.
“Wait – I’m getting something in the sub-infrared range… it looks like some kind of spaceship… Steve! I can just about read the markings: it’s a fuel tanker from Earth! It’s the…”
Steve waited patiently while Matt squinted at the screen, simultaneously fiddling with some of the controls in an obvious attempt to sharpen the incoming image’s resolution.
“It’s the… the EF Z4, Steve.”
“Okay, Matt - I’ll try to contact it…”
He reached over to the panel on his left to bring the communications systems online, and was just about to speak into it when a sound resembling a muttered expletive floated into the cabin.
“I’ve lost electromagnetics again, Steve. Conventional carrier waves almost certainly won’t penetrate skycurve at this range – they’ll just get swept out into deep space. I guess you’ll need the neutroni transmitter for anything you say to be audible over there. Even if they hear it – which I figure’s very unlikely – you sure won’t be able to understand anything they say in reply.”
“Okay, Matt – thanks for the warning! I’ll give it a try.”
He rerouted the configuration to patch in the neutroni enhancers, then leaned over it to speak.
“Fireball XL5 – come in, EF Z4!” He listened intently for a full half minute, but nothing came out of the loudspeakers except a steady stream of static. He grimaced, muttering to himself as he programmed into the ship’s navigation system a slow, steady movement towards the tanker’s coordinates.
“Not a thing. So… let’s take a closer look…”
The lines of the tanker’s bulky architecture slowly faded into view as the approaching XL5’s searchlights began to sweep over it, filling in the pitch-black hole in the starfield that had hitherto offered the only indication of its presence to human eyes. Steve powered down all the lights within the command section, and continued to watch in silence as the gap between the two ships slowly closed, but failed to discern the slightest indication of any activity either within or outside the drifting tanker.
After maintaining the intense scrutiny for a further five minutes, he reached down to power up the lights once more, and flicked the intercom switch to Sick Bay.
“Venus – prepare thruster packs: we’re close enough to cross to the tanker now.”
“Roger, Steve!”
He swung himself out of his seat, and turned to address the robot occupying the co-pilot’s station.
“Okay, Robert – she’s all yours. Keep her on free float: seven-one-five-zero-blue.”
“Roger… free… float… seven… one… five… zero… blue…”
Steve had already quit XL5’s command module by the time the robot had finished laboriously repeating the command, and was striding off down the connecting walkway in the direction of the ejection room. Matt was already suited up by the time he arrived, and he took the remaining thruster pack from Venus’s outstretched hand as she handed it over.
“There you go, Steve! While you’re gone, I’ll report to Space City.”
“A-OK, Venus.” He threw a glance at his companion. “All set, Matt? Okay – let’s go!”
Venus looked up sharply, mindful that he’d have cheerfully ejected from the ship without first tying his bootlaces if she ever let him. “Don’t forget your oxygen pill, Steve!”
When did I ever forget my oxygen pill? thought Steve irritably, but he had the good sense to say nothing. All three of them recognised that the mechanism for ejecting into space a crewmember who was shielded from the vacuum only by a protective force-field was an easy thing to do… perhaps just a little too easy. Maybe one day he would forget his oxygen pill – and that would be the day she didn’t bother to remind him. It would also most likely be the day he died.
“Okay, Venus – I’ve already taken it! About to enter ejection room now…”
He walked over to the ejection chamber while she opened the door leading back into the passageway and stepped through, then stopped and turned around as the ejection chamber’s seal began to close.
“Good luck – and be careful, Steve!”
He threw her a cheery wave as his body was projected upwards and out into space, to join Matt above the ship’s outer hull. A sudden scuffling sound from behind her made Venus start, but the breathless whimpering noise that immediately followed it rendered any further investigation into its cause unnecessary. Venus slowly turned around and gently scratched the top of the source of the interruption’s head.
“I sure hope they’ll be okay, Zoonie!”
The lazoon uttered a prolonged string of doleful chittering sounds, and then without further ado, raised its arms in an obvious plea to be cuddled. Venus wistfully smiled down at it and duly obliged, recognising that the pet had somehow perceived her concern for the welfare of her fellow crewmates, and wanted to take her mind off them by offering itself as a diversion.
“Yes, Zoonie – you’re right, of course! It doesn’t do any good worrying about them. Come on… let’s make sure Sick Bay’s ready for any casualties they might find over there, shall we? And then we can get you something to eat…”
Above the ship, two faint trails of vapour began to stream backwards from the jets of their thruster packs as Steve and Matt began the slow journey through space over to the tanker. Communication between the two of them was minimal, and consisted mainly of hand signals that both had come to use and understand over the course of many similar excursions, even though their EVA gear was fully equipped for voice transmissions.
The spacewalk took slightly under fifteen minutes to complete, by the end of which time Matt had completed a cursory examination of the exterior of the tanker’s drive section in a search for any evidence of collisions, while Steve had subjected its forward-facing superstructure to a similar inspection. With none found, each of them then returned to the docking port, located roughly amidships, where Steve was already examining the entry controls by the time his companion joined him.
“Tanker entrance located, Matt – entering now…”
He reached forward to activate the control, and the door began to slide – painfully slowly – sideways into the ship’s hull. He grimaced, and snapped on his communicator back to Fireball.
“We’re entering the tanker now, Venus.”
“Roger, Steve – and be careful!”
“Always, Venus!”
He switched the radio off once more, and propelled himself into the tanker with a short burst of power to his thruster pack. A few seconds later, his companion joined him, and the two of them peered warily into the darkness beyond.
“There’s power to the entry port, but I’d say not much. Ship’s lighting system isn’t operating at all… turn on your flashlight, Matt.”
“Roger, Steve.”
The professor unclipped the torch from his belt and activated it, projecting a powerful beam of light down the walkway in the direction of the front of the tanker. Suddenly conscious of the alarming rate at which his fingers were starting to lose their flexibility, he exhaled sharply and peered through his condensation-covered spectacles at the cloud of freezing moisture now hanging in the air in front of his face.
“Boy – it’s cold in here! All the power must have failed.”
Steve shivered, nodding in agreement. “Yeah, Matt… sure feels like it! I guess we were lucky we didn’t have to force our way in back there. Maybe the hatch is on a different circuit; artificial gravity too – there’s just about enough to keep our boots on the floor, but nothing to spare…”
They made their way slowly down the passageway towards the forward compartments, probing each connecting walkway with the flashlight as they passed it, but not seeing any sign of life down any of them.
“Here’s the control room…”
He reached out and activated the control. The door within the bulkhead slid aside with the same painful slowness as had the entry port when they first boarded the ship, and they stepped warily inside. As the beam from the flashlight passed slowly around the room, a table came into view on the other side of the room… and then a plate with a half-eaten meal on the top of it. Steve stepped over to the table and held his hand over the plate within a centimetre of the food, feeling no warmth at all. And yet, there was something about the cabin that he couldn’t put a word to... something he couldn’t hear or see, but which he nevertheless knew was there…
“I have a feeling we’re not alone, Matt.”
He took the flashlight from the professor, and continued to move the beam on around the walls of the cabin. The sweep was almost completed when a horizontal boot suddenly appeared within the beam… and then a second boot, lying at an angle to the first. The prone body upon whose unmoving legs the two boots were fitted appeared within the beam an instant later, and the two spacemen instantly crossed the room to examine it. Shining the flashlight directly into its face produced no effect whatsoever: its two lifeless eyes merely stared back directly into its glare.
Professor Matic immediately knelt down beside the motionless crewman, passed his hands in front of his eyes several times, held his hand in front of his mouth for a few seconds, and then gingerly felt the man’s neck.
“He’s alive… but what’s wrong with him, Steve? He’s just staring – like he’s in a trance…”
Steve straightened himself up and looked down at the inert figure in consternation.
“I don’t know, Matt. Let’s get the poor guy back to Fireball. This place gives me the creeps…”
§
Venus finished tucking the inert patient into his bunk, took a step back, and eyed him thoughtfully for a few seconds.
“He’s in bad shape, Steve – but I think he’ll live. He’s in a state of deep hypnosis.”
“Yeah… but how could it have happened? And where’s the rest of the tanker’s crew? There’s nobody else on board – I went over there again to double-check after we brought this guy back. I guess we should be thankful there’s no more in the same state as he is, but that still leaves the question of what happened to them! Have you any idea what caused it, Venus?”
Venus shook her head slowly.
“It’s impossible to say anything with certainty until I’ve run some scans of his cerebral cortex, but given his depleted nutritional levels and the state of his cardiovascular system, I’d say he’s been in this coma for several days. As to the cause, I’ve no way of telling.”
Steve bent over the patient and stared into his unblinking eyes for a few more seconds, then straightened himself up once more.
“Well, we’ll get the tanker back to Earth. Maybe they’ll come up with some answers… in the meantime, do whatever you can for him, Venus. Matt and I will need to prepare the tanker for flight: Matt – you’d better start by seeing if you’re able to recharge at least some of its power cells. If they’re completely exhausted, we should have suitable replacements aboard Fireball.”
“Sure thing, Steve – I’ll get onto that right away.”
The professor walked over to one of the consoles in the corner of the room, and keyed in a string of commands, nodding to himself in satisfaction as the requested inventories scrolled down the screen.
“You’re right, Steve - we’ve got spares for just about everything imaginable. There shouldn’t be anything we can’t replace if we need to – and we can certainly improvise if necessary.”
“Great, Matt! While you’re doing that, I’ll check out its engines and guidance systems. Unless we find some serious damage aboard the tanker that we can’t put right without asking for help to be sent out from Space City, I guess we should be ready to get under way in a couple of hours. Say, how about some coffee, Venus?”
She glanced down at the schedule she’d just finished drawing up, and frowned.
“I’ll be tending our patient here for a while, Steve – but I’ll see if I can fit it in somewhere between checking his nervous system for possible neurofibromatosis and completing the analysis of his brain scan.”
Reassured that his drink would be forthcoming in due course, Steve visibly relaxed with a smile. “I don’t know what we’d do without you, Venus!”
“I rather imagine,” mused Venus archly, “you’d make it yourself.”
He peered at her uncomprehendingly. “But I don’t know how to make coffee!”
“Have you ever considered teaching yourself, Steve?”
He contemplated the radical course of action she was proposing for a couple of seconds, but concluded that the learning curve was most likely just a fraction too steep.
“Well… I guess there’s not much point when you can do it so much better, Venus.”
“There is if I’m too busy to do it for you, Steve!”
The complexity of some of the finer points raised during the debate seemed to have at least temporarily taken away his thirst, and he duly terminated the discussion with a shrug.
“Well, I guess I’m probably going to be too busy myself to drink it anyway. Let’s talk about it another time – but in the meantime, let’s get to work! There’s plenty to do…”
Taking one final look at the motionless tanker pilot lying on the examination couch, he strode purposefully through the door and out into the passageway beyond. Venus watched him leave, then sighed quietly to herself. Something told her that the subject was unlikely to be resolved the next time it was raised… or the one after that.
§
“Say, Venus – what happened to the coffee?”
Venus put down the test tube, and bent down to speak into the microphone.
“Steve – I’m in the middle of synthesising a magnatonian antitoxin which might just possibly help us to break the pilot’s trance. The simulated atmosphere generated by our EVA headgear wasn’t designed to be used when the wearer isn’t conscious, and I’m worried that his respiratory system might possibly have suffered some damage while you and Matt were bringing him back to Fireball from the tanker. The antitoxin should help to counter any adverse effects he might have suffered, and hopefully help his brain fight whatever it is that’s preventing it from resuming its normal function – when I’ve finished synthesising it.”
“Hey, that sounds great, Venus!” Steve sounded distinctly upbeat. “So what about the coffee?”
Venus opened her mouth, closed it again and mentally counted slowly to three.
“I’ll see what I can do, Steve.”
She reached down and flipped the communicator switch to its off position, lurched over to grab the test-tube as it rolled off the laboratory bench, and turned to address her mechanical assistant.
“Robert, put down that centrifuge – very gently – then go to the galley and make him his goddam cup of coffee. Six point eight grams of Brazilian arabica, one hundred forty-five centilitres of milk, three point five grams sugar; microwave at ninety-six degrees Celsius for twenty-five seconds. Then add an oxygen pill to make him fart for the next three hours. You’d better make a cup for Professor Matic as well while you’re there – it’s almost time for him to wake up.”
“Make the coffee… make the coffee…”
The robot strode ponderously off down the corridor in the direction of the galley, and Venus re-opened the comms link to Fireball’s flight deck.
“It’s coming right up, Steve!”
“Gee, thanks Venus! You know, it’s sure great having a woman on board!”
Venus looked at him with an expression that betrayed just the merest hint of cynicism.
“I keep telling you I’m not just a pretty face, Steve.”
“That’s for sure! At least when you’re not wearing those safety goggles of yours!”
Venus did her best to look as if she was about to blush. “Oh, Steve – what a nice thing to say! And there I was thinking you took me for granted!”
“No chance of that, Venus! But I’d better not keep you, or that coffee will get cold!”
Venus returned her customary demure smile as she cut the comms link, then re-opened the one to the galley.
“Robert – make that two oxygen pills. And when you take it to him up in Fireball Junior, make sure you spill a quarter of it in his lap.”
“Spill the coffee… spill the coffee…”
Venus frowned thoughtfully for a second. “On second thoughts, Robert, belay that. He’ll only want a replacement – and I really do need to try to make that tanker pilot’s condition less serious if I can.”
“Do not spill the coffee… do not spill the coffee…”
The intercom crackled into life once more, and Steve’s face reappeared on her screen.
“Venus – I need to send Robert across to the tanker now. Send him to the ejection room, please.”
Venus’s expression didn’t alter by so much as a muscle. “Okay, Steve – I’ll tell him right away. Your coffee will be slightly delayed.”
She cut the connection without waiting for a reply, re-opened the line to the galley, took a deep breath and snapped into the microphone.
“Robert! Steve wants you in the ejection room at once! Leave his coffee to me….”
“Go to the ejection room… go to the ejection room…”
The robot marched ponderously out of the galley and set off in the direction of the door, while Venus walked over to the inert tanker pilot lying on the couch against the wall and peered thoughtfully into his unblinking eyes.
“Well, you’re not going to be waking up any time soon, are you? I guess a few more minutes won’t do any harm.”
She quickly checked that all the patient’s real-time monitoring devices were activated, then walked out of Sick Bay and into the ship’s galley, where she set about preparing his drink with instinctive thoroughness. The empty sugar bowl in the middle of the table made her frown momentarily, and she cast a suspicious glance down the passageway in the direction of her quarters, where Zoonie was most likely now enjoying an afternoon nap on a full stomach. With a sigh, she set off in the direction of her laboratory, returning a few moments later with a bottle of artificial sweetener. Peering down at the cup of coffee, she took half a second to try to remember how much of the stuff in the bottle would produce approximately the same level of sweetness as a single level teaspoonful of sugar, then with a mental shrug she tipped in just enough of the powder to produce a thin white layer on the surface.
Picking up the cup, she made her way out of the galley and down the passageway in the direction of XL5’s nosecone. Steve looked up with a cheery grin as she entered the cabin.
“How’s the patient, Venus?”
“He’s still in a deep trance, Steve. I’m still not having any success with the anti-toxin.”
A movement in the sky though the control room’s transparent viewing shell directly above the ship caught her eye, and she looked up to where a sizable portion of the star field was blotted out by the tanker, which was now flying on a parallel course to that of the XL5.
“How’s Robert making out, Steve?”
Steve peered upwards at the tanker, and uttered a barely audible grunt of approval.
“Just fine – you’d think he’s been flying tankers all his life. Did you bring that coffee, Venus?”
“Sure thing, Steve – I’ve got it right here…”
She carefully deposited the frothing mug of cappuccino on top of the weaponry array, then quietly slipped out of the cabin. She was a dozen steps down the passageway before the faint sound of a splutter emanating from Fireball Junior stopped her momentarily in her tracks. She nodded silently to herself: much experience had taught her that a splutter indicated that it was too sweet, whereas a cough would have signified that it was too bitter – not that he was consistent in his preferences from one cup to the next. Oh well… at least when we’re back at Space City he’ll be able to get Lieutenant Ninety to make it for him instead. She resumed her walk back to Sick Bay, making a mental note to halve the amount of whatever the white powder was next time.
§
“Okay, Steve – this is gonna be brief! I know the official report on this is going to take time to write – but I don’t have the luxury of time to wait for it… so I want you to tell me what it’s going to contain right now. Use words of one syllable or less – and keep to the point!”
Commander Zero folded his arms and leaned backwards in his chair, eyeing Steve with an air of benevolence. “Now I wouldn’t want you to think I’m trying to make your life difficult, Steve – so just to show you what a reasonable guy I can be, I’m gonna let you start any time in the next five seconds.”
He glanced at his watch, then closed his eyes.
Steve suppressed a grin. “Okay, Commander – I get the message! The tanker we’ve brought back with us is the EF Z4: we came across it adrift in deep space while we were on routine patrol close to the Cevena cluster. We hailed it but got no response, so Matt and I went over to investigate. It sure was spooky in there… all those long shadows gave you the eerie feeling that there was something waiting to leap out at you from every…”
Commander Zero’s eyes snapped open. “I said keep to the point, Zodiac!”
“Sorry, Commander! We found only one crewmember still aboard: he was huddled in the corner of the control cabin on the floor in some kind of trance. We tried to snap him out of it, but we gave up after Venus told us to concentrate on just getting him back to Fireball – which we did, although it sure was hard work preparing him for the journey between the ships.” He paused and looked around the room. “Say, where is Venus, anyway?”
“She’s with her patient down in Sick Bay, running some tests on him,” replied Commander Zero, who had risen out of his chair and had just started pacing around the room. “I’ve asked her to join us here as soon as they’re completed: she reckoned they’d take about two hours, so I guess she should join us before too long. What happened after that, Steve?”
“Well, we brought Robert over to the tanker once the survivor was safely aboard Fireball, and Matt programmed him to fly it back to Earth alongside us,” replied Steve. “He landed it just after we touched down: Matt filed a request for Jock to give it a check-out to make sure it was safe before the forensics team starts their work on it, and we made our way up here to report. The rest, you know.”
Commander Zero stopped his pacing and swung round to face him.
“Okay, Steve – now I’ll tell you why I don’t have time to wait for the official report! This is the fourth tanker that’s been found abandoned in the last few weeks. They were all on the same route, delivering fuel to the planet Granvenia – but this is the first one that’s been recovered with even a single crewmember still aboard. The other three were completely deserted: obviously we searched them all for clues, but found nothing to give us any indication why the ships had been abandoned. None of them had radioed in to report anything amiss, there were no recent entries of any relevance in any of the logs, and in one case there was even a half-eaten meal still on the table in the ship’s galley. We still haven’t come up with any answers.”
Venus had quietly entered the room during the briefing, and had joined her two fellow crewmembers while their commander brought his summing-up of the situation to a close. Her most recent examination of the sole survivor of the rescue contributed just final additional piece of information to impart to bring the briefing completely up to date.
“Well, I’ve got news for you, gentlemen. The tanker pilot isn’t going to come up with any answers either. He’s still in a state of deep hypnosis.”
Professor Matic looked at her thoughtfully. “Can’t you just… er… give him a shot of something to bring him out of it, Venus?”
She shook her head decisively. “I daren’t, Professor. The experimental antitoxin I prepared during our return to Earth had no effect on him at all. Whatever’s causing this is outside my understanding: if I make one false move, the shock could kill him. We’ll just have to wait.”
Steve leaned back in his chair, frowning. “That’s no good, Venus. We’ve no idea how long it could take for him to recover… that is, assuming he ever recovers! We could lose another tanker – and its entire crew – in the meantime. But…”
The frown began to clear, and he looked at Space City’s commander speculatively. “But maybe there’s another way…”
§
Steve leaned forward and looked down at the solitary flashing blip as it moved slowly towards the outer rim of the circular display in front of him, then threw a glance across Fireball’s cabin at the professor, who was busying himself with some minor adjustments to Robert.
“Tanker EF Z5 is still dead on course, Matt – but she’s almost at the limit of our short-range scanners now. Do you want me to close in a little?”
Matic looked up, and shook his head.
“I don’t think so, Steve. Keep it on your screen, but let’s not frighten off anyone who wants to interrupt its journey by making ourselves too conspicuous. We can close the distance between us and them fast enough if we need to. As you said yourself, we need to find out what happened to the other five tankers – and we won’t discover anything if the EF Z5 arrives at its destination without any incidents at all.”
Steve stifled a yawn, and settled back in his seat. “Guess you’re right, Matt… this is one of those rare times when we want something bad to happen! Let’s just hope we can handle is when it does, eh? We’re a lot better armed than that tanker, but their communications equipment is as good as ours – and Commander Zero said not one of the previous five tankers got a distress call out.”
The connection door between Fireball Junior and the main body of the ship slid aside, and Venus entered just in time to catch Steve’s final few words.
“It could be very dangerous, Steve. We don’t know what’s out there.”
Matt chuckled and pulled a face.
“I guess it’d be a kinda boring trip if we did know what was out there, Venus! But we’ll soon find out: we’ll be approaching the location we found the EF Z4 very shortly…”
He broke off, peered down at one of the displays on the console in front of him, his facial muscles visibly tightening as he did so.
“I’m getting an unidentifiable radio beam impulse on the radmascope, Steve…”
Steve’s bored expression vanished instantly, and he straightened himself in his seat.
“I’ve got it on my screen too now… it’s headed for the tanker, and it’s coming in fast! This could be it, Matt – I’m going to close that gap! Try and get a reading on it, will you? I want to know what it is – preferably before we’re facing it eyeball to eyeball.”
He stopped talking as a brilliant pulsing light slowly began to envelop the space around the object, which was now located directly ahead of them, and with the distance between the two ships closing rapidly.
“My god… what is that light? It’s not the flare from a missile, that’s for sure… Matt – can you analyse that emission, or whatever it is? It looks like a… it looks like a…”
“Steve – I’m picking up a voice from it! It seems to be coming through all the electronics on this board… should be possible to…”
The sentence was never finished, as a gentle, persuasive voice suddenly filled the cabin. There was no apparent direction from which it came; somehow it was just everywhere…
“You are all feeling tired… very sleepy… there is no escape… you will soon be at peace… “
Steve looked around himself wildly, desperately trying to identify the source of the sound as it seemed to envelope him in a sea of stupor in which he could feel himself rapidly drowning.
“Where’s that voice coming from? It’s all around us! Matt?”
Matt started fiddling with the instrumentation on the panel in front of him. “Strange… there’s something out there… let me see… my readings show it’s unmanned – there’s definitely no sign of life aboard… definitely no sign of… of… definitely no…”
“It is pleasant not to have to think… relax… you are drifting… gently… it is so easy to obey… forget your cares…”
“Steve – that light – it feels strange… it’s almost… hypnotic… peaceful… soft…restful…”
Venus frantically shook her head in a final feverish attempt to clear it, even as she felt her strength being sapped from her body as inexorably as if it were being drained from a bucket with a massive hole in the bottom. She had no more than two or three seconds of consciousness left, and she knew it.
“Steve – this is it! This is the cause of the tanker pilot’s hypnotic trance! Steve – we’re being hypnotised! I can’t fight it… No… I must fight it… But I can’t fight it! It’s not…”
The walls began to shimmer and dissolve around her, and she reached out desperately in a futile attempt to steady herself as she felt herself falling into a pulsating green luminescent pathway that had suddenly and inexplicably opened up in front of her… and in the far distance she could just make out a room… a room containing a glowing translucent stone which somehow called to her from far, far away… Sensing that it offered sanctuary from the unendurable torment of the voice that assailed the last vestiges of her consciousness, she tried to take a tentative step towards it… and immediately found herself fighting a rushing wind that roared out of the tunnel with the force of a hurricane, forcing her to retreat once more. Still she struggled to move forward, somehow conscious that time was racing past her more quickly than she herself was experiencing it… until at last the effort proved too much, and she finally collapsed unconscious in a heap on the floor.
§
Suddenly conscious that someone’s hand was touching her face, Venus frantically lashed out to flick it away, before opening her eyes with a start to find Steve bending over her in obvious concern.
“It’s okay, Venus – it’s okay… you’re safe now! How are you feeling?”
“What… what happened? There was a pulsating light… and there was…” Suddenly conscious of the cloying coldness inside her uniform, she gingerly pulled up her sleeve – and realized it was completely sodden.
“Sweat… covered in sweat… why am I…?”
He smiled grimly. “You passed out, Venus… and maybe it’s just as well you did, because things got kind-of scary after that! I only managed to keep conscious myself for just long enough to order Robert to avert a head-on collision with one of the volcanic planetoids on this route. The last thing I remember is we were heading straight for it: we’re clear now, but it was much too close a call for comfort! Are you going to be okay for a few seconds while I help Matt?”
“I… I think so, Steve.”
“That’s swell, Venus… at least that’s two of us! Let’s hope it’s all three...”
He stepped deftly over to Professor Matic, who was still lying outstretched on the floor nearby, but was just beginning to move.
“Come on, Professor – you’re out of the trance now. Wake up!”
His companion opened his eyes, then blinked back at him rapidly.
“Are you okay, Matt?”
The professor rubbed his head, then peered around the corridor trying to work out which specific piece of equipment had produced the bump on it that he could still feel smarting.
“Oh…. It’s all right, Steve! I’ll be thinking straight in a minute or two… I feel such a toot, passing out like that!”
Steve grinned at his friend’s delicate choice of phraseology: it wasn’t the word he’d have chosen if Venus hadn’t still been lying on the floor just a few steps away.
“Yeah, I guess if you put it that way, I feel kinda tooty too! Will you come through into the nosecone and help me clear up the mess, Matt? There’s things scattered all over the place.” He spared his mechanical co-pilot a baleful glance. “Say, it’s a pity you can’t give us any information about what happened, Robert…”
“But he can, Steve!” exclaimed Matt. “Have you forgotten? Robert records everything at all times!”
Steve rolled his eyes. “Of course! We can play it back, then discover the route the voice tried to make us follow!”
He turned to the robot, and addressed it formally. “Robert – replay recording of all voices from…”
He glanced at the chronometer on his navigation panel, and subtracted a quick estimate of the amount of time they’d all been unconscious.
“Replay from 1500 hours, Robert.”
The robot twitched, and a section of its innards suddenly started glowing with a pale blue colour to indicate that power was being transferred to its rewritable memory.
“It is easier to obey than resist. Fly five-one-seven-zero-red. Relax…”
“Okay, that’s enough.” Steve glanced down at one of the monitors surrounding his seat, then nodded to himself in satisfaction. “Fly five-one-seven-zero-red, Robert.”
The robot began the process of setting the new course, and Steve twisted round in his seat. “So why doesn’t the voice affect us when we hear it again, Venus?”
“The soft alternation of the light would induce the hypnosis, Steve. The voice just gives the command.”
Steve frowned. “You mean the light alone could hypnotise us, or at least put us to sleep?”
“That’s right, Steve,” confirmed Venus. “If we’re going to go back there, we’ll have to destroy that sphere the minute we arrive. There can’t be any delay – it could knock us out cold before we could fire a missile at it.”
“But if we destroy the sphere,” objected Matt, “we’ll reveal our suspicions – and in any case, it would leave us none the wiser about where it came from! Why not just follow it back to its base?”
“Good point, Matt,” agreed Steve. “Okay, agreed… but before we go chasing after it, I reckon we’re going to have to take a few precautions! Do we carry anything that could be used to prevent external light from getting into Fireball Junior?”
Matic thought for a moment, then nodded.
“Black polypropylene sheets should do it – and we’ve got more enough of them down in the hold. We can fix them to the windows with vinyl acrylic bonding resin: that stuff’s tough enough to hold them in place for as long as we need, but brittle enough to snap when we want to tear them down again – and I guess we might need to tear them down pretty fast when we get to wherever that sphere takes us to.”
Steve swung himself out of his seat and stretched his legs.
“Great – sounds like we’ve got a plan! So, while Robert’s tracking that sphere, let’s get to work…”
§
Two hours later, Steve fixed the final black sheet into position over the last remaining few square centimetres of Fireball Junior’s forward-facing viewing area. Standing back briefly to admire his handiwork, he threw a glance at his companion.
“Well, that’s it – all the ports and windows are blacked out, Matt! Guess that should stop the light from the sphere.”
The professor nodded. “It’ll stop all direct visual contact, that’s for sure – but I reckon we’re going to have to shut down the automatic navigation systems too. They’d identify the sphere as a navigation hazard and feed the image directly to the monitors in both Fireball Junior and Central Control. I guess we could shut the monitors down, but our main thrusters are computer-controlled: we’d be risking a critical engine malfunction if we couldn’t track and correct it.”
Steve frowned. “Would an electronically transmitted image over our computers have the same effect on us as a visual one, Matt?”
“I’m not sure, Steve,” admitted Matt, “but I reckon it’s a real possibility. Our systems are designed to replicate the original wavelengths right across the electromagnetic spectrum, so if the frequencies the sphere uses are accurately reproduced, one or more of us could be knocked out cold before we realised what was happening. I don’t think we can take the risk. Isn’t that right, Venus?”
Having just entered the cabin in time to catch the professor’s last few words, Venus was startled to discover that even the memory of the voice’s eerie pitch was enough to make her feel dizzy once more, and she held out her hand to steady herself against the back of Steve’s seat, deliberately taking a couple of deep breaths before replying.
“I’m still recovering from the last encounter with the sphere, so I’d go along with Matt: it’s too much of a risk. I guess you’ll have to fly blind, Steve.”
He looked back at her and grinned. “Yeah, Venus… I’ll have to sense the attitude of the ship.”
Matt chuckled. “It’s what they call flying by the seat of your pants! But don’t worry, Steve – I’ll work out the necessary calculations to keep Fireball on course. Anything that navigation system can do, I can do at least as well – though I guess maybe not quite as fast!”
Steve pulled a face. “I never thought I’d say this, but it sure is a good thing we don’t have to rely on our electronics to propel the ship, Matt. I always thought having a manual override on the guidance system was pointless because we’d never need to use it. Guess I was wrong.”
The professor looked up from the monitor at which he’d been working for the previous few minutes. “I calculate we should be within range of the sphere before too long, Steve – so I’m going to have to shut the navigation system down in a few moments. You’d better start following the instructions from Robert’s recording.”
“Sure thing, Matt.”
He turned to the robot sitting in the co-pilot’s seat beside him. “Robert – replay recording made during previous encounter with the sphere from fifteen hundred hours once more!”
“Replay recording from fifteen hundred hours… replay recording from fifteen hundred hours…”
Robert’s droning mechanical voice was replaced by the recording that it had evidently made during the earlier attack on the ship – which comprised a single command enveloped in a stream of gentle suggestions, and delivered in a seductive, sibilant voice:
“Come to me… it is peaceful here…it is easier to obey than resist… relax… fly five-one-seven-zero-red… it is pleasant not to have to think… relax… you are drifting… gently… it is so easy to obey… forget your cares…”
Venus found herself clutching the back of Steve’s seat once more as the instructions were repeated, even though she no longer felt the need to obey them.
“It’s still a compelling suggestion, even though that we’re not being controlled by the light, doesn’t it?”
Steve nodded slowly, clearly also feeling the power of the words.
“It sure is, Venus…”
He straightened himself up in his seat with an obvious effort.
“But those are our directions… so now we’re ready for it, let’s go! It can’t have got very far yet if its previous speed was anything to go by, so we’ll probably catch it up within a few minutes at full thrust – but hey, we don’t want to miss our connection…”
His fingers flickered over the main booster controls, and the ship perceptibly lurched forward as the main boosters ignited.
“Venus – we don’t know what happened to the crews of the first three tankers, so I guess you’d best get back to Sick Bay and get it ready to receive patients.”
“Okay, Steve. While I’m doing that, I’ll need Robert to replicate all the neurostimulants that I used to stabilise the condition of the pilot of the EF Z4.”
“Sure, Venus – and I guess it could be dangerous to have him piloting the ship when we’re effectively flying blind anyway…”
“Robert! Disconnect autopilot immediately, and return to Sick Bay with Venus.”
“Return to Sick Bay… return to Sick Bay…”
Venus found herself speculating briefly on just how much time it would take Matt to reprogram the robot to stop laboriously repeating its last order, and then remembered the tiny number of occasions on which it had completely misunderstood what was required of it, and had had to be corrected before it did something catastrophic. She abandoned the thought with a mental sigh: oh well, at least this way they all knew what it was going to do next.
“Come on, Robert – we’ve got work to do…”
“Work to do… work to do…”
She grinned, and quit the cabin to set off down the passageway in the direction of her laboratory while the robot disengaged itself from its seat and began to walk ponderously after her. She had just walked through the door to the medical wing when the intercom on her desk above her crackled into life.
“Matt calculates we’ll be catching up the sphere any time now, Venus! There aren’t any viewing ports in Sick Bay, right?”
She reached over the desk and flicked the switch. “Okay, Steve – I’ve just arrived – and no, there are none in here. Robert and I will be completely isolated from the outside world.”
“Okay, Venus – just wanted to make sure you’re safe.”
She had just cut the connection when the door from the passageway slid open once more, and Robert marched into the room. As it did so, the passageway visible through the door behind it was suddenly bathed in a brilliant pulse of light, and Venus found herself staring directly at the porthole directly opposite through which it was shining. With a curse, she looked wildly around the office for anything to cover it, snatched up a bedsheet from the examination couch and ran out into the corridor with it.
“Robert! Robert – Help me! Come here and help me now! Help me…”
Desperately trying to hold the sheet against the porthole, she felt the strength draining out of her arms and legs as the robot strode out of the office, turned to face her, then halted in the doorway to await further instructions.
“Come to me… it is peaceful here…it is easier to obey than resist…”
With her very last vestige of consciousness, she opened her mouth to order the robot to carry her away from the viewing port, but no words came from her lips. A recent memory, all but forgotten after the earlier encounter, once more took form within her consciousness, inviting her to approach and enter the tunnel of swirling green luminescence that beckoned seductively even as she watched. Her limbs went limp and the sheet fell from her hands, leaving her staring blankly out of the porthole at the pulsating sphere as the XL5 began the long slow journey following it back to its planet of origin.
4 - In Our Reality
Doctor Kurnitz looked out of the window in rapt fascination as the Spectrum magnacopter in which he and Captain Scarlet had been flying slowly descended towards Cloudbase’s flight deck. Even as he watched, a large rectangular section of the runway beneath them began to sink into the depths of the massive airborne platform. Seconds later, and with its rotor blades already audibly powering down, the magnacopter itself descended gracefully into the pit, coming to land with a barely perceptible bump within the deck’s innards.
“This technology is incredible, Captain Scarlet – and I say this as one who was personally involved in the design of Cloudbase! Four times have I been escorted here since it became operational, but the sense of awe that I feel each time we land does not diminish. On the contrary, I believe it grows each time I return!”
“The magnacopter’s landing procedure never ceases to send shivers down my spine too, Doctor,” agreed Scarlet. “I don’t think it’ll ever wear off. Some people can sleep right through an aircraft’s take-off or landing, but that’s something I’ve never been able…”
He stopped speaking as a deafening roar drowned out the sound of his voice. Seconds later, a dark shadow passed slowly across the rectangular opening above them, as their escort’s jet gracefully manoeuvred itself into a vertical descent onto the raised platform above the flight deck that Scarlet knew was waiting to receive it. He waited until the sound of the fighter’s vertical jets had died away, and was replaced by the low-pitched whine of the hydraulics returning the platform to its horizontal position once more before attempting to resume their conversation.
“That was Destiny landing, Doctor: she will deplane immediately, so she’ll most likely already be in the Amber Room by the time we get there. If you’ll just come this way…”
Scarlet led Doctor Kurnitz out of the hangar and into the labyrinth of corridors beneath the flight deck, stopping several times to allow his guest to peer with unselfconscious fascination into some of the laboratories and workshops along their route. They had just reached the entrance to the Angels’ standby lounge when Scarlet’s epaulettes flashed white, and he visibly stiffened, instinctively looking for a corner somewhere to take the incoming call in private. At the same instant, the door to the Amber Room slid aside, and a young woman wearing flying gear walked out into the corridor, fiddling as she did so with the straps holding her helmet in place. Momentarily startled, she recovered her composure instantly upon realizing who the man now standing in front of her was.
“Doctor Kurnitz? Please forgive me! I wished to save you and Capitaine Scarlet the walk from the hangar – and to stretch my legs after the flight – but I see I am too late…”
The electrophysicist brushed aside the apology with a wave of his hand.
“Ach… so you are Destiny Angel! We meet at last – and it is you that I must therefore thank for escorting me to Cloudbase once more, is it not?”
Obviously relieved to be free of the constricting flying helmet, Destiny lifted it from her head, shook her hair with an unselfconscious gesture of liberation, and with a warm smile, extended her hand.
“Yet again, Colonel White gives me that honour, Doctor Kurnitz! Welcome to Cloudbase: it is good to have you with us again – and Capitaine Scarlet, he tells me you bring good news of your investigations, yes?”
Doctor Kurnitz drew himself smartly to attention, took the proffered hand and kissed it with Teutonic formality.
“If it were otherwise, I would not be here, Mein liebes Fräulein! And indeed, I think your delightful codename is most apt to the circumstances today – for it is surely not too far-fetched to assert that the destiny of the world might be shaped by the events of the next few hours. Is it not so, Captain Scarlet?”
Scarlet had returned from his radio conference to join them once more, and his expression was grave.
“If we had any reason to doubt it, Doctor, we certainly have none now. I’ve just been informed that the Mysterons have within the last few minutes issued a threat to destroy this base before the day is out. Indeed, they’ve even been so good as to tell us the exact time of the attack: apparently it will take place at midnight. Perhaps we should express our gratitude to them for supplying that additional very specific piece of information, but somehow I don’t think we’ll take the trouble.”
He sighed with an air of resignation. “Given that everything else about them is incomprehensible, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the description appears to extend to their sense of timing also – and it’s something we could have done without right now, that’s for sure! How long will it take you to install the pulsator, Doctor? There’s now a heightened level of urgency regarding making it functional that we didn’t anticipate.”
“Spectrum’s own technical specialists have already installed the primary circuits, Captain,” replied Doctor Kurnitz. “These mirror the function of the prototype we have built at Nash – and having overseen every stage of the installation remotely, I am confident that the installation here on Cloudbase will function as intended… but of course, this we can now verify with absolute certainty by incorporating the pulsator itself. In view of the latest Mysteron threat, it would be my recommendation that we proceed to your communications hub immediately, and do so.”
“Of course, Doctor. Colonel White is looking forward to meeting you again, and I know he’s as anxious to begin as are the rest of us. We’ve established the communications hub itself in one of the conference rooms two floors down from the command centre: it’s this way, if you’ll follow me?”
Scarlet indicated the elevator at the end of the corridor along which they had been walking, and moved slightly ahead of the group to lead the way, while Destiny quietly dropped behind as a precursor to slipping away from the group down one of the intersecting passageways in the direction of the Angels’ quarters.
As the elevator doors opened, Doctor Kurnitz stepped smartly aside to admit the French Angel first, only to see her about to disappear around the corner.
“Miss Destiny – will you not come with us also? I had hoped you would join us, yes?”
Destiny smiled apologetically. “Forgive me, Doctor, but I must formally transfer command of Angel One, sign off-duty, and then change – and anyway, I am sure I would only be in the way…”
Kurnitz waved aside the objection with a dismissive gesture. “Mein liebes Fräulein, you have escorted me to Cloudbase three times in six months, and yet we have not once had the opportunity to speak about this project which has occupied so much of everyone’s time. It is right that you should join us in these final hours to witness the culmination of all our efforts!”
He turned to Scarlet and raised an eyebrow. “I trust this would be acceptable, Captain Scarlet?”
Scarlet suppressed a smile. “This is an operational military base – and one that is at present on red alert, Doctor – not the venue for an awards ceremony! But that said, I can’t think of any reason Colonel White would object. I’ll ask him on your behalf if you wish.”
“Thank you, Captain. Miss Destiny – perhaps we shall see you later?”
Destiny returned an appreciative smile. “Perhaps so… if the colonel, he permits it! But if not, then maybe before I escort your helijet back to the Institute tomorrow morning.” The smile clouded just a fraction. “If we live to see tomorrow morning, of course…”
Doctor Kurnitz held up his hand in protest. “Most certainly we shall live to see it! All this work would never have been undertaken had we not believed the Mysterons could be made to listen – and now they shall! Perhaps in a few short hours, this war will be concluded at last…”
He turned to face Scarlet. “But to ensure this, we have work to do! Please lead the way, Captain Scarlet.”
“Certainly, Doctor.”
The two men stepped into the elevator, and stood in silence as it carried them swiftly upwards. As it approached their destination, the elevator decelerated both rapidly and smoothly, the doors sliding open the instant it ceased moving.
Doctor Kurnitz stepped out and looked around curiously, then sniffed the air. “This section of Cloudbase has changed since my last visit, I think. I do not recognise these carpets… and I smell fresh paint, yes?”
“That’s right, Doctor,” replied Scarlet. “Cloudbase has played host to several conferences over the last eighteen months, all of them related to cutting-edge scientific research prompted by the threat posed to this planet by the Mysterons. Since that threat became apparent, there’s been a surge of interest within the scientific community in our new enemy’s capabilities – and the resources we’re developing reflect that paradigm shift. We now possess world-class research facilities within this section of Cloudbase in several subjects that previously would have been dismissed as pseudoscience.”
Kurnitz nodded, unsurprised. “It has happened before, Captain Scarlet. At the end of the nineteenth century, many physicists believed that there was no more to be discovered! The definitive textbooks had all been written: there remained only one or two minor outstanding anomalies to be resolved, after which the subject could be considered closed. One of those anomalies was that the speed of light appeared to be independent of the velocity of the observer. A small error in the calculations, perhaps? It did not concern them very much.”
He turned to face Scarlet with a twinkle in his eyes.
“And then came Einstein, who showed that it was not an error! No, the subject was very far from being closed. Always there will be phenomena that cannot be explained using our current model of the Universe… and our encounter with the Mysterons may well force us to change that model more than any other single event in history! It is a most interesting time to be alive, I think.”
The operative word being ‘alive’ , mused Scarlet grimly as the two men turned the corner into the newly decorated suite of laboratories, meeting rooms and teleconferencing facilities.
“This section is full of state-of-the-art facilities for researching any number of esoteric subjects with names that will probably mean more to you than they do to me, Doctor. We’ve also temporarily commandeered one of the conference rooms for use as the location from which this current project will be initiated – as you can see…”
Scarlet stepped smartly to one side and indicated the room directly ahead of them, in which an array of computer consoles and banks of other electronic equipment could be seen lining the walls. In the centre of the room, where a conference table might have been expected to be situated, was located a large hexagonal dais with an empty socket at its centre.
“We will be making our attempt to speak to the Mysterons from this room, Doctor. It was necessary to keep the experimental technology developed at Nash separate from our day-to-day operations while we were still testing it, so it made sense to establish the communications hub here. The hub is powered via a direct link to Lieutenant Green’s board in the command centre two floors above us, and the signals that will carry our message to the Mysterons will be transmitted through the same board.”
Doctor Kurnitz glanced at the number on the door, and raised an eyebrow.
“I see you have established the hub in Room 101, Captain Scarlet! A remarkable coincidence, perhaps?”
“Remarkable, certainly,” agreed Scarlet, “but not a coincidence. This suite was still under construction at the time of the lunar expedition to destroy the newly-discovered Mysteron complex. When we returned to Earth with the pulsator, this room was given that number in honour of the lunar crater in the Humboldt Sea where the complex was located: Crater 101. Under the circumstances, it seemed appropriate.”
Kurnitz nodded approvingly. “Appropriate indeed – I agree! But that is not the coincidence of which I was thinking. Have you read ‘1984’ by George Orwell, Captain?”
“I have, Doctor… Oh! Of course… I see what you mean. There was also a Room 101 in that book, wasn’t there?”
“Indeed so, Captain! But do you not also remember what was in that room?”
“It’s many years since I read the novel,” confessed Scarlet, “but wasn’t Room 101 some kind of torture chamber?”
Doctor Kurnitz looked at him sombrely. “It was more than that, Captain Scarlet. It was a torture chamber in which was to be found the worst thing in the world! For anyone who entered Room 101, it contained whatever was their most terrifying nightmare, transformed into reality.”
He gestured vaguely around the room and nodded thoughtfully. “And now Room 101 contains the Mysteron pulsator. So! I wonder if this room’s reputation will live up to that of its infamous predecessor before the day is out…”
A slight sound behind them made him turn, to find that Colonel White and Captain Blue had just joined Scarlet and himself at the entrance to the room.
“Not if we can help it, Doctor Kurnitz! Once again, welcome to Cloudbase… I see that Captain Scarlet has already shown you our communications hub: do you approve of our arrangements?”
“They are eminently practical, Colonel White,” replied Kurnitz. “Indeed, I believe I recommended something of the kind myself in the early days of this project. It is good to see you again!”
“And you, Doctor!”
They all shook hands, and Scarlet drew Colonel White to one side while Captain Blue was discussing with their guest some details of the technical specifications of the most recent set of components to be installed.
“Colonel… may I have a word, please?”
“Of course, Captain Scarlet – what is it?”
“Doctor Kurnitz has a request – one that I told him I would raise with you, Colonel. He would like to extend an invitation to Destiny Angel to be present at our first attempt to contact the Mysterons. He’s aware that she’s contributed significantly to the success of this project, and feels that it’s only right that she should not be excluded.”
Colonel White nodded approvingly at once. “I think it’s an excellent idea, Captain. Destiny has put in at least as much work on this project as any of us. Please tell her we shall expect her whenever she’s ready to join us.”
“Thank you, Colonel – I’ll let her know.”
Scarlet stepped away from the group to forward the message inviting Destiny to join the three men in the conference suite, while Doctor Kurnitz strode over to one of the banks of telecommunications equipment lining the walls, removed an inspection panel and bent down to inspect the wiring inside the console. Two minutes later he straightened himself up again, a look of satisfaction etched on his features.
“Spectrum have done a good job on the transmission circuits, Colonel.”
“Thank you, Doctor. It was built exactly to the specifications you sent us, and has been fully tested.”
Kurnitz nodded his approval, clearly having expected nothing less. “Well, let’s get on with it…”
He lifted his carrying case onto the top of the console, flicked the catches into their unlocked positions, and slowly raised the lid. Scarlet stepped forward and removed the pair of non-conductive tongs from their holding clamps.
“Allow me, Doctor…”
“Certainly, Captain.”
Scarlet gingerly lifted the pulsator out of the case with the tongs, carried it over to the hexagonal master console in the middle of the room, and snapped it into position in the cradle at its centre.
“Steady… good… now – switch on the primary circuits!”
Captain Blue stepped over to the console nearest the door through which they’d all entered a few moments previously, flicked an array of switches into their power-up positions, and then turned to observe the effect. Within less than two seconds, the interior of the translucent crystal began to shimmer and glow, at first slightly erratically, but then increasingly rhythmically as the power build-up within the network of devices positioned around the walls of the room continued. He watched the process unfolding with obvious amazement.
“It’s pulsating! Just as it did in the Mysteron complex on the moon!”
Doctor Kurnitz nodded, clearly unsurprised at the sequence of events that was being enacted in front of them all. “Yes, Captain Blue – with the aid of the visual recordings you and Captain Scarlet made of the expedition, it was relatively easy to simulate the exact conditions inside that complex.”
Colonel White peered at the glowing rock with a wary expression in which optimism and apprehension were both evident in equal measure. “Is it going to work, Doctor?”
“I am certain it will,” affirmed Kurnitz in a tone of voice that pre-empted any further discussion on the point. “Give me a couple of hours to check the secondary circuits and the frequency… and for the first time, you, Colonel White, will be the first man able to speak directly to the Mysterons!”
If Colonel White found the prospect a daunting one, his features didn’t show it: he merely acknowledged the responsibility that would shortly fall upon his shoulders with a curt nod.
“The relays for switching in the secondary circuits in the event of a critical power failure are activated from Lieutenant Green’s board in the main control room, Doctor. They are currently operating in a test mode: shall I instruct him to power them down?”
Kurnitz shook his head. “No… I wish to inspect the backup power relays beforehand – and the same circuitry controls these also. This we can do immediately: if you would lead the way, Colonel?”
“Certainly, Doctor. Let Lieutenant Green know we’re coming up to see him, Captain Scarlet.”
“Yes, Colonel!” Scarlet’s cap microphone snapped down into position, and he stepped away from the group to place the call while the others filed out of the room in the direction of the elevator. A moment later, and the call having been made, he strode smartly after them in the hope of catching up with the others before the elevator arrived, leaving the pulsator glowing fiercely in the middle of the master console behind him.
§
The elevator stopped once more at the conference suite, and Destiny Angel stepped out. Making her way to the room containing the pulsator, she listened briefly at the door for voices inside, but hearing nothing save for the faint background hum of a pair of generators that she knew to have been installed there, she quietly opened the door and entered. The contents and layout of the room itself were unchanged since her last visit a few days previously, with one extremely obvious exception… and it was that one extremely obvious exception that commanded her attention now: completely, and to the exclusion of all else.
“ Dieu tout puissant! C’est absolument magnifique!”
Totally enraptured, she stepped up to the dais in the centre of the room, placed her hands on its outer rim and leaned over the pulsator to inspect it at close quarters. She gazed into the depths of the fabulous jewel, watching intently as its interior facets twinkled and flickered before her eyes, the shimmering lights bouncing and rebounding within it. She blinked, momentarily startled as the dancing fires began to seep out of its surface, encircling it in misty luminous envelope that began to expand slowly from the crystal even as she watched. Touching the envelope with the tips of her fingers, she found herself being slowly pulled into the oozing incandescent plasma.
Come to me… it is peaceful here… it is easier to obey than resist…… relax… you are drifting… gently… it is so easy to obey… forget your cares…
Surely the pulsator couldn’t be singing to her? That was impossible… wasn’t it? She frowned uncertainly, and moved even closer to the blazing crystal, straining all her senses to the utmost in an effort to hear the music that she had felt calling her for just one fleeting second from somewhere inexpressibly, indescribably distant. Yes…. yes – it was calling her! It was… and yet it was not a sound she heard, but an incomprehensible feeling deep within her soul that stirred her being. A sensation that washed over her, around her, through her, sweeping her along with inexorable, relentless pressure… and that sensation told her to run… to run for her life…
Frantically she turned, terrified… the room was ablaze! The ceiling was falling down upon her, the walls were crumbling around her, the flames leaped and danced about her, reaching out to burn her body with inconceivably intense pain… Desperately she hurled herself into the crystal’s welcoming brilliance to escape the coruscating hellfire that had enveloped her – only to discover that the seductive radiance that had entranced her had now withered and died, to be replaced by a lonely, narrow pathway bathed in darkness, along which she was consigned to walk alone. Turning, she could see behind her the world she had abandoned fading away into nothingness, while in front of her she began to perceive a hazy, shifting corona of light materialising around a darkened shape that now blocked the path along which somehow she knew she had to pass. And slowly she realised that the darkened shape was the silhouette of a young woman, walking slowly towards her…
§
Two floors above Room 101, the elevator doors opened onto the command deck, where Lieutenant Green was seated at his communications console, cross-referencing his schedule for the next phase of the operation with Captain Ochre. Leading the way out of the elevator, Colonel White paused briefly to cast his eyes thoughtfully around the room, instinctively sensing that something was amiss – but unable to identify it, he dismissed the notion and invited Doctor Kurnitz to join him at one of the viewing ports with a gesture, while Scarlet and Blue followed a few steps behind. Captain Ochre stepped away from the console and walked smartly across the room to join them, whereupon Colonel White acknowledged his presence with a nod before turning to his guest once more.
“Since your last visit, Doctor, extensive modifications have been made to Lieutenant Green’s communications console. This provides us with the capability to divert some of the output from our atomic generators directly to the rig that has been assembled in Room 101. This in turn permits us to modulate the energy flow generated by the Mysteron pulsator in such a way as to enable us to imprint human speech patterns onto its energy signature. Captain Ochre and Lieutenant Green are more familiar with the details than I am, so if you have any questions, it’s probably best if you address those questions directly to them.”
“Thank you, Colonel. There are indeed a few points I shall need to clarify when the final connections are being established, so I shall do as you suggest.”
Colonel White glanced once more around the room, frowning to himself.
“Would you excuse me for one moment, Doctor?”
“Of course, Colonel.”
The colonel quietly drew Captain Ochre to one side, lowering his voice. “Captain – is it my imagination, or is the lighting in the control room dimmer than usual?”
Ochre glanced at the illuminated panels in the ceiling above his head, then slowly looked around the room thoughtfully.
“I guess it could just be the angle of the sunlight through the viewing ports, sir… but now that you mention it, yes – it does seem unusually dark in here.”
Colonel White grimaced with irritation. “Speak to Lieutenant Green about it, Captain – tell him to get it fixed if he can. We have a guest – and I dislike escorting guests around Cloudbase when we’re operating at less than peak efficiency. It doesn’t inspire confidence in our operations.”
“Sir.” Captain Ochre stepped quietly away from the little group and made his way back over to Lieutenant Green’s communications array, where the lieutenant was busily fielding an incoming batch of automated reports from one of Spectrum’s observation satellites.
“Lieutenant – Colonel White has asked me to ask you if there’s any way we can increase the level of illumination on the command deck while Doctor Kurnitz is here with us. Is that something over which you’ve any control?”
Lieutenant Green completed his filing exercise and looked up, obviously puzzled.
“I’m not sure, Captain. Normally I’d say yes at once, but the lights aren’t the only thing that seems to be operating at slightly reduced levels of power consumption right now. Several of the responses on this board have become perceptibly slower since we patched in the new connections down to Room 101, but even allowing for that, these controls seem to have become just a little more sluggish than usual within the last few minutes or so. It’s probably just the effect of the pulsator drawing power through the primary circuits from the main reactors – in which case the levels should return to normal once the pulsator is deactivated.”
Captain Ochre nodded. “Thank you, Lieutenant. I’ll tell him.”
He turned to return to the group, only to discover that the walk was unnecessary. Even within the couple of minutes that he and Lieutenant Green had been talking, the lights had dimmed alarmingly – and Colonel White had come over personally to seek an explanation.
“I caught the tail end of that, Lieutenant: are you saying the pulsator is responsible for this power drain?”
“I believe so, sir. Unfortunately, I’m unable to disengage the servo-couplings without powering down the primary circuits: that will need to be done from Room 101.”
Colonel White frowned. “What… are you saying the primary circuits are still feeding power to the pulsator, Lieutenant Green?”
Lieutenant Green looked up in confusion. “Why… yes, Colonel – I thought you were aware of that.”
Colonel White turned to Doctor Kurnitz. “Doctor – did you know the pulsator was still drawing power from the servo-couplings?”
Kurnitz shook his head in alarm. “Certainly not, Colonel! I would never have left Room 101 if I had believed that the generators feeding power to the pulsator had not been shut down!”
Colonel White swung back to Lieutenant Green. “Lieutenant – are you able to determine from this board the power levels currently being drawn by the pulsator from the generators?”
“Yes, Colonel…” Lieutenant Green’s fingers flew across the controls. “The present output from the generators feeding the pulsator circuitry in the conference centre is… my god! Output is three point four terawatts and rising, Colonel!”
“What? Cloudbase’s generators were never built to deliver power at that rate! Are you sure the instruments aren’t malfunctioning, Lieutenant?”
Lieutenant Green was already rapidly typing commands into one of the terminals.
“I’m positive, Colonel White – these readings indicate that all our other systems are being starved! The pulsator must be drawing power from the generators faster than they can distribute it to Cloudbase’s basic functions: our antigrav capability is now functioning at eighty-three percent, and is dropping at a rate of seven percent a minute…”
“Lieutenant Green – order a security squad to Room 101 immediately: tell them to initiate a shutdown of all electronic connections to the pulsator, and to disconnect all power lines linking it to Cloudbase’s generators if they get there before us! Captain Blue – remain here with Doctor Kurnitz and Lieutenant Green to coordinate operations from the command deck as soon as we’ve established the situation in Room 101. Captain Scarlet, Captain Ochre – with me! Now!”
The three men set off in the direction of the elevators at a run, and Colonel White turned to Captain Ochre the second it was clear from the illuminated displays that both cars were currently at other levels.
“Captain Scarlet – take the stairs! We don’t know how long an elevator car will take to arrive, and we can’t risk a general power failure trapping all three of us inside it. If you get there before us, disengage the primary couplings to the master generator at once!”
“Sir!” Scarlet ran for the stairs, while Captain Ochre and Colonel White continued their sprint towards the elevators. The instant they arrived, Captain Ochre stabbed at the button to summon a car, and they both listened intently as a distant whine began to emanate from somewhere lower down the shaft. A moment afterwards its pitch dropped perceptibly, but then rose falteringly once more to its previous level. A few seconds later one of the pairs of doors slid aside, and they entered the car that had just arrived. Captain Ochre hurriedly selected the destination, and the doors closed… and then the lights went out as all the remaining power to the elevator system finally died.
With muffled curses, both men instantly dug their fingers into the tiny vertical groove that separated the sliding doors and attempted to prise them apart. A few moments later the groove began to widen into a narrow gap, and Ochre forced his leg into it to prevent it from closing a second time before bellowing down the corridor for assistance. In the meantime, Colonel White shifted his position to enable him to bring pressure to bear near to the top of the gap while Ochre continued to concentrate it at the bottom.
The sound of running footsteps came clattering down the corridor from the direction of the control room, and a few seconds later two more pairs of hands were added to the effort, as Lieutenant Green and Doctor Kurnitz added sufficient pressure to the gap between doors to widen it sufficiently to allow Colonel White and Captain Ochre to escape.
“The stairs, Captain Ochre!”
Colonel White immediately set off after him, pausing only to call over his shoulder. “Thank you, gentlemen… Lieutenant Green – issue immediate orders to everyone on Cloudbase that nobody is to use the elevators for any reason until further notice!”
“Yes, Colonel! Do you also want me to…”
He stopped talking abruptly as Colonel White vanished down the stairs after Captain Ochre.
The illumination in the stairwell had reached a critically low level by the time the two men had run down the multiple flights to the floor on which the conference suite was situated, but the illumination emanating from beyond the swing doors leading into the suite more than made up for it. Rapid and intense bursts of light now radiated from within Room 101, and through the open door they could see…
“Destiny!”
As they both ran into Room 101, Captain Scarlet was attempting to drag the Angel’s inert body away from the dais, upon which the alien jewel’s rhythmic pulses were beating with almost terrifying intensity. Scarlet looked up in consternation as they entered.
“She was lying sprawled across the master console, Colonel! She’s barely breathing – I’m just about to attempt to resuscitate...”
“Belay that, Captain Scarlet! Disconnect those power couplings: Captain Ochre and I will attend to Destiny! Captain Ochre – get Doctor Fawn up here at once!”
Ochre’s cap microphone instantly snapped into place in front of his mouth. “Doctor Fawn! We have a medical emergency in the conference suite, Room 101: attend immediately – repeat, immediately!”
Even as he spoke, the high-pitched beating whine that filled the conference suite slowly began to subside, and the brilliance of the pulsator’s bursts of light began to dim. From the far end of the room, Scarlet looked up from the junction box within which he had just severed every connection he could find, mostly by physically ripping the cables out of their sockets.
“There… that ought to put a stop to it!”
He wiped his hands on his tunic, then hurried back to join Colonel White and Captain Ochre beside Destiny’s body.
“The pulsator should now be isolated from Cloudbase’s generators, Colonel. I hope the damage to the power conduits isn’t irreparable…”
Colonel White silenced him with a wave of his hand.
“Don’t concern yourself with that, Captain. We can delay the transmission to the Mysterons if necessary, though in view of their threat to destroy Cloudbase I’d prefer to avoid doing so if possible. Hopefully Doctor Kurnitz can provide us with an assessment of the time and effort required to repair the damage: try opening a video link to the command deck, please.”
Scarlet moved to the communications console against the wall and activated it. The monitor instantly sprang into life, and he found himself staring at Captain Blue’s anxious face.
“What’s the situation down there, Paul? Everything seems to have returned to normal within the last few moments: do we have you to thank for that?”
“You do,” acknowledged Scarlet grimly, “but we’ve got problems down here now. Can you put Doctor Kurnitz on the line, Adam? We need his advice urgently.”
Colonel White glanced around the room and frowned thoughtfully.
“I note that the lighting in this suite seems to have been restored to its normal level – so I think we may infer that your act of sabotage was successful, Captain. If so, it also seems likely that the elevators are functioning once more…”
The door to Room 101 opened as he was speaking, and Doctor Fawn strode through it. Without saying a word, he immediately hurried over to Destiny’s prone body and began rapidly checking for life signs, talking as he did so.
“You’re right about the elevators, Colonel – but all my equipment in the Infirmary came back online literally as I was leaving to answer your call, so I disregarded your earlier order to avoid using them. It would seem just as well that I did.”
“How is she, Doctor?” asked Scarlet.
Doctor Fawn continued his examination of Destiny without looking up.
“I’ve no idea yet, Captain. She’s alive, but right now that’s about all I can tell you. I don’t yet know if we can safely move her – but on the assumption that we can, please arrange for a gurney to be brought here at once: I want to get her to the Infirmary as soon as possible. While we’re waiting for it to arrive, I need to know exactly what happened. I’ll be attending to her while you’re talking, but I’ll be listening. If I ask you any questions, please answer them as concisely and accurately as you can. If you don’t know the answers, just say so: leave any speculation to me. Then when you’ve finished, don’t pester me with requests for reassurance about her condition – at least until I can confirm she’s out of immediate danger.”
“Of course, Doctor.”
Scarlet stepped to one side to place the call to the Infirmary, and Colonel White took his place at Doctor Fawn’s side.
“As to what happened, I’m afraid we know very little, Doctor. Destiny was invited to join us in Room 101 in time for the transmission to the Mysterons, and obviously arrived while the room was empty. We have no idea how long she was here alone with the pulsator: it could be anything from just a few moments to the length of time since we left the room to go up to the command deck, which was just over half an hour ago.”
Fawn looked up at him. “You’re saying that the pulsator is in some way responsible for Destiny’s condition, Colonel?”
“We don’t know, Doctor,” replied Colonel White. “She was clutching it in her hand when we arrived; that it caused her to collapse is an inference.”
“It is however an inference that can, I think, safely be made,” observed Doctor Kurnitz from the communications console. “It would not be the first time that such an effect has been observed, and it would therefore appear to confirm our earlier suspicions.”
Colonel White looked at the screen in astonishment. “You knew there was a health risk, Doctor? Why was Spectrum not alerted to this?”
Kurnitz bristled, clearly irritated at the implication that he might have been negligent.
“My very first report to Spectrum contained a reference to the possible effects of handling the pulsator without the use of protective equipment, Colonel! The report stated that we had been unable to establish whether a genuine risk existed, but it recommended against direct manual manipulation as an obvious precaution. It was for just that reason that I brought with me equipment to handle it safely. I did not anticipate a situation arising in which that equipment would not be used!”
Colonel White’s expression changed perceptibly as he recalled the report to which the electrophysicist was alluding… and yes, he realised: the man was right. Spectrum had been told – but since further exploration of the apparent effect was both outside the project’s remit and clearly potentially hazardous, he’d simply approved the development of the protective tongs and given the matter no more thought. And now this…
“I stand corrected, and I apologise, Doctor. We were indeed warned – and we failed to pay due heed to that warning. I will of course take steps to ensure that this oversight is not repeated… but right now we have a more immediate concern.”
He looked down once more at Destiny’s unseeing eyes staring blankly back at him, and inwardly shivered. At the same moment, the sound of a clatter and running feet coming from outside the room heralded the arrival of the gurney that had been summoned a few moments previously, and Doctor Fawn looked up once more.
“There’s no more I can do for her here, Colonel… whereas there are any number of things I should be able to do as soon as we’ve got her down to the Infirmary. I can find no broken bones, and can see no other obvious reasons why she shouldn’t be moved – so I want that done immediately.”
“Of course, Doctor.”
With the aid of the two paramedics who had delivered the stretcher, they gently and carefully lifted Destiny’s body onto the gurney, then watched anxiously as it was wheeled away out of the room under Doctor Fawn’s direction towards the elevators. As the gurney disappeared into one of them, Colonel White turned to face the other men in the room, his expression grave but determined.
“I need hardly tell you that Destiny could not be in safer hands, gentlemen – so, difficult as I know we will all find it, I urge you to put her out of your minds for the moment. Doctor Fawn will apprise us of her condition when he has completed his examination of her – and nothing we can do or say will make him work any faster.”
The colonel paused, and looked at the pile of electronic equipment that now littered the room.
“In the meantime, we have work to do here in preparation for the transmission – starting with the reinstallation of the conduits that Captain Scarlet was obliged to sever to prevent the power drain from our generators.”
He turned to the video screen. “Doctor Kurnitz, can you work with our technicians to rig up a mechanism that will preclude a repetition of these events? As an obvious precaution, I would prefer that the pulsator should only be able to interface with our systems when we require it to do so.”
Kurnitz nodded his assent. “Of course, Colonel. It should be a simple task.”
“Thank you, Doctor. Captain Scarlet and Captain Ochre – please provide Doctor Kurnitz with every assistance in the task of making the pulsator ready once more for the transmission. Under normal circumstances I might have postponed it until further tests on the reliability of the system could be conducted, but the immediacy of the Mysteron threat to destroy Cloudbase forces our hand. It may be that if a dialogue with the Mysterons can be initiated before such an attempt is made, a disaster with potentially far-reaching implications can be averted – and I therefore want that transmission to take place as soon as possible.”
Colonel White turned on his heel and left the room.
5 - Elsewhere
Destiny Angel slowly began to regain consciousness, vaguely aware that a particularly vivid dream was slipping away from her, and that it was important for a reason she could not recall that she should prevent it from slipping beyond her reach. She’d been running away from something – of that she was certain – but what was it? Yes, of course… it was the light – she had to hide from the light! She had run away as fast as she could, until the light was no more… and then there had been a tunnel… no, not a tunnel… it was a pathway – a narrow, dimly-lit pathway… and there was a young woman walking towards her from the opposite direction. She’d wanted to walk on past, but the path was too narrow – it had not been possible for either to proceed.
There was something Destiny had wanted to tell that young woman – something important, something she was certain the young woman needed to know. And they had spoken… yes, Destiny was quite sure they had spoken, though she couldn’t recall the words. And then suddenly the young woman was no longer standing in her way, and she was walking on along the pathway once more…
The light! Of course – the reason she was in the bed sprang vividly into focus – she’d been looking into the pulsator’s light… and then something happened. A blurred and confused recollection of people running and shouting from all directions came back to her, and she suddenly realised she must have blacked out.
She became conscious of a persistent low-level vibration all about her, not unlike that of a submarine… and certainly not one generated by any piece of equipment she’d ever encountered on Cloudbase. Realising that she wasn’t anywhere familiar, she opened her eyes for the first time since awakening, finding herself in a room she knew at once she’d never seen before. The décor was reminiscent of a sparsely furnished barracks, comprising two chests of drawers, a dressing table, a wash basin and a workstation supporting several monitors. The walls and ceiling were painted a uniform light metallic blue colour, and there was a somewhat threadbare carpet on the floor – and she frowned at that, recognising that if the facility to which she’d been transferred were being maintained by any branch of the military she was familiar with, the carpets would never have been allowed to deteriorate to such an extent.
She leaned over the side of the bed and squinted down at the carpet, suddenly realising that it was also liberally scattered with long brown hairs. So… the room’s previous occupant had a pet, and the authorities hadn’t yet cleaned the place out – and now she came to think of it, the room had a faint musty odour. Not very efficient – but then, obviously her transfer to this facility hadn’t been anticipated, so perhaps excusable under the circumstances. She pulled herself back into the bed once more, and was scanning the walls within her field of vision for a shower cubicle when an inhuman chittering sound suddenly arose from the other side of the bed, conveying both pathos and terror as it steadily intensified from a whimper to a howl. Realising in mounting horror that the creature was not only still in the room, but wasn’t of any species she’d ever encountered before, Destiny took a deep breath, rolled over to identify the source of the blood-curdling noise… and screamed, long and loud.
And then she did something she’d never done before in her life. She fainted.
§
As Destiny slowly regained consciousness, she began to become aware of a pair of hands gently probing her bare ribcage. Instinctively shrinking away from the unwelcome scrutiny, she forced her eyes open with an effort, to discover that the hands belonged to a young blond man who was leaning over the bed in which she was lying. The look of obvious concern on his face reassured her at least partially, and she physically relaxed as he completed the cursory examination and straightened himself up.
“Well, I don’t think there are any bones broken – though if you tell me otherwise I’ll apologise – but I still reckon that you must have been shaken up real bad if that scream was anything to go by, Venus! I thought when I managed to steer us clear of the sphere’s influence we’d all escaped just in time. I guess maybe I was wrong…”
Another pitiful howl drowned out the remainder of the sentence, and the man threw a glance towards the source of it with a chuckle.
“You frightened Zoonie, that’s for sure!”
Destiny pointed with a shaking finger towards the chittering wild-eyed ape-like homunculus, which immediately cringed away from her in abject terror.
“What is that… that thing!”
The man looked at her in obvious bewilderment.
“What… Zoonie? He’s your pet, Venus! He’s been with us ever since our last visit to Colevio – and that was way back! Gee, I don’t know what that sphere’s done to you, but whatever it is, it’s serious! Look, the poor little guy’s obviously scared out of his wits: can’t you smile at him for a moment – you know, just so he can see everything’s gonna be okay?”
Having recovered a little of her composure – and persuaded that she wasn’t in imminent danger of being assaulted by it – Destiny took a deep breath and gave it a wan smile. The creature’s frantic chittering slowly died away, and it peered back at her suspiciously for a few seconds before retreating into one of the corners of the room, from where it continued to regard her warily through baleful eyes. The young man watched the performance in silence, then shook his head with a frown.
“Well… he knows something’s not right, that’s for sure! Oh well, since there’s no way he’s gonna tell us what’s going on, I guess we’ll have to wait till we get back to Space City before we can get you checked over! Meantime, the mystery of the disappearing freighters comes first – so it looks like you’ll just have to cope as best you can till then, Venus.”
“Why do you keep…” began Destiny, as there was a sharp tap on the door. The man disregarded her unfinished question and rose from the bed.
“Come in, Matt! Emergency’s over.”
Now fully conscious and wide awake, Destiny blinked in irritation at the young man’s thoughtlessness in assuming she had no objection to yet another man entering her room while she was still lying on the bed in a state of partial undress. Recognising however that she was still feeling extremely unsure of herself, she decided to say nothing – at least until she understood the situation better. The door slid open and an older man, kitted out in the same uniform as the first and wearing thick-lensed spectacles, entered the room.
“I got your message, Steve – how’s our patient now?”
“She’s doing just fine, Matt. I guess it must have been just a bad dream, eh, Venus?”
Destiny opened her mouth to speak, but with her brain working frantically to make sense of the inexplicable situation she found herself in, for a few seconds no words came out. She looked at the new arrival, then turned back to the first man again. They both appeared to be friendly enough – at least at the moment – and notwithstanding the mystery of the disappearing freighters about which she knew nothing at all, they clearly had no suspicions that the woman they were talking to wasn’t the woman they thought they were talking to. Yes… probably best to keep it that way – at least until she was in a better state to defend herself, should the need arise.
She nodded slowly. “Yes, I suppose so…”
An insane suspicion began to coalesce as she replayed the incomprehensible sequence of events in her mind. She twisted her head on the pillow, critically inspected one of her tresses that now lay untidily scattered over it. She then pulled her left hand out from underneath the bedspread, peered at it uncertainly, and then repeated the exercise with her right, frowning ever more deeply as she did so.
“Is there a mirror in here… Steve?”
“Sure, Venus – it’s on the dresser. Say, why don’t we just leave you to get up? I guess you’ll be wanting to comb that lovely blonde hair of yours, eh?”
Destiny gave him a look that he couldn’t quite interpret, but from which he concluded that he’d somehow managed to say the wrong thing. He stepped away from the bed and gestured towards the whimpering creature that was still cowering in the corner of the room.
“We’d best take Zoonie with us, Matt – he’s been acting real strange ever since Venus woke up from that trance! I guess he’s just kinda spooked right now, but I daresay he’ll calm down when she’s herself again.”
When she’s herself again… The insane suspicion had been steadily solidifying within the last few moments, and Destiny could feel an icy numbness inexorably taking hold of her limbs as the two men made their way to the door. As it opened, Zoonie frantically launched himself through it, almost knocking them down in his haste to get out of the room, then shambled off noisily down the corridor, alternately whining and howling pitifully as he did so.
As soon as the door slid shut behind them, Destiny threw the bedclothes aside and swung her legs off the bunk. Stepping over to the dressing table, she bit her lip, and then after having taken a long deep breath, she sat down in front of the mirror.
She was strangely unsurprised to have her worst fears confirmed… for the face looking back at her was indeed not her own. But having already prepared herself for something perhaps even more terrible, she was gratified to recognise that she didn’t despair at the shocking discovery, for it was a pretty face that she saw before her – a gentle face, but with more than a hint of strong character within its delicate features. It was the face of a woman who would love deeply, and would expect to be loved deeply in return. She found herself inspecting her reflection critically. Yes, there was passion in those eyes…
What she had not prepared herself for was the shock of recognition – for in that first instant of looking into the mirror, she was uncomfortably aware that although it wasn’t the face of anybody she knew, she’d nevertheless seen that face before… and very recently, too. Perhaps ten seconds had passed before she realised with a start where she’d seen it before – and when she did, she turned away from the mirror in confusion and collapsed back onto the bed, the blood drained from her features, and her hands shaking… for the face she had just been so critically inspecting in the mirror was the face of the young woman she had met in her dream.
6 - In Our Reality
Neither as a child nor as an adult had Paul Metcalfe ever attempted to shift the blame for an error for which he considered himself responsible onto anyone else, and he didn’t do so now.
“It’s my fault, Colonel. I was the last to leave the conference suite, and I did so without ensuring that the system had been shut down.”
Colonel White shook his head slowly.
“No, Captain Scarlet… the fault is mine, and mine alone. This is the first time the pulsator has been connected to the communications rig on Cloudbase. Although I recall reading Doctor Kurnitz’s report at the time, the speculative nature of his conclusions regarding handling the pulsator caused me to overlook their potential consequences should they subsequently prove to be well-founded. Neither you nor Captain Ochre had been told that the system should have been shut down before the conference suite was vacated, and Doctor Kurnitz obviously didn’t realise that you were both unaware of it. Destiny Angel wasn’t informed that we had returned to the command deck before she entered the conference suite alone; nor did she know that the pulsator had been left there in a potentially dangerous state.”
The two men turned the corner of the corridor leading into the medical wing’s reception area. The colonel marched over to the door leading into the Infirmary and tapped smartly on it twice, in flagrant disregard of the official admission procedure: the only outward indication of the gravity with which he viewed the incident, and one that was not lost on Scarlet as Colonel White turned to face him while they waited.
“This, Captain, is an example of a multiple failure of assigned responsibilities resulting in a serious casualty that would – had the appropriate procedures been in place – have been totally avoidable. Ensuring that such a situation never occurs aboard this base is my responsibility. You need not blame yourself… however, all of us must learn from these mistakes, and take whatever steps are necessary to prevent their recurrence.”
The door slid aside, and Doctor Fawn rose from his desk to greet them, gesturing with his hand for them to follow him into the surgery.
“Come in, gentlemen… she’s through here. As with every other time in my experience that the Mysterons have had anything to do with it, absolutely nothing is certain – but I think she’s going to make a full recovery. She has however been severely shaken up by the experience, and I’d therefore ask you to keep the duration of this visit to a minimum. When she first regained consciousness she was unable to recall her codename – or even for that matter her real one – and she’s still both exceptionally disorientated and confused, so please don’t to press her too hard for answers to the questions I’m sure you’re anxious to ask her.”
Colonel White nodded. “Understood, Doctor. We’ll be brief.”
Doctor Fawn led them through the surgery into a small examination room at the back of it, in which the patient lay on a cantilevered table. Her uniform lay folded neatly on a chair in the corner of the room, and she was dressed in a regulation operating gown.
“Thank God you’re safe, Destiny… it looks like Captain Scarlet got to you just in time. If he’d been a few moments later, it might have been a different story.”
The patient peered back at him blankly, frowning with obvious incomprehension.
She twisted herself around in the bed to face the colonel, and looked up at him anxiously.
“Colonel… White? Your base doctor… he believes I’m suffering from the after-effects of electrically induced convulsions… he’s got it wrong… you must prevent him from injecting me with any …”
Scarlet grinned. “Don’t you worry about your treatment, Destiny! Doctor Fawn knows what he’s doing…”
The patient shook her head violently. “No… he’s got it wrong! The sphere has almost certainly induced dissociative amnesia – the stimulants he’s preparing could destabilise the neural pathways to my central cortex…”
Relieved that she was not only fully conscious but obviously firing on all cylinders once more, Scarlet raised his finger to his lips with a conspiratorial grin.
“I wouldn’t let him hear you talking like that if I were you, Destiny! He hates people who look up their own symptoms online before turning up for their check-ups.”
Doctor Fawn joined them at the patient’s bedside, and looked down at her thoughtfully.
“Don’t concern yourself, Destiny – I shan’t be prescribing anything for you at all until I’m a lot more confident regarding the underlying cause of your symptoms. Unfortunately, the luxury of confidence is something of a rarity when the Mysterons have their fingers in the pie – as Captain Scarlet here is only too aware.”
The patient visibly relaxed, albeit with an obvious effort, but the men could see the tension returning once more as she looked at each of the three men’s uniforms in turn, silently mouthing a single word to herself in each case as she did so.
“Does everyone on this base have a name that is a colour, Doctor?”
Doctor Fawn’s thoughtful expression deepened. “Colonel White… might I have a word?”
“Of course, Doctor.”
The doctor led him away from the bed and spoke quietly to him.
“Amnesia is only to be expected in cases such as these, Colonel – but the involvement of the Mysterons only complicates an ailment that is itself far less well understood than the medical fraternity would have everyone believe. I suspect what she will need once I release her from observation here is a reintroduction to those facets of her life aboard Cloudbase that have temporarily been blocked from her memory by the trauma she has undergone. Familiarity is a great healer in such circumstances.”
He turned his attention back to the patient, his voice adopting the same quiet, matter-of-fact tone that he’d just used to explain his patient’s condition to Spectrum’s C-in-C.
“Only the senior officers have code names, Destiny. And the Angels, of course – which reminds me, all four have put in requests to come and visit you as soon as I permit it. They’ve asked me to let you know they’re thinking about you, and that they’re looking forward to you returning to duty just as soon as you’re fully recovered.”
The patient nodded slowly. “I am an angel, yes…”
She looked at Colonel White speculatively, obviously steeling herself to ask a question – which when it came caused all three men to stare at her in astonishment.
“Am I in Heaven, Colonel?”
Colonel White broke the stunned silence with a low chuckle. “Well, considering the demonic carnage the Mysterons are planning to unleash upon this base within the next few hours, Destiny, perhaps right now while you’re in here out of harm’s way and subject to the good doctor’s ministrations, you are in a heaven of sorts – though probably more in the way of a day-trip than a prolonged stay!”
The upbeat expression faded slightly. “However, I recommend you don’t spend too much time practising the harp while you’re convalescing, Destiny: if the Mysterons choose not to listen to what we have to say to them very shortly, we’re far more likely to have need of your aerial combat skills before the day is through. On which point, I’d like a few quick words with Doctor Fawn, if you’ll excuse us…”
He motioned for the doctor to join him a few steps away from the bed, then lowered his voice.
“It goes without saying that I need her back on duty as soon as she’s been certified as fully recovered from her ordeal, Doctor. Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t feel it necessary to state this – but unfortunately these are not normal circumstances. The base is at present under threat of imminent destruction, and we may well have to call upon every man and woman on board to defend it.”
“I understand that, Colonel,” replied Fawn evenly. “I’m also very much aware from previous experience that she’ll almost certainly insist upon being discharged long before I consider it wise! I therefore have a suggestion, which might enable us to reconcile my recommendations concerning her speedy recovery with the requirements of the current situation. Why don’t we invite Destiny to spend some time later today on one of the Angels’ aerial combat simulators?”
Colonel White looked at him questioningly. “It’s certainly an unusual prescription, Doctor… are you sure it’s a good idea?”
“Under normal circumstances I’d have prescribed a period of complete rest for her,” acknowledged Doctor Fawn, “but as you’ve just observed yourself, Colonel, these are not normal circumstances – and I’m sufficiently familiar with Destiny’s psychological profile to know that were I to impose such a regime upon her right now, she’d most likely be champing at the bit within the hour. This way she’ll be in familiar surroundings and performing familiar tasks which – although certainly more stressful than I’d normally recommend – may serve to aid her recovery in ways that will enable her to return to her role as a fighter pilot in short order should the need arise. Her psychological state would of course have to be monitored continuously, and the exercise terminated immediately in the event of any deterioration in her condition… but then of course, those simulators are already fully equipped with all the technology needed to conduct such an exercise. I contributed some suggestions when the software was being assembled – and given the potential value of the data so obtained, I’d welcome the opportunity to oversee the exercise myself, if you approve.”
Colonel White hesitated briefly, then nodded. “I’ll put the proposal to her, Doctor, although obviously I shan’t insist. She can of course decline if she doesn’t feel up to it – but somehow I don’t think she will. Not if she’s the Destiny Angel we know…”
§
Symphony looked on apprehensively as her friend peered at the instrumentation in front of her for almost five seconds before entering, albeit with painstaking deliberation, the correct sequence.
“That experience with the pulsator up there really has hit you hard, hasn’t it! But I can see it’s beginning to come back: even if we stopped going through the basics now, you’d obviously be able to get it airborne… and of course the actual flying is a cinch. If anything, it’s the missile delivery sequencing that’s going to give you trouble, I reckon: the onboard targeting computers get better with every upgrade, but there’s a limit to what they can take off your hands.”
Venus nodded, unsurprised. “It’s not so different from a spaceship – in fact, it’s easier in some ways. The gravitational forces aren’t acting in any direction but vertically, so there’s no compensation needed for multiple extra-terrestrial planetary masses…”
Symphony laughed. “Hey – you never told me you’d managed to get the Zero-X emulator up and running at last! I’ve been trying to work out how to detach the forward lifting gear from the ship’s main body for weeks… the online manual doesn’t cover it, and the software developer’s notes are incomprehensible! When did you do that, Destiny?”
“Oh… some time ago,” replied her companion vaguely, after a moment’s pause. “I can’t remember exactly…”
A sudden burst of crackling over her earpieces interrupted the conversation, and Venus glanced across the room at the master console, where Doctor Fawn had just finished keying in a sequence of simulated manoeuvres for her to work through, and was evidently now establishing the comms links. As she watched, he bent down over the console and began speaking into a microphone on top of it. At the same instant, his voice replaced the crackles over her headphones.
“I’m about to establish a direct link between the simulator’s coordination sensors and the receptors in your cerebral cortex that record fluctuations in your skin temperature, Destiny: you’ll be aware of a slight sensation of disorientation for a few seconds while the system recalibrates itself to align with your biorhythms cycle. It’s perfectly normal, and nothing to be alarmed about.”
“Yes, Doctor – I know,” replied Venus patiently. “If you just tell me when the calibration is complete, I’ll know how long I’ve got to finish my drink before we’re ready to start.”
Symphony’s eyes flickered over the display showing the status of the feeds linking her friend’s sensory monitors to the bank of data loggers, and she frowned.
“How are you feeling, Destiny? Kind-of nervous, I guess. Every time I sign up for training on this thingamy-jig, I’m more worried about the monitoring equipment blowing up than I am about the exercise itself!”
Venus shrugged. “I’m not worried about it, Symphony! There’s nothing to be worried about – the voltages involved in taking these readings wouldn’t disorientate a lazoon, let alone a human – but I am concerned about the exercise itself. Please don’t tell him, but the only reason I agreed to undergo this test is that I wanted to prevent Doctor Fawn from prescribing what I believe to be an inappropriate and potentially dangerous treatment – because this way he’ll have a lot more data to examine before it becomes an issue. Although I can work out what most of the controls do, they are not in any way familiar to me.”
“Oh, I guess that’s just the amnesia,” retorted Symphony dismissively. “It’ll all come back to you in no time at all: Doctor Fawn told me once that most people who go into our line of work have an innate affinity with mechanical equipment that’s almost magical. Apparently we can sit in anything from the driving seat of a hillbilly’s fifty-year-old jalopy to the cockpit of a Fireflash, and instinctively we’ll just know not only how to make it work, but also how to take it to pieces and put it back together again.”
Venus grinned. “And that is your experience also, Symphony?”
Symphony pulled a face. “I told him that as far as I was concerned, he was talking bullshit – because he obviously hadn’t read my file! The first time I tried to drive an SPV I crashed it into a tree less than a minute after I got it onto the road – which was kind-of unfortunate because it gave Captain Black the chance to skedaddle off in the other direction while Paul and Adam were pulling me out of the wreckage. Jeez, that was embarrassing!”
She paused thoughtfully for a moment, remembering the incident and its aftermath. “Having said that, maybe there is something in what he said. I enrolled for the SPV maintenance and manoeuvring course immediately afterwards, and was awarded my Expert Rating Certificate within three weeks: that’s a week faster than it took Adam. I remind him about that whenever he forgets my birthday.”
The thoughtful expression grew a fraction of a shade deeper. “Destiny… what’s a lazoon?”
The audio channels in her head set crackled into life, and Venus held up a hand to silence her friend while Doctor Fawn addressed her over the communicator. “Destiny – we’re reading you strength ten on all channels, and are ready to start the exercise. Lose the coffee cup and strap yourself in, will you?”
“Later, Symphony! Quickly – which one’s the fuel injection regulator?”
“There isn’t one… it’s automated, remember? Just don’t forget to manually increase your forward velocity by between five and ten percent when initiating a downward-oriented missile strike, otherwise you’re wasting fuel unnecessarily – then pull out of the dive one second earlier than indicated by the onboard computer’s countdown. Don’t risk leaving it longer than that… you could hit turbulence that’s been swept upwards by the blast. The inertial dampeners are good, but they’re not perfect – so try not to get it wrong!”
Venus gave her a thumbs-up sign, flicked the switch to seal the cockpit, adjusted her face mike a fraction to bring it closer to her lips, then rested her hand on the controls. “Ready when you are, Doctor!”
“We’re going to start with a conventional Angel launch from Cloudbase’s flight deck, Destiny. You’ll experience a forward thrust in excess of five-G as the trebuchet propels your plane off Cloudbase, so you’ll need to have regained full attitude and manoeuvring control within five seconds of clearing the runway.”
“A-OK!”
A sound resembling a stifled laugh crackled over her headphones. “That should be either ‘Spectrum is Green’ or ‘SIG’, Destiny – but I’m not going to mark you down for that! Here we go…”
Venus waited breathlessly as the whine of the jets rapidly rose in pitch – and then an instant later found herself momentarily gasping for breath as her body was thrown backwards into her seat as the simulated jet was hurled forward with the force of a whirlwind. Simultaneously, the view out of the front of the cockpit changed within the space of a single second from displaying an airborne runway to empty sky, and she frantically juggled with the controls to restore the plane to horizontal flight as it began to edge into a nosedive. After what seemed like an eternity – but what she herself recognised was in reality no more than five seconds – the plane began to level out once more, and she consciously relaxed as she completed the actions required to stabilise it. Her headphones crackled into life again, and she closed her eyes briefly to concentrate.
“Good, Destiny – that’s good! I thought maybe you were going to lose it just then, but you brought her nose up just in time… a little quicker on the rear elevator controls, eh? Now – I’d like you to bring her round in a wide circle of radius twenty kilometres, then fly her directly beneath Cloudbase with a vertical separation of five hundred metres.”
Venus’s left hand sought out the buttons to adjust the trim by a fraction. Gently pulling back on the throttle, she was immediately conscious of the simulator’s evident ability to emulate the physical sensation of speed reduction within her own body via the connections to her headset, and she permitted herself a faint smile. Nice touch – Steve would be impressed... Shaking her head to force herself to concentrate on the problem in hand, she turned her attention once more to the instrument panel.
Maintain flight level… now bring her round onto a bearing of zero-four-two… increase port wing thrust by three per cent… no, make that three point five…
The shadows within the simulated cockpit shifted subtly, and the clouds on the display in front of her drifted slowly away to the left as the aircraft started its turn. A moment later an elongated structure resembling an airborne aircraft carrier began to move into view on the far right of the display. Tearing her eyes away from the instrument panel for a second to inspect it critically, she noted the elevated control tower, the anti-gravity generators and stabilizing jets, the helicopter landing pad and – most obviously – the flight deck, at the end of which she could just discern the outlines of a pair of landing ramps incorporated into the deck, both currently inactive.
So… that’s Cloudbase, is it? Okay… so the hover-combine turbofans must be located… yes, that’s right… shouldn’t need to make allowance for the downdraft… what was it – a vertical separation of five hundred metres? I reckon he’s being over-cautious with that, but I guess we’d best not scare him with anything closer…
She nosed the plane into a graceful arc that sent it hurtling below the carrier’s flight deck, wincing at the barely perceptible shudder as it flashed through the deck’s shadow. Okay, so the turbofans were a shade more powerful than expected… In the time taken for her to dismiss the minor miscalculation with a mental shrug, Cloudbase had been transformed into a rapidly shrinking dark grey structure in her rear video monitor, and the jet was rising into an extensive layer of white cloud directly in its path ahead. Lifting the nose even further upward, she sent the plane shrieking through the cloud at a steep angle, then levelled it off once more as soon as the obstacle was cleared, to reveal a magnificent panorama of simulated clouds scurrying along beneath her, and a deep blue empty sky above.
She grinned mischievously to herself. This is easy! Let’s have some fun… now, where did she say the primary aileron adjustment controls were located? Ah, yes…
She felt the simulated port wing dipping, and the cockpit view began to tilt as she sent the plane hurtling back into the bank of clouds in a smooth wide arc. By the time she’d cut the plane’s altitude sufficiently to penetrate the cloud layer once more, the image of Cloudbase had reappeared on her forward scanner, and was slowly but surely increasing in size as she watched. She was just contemplating another circuit to give herself the opportunity of taking a closer look at the infrastructure when her headset crackled into life once more.
“Okay, Destiny – recess is over: it’s time to get back in class! Return to Cloudbase immediately and bring her down on Ramp Two, please.”
Land it? Venus blinked in horror. Nom de Dieu!... how in the name of everything holy do I do that? No… no, one moment… calm down, Venus – it’s an automated procedure, isn’t it. This thing has vertical jets just like Fireball: all I need to do is bring it to a standstill in mid-air, and then gently lower it until the automatic guidance systems cut in. All I’ve got to do is keep my head…
Frantically alternating between the retro-rockets and the stabilizers to keep the plane on an even keel, she managed to use what little remained of its forward motion to carry it slowly over the runway towards the two landing platforms. Further desperate juggling of the vertical thrusters and the stabilizers ultimately resulted in the plane being brought to a hovering position directly above the platform, and breathing a heartfelt sigh of relief, she reached forward to cut the power…
Back in the control room, Symphony seized one of the arms of Doctor Fawn’s chair at the monitoring console and gave it a violent shove, sending the chair spinning away across the room while she snatched up the microphone and began shouting into it.
“Destiny! You’ve forgotten the platform lifts to connect with your fore and aft electromagnets… there’s not enough room for it to rise into position beneath your undercarriage! You need to raise the pitch of your forward stabilisers to thirty-five degrees to compensate – and FAST!”
A torrent of colourful Gallic invective burst out of the loudspeaker, and Symphony helplessly watched the monitor displaying the pilot’s view as the cantilevered landing platform began to rise out of the flight deck to meet the descending plane. At the very last second, a deafening roar assailed her ears, and the image began to shake violently as the simulated view of the flight deck began to sink towards the bottom of the monitor, to be replaced a few seconds later by a rapidly rotating view of the clouds.
“Sorry, Symphony! I couldn’t find the stabiliser adjustment controls, so I just blasted away from the deck instead! Coming around for another run…”
“You’re climbing almost vertically, Destiny! You’ve got to level out at once or you’ll…”
“Ne panique pas- je peux gérer ça! I know! Shut up and let me concentrate, will you! Non, attends une minute… where’s the emergency retro-thruster control… Ne répond pas - je l’ai trouvé! Forget it!”
Symphony looked on in horror as the clouds on the monitor began to fall downwards, indicating that the aircraft was performing a vertical loop-the-loop directly above the flight desk. A few seconds later Cloudbase reappeared on the display, increasing in size with terrifying speed as the jet bore down on it once more. Just as a collision seemed inevitable, the jet veered into a dive under the flight deck with such gut-wrenching suddenness that Symphony could feel her own innards rising towards her mouth as she watched.
Deliberately holding her breath in a desperate attempt to stifle the impulse to throw up, Symphony stared at the monitor in fascinated disbelief as her friend’s plane tilted violently to one side, before traversing a tight semi-circular arc around Cloudbase to bring it back to a hovering position directly above the landing platform once more. Only when it finally began to drop slowly downwards at an ever-increasing angle to match the elevation of the raised platform beneath it did Symphony allow herself to exhale, becoming aware for the first time as she did so of the deep red marks in the palms of her hands where she’d dug in her fingernails.
Wiping away a bead of sweat from her brow, Symphony hurried over to the simulator and helped her friend to remove the electronic paraphernalia from her helmet and then to extricate herself from the cockpit. Leading her over to a quiet corner of the lab where they could talk in private, she noted with astonishment that Destiny didn’t appear to be even remotely fazed by the episode.
“There… what do you think, Symphony? How did I do?”
Symphony stared at her for a full second before trusting herself to reply.
“Destiny Angel – that’s no way to fly an interceptor, and you know it! If you treated a real aircraft like that, it would break up in mid-air!”
“Maybe,” replied Venus with an expressive shrug, “but then, this simulator isn’t a real aircraft, is it? And anyway, if the software can’t handle a scenario like that, isn’t it about time the developers wrote an upgrade?”
She glanced across at the control console, where Doctor Fawn was examining the readouts with obvious perplexity, and lowered her voice conspiratorially.
“But much more to the point, I think Doctor Fawn over there is going to be kept busy analysing my encephalographic profile for rather a long time! At least, I hope so – because that will mean I won’t need to worry about being forced to submit to the wrong treatment for at least a few more hours! And besides…”
Venus grinned at her new friend sheepishly. “I haven’t had this much fun in years!”
7 - Elsewhere
“Keep your head, Juliette… keep your head – and think... Maybe you’ve died or maybe you haven’t, but regardless of whether or not there’s an afterlife, there’s no way this can be it! That path I was walking along in the darkness… where was it leading? Was it supposed to have taken me to the afterlife? Would I have got there if that other woman hadn’t been in my way? Who was she? No, no… wait… I already know who she was – she was the woman in whose body I’ve now been reborn… and her name’s Venus. Does that mean she’s a goddess? Perhaps she’s immortal… does that mean I’m immortal now? No, that doesn’t make sense… those two men are just ordinary guys, and they’re obviously not worshipping me. No, they’re behaving as if I’m just another member of the team… a team that’s engaged in a mission of some kind right now – a mission that was interrupted just before I arrived…”
Destiny swung around, searching the room intently for anything even remotely resembling a source of information – a newspaper, a book, a communicator, a computer terminal… anything – muttering furiously to herself as she did so.
“I’ve got to find out who I am – and I’ve got to find out fast! Those two men out there think I’ve just been suffering from nothing more serious than a dizzy spell, and that I’ll be back to normal again after I’ve walked around a little – but I won’t. I’m still going to be every bit as disorientated as I am right now… and then everything starts to get difficult. They’ll think I’ve lost my mind… they’ll get me examined by a psychiatrist – or more likely a team of psychiatrists… I could end up being sectioned – or worse – with absolutely no chance of sorting this mess out… ah!”
She reached into the top drawer of the dressing table and extracted a paperback with the title ‘Lazoons – Their Care and Welfare’ emblazoned on its front cover in large yellow letters. She was about to reach into the drawer a second time to continue the search for something more pertinent to her present predicament when she stopped, frowning at a recent memory. What had Steve called that anthropomorphic monstrosity hiding behind the bed when she recovered consciousness?
She sat down on the bed and flicked through the pages rapidly, stopping at a block of photographs in the middle of the publication that confirmed her suspicion: yes… the creature was indeed a lazoon. So… what was a lazoon? The product of a genetic experiment that had gone badly wrong? No, that couldn’t be it – whatever they were, they’d clearly attained the status of pets – and there were obviously enough of them in circulation to warrant the publication of a book detailing how to look after them. Temporarily putting her search for useful material on one side, she turned to the first chapter, and started to read – an exercise that lasted no more than the ten seconds it took for her to encounter the word “Colevio”.
Destiny blinked several times at the discovery. Yes… that was the name Steve had used when he referred to the creature earlier: he’d said it came from Colevio. What he hadn’t made clear was that Colevio was a planet – and suddenly everything became a lot murkier… because she was quite certain there was no planet of that name in the Solar System. Could the paperback be a work of science fiction? No, that didn’t make sense, for the lazoon was patently real. Could Colevio be a planet outside the Solar System? Well… if it was, then with nothing but empty space between Sol and Alpha Centauri, it would need to be one that was at least four light years from Earth…
Destiny put the book down and stared up at the roof of the compartment. It was no good: she needed more… much more. She turned her attention to the computer terminal in the corner of the room, got up from the bed and stepped over to it. Though the keyboard’s layout was unfamiliar to her, it took her less than twenty seconds to work out how to power it up, after which she found herself presented with what appeared to be a conventional log-on screen requiring a username and a password. The username she might at least make an intelligent guess at, but the password was a problem: it was too much to hope for that Venus might have written it down somewhere, and in any case, she had no idea where to look. She sighed, and mentally attempting to prepare herself for more shocks, headed for the door.
Suddenly she stopped in her tracks, with sweat breaking on her forehead, and her skin turning clammy, as a simple question – and the inescapable answer to it – struck her with the force of a thunderbolt.
“If I’m here… in Venus’s body… then where’s Venus now?”
The answer seemed so obvious to her that she didn’t feel it necessary – or even productive – to waste time racking her brain in a search for any credible alternatives.
She’ll want to get back here again. She’ll most likely be trying to get back here again… so what will she do? That’s easy: she’ll do what I would do. She’ll try to work out how she became trapped in my body on Cloudbase, then she’ll try to find out if the process can somehow be reversed. And while she’s doing that, I’ve got to do the same thing here. But where is here? I need to find out who she is, and what happened to her before I took her place…
Destiny stepped cautiously out of the cabin, and looked up and down the corridor outside, noting the metallic curved wall and arched roof that extended in both directions. To the left, the passageway ended abruptly in a blank wall after just two more doors, whereas to the right it stretched away into the distance, curving very slightly as it did so. She turned to the right and began walking past a succession of doors, always on the same side of the corridor, some with transparent panels through which she could see banks of equipment. Opposite several of the doors she noticed black plastic sheets attached to the metallic wall for no apparent reason, but found her attention drawn to the structure onto which they’d been stuck: a large rectangular grid of struts was clearly discernible within the wall, suggesting that it had been assembled in sections which had been subsequently welded together.
The faint vibration that she’d sensed earlier was stronger now, and there was also a very slight sensation of movement, although she was unsure of the direction. She glanced down at the floor, noting that there was no longer any carpet to stifle the vibrations, and nodded thoughtfully as she weighed up the implications of what she’d already learned.
It’s a vessel… a long, large vessel – clearly technologically advanced, lacking unnecessary décor, not luxurious enough to be part of a commercial venture, so probably military – and we’re being transported inside it. We’re in motion, so we’re on our way somewhere. I’m not conscious of any inertial forces, and I haven’t sensed any since regaining consciousness – so for at least for that long we’ve probably been travelling pretty much in a straight line at a constant velocity. It’s too large for either a submarine or any aircraft I’ve ever seen, with the obvious exception of Cloudbase itself. It could be a ship, or it might just possibly be…
The answer came to her in that moment, but something in the sheer impossibility of her situation instinctively made her shy away from acknowledging it, at least until she had undeniable proof. She continued her walk, instinctively reviewing her reactions to everything she saw in the light of the tentative conclusion she’d drawn regarding the nature of the vessel.
Several more minutes had passed before she came across an area clearly set aside for socializing – indeed, the sign on the door proclaimed it to be ‘The Lounge’. She slipped inside and looked around, disdainfully noting several empty or partially empty coffee cups adorning an assortment of tables that were scattered about the room. A woman wouldn’t stand for this mess, she thought vaguely, before it suddenly occurred to her that in view of her own recent incapacitation, she – or at least her counterpart – might actually be that woman. On which subject… were there any other women on board this craft? Except for the two men she’d already met, she hadn’t seen anyone else at all since leaving her cabin – so was it possible that there was no-one else? Increasing her pace, she walked past at least a dozen more uninhabited rooms before finding her path blocked by a bulkhead. In the middle of that bulkhead was a double-panelled sliding door… and immediately to the left of it, a control panel consisting of just two clearly-labelled buttons: one to open the door, and the other to close it.
Oh well… if it is a spaceship, there’s no way I can do something catastrophic by pressing a button to open a door – because if it were possible, then obviously I’d be prevented from doing so…
Nevertheless, she hesitated for a few more seconds before reaching out to activate the control – whereupon the two panels instantly parted to allow her to pass through into the next section of the vessel. Although now mentally prepared for whatever sight might await her as she did so, she nevertheless caught her breath as she stepped into what was obviously the ship’s command module.
The entire forward section of the nosecone from the deck upwards was transparent, affording a breathtaking view of the expanse of space forward of the ship as it sped through the cosmos. Destiny stood entranced at the back of the cabin for several seconds, taking in the ever-expanding view of the interstellar scenery – for even as she watched, Steve and Matt were both busily clearing a section of flexible black plastic sheets from one of the transparent sections of the viewing area. Despite the opening of the doors having been clearly audible, neither man turned as she entered, reinforcing her earlier speculation that there was nobody else aboard – save perhaps for the strange ape-like creature that had so terrified her earlier. She noted with relief that it wasn’t in the cabin with them, and tentatively concluded that it was probably locked up somewhere safe. It was a second or two before Steve looked round to address her directly, which he did with an upbeat smile.
“Hey, Venus – you’re looking great! No after-effects? Guess it must have been a bad dream after all, then. Well… it looks like the sphere’s gone on ahead. I guess whoever’s controlling it feels so confident we’re completely under its control that we’ll follow its orders until we reach our destination – so they’re concentrating on the tanker instead of us. We reckon we can risk looking out of the window for a little while… but we’ll need to be ready to put pack the coverings again when we get close to the end of the journey, because it’ll be waiting for us there. Robert can warn us in good time.”
He turned to face a bulky pile of interconnected translucent components that had been installed in the seat behind which Destiny had been standing… and spoke to it.
“Robert! Confirm that we’re still on that heading specified by the sphere, then estimate remaining time to destination!”
Destiny almost jumped out of her skin as what she suddenly realised was a robot stirred in its seat, and began to intone in a droning monotone:
“Heading confirmed… five-one-seven-zero-red. Heading confirmed… five-one-seven-zero-red. Estimated time to destination five hours and forty-three minutes... Estimated time to destination…”
“Stop, Robert! Replay original recording containing directions from the sphere.”
The droning monotone was immediately replaced by the recording of the sibilant voice, as Robert complied with its new instruction.
“Come to me… it is peaceful here…it is easier to obey than resist… relax… fly five-one-seven-zero-red… it is pleasant not to have to think… relax… you are drifting… gently… it is so easy to obey… forget your cares…”
With a shock, Destiny recognised the words to be those that had been drawing her to the pulsator on Cloudbase… they were the last words she could recall emanating from it before she blacked out! Maybe I’ve just identified a common point of reference between where I was then and where I am now, she thought. I need to find out more about what’s going on here… and what better place to start than the ship’s information system?
She turned to Steve. “This is a recording of what the… the object out there… the ‘sphere’, you called it… said?”
He grinned at her infectiously, and she instinctively grinned back. “Yeah, it does sound kind of juvenile, I guess – but the last time you heard that voice, Venus, it knocked you out cold! I wasn’t even sure you were breathing when we carried you back to your quarters. I was real worried we’d lost you.”
Don’t be so sure you haven’t, thought Destiny. Aloud, she said, “Oh… that reminds me, Steve… the computer terminal in my quarters: I’ve forgotten my password!”
Matt glanced round at her from the front of the nosecone. “No problem, Venus – I’ll issue you with a new one. There was nothing showing on the radmascope a few moments ago, so I guess we’ve got a little time before that sphere shows up again. Give me just a moment…”
She accompanied him to the console adjacent to his seat, and watched carefully as he logged himself onto the system, noting the exact format of his user ID as he typed in his first name at the end of a short string that looked as if it might identify the ship in which they were travelling, then dutifully turned away while he entered his own password, and idly cast her eyes round the cabin while he dealt with her request. A camera caught her eye directly above the interconnecting door, and she found herself wondering whether there were more of them distributed about the ship, and whether the images they were recording could be viewed from the terminal in her quarters. It was likely, she reasoned – in which case she might be able to give herself a virtual tour of the ship later.
“There you go, Venus!” Matt handed her a small slip of paper upon which was written a short string of random characters and digits. “You’ll need to change it the first time you use it.”
Destiny pocketed the paper. “Thank you, Professor – I’ll do it right away.”
Matt turned to Steve. “Were you saying earlier that Robert’s due for a check-up, Steve? Seems like it’s been only a few days since I gave him his last one.”
“You must have done a good job last time, Matt – I reckon it’s been over two months now – but regulations say that if we’re using him as a co-pilot, he’s got to be given a thorough once-over every four weeks.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” replied Professor Matic with a sigh. “Oh well – we won’t be needing him for a few hours, and I suppose I can use the time to fine-tune him up a little. We’ve no idea what we’re going to find at the end of this interplanetary paper chase, so I guess it makes sense to ensure he’s in tip-top condition when we get there.”
He turned to the robot and addressed it in the same reassuring tone of voice that Steve had heard Venus employ on any number of previous occasions when preparing him for his check-ups.
“Robert – I’m going to shut you down for a while. Don’t you worry about a thing, now… this ain’t gonna hurt a bit…”
He reached into the robot’s midriff and extracted a small blue rectangular panel from deep inside. The robot’s array of internal illuminations instantly went out, and it slumped in its seat.
“Okay, Steve – that’s me fully occupied for the next two or three hours!”
“I guess that makes two of us, then,” replied Steve. “While Robert’s offline, I want to double-check our present trajectory doesn’t take us near any potentially fatal obstacles. Also I want to make sure we’ve got instant access to the boosters if we need them: we might just need to get out of wherever it is we’re going in a hurry.”
He twisted his head over his shoulder. “You may as well go back to your quarters until we get there, Venus… and while you’re about it, you’d best pick up Zoonie on the way: I shut him in that empty cabin next to yours earlier – and that was ages ago, so he must be getting hungry by now. I’d feed him myself, but the men around here have got work to do. Guess after that you’ll be able to catch up on a little beauty sleep, eh?”
Rampant sexism appears to be endemic in this insane alternate Universe – or is it just him? Destiny regarded the pair of them impassively while she attempted to formulate what she hoped would be an appropriate reply in the strangely quaint vernacular that her two companions – and presumably her counterpart – shared.
“Sure thing, Steve – that’s real thoughtful of you…”
§
Destiny walked slowly back to her quarters, and was just about to enter when a sorrowful whimper emanating from inside the adjacent cabin reminded her of the obligation she’d unwittingly inherited. Filled with trepidation, she pressed the control to open the door… only to be almost knocked off her feet by the lazoon as it shot out of its prison cell and dived straight into her quarters. By the time she had recovered her balance and followed it inside, it was clawing frantically at one of the cupboards against the far wall.
Oh well… at least I won’t have to take the room apart trying to find out where Venus keeps your food, she thought wryly. Gently but firmly pushing the creature out of the way, she reached inside the cupboard, extracted a large bag containing chunks of some organic substance that she couldn’t identify and filled a bowl with them, which she then placed on the floor in front of him.
“Is this your lunch, Zoonie? Yes, something tells me that it is – so… do I need to heat it up for you? Evidently not…”
She watched him tucking into it with gusto for a moment, then closed the door behind them, stepped over to the computer terminal and powered it up. Replicating the ship’s prefix in the professor’s username but substituting “Venus” for “Matt” in the extension, she then entered the temporary password she’d been given a few moments previously – and allowed herself to savour a brief second or two of satisfaction when she discovered that both had been accepted.
Okay, Juliette… so let’s find out just who you are in this Universe…
She spent the next half-hour finding her way around the ship’s intranet, starting with the personnel files – where, to her astonishment, she found herself prevented from accessing any documentation related to her life before reaching the age of fourteen. The earliest non-classified records concerned her teenage years living in an orphanage in the city of Kahra, capital city of the planet Mars – a detail at which she stared for several seconds before continuing her research. Ought she to be surprised to discover that Mars had been colonized in this alternate reality? Pausing to reflect, she concluded that she probably shouldn’t have been so taken aback… but what of the Mysterons? Do they even exist in this crazy Universe?
Of her later life, she was intrigued to discover that despite having been born “Lilly Lumière”, she herself was universally known as simply “Venus”, even to the extent of the name appearing on the official documents designating her as the ship’s resident medical officer. The ship itself was the fifth off the production line of a fleet of Fireball XL-class interplanetary patrol vessels within an organization called the World Space Patrol, and therefore bore the designation “XL5” – the same letters that appeared on the insignia prominently displayed on the chest of her uniform and those of her two crewmates, in addition to being inscribed on the interior of the door to the command module from which she’d just returned.
As she’d earlier suspected, the surveillance camera located above the interconnecting door between the ship’s command module and its main body was one of several scattered throughout the craft, all of which were directly accessible from her console. She worked her way through them one by one, comparing their respective images with a schematic of the ship itself, familiarising herself with its layout until she was confident of being able to find her way around it unaided.
As to the names of her crewmates, she noted with wry amusement that Steve’s surname was “Zodiac”, and that his companion’s name was apparently Matthew Matic, only stopping short of laughing out loud at the implied play on words when she recalled her own first reaction to the list of codenames offered to her colleagues and herself back on Cloudbase.
Back on Cloudbase… She sighed, then got up from the terminal and walked over to the now-sated and distinctly soporific lazoon, which tried half-heartedly to shy away from her once more – though with nothing like the ferocity it attempted to escape from her cabin when she first awoke – as she sat down beside it. The instinctive revulsion that had initially overwhelmed her upon encountering an alien species – or at least one composed of flesh and bone – for the first time had long since dissipated, and she could now see it for what it was: just another creature that wanted to be loved and cared for; no different from a puppy or a kitten – and just like either, very sensitive to the moods of the humans around it.
Still obviously confused about the identity of the woman masquerading as its mistress, and therefore still wary of getting too close to her, the lazoon peered up at her unhappily with pleading eyes, whimpering slightly as she spoke softly to it, tentatively tickling it behind one of its ears as she did so.
“You know, don’t you, Zoonie? Yes, you know…”
She regarded the wretched creature speculatively. “So tell me, you lily-livered extraterrestrial disaster area – when am I going to tell Steve and Matt? And when I do tell them, what am I going to say to them?”
“Howdy folks!”
Destiny jumped with astonishment at the strange creature’s faltering attempt to emulate a greeting that her counterpart – who was perhaps at this very moment walking the decks of Cloudbase in her place – had presumably been practising with it, then smiled wistfully at the choice of words.
“So you can speak a little, can you? Well, if I can’t get back home again, you might not be too far off the mark…”
She returned to the computer terminal once more, sat down in front of it, and began idly working her way through a line of icons that decked the bottom of the screen. One of them comprised a single character resembling a stylised space invader, and she half-expected to be presented with a shoot-em-up style game when she selected it. Instead, she found herself looking at the index to a database of terms that conveyed nothing at all to her. She began to page slowly down through the list of meaningless words, and was perhaps half a dozen pages through it when suddenly the word “Lazoons” caught her eye.
She duly clicked on it, and was immediately linked to a page of statistics relating to the indigenous population of Colevio. A second click on the single word “Enemies” led her to a wealth of documentation related to two major historical conflicts involving lazoons; one with a diminutive species referred to as the Lillispatians, and a second, more recent war that had apparently almost resulted in the extinction of the lazoons from a milomytosis plague instigated by the Cult of Kudos. She shot a quick glance at the now quietly-snoring Zoonie, shook her head in disbelief that his ancestors had apparently managed to incur the murderous wrath of not just one but two races of aggressors, and then continued to read though the documentation. As she did so, the content of the database became increasingly obvious: it was an online encyclopaedia of alien species within the sectors of space patrolled by the XL5 and its fleet of sister ships – of which there were evidently at least thirty – and she was astonished to discover that the number of those species apparently extended into the hundreds.
A thought struck her, and she paged down into the following section, and immediately spotted what she was looking for, but which for some reason she hadn’t expected to find. Nevertheless, there it was: “Mysterons”.
Intrigued, she clicked on the link… and was instantly confronted with a red rectangular warning emblazoned across the screen, bearing the words:
“Access Restricted: Authorized Personnel Only”.
Interesting, she thought…. and given the nature of the database, both unexpected and irksome. The warning banner displayed an option for entering a password, but there was no clue as to how many characters it ought to contain. Did either Steve or Matt know it? She had no idea – but if either of them did, she’d need a good reason for asking them to tell her what it was… and she didn’t have one.
She was contemplating the advisability of attempting to hack her way into the forbidden files when the communicator crackled into life, and Steve’s voice filled the cabin.
“You’d better come up front, Venus – Matt reckons we’re almost there, and we’ve no idea what to expect when we arrive… so you’d probably best lock Zoonie in your quarters – there’s no knowing how he might react to whatever we find. When you came under the sphere’s influence the last time, he almost went crazy – and we’re likely to have bigger things to worry about than him.”
“On my way, Steve!”
She powered down the computer terminal and rose from her seat, donned her green jerkin and turned towards the door, only to find Zoonie crouching obstinately in front of it, peering up at her with big doleful eyes. She shook her head with a sad smile, and gently manhandled him out of the way.
“You’re going to have to hold the fort while I’m gone, Zoonie. Steve’s right – you’re much more likely to be a hinderance than a help.”
Although the lazoon had perceived in some way beyond its understanding that the human addressing it wasn’t its mistress, it could still clearly sense the apprehension she was feeling, and continued to whimper sadly to itself as she left the room, closing and then quietly locking the door behind her.
By the time she had reached the command module, the tone of the constant faint vibration under her feet had changed perceptibly, and she found herself thinking of a cruise she’d once undertaken, during which she’d throw back the curtains of her cabin each morning to find the ship docked in a different port. Better brace yourself, Juliette, she thought to herself. This is going to be like no other port you’ve ever seen…
She activated the cabin’s bulkhead release and stepped onto the flight deck once more, to find Matt staring intently at a computer monitor that was displaying a slowly scrolling catalogue of navigational data. Without looking up, he raised his hand briefly by way of a greeting as she eased herself past him, then glanced behind him to where Steve was hunched over another monitor at his own station. Destiny noted with curiosity that his hands were resting on a pair of levers that looked like handlebars, one on either side of the console he was studying: the pose was somewhat reminiscent of a biker, and she found herself speculating as to the purpose of the controls, as they obviously weren’t there to enable him physically to steer the ship.
“Prepare to land, Steve. I calculate we’re now in Cevena’s atmosphere.”
“Okay, Matt! Guess we’re going to have to risk breaking radio silence for a few seconds to align the ship over a flat piece of terrain… I daren’t fire the retros to bring us to a stationary position above the ground until we know we’re not going to need them to perform any last-minute manoeuvres… hold tight, everyone!”
His fingers hovered over one of the buttons in front of him for a second, then came down decisively on it. A couple of seconds later, he visibly relaxed.
“It’s okay – it looks like that voice is no longer being beamed at us, now we’ve arrived. I’ve got a fix on our destination now, so I guess whoever lives here wants us to arrive in one piece. We’re obviously expected, so we’d best be prepared for anything…”
Standing at the back of the cabin, Destiny reached out to the sheet of blackout material covering the nearest viewing port, cautiously pulled it aside, and inhaled sharply at the sight.
“Steve… on the ground – I can see more spheres like the one we saw on the video playback! There must be thirty of them down there!”
Steve swivelled his seat around and rose to join her. “Yeah… it looks like a regular invasion fleet, doesn’t it? I reckon we called by just in time…”
He returned to his seat, rapidly re-checked his instruments, and then looked up at his fellow crewmembers with an air of irrevocability. “Stand by for action, folks – we’re going in to land!”
“We’ll hear that voice again as soon as we leave the ship,” Matt reminded him. “Don’t forget that whoever’s transmitting it thinks we’re still in a state of deep hypnosis - so everybody just play along, okay?”
“Sure thing, Matt! Venus – you may as well ride pillion with me when we leave Fireball, as we won’t be going very far. There’s just about room for two on this jetmobile, even if we will be a bit cosy! We’ll leave Robert in charge while we’re outside.”
Destiny blinked at him uncomprehendingly. “Jetmobile?”
“Sure, Venus!” He gestured towards the back of his seat at the ship’s controls, reached forward to grip two handles positioned either side of the display unit directly in front of him, and shuffled himself forward slightly. “Let’s go, shall we? After all, we don’t want to keep our host waiting…”
A faint sound from the roof of the cabin made her glance up, just in time to watch a large square hatch above them swinging smoothly outwards. She suddenly realised with a start what was about to happen, and grinning with admiration for the technology enabling it, she stepped smartly over to Steve’s seat at the ship’s helm and seated herself directly behind him. The moment she was in position, a powerful whine began to build up rapidly from beneath her feet as the entire unit began to float gently into the air and upwards through the hatch, closely followed by the co-pilot’s seat carrying Matt.
An intense, biting blast of cold air assailed her lungs as the jetmobile flew clear of the hatch, and she instinctively tightened her grip on Steve’s waist as he slowly rotated the craft in a full circle, scanning the surroundings into which the ship had been brought down. With both devices now hovering directly above the ship’s command section, she could now see with perfect clarity what hadn’t been apparent from the interior, namely that the devices upon which they were being transported served the dual purpose of being both self-contained workstations and individual airborne personnel carriers. Nice piece of kit, she thought, we could use something like this back home…
The insistent, persuasive instructions from the disembodied voice she’d previously heard aboard the spaceship suddenly broke into her train of thought once more, and she found herself peering around into the space around her, trying to identify their source.
“Come to me… it is peaceful here…it is easier to obey…”
Was she hearing the voice with her ears, or registering it inside her head? She wasn’t sure – but whichever it was, she felt no obligation to comply with their speaker’s wishes: indeed, the words merely sounded rather ridiculous to her.
She watched intently over Steve’s shoulder as he piloted the jetmobile carrying the pair of them away from the ship in the direction of a squat, featureless building at the edge of the plain upon which he had brought the spaceship down. The controls appeared to be located entirely within the two handlebars, and comprised no more than a dozen buttons and dials: she noted almost without conscious thought which ones performed what actions as he manoeuvred the airborne module away from Fireball, and found herself speculating on how long it would take her to learn how to pilot it herself.
The building that was clearly their destination began to loom up large in front of them, and Steve lowered the jetmobile gently to the ground in front of the entrance. The one carrying Matt silently touched down beside it a few seconds later, and the three companions disembarked together, each of them regarding the building that stood before them in silent contemplation as they did so.
I’m standing on another planet , thought Destiny wildly. I’m really standing on another planet! Should I be overcome with a greater sense of awe than I am? Or is the prospect of what’s waiting for us on the other side of that door dampening my enthusiasm a little?
“Don’t forget,” muttered Steve, “whatever’s in there thinks we’re all completely within its control… so play it real cool…”
“You are under my power, Earthling patrolmen! Come towards the door…”
The door slid slowly open, and an eerie pale red phosphorescence met their eyes as they slowly stepped inside…
Nothing could have prepared them for the obscenely pulsating abhorrence that awaited them as the clouds of steam slowly dissipated before their eyes, revealing a massive disembodied brain lying completely enclosed within a transparent protective shell. An enormous single unblinking eye, connected to the brain by a gnarled network of what appeared to be veins passing though the protective casing, fixed them within its emotionless gaze as the brain itself quivered and throbbed nauseatingly within the jar.
“Welcome, Earthmen… you escorted the tanker that recently brought me more fuel, I think…”
“What… what are you?”
“You do not ask questions of me, Earthman! I brought you here to obey me… you must obey me… you will obey me! Your ship… it is propelled by the same fuel that is conveyed by your tankers, is it not?”
“Yes, but…”
“Then you will give your fuel to me! You will return to your ship, and you will transfer all of it into the storage silos which feed my fleet of spheres. When you have completed that task, I shall have no further use for you… and your ship is of no value to me, so you will fly it into space on its final few drops of fuel, and you will remain there with it until you die…”
The sound of a guffaw emanated from the direction of Steve, whose inclination to prolong the deception had manifestly just expired.
“And why would we want to do that, you ridiculous parody of a fictional criminal mastermind? Don’t you know that there are laws against this kind of interplanetary piracy? When we get back to Space City, we’ll see to it that…”
The alien intelligence instantly began to vibrate alarmingly within its protective casing, and its colour deepened significantly as the blood vessels within it began to swell.
“Do not question me… you cannot question me! What is this… ah… this is but a deception… you are not under the control of the sphere! You have attempted to deceive me – you have come here to destroy me! It is well that…”
It stopped speaking abruptly as an incandescent bolt of energy seared across the room from Steve’s handgun, dissipating harmlessly and fading into nothingness as it struck the protective dome enveloping the alien – which emitted an unearthly travesty of a chuckle.
“You cannot fight me, Earthman! You cannot even lift your arm to fire your gun… you are feeling tired…. you are so very tired… put down the gun…”
The room had begun to pulse with a weird all-enveloping light, and Destiny was suddenly conscious that she also wasn’t able to lift her arm. The light began to envelop her, seeping into her soul as it washed through her brain, emptying it of all desire to resist the persistent, persuasive voice… and then suddenly, just for a brief second, she was standing in the pulsator room aboard Cloudbase. A man… it was a man in a light-brown uniform… yes, it was Rick! She knew somehow that he had stepped up behind her and placed his hand on her shoulder… She turned to face him, and was staring deep into his eyes as he was shaking his head warningly… She opened her mouth and tried to speak to him, but she knew she could not, for she was too cold… too far away from the pulsator’s welcoming warmth. And then, she knew…
The mirage dissolved into nothingness, and instantly she was back in the room with the malignant intelligence once more. The air around her started to coagulate, as if she were slowly sinking into a bowl of jelly that was solidifying as it cooled, and she realised numbly that within a few more seconds she would be transfixed.
“Relax… you will soon be at ease… it is easier to obey…”
Cooling jelly…. Somewhere deep in her mind, she desperately strove to seize the clue that she’d inadvertently stumbled upon…
“Steve – fire your gun at the heat control! It’s hot in here because it’s maintaining an artificially high temperature inside that protective dome! It won’t be able to survive in the cold – destroy the heating system!”
“You cannot lift your arm… you are feeling tired… ”
“I must do it… gee, I’m sleepy… I must destroy the heat…”
“Put down your gun, Earthman. Relax… sleep… do not fight against me… relax… it is easier to obey…”
“Must… fight… the drowsiness… must destroy the heat…”
With a superhuman effort, he succeeded in levelling his coma ray at the flickering array of lights above the doorway and pulling the trigger. A coruscating blast of energy sliced into the heat controls, which were instantly transformed into a blackened pile of molten metal. A second later, the resulting chain reaction saw all the cables and ducting emanating from the unit erupt in a spectacular sequence of related explosions – and within less than a minute, much of the building’s infrastructure was on fire. Even as they watched, the wall directly behind the sickening monocular alien collapsed on top of its transparent protective dome… and an instant later, what remained of the creature had been buried beneath the rubble raining down upon it.
With one side of the building now completely open to the sky, an icy blast swept through the ruins with the force of an arctic storm, accelerating even further the massive temperature drop initiated by the destruction of the heating controls – and Matt turned to Steve urgently.
“We need to leave fast, Steve – before we all freeze…”
“Guess you’re right, Matt – let’s get out of here! Venus – you’re with me!”
They quit the building at a run, even as the walls began to collapse around them, and ran for the jetmobiles, which Steve and Matt immediately piloted skywards and away from the building as the explosions within it continued with increasing frequency and intensity. As the two airborne carriers began to build up speed, Destiny spared a quick glance over her shoulder as one final massive blast shook the ground beneath them, hurling a deadly black cloud of rock fragments and burning fuel skywards after them.
Even before they’d regained entrance to the ship, Steve’s fingers were flying over the control panel in front of him, and watching his actions over his shoulder, Destiny realised that he was already programming the ship’s departure from the console even as they flew. A microphone snapped up into place in front of his mouth, and he barked a rapid string of instructions into it as they sailed back towards the ship.
“Robert! Return to your station in Fireball Junior immediately and open the main hatch, then bring all navigation systems online, prime vertical jets and initiate emergency lift-off procedure: we need to be off the ground within fifteen seconds of our arrival! Calculate our flight path away from Fireball’s current position to keep us above that crater rim at south-south-west, then prime main boosters for firing on my command: I’m gonna want full power to get us off this rock as soon as we’ve cleared all surface obstacles!”
He twisted his head over his shoulder and shouted above the freezing wind through which they were flying. “You okay back there, Venus? Guess you’ll want to warm yourself up in that cosy bunk of yours when we return to Fireball, eh? I know - I’ll get Robert to make you a nice hot cup of cocoa when we’re back in orbit…”
She smiled grimly to herself: even if his idea of making conversation with female pillion passengers on his flying scooter could do with some work, he clearly knew how to comport himself in a crisis.
“Thanks, Steve – but I think I can manage to make my own cup of cocoa!”
8 - In Our Reality
Doctor Fawn opened the door, and Colonel White entered the Infirmary. He was perfectly composed as always, but considerable experience had taught Fawn to recognise the signs. The C-in-C was feeling the pressure, and the doctor had no wish to compound it.
“Thank you for finding the time to come down, Colonel: I know you’re very busy with the preparations for the transmission, so I shan’t keep you long.”
“Not so busy that I can’t find time to bring myself up to date with the condition of one of our best pilots, Doctor – but I appreciate your consideration. How is she?”
“She’s unquestionably improving, Colonel… however, there are still some very significant gaps in her memory. Shortly after we last spoke, I asked Captain Ochre to spend a little time with her to establish the extent of this amnesia. He’d been pestering me with requests to see her anyway, and in view of their long-standing friendship I decided to permit a short interview. It became apparent very soon after the start of that interview that she had no recollection of him whatsoever.”
“None at all?” asked Colonel White in astonishment. “That sounds extremely serious!”
“I won’t attempt to minimize it,” admitted Doctor Fawn. “Nevertheless, I’d warned him beforehand to expect something of the kind – and he handled it to perfection. To establish a relationship with somebody in such a condition, you need to be able to set aside your own personal discomfort at the situation while at the same time conveying the empathy required to put the patient completely at ease… because until they trust you, you’ll get nowhere. It’s a skill you learn from handling scenarios like hostage standoffs – and of course, Captain Ochre served in the WGPC before he joined Spectrum. The civil police are trained to deal with people who have psychological issues, whereas I’ve known more than a few military types in the past whose preferred solution would be to shout at them repeatedly until they…”
Suddenly remembering who he was talking to, he checked himself abruptly.
“Anyway, she obviously responded positively to his obvious concern for her well-being, and within five minutes they were chatting as easily and effortlessly as normal.”
Colonel White looked around the room. “And… where is she now, Doctor?”
Doctor Fawn gestured down the corridor in the direction of Cloudbase’s accelerated sleep facility.
“I sent her to the Room of Sleep shortly over an hour ago and programmed her capsule to deliver six hours with induced delta wave intensity at just over sixty percent. She should be waking up within the next few minutes, hopefully with fading memories of some very stress-free dreams.”
He sat down at his desk, then took a deep breath before continuing, obviously choosing his words carefully.
“I asked for this meeting, Colonel, because I have a… a concern – and I don’t know what to do about it. But to answer your immediate question, I’d say she’s in good shape. Remarkably good shape actually, given the circumstances.”
“Then what is the nature of your concern, Doctor?”
Doctor Fawn opened a folder containing a pile of computer printouts and began to arrange them on his desk.
“Well, Colonel… as you know from our conversation earlier today, I proposed that we put her through her paces on one of the fighter jet simulators – and she agreed enthusiastically. That session ended just over an hour ago, and I’ve been analysing the results of the various tests that all the Angels need to pass for me to be able to classify them as fit for duty. Her reaction times are a little down, certainly – but I’d have been surprised if they weren’t.”
His frown grew deeper as he spread more of the computer’s output across the desk.
“No… what’s remarkable is that her encephalographic profile bears no resemblance to the one that I have in her files. She’s flying the simulator perfectly efficiently – I’d almost say surprisingly efficiently, given the experience through which she’s been put – but she’s simply not operating it as she used to. Encephalographic profiles are as individual as a fingerprint: I’ve only got to look at a trace after one of the Angels has been training on the simulator, and I can tell immediately from which of them it was taken. This time, I can’t.”
He settled himself back in his chair and gestured vaguely at the output.
“If I hadn’t watched her logging these responses on the simulator myself, Colonel, I’d have thought she was a well-trained recruit I hadn’t seen before. Most of the routine operations correlate with synaptic traces which, although idiosyncratic, do nevertheless lie within accepted norms. At critical moments, however, she’s quite simply using different areas of her brain to make decisions that require a quasi-instinctive response. It’s almost as if she’s basing those decisions on a completely different history of acquired experience.”
Colonel White regarded him thoughtfully. “It makes my blood run cold to have to ask you this, Doctor, but could the Mysterons have taken control of her?”
Doctor Fawn spread his hands in a ‘your guess is as good as mine’ gesture.
“She’s not a Mysteron construct, if that’s what you mean, Colonel. Her X-rays are those of a normal human… and there’s also one other little point that, although not in itself providing a definitive answer, may at least help to reassure you a little. In view of the history of the pulsator, I made a point of asking Captain Scarlet after your visit to see Destiny earlier whether he sensed anything untoward about her – and he said no, he felt nothing at all. That said, the present Mysteron threat to destroy this base before the day is out makes me reluctant to overlook anything out of the ordinary – and I therefore propose to conduct a range of additional tests on Destiny in the Advanced Neurosciences Lab using our full range of encephalometric scanners to see if I can make sense of these anomalies. If you agree, I can start work on compiling a test programme at once – in which case I should be able to run the tests themselves within the next two to three to hours.”
Colonel White contemplated the new information in silence for a few seconds, then nodded approvingly.
“Thank you, Doctor – and I concur: given the imminence of the Mysteron threat, it’s better to be safe than sorry, even though we’ve no hard evidence of a problem. In the meantime, I see no reason to restrict Destiny’s movements any more than they’ve already been in consequence of her condition: this is just as well, because Doctor Kurnitz has requested that she be present at the transmission we will shortly be making to the Mysterons. I granted that request earlier today, and I intend to honour it – not least because it will enable us to keep an eye on her without the need to assign additional personnel to the task. Please keep me informed of the results of your next round of tests as soon as you’ve completed them: I want to be confident she’s operating at maximum efficiency if we need to send her into combat.”
He glanced at his watch. “Doctor Kurnitz indicated that checking the secondary circuits would take approximately two hours – and that was approximately ninety minutes ago, so I shall make my way to Room 101 shortly. Would you ask Destiny to join us there when she wakes, Doctor? After six hours’ rest, hopefully she’ll be in a considerably better state to face whatever the next few hours may bring.”
§
“Fifteen seconds to transmission!”
Colonel White’s eyes flickered around the room, instinctively taking in the expressions of everyone present. Other than for the absolute silence, a casual observer wouldn’t have noted anything to remark upon, but the colonel was no casual observer. The rigidity of the postures and tautness of the facial muscles spoke louder to him than words ever could: that they all understood just how much was at stake was written into their body language.
“All circuits… A-OK!”
“Stand by, Colonel!”
“Spectrum is Green.” The tension was audible in Colonel White’s voice as the final few seconds ticked down.
“Five… four… three… two… one… transmission!”
The colonel leaned forward towards the microphone, and immediately began reading his script without any introductory preamble.
“This is Colonel White, Commander-in-Chief of Spectrum, speaking on behalf of the peoples of the Earth to the Mysterons on Mars. I would like to recall Man’s first survey expedition on the surface of your planet…”
Standing silently in the doorway of Room 101, Venus watched on in rapt fascination with the two captains and Doctor Kurnitz, as Spectrum’s C-in-C went on to describe the scenario that led to the destruction of the Martian complex and its aftermath. She came to understand for the first time since her inexplicable arrival the nature of the task that the personnel around her were undertaking. That they were suing for peace with an exceptionally powerful extraterrestrial adversary was self-evident, but her years in space working alongside Steve and Matt in their dealings with some of the more belligerent inhabitants of the extrasolar worlds made something else manifestly obvious – namely that they were suing for that peace from a position of weakness.
Colonel White went on to speak of some of the consequences for humanity of that original fatal error of judgment by the commander of the ill-fated mission, and she mentally shuddered as the sheer magnitude of the undertaking – and the potential consequences of failure to reach a settlement – became apparent.
Had she ever heard of these so-called ‘Mysterons’? She searched her memory for the name, but nothing surfaced. And yet… they came from Mars – the very first planet in the Solar System to be explored, and one in which her parents had taken a keen interest before their unexplained disappearance somewhere in its hinterlands, perhaps fifteen years previously. It was just possible that there might once have been a Mysteron complex on Mars – her Mars – she supposed… but if there had ever been such an artefact, its fate was presumably lost in the mists of time.
Another thought occurred to her: might the newly created World Space Patrol have discovered and simply obliterated it? It wasn’t impossible, she realised sombrely: if an overly aggressive species with the awesome capabilities that this one appeared to possess had ever been identified as a threat to the Earth, it would have very quickly found itself at the receiving end of a salvo of planetomic warheads. If such an attack had been undertaken, she reasoned, it would have destroyed not only the complex itself but a very substantial area of the surrounding terrain as well – within which the technology underpinning the Mysterons’ powers of reconstruction would presumably have been located. She frowned at that notion… was it possible that Captain Black’s real mistake was simply not employing enough firepower in the attack? And yet, Colonel White had just referred to the Mysterons as having laid claim to being peaceful beings.
Peaceful… peaceful… somehow the words had begun to resonate within her brain. She found herself inexplicably beginning to lose interest in the transmission, as the pulsator continued to beat its slow, mystical inexorable wavelike rhythm deep into her consciousness… she had felt that relentless ebb and flow of the light before... but where... yes… yes, of course… the sphere in space… come to me… you are in my power… it is so much easier to obey…
Mechanically, she began to walk slowly towards the pulsator… she had to go… there was something she had to do…
And then – suddenly… she was there…
Her limbs were sinking into a cold, clammy, gelatinous sludge… the air around her was thick with dank, oozing putrescence… and through it all there was an eye… a single, gigantic, staring, malevolent eye in a jar… containing… a disembodied brain…
On her left stood a man… yes – it was Steve! There was a coma ray gun in his hand… but he could not draw it… and Matt was there too – powerless to move, powerless even to breathe… the eye held them all within its power…
She opened her mouth to scream…
A firm hand descended on her shoulder, and she blinked out of the terrifying nightmare with a violent start. Turning to see who had stopped her from stepping any nearer to the pulsator, she found herself staring directly into Captain Ochre’s eyes, as he gently drew her back to the side of the room, shaking his head warningly. Still shaking – and sweating profusely – she raised her hands by way of offering a silent apology and resumed her place by the door, suddenly conscious that while she had been sinking slowly into her delirium, Colonel White had begun to speak in the tone of voice that indicated his speech was drawing to a close. She shook her head to clear it, and concentrated once more on the drama that was being played out as they watched.
That Colonel White had a gift for expressing himself clearly and eloquently even when under pressure was self-evident, and Venus found herself wondering if the alien intelligence believed to be listening to the transmission would be influenced by the talent in any way when formulating its response. She recognised that his final words would set the tone of the message as a whole, and that he’d chosen them very carefully.
“The attack on your complex was wrong – we admit it, and deeply regret it. But we on Earth want you to know it was done out of fear, and was not a deliberate act of aggression against you. I know that you can hear this message, and hope you will answer – so that together, we can find a way of ending this war of nerves between us. On behalf of the World Government, and all the peoples of the Earth, I offer you the hand of friendship. I hope that it will be accepted.”
Colonel White nodded towards Captain Blue, who promptly cut the connection, and then turned to address the group.
“Well, members of Spectrum… and Doctor Kurnitz, of course… six months’ hard work has brought us this far – but unless and until the Mysterons respond to our gesture, it is as far as we can go at this time. Let us hope that they – like us – are weary of this conflict, and wish to bring it to an end. We must now wait until they choose to let us know how they wish to proceed… so I propose that we now return to the command deck and await their response there, as there is very little more we can do here. Doctor Kurnitz – will you walk with me? I’d be interested to hear your views on the likelihood of a successful outcome…”
His voice faded away as the two men led the way out of the room in the direction of the elevator, closely followed by Blue and Scarlet, leaving Captain Ochre and the Angel alone in the room. Ochre turned to her with a questioning look on his face.
“Well… what do you think, Destiny? Are the Mysterons going to buy it?”
Venus blinked in surprise, a little startled at being asked for her opinion.
“I… I cannot say, Captain Ochre!”
He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Hey… Rick, please! There’s more than enough formality out there – although I hope you’ll not ask me to drop your codename in favour of your real one! I’ve just had to spend the first few hours of the day being called ‘Yellow Fox’ – and yellow’s not even the colour of my uniform!”
He looked down at his tunic, and frowned speculatively. “They could at least have made it ‘Light Brown Fox’ – do you think that would have suited me?”
Their eyes met once more, and she suddenly recognised with a shock that his obvious concern for her welfare was motivated by more than mere sympathy for someone who’d recently had a bad experience. We’re more than just friends, she realised – and the instant she did realise it, the obvious question of just how intimate that friendship might just be hit her even harder.
One heartbeat later, she realised with a palpable sense of relief that it wasn’t deep enough to be something she couldn’t handle. It couldn’t be, for he’d surely have acted very differently the moment they were alone together if it were so. She took a second to gather her thoughts before replying.
“Why should the… the Mysterons choose to believe him, Rick?”
He nodded unemotionally. “Why indeed? But what choice does he have but to try to make them believe him?”
Venus found herself contemplating how the top brass at Space City might have approached the same problem, and was unsurprised at how little time it took her to draw her conclusions. She chose her words carefully.
“I think some would argue that regardless of the circumstances that led the people of Earth to this place, peace is no longer an option. They would argue that the only way forward is to throw everything into an offensive of such intensity as to win this war with one massive pre-emptive strike. I can think of a few myself.”
“Yeah, so can I,” acknowledged Ochre. “In my experience, they fall broadly into two camps. The first is motivated primarily by simple ignorance of the facts plus a complete lack of imagination, and the second by wilful stupidity coupled with mindless optimism. Neither group understands the threat posed by the Mysterons, and both overestimate our capacity for countering it. Colonel White knows this war can’t be won. The best that can be hoped for is that we can contain – or at least minimize – the damage until a peaceful solution can be found.”
“Doesn’t that claim the Mysterons made about being peaceful beings carry any weight in all of this?” asked Venus. “If they’re really peaceful, wouldn’t you expect them to react positively to any overtures we make about wanting to put an end to this war?”
Captain Ochre shook his head sadly.
“As I see it, that’s just wishful thinking, Destiny. The Mysterons may have been peaceful beings once, but they sure as hell aren’t peaceful any more – as you’re well aware – and we’ve no choice but to deal with the situation as it is now. They don’t qualify as nice guys on any conceivable scale of measurement. On the contrary – they’re vindictive, callous and gratuitously violent. When I was a cop, I worked hard to get humans with that kind of attitude locked up for a very long time – and I celebrated when it was done, knowing that the world was a better and safer place as a result. Believe me, acknowledging that we aren’t going to be able to deal with the Mysterons like that is a bitter pill to swallow.”
His eyes adopted a faraway introspective look, and she realised that for just a few seconds some troublesome memories from his past life had resurfaced to haunt him.
“People I’ve known have died to make Spectrum a reality – and right now, we’re the only thing that stands between order on the one hand, and chaos and destruction on an unimaginable scale on the other. Those deaths can’t be allowed to have been in vain… that’s why we must make it work.”
He’s been hurt some time back in the past , she realised with a flash of insight. He’s here because he wants to forget and to move on. Perhaps he sees this organization as his Foreign Legion…
“I’ve no illusions about the difficulty of getting them to talk to us,” he continued, “but that’s what we must do, because we’ve no choice. Putting it bluntly, we’re going to have to fight for this peace. Not just against Mysteron belligerence, but also against those of our own people who want to escalate the war in the mistaken belief that we can face them down – because if those lunatics ever get the upper hand in the decision-making process, the consequences for humanity will be incalculable. I don’t want that for me. I don’t want that for you.”
He’s certainly no peacenik, Venus realised, and yet he’s arguing in favour of a solution that doesn’t involve threats of annihilating the enemy with a bombardment of planetomic missiles.
Was that just because this strange organization into which she’d been inadvertently transposed didn’t possess that level of firepower? Or was it that this unfamiliar interpretation of humanity was a shade less trigger-happy than the one from which she’d been so recently and inexplicably taken?
Perhaps a bit of both… but having dedicated herself to the task of trying to save life as opposed to destroying it, she found herself being instinctively drawn to the approach to the problem now being expressed.
Or... was it merely that the man who was expressing that view was doing so in a way that commanded her attention in a way she hadn’t ever encountered before?
“Have you given any thought to the sort of world you’d like to see come out of this godawful mess, Destiny? Oh sure, it’s hard to do when the everyday business of trying to keep as many people alive as possible in the present constantly – and necessarily – takes precedence over any longer-term considerations, but it’s not impossible. As I see it, we need to force ourselves to find the time to do it… because one thing’s a near certainty: it won’t be a world that even remotely resembles this one. It’ll be a world which incorporates technology we can’t even begin to comprehend at this time. We already have machines that can do pretty much anything we can do – and that trend will only accelerate as time goes on. The whole idea of what it is to be human is going to change irrevocably. Does that notion frighten you? Or does it inspire you?”
He’s moving too fast, thought Venus. He doesn’t know what else is out there yet – but that doesn’t make having something to strive for any less of an admirable trait. Steve would most likely be more interested in when his next cup of coffee was going to be served up…
“Technology is driven by need,” she replied slowly. “If we need it, we’ll find a way to invent it… after which it will get used to do both good things and bad things – as it always is. It has been said that life would be much happier if we stopped worrying about things we can’t change – so if it’s going to happen anyway, shouldn’t we try to avoid being either frightened or inspired by it?”
“Well… maybe,” he conceded thoughtfully. “After all, the concepts of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ can’t really be applied objectively. What’s good for me isn’t necessarily good for you; what’s bad for you isn’t necessarily bad for me. Only simpletons and fanatics believe in an absolute definition of the terms – and for every simpleton or fanatic, you can find another one who believes the opposite equally strongly. Maybe there’s no such a thing as ‘objectivity’ anyway.”
He wouldn’t get past the first interview if he applied to join the World Space Patrol, thought Venus wryly. She shook her head decisively.
“I can’t accept that! If I did accept it, I’d have to question everything I’ve ever believed in regarding caring for those who need it. Surely nobody can question the need to tend the sick? To relieve suffering? To offer the chance of life when the alternative is death? These must be objective truths – are objective truths!”
“We can justify fighting a war easily enough when we want to… and wars produce a lot of injured people,” he countered. “How do you reconcile that with an absolute need to tend the sick? There’d be far fewer sick and injured people to tend if wars didn’t happen!”
“The best way to ensure that a war doesn’t happen,” she retorted, “is to be as well prepared to fight it as possible… but everybody who’s ever served in the military knows that, so what point are you making? That wars shouldn’t ever be allowed to happen? If so, then I agree! But it only takes one side in any conflict to turn that conflict into a war, whereas both sides must agree to bring about peace. What happens when one side refuses to agree?”
“And suddenly we return from the realms of abstract philosophy into the real world once more,” he observed with a chuckle, “because I guess that’s pretty much where we’ll be if the Mysterons won’t accept the truce we’ve offered them!”
He sighed, then smiled at her wistfully. “Well, I don’t think we’ve settled the matter of whether there’s any such thing as objectivity – but I reckon that between us, we’ve nailed the question of how to bring about peace if the Mysterons won’t agree to call it a day. I guess we’re going to have to learn how to do to them what they can do to us – and then learn to do it better. So… no pressure, then.”
Steve probably would have expressed it in much the same terms, she thought sadly. And what was that quote by some ancient Chinese philosopher about outthinking your opponent that Matt once mentioned? Oh yes – I remember now…
“To defeat your enemy, you must become your enemy.”
He raised an eyebrow, and then looked at her speculatively. “Is that another of Sun Tzu’s pearls of wisdom, by any chance?”
She nodded with a grin. “That’s him!”
“I guess I’m going to have to get hold of a copy of that book and read it from cover to cover before anybody else quotes him,” sighed Rick despondently. “I’m getting to think I’m the only guy on the base who never heard of him before yesterday. It’s kind-of depressing though: I don’t like the idea of teaching myself to become a Mysteron.”
“Didn’t you say earlier,” replied Venus mildly with a twinkle in her eye, “that in the future, our whole idea of what it is to be human will be irrevocably changed?”
“Er… yeah, I guess I did, but…”
He stopped speaking abruptly and looked at her in astonishment. “Destiny – you’re teasing me!”
Their eyes met for a long second… and Venus found herself marvelling at just how much information she was able to process about him within that long second. This intriguing man was listening to her… he sought her opinions, gave them due consideration when she expressed them, and offered his take on them without belittling her. He didn’t patronise her if she expressed her concerns, and didn’t shy away from losing face by speaking of his own…
Without breaking eye contact, she frowned uncertainly. “I’m sorry… was I? I didn’t mean to… it wasn’t my intent…”
His look of astonishment dissolved into a delighted grin. “Hey, that’s enough of that! I guess I’ve just gotten too used to that crazy mix of rational worldliness and Gallic passion of yours – and I’m teasing you too, so don’t panic – to share a few laughs with you along the way! Yeah… could be that as a species we’re going to have to develop in ways we can’t even imagine if we’re to bring this war to an end… but until then, we’re still human – at least insofar as we understand the term – which means we still have human needs. How about we go find something to keep body and soul together?”
Passion… human needs… body and soul… oh, yes…
Snapping herself out of her daydream with an effort, she realized that he was proposing they grab a late lunch.
“Er… sure!” Her face suddenly fell. “I’m sorry… I forgot. Doctor Fawn told me to report to the Advanced Neurosciences Lab later today for some more tests. He’s got concerns about my encephalogram traces… and I guess my performance on the simulator earlier in the day didn’t inspire him with quite as much confidence as I’d hoped! Er…”, she added, suddenly remembering she had no idea where the lab was, “will you come with me when the time comes?”
“Sure… with pleasure!”
He glanced at the clock on the wall and winced. “Actually, I don’t think we’ve got time for a proper meal anyway. Let’s just grab a snack in the standby lounge and eat it there: we can walk over to the lab afterwards.”
As they navigated the maze of passageways together, she found herself reflecting on everything she’d learned about these people aboard their weird and wonderful flying carrier since her incomprehensible arrival in their midst just a few hours previously. Was the difference in attitude perhaps a by-product of the war that they were fighting? A war creates intense loyalties among brothers-in-arms… did that extend to sisters-in-arms also? Back home, her status as a doctor of space medicine was something of an anomaly, albeit a fortuitous one. Perfectly capable but less lucky women would typically aspire to subordinate medical and/or administrative roles… and yet, her own counterpart in this alternate Universe was an ace fighter pilot – and she had no difficulty imagining the look on Steve’s face if he were ever to learn of it.
Were men such as himself inherently better suited to such a role? Any of her male colleagues back at Space City would have considered the question ludicrous, and its answer self-evident. And yet this strange colour-oriented security organization clearly prided itself in recruiting the best of the best – and hadn’t Doctor Fawn told her earlier that all the other members of her team were female? And of course, added to all these attractions was the man now walking at her side…
Invisible aliens with incomprehensible powers or not, thought Venus, I like this world!
§
Lieutenant Green suddenly stiffened and looked up sharply. “Colonel White!”
Something in the tone of the lieutenant’s voice seemed to make the temperature in the control room instantly drop several degrees, and the colonel took a fraction of a second to glance around at the expressions on the faces of everyone else present before replying. It hadn’t been just his own imagination, he realized grimly: they’d all sensed it, and reacted exactly as he had.
“What is it, Lieutenant?”
“Our monitors have picked up a carrier wave, sir. I believe the Mysterons are about to answer your transmission!”
Colonel White took a deep breath. “Well, gentlemen, the moment of truth has arrived…”
“THIS IS THE VOICE OF THE MYSTERONS. YOUR MESSAGE HAS BEEN ANALYZED, AND IT HAS BEEN DECIDED TO ALLOW ONE MEMBER OF SPECTRUM TO MEET OUR REPRESENTATIVE. IF YOU AGREE, YOU MUST CARRY OUT THE FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS. ANY DEVIATION AND THE ARRANGEMENT WILL BE CANCELLED. THE MEMBER OF SPECTRUM MUST NOT CARRY WEAPONS OR COMMUNICATION EQUIPMENT OF ANY KIND. HE WILL FLY ON A COURSE OF ONE-TWO-FOUR MAGNETIC FROM CLOUDBASE’S PRESENT POSITION. FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS WILL BE RELAYED TO YOU. THIS IS THE VOICE OF THE MYSTERONS.”
“Check that course, Lieutenant!” Colonel White turned to face Captains Scarlet and Blue plus Doctor Kurnitz, whose reaction to the experience of witnessing the Mysterons’ reply at first-hand was clearly visible in his taut expression. The colonel’s jaw tightened: he well remembered the first time he’d heard the doom-laden tones permeating throughout Spectrum’s airborne headquarters.
“Well, gentlemen – what are your reactions?”
Captain Blue’s response was immediate. “It’s a trap, Colonel! It means sending an unarmed man into the jaws of death!”
“You’re probably right!” acknowledged Colonel White, his tone laying bare how closely his own instinct mirrored that of the captain. “But I think we must accept. We cannot miss this chance.”
Lieutenant Green’s chair slid silently to the end of its runner. “I have that course reference for you, sir. The only landfall is a large volcanic area in Greenland.”
“Greenland, eh?” replied his commander thoughtfully. “An ideal place for a secret rendezvous.”
Captain Blue wasn’t prepared to be silenced without at least one further attempt to make his objections clear. “Colonel – I still say the risk’s too great! Why should we trust the Mysterons?”
His commander looked at him through stoic eyes. “I know the risks, Captain – but someone must go.”
“Sir,” interjected Scarlet evenly. “If a member of Spectrum is to be sent, I am the obvious choice. I’m ready.”
Colonel White turned to face him, acutely mindful that a heavy burden had been lifted from his shoulders. “Thank you, Captain Scarlet.”
He paused for a moment, then turned to his lieutenant once more. “Lieutenant Green – please verify that the reply we’ve just heard has been relayed on all channels throughout Cloudbase as usual. Having done that, please schedule a base-wide audio transmission of our own to take place within the hour. If it is already common knowledge, it is essential for morale that I inform everybody of our response.”
§
Sitting in the officers’ standby lounge, Captain Ochre muttered under his breath as a faint click over the loudspeaker high above them signified the end of the update, then finished setting down their meals on the little table they shared, disapproval clearly showing in his expression.
“Here we go yet again, Destiny! How is it they always manage to get us onto the back foot every single goddam time? You’re most likely to make mistakes when you’ve got your back to the wall – and it seems to me it’s a mistake for Spectrum to assign Scarlet to this task. You don’t need to be a genius to see that the Mysterons must view him as the single biggest obstacle to this campaign of intimidation that they’ve waged against us – and they’ve now engineered a scenario in which he’s both separated from us physically and unable to communicate with us. There’s no conceivable reason for them to impose such terms other than to facilitate their elimination of him once and for all – and yet in the full knowledge of that, we’ve offered him to them on a plate!”
Venus met his angry gaze without flinching. “What would you have expected Colonel White to do, Rick?”
He waved his arms vaguely in obvious frustration.
“Oh, I don’t know, dammit! Look, I’m with him one hundred percent in thinking there’s too much at stake to miss the opportunity… and these being the terms they’ve dictated, I accept that we’ve very little choice but to agree. But that said, we made the choice of representative to be sent to meet them – and as I see it, letting Scarlet go was a bad move. Oh, I get that he volunteered because under normal circumstances he’s virtually indestructible – and so more likely to come out alive – but these aren’t normal circumstances, are they? If anyone can kill him effectively, it’ll be the Mysterons themselves: after all, it was they who gave him his superhuman powers of recuperation in the first place! He’s too much of an asset to risk on what could very easily be – and probably is – a trap. As I see it, we should have assigned somebody else to this one… just about anybody else.”
She looked at him contemplatively.
“Who would you have assigned to the mission, Rick? The risk of being killed would have been the same whoever went… which obviously they would have known. Isn’t that the very dilemma Captain Scarlet was trying to spare Colonel White by volunteering to go?”
He considered the point thoughtfully, and then sighed.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right… as usual. There’s nothing like a two-minute conversation with you to put everything into perspective, is there?”
He glanced at his watch and frowned. “You said you had to report to the Advanced Neurological Lab at twenty-two hundred, didn’t you? I’ll never get used to these crazy hours we end up working when Cloudbase flies through several time zones – especially when that takes us anywhere near either of the polar regions. A spectacular view of the aurora borealis doesn’t make up for my lack of sleep… and as far as I’m concerned, I want to get my head down! No chance of that, I guess – at least, not until this night’s through.”
He stifled a yawn, then stretched as he stood up.
“I guess we might as well get moving… you mind if we stop by my quarters on the way? On the assumption that we do live to see the dawn, I want to pick up a pillow and a blanket – just in case I get the chance to curl up and take a quick nap someplace.”
They quit the lounge and set off in the direction of the officers’ living quarters.
“Can I ask you a question, Rick?”
“Always, Destiny!”
“You seem to treat the possibility that we might not be alive tomorrow very lightly,” she said hesitantly. “The psychology of that attitude is very interesting: I’ve seen it many times before, and yet I’ve never truly understood it – because I worry dreadfully! Is that really how you feel?”
“I used to worry,” he replied quietly, “but I learned to stop – quite simply because I had to. It was either that or go to pieces – and where would doing that have gotten me? I guess it’s the same in most professions where the consequences of making just one wrong call can be fatal. I’ve been told front-line medics are among the best.”
“Yes, I’ve been told that too,” she replied quietly. “I never quite managed to work out if the people who said it knew what they were talking about or not.”
They turned the corner into the wing housing the bachelor officers’ quarters, and he started fumbling for the key to his suite.
“I envy you, Destiny – I really do. It’s one thing to just shrug off the risks, but quite another to hide the worrying so well that the people who depend on you never realize even for one second that you’re shaking inside. You do that better than anyone else I’ve ever met. It’s just one of your many accomplishments that leave me in total awe of you.”
He frowned to himself, then looked at her speculatively.
“Destiny – have you ever given any thought to the future of Spectrum if we really do manage to bring this war to an end? This organization was created to protect humanity from the consequences of its own spectacular capacity for self-destruction: there wasn’t anything in the original remit about countering an existential threat from outer space. The thing is, once the true nature and magnitude of that threat became apparent, most of the international squabbles that prompted our creation in the first place suddenly and incomprehensibly dried up! Okay, so suppose the Mysteron threat were eliminated. What would our role be then? Would we even have a role? With the world at peace for pretty much the first time in its history, what would be the point of us?”
“I think having an insight into human psychology helps to supply the answer to that question,” Venus replied cautiously. “As a species, we have an instinct for banding together and cooperating when facing a common adversary. If the threat posed by that adversary were removed, it wouldn’t be long before we started fighting among ourselves again. It’s depressing, sure… but that’s what happens, because that’s what we do. It is what we are.”
She broke into a smile. “I don’t think you need to worry about having a job, Rick!”
“I’m not worried about it – and that’s the honest truth,” he replied wistfully. “I’m just wondering what I’d like to do with my life if I wasn’t occupied twenty-four seven protecting planet Earth from imminent obliteration anymore. I can think of more pleasant pursuits.”
He frowned to himself thoughtfully, then turned to look deep into her eyes.
“How in God’s name do we manage to reconcile this amazing capacity for causing chaos and destruction wherever we go with a deep-rooted need for peace and security in which to live quietly with our loved ones and bring up our families? I just don’t get it, Destiny! We’re already the most successful species in the history of this planet… we don’t need to keep killing each other to prove it to ourselves! Why can’t we just love one another, dammit?”
She gave him a look that he couldn’t quite interpret, then shook her head sadly.
“Are we the most successful species in the history of Earth, Rick? In terms of timescales, we’re nowhere near as successful as the creatures of the prehistoric ages, who were around for millions of years before being wiped out by a freak astronomical accident. Compared with that, the few hundred thousand years we’ve been on the Earth is the blink of an eye.”
“Well, I guess that’s true,” he acknowledged grudgingly, “but then, look what we’ve done in that time! If you asked a dinosaur on its deathbed what it would like to be remembered for, something tells me it wouldn’t be able to come up with all that much.”
“To use your own argument,” she countered dryly, “that might depend on whether it died happy, and was mourned by a loving partner and a large family of little dinosaurs. It depends on how you measure success, doesn’t it?”
He glared at her for a second, then broke into delighted laughter.
“Destiny, you’re amazing, you know that? Strange that I’ve never seen this side of you before… I guess maybe I’ve just been too wrapped up in my own little world to notice. Oh well… thank God I’m at least able to recognise a woman in a million when I’m talking to one. I’ve been around long enough to know there are plenty of men who can’t.”
“That makes two of us,” thought Venus, acutely conscious that her heart rate had just risen markedly for the second time in as many minutes, and desperately hoping against hope that he was unaware of just how much the compliment had shaken her composure.
He turned to face her, and his expression softened.
“At least I don’t have to worry about what I’d have done if you’d volunteered to go – because I know you well enough to have no doubt you would if the situation demanded it. If I lost you, I can’t even begin to imagine what I’d do. Give up completely, I guess… you’re more precious to me than I can possibly…”
The sentence was left unfinished as she reached out and seized him by the back of his neck, pulling herself up to force his lips to meet her own. The kiss was long, lingering and sensual… desperately she sought to claw her fingers into the back of his tunic while she forced herself upon him. The tableau held for a full ten seconds before he was able to recover enough of his composure to extract himself from the facial contact, which he did slowly and with obvious reluctance. Pulling his head away from hers without attempting to extricate himself from the physical embrace in which their bodies were still locked, he looked at her with the same bewilderment in his eyes as if he’d just seen a vision.
He released her gently, then slowly raising his hand to her face he touched her cheek, never lowering his gaze from her eyes. The intensity of the passion that burned in them was such that he almost recoiled, and for just a few seconds he found himself having to control his breathing. With a supreme effort he managed to withdraw his hand from her face, after which he forced himself to take a faltering step backwards – but even when their physical contact had been broken, it took him another second or two to find his voice.
“My God, Destiny… I had no idea…”
They continued to stare at one another in wide-eyed shock while he fumbled for his passkey, with which he mechanically opened the door to his quarters. Only when it had swung fully open did he force himself to break the spell by speaking once more – and even then, the words came out in a flurry of disjointed phrases.
“I… I just need to get a couple of things… won’t be a minute… just need to… if you want to wait while I… you know…”
He turned and slipped into the room, then peered into the darkness stupidly for a couple of seconds before automatically reaching behind him to close the door behind him – and found himself inexplicably astonished to discover that he couldn’t see a thing. Muttering an expletive under his breath, he set about fumbling for the light switch… only to find her hand covering it. Strangely unfazed that she’d inexplicably managed to slip behind him into the room without his noticing, he merely reached out and pulled her head gently towards his own until their lips touched.
“Yeah, you’re right yet again – just like always. I guess we won’t be needing it for a while…”
9 - Elsewhere
Alone in her quarters except for the not-so-quietly snoring Zoonie stretched out on her bed in the corner, Destiny slowly and methodically clicked her way through page after page of notation on the ship’s intranet, searching for information about the strange Universe in which she now found herself. Notwithstanding the archaic American colloquialisms that were reminiscent of a bygone era, all the languages that she recognised – including her own native French – were perfectly understandable. That said, in some respects the technology was perhaps two or three decades in advance of her own, most obviously in the realm of interplanetary travel. That would suggest some form of divergence in the common timeline in the relatively recent past, she reasoned.
She found herself vaguely speculating on when that divergence might have taken place. An accelerated development of weaponry coupled with earlier development of space travel… that would suggest an even greater level of paranoia in the aftermath of the Second World War, inducing a correspondingly more intense arms race. Yes, it would make sense: the twentieth century race to the Moon had been the excuse for an unparalleled development programme for missile deployment systems, and it wasn’t difficult to imagine how the scenario might have played out during the late twentieth century if the funding hadn’t been cut. With a mental smile, she remembered Rick talking only yesterday about the fictional alternate Universe in the paperback he’d been reading… and with an irrational sudden pang of guilt, wished she’d been paying greater attention.
Only yesterday… A thought suddenly occurred to her: did time pass at the same rate in both Universes? Yes, obviously it did. But in that case, a day on this ship would correspond to a day on Cloudbase… and the Mysterons had threatened to destroy Cloudbase at midnight…
Destiny felt a sickening sensation in her stomach as the implications hit her full force.
When did I arrive here – and how many hours have passed since? If more hours have already passed than the time between my being taken from Cloudbase and midnight, does that mean I can’t ever get back?
Filled with trepidation, she accessed the ship’s log and worked her way back through it to an automated entry to the effect that she’d been found unconscious by a porthole and had subsequently been carried back to her quarters. She didn’t know how long she’d been lying unconscious… but an earlier entry noting her presence in Fireball Junior while preparations were being made to counter the hypnotic effects of the sphere gave her a window within which to work. The relief she felt upon completing the calculation was palpable: assuming the Mysterons made their attempt at midnight precisely, then even the most pessimistic estimate indicated she still had a few hours left.
A second thought occurred to her: if Cloudbase was indeed going to be destroyed within the next few hours, wouldn’t it make a lot of sense simply to remain where she was? She pondered the option for less than a second before indignantly dismissing the notion. If there was a chance that she could return in time, then failure to defend Cloudbase to the limit would be tantamount to dereliction of duty. No… she had to get back if she could.
But how was she going to do it? The answer was plain enough, even if the modus operandi was still an unknown quantity: she’d have to locate a sphere and work out how to activate it. Forcing herself not to dwell for the time being on how difficult that was likely to be, she moved on to the more pressing question of where to find one. Destiny nodded to herself – if not with satisfaction, then at least with a sense of resolution. She had to return to Cevena… and fast.
§
“No, Venus – there’s no way we’re going back down there! It doesn’t matter how interesting they might be to the scientific community: they’re a menace that’s got to be wiped out – and the sooner the better! I put in a neutroni call to Commander Zero just before you arrived to tell him about the spheres we saw during our descent, and his analysis of the situation was pretty much the same as mine. We’re under orders to destroy the entire fleet with planetomic missiles: orders to take effect immediately.”
She glared at him with impotent fury.
“But… that’s crazy, Steve! The alien that controlled them is already dead, and the ground-based facility has been destroyed! What purpose will be served by blowing up the spheres as well? We should be taking the opportunity to study them – to learn how they work, and then to use that knowledge to develop a defence that will counteract their effect! Isn’t that obvious?”
Steve shook his head, clearly taken aback by the vehemence of her reaction.
“Commander Zero’s orders are explicit, Venus! His view was that the spheres present too great a danger to the supply routes between the planets to be allowed to continue to exist. You’ve only to look at how much trouble one sphere caused to see that the risk of leaving them intact and operational is just plain too great! Imagine the threat to Earth if the Subterrains got hold of one of them – or the Lillispatians? No – he’s right… they’ve got to be destroyed. I’ve already turned the ship round, and Matt’s plotting a course back to Cevena as we speak. The planetomics will be fired as soon as we’re within targeting range – which I reckon should be in just under an hour.”
“But, Steve…”
“No buts, Venus! It’s done – the discussion’s over! I’ll be downloading the security protocols to enable the firing sequence in a few moments – and I’m real sorry to have to put it this way, but you don’t have clearance to view them. I guess you’d better just return to your quarters so Matt and me can get on with what we’ve gotta do before the action starts.”
He reached forward, punched up an interrogation dialog onto the screen in front of him and began entering a lengthy set of responses. After a few seconds, suddenly realising that she was still standing behind him, he stopped typing and looked over his shoulder at her expectantly.
“Say, why don’t you go make us both a cup of coffee?”
If the protracted dismissal of her analysis of the situation could be likened to the loading of a camel, the request for a drink was the final straw that broke its back… and Destiny hit the roof.
“Oh, pour l’amour de Dieu! Je suis une pilote de chasse hautement qualifiée – et une sacrée bonne en plus – pas une serveuse! Fais-la toi-même, ta putain de tasse de café!!”
Glaring at her two colleagues for just long enough to savour the looks of abject disbelief on both their faces at her outburst, she turned and stormed out of Fireball Junior, slamming her hand painfully against the bulkhead control to shut it behind her as she left. The torrent of invective continued, albeit with somewhat diminished ferocity, as she continued her march back to her quarters… but by the time she reached Central Control she’d largely recovered her usual demeanour, having run out of profanities with which to tarnish both Steve generally and several very specific but unmentionable parts of his anatomy.
Was there any way she could she talk him out of it? No: he’d received his orders and would carry them out. Could she physically prevent him from doing so? With Matt working in the nosecone as well – to say nothing of the robot, which they could call upon to restrain her should the need arise – it was highly unlikely. No… she had to find another way to prevent the assault.
So… if planetomic missiles were as destructive as their name implied, there’d probably be a failsafe mechanism to prevent them from being fired by a crewman gone berserk. How would that be done? She nodded to herself thoughtfully: it wasn’t difficult to guess. At least two people would need to work in tandem when initiating the firing sequence… and how would that work on board a ship with a crew of only three, one of whom wasn’t authorized to participate in the launching protocol?
She mentally cursed herself for having lost her cool earlier, and immediately broke into a brisk run. Would he have started arming the missiles yet? There was just a chance he’d still be reeling at the shock of having been screamed at by his ship’s resident nursemaid, cook and drinks maker… but he’d obviously recover from that soon enough.
Upon reaching her quarters, she hurried over to the computer terminal, quickly sat down and keyed in the command to display the live feed from the surveillance camera at the back of XL5’s nosecone. Both men were clearly visible, and appeared to be in the middle of an intense discussion of some kind. She smiled grimly to herself: it wasn’t difficult to imagine what the subject of the discussion was… but never mind about that. Things were likely to happen quickly enough over the next few minutes – and she needed to be ready to respond instantly when they did.
First, she’d need to be able read the text on either of the two monitors currently being used by Steve and Matt. She found the panning and zoom controls, and experimentally began to adjust the camera’s viewing angle from her keyboard. No problem there… She smiled to herself once more, clicked on the icon to begin recording the session, and then settled herself back into her chair with her eyes fixed firmly on the screen.
She didn’t have long to wait: the discussion now evidently concluded, the two men both turned their attention to their respective instrument panels. But which one should she follow? Steve was the ship’s captain… he’d most likely be the one to start the authentication process. She zoomed in on his workstation and watched intently as he pulled up a dialog screen and rapidly started filling in the required fields. It’s no good, she realized: he’s too quick with this sort of thing: I’ve got no chance of being able to anticipate anything he does. But wait a minute… The professor’s spectacles have thick lenses: his eyesight must be less than perfect – so maybe he won’t be able to type quite as fast…
She realigned the camera to cover Matt’s workstation. Sure enough, a few moments later he also started to type, slowly and laboriously. Watching the screen intently, she reproduced his keystrokes one by one as he entered them. First his name – no problem. The next line is going to be his password, which will be masked…
Cursing herself for failing to anticipate the potential showstopper until the last second, she switched her attention to his keyboard as Matt began to key in the password letter by letter, taking care to watch for a movement of any fingers of his left hand that would indicate he’d augmented any key press with the shift. Her luck was in: the screen that next appeared was identical to the one that had just appeared in front of him in Fireball Junior – and she permitted herself a quick smug smile. Simultaneous duplicate access to the system with the same user credentials? THAT wouldn’t be possible on Cloudbase!
As she continued to watch, he reached into the innards of his workstation and enacted a precise sequence of movements with his hand that were hidden from the camera. A moment later, he extracted a long dark red envelope from inside and carefully opened it. With a flash of insight, she quickly panned the camera back to show a wide-angle view of the cockpit. Her instinct was correct: Steve had indeed just done the same thing with an envelope of his own.
So… they’ll both have to enter whatever’s in their respective envelopes onto the system before it’ll enable either of them access to the launch codes…
She quickly zoomed the camera back to the piece of paper in Matt’s hand. Was it readable? YES!
It was now or never. She keyed in the sequence as rapidly as she could, turned up the volume on the comms link, then furiously started clicking her way through as many sets of menus and checkboxes as she could find within the now active launch system, seeking out and immediately sabotaging anything that might prevent either Steve or Matt from completing their respective tasks. After a moment or two, the mutterings of an increasingly agitated Professor Matic began to filter over the speaker into her quarters, indicating that he’d hit a problem.
Breathing a heartfelt sigh of relief, she continued making changes with greater deliberation than previously, intent on creating as much havoc within the system as she could in the time available. In the meantime, Matt’s mutterings had given way to a confused verbal exchange with Steve which she tried to follow as best she could as she worked, glancing at the screen every few seconds as she did so.
“What’s wrong, Matt? Why hasn’t the firing sequence been initiated?”
The professor frowned helplessly and shook his head. “I dunno, Steve – it’s saying my secondary authentication code’s been rejected. That’s strange: I’m sure I entered it correctly!”
“Guess you didn’t! Let’s try it again – on my mark…”
Both men turned their attention to their respective terminals and began typing once more. After two further unsuccessful attempts, Matt looked up from his workstation in bewilderment.
“It’s saying here that access to the system is currently denied, having been disabled as of a few moments ago, Steve! But that’s crazy – I’ve done nothing to disable it, and obviously you haven’t!”
“You’re darned right I didn’t,” growled Steve. “Can you track down the source?”
“Should be able to, Steve… give me just a minute… no, that’s not right… I’m gonna need to… yep, I reckon that should do it…”
He stopped typing abruptly and stared at the screen in disbelief.
“It’s saying it’s been changed from the console in Venus’s quarters, Steve!”
Steve swung round in his seat, blinking rapidly. “Venus? I don’t believe it, Matt – you’re joking! There’s no way she’d ever…”
“I’m not joking, Steve! According to the activities log, that’s where it was issued from… just over four minutes ago!”
Shaking his head in bewilderment, Steve reached over his console and flicked the intercom switch.
“Venus – are you there? We’ve got an issue with the planetomics – have you been accessing the system in the last few minutes?”
Destiny looked around her wildly, as the first few strands of a plan began to suggest themselves. She switched on the intercom and turned up the volume to maximum, then ran quickly over to her bed where Zoonie was curled up gently snoring – then seizing the underside of the bedframe, she lifted it sharply, tipping the sleeping lazoon onto the floor. The creature let out an indignant howl of protest, and she moved closer to the intercom to gauge the reaction from the nosecone.
Up in Fireball Junior, Steve and Matt exchanged astonished glances, then with slowly dawning comprehension, Steve turned to the intercom once more.
“Venus? Are you awake, Venus? Zoonie sure sounds upset about something! What’s going on in there?”
He shook his head once more and turned to the professor. “You know what I think, Matt? I reckon Zoonie’s fooling around with the computer terminal in Venus’s quarters!”
Matt looked back at him incredulously. “But that’s impossible, Steve! Zoonie couldn’t get into the system in a thousand years – it’s way too complicated for him!”
“Well, that was definitely Zoonie we heard just now,” muttered Steve, “and Venus isn’t answering. I reckon she’s left him all alone in there, and he’s somehow managed to activate the terminal. God knows what he’s done to it, but it’s the only explanation I can think of. Maybe she just left it logged on – I don’t know – but whatever it is, we need to get down there and stop him before he causes any more trouble!”
“Sure thing, Steve,” agreed Matt. “I’ll go find out what’s happening; you reset the target coordinates while I’m gone: it shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes. I’ll call you back from there when I’ve tracked down the problem.”
From her quarters, Destiny watched the monitor intently as he logged himself off the system and walked out the connecting door beneath the surveillance camera’s field of vision. How long would it take him to reach her? Five or six minutes at most… less if he started running. She was going to have to move fast.
She shut down the link to the surveillance camera in Fireball Junior, then brought up the missile initialization system on the screen once more and typed gibberish into several of the entry fields. Leaving the page on the screen, she then helped Zoonie to scramble off the floor and up onto the chair facing the monitor.
Listening intently at the doorway for a few seconds while the lazoon began to doze off once more, she waited until the first faint sounds of Matt’s approaching footsteps began to echo down the passageway from the direction of the nosecone. She dimmed the lights to their lowest possible setting, opened the door and pressed her body flat against the wall adjacent to it. A few seconds later the professor entered the room and walked straight to the console, exactly as she’d anticipated… at which point she silently slipped out of the room, remaining outside and out of sight of the doorway for just long enough to hear the first few words of the dialogue she knew would ensue.
“Looks like you were right all along, Steve: it’s Zoonie… he’s sitting at the terminal in front of me right now. It looks like he’s managed to access the delivery system and scramble the settings... but for the life of me, I just don’t understand…”
“Matt,” interrupted Steve wearily, “since we first brought him back to Earth with us, he’s eaten the ship’s entire supply of oxygen pills on two separate occasions – and managed to launch Fireball into space in the middle of the night with only Robert and Commander Zero’s nine-year-old son on board! I’d say he’s got quite an impressive track record when it comes to causing trouble, wouldn’t you?”
“I’m not disputing that, Steve… I just can’t see how he did it! The system gives even trained astronauts trouble sometimes – after all, it’s not supposed to be the easiest thing in the world to launch a salvo of planetomics! Zoonie ought to find it impossible!”
“Look, never mind about it, Matt… we’ve got bigger fish to fry right now – in the form of a mighty large chunk of Cevena to blow up! Can you sort out the mess on your own, or do you need me to come back there to help?”
“I can do it, Steve – I guess I’ll need about fifteen minutes to straighten it out and reset the codes, so it’s probably best I call you when I’m done, okay?”
“Okay, Matt… let’s just hope that lazoon hasn’t deleted anything we can’t easily recover! When Venus gets back from wherever she’s gone, I guess I’m going to have to say a few things about Zoonie to her that she’s sure not going to want to hear…”
Following the exchange from the corridor outside her quarters through the still-open door, Destiny frowned thoughtfully. Fifteen minutes plus however long it took for the professor to rejoin Steve in the nosecone… that was how long she had to pull it off. Silently she set off in the direction of Fireball Junior, substituting speed for stealth as soon as she was out of earshot of her quarters. As the door leading into the lounge came into view ahead, a wild notion occurred to her: she turned into the lounge and rapidly scanned the tabletops and work surfaces for coffee cups. Sure enough, there were several scattered about the room, some still containing cold dregs. She snatched up one that was three-quarters full, then quickly looked around the room once more, this time for anything small, solid and flat. A digital scratchpad caught her eye; she duly clamped it onto the top of the cup to prevent it from spilling, then resumed her run towards the ship’s nosecone, planning the next step as she ran.
Do I tell him that I’m not Venus? If I were to tell him that Venus is trapped right now on board the airborne base of a global security organization he’s never heard of in a parallel Universe – and that by blowing up those spheres he’ll be destroying not only her only chance of ever coming back, but also my chance of ever seeing my friends again?
She contemplated telling him the whole story for less than one second, instantly dismissing the notion outright. It was hopeless: he’d never listen – and from what little she’d managed to glean about the workings of the World Space Patrol in the short time since she arrived, neither would his superiors.
Do I want to stay in this Universe? No, she didn’t. If the unspeakable alien entity she’d just witnessed being destroyed on Cevena was anything to go by, there were extra-terrestrial abominations here that were every bit as viciously unpleasant as the ones back home… and at least the Mysterons were an enemy she felt she could, if not comprehend, then at least empathise with. Added to that was the current operation to communicate with the Mysterons that her counterpart might be witnessing aboard Cloudbase at this very moment – which just might succeed…
Do I have a duty to remain in this Universe? Again, no: her oath of loyalty was to Spectrum, not to this gung-ho interplanetary policing operation… and in any case, her counterpart presently exiled on Cloudbase was almost certainly better equipped to make this section of the galaxy a safer place for humans to inhabit than she herself.
Which leaves only the question of the course of action to be taken that would give both me and my counterpart on Cloudbase the best chances of getting home…
The bulkhead separating Fireball Junior from the main body of the ship now stood in front of her, and she paused for a few seconds to catch her breath and recover her poise. Not a good idea to alert him to anything at this stage in the game… She activated the control, and adopting her sweetest and most casual demeanour, slowly walked into the cabin.
Steve half-turned in his seat, obviously expecting to see Matt standing there in her place. The instant his eyes fell on her, she watched the thoughts chasing each other through his head as surely as if he’d voiced them aloud: initial surprise, apprehension at the possible continuation of her earlier outburst, relief at her demure expression indicating that the inexplicable tantrum was now over, and finally enquiry as to the reason for her being there – all within the space of half a second.
“Hey, Venus – are you, er… feeling better now? Matt and I were wondering what on earth… that’s to say, we were wondering where you’d got to back there! Say, we’ve really got to do something about Zoonie, you know – Matt’s just sorting out his latest little escapade back in your cabin… you wouldn’t believe what he’s managed to do now!”
Destiny quietly put the cup of coffee down on the console, just out of reach of his left hand, then faced him with a sugar-coated smile.
“Oh, he doesn’t mean to be a nuisance, Steve! When I get back I’ll tell him off… he won’t do it again, I promise! Look, I’ve brought you some coffee. Are we within targeting range of Cevena yet?”
“Just a few more minutes, Venus… and thanks! I guess I’d better get Matt up here to double-check the co-ordinates before we start the countdown: those missiles are sure gonna make one hell of a mess down there…”
He flicked the intercom switch. “Matt? Have you sorted out whatever Zoonie did to the delivery system’s settings yet? I’m ready to initiate the firing sequence up here as soon as you’re ready.”
“He did a real good job of scrambling it, Steve – I guess it’s gonna take me longer than I thought… maybe another fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. Say, is there any sign of Venus?”
“Yeah, Matt – she’s right here with me now! Guess you must have missed one another somewhere along the way. See you when you’re through, okay?”
He flicked the intercom switch and stretched out in his seat. “Well, I guess there’s just about time to drink this before he gets back…”
He leaned over to pick up the cup of coffee, frowned slightly as he lifted it to his lips, and then suspiciously took a sip.
“Say – this coffee’s cold, Venus! Guess you must have picked up the wrong…”
He suddenly stopped speaking as he looked up questioningly at Venus – only to discover that she’d extracted his ray gun from its holster on his right hip while he’d been reaching over to the left for his coffee… and was now pointing it directly at his head.
10 - In Our Reality
The inner door to the lab opened and Doctor Fawn came out, carrying a clipboard.
“Ah, Destiny! Do come in – I was just starting to wonder if you’d had second thoughts… are you sure you’re feeling okay?”
“Of course, Doctor,” replied Venus as dismissively as she felt she could without seeming rude. “I… I forgot the time… had to run most of the way. I’m sorry.”
Fawn nodded understandingly and led her into the laboratory. As he closed the door behind her, she took a few seconds to let her gaze wander before proceeding into the room. The purpose of much of the equipment positioned around the walls was obvious to her, but she noted two or three interesting-looking experimental lash-ups among them. One of the more complex-looking rigs conveyed nothing to her at all, and she walked over to take a closer look.
“Er… could I ask you to come and sit down at this console over here, Destiny?”
Venus turned with an apologetic smile, and duly made her way over to the chair he was indicating.
“I’m sorry, Doctor… I’m just being curious…”
She gestured back towards the mysterious array of gadgets that had previously caught her attention. “Why do you need a transitional episodic sequencer connected in parallel with the dynamic synapse monitor over there?”
Doctor Fawn glanced at the module in question, then peered at her uncertainly for a moment before replying.
“Er, well… that rig is part of a project to determine whether the human brain’s temporal gyrus mechanism can be artificially augmented to enable us to extract more information from the Mysterons’ communications than can be obtained from the audible frequencies alone. The sequencer enables us to replicate the functionality of the human auditory cortex.”
“Ah,” replied Venus absently as she sat down and made herself comfortable. “Do you need me to roll up my sleeves, Doctor?”
Fawn continued to look at her with obvious puzzlement for another couple of seconds before suddenly realizing she’d just asked him a question.
“Er, yes… if you would, please. Now then, Destiny… I just need to connect you to several devices which will monitor your vital signs and neural activity while I take you through a series of tests. It’ll take me a few minutes to power them all up and then to calibrate them against the electroencephalographic scan I obtained while you were flying the simulator, so just try to relax, okay? I just need to attach these connections to your forearm… that’s it… now, let’s check to make sure the complete range of your physiological responses are being recorded on all channels…”
He squinted at the graphic displays for a few seconds, and then frowned. “Did you say a few moments ago that you ran from the Standby Lounge, Destiny?”
“Yes – it must have been almost all the way,” replied Venus vaguely, trying hard not to blush.
He regarded her closely, clearly puzzled. “Strange… I wouldn’t have expected that alone to account for these readings – the hormonal sensors are detecting elevated oxytocin and dopamine levels…”
“I’m sure it’s nothing, Doctor,” interrupted Venus hurriedly. “I feel fine – can we just get on with it, please?”
He shot her a glance, then stepped over to the side of the room and picked up a translucent hemispherical structure about the size of a flying helmet, from which protruded at least a dozen electronic connections.
“In addition to the physiological sensors, I’ll need to connect you to one of these multiphase synaptic feedback interpreters. Would you lean forward, please? Thank you, that’s perfect… yes, I appreciate that it’s not quite the sort of headgear you’d find exhibited in the best Parisian fashion shows, but I promise not to make any derogatory remarks…”
Venus mentally smiled at the small talk, recognising just how closely it mirrored her own technique for distracting her patients while wiring them up back at Space City. Should I tell him how infuriating it is? she wondered. No… doctor always knows best – and he’s the doctor, not me! How would I feel if the positions were reversed?
“You never know, Doctor Fawn… perhaps next year they’ll be all the rage!”
“Well, who can say, Destiny? I’ll admit that as far as women’s fashions go, absolutely nothing surprises me any more…”
He took a step back and nodded with satisfaction at the arrangement, then turned to face the control panel.
There… I think that’s everything… Now then, the equipment I’ve connected you to will help me to understand better the nature of some encephalographic anomalies which I noted during your earlier session on the simulator. You may become aware of a slight sensation of dizziness as I adjust the settings. This is perfectly normal, and nothing to be concerned about. Are you ready? Good – then let’s begin…”
Venus looked on with polite interest while he gestured towards the array of controls.
“I’m about to induce within your cerebral cortex part of the recording I made earlier today of your session on the simulator, Destiny. The section in question relates to your initial abortive attempt to bring the Angel interceptor down onto the elevated platform, and the subsequent actions you took to rectify the situation. You will experience the same emotions as you did previously – but because the events are no longer being played out in real time, your brain will find itself able to contemplate courses of action other than those you originally followed. You will be unaware of these, but the equipment to which you are attached will record the electroencephalographic traces to which they correspond… and I will be able to analyse them once the session is over. All I need you to do is to re-experience the sequence of events as you would as an observer, as opposed to as a participant - much as you would sit back in a sensory-enhanced armchair and enjoy a movie. Are you ready?”
Venus nodded and closed her eyes. Almost immediately a montage of impressions began to assail her as vivid memories flooded back into her mind… the plane’s control panel was arrayed in front of her eyes… the deck was rising to meet her… she reached forward… she stabbed at the vertical thruster controls… the sharp jolt to her rib cage and stomach as the plane began to rise… She sensed, rather than saw, the cloud-studded sky circling above her as the plane hurtled vertically into the stratosphere, then found herself instinctively tensing her stomach muscles as the gut-wrenching g-forces tore at her innards as the aircraft began its long, slow loop-the-loop.
And then, as quickly as the acceleration-related sensations had begun to force themselves upon her, they started to dissipate in her mind. The sky began to fade away: she was no longer seated in the simulated cockpit, but in a black leather chair… a black leather chair in front of a screen… a screen showing a set of hypnotically rhythmic, concentric circles… and there was a slow, deep voice that spoke inside her head…
“Please sit.”
Venus physically jumped, opening her eyes at once and blinking rapidly. She’d heard that slow and deep intonation as it echoed throughout the corridors and meeting rooms of Cloudbase not two hours previously! She looked wildly about the lab but saw nothing amiss… except for the expression on Doctor Fawn’s face, which betrayed puzzlement at the readings that had presumably just appeared on the screen at his console.
“Thank you. Will I be able to see you?”
And now there was another voice echoing inside her brain… a different voice… a human voice! She recognised it instantly as that of Captain Scarlet: the clarity was such that she could not only hear the words, but also sensed something of Scarlet’s mood as they were spoken. There was apprehension there, with just the faintest suggestion of foreboding.
“There is no need for you to see me. I can hear anything you have to say.”
Yes , thought Venus… I’m not wrong – it is the voice of the Mysterons! The same slow, deep and menacing intonation; perhaps lacking the reverberating echo present in the reply to Colonel White’s message, but unquestionably the same voice. She caught Doctor Fawn’s attention with a wave of her hand and gestured urgently at the feedback interpreter positioned over her head. He nodded with instant comprehension and strode towards her to disconnect her from the equipment, but she shook her head and gestured for him to wait.
“I have come here unarmed. Your instructions have been followed precisely.”
That was Scarlet once more: a statement of having fulfilled a set of conditions… of course! Captain Scarlet is currently undertaking a mission to meet with the Mysterons! Could it be that Doctor Fawn’s equipment has somehow tapped into that mission? But the Mysterons are speaking again…
“You must listen – and take back this message to the world. This is the voice of the Mysterons. Hear us, Earthmen, and take heed! You started this war of nerves with your unprovoked attack on our complex…”
“What’s going on, Destiny? My instruments have just gone crazy: the recording I’m using to stimulate your synaptic nodes seems to have been corrupted by some…”
Venus cut him off impatiently with a wave of her hand.
“I’m hearing voices inside my head, Doctor Fawn! It sounds like… like a conversation between the Mysterons and Captain Scarlet! But how is that possible? Is this equipment connected to the base’s communications system?”
The flat monotone voice faded away into nothingness as Doctor Fawn reached over and gently lifted the interpreter up and away from Venus’s head.
“I take it you’re not hearing anything now, Destiny?”
Venus shook her head. “No, it stopped as soon as physical contact was broken.” She looked at Doctor Fawn questioningly. “Could the interpreter be acting as cat’s whisker radio receiver? No… that can’t be right – I sensed the chair in which Captain Scarlet was sitting, and the screen he was watching when he spoke – it must have been a neural reaction…”
Doctor Fawn placed the apparatus on his own head and closed his eyes.
“I’m not sensing anything myself, Destiny. You’re quite sure about this?”
“Absolutely certain… I know it was there!” replied Venus. Her eyes narrowed, and she frowned thoughtfully. “Doctor… where is Room 101, the location of the Mysteron pulsator? In relation to this lab, I mean: is it very close?”
Fawn opened his eyes and blinked. “Er… it’ll be somewhere on the floor above us, Destiny. I don’t know its exact position relative to this room. Why… what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking,” replied Venus slowly, “if the pulsator were directly above us, it would be no further away than I was standing from it when Colonel White sent his message to the Mysterons earlier today. And for a few seconds on that occasion, I sensed… something… inexplicable...”
Doctor Fawn closed his eyes once more, then opened them again with a start.
“Interesting… I thought I might have sensed something for an instant just then – the sound of a door slamming, perhaps? There’s nothing now though: I guess I must’ve been mis…”
His face suddenly contorted with pain, and with a weird, unearthly scream of anguish coming from his mouth, his body was instantly hurled across the lab as if by some giant invisible hand. Two of the banks of equipment positioned against the wall simultaneously exploded in balls of flame, and at the same instant the lab was plunged into darkness as all the lights in the room went out.
Within seconds the lab began to fill with pungent acrid smoke. Coughing violently, Venus threw herself to the floor to minimize her contact with it, rolled herself to where Doctor Fawn’s prone body lay and desperately started feeling for signs of a heartbeat – a pulse in his wrist, his neck, anything…
The flickering electrical sparks emanating from the equipment enabled her to make out the faint outline of the door, as her eyes gradually became attuned to the darkness. Forcing herself to inhale deeply, she struggled to her feet, ran to it and frantically started feeling for the control that would make it slide open. Within seconds she’d found it, but no amount of pressing, pushing, pulling or stabbing at it had any effect: the door remained obstinately closed. No lighting, no power to the door, so internal communications are probably down too…
Fighting down the urge to scream with frustration, she peered through the smoke-filled gloom in search of anything resembling a box, cabinet or locker that would contain a first-aid kit. There had to be one – it’s a laboratory, for God’s sake…
Squinting through the billowing smoke, she eventually managed to spot it within a purpose-built cavity in the far wall, and immediately scrambled over one of the still-burning pieces of equipment to reach it. Tearing it open, she extracted two respirators and ran back to Doctor Fawn, where she quickly affixed one of them over his nose and mouth, then did the same for herself with the other, before returning to the cabinet for the defibrillator. Running back with it, she’d already ripped open the doctor’s uniform and started to connect it up to his chest before realizing that the increasingly thick smoke would shortly impair her ability to see what she was doing.
She cursed herself for a fool, and desperately started fiddling with the communicator built into her tunic. How does this thing work? Come on, Venus – think! You saw Symphony activate hers… how did she do it? Was it this button? No… how about this one? No… then it must be…
Her epaulettes suddenly started flashing white, and she almost screamed with relief.
“Colonel White! Can you hear me? Emergency! Repeat – Emergency!”
“Destiny Angel – this is Colonel White! Where are you? What’s happened?”
“Colonel – I’m in the Advanced Neurosciences Lab with Doctor Fawn… there’s been an explosion in here, and we need medical support immediately! Doctor Fawn is critically injured… I’m administering what treatment I can, but his vital signs are absent. The lab is without power; lighting is non-functional, the external door does not open from the inside and the room is filling with smoke. We are both wearing respirators; I’ve been attempting to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation without success, and I am about to apply defibrillation – however it’s highly probable that he’s suffered a severe brain injury that will impair his ability to respond. The situation is critical! Can you help us?”
Even over the sparking and crackling of the flames still shooting out of the wrecked equipment, Venus could hear the sharp intake of breath over the radio link.
“Lieutenant Green is forwarding this call to the Infirmary as I’m speaking, Destiny: help is on its way! I have Captains Blue and Ochre with me: they will be instructed to take charge of the rescue upon termination of this call. What’s your status – are you injured?”
“No, Colonel – I wasn’t connected to the equipment when the rig exploded, but Doctor Fawn was. As soon as the medical support team effects entry, he will be their immediate priority: please ensure they are equipped with an intracranial pressure monitor, endotracheal tubes, laryngoscope, pulse oxymeter…”
“Standing orders are in place for the equipment to be deployed in all types of medical emergency aboard Cloudbase, Destiny,” interrupted Colonel White hurriedly. “The emergency response team are already on their way to your location: they’ll contact you directly upon arrival, so leave this channel open! In the meantime, obviously try to do everything you can for Doctor Fawn until they get there!”
“A-OK, this is Destiny out, er… that is… Spectrum is Green!”
She switched her attention back to Doctor Fawn’s inert body, then began applying mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while simultaneously straining her eyes through the smoke, looking for any equipment that could conceivably be of use. The resuscitators and the defibrillator all had self-contained power units, but would anything else work? Not all the equipment in the lab was operational when the explosion occurred – and that included the other synaptic interpreter, with which she could scan for neural activity – but without power it would be useless…
“Colonel White… regardless of whether your team can get through the door, I need electrical power restored to the lab as an absolute priority! Is there anything you can do to facilitate this?”
“One moment, Destiny...”
He turned to face Captain Blue. “Can we cut a hole in the door large enough to feed a power cable through it into the ANL, Captain?”
Blue shook his head. “Unlikely, sir. Even if we were able to cut the hole in time, the metal around it would be virtually molten: any cables we tried to feed through would most likely fuse into the metalwork. Rigging up heavy-duty insulation is feasible, but doing so will add to the time needed to complete the operation.”
“Lieutenant Green - is there any other route through which we could feed a power cable into the ANL?”
“No… the airducts connect the rooms directly to the exterior walls… wait a minute… yes!”
The lieutenant turned urgently to Colonel White. “Colonel, there could be a way! The renovation work in the conference centre isn’t complete, and the air ducts are still interconnected. The ANL is on the floor below, so we might be able to pass a cable…”
Colonel White nodded immediately, cutting him short with a wave of his hand.
“Which room is located directly above the ANL, Lieutenant?”
Lieutenant Green began typing rapidly, and within a few seconds a schematic flashed up on the screen in front of them.
“It’s Room 101, Colonel! There’s an airduct leading vertically down to the floor below. There shouldn’t be anything between the two floors to prevent a cable from being lowered down from there to the lab.”
“Is the ducting large enough to allow Destiny to climb up to Room 101, Lieutenant?”
Lieutenant Green shook his head. “No, Colonel – those passages are too narrow to allow access.”
Colonel White pondered the new information for a second, then turned to Captain Ochre.
“Go to Room 101 immediately, Captain. Remove any covering over that airduct, determine how much additional cable will be needed to reach the ANL from above – hopefully there should be enough already there on account of the installation of Doctor Kurnitz’s limiter – and get it installed as fast as possible.”
“S.I.G., Colonel!” Ochre turned smartly and ran from the room, and Colonel White turned to Captain Blue.
“Captain Blue – liaise with the engineers in Maintenance and the medical emergency team: find a way to get through that door into the lab, then provide the team and Destiny with all possible assistance in treating Doctor Fawn.”
“Spectrum is Green!” The captain’s cap microphone snapped into place in front of his mouth, and he moved away from the communications board while Colonel White turned to Lieutenant Green once more.
“Lieutenant – let Destiny know what we’re doing, then tell her to remove the covering from the airduct in readiness to receive the cable. Tell her we’re working as quickly as we can, and that she should do whatever she can to keep Doctor Fawn alive until we can get that cable down to her!”
Lieutenant Green nodded. “S.I.G., Colonel: Destiny’s channel is still open, so she may be following this… Destiny – are you there? Did you hear that?”
An ominous silence was the only reply, punctuated a few seconds later by a succession of faint scuffling sounds and the occasional muffled expletive in French. Colonel White let it continue for a further minute before leaning over the lieutenant’s console and reaching for the microphone.
“Destiny… what is your status, please? Please advise us of your…”
“Colonel White – yes, I did hear that! The airduct cover has now been removed, and I am about to apply defibrillation to Doctor Fawn. This may prevent me from immediately attending to the cable when it is lowered, so please advise Captain Ochre of my situation – then stand by for further instructions!”
The manner and tone in which the update was delivered had its effect on the two men who, having initially responded instinctively to the emergency, now found themselves with a few seconds to catch their breath. Colonel White was the first to recover his wits.
“Er… Destiny – are you certain you know how to operate the defibrillator? It’s probably some time since you took the first-aid course dealing with cardiac arrests, and we don’t want to risk…”
“Dieu du ciel! Of course I know how to operate it! Please just concentrate on getting that power lead…. ah! There are noises inside the shaft, so I am signing off! I will let you know when I have an update on Doctor Fawn’s condition, so in the meantime please do not call me to ask how things are going!”
A sharp click signalled the end of the conversation, leaving Colonel White and Lieutenant Green staring each another in bemusement.
“You know, Lieutenant,” muttered Colonel White wryly, “if I didn’t know better, I’d have said Destiny’s been taking lessons in how to handle medical emergencies from Doctor Fawn himself! I just hope her faith in her own abilities isn’t misplaced, that’s all.”
“She certainly seems very sure of herself!” agreed Green. “Do you think she can resuscitate him, Colonel? The rescue team ought to be able to get through that door very shortly – perhaps it would be better to tell Destiny to wait until they’re able to…”
“No, Lieutenant – I don’t think so. Irrespective of whether she’s as proficient at handling medical emergencies as she clearly thinks she is, we can at least be confident she won’t make the situation any worse. Let me know the second she calls back, but in the meantime put me into contact with Captain Blue: I want to know if his team can be expected to get to Doctor Fawn before the expiry of the Mysterons’ deadline. After that we’ll leave them alone: they’re some of the best people we have, and I find the most effective way to be of assistance to them is usually to keep well out of their way.”
11 - Elsewhere
“Say, what’s up, Venus? This is no time for practical jokes – that coma ray’s dangerous!”
“This isn’t a joke, Steve – and you don’t need to tell me how dangerous it is: I was with you when you incinerated that installation down on the planet’s surface with it, remember? Now wipe that condescending expression off your face and listen! You’re going to fly this ship back into orbit around Cevena, and the two of us are going to take Fireball Junior down to the surface. We are going to land it and disembark – and I am then going to try to reactivate one of the spheres.”
“What? I’ll do no such thing, Venus! What on earth’s gotten into you, for heaven’s sake? Are you still under the influence of the one that intercepted us back there in space?”
Destiny sighed. There was no other way… and with a sudden pang of regret, she realized that she’d known there was no other way all along.
“I’m not Venus, Steve. At this moment – right now – Venus is trapped in another Universe – my Universe – and I’m trapped here… in hers. Everything about her that makes her who she is has changed places with everything that is me. Don’t ask me how because I don’t know. What I do know is that if there is any chance – any chance at all – of us reversing whatever’s happened to us, both she and I will need to recreate the conditions that caused this… this transposition in the first place.”
“Venus… you’re sick… that sphere’s done something to you – something terrible! I know… let me just call Matt and get him to look you over…”
“No, Steve – you won’t… and don’t even think about touching that communicator switch! You’ll do what I’ve just told you to do – and you’ll do it now. Those spheres provide the only possible way to resolve this situation. Every word I’ve just told you is true.”
He merely shook his head in a dismissive gesture that fell just short of a laugh. “Nonsense!”
“Yes… that was the reaction I expected,” sighed Destiny. She took a deep breath, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t realize she had no idea how to read the navigational controls.
“Steve, the only reason I’ve told you this is that if what I’m planning to do works, then Venus – your Venus – will tell you an equally unbelievable story when she returns. If I had enough time, I would describe the place where she is right now – and the technology that was used to create it – to you in such minute detail that eventually you’d have to believe me. But I don’t have time – your commander back at Space City has made sure of that – so I’m going to have to leave sorting out the mess I’m going to leave behind to Venus when she returns to this body once more… if she ever returns to this body, that is. In the meantime, I need you to take this ship back into orbit around Cevena…. so please lay in that course right now – while I’m watching you doing it.”
Would the bluff work? She’d been confident she’d get away with it – and yet when his reply came, it certainly wasn’t the one she was expecting.
“I need Matt’s navigational calculations entered onto the system before I can pre-program a manoeuvre that close to the planet, Venus – you know that!”
“Steve – let’s not waste time playing games,” sighed Destiny, “I’m not that naïve… this is your ship: it goes wherever you fly it! I lead a squadron of jet fighters where I come from – and even if our navigational equipment isn’t as advanced as yours, I still know that…”
He stared at her, open-mouthed, and then burst into laughter. “A fighter pilot? You?”
Destiny glared at him, irritated at the interruption to her train of thought with an overtly condescending reference to an irrelevant detail.
“Did I say something funny, Steve?”
“But… but… you’re a woman, Venus!” He shook his head in obvious disbelief. “Now I know you’re sick…”
“The files I reviewed earlier,” interrupted Destiny coldly, “told me that Venus once flew a solo mission around the Moon… and that’s an achievement even where I come from! And it really doesn’t matter if what I’ve told you about who I am is true or not, because right now I’m holding you at gunpoint with your weapon – so as I see it, you really do need to take this conversation seriously. Would you agree?”
The look of disbelief in his features slowly faded, and he regarded at her warily. Once more, she could almost see the thoughts running through his head: irrespective of her sanity, he was at least satisfied of her sincerity… and whatever her mental state, the gun was real enough. He’ll play for time and wait for his chance, she realized. She took a small step backwards before speaking once more.
“Now… what’s our ETA at Cevena, please?”
He took a second or two to reply, during which time his expression didn’t change.
“Hard to say for certain without Matt’s input… but I’ll guess at no more than fifteen more minutes on this heading… could be less. You’d best not prevent me from firing the retros when the time comes, else we’ll be making a mighty big mess on the planet’s surface… and I sure wouldn’t want to finish a three-week journey from Earth looking like a mud speck on a football.”
Destiny looked at him uncertainly. “There’s no planet called Cevena within three weeks of Earth, Steve! The nearest star’s Alpha Centauri – and that’s four light years away…”
Steve frowned back at her. “Just where do you think we are, Venus? From Space City to Cevena is three weeks and two days at full thrust… and Granvenia – that’s the planet the tankers were headed to when the spheres started intercepting them – is only a few more days further out.”
His expression changed subtly. “You know what I think? I reckon that when you were first knocked out, that sphere scrambled your memory! All that fairy-tale stuff about the Solar System only consisting of about a dozen visible planets is what all the Earthbound sky-watchers thought before the first astronauts ran into the effects of the EDFE while trying to navigate the asteroid belt. We were sure lucky a few of them survived to tell us about it!”
Destiny shook her head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Steve! What effects? What is the ‘EDFE’?”
Steve’s eyes narrowed. “Hey, you’re really out of it, Venus! This is kindergarten stuff – the Extrasolar Dark Fluid Ellipsoid intersects the plane of the ecliptic between Mars and Jupiter, remember? That’s why that orbit’s littered with asteroids and other pieces of smashed-up interplanetary debris – and of course that’s also why only about half of them are visible! Is it coming back now?”
“Nothing’s coming back, Steve!” snapped Destiny impatiently. “Are you telling me there are invisible planets out in space?”
He stared at her incredulously.
“Of course there are, Venus! Everything in the Ellipsoid that orbits the Sun at more than twelve degrees off the ecliptic is invisible from Earth – asteroids, planetoids, meteors, you name it! I guess it wasn’t surprising that nobody knew they were there when all exploration was limited to the visible planets, and all electromagnetic radiation passing through the EDFE just got swept around them and out into interstellar space thanks to dark-energy induced skycurve… but that all changed fast enough when the first explorers away from the ecliptic started flying into them! And talking about dark-energy induced skycurve…”
He gestured towards the instrumentation panel in front of him, where a coordinated sequence of lights had just started flashing urgently in the middle of the screen. She glanced at it without lowering the weapon, and merely nodded to acknowledge that she understood something required his attention.
“Here we go… Cevena’s just coming back into range. Normally I’d ask Matt for confirmation before bringing the close-orbital manoeuvring thrusters online, but I reckon the planet should be at least partially visible on a bearing of one-three-six-zero-blue any moment now.”
He moved slightly in his seat to look past her, through the main viewing window into the blackness of space beyond. “And the local dark fluid envelope’s beginning to dissipate, right on cue…”
Her attention was diverted for less than a second, but he’d been watching for it – and had chosen his timing with expert precision. His arm lashed out and knocked the coma ray gun clean out of her hand, sending it clattering across the floor of the cabin. An instant later he was out of his seat and had seized her wrist, simultaneously spinning her round to disorientate her while attempting to wrench her arm behind her back to trap her in an unbreakable armlock. And it would have worked like a charm if she’d been the woman he still thought she was.
But then… she wasn’t the woman he thought she was. Reacting to the assault with both the instinct and speed of a cornered wildcat, she swung her body into and through it, gracefully slipped out of the grip and seized one of his legs, sweeping him off the ground and over her shoulder in a single coordinated movement… before hurling him out of the cabin through the open door, where he landed in an undignified heap of bruised and aching limbs on the floor. By the time he had managed to work out in what direction the command module from which he’d just been ejected lay, the connecting door had been closed and sealed shut from the inside.
Rubbing his head more in bewilderment than in response to the pain, he scrambled to his feet and stumbled over to the bulkhead, and then thumped hard on it. “Venus? Venus – open this door at once!”
The intercom crackled into life, and Venus’s voice – very slightly strained but otherwise perfectly composed – floated into the corridor.
“Sorry, Steve! But I did give you a chance to settle this peacefully… and you don’t get another one! I was really hoping we could avoid it, but it looks like I’m going to have to do this the hard way…”
The intercom went dead again, and he thumped on the bulkhead once more.
“Listen to me, Venus! You can’t keep us out of there – you know that! Just in case you’ve forgotten, we can override the bulkhead release mechanism from Central Control – so come out now, before you get hurt! Open the door and throw out the coma ray – then we can talk about this!”
Inside Fireball Junior, Destiny looked quickly around the cabin, recognising sombrely that his claim to be able to trip the lock remotely probably wasn’t a bluff. If so, she had about the amount of time it would take him to run to the professor’s navigation console in the main body of the ship, override the locking mechanism and run back again.
Her glance fell on Steve’s weapon, now lying on the floor underneath one of the consoles, but she rejected the notion instantly. True, she might be able to overcome the pair of them in a firefight, given that they’d be more worried about harming her than she would be of harming them… but that scenario would irrevocably destroy any chance that either she or her counterpart might have of rebuilding their life here afterwards. No… there was a better way – and although she’d already considered the likelihood of needing to fall back on it, she’d most earnestly hoped she wouldn’t have to attempt it. However, needs must…
She stepped over to Steve’s console, swung herself into his seat and ran her fingertips over the controls. Would she be able to perform alone the operation she was now contemplating? Probably not – and almost certainly not in the time she had available to find out – but then again, she might not need to…
She turned to face the ship’s co-pilot, which was sitting immobile in the seat immediately to her right, and addressed it in an appropriately commanding tone of voice.
“Robert! Disengage nosecone from Fireball’s main body, then proceed on current trajectory towards Cevena until you receive further instructions!”
“Disengage nosecone… disengage nosecone…”
The interconnected morass of translucent circuitry jerked into life and reached forward towards the control panel in front of it. Destiny hurriedly swung herself out of the command chair and leaned over to watch as the robot began to effect a complex sequence of button pushes and twisting of dials. She suddenly felt a slight movement, not unlike a miniscule drop in the level of the command module’s floor beneath her feet, followed less than two seconds later by a brief but gut-wrenching thrust forward.
Realising that the command module in which she was located was now separated from Fireball’s main body by a rapidly widening gap of empty space, she permitted herself to breathe a brief sigh of relief that she’d no longer need to worry about the bulkhead being forced, though she continued to study the movements of the robot’s pincers as they began to perform the task of piloting Fireball Junior in the direction of the planet that was now occupying a substantial – and steadily increasing – proportion of the module’s forward-facing viewing port. Manoeuvring the craft didn’t appear to be all that difficult…
It was some ten minutes later that she noted with alarm that Robert had suddenly started to perform a series of erratic movements with the pincers as the pattern of their movements visibly changed even as she watched. A moment after that, the planet they were speeding towards began to move slowly but inexorably out of view to the left.
It took Destiny less than two more seconds to realise what was happening: the robot had obviously just been taken over remotely by someone aboard the ship’s main body, and had been ordered to reconnect its command module with it forthwith. Oh no, you don’t! she thought grimly, as she reached into its innards and wrenched out the component she’d seen extracted from Robert earlier. The robot instantly slumped in its seat, and the array of twinkling lights within its innards faded and died. So much for my chauffeur, she thought to herself as she pushed Robert’s inert arms aside and began to attempt to replicate the actions she’d watched it performing just a few moments previously.
It took her a further quarter of an hour of experimenting with various combinations of the controls before Cevena was once more firmly established as the ship’s destination, throughout which time, she was gratified to reflect, no further attempts appeared to have been made to seize control of it.
No more tricks up your sleeves, boys? She smiled tightly to herself as she edged Fireball Junior into a slow descent towards the planet’s surface, far below. Would she actually be able to land the ship, having never flown it before? Navigating it in flight was one thing, but bringing it down in one piece was entirely another – and she began to give serious thought to the possibility of returning control of it to Robert for the final descent. For one thing, she guessed that Steve wouldn’t want to risk damaging or destroying Fireball Junior by attempting to regain control of it while it was both out of his sight and possibly executing a critical manoeuvre – and for another, Robert would have the exact coordinates of Fireball’s previous landing position recorded within his memory banks.
She had almost made up her mind to reinstate the robot as the pilot once more when she realised with a start that the terrain now slowly passing far beneath Fireball Junior was increasingly familiar. The mountain range far to the south… that crater rim over there… the fleet of spheres scattered about the plain… the remains of the destroyed facility….
She squinted at the array of buildings passing beneath Fireball Junior as she piloted it slowly over them, and frowned uncertainly – something wasn’t right – and now she thought about it, she realised that she’d subconsciously registered that something was amiss even as the plain first came into view. Surely the destruction wrought upon the facility by the explosions during their earlier visit was more obvious than this? The frown grew deeper as she manoeuvred the ship into a stationary hovering position directly facing the buildings. Looking at the state of them now, she could almost believe that there hadn’t been any explosions at all…
And then, suddenly she knew. Reaching out to the vertical thrust control, she slowly increased the power to the downward jets to raise Fireball Junior a few hundred metres into the air once more, and looked down on the array of spheres scattered about the edges of the plain – and realised what it was about them that hadn’t quite looked right when she’d flown over them a few moments previously. The spheres had moved: what had originally been a straight double line of them at the edge of the plain had been transformed into a rough semicircle with the facility at its centre. And Destiny had a pretty good idea what those spheres had been doing since Fireball had left the planetoid just a few hours previously…
Her fingers hovered over the ship’s interceptor controls for a few seconds, but realising almost in the same moment that such an attack would be completely pointless, she withdrew them again. Even if she managed to destroy the facility completely, the fleet of spheres would almost certainly just reconstruct it again. The spheres would obviously have to be eliminated also – but with them scattered around the perimeter of the plain, Fireball Junior lacked enough missiles to destroy all of them. The main ship probably did possess sufficient firepower to obliterate the entire plain – and possibly the rest of the planet too – but she knew that Steve wouldn’t initiate such an attack while she was still on the surface. True, she could abandon her mission and return to the main body of the ship in orbit – but doing that would probably leave her stranded in this insane alternate reality for ever.
No, she had to try to complete her mission… but she recognised that even a successful outcome of that was fraught with risks for her counterpart should she succeed. Venus would be returned – possibly in a state of hypnosis – to a strange planet about which she knew nothing, in the middle of a Mysteronised installation that was about to be vaporized on direct orders from Earth.
Destiny weighed up Venus’s chances of survival and concluded that they weren’t good. Venus would have to be made to understand that she had to get off Cevena instantly… assuming of course that was possible at all, given that the facility itself was clearly now controlled by the Mysterons.
Could she write Venus a note, and carry it with her until the moment of the transpositions of their consciousnesses – if it ever occurred – had passed? She dismissed the idea out of hand: it was too much to expect Venus to read it and understand the urgency with which its instructions would have to be carried out… and as she’d already recognised, Venus might not be in any fit state to read it anyway.
Her eyes fell speculatively on Robert, still lying deactivated in the co-pilot’s seat. Yes – the best chance of a successful outcome lay with Robert… but what was to be done about Steve’s likely response to the robot suddenly being able to respond once more to commands from orbit? Double-guessing the outcome of that scenario didn’t take much brainpower, she thought wryly. Regardless of whether she herself was aboard or not, he’d order Robert to return Fireball Junior to orbit so that he could come down himself, probably bringing the professor with him.
Could she disable Robert’s comms link? No – she had no idea how to do it, and there wasn’t time to learn. Could she simply order Robert to disregard orders from Steve? Again, no – as the XL5’s captain, he’d obviously have both the authority and the means to override such a command.
It was no good: she’d just have to explain the scenario to him, and trust in his good sense not to interfere until she’d finished making the attempt to get home. The problem with that argument, she realised grimly, was that his ‘good sense’ would almost certainly tell him simply that she was sick, and that she needed help urgently – in which case he’d merely act in accordance with her earlier prediction, and her one opportunity to get home again would be lost.
So… she had to prevent him from taking control of Robert while she still needed the robot’s aid. But how? Formulating that plan took her another couple of minutes – at the end of which time she realised grimly that it would depend on her taking a calculated risk, and then moving very quickly indeed…
She reached over to the control she’d seen Steve use to open the hatch in Fireball Junior’s roof, and flicked it. Waiting until the hatch was fully open, she then squeezed herself into position directly behind the robot on its jetmobile, and picked up the module that would activate it. Taking a deep breath, she reached around Robert’s middle, and pressed the activation module into its socket within the robot’s innards - whereupon the robot instantly twitched into life.
“Robert! Fly this jetmobile out of Fireball Junior, land it on the ground outside as quickly as possible, and then disembark immediately!”
“Fly jetmobile out of Fireball Junior… fly jetmobile out of Fireball Junior…”
The jetmobile slowly began to rise into the air, and she braced herself for the blast of freezing air as it glided upwards out of the cabin. No sooner had it cleared the hatch when the radio burst into life with a crackle of static.
“Venus! Our instruments tell us that Robert’s been reactivated… what’s going on down there? Are you hurt? Speak to me, Venus!”
The level of concern present in Steve’s tone of voice was manifestly obvious, and Destiny mentally cursed both him for being so quick off the mark – and also herself for what she knew she had to do next.
“Crisis situation, Steve! Just give me another couple of moments, and then we can talk, okay?”
“Okay, Venus – but…”
She flicked the radio’s off-switch to cut him off in mid-sentence, and prepared herself to leap off the jetmobile as it sailed downwards towards the ground beneath Fireball Junior. As it landed, she swung herself off the back of the seat onto the ground, then waited impatiently for the robot to vacate the forward section, which it did with painstaking deliberation.
“Disembark immediately… disembark immediately…”
The second the robot was off the machine, Destiny moved lithely forward, swung her leg over the seat and seized the handlebars, reactivating the vertical thrusters as she did so. The jetmobile rose rapidly into the air once more, and she brought it gracefully to a stationary hover about two metres above Robert’s head. Activating the radio once more, she leaned down to speak into the jetmobile’s microphone.
“Okay, Steve – the crisis is over! Well… it wasn’t really much of a crisis, but never mind about that – the important thing is that I need you to listen to me, okay?”
A couple of seconds’ silence followed, and Destiny could see a clear image in her head of Steve and Matt whispering to one another as they planned their next move. When Steve’s reply came, it was delivered in a calm and measured voice quite unlike the one he’d used a few moments earlier.
“Okay, Venus… look, why don’t you just take a little time to explain slowly and clearly what it is that you’re trying to do down there? Nobody’s putting you under any pressure…”
The ploy to gain the two men a little extra time was so transparent that Destiny almost laughed out loud.
“No, Steve – it won’t work! And to save you the trouble of interrogating Robert to find out what’s going on, I’ll tell you myself. Robert and I have left Fireball Junior on one of the jetmobiles, and right now he’s standing on the ground out of reach of it – because I’m now flying it. He can’t get back into Fireball Junior to pilot it back into space, and he can’t incapacitate me while I’m airborne and out of his reach – so don’t waste your time ordering him to do either! There is something I’ve got to do down here, and I need his help to do it – so I will ask you nicely: please don’t interfere with his ability to carry out my orders in any way! If you do, you will probably put my life in danger. Do you understand?”
Another few seconds of silence followed, during which time Destiny could see a concerted burst of electrical activity emanating from Robert’s innards, several metres below her. No prizes for guessing what that’s all about, she thought. Evidently the robot had merely confirmed to Steve and Matt what she’d just told them herself a few moments previously, because when Steve’s reply eventually came, it was delivered in a resigned tone, and was short and to the point.
“Okay, Venus – it’s your show. I promise we won’t interfere… but don’t forget that you’re shutting us out from helping too, so I guess that means you’re on your own. Look after yourself down there: you mean a lot to us – so you take care, okay?”
Destiny permitted herself a tight smile: he had plenty of faults, but he was okay where it mattered. She realised with a sudden and unexpected pang of regret that if she ever did manage to get home again, she was going to miss him.
“Thanks, Steve. There’s something I need to warn you about – because I don’t think you were very attentive the last time we spoke about this! If I am successful, the Venus that comes back from this planet’s surface when this is over almost certainly isn’t going to remember anything about what happened here. Instead, she will probably tell you some crazy story about life aboard an airborne aircraft carrier, where people wear colour-coded uniforms and have names to match. Please don’t just dismiss that story as some wild fantasy. Listen to her and believe her… if she means as much to you as you say, you owe her that much.”
There was a brief pause, and she could picture the expression on his face as he tried to formulate an appropriate reply. When it came, she was gratified to recognise that he had at least taken it in – though what he’d made of it was entirely another matter.
“I reckon this has to be the craziest conversation that you and I have ever had, Venus! But I promise I’ll do my best, if it ever comes to that.”
It was as much as she could realistically hope for by way of protecting her alter ego at present aboard Cloudbase from the consequences of her own actions, and she knew it.
“There is something else you need to know, Steve… which is that you have a Mysteron problem here! When what I’ve got to do here on the surface is over – however it ends – you must destroy this site completely. Not just the facility itself, but the entire surrounding area. Your commander was right to order the attack, even if it was for reasons he couldn’t possibly have known.”
“Mysterons – you mean the disembodied intelligence on Mars? You’re wrong, Venus: the Mysterons were destroyed years ago! They were pretty much the first aliens the early pioneers encountered when we first started exploring the Solar System – that was before the WSP was created, of course. We wiped them out with a salvo of planetomics after they started giving us trouble during our early missions to the asteroid belt and beyond. You’re still kind-of mixed up on account of that sphere, I reckon.”
“Steve,” snapped Destiny, “please believe me when I tell you I am not mixed up! I know far more about Mysterons than you think: they have powers beyond human comprehension, including the ability to recreate any object or creature after it’s been destroyed and use it for their own ends! Did your commanders know about that capability before they attacked the Martian installation? Ours did not – and we’ve been paying the price of that intelligence failure ever since…”
“Venus… why should any of this matter? I told you – the Mysterons don’t exist anymore!”
“Scan the surface, Steve! The structure containing the one-eyed creature you destroyed just a few hours ago clearly does exist! Now, I don’t know any more than you do what that creature was before you blew it up… but if I’m right, it’s back from the dead – and far more dangerous now than it ever was before! It was raiding your tankers for fuel when you first encountered one of the spheres, right? Perhaps it scavenged the pulsators from the ruins of the Martian complex for much the same reason, perhaps it got them from somewhere else – it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the spheres, all of them powered by Mysteron pulsators, are there – quite possibly together with a Mysteronised reconstruction of the creature itself!”
Silence followed, and in the hope that he was checking his instrumentation for structures on the surface below, she refrained from breaking it. When he spoke again, there was a hint of conciliation in the tone of his voice.
“Venus… are you still listening? Matt photographed the installation from orbit while you and I were talking, and we’re looking at it right now. The installation appears to be intact, and the spheres look like they’ve rearranged themselves since we escaped the destruction in Fireball Junior. But that’s impossible, isn’t it? We destroyed it completely! It’s just like an implausible work of science fiction...”
“Steve… that’s what we thought when we first encountered them – and it was just the start of a bloody war that’s still being fought on my world! However, I’ve got no proof that it’s hostile – because its actions prior to its destruction have no bearing on its intentions towards us now. And if it isn’t hostile, I can’t risk making the same mistake that Captain Black – he was the leader of the expedition to Mars that made the discovery – made. The Mysterons claimed to be peaceful until we attacked them – in which case, maybe a peaceful solution can be found here too. So I’m going to talk to it…”
“Venus – that’s crazy! You’ll do no such thing – I forbid it! That’s a direct order, Venus…”
“I keep telling you, Steve - I’m not Venus! You’ve no authority over me, so don’t waste time trying to give me orders which I’m under no obligation to obey! I’ve thought it through; I’m not crazy, and – just in case you’re wondering – neither do I have a death-wish! If that creature has been recreated, it almost certainly controls the spheres – so in addition to just possibly being able to prevent a war before it starts, doing a deal with it is probably my best chance of finding a way home. Now listen…”
She paused to take a deep breath, mindful that the instructions she was about to give him needed to be delivered concisely and unambiguously.
“When I’m finished here, Robert will return to Fireball Junior on this jetmobile… and you can then order him to take it into orbit to reconnect with the main body of the ship. If he doesn’t bring me with him, it will mean I’m already dead – so don’t come down here looking for me. Just carry out the missile attack as planned… and do a good job of it, okay?”
She cut the connection without waiting for a reply, and set the jetmobile’s controls to commence a slow forward glide towards the entrance to the facility, then shouted down to the robot beneath her.
“Robert! Walk ahead of me into the building!”
“Walk ahead… walk ahead…”
The interior, though instantly recognisable from her earlier encounter with its solitary inhabitant, was now subtly changed. An aura of unworldly calmness pervaded the place… the sensation was that of standing within the inner sanctum of a temple, long since abandoned.
Like a high priestess preceded by her bodyguard, she allowed the jetmobile to transport her slowly into the shrine, whereupon seemingly of its own volition, it gently drifted to the ground to allow her to alight. As if in acknowledgement of her presence, the wall directly ahead of her began to pulse with an unworldly light, gently at first, then with slowly gathering intensity into a maelstrom of pulsating concentric patterns not unlike those she had seen in the recordings brought back from the Mysteron complex in Crater 101. And standing in front of them was the silhouette of a pedestal… upon which stood, once more within its transparent dais, the one-eyed disembodied brain.
The boastfully aggressive megalomania of the original repulsive organism was gone – and in its place she sensed the coldness of death… animated death. This was not merely a Mysteronised construct, she realised – although the menace it posed had it been one would be no less real. Without understanding how she knew, Destiny understood that she was addressing an entity endowed with the capabilities of Captain Black – and that by addressing it, she was speaking with the Mysterons themselves… or at least with the Mysterons of this Universe… Without any attempt at preamble, she simply spoke the first words that came into her head.
“Yes… I thought I would find you here.”
The reply was equally devoid of fatuous pleasantries, being slow, deliberate and indescribably menacing.
“You witnessed the destruction of this organism by your companion, Earthwoman. We did not know you then, but we now see that you are not of this frame.”
It was a statement, not a question… and although the phraseology was uninterpretable in any terms that Destiny could verbalise, the meaning was clear enough. How do I respond, she wondered wildly when framing her reply, knowing that this may well be the last few seconds of my life? When all hope is extinguished, there is nothing left to fear… save fear itself.
“You are correct… I am not. How did I come to be here?”
“You sought to escape from your frame, as did the other.”
Destiny found herself strangely unsurprised at the unexpected confirmation of her steadfast conviction from the outset of an exchange having taken place. Had her unshakable certainty been based on something more than merely an irrational desire to believe it was so? Perhaps… but whatever the truth, it no longer mattered. She forced herself to address the repulsive one-eyed entity with a detached calmness that couldn’t have been further from how she was feeling.
“I wish to return to the other… frame. Is that possible?”
“It is possible… but we have no reason to help you, Earthwoman.”
“Why do you have no reason to help me? In the other frame, you and I are enemies… doesn’t that make me a threat to you? The other – her name is Venus – knows nothing of you: I read her bio shortly after I arrived: she’s a healer, not a fighter… she’s not your enemy! My being here is an accident! Wouldn’t it benefit you to help us exchange places once more?”
“The other once knew of us when she was a child on Mars. We are peaceful beings – she accepted us as we accepted her – but when other humans discovered us, they took her from us and corrupted her memories. When she could not tell them of our willingness to share the resources of the planet with their species, they destroyed our complex with their missiles and took the minerals for themselves.”
Destiny assimilated the information without expressing any visible emotion, but her brain was racing. Might that have been the reason for the interdict on the records of Venus’s early life history? It would make sense, particularly in the light of the summary of mankind’s early experience of the Mysterons, as recounted by Steve just an hour or two previously. Yet another example of first contact that went badly wrong…
“You have powers beyond our understanding – can you not use those powers to right the wrong that has been done you? If you were to help me return her to this frame, couldn’t you then restore her memories? Ask her to intercede on your behalf – could you not make the humans understand that even after what they’ve done, you’re still prepared to discuss terms for a peaceful coexistence?”
“Only the humans who corrupted her consciousness can repair it – and were we to cleanse her of it, the others of your species would not heed her words. Her return to this frame would therefore serve no purpose. The instinct to destroy that which you do not understand is endemic to your species: even now, your companions in the ship above this location plan our annihilation.”
So… the price of the creature’s assistance in restoring Venus’s memories would be her death and resurrection as a Mysteron construct – and even the creature itself understood that such an outcome would resolve nothing. No… it was hopeless: just as in her own Universe, the die was now cast; there was no going back. Which just left the question of what her own fate was to be...
“Steve won’t launch an attack from Fireball as long as I’m still here on the surface! If you’ll allow me to stay here, I’ll ask him to come down and discuss this! I can instruct the robot to return the command module to the main ship and bring Steve back with it: he won’t be able to fire his missiles once he’s on the ground – you’ll be safe from a pre-emptive strike…”
“Your analysis of the situation concurs with our own, Earthwoman, but there is no need to call down its pilot. Once re-energized, the spheres will ensure that the ship in orbit does not threaten us ever again… until which time you will remain…”
The freezing air surrounding her suddenly began to take on a familiar cloying feel: her hands were rapidly losing their capacity to respond to her wish to move them, and she realised that within seconds they would be useless. She still had Steve’s weapon… what had he called it – a coma ray? The name meant nothing to her… but having already seen it in action, she knew it would have no effect on the creature’s protective dome. Could she use it to destroy the heating control instead, as Steve had done before? No way… the dome’s interior was as bitterly cold as the atmosphere outside, so the Mysteronised abomination obviously had no need of the artificially maintained temperature required by the original. Then how…
“Robert – smash the dome! Smash it now!”
“Smash the dome… smash the dome…”
The lumbering robot marched forward, then as soon as it loomed over the dais supporting the creature, it raised its arm high into the air, then brought it down with all its might onto the top of the dome. Its appendage having rebounded harmlessly off the surface, the robot struggled momentarily to regain its balance before delivering a second massive blow, followed seconds later by yet a third. Destiny watched in rapt fascination as Robert continued the relentless assault, seemingly without effect at first… but just as she was about to give up hope, a hairline crack appeared in the top of the dome. Three further devastating blows saw it begin to lengthen, and with a further five delivered in rapid succession, the crack had reached the dais upon which it stood. As if sensing that victory was imminent, the robot adjusted its stance to render it towering over the dome in readiness for the delivery of the final blow.
Destiny instinctively threw herself flat onto the ground and covered her face as the robot brought both of its arms crashing down onto the dome with the herculean force of a sledgehammer. The dome instantly shattered into thousands of tiny fragments flying in all directions, and she winced in pain as several shards cut through the leggings of her uniform and buried themselves in her calves.
An instant later an eerie silence enveloped the room – and forcing herself to look up, she belatedly realised that in the panic she’d failed to think the desperate plan through to its conclusion. Having completed the task assigned to it, the robot had simply stopped to await further orders… and the abomination formerly housed inside the protective dome was still alive.
She opened her mouth to order Robert to deliver the final blow needed to finish the job, but no words came out. An all-too-familiar sensation of the atmosphere enveloping her in a cloying gelatinous mist began to assail her… Acutely aware that she now only had seconds left in which to act, she clutched at a single thought. Mysteron construct or no, it can be destroyed by high-voltage electricity…
Galvanized into action, she forced herself to raise Steve’s coma ray and level it at the pulsating creature. Would a blast from the gun have any effect now that its protective dome had been destroyed? She didn’t know. It was obviously a projected energy weapon, but what was the nature if the energy that it projected? Could it be electrical energy? Again, she had no idea – but it was the only chance she had. With her last vestige of strength ebbing away from her, she began to pull the trigger towards her, millimetre by millimetre…
The sensation of an invisible swirling wind began to enfold her, and the space surrounding the unspeakable abhorrence started to distort and blur as she watched. Before she had time even to question her senses, the malignant creature dissolved and faded away into nothingness before her eyes, leaving the empty dais with an enormous pulsating cavity in its centre. As the same time, the cloying mist that had held her almost transfixed just a few seconds earlier now released her from its grip, and then simply evaporated.
In the silence of the now empty ice-cold chamber, Destiny forced herself to take three slow, deep breaths before permitting herself to start thinking again. The creature had not been destroyed, she realised. It had been snatched from her at the very instant of defeat at her hands, just as Captain Black had been seemingly spirited away into thin air by his masters in the past. So… could it have been more than just another reconstructed tool of the Mysterons? Might it be that the one-eyed abomination that Steve destroyed during their earlier encounter was the physical embodiment of a Mysteron? She realised she would probably never know.
She shook her head to clear it. What were her options now? The creature had implied that the spheres needed re-energizing, in which case her original plan to try to reactivate one of them was probably doomed to failure. But then, perhaps that no longer mattered…
Holding her hands up to enable her to cover her eyes instantly should it prove necessary, she stepped warily over to the smashed dais and peeped over its rim – then hurriedly withdrew once more, her suspicions confirmed. The one thing she needed to make her attempt to return home was right here in this very chamber!
“Robert! I’m going to walk over to that pulsating crystal over there. I’m going to lift it out and take it in my hands, and I’m going to stare into it. It’s likely that I will lose consciousness after a few seconds. If that happens, you will do nothing except watch and wait for…”
She frowned, wondering how long she should give for the transposition to take place – assuming, that is, that it happened at all. If she left too much time, she might cause some irreparable injury to the body in which her consciousness was now housed. If she left too little time, she could awake to find herself still here. How long was Venus staring at the sphere out of the viewing port aboard Fireball before Steve and Matt found her? Steve had said about thirty minutes. She took a deep breath.
“You will wait for up to forty minutes, Robert. If I haven’t recovered consciousness within that time, you will fly this jetmobile back to Fireball Junior, carrying my body with you. You will then contact Steve and tell him that I am aboard, after which you will accept and obey all orders from him.”
“Return to Fireball Junior … Return to Fireball Junior…”
“That’s right, Robert – and there’s one more thing. I’m going to give you a password… and that password is ‘Mission Failed’. If I regain consciousness before you return to Fireball Junior, and I don’t give you that password, you will immediately fly Fireball Junior back into orbit with me on board as soon as you re-enter it. You will then rendezvous with the main ship – and you will disregard any other orders that I might give you to the contrary. Do you understand?”
“Orders understood… Orders understood…”
There… that should at least ensure that if the transposition did take place, Venus wasn’t left trapped on Cevena afterwards merely because she hadn’t understood the situation quickly enough.
“Good. I think we’re as ready as we’ll ever be, Robert.”
Steeling herself, she approached the dais and reached into the depths of the cavity towards the jewel, still pulsating with burning intensity, that lay within…
§
“Steve! The planetary magnetometers are registering a power build-up on Cevena’s surface… it seems to be originating from the location of the installation we destroyed! It’s faint, but there’s something happening down there – and it’s getting stronger by the minute. I reckon you’d better come take a look and see what you make of it.”
Steve stepped away from his console against the far wall of Central Control, and strode across the room to join the professor at his workstation.
“Yeah, you’re right – and it can only have appeared very recently too, else the early warning systems would have flagged it when we re-entered orbit. Do you see it as a threat?”
The professor pointed towards another screen displaying a complex array of charts that conveyed nothing to Steve, shaking his head in obvious bafflement.
“I can’t tell, Steve! The energy signature doesn’t match anything in our database – not even the one we recorded for the sphere that hypnotised us in deep space on our way here. There’s some similarity in the fifteen terahertz band with the signature of that gamma ray the Archons deployed against us a while back, but I don’t think it’s that…”
Stave pulled a face. “It’d better not be, Matt! That zap gun of theirs not only immobilised us in a matter of seconds, but it took out Robert too…”
He broke off abruptly and frowned. “Just a minute: maybe I’m getting slow in my old age… though I sure hope I’m wrong about this! Tell me – did your scan include any of the restricted entries?”
The professor shook his head. “I’m not authorised to view them, Steve. Only the ship’s captain has access rights to that section of the database.”
Stifling an expletive, Steve ran back to his console, pulled his keyboard round to face him and rapidly entered a string of commands, then turned and shouted over his shoulder.
“I’ve just granted you privileged status, Matt: check them out now – and fast! Something Venus said to me just after Fireball Junior touched down on the surface is starting to make a lot of sense… but in the meantime, I reckon I’d best prime the planetomics right now while all systems on board are still fully functional. I want us ready to vaporize that entire region of the planet at a second’s notice.”
“But you can’t, Steve! Venus is still down there, remember?”
Steve opened his mouth to snap back a sharply worded rebuke, then shut it again before deliberately lowering the tone of his voice.
“I haven’t forgotten, Matt – but time’s running out. I’ve already in violation of a direct order from Commander Zero to destroy the entire facility plus about fifty kilometres of the surrounding surface area in all directions with immediate effect. The only justification I’ve been able to offer for delaying the execution of that order is that Fireball Junior is still on the surface, and that our return journey to Earth will be made one hell of a lot more difficult without it – but even that excuse is starting to wear thin. He could easily send out a rescue ship to take us off, then deploy a salvage team to recover the main ship later – and it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the only reason he hasn’t actioned that plan yet is that Fireball Junior is one very expensive piece of hardware which he wants returned in one piece!”
The professor looked up from his keyboard and shook his head in dismay.
“But what about Venus, Steve? Doesn’t she figure in his calculations at all? Fireball Junior can be replaced, but she can’t!”
He’s just not getting it, thought Steve sombrely. He took a deep breath, realising that he was going to have to remind his friend of some of the harsher realities of life in the World Space Patrol.
“I guess you might not realise just how much trouble Venus is in, Matt. Depending on which way you look at it, she’s committed an act of either mutiny or piracy – and at least in theory, the death penalty still applies for both offences. I’ve already done everything in my power to minimise what’s happened to get us into this situation – up to and including blatant lying – in my most recent report to Space City, but it still makes very sobering reading. If she’s lucky, we might be able to persuade the top brass to grant her a discharge from the WSP on grounds of mental incapacity. If she’s unlucky…”
Matt suddenly stiffened, and he leaned over to peer closely at his monitor.
“I’ve got a match, Steve! There’s just the one: it comes from an incident right back in the earliest days of the World Space Patrol – and it occurred a darn sight closer to home than the Ellipsoid! This happened on Mars, and concerned some kind of machine intelligence called…”
“… called the Mysterons?” interrupted Steve grimly. One look at the astonishment on his friend’s face was sufficient to tell him that his flash of inspiration had hit the mark, and he took a deep breath, conscious that he’d need to elaborate.
“Yeah, I’ve heard of them – there were whisperings about some operation that was hushed up just before I joined the WSP – but that’s not why I thought of them just now. Venus was trying to tell me some crazy story about them: at the time I thought she was losing her mind, but it’s starting to look like there’s more to it.”
“But the Mysterons were destroyed, Steve! I’m reviewing the file right now – it says here that…”
“I suggest we take everything it says in there with a large pinch of salt, Matt! From what I remember of the rumours that were circulating at the time, the Mysterons were assessed as being dangerous as hell – and that they were summarily dealt with in line with that assessment! If Venus is right about this, it looks like their operations weren’t confined to a single base on Mars, right? In which case we’re already living on borrowed time… and that energy build-up you’re monitoring now tells me that there isn’t much of that borrowed time left – all of which points to us needing to get this over and done with while we still can. I’m sorry, Matt.”
With a heavy heart and trying to avoid looking his friend in the eye, he turned on his heel and returned to his console, where he pulled up the missiles’ targeting array.
“Priming sequence initiated: I require your launch confirmation code. That’s now, Matt.”
Accepting the inevitable, the professor took a deep breath, tore open the envelope in front of him, then slowly and precisely read out its contents, digit by digit. Steve keyed them in as they were uttered, repeating each out loud in turn as he did so. The final digit having been entered, he closed his eyes briefly, and then brought down his finger on the button. A barely perceptible tremor passing through the ship’s infrastructure was the only physical sign that the missiles had left their silos, but both men understood that there was now no turning back.
“Planetomics away, impact in one hundred twenty seconds. Hold tight, Matt – there’s a chance we could experience turbulence from the shockwave, so I guess we’d best realign the…”
A desperate shout from across the room made him physically jump, and he swivelled round in his chair.
“Steve! I’m picking up a faint signal from Fireball Junior! I think Robert’s trying to contact us, but there’s so much interference I can’t be…”
Steve instantly turned and stabbed at the emergency destruct button, repeated the action several more times with increasing ferocity, then swore furiously with the realisation that the same interference was most likely also scrambling the abort sequence to the missiles.
“Put him on main screen and speakers, Matt! Boost the signal to maximum!”
He snatched the microphone out of its holder, then swung round to look at the visual display covering most of the opposite wall, where the robot’s head was barely discernible through all the visual noise, and its voice could just be made out through the crackling.
“Commands from XL5 crew now accepted… commands from XL5 crew now accepted…”
Steve thumped his fist on the desk and almost shouted into the microphone.
“Robert! Is Venus on board? Repeat – have you got Venus on board?”
“Doctor Venus aboard… Doctor Venus aboard…”
“Robert – blast off immediately! You’re inside the target area of a planetomic bombardment, and the missiles are already on their way down! Get out of there – maximum thrust! Acknowledge and execute!”
“Command acknowledged… command acknowledged…”
“Matt! Can you track Fireball Junior’s ascent on your navigation scanners?”
The professor adjusted the remote settings on his relay to the instruments in the Navigation Bay, bit his lip and frowned.
“I’m not sure, Steve – if the interference build-up continues at this rate, I might lose them completely…”
“Do your best, Matt! Impact in eighty seconds!”
The other nodded and continued typing furiously for a few more seconds, then half-turned in his chair.
“I think she’s coming up, Steve! I can’t estimate either velocity or acceleration – the interference is playing hell with the scanners – but I’m almost certain she’s climbing. The signal quality should improve enough for me to get a set of readings I can rely on once she leaves the atmosphere…”
If she’s still in one piece after those warheads detonate then it won’t matter anyway, thought Steve grimly. He briefly contemplated trying to call Robert once more for a progress report but rejected the idea instantly: the robot would have to interrupt its program to respond – and with so little time remaining before impact, it probably wouldn’t be a smart move. He bit his lip as the countdown entered single digits, then took a deep breath.
“This is it, Matt! Impact in five seconds… four… three… two…”
He watched as a series of coruscating explosions ripped apart the terrain of Cevena far below them, noting with a mental sign of relief that the interference disappeared simultaneously with the first detonation, then grabbed the microphone once more.
“Robert – report your status! Have you attained orbit yet? Come in, Robert! Come in, Rob…”
“Orbit attained… orbit attained…”
Stifling the urge to yell a whoop, Steve contented himself with a grin of relief and a thumbs-up sign to Matt, then turned back to face his monitor once more, where the robot’s head almost filled the screen.
“I want to talk to Venus, Robert – right now, this instant! Put her on!”
“Unable to comply… unable to comply…”
The look of relief vanished instantly from Steve’s features, and his hands instinctively gripped the microphone tighter as he leaned forward towards the monitor.
“Robert! I want to see Venus immediately! Turn the camera to show me Venus: do it now!”
The crackling and distorted image on the screen in front of him began to turn, panning infuriatingly slowly away from the robot, across the bulkhead, and finally coming to rest on Steve’s own command console – at which Venus’s unconscious form was clearly visible, lying in his chair. He watched her intently for long enough to assure himself that she was breathing… then quietly closed his eyes and allowed himself a few seconds to take a long, slow, deep breath. Then his eyes snapped open again.
“Okay, Robert – are you listening? Bring Fireball Junior into synchronous orbit with the main ship, then execute standard docking procedure… then as soon as docking’s complete, you will assist me in getting Venus to Sick Bay. Further orders will follow once we’ve ascertained her status and made her comfortable – but whatever her condition is, I want to set course for Space City at full thrust as early as possible. They’re a darned sight better equipped to treat her than we are, so the sooner we’re on our way home, the better.”
“On our way home… on our way home…”
Steve permitted himself a tight smile at the robot’s off-camera acknowledgment: its quasi-human response to the end of a mission never failed to amuse him. The smile vanished instantly as he watched Venus’s body starting to contort in apparent agitation, her lips silently opening and closing several times before she lapsed back into immobility once more. A faint sound behind him made him start, and he glanced over his shoulder to discover that the professor had quietly joined him at the console, and was also peering at the screen with obvious concern.
“Looks like something’s really bugging her, Matt! I just hope she’s not going to have yet another crazy tale to tell us when she regains consciousness – because we need to get her back the way she was before all this happened as soon as possible. If there was any way we could just erase everything that’s happened over the last few days, I’d jump at it.”
The professor nodded vigorously.
“You and me both! But as I guess that’s not going to happen, let’s just hope it won’t be too long before she recovers enough to tell us what this is all about – and if she’s able to do it in terms we can understand, that would be real boss…”
12 - In Our Reality
There’s no neural activity whatsoever, thought Venus grimly as she watched the stubbornly flatline signal traversing the synaptic interpreter’s monitor. She shot a glance at the display attached to the defibrillator, which was now showing a weak but relatively regular heartbeat… but she knew that keeping Doctor Fawn’s body ticking over was merely delaying the inevitable. His brain had to be restored to full functionality – and quickly – or he’d have no life at all…
Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and replayed in her mind her first reaction upon awakening aboard Cloudbase to the equipment in the Infirmary. State-of-the-art in this Universe, no doubt… but her own first impression was that of being slightly underwhelmed. Fit for purpose, but hardly revolutionary… and unlikely to facilitate the sort of operation that would be needed to save the patient’s life. No – she was going to need something capable of replicating the functionality of her own encephalographic recalibration equipment back at Space City, using only the primitive devices present within this lab…
Her eyes fell once more on the synaptic interpreter. Can it scan, record and replay memory traces? Yes, obviously it could: that was its purpose. Does it possess both a transmission and reception capability? Possibly: the dialogue between the Mysterons and Captain Scarlet that she’d somehow overheard inside her head just before the circuits overloaded suggest that it ought to be able to perform both functions. So far, so good – the only thing lacking is enough power to trigger a synergistic response within an inert neurological configuration…
Hoping against hope, she snatched up the device and started inspecting its auxiliary connections. Yes… maybe – just maybe – it would be possible… but then, how was she going to program a compatible stimulation sequence to feed into the interpreter without a multiphase encoder to create one for her? Any fully-functional human brain should be able to generate the required sequences almost as well, if not so quickly – she could use her own to do it – but she’d need to wire herself up to a second interpreter…
Wait a minute… didn’t Doctor Fawn say he was connecting her up to one of the interpreters? There must be another one somewhere! So where is it, for God’s sake?
She started systematically scrabbling through the still-smouldering pile of equipment, picking up and squinting at each device through the smoke, then tossing it aside as soon as it became apparent that it was either charred beyond possible use or obviously irrelevant to the task. Continually having to snatch her fingers away from anything too hot to handle slowed down the process considerably, and it was several minutes before the bulk of the blackened pile of wrecked devices had been separated out and arranged about the floor around her. Carefully lifting one of the final sheets of metal, she immediately spotted the second interpreter lying beneath, evidently protected from the explosion by the metal plate and – at least superficially – undamaged. Gingerly she picked it up and inspected it closely, then – suddenly realizing that she’d been holding her breath as she lifted the plate away – allowed herself gently to exhale. A few delicate modifications would be needed to both devices before they would be able to do what she required of them – after which she’d need help from Captain Ochre to get a second cable lowered down through the airduct – but at least she was now in with a fighting chance…
§
An urgently flashing light on Lieutenant Green’s board provided the indication that the conference call was ended, and that Captain Ochre was now available to speak – and when his voice filtered through, the tone was clearly strained.
“Sorry to keep you waiting for a progress report, Colonel: Destiny’s asked me to brief you on the situation while she’s got her hands full! She’s been able to induce and maintain a heartbeat using the lab’s defibrillator, but she told me a few moments ago that the state of Doctor Fawn’s cerebral cortex remains critical. She says she’s converted one of the lab’s synaptic interpreters into a neural stimulator – don’t ask me for the details because I don’t understand a word of this – and now she needs to encode a dynamic sequence of multiphase pulses – using a secondary cable that I’ve just fed down to her through the ducting… and now there are some things she needs you to do, so I’m now passing you over to her to talk to you directly, okay?”
“Understood, Captain Ochre! Destiny Angel – are you there?”
“Yes, Colonel – I’m here! Disregard Captain Ochre’s description of the situation – he’s right… he doesn’t understand it – but that doesn’t matter! Please do exactly what I tell you… because Doctor Fawn’s life depends on it! I want to feed a multiphase dynamic sequence of oscillating synaptic pulses up through the primary cable to Room 101. I need that dynamic sequence channelled through the signal enhancers on Lieutenant Green’s comms board and amplified at least sixty-fold – no, make that seventy-fold – and then fed back to me here in the lab on the secondary cable that Captain Ochre has just installed. I’ve rigged up a makeshift decoder to intercept that signal and resynchronize it through the other synaptic interpreter. Please acknowledge and tell me when you are ready to start!”
Colonel White glanced quizzically at Lieutenant Green, who silently shook his head and spread his hands in obvious bafflement.
“Destiny… we haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about! If you could just apprise us of Doctor Fawn’s present condition – preferably using non-technical terminology – we can ensure that the rescue team is fully briefed when they…”
“Putain de merde, nous n’avons pas le temps pour les explications! We don’t have time to discuss this, Colonel White! The overload to Doctor Fawn’s cerebral cortex has terminated his synaptic functions, and his encephalographic matrix has been wiped clean: we have no more than a few minutes! All you need to know is that I’m about to feed you a lengthy continuous signal via the primary coupling from Room 101, which I need boosted seventy-fold and returned to me using the secondary coupling. The apparatus I’ve assembled down here should do the rest – but I need this done now, or Doctor Fawn will die… and before you ask me, yes – I do know what I’m doing! I don’t know if it’s going to work, but I do know it’s the only chance he has!”
“Did you follow that, Lieutenant? And if so, is it something we can do?”
“If what she requires us to do really is as straightforward as she just said, then I think we can, Colonel. I can control the flow of data on both channels from this board, and I should be able to adjust the transformer settings to deliver the signal amplification factor she’s requested.”
Colonel White hesitated briefly, then nodded. “Do it, Lieutenant. As quickly as you can, please.”
“Yes, Colonel!” Lieutenant Green’s fingers flew across his board, which immediately began to display a slowly expanding illuminated pattern of connecting dots. Within a few seconds a faint but just audible whine began to fill the air around the console. He then sent his chair sliding to the other end of its track, and reached once more for the microphone.
“Lieutenant Green to Destiny Angel – you should now have access to both the main generators and the communications board. Commence upload of the signal you require boosting, and confirm when transmission is in progress, please!”
A momentary pause followed, during which the muffled sounds of awkward physical movement were clearly audible over the loudspeaker above Lieutenant Green’s console.
“Transmission is now in progress, Lieutenant. Please confirm that you are returning the boosted signal on the secondary channel: I’m currently seeing what appears to be just an echo of the original transmission.”
Lieutenant Green glanced at Colonel White, then began working through the settings on his board. The loudspeaker by the side of the console crackled into life once more, and Destiny’s filtered voice cut through the air.
“Lieutenant Green – are you there? The signal I’m receiving is insufficient even to maintain Doctor Fawn’s basic synaptic functions: I need an amplification factor of at least seventy: are you able to increase it by that amount? I need an answer quickly, please!”
“One moment, Destiny – we’re conferring now…”
The lieutenant muted the microphone and looked up at his C-in-C, shaking his head in obvious confusion.
“I don’t understand, Colonel! According to my instruments, what she’s requested is well within our capacity...”
He suddenly snapped his fingers. “Of course! It’s Doctor Kurnitz’s limiter, Colonel! It’s there to prevent power from reaching the pulsator… but it’s probably also inhibiting the link to the ANL!”
“So the limiter is blocking the power transfer, right?”
“Yes, Colonel! At least, I think so...”
Colonel White reactivated the microphone and leaned over the console to speak into it.
“Captain Ochre – this is Colonel White! Is the limiter incorporated into the circuit that is currently supplying power to Destiny down in the ANL?”
There was a brief pause, during which a background scuffling was clearly audible.
“Yes, Colonel – I believe it is. Do you want me to disengage it? I can do so in seconds.”
Colonel White’s eyes narrowed, and he drummed his fingers on the desk rapidly. Sensing the indecision, Lieutenant Green leaned forward urgently.
“I say we go for it, Colonel! What have we got to lose?”
Colonel White turned to him gravely. “Possibly Cloudbase itself, Lieutenant! Have you forgotten what happened the last time that pulsator was given unrestricted access to our generators? Or that there are now only a few minutes left before midnight – which is when the Mysterons have already told us they intend to destroy it? As I see it, the pulsator must be the single most obvious risk to Cloudbase at this time – and now Destiny wants us to let it off its leash…”
He closed his eyes for a long second, then opened them again. “Captain Ochre – disengage the limiter immediately. Lieutenant Green – monitor the pulsator’s power readings: don’t take your eyes off that board, even for one second!”
Colonel White moved to join him at the console, and then glanced at the clock on the wall before speaking again.
“I may be taking the biggest gamble of my life, Lieutenant… but I’m betting that the Mysterons plan to enact their threat to the letter. They said they would destroy Cloudbase at midnight – not before midnight or about midnight – but at midnight. If so, we might have just a few minutes left to help Destiny save Doctor Fawn’s life. If I’m wrong… well, it may not matter anyway.”
A bank of lights within the section of Lieutenant Green’s console displaying the connections to Room 101 suddenly sprang into life, and he turned to his C-in-C.
“Power output levels have been raised in accordance with Destiny’s requirements, Colonel!”
Colonel White nodded. “Thank you, Lieutenant: please inform them both that Destiny should now be able to proceed.”
“Captain Ochre and Destiny Angel, this is Lieutenant Green! I confirm that the disengagement of the limiter has resolved the issue. Destiny Angel – you should now have unrestricted access to the full output from the generators, which should enable you to draw power at whatever rate you need to achieve the level of amplification you require. Captain Ochre – keep the status of the pulsator under constant review, and re-engage the limiter immediately in the event of any…”
He suddenly stiffened as a light within the tracking station monitoring array started flashing urgently.
“Captain Ochre – stand by! Colonel White… I’m picking up some kind of signal! It’s morse code… getting a directional bearing now… bearing is one-two-four magnetic…”
Immediately recognizing the bearing as that dictated by the Mysterons, Colonel White instantly glanced at the nearby clock. Only five minutes left to midnight… and now a communication from a tracking station on exactly that same bearing! Coincidence? No way…
“Let me hear it, Lieutenant!”
A rapid audible sequence of dots and dashes filled the control room as Lieutenant Green switched the incoming message to the external speaker above the console, and both men listened intently as the message continued.
“S-C-A-R-L… it’s from Scarlet! Quickly, Lieutenant Green – give this channel absolute priority over all other communications, and decode the message independently of me: there are only minutes left before midnight, so we can’t afford any errors whatsoever…”
§
Huddled in the corner of the smoke-filled lab with her face contorted in pain, Venus maintained her vigil at Doctor Fawn’s side. His head and hers were joined by a morass of hastily assembled wiring, which connected the two synaptic interpreters that they wore. Struggling desperately to keep her mind free of distractions for as long as the flow of data passing between the two interpreters continued,
Venus began to become aware of a new sensation slowly building up within her consciousness: a sensation with which she was only too familiar… a feeling of being inexorably drawn upwards towards the ceiling – above which was located the pulsator…
Exerting every last morsal of self-will she was able to drag up from within her consciousness, she forced herself to turn away from it for just the few seconds needed to confirm that the trace registering on the oscilloscope connected to her patient’s synaptic interpreter had indeed begun to morph from its previous flatline into an increasingly complex dancing pattern of waves, their amplitudes growing wider and wider even as she watched. Gritting her teeth, she desperately shouted into her communicator.
“Rick… Rick! The pulsator… it’s active again… and it’s pulling… it’s pulling me back! Rick… you must make it stop! I can’t… I can’t consolidate the transfer if it takes me away before the dynamic configurations have been stabilized! You’ve got to stop the pulsator from…”
“Destiny – the pulsator is interfaced directly to Doctor Kurnitz’s limiter! If I re-engage the limiter, you’ll lose your power supply: have you completed your operation or not? I can’t cut the power if you haven’t finished yet… I need you to tell me what to do, Destiny!”
Venus opened her mouth to speak, but no words came. In vain she tried once more, but it was hopeless: the sensation of having her mind ruthlessly and systematically ripped from her body was now so strong that she was rapidly losing the ability to make her larynx convey her thoughts…
“What do you want me to do? Destiny – speak to me! What do you want me to do, Destiny? I need an answer now!”
“Rick… I won’t let it… I mustn’t let it… take me away… from… you!”
A second later, the sensation of being pulled into the dazzling, swirling maelstrom of green light that had now formed around her became too much to resist. She screamed in desperation as it swept her out of her physical body’s plane of existence, hurtling her consciousness once again into the same long phosphorescent tunnel where she’d first encountered the other woman… the woman who was now walking slowly forward to meet her… to take her place…
Instantly she hurled herself at her in a desperate attempt to block her path.
“No! I don’t want this! I don’t want to go back… I can help your people… I’m valued here… I’m loved here! Let me stay… I want to stay! You can understand that, can’t you?”
“I could help your people, if only they would let me,” replied the other, her voice tinged with both compassion and sorrow as she moved to push her aside. “And yes… I do understand – because I want him too…”
§
In Room 101, Rick’s link to Destiny’s communicator was abruptly severed, and his epaulettes instantly flashed white just once before the colonel’s voice broke the silence.
“Captain Ochre – this is an emergency: details are still unclear, but we’ve received a message from Scarlet telling us the pulsator is a Mysteron booby-trap! Now do exactly as I say! Disengage the pulsator immediately, take it to the nearest porthole and jettison it!”
“S.I.G.!”
Abandoning hope of establishing the situation in the lab before obeying the order, Rick strode over to the window, realizing at once that the only way to open it would be with a bullet – and that an immediate side-effect of that bullet being fired would be an instant depressurization of the room. He’d already found the room’s respirator and torn it from its mounting on the wall by the time the same thought had occurred to Colonel White a few seconds later – and rather than waste time acknowledging the warning when it came through, he concentrated solely on the sound of Lieutenant Green’s voice in the background as he counted down the seconds to midnight – a countdown that had by now reached single figures, and was fast approaching the final five digits before zero.
“Hurry, Captain Ochre!”
“I’m sorry, Destiny – I swear to God I am… but time’s up,” muttered Rick under his breath. Drawing his sidearm and levelling it, he blew out the porthole window with a single shot, then clasping the respirator over his nose and mouth, he ripped the still brightly throbbing pulsator free of its connections on the hexagonal dais and hurled it through the broken window out into the freezing midnight sky.
Seconds later, a brilliant flash lit the interior of the room as the pulsator exploded in mid-air, just far enough below Cloudbase to preclude the possibility of any structural damage being incurred to the airborne carrier, yet close enough to send a perceptible tremor through its infrastructure.
Struggling against the freezing wind now howling through the open porthole, he ran through the door into the corridor outside Room 101 and slammed his hand against the control to close it. As the door slid shut behind him, he collapsed against it and frantically activated his cap microphone.
“Destiny! The pulsator’s been destroyed… I don’t know how that will have affected whatever you’re doing down there, but there just wasn’t any more time! It’s been destroyed, do you hear? It’s over, Destiny… are you okay? Are you there, Destiny? Speak to me, dammit! Destiny… for God’s sake, speak to me!”
Stifling the urge to scream in frustration, he closed the channel and opened another to Lieutenant Green.
“Lieutenant – I’m trying to call Destiny Angel in the ANL, but am getting no response…”
“Captain Ochre – this is Colonel White! Am I right in thinking you’re responsible for the explosion that shook my control room alarmingly a moment ago?”
Rick bit his lip and took a deep breath.
“Yes, sir! Sorry, Colonel… that was just the pulsator exploding in mid-air – I guarantee it won’t happen again! – but the reason I’m calling is to ask if you’ve managed to regain contact with Destiny down in the ANL…”
Colonel White’s voice cut firmly across him again, his tone perceptibly warmer and more conciliatory than previously.
“I know why you’re calling, Captain! Lieutenant Green is trying to establish the status of Destiny Angel and Doctor Fawn as we speak… the rescue team effected entry into the lab just over two minutes ago, and we’re at present awaiting an update from Captain Blue as to the condition of its occupants. As soon as the situation in the lab has been established, you will be informed. In the meantime, please liaise with Maintenance regarding the replacement of the porthole you presumably destroyed in line with my instructions: I don’t want the depressurization spreading to the rest of the tower. Oh, and Captain Ochre…”
“Yes, sir?”
“Well done, Captain.”
§
Lieutenant Green cut the connection, then looked at Colonel White expectantly.
“Is that it, Colonel? Is it really over?”
Colonel White took a long second to assemble his thoughts before replying.
“I think it’s reasonable to assume so, Lieutenant. Yes, I know that in the past they’ve made two attempts in rapid succession to make good some of their threats – but I feel this situation is different. They gave us a very specific time at which the threat was to be carried out… and that time has now passed. They’ve tried to deceive us regarding the object of their threats on more than one occasion, but to date they’ve never actually lied to us. We can only hope that…”
The comms link to the Advanced Neurological Laboratory crackled into life, and a querulous voice filtered through the loudspeaker above the communications board into the control room.
“Colonel White… this is… Doctor Fawn…”
Colonel White and Lieutenant Green exchanged incredulous glances, and the colonel leaned over the communications console to reply.
“Doctor Fawn – this is Colonel White! Please advise of the present status in the ANL – what’s happening down there, please?”
There was a brief pause, during which Fawn’s measured breathing was just detectable over the audio link.
“Colonel… as you may already have concluded, I’m alive. As to whether I’m also well, I’ll let you know when I’m in a better position to provide an assessment – but in the meantime, Destiny Angel needs urgent treatment in the Infirmary. When Captain Blue’s team broke down the door a few moments ago, they found her lying unconscious on the floor with one of the lab’s multiphase synaptic interpreters on her head. She seemed to be breathing normally at that time, but that’s as much as I was able to determine before I was relieved of duty by my own orderlies. She saved my life, Colonel – so please ensure that she receives the best possible care we have to offer until I can place her under my own personal supervision.”
“Have no fear, Doctor Fawn: you may count on it. Of that, I give you my absolute and unconditional guarantee.”
Colonel White made a ‘cut the transmission’ gesture with his hand to his adjutant, then paused a second before continuing.
“Lieutenant Green – contact Captain Ochre and apprise him of the situation as just described by Doctor Fawn, please. I have no doubt he will want to visit Destiny in the Infirmary as soon as she is out of danger … but remind him that I want that broken window in Room 101 replaced before he tries to make his first appointment, will you?”
§
“There’s still one aspect of this business that I can’t get my head round,” muttered Captain Ochre.
Scarlet looked at him stoically. “Only one, Rick? In that case I’d say we’re doing rather well… because I can think of several points that make no sense – not the least of which is that recording Captain Black played at the rendezvous. What was the purpose of it? Did he really want his message to be taken back to the people of the world – which is what he said – or didn’t he? Because if he had managed to kill whoever was sitting in that chair listening to it, the message would never have been heard by anyone… and Cloudbase would now be scattered over several hundred square kilometres of the polar icecap! What’s troubling you?”
“Well,” replied Ochre, “up to the time when Destiny asked us to override Doctor Kurnitz’s limiter to allow her to do whatever it was she needed to do to save Doctor Fawn’s life, the pulsator was inactive. The Mysterons were presumably able to overload it only because we deactivated the limiter! How did they know we would do that? Their threat to destroy Cloudbase was issued before any of this happened. They can’t conceivably have foreseen how events would unfold afterwards! That is, I’d like to think they can’t…”
He turned to face Doctor Kurnitz, who had been silently following the conversation from his chair on the other side of the command console.
“What do you think, Doctor? Is it possible that they do know our every move in advance? Are we just acting out a performance for which they’ve already written the script solely for their amusement? Because if we are, it seems to me we might as well just fold our arms and tell them we won’t play anymore!”
If the electrophysicist regarded the suggestion as being anything less than completely sincere, he gave no indication of it.
“Their motivations are as incomprehensible to us as their capabilities, Captain Ochre… and it is a most interesting strategy that you propose! Could it be that this war of nerves they wage would end on the day we tell them we will no longer amuse them by fighting it? It is a fascinating notion indeed! But I must ask you this: are you prepared to risk putting it into action?”
The question was left unanswered as Colonel White joined them at the console and took his place facing the little group.
“Forgive me for the delay in starting this meeting, gentlemen… and indeed, I apologise also for the haste with which I shall have to conclude it. I’ve just been given the latest update on Destiny Angel’s condition from Doctor Fawn, in consequence of which I’ve asked him to join us here briefly. He is however anxious to return to his patient as soon as possible, and I’m mindful that Doctor Kurnitz also has pressing commitments elsewhere, so I shall be brief. But firstly, I must thank you, Captain Scarlet – and you, Captain Ochre. Because of your initiative, Cloudbase is safe.”
He placed his hands on the control panel with the tips of their fingers together, and contemplated the little group gathered around him thoughtfully before continuing.
“Well, gentlemen… the events of yesterday can now be viewed in retrospect. Our attempt to end the war of nerves with the Mysterons has failed. Obviously we were unable to convince them of our sincerity, but we will try again. Let us learn from this operation, and steel ourselves for the long road which lies in front of us… for I cannot doubt that it is an arduous journey that we face. And yet even as we contemplate the toll upon us that that journey may exact, I do see grounds for optimism. The unprecedented challenges we face have obliged us to develop previously undreamed-of skills and technologies to counter them. Who can say how this wonderous new field of knowledge, into which we have just taken our first faltering steps, might benefit mankind in the years to come? We are all of us privileged to be present at the start of that process, and to be members of an organization so well both motivated and equipped to ensure its continuance. That is all I wish to say.”
As the group began to disperse, Colonel White leaned over to Doctor Kurnitz, who was also just rising to his feet.
“Doctor… could I ask you to remain a few moments longer before you take your leave of us? I would value your opinion on some aspects of the situation regarding Destiny Angel… for which reason, I’ve asked Doctor Fawn to join us.”
He turned to address his chief medical officer, who had just walked over to join him from the entrance.
“Doctor… thank you for allowing me to take you away from your patient for a few moments, but it’s with her interests in mind that I’ve done so. Please come and sit down: I promise I shan’t detain you for any longer than necessary.”
Colone White gestured towards the chairs facing the command console, then waited until his two guests had seated themselves before continuing.
“I conducted Captain Scarlet’s debrief earlier today, gentlemen. During that debrief, he described to me a verbal exchange that took place between himself and the Mysterons’ representative, whom Scarlet incidentally had no doubt was Captain Black himself, even though he never actually saw him. This conversation took place immediately prior to the attempt on Captain Scarlet’s life… and his recollection of what was said during that conversation has brought something quite remarkable to light – indeed, so remarkable that it cannot be dismissed as a coincidence. I have a transcript of the debrief here… and have marked the relevant section.”
Doctor Fawn took the proffered document and glanced over it rapidly before settling his eyes on the paragraph that his C-in-C had circled in red ink. A moment later, he looked up thoughtfully.
“This is what the Mysterons said to Captain Scarlet… and what was said by him to them in reply?”
“Yes, Doctor – as accurately as he is able to recall it.”
“Just before the explosion in the Advanced Neurosciences Lab,” replied Fawn slowly, “Destiny told me she was sensing a conversation very much along these lines playing inside her head. I took the synaptic interpreter from her and donned it myself to see if I could sense what she was describing, but I felt nothing…”
“… and we now know that the pulsator concealed at the location of the rendezvous exploded just a few seconds later,” confirmed Colonel White. “Yes, Doctor… I think we may safely infer that the explosion in the Advanced Neurosciences Laboratory was triggered by the destruction of the pulsator in Greenland, perhaps by means of some form of telepathic link between the two pulsators whose nature we do not as yet understand. The equipment in the ANL was operating on the same circuits as the pulsator in Room 101 just a few metres away – but with Doctor Kurnitz’s assistance, we had already incorporated limiters to prevent the pulsator from interfering with our other systems. With nowhere else to go, the shock must have been rerouted down through the power grid into the ANL, and thence directly into your equipment.”
“I think perhaps we might speculate here,” observed Kurnitz thoughtfully. “Colonel White – you speak of a telepathic link between the two pulsators… but I am wondering if they might be connected more fundamentally than this. Are you familiar with the theory of superposition of quantum states?”
“I know as little as the next layman, Doctor Kurnitz – but if it enables us to take even one more step towards understanding the Mysterons, I am willing to learn... or at least to try.”
“We can create two subatomic particles,” asserted Kurnitz in his best lecturing tone, “that are ‘entangled’ – you have heard of this, yes? An observation conducted on one such particle immediately reveals the state of the other, even though the two particles might be separated by an arbitrarily large physical distance – and from this we may conclude that the two particles are merely two multidimensional aspects of the same subatomic particle! This effect has been confirmed experimentally, even though it offends our common sense. But what we call ‘common sense’ is merely our intuitive response to a scenario that is familiar to us… and the world of subatomic particles is not familiar to us! So much is clear, yes?”
The ensuing silence was evidently sufficient to persuade him that the lecture could proceed.
“But now we must clarify our terminology – for what is an ‘observation’? What does it mean to observe? To see… to hear… to touch? I think not – for these are merely human sensations! To observe surely means to perceive – and perception requires consciousness. These pulsators… do they facilitate the transmission of consciousness? I think it might be so!”
Concluding that the ongoing silence might become socially embarrassing were it allowed to continue for longer than a few seconds, Colonel White elected to break it.
“I’d like to think I managed to follow the gist of at least some of that, Doctor… but as I see it, there is now a practical obstacle that will prevent any further research into the notions you have just so eloquently expressed. We have no more pulsators to examine… because they have both been destroyed.”
“This is true,” acknowledged Doctor Kurnitz, visibly crestfallen. “And I reluctantly conclude that it may be some time before my hypothesis can be put to the test. It is my sincere wish that I shall live long enough to see that day.”
He glanced at his watch. “I am expected on the flight deck shortly, Colonel – so I think I should collect my belongings and make my way to where I am supposed to be.”
“Of course, Doctor. I cannot thank you enough for your contribution to this project… and may I wish you a pleasant – and preferably uneventful – journey back to your research institute. Lieutenant Green will be overseeing the arrangements for your departure, so I’ll leave you in his capable hands.”
“Thank you, Colonel White. The last twenty-four hours have been an experience that I shall not forget.”
“Neither shall we, Doctor… I assure you that neither shall we! Doctor Fawn, could I ask you to remain for a few more moments while I show Doctor Kurnitz out?”
Returning a few moments later, Colonel White dropped down into his chair once more and regarded his chief medical officer speculatively.
“Well… what did you make of that, Doctor? I wanted you to hear what he had to say at first hand because you’re far more likely to have understood his assessment of this extraordinary chain of events than I am. Also, as Spectrum’s resident expert in all matters both physical and psychological, you’ll obviously be directly involved in any further investigations into Destiny’s recent atypical and uncharacteristic behaviour, should they prove necessary. Could the Mysteron pulsator have been at the heart of this?”
“Speaking for myself, I’ve no doubt of it,” replied Doctor Fawn, “even if I’m unable to speculate about the nature of that effect. Like Captain Scarlet before her, Destiny has been through an experience outside the knowledge of medical science – which in this instance appears to have given her an understanding of the practical applications of psychophysics over and above anything I’ve ever seen… or even imagined! The end result of this remarkable new skill she’s seemingly acquired is that I’m sitting here talking to you now.”
“Could I ask you to elaborate, Doctor? What did she actually do in those few minutes immediately preceding the destruction of the pulsator?”
Doctor Fawn shook his head in obvious bemusement.
“I’ll do my best to describe it, Colonel – but I fear it’s unlikely to add much to your understanding of the modus operandi. Putting it in a nutshell, she used the reaction analyser contained within one of the synaptic interpreters to create a dynamic simulation of her own neural configuration, which she then uploaded to Lieutenant Green’s communications array. She then amplified it by feeding it through the array’s signal enhancers, after which she downloaded the intensified configuration into a second reaction monitoring headset. Having done that, she then used the headset’s decoders to induce an equivalent state within my cerebral cortex.”
Colonel White nodded thoughtfully.
“It might be just my very limited medical knowledge that’s preventing me from understanding the finer details, Doctor, but I confess I’m not totally sure I followed that explanation in its entirety. Could I impose upon you to… to simplify it – just a little?”
Doctor Fawn grinned. “In layman’s terms, Colonel, she jump-started my brain! How she did it – or for that matter, what made her think even for one instant that she could do it – I haven’t the faintest idea.”
He took a large swig out of his coffee cup and swallowed it in a single gulp. “But I’m certainly glad she did!”
“As are we all, Doctor… as are we all,” replied Colonel White warmly. “I’ve no doubt that you and she will have a great deal to talk about when she recovers consciousness, but for now let’s just be thankful we’re all still here to discuss it.”
“Indeed,” agreed Doctor Fawn. “And as you’ve just reminded me, Colonel, I have a patient down in the Infirmary… and I’d be failing in my duty, both to you and to everyone on this base, if I didn’t do everything in my power to ensure her return to good health is both complete and permanent – so if there’s nothing more...?”
“Of course, Doctor – and thank you for taking the time to brief me on her condition. As soon as she’s fully recovered, I look forward to thanking her personally – and to spending some time with her, trying to gain an understanding of the remarkable abilities she has demonstrated during these last few hours.”
“With your permission, Colonel… I would very much like to be present at that interview.”
Doctor Fawn rose from his chair, gathered up his notes and stood to attention for a second, then set off for the medical wing.
§
Having taken a few seconds to drop his paperwork onto the desk in his office, Doctor Fawn headed straight for the Room of Sleep. Quietly opening the door, he was gratified to find his patient sitting up in bed, intently watching a news bulletin on the screen occupying a large section of the wall opposite.
“Catching up on current affairs, Destiny? In my experience that’s usually a good indicator of recovery, although it can be kind-of depressing if too many unpleasant things have happened around the world since you’ve been hospitalized! How are you feeling?”
She seemed to ponder the question a fraction longer that he might normally have expected under the circumstances, but the reply was reassuring enough.
“I am feeling well, Doctor – yes, I’m very well… very well indeed. How are you feeling?”
“Strangely enough, I feel better than I’ve felt for a long time,” admitted Doctor Fawn. “Destiny… I’ve just been bringing Colonel White up to speed on your progress – and as I told him, I’ve no doubt you’re well on the way to making a full recovery, even though there’s much that we still don’t understand about your experience. Not that that’s news, of course – it happens pretty much every time the Mysterons are involved, as Captain Scarlet can readily testify.”
Doctor Fawn looked at her thoughtfully for a few seconds, then seemed to come to a decision.
“But I’ve a confession to make, Destiny… which is that there’s something I didn’t tell Colonel White. My reason for not telling him is that I knew I wouldn’t be able to elaborate when he asked me to… and I’ve no doubt he would have asked me to.”
He took a deep breath before continuing.
“When our minds were linked in that rig you created in the ANL, you imprinted your own encephalographic matrix onto mine. When I regained consciousness, I was able to see fleeting glimpses of imagery within my mind for up to about an hour afterwards that I know I’ve never experienced… and I’m therefore forced to conclude that it was your experiences that I was seeing. Those experiences include vivid recollections of life aboard a spaceship that can’t possibly exist, encounters with aliens on planets that also can’t possibly exist, most notable of which is a hideous disembodied brain living in an enormous glass jar – which obviously can’t possibly exist! So – Destiny – either you have a graphic imagination that’s off the scale in terms of vividness and intensity… or there’s something of colossal significance going on here that you haven’t told me about.”
He looked at her speculatively, waiting for her to respond. She looked back at him thoughtfully for a moment, then shook her head slowly.
“Where does imagination end and reality begin, Doctor Fawn? There was a time, not so long ago, when that was such an easy question to answer...”
She closed her eyes wearily and continued talking quietly to herself.
“So many things to consider… what she would want me to do… so unhappy… it is important to do the right thing… the right thing for both of us…”
Her eyes opened once more, and she smiled wistfully at his obvious lack of comprehension.
“Give me time, Doctor. It’s complicated. I need more time to think… a lot more time.”
He nodded understandingly and gave her a reassuring smile.
“No worries, Destiny! You’ve been through one hell of an experience, so nobody’s going to push you – least of all me. You take as long as you need… just let me know when you’re ready, okay?”
“I will, Doctor… and thank you. In the meantime, am I allowed visitors?”
“If you feel you’re up to it, then I can’t think of any reason why not – so yes, sure! Who would you like to see?”
“I would like to see Rick… I mean Captain Ochre… privately,” she replied. “We need to talk.”
THE END