Chapter 9

 

'There's no cause for alarm here,' Angelina Carter was perplexed. She was in Medical Center sitting up in a patient bed, dressed in Moonbase Alpha issue karate pajamas. Her head was bandaged and an IV line was firmly planted in her left wrist. Electrodes monitoring heart rate and brain activity fed data into a medical oscilloscope.

Everyone around her, Carter, Commander Koenig, Professor Bergman, Dr. Russell and Dr. Mathias wore bizarre expressions of, what was it: shock, disbelief, perhaps even anger and sadness? Not directed at her, per se, but the mood was somber and depressing.

'Really, I'm alright,' she straightened the bed cover over her. 'Well, ok, I'll admit to being a little embarrassed. No, a lot embarrassed. I was on the ship and I stood up quickly, not watching what I was doing or where I was going and smacking my head into the ship bulkhead. So I crack my head open, give myself a pretty good concussion and a headache which will last for days.'

She studied the expressions. It was awkward.

'With all due respect,' she stared at Koenig, 'don't you have better things to do than to hang out here with me? I mean, in a way, I always appreciate the company but today you,' she looked around, 'all of you, aren't exactly uplifting and cheerful. Honestly, you all act like you just came back from a funeral.' She didn't ask 'what's up'. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she really didn't care to know.

Her muse was broken by shrieking, screaming and sobbing in the 'padded' room through the open door. Anne Delline quickly exited with a straight-jacketed and restrained Ed Malcom howling after her as the door slid close.

Bergman glanced at Parker who continued to observe the highly distraught Malcom through the glass as he typed notes into a laptop.

'What the hell is Ed's problem?' Angelina asked, half amused and half disgusted. 'Did Chris finally push him over the edge?' She laughed. 'Well, good for him. He deserves a promotion.' All the while, she kept hearing the buzzing of insects.

*******************

'Pardon my frustration.' Koenig openly, angrily, even antagonistically closed Russell's office door for her. For a moment, he could smell rubber burning; fine, if the thing jammed, he'd tear it off the track. 'But her reaction was not the one I was expecting.'

It took him two tries to reholster his commlock, such was his preoccupation.

'Maybe you expect too much.' Russell was not speculative so much as abrasive, and cold.

'Victor, clue me in.' The commander cajoled them. He figured he had a right to cajole them. The alien spacecraft was now a cemetery for alphans as well as extraterrestrials. All in the space of one hundred seconds, and no one had any record--visual; oral; or pneumonic as to how it happened. It was the hyacinth of dumbstruck. Impossible. Even Morrow just stared back at him with his big mouth hanging open, agog, with nothing to palate except a certain lack of knowledge. Inconceivable. And downright fucking ignorant, you should pardon his french. 'Why doesn't anyone remember anything, and spare me the chestnuts of practicality.'

'Oh, the memory is there, according to Bob Mathias,' Bergman, arms crossed, tapped his temple with right index finger. 'Its just buried deep in their subconscious. Both Ed and Ang have chosen not to remember it.'

'We tried everything from Omega Three fish oil to Topomax.' Russell criss-crossed the bellicose black sleeve again, and did not care. 'Keep in mind that Ang' Carter is not one to forget a grocery list.'

'AGREED.' Koenig grew more combative. 'FOR THAT MATTER, THERE WASN'T A SINGLE PERSON ON THAT D/C TEAM WHO HAD LESS THAN A DOCTORATE. YET THEY DO SEEM TO BE QUITE, GODDAMN DEAD NOW, DR. RUSSELL, AND SUDDENLY OUR MOST COMPETENT OPERATIVES HAVE ALZHEIMERS DISEASE.' He pounded her fist, causing her 3D model of a man to tumble to the blotter. 'WELL, I'M NOT BUYING IT.'

'You don't have to buy it, John,' Russell stated with remarkable calm and almost in a whisper. The contrast between his tone and hers was clearly evident but the common factor was their ire was equivalent. 'You saw the results of Bob's hypnosis on Ed Malcom; complete derangement. He will work with him more in about 30 minutes; and no, he won't try it on Ang, not that Alan would let him anywhere near her.' She sighed. 'Whatever they saw, whatever happened, must have been too terrible...' she trailed, taking a sip of cold coffee. Dot Sullivan was completing the second autopsy on the corpse they guessed was Colonel Petrov.

'But Angelina Carter is a different person, a different psychological personality than Ed Malcom.' Bergman interjected. 'The affect might not be the same. At some point, despite Alan's objection, he will have to try to retrieve that memory. It will be key to our survival, for our ability to fight whatever it is we are fighting.'

******************

'Locate.' Sandra Benes, bloated with pressure, and underscored with the fight, and flight of bug bombulations, and pollutants. Behind her, Paul Morrow looked blankly on while observing from one of the wall consoles near the big window.

Pierre Danielle could have sworn that it flew over his shoulder.

Ben Ouma, neck a sweat, could have sworn that it flew into his face.

'According to computer....' He attempted to remain calm, but disgusted. 'There's nothing in Main Mission, but some unaccountable sound pressure.'

Below the big screen, Kate Bullen looked fraught, and suspicious.

***************************

In the acoustics lab, Velma Hill pressed her headphones against her ears with emptiness, and vaguery.

'I don't see what good this is doing.' Harness Bull Theyland was doing nothing, but tossing paper wads into a nearby receptacle. All of this equipment. A one hundred channel control board? Two engineers backing up the procedure? Truman Starns was not chief of security for even one day, and already Theyland saw him abnegating power to an egg-headed Bergman. 'All of these top shelf scientists, and not a one of them can see what really needs to be done.' In other words, let us put away our man tits, and take an affirmative stance. Lasers will atomize--rocks, and buildings, and people, and anything else that might pose a threat. Three wars had taught them this much--creation is difficult, but destruction is the bee's knees. 'All right?' He was concerned about Hill's complexion.

'No, I'm not alright.' The sergeant boo'ed him. 'I need you to shut up so I can finish these tapes.'

'Got something?' Theyland looked mortified (but not as mortified as the doomed damage control team that had boarded the alien spacer).

'Maybe....' Hill was horrified by the electronic hysteria that now assailed her eardrums, from the left, and from the right.

She heard a woman screaming, amplified a jillion' times.

**********************

'Here we are....' Bergman thumbed the pages of the book back. He looked out of breath with discovery, and enthuse. 'John, it's right here. In Kabalistic lore.' And he proceeded to quote: ''Born of revenge, Golems were creatures that rose from filth, and epidemic,' but from beginning to end, they remained more, or less at the beck and call of the one who summons them.'

Koenig glanced over at the text. Once upon a time, he would have instantly ruled out the possibility of the reality of a Golem as the stuff of dark fairy tales, an impossible possibility. After years in deep space, however, he had quickly realized that anything was possible: monsters were real.

'Answers leading to more questions,' the Commander mused, arms crossed over chest. 'The questions are: what is the motive of the revenge and probably more important, who is summoning it?'

Then, bursting into the triage room, a rattled Bob Mathias.

'Commander, Dr. Russell--we've completed the autopsy on Mueller, one of the astrophysicists. There was gross, physical trauma, of course, but also this.' He handed Russell the 3D body scan.

Russell was not only speechless...she was mindless.

The data being handed her was preposterous. He may as well have handed her a ditto copy of 'Little Red Riding Hood.'

Koenig glanced over her right shoulder, reading glasses perched on nose. Bergman studied the bold and larger text highlights and conclusions over her left shoulder. The professor and the commander exchanged incredulous looks, mouths agape.

'It happened within seconds.' Mathias approved. 'It must have. Every organ in his body has been egested, and the remaining muscles, and skeleton are packed with some type of larvae.'

Russell was still mute, horrified and seemingly wooden on the exterior. It was incomprehensible. It was a horrible way to die, not that any form of death was particularly pleasant, but she found little consolation in the fact that death came quickly.

'How could this have happened in such a short time period?' Koenig questioned. It didn't make sense.

'Larvae!' Bergman exclaimed after another long second of processing the information. A glimmer of terror crossed his features. 'Larvae...on Alpha! That means....'

'COMMANDER KOENIG.' Paul Morrow's intensity replaced the Belziers on the nearby commstation. 'MAIN MISSION IS UNDER SEIGE.'

'PAUL!!!' Koenig stabbed the white communication button on the comstation with such intensity it nearly split into two pieces. 'GET EVERYONE OUT OF THERE!! EVACUATE AND SEAL OFF MAIN MISSION!!' With a hard set grimace, all that was required was a glance at Russell, Bergman and Mathias. They bolted out of Bergman's lab into the corridor toward the Command Tower.

The CT Accessway was all overturned gooseneck lamps, and stampeding harness bulls. The Level One rotunda of the command tower did have an information desk, but Services Specialist Miriam Cross was at cross purposes--show her head, and be crushed by the booted brigade, or remain, and coordinate. She chose instead to try to remain in contact, via her commlock with Sandra Benes, but it was a disposable gesture. Even if the image on the monitor wasn't a cyclone from OZ of black particles, and screaming voices, the wailing pulse of the Red Alert made any constructive audio incomprehensible. Unpressurized stairwell doors were kicked open, and Harness Bull after offensive Harness Bull began their ascent. The packed elevator was halted before its departure by Truman Starns.

"USE YOUR HEADS!" He lambasted the contingent. "THERE MIGHT BE FLAMES ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THAT DOOR. GET YOUR BUTTS OUT OF THERE, AND USE THE STAIRS.

"MOVE IT!"

And thru it all, the fact that Tara Bathory, and her videographer Duke were still truant, remained unnoticed.

***************************

On Level Nine, out of shape security patrols gagged for breath. All except for Harness Bull Pound, who was invigorated by running up steep hills. He became, therefore, a natural commanding officer of the field.

"COME ON, MATES." He inspired them on. "WERE ALMOST THERE. ONLY FIFTEEN STEPS LEFT."

**************************

Benjamin Ouma screamed loudly enough to drown out the claxon.

His veined hand was crawling with bugs, and pain.

"WHAT THE DEVIL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING!" Paul Morrow, his long hair a nest for critters, scolded Harness Bull Theyland. "YOU CAN'T FIRE YOUR LASER IN HERE."

What would he hit if he did? Sandra Benes? Umberto Garzon? Gordon Cooper? Or maybe it would ricochet, and the universe would be minus one, unintelligent security guard.

"OPEN THE DOOR, YOU PRICK!" Bearded CapComm Pierre Danielle pounded on the closed hatch to Koenig's office, where the on-duty astrophysicist Claude Murneau had retreated, and refused to let anyone else share his sanctuary.

All around them, operatives were jumping over the rail into the level two MPSR, which had long since been evacuated.

"EHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Sandra Benes lashed out violently, and dispatched insects, crushing them in her bare hands. "EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Her palms were mutilated beyond recognition.

**************************

Angelina Carter, in medical center, suddenly sat upright in her bed . "NOOOO!" She shouted, impossibly and completely alert from a drug induced sleep.

**********

"STAND ASIDE!" Koenig ordered at the contingent of security guards attempting to open the door to the upper level of Main Mission with brute force. Russell quickly came up from behind with a gasping Bergman. The commander fired and the group instinctively shielded themselves, arms to faces as the circuitry exploded into a burst of sparks and smoke. Koenig and Harness Bull Pound exerted muscle to the door, forcing it open.

They gaped at the scene inside.

There were operatives everywhere, in various states of injury and insect bitten misery, panting or moaning or weeping.

But there was not one insect or bug. Anywhere.

The Commander made his way to his office, trailed by Bergman, opening the doors with his commlock. Even Bergman, who had pretty much seen it all in his 60 something years, gave a slight surprised reaction at the sight of Claude Murneau.

Well, he assumed it was Claude Murneau by the remains of his tattered lab coat, bearing project patches and looking very much like a cub scout uniform. The bloodied remnant of vanity and extreme ego haphazardly draped on the bloated, eviscerated and unrecognizable corpse of the late scientist.

**********

"Woolgathering." Carter confessed unabashedly, elbow on the sill of the vision port of the murder scene (aka Koenig's office).

A transuded Paul Morrow was smoking. The look of being mauled suited him...actually made him seem more sympathetic, and effete. Sandra Benes bore the worse wear. Her eyelids, and lips were Goth, vessicated flaps of insect puncture marks. Pierre Danielle actually found the loss of hair to be an improvement, though he fretted over Morrow detecting his thoughts.

"We need you in this room." The controller told the pilot. "Not a million light years away."

Koenig did not disagree.

"Right." Carter rubbed his hands together in mock-excite as he returned to his seat at the table.

"Captain, do you have a report?" Koenig showed umbrage.

(...little Brown Betty lived under a pan...)

"Because you act like you know something." Morrow tag teamed with Sandra Benes. Carter was oblivious. Did he say something? Did he answer the rhetoric of bug bites.

(...Angs' eyelids flickering up, and down; back, and forth; sideways and open; the pilates of nervous sleep...)

"I told you everything I know." The astronaut was bleary.

(...Digger men came every day...)

Bergman cleared his throat, and stood. Medical had done an admirable job of mopping up Claude Murneau--not five feet away from where he stood actually.

"Here are the projections you wanted." He passed the red flimsey to Koenig. "Obviously, evacuation is a last resort. We're in empty space right now, and for all we know, it might stay that way.

"As to Plan-B, we've coordinated with Pete Garforth in Dr. Carter's absence." The astrophysicist went on. "He sees plenty of reason why it would be unwise to purge the base, room by room; corridor by corridor--but it can be done."

"So...." Ouma was slouched, and negative. "We open every airlock on Alpha, and hope the decompression will blow the arthropods back into space?" He turned to Carter for moral support that was a universe away. "What's the obvious problem with that?"

Koenig acknowledged--and disliked Carter's preoccupation, but said nothing.

("I HATE that man!"

The memory played over again, simultaneously, both in a sleeping woman in Medical and through the mind of the Chief of Reconnaissance in Koenig's office.

"I really, really despise him!!" Angelina Carter paced in their living quarters, just 3 weeks earlier, venting her rage.

The pilot merely listened, periodically taking the dregs of that morning's reheated coffee.

"What is it about that guy? Why does Claude Murneau continue to attempt to humiliate me, to step all over me, to play the game of politics that should have died with the earth?!?" She went on, really pissed off. "Alan, do you know what really sucks about being out here?! It's the fact that we are stranded with almost 300 BONEHEADS that we have to live with each and every god forsaken day! Oh sure, Balor sucked....the Sidons sucked...those up tight medieval weirdo sucked...that Trask thing REALLY sucked...but, these were not the most annoying things. Oh no, these are just icing on the cake. It's the Claude Murneau's which are going to be my undoing, that's for goddamn sure!"

"I've never wished death on anyone but sometimes," she paused a second, "sometimes....well let's just say I don't wish that ass a toast to his health and a long life.")

"...toast?" Pierre Danielle spouted out loud, unfamished, but literal in his interpretation of Carter's meander. In francais they had working lunches. What with the insects, he had assumed that no one had an appetite.

"Carter?" Koenig straightened his tunic, bones in his shoulders cracking.

"Which could we expedite." Morrow passed his empty cup to Truman Starns, who only now realized that she had become a server for bottomless refills at the Maison de Butthole. "A or B?"

The pilot leaned against an uncluttered area of the table, one quarter cognizant.

Bergman said Plan-A.

**********

"How many kilos?" Carter Jackson wondered as they moved along the lunar surface in the hotshot rover. Hitched to the transport was a revolving mixer, so they were also like a cement truck, putty 'wutty. "In total."

Eagle 3-7 was just barely visible near a portable laboratory that had been reclaimed from the remnants of a rocket booster. Moonbase Alpha was two hundred kilometers away, and considering the current affairs there, he could stay away, and suck air in his space suit. "In total, I mean."

Specialist Crook tapped his helmut microphone.

"The whole smash." He transmitted to his colleague. "The professor doesn't want to risk a nuke because the Moon doesn't need to be any more geologically unstable than it already is, though he added a codicil that we 'would' use a warhead if we had to.

"But for now...." He released the grip, and the treds of the rover ground to a halt in the bars of palpable shadow. "We're going to deploy the largest, improvised explosive device in the universe."

"Ah...." Jackson minimized it, sweating, and carrying a polymer box filled with igniter switches. He wanted to be back on Alpha now. Funny, how many amendments had been added to his contract since the Moon quit the bosom of mother Earth. He wished there were red shirts. Disposable people who would not be missed if they failed the greatest intelligence test of all. As it was, everyone took their chances. There were no exceptions in deep space. "Where do you want to start?"

He was an American, by birth, and the whole thing reminded him of that Simpson's cartoon, where Homer is in love; a billionaire; a humanitarian--only to have it all collapse in a daydream balloon, leaving him alone with his donut, and emit 'DoOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!'

"Here." Crook surmised, and made an 'X' shape against the hull with a piece of chalk.

It had to be strong enough to destroy the entire spacecraft.

Chapter 10

 

"They did what?" Angelina Carter gaped in disbelief. She appeared to be comfortable, sitting back in the white cushioned papasian chair in her living quarters, dressed in a 10 year old oversized faded red sweatshirt (which actually belonged to Alan Carter) and her own faded navy blue sweatpants. She wasn't exactly a fashion plate but she didn't care either; she felt horrendous with lack of quality sleep, persistent nightmares and a continuous headache despite Russell's analgesic.

In her company, John Koenig and Victor Bergman sat at opposite ends of the white sofa. Bergman was in faux relaxation while Koenig was on the edge of his seat. Carter stood at the far end of the room, by the mini refrigerator, brooding over yet another cup of Alpha grown synthetic coffee.

"It is one of our options," Bergman replied cautiously. Ang was irritable and aggravated more than he had ever seen her. It was a PMS moment times a thousand. "You know that I would like to save that ship if at all possible. But our very survival may depend on destroying it."

"Whatever," Ang shook her head. "Blowing it up is a waste of time. Whatever it is, it's here already."

"How do you know?" Koenig looked up, not caring if he fell through the thin ice, stomping out at the Technical Manager. "What is it? WHAT is here?"

She grunted. "I don't know. Why should I know? I don't know what it is." She paused, wishing they'd go away. "I just know it's here."

Koenig imparted a coup d'oeil to Alan Carter--who still seemed culpable for something, even if it was the sin of undeveloped thoughts. The astronaut didn't realize it, but Bergman was feeling sorry for him behind his back as well. All of the Viking spears, and great shields, and longbows, and maces couldn't put the Carter family’s' credibility back together again. The pilot looked to his Katana for relief--elevated high above the floor, on the wall, where his son would never reach it. All he got for the aversion was the strong inclination to cut his own throat ear to ear. Now, that would solve nothing.

But it sure sounded like a great idea.

"What gives, commander?" He finally regorged. It was the best he could do, and in retrospect, they had had better arguments in the past. This contretemps saw him as a big, giant wussy'--with no facts; no virtue; no righteous coronet on which he could base a disagreement. His spine was as indolent as a hundred insects. "All through the CC you acted like you dredged me up from the bottom of some pit, and now you and the professor barge in here like freaking philistines, and what's worse, I'm not sure that I understand the accusations."

He did, though.

On some level.

"You forgot to add that I'm being tyrannical." Koenig had his act together. "Except for the part during the command conference where I was unable to find a reason for chief Starns to hold you over for interrogation. Your dignity was an issue, and facile, weak man that I am, I allowed you to walk. I thought a conversation here might be more appropriate.

"On the other hand, I've thought better of it, Alan, and I'm happy to announce that if you don't come clean with me immediately, I'm going to have you dragged down to the security cube for a one-on-one with Pound, and Theyland."

"It's a matter of non-disclosure." Bergman explained to Ang' vaguely.

"Non-disclosure?" Angelina huffed angrily. "You seem to be implying that Alan or I am guilty of some sort of crime. What is this? Are you looking for a scapegoat for our recent round of misery? What's the matter? Can't your biophysicists figure out what is going on? Is Bob Mathias totally stumped?"

"Not guilty of a crime, so to speak," Bergman continued to Ang, even less vaguely. He took a sip from his mug of Vitaseed. His calmness, his paternal demeanor was getting on her nerves. He returned his attention to her. "Circumstantial evidence seems to indicate a connection between you and the, for lack of a better word, entity. You and Ed Malcom were the only survivors of the attack on the ship. Then, there was the attack on Main Mission, culminating in the death of Claude Murneau."

"I am well aware how you feel about Claude Murneau." Bergman took another sip of Vitaseed.

Angelina gaped. "This," she said carefully, "is ridiculous. If you are looking for someone with a motive, at least half this base thought the guy was an asshat and would think twice before risking life and limb to save him. Not only that, professor, but I think you're conveniently forgetting that I was nowhere near Claude Murneau."

"I never said you killed him," the Chief Scientist crossed his right leg over his left knee.

"Then what are you saying" Despite the ludicrous, hippy dippy direction the conversation was going, Angelina was somewhat intrigued. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Alan Carter was not, steaming and probably on the verge of tossing Bergman and Koenig out. But Ang kept the conversation going.

"This entity," he continued, "is comprised of pestilence and filth. Borne of revenge, it thrives on emotion, intense and negative emotion." He nodded to Koenig, who, incredibly was not disagreeing. "During the attack on Main Mission, you were asleep but you were being monitored. Claude Murneau had barricaded himself in the Commander's office whilst the others were being attacked. At one point, you cried out in your sleep. You said "No". At that precise moment, the attack immediately stopped in Main Mission. The rage though had to go somewhere. The target became Claude Murneau."

Ang said nothing.

"You and Ed Malcom were the only survivors from the attack on the alien ship. It is unclear why Ed Malcom survived. It is rather clear, however, the reason for your survival."''

"Clear." Koenig assented. "To both of you."

"Hold your horses, commander." Carter disputed. "You've got a trail, but you're trotting off in the wrong direction. Nothing is certain, yet."

"It must all seem like a witch hunt to you." Bergman sympathized.

"Fucking-A, it seems like a bloody witch hunt." The astronaut informed them. “ Even if you're right, what do you plan on doing? Are you going to give us an airlock-job? Whatever happened to community, and freaking justice?"

"Now you're putting words in my mouth." Koenig radiated irritation. "If you'd shut your trap long enough, you'd find out what we have planned." The commander moved in closer to who he beheld to be the smarter Carter. "Ang,' you say that there's no link between yourself, and the 'thing' that attacked Main Mission. I would like to believe you. What we would like to do is to place you under twenty-four hour surveillance.

"I doubt that the entity can go for that long without manifesting."

"It appears to draw power from its materializations." Bergman speculated. "Each time it has appeared, it has been more belligerent, more forceful."

"We'll be scrutinizing everything, of course." Koenig relaxed. "But I'd like to rule you out as a host before we look to other areas. If you are a catalyst...we may be able to use that to our advantage somehow."

"Or, we may turn up nothing a'toll." The professor reminded the commander, who already knew that all too well.

"Do you agree?" Koenig solicited.

Angelina was thoughtfully quiet for what seemed like an eternity. "I suppose I really don't have a choice," She finally spoke, not with as much resignation as more resolve. "If it turns out that someone, me, whoever, is feeding it with violent emotions, what good does it do us? How do we fight it?"

"If it thrives on negative emotion," she adjusted her blanket tighter around her. She looked like she was encased in a quilt cocoon. "If it thrives on negative emotion, is it defeated with positive emotion?"

She chuckled in disbelief. "What are we going to do? Laugh it to death?" She let out an incredulous 'huh'. "Professor, with all due respect, I'm not sure this is the right direction. I mean, really, an entity that is killed by laughter." Ang smirked and looked toward Alan.

"Wasn't there a Star Trek episode with that same kind of entity?" She went on, now the Captain was smirking. "Rejack!! REEEEEJack!! Come out Rejack!!!" Her giggling turned into outright laughter to match the other Carter's chuckling.

Koenig wanted to choke them both now. Bergman's supplemental reticence was the only thing that saved him from committing the next murder before the creature.

"I always got on with other things." The professor kept his gift of nonchalant. "Not much time for the telly, but I do have a notion."

"Mathias was against a pharmacological solution." Koenig changed faces, and felt disgusted for it.

Bergman gazed deeply into the commander's unflappable, seeming to find it naive, but said nothing.

"THIS IS THE TROTS." Carter expressed disharmoniousness again for the whole thing.

Koenig told him to deal with it.

**********

The funeral of Claude ("Clode" to the urbane, and the well bred) Murneau occurred in 3-Cantina, deep in the bowels of a launch pad of the same number. It was a dank, dreary affair, with the local smells of oil, and solid rocket fuel abounding. A few of the Hoyster forklift drivers did not have the courtesy to avoid the area during the service--as a result, they were frequently disturbed with traffic sounds, and the hot hiss, and splatter of crap on the concrete floor.

Ten chairs.

One for each department head, gymnasium style, and awkward on a grated floor.

Pete Garforth was there, representing Technical Section, since Ang' Carter thought Murneau was an asshat. Actually, so did Garforth.

Harness Bull Thackeray was there. His mandatory attendance was somewhat of a mystery. He was a grunt, first class, and symbolized nothing, other than entry-level unfairness, and bureaucratic bullying.

He suspected that Chief Starns didn't like Murneau, secretly.

Little did he realize, it was no big secret.

Others kept a straight face; all stiffened of back; all checking their watches, and mourning by compulsion.

Hugo Willet was the presiding Zoroastrian/Catholic. He had no idea what God was, but he was the only one willing to perform this final rite, and he had a copy of the Douay Bible to boot. He tried to infuse enough grass roots laicite in the hopes that 'Clode' would look down on them approvingly, or look 'up' on them approvingly, confident that he had been done justice in terms of Man, and Citizen.

"Psalms 90." He foundered again. There was no reason for him to feel self-conscious. No one was paying attention to him anyway. Especially the cold corpse that was atop two saw horses, and encased in space age plastic. "The days of our years are threescore and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away."

Or, in this case, be ingested by critters from another world.

"Right." Engineer Smith blurted. "You've already quoted that one three times. Get along with it. I was having a brilliant day, until I got drafted into this bodge."

Murmurs of assent abounded.

Hugo Willet flushed. He did not enjoy presiding over the memorial, he didn't particularly like Claude Murneau either, but Pete Garforth had convinced him (deceived him) into doing it. Something about developing his public speaking skills or other such nonsense was the reason but in retrospect, he really didn't care whether he ever developed this skill set. Since he was taken from his post as Gonzales' assistant, he had "returned" only for a total of two months. Evidently, his mechanical skills were in demand and as he gained more proficiency, he was "rewarded", not by his desire to return into the kitchen into obscurity, but with increasing responsibility and more complex work.

At least now he was in Eagle flight systems, out of the hazardous technical section but Gordon Cooper was less sympathetic to his desire to return to the kitchen ("Never again, mate.")

"Psalm 23," Willet went on, ignoring Smith. "The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want." He continued loudly and smoothly.

Smith rolled his eyes and slouched. He glanced sideways at Yasko Nugami, the representative from Services Section. Sandra Benes picked her lowest ranking and least intelligent operative to attend the service; she did not even wish to "waste" the value time of her custodian staff. The airhead, though, thought it was an honor and an opportunity to scout out another sex partner. Smith, like nearly every man on the base, thought Yasko was butt-ugly and boney. Smith, though, had gone without the horizontal mumba for quite some time.

Maybe he could put a bag over her head, he thought, shuttering inward as skeletor smiled at him coyly.

Or thank god for night modes.

He winked at her. Maybe he would get lucky tonight.

Bottom line: most of the threnodic alphans did not care about the rod, and the staff.

"HURRY IT UP!" Harold Gleason--now substituting for stellar cartographer Carroll Severance--rapped out in pain at this endless Bible cracking. He was a large, insalubrious looking man with a medical history that was so negative, he probably would not have lived long, even if the Moon had not pin balled out of Earth orbit.

Pete Garforth languished in a sheen. He felt as though his commlock were shoved up his rectum. He knew better. Even before saying adieu to 'Clode, he felt that he had slept on the wrong side of the bed, and that his calendar was last year's. Disambiguation was what he needed, but why, he did not know. It was like the impalpable last name, and forgetting to put coffee in the pot. He had to take stock of himself. And yet....

...and yet....

"Hey, rube." He said jocularly into his commlock. He hoped that 'Ang Carter was around to pick up. "Want to hear something queer as folk?"

"Shall we sing 'The Old, Rugged Cross?'" Harness Bull Thackeray, looking a lot like Weird Al Yankovic, stiffened. Everyone looked strangely at him (even Murneau, so it seemed, from his casket of plastic), but it seemed like an honest question.

 

**********

"Is that still going on?" Angelina Carter responded mildly. Her small image in the commlock of her head and shoulders was the neutral image with the forced smile she projected when she was under stress and not exactly a happy camper...but didn't want to include others in her own personal misery.

On the white couch, Velma Hill looked up, freezing momentarily then continuing in dealing the cards. Nicky Carter sat on the floor on the other side of the coffee table. The story given to Ang was that Velma was there to "help" with Nicky so the Chief of Technical Section, confined to her quarters, could get some work done.

Ang wasn't stupid and disappointed that Starns would think she'd believe that explanation without question. The real reason for Velma's presence was to observe her. Sure, there was the camera in the living area ("Try to stay there as much as possible", Theyland instructed her) for the 24 hour surveillance. But cameras did not cover the bathroom and the bedroom ("If you could sleep out in the living area tonight, that would be helpful," Theyland told her.) Cameras could not pick up the subtle human emotions that Velma Hill was particularly astute at in observation and particularly trained in her field.

The AD of Technical Section rubbed the burned, time-worn landscape of his forehead as he struggled to retrieve the forgotten list.

"Sorry for the bang up schedule...it just occurred to me that I never saw a complete work order on the rail hydraulics."

Now that he thought about it, he had not ridden in a travel tube for several hours; he had, in fact, walked one quarter of a kilometer to work from Residence Building-C this morning, and had not noticed it.

"Uh, right," Angelina quickly clicked through the tabs on the spreadsheet on the screen of her laptop. She was sitting Indian style in the papasian, sipping recycled water. "Hmm....I don't see one in the master list. Oh dammit, all." She grumbled. Chris Potter was responsible for travel tube maintenance.

Chris Potter was dead so the boom couldn't very well be lowered on him, could it? And when was his memorial service anyway? Oh, yes, that's right. It had already been held along with the 6 other people who had died on the alien spacecraft 3 days ago.

"We're going to have to figure something out, reassign who's responsible for travel tubes," Ang continued, becoming angrier inside and still focused on the fact that Claude Murneau was given an individual memorial while her better technicians were lumped together in a mass grave type ceremony...which she could not attend.

"Pete, could you assign someone temporarily? Maybe we can get Hugo Willet back. We need someone good. I know Coop will have a fit but I am much more influential over his boss." She smiled again, that thin, not quite genuine, smile.

Garforth relaxed, suddenly his old self again.

"Well, I'll make sure it's all mint. Say hello to your salty dog mate for me. Don't worry about section, either. It will all be taken care of."

"Thanks, I'm not worried. You're doing great despite all the weird shit going on right now," She rubbed her forehead. She was still pissed off about the Murneau thing.

Little did she realize, Garforth was no longer paying attention. He was watchful of the dark figure that was standing in the window, high above the floor of the hangar, in what was supposed to be the unoccupied map room.

"Is there something wrong?" Velma could be heard on the other side of the link, but again, not that Garforth was paying attention. He was squinting at the figure, trying to list every possible person who might be there but no one on his list was as massive as the figure in the window.

Angelina closed the laptop lid. "You know," she started to Hill, "Seven people died on that alien ship and they get a generic, bulk sale memorial. Claude Murneau meets his maker and he gets a private ceremony." She seethed. "What gives with that?!?"

"Murneau was higher up," Velma responded, all the while noting Ang's increased aggravation. She could go two ways with this situation. Velma could either try to soothe and calm the emotion or she could attempt to escalate the anger and see what happens.

She went for the latter.

"I lost a couple of good friends on that ship," Hill continued, bitterness in her tone. "Good security cops, the best in the field, and all around good guys. One of them left a little girl so now that baby is faced with a future without a Daddy."

Ang's face was flushing as she shook her head. Nicky studied her, unsure whether to go to her or stay away from her.

"Then, you get a guy like Murneau, a guy would was mediocre in his field at best but thought he was the most brilliant and indispensable scientist on the base. Nobody liked the guy because he was such an asshat and he's treated just about every person with the kindness and regard of an insect yet he gets the state funeral treatment.

"It's not right....it's just not right."

 

**********

Garforth rubbed the arrow that seemingly, penetrated his neck. That was how he learned that an arrow in the neck is not a thing to scorn.

"Well done." He complained, and counted the wrungs on the maintenance ladder. Stepping into the shaft, the climb did not seem any easier as he tracked into the emerald green light of the bulb that burned midway between the floor of the hanger, and the map room.

Of course there was no lift at this level--a nice, smooth-type ride to the top--or even one of those fortean stairwells, which took his forty year old breath away.

A hundred meters over the shoulder, there was the comparative safety (why did he think that) of 3-Cantina. He disappeared into the muck, and not even the forklift drivers had noticed. Beyond the high, chain link, barrier fence, he could hear the engine block of an Eagle as it went into test mode in the sub lunar, jet propulsion laboratory.

Grasping the oily aluminum, he prepared to climb.

"EAGLE FIVE FLIGHT CREW STAND BY FOR THE CRYO-FILL." Bram Cedrix boomed over the speakers, almost causing a surprised Garforth to scream like a little girl, half way up the shaft. Panting, and laughing, indirectly, at something, the assistant director resumed his journey. The dark hole in the bulkhead lowered on him, like a blight (there he went thinking again) until he was eye-to-eye with gray linoleum, and inferior to anything in a standing position.

Seizing both of the wall mounted handgrips, he propelled his 200 pound bulk into the cluttered, black nirvana.

"Do behave...." He said aloud, cautiously, to the individual that he knew was in the room. Tables, tables everywhere, and maps were his only defense. "If there's anyone in here, reveal yourself, or be clumped upside the head."

The sour redolence was familiar to his nostrils.

**********

"I'm listening," Velma Hill nodded toward an increasingly enraged Angelina Carter, as the security investigator typed a text message into her commlock to Chiefs Starns.

'She's getting pissed off,' was the message and to Starns on the other end, it needed no further explanation.

Nicky had retreated to his room.

"You know," Ang continued, irked, "it's not the crap out here which will kill us. Oh no." She shook her head. "It's idiots like Murneau, Ed Malcom, and William Harms which will be our undoing, mark my words!"

"Only the good die young," Velma borrowed the words from Billy Joel. "But in our situation, we can't afford to have the good die young." She paused. "But if we can only get lucky enough to get rid of some of the rotten ones, we might have a chance. I, for one, am glad Claude Murneau is now the late Claude Murneau.

"But we still have others that we could certainly do without," Hill continued.

Angelina paused in mid stride. She stared at Hill for a long moment as she took a deep breath. Collecting her thoughts, she resumed her seat in the papasian chair. Evil thoughts of "fortunate" accidents toward certain individuals were forced out by her will, replaced with loving thoughts, acts of kindness. Nicky had returned to the room, this time not hesitating at all, and climbed onto her lap. The anger, the building rage was replaced with calm and happiness.

"I know what you were trying to do," Ang finally spoke to Hill. "I can't say I don't blame you. I would probably do the same thing, if I was in your situation.

"But I will not be responsible for someone else dying from this thing, if I am really the one responsible....which has not even been proven."

******************

Carefully, Garforth removed the square Maglite from the utility cabinet. The dimmer switches were no good, and he'd curse Technical Section for it, were it not for the fact that he was Technical Section. His other hand sweated over a commlock, and not a blaster, which was not the best of worlds.

He gave up on the idea of reciprocal conversation. Whoever was there--and he did believe someone was there--they were going to hide/pounce where silence has lease.

Along the phosphorescent lime-glowing grates, his disco boots clocked along, metal against leather. On several of the monitors, there was a screensaver called Marquis. Garforth hated the tangled geometry, and the bloodwork of color. In a dark recess over one hatch, the words EMERGENCY EXIT beamed back to him in future font.

Another dimmer switch--nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Fucking thing worked like a London gas tax.

"This most definitely is not funny." He vocalized to his unseen opponent who preferred a lack of tonsils as torture. "YOU HEAR THAT, OSTROG?"

But he knew better, and the insect that landed on the back of his neck informed him of his massive blunder.

*****************

Suzanne Wallace was in the lower level of Residence-Building A. Her weekly adventure was laundry--all of it, stuffed into a giant triple loader that was shaped like a triangle. Don't ask. She wasn't the person who designed the peculiar patina that was Moonbase Alpha. Under the circumstances, she was just grateful to have clean clothes, and working in a hydroponic unit made you appreciate the little things in life.

"HMMMM--hmmm--hmm-HMMMMM!" She hmmmmmm'ed in a prim, and proper that made a refined Liza Doolittle look like a butch sheet metal worker.

Setting aside the plastic container of powdered, hydrogenated bleach, she was preparing to introduce a flask of the brightener into her begrimed, white coveralls when suddenly a vent crashed to the floor from one of the overhead casings.

"Can I finish my chores before the base falls apart?" She complained, hardly expecting a ripped, slimed back Tara Bathory to teeter forward from behind her.

"Please, help me." The ANS Anchor was ultimately skanked.

Wallace shrieked.

 

Chapter 11

 

Truman Starns made way, but with nothing to distinguish himself, or his sense of direction. Carter Jackson--who oft doubled over as the Alpha's resident pyrotechnics expert, and IED Commissar--was in charge of the operation. Following him was a rag tag gang that consisted of a security chief who was formerly a detective, and a squad of harness bulls with no self esteem--not any more. A few years of failure in the ass end of space could do that to you. Being punched; beaten down; body slammed; and atomic dropped; murdered; and exsanguinated; and lobotomized by all manner of unpleasant extraterrestrials could do that to you.

Starns didn't blame them.

He didn't know why he was there either.

Yet, he was not willing to part with his laser.

"It's just around this bend." Yankee Jackson said loudly as they ducked the overhead accordions of plastic, and intermittent coils, and couplings--a system so intricate that only the technician and the likes of Nicola Tessla could determine what was what.

"The original blueprints for the base called for everyone to walk everywhere." Jackson tried to make them feel more fortunate than they were.

"What of it, then?" Harness Bull Duncan huffed, and puffed--out of shape, and breath. He would have better luck swimming Loch Ness: at least that would support his buoyant gut.

"The war." Jackson revealed. "The DOD came to the conclusion that it was unrealistic to expect concerned parties to run a mile to their post whenever the nations went on alert."

"Ahhhh.'" Harness Bull Huang saw with clarity. The Charlie Chan imitation was not lost on Duncan who knew that his partner had no more of a clue than he did.

"After Breakaway, the Lunar Council brought them up during a special session." Jackson went on. "They discussed a plan for shutting them down in order to conserve precious power."

"Why didn't they then?" Harness Bull Popov blurted, so loudly as to embarrass Starns.

"Same reason as the DOD." Jackson iterated. "Only you can substitute the phrase 'threat of the week' for 'rivaling governments.' Here we are."

It was like walking thru a vacuum cleaner hose--almost fifty meters beneath the lunar surface. The metal box before them had huge, rubber cables sprouting from it on all sides, each one disappearing into contacts in the surrounding walls. The cover was marked DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE, but it really wasn't greek to figure out this was a skull and crossbones situation.

After pulling on his elbow length rubber gloves, Jackson produced a wrench in one hand, and his commlock in the other.

"Doctor Garforth, it's Jackson." The technician reported as he used the handle of the wrench to break open the cabinet at one corner. "We've reached the local bus...."

******************

"...Truman Starns is here...for some reason." Jackson was bleary. "And I'm getting ready to spark the solenoid."

Garforth looked over his panel at 'Ang Carter, who had insisted on reporting for work for this. Astronaut Carter was statuesque behind her, reliable for moral support.

"Good man." The assistant director told Jackson. "Let us know when the unit is moving again." It's just a 'forchrissake travel tube car he wanted to tell his boss, but after what happened in the map room, he wasn't about to question anyone's instincts.

Ang merely nodded at Garforth. It was a nod of acknowledgement, not of assent. She was against Carter Jackson leading the expedition but he volunteered.

She marveled at how much of a hard ass she had become since taking over Technical Section, more so in attitude than she ever thought possible or desirable. The basis of her objection (to be shared with no one other than Carter) was thus: Carter Jackson was too valuable of a member of Technical Section to possibly sacrifice as a red shirt on some potentially dangerous mission. Losing him would definitely take a bite out of her staff's ever dwindling expertise. She would much rather have sent out Ed Malcom if it wasn't for the fact that he was still in the psych ward in Medical Center, blank of mind (though many would say that was no different than before) and expression, sucking his thumb while simultaneously masturbating, occasionally breaking out into hysterical laughter.

"You know, no one has heard from Duke," Ang mentioned randomly, not realizing that the statement was totally relevant to the situation. "Anne Delline keeps calling us, telling us she is getting weird readings from his medical wrist monitor. We sent the case to Ouma's group since it's probably that ongoing software bug. Of course, no one in that group has addressed it yet."

Garforth grunted in agreement.

Not that anyone missed "the Duke", but upon hearing about the demise of Bathory, Hendershot temporarily acted like a decent human being and reported him MIA. Not that MIA was an unusual action for the videographer, who always preferred to sleep in a corner rather than earn his keep. Still, usually he was hanging all over Bathory and the fact that she made her last grand but gruesome entrance into Residence A laundry area was a bit unusual.

"Alrighty then," Jackson's voice boomed over the speakers. "It's moving and returning to us."

He still didn't know what was the big deal and why the Keystone cops were hanging around the area.

*****************

It was not a field, but it would have been enough to impress even Ambrose Bierce. What began as a shimmering of high velocity, interacting energy, mass, and time warped into a kinesis vortex--
clouds of barred, spiraling arms with a boiling center light; the eye of a perfect storm. Some of the stars began to move towards the phenomenon, and these were doomed. Others began to ripple like images in a many columned Roman pool. Out of the axis, there emerged a curling, infernal ball of ice, and electromagnetic rock. But mostly, the comet was sound--still connected to some umbilicus on the other side of the doorway.

**********

Thousands of nautical miles away in the distance--the barracks tops, and travel tube tunnels; the high lit launch pads, and the asterisk hub of the command tower of Moonbase Alpha fell into an eerie crimson glow before going totally into eclipse.

**********

On the MPSR level, Commander John Koenig was totally out of ideas.

Maybe they should just hang themselves.

"Victor....?" He bent his cortex, hoping he could think of something else.

Bergman was afraid to turn his back on the monitors--preferring instead to bite his own lip off. But it was better than abandoning his data. That would signal total, crushing defeat, although this
was already true in fact, if not in substance. It depressed Phil Geist; at the nearby geological console, it wasn't even his job to lose to the monster cicadas.

"COMMANDER, KOENIG!" Sandra Benes pre-empted the professor's telemetry. Her image gazing anxiously sideways at them from the monitor. "URGENT...FROM FAR AWAY...SOME SORT OF ENERGY EMISSION FROM THE RAPTURE CORRIDOR."

"The rapture corridor?" Koenig circled around to Benes' station, leaned over her shoulder to study her data. "Type of energy? Strength?" He already knew they were too far away for the long range
sensor to detect an accurate picture of the situation.

"Something is trying to exit the rapture corridor," Bergman chimed in, now next to his white board, intently scribbling equations of quantum mechanics and vector analysis. "But it's not...yet".

**********

"Doctor....?" Carolyn Kennedy looked lovely, long, brunette locks allowed to flow for once; well built with commlock smartly on one hip; and totally freaked out by the shafts of red roiling, velvet
gas that were cast thru the six vision ports that lined the east wall of Technical Section's reception room. "Doctor Carter?"

"What the bloody Hell...?" Garforth trailed because he sounded too concise for his own tastes.

"It looks like it, doesn't it," Angelina remarked, her blonde hair taking on and auburn hue. "I'm hoping its a gas cloud but somehow I don't think we're that lucky." She knew they weren't; besides, a gas cloud had not been detected since the restoration of their sensors. A surprise cloud would be suspicious as well. "Has the commander called us yet?"

"No, not yet," Carolyn didn't like the 'I don't think we're that lucky' comment but it didn't send her into a meltdown. After years in deep space, Carolyn Kennedy's skin was tough. Oh, that didn't mean she liked her situation but after years of being frightened out of her mind, she began to approach the dangerous events with an almost indignant and rebellious attitude.

"He will," Ang nodded, "I'm sure but I really want to stay here until Carter opens up that travel tube." She turned to Alan. "Why don't you go on up? I'll be up in a bit."

Carter remained long enough to listen, and give support, but ultimately it came down to a pat on 'Ang's sleeve.

"Yeah...." He agreed. "I better get to Main Mission."

The astronaut left, walking fast.

"OK," Carter Jackson called on the link almost immediately. "We're at the corridor 12 junction and the missing travel tube is here."

Ang and Pete could clearly see he was speaking to them from the commpost station. In the background, Truman Starns and his overworked and overweight harness bull positioned themselves in front of the door.

"The door isn't opening," Jackson reported, not surprised. Harness Bull Huang was readying his laser and Jackson's face fell. He hated repairing laser fried locks, but, then again, it wasn't his problem. It was someone else's, though he wasn't sure who; Ang didn't get a chance to hold a staff meeting since they left the rapture corridor.

But that was ok. Staff meetings were usually boring.

**********

The impacting impossibility of high notes first shattered the icy montanes of Reiner's Crater, disabling the mantle, the solidity, the unimpeachability of the lunar surface itself. Slowly, and vaguely, the avalanche--the stampede, as it were, from pole to pole—of swirls, and curlicues began to bedim, and disfigure the Moon itself until it was nothing more than a rock that was fading into an incomprehensible blur of tumult, and turmoil. A perfect storm of 'whoknowswhat.

**********

The lamp at Paul Morrow's station dimmed violent orange, and then browning to zilch. The stars outside the level two vision ports became impeccably more pronounced, and Captain Alan Carter nearly disappeared completely as he entered thru Koenig's office--such was the density of the complete blackout as Moonbase Alpha expelled the last of its electrical brain impulses, and died. Stunned operatives waited motionless in the dark with unhelpful clipboards as secondary power sources flickered, and failed. Yellow wall panels suddenly blossomed into emergency red.

"OUR RECEIVERS HAVE BEEN KNOCKED OUT!" Paul Morrow told Koenig who frowned in the vulnerable shadows beside him. At some point, a ruffled, surprised Bergman staggered backwards to join him in the unavail.

"THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE!" Sandra Benes decreed in the growing rumble, and tumble. "IT IS ACOUSTICAL WAVES...ENORMOUS ACCOUSTICAL WAVES."

"Frequency!?!?!? Time to impact?!?" Koenig yelled across to Ouma, whose swivel desk was not swiveling.

"They're off the scale...." Benjamin Ouma gathered. Computer was completely offline, and what he was staring intently at was not the big screen, which had been reduced to nothing, but empty plasma tubes. "And heading towards Alpha."

**********

It sounded like glass breaking--with sparks, but otherwise not dissimilar.

"Hold tight." An out of breath, rubescent Truman Starns told Huang as they each dug into the doors of the travel tube with both hands. "ALRIGHT, PULL!"

Nary would they budge.
**********

On the frontier, the screaming, whole toned winds blew down the ten foot security fence. A half shell maintenance shack, and a lunar rover that was parked on a concrete pad--both were blown apart, and away; flying up, and up, and up into the shrieking tumult.

***********

The vision ports shattered in Recreation Room 3, then televisions, an old x-box, various video game cds and several board games were sucked out onto the lunar surface. Fortunately, no one was recreating in Recreation Room 3.

The rumbling and the shaking sent Carroll Severance over the railing in the observatory, so intent was he on viewing the distant phenomena in the rapture corridor that he forgot to secure his safety harness line to the rail. Falling 25 feet resulted in an awkward position of his lower left leg but the flash of pain snap of his tibia did mitigate the pain of his ass impacting the concrete floor.

The red alert klaxon was ignored by Angelina Carter as the ever so familiar alarm of a fractured and no longer cooling coolant system for nuclear plant #4 screeched incessantly.

Melita Kelly Geist was no fool. As the shaking began, she immediately hustled her people out of hydroponics farm 4 and closed the bulkhead doors just seconds before the power gave out; as a stress crack on an external wall, due for inspection the next day, gave way causing explosive decompression in the exterior most section of the farm.

As the base lighting regained minimal footing with the blood red glow of emergency lights and all alarms ceased, in the unsettling silence, another sound began to emerge from the HVAC vents in every area of the base: the sound of insects.

Once again, her intuition spoke to her and Angelina paled. She grabbed her commlock, shouting, "TRUMAN!!! GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE!!!" before she realized her commlock had no power. She cursed the device loudly then threw it to the ground. "Goddammit, we've got to stop them....COME ON!!!" She practically hauled Peter Garforth out of his seat and dragged him out the door, a completely adrenaline powered feat as he outweighed her by at least 70 pound. Stunned, he took off with her in a run, knowing exactly where she was going.

**********

In the half sheet of shadow, Truman Starns backed away from the benches--black vinyl, but now red in the overlording doom--of the travel tube car. There was a dark, rectangular hole on the port
side, beneath the long, Plexiglas light cover that ran the length of the chassis. Exit Tara Bathory, he had no doubt. She had crawled away on her hands, and knees, presumably to look for some more hospitable place to croak.

The security chief cloistered, making room for the rest of the squad.

"I don't understand." Harness Bull Popov said momentously.

**********

In CT Connector-D, praying operatives hustled for their lives--partially decompressed, they looked like dummies, their underwear all a melvin--as if an invisible hand were not only leading them away, but with the force of an Atomic Wedgie to boot. They struggled to avoid the sequence of vision ports, and the diaphysis of lurid, crimson, inexplicably whorish light that penetrated the vycor windows from the hurricane beyond.

The last contestant in this game--this episode of "Wheel Of Death,” was technician Chynna Watts, petite--her figure was some eighty pounds; her horror weighed a billion pounds. Commlock senselessly in hand, she remained frozen with her anorexic backbone against the darkened wall panels. A few of the insects laid claim to her nose; her right cheek; and her upper lip. Before her was the bad, bad weather of deep space--eye sockets bottomless, and clouds swirling into a gaping, hysterical cacophony.

Her green flimsied, ITR report for 'Ang Carter lay on the floor, at the opposite end of the corridor, and she did not care.

"Oh 'GOOOOOOD!" Watts supplicated, at once convinced by the dizziness, the chest pains. She knew that her plumbing was about to lock up.

"WHAT ARE YOU BLADDERED?" Umberto Garzon materialized like a saint at the end of the access way. "GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE!"

He grabbed her by her pony tail, and pulled her thru like a sack of whole kernel corn, just as a thousand bugs splattered against the closing, elevator doors.

**********

Carter missed it at first, but he was by no means the last to see the pulsating, orange of his own countdown clock.

"WE HAVE BERTHOLD LEAKAGE IN 50-K REFINERY!" Paul Morrow tolled his bell with a miserable eye on Sandra Benes' ENV Tab. "BUT THE POLY SEEMS TO BE HOLDING."

They appeared to be in the eye of the tempest--either that, or everyone feeling calmer, and much better about the cocksure kismet that was about to expunge them all.

"Refresh on source location!!" Koenig called out, standing at the other side of his desk.

"FIFTY POINT ZERO, NORTH...." Operative Kate Bullen tried to triangulate it all for a stunned, uncaring, Ben Ouma. "Seventeen and two degrees...."

"HEY!" Carter almost tore his capcomm station from its moorings. "WHO'S THE IDIOTIC BASTARD WHO IS TRYING TO LAUNCH AN EAGLE INTO THIS?"

 

Chapter 12

 

Anne Delline RN had ambition to complete her MD and study and work, under the constant tutoring of Dr. Helena Russell with her practical work supervised by Dr. Bob Mathias.

 

EEG monitoring was the most boring task on Moonbase Alpha, especially since she was already quite skilled at interpreting brain wave patterns. However, it was part of the training so she continued to study the randomly selected and changing every 5 minute brain wave patterns of select inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha. Nothing unusual. Some were sleeping. Some were wake. Many were under stress (not usual). Jim Haynes, severe type A personality, was going to give himself a stroke within 3 years, she predicted.

 

She sipped her now cold coffee; then choked. "HOLD!" She yelled the command into the microphone ensuring the screen would not change. The monitor was frozen on Angelina Carter.

 

Anne was puzzled. The image was strange, double trouble, one would characterize it. A few taps of the mouse and it did not change. A few strokes of the keyboard but still, it was the same.

 

"What the hell...." Anne reached for the commlock on her waist. "Bob? Can you come here for a sec and take a look at this?"

 

**********

 

"I'm sorry, Pierre," Angelina Carter was genuinely contrite, despite the laser set to kill in her right hand aimed directly at him. She was sorry; sorry and confused. Without realizing it and unable to explain it, she was in an Eagle, leveling a laser at Pierre Danielle and it did not escape her notice that Truman Starns and a few of his harness bulls had accompanied her, lasers also pointed at Danielle.

 

'Don't fight it.' The voice inside her head repeated.

 

"Don't fight it" Truman said it aloud but it wasn't Truman Starns.

 

"We can't do this," Truman said to himself in his own agonized and conflicted voice.

 

"We can and will," Harness Bull Popov answered, sort of, for even though Harness Bull Popov was speaking, it was not him either.

 

"You should probably put this on," Angelina Carter offered the EVA helmut to Danielle.

Danielle--blocking the trapezoidal hatch, but not immovably—casually wiped the perfunctory dust from his helmut's visor. He was standing half inside the command module--which meant that he was also half occupying the aft equipment bay. Only two feet away, there was the hatchet--placed there by WSC policy makers, and survivalists who thought they needed an axe for who knows what? Starns, and his team of noble harness bulls were so busy trying to figure out how to work the neck dam of their suits, he would have ample time to bash Angelina Carter with his SCA bread box. Then, he could take the hatchet, and commence to hacking, and mutilating these traitors.

Problem is, he didn't have the stomach for it. Now was not the time to be a fumifugist, and Carter would never forgive him for leaving lumps on the wife's head, even if they were richly deserved.

"O'kay...." He sneered. And she didn't like his sneer. He could tell. So, he sneered again. "You need someone to pilot the ship for you." There was absolutely no way they could clear the tower on their own, which made him a valuable asset. He kind of liked that. It made them vulnerable...at his egotistical mercy. Harness Bull Popov would pay the highest price because Danielle never did like him. Kind of looked at you sideways when you were talking--like he was askance, and doubtful of your adequacy in the human race. At the earliest possible opportunity, he would fuck with the cabin pressure; maybe roll hard over--give them a waffle job, watch them head butt one another. "Mind if I ask where we're going?"

Danielle unbuttoned the checklist that was velcro'ed to the sleeve of his betacloth suit. The voice thing was weird enough. Then, something else caught his attention.

 

Their eyes.

Starns nodded to her and leveled his own laser at the Assistant Chief of Reconnaissance, giving Ang the opportunity to don her EVA suit.

 

"Who are you?" Danielle ventured into strange territory. It seemed like a reasonable question.

"It's not far from here," she did not answer the second question because she couldn't answer, "of course you know that from the coordinates, fifty point zero north, seventeen and two degrees west, 300 nautical miles."

The communications console was lighting up like a Christmas tree. It was Main Mission, no doubt. She settled back in the co-pilot's couch. She was tempted to ignore it since nothing would stop them, but then again, Koenig deserved an explanation. She'd learned enough about him to at least attempt to explain. She hit the white console and Paul Morrow's enraged rictus immediately appeared on the monitor.

"MAIN MISSION TO EAGLE SIX." To anyone viewing the monitor at an angle, the controller looked scrunched, and warped. Like a hysterical moment in a Roger Corman horror movie, he looked enraged by this circumventing of his professional power, and ballooned from the flood of piss-off, and barely contained tantrum. Too bad the red flash was negated by the black and white pixels of the video screen. All things considered, it would have been a sight to see. "YOU ARE
NOT CLEARED FOR LIFT OFF. I ORDER YOU TO ABORT YOUR LAUNCH SEQUENCE,
AND TAKE THE BOARDING TUBE!." His eyebrows were strict, and conveyed inevitable, terrible consequence.

 

"They have some of those just like we did," Truman Starns motioned to Morrow in the black and white monitor.

 

"Maybe we have more in common with them than we thought....unfortunately," Angelina agreed.

 

"Unfortunately," Truman consented.

Then, she dismissed the controller. "Are you finished? Put Koenig on. I don't want to talk to you."

(...of all the lame-brained--have YOU GONE FREAKING BATS?)

Carter.

(...Alan, be still....)

Bergman.

Some things didn't have to be seen.

 

Then, something was seen. Carter no longer needed Bergman's steadying hand to hold him back. Instead, his jaw dropped. He was fixated on the image of his wife on the big screen. Something was definitely not right.

 

"Her eyes..." Kate Bullen whispered mysteriously.

"'Ang, those undulations are off the scale--if you lift off in this storm everyone aboard that ship will be killed." Koenig was willing to talk, and he spared no amount of doom, and despair. "I don't know what you're trying to accomplish, but the smart move would be to forget it, and return to base." He completely ignored Kate, though he saw it too.

 

***********************************

 

Bob Mathias leaned over Anne Delline's shoulder at the monitor, now displaying the same sets of dysfunctional EEGs for not only Angelina Carter but Truman Starns as well as three of his security squad.

 

He removed his glasses, wiped them and replaced them. His forehead wrinkled curiously, definitely broadcasting his years with increased lines due to living in deep space.

 

"What the fuck is going on?" he mumbled, pointlessly attempting to adjust the monitor settings.

**************************************

"We have to go directly to the source, John Koenig, and it has to be done now." Angelina responded firmly but it was not clearly the voice of Angelina Carter. "We must complete what was not completed before." She nodded then broke the communication link. The big screen went abruptly blank.

In Main Mission, Alan Carter was tracking the blip of Eagle 6. Suddenly, it was no longer there.

Carter shoved his clipboard across the desk so violently, he jarred his gooseneck lamp.

"Alan?" Koenig was empathic, but firm.

"THEY'RE OFF THE SCOPE." The astronaut explained, burning. The futura chair threatened to swallow his angry, exhausted, worried weight.

"They can't possibly be out of range." Morrow argued.

"G'day." Carter stood, and suddenly became fisted, and aggressive. "WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE A LOOK AT THE BOARD, YOU TWIT? 'CAUSE FROM WHERE I'M SITTING-"

"Now, that's not helping at all." Bergman interrupted both of them, prompt, and emphatic.

***************************

Complete and total blackness surrounded them as Eagle 6 disintegrated and then faded out. The onslaught of insects enveloped them in a massive cloud. The swarm went through their EVA suits, seemingly crawling over their bare skin, in an unending nightmare of continuous stinging. However, despite the horror, they were not being devoured.

A loud bellowing emitted from somewhere and they became aware of all the insects suddenly taking flight, away from them. Left ill and with extreme heebie jeebies, they lifted themselves up on shaky elbows feeling the familiar floor of the Eagle, only to look up at the form which had taken shape.

"That..." Angelina pointed, croaked to Starns and Danielle, who appeared out of nowhere into the room, an explosion of memory now adding a headache to her miseries, "that was the thing which killed the others on the alien ship."

 

"I know," Angelina answered herself.

"I...." Harness Bull Popov elucidated. "Do not understand."

"I think I do." Truman Starns dreamed. He really didn't, but somehow that too made sense. "It's all about surfaces....things in the window that really don't represent what's actually behind the door." He doubted that Victor Bergman would concur with this metaphysical analysis, but in a universe would you could be marooned on the Moon, it all came together.

 

"That would be a simple but somewhat exact explanation," Truman Starns spoke to himself.

"The time has come" Angelina, now upright, stood facing the gargantuan creature of pestilence. It's vacant eye sockets seemed to stare, mocking her. The others, except for Danielle, who was overcome by the stench, joined her.

 

An ear piercing scream emanated from the creature and Angelina thought her head had exploded. Blinded and in agony, she wished for her eardrums to burst and get it over. She was acutely aware that the others were suffering to the extreme as Truman Starns nearly fell on top of her, tripping over her ankles. The screeching, the wild fluctuations in temperature, the unrelenting gale force winds provided the background to no man's land. If she could see, if she could find a laser, she would have ended her own miserable existence.

 

The whining, cacophony of insects whirling and spiraling, coalescing into a tubelike cloud winding through the corridors of Alpha caused everyone to cover their ears with little relief. Finding dead ends and losing hundreds of their numbers in splatting bodies, the column of insects redoubled and retraced their paths, finding their final destination into the unoccupied launch pad 3.

"Open the hanger doors," Bergman gripped Koenig's sleeve, but the Commander already had the same thought, conveying his glance to Morrow. The controller, now back in seeming control, typed a series of commands and once he received feedback, hit the red switch to open the hanger doors. The column of insects advanced out into space but the implosion of their bodies upon reaching no atmosphere and zero pressure created a mushroom cloud of debris, raining down inside the hanger and all over the launch pad.

 

Ringing ears, gradually returning sight and the disbelief that they were actually still alive coincided with the blip of Eagle 6 on the scope of the capcom station. Carter saw it but his distress was not abated as he read the navigation feedback from the ship.

 

Angelina Carter became aware of the fact that they were not level as Truman Starns,still on all fours, attempted to stand. He was not successful. Ang stumble to Danielle.

 

"PIERRE!!! GET UP!!" She shook him violently for 3 second but he was out cold. Moving unsteadily toward the Command Module, the instrumentation was greek to her under normal circumstances. Add a migraine and the almost irrepressible urge to dry heave and she was completely lost.

 

"ALAN!" She hit the audio communication switch and her voice, HER voice, echoed through Main Mission. At the same time, she spied the "REMOTE" toggle. It couldn't be as simple as that; she switched it into the "up" position anyway then lost consciousness.

 

EPILOGUE

Gorski bagatelle lined the shelves, haphazardly in some cases and neatly organized in others. Despite the remodel, Commander Koenig's office still retained the shelf housing the knickknacks left by former Commander Anton Gorski, years ago.

"I have always been curious, Commander," Angelina Carter returned a bright red kaleidoscope to its upright position on the shelf, as Koenig entered the office. "Why have you kept this…stuff…after all of these years?"

John Koenig paused, leaning against his desk. He didn't feel like sitting. He had been sitting all day, reviewing, evaluating and listening.

"Perhaps it is for the same reason that Mr. Caesar here," Professor Bergman spoke as he entered the room, with Caesar the cat trotting regally in front of him, "gets the run of the base."

Caesar jumped on Koenig's desk and proceeded to head butt the Commander in the hip. Koenig abided the feline's demand for attention with gentle strokes from neck to tail tip.

Angelina gave Bergman a quizzical look.

"They are something that reminds us of that which is no longer a part of our lives," Bergman continued, comfortably seating himself on the white couch. "Earth."

As if on cue, Caesar bounded toward Bergman and planted his (some would say overweight) body on his lap. "Caesar, my friend," Bergman continued as he pet the animal, "I believe you are quite well fed."

Caesar closed his eyes, purring contently.

"With all due respect," Angelina continued, "I'm not here to talk about Caesar's diet or lack thereof."

Koenig crossed his arms over his chest. "I have no intention of asking you to resign, Ang. Mathias confirmed it with the double EEGs." The Commander rubbed his irritated eyes. After all these years, he was still allergic to cats.

 

"Do you remember anything? Who they were?" Koenig asked.

 

"If you mean a name? No," She shook her head sadly. Her left arm was in a cast and sling. Somehow, she had broken it. Truman Starns was on crutches, having suffered nasty fractures of ankle bones which provided Jerry Parker with an opportunity to practice orthopedic surgery under the watchful eye of Helena Russell. Harness Bull Popov had a 4" long gash on the back of his head requiring stitches and shaved head. "But, they definitely knew that insect alien thing." She paused. "They were determined to destroy it. I suppose they did..." She trailed off, thoughtfully.

"John," Bergman changed the course of the conversation, "I just met with Jim Haines and we discussed the data regarding the interspatial anomaly they encountered, resulting in the destruction of the alien. The area is under constant surveillance but that window has apparently closed."

"Was the alien from interspace or was it from our physical plane with the ability to travel back and forth?" Koenig asked, now walking toward a viewport. Blackness, blackness and more blackness with a canopy of pin point stars.

"We don't know, John," Bergman answered pensively. "We just know that obviously, in interspace, the alien was vulnerable and able to be destroyed."

The professor went on, now somber. "However, unfortunately, we have to conclude that rapture corridors don't just connect from one physical place to another but possibly, one plane to another."

Angelina paled. "Oh my God." She swallowed. She felt physically ill. "You know what this means?"

The horror had not been lost on Commander Koenig. "Yes. We've just proven a theory as reality."

"A nightmare we hope to never experience," Bergman added softly but unwavering.

John Koenig returned his gaze out the viewport, trying to decipher the ever engulfing darkness.

THE END…

BASED ON THE SERIES CREATED BY GERRY AND SYLVIA ANDERSON