Space 1999 #5 - Lunar Attack Read Online Free Page A

Commander. Maybe we have a race of deaf mutes.’
    ‘With their technology, they’d work out some way to communicate.’
    Watching the surface from a direct vision port, Helena Russell said slowly, ‘I have the feeling they’re just playing us along, John.’
    A green telltale flashed on the console and Koenig reported it for the record, ‘Compensators at six-sixths. We have Earth gravity.’
    ‘That levels with Computer prediction. And still no sign of enemy ships.’
    Now they were getting surface detail. There was a bland air of mystery. They were flying into a gently undulating landscape clothed with a soft and succulent reddish foliage on a carpet of autumn green. At intervals there were towering structures that looked like futuristic extravaganzas. Helena was impressed. She said, ‘John, it’s beautiful.’
    Koenig was staring in simple disbelief at his console. ‘Course correction five degrees green. We’re veering off.’
    Helena came back to co-pilot duties, ‘No computer malfunction.’
    ‘Correction makes no effect.’
    He ran a standard check and a row of green lights dotted the spread. ‘All systems check out.’ He called Alpha, ‘Alpha, do you copy? Come in, Alpha . . . Alpha, do you copy? Come in, Alpha.’
    There was no reply. He looked at Helena, ‘No contact. I’ll take it on manual.’
    Five seconds of concentrated effort, pulling out every trick in the book and he had to concede, ‘We’re still going off course . . . I can’t correct it.’
    But the Eagle was levelling off for a planetfall and a third force joined them in the command cabin. A precise female voice spoke from the console, ‘Alphans, you are under ground control.’
    It was the first crack in the blank, hostile front the red planet had presented; something to adjust to on familiar ground. Helena Russell said, ‘A human voice.’
    It spoke again, ‘Relax. Stand by for touch down.’
    Koenig said incredulously, ‘Earthmen must have been here before.’
    Judged to a centimetre, the Eagle came down feather light on a circular landing disk above a complex which had all the ear marks of a control centre. Koenig thumped his release stud and shrugged out of his straps. ‘This is it. We’ve arrived.’
    ‘I only hope we’re here to stay.’
    He could have said that wherever she was, was a good place to be; but the host organisation was wasting no time. An elevator tube was rising to meet the hatch of the passenger module and Koenig pressed the opening button. As the hatch sliced away, there was a flood of brilliant light. Helena joined him on the sill. It was a moment of truth. His hand dropped to the butt of the laser on his belt. Together they stepped from the known world of the Eagle to the waiting cage.
    The cage fell away, slowed to a halt, dissolved from around them, so that they appeared to walk out from a glowing area in the notional wall of a vaguely defined, circular chamber, full of shifting colour and moving light. Making an inner circle, six translucent columns slowly pulsed with brightening and dimming light sources. Crowded between them, were other columns, smaller and less intense and a host of dim shapes in constant movement. The whole chamber was in a flux of light and colour and change which seemed to simulate a kind of organic life, though to Helena Russell’s sensitive intuition it seemed also to be mechanical and in some strange way biologically dead.
    Like any living organism, they tried to explore the environment and make sense of it. But when they met up at the centre, they were no nearer. It defied the data in their Earth based minds.
    Helena said, ‘What do you make of it?’
    ‘Not much. Highly developed technology. It seems to have nothing in common with Earth type Hawks.’
    It was still bugging him. They went together to a small column, seeing their own faces reflected back and flooded by the pulsing lights.
    Koenig went on, ‘And still no communication. I wish someone would show a face,