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

say a word—any goddamned thing.’
    ‘This could be a sort of cortex, a sort of brain.’
    ‘Why did they bring us here?’
    ‘Maybe they just wanted to take a closer look at us.’
    ‘That feeling’s mutual.’
    He moved away to a major column and had both palms flat on its surface when it suddenly flushed brilliantly from base to tip and an electronic chatter filled the room. He recoiled and Helena was beside him holding his arm, suddenly afraid. There was action inside the pillar. Mist swirled, cleared, revealed the dark silhouette of a seated figure.
    Helena, voice in a whisper, asked ‘Human?’
    As if on cue, light strengthened inside the column and they had it clear. It was no bonus. The face was humanoid, but still as a death mask, pallid, with closed eyes and tightly pursed lips. It could have been smoothly chiselled out of an alabaster block.
    Koenig said, ‘Human? Or some sort of trick manifestation. An elaborate mask?’ He went close again, ‘Can you speak to us?’
    Helena said nervously, ‘The lights and colours. They could be a language we don’t understand.’
    The eyes in the mask flicked open, fixing them with a stony stare. The lips writhed in an enigmatic smile, as though the owner relished the disadvantage they were in. A thin, cold voice seemed to speak into the inside of their heads. ‘Speak, Earthman. What is your case?’
    For a brief count, Koenig was speechless with the calm insolence of it. Unprovoked aggression had killed his people and brought their hard-pressed base to a desolated ruin. If there was any case to answer it was for the column squatter.
    ‘Speak.’
    Koenig clamped down on a rising tide of anger. He tried to keep his voice steady and factual. ‘You know we came from Earth planet?’
    There was no reply. The face remained cold as a graven image. Indignation took over. Koenig went closer, ‘Why? Why did you attack us? Why?’
    The figure was unmoved.
    ‘We’ve been transmitting messages for weeks. We wanted permission to make a landfall on your planet. You understand us. You speak our language. Why did you reply with war machines?’
    Koenig spread his hands and turned to Helena. Her clear, gentle voice filled the silence.
    ‘If there’s some reason why you don’t want us here, we would understand. Some basic incompatibility, maybe? We’re peace-loving people and we’re not here by choice. We cannot control the course of our Moon platform. We have to find a place to live. But we don’t use force. All we want is peace.’
    Having Helena ignored was too much. Koenig’s anger flared out, ‘Answer, damn you! You want my case. It’s this. We came in peace. You waited without word and launched a surprise attack. Half our people are dead. Alpha is destroyed. You leave us without the means to live. Let us bring the survivors down here and see if we can get a better understanding between us.’
    ‘You cannot stay.’
    Koenig was shouting, ‘Nor can we stay on Alpha.’
    ‘You have no place in space at all.’
    ‘Just like that! You deny us our future?’
    ‘You have no future. You carry within you the seeds of your own destruction. You are a contaminating organism, a fatal virus, a plague of fear.’
    A burst of electronic gobbledegook sidetracked the listeners. A second column had come to life. The face in it was again inhuman and mask like, but recognisably female and the voice confirmed it. ‘Your presence on this planet would destroy a civilisation that has survived for billions of years.’
    Helena said, ‘Is that your opinion of mankind? Are we no more to you than a virus?’
    It was more than Koenig would take. Hand on the butt of his laser, he faced both masks and his voice was hard edged with challenge, ‘From the time we were blasted from Earth’s orbit, we have fought for survival. We have survived. How I don’t know. There’s no rational explanation. This I say, I have faith in the strength of the human spirit and a conviction of our destiny.