Killer Planet

Chapter Seven

The decision to abandon the mission having been made, they scanned the surrounding plain, taking advantage of the slight elevation they had attained, checking for any sign of movement in the scattered military equipment. All was quiet for the moment, as though the mysterious force which could propel tanks without help from their engines, had expended its fury for the time being. The only semblance of life came from the lightning which stalked the horizons, growling in the insubstantial throat of the atmosphere.

They knew they should get back to the rocket ship without delay and leave Verdia behind as quickly as possible, but they were now desperately tired and in need of an interlude in which to regain their strength.

“How do you feel about resting for a few minutes before we set out?” Petra said. “I never thought I would say this, but I’m so hungry I’m even looking forward to eating some more of that awful tennis-shoe toffee.”

“It would be a good idea to have a break.” Jan glanced around. “But I’d feel safer if we were under cover.”

Petra looked up the slope and saw a break in the wall of the circular ruin which crowned the knoll. “Let’s try up there—we might be able to get into the old building.”

They stood up and climbed slowly to the gap in the wall. The space beyond was largely taken up by collapsed walls and roof beams, but they could see an opening to a small chamber which had remained more-or-less intact. They unslung their bows, squeezed their way into the chamber and flopped down in the near-darkness with sighs of relief. The watery grey radiance which managed to penetrate down through the clouds was too weak to illuminate the interior of the chamber to any great extent, but they did not mind. It was purely psychological, they knew, but they felt more secure in the near-darkness, as might hunted animals sheltering in a burrow.

They had come a long way since they had brashly undertaken to conquer the Killer Planet.

“I think we’ll be all right here for a while,” Jan said. “You know, it seems ages since we had that drop of champagne in the office—but it was only this morning. So much has happened.”

“Too much, if you ask me.”

“Yes, but at least we’re going back now. Just think! If we make good progress back to the Seeker—and get picked up quickly when we get into orbit—we might even be back in Jacksonville by nightfall on the same day. That’s if the quarantine police don’t lock us up for too long.”

“They’d better not try it,” Petra said. “I’ve got things to do at home.”

“Yeah, and I need to tell Dad about Bari as soon as possible. He’s entitled to know, to have his mind put at rest. Once that’s been done I might feel as though I had achieved something—little though it is.”

“You have achieved a lot, Jan.” Petra was silent for a moment. “I’m only sorry you had to find out at last that your brother is…”

“Dead,” he supplied for her. “You don’t need to avoid the word—I’m getting over the first shock of it now and I’m starting to get reconciled to the idea. In an odd way, I think I have always known the truth—somewhere deep down inside me—but I couldn’t admit it to myself. Perhaps Dad was the same. Your mind can behave strangely. This way, knowing that Bari is at peace, we can all be at peace…eventually…”

Jan’s voice broke with emotion and suddenly, there in the darkness of the ruined alien temple, the tears he had held back earlier were coursing down his cheeks. He felt Petra’s arm steal around him and he buried his face in her shoulder as bitter sobs racked his body. After a while the act of expressing grief, and the simple comfort of human contact, did their healing work and he sat up feeling emotionally wrung-out but strangely relieved. The inner warfare between his subconscious and conscious mind had ceased, and there was a blessed quietude at the core of his being.

“I’m all right now,” he said. “And once we’ve got some nourishment inside us I’ll race you back to the Seeker. Okay?”

“You’ve got yourself a deal,” Petra said as she opened the supplies pouch attached to her belt. Making herself as comfortable as she could, she brought out a bar of the food concentrate and began to chew it.

“This stuff isn’t all that bad, you know.” Jan made some appreciative noises. “The taste isn’t too exciting, I admit, but what we have here is a scientifically proportioned blend of essential ingredients—just what we need to keep us going.”

“Yes, but it shouldn’t be beyond the powers of 22nd Century science to make it taste half-way edible,” Petra replied. Her eyes were adapting themselves to the dimness, picking out more and more detail in the surroundings, and it was when starting on the second bite of her food bar that she turned her head to the right and made an unnerving discovery.

They were sharing the tiny chamber with a human skeleton.

Petra stopped chewing, instinctively flinching away from the grisly object which was slumped against the wall not far from her, on the side farthest from Jan.

“What’s wrong?” Jan whispered, aware of her reaction.

She made her voice calm. “There’s nothing to worry about—we’re in no danger—but there’s a skeleton of a man over to my right.”

“Christ!” Jan began to scramble away towards the entrance of the chamber, but Petra gripped his arm and held it until he relaxed again.

“Take it easy,” she said. “Skeletons are the least of our worries.”

“Sorry—my nerves are still on edge.” Jan settled down again, unable to move his gaze away from the barely-seen figure, and in an effort to compensate for his jumpiness fixed his eyes on a glint of metal near the skeleton’s neck. “I can see his identification tag—perhaps we should bring it back with us.”

“Suit yourself.”

“I’ll do it.” In spite of all the carnage and destruction he had witnessed during the course of the day, Jan was far from inured to death, and he had difficulty in overcoming his natural revulsion as he moved closer to the skeleton. He studied the crumpled form and made out the tattered remains of an SEF officer’s uniform. It appeared that the man had taken refuge in the ruin when the machines went on their deadly rampage, and perhaps had died of starvation.

Verdia’s teeming insect life would have done the rest. Feeling like an intruder in a tomb, Jan abandoned the idea of collecting identification. He turned to crawl away, and as he did so the tip of his sword brushed against the bony remains.

“My name is Major Dorey Haines,” the skeleton said, “and I am a senior science officer with the…”

The rest of the sentence was lost to Jan as he began a feverish scramble towards the entrance of the chamber, to get away from the terrifying apparition. Then his common-sense reasserted itself. There had been a hissing sharpness to the voice which indicated that it was coming from a microrecorder. Shamefaced, he turned back to the skeleton, and this time he noticed the microrecorder bracelet on one of the fleshless wrists. The dead officer must have made a recording for the benefit of posterity and set the machine to play automatically at the slightest touch.

“That scared the hell out of me,” Jan confessed to Petra, who had not moved. “I didn’t expect a voice to come out of a…”

“Listen to what it’s saying,” Petra cut in. “It might be important.”

“…have been here at this landing site for only two hours,” the recorded voice went on, an echo from two years in the past, “but already there are signs that something very strange is taking place. There is a huge build-up of electrical potential in the area. One can see the Saint Elmo’s fire shining around the tips of antennae and masts, and I have noticed glowing fingers of it reaching down from the clouds in many places. The signs are that we are going to have a very severe electrical storm.

“My instruments show that there is a powerful flow of electromagnetic force streaming into the camp. It seems to originate at the planet’s north pole, which is only about two kilometres from here. Visibility is poor, but the radarscope shows that there is a peculiarly shaped tower at the precise position of the pole and it appears to have, somehow, escaped the destruction which laid low the city which once occupied the rest of this area.

“That is something I plan to investigate at the earliest possible moment, but my main priority at present is to contact Colonel Tout and persuade him that we should disperse our people and equipment as quickly as…”

At that point the recorded voice was lost in a fierce crackling sound which was followed by a period of silence.

“That was probably the beginning of the attack,” Jan said, stirring out of his chilled fascination.

“It sounded that way.” Petra felt a pang of sadness. “I wonder if…” She stopped speaking as another burst of crackling came from the recorder and the voice from the past was heard again. This time it was weak and barely recognisable, the well-constructed sentences having given way to disjointed phrases.

“…terrible…;terrible…never seen anything like it…machines have a life of their own…missiles firing by themselves…everybody dead…bodies crushed…”

There was another silence, and when the voice resumed it was calmer than before but very faint, as if the speaker was being overcome by a deadly weariness.

“I hoped I would have been safe once I had crossed the bridge to this old temple, but I took a bullet or a piece of shrapnel in the back. It’s all quiet out there now. Oddly enough, I can’t feel any pain. I don’t know if that’s a good sign or a bad one.

“I don’t know how much time I have left…and I don’t even know if this recording will ever be heard by another human being…but in the hours I have been lying here I have reached some conclusions about what happened out there…

“It may sound as though I’m delirious, but I believe there is a malign intelligence at work on this planet, one which orchestrated the destruction of our expeditions.

“I also believe it is an alien intelligence. Alien to this world, that is. The ancient Verdians had a flourishing civilisation here, and it didn’t simply crumble away. It was destroyed suddenly…in the same way that we were destroyed…

“I believe that an alien creature arrived here from space many hundreds of years ago. It has a blind hatred for all other forms of intelligent life. It also has the power to control and direct electromagnetic forces…a power which enables it to take control of any metallic machine and turn it against its operators…

“I believe that the alien being is still alive…in the tower which marks Verdia’s north pole…and it is feeding on…feeding on…

“It’s getting very dark in here. Why is it getting so…?”

Jan and Petra bowed their heads as silence descended on the chamber. There had been a finality about the last whispered words which told them the recording had ended—for ever.

At length Petra said, “Another five minutes or so, Jan—then we should get out of here.”

Jan raised his head and scowled into the darkness, forgetting about his need to eat. “You know, what we just heard sounded crazy. I doubt if anybody back home would ever credit it, but we know that everything Major Haines said was right. The machines don’t simply go wild—they act as though they’re being guided by…how would you put it? Some kind of evil intelligence.”

“That’s right,” Petra agreed. “They were definitely bunting us—that’s why we want to get away from this damned mudball of a world as soon as possible.”

“Yes, but what’s sticking in my gullet is the major’s explanation, this idea about an alien coming down out of space a long time ago. Who’s to say it isn’t true? We’ve only explored a small fraction of the galaxy, and it’s quite possible that out there somewhere are creatures who can control some natural forces and use them to kill anybody they see as an enemy.”

“And you think there’s one of them right here on Verdia,” Petra said. “In that tower at the north pole?”

“The more I think about it the more certain I am.” Jan clenched his fists as fury boiled through his mind, driving out his former fatalistic acceptance of his brother’s death. “Bari and all the others were murdered by some kind of thing. It’s only a couple of kilometres away—skulking in that tower—and there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s too powerful. It can turn back an army attack. In fact, the better equipped any force which went against it, the more certain it would be of winning—because there would be more weapons to turn against the attackers.”

Listening to Jan’s words, Petra felt a cool tingling along her spine as a strange idea took shape in her mind. Could the alien’s strength also be its weakness? Could those very attributes which made it so all-powerful also contain the seeds of its defeat?

“What if somebody attacked the monster without any weapons?” she said thoughtfully, almost as if musing aloud.

Jan snorted. “I can think of much better ways to commit suicide.”

“I don’t mean with no weapons at all. I mean with weapons that the monster wouldn’t be aware of…wouldn’t be able to control…like our swords and bows. That’s why they were made of plastic in the first place, isn’t it?”

“My God!” Jan went rigid with excitement. “You’re absolutely right! Just think—if we could approach the tower undetected, and get inside it with our swords, we’d be a bigger threat to the monster than an entire army equipped with modern weapons!”

Jan fell silent for a moment as he explored the new idea and its implications. It was ironic to think of man’s simplest and most basic weapon, hardly changed since the days of the Roman empire, being more effective than a full squadron of battle tanks or warplanes. His heart began a steady and powerful pounding as he considered putting the plan into action. Everything seemed quiet on the plain surrounding their refuge on the rocky knoll. If the alien was making the mistake of presuming them dead, all they had to do was slip quietly away into the jungle and make their way to the tower.

“This changes everything, doesn’t it, Jan?” Petra’s voice was quiet but intense. “You know where your enemy is now—and you want to go after it.”

“Yes, but…”Jan hesitated.

“But what?”

“It’s going to be bloody dangerous going into that tower…there’s a very good chance of not coming out again…and it was my brother who was killed.”

Petra gave an impatient sigh. “Jan, are you trying to say that this is a personal thing? That I’m not really involved?”

“I…I suppose that’s about it.”

“Well, think again,” Petra said firmly. “How many innocent people has that beast killed? Hundreds of humans; perhaps millions of Verdians. No, Jan, this isn’t a personal matter—it’s an all-out war between that monster and the entire human race. Both of us happen to be in the front line, and both of us are taking the enemy on.”

Jan nodded gratefully. “Thanks, Petra. I guess I…” He broke off as—abruptly—the stillness outside the ruin was shattered by the clanking of armour and machinery.

The two friends crawled rapidly out of the makeshift hideout, half-rose to their feet and peered over the ruin’s perimeter wall. The scene which met their eyes caused them to step back from the wall, dry-mouthed with dread.

A military bridge-laying machine was in the process of spanning the moat with massive steel girders, and beyond it several tanks were already rolling forward, ready to surge on to the knoll as soon as the way had been prepared. The death hunt was on again!