Space 1999 #3 - The Space Guardians Read Free Page B

lover?’
    Koenig smiled. ‘Read my mind.’
    Raan looked curiously at Vana. Koenig caught the small frown of puzzlement. It cleared.
    ‘Well, Commander John Koenig? Are you ready to tell us that you believe we exist?’
    Koenig knew with an overwhelming certainty that he had been transported on to a far and utterly sophisticated planet.
    ‘It makes no sense at all if you were my own fantasy. Zenno exists,’ he said. ‘But why should you interest yourself in me?’
    ‘Vana should have explained,’ said Raan.
    ‘My father is Zenno’s leading anthropologist—’ she began, conscious of her lapse.
    Raan held up his hand.
    ‘No, my dear. I think the Commander would like to hear it from me.’ Koenig saw the man’s subdued excitement. ‘On Earth, you study the last of your savages, Commander. I know from you that there are still remote communities which you protect from the effects of your civilization. You protect them, because they remind you of your primitive past. They are your link with your origins.’ Raan laughed. ‘And even they get some satisfaction from observing the behaviour of still more primitive forms of life.’
    Koenig had a sudden memory of a film he had seen: a pygmy watching a baboon in a rain-forest glade.
    ‘Yes, Commander! Exactly. Their link with the primeval past!’
    The laughter was sustained and harsh. Koenig, listening, suddenly knew his role. Vana was staring at him, her yellow-gold eyes glistening.
    ‘Raan—’ she said in alarm.
    ‘No! John Koenig must be told! Commander, do you know what you are? I see you do! Why have we brought you here? You know! You see now that you are our missing link!’

CHAPTER FOUR
    ‘You’ve been unconscious for two days, John,’ said Victor Bergman.
    Koenig opened his eyes fully and recognized the bleak walls and the diffused lighting. He had been too many times in the Diagnostic Unit at Medical Centre to mistake it. Too many lives had slipped away; too many good men and women lost in the unending struggle for survival on the harsh rock.
    ‘Victor!’ Koenig remembered. ‘I was hallucinating—but, good God, it was so, so intense!’ He looked around and caught the movement of an orderly, a woman dressed in the white of the Medical teams, slim and sweet-looking, but not a Vana, all honey-bronze under the shimmering gown. Bergman said:
    ‘We’ve been worried about you, John. How’s the head?’
    Koenig pushed aside the memories.
    ‘The others—and yourself, Victor?’
    Bergman shrugged. ‘A couple of ribs cracked. They’ll mend. But Sandra Benes is dead, John.’
    ‘Dead!’
    ‘Helena tried. But Sandra seemed to give up.’
    ‘But she wasn’t badly hurt!’
    ‘She saw her death and accepted it.’
    Koenig pushed down the all-too-familiar angry grief. Bergman must be suffering from the shock of the technician’s death. ‘We have to take casualties, Victor.’
    ‘Yes!’ There was an odd certainty in Bergman’s tone of voice and a strange glitter in his eyes. ‘More and more casualties, John—don’t you see, we’ve no way of avoiding becoming casualties ourselves! The personnel of Moonbase Alpha isn’t limitless. The more that die, the more strain and responsibility it throws on the rest of us. The work doesn’t lessen though we do! Eventually, there won’t be enough of us to operate Alpha.’ He was breathing fast now. ‘John, would you like to be the last man alive on this useless chunk of rock? I wouldn’t! I’d like to be free of it! John, you and I can’t sacrifice ourselves to the rest!’
    Koenig was aware of a tenseness in himself now. Bergman was unnaturally excited. The ascetic features were flushed, the aquiline nose seemed hooked and predatory.
    ‘Victor, you sure you’ve got over the crash?’ he said carefully. ‘Did Helena give you a final check?’
    ‘Why play big man now!’ snarled Bergman. ‘We could be live cowards if we took the only correct choice! There’s the possibility of escape for a few of