Valley of Terror

by Russell Rey, Denis Hughes

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Alien Contact; Space Opera

Synopsis

Spatial Body 232: Zone K, because of its valuable strategic position as a satellite of Zennor, was the goal set by the exploratory expeditions from the Earth controlled ports of Zennor itself. A base on 232 offered many advantages for defence of the spaceways, and establishing a settlement there was a must lest rival races in the Galaxy gain a foothold on it first. But though successive ships blasted off with the avowed intent of claiming the cheerless grey satellite none had ever been heard of again, save one whose crew had returned to report fantastic storms of unknown origin. It was not until Tony Wayne and John Reece crash-landed their ship on 232 that they learnt its incredible secrets - and found there a fellow whose story was akin to a nightmare . . .

Release date: May 31, 2018

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 142

Sample

It didn’t seem possible, thought Wayne, that in Man’s present state of advancement the conquest of Zennor’s satellite should prove so difficult. It was downright absurd that a barren chunk like that could defy exploration and establishment as a base. The more he thought about it the more ridiculous—and maddening—it seemed. But the fact remained that no one had so far come back from a journey there. It was known that landings had been made; it was equally certain that if any of the crews had survived they were not in a position to return to Zennor. But there were stories, oddly disturbing in their vagueness and lack of detail. He thought about them and thought about the morrow. He and Reece might be sticking their necks out, but they’d volunteered and it was their affair.

And yet now that he looked once again on the great grey satellite up there in the sky he began to wonder if it was entirely the affair of two men. Surely this was something that had a bearing on the whole of progress? If failure to establish a base on the satellite continued and persisted with the loss of more and more ships and men then morale would suffer. Somewhere up there in the sky was a mystery, a threat to mankind, a gigantic question mark that sprang from the grey globe that constantly circled Zennor with the tirelessness of all eternity, the unchanging rhythm of Time itself.

Reece, standing in the chalet doorway behind him, drew a long breath. Like Wayne, he had been staring up at the satellite body for several minutes. But unlike his companion—a volunteer like himself—he looked on the coming venture not so much from a spatial point of view as with the eyes of a man born to run risks and revel in the various experiences his service with the Space Exploratory Branch provided for what was to him his own personal amusement. And yet he was no rash fool, this man Reece. Wayne had worked with him on many occasions in the past; they knew each other well; they knew to just what extent they could rely on each other; they knew the risks they would be running on the morrow, but they did not know what form those risks would take. No man knew that, though several had tried to find out. If they had probed the mystery of the satellite they had never returned to tell the tale. Only two men had ever come back from the trip. But they had never actually landed on the satellite, and did, in fact, bring back no information worth having, nor any clue at all as to what had happened to other ships or their vanished crews.

Wayne turned his head at a slight sound made by Reece. The night was dark—as all Zennor’s nights were dark. But the satellite was bright enough, and near enough, and clear enough in all conscience. Wayne felt as if he had but to stand on tip-toe and reach up an arm to touch the barren greyness of its surface, to finger the needle points of the mountains that speared from most of it.

“We know everything about it,” he said quietly. “And yet we don’t know a thing when it comes down to hard fact.”

“Curious, I agree.” Reece lit a cigarette, the sudden flare of the match illuminating his chiselled features. “We don’t know a thing—apart from the undeniable things such as distance, the time it will take to get there, the certain knowledge that it has no atmosphere whatever, good or bad, that its gravity factor is considerably less than we are accustomed to on Zennor, that there’s no life there, and finally—but by no means least, my friend—that up there on that uninviting little world that doesn’t even have a name, only a number, at least a dozen men had perished and five ships have disappeared without trace.”

He broke off and shook his head grimly. “When it comes to that we don’t know a thing, as you say. Funny, isn’t it? Or is it?” He lowered his gaze from the moon of Zennor, looking instead to the floodlit space port a mile from where he and Wayne were standing. Ships … they were things he could understand; they were the lifeblood that made him throb with excitement. Yes, even after years at the game of dodging spatial perils and probing deeper and deeper into the unknown. He sighed when he thought about it, and wondered what would happen this time. He even went so far as to wonder if he and Wayne would come back.

“I suppose it is funny in a way,” muttered Wayne. “But it won’t be funny for us, old man.”

Reece eyed him shrewdly in the darkness. The tip of his cigarette glowed bright and etched his mouth with red.

“We’ll make out,” he said softly. “Nothing’s beaten us yet; I don’t see any reason why 232 should beat us.”

But Wayne only shook his head—and went on staring at the grey globe of Zennor’s satellite, more correctly known as Spatial Body 232: Zone K.

“232 may not beat us,” said Wayne soberly. “It won’t be the satellite itself that does the beating. There’s something on that globe, something that we know nothing about. I have a hunch that sooner or later we’re going to be mighty sorry we ever took on this particular detail.”

Reece laughed quietly. “If there’s anything on 232 apart from sand and rock and wrecked ships it’ll be a miracle. You don’t expect me to believe these fairy stories, do you? Especially as the men who spin them have been listening to lunatics!”

Wayne said: “I wonder …?”

Reece frowned in the gloom. “For heaven’s sake be your age,” he grunted. “Those two clots who took a ship round 232 without landing didn’t bring back anything of any value. You’re not going to tell me at this late stage that you attach any credence to that wild yarn of theirs about seeing some kind of monster striding around, are you?”

Wayne tore his gaze from the ominous circle presented by 232. His companion’s hard-headed commonsense was of course sound enough—in its way and as far as it went. And yet Wayne could never quite forget that five ships had landed on 232 and never returned.

“It’s crazy,” he said, as if speaking to himself.” “Here are we, Earthmen living on Zennor thousands of millions of miles from the Earth. We cover distances in space that would have made our ancestors’ hair stand on end. We use ships and communication methods that to them—even a century ago in the ’50s—would have seemed on a par with magic. And yet…” He sighed and spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

“And yet,” finished Reece, “we can’t establish a base on a miserable little moon less than a week’s travel from here! I know, it gets me down too. That’s why I’m determined to put an end to it once and for all.” He came from the deeper shadows and dropped a hand on Wayne’s right shoulder.

“You and I are landing on 232,” he said firmly. “Get all these crazy ideas out of your head, my friend. There aren’t any monsters there. That’s a fairy tale. We’re out to prove it—and we’re coming back!”

Wayne grinned. “Sure we are, John. You needn’t think I’m getting scared or trying to back out; I’m not. But I must admit that I can’t see things in quite the same crystal clear light that you do. There must be some very real reason why no one ever returns.”

“Why no one has so far returned, you mean!”

“All right, if you like it better.”

“It’s been a series of accidents that stopped those men coming back,” said Reece. His tone was so sure and so convincing that for a moment or two Wayne was almost prepared to believe him. But always there was that vague and formless doubt at the back of his mind that warned him of things and events far beyond the grasp of either himself or the levelheaded Reece. Perhaps, he told himself, he was being too fanciful, and being fanciful when engaged on the type of work that he and Reece undertook was a dead loss. Spatial exploration under the auspices of the far-distant Earth Government could at times be a pretty dangerous game. Often enough the two of them had come unpleasantly close to a sticky end. Would they come out on top yet again? He hoped so, he sincerely hoped so, but he was none too sure, certainly not as sure as Reece was that everything could be reduced to a few hard facts and mysteries fobbed off by explaining them as the result of accident. Admittedly there were plenty of accidents that could serve; there were a hundred different reasons why a ship should not return from a journey to 232. A dozen ships might follow one another and all fall foul of some error of judgment on the part of their crews, some material defect, even from a quite simple and apparently trivial breakdown. But such a premise could hardly explain why no word had ever come from those ships either immediately before or after landing. Wasn’t it taking credulity just a little far to ask belief of such an extraordinary series of accidents coming one on top of another? Wayne thought so, and Wayne, despite his somewhat vivid imagination, had an underlying streak of commonsense that matched Reece’s in the long run.

“It could have been accidents, I suppose,” said Wayne. But there was doubt in his tone. So strong was it that Reece eyed him suspiciously as he turned for the door of the little mountainside chalet in which they were to spend the hours before blast-off shortly after dawn. It was quiet and peaceful, but at the same time handy to the space port below in the valley.

“Of course it was accidents!” grunted Reece. “You know, Tony, your attitude worries me a little. This is not a picnic we’re in for. We shall need all our senses about us if we’re going to stay out of trouble. But I still believe that if we handle our ship properly, take the usual precautions and don’t act the fool—or get the jitters—we shall solve this mystery and come back to pick up the kudos for doing it.” He laughed softly. “Think of it, the first men to land on 232!”

“Not the first to land,” said Wayne grimly. “You mean we hope to be the first to get off it again.”

They stepped inside the simple peace of the building. Florilight came on at the touch of a switch; there was food and the rarest of Zennorine wine; there were books, a video, an ultra-phone giving direct contact with Earth; there was a Zennorite manservant to look after them, and above all there was solitude—which even Reece enjoyed on the eve of such a venture as the one on which they were soon to be engaged.

Over supper Reece said: “There’s one thing that does puzzle me a bit. It’s something we shall have to watch out for according to the only report available.”

“What’s that? Oh, you mean the wind storms …?”

Reece speared a pickled onion and held it up on the end of his fork.

“The storms,” he said slowly. “Yes, that’s it. The trouble is that I can’t really believe in those storms, Tony. Conditions on and near the surface of 232 are known from observation. There’s no atmosphere and therefore there can’t be any wind currents or storms. That’s patently obvious, and yet the only thing that rang true in that weird and wonderful report those crazy men brought back was mention of severe disturbance whenever they approached the surface.”

Wayne compressed his lips tightly. “That part of the report hadn’t escaped me,” he said. “On the face of it a storm as we know it, a wind storm of the strength and power mentioned, is impossible. Since there’s no atmosphere there can be no atmospheric movement, and long range observations establish the fact that 232 has no electrical potential whatever, which cuts out the possibility of that kind of storm. It doesn’t make sense, but after all it’s hard to disbelieve everything in that report!”

Reece grunted. He did not look at Wayne, but kept his eyes focused on the onion he had speared and was holding up for inspection. Then: “The pity of it was that those two chaps died so soon after getting back. No one had a real chance to go into detail with them—or sort out the right from the wrong in their story. Queer why they died like that. You remember the details, of course?”

Wayne nodded grimly and took a sip from his glass.

“Found dead in bed, both of them. Only a couple of days after getting back. They never did make up their minds as to the exact cause of death. One authority said they died of fear, pure and simple. They certainly had a look on their faces as if they’d seen the devil himself in the night!”

Again Wayne gave a nod.

“We shall see for ourselves,” he said quietly.

“You bet! I’ve often wondered why the Government hasn’t put its back into the business and sent at least a dozen ships off Zennor. If they’d done that they’d have been sure of getting there—and getting back. Accidents couldn’t happen to a whole fleet, not the kind that wipes out all trace and silences communication on approach.”

“The Government is too mean to think of a thing like that. They never see further than sacrificing one ship and the smallest possible crew. Besides, with the Earth and our rivals from the other side of the Galaxy just itching to fly at each other’s throats they’re scared stiff of using more ships than necessary for anything but readiness for war.”

“That may be, but don’t they realise that a base on 232 would give complete control over Zennor? 232 is a far more important place than anyone seems to think. And Zennor is vita. . .