Free Space 1999 #3 - The Space Guardians by Brian Ball

towards the entrance.
    Zoref waited.
    ‘Don’t shoot him!’ yelled Koenig, bursting through the group of Security men as the radiation lamps glowed dimly into life.
    Zoref stared towards the light-source, puzzlement showing in his thin face. He reached up again. A guard couldn’t control his shaking hands, and a laser jet scoured the wall behind Zoref. Koenig kicked out and the hand-gun shot into the air. It clattered to the ground, spinning.
    ‘Blast the radiation lamps!’ Koenig yelled.
    He aimed the stubby weapon at the dim lights. A jet lanced out, blasting the heat-lamp into fragments. The guards understood. In seconds, the solarium was dark again.
    Zoref groaned, then collapsed.
    The two women pushed through the guards. Koenig patted Johnson on the arm but he did not speak to him. There was time for congratulations later.
    ‘Dr Russell to the solarium,’ he ordered. ‘We’ve found Zoref.’
    The great hall was cold. Koenig looked out at the reaches of sable blackness beyond the windows. Alien, he thought, and Zoref’s coldness hit him too. Alien, hungry for energy. An entity from that deep emptiness. Was that what had possession of Zoref?
    Helena Russell arrived within two minutes.
    She carried a portable life-functions decoder. Its antennae quivered as she examined Zoref.
    ‘He’s alive,’ she said after a puzzled silence. ‘I don’t know what damage he’s suffered—look at his skull! And the radiation burns!’
    ‘He’s absorbed a huge amount of energy,’ said Koenig. He shone a torch over Zoref’s thin features.
    ‘Careful!’ warned Helena Russell. ‘Don’t touch him—it could be lethal.’
    Koenig looked at the beam of his torch. It was stable.
    ‘He’s not absorbing energy now. I want him moved for examination, Helena. I think he’s safe for the moment, but use robot grabs to move him to Diagnostic. I’m taking no chance with the orderlies. Two dead is enough. More than enough. And use a restraint harness on him—something he can’t get out of.’
    ‘I’ll be careful, John,’ said Helena Russell.
    She was thinking that Koenig sounded like the old Commander of Moonbase Alpha once more. His eyes were steady and clear, his orders decisive. She pushed these thoughts from her mind and arranged for Zoref’s transfer with her normal controlled professionalism.
    An hour later, she had completed her examination. She called Main Mission Control.
    ‘I have the plates ready,’ she said. ‘Technician Zoref is under observation. I’ve taken the precaution of having him strapped down, but I’m not sure it’s necessary.’
    ‘Let me see him,’ said Koenig.
    The man appeared to be asleep. His face had not been bandaged, but a layer of some plastic dressing gave him a waxen appearance. A single blue light picked out the gaunt features. Steel bands held him at the shoulders, waist and thighs.
    ‘He’s losing heat all the time,’ said Helena Russell. ‘I’ve tried to maintain a constant body temperature, but his metabolism keeps altering. There’s something uncanny about it. As if he doesn’t want to stabilize at normal heat.’
    Koenig waited until Bergman had examined the plates:
    ‘What do you make of it, Victor?’
    Bergman passed the plates to Koenig.
    ‘There,’ he said. ‘See—these dark patches are Zoref’s bones and thicker tissue. See how the skull is massively reinforced. And now look inside the cranial cavity.’
    Koenig peered closer. He saw a small grey-black blotch, hardly larger than a toe-nail.
    ‘Is that it?’
    ‘It has the configuration of the alien energy-source.’ Bergman could not keep the excitement from his voice. ‘It’s the force that killed Dominix and the girl. I haven’t compared it with the original scans for computer analysis—I’ll relay the plates now—but I’m sure of it.’
    ‘But why does it lodge there? Why in Zoref?’
    ‘Who knows? Maybe Zoref was a convenient host or the right kind of catalyst. At any rate, it seems to be