The Merchandise Guide
Annual 1976

This was the end. In the breadth of one more second, Commander John Koenig knew that he would have the answer to the timeless question that had plagued man since the very birth of intelligence. Was death the gat to another life . . . or did death end everything? He rolled over, helplessly. His mouth, tight-shut against the foam that surged around him, held in that last breath he had drawn. Redness swam in the darkness of his closed eyes, and there was a frantic roaring in his brain as the instinct for survival told him to fight--fight--fight!    Choking, his nostrils blocked by the stuff, he felt a body canon into his. Sandra Benes? Paul Morrow? David Kano? They'd all been there when it had happened. They'd all been there in that terrible moment when he--John Koenig himself--had opened the capsule. . .    He heard a voice--it was his own, but from some inner point within his brain--say his epitaph. "I didn't know . . . I didn't realise. . ." and then he gave himself up to the inevitability of oblivion! He--he and his colleagues in Main Mission--all were doomed, and it had been his fault. . .    Then the strong arms gripped his shoulders, and he was only faintly aware of the red survival suit of his rescuer from the Moonbase Alpha standby security team, looming over him as its wearer dragged him through the sliding doors and to safety. . . They were still in there, Koenig reflected as his senses gradually came back to him. The hardest men of the

Alpha complex. The security staff--the internal police who feared nothing, who could quell their imagination and do their job inthe most hazardous of conditions--the conditions of the unknown! He was safe. So, miraculously, were the others who had been with himm. He looked around, and met the stunned eyes of Benes, Morrow, Kano . . . of Williams, Mason, Fantino. And then the doors crashed open and, foam flooding round their feet, the rescuers dragged out the last bodies for Doctor Helena Russell's resuscitation machine. Davis, Yamamoto, Duvalier.    "He was conscious of Victor Bergman bending over him. "John. You're okay? It's beyond all reasoning. We just don't know what it is!"    Koenig fought his way to his feet, ignoring the hands that tried to make him lay still. "We--we've got to get rid of it," he gasped. "If we can't get back into Main Mission, we've no control over our destiny at all!"    For every master system, from Kano's computer down to the life-support systems of the whole of Moonbase Alpha were in that foam-filled roam, and without access to them, the castaways of space were totally helpless!    "We have the black box, John," said Bergman, his voice soothing, but with a definite and recognisable edge to it. "Maybe that will give us the answers! My laboratory. . ."    "Your laboratory doesn't have the computer, Victor!" Koenig clenched his fists and slammed them together in fury. "Human minds aren't going to decipher whatever message that box has for us!"

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