Colin Wilson - Lifeforce

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Lifeforce

originally published as The Space Vampires

by Colin Wilson

a.b.e-book v3.0 / Notes at EOF

Back Cover:

WILL THE EARTH EVER BE THE SAME?

The derelict spaceship was vast, and like the landscape of a deeply disturbing

dream. Equally strange were the immobile bodies of the humanoid passengers discovered

by Captain Carlsen and his men. Later, when three of the aliens had been transported to

earth, the oddity became a nightmare. The beings were energy vampires whose seductive

embraces were fatal, whose eroticism few humans could resist. As their lust for lifeforce

remained insatiable and sexual murders spread, Carlsen fought to discover who they were

and how to destroy them -- before their evil hungers contaminated all of mankind and

Carlsen himself became the willing victim of the most beautiful and irresistible alien of

them all.

"EXCELLENT. . . A FAST-MOVING, PLAUSIBLE PIECE OF SUPERIOR SCIENCE

FICTION." -- Los Angeles Herald-Examiner

WARNER BOOKS EDITION

This Warner Books Edition is published by

arrangement with Random House. Inc.,

201 E. 50th Street. New York, N.Y. 10022

Warner Books. Inc. 666 Fifth Avenue New York. N.Y. 10103

A Warner Communications Company

Printed in the United States of America

First Warner Books Printing: June; 1985

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For June O'Shea,

my criminological adviser

Acknowledgements

This book originated, many years ago, in a discussion with my old friend A. E.

van Vogt, whose story "Asylum" is a classic of vampire fiction. (Aficionados of the genre

will recognize my indebtedness to it.) August Derleth, who published my first work of

science fiction, offered warm encouragement; unfortunately, he has not lived to see the

completion of our project. For the idea of the parallelism between vampirism and crime, I

must acknowledge my indebtedness to June O'Shea of Los Angeles, who has kept me

plentifully supplied with books and press cuttings on recent American crime. This book

also owes much to the stimulus of discussions with Dan Parson -- on vampirism in

general, and on his great-uncle, Bram Stoker, in particular. I must also express my

warmest thanks to Count Olof de la Gardie, both for his hospitality at Raback, and for

allowing me to inspect family papers relating to his ancestor Count Magnus. Finally. I

must thank Mrs. Sheila Clarkson for her careful work in retyping and correcting the dog-

eared manuscript.

-- C.W.

Their instruments picked up the massive outline long before they saw it. That was

to be expected. What baffled Carlsen was that even when they were a thousand miles

away, and the braking rockets had cut their speed to seven hundred miles an hour, it was

still invisible.

Then Craigie, peering through the crystal-glass of the port, saw it outlined against

the stars. The others left their places to stare at it. Dabrowsky, the chief engineer, said:

"Another asteroid. What shall we name this one?"

Carlsen looked out through the port, his eyes narrowed against the blinding glare

of the stars. When he touched the analyser control, symmetrical green lines flowed across

the screen, distorted upwards by the speed of their approach. He said: "That's no asteroid.

It's all metal."

Dabrowsky came back to the panel and stared at it. "What else could it be?"

At this speed, the humming of the atomic motors was scarcely louder than an

electric clock. They moved back to their places and watched as the expanding shape

blocked the stars. They had examined and charted nine new asteroids in the past month;

now each knew, with the instinct of trained spacemen, that this was different.

At two hundred miles, the outline was clear enough to leave no doubt. Craigie

said: "It is a bloody spacecraft."

"But, Christ, how big is it?"

In empty space, with no landmarks, distances could be deceptive. Carlsen

depressed the keys of the computer.

Looking over his shoulder, Dabrowsky said with incredulity: "Fifty miles?"

"That's impossible," Craigie said.

Dabrowsky punched the keys and stared at the result. "Forty-nine point six four

miles. Nearly eighty kilometres." The black shape now filled the port. Yet even at this

distance, no details could be seen.

Lieutenant Ives said: "It's only a suggestion, sir. . . But wouldn't it be an idea to

wait until we get a reply to our signal from base?"

"That'll be another forty minutes." Base was the moon, two hundred million miles

away. Travelling at the speed of light, it would take their signal half an hour to get there,

and another half-hour to bring a reply. "I'd like to get closer."

Now the motors were silent. They were drifting towards the spacecraft at fifty

miles an hour. Carlsen switched off all the cabin lights. Gradually, as their eyes adjusted,

they could see the grey-black metal walls that seemed to absorb the sunlight. When they

were a few hundred yards away, Carlsen stopped the Hermes. The seven men crowded

against the port. Through its thick crystal, as transparent as clear water, they could look

up at the side of the craft, towering above like an iron cliff as far as their eyes could see.

Below, the same wall seemed to plunge into the gulf of space. They were all accustomed

to weightlessness, but it produced a sensation of dizziness to look down; some

instinctively drew back from the glass.

At this distance, it was clear that the ship, was a derelict. The walls west grained

and pitted. A hundred yards away to the right, a ten-foot hole had been ripped through the

plates. The searchlight showed that the metal was six inches thick. As the beam moved

slowly over the walls, they could see other deep indentations and smaller meteor holes.

Steinberg, the navigator, said: "She looks as though she's been in a war."

"Could be. But I think that's mostly meteor damage."

"It must have been a meteor storm."

They stared in silence. Carlsen said: "Either that, or she's been here a very long

time."

No one had to ask what he meant. The chances of a spacecraft being struck by a

meteor are roughly the same as the chance of a ship in the Atlantic bumping into a

floating wreck. For this hulk to be so battered, it would have had to spend thousands of

years in space.

Craigie, the Scots radio operator, said: "I don't like this bluddy thing. There's

something nasty about it."

The others obviously felt the same. Carlsen said, almost casually: "And it could

be the greatest scientific discovery of the twenty-first century."

In the excitement and tension of the past hour, no one had thought of this. Now,

with the telepathic intuition that seems to develop between men in space, they all grasped

what was in Carlsen's mind. This could make each individual of them more famous than

the first men on the moon. They had found a spacecraft that was clearly not from earth.

They had therefore established beyond question that there is intelligent life in other

galaxies. . .

The sound of the radio made them all jump. It was their reply from moonbase.

The voice was that of Dan Zelensky, the chief controller. Obviously, their message had

already caused excitement. Zelensky said: "Okay. Proceed with caution and test for

radioactivity and space virus. Report back as soon as possible." In the silence, they could

all hear it. They also heard Craigie's reply, dictated by Carlsen, Craigie's voice sounded

cracked from excitement. "This is definitely an alien spacecraft, approximately fifty miles

long and twenty-five miles high. It looks like some damn great castle floating in the sky.

It seems unlikely there is life aboard. It's probably been here for at least a few hundred

years. We request permission to investigate." This message was repeated half a dozen

times at minute intervals, so that even if space static made most of them inaudible, one

might get through.

In the hour during which they waited for the reply, the Hermes bumped gently

against the unknown craft. They were all eating tinned beef and washing it down with

Scotch whisky; the excitement had made them ravenous. Again Zelensky came on

personally, and his voice was also thick with tension.

"Please take fullest possible precautions, and if any danger, prepare for return to

moonbase immediately. You are advised not to attempt to board until you've had a night's

sleep. I've talked to John Skeat at Mount Palomar, and he admits that he's baffled. If this

thing's fifty miles across, it should have been discovered two hundred years ago. Long-

exposure photographs show nothing in that part of the sky. Please complete all other

possible tests before attempting to board."

Although the message told them nothing they could not have guessed in advance,

they listened intently and played it back several times. Life in space is boring and lonely;

now, suddenly, they felt they were the centre of the universe. On earth, their news would

now be on every television channel. Since two hours ago, they had entered history.

Back in London, it was now seven o'clock in the evening. The men of the Hermes

regulated their lives by Greenwich mean time; it was a way of maintaining contact. The

evening that lay ahead already sagged with a quality of anticlimax. Carlsen issued more

whisky but not enough to produce intoxication; he didn't want to board the derelict with a

crew suffering from hangover.

Together with Giles Farmer, the medical officer, Carlsen manoeuvred the

emergency port of the Hermes opposite the ten-foot meteor hole; guided robots took

samples of cosmic dust from inside the derelict. Tests for space virus were negative.

(Since the Ganymede disaster of 2013, spacemen had been highly conscious of the

dangers they might be bringing back to earth.) There was slight radioactivity, but not

more than would be expected from dust exposed to periodic bursts of lethal radiation

from solar flares. Flashlight photographs taken by the robot showed a vast chamber

whose dimensions were difficult to assess. In his last bulletin before he retired to sleep,

Carlsen said he thought the ship must have been built by giants. It was a phrase he would

regret.

Everyone had difficulty in getting to sleep. Carlsen lay awake, wondering what

the rest of his life would be like. He was forty-five, of Norwegian extraction, and married

to a pretty blonde from Alesund. Understandably, she disliked these six-month-long

expeditions of exploration. Now it looked as if he might return to earth permanently. He

had the traditional right, as captain of the expedition, to produce the first book and

magazine articles about it. This alone could make him a rich man. He would like to buy a

farm in the Outer Hebrides, and spend at least two years exploring the volcanoes of

Iceland. . . These pleasant anticipations, instead of making him drowsy, produced an

unhealthy excitement. Finally, at three in the morning, he took a sleeping draught; even

so, he spent the night dreaming of giants and haunted castles.

By ten

A.M. they had eaten breakfast, and Carlsen had chosen the three men who

would accompany him into the derelict. He was taking Craigie, Ives and Murchison, the

second engineer. Murchison was a man of immense physique; somehow it gave Carlsen a

sense of comfort to know he would be along.

Dabrowsky loaded the mini-camera with film for two hours' shooting. He filmed

the men climbing into their spacesuits, then asked each of them to describe his feelings;

he was already thinking in terms of television newsreels.

Steinberg, a tall young Jew from Brooklyn, looked ill and melancholy. Carlsen

wondered if he was upset at not being included in the boarding party. He said: "How you

feeling, Dave?"

"Okay," Steinberg said. When Carlsen raised his eyebrows, he said: "I've got a

creepy feeling. I don't like this. There's something creepy about that wreck."

Carlsen's heart sank; he recalled that Steinberg had experienced a similar

premonition just before the Hermes almost came to disaster on the asteroid Hidalgo; on

that occasion, an apparently solid surface had collapsed, damaging the ship's landing gear

and injuring Dixon, the geologist. Dixon had died two days later. Carlsen suppressed the

misgiving.

"We all feel that way. Look at the damn thing. Frankenstein's castle. . ."

Dabrowsky said: "Olof, you want to say a few words?"

Carlsen shrugged. He disliked the public relations aspect of exploration, but he

knew it was part of the job. He sat on the stool in front of the camera. His mind

immediately filled with commonplaces; he knew they were clichés, but could think of

nothing else. To encourage him, Dabrowsky said: "How's it feel to. . . er --"

"Well. . . ah. . . we don't know what we're going to find in there. We don't know a

damn thing about it. Apparently. . . Professor Skeat at Mount Palomar points out that --

that it's strange no one ever saw this thing before. After all, it's pretty big, fifty miles

long. Astronomers have detected asteroid fragments two miles long by photo-

comparators. The explanation may be its -- colour. It's an exceptionally dull sort of grey

that doesn't seem to reflect much light. So. . . er. . ." He lost the thread.

Dabrowsky prompted: "Do you feel excited?"

"Well, yes, of course I feel excited." It was untrue; he was always calm and

matter-of-fact when faced with action. "This could be our first real contact with life in

other galaxies. On the other hand, this craft could be old, very old, and it's --"

"How old?"

"How the hell do I know? But to judge by the condition of the hull, it could be

anything from ten thousand to. . . I dunno, ten million."

"Ten million?"

Carlsen said irritably: "For Christ's sake, turn that thing off. This isn't a fucking

film studio."

"Sorry, Skip."

Carlsen patted his shoulder. "It's not your fault, Joe. It's just that I hate all this. . .

posing." He turned to the others. "Come on. Let's move."

He was the first into the airlock; for the sake of safety they would go one by one.

The powerful magnets in the soles of his shoes produced an illusion of gravity. When he

looked down at the chasm below he felt dizzy. He pushed himself very gently out of the

hatch, then slammed it behind him. In the vacuum, it made no sound. With a push of his

hand, he propelled himself across the five-foot gap and in through the jagged hole. The

camera was slung across his shoulder. The searchlight he carried was no bigger than a

large torch, but its atom-powered batteries could send a beam for several miles.

The floor was about fifteen feet below him. It was made of metal; but when he

landed on it, he bounced six feet into the air. Clearly, it was nonmagnetic. He floated

down gently, head-first, and landed as lightly as a balloon. He sat on the floor and shone

the torch towards the opening, as a signal that all was well. Then he looked around.

For a moment he had an illusion that he was in London or New York. Then he

saw that the vast, towering structures that had reminded him of skyscrapers were in fact

giant columns that stretched from floor to ceiling. The scale was breathtaking. The

nearest column, a hundred yards away, could have been the size of the Empire State

Building; he guessed its height at well over a thousand feet. It was circular in shape, and

fluted; the top, he could see, spread out like the branches of a tree. He shone the beam

along the hall. It was like looking down the aisles of a giant cathedral, or into some

enchanted forest. The floor and the columns were the colour of frosted silver, with a hint

of green. The wall beside him stretched up without any visible curve for a quarter of a

mile. It was covered with strange coloured shapes and patterns. He backed up gently

towards the nearest column -- in spite of his lightness, violent collisions could damage

the spacesuit -- then propelled himself into the air. He widened the beam of light so that it

covered an area of twenty or thirty yards. His mind had become numb to astonishment, or

he might have called out.

Craigie's voice said: "Everything all right, Skip?"

"Yes. This is a fantastic place. Like a huge cathedral, with great columns. And the

wall's covered with pictures."

"What kind of pictures?"

Yes, what kind of pictures? How could he describe them? They were not abstract;

they were of something; that was clear. But what? He was reminded of lying in a wood as

a child, surrounded by bluebells, and the long whitish-green stems of the bluebells

vanishing into the brown earth. These pictures could have been of some kind of tropical

forest with strange vegetation, or perhaps of an underwater forest of weeds and tendrils.

The colours were blues, greens, white and silver. There was a haunting complexity about

it. Carlsen had no doubt he was looking at great art.

Other torches stabbed the darkness. The other three floated down gently,

propelling themselves as if swimming under water. Murchison floated up to him, and

drove him fifty feet further along with his weight.

"What do you make of it, Skip? Do you think they were giants?"

He shook his head, then remembered that Murchison could not see his face. "I

don't even want to guess, at this stage." He spoke to the others. "Let's keep together. I

want to investigate the far end." With the camera running, he moved gently down the

hall. To the right, between the columns, he could see something that looked like a huge

staircase. He kept up a running commentary for the benefit of those back in the Hermes,

at the same time aware that his words conveyed nothing of this mind-staggering scale of

construction.

A quarter of a mile further on, they passed an immense corridor leading off

towards the centre of the ship; its roof was vaulted like a mediaeval arch. Everything

about these surroundings was at once alien and curiously familiar. He heard himself

telling Craigie: "If earthmen had built this, they'd have made it all look mechanical --

square columns with rivets. Whatever creatures built this had a sense of beauty." Far in

the air, on the left-hand wall, there was a circular grid that reminded him of a stained-

glass window. He floated towards it. At close quarters, he could see that it was

functional. It was a hundred feet high and five feet thick, and the holes in the grid were

several yards wide. Carlsen alighted in one of these and shone the searchlight beyond.

The camera, strapped to his chest now, was working automatically, recording everything

he saw.

He said: "Christ."

"What is it?"

The space beyond had the appearance of a dream landscape. Monstrous flights of

stairs stretched up into the darkness and down into the depths of the ship. There were

catwalks between, and curved galleries whose architecture made him think of swallows'

wings. Beyond these, stretching upwards and farther into the blackness, more stairs and

galleries and catwalks. When Craigie's voice said: "Are you all right?" he realised he had

not spoken for several minutes. He felt dazed and overpowered, and in some way deeply

disturbed. The place had the quality of a nightmare.

"I'm all right, but I can't describe it. You'll have to see it for yourself." He

launched himself outward, but the immensity made him feel weary.

Ives said: "But what purpose could it serve?"

"I don't know that it serves a purpose."

"What?"

"I mean a practical purpose. Perhaps it's like a painting or a symphony -- intended

to produce an effect on the emotions. Or perhaps it's a map of some kind."

"A what?" Dabrowsky sounded incredulous.

"A map. . . of the inside of the mind. You'd have to see it to understand."

"Any sign of the control room? Or of engines?"

"No, but they might be at the back, towards the jets -- if that's how it's driven."

Now he was hovering over one of the stairways. From a distance, it looked like a

fire escape, but at closer quarters, he saw that the metal was at least a yard thick. It was

the same dull silver as the floor. Each step was about four feet high and deep. There were

no handrails. He followed them upwards, to a gallery supported by pillars. A catwalk,

also without rails, ran across a gulf at least half a mile wide.

Craigie said: "Can you see a light?" He pointed.

Carlsen said: "Switch off your lights." They were in blackness that enclosed them

like a grave. Then, as his eyes adjusted, Carlsen knew Craigie was right. Somewhere

towards the centre of the ship, there was a greenish glow. He checked his Geiger counter.

It showed a slightly higher reading than usual, but well below the danger level. He told

Dabrowsky: "There seems to be some kind of fault luminosity. I'm going to investigate."

It was a temptation to thrust powerfully against the stairs and propel himself

forward at speed across the gulf. But ten years in space had made caution second nature.

Using the catwalk as a guide, he floated slowly towards the glow. He kept one eye on the

Geiger counter. Its activity increased noticeably as they drew closer, but it was still below

the danger level, and he knew his insulated suit would protect him.

It was farther than it seemed. The four men floated past galleries that looked as if

they had been designed by a mad Renaissance architect, and flights of stairs that looked

as if they might stretch back to earth or outward to the stars. There were more immense

columns, but this time they broke off in space, as if some roof they had once supported

had now collapsed. When Carlsen brushed against one of these, he noticed that it seemed

to be covered with a fine white powder, not unlike sulphur dust or lycopodium. He

scraped some of this into a sample bag.

Half an hour later, the glow was brighter. Looking at his watch, he was surprised

to see it was nearly one o'clock; it made him realise that he was hungry. They had

switched off their searchlights, and the green glow was bright enough to see by. The light

came from below them.

Dabrowsky's voice said: "That was moonbase, Olof. He said your wife had just

been on television with the children."

At any other time, the news would have delighted him. Now it seemed strangely

remote, as if it referred to a previous existence. Dabrowsky said: "Zelensky says there are

four billion people all sitting in front of the televisions, waiting for news. Can I send an

interim report?"

"Wait ten minutes. We're getting close to this light. I'd like to find out what it is."

Now at least he could see that it was pouring up from a chasm in the floor. The

greeny-blue quality reminded him of moonlight on fields. He experienced a surge of

exultancy that made him kick himself powerfully downwards. Ives said: "Hey, Skip, not

too fast." He felt like a swallow skimming and gliding towards the earth. The edge of the

gulf lay a quarter of a mile below him, and he could see the full extent of the immense

rectangular hole that was like a cloud-filled valley among mountains. The Geiger counter

had now passed the danger point, but the insulation of the suit would protect him for

some time yet.

The hole into which they were plunging was about a mile long and a quarter of a

mile wide. The walls were covered with the same designs as the outer chamber. The light

seemed to be coming from the floor and from an immense column in the centre of the

space. He heard Murchison say: "What in hell's that? A monument?" Then Craigie said:

"It's made of glass." Carlsen stretched out his hands to cushion his impact against the

floor, rolled over like a parachutist, then bounced for a hundred yards. When he

succeeded in standing upright, he found himself at the base of a pedestal that supported

the transparent column.

Like most things on this ship, it was bigger than it looked from a distance. Carlsen

judged its diameter to be at least fifty yards. Inside, immense dim shapes were suspended.

In the phosphorescent light, they looked like black octopuses. Carlsen propelled himself

upwards until he was opposite one of them, and then shone his searchlight on it. In the

dazzling beam, he could see that it was not black, but orange. At close quarters, it looked

less like an octopus, more like a bundle of fungoid creepers joined together at one end.

Close beside him, Ives said: "What do you make of that?"

Carlsen knew what he was thinking. "I don't think these things built this ship."

Murchison pressed the glass of his space helmet against the column. "What do

you suppose they are? Vegetable? Or some kind of squid?"

"Perhaps neither. They may be some completely alien life form."

Murchison said: "My God!"

The fear in his voice made Carlsen's heart pound. When he spoke, his own voice

was choked. "What in God's name is it?"

Something was moving behind the squidlike shapes. Craigie's voice said: "It's

me."

"What the hell are you playing at?" The shock had made Carlsen angry.

"I'm inside this tube. It's hollow. And I can see something down below."

Cautiously, Carlsen propelled himself upwards, braking himself by pressing his

gloved hands against the glass of the column. He was sweating heavily, although the

temperature of the spacesuit was controlled. He floated past the top of the column, made

a twist in the air and managed to land. He could then see that, as Craigie had said, it was

hollow. The walls containing the squidlike creatures were no more than ten feet thick.

And when he looked into the space down the centre, he noticed that the blue glow was far

stronger there. It was streaming up from below the floor. "Donald? Where are you?"

Craigie's voice said: "I'm down below. I think this must be the living quarters."

Carlsen reached out to grab Murchison, who had propelled himself too fast and

was about to float past him. Without speaking, both launched themselves headfirst into

the hollow core. Since space-walking had become second nature, they had lost their

normal inhibitions about this position. They descended gently towards the blue-green

light. A moment later they were floating through the hole into a sea of blue that reminded

Carlsen of a grotto he had once seen on Capri. Looking up, he realised that the ceiling --

the floor of the room they had just left -- was semi-transparent, a kind of crystal. The

glow they had seen from above was the light that filtered through this. Down the wall to

the right, another great staircase descended. But the scale here was less vast than above.

This was altogether closer to the scale on the Hermes. The light came from the walls and

the floor. There were buildings in the centre of the room, square and also semi-

transparent. And at the far end of the room, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, Carlsen

could see stars burning in the blackness. Part of the wall had been ripped away. He could

see the immense plates twisted inwards and torn, as if someone had attacked a cardboard

box with a hammer. He pointed. "That's probably what stopped the ship."

The fascination of violent disaster drove them towards the gap. Dabrowsky was

asking for further details. Carlsen stopped at the edge of the gulf, looking down at the

floor, which was buckled and torn under his feet. "Something big tore a hole in the ship --

a hole more than a hundred feet wide. It must have been hot: the metal looks fused as

well as ripped. All the air must have escaped within minutes, unless they could seal off

this part of the ship. Any living things must have died instantaneously."

Dabrowsky asked: "What about these buildings?"

"We'll investigate them now."

Ives's voice said: "Hey, Captain!" It was almost a shriek. Carlsen saw that he was

standing near the buildings, his searchlight beam stabbing through transparent walls and

emerging on the other side. "Captain, there's people in there."

He had to check the desire to hurl himself across the quarter of a mile that divided

him from the buildings. His impetus would have carried him beyond them, and perhaps

knocked him unconscious against the far wall. As he moved slowly, he asked: "What

kind of people? Are they alive?"

"No, they're dead. But they're human, all right. At least, humanoid."

He checked himself against the end building. The walls were glass, as clear as the

observation port of the Hermes. These were undoubtedly living quarters. Inside were

objects that he could identify as tables and chairs, alien in design but recognisably

furniture. And two feet away, on the other side of the glass, lay a man. The head was

bald, the cheeks sunken and yellow. The blue eyes stared glassily at the ceiling. He was

held down to the bed by a canvas sheet, whose coarse texture was clearly visible. Under

this sheet, which was stretched tight, they could see the outlines of bands or hoops,

clearly designed to hold the body in place.

Murchison said: "Captain, this one's a woman."

He was looking through the wall of the next building. Craigie, Ives and Carlsen

joined him. The figure strapped to the bed was indisputably female. That would have

been apparent even without the evidence of the breasts that swelled under the covering.

The lips were still red, and there was something indefinably feminine about the modelling

of the face. None of them had seen a woman for almost a year; all experienced waves of

nostalgia, and a touch of a cruder physical reaction.

"Blonde too," Murchison said. The short-cropped hair that covered the head was

pale, almost white.

Craigie said: "And here's another." It was a dark-haired girl, younger than the

first. She might have been pretty, but the face was corpselike and sunken.

Each building stood separate; it struck Carlsen that they were like a group of

Egyptian tombs. They counted thirty in all. In each lay a sleeper: eight older men, six

older women, six younger males and ten women whose ages may have ranged between

eighteen and twenty-five.

"But how did they get into the damn things?"

Murchison was right; there were no doors. They walked around the buildings,

examining every inch of the glass surface. It was unbroken. The roofs, made of semi-

transparent crystal, also seemed to be joined or welded to the glass.

"They're not tombs," Carlsen said. "Otherwise they wouldn't need furniture."

"The ancient Egyptians buried furniture with their dead." Ives had a passion for

archaeology.

For some reason, Carlsen felt a flash of irritation. "But they expected to take their

goods to the underworld. These people don't look that stupid."

Craigie said: "All the same, they could hope to rise from the dead."

Carlsen said angrily: "Don't talk bloody nonsense." Then, as he caught Craigie's

startled glance through the glass of the helmet: "I"m sorry. I think I must be hungry."

Back in the Hermes, Steinberg had cooked the meal intended for Christmas Day.

It was now mid-October; they were scheduled to leave for earth in the second week of

November, arriving in mid-January. (At top speed, the Hermes covered four million

miles a day.) No one had any doubt that they would be leaving sooner than that. This find

was more important than a dozen unknown asteroids.

The atmosphere was now relaxed and festive. They drank champagne with the

goose, and brandy with the Christmas pudding. Ives, Murchison and Craigie talked

almost without pause; the others were happy to listen. Carlsen was oddly tired. He felt as

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LifeforceoriginallypublishedasTheSpaceVampiresbyColinWilsona.b.e-bookv3.0/NotesatEOFBackCover:WILLTHEEARTHEVERBETHESAME?Thederelictspaceshipwasvast,andlikethelandscapeofadeeplydisturbingdream.EquallystrangeweretheimmobilebodiesofthehumanoidpassengersdiscoveredbyCaptainCarlsenandhismen.Later,whenthr...

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Colin Wilson - Lifeforce.pdf

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Colin Wilson - Lifeforce

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