by Perry Rhodan
Perry Rhodan
Atlan And Arkon #50
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Attack from the Unseen
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1/ TROUBLE on Trebola 2?
Quite the contrary.
The second planet of the star Trebola, located 4000 light-years from Earth, was a peaceful world. A beautiful world. It was no Terra but it suited its inhabitants well intelligent and non-aggressive as they were. And spider-like.
Humans found difficulty in distinguishing one spiderian from another. Fortunately, it worked to the same degree the other way around: the inhabitants of Trebola 2 could rarely tell one human being from another. So it had been no problem for Ralf Marten to pose as a descendant of the Arkonides.
Ralf Marten: mutant. Tall, slender, dark-haired. Eyes clear blue and oval enough to suggest almonds-the heritage of his Japanese mother.
A man with the power of teleoptical projection, when Marten concentrated hard enough, he could project his consciousness into another individual's brain. In effect, see through another person's eyes.
It was partly because of his astounding faculty that he now found himself a cosmic agent in the service of Perry Rhodan, guardian of the Solar Empire, stationed on this arachnid world unthinkable trillions of miles from the planet of his birth.
As on all inhabited worlds in the Arkon Imperium, Arkon's interests were protected by an Arkonide Administrator and Trebola 2 was no exception. It had been no problem for Marten to pass as a descendant of Arkonides among the spiderians but, even more important, his pose had convinced the planet's chief Arkonide. His story was that his ancestors had been stranded here in the past and had changed appearance slightly over the centuries.
Life on Trebola 2, at least that which stemmed from interstellar traffic, was concentrated on the outskirts of the spaceport. Here Marten operated a small travel agency, arranging pleasure trips and flights to all parts of the planet for sightseers and tourists. In this manner he kept in contact with intelligences from other worlds and often learned of developments which could be of great importance to Perry Rhodan and the Earth.
Closing his office, he strolled along the street toward the main avenue which led to his small apartment. From the outside his quarters were typical of those intended for humanoid inhabitants of Trebola 2. But there were certain definite differences inside which would have greatly intrigued certain people-had they known of them.
Ralf Marten slowed his pace and looked cautiously to all sides. He feared discovery any day now for the interstellar empire of the Regent of Arkon knew that Earth, thought destroyed for more than 50 years, still existed. True, the Regent was a mighty positronic brain, but that only made it all the more dangerous.
Relieved, Marten then entered the apartment building and took the elevator to the tenth floor. He stopped before the door to his rooms and inserted his thumb into the small, round opening near the lock. He had only a few seconds to wait till the electronic lock registered his fingerprint and his brainwave pattern. Then, humming gently, the door opened and Marten stepped in, shutting it behind him.
He whistled to himself as he went into the kitchen and programmed the robot stove to prepare his supper. He used the time until his food was ready to tend to some rather mysterious business.
Standing in the comer was an inconspicuous metal box measuring a yard in length and foot and a half in width and breadth. Marten opened the lid with the aid of a pair of complicated keys he wore on a chain around his neck. Should someone having no business doing so attempt to open the box, a built-in bomb would go off, destroying the box and killing the intruder.
As the lid came open, the device inside automatically switched on its receiver and transmitter. It was, of course, no ordinary radio-which would be of little use over a distance of 4000 light-years. Instead, the box contained a hypercom unit especially constructed for use by cosmic agents. Its signals crossed unimaginable distances in fractions of seconds.
The impulses hurtled through hyperspace from Trebola 2 to the Earth. They were coded and no one who had not tuned in with the proper decoding device could have understood them.
"Agent Marten calling Terra. Go ahead, Terra. Agent Marten calling..."
The call beamed out until it was answered by a confirming signal from Earth. Then the transmitter shut off automatically. Marten would then know that there were no new instructions and that the receiving station on Earth knew that Agent Marten was still alive.
A red light lit up.
Marten forgot his kitchen robot and adjusted the receiver.
There was a message for him.
A few seconds later, a masculine voice resounded through the room. Marten gave an involuntary start for it had been a long time since he had heard a Terran's voice.
"Headquarters calling Agent Marten. Your instructions from Terrania are as follows: you will board the ship of Springer clan leader Logarop, which will land tomorrow. Your present quarters are to be destroyed, as per Plan XXB. Please confirm. Over."
Marten replied: "Agent Marten to Headquarters. Instructions understood. Over & out."
The humming died away.
The lid closed and Marten stood up and went slowly into the kitchen. The food was done but he hardly tasted it. Naturally, there was nothing on Trebola to hold him there but every change leaves open the question of whether or not the future will be better than the present. He had grown accustomed to Trebola and was familiar with his duties. What lay before him now was highly uncertain.
But orders were orders.
Tomorrow he would leave his apartment, as though nothing had ever happened, but an hour later gaseous acids would destroy all his traces in his former quarters. Should anyone in the days or months ahead get the idea of forcing his way into the deserted apartment, he would find nothing to indicate Marten had ever even been there. The rooms would simply be empty.
Marten retired early that evening. He had no desire to pay a final visit to the Administrator.
His mission on Trebola 2 was finished.
• • •
5 other agents of the Solar Imperium had experiences similar to Ralf Marten's that day. The headquarters in Terrania, capital city of the planet Earth, called for them to return. The order came directly from Perry Rhodan himself. No explanation was given.
Terrania, vast metropolis of more than 14 million inhabitants, lay in the area that had been known as the Gobi Desert little more than a half-century before. Today, nothing remained to remind one that here sand and gravel had once been all there was to see. Giant skyscrapers, vast green parks and an enormous spaceport marked the shape of a city from which the destiny of an entire solar system was ruled.
One man was responsible for it all.
Perry Rhodan.
It was he, too, who had ordered the return of six cosmic agents and had made the necessary arrangements. The operation required several days, since not every agent could get away from his previous assignment as easily as Ralf Marten.
A week after the order for return had been issued, the only agent missing was John Marshall, the nominal leader of the Mutant Corps and a superior telepath.
John Marshall, the dark-haired Australian with the narrow, impassive face, had received the life-prolonging cell-renewal on the artificial planet Wanderer, along with Perry Rhodan and other personalities of the former New Power. Although he was now about 100 years old, John Marshall looked like a well-preserved 40.
His mission had taken him to Reno 25.
Reno 25 was the 25th planet of a solar system consisting of three nearby stars and some 60 planets orbiting all 3. The stars themselves, the middle point of this rather unusual system,
revolved around the system's center of gravity, an empty point in space.
7 of the system's planets were inhabited by intelligent beings but Reno 25 was the main world.
About 10,000 light-years removed from the Earth, Reno 25 was an important trading center for the Arkonide Imperium and a base for its battlefleet, as well as a base for the Galactic Traders.
There was no wonder, then, that it was here, of all places, that John Marshall had been posted for sending on to Earth all important information he might pick up. For his duties he made use of a transmitter similar to Ralf Marten's; at least before he followed the new orders and returned to Earth.
In order to pose as a Luraner, Marshall had had to make use of the Terran plastic surgeons' art. The Luraners were a thoroughly humanoid race and were known as a somewhat independent branch of the Galactic Traders-or Springers, as the Traders were also known. They were called Springers because they lived mostly in their huge cylindrical spaceships and, in a certain sense, 'sprang' from star to star to carry on business and trade.
Marshall called himself Probat and was considered the business partner of a very influential Luraner. Everyone knew the Luraner's name but no one had ever seen him-for the simple reason he existed only in Marshall's imagination. As the unseen partner evidently was very rich, his perpetual absence played little role.
'Probat's' office lay in the immediate vicinity of the spaceport. In one of the spaceport's private hangars stood a discus-shaped spacecraft some 90 feet in diameter. It was a Gazelle, a scouting ship capable of springs through hyperspace of up to 500 light-years.
Reno 25 was a peaceful world for there were no more wars in the Arkonide Imperium. And so the inhabitants and the Arkonide Administrator stationed there must have been all the more surprised when three huge space ships-each 900 feet long, their cylindrical shape identifying them as Springer vessels-suddenly appeared that day and landed on the spaceport field.
Hardly had the ships touched down when something extremely unusual happened: the hatches opened and several companies of well-equipped fighter robots streamed out. The Administrator's own troops, immediately alerted, were quickly thrown back and the robots occupied the city.
Then it was learned that those responsible were highly organized pirates who lived from the surplus of rich worlds, turning up without warning here or there to loot unsuspecting planets.
At the time of the attack, Marshall had been in his office and had no time to send the sensational news on to Earth via the hypercom. Before he knew what was happening, two warrior robots had forced their way into his apartment, which was just above his office, and started to demolish the furniture. Unfortunately, they came too close to the camouflaged hypercom device.
Only the office on the building's first floor remained. The rest of the structure and the two robots had been blasted into rubble.
Marshall was cut off from Terra but he could be thankful that he had come out of the accident alive. His first thought was to get to his Gazelle and leave this suddenly very inhospitable solar system but that proved to be more difficult than he had first thought. The pirates had sealed off the spaceport hermetically, preventing anyone from leaving Reno 25.
Marshall sat tight, knowing nothing of the silent command that had been ceaselessly streaking through hyperspace for hours, seeking his receiver. He waited patiently for a chance to reach his spaceship. Once on board he was sure he could take off and easily break through the blockade around Reno 25.
Theory is one thing but practice another. The pirates occupied the Administrator's palace and thus the hypercom station. The connection to Arkon was broken off almost at the same moment a jamming transmitter was put into operation, which prevented even the ships stranded at the spaceport from sending calls for help.
The pirates allowed themselves time to plunder the defenseless planet. Unfortunately for them, it was that same jamming transmitter that sealed their doom. About eight days after the successful attack, the Robot Brain on Arkon attempted to reach the Administrator of Reno 25 by hypercom-something that happened perhaps once every ten years. There was no answer. The Regent reacted with unusual speed and sent a huge battleship to Reno to investigate.
Marshall still remained in his small office amidst the rubble. Luckily for him, no further robot attacks had followed the first one and he had been left in peace. He felt safe enough but an increasing anxiety was threatening to make his continued presence on Reno 25 unbearable to him.
Then came the battleship!
Even before the pirates had a chance to organize a defense, the huge spacesphere of the Regent landed on the field. A division of the strongest fighter robots issued from the hatches and was set to their duty. The somewhat smaller robots belonging to the pirates attacked automatically, immediately revealing what had been happening on Reno 25.
Now Marshall could see for himself how much methods of government had changed over the past decades. The Robot Brain of Arkon tolerated disobedience no longer.
Without endangering the life of a single person, the battle-machines of the Regent restored order. They destroyed the pirates' robots in concentrated attacks and took prisoner all the pirates they could find. The three cylindrical ships were then melted in the crossfire of energy beams.
Marshall saw it all without budging from his spot. There was no danger of any kind for him since he could prove himself an inhabitant of Reno 25 at any time.
5 hours after the landing of the spacesphere, order reigned once more on Reno 25 and reconstruction was already underway. A company of battle-robots remained behind while the rest boarded the ship and returned to Arkon.
Marshall had only one wish: to leave Reno 25 as fast as he could. What else could he do here, now that he no longer had any means of contacting headquarters? His ship stood over in the hangar and leaving the planet was no longer prohibited. What was he waiting for?
Since all his belongings had been destroyed, he walked past the sentry-robots on watch-duty with empty hands. He identified himself as Probat and reached the hangar where his Gazelle stood, intact, and ready to go, without hindrance.
Everything else was child's play.
Having given the worker robots the necessary instructions, he climbed through the Gazelle's hatch and made his way to the small control cabin. Meanwhile, the roof of the hangar slid to one side, giving free access to the open sky. Marshall flew the small ship straight up, accelerating immediately to maximum speed. The molecules of the air itself burned in the heat of friction and a glowing trail marked the passage of the Gazelle as it shot out of the atmosphere in seconds and hurtled toward SPEOL-the speed of light and transition through hyperspace.
Marshall activated the structural compensator. It was more of a reflex action than anything else but it saved him a good deal of trouble. In that same moment, the Administrator of Reno 25 was receiving explicit directions from Arkon for the investigation of a certain businessman named Probat, as justifiable suspicion existed that this person...
The investigation was made and initially ended at the hangar. Then the inquiry was extended into space, where it ended again, this time at the point where the suspect's ship had vanished without a trace and had crossed over into another dimension without leaving behind any clues.
Marshall of course knew nothing of the investigation. He had enough to do in re-charting his course to Earth after every hytrans. The range of the Gazelle was limited to 500 light-years and Earth was 10,000 light-years away. Each transition required only a tenth of a second to accomplish but the computer programming and calculating necessary beforehand took up to half an hour. Marshall was able to cut down the preparation time with later jumps but close to three days had passed before he reached the Solar System and landed on the spaceport field at Terrania.
He arrived just in time to take part in the last briefing session.
Rhodan looked up as Marshall entered the small room in which the officers and Mutant Corps members had assembled. "You finally made it? I'd almost
given you up for lost, John. My order to leave your planet went out more than ten days ago."
"I was held up," the telepath smiled and gave a, brief account of the events on Reno 25.
Rhodan appeared to be interested in only one part of it: the Regent's swift and sure reaction. "A few things have changed in the Arkonides' realm," he decided. "So we'll have to expect an opponent who is in every way our equal and not at all decadent. The Regent has learned how to accomplish its goals. I don't think things are going to be very easy for us."
"Oh yeah?" came an emphatic chirping voice from the background. "That pile of positronic tin cans will shake like Jell-O when we give it our conditions."
"If that's the case," replied Ralf Marten roguishly, "perhaps the Robot Brain would tremble all the more if it didn't see you. Once it caught sight of you, the only shaking it would do would be with laughter."
The previous speaker with the chirping voice drew himself to his full height, measuring then about a yard. He crouched on his hind legs, supported by a broad beaver-tail. The upper body and head were that of, a huge mouse.
"Me? Stay in the background?" demanded Pucky, becoming quite shrill. "I'm a telepath, telekineticist, teleporter, hypno..."
"Anything else?" inquired Rhodan pleasantly.
Pucky wanted to answer but shook his head with sorrowful gravity and sat down. He seemed to regret being such a deficient mutant.
Rhodan restrained a grin and continued, more to Marshall than anyone else. "As you know, we deceived the galaxy and the Regent of Arkon in particular into believing that the Earth was destroyed 56 years ago. We did this to gain time. Today we are strong enough to lay our conditions before the Regent, even though it has also increased in strength over the years. The Regent's discovery of our existence was thanks to Talamon the Mounder, who recognized me when I picked up Fellmer Lloyd a few weeks ago. The Regent was informed immediately and since that minute has been continually broadcasting a call to me. It wants me to get in touch with it. Our robot-psychologists have determined that the Regent must be in trouble of some sort, otherwise it would have reacted differently. So, we will respond to the Regent's call and announce ourselves. That's how the situation stands now, Marshall."
