by Perry Rhodan
Bell stared sullenly at the forward view screens. The red planet Mars was recognizable in the upper right quadrant of the starboard screen. The Good Hope had already reached its maximum speed. Thora, tall and stately, sat in front of the galactonautic computer. Her gaze was enigmatic.
"How do you feel!" Rhodan asked her.
"Excellent, thank you. Perry... you look like an unstable force field that's about to collapse at any moment."
Perry did not reply but looked ahead of him where, somewhere in the depths of space, that point lay whose coordinates had already been calculated by the computers. It was absolutely essential that the hyperjump should occur precisely at the calculated split second.
Thora looked helplessly over at Khrest. She did not know why she felt so depressed...
5/
Everything happened in a flash; far too fast for adequate human comprehension. Nevertheless, they sensed the wild tempest of the hyperfield converter as it built up the spontaneous jump through. On the view screens, violet light became visible; then everything changed. The control room changed incomprehensibly and seemed to be like the red glaring eye of a pagan giant. The control panels and peripheral equipment faded into mere outlines, gradually became nebulous, and finally disappeared completely. The rising sensation of pain was raw and excruciating. At its highest point it cut off, as if the nervous system had thrown an automatic switch.
Inside the warp field, built up with all available power to screen out four dimensional energy influxes, the Good Hope was converted into a structure that could no longer maintain its stability. The phenomenon was referred to in advanced Arkonide physics as the "Sublimation effect." Simultaneously the propelling corpuscular waves of the pulse drive converted themselves to fifth dimensional energy units, since they, too, were unable to maintain their normal characteristics within the spherical absorption field. They were like water that, under the influence of an enormous beat source, must turn to steam, since under the transformed conditions it could no longer remain in a fluid state.
Rhodan attempted to experience the transition in a conscious state. Yet in this instance there was apparently not the slightest difference between the human and the Arkonide brain. His last thought before entering into hyperspace was his concern for their rematerialization. Granted, it wasn't difficult to change matter into energy, but no one had ever succeeded in creating physical substance out of pure energy, no matter what its state or condition.
But in the case a transition this very effect occurred inevitably, reverting everything back to its precise original state and form.
The whole thing seemed to last for only a few moments. The previous relativistic time concept had lost all validity. A reference point or relationship of years could become seconds and vice versa. The brooding red glare became more pronounced as the raw pain returned inexorably. The sharp sensation of disintegration set in again, but simultaneously the outlines of the control room reappeared.
The return into the normal universe happened spontaneously, without the former train of crossover sensations. Vision cleared abruptly; the normal senses took over as if they had never been turned off.
However, the picture reception of the outside scanners had changed completely. On the front screens glittered a mighty star that could not conceivably be compared to the Earthly sun. It was too big and too hot and too bright in its colorations.
Perry Rhodan's thoughts were interrupted by the buzzing of the alarm system. With a groan of pain he became fully animated. Beside him, a solicitous voice rang out.
"Pretty rugged, wasn't it? Are you all right, sir?"
Rhodan looked up into the face of Tako Kakuta. The teleportationist stood by the controls, apparently completely unruffled.
"You're not kidding," he answered. "But what's with you?"
"I've been long accustomed to this kind of thing, sir. Rematerializations are all the same, whether you're dealing with physical or psychic phenomena. You get used to it. But, sir—the alarm system. The sensors have picked up something!"
Rhodan took little notice of his loudly cursing copilot, who staggered about in pain, testing his limbs. The next alarm buzz brought him abruptly to a state of sober alertness. Khrest and Thora also showed signs of life. Reports of all clear came in from the various sections of the ship. Dr. Haggard and Dr. Manoli were reporting over the intercom that the crew was in good shape.
The alarm had been activated by the ship's own warp sensors, which had registered strong disturbances along the curvature of space. It lasted a few moments; then the registrations subsided, and gradually the warning lights died out.
Rhodan looked around him silently. Thora's pose revealed such an experienced adjustment to the whole experience that he withheld his burning question.
Bell did not have such good control. He staggered over to the viewscreens. Expressionlessly, he asked, "Are we there—all in one piece?" Is that Vega?"
Somewhat too coolly, the Arkonide answered, "What did you think? Our ships always make successful hypertransitions."
"A transition of twenty-seven light-years?" Bell swallowed hard, then mumbled an oath under his breath. Without another word, he went back to his seat and started collecting the reports that were reeling out of the control console. So everything was all in order. What had been a world shaking experience for the crew had come off with the ease and precision of a fine watch. No one seemed to be very excited by it, least of all the Arkonides.
Khrest stood anxiously in front of the warp sensor calculators. The fully automatic output indicated bearing on the first planet. Countless green flecks of light appeared on the screens, and these objects attracted the Arkonide's burning interest.
"Our ships!" whispered Khrest, enraptured. "A small fleet. Look at the warp sensor data. More than fifty units emerged simultaneously from hyperspace."
His gaze met Rhodan's expressionless eyes.
"When?"
"Precisely concurrent with us."
"Excellent!" said Rhodan. "In that case, they will not have detected our own warp disturbance. Coincidence, don't you think?"
"I think a mutual detection would be desirable," Thora put in heatedly. "I do not intend to search any farther. Please start the galactonautic calculators on the course equations for the eighth planet. I guarantee you we'll find our research ships there."
"You could have a point there," Rhodan said slowly. Then came the sharp command, "Bell! All hands to battle stations! Thora, you take the scanner controls. Bell, you're in charge of the weapons control center!"
The clamor of alarms rang through the various sections of the Good Hope. Men sprang to their feet and stared at each other.
Deringhouse announced himself over the intercom. His two space fighters were clear for takeoff.
"Have you gone mad?" Thora trembled, her eyes raging with anger. She drew herself up haughtily before the long, lean man whom she believed she actually hated at this moment.
"Maybe," Rhodan said calmly. "And maybe not. In any case, I'm not so crazy that I'm going to go joy dancing into an unknown solar system without good reason. Didn't I tell you that I don't believe there are any Arkonide ships? Please go to your defense post·" He watched her silently as she turned from him in a rage.
"Captain Klein, climb onto those direction finders! Wuriu Sengu, stand by. We will be through the system in about eight hours. There are forty-two planets to cover. The distances between them are very great. Thank you, I believe that will be all."
As he took his control seat again the isolated flux reactors started to howl. Around the outer hull, after a brief shimmer, the defense screen began building up extra-dimensional energy quanta. Then came the repulsion field for protection against materially stabilized bodies. Thus the Good Hope became as well secured as was possible with the Arkonide technology.
The little points of green light still flickered on the sensor screens as before. They were still at some distance, more than three light-hours, which could be traversed under
the Good Hope's normal velocity.
"I demand a short span transition!" Thora's voice shrilled.
Rhodan did not answer. Though she held herself under control, she nevertheless persisted. In the rear of the control room the five mutants sat grouped together. Betty Toufry and John Marshall listened to thought streams that an ordinary mortal could never have sensed.
After a moments the girl said tonelessly, "I hear the crying of souls. Someone is dying. Space is filled with whispered grief and sobbing. Despair, pain, death!"
Her eyes seemed of boundless depth. Bell looked askance at the girl. On the detector screens of the interstellar spaceship, still more green flecks assembled. Rhodan established full alert on board. The positronic fire control system came on. On the screens that were receiving the image of Vega, the great star gleamed at them like the blue cycloptic eye of a great dark god...
Far ahead in the depths of the mighty planetary system, something was happening that was as yet incomprehensible...
The cry echoed hollowly through the control room. No one had actually anticipated what was going on now, and that which ensued overtook them with the impact and speed of a charging beast of prey.
Gigantic Vega, principal star of the constellation Lyra, hung like a monstrous iridescent soap bubble in the normal range observation screens. It was a giant type star.
So it was that some time passed before anyone began to discern the distant hairlines of light rays and exploding light blobs. The wide screen scanners with their enormous magnification were the first to make it clear that terrible events were occurring in the vicinity of the fourteenth planet.
Five minutes after positive detection, the hyperfast field sensors responded. Their shrill clamor still continued. The highly sensitive equipment, which reacted to the presence of energy discharges had not been activated in vain. It was too late, because the Good Hope still maintained its near light velocity. So it would have been impossible to turn aside from the unheralded ships appearing so suddenly or to avoid crossing their confused trajectories.
The space sphere's twin starboard drivers roared into a blazing thrust of power. A small course deflection even at this mad velocity would still suffice to bring the Good Hope out of the immediate area of danger. But then the inertial absorbers began to scream their complaint. They were wolfing in a part of the available power that only moments before, Rhodan had channeled exclusively into the projectors of the overlapped defense screens.
The alien finger of light that raced now toward the Good Hope could not have been propagated at the speed of light. If it had, the optical visiscopes would have discerned it only at the moment of contact. It approached swiftly enough, however, to bring a bellow of alarm from the men in the control room. They recognized this gleaming phenomenon, which for all its seeming harmlessness carried the sting of death.
Rhodan turned up the variac control of the starboard drivers still more. Try as it would, the Good Hope could not be torn out of its course. Even Arkonide science had its limitations; the mass of a near light speed object could not be retarded. Deviation manoeuvres could never be made abruptly and certainly not at right angles. A course deflection curve of 1,200,000 miles radius was all that could be hoped for. Mass in motion remained mass in motion, and nothing could change it.
The matter straining crash manoeuvre was sufficient to pluck the space sphere out of the center line of danger at the last moment. The finger of light, which was nothing less than a sharply focused energy beam of obviously high intensity, snapped past the swerving ship only a thousand yards away in the emptiness of interplanetary space.
"A fine reception!" shouted Rhodan, giving vent to his anger.
The white faced Arkonides stared at his hard lined face for a moment. Then, what could only be inevitable in this swarm of ships occurred.
On the visiscreens what had been points of light before had now become mighty shapes that hung rank upon rank in space and filled the deep darkness with an endless filigree of varicolored lines.
It had been Khrest who had burst out with the cry of anguish. He stared at the screens where two basically different types of spaceships were revealed in stark detail. Captain Klein had one of them greatly enlarged on the screen of the short range detector. It was one of the egg shaped units that were heavily represented in the area. The ship's stern propulsion system generated extremely intense bursts of light, the brilliance of which pained the eye of the observer.
Although these ships were there in great numbers, they were being swiftly decimated by the other ships. The interplanetary space of the Vega system was filled with catastrophic nuclear explosions, in which more and more of the egg shaped vessels perished. They seemed to be completely helpless, which seemed to a great extent to be due to their obvious bulkiness. From the automatic calculators Rhodan had been aware for some time that the alien vessels possessed only a trifling rate of acceleration, so that their manoeuvrings were painfully slow. Again and again the height fingers of light struck the dark looming egg hulls, which instantly became exploding bombs.
"They don't have any protective screens!" Klein yelled excitedly. "No energy detection system, sir! They're snails they don't have a chance!"
Rhodan concentrated only on his daring course deflection. If the Good Hope maintained its present trajectory, it was inevitable that it would plunge right into the thickest part of the war and chaos.
Then Khrest's second outcry was heard.
On the extra large bow screen, new shapes emerged. In complete contrast to the rotund, cumbersome units they had seen, these ships possessed long, delicate, rod shaped hulls but were conspicuous because of their large center bulges. They looked as if someone had stuck a thin pencil through a chestnut.
"Faster—increase the deflection!" Khrest cried in a panic. His famous composure had fallen from him completely. The Arkonide scientist was in this moment nothing more than a quivering bundle of nerves.
Rhodan's answer wasn't needed. The Good Hope raced away from the battle center with flaming deflection drivers, yet still drew fire. Too many of the mysterious alien opponents were distributed over a giant sector of the Vega area of space. Again, when it was almost too late, they saw the lightning finger of death reach toward them. The positronic detection system took over automatically, but no further thrust could be expected from the drivers. The ray beam flashed. In the same instant the Good Hope was grasped as though in a giant claw and whirled off its course. A titanic discharge of energy crashed and blasted so mightily against the extra-dimensional outer screen that the spherical Arkon steel core began to reverberate like a bell in the direct transmission of the resulting vibrations.
In a moment the phantom thrust passed on. In the distance one of the rod shaped ships darted through space, the ship from whose weapon cupola the shot had come.
Rhodan could be seen laughing, although there was no possibility of hearing him above the echoing reverberations of the deflected lucky hit. Khrest still stood before the visiscreens. The flaring crucible of the apace battle fell behind, and the individual definitions of ships became mere points of light, The relatively small space sphere ceased to draw further fire. Far behind it the cumbersome egg shaped ships still exploded, but with diminishing frequency now as new enemy units emerged out of hyperspace.
The last incident of immediate danger occurred when they shot through a flaming ball of gas at their extreme velocity. In this spot one of the cumbersome ships had exploded from a hit. The outer defense screen shrieked its complaint again; then the Good Hope was through. Before them shone the fourteenth planet of an unreal seeming solar system. This world appeared to be a giant sphere of gases of the Jupiter type.
Rhodan finally cut off the roaring starboard drivers, and the Good Hope glided toward the still distant planet in free fall.
"They don't have much to offer," Reginald Bell commented with the reassuring calm of a man in complete self-control. "That was no ray beam—just a gentle brush of the hair. Anybody have any
comments?"
He squinted across at Rhodan, who was just getting up from his control seat. Slowly, be approached the two Arkonides. Khrest seemed to shudder under the commander's smiling gaze. Rhodan was again the uncompromising test pilot who refused to deal in vagaries.
"When we were under fire, you wanted to say something," Rhodan's voice said. "What was it?"
Khrest presented a pitiable spectacle. Thora, pale and shaken, had sunk back into her chair.
"I was in error!" sobbed the great scientist. "I really made a mistake. Forgive me!"
"Mistake? Well, that's no world shaking piece of news. But what did you want to tell me when we were attacked?"
Khrest's reddish eyes implored. He was greatly disturbed. "Those long, rod shaped ships with the conspicuous center bulge—! know them! Every Arkonide knows them. There can be no doubt. There is only one race in the entire galaxy that builds that extreme type of hull."
"And where do they come from?"
Khrest groped for support. Dr. Haggard led him wordlessly to the nearest chair. From there the Arkonide explained brokenly, "Naturally, not from Arkon. The race of the Topides has evolved from a reptilian phylum. Highly intelligent, unyielding, and fierce. Absolutely nonhuman! They dominate three small solar systems. We call their principal world Topid. By Earth reckoning, their system is located about 815 light-years away in the vicinity of Orion. The planet Topid circles Orion Delta, a double star. The prime star is white; the secondary one is violet I don't understand what the Topides are looking for in this region. They were the very first colonial race to revolt against the might of the Greater Empire. About 1,000 years ago we made several punitive expeditions against them."
Rhodan emitted a low laugh. "A thousand years ago," he repeated. "That's just like you, my friend. And nevertheless you claimed that your people had pulled themselves together to make a mighty research expedition. You know, I can even tell you what these characters are after."
