by Perry Rhodan
By the time the 15-minute period I had stipulated came to an end, the timing since the robbery stood at 54 hours and 11 minutes. I had eight hours at the very most. It was a stay of execution that was driving me insane. Here, after a major piece of sleuthing, we had located both the thief and the device itself, and yet we were relatively helpless! Of what use would it be to atomize the temple and its inhabitants? It was a foregone conclusion that the delicate apparatus itself would not survive the holocaust. And as for the mutants I had been relying on, they were condemned to stand idly by and do nothing. The Antis could well sneer in triumph, especially the high priests.
Naturally this Segno Kaata knew that my hands were tied. I had already shown a little weakness and now all he had to do was wait to see what further measures I would take. If I hesitated any longer he would become certain that I did not have a replacement activator.
"It's time!" said Rhodan tonelessly. He gazed expressionlessly at the large viewscreens, which gave us a clear picture of the remains of the temple buildings. "I suggest you have the robot troops storm the place during the bombardment. Maybe they can catch that priest."
I had already toyed with the idea of holding off the main guns entirely and only using a robot attack. But that would have also proved to this unquestionably perceptive priest that I could not risk a complete destruction.
I decided to take the final risk. A few moments later I issued the command to fire and thunder arose from the impulse cannons and advanced tank positions. I had carefully described the exact target areas so that the main building would still be spared.
Rhodan activated all systems on the spacejet. I barely heeded the loud howling of the energy converter as the antigravs neutralized the pull of the planet. A light burst from the ground jets thrust us quickly upward, where we obtained a better overview of the action.
Rhodan leveled the spacecraft off at an altitude of 100 meters. Not far ahead the nuclear holocaust was raging: a number of armored vehicles opened fire on the subterranean installations and the sun-bright and sun-hot impulse beams burrowed downward. Deep chasms were carved into the ground. Boring inward at an ever steeper angle the ribbons of energy were threatening a collapse of the foundations.
I sat tensely in front of the videophone—my direct contact with the troops' signal vehicle.
"There is no communication from the priest!" came the duty officer's announcement.
I only nodded to him. Questions were futile.
Beneath us we saw the ravening fire of the impulse guns on the mobile equipment. Seen from above, they made a bright ring of fire that turned the night into day for miles around.
"The Drusus could handle all that in a second," said Goratschin.
Neither of us answered him. We knew that we could not employ heavier weapons than these. Even the handguns of the soldiers might have accomplished as much but without such a spectacular demonstration. But everything depended on keeping up appearances. In the temple they had to believe that the loss of the activator was relatively unimportant to me.
Three minutes after opening fire the great temple area resembled an erupting volcano. The main structure that had been spared thus far now began to sway. We saw pieces of masonry shaking loose from the sharp cone of its peak. Wide fissures were growing around its edges. A final collapse was only a matter of minutes.
The videophone came to life. It was the lead officer of the mobile tracking station. "We have an energy reading, sir! Either somebody's turned on powerful fusion generators with a very high output or our fire has caused a reactor to start going out of control. There's no mistaking our readings. Something is happening over there!"
Rhodan suddenly leaned forward. The whistling beeps of the frequency sensor had become irregular. On the small scope the waveforms were changing.
"Watch out!" he called to me urgently. "The activator's location is changing. Atlan, hasn't that priest answered yet?"
Rhodan had hardly spoken before the recognizable cone of the still standing edifice changed suddenly. As it gaped wide open, something shaped like a teardrop shot upward. It hurtled up through the light ring of the firing tanks and disappeared into the darkness of night.
In stark astonishment we watched the gleaming phantom depart. Only Goratschin had the foresight to act. He turned on the fully automatic hyper-tracer and pressed the red button as he swung it roughly to the area in question. Seconds later the ship which had just taken off was on our relief screen. The small craft, measuring hardly more than 15 meters in length, was racing vertically up into space, where more than 1,000 ships were waiting for just such an escape attempt.
"Has he lost his mind?" yelled Rhodan, beside himself. "Look, the sensor shows the activator is on board. Atlan! Command all robotships at once to let the fugitive come through!"
In the same instant the com panel speakers threatened to come off the bulkheads. Personnel on duty at numerous tracking stations were signaling us what we already knew from, our own observations. I contacted the Regent and ordered him to prevent firing on the small spacecraft under any circumstances but to track and register its course and changing locations. At the same time, Rhodan took off after our quarry.
This ultra-modern spacejet had the acceleration capability of a State class cruiser. Rhodan had seen at once that we would have to undertake the pursuit ourselves. The Drusus and the California were on the ground at the Torgona port and the Togo had retreated deeper into space to give the Regent's ships a wider berth. Moreover it was not practicable to use the large ships for this type of pursuit.
The priest still had an advantage inasmuch as he had taken the activator with him.
Our screens showed a reddish-white glow on the out side of the hull because our forced start was compressing the air before us to the point of incandescence. I was hardly aware of the thunder from the super powerful engines as they took us in a few moments into the depths of space. We shot from behind the night hemisphere of Arkon 2 into the light of the great Arkon sun.
Far ahead of us, considerably more than 3,000,000 km away, the teardrop vessel raced onward into the void. Our energy tracer immediately picked up the fugitive's propulsion impulses which kept us firmly on his invisible trail.
The spacejet's power and propulsion machinery roared at maximum output and the indicators of the inertial-pressure neutralizers were hovering close to the red markers. Meanwhile Rhodan had raised the telecom mike to his lips and now he called to his three Terranian ships.
"Rhodan to Fleet unit: the California will take off at once. Try to keep us in your tracking monitors. It is to be assumed that the fugitive will seek to secure his escape by going into a transition as soon as he reaches speol. With our new hypersensor we'll stay on his trail no matter where it leads us. Maybe the priest won't have time for true coordinate jumping and he may do some blind hyper-transiting to get out of the danger zone."
"Now hear this: all units of the robot Regent have received orders to hold fire. The situation has changed. While the 60-hour time allowance is still in effect there can be no direct shooting under any circumstances. Atlan and Goratschin are here with me. We'll try to overtake the other spacecraft." He put down the mike. "What happens then I'm not sure of, myself," he muttered.
The commanders of the Terranian vessels confirmed the message. At the same time I received a report from the robot Brain over my command transceiver. All robot units had ceased their attacks. Shortly thereafter, Allan D. Mercant came through on the telecom. He was speaking to us from the mobile com station near the temple.
"This is Mercant. The combat robots have stormed the rest of the temple and discovered many priests inside. They had all gathered inside the one remaining building. It's likely that only the high priest himself got away although we have no proof of it. The cleanup and capture operation is continuing. One question: is the activator on board the escape ship?"
"You can bet on it! I'm just picking up a new trace on it now. Kaata's ship isn't overly fast. At most I'd giv
e it a rating of 500 km per second squared. I'll be lightspeed in three minutes. What do you make of the high priest's action, Mercant?"
Rhodan lowered his mike as the Intelligence Chief began to speak again. The video portion suddenly came through and his face appeared on the screen of the translight hypercom receiver. Thus there was no time delay in transmission.
"Interesting psychologically, sir. He acted differently than we expected he would. Before trying such a crazy escape, any human or any Arkonide would have made one last attempt to negotiate his freedom in exchange for a return of the stolen property. Since he neglected to do this, there are certain inferences to be—"
"OK, you can stow that!" Rhodan interrupted him. "Such observations are of no use to us now. We're staying right on his heels. We're sure he has the activator with him. Since he knows it's supposed to be a big chore for Atlan to reproduce an alleged duplicate, he's gambled on a final chance. It's too bad it was even mentioned to him."
"So how else would you have justified his returning the device?"
"By right of ownership—as simple as that!"
"That would have gotten nowhere with Kaata."
Rhodan cut off the communication. His grey eyes flashed angrily. I sat resignedly in the co-pilot's seat. Ivan Goratschin had taken over the radar and hypercom tracking console. Owing to his separately thinking heads, the trained mutant was able to carry on two functions simultaneously. And as a pilot he was not to be matched.
The impulse space drive was working at full power. At 75% speol or the relative speed of light, Rhodan cut in the nuclear fuel injectors. The thundering of the engines became more deep-throated and powerful. We were catching up very swiftly but the seven minutes between the priest's takeoff and our own still made an agonizing difference.
Rhodan was calculating. While staring at the green blip on the hyper-tracking screen and altering his course accordingly, he commented suddenly. "We've already come into shooting range but if I open fire on him that bubble boat will smash like an egg under an elephant's foot."
Stirring out of my lethargy I turned my burning eyes toward the echo blip on the screen. Our proximity was so close now that the return beam was showing a recognizable outline of the ship. "How would you be able to capture him, anyway?" I asked wearily. "We don't have tractor beams."
By way of an answer, Rhodan turned on the hyperwave sensor and coupled it with the transition autopilot. It was a new kind of circuit hookup which enabled a pursuer to continue a chase through hyperspace without having to wait for the target ship's transition thrust. "He's going to jump before we get close enough. He's already at about 5% under C velocity. With maximum injection we could get another notch of speed out of this ship but it would not be significant enough. And I don't want to risk any sharp shooting this close to the light barrier. But that's the choice we have if we don't want to rip him wide open. I've got to lay a fine beam into his tail section and cripple his propulsion. Then we'll see how much this Anti values his life!"
Anti! It made me shudder. At the same time I saw Goratschin turn one of his heads toward us.
Ivan was unusually calm when he spoke. "Get ready! Here's a warp trace. He's just going into transition. His first hyper pulses are coming in!"
I slumped back into my seat, bracing for the jump. Rhodan checked the synchronous autopilot once more. On the basis of energy values fed into it, at the moment of transition it would be able to automatically pattern its trajectory through hyper-dimensional space according to the jump configuration of the other ship. But even the new 'synchro'-pilot was only reliable within transition ranges which did not exceed 10 light-years. Beyond that the coordinate tracing had a wider margin of error.
Suddenly we heard a booming report from the warp sensor. The Anti had disappeared from the normal continuum. Our own transition came 0.3 seconds later. That's how long the fully positronic synchro-pilot had taken to calculate the related values of the tracked warp echoes, to coordinate them with the mass of the alien ship and to convert everything in terms of our own transition alignment.
Only 3/10's of a second—and yet even that seemed to me an eternity. Then came the shock of dematerialization. It was quite short in duration and not too painful, which was a sign that the Anti could not have made too big a jump.
Rhodan's bodily outlines shimmered into nothingness. We attenuated and were temporarily transformed into energy quanta of fifth-dimensional space where a four-dimensional body could not remain materially stable.
The last thing I heard was a shout from Goratschin. I did not catch what he wanted to tell us.
8/ IMPASSE ON GELAL'S MOON
10,000 years before, by Earth reckoning, when a decision was made to activate the brain of one Atlan, a Fleet Admiral of the ruling house of Gonozal, so that dormant cerebral centers could be excited into usefulness, a by-product of this process turned out to be a photographic memory. Once I had seen or experienced something, I never forgot it.
I recognized the sun that lay ahead of us. It was a small yellow sun, almost a dwarf star, and it possessed but one planet. However, the latter was a bloated methane giant which was unusable to oxygen breathers. Even in the palmier days of the Imperium we had not established a fleet base there.
The small sun was slightly distant from the main center of the star cluster, the nearest star being about 0.5 light-years away. There were many problems involved with making transitions inside the Empire's star-clustered domain. At the inception, of translight space travel this had been the cause of many serious disasters.
In Arkonide catalogs the semi-dwarf was listed under the name of Gela. According to the standard system of designation, its single planet was simply referred to as Gela!
After we completed our emergence into normal space and rematerialized we immediately looked about in search of our quarry. Before my anxiety became intolerable, the tiny ship was spotted by Goratschin. We had come out of the para-dimensional void within just half a million km from the teardrop spacecraft but in contrast to the fugitive we had still retained about 97% of the relative speed of light.
The Anti's vessel was not of any Arkonide design, which was indicated alone by its outward form. The scientists of my venerable race had never built anything other than spherical ships. So there were considerable differences here which quickly became apparent in the wide gap between our respective velocities. The Anti was traveling only at half the speed of light. After picking him up in our tracking beams the special sensor device also responded again and confirmed that my activator was still on board the fleeing ship.
Rhodan was placing everything now on one cut of the cards. I marveled at my state of indifference. My senses seemed suddenly to have become dull and unresponsive. Even the thought of my imminent end could hardly shake me now. After marshaling every last shred of my awareness I finally perceived that every cell of my body was now being taxed and what affected the cells affected all my functions whether mental or physical.
I was so groggy and exhausted that I had to struggle to look at my watch. Since the theft, 56 hours and 58 minutes had passed, or more or less 57 hours. My stay of execution was almost at an end. After having been fully active shortly before the transition, now I suddenly felt no interest in anything. A weak signal from my extra-brain advised me that was probably due to the double burden of the dematerializing and rematerializing processes entailed in the hyperjump. Considering my state of health and already overtaxed cellular structure, the additional torture had been poison.
I looked down at my hands. In places I could see the skin beginning to shrink. My wrists were showing deep wrinkles and folds. I tried to laugh but could bring no sound past my lips. Somewhere in the depths of my brain I knew that the feared deterioration was approaching faster than anticipated.
Goratschin's mighty figure loomed before me. I looked up listlessly at his two heads. Why didn't they leave me in peace? I heard Rhodan say something that I couldn't quite make out. I only sensed that his voice sounded sharp
and urgent.
Goratschin swung his arm as though to heave a stone. I felt a sharp pain which swiftly subsided, however. In some stupefaction I stared down at the visible part of the heavy hypodermic that the mutant had thrust into my chest muscles. Only then was I aware that he had first opened my uniform.
I felt the pressure of the injected fluid. Why in the world was Goratschin using this antique hypodermic on me? I was not very fond of being stuck by needles. But I soon gave up my feeble protestations. To me it made no difference whether they stuck me or used an automatic high-pressure injector.
I looked down at his thumb as the plunger went lower and lower into the chamber of the hypodermic. The fluid disappeared into my body. When there was hardly any of the liquid left to see, I suddenly felt sick. The resulting giddiness was so overpowering that I lost consciousness.
When I came to my senses again I felt as though I could tear up trees. I sat up vigorously in my seat. I could not recall clearly what had happened prior to that but I knew I could not have been unconscious for long. "What was wrong?" I asked, more gruffly than I had intended. Belligerently and somewhat suspiciously I looked about almost as though I'd been outraged. But then I realized I must be acting stupidly.
Goratschin's two heads winked at each other and grinned in satisfaction. But on Rhodan's face there was hardly an expression. He was looking narrowly at the tracking screen where the other spacecraft was delineated very clearly.
"Don't ask," he muttered deprecatingly. "You had thrown in the towel—just about given up the ghost. Ivan gave you a super shot of parastimulin. I hope you can still hold out a few more hours. I have a question: how good can you shoot, Arkonide?"
I knew what he was getting at. "Better than you think. I've never missed a target."
"OK, that's what I wanted to hear. I'll have enough to do with the controls. The ship is still about 4,000 km away but in terms of space fighting that makes it ridiculously close. It's big enough on the screen and you should be able to just swipe its tail. We still have about two minutes left. If we wait longer than that he'll have picked up enough speed to be able to go into the next transition. And with that he could get away. Do you understand what must be done?"
