by Perry Rhodan
"You are blockheads!" Now old Talamon delivered his rebuttal. "Up till now I'm the one who has brought in the choice business deals and closed them. Afterwards, all you did was stash the money away. Do you think I'm so decrepit already that I wouldn't have thought of the Honur Plague? But Rhodan didn't forget it either. That's why he wasn't risking anything by telling me where this scrap pile is. We're only able to take a remote look at the graveyard of ships on this forbidden planet. For the moment, there seems to be plenty for everybody. We will take an inventory and make a rough estimate. If I understood Rhodan correctly in our last meeting, we don't have to pay him a thing. We are merely to keep our hands off of 5 large freighters and one Arkon battlecruiser. These he wants to reserve for himself... Now, my clan brothers, is that a piece of business or isn't it?" said Talamon triumphantly.
Ocxal thought of the plague which had afflicted 700 of the Titan's crew—a hyper-euphoria contracted from little bear-like animals they had taken on board as pets.
"Rhodan will give us the antidote. Ocxal. Have you forgotten that he was on Aralon with a shipload of sick crewmembers? Are any of them sick now?"
Ocxal studied his Patriarch reflectively. He did not like the youthful fire in Talamon's eyes. He had to put the brakes on him or he could lead the whole clan to destruction. "If Cekztel, the Chief of all the clans, harbors the slightest suspicion, he will root us all out and exterminate us. And if Topthor gets wind of this, he will forget whose friend he is! He hates Perry Rhodan with every bone in his body!"
Talamon's face hardened. "And to make sure the thought won't occur to you to pass the word along to Cekztel or Topthor radio silence will continue to be in force now as it was before our meeting."
He got up and went to his cabin. Meanwhile he had Perry Rhodan on his mind even more than the 'big deal'. More and more clearly, Talamon came to understand that as long as he himself remained honorable, he had found in Rhodan the truest of all his friends.
• • •
A call to stations sounded on board the Ganymede.
Col. Freyt, Commander of the half-mile long battleship, had returned a few minutes before from a conference with the Chief. With lightning swiftness, 500 men occupied their positions. In the stem section of the ship, the power machinery and converters came to life.
The Ganymede was readied for departure. Only the officers in the Control Central knew the destination. The battleship gradually began to accelerate. The distance from the spacesphereTitan increased more and more. The rate of acceleration was under the control of the ship's positronic computer.
Col. Freyt sat with seeming indifference in the pilot seat and watched the great panoramic viewscreen. The Titan, 10 minutes before, had become a tiny point of light there, and disappeared. Talamon's TAL VI, completely blended into and enveloped by the counter-detection screening of the giant sphere, was in the process of transmitting a pulse-coded message over Rhodan's superpowerful ship's transmitter.
As the Ganymede's receiver caught the transmission there was a single 'pip!' of sound from the speakers. Col. Freyt turned around to his computer officer. The latter merely nodded, nothing more. Freyt asked no questions. He knew that all pertinent data concerning hypertransition coordinates and timing factors were being collected in the memory section of the positronicon for retrieval.
'Pip!' The micro-speakers in the Control Center emitted the sound a second time. It was an answer to the pulse-burst message from the TAL VI. One of the ships from Talamon's fleet had called back.
The closed circuit screen connected with Communications flared up before Freyt. His Com Officer put through the rectified and deciphered pulse-code message. Again the Commander only nodded. The picture on the screen flickered out and its corresponding loud speaker cut off.
Shortly thereafter, the detected location was automatically delivered. A time and place was presented, toward which the Ganymede flew, at three-fourths speol (speed of light).
Freyt cast a second quizzical glance at the positronicon officer.
"33 minutes yet, Colonel," announced the latter.
With the first set of tracking coordinates they had detected, the Ganymede had changed its course to 8 degrees 32 seconds Phi. The ship's powerful inertial compensators virtually ate up the impact of the increased centrifugal forces as the big space fighter changed abruptly from the old course to the new. The only evidence of the course change was shown visually on the panoramic viewscreen. A few distant suns disappeared off the upper edge of the screen and at the same time a few more stars popped into view along the lower edge.
No man in the Control Central had the time or desire to admire the rarely seen entirety of the sparkling mass of Star Cluster M-13. Today it could not draw the men into its spell: They were flying an armed mission! They were heading directly for the ship they had detected and which now could not be let out of their tracking range.
The Ganymede's velocity approached 0.9 fight speed.
Col. Freyt sat almost negligently in the pilot's seat. Years ago he had sat with a similarly apparent indolence in Rhodan's one-man interceptors and had flown the most dangerous missions.
A brilliant flash of light jolted Freyt back to reality; the automatic tracking and navigational system had cut off the Ganymede's acceleration. The vast battleship with its wide-flaring stern fins went into free fall, gliding toward the pinpointed coordinates of the other ship.
Now the optical system picked it up from midship. On an auxiliary screen to Freyt's left, a cylindrical spaceship was brought into piercingly sharp focus. In the same moment the ship was identified. Lt. Feller announced: "The TAL 153...!"
The bellowing of alarms drowned out everything else on the ship. Meanwhile the hypertran-sensor trackers crowed their own alarm. Out of the void from hyperspace 3 ships had emerged in dangerous proximity to the Ganymede.
"That's all we needed now," observed Col. Freyt calmly. But then came his orders. "Inform the Chief!" That was for Corn Control. "Defensive fire with all weapons if we are attacked!" This order rang out at all battle stations. Simultaneously the gun ports opened up.
The Ganymede was ready for battle.
But who were these 3 spacers which had emerged out of a hypertransition and now held their courses locked to that of the battleship?
"Springer ships!" The message shot through simultaneously from Tracking and from Optical Observation.
Freyt shouted into a microphone for radio transmission: "TAL 153 must get out of here at once!"
"Transition!" rasped Lt. Dreyfuss' voice from Hyper Sensor Tracking. "TAL 153 in hyperjump!"
From station Dora-8 came the cool voice of the Fire Control Officer. "Attack from Green 45!" Battle station Dora-8 was located where the curve of stern fin #1 harmoniously joined the ship's hull.
In the machine rooms of the battleship the turbines howled to a higher pitch; thousands of connections were changed, cut, or activated; the final converters began to roar; and the power stations provided all battle positions with an excess of energy.
Dora-8 fired for 3 seconds' duration.
"Our optical system is good!" Freyt praised the men who sat amidship and accomplished the skilful feat of making the 3 cylindrical vessels visible on the special screen. The gunnery crew at Dora-8 also drew praise. The propulsion section of one of the 3 Springer ships disappeared. It had taken a full half-second of the powerful disintegrator beams.
"New transition!" panted Lt. Dreyfuss and his surprise increased as he added, "The TAL 153 has come back...!"
A high-decibel announcement thundered out of the Com Control. "Pulse-code message from the 153! Deciphered text follows!"
Now at last Col. Freyt was beginning to perceive why the fighter ship from Talamon's fleet had returned and was taking part in the battle: This ship from the clan of the Mounders was attacking the Ganymede! Three powerful disintegrator beams were aimed at Freyt's battleship but all 3 bolts of destruction missed and didn't so much as touch the strong defense screens of the 2500-foot s
pacer.
The fire crew at battle stations cursed bitterly in their rage. Had their curses been weapons they wouldn't have left a hair on either Talamon or his clan.
In the midst of this Col. Freyt's voice came over the P.A. system. "Simulated attack only, on the TAL 153! Just slice within a hairbreadth. But I want you to turn those Springer ships into scrap heaps!"
Finally the rectified pulse-code message from the TAL 153 piped through, deciphered: "We are flying a feint attack!" That was all—nothing more.
At the same moment the defense screen of the Ganymede was shaken by 8 hits. A cascade of light flashes flared up as the energy field warped slightly in its effort to absorb the impact of ravening forces.
"What the devil!" roared gunnery officer Bredhus from Bertha-5.
The TAL 153 had faked a protective move, shoving itself in front of a Springer ship with just a fraction of a second to spare, in order to save its drive engines from destruction.
Col. Freyt, who was following the battle with keenest attention on the panoramic viewscreen, smiled knowingly. The TAL 153 was putting up a good front and the Ganymede was laying it on hard. The two Trader ships which were still intact simply had to believe that a fighter ship of the Mounders was taking their side in a battle with the Ganymede...
• • •
By chance Talamon found himself on board the Titan as the space battle between the Ganymede and the 3 Springer ships broke out about 30 light-minutes away. The participation of the TAL 153, her prior disappearance into hyperspace and her return shortly thereafter—these manoeuvres were clearly indicated by the tracking equipment.
"Well?" asked Perry Rhodan, adding nothing more as he glanced at the squarish bulk of Talamon. He referred to the action some 300 million miles distant in which the TAL 153 fired 3 disintegrator beams simultaneously at the Ganymede and missed.
Talamon straightened himself up slightly. "In my clan there are no traitors, Perry Rhodan!" In this brief statement was an expression of that power which each patriarch wielded over his clan. What the patriarch commanded became Law for all.
"Isn't it a curious coincidence that these 3 Trader ships should show up?" asked Reginald Bell but without a trace of the congeniality he so often displayed.
Then the Titan also received the pulse-coded message of the TAL 153. Just as Talamon was composing a sharp rejoinder, the deciphered words came through: "We are flying a feint attack!"
Impulsively, Bell reached out his hand to the patriarch. "No offense, Talamon, but a little healthy suspicion serves to clear the air once in awhile!"
Talamon took the hand and shook it cautiously, breathing a bit heavily. "I hardly believed my own eyes when I saw the TAL 153 attack the Ganymede but—"
"No buts!" interjected Rhodan. "The feint attack on Freyt's ship is the only way to fool the Springers and to let you work with me without bringing your clan under suspicion... Talamon, I think we're still going to become good friends!"
• • •
The longer the battle lasted the more concerned Col. Freyt became about his assignment. Actually, the TAL 153 made it very difficult for him to end the unequal combat. With each minute the danger increased that the Springer clans with their allied flotillas would appear, because the two cylindrical ships that were still in action were transmitting an uninterrupted stream of distress signals.
The Ganymede vibrated slightly. A tremor ran through the giant ship: 8 or 9 gun positions had fired simultaneously. The darkness of the void broke into planes of glistening light fingers that fanned out, shooting into the Deep and striking the Springer ships.
Two orange clouds of fire erupted in all directions, producing a rain of molten metal. Hellish lightning marked the detonation of converter energies and the heavy, short-circuiting collapse of magnetic fields. All 3 of the cylindrical ships of the Galactic Traders were devoid of stern sections. As derelicts they went reeling away in free fall and their crews inside awaited their deaths. It was the way the Springers themselves treated their foes: complete annihilation.
And to make things worse, here came this monster spherical spacer thundering out of nowhere. The Titan was there! The battleship TAL 153 must have gone into shock at the appearance of the mile-thick spacer. With reckless acceleration it blasted away from the area. The survivors in the Trader ships thus witnessed it all in graphic detail. They could understand the flight of the Mounders and now awaited their deaths more than ever.
However, neither the Titan nor the Ganymede concerned themselves over the derelicts. Both vessels accelerated and disappeared from the optical view of the shipwrecked observers. Exactly 10 minutes later in the battle area, 14 cylindrical ships emerged out of hyperspace. The space-time continuum warped in tremendous upheaval at the successive impact of 14 transitions in a row. Each of the hytrans arrivals was registered by the Titan, which meanwhile had again tucked Talamon's flagship TAL 6 under cover of its super-powerful ECM and anti-tracking shield.
Rhodan's eyes sparkled. Suppressed laughter trembled on his lips as he looked across at the hypersensor station. The officer who sat tensely at the panel jerked up his head. "Double transition!" he reported, then passed on the coordinate data and transit direction.
Perry Rhodan's suppressed laughter finally surfaced in a thoughtful smirk. He was thinking of the robot brain on Arkon. There, too, this double transition had been measured and now the mammoth robot sat clicking its millions of Arkon relays and waited for the second transit of the Titan and the Ganymede. It waited in order to finally determine from the transition calculations where in the Galaxy the mysterious Earth was located—the world which Perry Rhodan came from.
Perry Rhodan had out-bluffed the giant positronicon.
In place of the Titan, it was the TAL 153 which had transited together with the Ganymede toward the center of the Milky Way. Meanwhile the Titan was able to use this ruse to remain within range of Star Cluster M-13, in order to take care of important matters before returning to the threatened planet, Earth.
The positronic Regent waited in vain for the next hyperspace transition.
It was never registered; the Ganymede's hyper-compensator absorbed the space warpage so that there were no consequent tremors transmitted. While TAL 153 turned away toward its home sector of the cluster at normal light-speed, Col. Freyt's ship initiated a second hypertransition, which still did not quite point to the side arm of the Milky Way, in which there was a system containing the planet Terra.
3/ "THEY ARE MONSTERS!"
Topthor the Mounder received the information transmitted to him from Headquarters that Perry Rhodan's Titan and his Ganymede had taken off on a course toward the center of the Galaxy, which was probably toward their own solar system.
"Sirger," said the green-skinned oldster with a grim smile, "Headquarters is dripping with friendliness it seems—but will somebody please let me know what's hidden behind your sweetness and light?"
The eternally suspicious Topthor could not be taken in so quickly.
Sirger, information officer at Mounder Headquarters, did not strike a convincing pose on the viewscreen. "Sir," he admitted somewhat meekly, "we still cannot reach your friend Talamon."
"Neither can I!" growled Topthor and his mood became worse. He began frankly to have his doubts about Talamon's fate and that of his fleet. "But wasn't there some kind of minor skirmish yesterday between 3 Springer ships and Rhodan's Ganymede? Am I not correctly informed? It was reported to me that the TAL 153, a battleship from Talamon's fleet, got into the last part of it and fought it out with the Ganymede, in order to give the traders' boats a chance to escape but at the last minute this accursed Rhodan showed up in his Titan..."
"Sir, all that is valid. We have the identical reports before us. But the TAL 153 had to retreat when the Titan appeared and since then has not given any sign of itself. We are groping completely in the dark."
"Rhodan..." Topthor uttered the name threateningly yet with a note of helplessness. "Wherever that fellow shows up there
are always unheard of impossibilities and riddles!... End of message, Sirger. Thanks for the transmission and inquiry."
• • •
The Ganymede had made a lightning swift journey back to Earth. After 3 transit jumps—under detection shielding of the hyper-compensator—it had finally emerged into normal space between Earth and Mars.
Now the mighty Ganymede stood firmly on its 4 tail fins and stretched its gigantic fuselage skyward. Its prow disappeared in the heavy cover of clouds which lay over the Gobi Desert.
Clouds over Terrania? Col. Freyt had asked himself this question and had regarded this rare phenomenon as a bad omen, even though he was not superstitious. Terrania, Perry Rhodan's tiny 'springboard' in the Gobi Desert, which had launched him onto the path toward conquering the Universe for the Earth, was the power center of Terra; for Earthmen it was an unimaginable concentration of might.
Col. Freyt considered this power as the ground car raced swiftly past the heavy cruisers and the Stardust II. The facts were the Earth had fewer heavy space cruisers than a man had fingers on his hand! Against this force, the Galactic Traders and the Mounders had a thousand times that much—and when Freyt thought of the engines of power which were at the disposal of the Arkon Empire, he could only shake his head.
"We have a chance of one in a million!" he muttered, half aloud, and felt himself at the point of depression. But he brightened with the recollection of everything that they and Perry Rhodan had experienced and accomplished together in just 15 years. He finally had to admit: "We have never had a better chance—we have Perry Rhodan and the others do not!"
It was as though a new strength were being transmitted into him—a power which came to him from over 30,000 light-years away, where Perry Rhodan held forth in the Titan...
Half an hour after Col. Freyt's arrival, the first strategy conference took place.
