by Perry Rhodan
Keklos remained silent. Not a word, no sudden outcry gave expression to his triumph. Before his eyes the path was indicated which would make it possible for him, even tomorrow, to promise the Aras a 30% prolongation of life!
And in a hundred years, thought Keklos, I will still be the Chief Biologist—and in a hundred years I will have found the secret of eternal life! It's a shame I couldn't obtain this Thora for experimental purposes. Her cell condition would have interested me, and the fact that this woman, in contrast to most of the Arkonides, still possesses initiative. Without Arkonides from the highest social strata, I won't be able to complete my latest test series. First thing tomorrow I'll order 10 of them from Aralon. They have enough eligible material lying around in their hospitals...
He leaned back and rubbed his tired eyes. A 178-year research project had reached the end of its first phase today. Chief Biologist Keklos already saw the Aras as the successors to the Arkonides, taking over rulership of the Empire in Star Cluster M-13.
For him, Perry Rhodan ceased to be a factor to consider.
• • •
On board Topthor's flagship, the hypercom receiver sounded. By chance, the old Mounder happened to be in the Control Central. He turned around, recognized that the message was coming in on Talamon's frequency and let out a bellow when Talamon's laughing old face came into focus on the screen.
"By all the gods, Talamon, where in the devil have you and your ships been hiding? Half the Milky Way is looking for you! I've been searching for you, and Headquarters, too!"
Talamon's laughter lingered, then changed to a crafty grin. "Topthor, I'm cutting in the scramble coder, using password 'Obsian'."
At the same moment, Topthor's intuition came into play. He took a look around the Control Center. "Get out of here!" he ordered his clan followers.
The last of these had hardly left the Control Central of the battleship before he turned to an ancillary console of the hypercom and adjusted certain controls to accommodate the password Obsian. Now Talamon's report came through clearly. Topthor listened with interest to what his best friend had to tell him. He did not take offense that Talamon, in spite of using a scramble-coded hypercom transmission, was nevertheless cautious and even left certain innuendos dangling in the air.
"Isn't there some way I can get a piece of this business, Talamon?" Topthor bored carefully toward the fountain of gold that Talamon had alluded to in his paraphrased report.
"That's why I'm calling you now, Old Man," and Talamon grinned at him from the viewscreen. "All you're going to have to come up with is a hundred million in cash in order to make 5 times that much in a month!"
Suddenly old Topthor wasn't smiling. "A hundred million! Where do you think I'm going to get that kind of money?"
Topthor the Mounder was known everywhere as a miser and a hoarder. Together with his clan he counted among the Nabobs of Star Cluster M-13—those who had made it rich in far ventures and come home to keep it all. He could have shaken a hundred million out of his left sleeve but the shrewd, cunning oldster was merely gracious at all times, without any expenditure of money.
Talamon did not hard sell him. "I'll be landing in 18 hours. Until then you can think over whether you want to come in with me in this business or not. Otherwise, old friend, I'll make the deal with somebody else."
Talamon guarded himself from letting out one word about the Arkon T-steel on Honur. Now he fell back on his concocted cover-up: "Topthor, it wasn't laziness that kept me from answering all the calls that reached me. All we need is for somebody to intercept our conversation, even now—and if I had answered your search call just once, everybody else would have known in a few hours where I had hidden out with my fleet! Topthor, I have in my hands the business deal of my life. Old boy, think it over. You have 18 hours. Over and out—!"
Talamon's image faded from the screen. Topthor stared pensively before him.
To risk 100 million and receive in return 500 million without firing a shot, without putting a single fighter ship onto the game board and for once without having to pull the Springers' hot chestnuts out of their stellar fires...
Topthor got to his feet sullenly. "Why didn't Talamon give me even 5 minutes to decide? Of course I would have bought in on the deal. A curse on this clan gathering here—I don't think I like the idea any more! 500 million in one month without having to risk my life? My dear Aras, in your last visit, you were a bit too friendly! I'm going to disappoint you badly. I am not your Council's whip. You'll have to fight your own battles to win over the old hollow heads! I have more important things to do—such as picking up a little sum of 500 million! Forbidden planets and shrinking suns! Why with this I could even forget Perry Rhodan! If I only knew what this colossal deal of Talamon's consisted of—!"
• • •
Perry Rhodan had intercepted Talamon's hypercom transmission. At the same time it was a prearranged signal for him, to the effect that Talamon's smallest spaceship would arrive in an hour to take on board a Gazelle-class scoutship along with the mutants.
Bell left his co-pilot seat. "I'll get ready," he said contentedly. "The mutants have also been briefed already..."
6/ HYPERCOMFUSION!
Laros, the 18th moon of the planet Gom, was an oxygen world and in its diameter and gravity it was similar to the Earth.
Two great oceans separated the flat continents from one another. There, were only 8 large cities on Laros, which by Arkonide standards were of no significance. With their hospital tracts they served as cloaks of camouflage which the Aras used to conceal their subterranean places of research. Much more intensively than on Aralon, Laros had been developed into one big system of caverns and beneath the moon's harmless-appearing surface 3,000,000 Ara medical men carried on experiments that the Galaxy must not know about under any circumstances.
The Master Council, the highest court that the individual physicians received their instructions from, had ordered for Laros and its secret laboratories that each Ara, once he entered the cave system below, would have to make his dwelling there until his death! Only Chief Biologist Keklos and 5 of his closest assistants were exempt from this law.
The physicians and medical men working above in the hospital areas had no idea that beneath their feet more than 3,000,000 colleagues worked in life-long slavery, conducting experiments all aimed at but one objective: to one day convert the domain of the Arkonides into an Empire of the Aras!
Chief Biologist Keklos was officially head of all hospital installations on Laros, where only sicknesses related to disturbances of the inorganic metabolism were handled exclusively. He received in his office a biochemist named Tragh, a young man with prematurely wasted features.
Tragh's gaze wavered. Four weeks ago he had been transferred to Laros as a punishment, having in fact just barely escaped a death penalty. But he still had more to fear from the courts. Three other crimes had as yet remained undiscovered. But he thought about them when he received the order to come to the Chief Biologist, Keklos.
And now he stood before this powerful, tremendously influential man, who was the uncrowned Lord of Laros. Keklos did not leave him in any doubt as to why he had been summoned. He presented to Tragh the details concerning the very 3 crimes that he had thought were undiscovered.
"Stop shaking, you wretch!" Keklos thundered at him. "I could turn you over to the tender mercies of a converter but I'm going to give you one more chance, Tragh! Now listen..."
"The ships of the Springers and the Mounders are arriving on Laros in a constant stream. All crews realize that a landing here automatically puts them under quarantine until one of our medical commissioners has been on board and determined that the crew is healthy and the ship is not a germ carrier. We have been forced to impose this restriction because of the Exsar incident. Surprisingly, the 3-hour convulsion sickness broke out on that planet and, as you know, for some incomprehensible reason the Aras have been given the blame.
"I want you to take part immediately in the
inspection of the landed ships, as a biochemist. But your principal assignment is not connected with giving support to the commission in the course of their work.
Instead, in 3 of the ships I want you to place one of these capsules you see on my desk—into the air-conditioning intake system."
"If you take care of this task to my satisfaction, then I am in a position afterward to obtain clemency for you from the Master Council. As soon as I have left this room, come to my desk and take the 3 capsules; then go to my light-board and commit to memory every detail you see noted there!"
Keklos concluded his commands with an inhuman threat: "If you should make the slightest mistake, Tragh, you will have the adventure of landing as an experimental subject in one of our plague-research departments!"
In shocked dismay, Tragh stared after the horrible little man. He did not believe one word the Chief said. He suspected that he was now a candidate for death. But this served to fill him with the desperation of a madman compelled to clutch at the final straw. He ran to the desk and snatched up the 3 capsules greedily. He concealed them surreptitiously and studied what was written on the light-board. Only then was he able to see through the terrible plan of the Chief Biologist!
• • •
Bell put in an emergency call. He was already with the mutants on Talamon's smallest ship, which had come to fly them to the TAL 6.
"What's up?" asked Perry calmly over the radio connection.
"Oh nothing much," began Bell, and whenever he started that way the rest of it was sure to be heavy, "but were you aware that Laros is a main stronghold of the poison mixers, Perry? That place is under complete jurisdiction of Aras! I just happen to be reading here an edict of quarantine..."
"Just a second, Bell."
On Bell's screen, Perry was seen to turn around and Bell caught his question: "Khrest, didn't you know that?"
Khrest, a top scientist in the Arkon Empire, shook his head. "300 years ago Laros was only an insignificant Arkon base, Rhodan..."
Bell heard his friend gasp. Perry Rhodan turned again to the screen. His face expressed deepest concentration under a suppressed tension. With his unfailing instinct he appeared to sense trouble. Bell also. Behind this quarantine notice, something was decidedly fishy! Bell let loose then with his angry suspicions. His voice became sharp when he mentioned the planet Exsar and then read the high-sounding phrases of the Aras.
"Bell, when did you get this quarantine notice?"
Reginald Bell understood why Perry asked the question. Rhodan was beginning to distrust Talamon. And for this reason he was quick to answer: "This instruction isn't 15 minutes old. It just came fluttering in from Laros over the hypercom."
"Okay." Perry nodded in response. "Then you already know how you and the mutants will have to conduct yourselves after the landing, Bell."
"Very nicely put, Perry," grinned back the heavyset one. "I'm not the least worried about us but what are Talamon's clansmen going to tell the Ara commission when they're standing in front of the Gazelle?"
"Well, friend, is it absolutely necessary for them to see the Gazelle?" asked Perry softly, and cut off the connection.
Bell's strong rebuttal didn't get through...
• • •
Laros possessed an astonishingly large spaceport of first-class construction. Almost 4000 square miles in extent, it offered room for a medium-sized fleet and the landing surface was so solid that even ships of the Arkonide Universe class could land here without using their antigrav fields.
Bell stood beside Talamon the patriarch in front of the large viewscreen and examined the tremendous spaceport in amazement. The whole layout filled him with certain misgivings but in contrast to his normal habit he did not express himself. Whoever understood Bell knew that his silent moods were the same as a threat.
The hypercom speaker blared. A call from Laros. It was an order not to land. Contagion danger on Laros!
"Why are you laughing, Bell?" asked Talamon, who was usually the first to be suspicious about anything.
Bell sneered scornfully. "Because they must have pulled that gag out of the mothballs! It's no wonder that these poison peddlers can't think of anything better to do; these Aras are just busy from morning to night spreading their germs around. I hope I get a chance down here to wipe out Gegul!" He couldn't forget the crime that Gegul had perpetrated on the planet Exsar. In the computer archives of the Titan he had familiarized himself with all the gory details concerning the '3-hour convulsion sickness'.
Bell was a goodnatured person. People who knew his soft spots could wrap him around their fingers but lot the slightest infraction of the code of ethics occur and the fun was over. Gegul's unprecedented action had been one of the most unethical of crimes and it was an expression of Bell's nature that he wanted to get his hands on this man.
• • •
As the Ara fighter robots lined up, in front of the 3 great locks of the Springer spaceship XUL 2, every Galactic Trader and Mounder fled the vicinity of the vessel. An Ara ambulance ship raced to the scene and hovered over the cylindrical hull of the Springer craft. Uninterruptedly it broadcast the "contagion" alarm, which was everywhere feared as the most dreaded signal in the entire Star Cluster M-13. The alarm was emitted acoustically, optically and vibrationally.
The small ambulance ship had hardly traversed half of the great spaceport before 5 large vessels appeared. They came to a stop above the XUL 2 and generated a defense screen around the long ship. Shortly thereafter a gigantic, major-class Ara ship appeared. It took a stationary position exactly above the XUL 2. Slowly an opening appeared along the keel, almost 1000 feet long and 200 feet wide. It seemed like the gaping maw of a monster, ready to devour the infected XUL 2.
Hardly had the last section of the hole gaped open than the 5 other craft isolating the XUL 2 with the defense screen disappeared. Slowly the vast ship with its yawning aperture lowered vertically. When it was within 150 feet of the Springer ship, the latter detached itself from the surface, lifted up by mighty tractor beams, and was pulled through the opening in the Ara ship.
Soundlessly the great maw in the belly of the monster closed again. Like shutters, section after section came back into place. It was a ghastly scene. On board hundreds of spacers lying around the periphery of the vast port, the rescue action of the Aras had been followed on television screens—an Ara-broadcast of the scene. The commentator carefully avoided any intimation of self-praise. There was a dissolve transition into one of the laboratories.
Glistening apparatuses, unfamiliar to Springer and Mounder alike, sparkled from the screen.
The ascetic face of an Ara appeared. His gaze hypnotized. He spoke slowly, sometimes hesitantly. He described the disease that had been discovered on board the XUL 2: "The contagion is known to us and we have the preparations at our disposal with which to combat it successfully." His tone of voice remained even throughout. What he said sounded unassuming and modest. The speech made a tremendous impression on all who sat before their screens and watched. "I am sorry to announce that the XUL 2 was the third case we discovered today and we were thus forced to isolate the vessel. But we are happy to assure you that the 3 sick patriarchs will be returned to a state of health in time to take part in the meetings. May I then bid you good day and wish you a very happy sojourn on Laros!"
With this the broadcast came to an end.
For biochemist Tragh, his career and his life came to a close.
He was about to leave the XUL 2 with the Commission in order to accompany them on board the Ara ship that was demarcating the isolation area around the allegedly contaminated cylindrical vessel. Suddenly, he was blocked from entering the exit lock by two Aras. In that moment he was aware of his danger. He looked around for help but the broad passage of the XUL 2 was empty. No one heard the hissing of the two rayguns. The murderers concealed their instruments of death in their pockets and, with peaceful smiles, departed from the Springer ship. They were not members of the Commission; they were
officials from the Security Department.
When they entered the Ara ship's control office, the larger of the two men indifferently handed in a plastic foil sheet. "The assignment has been taken care of," he said curtly.
The man who received the sheet commented: "That's the second case this year now an Ara has sold medications to Arkonides before they were officially released for distribution. This Targh was a 4-time offender. Well, this certainly seems to balance the accounts!"
• • •
Talamon had landed on Laros with his flagship TAL 6. Topthor had arranged for his friend to bring his ship down next to his own spacer. The Ara Commission was just leaving.
Bell and the mutants finally came out of their hiding place with angry faces. They had only had to stay there for a half-hour. What had been taken for a major emergency prior to their landing on Laros had in actuality turned out to be a farce.
"It was a swindle!" Bell grumbled to Talamon. "The Aras are not a bit interested in the state of your health. These poison-pot mixers are only trying to set up a 'good weather' front and they're trying to brush their big mistake on Exsar under the carpet. Well, Talamon, can you say the Commissioners have given any of you an honest examination?"
Talamon could only stare at Bell in amazement. The pace that this being from the mysterious Earth set for him was a bit too fast. He was finally coming to understand how Perry Rhodan had managed with a handful of men to steal away the Titan from Arkon. But he still didn't know what his guests planned to do here on Laros. Neither Perry Rhodan nor this Reginald Bell had briefed him and the mutants who sat silently behind him did not seem to react to questioning.
Talamon comprehended least of all what this little girl was doing among the grownup Earth beings. He glanced at Betty Toufry repeatedly and Talamon, who was himself the father of a good dozen daughters and sons, could not suppress a certain fatherly kindness toward her.
