Enterprise Stardust

by Karl H Scheer

  That brought her to the edge of eruption. She knew suddenly that the human race held a position unparalleled anywhere else in the universe. Never before had she encountered such candour or such insolence and belligerence. She was accustomed to submission. It was natural for her to expect an unconditional surrender to her immeasurable superiority. But this . . . man . . . seemed not in the least intimidated by her. With his impertinent grin, he had irritated her to the boiling point. Then, to add insult to injury, he had treated her like some silly creature!

  Thora was quite beside herself.

  She sat up erect when Rhodan again approached her. Her furious glance produced only a friendly nod in reply. Could he not feel the power of her presence, or had he simply chosen to ignore it? Obviously, it was the latter. She found this frightening.

  “I’ve got another simple question for you, ma’am,” said Rhodan. “Or rather, I’m wondering about a certain pragmatic issue. . . . Tell me, is there such a thing in your world as ‘money,’ or means of payment, or standards of exchange? You see, One offers it in purchase of certain goods, and—”

  Sardonically she declared, “With a galactic trade between more than 1,000 inhabited planets, we could hardly avoid such a thing.”

  “Very well, then,” he laughed, unmoved. “I shall have to take Khrest back to Earth. We have neither the required medications nor the needed diagnostic instruments on board the Stardust. An operation might even be necessary. What can you offer us in return? If only banknotes, letters of credits, or something of the sort, we’re not interested. We wouldn’t know what to do with them. So what do you have? How about your precious stones, crystals, artificial elements or other such materials?”

  “We have with us the customary items of exchange for worlds in developmental stages C and D. These are tooling machines with automated control units and their own power supplies, guaranteed for some eighty of your solar years. These may be applied to all branches of industry. In addition, I can offer various micromechanical devices, such as portable spectrometers for the detection of element, an antigravity apparatus for one man flight, and—”

  “Stop, stop!” moaned Fletcher. “This is too much for me. You’re going to him everything topsy-turvy on Earth. They’ll be killing each other off just to get a chance at your magic machines.”

  “That is your affair. We are merchants. We deal in only those things which we consider harmless, even in the hands of primitives such as yourselves.”

  “And what,” asked Rhodan, “do you have for ‘genuine’ rational beings? Never mind, you don’t have to answer that. I can just imagine. Then will you please see to it that the Stardust is equipped accordingly. Pack everything that will be needed by Khrest, plus . . .” He paused, with a sharp glance at her as he continued. “Plus, don’t forget the other instruments. They might come to be of great importance. You do remember our conversation, don’t you?”

  She examined him slowly. Was it respect that he found, newborn, in her eyes?

  “You are risking your life, do you realize that? Your reasoning meets with my approval, nonetheless. It seems better for all concerned. After all, who knows what brute response will come from such low—I mean—”

  “Don’t hesitate,” Rhodan smiled. “Finish what you were saying. It doesn’t bother me at all. I shall be tolerant; I shall regard you as one who is simply not responsible for her actions. Just forget it. Please start loading the cargo aboard the Stardust immediately. You may throw out whatever remains in the storage room of the ship. We won’t need it. The payload should not exceed sixty tons, all told. I have a very difficult landing operation ahead of me. Or perhaps, if you would reconsider . . . why not let us have one of your auxiliary vessels? With one of those, we could be back on Earth in an hour.”

  She corrected him. “Within five minutes. I’m afraid not, however. This is the limit of my hospitality. Nothing, except Khrest and some few instruments, may ever find its way to Earth. I simply cannot permit it. I have my orders.”

  “Khrest has rated us one stage higher on the developmental scale, don’t you recall?”

  “And lucky for you. Otherwise, these negotiations could not have proceeded even this far. Nevertheless, I am not permitted to send a minicraft into your atmosphere. The positronic brain would never assent to such a move, and there is no way to override its decision. The computer’s circuitry cannot be tampered with. Please understand that this was not the enterprise we foresaw when we left Arkon.”

  “What was?” Rhodan asked this with mounting discomfort.

  “Once again I regret. . . . Suffice it to say that we did not land here by choice. Our destination lies elsewhere. Light-years from here, in fact.”

  At just this moment, Dr. Manoli appeared, looking pale and weary. His manner was brusque; he fended off their attentions.

  “Spare me your questions. It was more than strenuous. I find that they are not as different from us as I had feared at first. A rather novel arrangement of their inner organs, and the skeleton is also of a singular nature. Yet they do have the same blood composition as we. It was this fact, I suppose—the hunch that their blood was like ours—that aroused my diagnostic suspicions that first minute I saw him. We are dealing here with a case of leukaemia. I’ve exhausted all the possibilities of our shipboard laboratory but the blood tests have proved this beyond all doubt. Two years ago, after many unsuccessful attempts at conquering this seemingly incurable disease, an anti-leukaemia serum was finally developed. Now, I only hope that it will be effective in Khrest’s case. Even though the Arkonides are physiologically similar to ourselves, we must not overlook the possibility that the serum could still have disastrous effects. This must be kept in mind. Yes, I am certain—it is leukaemia.”

  Rhodan was again perplexed. Thora showed signs of being highly distraught as she inquired into the nature and cause of this anomaly. By now, she had dropped her pose of prideful superiority.

  “Let’s get on with it,” said Rhodan firmly. “Don’t ask questions. We’ve got to start loading up right away. Our time is running out. Your crew and their dream worlds can go to hell, for all I care. What a waste! I can’t understand such ‘supermen’ whiling away their lives with the pleasures of lunatics.”

  Thora seemed to weigh it in her mind before answering at last with a face devoid of feeling. “you wished to know what we were looking for in this sector of space. I will tell you. We are seeking to preserve the lives of our last great minds. We have not yet succeeded in escaping death and decay. We have had partial successes, but nothing more. My instructions were to proceed to a planet that is known to us from previous exploratory missions. The inhabitants of this planet hold the secret of biological cell preservation, which must be equated with a prolongation of life. Not only is Khrest our most important personage, he does not suffer from our general debilitation. Save him, please. Do everything in your power. Everything possible, everything imaginable. I will give you any support you may require, Major Rhodan, and that means a great deal. Do everything. If you should encounter opposition, you may call me by way of this device. Your advice will be acted upon. It must be apparent that the combined strength of all your terrestrial forces is but a ridiculous nothing that I could sweep away, with simply a twist of a dial, for all time. A single one of my energy cannons would suffice to change any of your larger continents into a boiling sea of lava within a fraction of a second. With this ship alone, I could destroy your entire solar system. Just remember this. Call me, please, before it is too late.”

  She left without another word. Captain Fletcher turned as pale as a ghost.

  “If I’ve never believed in anything before,” he whispered roughly, “I believe this; I accept all this completely, 100 per cent without reservations. But good God, what have we gotten into? Where is all this going to lead? Things will be chaos in Washington! They’ll never believe this.”

  “On the other hand, they might not be that surprised.” Bell interjected this with such emphasis that Fl
etcher started. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing.” Bell stared with a vacant expression at his commanding officer, and after Fletcher had gone to check on the exhausted Dr. Manoli, he once again queried him.

  “Perry, what have you got up your sleeve? Something doesn’t seem quite right here. Have you made some kind of deal with Thora?”

  “Perhaps I offered her my hand in marriage,” was Rhodan’s dry reply. He now had the serpent’s eye stare of a merciless conqueror. Or at least that was Captain Bell’s impression. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “No.” Bell asked no more questions. He had abruptly fallen silent when robots filed into the room. According to carefully made plans, the Stardust was being equipped from the gigantic arsenals of the alien space sphere. These mechanisms would weigh 60.3 tons under Earth gravity.

  Rhodan went to Khrest. With an encouraging smile, he said, “Sir, we’re ready to start. Unfortunately, Thora still refuses to put the space vehicle at my disposal. Isn’t there any thing that would change her mind? I’ll have to subject you to enormous stresses in the Stardust. We know no means of counteracting natural inertia. Thus we must submit to high G forces during acceleration.”

  “I have no influence over Thora’s decisions, but you will not have to suffer under these conditions. A small null-gravity adaptor will be brought on board. You will not feel a thing.”

  Once more, Rhodan was swallowing hard. He realized that he would simply have to get used to the miraculous. The Arkonides obviously made use of techniques that still seemed, for human scientists, to beckon remotely from the limbo of insoluble problems.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “They’ve made it! They’ve made it!”

  General Pounder, chief of the Space Exploration Command and of Nevada Fields, uttered these same words over and over again. He stared with rapt attention at the gigantic radar screen.

  After a flight of fourteen hours, the Stardust had entered the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere. She had then begun the third orbital braking approach.

  While still out in space, her high velocity of free fall had been throttled to three miles per second. The efficiency of the new nuclear chemical power plant had not been overestimated. It had enabled them to perform manoeuvres ordinarily denied to a ship using chemical fuel.

  The ship had been turned around close above the first molecules of air. The autopilot functioned with precision and reliability. Another failure seemed highly unlikely.

  Major Rhodan’s explanation for the cause of his long silence had sounded somewhat peculiar. According to his account, given via radio just a few minutes previously, some trouble had occurred in the circuits of the reactor; but he could make further details available only after they had landed safely.

  Moments earlier, the Stardust had again come within range of the relay stations in Alaska and Greenland. Its altitude was then only 110 miles and its velocity somewhat less than 5,000 miles per hour.

  Pounder turned around angrily. The little man had announced himself by clearing his throat.

  Allan D. Mercant, head of the NATO security organizations, could not be persuaded to remove himself from the control center. He knew very well that his presence there was a disturbing factor, but this did not bother him.

  He had shown up suddenly three hours before. His companions had silently departed, and shortly thereafter the armoured tanks of the U.S. Fifth Reserve Division had arrived. Never before had Nevada Fields been so thoroughly quarantined.

  Next came heavy transport vehicles with special crews. The FBI (internal security section) had provided their best people. With an enormous array of men and ammunition, they were waiting for the landing of the Stardust.

  General Pounder had been furious. Allan D. Mercant smiled as affably as ever.

  “I’m sorry, General. You brought the avalanche down on your own head. Now I would like to know what really happened up there. The report from the commander of your ship sounded rather off, you must admit.”

  “But there was no need to mobilize an emergency division of 10,000 men just for that!” Pounder had sputtered in a rage.

  The Defence Secretary could only offer his regrets. He had deemed it necessary. For a moment Pounder thought of warning his four astronauts by radio.

  But when a number of conservatively dressed men began to appear in the control center, he had to abandon any such thought.

  Pounder could find no explanation for this. The technicians and scientists were nervous, and the chief of military security at Nevada Fields had been temporarily put out of action.

  “Now what do you want?” snarled Pounder. “Can’t you see that the Stardust is landing according to plan?”

  “No longer,” Mercant said with emphasis. The friendly smile was gone now. “Deviation. You can see for yourself. What is that supposed to mean, General?” Pounder whirled about. Just then there came the alarming report from the remote control autopilot computer. A bright light lit up, and the loud hum died down.

  “Contact interrupted,“ droned the mechanical voice. “Manual control assumes command of vehicle.”

  “Has Rhodan lost his mind?” Pounder roared, shaken to his roots. With a few great leaps, he bounded over to the microphone. The video Screen was blank. There too Rhodan had broken the connection.

  “Rhodan, General Pounder speaking! What is the meaning of this? Why have you discontinued remote control guidance? Rhodan! Where are you, Rhodan?”

  There was no reply. The general grew pale. Helpless, he stared at the security intelligence chief, who walked slowly toward him. Allan D. Mercant had lost every trace of good humour, and fury shimmered in his blue eyes.

  “You see?” he said coldly. “I had a premonition. There’s something amiss here. Send out an alert to air defence. Unless Rhodan changes course at once I will have them open fire. Inform him that at this present altitude, he is in range of our new ground to air missiles.”

  In the same instant, however, an emergency signal from the Stardust squeaked from the receiver. It was a conventional SOS without any attempt at code. The SOS signals came through again and again. The first signs of panic appeared in the Nevada Fields control center. Men looked agape at each other, Why had Rhodan sent the universal distress signal? There were so many other ways to inform them of an emergency situation. Why had he chosen the SOS, and why on the international frequency?

  Allan D. Mercant went into action. With a few terse commands, he activated the continental warning system. The men of air defence, who had been on standby alert for weeks, ran now to their battle stations. At that moment the Stardust was continuing its flight over the Taimyr Peninsula in northern Siberia.

  Once again the Stardust changed course. Continuously broadcasting an SOS, Rhodan turned south. He flew across Siberia.

  In the headquarters of the Eastern Defence high command, the command to fire—already given—was cancelled at the last moment. They had recognized that they were dealing with only the harmless American moonship. A hand withdrew from the red button. It had been very close to sending 7,000 atomic ICBMs into the sky.

  This overflight had caused an international crisis and almost triggered a nuclear holocaust. Marshal Petronsky stared silently at the screens of his infrared stations. In its mad descent, the Stardust flew south over the Siberian steppes. Computers were calculating the probable point of landing from moment to moment. If the American vessel kept to the same course and held its velocity of fall, it would come down in the vicinity of the Sino-Mongolian border, somewhere in the middle of the central Gobi. Marshal Petronsky could have shot down the ship with no particular difficulty. Yet, being a practical man, he abandoned such a course of action.

  The giant transmitters at his headquarters were set to work instead. He personally directed the operation.

  The commanding officer of the Twenty-second Siberian Army Corps received detailed instructions. Those obtained bv the division’s commanders a few minutes later were still more explicit. The Eighty
-sixth fully motorized border patrol in particular, then assigned to the area of the Obotuin-Chure and Goshun salt lake, were given orders to start marching.

  The Fourth Mongolian Airborne Division, under the command of Lieutenant General Chudak, was put on emergency alert.

  With this, Marshal Petronsky had done everything possible to guarantee capture of the American moon rocket-provided it still touched down within the Mongolian border.

  If, on the other hand, the ship should land outside the border, in the territory of the Asiatic Federation, serious problems would undoubtedly arise. The marshal requested and received an immediate line to Moscow.

  Concluding his discussion, he stated briefly, “It is to be assumed that serious failures have occurred within the ship’s control system. The Stardust is presumably under manual control and piloted by an astronaut of the American Space Force. Our evaluation of radar data confirms this. I have abandoned the idea of dispatching high altitude jet fighters. I suggest we wait until the Stardust has landed and then, and only then, proceed with those measures which seem to he in order. I request special jurisdiction in this area.”

  Petronsky was granted his authority. But he had not counted on Major Perry Rhodan.

  Immediately upon reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere, the rocket had proceeded in the proven manner to the aerodynamically effective glider flight. The mighty delta wings had taken over the weight. As the air envelope became denser, the rudders proved more and more effective. The high velocity lost itself through increasing air friction. Landing in this manner, it became necessary only to slowly and progressively decrease speed. The outside temperature rose to 870 degrees Centigrade, particularly on the moon rocket’s surfaces and its nose cone.

  The automatic transmitters were continuously broadcasting “SOS” over the international emergency frequency. Rhodan had taken for granted that this would accomplish exactly what it did—there was no thought, in any of the capitals of the world, of bringing the Stardust under fire. Of course, all the Eastern powers were intensely interested in examining the Stardust at close range. For this, however, they would need a ship that remained intact. A pile of radioactive debris would be of no use to anyone.