"I didn’t have the slightest suspicion of it until today," replied the Mounder and Rhodan could tell that he was not lying. "What kind of creatures would come out of the depths of the Milky Way like that and depopulate our worlds?"
"I haven’t the slightest idea, Talamon. Anyway it looks as though we can forget all the other problems that we had on our minds up to this time and we can get down to business. Something has come up that’s more menacing and dangerous than anything in our experience. We don’t know what it is. An unknown danger is always deadlier than one that may be recognized by its characteristics."
Talamon was about to answer but he was interrupted by the buzzing of Rhodan’s wrist receiver… Sikermann’s excited voice came through. "Alert, sir! One of our guppies has put out an alarm!"
Almost in the same second, the Regent’s robot relay station began to glide away toward the Arc-Koor. Talamon noted it but made no comment. One of the Arkonides in his group took a small case out of his pocket and pressed a button.
A voice was heard, loud and clear: "Get back into the ship! Red alert! This planet is under attack!"
For some seconds, Rhodan was surprised and confused. Had he fallen prey to a prearranged trick? But then he saw Talamon’s face turning white and he knew that all of them had been catapulted suddenly into the midst of events that no one had foreseen.
Red alert?!
He spoke swiftly into his wrist communicator: "What’s going on? I want more details!"
"Our reconnaissance craft started to track alien spaceships but they lost them again. The pilots claim that the other ships were able to make themselves invisible."
"Invisible?" Rhodan repeated the question—and then it hit him with a frightening shock. "Invisible!"
John Marshall and Talamon joined him.
"I have to get back to my ship," said the Mounder, to await further orders. This incident was totally unexpected. What the devil is happening?"
"I don’t know any more than you do," replied Rhodan while his thoughts raced and he tried to recall what the Regent had reported to him concerning this uncanny assailant. "At any rate, one thing is certain: this planet is being visited by an unknown force."
"Unknown? Maybe the ones the Regent was telling us about?" Talamon straightened up and looked across at his ship. "But—then why don’t they start attacking?"
Rhodan signalled to Marshall and the others. "There’s no time to discuss it, Talamon. You heard what the Regent said—we are equal partners. Hopefully this partnership will be more permanent than it was 60 years ago. So we’ll be fighting our future battles together and I’m afraid we’re in the first one already. Well take off and wait to see what happens. We’ll keep our Com stations in constant contact. Lots of luck, Talamon. The next few hours should tell us how we may mutually combat this terrible menace."
"Luck to you, Rhodan," responded the Mounder and without another word turned and strode away toward the Arc-Koor. His Arkonide and Springer companions followed silently. Without exception their faces had lost their normal healthy colour.
Rhodan remained behind alone with his mutants. Pucky had already teleported himself into the Drusus and they were joined by Khrest.
"We’d better get to the ship, Perry. That alert wasn’t given idly—it had a very serious tone. The Arc-Koor is already preparing for an emergency takeoff. It’s my advice to hurry!"
Without further conversation, they started moving. Behind them the miniature Regent glided into the lock and Talamon followed with his staff. Seconds later the giant spaceship rose and hurtled into the sky. It had faded to a mere point by the time Rhodan and his men reached the Drusus.
Baldur Sikermann was waiting for him in the Control Central.
"Liftoff!" ordered Rhodan and added a few other instructions. Then he hurried into Com Central and asked for contact with the scoutships.
Minutes later when he returned to the Command Central, his face was as colourless and frozen as a death mask.
Khrest started involuntarily and sat down in the neighbouring swivel chair. Marshall cast an imploring look at the other mutants, aware that he had never in his life seen Perry Rhodan in such a nonplussed and horrified state. Something ghastly must have occurred.
In a toneless voice, Rhodan spoke to Sikermann. "The Drusus will take up an orbiting position at one light minute’s distance from Mirsal 3. Issue orders to have flier K-13 ready for takeoff…"
"Your special ship?" observed the First Officer.
Rhodan nodded. "Yes. Marshall, Ras Tschubai and Pucky will accompany me in addition to the normal crew complement of 15 men. I want to leave the Drusus within 5 minutes."
So far even the telepath Marshall had not been able to probe Rhodan’s thoughts. The screen surrounding them prohibited any penetration. The tension mounted.
"What are you planning to do, chief?" asked Marshall.
Rhodan looked past him as he answered. "Do you know what’s happened, John? These invisible ones—call them the Unseen if you will—they’ve begun their attack on the Mirsal System. The danger that the robot Brain told us about is reaching out for us now. If we are not able to handle this menace…"
He fell silent.
But Marshall had already gotten the picture.
And the others along with him.
3/ CITY: "MARIE CELESTE"
A humorist had once dubbed the auxiliary scoutships ‘guppies’ and so they were called to this day.
The spherical little ships, 100 feet in diameter, were space-worthy craft capable of making hyper-transits over light-years of distance and they carried quite adequate armaments.
The K-13 was hardly any different than other ships of its type but it was also equipped with hypercom gear and a teletransmitter. In addition it had certain supplementary built-in features which had proven themselves on many a mission.
In the comparatively small control room there was not much room for very many crewmembers but when one opened the door to the adjacent communications section the 2 spaces together provided a surprisingly roomy area.
Behind the operating controls sat Stepan Potkin, a squat, muscular Russian with a stubble of bright blond hair. He was a lieutenant and was considered to be one of the best pilots around for smaller spacecraft. So it was no wonder that Rhodan had selected him to be the commander of his K-13.
As usual, Pucky sat on a nearby couch and pretended to be bored whereas in actuality he looked forward to the adventure with keen anticipation. The idea of battling against something unseen excited him although he was not able to suppress a certain uneasiness.
Marshall and Tschubai were standing close to the door while Rhodan sat next to Potkin at the controls and stared at the videoscreens.
The Drusus had penetrated outer space long since and gone into its orbital course. Of the Arc-Koor there was nothing to be seen. Once more Rhodan felt the chill in his spine as he faced the thought: now we are alone and somewhere an incomprehensible danger is lurking, waiting for us.
Mirsal 3 became larger again as the K-13 dropped toward the planet at half SPEOL, slowing its plunge in order not to melt by heat of friction in the atmosphere. The night side was dark and only revealed the occasional glow of brightly-lit cities. The only reassuring thing about those lights was the knowledge that life still continued here. If the Unseen had already struck, there would have been nothing but darkness below.
But the main thing now was to investigate the daylight side.
Before Rhodan lay the opened catalogue of the Arkonide astronauts. Its information was reliable and up to date—or at least Khrest had maintained that it was. Rhodan entertained some doubts, particularly concerning the current status of the data.
According to the catalogue, Mirsal 3 was a world that was inhabited by humanoid intelligences. The original inhabitants had not developed to a height of more than 5 or 6 feet and they sustained their own form of civilization, which was somewhat similar to that of the Middle Ages on Earth. They did not know space flight but the
y were familiar with the sight of Arkonide ships landing here and there, whose crews they worshipped as demigods. On Mirsal 3 there was still the old system of states and nations, which was customary on all worlds which had not yet reached the cosmic stage. Princes and kings ruled over the common citizens, whom they subjugated and exploited with their armies and mercenary troops. The rulers sat in their fortified castles and lived it up. The common man had to work for his mere existence.
Rhodan set the catalogue to one side. Somehow human types of development were the same everywhere. Mirsal was no exception.
The K-13 shot downward and made a whistling glide into the atmosphere.
2 minutes later, as they flew along over a small settlement, Marshall remarked, "I don’t understand why nobody can be seen down there." Their velocity had been greatly reduced to hardly more than 120 miles per hour. "If there’d been an invasion here, we ought to be able to discover the traces of it."
Rhodan slowly shook his head. "You forget what the Regent reported. There are no traces."
Low houses huddled around a mountain on which stood some kind of castle. Medieval highroads wound their way through cultivated fields, giving mute evidence of the limited means of travel. Carts still laden with peasant produce were in the market place but not a person nor any other type of life was to be seen.
Rhodan narrowed his eyes and gave a command. "Potkin, fly straight west and slow down when we get close to a larger town. I’d like to take a look at it."
The city appeared soon directly before them in the afternoon sunlight. The tidy rooftops sparkled and glistened as if covered with gold and silver but this was merely due to the thin metal shingles that were in common use here. The streets were broader than in the villages but still there was not the slightest sign of life. Even at this altitude the city had the appearance of a ghost town.
"Land down there in the open square," Rhodan ordered.
He didn’t know why but he was seized by an uncanny premonition. Never in his hundred years of life had he been confronted with the kind of situation he feared he’d be faced with here. The indications given by the Regent had not been exaggerated, by all appearances. And if even a robot Brain could sense fear…
"I can’t pick up any kind of thought waves," said Marshall suddenly. "Certainly the beings who constructed these houses must be able to think."
Rhodan did not answer. He followed the landing manoeuvre on the screens and waited for the familiar light jolt of the ship that signified they were down. Then he signalled to Marshall and Tschubai. "You 2 and Pucky come with me. Potkin, stand by to cover us with weapons if necessary and don’t let us out of your sight. I’m depending on you."
"Yes, sir!" answered the Russian gravely and he shut off the engine. "You may rely on me, chief. Are you taking any weapons?"
Rhodan nodded affirmatively and went out of the control room accompanied by the 3 mutants. Before they got to the airlock they procured some hand rayguns and a few atomic grenades from the weapons cabinet. Then, a few minutes later, they stood on the surface of Mirsal 3 for the 2nd time.
The K-13 had landed in the middle of the open square. It showed signs of some sort of simple maintenance and had probably been used for town meetings and market fairs. Close to the ship was a vehicle that had obviously been drawn by an animal. The reins hung down loosely as though the horse—or whatever was used here in the place of a horse—had slipped free of them.
Rhodan looked critically at the reins but said nothing. Marshall, who happened to pick up his thoughts, also glanced at the reins. A questioning expression came to his face. But he didn’t have time to solve the mystery of the reins because at that moment Pucky whispered excitedly: "Over there… on the wall!"
They saw it simultaneously. A shadow flitted past the spot, paused for a moment—and then disappeared.
"It can make itself invisible," said Pucky excitedly and he was more nervous than they had ever seen him before. "He simply dissolved into the air in front of our eyes!"
"And his thought impulses?" asked Rhodan as calmly as possible. "Did they also become invisible?"
He did not receive an answer because there wasn’t any.
With ready rayguns they entered the nearest house and searched it. To their amazement they found everything in such order that it seemed the inhabitants would return at any moment. Nothing had been disturbed of misplaced; everything stood or lay in its proper location and position. On the primitive hearth a fire still burned, even though the heavy logs had burned down, thus indicating that no one had replenished the fire in hours.
But they did not meet a living soul.
"Where are they?" gasped Ras Tschubai, who was gripped by superstitious fright. "They just couldn’t simply have disappeared!"
Pucky, who was so used to scoffing at things, now remained silent. In grim speechlessness he stared at the abandoned household articles, into the empty rooms and hallways and out of the windows at the lifeless streets. The nape of his neck bristled, indicating the mouse-beaver’s inner agitation.
Marshall placed a hand on the African’s arm. "Everything has a natural explanation, Ras. We’ll find out yet what all this means. I’ll grant you it’s an unusual situation not to find any trace of the struggle or any clue as to the how and why of it—but as I say, we’ll still get to the bottom of it."
Even Rhodan had to admit that this was very poor consolation. But he couldn’t improve on it, himself.
In the rest of the houses the same condition prevailed Not a living soul or an animal; nothing. There was only the same typical orderliness in all the rooms and an almost expectant atmosphere, as though the vanished occupants would return at any moment.
But the robot Regent had already stated that they would never return again…
Rhodan pushed on farther. They traversed several narrow side streets and arrived at the outskirts of the town. Here the aspect was more humble and rural. The large houses gave way to smaller ones behind which there were gardens and fields and animal stalls.
It was in one of these stalls that they ran into the same puzzle for the 2nd time.
There were chains fastened to the walls which ended in rings. It was obvious that these rings had encircled the necks of fettered animals. And now they lay empty and unopened on the ground in the stalls, all of them in the same position next to each other in which the animals must have been standing.
Who had freed the animals from their fastenings without opening the rings?
"Even those reins we saw were still all hooked to bridle and harness," muttered Marshall, remembering the abandoned horse cart. "It’s just as if all the animals dematerialised."
Again Rhodan did not answer. Pensively he stepped outside into the light of the sinking sun and started on his way back to the K-13.
He knew that they still had a long way to go. And certainly a dangerous one.
* * * *
Lt. Marcel Rous was in command of auxiliary craft K-7. He approached the night side of Mirsal 3 from outer space.
Marcel was a dark-haired man who was high spirited and his enthusiasm for things was sometimes out of proportion to his commonsense. In spite of a love of life, he was reckless and daring and his impulsiveness had already gotten him into many a previous scrape.
At an altitude of merely 1500 feet he swept along above the surface of the unfamiliar terrain. His loudspeaker poured out a ceaseless radio voice traffic covering reports from other ‘guppies’ and the corresponding return instructions from the Drusus. Something had happened on this strange world but nobody would venture to say just what it was.
The tracking instruments of the K-7 had more than once registered solid objects in the atmosphere of Mirsal 3 but were never able to hold their trace for more than 3 or 4 seconds. Then the screens would clear and the electronic blips would die away. Marcel was sure that even ships with unimaginable acceleration capability could not be swift enough to elude the range of the tracking sweeps.
It was equally imposs
ible for ships to escape the multiple high-intensity beam sweeps of the special tracker, even if by some technical means they could be made invisible. Normal light and electromagnetic sources could be warped to one side but not these specialized tracking beams. Even invisible ships would have to become visible on the screens.
But such was not the case.
So Marcel Rous sensed in all this an element of the mysterious and permitted himself to be drawn into its spell. Ignoring all commands from the Drusus he decided to make some investigations on his own hook. With this purpose in mind he had dropped down out of orbit and plummeted like a bird of prey toward the surface of Mirsal 3.
There was a reason he had chosen the night side. Here he felt he had less chance of being discovered by the uncanny opponent than in the bright light of the sun. Of course he had no way of knowing whether or not the unknown foe were capable of seeing perhaps as well in the dark as in the light.
Rous recognized at first glance that an invasion in the ordinary sense of the word had not occurred here. Down below everything appeared to be peaceful and normal. In the large cities the streets were straight as an arrow and brightly lit, therefore unmistakable. Although the inhabitants of Mirsal 3 were representative of a more or less medieval type of civilization, nevertheless they employed electricity. Perhaps the Arkonides had helped them to discover at least this one modem convenience. At any rate, the cities were brightly lit, which indicated a bustling state Of activity.
This impression persisted until Rous decided to fly still lower and come to a hovering position above the centre of the city. The viewscreens gave the Frenchman a still closer look at the houses and streets and at that point he caught his breath.
It was almost 10 seconds before he turned to a 2nd man who shared the control room with him. "What do you notice about it, Becker?"
The cadet directed his attention to the screen in front of him. It took him a few moments to adjust his eyes to the brightness so that he could make out details beyond the glare of the street lamps. Then he leaned back and replied: "Why do they keep their streets lit up when they’re all asleep?"
#58 - Attack from the Unseen Page 4
