by Perry Rhodan
The super-battleship Titan had been brought in to a landing near the eastern edge of the spaceport, by remote control. A comparison of the might and power that was embodied in the Titan could only be made by approaching it from a distance. The landed super-battleship looked like a spherical mountain one mile thick, ringed round the middle by a prominent girdle bulge, in which most of the commercial spacers at Olp'-Duor could have been comfortably accommodated. Each of the Titan's 18 propulsion engines had a diameter which was comparable to the measurements of a small spaceship. In this structure of Arkon steel with its concentrated and daringly harnessed nuclear energies waited 800 healthy men. The 700 sick men knew nothing of the landing on Arkon II that had occurred since Honur.
Lt. Tanner had been seated at the console of the so-called 'fire organ' for about an hour. This was the crew name for the master weapons fire-control board. Pulse-beam projectors and disintegrator cannons lurked in readiness in a hum of rectifier and radiation force fields behind the closed hatches of the armor-plated gun turrets. The Titan was in battle readiness, as was the Ganymede, some 3000 feet distant.
This sector was hermetically sealed off from regular traffic. Nevertheless, more and more alien-type life forms appeared in the magnified videoscreens of the automatic port monitor. They stared with curiosity and fear into the face of this giant. The Fleet advanced ship-building technology had only produced two vessels of the Universe Class. The Titan was one of them. Therefore there was no place where a Universe Class giant would attract more attention than on a spaceport of the second Arkon planet.
Rhodan looked at his watch. The great viewscreens of the panob gallery revealed the area in faithful detail: brimming over with all possible types of spaceships, robot contingents, and ponderous freight-handling equipment.
"You've deceived yourself, my friend," Rhodan remarked to Khrest. "The medical examinations are lasting longer than 30 minutes."
At that moment, the mouse-beaver returned from his third 'excursion.' The peculiar creature, endowed with the gift of teleportation, materialized in the middle of the Command Center. As the 3-foot mouse-beaver suddenly appeared in front of him, Capt. Everson jumped back with a muttered oath. Pucky grinned with his one large incisor tooth. Then he trudged on his short hind legs across to the main control area.
"Well…?" asked Rhodan, curtly.
Pucky swung himself with a grunt into the next seat. His round mouse ears still listened to the men in the background.
"Bad news, Chief. They're still in this clinic. Four Arkonides are making the examinations, along with some of the robots. It doesn't look as if they're going to do anything for them. For a few seconds there, I gave them a look at me. Maybe they've gone donk by now—ha!" Pucky laughed long and shrilly. The soft hair of his reddish-brown pelt bristled up at the nape of his neck.
Rhodan growled at him, "You shouldn't pick up Bell's bad language, Pucky. Donk—of all things!"
"Okay, so they climbed the walls!" replied Pucky. "It was a grass!"
"Khrest," ordered Rhodan, "I want you to do something about the negligent manners of this officer!"
"Lieutenant Pucky!" chirped the mouse-beaver, spiritedly. "That's what I am! So it's only right that when I'm in service nobody should call me Pucky!"
Rhodan suppressed a smile. Suddenly, the mouse-beaver sobered. His large, satin eyes became fixed. "It's Thora," he said tonelessly. "I'm picking up her thoughts. She is still sick."
Again, Rhodan consulted his watch. The 8 patients had not yet come back. A robot contingent had picked them up an hour ago.
The space intercom rang. Colonel Freyt, Commander of the battleship Ganymede, appeared on the videoscreen. "Sir, we have a large vehicle on the screen. The sick patients are being returned. In addition we are being approached by a giant thing with grappling arms. It looks like a loading machine. Request instructions, sir."
"Stand by. The Brain will contact us. I have requisitioned fresh water and provisions. A replenishment of the magazines before an engagement is an absolute necessity. You need rations for 500 men. Take everything you can scrounge. The Brain promised to fill our provisioning lists. Judging by the terrific precision of this Machine, we'll be loaded up with everything that a large crew needs."
Freyt made a wry face. In his eyes glinted a touch of revulsion. "But—synthetic food… not exactly my meat, as you might say, sir."
"When in Rome, do as the Romans do—even if it's this kind of Romans. You probably don't have any idea of what Arkonide chemistry with the help of first class photosynthesis is capable of producing. Why should anybody prefer plant-eating beef cattle if such meat can be produced directly in a better and cleaner and more humanitarian way? Don't kid yourself that you're going to be stuffed with objectionable-looking food products on Arkon. This is the place of high living remember? They've been feeding themselves for thousands of years with the help of synthetic photosynthesis. So open your hatches and take charge of the loading robots."
Freyt saluted. The screen went blank. 10 minutes later the robot escort contingent announced itself at airlock 28. Thora, Bell and the 6 other patients were delivered without comment.
Rhodan hurried below. Soon he was bending over the pale, slightly emaciated face of the young Arkonide woman. Thora lay in a piteously helpless condition but she breathed easily and regularly.
"Deep sleep," confirmed Prof. Kaerner. "So the examination was negative. What now?"
Wordlessly, Rhodan picked up Thora's light body in his arms. With equal silence he deposited her on a comfortable pneumatic couch in the ship's clinic. Like the other women, she had been assigned a private room. Nearby slept Anne Sloane, Ishy Matsu and the girl, Betty Toufry.
A permanent medical watch was posted. If the highly endowed mutants were to unleash their forces, the ship could be destroyed.
"Take care of Thora," said Perry in low and dispirited tones.
The toxicologist Tina Sarbowna surveyed him with a penetrating glance. "A few hours of rest would do you good," said the raw-boned woman. "Do you have to make yourself a bundle of nerves? That won't do anybody any good!"
"You're right," he answered absently. "Maybe I'll grab a couple of winks…"
5 minutes later the loading machines arrived at the ground-level locks of the Titan. A hectic spurt of activity began. Tifflor's strident commands practically took over the P.A. system. He had been commandeered as the chief supplies officer.
Mountains of stores and goods of all kinds came on board. Spare parts, medical supplies, special spacesuits, fighting robots, ground vehicles and even antigrav fighter tanks followed. The Titan was stuffed full with tireless machines, as if they were being prepared to conquer a stellar empire. The ship's chandlering and loading lasted 4 hours but meanwhile the Brain had not been heard from. Rhodan was by now impatient.
The Ganymede reported all clear and secure. And Freyt added: "They've brought me 200 uncanny
gadgets on board—complete with operating instructions. Some kind of hover tanks that can float on forcefields about 3 feet off any terrain, with build-in raygun armament. And with the set, I get 1500 fighter robots. Same things we ran into after your flight. Aside from that—all clear!"
Rhodan answered: "We've been promoted to full-fledged allies. I'm curious as to what the bottom line is going to look like. Stand by for further instructions. I expect to be getting some news shortly. That's all."
Rhodan cut off the connection just as the Robot Regent called. On the special screen of the ship-to-land intercom installation, the dizzying color patterns returned. Shortly thereafter, the Central Computer Programmer Unit of the Brain appeared, housed beneath its transparent armor-plated cupola.
Without any transition, the Automaton began to discuss the situation: "A cure for your sick crew members is not possible," the voice droned from the loudspeakers. "The poison cannot be neutralized. Existing remedies do not work. We are not dealing with a vector-caused deterioration. Try on Mooff 6 to find further information. You will
take off immediately. The hypertransition coordinates will be transmitted to you. The star, Mooff, lies at a distance of 36 light-years. Attention! Clarification:"
"I have directed that the planet should be destroyed because it is not within my power to subjugate psychically-endowed organic life to any suitable purpose. Your new data change the situation. You hereby receive full authority, whereby you may take action according to your own judgment. You may lift off—and send Adm. Ventron back, with reference to your command authority. The attack by the fleet has already begun."
"That's insane!" Rhodan yelled into the microphone.
"Purposeful according to previous postulates, less practical after your latest appearance. Give field reports on your progress. I require the complete subjugation of the Mooffs. Should you find that these intelligences are connected with the Aras, I leave it to your discretion what measures shall then be taken. You must hurry. That is all."
"And my sick people!!!??" Rhodan shouted back.
"The sick crew members must be given up."
The Brain cut off the connection. Not a word about the costly special ship's outfitting. No word about the planetary data. Nothing had been said which would lighten Rhodan's decision load.
"Man-oh-man" marveled Everson, nonplussed. "That's what I call fast reaction! Just as a rough estimate I'd say that for me to decide all that I'd need to hold about 20 reconnaissance and tactical briefings!"
"Flight program activated!" Tiff's voice rang in the loudspeakers. He had taken over the controls of the master navigation computer.
The transition data arrived. This consisted of a datalink pulse-chain of 8 seconds duration, followed by a single bit blip. Data-line station III came through. A fully produced image of a planet appeared on a viewscreen, in full color and 3 dimensions. It gleamed in a twinkling firmament.
"So there you have your planet data," said Rhodan bitterly. "I'm afraid one day that Thing is going to get to me! Everson, stand by for takeoff manoeuvre. You may lift the battle-ready status."
Col. Freyt called again. He reported reception of the data.
Five minutes later the giant spaceport of Olp'-Duor was shaken by a hurricane-like shockwave. Although far removed, the big merchant ships began to tremble in their cradles. The Titan lifted off with super cautious minimum power. With exasperating slowness, the Colossus bored into the sky but the power released by its mighty propulsion engines was sufficient to invoke in the spaceport a sense of Armageddon.
Only when it had risen above 60 miles of altitude did the super-battleship open to full power and get under way.
One minute of Arkon standard time later, the Ganymede followed. She, too, was a monster, but in comparison to the Titan she seemed to be a gnome. Which did not alter the fact, however, that the sharp teeth of the Ganymede's weapon system were sufficient to more than give an account of herself.
The anti-gravitation generators for neutralizing the planetary pull were shut off but internally a synthetic gravity field of 0.9 gravs was established, which was close to Earth conditions. The robot escort ships appeared again but this time held themselves at a respectful distance.
The transition data transmitted by the Brain provided for a hyperjump within the great Arkon System, which was an indication of the importance the Robot attached to this mission. Normally any commander took care not to produce a space rupture within range of the complex gravitation and force-lines of a star system.
In 10 minutes the two space giants reached the relative speed of light. The programming of the 5th-dimensional hypertransition computer was completed. When the spacers emerged from timeless hyperspace with its alien laws of nature, they were supposed to find themselves directly in front of a middle-sized, yellow sun, which had been entered into the catalogs as Mooff.
Rhodan closed his eyes against the incredible light maze of countless close-packed appearing suns. Star Cluster M-13 measured some 230 light-years in diameter yet it contained approximately 35,000 stars. Probably there were more than merely 35,000. It was an unbelievable magnificence of sparkling and shimmering orbs. The familiar star strip of the Milky Way had disappeared. Here there was no trace of the normal firmament that the seeking eye might have perceived while looking out into space from Earth. Cascades of light points flooded the viewscreens. Nowhere was galactonautical navigation more difficult than in this spherical group of stars. A clear perspective was just about impossible. Double stars, variables and others with variable occultation and other formations of the kind made constellations unrecognizable. Out here a hypertransition meant a blind plunge into the energy-primed wonderworks of Creation.
Before Rhodan gave the signal for the transition, and before the mighty hyper-field became a total screen against 4th-dimensional energies, he tried once more to discern the target star. His eyes were painfully inadequate to the task. What would be taken for granted in the 66 open galaxy became here a sense-bewildering unreality. Against this background the Mooff star was simply not discernible. The only alternative was to rely on the complicated hyper-mathematics of a race whose home planet lay in the center of Star Cluster M-13.
The two battleships disappeared into a phosphorescent pool of light. Their violent, mechanically precise entrance into hyperspace suspended the physical laws of the normal universe; but it also gave rise to a warpage of the curvature of the known dimensions.
The Robot Brain on Arkon III registered the transition. In the escort ships, their hyper-sensors rumbled.
Seconds later they registered the space-rupture shock of the hyperjump manoeuvre. The two battleships had conquered a distance of 36 light-years in but a few moments.
The remote control circuits of the 3 robot ships switched over to deceleration mode. There was nothing more to escort.
4/ HELL PLANET
His Eminence, Vetron of the House of Tatstran, Admiral of the Greater Empire, Chief of Space Fleet Formation ZL-ARK-86, was among those few remaining younger Arkonides who still possessed a trace of the old energy that had once been taken for granted by the men of the Great Expansion Era. He nevertheless was fond of the simultan game and other decadent traditions, which had been customary not exclusively in the court of the Emperor. But otherwise he was by Arkonide standards an unusually severe man with sharp-cut features and a penetrating mind.
Vetron had acquired the transparent manner of undisguised self-discrimination. Of late a certain pleasure had been found in the Crystal World, in grinding one's inadequacy through the mill of ingenious irony in the most elegant and polished form.
Fleet Formation ZL-ARK-86 moved in converging orbits over the 6th planet of the star Mooff. Two hundred spaceships, ranging from small to medium-sized and a few heavy-class vessels, had materialized in the system and were prepared according to precise planning to open the attack very shortly.
The sun Mooff possessed only 7 planets. Number 6, the home of the amorphous, jellyfish-like monsters with their fair telepathic faculties and their essentially weaker traces of hypnotic suggestion, was a reddish glowing giant planet with a frightfully high-pressure methane-ammonia atmosphere. It was 90,000 miles in diameter with a gravitic field of 2.8 gravs.
It was cold on this world. Giant oceans of pure ammonia covered the surface. The sparse outcroppings of land could hardly be claimed to be mountains. Here the super-heavy gravity had worked its inevitable effect. Fierce hurricanes raged within this poisonous gas shell, in which chemical processes occurred that human beings could only duplicate in special laboratories. This was a planet of natural high-pressure chemistry, which also included super-cooling, or natural cryogenics.
The ordered attack had begun one hour ago, by Arkon standard time. To the unfeeling callous Robot on Arkon III, this giant world, of no practical use to humans anyway, served merely as an exercise and a warning.
The indigenous Mooffs, who were manifestly methane-ammonia breathers with pressure-compensating organs and a completely alien metabolism, were of no importance to the interests of the Empire. Nor was
a subjugation of these intelligences, in the sense of a prolonged colonization development, suitable in view of their parapsychic faculties. In spite of this, however, they had entered dangerously into the political affairs of the stellar empire. These were sufficient grounds for the Robot to set the destruction of this world in motion. It was hard and inhumanly conceived, absolutely unrighteous and unworthy of humanity—but the Robot Regent was not a member of humanity!
The attack, now more than an hour old, had begun with the arrival of the smaller fleet units in the upper atmospheric strata, where they opened up first with fire from their pulse-beamers. The sun-bright fingers of energy whipped with a thunder through the highly compressed gases until they fanned out over the surface areas and produced glowing seas.
First of all, Vetron intended to run a fleet manoeuvre using conventional energy-beam ordnance, whereby he had in mind testing the reaction efficiency and coordination of the individual commanders and their unit leaders at the same time.
Over the dense poisonous atmosphere of Mooff 6 hung destruction in the form of spherical spaceships, among which were 3 spacers of the 2500-foot diameter Empire Class. Vetron's non-robotic, living crews had been recruited from the Naats, who were colonial auxiliaries having 3 eyes. Their Arkonide commando hypno-schooling had been completed.
Suddenly in the midst of these manoeuvrings a tremendous hypertransition warp-wave was felt. Within dangerous proximity, 2 giant ships burst out of hyperspace and hurtled at top speed toward the slowly orbiting fleet formation. Before Vetron could recover from his surprise, there appeared on the viewscreen of his flagship the lean, hard-lined features of an alien. Least of all did Vetron like in this face the icy grey eyes under the high forehead. The stranger spoke perfect Arkonide without, a trace of accent.
"You have understood me correctly," the hard, cold tones rang from the speakers of the Empire Class battleship, "that was an order!" A deep cleft had appeared between the brows of the alien commander. "Cease firing, break orbit, assemble and disappear! Did you understand that?"
