by Perry Rhodan
Now Rhodan planned the same fate for Arkon 3—for that ancient planetary body that had been the foundation for the power of the Arkonide realm and still kept it on its feet. Without Arkon 3, the Great Imperium was like a tree without roots. It must not happen!
When I came back into the small officers’ room, the Regent was just then issuing the first evacuation instructions. I heard that the commanders of 10 ships were told to lead their crews out of their quarters and proceed in good march formation to destinations indicated by robots.
With that it was clear that the Robot was acting very quickly. It could be our turn at any moment. No one knew which crew would be giving its marching orders next. I only hoped that Sgt. Huster would not have enough time to finish the construction of the Arkon Bomb.
I stormed back into the room only half-thinking, not suspecting what was waiting for me there. I probably should have realized correctly what would happen beforehand but I was agitated beyond all bounds. After all, I had known mankind for 10,000 years.
The mouth of Rhodan’s beamer was aimed directly at my chest. Three other weapons threatened me as well. I stopped and looked down in confusion at the reddish fluorescing beamed rays of energy. Then I raised my head.
“I’m sorry,” said Rhodan in a regretful voice. “We’re assuming that my last order might incite you to doing something irrational. We’ll keep our eye on you until we get our marching orders. I hope you have nothing against that?”
The cold irony of his words shocked me. I pushed back my senseless anger and made an effort requiring all the strength of my will to stay calm.
“No, tricks, please,” Bell added in a friendly tone. “We know each other, don’t we?”
I laughed bitterly. Yes, we knew each other! It took awhile before I could speak. “So you want to destroy the war planet, eh? I hope you’re also aware that this means a revolt in the galaxy. If you destroy Arkon’s ship-building potential, the Imperium will be like a warrior with his sword hand chopped off.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“More than 50,000 colonial worlds will realize at once that the stellar empire no longer exists. It will lead to chaos and, besides that, there’s the Druuf menace. Do I have to argue with you anymore, you irresponsible upstart?”
Rhodan was not offended, even though I had meant it earnestly this time. He regarded me coolly. His self-control was perfect.
“I’m sorry. The Druuf menace will come to an end in a few months of its own accord, thanks to the continuing instability of the overlapping zone. We’ll take care of the revolts in the Arkonide colonial sectors.
“For Terra’s benefit!” I scoffed, not far from sobbing.
“For Terra’s benefit, Arkonide. I’m giving you the chance to create a new empire together with us. Here, you’re fighting for a lost cause. Or have you forgotten what the people of your race are like? With them you would never be able to put down any internal rebellion. You must realize that the destruction of this mammoth war world is the only solution. Not even the Regent will be able to withstand the atomic fire. His super-defense screens will collapse and the planet will begin to seethe. Beforehand, we will have found ample opportunity to escape in a ready-to-go spaceship. There are several hundred thousand units here, any one of which would be suitable. No one would be killed. The bomb is only a small one and would require hours for the fire to spread out over the entire planet. Everyone would have been able to get into open space by then. The only unfortunate one having to remain behind would be the Regent, solidly anchored in rock. And then our goal is accomplished.”
“You’re destroying the Imperium,” I said haltingly. “You’re wiping out everything we’ve done and built in 20,000 years. I won’t stand for it! What do you know of the countless races who are waiting only for this moment? They will fall upon us like wolves. The non-humanoid races will have the time and opportunity to make their influence felt.”
“We will have to deal with it. However, Atlan, you won’t change anything.”
I noticed that the mutant hypno, André Noir, was trying to influence me with his unusual power. I felt a weak twinge of pain in my neck. It vanished at once when my extra brain automatically strengthened my mono-screen. The hypno could not penetrate my mental defense block.
I laughed mockingly in his face and, disconcerted, he stepped back.
Rhodan gestured warningly to him, then said, very much in self control, “Atlan, we’ll overcome even this barrier in the way of our friendship. Calm yourself now and try to understand the facts logically. The Regent must be put out of commission.”
“But not this way!” I cried out, beside myself.
Marshall wanted to clap his hand over my mouth. I knocked him down with one blow. He went down on his knees with a groan, falling with his back against the wall.
“Better men than you have tried that,” I said, chokingly. “Don’t do it again, John!”
From then on we were silent. I decided it was pointless to try to continue pressing Rhodan, now that his motivations were fully clear to me. To be completely candid, Arkon’s rulership did not interest him at all. For him the realm was merely a decayed system of government without any right to exist.
Looked at from a standpoint of strict logic, he was even right. My people were no longer able to rule a galactic empire. Still, it was terrible for me to have to look on as the original source of our power was condemned to total destruction.
Exhausted and spiritually drained, I sat down on my pneumo-bed.
“Very nice, Arkonide!”
I looked at Rhodan searchingly. He sensed the hate that suddenly rose up within me. My lips chapped and dry, I whispered: “I should have driven that sword in the Venus museum into your throat, you fool! If Arkon 3 is destroyed, horrible tides and quakes will ensue on the other two planets in the triple system. What do you know of the carefully calculated system of opposing gravitational stabilization?”
I looked at him imploringly. Wouldn’t he understand?
His grey eyes were expressionless and his lips were a razor-sharp line. He was thinking of Terra, of course!
One of the crewmen looked in hastily. “We’ll be ready in 30 minutes, sir,” he announced.
I was inwardly growing desperate. Why hadn’t any watch robots appeared? They should be showing up in the corridors at any moment. Bell blocked the door. I knew that if I attempted to escape, he would shoot.
200 ADVENTURES FROM NOW
H.G. Ewers instigates
Mission: Teleport Sphere
6/ DESTINY APPOINTS ATLAN
“Faster, faster!” ordered the three-meter-tall combat robot with the maximum loudness of its biomechanical speech organs.
We had been running for 10 minutes now. We had even been required to trot on the express roll-band, even though that means of mass transportation glided along its invisible cylindrical rollers at 40 kilometers an hour.
Now we were running towards the iridescently lit entrance of a giant antigrav shaft. I had already suspected that the Regent would not have us taken up to the surface by the way we were familiar with but that it could decide to send the many crews up through the huge spaceship lifts in the adjacent underground dockyards had surprised me.
Even so, the Robot had been careful enough to barricade the wide passages between the fully automatic bandways with combat robots. We ran a gauntlet of threateningly raised weapon arms which could discharge their deadly energies at any moment.
Rhodan, Bell and Marshall were staying behind me. They had not given me any chance to reveal the fact that the Arkon Bomb had been set. In my current state of mind I probably couldn’t have done it anyway, although I would have done everything I could to prevent Arkon’s destruction two hours before.
Now I was too weak for that. I didn’t risk anything more. Deep inside, I was even coming to the conclusion that Rhodan was only justified. We would probably be able to suppress the revolts in the colonial sectors of the galaxy later.
I was t
he fifth man to leap into the antigrav shaft. Behind me came the Terrans, determined to do anything. I noticed that Rhodan glanced quickly at his watch. Then looked shocked over to Sgt. Huster, who only gestured uncomfortably.
Then I knew that the moment in which the bomb would automatically go off had gone by.
I supported myself by holding tight to the wall, trying not to be whirled away in spite of the weightless situation. Not all our men had assembled yet. We had been ordered to float upwards only in a group.
“Huster, what’s going on?” Rhodan called to the massively built man. His face was tense.
“Sir, it ought to have gone off by now,” the weapons expert moaned. Someone cursed frightfully. I could not tell who it was.
Behind us came some combat robots into the shaft, which measured more than 200 meters in diameter. Then we were given a burst of compressed air which shoved us upwards and not very gently at that. The huge shaft led straight up through the rock.
I pushed off from the broad shoulders of a soldier and floated over to Rhodan. His weapon had long disappeared. He looked at me, seeming no longer quite so cold and unfeeling. If anything, he impressed me as being desperate. I put my arms around his shoulders, which had the effect of spinning us.
“Where did you have the teleporters plant the bomb?” I asked quickly. “Now tell me—where?”
“Right in front of the rock wall of the power plant. Under the bend the air-conditioning pipeline makes.”
“Right where the surveillance systems would be strongest, you mean! Why didn’t you fools simply leave the bomb behind in our quarters? An Arkon Bomb operates on the basis of a high-energy detonation. It’s obvious that the bomb was detected and rendered harmless right after the timer-detonator was activated.
“Impossible—it was shielded against energy detection,” he answered, dismayed.
“What do you know of the options open to the Great Brain? When the stimulation process began in the bomb’s deflector field, it resembled a radiant ball of energy. That alone would make it stand out from its surroundings and it was immediately detected. A robot troop has probably long since deactivated the bomb.”
“No, no…!”
“I’ll bet anything that’s what happened. What now? Why has nothing taken place that indicates a successful total detonation? Perry, think about it. They’ll be waiting for us up there.”
The following events happened so quickly that we were hardly able to keep up with them. We were drawn upwards at a considerable speed. Suddenly the armorplated mouth of the shaft opened up and harsh sunlight blinded our eyes.
Our fall was stopped by the receiving station’s impact field and the gravity returned. Above us vaulted a gigantic dome of Arkon steel. Only five men out of the crew brought up just before were still to be seen. They were in the process of marching in rank and file through a high-tension barrier, behind which a portable energy sensor had been set up.
That meant it was no longer possible to carry our weapons, which operated on an energy basis, on our bodies. The sensor would probably register when we had approached it to within 30-40 paces. It was just as I had suspected.
Rhodan said something that I could not quite understand. The men of the commando team, also landing alongside, immediately made a circle around him and then Perry reached into his pocket.
He had simply put the micro-atombomb in his pocket without considering the dangers of such an action. The bomb had the flat form of a jewelery case but in
explosive power it was the equivalent of 500 tons of TNT. With a move of the hand, Huster pushed the tiny rod-shaped solid fuel rocket engine on the connecting flange of the bomb and snapped the thin aluminium handle down. With that, the flat shape became a flight-ready microrocket that could be launched straight to its target with the guide rail of the handle.
Rhodan bent over the opening, his feet held by two men, and stretched his right hand straight down. The loud hissing of the chemical fuel was drowned in the noise of our voices. I noticed only the blinding stream of gas shooting past Rhodan’s turned head. As he straightened up with a jerk and jumped back, the unusual missile was already on its way. When it struck, 1,800 meters lower down, there would have to be a devastating explosion.
The few combat robots were still in the shaft. They had waited until we had reached the top. I saw our 150 men leap. They ran like madmen to the most distant point in the dome, threw themselves flat on the ground and at the same time pulled their guns out of inner pockets of their uniforms.
I followed, throwing myself to the ground as well but then I was surrounded by an atomic storm.
The bomb must have reached the bottom by this time but evidently it had a delayed action fuse. Rhodan’s men were firing at the now-emerging combat robots, shooting them down so quickly that they did not have a chance to resist.
Our next target was the high-tension barrier with the portable sensing device. It exploded in a bright burst of flame and the robots standing next to it were knocked off balance by the shockwave. Before they could regain their equilibrium, they had been turned into glowing piles of scrap.
Suddenly there seemed to be no more threat. The entrance lay open before us. I noticed some Zalites fleeing in terror; they had belonged to the crew that had preceded us.
“Stay down,” Rhodan yelled. “It’ll go off any moment now.
What ‘it’ was, was obvious to me. I wrapped my arms around one of the struts supporting the dome overhead and pressed my face against the ground. Then the ground shook amid a terrible explosion.
But only a surprisingly weak column of fire burst from the wide shaft. However, the ground tremors were so strong that I was ripped from my protection and sent whirling across the metal-plastic ground covering.
The shockwave boiling out of the shaft demolished the dome roof and dumped on us glowing hot pieces of rubble that had evidently been raised from the depths.
There seemed to be no end to the fearful thundering. Again we were caught by a shockwave, and a second, this time considerably more intense, pillar of fire shot out of the shaft, looking as though it had been shot from a gigantic cannon barrel, which the shaft resembled.
This was to our benefit and Rhodan seemed to have been counting on it. Besides, the effects of the explosion were slight here in comparison to down below where it had taken place: the liberated energy had naturally expanded into the huge caverns far beneath us. We were only getting a taste of it, so to speak, but even that was violent enough for me to be quite satisfied.
The edges of the shaft collapsed. The last pieces of debris came flying out of the rumbling depths. The dome was a mass of rubble. Wide openings had appeared in the walls. Rhodan was the first to get to his feet. He sprang up to one of the openings and looked out. From now on, then, we were playing with all our cards on the table.
“Ships!” he cried. “There are lots of ships out there! We’ll try to reach the nearest one. No matter what happens, no one must let himself be caught!”
It was a very heroic thing to say but in spite of the desperate situation it made my laugh. Who else but a Terran could have said it so close to inevitable destruction?
We all knew that despite our momentary success we had no more chances. Even if we could take off in a ship, our fate would catch up with us even before we were fairly off the ground. It was all so useless and yet we ran anyway.
I leaped out into the bright glare of Arkon’s sun and then I thought my blood would freeze. Just one kilometer away rose the huge energy dome of the Regent into the cloudless sky. The dock shaft we had just destroyed led upwards somewhat too closely to the defense screen.
One hundred-fifty madmen ran as they had never run before in their lives. The genuine Zalites remained behind, thoroughly confused. They understood nothing more. I followed Rhodan, since for better or for worse I had no choice. When we were just 100 meters from the ship we coveted so much—a light cruiser of the Fleet—its engines came to life. It rose from the ground, impulse waves
roaring and glowing white hot from its jets.
Rhodan’s legs suddenly seemed to give way. They slowly folded up and Rhodan sank to the ground where he lay as though paralyzed. Through dull eyes he watched the cruiser flying away. The other ships were also starting to take off. The hollow roar of engines sounded like our death march.
Rhodan was still lying in the same place. His mouth was wide open. He was breathing heavily. The flickering wall of the gigantic energy dome was just 500 meters away. The robot ships taking off gave us an increasingly more open view until we stood alone before the horizon-filling wall.
The men of the commando team had also stopped running. Gasping, they looked around and then they noticed what I had long since discovered.
Far to the rear, perhaps still three kilometers away, dark figures were welling up out of the armored doors that we had used not many hours before as our entranceway into the sub-Arkonide cities. From a distance they looked like angry ants spewing out of their hill.
The thick stream split up and soon we knew that the on-marching robots had formed a skirmish line.
It was silent, oppressively silent. The thunder of engines had died away and the vast spaceport suddenly seemed to be deserted. We could not yet hear the
stamping tread of the robots but by the time we were able to perceive it, we would be done for in any case.
Bell looked around. Then he pointed over to the defense screen. “That’s a kind of rampart over there. It probably constitutes the first danger zone and beyond it things get unpleasant. Let’s get ourselves some cover.”
He went over to Rhodan, grasped him under the shoulders and raised him to his feet. Rhodan shook his head vigorously, as though he had to divest himself of some burden.
“Why didn’t the robot ships shoot at us, in heaven’s name? They would have wiped us out in one salvo.”
“They want us alive, my friend,” I answered. “Remember that. The battle robots will probably use only shock weapons.
He looked at me wildly. Finally he managed a tortured smile. “OK, let them come. Do you see any avenue of escape?”
