Death's Demand

by Perry Rhodan

  It was Carba of Minterol!

  Ron had only seen his face once—when the Mokoki had simulated it—but it was a face one seldom forgot, even if only seen in imitation. The features were ascetically fine-chiseled with an unusually high forehead and a hard, forceful-looking chin. He was altogether an Arkonide yet something one wouldn't quite expect in this age of decadence and lassitude.

  Arfar was already standing but Melaal also got to his feet when he recognized Carba.

  "We have to get out of here," said Carba in alarm. "I have a suspicion that the Terrans are on our heels. For a number of hours now, Thekus' doctors have not been seen at their residence. Perhaps they are agents, after all. We can't take any chances. Anyhow, we have to go to Kusma."

  "What ship do we use?" asked Arfar, perplexed.

  "That's right, you've left yours at Tourhathon," said Carba. "We'll take mine. Takeoff in 15 minutes, no delays. Bring the prisoner on board—and Minthor, too, if he's still not ambulatory. Pass the word to Palor—and hurry!"

  Turning with stiff precision he disappeared back into the darkness. Almost at the same time, Nike Quinto moved also. Bright light fell into the observation chamber as the hatch slid open and he shouted into the control room. "Stand by to take off!"

  Hardly any preparations were necessary since the K-3605 had not shut down its engines. Larry Randall came in with the report that nobody on Arkon 1 knew anything about a man called Belubal. Quinto sent him right back to the telecom and told him to run a check on a world named Kusma.

  While Larry was busy with that task, time passed with agonizing slowness. Meech Hannigan was the only one who had something to do. He followed the route taken by Thekus and his captors. He discovered that there was a direct and therefore illegal passage from the storage shed to the spaceport. Thekus was shoved on board an aircar and within a few moments it was flying across the landing field. Meech soon found out that the craft's destination was a single ship which stood alone in an empty area of the port.

  He called the colonel. In response to a program command, Thekus had extended his picture-generating hyper-field so that it surrounded the aircar with a minimum of distortion from the fuselage. In the glare of the night lights the large spaceport area was clearly visible. The colored position lights of a ship appeared in the distance. Nike Quinto tried to estimate its size.

  "Spherical hull," he said, nothing more.

  Ten minutes after receiving his latest assignment, Larry Randall came back from the telecom. "Not a thing, sir," he reported. "The world called Kusma is unknown."

  Quinto glared at him in some surprise. "Unknown, you say? Who did you talk to?"

  "With the Imperator himself. He seems to be very interested in our operation. Over his private direct line to the former robot Regent, he asked for a readout from the big positronic memory banks. Even there he found no registration of the name Kusma. There's a planet called Korzama but that was the only..."

  Nike Quinto waved a hand. "No, I need Kusma, not any other," he declared. In a few moments he got over his impatience. "Well, it doesn't matter. After all, we have Carba and his cohorts right under our noses. All we have to do is chase after them."

  Ron knew that this was an understatement. The Arkonide ship was only equipped with the usual type of transition propulsion, which meant that it would have to make "jumps" through hyperspace to reach its destination. On the other hand the K-3605 operated on the basis of the modern linear spacedrive system which enabled it to move faster than light through a metastable semispace zone without losing sight of the target destination in the Einstein continuum. There were two different kinds of motion. If the K-3605 were to pursue the Arkonide ship it would be like a man on foot chasing another man who was swimming under water. Undoubtedly the man on dry land would be able to move much faster than the swimmer—but the problem would be to figure out what direction the underwater quarry was taking.

  Of course the actual situation wasn't quite that bad. Upon entering and emerging from hyperspace the Arkonide would leave signs of his passage. Just as a jet aircraft produced disturbances when breaking through the sound barrier, this kind of flight caused a warp shock in the normal time-space structure which could be detected with suitable instruments. That is, not only could the warp shocks alone be traced but also their distance and direction.

  So that wasn't the most difficult part. A little more problematical was the fact that the K-3605 had been deprived of certain equipment in order to make room for the modern propulsion system. The ship's positronics no longer needed to calculate complex hypertransition coordinates so the nav-computer section was going to run into difficulties with the conversion of the tracking data into usable linear-drive calculations—or at least the process might not be fast enough.

  Ron was still immersed in such worries when the intercom speaker crackled suddenly and Meech Hannigan's calm voice announced: "Enemy ship has taken off at high speed."

  • • •

  The K-3605 followed a half hour later.

  This was not just a matter of course calculations. Carba could have left a spy behind him in order to see how closely the Terrans might be following on his heels. But there was heavy traffic at the Farthor spaceport and quite a number of vessels had taken off after the Arkonide's departure. However they had taken off prior to the K-3605 so that if there were actually a spy in the area he wouldn't have much of a basis for any suspicion.

  Nor was any great show of acceleration permissible. The K-3605's propulsion system was superior to that of the Arkonides but there was not much sense in making it a tight race through space at the outset when it was necessary to wait anyway for the first transition signal so that a directional clue could be picked up.

  The signal came 25 minutes after the enemy had taken off. It took the K-3605's computer another five minutes to process the registered data in terms of location and direction. It was then that Nike Quinto had given the order to start. As a precaution he had parked the K-3605 outside the regular line of main traffic so that no special takeoff permission would be necessary. The Corvette took off into the night sky at a modest rate of acceleration in order not to startle the traffic-control personnel at Farthor. Minutes later Arkon's brilliant sun rose above the horizon.

  Nike Quinto gave a command to the ship's positronicon to put them on course. The warp shock given out by the Arkonide ship at the start of its transition indicated the route to be followed. The fact that the second transition had not yet been registered meant that the hyperjump was in excess of 10,000 light-years.

  Using its conventional spacedrive, the K-3605 had already put 100,000 km between itself and Arkon 2 when the 2d signal was received. It was fainter because of the greater distance. The nav-computer required 15 minutes to process it this time, which was not surprising considering the circumstances. The location fix was fairly in line with the course the Corvette had taken after the first warp shock reception. After making a final course correction, Nike Quinto switched over to the Kalup generator. The small Terran ship was enveloped in a 6th-dimensional field which built a "bubble" of metastable semispace around its hull. The K-3605 raced along within this "hole in space". After only a few seconds their speed away from Arkon was defying all laws of the 4th-dimensional continuum.

  Nevertheless Quinto was concerned. Linear spacedrive compressed vast galactic distances into mere cat jumps but even that required finite time. And Nike didn't know how much time he had.

  As it was, this particular "kitty jump" was almost 45000 light-years in extent.

  • • •

  In little more than 11 hours the K-3605 covered the tremendous distance. When Quinto finally shut off the Kalup and the semispace bubble around the ship collapsed, the part of space they found themselves in was devoid of stars and eerie in its unusual darkness.

  During the flight the positronics had worked out the exact location of this sector of the void. The K-3605 was out on the edge of the galaxy, almost the whole diameter of the Milky Way remov
ed from Terra. The region that Carba and his followers had chosen for their destination lay between two arms of the galactic spiral. Here the material density was only slightly greater than that of the yawning gulf between the island universes.

  Meanwhile no new signals had been picked up, so they knew the Arkonides must be relatively close by. Quinto put the tracking sensors to work but the first object that was detected on the screen was not a spaceship. It was an energy source of the first magnitude.

  A sun!

  It was 15 light-hours distant from the K-3605. Although its radiations were tremendously obvious to the sensor equipment, the human eye would still not have been able to see it unless one knew in what direction to look.

  The detectors registered another large body. Ten minutes later it was determined that it revolved around the sun at a constant distance.

  A planet! Probably it was Kusma.

  There was nothing to be seen of the Arkonide ship. The overriding presence of the sun and its planet made it impossible to discover such a relatively tiny object at this distance. Quinto decided to reduce the distance between the K-3605 and this peculiar solar system without delay.

  • • •

  Ron Landry felt a cold shudder run through him. He was not accustomed to seeing what was revealed to him now on the large panob screen. On opposite sides of the viewscreen two dimly-glowing nebulous veils seemed to reach out into endless distances. They were spiral arms of the Milky Way, stretching away into depths of the outer vastness. They were almost lost to sight where they appeared to join each other in the western sector of the screen. The small nebulous object there that looked like a little knot was so dim that it might have been an illusion yet he knew it was the tremendous mass of the galaxy.

  How standards changed, he thought. One day men would travel as freely back and forth between the galaxies as they did now between the stars of their home universe. And they would think no more of the aspect of the starless void out there than they did now of normal space while traveling between various solar systems.

  He was jarred out of his speculations by the appearance of an orange-red eye in the north sector of the panob screen—the sun of Kusma. It was still just a barely discernible disc that one could look at directly without discomfort. The K-3605 was still one light-hour away from it.

  On the green-glowing tracking screen a small blip had appeared. The indicator had automatically blocked out the sun and its planet, so the blip was not caused by either one of them. It had to be the Arkonide ship. Ron followed its course attentively. If there had been any doubt before that this god forsaken system between the spiral arms was Carba's destination, that doubt was eliminated now. The little positronicomputer had not erred. The Arkonide ship had already landed on Kusma and was now heading home.

  Ron made calculations which projected the present course of the enemy ship and then compared the trajectory with that of the K-3605. At the point of nearest approach the two vessels would not be more than 800,000 km apart. If Thekus were still on board the other ship, the instruments would be able to detect him.

  Ron glanced briefly toward the door behind which Meech Hannigan was still wearily tracing numbers across the scales of his indicators. Nike, Larry and Lofty were in their bunks asleep. The blip on the green raster became brighter and neared the center of the scanning screen.

  The Corvette was moving under protection of an anti-tracking screen. If the Arkonides were equipped with normal detector devices they would not be able to spot the Terran ship. Ron wasn't too concerned about such a possibility at present. As long as they were still out here in free space and were remotely situated from any ground stations, they were fairly safe from detection. Only when they began to descend toward Kusma itself would there be any danger. No anti-tracking screen could conceal a spaceship from the powerful modern sensors of a stationary tracking center on the ground.

  Ron made contact with Meech on the intercom. "The Arkonide ship is on its way back from Kusma, Meech," he said. "Keep your eyes open. Our 'friends' may still be on board."

  "So far no sign of it, sir," Meech answered immediately.

  Ron checked the distance. It was now 1.5 million km or about double the minimum trajectory point. If Thekus were still on board the Arkonide ship they should be able to detect him by now. A few minutes later he was sure that Thekus wasn't there. The 2 ships had passed the minimum point but Meech had received no signals. Of course Ron couldn't tell what might have happened to Carba, Melaal and Arfar but it seemed to him an improbability that they would have only flown clear out to Kusma to deposit Thekus and then take off again.

  They must all be on Kusma. They had sent their ship back because they no longer needed it.

  Ron waited impatiently until the Arkonide vessel had vanished beyond the edge of the scanning screen. Then he did what Nike Quinto had ordered him to do: he sent out a coded hypercom signal that would alert the designated units of the Terran Fleet. The Arkonide ship was not to escape. No source of information must be lost. The Terran warships would intercept the enemy vessel at a safe distance from Kusma and place the crew under arrest.

  Meanwhile the K-3605 continued to hold its course for Kusma. Slowly, almost in freefall, it approached the orange-colored sun and its single companion.

  • • •

  It seemed unbelievable when the K-3605 came within a million km of Kusma—slightly over 3 light-seconds—without being detected by a ground tracking system. Whoever was down there on Kusma must be asleep.

  For some time now Thekus' signals had been coming through perfectly. The picture's the robot transmitted gave a good indication of what a strange world the planet Kusma appeared to be.

  Built into his complex body, Thekus carried a special circuit which enabled him to project his picture-generating hyper-field as far away from him as he pleased. He could even transmit a picture of something which was beyond his own optical range and which he was not aware of himself. Thekus served as a focusing point or a lens for the picture-forming field, so to speak, if one were to simplify the operation with a comparison to geometric optics. From the control console on board the K-3605 one could instruct him to virtually send his "visi-field" on excursions and thus bring large areas of Kusma's surface under observation.

  After the contact with Thekus had become firmly established, Nike Quinto had done this with him. The pictures he received after that were anything but inspiring. Kusma was not even spherical in shape. It was simply a giant chunk of rock which the sun had captured at some distant past time—a super meteor that had wandered for millions of years through the lonely galactic gulfs until finally it encountered a superior gravitic field and accommodated itself to a stabilized orbit.

  Kusma was not massive enough to be able to hold an atmosphere. And its sun was not big enough to warm it adequately. Vapors exuded from the rocky surface precipitated immediately as frost. Anything that remained in a gaseous state was swept away into the void. Even at temperatures close to Absolute zero the thermodynamics between solids and gases would have slowly dissipated the frost but new gas continued to exude from the rocks, to sublimate, vaporize and be replaced again. There were wide stretches on the surface of Kusma that reflected the orange-red light of the sun in full brilliance.

  Kusma was bleak and desolate, a world on which no one would have believed that any intelligent beings had ever landed—that is, if it hadn't been for the gleaming dome in one of the wide crater basins. It rose impressively above the inhospitable ground as a hemisphere that was almost 100 meters high and 200 meters in diameter.

  After Thekus had satisfied Nike Quinto's curiosity concerning the surface of the planet, the robot transmitted pictures from the interior of the dome. Nike Quinto had always thought that all intelligent beings, regardless of race or origin, based their technologies on the same universal principles and that anyone with some technical experience would be able to make sense out of the most alien science—but in this case he began to doubt his reason.

&nbs
p; The interior of the dome was one tremendous chamber in which just the form and shape of things was confusing in itself. There stood a square box-like structure with a long snout sticking out that looked like the head of a tapir, being slender and slightly curved. There were some other things that looked like conical pillars or towers, with smooth sides that gave not the slightest indication of their purpose. There were serpent-like twisted shapes on the floor and arches spread their legs out in various directions. Fragile, knife-sharp metal sheets rose upward to form precarious-looking spirals 10 meters above the floor.

  Thekus was still in the company of Arfar, Melaal—the man of unknown origin—and Carba. Otherwise the dome seemed to be empty. The interior of the dome wasn't furnished for accommodating visitors for any length of time. Ron Landry made a careful note of this. There were no sleeping or cabin arrangements, not even tables or chairs. That is, there were some chair-like objects visible but they seemed to be a part of the bewildering apparatus and apparently nobody cared to take the chance of sitting in them.

  Thekus transmitted the conversation that was going on between the three conspirators. Carba wanted the opinions of the other two regarding the situation. Arfar felt that they should continue to cross-examine Thekus. Melaal thought they should get under way as soon as possible because in his view Kusma was anything but a safe hideout. When Carba asked him why he had this idea, Melaal merely made a vague gesture with his hands and said that he had an uneasy feeling about the whole thing.

  Carba finally agreed with Arfar's suggestion and his vote carried the most weight. The three men squatted in a huddle on the floor. They called Thekus to them and then the questioning started again. Landry and Quinto followed it all on the view screen and the speaker. Meech Hannigan still monitored his controls.