Menace of the Mutant Master

by Perry Rhodan

  "Tomorrow somebody will come and call for you," explained Monterny. "You'll accompany him—and you will become a new man."

  Monterny ended the conversation. The confusion of bright lines on Bradley's TV screen faded and disappeared. Then Monterny issued orders that further activities of this group were to be transferred to his Japanese branch. He promised himself greater chances of success for his future enterprises if they were carried out closer to the enemy's base.

  Meanwhile in Terrania, Khrest the Arkonide had arrived at a stage during his psychological examinations of the prisoner Raleigh where he hoped to obtain the first important information. Raleigh had spent the last few days in a trance and had no longer offered any resistance to Khrest's endeavors to penetrate into his subconscious mind.

  Khrest realized how important the information eventually to be supplied by Raleigh might be for Rhodan. He asked Thora to assist him with the decisive examination. Thora, the beautiful Arkonide woman, had been recovering from the shock she had suffered during her recent adventure on Venus.

  Thora and Khrest were members of an Arkonide research cruiser which had been sent from the distant planet Arkon to explore this section of the galaxy which was over 30,000-light-years away. The cruiser which had been commanded by Thora crash-landed on the Earth's moon where it was discovered during Rhodan's first flight into space. At that time Khrest needed help. He was sick and nobody on board his spaceship could cure him. Rhodan procured medical assistance from Earth and realized at once the tremendous manifold possibilities which were put at his disposal with this Arkonide space vehicle that was the product of a far-advanced technology measured by terrestrial standards. Khrest supported Rhodan in any way he could, at first out of sheer gratitude for having saved his life, later out of inner conviction. Thora put up a constant opposition; she was only interested in returning to her home planet as fast as possible.

  But her wishes were foiled—through some terrestrial powers who meanwhile had learned that the representatives of an alien race had landed on their moon. They destroyed the disabled cruiser with atom bombs. The only members of its crew to survive were Khrest and Thora, who had flown to Earth in a small spherical lifeboat with a diameter of 180 feet, when the attack took place.

  This auxiliary vessel and the instruments it carried on board ensured Perry Rhodan absolute technical superiority for the newly-founded state—the New Power. Rhodan prevented a war which would have meant the end of earthly civilization. As a result he and his new state were recognized by the rest of the world powers. He successfully warded off the attacks from extraterrestrial intelligences that had been attracted to this part of the universe by the automatic emergency signal emitted by the stranded Arkonide cruiser. Rhodan brought about victory for an attacked alien race living in the Vega system 27-light-years distant from Earth. He captured an Arkonide superspaceship from an alien race who in turn had seized this vessel as booty from a defeated foe. This superspaceship became the nucleus of Rhodan's spacefleet. Then he set out on an odyssey lasting several years to find the planet of eternal life, an artificial planet guided by a race who lived in a spiritually collective existence and who caused their artificial planet home to orbit in a strange, unmathematical path around a number of fixed stars. Rhodan experienced the almost incredible phenomenon of cellular rejuvenation which gave him immortality—but there was one condition attached to this gift: he had to visit periodically every 62 years this artificial world, called Wanderer, and get a new treatment by the physiotron. Also Reginald Bell, Perry's friend, had received the gift of immortality.

  The two Arkonides however had been refused this treatment. Their time had run out, their race was on the downgrade; only young, aspiring races were considered worthy to receive the gift of eternal life.

  Nine years after Rhodan had discovered the Arkonide research cruiser on the moon, he returned to Earth. Conditions on Earth, that had been so stable when he had left on his search for the planet of eternal life, had in the meantime deteriorated. The Eastern Bloc was in revolt. A rival space landing division had become established on Venus in order to conquer there the base of the New Power which also harbored the mighty positronic brain.

  Rhodan acted immediately. He attacked and dispersed the enemy's division, leaving enough people alive on Venus to give him hope that they might found a colony there far removed from any political ambitions—after they would have learned to adapt to the rigors of life in the Venusian jungle world. Having completed this task he returned to Earth and removed the obstacle for a final union of mankind which the opposition of the Eastern Bloc had represented.

  And during all this time Thora had to resign herself to wait for the fulfillment of Rhodan's promise to permit her to return to Arkon as soon as the 'situation had become safe enough.'

  Thora had thus waited for ten Earth years; then she took matters in her own hand: she fled to Venus in one of the newly built destroyers. She intended to activate the hypersender on the Venusian base and broadcast a signal for help toward her home planet Arkon. But she had overlooked the fact that the new ship had not yet been equipped with the special code sender which alone could permit access into the area surrounding the ancient Arkonide base on Venus. Her destroyer was therefore shot down and Thora was made prisoner by a group of survivors from the former space-landing division of the Eastern Bloc.

  Rhodan, who hurriedly left Earth in pursuit of the fleeing Thora, shared a similar fate. He took off in the same type of destroyer ship and was of course also refused entry into the base and shot down by the positronic brain.

  Rhodan was cut off from all assistance for the positronic, having been alarmed by the strange events, had placed a barrier around the entire planet Venus in order to prevent any further intrusions. Rhodan, almost single-handed, took up the fight for Thora's freedom. He won the battle, barely escaping with his life on several occasions.

  He brought a much subdued, dejected Thora back to Earth, who had to promise him she would wait until he would accompany her on her return flight to her planet home.

  To a certain extent, Thora was very pleased now that Khrest had requested her help. Without wanting to admit it to herself, she was eagerly waiting for a chance to prove to Perry Rhodan that she could be a quite useful person and not just an impatient haughty woman causing trouble and confusion. Perhaps examining the prisoner would offer such an opportunity to redeem herself.

  Khrest was awaiting her. The room in which Raleigh was lying strapped on an examination table was rather large but at this moment so jammed full of instruments of all kind that there was hardly room in which to move around.

  "What are you planning to do?" Thora asked in her own Arkonide language.

  "Deep probe," replied Khrest curtly. Thora audibly drew a deep breath. "Have you exhausted all other approaches?" Khrest shook his head. "I've tried everything. Assuming he still has a remnant of some memory of the

  incident with the unknown person who put him under his hypnotic spell, the memory is buried so deep that we can hope to reach it only with a special depth probe."

  Thora's face was serious when she spoke. "Let's hope he'll survive this ordeal." Khrest rolled a little table with the complicated deep-prober instrument next to the examination table. "Will you take charge of the electrodes while I watch the indicator?"

  Without a word, Thora took the two spindle-shaped parts of the apparatus which were connected by two thick cables to the actual instrument, and fastened them to a frame above Raleigh's head. The thin ends of the spindles were now pointing at Raleigh's head.

  "Ready?" asked Khrest. Thora checked the position of the spindles. "Yes, go ahead!" A soft hum came now from the small apparatus. Thora kept watching the spindles. They remained

  Undisturbed. "Full charge!" said Khrest. The prober-screen showed now the first wave reflexes—a confusion of green lines which for the time

  being could not be interpreted. Khrest made sure that the him camera attached to the apparatus was working. The film
would later be presented to the positronicon for evaluation in order to decipher Raleigh's memories.

  The tangle of lines on the screen showed up clearly. It became evident that Raleigh's brain was just an average specimen.

  "Exchange the two spindles, please!" requested Khrest after some time had elapsed. Thora made the change. A second period of radiation produced complementary pictures to the first ones they had already obtained.

  The whole examination lasted about 15 minutes. "That's it!" said Khrest. A switch clicked, a lever fell, the humming sound gradually died down. Nothing had changed all throughout the examination in Raleigh's facial expression. He was breathing quietly and

  regularly. "He seems to have withstood it alright," remarked Thora. But Khrest was already busy with other things. "Do you want to help me with the evaluation?" he asked.

  Thora smiled. "Are you feeling alright, Khrest? My diagnosis: A Terranian-type burst of activity! Here

  you are working as much in one hour as you would not have accomplished in one whole day back home on Arkon."

  Khrest returned the smile. "Vitality is contagious," he answered, "or would you prefer lying under a cerebronicon and look at the wave patterns?"

  Thora laughed out loud. "No, no! I'd rather help you here!"

  General Cosmic recovered. The prices of its stock began to rise and the speculators were eager and willing to buy.

  But a few thousand miles toward the west a man tried very hard to secretly prepare the final death blow against General Cosmic and with it against the New Power. This time he wanted to make sure the job would be thoroughly planned and executed.

  Clifford Monterny assembled his mutants in his Japanese branch and informed them of his intentions. "This time we won't miss!" he declared. "When we're through there won't be any more New Power nor Perry Rhodan left on the face of the Earth or anywhere else in the universe!"

  Rhodan spent some time investigating the case of Homer G. Adams. He gratefully accepted the assistance of the Terranian Defense Federation, headed by Allan D. Mercant. He learned from Mercant's agents the location of the print shop which had produced the amateurish stock market prospectus describing the fictitious gold mine in Peru.

  The shop was situated in a suburb of Osaka in Japan. Rhodan quickly found out further details. The owner of the print shop did not deny that somebody had come to him two weeks earlier and had placed an order with him to print this prospectus.

  This was however as far as the trail led. Therefore Rhodan flew back to Terrania in the hope that Khrest would meanwhile have obtained some additional information from Raleigh.

  The evaluation sector first had to dig through the maze of memories which had accumulated throughout a lifetime in Raleigh's brain. These memories had of course nothing to do with the Sacramento affair.

  Images from his childhood, Raleigh's high school life, military service, years of studies at the Institute of Technology.

  The E-sector rejected these images until it finally hit on the data they were looking for.

  Khrest was startled when suddenly the first image of the series appeared which contained the desired information: the picture showed a man with hazy out-lines and an unrecognizable face who somehow had materialized out of thin air right next to Raleigh's desk in his Sacramento office. Raleigh had been thoroughly frightened by this sudden apparition.

  Thora stared unbelieving at the short sequence of pictures which Khrest projected over and over again in a loop. "How can that be possible?" she gasped.

  "Oh, yes," replied Khrest, who himself could hardly overcome his surprise, "from that instant on when this man suddenly appeared in Raleigh's office, Raleigh continued to be under his hypnotic spell. Apparently this influence could be temporarily increased or decreased according to need. For instance, Raleigh still remembers this incident but no longer the face or image of that man. The unknown made sure that Raleigh would never be able to identify him or that nobody else could do so rummaging around in Raleigh's memory banks. You see, Thora: no figure, no face, nothing but vague outlines!"

  "That sounds," remarked Thora, "as if you don't believe that this hazy shape and the unknown foe are one and the same person; am I right, Khrest?"

  Khrest nodded. "You are right there, Thora. I am convinced that anybody who is so intent on never being recognized and identified by anyone, will never show himself during one of his actions. He sends his go between—and even those are so disguised that the involuntary partner-in-crime won't be able to recall what they looked like. Not even the depth prober will bring this image to the surface."

  Khrest proceeded to project some more filmstrips: the first deliveries arriving by rail, the onset of the advertising campaign in the newspapers and TV, the first inquiries, the first orders, the first sales.

  All these pictures were interspersed with scenes showing hazy-looking people, unidentifiable men, the hiring of the four guards.

  And finally Rhodan's phone call. Raleigh's thoughts what he would do to him. Then Rhodan's visit, the arrival of the bodyguards, Barina's intervention.

  And finally—blackout! Nothing besides a few distorted scenes that already had taken place after he had been brought to Terrania. Then total darkness. The period during which Raleigh was resting on the examination table, the time he was in a deep trance.

  Khrest sighed and switched off the projector. He stared at the shiny table top before him.

  "Well," began Thora, "what have we found out now?"

  Khrest did not hurry with his answer. When he spoke it was with deliberate slowness. "We have learned that the unknown foe will almost never relax his hypnotic grip on his helpers and victims. They are kept under his unceasing surveillance via telepathy—sometimes stronger and sometimes weaker—but the influence is always present in some form."

  "What good will this information do us now?"

  Khrest narrowed his eyes to mere slits. "Telepathic influence can be detected by certain brains even if they are not the intended target against which it is directed. Hypnotic influence is also a five-dimensional sending-and-receiving process. There are some secondary areas due to dispersion, although a good telepath will usually work in a sharply delineated directional beam.

  "As a consequence a similarly efficient telepath should be capable of perceiving the hypnotic beam if it is being received by one of the helpers and provided the two are not separated by too great a distance."

  These were the results of the examination which were reported to Rhodan shortly after his arrival in Terrania. Raleigh and his men had been released; they no longer presented any danger for anybody.

  At nearly the same time Rhodan received a radio call from Salt Lake City. Captain Barina informed him briefly that there had been no further developments in his efforts to track down Richman's murderer. Rhodan suggested Barina should give up the search. "We have another lead here that might set us on his trail!" he explained and Barina felt very grateful to hear this new turn of events.

  Rhodan felt, after all the data he had gathered and those he had received from Khrest's depth probe examination, that now the time had come to inform one of his mutants about the recent alarming incidents.

  "I hope you will understand," he finished his explanation to John Marshall, one of the members of Rhodan's mutant corps, "we had no way of making sure at first if the unknown hadn't forced some of our own mutants into his service. Not until now did we find out that such was not the case. The enemy works only with his own people."

  "But as long as we didn't know this for certain we didn't dare inform our mutant corps. Those of us who knew all along what was going on, were inaccessible to any sort of thought reading. If we had included one of you in our circle then his thoughts would not have remained a secret for very long to the rest of the telepaths among you—and our plans would have been revealed to our enemy.

  "I hope you realize we didn't intend to slight you, it was just a necessary precaution."

  John Marshall, the Australian, looked at Rh
odan across the table at which they were sitting. He smiled. "I am convinced, sir," he replied, "that the other mutants will be just as delighted as I am that you finally see your way clear to include us in this affair."

  Rhodan hesitated awhile before he continued. "You know that I have only very weak telepathic abilities and I can't read your thoughts against your will. But in this case you should nevertheless tell me what you really are thinking!"

  Marshall's smile deepened. "Alright, then, I'll give it to you straight: None of us will feel very flattered when they learn that you suspected the mutant corps at first. But once they learn the reasons for this then it... it will be exactly the way I already have told you: we are happy to be included now in this affair and will do our best to cooperate with you."

  Then Rhodan proceeded to expound his plan of action to John Marshall. "It will be so much easier for you telepaths than for the two teleporters," Rhodan concluded. "You are four people who can relieve one another by turns: you, Ishy Matsu, Betty, and Nomo Yatuhin. But Tako can alternate only with Ras Tschubai.

  "Make sure to impress this on all the others: from now on both a teleporter and telepath will have to be on guard every single second. The telepath will have to locate the intruder while the teleporter will have to catch him as quickly as possible. We must not forget that anybody who is trying to intrude unnoticed in our territory is of necessity a teleporter. Therefore Tako and Ras must always carry weapons. But tell them that psycho-rayguns are totally ineffective."

  The most depressing part of this whole affair was that even John Marshall had no idea how the intruder would make his presence felt. He had never been confronted by a problem like this.

  Marshall had taken up residence in a small apartment on the outskirts of the city. It was up on the 24th floor and the four telepaths used it as their guard headquarters.