by Perry Rhodan
Fellmer Lloyd didn't permit his excitement to become visible. His whole theory collapsed beneath the fact that his opponents were neither Arkonides nor Galactic Traders. Where could these two bosses come from?
The others awaited his decision with utmost interest. Fellmer Lloyd wouldn't have been Rhodan's pupil if he hadn't known that offense is the best defense. He was anxious to have Kuri in the vicinity when the action unfolded near the spaceport at the Springer offices. His assistant had determined beyond doubt that the bosses had chosen that building as their base of operations.
One hour later Kuri arrived, almost at midnight, at O-oftftu-O's apartment. The two Springers, the nose-giant and his friend from Haspro had already left and taken up their positions.
• • •
On the expressway between Kuklon and the spaceport the heavy traffic of the metropolis rushed by without regard to the midnight hour.
The vast spaceport—the springboard to the Galaxy which lay beyond the ramparts of the Great Empire—was swarming with thousands of passengers scurrying back and forth. Huge spaceships arrived and departed in an unbroken stream.
The expressway was lined on both sides by rows of high rise buildings. They were not as big and pompous as the edifices around Thator Square but they fully showed the wealth of each of the Springer clans conducting their transactions here.
The Galactic traders were by nature gypsies who preferred to roam between the stars. Entire clans, sometimes comprising as many as 10,000 members, with very few exceptions made the cylinder-shaped spaceships their home where they lived and died.
The small minority that had become more sedentary had not broken its ties with the clans. The invisible bonds between the migratory and stationary Galactic Traders seemed to survive eternities.
These reflections passed through Lloyd's mind before he stopped and left the vehicle with Kuri and the Volatian O-oftftu-O 100 meters from the Springers' office building whose colorful illumination stood out against the night of Volat.
Inside were the two culprits—the hypno and the telepath—who had murdered Ralph Sikeron and had tried more than once to slay Fellmer Lloyd.
Lloyd took a little radio set out of his pocket and handed it to Kuri. Pointing to the restaurant where thousands of different people were eating as they waited for the departure of their spaceships, Lloyd said: "Wait for me in there, Kuri! Don't do anything until you hear from me. I don't know yet what my message will be. Here! Take this too!"
With a look of surprise in her dark eyes she involuntarily took a step back, precariously close to the highway where the traffic roared by. Then she reluctantly accepted the thermo-beamer.
"And this just in case, Kuri," he said with a faint smile, handing her a license. She didn't have to ask whether the license would pass a possible inspection by the authorities if she had to prove that she was duly permitted to carry such a weapon—she already knew that the license issued in the name of Kuri Onere was genuine as far as the Arkonides were concerned. She hid the thermo-beamer and the radio set on her body.
"If I should fail to come back, Kuri, my friends will come to Volat and look for me. You'll know how to recognize my friends. Tell them: 'Three Bells and Shadow of the Mutant Master! ' Kuri, you're a marvelous girl!"
And for the first time he saw tears in the eyes of a Springer.
He pensively followed the girl with his eyes as she ran across the highway between the fast-moving vehicles and entered the restaurant where tireless robot waiters hurried to and fro, serving the host of travelers.
O-oftftu-O had silently watched his friends and 'listened' to Lloyd's telepathic emanations. His antennae quivered excitedly and Lloyd 'heard' the aborigine of Volat ask: "Who are you?"
With great sincerity the cosmic agent answered simply: "I was born on a faraway star, O-oftftu-O, and I've only one desire: I want to see the people of all worlds live in peace!"
No Arkonide or Springer—or Terranian—would have been satisfied with this answer. But the Volatian didn't question him; he merely said: "The Omniscient Mother wants you to know she's praying for your success."
And Lloyd, who had gone through Rhodan's hard school and had fought many battles for the Solar Imperium in scores of years that had made him tough, was touched by emotions.
In his action at the Springer building near the highway Lloyd was assisted by 20 men whom he divided in three groups. The Springer Ghal was in charge of the first group and Zintz led the second. five men were held back as reserve.
The Dure 5, a cylindrical freighter which was loaded with 43,600 Gech-skins in its huge holds, was waiting on the spaceport. Its captain Dure-an had left the office building a few minutes ago. The Springer was in a very unfriendly mood, cursing in his thoughts the greedy broker who had arranged the transport and now had haggled for hours, demanding 15% from the sale of the merchandise.
Capt. Dure-an kept thinking about the luxurious office of his broker and began to rave about all the Springers who had become city-dwellers, condemning the whole lot of them as avaricious hogs. Lloyd left the boiling mad trader to his thoughts and proceeded to look for the broker whose office was located on the 46th floor according to the information from the captain.
As soon as Lloyd concentrated his thoughts on the occupants of the office, he perceived a succession of various brainwave patterns, one of which seemed to be familiar. He focused once more on it with increased intensity and was suddenly as thunderstruck as if the whole planet Volat had been blown apart. He recognized the person by his brainwave pattern!
It was not an Arkonide nor a Springer—it was a man from Earth!
That hypno was none other than Gregor Tropnow—the man who had once worked for Perry Rhodan!
Tropnow was unaware that someone else intruded on his thoughts. He was busy increasing his hold on the broker of the Galactic Trader and turning him into a helpless slave. Gregor Tropnow's thoughts were dominated by greed and hate.
A cold shudder ran down Lloyd's spine as he stood 46 floors below outside the huge Springer building. The mutant was consumed with hate for Perry Rhodan!
Lloyd paused a moment in order to collect his thoughts. First of all he had to grasp the horrendous discovery that Terra was menaced by one of its own sons.
"Mutant Master..." he moaned like a man awaking from a nightmare. He wiped his brow.
Gregor Tropnow was a hypno from the followers of the Mutant Master. After that evil genius had been destroyed by Perry Rhodan, Tropnow had offered his services to the New Power. Rhodan had deployed him several times in the Mutant Corps but he was considered to be highly unreliable and to have an unrestrained temper. One of his worst faults was his inability to judge his talent wisely.
Now Gregor Tropnow had fled to Volat! He had murdered Ralph Sikeron—he and his accomplice. But who was the other one?
While Lloyd's teammates wondered why they were given no further instructions, he racked his brain about the identity of the second conspirator. Lloyd kept pondering the description of the person his helper from Haspro had given him.
Nobody saw how his hands were clenched into fists!
Gregor Tropnow's cohort, the telepath, had detected him and tried to take over his mind. However for, the first time in his life the mutant succeeded with a momentous mental struggle to erect a barrier around his thoughts. At the same time he noticed the strangely formed hand of the Volatian touch his shoulder and additional power flow into him. His resistance grew and swiftly became so strong that his own telepathic powers came into play and enabled him to recognize—Nomo Yatuhin!
This time he was not amazed to discover that the second traitor was also an Earthling. Now he was anxious to hide his track which Nomo Yatuhin had picked up as quickly as possible.
He wondered whether he would be able again to put a shield around his thoughts. And would the Volatian lend him fresh powers again? It was a phenomenon which puzzled him and which he later found impossible to explain.
Lloyd made an attempt and t
hen changed his mind and quickly called off all further moves against the office.
It had suddenly dawned on him that to go on with his plans at this point would mean almost certain death for him and his comrades. First he would have to determine the extent of the organization Tropnow and Yatuhin had established here and what purposes they pursued with it.
It was sheer luck that Tropnow was occupied on the 46th floor with the intense hypnotic treatment of the broker and had therefore given orders not to be disturbed under any circumstances.
When the badly shaken Nomo Yatuhin finally managed to talk to Tropnow after two hours and reported about his two short and fruitless contacts with Fellmer Lloyd, the hypno-mutant swore horribly.
9/ INCREDIBLE CONFUSION
Gregor Tropnow did not seem to be severely troubled the next morning by Fellmer Lloyd's latest appearance. He stretched out in his chair and condescendingly eyed the nervous Japanese Nomo Yatuhin who was biting his fingernails. Despite his rebellious character Yatuhin was a very vacillating person who had to be led and preferred to be submissive as long as his associates corresponded to his mentality.
Gregor Tropnow was a perfect match for him. Both hated Perry Rhodan for the same reason: Rhodan had failed to take them to the planet of eternal life, Wanderer, to receive the biological cell shower which interrupted the aging process of the human body for more than six decades.
Rhodan knew why he had excluded Yatuhin and Tropnow from this gift but he had not considered the devastating consequences his decision eventually would evoke.
The hypno Tropnow was 88 years old and Yatuhin was one year older. However they didn't look their age and they didn't feel like old men. Biomedical drugs which in the meantime had become part of Terrestrial medicine had accomplished this miracle of rejuvenation but they could not completely arrest the deterioration of the body, merely slow it down, whereas the cell shower treatment provided by the mysterious being on Wanderer effectively stopped any aging process for the duration. By contrast the biomedical drugs in time lost their efficacy because the cells became too old to react to the therapy.
Gregor Tropnow slouched in his chair and admonished the telepath: "Stop running around and sit down, Yatuhin. You can make even the most phlegmatic Springer nervous. Better do something about finding Lloyd. He'll be a tougher nut to crack than Sikeron. I bet he's already snooping around us and..."
Yatuhin gazed at Tropnow with frightened eyes. Tropnow sniggered maliciously. "This is already the second time that you let Lloyd get away from me, Nomo...!" He suddenly leaned forward and whispered: "I'm going to force Rhodan to let me have the cell shower—or his Solar Imperium will be destroyed! But heaven knows whether you’ll ever get the cell shower. You're such a coward you're ready to faint. What are you going to do once we've caught Rhodan and have him in our power?"
"So far we couldn't even lay our hands on Fellmer Lloyd," the Japanese telepath defended himself, bringing Tropnow from the land of fantasies back to reality.
However his remark made little impression on the hypno. "You bet I'm going to get him—and I'll tie up your hands when I've got him. You're not going to bash in his head as you did Sikeron! Yatuhin, don't you understand that our time is limited? The Springers won't cooperate forever. One of these days we won't be able to put them off any longer with promises and they'll insist that we tell them where the planet is that's bursting with treasures. On that day we'll have gambled our best card against Rhodan. Can't you even think one day ahead and..."
Nomo Yatuhin was a telepath and although he was a cantankerous coward, he was not as stupid as Tropnow insinuated. He interrupted his partner in an icy tone: "Tropnow, don't get any ideas of booting me out and trying to win Fellmer Lloyd over to your side. You know I can dish it out too!"
"Damn mind reader?" Tropnow snorted, half-frightened and half-amused. "Let's not forget while we're bickering that Tirr Uxlad will be here any moment. I want him to pay a little closer attention to Kuri Onere."
"You better cure him first of making offensive remarks to all the girls!" Yatuhin objected vigorously. "If you had done this at the first treatment you gave him, he wouldn't have pulled such a boner with Kuri Onere and we could've used her to lead Fellmer Lloyd into a trap."
The hypno ignored his remonstrations. He was already busy thinking about something else and said in a low voice: "Leave Lloyd to me, Nomo, but try to find out what significance the code words Three Bells have for Earth. I must know it before I take the next steps."
• • •
"I can do it from now on whenever it's necessary," Lloyd said to Kuri, his eyes radiant. He slowly, turned around to O-oftftu-O and nodded to him gratefully. He owed it to this aborigine of Volat that he had found the way to block his brain against any unwanted foreign trespass.
Last night he had accomplished it twice with the help of the Volatian. Each time O-oftftu-O had put his peculiarly formed hand on his shoulder, and an invisible energy had flowed to him.
For three hours Lloyd had practiced to achieve it alone and now he was confident. "As long as the hypno doesn't get to me..." was all he said but the way he shook his head was explicit enough.
For this reason Kuri sat across from him with the hypno-beamer in her hand ready to shoot at him the moment Lloyd's face became contorted.
• • •
Toward noon the Springer Zintz arrived. He had adopted the cause of the Prebonian as his own and seemed concerned. He blurted excitedly: "I still can't believe what happened to me in that office building. I ran into Tirr Uxlad, Aser Uxlad's youngest son, who claims space traveling doesn't agree with him, which nobody believes. I started to talk to him because I was surprised to see him there and not at the Uxlad House on Thator Square but Tirr failed to respond to me. I turned around and caught up with him in the lobby, where I spoke to him again. Nothing happened this time either. He simply didn't recognize me and so I decided to follow him."
Zintz related some important and some irrelevant facts. He had followed Tirr Uxlad to the landing field of the spaceport and entered the Re-9 behind him. He managed to get as far as the Control Center without much trouble. Although the hatch was open he had been afraid to walk in because of an unwritten law of the Great Empire forbidding admittance to spaceship control centers for strangers without special permission.
"Then," Zintz continued, "I observed that some coordinates and transition data were inserted into the memory bank. This was the end of Tirr's visit to the Re-9. I left before he came out of the Control Center. The officers in the spaceship didn't seem to notice anything unusual about Tirr's behavior. At least I didn't hear them ask any questions."
When Zintz had come to this point in his report, Lloyd was seized by the most fearful misgivings. He controlled himself with a colossal effort and applied his telepathy to probe Zintz' thoughts.
His Springer didn't understand what he was saying. The coordinates which he now repeated were just another place in the Galaxy to him. How could he suspect that the positions described the space sector of the Milky Way where the Solar system was located?
Lloyd let Zintz keep talking without listening to him. The most important question he had to decide now was whether to inform the waiting Lotus of his discovery or take action on his own.
He had trouble making up his mind but the longer he reflected the less he liked the idea of calling the Lotus by hyperradio. Even the shortest code message entailed the danger of being picked up by the Arkonide monitoring stations which would start a new search for his Gazelle. At worst it could also jeopardize the Lotus and compel a retreat in flight.
Zintz was already on his way again to pay the office of the Springers a visit when it became clear to Lloyd what he had to do.
• • •
Nomo Yatuhin, the feeble telepath with the unstable character, elided his inner concentration. He was no longer able to find Fellmer Lloyd. Although his telepathic probing told him Rhodan's agent was somewhere in the neighborhood, he could not succeed in invad
ing his thoughts and several times he observed that his efforts were sidetracked when he believed he had located his subject.
Gregor Tropnow was furious at his accomplice. He was more ruthless than the Japanese and never wavered in his determination to blackmail Perry Rhodan for the prize of gaining the life-giving cell shower for himself. Yatuhin's efforts had been frustrated for hours but the hypno realized that the failure of the Japanese was not all his fault, because he had worked until recently, albeit reluctantly, for Rhodan. Tropnow came to the conclusion that Lloyd had succeeded by some natural or artificial means to shield his thoughts against telepathic intrusions. He had experienced it himself during his latest attack at the time when he pursued Lloyd as he fled in the police craft. He had gotten hold of him only to lose him immediately because Kuri put Lloyd in a lethargic state with a shot from the hypno-beamer.
Suddenly he noticed Yatuhin making a warning gesture. The telepath was receiving thoughts. His face expressed amazement and then fear. The hypno didn't dare disturb his partner. He breathlessly followed the changes on Yatuhin's face.
"They're in the house," Nomo whispered. "A Springer by the name of Zintz came to see Killi. He inquired about Tirr Uxlad and claims to have seen him here in the house. Now he wants to know if Jidif was here during the last few days while he thinks: I'll find out what tricks you boys are up to and what you did with Tirr Uxlad! Now that fool Killi tells him the truth, that Jidif died when he fell out of an air taxi."
As soon as Nomo Yatuhin told Tropnow where the snooping Springer was and with whom he talked, he took over and imposed his will on Zintz with his hypnotic power. As Zintz was speaking to their employee Killi, he was put under the hypno's thrall with such thorough and unnoticeable finesse that he kept believing he acted on his own free will and he had no inkling of being the slave of a hypno.
