Death Waits in Semispace

by Perry Rhodan

"Good. Try to reach him!"

  John Marshall switched on his minicom and tried to find Bell's altered frequency. He no longer saw how the ghastly figure outside continued to grow—how Reginald Bell to the left and Tompetch and the Gazelle to the right extended past Rhodan's ship and pressed onwards to the south. He called out: "Come in, Mr. Bell!"

  He sensed Bell's surprise and then, when he had called again, he heard the answer: "It's about time you guys showed up!"

  At the same moment someone behind Marshall cried out: "Tell him to be more careful with his movements! Every time he turns his head a hurricane blows over the land."

  Marshall opened his eyes in surprise and looked at the vidscreen. The image of park landscape had changed. Thick dust clouds blew along at terrific speed. Branches, limbs and even entire trees appeared, whirling here and there, and then disappeared once more in the dust. It was hard to imagine that Reginald Bell had caused this storm with a single movement of his head.

  Marshall transmitted the instructions word for word. Bell promised from now on he would not move. Then Marshall turned to Rhodan for further orders.

  • • •

  Bell heard his instructions as follows: "There must be some sort of station in the city that supplies the planet wirelessly with energy. That much is certain. Try to find this station and set it into operation—or if it already is operating, reset its transmitter so that a maximum of energy is being beamed at our landing site. Our engines have been drained of energy by some inexplicable force: we don't have any more left for our power units. If, however, we can tap the power station, we'll be all right. Do you understand?"

  "Yes," Bell replied. "It seems to me you're talking rather fast but everything is clear. You haven't overlooked my little problem, have you? I mean, how can I find a power station when the whole building is only 1,000th of a millimeter thick and how can I manipulate any controls when my finger's 50 kilometers long?"

  "Wait a minute," said Marshall. "I'll relay that." After a few seconds he reported back. "The shrinking will soon reach its maximum. Then it'll go the other way. You'll reach your normal size again—or rather Wanderer will return to the scale marked on the map. Then it'll be time to act. Work fast and remember that at the moment your rate of time is about 1/3rd of Wanderer's. The factor is not constant: it could change... in either direction."

  "OK," Bell answered, trying to think at a faster speed. "Tell me one more thing: how much time do we have left?"

  "Our figure is 21 hours," said Marshall. "It's 03:00 now and the date is May 1st!"

  • • •

  The time had come. The northern sea was just a small puddle—no more than half a meter wide. Bell needed to take only one more step and he would stand on the northern continent.

  But he hesitated to take that step. He knew what commotion he would cause in the atmosphere if he moved his 1,000 kilometer-long body.

  He raised his right foot slowly. He had taken careful note of the place where the city stood. He could no longer see it because its buildings had shrunk to figures of so little depth they were imperceptible. But he felt certain that he would do them no damage. At least not directly. What the storm he was causing would do to them he could not say.

  Mike Tompetch moved at the same time. Just as slowly as Bell he raised his foot, shifted his body weight to the left leg and bent gradually forward. Then, as his center of gravity was located about over the middle of the sea, he began to set his right foot down. That was the dangerous moment. He could no longer hold himself upright on his left leg and had to bring his foot down more quickly than he had wanted. He looked guiltily at Bell but he'd had no better luck. They had both lost their balance at the same time. The storm that now raged over Wanderer must have been enormous.

  Carefully they drew their left leg after. Since they were standing securely on their right foot, they had no further problems. The storm that resulted from this movement was only a murmuring breeze in comparison to the end-of-the-world-sized hurricane the too quick setting down of the right foot had called forth.

  Bell turned slowly to the side and in so doing his shoulders grew in width and knocked a few mountains out of the way. Mike Tompetch turned as well.

  Out of the corner of his eye—since he did not dare even turn his head—Reginald Bell saw the Gazelle standing on the other side of the narrow sea. It was still close enough that he could have touched it by stretching out his arm but when the shrinking reversed it would soon be 4,000 kilometers away.

  "We're about five kilometers west of the city," he said to Tompetch. "We'll have to walk a little. As you know, the foreshortening works from north to south. From east to west, the proportions remain the same. Move carefully! We don't have any time to lose, true, but we don't want to wreck Wanderer, either. If we take two hours to reach the city, then we'll have reached a reasonable compromise. Let's go!"

  They started to move. They did not lift their feet far off the ground and they slid across the grass. The ground gradually ascended, reaching the level of the cliffs on which the city stood about three kilometers ahead.

  Bell looked north once. He saw that his left shoulder seemed to be flattened in. The sight was astonishing. It looked as though the shoulder joint was simply missing. Yet he felt no pain and since he was still in possession of his left arm it was certainly nonsense to assume that the apparition was authentic.

  He thought about it and found the explanation rather quickly. His left shoulder was pressing against the protective forcefield that domed over the planet's flat surface. The field was the boundary between semispace and normal space. All effects of the distortion ended there in the north where the field rose from the ground.

  • • •

  Never before had Perry Rhodan seen a more grotesque picture. The two poles that in reality were Reginald Bell and Mike Tompetch moved in bizarre fashion. The right side split off. A tear appeared and what was to the right of the tear glided slowly upwards. Nevertheless the atmosphere was agitated into fury. Within seconds a storm developed that was even more violent and destructive than the one Rhodan and his companions had experienced an hour before. The separated section of the pole went off into the north, giving the storm a new direction. What the two giant figures then did became lost in the dust. But when they came to rest and the storm began to die down, their southern end, which had been at the waiting Gazelle, had moved farther north.

  Perry Rhodan had arranged for the event to be filmed. Infrared camera attachments made sure that movements hidden by the storm-driven dust-clouds from the eyes of the human viewers were recorded on film.

  Immediately thereafter the storm began again. The poles were turning. For a moment they were out of sight, then in their places appeared completely new figures. They were narrower than the poles and seemed at first to consist only of a piece of material floating about 1.8 meters above the ground. Then it was realized that the free-floating object represented the southernmost extent of some sort of wall which curved farther to the north the more closely it approached the ground.

  In reality it was a side-view of Reginald Bell and Mike Tompetch. The overhanging object was the shoulder of their spacesuits. Both men's heads were out of sight.

  That meant Bell and Tompetch had turned toward the west. Moments later they started to move again and the storm which had faded in the meantime flared up again for the third time. It was most confusing to see two apparently disembodied shoulders hanging in the air and moving jerkily towards the west—at a speed that seemed ridiculous compared with the size of the two figures.

  Perry Rhodan looked at the clock.

  They had 19 hours left.

  • • •

  During the journey to the city the foreshortening had hit its maximum and began to reverse itself. Reginald Bell noted with some surprise that the expansion process proceeded at a greater rate than had the foreshortening. He explained the phenomenon with the thought that it had only the name in common with a rotation in normal space. If the time-axis a
lso took part in the turning, then in spite of any uninvolved observer, ½ of an event might appear considerably shorter than the other.

  But however it was, after an hour and a half had passed since they began their crossover to the northern continent, the city began to grow visible to their eyes. The formerly unimaginably shrunken thinness of the buildings expanded, reflected light again and thus at length could be perceived by the two Earthmen. After another ½ hour had gone by, when they stood at the edge of the city the northern sea was again so broad that they could no longer see their Gazelle and a few moments later the northern sea's southern coastline disappeared from view.

  Even so, they were still too broad-shouldered to enter the city. The streets were not wide enough for them. They had to wait.

  • • •

  At the same time, Nathan reached the city after wandering for a long time. He looked around and found it at the same time impressive and depressing. His longing for his friend and the other strangers, and his feeling of loneliness, had increased almost to the level of panic. Nathan had become convinced that his existence as an astral form would come to a quick end if help did not arrive soon.

  He landed on the great central plaza of the city and waited. There was nothing and no one for him to converse with.

  • • •

  Reginald Bell did not know what time of day it was when the expansion had progressed to the point where he and Tompetch could enter the city. He only knew that they had to hurry. They had to find the power station as quickly as possible.

  Bell tried to reach Marshall again. He called his name at short intervals, hoping that enough mental energy would be concentrated in his calls to attract Marshall's attention. He wanted to know in what part of the city he should look for the power station. But he had no more success. Marshall was now in semispace and he and Tompetch had remained in normal space. That fact alone cut off any connection, unless the spatial distance was small enough that the barrier could be broken through—as had been the case before.

  Finally Tompetch pointed out a building rearing tower-high into the reddish sky. Its domed roof was studded with odd shapes that in Tompetch's opinion were directional antennae. Bell decided he was right and they turned their steps in the building's direction.

  The entrance to the tower faced the west. Bell's shoulders were still too wide for him to go in the usual way. So he turned sideways and stepped in, right shoulder forward.

  The number of machines, conveyor belts and antigravity shafts which greeted his eyes on the tower's first floor confused him for some time. He needed a quarter of an hour just to guess their function by their shapes and the sort of connections they used.

  He identified the huge alternating current generators, the connections from the massive conductors leading straight up to the top of the tower, and finally, a sort of control board that seemed capable of regulating the activity of the vast machine complex.

  On the inclined face of the panel he found besides a confusing number of switches, buttons and without exception unlighted instrument lamps, a single lever impossible to overlook. It was marked with only two symbols, neither of which Bell could read. But he knew from frequent experience that two symbols inscribed by a master switch, one at either end, usually mean ON and OFF. He tipped the lever forward and to his satisfaction a series of lamps began to light up. At the same time, the vidscreen built into the horizontal section of the control panel showed an image that looked like a relief map. In a few moments Bell saw that in fact it was one. He began to turn other knobs and finally found one coupled with the vidscreen. When he moved it the map glided past the screen and it required only a little practice before Reginald Bell had the landing place of Rhodan's Gazelle precisely in the middle of the screen.

  "We can start!" he said dryly to Mike Tompetch.

  Then he shoved his helmet down over his back so he would be freer to move his head. The air pressure was hardly more than normal.

  • • •

  Its laughter resounded once more. "You've done it yet again, my friend!" It told Rhodan. "It was interesting for me to see how you would go about it. I must admit that you had luck on your side!"

  Perry Rhodan understood instantly. If It said he had done it, then that could only mean that Reginald Bell had succeeded in finding the power station and setting it into operation.

  Our chances were small, he thought, but we did it!

  He sat down in the pilot's seat as Its laughter began all over again, which only showed how much It had enjoyed the affair. Rhodan pulled down the master switch and saw that all the lights were burning. All of them, even the one for energy supply to the engines.

  Rhodan did not hesitate. He activated the engines and noted in satisfaction how the Gazelle lifted into the sky. The landscape on the vidscreen sank past. Nothing had been seen for some time of the three monstrous figures that had been Bell, Tompetch and their Gazelle.

  Even after the Gazelle had taken off and sped towards the north at a velocity of Mach 6,It was still laughing. The protective forcefields began to have their effect. The air molecules were agitated into glowing. An aura of glowing red light surrounded the spacecraft.

  "And you yet will experience your greatest surprise..."It said. Then the connection was broken off.

  Rhodan did not give the hint any especial attention. It was only important to him that he reach the city on the coast of the northern continent, nothing more.

  The time was 14:45. Remaining were only 10 hours in which to insure immortality.

  The sky had become brighter as Reginald Bell and Mike Tompetch left the tower to make their way to the plaza at whose edge stood the Great Hall.

  "That's odd," Bell said thoughtfully to Tompetch. "Do you remember that this happened once before, right when we made our crash landing?"

  Tompetch nodded. Yes, he remembered. Before it had been so dark that they could hardly see their hands in front of their faces. After their emergency, landing they had suddenly a good range of vision and now it was as bright out as an overcast winter's day on Earth.

  They walked through the silent streets of the gigantic city. It was dead and deserted—with the exception of the figure which suddenly appeared from the shadow of a building just as they turned onto the avenue that led to the plaza. Reginald Bell recognized him—the man with the dirty, broad-brimmed Stetson, the torn vest, the drooping gun belt, the greasy trousers and the dangling chaparejos.

  The man stepped into their path, both thumbs jerked into his belt, and grinned at them. "Howdy, gents!" he exclaimed, and Bell could even remember the unmistakable Texas drawl which he had heard once more than 60 years before, almost in the same place. "What's your hurry? You know this town very well? Seen it a few times before myself. Looks funnier every time I come back. Never knew such a funny-lookin' place laid twixt Dodge and Wichita. Got any idea how far 'tis to Wichita? I got a hankerin' to go there for a spell."

  Bell smiled wryly and answered: "38 miles, stranger. What happened to your horse?"

  The cowboy looked disgusted. "Got shot out from under me by the redskins. Been lookin' for a new one but where do you find one around here in the devil's own hometown? 38 miles... holy smoke! That'll cost me two days at least. But Wichita..." With that his eyes opened wide. "...Wichita is a place worth goin' to, no matter how much time it takes. Ever hear of Wichita Red?"

  "Of course," said Bell truthfully, for he had read all about Wichita Red's heroic deeds as immortalized in the Wild West storybooks of his childhood. "He cleaned the town up, right?"

  "Right, pardner! Just what he's doin'. And I'm on my way to help him!"

  At that he disappeared, as though he had never existed. Reginald Bell glanced at the astonished expression on Tompetch's face, then went on. Tompetch followed.

  A few minutes later they reached the plaza. The door to the Great Hall stood wide open. No energy curtain was in sight.

  The plaza was empty. Bell sat down on the pavement in the center and turned away so he woul
d not have to look at the open doorway. The temptation was great. He did not know what time it was. He did not know when the time finally ran out. He only knew that he wanted to enter the Physiotron only once Perry Rhodan had already received his cell renewal treatment. He was the second man in the Solar Imperium and he did not want to be any more. Rhodan was first!

  Mike Tompetch's cares were fewer. He walked along the plaza and looked intently up at the building. He was on Wanderer for the first time and this world was filled with mysteries. Bell did not pay any attention to him. He remained where he was until he heard the whistling noise of the approaching Gazelle coming in towards the city after crossing the sea from the south. He stood up and raised his hand in greeting as the small spacecraft landed on the plaza.

  • • •

  Perry Rhodan entered the Physiotron at 16:00 hours on May 1, 2042. When he had stepped through the door of the Great Hall, the robot Homunk had appeared from somewhere in the depths of the building and conducted him to the device. Homunk could give no information if the strange situation in which Wanderer found itself would have any effect on the results of the cell renewal process. And if Homunk did not know, it could be assumed that It, his master, was Itself facing a mystery.

  Perry Rhodan's treatment was completed at 17:24 hours. Then Homunk spent some time working on the machinery that supplied the Physiotron with power, and finally it was Reginald Bell's turn to be treated. In the meantime Bell had been thinking over on his own what effect Wanderer's presence in semispace could have on the results of the cell renewal. He had not come to any conclusions. Or at least what he finally decided was most probable, could not be called a conclusion: that in a situation like this the cell renewal process could not guarantee any prevention of cell deterioration. It was different for Rhodan: by virtue of his transmitter leap he belonged to the same continuum as Wanderer. For him Wanderer had suffered no change. The sky was blue and the artificial sun shone like it did years before. Reginald Bell, however, had remained in normal space. For him Wanderer was a weird and uninviting world. It found itself in another spatial realm entirely. Did that mean the cell renewal would have no effect on him?