by Perry Rhodan
Next Tomisenkov posted lines of riflemen behind the numerous rocks of all shapes and sizes on both sides of the valley. The signal corps set up lines of communications with the forward guards at both exits of the valley in order to warn Tomisenkov as soon as Rhodan approached.
Moreover, Tomisenkov ordered strict radio silence. There was no doubt that Rhodan had found their positions so quickly because the radio messages from ship to ship had made it easy to home in on them. Tomisenkov was furious when he heard that nobody had even thought of severing the radio communications.
Tomisenkov's last instructions went to the approximately 1500 men who had been assigned no special tasks. They were told to behave as if they felt completely safe. Tomisenkov was certain that Rhodan would observe their camp for a while before he attacked.
• • •
Rhodan came from the north. It was about 140:00 o'clock when the transporters flew over the entrance to the basin and landed about 3000 feet above the floor of the gorge on the western rim.
From there they surveyed the encampment. "It looks alright, sir," Maj. Deringhouse said. Rhodan peered through his binoculars. "Some prisoners have claimed that there is a garrison of 2200 soldiers here," Rhodan pondered.
"There are only about 1500 men down there. where are the rest?"
Deringhouse shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. Maybe they went hunting?"
Rhodan laughed. "Seven hundred of them? No, my friend, there's something fishy. They know we're coming and they are prepared for us."
Deringhouse took his field glasses again and studied the valley. As Tomisenkov had concealed his riflemen very well he was unable to detect them. Maj. Nyssen and Lt. Tanner proposed to forego the established procedure and to destroy the entire camp with the spaceship by dropping an atom bomb on it. However, Rhodan declined their suggestion. "I need every man on Venus," he answered.
He decided to go down with Tanner and Deringhouse to scout the camp. Nyssen was left in charge of the transporters. Using the deflectors, Rhodan and his companions made themselves invisible. The only thing that remained in sight was the detonator which Tanner carried to be placed under the rear fin of the C-103. It was the size of a melon and a little too big to be entirely confined within the field of the deflector. The disadvantage of the deflector field was that the wearers of the transport suits were unable to see each other any better than those outside. Rhodan and his two officers had to hold hands during their flight in order to stay together.
• • •
Lt. Josip was posted in the last line of riflemen close to the wall on the west. He had already spent a few hours guard duty at his post and had meanwhile begun to curse the world in general and Gen. Tomisenkov in particular because he had forbidden smoking.
He wanted a cigarette very badly but could not have one. Something hit him on the shoulder and smacked to the ground. A small, rather flat stone. Josip turned around and tried to find out where the stone had come from.
Obviously from above. Sometimes loose stones fell, making his spot a little hazardous. He was likely to break his neck here, even without Rhodan on the prowl.
Josip reclined again to his former position and aimed his automatic pistol at random out of sheer boredom. From here—
Josip strained his eyes and tapped himself on the head. But the thing was still there.
It looked like a semi-sphere, dark gray and about six inches in diameter. The semi-sphere floated in the air, perhaps three, four feet above the surface of the flat rock behind which Josip had stretched out. It bobbed up and down and retreated slowly.
He carefully raised the barrel of his gun and took aim. At that moment somebody slapped down his arm from behind.
"Cut out this nonsense!" a voice hissed. "What are you shooting at?"
Josip was startled and spun around. It was Capt. Liubol standing behind him. Josip pointed his trembling hand in the direction of the suspended semi-sphere and stammered: "There, look, there is..." Flabbergasted, he stopped in the middle of his words. The semi-sphere had vanished.
However Liubol had become curious and Josip told him his story. Liubol's mien was skeptical and he said: "Come on, if you let me have a swig from your bottle, I'll keep my mouth shut!"
• • •
Lt. Tanner appraised the situation to determine the most favorable way of bringing down the ship. He decided to place his melon under the rear fin toward the inside of the valley and he did it without anyone noticing him.
The explosion would rip off the fin and make the ship tip over to the inside. The forward end was going to hit the ground not far from the nearest soldiers, whom Tomisenkov had told to sit still and act naturally and unconcerned. They were bound to get a healthy lesson.
"Ready?" Rhodan whispered.
"Yes, sir!" Tanner replied.
He was unable to see Rhodan, but he felt the touch of his hand.
"Careful, get back!"
They retreated the same way they had come. Before reaching the first line of defense, Rhodan gave the order to switch on the antigrav apparatus and fly over the guardsmen instead of wending their way between them as they had done previously.
And then the accident happened.
Deringhouse stood on the slanted surface of a rock. As he turned on the antigrav, he slipped. He did not have time to adjust the neutralizer so that his transport suit would carry him upward. Cursing angrily, he fell on the slab and rolled down the slope till he bumped into the soft ground of the valley.
He had remained invisible all the time but his swearing could be heard and one of the guards saw the impression of Deringhouse's body in the soft soil. The soldier did not bother to speculate about the evidence and whether such a thing was possible at all—he fired a shot. He shouted to the men around him and pointed with his outstretched arm to the impression of the body. Within seconds the fire from at least 20 automatic pistols concentrated on the hapless major.
Deringhouse's transport suit was equipped with a defense screen from which the bullets recoiled and fell harmlessly to the ground. However, the protective screen was only designed to withstand the fire from one or two such weapons. If the screen had to absorb the continuous bombardment of hundreds of bullets, it required additional energy which could only be drawn, first from the gravity neutralizer and second from the video deflector field projector. As a consequence Deringhouse not only lost the mobility of his transport suit but his video deflector also ceased to operate, which made him visible again. Moreover, the impact from the pistol shots caused a tremendous vibration which prevented him from simply running away.
With a great effort he managed to get into a position to return the fire with his impulse beamer. Conforming to Rhodan's wishes to spare as many lives as possible, he drew a line of searing heat over the stony barricades behind which the forward guard was posted, forcing the men to keep their heads down and to crawl away as best they could from under the lethal curtain.
However, he did not succeed in gaining his freedom because other troops farther away also rained their withering fire on him.
"Don't give up!" Rhodan called from somewhere and Deringhouse bellowed in agreement.
He knew that Rhodan and Tanner would not leave him in the lurch.
His situation was not overly rosy. He was protected from injuries but the concentrated steady fire prevented his antigrav and video deflector from functioning. He was pinned down out in the open for everyone to see.
• • •
Gen. Tomisenkov took immediate cognizance of the facts that had transpired. It did not take him more than a second to revise the opinion that his enemy was incapable of making himself invisible.
With lightning speed he summoned his forces from the outlying positions to throw them into the struggle where Deringhouse was fighting desperately for his mobility and invisibility.
At this time Tanner detonated by radio impulse the melon under the rear fin of the rocket ship. Deringhouse, who was only about 300 feet from the ship, was throw
n up into the air and came down farther away. From his new spot he could see the upper end of the rocket ship lean over to the side over a huge cloud of dust and disappear underneath. A moment later the ground began to shake from the shock of the metal colossus.
The shooting had been interrupted for a few seconds. Deringhouse's video deflector began to function again and simultaneously he could feel the gentle pull of the antigrav field. At this time Maj. Nyssen had already committed his unfortunate error. Not withstanding his limited view of the battle, which took place down in the valley, and convinced that Rhodan and his men were endangered in some inexplicable manner, he had ordered his detachment to go to the rescue. All transporters save one, which was left behind as a reserve on the rim of the mountains, descended into the gorge along the wall.
Rhodan countermanded Nyssen's orders when he saw the transporters coming down but the telecom was so busy with many voices that he did not get through. Besides, he had only realized Nyssen's intentions when the transporters had almost reached the bottom. The transporters spread terror among the rear lines of the defense. The vehicles landed almost noiselessly. There were excited voices, yet nobody could be seen. Then the boulders began to glow and melt before their terrified eyes.
There was nothing for Tomisenkov's men to do but flee. They deserted their positions and ran in headlong flight into the valley. Tomisenkov surveyed the debacle and realized that he was almost powerless against such foes. Almost! But there was still a possibility. He called three of his officers to the side and hastily gave them instructions. The officers went on their way toward the northern exit of the valley.
Rhodan called for retreat.
At the same time the enemy, who had taken up new positions in the middle of the valley, started to rake the transporters with their fire. As the transporters were enclosed in strong defense screens, they were impervious even to the shelling by mortars. However Rhodan's men became visible when they entered the transporters in the barrage, and they drew the massed fire from the advancing riflemen.
Rhodan made sure that everyone was aboard and then gave the order to start. The machines leaped into the air and ascended along the cliffs.
All transporters—save one.
Deringhouse had retreated a little farther north when the big tumult broke out. when Rhodan called everybody back, he flew toward the transporter which had landed farthest north.
He could hear voices inside the craft. The crew had followed Rhodan's orders. Deringhouse did not pay much attention to the fact that there was no shooting at this transporter in contrast to the fusillades at all the others; but he heard the men grumble as they tried to start the generator.
"What's the matter?" he asked gruffly.
He could not see anyone and nobody could see him.
"The thing won't start!" an invisible speaker complained.
"Let me take a crack at it!"
Deringhouse slipped into the driver's seat. He pushed the green button which switched on the generator and waited for the familiar hum.
"We've got no time to lose!" he bellowed. "Try and find room in one of the other vehicles or use your suits to fly up! Get going!"
The patter of their feet soon faded away.
Deringhouse dropped over the side of the transporter and looked at the chassis from underneath. He saw at first glance the neatly cut oval hole above which the positronic impulse relay had been mounted before; it transmitted the manipulations of the pilot to the propulsion of the craft.
Somebody had taken it out. Somebody who knew next to nothing about the mechanism of the machine. Otherwise he would have removed the generator. In any case, the loss of the impulse relay was enough to disable the vehicle. At this moment Deringhouse drew fire. Someone had noticed his footprints on the ground.
The fire was not very heavy. His protective screen reflected it without draining energy from the antigrav or video deflector. Deringhouse got up and saw half an arm and the barrel of an automatic stick out from behind a boulder about 60 feet away. He leveled his impulse beamer at the boulder. It became white hot and Deringhouse figured it was time to clear out.
Meanwhile the transporters had almost reached the rim of the mountains. Deringhouse depended on his transport suit. He put his antigrav into high, lifted himself off the ground and sailed up the cliffs. It took him a little longer than the transporters to reach the top but now that he left no tracks on the ground he was no longer molested.
The sounds of shot died away in the basin since all the targets were gone. The dust raised by the explosion under the C-103 had settled. Derringhouse could see that the rocket had burst wide open. It would never fly again.
Rhodan's men had taken three prisoners who had escaped the fire of their countrymen with slight injuries as they were led to the transporters. Rhodan considered it necessary to interrogate the prisoners as soon as possible, yet he felt that they were not quite out of danger. Therefore, he ordered his column to return home at once.
Deringhouse reported how the last transporter had been prevented from leaving. Rhodan raised his eyebrows and commented with sincere admiration:
"There is a wily fox in charge down there!"
• • •
Tomisenkov was advised that his casualties amounted to seven dead and 22 seriously wounded men. However his mind was on something else. He was in the middle of a conference with the electronic specialists of the C-103. "Take the part," Tomisenkov urged them, "and replace it where it was cut out. This shouldn't be hard to do. Then get the thing going again."
The electronic technicians went to work. It presented no difficulties to replace the block. Since the cut was in an irregular oval line, there was only one position which matched it.
As the Arkonide technique of impulse transmission did not involve electric wires, there was no problem of how to make connections. The part was put in place, welded in and was ready to function again.
All that was left for the technicians to do was to try out the various buttons and levers and observe how the vehicle reacted.
In less than an hour they had determined exactly how to drive and fly the transporter, how to turn left and right or up and down. Tomisenkov's most urgent demand had been fulfilled.
10/ CONDEMNED TO VENUS
Rhodan made a temporary stop on the shore of a little lake situated halfway between the C-103 camp and the Stardust, in order to conduct the interrogation of the captives.
He questioned the prisoners himself and thus did not require the application of the psycho-beamer.
When he had learned everything he wanted to know, Rhodan deliberated about the situation with Maj. Deringhouse.
"Tomisenkov has appeared on the scene again," Rhodan said. "No one knows how he was able to struggle his way through to the C103 but he finally did it."
Deringhouse looked amazed. "How far is that from their first camp? Wait... almost 120 miles, isn't it?—120 miles on foot through the Venus jungle and all he had was an automatic pistol."
"And he traveled half the way by night," Rhodan added.
Deringhouse nodded.
"You've got to take your hat off to a man like that," Rhodan said thoughtfully.
Deringhouse asked: "What are your plans now, sir?"
Rhodan shrugged his shoulders and smiled. "Nothing. They don't have a ship left with which to leave Venus. Maybe they'll manage to repair the transporter; then they won't have to walk. What do you think will become of them?"
"Do you believe that those men will be able to survive?" Deringhouse asked in doubt.
Rhodan nodded. "Why not? One of them made it. How much easier it will be for them to do it together!"
• • •
Shortly after they lifted off again, Rhodan instructed Tako Kakuta in the Stardust to perform his space leap.
A few days earlier—Terrestrial time—when Rhodan decided to spare the lives of Tomisenkov and his men, he had thereby automatically killed his other plan to rid Venus of the foreign intruders, thus demons
trating to the positronic brain that the threat had been eliminated and that it was safe to open the entrance.
Tako Kakuta, a Japanese like Son Okura and many other members of the Mutant Corps, was the only one among Rhodan's men who had the capacity of teleportation. Thanks to the development of his brain caused by mutation, it had the energy which enabled him to transport himself over distances up to 30,000 miles in a manner resembling the transition of a spaceship.
