by Perry Rhodan
IT IS THE DAWN of a new era for Humanity!
Since the death of Khrest, 57 years have passed. It is now 2102 AD. and much had happened in the mean time:
With the support of Earthmen, Atlan has succeeded in consolidating his position as Imperator. The treaty between Arkon and the Solar Imperium has borne fruit-especially for the Terrans, many of whom have already taken over important positions on Arkon itself. Atlan has to tolerate this because he cannot rely on most of the members of his own race.
The Solar Imperium has become a major commercial power along the rim of the Milky Way. For the past 22 years a virtual stream of emigrants has been flowing out to colonize worlds on many of the inhabited planets Terran embassies have been established as well as interstellar trading settlements.
It goes without saying, of course, that many a dangerous confrontation arises but whoever dares to challenge Terrans must always reckon with...
Perry Rhodan
Posbis #94
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ACTION DIVISION THREE
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1/ ATTACK FROM NOWHERE
Hyper-Relay Station 14 to freighter CAROLINA: You are approaching Springer territory. Caution advised.
Freighter CAROLINA to Relay 14: Thanks for the warning. Will be careful. All's well on board.
• • •
For a spaceship commander there is nothing more unpleasant than to see an alien ship suddenly appear out of the void in close proximity-so close in fact that he's not sure whether or not he can avoid it in time. Nothing is more frightening for such a commander than to get a reading from his instruments indicating high levels of energy operating on board the alien vessel. Because usually such activity can mean only one thing: the enemy's guns are being primed for instant action.
Few things make him feel more helpless than to see his collision screens flare up under such a situation, because that means the enemy has opened fire without previous warning.
These three things happened to Commander Odie Rhyan while en route from Terra to Arkon, with three transitions and half the long course behind him. Far from being the fearful type, Odie Rhyan took one look at the situation and realized that there wasn't a single thing he could do about it. A freighter was no match for a warship-and what had popped up out there was definitely a fighting vessel, long, slender and with a ring-bulge in the middle.
Rhyan remained seated and set off the alarms. At that moment the meters on the energy board rattled their needles against their upper pins, coinciding with a sudden darkening of the outer screen. Odie Rhyan knew what that meant! The next enemy salvo would hit the ship directly because his defense screens were gone.
Odie sent out a coded distress signal. All he had to do then was to press one more button. He pressed it but suddenly everything exploded in a burst of light. It engulfed him-swiftly and painlessly...
• • •
One would have considered Lyn Trenton one of those types who seem to acquire their second prime along with a greying at the temples. But Trenton himself maintained that his first prime had never been interrupted, so it was a misnomer to refer to any 'second Spring'. "Inasmuch as Lyn occupied a position in the Terranian Hierarchy that most other men only ventured to dream about, his assertion was taken at face value and, at least in his presence, everyone had ceased to refer to him as 'the dangerous man with the grey sideburns'.
At the moment Lyn Trenton was setting out to do credit to his reputation. So far he had not had a chance to exchange more than a few inconsequential words with Dynah Langmuir. By his own rather abstract but self-sure evaluation, Dynah was 'an opportunity not to be missed'. They were already halfway to Arkon by now and Lyn had begun to fear he might miss the boat if he didn't make an effective move pretty soon.
With an elastic step he crossed that section of the corridor that separated his cabin from Dynah Langmuir's quarters. He intended only to knock on her door and offer an invitation to dinner. Trenton was convinced that the invitation would not fail to achieve the desired objective. Even as fascinating a woman as Dynah Langmuir could not refuse an invitation from the chief Terran liaison officer on Arkon.
He had just reached her door when the unbearable bedlam of the alarm sirens began. Lyn turned irritably and headed for the lifeboat hangar in compliance with emergency regulations. However, he had hardly taken a step before Dynah Langmuir opened her door and emerged into the passageway, impelled by sudden fright. When he spotted her over his shoulder he turned back toward her, suddenly ceasing to consider the alarm a personal affront of Providence.
He smiled at her quickly. "I was just about to put in a humble request for your company at dinner but the way it looks now we'll be on dog rations in the hangar-not quite the right atmosphere."
Dynah was much too confused at the moment to share his levity. "What is it?" she asked. "What's the meaning of the alarm?"
In view of her obvious concern, Lyn decided to show his fatherly side. "Nobody knows, my child. But in any case we'll be safest in the hangar. Come on!"
As Dynah hesitated he grasped her gently by the arm and drew her along with him. By this time the ship was beginning to sway. From somewhere came a bellowing clap of thunder. When Lyn Trenton saw the girl's shocked reaction he realized that the situation was really serious. He increased his pace but by now Dynah was running on her own.
• • •
Until disaster struck, Richard Silligan had been carping about his boring duty in the lifeboat hangar. All the while he had been trying to dissuade himself from the thought that Odie Rhyan had it in for him and for this reason he continued to assign him to guard duty in the hangar. Naturally that was ridiculous since nobody in the world could seriously doubt Odie Rhyan's impartiality in such matters.
Then the alarm had struck and the ship began to buck like a billy goat, so badly that the antigravs couldn't compensate for it. Silligan quickly opened the lifeboats' main airlock hatches. The enlisted men under his command slipped into their spacesuits and clambered into the smaller vessels' control seats. The engines were fired up and the hangar was suddenly filled with a thundering uproar that even muffled the shrieking sounds of the freighter's overstressed hull.
Richard Silligan waited. The lifeboats were intended for the passengers but when none appeared, Richard began to think of his responsibility for the men in his command. If no passengers showed up he'd have to let the boats take off without them so as to at least save the deck watch crew. There was no doubt in his mind now that the ship had reached her limitations.
He was about to swing up into the airlock of the lifeboat farthest back in line when two of the hangar's access hatches opened simultaneously, emitting two men and a woman.
For a moment Silligan lost his usual control. "Hurry, you fools!" he shouted at the passengers, although each of them had paid 22000 solars for their passage to Arkon.
• • •
The ship burst asunder in a fiery spray of colorful eruptions which momentarily illuminated the darkness of the void with an unaccustomed brightness. Suddenly, where the long fighter with its central ring-bulge had been matching. the Terran freighter's course but seconds before, there was nothing but emptiness. The attacker had disappeared!
A cloud of glowing gases spread out in space. Small pieces of debris were interspersed with it, continuing to glow like embers. Somewhere along the edge of this chaos a small object was receding swiftly. It would have been difficult to tell what it actually was-whether a larger piece of wreckage or a lifeboat.
But no one would have been inclined to believe. that even one single survivor could have escaped the destruction of the Carolina.
2/
BLOODHOUNDS OF TERRA
CAROLINA to Relay 14: CQD EA
(Crypto decode: Help! In imminent danger! Enemy attack!)
Relay 14 to CAROLINA! Hold out. Help under way. Give your position coordinates. Over and out.
CAROLINA to Relay 14:...
• • •
Glord!-thought Ron Landry. I've had more likable chiefs than this one in my time!
'This one' was a small fat man with a sweating chubby red face. He had thin blond hair combed straight back and his puffy lips were always wet It looked as if his bodily development had stopped at age 25 although he must have been twice that old.
From the first moment he saw him Ron Landry couldn't stand him. The worst part was when the little fat man opened his mouth to speak. He had the high, shrill voice of a eunuch. But Ron Landry found the fact equally hard to bear that the rank insignia of a colonel lay on this man's shoulders while he remained a captain. They both wore civilian clothes, considering the nature of their profession, but they were acutely aware of their difference in rank.
The uncongenial one was Nike Quinto, Chief of Intercosmic Social Welfare and Development. "Man, don't wear me out!" he scolded Landry in his high-pitched voice. "How did you ever get to be a captain when you're so stupid? What's going to become of my blood-pressure if all I get is subordinates like you?"
Ron thought grimly that as far as he was concerned the man's blood-pressure could do what it pleased-but he felt that he could not take the remark about being stupid even from a Colonel. "Sir," he retorted with emphasis, "I'd appreciate it if you could be more specific about this assignment. I don't think even a genius could make much out of just three or four words."
Nike Quinto stared at him in startled amazement. "What? So you have an insolent tongue as well?" he criticized.
Landry was on the brink of flaring up but somehow he could not quite take the situation as seriously as the circumstances seemed to merit. So he held his 'insolent' tongue and waited for Nike Quinto to continue his tirade.
In fact Quinto was now shouting. "What the devil's so hard to understand? You have to take a ship to a precise location in interstellar space-is that so difficult?"
"Not at all, sir," Ron answered, but he had to struggle to suppress a smirk. "I merely wanted to know why."
Quinto whistled in exasperation. "Why, he says! Is a soldier supposed to ask why every time he receives an order? Just go there, take a look at whatever there is to see and give an exact report about your observations and remember it's urgent!"
Ron nodded. "Very well, sir."
Nike Quinto's frog eyes glared at him. "That is all!" he blurted out in high, harsh tones. "You may go!"
Although it seemed foolish for him to do so in civvies, Ron saluted and turned toward the door.
"Not there," complained Quinto. "Where the devil do you think you're going?"
Wonderingly, Ron turned around. "To check out a ship, sir," he answered, "and to take off for the target area."
With a pained expression Quinto placed a hand over his heart. "You're making things difficult for me," he sighed. "I'll bet my blood-pressure is up to 220 by now. I'm not supposed to have more than 160." Suddenly his temperament blazed forth again. "Do you really think I'd let you go like that? What in Hades would you be doing out there if I didn't brief you on what's going on and why you're making this flight?"
Ron was about to explain that this was precisely the information he'd been asking for all along but Nike Quinto didn't give him a chance to speak.
"There is where you go!" he almost squealed, pointing to a side door. "Go in there, sit down in the chair inside and relax. When you're ready, come back out and tell me what you think of the situation. Do you understand?"
"Yssir," replied Ron in some bewilderment.
He went to the other door and opened it. At first glance he realized what kind of room Nike Quinto had sent him to. The ultra-comfortable chair, the yellow-green color of the walls, the grey light interspersed with a violet shimmering, the complete absence of any other furniture than the chair itself-all this could mean only one thing: hypno-schooling.
Suddenly Ron Landry was looking at this assignment from another perspective. If they were going to all this trouble there must be more behind the whole thing than he had thought.
The door closed behind him. He sat down in the chair as Quinto had ordered him to do and stretched his legs out comfortably. He dosed his eyes and attempted to think of nothing. He became sleepy.
A few hours later he knew exactly what was involved.
He also had another opinion of Nike Quinto, the little fat man with his high blood-pressure and his perpetually sweating red face.
A spaceship had disappeared. The last emergency signal from the commander indicated that his ship, which was a freighter, had been attacked by an enemy spacecraft of some kind. Who the enemy was or why it had attacked the Terran freighter, nobody knew. Conjectures would be superfluous until somebody went to the location for a close look around.
This was Ron Landry's assignment. It was by no means an easy as it had seemed at first glance. Whoever the enemy might be, he would know that the Terrans were not inclined to suffer the loss of a freighter without taking the necessary measures to investigate. He would presume that a search expedition would be sent out to trace down the remains of the ship and attempt to draw some conclusions. If there were no unforeseen disturbances in the area the remains of the destroyed vessel could be analyzed to furnish the Terran authorities with the data they wanted.
Nike Quinto had thought of all this. All Terran Fleet units in the vicinity of the catastrophe had been alerted. So when Ron Landry came to inspect the freighter remains he knew he would have a powerful fighting formation at his back. Quinto had thought of still more: the ship that he was consigning to Ron Landry was a heavy cruiser which could hold its own with every known type of ship in the galaxy, provided the enemy forces weren't too numerous. Landry was authorized to engage in a pursuit of the unknown enemy as soon as he found a clue to follow. Further, Landry would be under protection of the Terran Fleet task force in the area, which was to follow him on his chase.
Ron had to admit that he might not have been able to make such effective preparations himself. He had overlooked many factors that Nike Quinto had thought of.
When he finally took leave of Quinto he went out of his way to let the sweating little man know that ha respected him.
But it didn't seem to mollify the frascible Quinto, who shouted after him: "And God help you if you don't handle this thing to my complete satisfaction!"
• • •
All that was left of the Carolina: a cold gas cloud that swept through space with a velocity that matched that of the freighter at the moment of the disaster-aside from the effects of thermodynamic laws which were causing it to gradually expand and attenuate.
By the time the Royal Irish reached the cloud of gas its density had been reduced to a few trillionths of a gram per cubic cm. This meant that the vaporized material of the ship comprised a spherical configuration that was about 1000 km in diameter and by virtue of its attenuation it could not be detected against the star-fired background of space by any normal optical means.
On the other hand the cloud's density was ample for the analysts. Against the light of the stars whose spectrum constants were known they took an absorption spectrum of the gas and ascertained if this particular cloud actually did represent the remains of the Carolina. The spectrographs revealed the familiar metals of the ship's hull and bulkheads. Also they picked up the lines of carbon dioxide, the common plastic components of the ship's equipment-and the formerly living substances of those who had been on board the Carolina.
No, there could be no doubt of the fact that the freighter had been obliterated.
But the analysts did not stop there. They also examined the molecular chain patterns of the remains. The manner in which the matter had been split and ruptured, apart gave an indication also of the type of weaponry em
ployed in destroying the Carolina. The molecular fragments were analytically sorted out so that a statistical conclusion could be made with regard to the kind of dissociating energy that would be needed for breaking down the original molecules into the fractional components and isotopes thus obtained. Using known molecular-count factors it was easy to calculate what kind of energies had been unleashed against the Carolina. For every weapon had its specific output rating and since the battle had only lasted a few minutes-otherwise Odie Rhyan would have been able to do more than send out a coded emergency call-the overall weapons-intensity could be calculated.
The results were: the Carolina had been destroyed by a thermo-beam bombardment. The total energy output was 15 times what would have been necessary to collapse the freighter's defense screens. The final hit must have caused the Carolina to burst like a bomb.
Ron Landry's task now was to draw some conclusions as to the identity of the unknown enemy who had attacked a defenseless freighter here in a comparatively well-traveled shipping lane.
It would have been a difficult task to accomplish if he had only had the results of the analysis to go by. Anybody in the galaxy could be in possession of a thermo-cannon. It was true that a weapon of the large magnitude such as was employed here would cost a great deal of money but there were more people in the Milky Way with a surplus of that commodity than seemed justified to Ron Landry at the moment. Any of them could have purchased such a weapon, installed it on board a ship and attacked the Carolina. The weapon alone offered no basis for any conclusion.
But there was something else to go on.
120 years ago, Terra had begun to play its own fiddle in the galactic orchestra of major powers. It was a soft fiddle at first while all the others like the Topides, the Ferrons and above all the Arkon Imperium with all its associated powers and allies proceeded to pound their drums loud enough to drown out anybody's brass. At the time there was an offshoot race of Arkonides known as the Springers who maintained a sort of galactic trade monopoly. According to them, all interstellar commerce was to go through their hands. No world was to carry out trade with planets outside its own system without consulting the Springers' commerce control. Any extensive trading projects required Springer approval, and not only that: the Springers would then take over the larger project themselves and distribute a ridiculously small portion of the profits to the original merchants involved.
