The Ghosts of Gol

  Perry Rhodan

  The Third Power #10

  The Ghosts of Gol

  —————————————————

  The Ghosts of Gol

  —————————————————

  1/ SPOOKY PHENOMENA

  Rhodan's stern voice, resounding from the telecoms in all the corridors of the mighty spaceship, broke the quiet which had prevailed for several hours aboard the Stardust II.

  "Commander to all Guppies! Prepare your ships for takeoff at nine-twenty ship time. I repeat..."

  The previous quiet had been deceptive. Beneath its surface, tension was growing, perhaps even fear, most certainly the disquieting realization of involvement with things beyond the comprehension of human brains. To the Stardust's crew of five hundred, never before had it been so apparent as in the past few days and hours to just what extraordinary degree the welfare of the entire ship depended on the capabilities of a single man.

  A single man: Perry Rhodan.

  Many of the men did not know the reasons for Rhodan's actions and the leader of the New Power did not deem it necessary to enlighten them. So rumors spread, at first ridiculed, then embellished with hair-raising details and finally accepted.

  Rhodan's latest order meant new excitement for two hundred men of the crew. After the unnerving experience of hours of uncertain waiting, they preferred plunge into the most dangerous adventure rather than remain inactive a moment longer.

  Guppies were the eight auxiliary ships of the Good Hope class carried aboard the Stardust II. Nobody remembered who first called them such but "Guppies" was now accepted as the common code name for the two hundred-foot-long ships.

  The all clear reports for the Guppies had come. Perry Rhodan sat in the pilot seat in the Control Center and listened to the telecom with an impassive face. He looked as if he were not interested in the chatter but after the eighth report he leaned over the mike and ordered:

  "Proceed in accordance with the data of your automatic navigation control. Hold your ships in standby position in your respective target areas and scan the sector for structural changes. Keep your structure sensors manned at all times and report immediately any change in the spacetime continuum. Start at prearranged time."

  With an abrupt move of his hand he switched off the telecom. He whirled around in his chair. He was alone in the Command Center with Reginald Bell, his companion ever since their first flight to Earth's moon and still his best friend on their way to the Unknown. Bell tried to smile but managed only a half-hearted grin. Cheerfulness seemed out of place these days.

  "What do you anticipate?" asked Bell. "Alien ships?"

  Rhodan stared thoughtfully at him for a few seconds. Then he shook his head in vigorous negation and got up.

  "No, no ships," he answered.

  Bell waited. He waited until he knew that Rhodan would give him no further explanation voluntarily.

  "What in the devil else?" he asked gruffly. "Am I supposed to guess or are you going to tell me?"

  "I expect a structural disturbance," Rhodan replied. "How it will be brought about I don't know. The man we are chasing can change the space-time continuum at will."

  Bell laughed but he did not sound very cheerful.

  "That man," he mocked. "I'd really like to see him. He probably has an energy spiral instead of a head and two machines where I have my arms."

  "We'll get to see him," Rhodan said quietly. "Then we'll find out whether he has a spiral or not."

  "Do you really believe that? I mean..."

  "Yes, I do," interrupted Rhodan. "I'm not fool enough to risk a deadly adventure against my better judgment."

  Bell mumbled something Rhodan did not understand.. Then he asked:

  "And our Guppies are supposed to determine in which region of space the disturbance will take place, right?"

  "Exactly!"

  Bell was silent for a while, then he made another effort.

  Listen, Chief, you've brought a metal cartridge from the past. What a fantastic feat—ten thousand years from the past! You've opened it and tried to decipher the text it contained. You're convinced that you've read it correctly, right? And this is what it said:

  "'He who wishes to find the way can still turn back. But if he decides to go on, may it be known to him that he will receive no more help whatsoever. Soon a quake will shake space...' and so on."

  "So you drop out of sight for a few days and almost burn up the big positronic computer. Finally, you bring forth the great idea that you must send out all auxiliary ships to scour space for structural disturbances."

  "If one takes into consideration that we cannot be at all sure that the translating machine is equipped to handle such complicated messages properly, don't you think that we've started something we cannot finish?"

  Rhodan listened thoughtfully. Bell had become serious and Rhodan knew that he expected a serious answer.

  "No, Bell," Rhodan said quietly, emphasizing his words. "I'm convinced that we can accomplish it."

  Bell's face changed from one second to the next. His mouth became firm and he cocked his head with its bristles of red hair.

  "Well, come on, then, and tell it to the others too!" he growled.

  "Which others?"

  "Who on board this ship would dare oppose your commands—except the two Arkonides?"

  For Captain Chaney the flight presented conflicting emotions. He commanded Guppy Number Five. He had taken off at nine-twenty ship time from Stardust II together with the seven other Guppies. He had set his automatic pilot on the course predetermined by Rhodan's calculations and had proceeded according to his instructions to a position which was no more than a distance of one astronomical unit from the orbit of the fifteenth Vega planet.

  He stopped at this point and began to wait, conforming to his orders. At first he had thought that something was going to happen in the next few hours; but hours passed and nothing happened except that the fifteenth planet of Vega, which had been thirty million miles distant at his arrival, moved away a few more miles.

  Captain Chaney stretched out and tried to sleep without much success. Then he got up again and stared with smarting eyes at the monitor screens of the optical scanners and structure field sensors.

  Captain Chaney had not often had the opportunity to fly such a ship as this. He knew the ship very thoroughly but his knowledge stemmed more from his intensive hypno-training than from flying practice.

  Chaney had piloted a few cruising flights in the Terrestrial solar system and this experience in itself had considerably affected his outlook. Only eighteen months before that event he had believed—while flying his supersonic jet plane as a first lieutenant—that it would be decades till man would reach Mars or Venus with his flaming rockets.

  There were moments when he thought he was dreaming. At times he tried to convince himself that his experiences could not be real. Then an alarm signal would shrill or a range finder would begin to hum with blinking lamps—and he was back in reality again.

  I am a dreamer, he thought, feeling tired.

  "Orientation Section to Commander!" a harsh voice bellowed. "Unidentified object on zero-one-eight degrees horizontal—two-six-six vertical."

  Chaney perked up. He moved the lines on the scale below the center screen to 180H and 2660V. The screen flickered and came to rest again. A glistening point showed up in its center. It was changing its luminosity at regular intervals.

  "What is that?" Chaney asked gruffly.

  "Can't make it out, sir."

  "Velocity?"

  "Fourteen miles per second, sir. Coming in our direction."

  "Minimum distance?"

  "Eighteen miles, sir, in about forty minutes."

  Chan
ey waited. Eighteen miles was a small distance out in space. One should be able to recognize at eighteen miles what kind of an object with variable light intensity was drifting in space. Forty minutes was a long time. Chaney kept looking till his eyeballs hurt but his observation screen was not sharp enough to make out the outline of the object.

  Then the range finder reported again. "False alarm, sir. It's the wreckage of a ship from the time of the Topide invasion; a Ferronian ship, sir." Chaney felt cheated.

  "Okay," he said with a tired voice. Then he got up. "Lieutenant Forge, take over my place. I'll go and catch some sleep. I guess it'll be a while till we get to see something real interesting."

  Rhodan established quiet with an imperious gesture of his hand.

  "Let's start from the beginning," he said bitterly, dividing his anger in equal measure between Khrest and Thora. "You came to this sector of the galaxy on a search expedition in a cruiser which probably was the last one you had been able to launch on Arkon. You were hoping to find the mysterious world where the secret of perpetual cell reproduction had been discovered.

  "Your expedition failed at first but now after some detours—which probably caused no more delay than if you had managed by yourselves—we are once more approaching our goal together."

  "In the vault underneath the Red Palace in Thorta we found some clues. We've made many great efforts to follow them up and we've found new clues. We're getting closer to our goal step by step and now you suddenly want to abandon everything! Why?"

  The last word sounded like the crack of a whip. Bell, who was sitting nearby, winced. He could not remember ever having seen Rhodan so irate as during these past minutes. Khrest did not reply. He held his long, narrow head lowered and stared at the floor. Thora had moved forward, to the edge of her chair and looked at Rhodan. Hostility glared in her red eyes.

  "I'll tell you why," Rhodan continued, much calmer after a while. "You are afraid!"

  Khrest's white-haired head shot up.

  "And if it were so?" he asked quietly. "Do you think it's cowardly to be afraid in a situation like this?"

  "Yes," responded Rhodan, "and you know why: because you've believed that the secret of eternal life can be cheaply obtained in the galaxy. You've been told that some unknown race has solved the puzzle and will be happy to let you in on the secret."

  "But now it turns out that it just isn't so. The people who know the secret of cell preservation also know how to guard it. Whoever desires to learn it has to tangle with them according to their rules of the game."

  "Since you have, after ten thousand years, a habit of believing that everything has to fall into your lap, you now prefer to quit the game. One of these days, when we have more time, I'm going to tell you that fable of the Fox and the Sour Grapes.

  "All I can tell you at the moment is that you're free to decide whether you want to await the outcome of our action in safety outside, or if you want to come along with us." Thora jumped up. Bell was holding his breath. He knew how Thora was given to acting on impulse and it looked for a moment as if she were ready to strangle Rhodan. She took a couple of steps toward Rhodan, then stopped and let her shoulders drop.

  "Barbarian!" Rhodan blunted the force of her fury by beginning to laugh. "If it is barbarian to recognize necessities and civilized to be a be a coward, I would rather remain a barbarian."

  Khrest got up too. "Will you give us a few hours to think about it?" he asked earnestly. "The matter is important enough to be given serious consideration. I'm going to analyze your arguments carefully, Rhodan."

  "You'll have a few hours, providing our auxiliary ships don't report back earlier," replied Rhodan. Khrest nodded. Then he left the room, walking slowly. Thora hesitated. "Have you already finished your deliberations?" Rhodan asked, taunting her. She turned away and ran out. The automatic sliding door rolled with a hissing sound into its latches behind her.

  Captain Chaney was awakened by a noise such as he had never heard before. After some effort and with the aid of two pills he had finally managed to fall asleep but he had no idea at the moment how long he had been in bed.

  He got up and put his aching, ringing head under the water faucet in his cabin. As the water was rushing over his ears he heard the telecom start to blare: "Attention, everybody, attention! This is your commander speaking. Alert ship for highest state of alarm! Stand by!"

  Chaney snorted, wiped his face and stormed out of the cabin. In the Command Center Lieutenant Forge was still standing with the mike before his mouth. "What's the matter?" shouted Chaney. "Why didn't anyone wake me up?" Forge showed the strict training he had enjoyed. He finished his message, put back the mike and stood at attention.

  "Considerable structure changes in immediate vicinity. It's my opinion that a whole feet of alien ships has appeared by hypertransition."

  "Have you located them?"

  No, sir, not yet." Chaney remembered that a strange noise had aroused him from his sleep. Now it was no longer heard.

  "What kind of a racket was that earlier?" he wanted to know.

  Forge shrugged his shoulders and looked puzzled. "I don't know, sir. Evidently the hull of the ship has been vibrating."

  "The ship vibrating!" shouted Chaney. "Didn't you set up the protective screen!?"

  "I did, sir!"

  "Then why, for heaven's sake...?" He was almost thrown off his feet. The Command Center began to sway violently and the material of which the walls were built squeaked in the joints. A spark flashed on the switch console of the copilot, followed by a black, malodorous cloud of smoke. The noise of the explosion could not be heard because the hull of the ship had begun to drone again.

  Chaney recognized the sound as the same which had awakened him. With shaky legs he walked over to his seat and called the Orientation Section. "What's going on?" he yelled.

  "Severe structure disturbances very close by, sir," rasped the voice from the receiver.

  "Find out where these disturbances have occurred and report the accurate distance of the location."

  The spooky phenomenon disappeared as quickly as it had come. The ship was settling down again. The droning stopped and Chaney was now able to walk straight on his legs. He went over to the seat of the copilot and examined the switch console. The explosion had shattered one of the measuring instruments into thousands of pieces and left nothing but a hole as big as a fist in the plastic surface.

  "What kind of an instrument was that?" asked Chaney and pointed to the hole.

  Forge came over.

  "The dial of the small structure sensor, sir."

  Chaney suppressed a feeling of panic welling up in him. What sort of gravitational shocks could cause a structure sensor to burn out? He turned away and ordered the radio technician to be ready with his hyper-communication set for a talk to Ferrol. Before he could speak, however, he received another report from the range finder.

  "The direction is zero-zero-eight degrees horizontal and one-eight-nine degrees vertical. Distance four-point-three astronomical units."

  "Can you make out anything in that area?"

  "Yes, sir. The fourteenth planet of Vega."

  Chaney suddenly got the impression that his hypercall had become very urgent. He barked at the radio officer to hurry up.

  "We would like to talk to you," said Khrest hesitantly, remaining in the hatch to keep it from immediately closing up again.

  Rhodan nodded. "Come on in!"

  His anger had blown over long ago. He was feeling sorry for Khrest and all people like him. Thousands of years of comfort had made the race of the Arkonides forget how to jump over one's own shadow. To undertake any matter the result of which was not perfectly assured right from the start appeared just as foolish to them as to shoot a full dose of neutron beams through one's head to see if one could survive it.

  Thora entered the Command Center behind Khrest.

  Rhodan was sitting at a test stand and staring at a metal cartridge which he had retrieved from the past during one
of his previous actions. So far there was no hint that the capsule held anything other than the contents removed earlier, although Rhodan had no doubt that it did. It would have meant the end of the long, tortuous road to eternal life if the great unknown person would furnish no more clues.

  Rhodan swiveled around in his chair and looked attentively at the two Arkonides. Khrest was standing there, still undecided.

  "Please sit down!" Rhodan smiled with amusement "This is your ship just as much as mine. Make yourself at home!" Khrest sat. He seemed to have to force himself to speak as it took quite a while till he lifted his head and began.

  "We've thought this matter over," he started to say. He got no further. At this moment many astonishing things began to happen almost simultaneously, which rendered totally insignificant what Khrest had decided about the situation. The circular room reverberated with a sonorous droning which deafened the ears. Rhodan received such a strong jolt in his back that he swerved up from chair. chair. He whirled around, his weapon half drawn but his moving body froze suddenly. The metal cartridge on the test stand had begun to glow. It radiated a blue-white light, evidently without any attendant emission of heat since the surface of the table suffered no damage.

  He noticed with amazement that the cartridge obviously radiated away its own matter. It became smaller and smaller as he watched and the light went out at the same time as the last bit of metal disappeared.

  Rhodan let his hand drop and tried to peer through the wildly pulsating images which his overly agitated retina conjured up.

  "Bell!"

  "Yes, Chief?"

  "Call Tanaka. Tell him to come here at once!" Bell reacted quickly and efficiently. He gave no sign whatsoever that the radiating cartridge had made any impression on him. Bell was talking into the telecom mike when the high pitched buzzing of the hypercom set attracted Rhodan's attention. He leaped to the switchboard with two big jumps and adjusted the reception.

  "Commander Rhodan speaking. Go ahead!

  "Guppy Number Five to Commander; Captain Chaney speaking. Strong structural changes in area of fourteenth planet, sir, coming in intervals. They are of such magnitude that I have trouble keeping the ship upright."