The Silence of Gom Read online

  Perry Rhodan

  The Third Power #39

  The Silence of Gom

  The Awesome spaceship Titan blasts off from Laros, the base of the Medical Masters. But the Peacelord's trouble are far from over. Suddenly, inexplicable forces spirit eight of his Mutants onto the face of the mysterious world of Gom. The inhabitants are deadly–yet Perry Rhodan must delay his rescue, for the Earth itself is threatened and a deception of cosmic proportions is the only chance of saving the home planet from total destruction. This is the stirring story of–

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  THE SILENCE OF GOM

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  1/ MENACE IN BROWN

  MYSTERIOUSLY dragged down from space by an invisible power!

  The Terranian spacecraft known as a Gazelle, forced to the surface of the planet Gom, battered, bruised, captive of the weird world's powerful gravitation.

  And Reginald Bell and his mutant group, in the service of Perry Rhodan, victims of Gom.

  A They had crawled from the wreck to a distant cave, making it just in time to seek refuge from the savagery of the elements when a violent storm struck, a nightmarish howling dervish that lasted 10 hours till, abruptly as it had begun, it ended.

  Reginald Bell was the first to speak. "The shadow has moved farther," he observed, pointing to a slender column of stone which had earlier stood in shade near the edge of the horizon. A rare formation considering the massive gravitation of Gom, red sunshine had now crept on several handbreadths over the monolith, illuminating it with crimson.

  The fleshy blue-leafed plants which had burrowed into the ground like earthworms a few minutes before the storm loomed on the horizon, crawled from their retreats with scraping noises and stretched along the surface of the ground till they regained their original shape, after which they remained motionless.

  More than a day had passed on the Terrestrial time scale since the crash. At that time they had instantly lost all contact with Perry Rhodan, who waited far outside the stellar system of Gonom, aboard the Titan , flagship of the Terrestrial Spacefleet; waited anxiously for the success of the mission Reginald Bell and a handful of mutants had courageously undertaken.

  It had taken the group a little less than a day to crawl from the place of impact to the sanctuary of the cave. Tako Kakuta was unconscious for hours after the crash and had to be carried. One of Ivan Goratschin's double heads had suffered an injury. Although it was the 'younger' of the two heads which had received the concussion, the mutant's sympathetic nervous system caused the 'older' head a great deal of pain—which was cause for it to severely tongue lash its brother.

  Betty Toufry had been the biggest surprise. When they crawled out of the broken body of the dead Gazelle, the men were sure they would have to clamber back and rescue Betty, who was presumably so paralyzed by fear and shock that she was unable to move. Instead, after each had emerged from the mass of twisted plastimetal, stretched out on the ground and gingerly fingered his body with leaden arms, Betty was already outside, some yards distant, leaning nonchalantly against a rock formation and greeting them with a cheery smile. She could read their thoughts and knew what was on their minds, shushing Bell as he began to compliment her on what a courageous girl she was...

  The steady wind had blown heat waves as high as 400° F to the site of the crash, forcing them to seek a cooler climate in the twilight zone. At first they walked erect like human beings but soon discovered that their earthly pride was no match for the doubled gravity.

  They had just made it to the cave when the storm struck in earnest. They had watched in wonder while the blue flesh-like plants had sought safety in the ground a few minutes before the first gust swept over the high-plain and would have whipped them away but for the fact that they were partially protected as they cowered on the lee side of a rock.

  Then they hid in the cave and waited 10 long hours for the tempest to subside.

  And now they found themselves—as before—cut off from all communications on a world which was almost twice as big as Saturn, rotated once every 2.4 Terrestrial years as it completed its orbit around its central star Gonom, thus always showing it the same face. However its trajectory was very eccentric so that violent liberations caused periodic changes of the sun's position. Gom had a mantle of oxygen and an air pressure of 20 atmospheres. Its surface gravitation measured 1.9G.

  It was a world on which a man could stand erect no longer than a few minutes and where he needed the protection of a spacesuit to keep from being crushed by the enormous pressure; a world on which disgusting, blue, semi-intelligent plants vegetated and where eternal night reigned on one half and constant day on the other; a world from whose twilight zone one perceived nothing but deepest darkness behind and only a weak, blood-red streak of light ahead.

  A creation of hell. Such was Gom!

  • • •

  "Something is coming," John Marshall said. Reginald Bell stared out of the cave's exit. "There's nothing I can see," he muttered.

  "There's nothing to see," Betty remarked. "What do you think of it, Mr. Marshall?"

  Marshall shook his head. "I don't know. It seems to be rather simple minded."

  "Right. Semi-intelligent."

  "Good grief!" Bell growled. "I know you're telepaths but I also want to know what's going on!"

  John Marshall leaned forward as he listened. Then he shrugged his shoulders. "The impulses are stronger than those from the blue plants," he observed, "but it's impossible to make sense out of it."

  "Where is it?" Bell demanded.

  "Up front!" Marshall pointed in the direction of a flat rock lying a few feet from the entrance to the cave.

  Bell wanted to ask another question but held his tongue. In the reddish twilight something crept around the rock. It looked like a plain dark spot of oval outline, perhaps 10 square feet-big. It slithered around the rock and moved toward the cave. "It wants to come here!" Marshall whispered. Bell stared at the thing. It didn't have any definite contours. Wherever it moved it gave the appearance as if the ground had been darkened by a shade. It was about to creep between two of the blue plants but the plants seemed to fear the dark spot more than the storm. They retreated into the ground with amazing agility and with their scraping noise. Reginald Bell drew his thermo-weapon, prepared to shoot.

  "Don't!" Marshall ordered. "It's only curious."

  Then the spot stopped at the entrance to the cave and Bell gawked at it. It looked like a thin layer of dark brown lacquer. Bell felt ill at ease and looked to Marshall for reassurance. "What does it want?"

  Marshall shook his head. "Nothing else. It doesn't find us interesting."

  With a slight scratching noise the spot started to move again. However it didn't return the same way it had come but wandered to the right around the cliff in which the cave was located. After a few minutes it was out of Bell's sight.

  "Good Heavens," he groaned, "what kind of a world is this?"

  Tama Yokida seemed less impressed. "I can bring it back, sir," he offered. "Do you want me to?"

  Bell wearily waved him off. "Let it go! What should we do with it?"

  Kitai Ishibashi, the Suggestor, drew Bell's attention. Kitai lay next to the wall of the cave and stared at the stone wall. "What's the matter?" Bell wanted to know."

  Kitai sighed and turned around. "I thought I could force my will on it. But it's probably too dumb to be influenced."

  Bell laughed angrily. "I guess you're right. It seems to be no smarter than the blue plants that are hiding from the storm."

  He moved back from the cave's exit and muttered for the second time as he crawled past Marshall: "Good Heavens! What kind of a world did we get int
o?"

  Marshall asked pensively without expecting an answer: "What did you expect to find on Gom?"

  Ivan Ivanovich Goratschin, the two-headed mutant, brashly piped up with one of his heads: "Booze and beautiful babes!"

  The older head chortled and turned to the side while the younger cocked his head and said mischievously: "It was he who said it."

  Bell gnashed his teeth and commented loud enough for everybody to hear: "Dumped in a desolate hell with a bunch of idiots to depend on!"

  • • •

  They tried once more to get in touch with the Titan. The most efficient telepath of the Mutant Corps, that little furry animal Pucky, was aboard the Titan. Betty and John Marshall joined their efforts to relay a signal to Pucky in order to inform him where and in what predicament they had landed.

  But instead of an answer from Pucky they received confusing and senseless thought-impulses of such intensity that Marshall was willing to bet they came from their own planet Gom.

  "What do you propose to do now?" Bell asked grimly. "Are you ready to settle down here for life?"

  Marshall smiled. "You're the leader of our group and we thought you'd come up with a good idea."

  "Balderdash!" Bell snorted. "My insignia isn't going to get us out of this mess but I figured that you with your superbrains would hit on a useful solution in no time at all."

  Betty Toufry interjected: "I don't believe we can do more than wait. Perry Rhodan knows we're in danger and he can figure out where we wound up. In my opinion all that matters now is that we survive till the Titan lands on Gom."

  "If I only knew how far the libration extends," Bell murmured. "The edge of the dusky zone has already advanced 300 feet closer to us. If it keeps going like this we'll have to get out of here in a few more days."

  The red band of light which bordered the twilight zone had moved farther up into the black sky. A constant stream of air had raised the temperature inside the cave from 170 to 200°F. The climate control in their spacesuits worked at top capacity.

  40 hours had elapsed since the crash of the Gazelle. They had endured the ordeal by watching the blue plants and by tensely waiting for a response to their telepathic calls—which unfortunately never came—and by kidding each other with horseplay.

  But now the enforced idleness became unbearable—and yet there was nothing else they could do except wait.

  • • •

  All of them slept at the same time. Originally Ivan the older, was assigned guard duty at the entrance to the cave but the two heads were unable to come to an agreement as to who had received the order with the result that they both went to sleep. Luckily nothing happened.

  Bell crawled wearily to the opening and stared out, glancing first at the rocky needle by which he gauged the progress of the libration. His second look was aimed in the direction of the pancaked wreck of the Gazelle.

  He rubbed his eyes in panic and his men heard him utter a frightful gasp. He blinked a few times and tried to focus his eyes but the picture remained the same.

  The wreck had vanished.

  Reginald Bell hesitated for awhile but finally asked the Seer Wuriu. Sengu to search for the wreck under the surface of the plain. He theorized that Gom was subject to volcanic activity and that perhaps a fissure had opened in the ground and swallowed up the Gazelle. Only Wuriu .Sengu, with his para-optical ability of seeing through solid matter as other people look through, clean window glass, was in a position to discover it again.

  However Sengu's efforts were in vain. The Gazelle seemed to have disappeared from the face of the planet without a trace.

  Bell made another decision, albeit very reluctantly, because it meant placing one of his men in jeopardy again. But in their situation reconnaissance and vital information were of paramount importance. He turned to Tako Kakuta, the teleporter. "Take a look, Tako!" he ordered. "But don't linger, just give the site a brief inspection. You don't have to conduct a search. Return as quickly as you can."

  Tako disappeared and by using his ability of teleportation emerged almost instantly as a little glittering point at the spot where the wreck of the Gazelle had been abandoned.

  Bell saw him move around a few steps and then he was gone again. But—he popped up at the same moment at the entrance to the cave. The entire inspection had lasted only 15 seconds.

  "Nothing," Tako murmured disappointedly. "The ground is perfectly smooth, almost as if varnished."

  Marshall broke in as if electrified: "Varnished, you say; what color?"

  Tako thought for a moment. "I'd say... dark brown."

  Bell followed Marshall's deductions. "Would you believe the patch of lacquer devoured the Gazelle?"

  "I'm not jumping to any conclusions. But if the ground is dark brown and looks like varnish..."

  "How big was the spot?" Bell asked Tako.

  Tako didn't know. "I didn't see it all," he admitted.

  "More than a few square yards?"

  "Sure, much larger than that." Bell wanted to reply something but at this moment the two-headed mutant Ivan Goratschin, Kitai Ishibashi, Wuriu Sengu and Tama Yokida got up in the rear of the cave. Swaying but erect they moved toward the talking group on their way to leave the cave. All this happened so fast and looked so peculiar—as if the men were guided by machines—that Bell didn't recover from his shock until the men were outside the cave.

  "Stop!" he shouted. "Come back, you idiots!"

  But the mutants kept marching on. Apparently they had failed to hear Bell. Bell crawled out to follow them. However the 4 suddenly seemed to be endowed with enormous strength and the distance between them and Bell rapidly increased. The mutants headed for the rock behind which the sheet of lacquer had first appeared. Bell hollered and cursed. Finally he stopped and pulled out his little impulse-beamer, bellowing: "Come back at once or I'll shoot!"

  The mutants paid no attention whatsoever. Bell raised his weapon but before he could pull the trigger he heard Marshall cry out in anguish behind him: "Don't shoot! They can't help it!"

  Bell rolled over on his side so that he could look back to the cave. "Why? What's the matter with them?"

  "Extremely strong hypnotic influence!" Marshall panted. "They've no choice but to obey."

  "Then do something about it, for Pete's sake!" Bell screamed. "There's nothing I can do. I'm glad it didn't catch me too. The force is too great... it's impossible to buck it!"

  The 4 mutants disappeared behind the rock. After awhile they came into view again, moving slightly to the right and straight to the place where the Gazelle had been wrecked, still marching erect.

  Bell kept staring at them. Then he turned around with much grunting and cussing and returned to the cave. "I'm sorry, Marshall," he murmured, "if I was a little rude. But conditions around this place ran throw you off your rocker."

  "Forget it!" Marshall replied. "I'd only like to know who in this forsaken wasteland exercises such strong hypnotic powers."

  Bell gave no answer. He observed the mutants who kept plodding across the mesa between the rocks, defying the excessive gravitation in an upright position. Bell tried to attract their attention by continual shouting and he was sure they could pick it up through their helmet radios. Nevertheless he received no response.

  After about 10 minutes a new incident occurred. Ivan Goratschin first staggered, then fell to his knees. The Japanese following closely behind him toppled to the ground. Bell called to them to turn back.

  After a few minutes they started to move again but this time on all fours. They succumbed to their weakness and endeavored to comply with the hypnotic command by crawling.

  "It's no use," Marshall said. "They're still mesmerized."

  "Can you tell where it comes from?" Bell inquired.

  "No, not exactly. It seems to come from the direction where the wreck was."

  An odd thought crossed Bell's mind. Tako had claimed that the place where the Gazelle had come down was covered by a widespread dark brown sheet and the strange spot
they had observed a few hours ago had a similar appearance. Marshall had been able to perceive some of its thoughts, leading him to the conclusion that it was an organic creature of limited intelligence.

  If Marshall was right the film of lacquer covering the crash site was nothing but a much more expanded living organism of the same species that—due to its larger size—exuded much greater mental energies.

  It was beyond their ability to help the 4 mutants—hard as it was to become reconciled to the futility. It took the mutants one hour to reach the area where they had crash-landed—a truly incredible feat under the paralyzing gravitational conditions on Gom.

  During that hour Bell had tried without interruption to communicate with the mutants through their helmet, radios with the same lack of success.

  When the 4 mutants had crawled to the site of the crash they could be seen in their glittering spacesuits scrambling back and forth as though searching for something. Again Bell looked questioningly at Marshall, who merely shook his head as a sign that the hypnotic influence still prevailed and that the mutants had no chance of regaining their own will.

  Their fate was sealed abruptly and inexplicably. Bell had shouted his last warning... and they vanished the next moment.

  Reginald Bell's forehead was bathed in sweat. Without looking at Marshall, he said to him: "Gone like the wreck of the Gazelle. What do you make of it, Marshall?"

  "I've been giving it some thought," Marshall replied quickly. "The Gazelle was made of plastic metal which has a high content of carbohydrates. The metallic component served merely as a hardening agent and the substance was 85% organic matter."

  He paused and Bell gaped at him in astonishment. "So what?"

  "That monster over there Marshall flipped his head in the direction where they had last seen the mutants, "Must perhaps revamp or replenish its own substance by feeding on organic matter such as plastic metal and—humans."

  Bell's eyes bulged in amazement. "You've got a fantastic imagination!"