Power Key Read online

  POWER KEYK.H. Scheer

  THE KEY TO EXCITEMENT LIES WITH—

  PERRY RHODAN—Our Man in Space ATLAN—The Man of Time and Space Reginald Bell—Rhodan’s second-in-command Jeremy Toffner—A cosmic agent Calus—An Arkonide space admiral Breheb-Toor—Commanding officer of Zalites (colonial Arkonides) Commodore Gailos—Commander of a squadron of 17 Arkonide battlespacers His Eminence—An elderly Arkonide scientist John Marshall, Ras Tschubai, Tako Kakuta, Tanaka Seiko, Son Okura Betty Toufry, Ishy Matsu—Members of the Mutant Corps with various extrasensory powers such as telepathy, teleportation, superspectrumatic vision, etc. Lt. Kecc—A radar technician on Voga 4 Lt. Olavson—A guard Lt. David Stern—A radioman and orderly Sgt. Huster, Stepan Potkin and a man named Roake—Three who make but brief appearances Testro—A famous Arkonide philosopher Oscer—A young Arkonide simultan pattern performer Maj. Sesete, Capt. Ighur and Sgt. Roger Osega—Three doppelgangers (two Terranians and an Arkonide who’s been on Earth for 10,000 years) in disguise.

  …and the spaceships Drusus and California.

  A POWERFUL GROUP OF PARTICIPANTS IN A KEY SITUATION

  PERRY RHODAN: Peacelord of the Universe

  Copyright © Ace Books 1974, by Ace Publishing Corporation

  All Rights Reserved.

  Original German Title: “Der Schlüssel zur Macht”

  Printed in U.S.A

  Perry Rhodan

  Atlan And Arkon #78

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  Power Key

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  1/ ATLAN HEADS HOME

  THE ALIEN was tall, slim and well developed. The reddish brown skin of his thin face indicated that he was a Zalite: a descendant of those Arkonides who many thousands of years ago emigrated to the planetary system of the red star Voga, only 3.14 light-years from Arkon, and settled on the fourth planet. As time passed, the skin and hair color of the Zalites had changed but they had nonetheless remained purebred Arkonides.

  “Breheb-Toor…!” called the tall man with a penetrating, commanding voice.

  200 colonial Arkonides, Zalites like the officer up front, seemed to have become electrified. The turning of so many bodies was so exact and precise that it seemed to be the result of electronic steering with the most sophisticated automatic equipment.

  The commanding officer turned. Stiffly and with short steps, he came towards me. On the breast of his blue-grey uniform shone the emblem of the Great Imperium: three planets circling a shining star.

  The dark face was half-covered by the broad equatorial rim of the regulation service communications helmet he wore. I saw only the grey eyes, the narrow nose and the firm mouth.

  He stopped exactly three steps away from me. His report followed, given in pure Arkonese, although the light Zalitish accent was not to be overlooked.

  During the report he held his balled right fist pressed against the left chest where it joined the shoulder. There was nothing to be seen that would have betrayed to an observer that this space officer was in reality a Terran. No one— not even the 50 genuine Zalites within the ranks of our commando team—could conclude that the First Officer of the brand new Arkonide battleship Kon-Velete, and Perry Rhodan, First Administrator of the Solar Imperium, were one and the same.

  Those individuals aware of the situation were also well aware of the necessity to hold their tongues about it.

  In accordance with the ancient custom, I also pressed my right hand against my left chest and thanked the officer.

  Behind the men lined up in their ranks, the huge spherical body of the 800 meter spacer Kon-Velete rose high into the sparsely cloud-flecked sky of Naator. The sole satellite of the fifth world of the Arkon System, it had been selected to temporarily serve as the site for the tactical education of space crews recruited by the Robot Regent.

  Rhodan’s stiff bearing, assumed in deference to protocol, relaxed. He threw me another warning glance before returning to formation with those ridiculously short steps. He conformed in every detail to Zalitish regulations.

  I pulled my cape tighter over my chest. An icy wind blew over the wide plain, whose former aspect—that of a rocky desert—had been starkly altered by the laying of a meter-thick layer of steel-plastic.

  The thus-created spaceport bore the name NA-4. Just 24 hours (standard time) before, I had received the order to move the Kon-Velete onto this field. With that we knew that takeoff could not be very far away.

  I turned around and saluted to the two thoroughly frozen Arkonide officers. They sat in an open impact-field glider and were busy inspecting the lined-up crews of the many spaceships.

  In my capacity as commander of the new battleship, I beamed the all-ready signal by way of the sender built into my helmet. The older man raised his hand in salute. He was Admiral Semekho. Thin and seeming very fragile and weak, he sat next to the robot driver. Yet he belonged to the small number of Arkonides who still had enough energy and initiative to serve as commanding officer of a forward fleet base.

  “I wish you much luck, Capt. Ighur,” he said, his voice coming from the speakers in my helmet. “You will carry the glory that is Arkon into the depths of space. You are to take off with the squadron of heavy units. Wait for the takeoff signal. Again I wish you much luck.”

  The younger officer at Semekho’s side waved apathetically to me and checked off the name of my ship on the list he carried.

  Lightly humming, the glider went on. With bitter feelings I watched the vehicle until it stopped before the next ship down the row, a battlecruiser direct from the robot production line.

  I was to ‘carry the glory that is Arkon into the depths of space,’ the old and worn-out man had said. “The glory that is Arkon”!

  He, who must have been about 10,000 years younger than I, had no idea that long before him I had been an admiral and commanding officer of a squadron of Arkonide ships. Then, when the methane breathers were attacking our interstellar empire, ‘glory’ was an appropriate term to apply to Arkon. At that time we did not find it necessary to man the units of our fleet with subject races. Twenty billion Arkonides, each man a highly trained specialist in his own area, stood at our disposal. Not one of us would have tolerated a robot or an alien intelligence in our control rooms or command posts. Even suggesting to the youngest apprentice technician that he might have to obey the orders of a non-Arkonide would have led to mutiny.

  And now—how did it look now? Angry and at the same time painfully touched, I looked over at the crew of robots, marked with different colors, that had lined up behind the ranks of the men of my ship.

  Each of the special machines had a specific assignment to carry out on board the ship, and programming the emotionless creations for all the different tasks had been a time-consuming and troublesome chore.

  In contrast to the other and pitiable commanders I at least had 200 genuinely living men on board with whom I could speak, laugh and, if necessary, curse. 150 of them were dynamic men of action from the ranks of the Solar Space Patrol. They were space travellers with whom one could go into missions no matter how dangerous without having to fear that chaos would ensue the first time the ship was hit by enemy fire. None of them were prone to shellshock; none of them would desert their posts in fear. Besides these 150 men were 50 authentic Zalites, who had been assigned to me some weeks before. The new battleship was to be manned by at least 200 thinking beings, since past experience at the blockade front near the Druuf discharge zone had shown that robot crews alone were no longer enough.

  Neither Perry Rhodan nor I had been happy about having to take the Zalites on board. Naturally we would have to be careful from now on that we did not make any serious mistakes. Even one English word might excite surprise and suspicion.
Still vivid in everyone’s memories were the mysterious attacks, although we had successfully seen to it that our men had come through the medical and psychological examinations in good shape.

  To round out our bad luck, among the fifty Zalites were two officers with whom I had to trust leadership posts. Since we were supposedly Zalites ourselves, I could not find any plausible reason to simply reject two competent-rated men.

  I found it difficult to shake off my worries. We were in an alien environment and among bitter enemies who would have mercilessly struck with even the slightest hint of our true origin.

  The gigantic Robot Brain on Arkon 3 had recently added a new subject to the general fleet training program: ‘Studies in Terran Battle Tactics’!

  When I heard of that for the first time I grew weak in the knees. According to the course description, the Regent was preparing for the conquest of the Solar System even though it still did not know where the Earth even was.

  In a few months, the Druuf threat would come to an end by itself, for the discharge zone was once more approaching an unstable state. This time, however, the aliens from the other time-plane would no longer have any possibility of invading Einstein Space. If they knew that their opportunity would last for only a few more months, then the Robot Regent would have to be ready for anything. Already it was clear that the Druufs were attacking with enormous fleets. Once the Druufs ceased their attacks, the Regent would turn its attention to the gradually increasing irritant named Earth. Then the discovery of our galactic position would be only a matter of time.

  Such knowledge led us to the decision to put the Regent out of action once and for all, assuming it could be so simply turned off or blown up. At the moment it looked as though Rhodan’s plan, carried out so far at great effort and expense, was doomed to failure.

  The date was March 18, 2044, Terran time. On January 21 we had taken off in the Drusus and the fast cruiser California after making the most basic preparations.

  An open attack against the Robot Regent would have been senseless. At this time the Robot had almost 60,000 warships standing by in the vicinity of the discharge zone. If we were going to render the Regent harmless, we had no choice but to resort to subterfuge.

  So the 150 men of the commando team had been converted into Zalites even while they were still on Earth. I too had been given the typical reddish brown skin and the long copper-colored hair which, when the light shone just right, shimmered greenishly.

  I heard a slight cough in my earphones. Rhodan, standing near the front of the lined-up men, gave me a warning glance. I came out of my brooding and resumed playing my role in the ceremony.

  I saluted again to the formation and ordered over the communicator: “Let the crew go on board, Maj. Sesete!”

  Rhodan turned around. His orders resounded over the wide plain. 200 identically uniformed men marched towards the open ground hatches of the battleship. More than 1,000 robots followed behind them. Among the robots were also the new battle machines designed for ground operations. They were steel giants with built-in swivel-guns and four multi-jointed arms. Almost three meters tall, they towered far above the other robots.

  I stood near one of the ship’s telescopic landing legs and watched the troop of men board. They seemed well disciplined: we had expended every effort to learn Zalitish formalities.

  We had landed on Voga 4 with the help of a matter transmitter secretly installed there. The cosmic agent Jeremy Toffner had slipped us into the capital city of Tagnor where he found a prepared base of operations waiting for us in the catacombs beneath an arena.

  From then on, our mission had grown more dangerous. Months before, an Arkonide space admiral named Calus had landed on Zalit, his task as assigned to him by the Robot Regent to recruit Zalitish spacemen for service in the Arkonide fleet. For all practical purposes, Calus was the personality on Voga 4, which was why we went to the trouble of putting one of our men in his place.

  After wearisome preparations by our scientific team, we succeeded in putting the slender Sgt. Roger Osega, disguised as Calus, in the governmental palace of Tagnor. The genuine Calus was our prisoner.

  After that, it was easier for the 150 disguised Terrans to pass as Zalites. We were provided with flawless identification papers that finally enabled us to deceive the Arkonide impressment squad.

  Halfway through February 2044, we were at length brought in fleet transport to the huge moon of the planet Naat, where our difficulties began anew. The Robot Regent had given the galactic physicians the assignment problem to deceive the Aras and smuggle false data about each individual in our group into the automatic crew register.

  Even that was successful. It was only weeks later that things almost came to a catastrophe.

  On the distant planet Zalit, 3.14 light-years from the Arkon System, Zalitish resistance fighters had successfully carried out an assassination plot against the Arkonide commanding officer, Admiral Calus. But it was our Sgt. Osega who was killed.

  At the last moment, our mutants and scientists left behind on Zalit removed Osega’s body. If it had been found, someone unquestionably would have realized that instead of Calus a thorough alien had fallen victim to the senseless attack.

  Once again we had escaped disaster but the event served to show us just how unpredictable fate could be. When we had landed on Zalit, we assumed that in a few weeks we would reach Arkon 3 and there act according to plan.

  Not one of our expectations had been confirmed! Mountains of difficulty had, risen before us. Again and again compromise solutions had been necessary. With each passing day things happened that were not part of our original plans at all.

  We were tied down for weeks on the huge moon. Shortly after our arrival we had been assigned a factory-new battleship of the Imperium Fleet. I was named commander, since I had been fitted out on Zalit with papers attesting to my qualifications for such a rank.

  If we had thought that events would continue in so smooth a manner, we had only deceived ourselves again. Training flight after training flight followed. We practiced all possible kinds of squadron manoeuvres and, not only that, we had to take care that the 50 genuine Zalites didn’t hear any unconsidered words.

  Programming the robots had occupied our specialists for 14 days. In our efforts to fulfill our duties exactly and satisfactorily, we did not find any opportunities for carefully thinking through our plans.

  Strongly hoping that everything would still succeed, we entered our service with the Arkonide Fleet. Discipline was strict and punishment was harsh. The Arkonides had long known how to deal with crews made up of subject races pressed into service more or less against their will. It was quite natural that such people would not be especially zealous.

  And now today I had received the order to take the battleship along with its trained crew to Arkon, where it would probably undergo further tests. I shuddered when I thought of the dangers connected with the move. The Solar Imperium’s most important men were on board a spaceship that was flying directly into the lion’s den.

  I was now very glad that we had left the mouse-beaver Pucky, the two-headed mutant Goratschin and the female mutants behind at the base on Zalit. We would probably have run into immeasurable difficulties if we had taken these individuals along into the final action. Certainly we could not have disguised Pucky and Goratschin as Zalitish natives, even with the most determined of efforts.

  The last of the robot troops marched past me. These were the special machines of the leak security corps, marked by red circles on their metallic chests.

  Perry Rhodan stood at the foot of the extended entrance ramp. The Kon-Velete was a new and battle-worthy ship but it did not possess the slightest comfort. Even the commander’s cabin was spartan simple in its furnishings, and the sanitary installations were by our standards more than insufficient.

  The Robot Regent evidently did not think it necessary to reconvert the gigantic assembly lines on Arkon 3 simply because the new spaceships were suddenly to be manned by
living beings.

  When the last robot had disappeared, I glanced upwards. The open hatch of the airlock lay 22 meters above us. There the curve of the lower pole cap began. The 800-meter colossus was in any case a ship a commander could be enthusiastic about.

  I had long given up hope of ever being able to stand in the control room of an Arkonide spacer again. My long wandering through the history of the Earth was at an end. Now a new epoch was beginning. Right in front of me stood the man who in merely the space of a few decades had transformed the once so primitive Earth into a planet of galactic importance.

  Before Rhodan spoke to me, he touched the switch of his helmet radio, checking it. Were we ever to leave the units on during an incriminating discussion, it could mean our ruin.

  I also checked my radio. It was switched off. Three guards appeared in the airlock. The men belonged to our group. Everything was in order. Lt. Olavson waved at us reassuringly.

  I looked around carefully once more. To the left and right of our landing place stood the battlecruisers of the fourth group. Each had received a crew of only 50 men: far too few for the ships which were, after all, 500 meters in diameter. Their battle-worthiness was considerably impaired by their lack of men.

  As a result of the total degeneration of my people on Arkon, the ruling robot suffered a chronic manpower shortage. The Regent tried to make up for what it lacked in fighting ability due to insufficient crews by substituting quantity.

  “Takeoff in 32 minutes”, I said lowly to Rhodan. The sharp wind drove into my open mouth, making my teeth ache.

  Perry only nodded. He had long given up rehashing matters that had already been discussed a thousand times. Now the important thing was finally transporting our group of men to where we could carry out our plans.

  We had done everything that was within our power. Now we could only throw ourselves on the mercy of fate. What would happen from now on was out of our hands.

  “Three more Zalites are sick,” Rhodan informed me. “Bell just got the report. They can’t tolerate the climate here. How do you feel?”