Planet Topide Please Reply Read online

  Prolog

  The New Year has come. Everywhere that men are found—whether in the lonely outposts of the Solar System, on colonial worlds or on the good old Earth itself—the arrival of the New Year is celebrated according to traditional customs, with merriment and a commensurate amount of noise & fanfare.

  Only a few men suspect that the year 2044, so joyfully greeted by all, will be a fateful year for Mankind—a year that will be more or less decisive.

  Power politics in the galaxy are in a state of confusion & uproar. The Solar Empire, tiny by comparison to the Arkonide Imperium or the vast power block of the Druufs, stands between two fires in the truest sense of the word.

  One spark would be sufficient to kindle the flame of war even in the Sol System. And this very tinder spark has been smoldering for 73 years—in the home system of the Topides . . .!

  Perry Rhodan

  Atlan And Arkon #

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  Planet Topide, Please Reply

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  1/ BELL PUTS HIS THUMB IN IT

  Evil! The shadow of misfortune... a foreboding of ill-fated destiny. Was 2044 to be the year of disaster?

  The omens began on New Years Eve...

  In the personal, inner circle of those few men who held the fate of the Solar Empire in their hands, the death of Thora still gloomily pervaded their thoughts, yet they celebrated the passage of the year 2043 according to custom—though not in the usual frame of festivity.

  It all began on that particular occasion.

  Inadvertently Reginald Bell knocked a cognac glass from the table. Its contents splashed all over; the glass shattered against the floor. When he stooped down to pick up the pieces, he cut the tip of his left thumb.

  In a few minutes the New Year would begin. After straightening up swiftly and regaining his seat, Bell sat there motionlessly with his thumb in his mouth, peculiarly pale and staring at the large clock. "Hope that isn't bad luck..." he mumbled somewhat indistinctly around his injured thumb.

  Perry Rhodan, Khrest, Freyt and Mercant observed him with a mixture of derision and amusement. Yet the incident had jolted them strangely. They were unprepared for this kind of a Reginald Bell who would give credence to crystal gazing or evil omens and other such hocus-pocus. The congenial atmosphere of the small group had been interrupted.

  Perry Rhodan also looked at the clock. In 3 minutes the year 2044 would begin. It was time to pour the champagne.

  Bell finally took his thumb out of his mouth. He extracted a neatly folded handkerchief from his coat pocket and wrapped it around the small but bloodied wound. He was about to comment again about the evil aspects of the incident but was suddenly drowned out by a burst of riotous sound that came into the room from outside.

  The New Year had arrived!

  Terrania, capital city of the Solar Empire, greeted it with every noise-making device appropriate to the occasion. Sirens howled, alert horns blasted, fireworks screamed with an infernal racket into the clear night sky and at the spaceport the mighty pulse jets of the spherical spaceships suddenly contributed their thundering to the New Year's reception while synchronized traction fields held the vessels of the Solar Fleet firmly to their launching pads.

  In the pleasant comfort of Perry Rhodan's home, which was so seldom used by this most powerful man in the Solar Empire, the five friends clinked glasses together. They had no reason to expand upon past triumphs and successes or to revel in such memories because the general situation didn't justify it. Nevertheless they possessed a proper amount of healthy optimism.

  Bell alone was the single exception—the one man who would have been least expected to dampen a celebration.

  "What's the matter, Chubby?" Rhodan asked his heavyset friend whose red stubble of hair stood up like the bristles of a brush. "Are you superstitious or something?"

  "No," Bell replied, setting his glass down. "But just look at that mess!" He indicated the fragments on the floor. "That goblet was made of unbreakable glass! But there lie the shards of its invulnerability. I'm not superstitious exactly but when I even cut my thumb on the splinters of something that's supposed to be safe and unbreakable, then let's face it—it's got to be some kind of omen of impending disaster!"

  "But you're still not superstitious, Bell, is that right?" smirked Rhodan, and he glanced at his colleagues and friends, who were gently derisive of Bell's dire remark.

  "That I am not and never have been!" protested Bell vehemently and he was about to start in all over again when he was interrupted by Allan D. Mercant,

  Chief of Solar Intelligence.

  "Where is the logic of it, Mr. Bell?"

  Bell answered without deliberation: "Bad omens are never logical."

  Perry Rhodan laughed. "I give up! OK, Chubby, here's to you and the year 2044!" He lifted his champagne glass and drank to his friend's health.

  The latter emptied his own glass in one long swallow. When he set it down he grumbled aloud to himself. "I just have one wish... that the year 2044 gets over with as fast as possible and that we'll still be able to celebrate next New Year's Eve!"

  "All that over a sore thumb?" chided Rhodan with a slight edge to his tone because Bell was close to dispelling the congeniality of the moment. In these few hours while those responsible for the Solar Empire sat privately together there wasn't supposed to be any 'shop' talk of any kind. And Perry had now made it clear that the subject was closed.

  But Bell seemed to have corks in his ears since he started in again: "Well, not only for that but also because that glass was supposed to be unbreakable..."

  Rhodan cut in swiftly. "Pig apple it, (21st century slang for "Knock it Off"— Derived from Image of Roast Pig with Apple Stuffing Mouth Shut?) Chubby!" He placed the cognac bottle in front of the other and furnished him with a replacement for the broken goblet. Almost in a tone of command, he added. "Help yourself, Old Boy—have a couple. You can use them!"

  Thus the congenial mood of the small party was restored during the first few hours of the New Year. But when they prepared to leave at about 3 a.m., Bell had to get in a final comment: "If somebody 'out there' doesn't egg our noggins (lower the boom on us) this year, then I didn't get cut by an unbreakable glass that's not supposed to slice thumbs. In that case I'm spaced out... hallucinating!"

  No one contradicted him. They were all ready for their beds by now yet none of them could forget Bell's suddenly pessimistic mood. His gloomy foreboding cost them all at least an extra hour of sleep.

  • • •

  "Take it easy!" O'Keefe yelled into the microphone. Wearily he was complaining to his counterpart on Earth, speaking from Matter Transmitter Station D-18, Lunar Sector HAN/456. "Do you have to try for a record on the first work day of the New Year? Take at least a minute, anyway, before sending me up & next chunk of that assembly line—that's right, section 762. My robots are slowly heating up and the antigrav derricks are starting to sweat around here!"

  There were neither overheated robots nor sweating gravlifters on the Moon but O'Keefe had celebrated New Year a bit too heavily and the work-pace of his counter-station on Earth was getting a little sharp for him. In spite of his fatigue, however, he had just confirmed that a breakdown had occurred over half a mile away on assembly line 66. A cavity close beneath the lunar surface had silently caved in and a part of the line plus a number of work robots had gone with it into the depths where they were probably buried under the rocks and rubble by now.

  Then his warning board flashed a red signal at him. And automatically the Earth transmitter-station was shut down.

  At the same moment the Moon's positronic Control Central went int
o action. The robotic surveillance center monitored the complicated assembly processes and was capable of handling up to 250,000 event transactions per second in various locations and comparing them with the programmed master assembly schedules. Additionally, this center was programmed to take over in cases of a breakdown. If required, it could fall back on reserve task forces to work robots and transmit orders to them so that any schedule delay due to a breakdown would be made up on the master timetable within the next two hours.

  The good old Moon, Earth's ancient companion, had become one massive construction yard. The Man in the Moon was fading away!

  Perry Rhodan was replacing him.

  The galactic situation had forced him to do this. On Earth there simply wasn't any more room for setting up the gigantic assembly lines and launching the spherical spaceships in a continuous production flow, in addition to maintaining adjacent support industries with their constant output of parts and supplies for the ships, such as major assemblies, peripheral equipment and small replacement parts.

  Only on the Moon was there still building room to be found. Most important, great transmitter stations had been set up everywhere on the Moon, backed by their equivalent matter transceivers on Earth. Once this had been established, a virtual stream of materials began to flow to the Moon—to the point where it might have been suspected that Earth was being stripped of its industries.

  The satellite of Terra had become the armory of the Solar Empire! Up to now Rhodan had invested more than 100 billion Solars in this new armament center.

  So an interruption had occurred in the construction of assembly line 66. Events of this nature occurred sometimes hundreds of times per hour but they could not affect the overall construction schedule. More than 50 major assembly lines had already been completely installed. Several hundred thousand special robots carried out their programmed assignments on these lines in order to build spaceships for the Solar Empire.

  But this advanced idea of turning a world into one big armory had not originated with Perry Rhodan. Arkon had put it into practice more than 15,000 years ago but not with a mere satellite: it had converted an entire planet to such purposes after having previously removed it from its orbit and established it in a new one.

  Eighteen minutes after the red light had flashed on matter transmitter D-18 as well as on its sending station on Earth 18 minutes after the cave-in of a lunar cavern under the advanced staging position of assembly-line 66, everything was running as before, even at that construction point, and an hour and a half later the delay in the master assembly program was made up in spite of O'Keefe's morning-after fatigue.

  "These Druufs and Arkonides can go to the devil!" groaned Cullins in despair.

  At the moment he was responsible for the production of automatic space probes. No sooner had he expressed himself than he promptly forgot the Druufs as well as the Arkonides. He was much more concerned with the curt request he had received from Terrania for an immediate shipment of 4,500 rocket spy probes via a designated matter transmitter station, to be received by the Terranian spaceport.

  Cullins didn't have this quantity but the observation probes were urgently needed in that far region between Einsteinian space and. the Druuf continuum which was known as the 'discharge zone'. The robot warships of the positronic Regent of Arkon, otherwise known as the Great Coordinator, were engaged in a continuous battle with the Druufs, and they gave chase to the spy probes as energetically as the Druufs themselves.

  One after the other Perry Rhodan's spying rocket-eyes were shot down in the Area of the overlap zone but some of the probes managed to return with valuable observation results to the Terranian reconnaissance cruisers stationed at forward deep space positions, which served to inform Terra of the enemy combatants' fleet movements as well as even the composition of their crews. These special observation ships were exclusively light cruisers of the City Class, measuring 300 feet in diameter, using a 150-man crew. Though carrying light armament, their ultra-powerful pulse space-drives made them capable of accelerating to lightspeed in just five minutes!

  Cullins drummed his fingers nervously on his desk top. He surmised what would happen when he advised Earth that he only had about 3,000 space probes available. The positronic answer to his data request was already staring at him from the screen of his video terminal, the missing 1,500 probes would be ready for shipment in 27 hours, 42 minutes and seven seconds.

  Worriedly, he activated his radio-TV communication channel with the Earth. The chief administrator of depot H-89, a Mr. Gibbons, appeared on the viewscreen. He was the one who had put in the high-quantity requisition for the probes.

  When he heard the report his impenetrable face hardened. "Then I'm sorry for you, Cullins. All I can do now is advise the Chief..."

  "Advise who?" Cullins interrupted. "You mean—Perry Rhodan...?"

  "Who else? He issued the order to ship 4500 remote-controlled surveillance probes to the discharge zone and it looks like this isn't any Sunday picnic. Since when has Rhodan concerned himself directly with such routine internal matters? There's trouble brewing somewhere and we figure that these probes are needed to find out just who the trouble is aimed at. So brace yourself, Cullins—anything can happen!"

  It was poor consolation and Cullins was soon startled by the appearance on his screen of the Solar Empire's administrative insignia, which signified that he was about to be confronted by a cabinet level State authority—or higher!

  However, he gave a secret sigh of relief when he saw the broad face of Reginald Bell. This one did not stand so much on ceremony and everybody referred to him by the simple nickname of 'Bell' or 'Reggie'. It did not detract from his personality or prestige because he was somewhat of a protocol renegade in the upper ranks and wasn't past using some rather colourful Anglo-Saxon language here and there when the occasion called for it.

  Bell's red stubble of hair fairly seemed to bristle as he shook his head and bellowed: "Cullins, I'm going to personally keel-haul you if our two transport ships don't take off in just two hours with those 4,500 snoopers! By our records you should have more than 8,000 of them in your inventory there. Don't hand me any excuses—I can't accept any. So I want those things down here in an hour, Cullins!"

  Cullins called out with the blind desperation of a drowning man. "But they're not going to be there, Bell...!"

  That did it, he thought ruefully. People referred to Perry Rhodan's Second-in-Command as "Bell" but with this second most powerful man in the Solar Empire you didn't just come right out and use his nickname to his face. Mr. Reginald Bell would never let him get away with it!

  Nevertheless he heard Bell actually laugh. "Alright, so what the devil's the matter with you boys up there? How come our data sheets down here are haywire?"

  Up there was always the Moon. It was part of human instinct to ever think of it as above, so by a logical inference Earth was forever 'down here'. Cullins felt half Of the Moon fall off his shoulders when he heard Bell laugh but he was even more relieved at the other's calmer tone of voice when he asked about the discrepancy in the records.

  "But we sent in the new adjustment, Mr. Bell. Our entire supply of reconnaissance probes has gone into the grinder out there because the old models were so easy to detect. But the inventory revision was sent through official channels three days—no, four days ago!"

  Bell groaned. "Official channels...! Cullins, I can't climb onto your back for that. You went by the Book but whenever somebody says 'official channels' to me I am reminded of one of the worst lickings my old man ever gave me when I was a boy. He had learned through official channels that his honorable offspring was the culprit behind two months of certain ghostly appearances in the neighborhood, night after night. So just for that, Papa arranged to have a special officer from Criminal Investigation trace down the character who had caused more than 20 families to move out of their houses. Don't talk to me about 'official channels'! Anyway, Cullins, when will the snoopers be available?"

  "In 28
hours, sir."

  In the viewscreen Bell was seen to give what he had once himself dubbed the Academy freshman's salute—a helpless wave of the hands. "OK. Now give me a rundown on the latest models—just the most important items."

  "I think you want the attrition factors, sir. Out of every 100 of the old design, only 7.38 returned from their missions, on a statistical basis. With the new models this ratio has been improved to 21.83 per 100..."

  "Your engineers up there are really way out!" remarked Bell, shaking his head slightly in wonderment. "So the new super snoopers return 22 out of 100 instead of only seven—and of those you have 3000 in stock?"

  "Yes sir. Exactly 3,000."

  Bell's well-known thunderous laugh of triumph rang out. Finally he shook his head at Cullins through the screen. "You're heroes!" he exclaimed suddenly with a hint of irony, yet there was a note of extreme satisfaction in his voice. "Then why do we need over 4,000 of the damned things when the new ones are three times better than the old ones? Cullins, you send down 2,000 of them. They're as good as 6,000 of the previous contraptions. Of course now you know who will be on your neck if your figures fall down, Cullins!"

  "Sir," announced the 'Man in the Moon', "those figures are based on positronic calculations and they're as foolproof as..."

  "Oh sure—just like unbreakable glass! End of message, Cullins!"

  Cullins nervously wiped his brow as he stared at the darkened screen. He whispered to himself. "What in the curdled Milky Way do positronic readouts have to do with unbreakable glass?!"

  He didn't get an answer.

  However, within 90 minutes of this conversation between Perry Rhodan's chief deputy and Cullins, a latest model commercial space freighter took off from Terrania's spaceport with 2000 of the newly designed spy probes on board, bound for the far depths of the Milky Way where the superfast light cruisers were waiting.

  • • •