The Pseudo One Read online

  Perry Rhodan

  Atlan And Arkon #44

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  The Pseudo One

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  1/ PITY POOR PUCKY!

  A MINOR MIRACLE: there were still some inhabitants of the worlds of the 21st terrestrial century who had not yet heard of Pucky the mouse-beaver. Of course this was not exactly a tragedy for most of them: people suddenly encountering him for the first time were frequently in for some embarrassing surprises.

  Such was the case of the insubordinate settlers in the high plateau country south of Venus City. They knew from experience that World Government on the home planet was not in the habit of dispatching a punitive expedition to nip such rebellions as this in the bud so they had decided to assert their independence by shaking off a slight burden of taxation.

  Inasmuch as Perry Rhodan was off somewhere in the depths of the cosmos and could not be contacted, the Terranian World Government took matters in its own hands and assigned Pucky the task of keeping things in order on Venus.

  Which the Vagabond leaper was only too happy to do.

  So one day when a Disneyesque creature resembling an ancient cartoon rodent named Mack the Mouse, or something like that, appeared among the rebellious settlers, it was met with peals of laughter. They laughed even more uproariously when this comical cantankerous apparition asserted that it was an emissary of the Solar Empire, come in the interests of Law & Order.

  Their laughter subsided only when the strange animal, who spoke impeccable English, brought its hidden faculties into play. The ring leader could not hide a single thought from him because Pucky was an esper, first class. He was also capable of appearing almost everywhere simultaneously because he was also a teleporter. And finally, all the settlers' weapons took minds of their own and assembled themselves high above the plateau, whereupon they fell into a very deep lake. Because in addition Pucky was psychokinetic.

  Naturally this was enough to bring the settlers to their senses. With many fine words they begged forgiveness and promised to be obedient in the future and to pay the agreed upon taxes.

  On the evening of this eventful day, Pucky permitted a celebration in honor of his obvious generosity. The leaders of the aborted uprising had invited him and they served him some vintage Venusian wine. It turned into quite a gay festival and Pucky's rising enthusiasm caused him to forget some of his better upbringing. In his squeaky voice he regaled them with some rugged spaceman songs which he had picked up from Reginald Bell. With husky voices, the men responded in a roaring accompaniment. In the forest which surrounded the colony, the animal fell into silent wonderment over this unusual bedlam. For them, too, a singing mouse-beaver was new to their experience. In great bewilderment, a ring-nosed beetle-eater crawled deeper into its hole and decided to look for a new home first thing in the morning. Even a half-deaf corkscrew worm bored its way deeply into the ground in order to get away from the intolerable caterwauling.

  To put it mildly, Pucky was feeling no pain.

  Of course he was vaguely disturbed, now and then, by a subtle intrusion of weak thought-impulses into his subconscious which did not originate in the settlers' brains, they being befogged by the strong wine they had consumed, but he tended to dismiss these exterior stimuli. After a task well done, hadn't he earned himself a night on the 'town' so to speak? Why should he worry about the Terranian garrison at Port Venus, the capital city? They could wait until morning.

  So Pucky continued singing and dedicated himself to the spirit of the occasion.

  It was much later that night, while surrendering to the luxury of a soft bed in the mayor's house, when he sensed the thought-impulses again.

  Pucky! This is Command Headquarters of the Mutant Corps! Come in, please! Report your situation!

  It was too clear a signal to be ignored. He could detect in the vibrational pattern the personality of Betty Toufry, whose telepathic ability had often left him breathless with astonishment. Betty was in charge of the Mutant taskforce on Venus and it was she who had the basic responsibility for squelching the revolt of the settlers.

  Pucky sighed and made an effort to clear his head.

  Goldilocks! he thought, as he gradually regained his alertness. The situation is splendid! All I did was get them alked up.

  Alked up?

  The mouse-beaver grinned when he realized that this innocent one might not fully understand these special expressions of Bell.

  Wine! he explained somewhat brusquely. Very excellent wine! The revolt has been forgotten. Tomorrow I'll report in and I'll give you a kiss.

  Betty did not seem to be particularly enthralled by this prospect.

  You report in here at once! I have a new assignment for you.

  The mouse-beaver continued lying restfully in the bed but he shook off his feelings of fatigue. In the course of duty, had he also sampled too much wine...?

  What's up?he wanted to know. And he was aware of not feeling very well.

  A special mission, dearie! the telepathic answer came back at once. You will have to take off early in the morning.

  Pucky let out an agonized groan and sat up in bed. He supported his back against the wall. The soft pelt of his tummy gleamed in the light of a street lamp outside the house.

  Take off? Will this gypsy life of mine never cease?

  Now Betty seemed to become almost impatient with him. Pucky, you come here immediately or I'll advise Rhodan that you have refused to obey an order! He has expressly requested that you be assigned and...

  All at once, Pucky came alive. His fatigue and the queasiness in his tummy disappeared as though an invisible hand had swept them aside. He jumped to his feet in the middle of the bed.

  Rhodan? Rhodan has requested me? Good old Chief! He hasn't forgotten me!He was almost carried away by his emotions but got hold of himself. I'll be there in five minutes. The spaceport?

  Yes... and hurry!

  I'm already on my way, replied Pucky, and he began to get dressed. In his fine, delicate handwriting, he wrote a note of thanks to the settlers and warned them to dismiss any future thoughts of rebellion.

  Then he concentrated on his goal and made his teleport jump. At first the air around him started to shimmer and then he disappeared. In the same second he rematerialized in Port Venus at the agreed location.

  Betty Toufry didn't so much as blink an eye. She sat on her bed. She had modestly put on a house robe to cover a quite diaphanous nightie. The periods of night and day on Venus were not measured by Earthly standards because according to the rotation of the second planet an actual night would amount to 120 hours.

  The walls of the room consisted of viewscreens and control panels. Here all threads of the Venus control web came together; from this point the task assignments of the mutants were administered. In the absence of John Marshall, the actual Chief of the Mutant Corps, Betty had taken over his post.

  "You sure this can't wait till morning?" asked Pucky. But then he recalled who had called for him. "Rhodan himself put in a request for me? In that case you could have called me sooner."

  The girl—who had remained young as a result of biological cell showers on the planet Wanderer, administered to all important mutants—shook her head to clear it of Pucky's self-canceling logic.

  "Rhodan's call was only received a few hours ago on the hypercom. He put in an unusual order which we had to fill immediately. Only then was there time to think about you. You are a part of the equipment he requested."

  "Me—a piece of equipment?" retorted Pucky indignantly and he squatted down on a chair. "Is that what the Chief said?"

  "Naturally he didn't put it quite that way. He was very insistent that we only send you and n
o one else."

  "Apparently he's fully aware of my qualities," replied the mouse-beaver contentedly.

  "Hm-m, perhaps," the girl admitted. In outward appearance she might as well have been 18 or 30 but in actuality Betty Toufry was more than 60 years old. "At any rate, tomorrow after the sleep period you are to fly to Hellgate."

  Pucky sat up straight and stiffened his big ears. Between his lips his incisor tooth became visible, which was an indicator of his mood. If it came into view you knew he was with the situation.

  "Hellgate!" He shook his head wonderingly. "That furnace world, of all places! Couldn't the Chief have figured out something more sensible?"

  "Hellgate is an important base and it has a transmitter station. It's the only planet belonging to a small, unimportant sun, which is listed as ZW-2536-K957 in the Arkonide catalogs. Hellgate is exactly 12,348 light-years distant from Earth but it still belongs to the Arkon Empire. Fortunately no one pays it much attention, least of all the Arkonides themselves."

  "Thanks for the lecture!" snorted Pucky disdainfully. "I could have looked it up myself. So what am I supposed to do on Hellgate?"

  "Ask Rhodan, he'll know. I haven't the slightest idea what's happened there." In a subconscious gesture of propriety, she pulled her robe together and covered her knees, although this was wasted on Pucky, who might have responded more readily to a brace of fresh carrots. "And I also have no idea what the Chief wants with the VIP space jet."

  "With what?!" Pucky gaped in dumbfounded amazement.

  "It's a special model:" Betty confirmed, and shared his wonderment. "A custom-made space yacht for millionaires. It's a kind the Arkonides were fond of using. You're supposed to bring the small ship to Rhodan on Hellgate."

  "And then what—walkback?"

  "Hardly. Why would he have been so insistent that you be the pilot? I just hope you know your way around in that thing."

  The mouse-beaver put on such an air of superiority that Betty could hardly restrain her laughter.

  "A minor detail! After all, I've been trained to handle all makes of spacecraft—even such a ridiculous VIP hotrod as that. When do I get going?"

  "The equipment is still being loaded on board. Unfortunately, the long Venus night has just started but it won't make much difference to you if you take off in the dark. So make it about 10 hours from now. If you wish, you can still get in some sleep. The crews at Port Venus have been briefed and are hurrying up the preparations. Rhodan expects you at the latest within 20 hours."

  Pucky revealed his incisor tooth and looked about him interestedly. "May I sleep here with you?" he inquired sanctimoniously and cast a yearning glance at Betty's bed. But Betty appeared to have no desire to scratch the mouse-beaver in his sleep. She discarded her robe, slipped under the downy quilt and shook her head energetically. "There's a couch in the next room. Good night!"

  Pucky sat disappointedly in his chair for a few minutes, then teleported himself into the other room.

  He was still sufficiently conditioned by recent celebrations to fall quickly to sleep and forget his troubles.

  • • •

  The luxury spaceboat was in a class by itself. It lay flat on the cement pavement in the bright glare of the searchlights, next to the light cruiser that had brought it here from the Earth. The Arkonide name, Koos-Nor, was marked by black letters on the silvery hull. Its contour was that of a giant egg, approximately 100 feet long and 60 feet in its central diameter. One gained entrance to the inner part of the yacht through an oval hatchway into the airlock. Its range of action was practically limitless if the required overhaul periods were not taken into consideration.

  Pucky stood with Betty Toufry in front of the glistening marvel. "That thing must have cost a satchel of solars," he remarked. "I never thought I'd be the captain of a dream boat like that."

  The girl looked at her watch. "You know the co-ordinates, Pucky. The chief engineer has briefed you on everything. What are you waiting for?"

  "You're right, Betty. I guess I'll hoist a sail and get under way."

  "That's the understatement of the year—and from you, of all people. Give my regards to Rhodan and the others. And—lots of luck!"

  "Do you mean that well need it?"

  "Certainly. Rhodan mentioned that this was an unusually dangerous undertaking."

  Pucky grinned happily. "So it's an end to the boredom at last. All the other mutants are on special assignments and here I am on Venus, pacifying harmless settlers, merely for tax violations."

  "Maybe it'd be different if they had a mouse-beaver tax," Betty smiled as she stepped back. "Go give 'em all you've got, Pucky!"

  He grinned back at her and then jumped easily upward into the entrance hatch. The unused passenger ladder retracted automatically. Pucky waved a last goodbye and then disappeared into the lock. The heavy hatch cover closed slowly in the glare of the lights.

  A few minutes later a vibration of power went through the egg-shaped frame of the ship. It rose up weightlessly and drifted slowly away into the night. The searchlights followed it.

  Betty walked back to the edge of the field. As she stood there and looked upwards once more into the dark sky, there was nothing more of the ship to be seen. It was as though it had dematerialized.

  • • •

  Which is what actually happened. Pucky had determined to make full use of the special capabilities of this Arkonide luxury yacht.

  Ships of the Koos-Nor class were equipped with a special damping field that reduced the effects of entering and emerging from hyperspace to a minimum. On this basis these ships were licensed to enter hyperspace while inside a solar system, or to emerge into so-called normal space within the confines of a system. Only the extreme costliness of such an installation prevented all space vessels from being so equipped. The damping field generator was unprofitable for normal use—except in the case of these splendiferous VIP models, which an Arkonide inspector might utilize for the purpose of glamorizing the power and splendor of his empire...

  Almost before the Koos-Nor had traversed the yellowish-white cloud layers of Venus, the mouse-beaver activated the DF generator. And in that moment the universe ceased to exist for Pucky—or more specifically: the mouse-beaver together with the luxury yacht had ceased to exit in terms of the normal universe because their state of existence was changed, having acquired a hyper-vibratory pattern of energies.

  Until the material state was regained...

  As the familiar pains of rematerialization wore off, Pucky observed the suddenly altered constellations. Then he slipped out of the pilot's seat and decided that he would give the ship a closer inspection. He began to be plagued by curiosity as to why Rhodan had chosen to use this vessel. Instead of making a specific request for this magnificent plaything, why hadn't he just ordered up a heavily armed cruiser? How could a luxury yacht bring anybody successfully through a dangerous adventure?

  In the hold he found the cases that had arrived sealed from Earth. But for Pucky the telekineticist, locks and seals presented no particular difficulty and so it was not surprising that the mouse-beaver was able to make an unabashed inspection of Rhodan's special 'equipment'.

  10 minutes later he returned to the control room of the Koos-Nor and sat down slowly in the pilot's seat. In great wonderment he stared into the swarm of unknown stars before him.

  And he whispered to himself: "I'd sure like to know what Rhodan has got to do with a masked ball..."

  • • •

  Hellgate really seemed to be a gate to Hell, as its name clearly implied. No one could imagine a more lonely and desolate planet. Here it had been that Rhodan fought his first terrible battle with Atlan, the Hermit of Time.

  Hellgate...

  A sun-flooded hell of sand and rocks, devoid of all life or even hope. It would never occur to any rational form of life to settle here because there was nothing to sustain it. The solitary sun was located far from all space routes and was of less significance than a dust mote in the atmosphe
re of an inhabited planet anywhere in the Milky Way.

  Hellgate...

  Rhodan had singled out this hell world to become an important base and advanced outpost against the Arkonide Empire. No one would suspect his presence here—if indeed there were anyone who knew of his existence. This, however, was improbable. For almost 60 years now Terra had been considered destroyed, with Rhodan and his giant ship the Titan long gone into oblivion.

  So it was on Hellgate that Rhodan constructed his steel-domed base, which provided in its interior the living conditions necessary for Earth life. From here he could make contact at any time with his widely distributed stations by means of the hypercom installation. A swift space vessel lay in a subterranean hangar, ready to take him away whenever the occasion might require it.

  He had been established for some time now on Hellgate without making headway toward his goal.

  Standing at a distance of exactly 31 light-years was a dimly shining sun, a G-type body which was registered in the Arkonide catalogs as Revnur's Star. It was similar to the Earth's sun and could have easily been interchanged with it. Six planets orbited around Revnur's Star but only the second world was inhabited. The Aras, off shoots of the Springers and the Arkonides, had discovered it at one time and settled there. Just as the Springers lived principally by commercial trading and were thus referred to as the Galactic Traders, the Aras lived by another kind of specialty: they were the galactic Medical Masters and made their living through sales of their personally developed antitoxic serums and by maintaining a general medical surveillance of other races and their worlds.

  In this connection they maintained on the second planet of Revnur's Star the only existing galactic zoo and they had succeeded in discovering a life elixir in which Rhodan took an understandable interest. The two mutants, John Marshall and Laury Marten, had been established on the 'zoo planet', called Tolimon, as Rhodan's agents. It was just a week ago that John Marshall had radioed a message hinting of perilous conditions and asking for help. Since then his signals had faded. Nevertheless, Rhodan knew that Laury had succeeded in pilfering an ampoule of the life elixir from one of the laboratories.