To Arkon! Read online

  Perry Rhodan

  The Third Power #30

  To Arkon!

  For 13 years Perry Rhodan promised to take Thora and Khrest, the Arkonides back to their own parent planetary system. In five hyper-transitions the great spaceship Ganymede takes Perry, Thora and Khrest To Arkon. But in between comes interception! The Ganymede is forced to land on Naat. Rhodan and his friends are captured, and their ship immobilized beneath insurmountable energy fields. They must contact the Akonide authority on Naat to negotiate their release so that they may go on to their goal. And if Perry, Thora and Khrest get to Arkon, the Arkonides will find that things have radically changed for them at home during their absence...

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  To Arkon!

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  1/ THE METHANE BREATHERS OF MOTUN

  "A monster! - she's a monster ship!" Reginald Bell, Perry Rhodan's right-hand man, was overcome with awe and reverence as he stood at the base of a tall slender spaceship and stared up towards its apex. The great stellar vessel made the short red bristles on his head stand up almost as if in a salute to its man-made magnificence.

  The object of Bell's overwhelming emotion was the Ganymede , the New Power's latest space-destined giant. It seemed slender only towards someone situated at its base; as Bell was, and looking up; for the foreshortened perspective was deceptive. In actuality the ship was a gigantic cylinder over 2500 feet tall and 600 feet in diameter. Originally the total length had been only about 2380 feet but a sharply tapering nose-cone measuring another 200 had been added in the shops at Terrania.

  TheGanymede stood on four legs projecting from its enormous tail-fins. A massive metal monster, a colossus so huge that one could scarcely imagine its titanic tonnage could ever move an inch off the ground . . . let alone leap for the stars.

  "A monster," Rhodan observed, "as long as you don't compare her with the Stardust ."

  But the Stardust stood six miles away and its mighty spherical body appeared only a relatively dull disc against the violet sky of late evening.

  "So we're flying to Arkon," said Bell, switching to a new topic without removing his eyes from the Ganymede. "And in this ship!"

  "That's right, Rhodan affirmed. "In this ship."

  "Why not the Stardust?"

  "Because it's an Arkonide ship. If I pay a call on Mr. Thompson, whom I've never seen before, I'm not going to go wearing a suit that once belonged to him and say: "I know this is really your suit but because I took it from somebody else and not from you, I'm going to keep it." That wouldn't be very diplomatic, would it?"

  "You're so right," Bell readily admitted. "Okay, great - we'll fly the Ganymede to Arkon. We'll land there and say: 'We've come from Earth and we've brought with us two shipwrecked people from your planet, now help us so our world won't fall into the hands of the Springers,' right?"

  Rhodan laughed. "I wish I knew how things will go when we get to Arkon but if they don't get too complicated I'll remember your suggestion!"

  The day of departure was fast approaching! Thora and Khrest, the Arkonides, were the first to move into their new quarters aboard the gigantic Ganymede. It looked as if they hoped their early move would somehow prevent any further postponement.

  It was a new Thora that Perry saw these days. Her radiant red eyes sparkling with vivacity, she was beautiful, like an alien goddess. The obstinacy that had been the most outstanding trait in her character over the last 13 years had prevented Rhodan from realizing hat he loved her. Now it was becoming obvious to him with pressing clarity.

  Direction of the purely technical preparations fell to Bell and he carried out his tasks with the inexhaustible zeal of a man about to embark on a great adventure and hardly able to wait. Bell oversaw the transfer of one of the two teletransmitters - the most important weapon of all - from the Stardust to the Ganymede. He also made sure that the structural compensator, a device found on board the Ganymede when it was commandeered from the Springers, lived up to what its name promised.

  It did, producing a protective field that absorbed the disturbance of the space-time continuum which betrayed the transition of a spaceship. As long as the structural compensator was in operation, no one would be able to locate the Ganymede by any disturbance it caused in the fabric of space. Bell also took care of installing 27 three-man destroyers in the newly-added ship's nose, as well as the loading of twoGazelle -class scouts. The latter were flat, discus-shaped craft, considerably thicker at the center than at the edges, and were 90 feet long and over 50 feet wide.

  Col. Freyt, nominal commander of the Ganymede, supervised the boarding of its thousand man crew, seeing to it that all were able to find their way about and knew where their posts were. The preparations for the launch required a week, a short time considering the size and importance of the undertaking. Rhodan had been forced to compromise between the haste demanded by the threat of the Springers against the Earth and the care necessary for an expedition like this one.

  The schedule was held to. Despite the shortness of time allowed for preparation, a comprehensive series of tests concluded five hours before liftoff showed that everything aboard the ship was in order and ready to go.

  • • •

  Arkon lay in the middle of Globular Cluster M-13, some 34,000 light-years from the Earth. The Ganymede was not capable of bridging such an enormous distance in a single spring through hyperspace so Rhodan planned for five hypertrans leaps altogether. The last one would end on the periphery of the star cluster. While the first four springs would proceed under cover of the fabricompensator, the fifth would not. No one on Arkon was to get the impression an enemy was attempting to steal into the very heart of the Empire but that last hypertrans was supposed to be detected.

  The first four transitions took place without incident. The distances that separated one trans-point from another were identical each time; every new leap added 6800 light-years to the distance between the Ganymede and the Earth. The last transition began. Rhodan ordered the ship on maximum alert.

  • • •

  The pain faded away.

  The shrill howling of the alarm pulled everyone back into consciousness.

  Someone cried out - no one knew who. A cry of admiration: "The observation screen! Look at them!"

  The large panoramic screen depicted the entire region of space before them. There, pointed to by the ship's nose glistened a globe of brightness, a carpet of radiance in which individual light sources could no longer be distinguished. A cloud of stars, incredibly huge, stars more splendid than man's eyes had ever seen them before.

  M-13!

  Core of the Great Imperium, hundreds of thousands of tars protecting the heart of the Empire - Arkon.

  In comparison, the other areas on the screen seemed empty and deserted. The normal concentrations of stars in the Galaxy faded and looked dark beside the brilliance of the star cluster. Minutes passed by. All aboard took time out to gaze in astonishment st the wonder on the screens. the crew had almost forgotten why it had come here in the first place.

  Then the crackling of the telecom broke the silence. "Something's wrong sir!"

  Perry Rhodan reacted at once, forgetting the marvel depicted on the videoscreens. "What's wrong?"

  "The hypercom receivers have been picking up continuous broadcasts ever since that last transition. If I may say so, we're getting one heck of a jumble on our equipment!"

  "Have you been able to locate the senders?"

  "No, sir. Concerted direction-finding isn't possible because the broadcasts overlap so much. We would need a third reference point to try any triangulations in locating the sources."

  "Continue your observations, then," Rhodan told the radio operator. Then he
directed a series of short and precise commands to the ship's piloting crew: "Stop the ship! Activate the defense screens full strength! Gun posts, remain fully occupied!"

  The Ganymede came to a halt.

  Almost directly in the ship's path, 50 light-minutes ahead, shone the star most removed from the star cluster, a planetless red giant. Silence deepened in the control room. Every eye was fixed on the panoramic screen. Every mind tried to grasp what was going on out there.

  Out there the . . . in an alien, unknown region of space.

  • • •

  "The photometer registers a weak reflection of light in Phi 182, Theta 21 on the star spectrum, but there's a slight blue shift. The reflection is coming closer to us!"

  Glances flew to the indicated point. If the direction towards the globular cluster could be labeled 'ahead,' then the point lay in the rear. Eyes found nothing. Eyes are not photometers.

  Rhodan ordered the radio crew to pipe incoming signals over a receiver in the control room. A second later, a hodgepodge of noises filled the air. Everything in the sound spectrum from deep, monotonous humming to a barely audible, high-pitched twittering was represented.

  Hyper-space messages, coded and scrambled. No one not knowing either the code or the scrambling pattern could decipher them. The directional antenna indicated that a part of the broadcasts was coming from the area in which the photometer had spotted the faint reflection. Something was approaching the star cluster at a considerable speed.

  But what?

  Khrest, the arkonide, was asked to come to the control room but even he was unable to determine what was moving out in the void.

  An hour passed. The light reflection had approached to a distance of 20 light-minutes. Meanwhile it had become clear that the object would pass well away from the Ganymede, barring any change of direction.

  Rhodan breathed easier.

  The object's destination was not the Ganymede!

  Then, for only a fraction of a second, a light flashed on the upper half of the panoramic screen. Despite its short duration, its brilliance attracted everyone's attention. A hair-thin green shot out from the spot where the light had been and crossed the entire screen. It was lost in the radiance of the stars, then appeared again and finally exploded into a second flash.

  Another thread of light flared in the neighborhood of the second flash and sped in the direction from which the first thread had come. Rhodan and his men waited breathlessly for the second detonation but none came. The streak of light hurtled millions of miles through space, ultimately fading out in the glare of the star cluster.

  "Missed!" rumbled Bell, breaking the spell that had taken hold of the men.

  There was no more doubt about it: the Ganymede had emerged from its fifth transition into the middle of a space battle!

  "We're going to stay passive," Rhodan instructed. "We don't know who's fighting who out there; in any case, we aren't involved."

  The situation was ghostly: colored threads of light flitted across the screen while dazzling explosions flared, all in complete silence.

  Khrest was at a loss. "Of course there are a large number of races who are not in agreement with the Arkon Empire," he admitted. "Any power will have its opponents. I have never tried to hide the fact that over the past centuries the Arkonides have brought to bear the force necessary to deal with rebellions. But how should I know what is going on out there? I cannot even say for sure whether Arkonide ships are taking part or not."

  The uncertainty dragged on while the desire for information grew. Rhodan sensed his own nervousness increase and knew that his men were not any less affected. "Reg?" he said.

  Reginald Bell raised his head, his eyes shining with a daredevilish spirit. "Yeah ... should I—?"

  Rhodan nodded. "We can't wait here for days on end. We need information, so take the Gazelle I and find out what's going on out there."

  With nimble hands Bell activated the intercom and informed Lt. Tifflor, under whose command the auxiliary vessel stood, ordering theGazelle I and its crew to be ready for launch in 15 minutes.

  "Don't pull any rash stunts while you're out there," Rhodan warned Bell. "We don't want ant shooting we just want to know what's going on."

  Bell shook his head scornfully. "Don't worry! I'm the most cautious man in the world."

  The last comment brought grins to the faces of the other men in the control room. They knew Bell's fiery temperament well.

  • • •

  With its 10 man crew, the Gazelle I bore all the marks of a small spaceship. She was equipped with hyper-engines and could make transitions of short distance. Her energy supplies allowed an effective action radius of about 500 light-years.

  The small ship's weaponry was enough to fight a war with the entire Earth and win. Yet Bell doubted that the events now taking place at the edge of Globular Cluster M-13 could be measured by Earthly standards.

  The Gazelle I had left the massive body of the Ganymede a few minutes before and with maximum acceleration had reached a speed 80% of light. It bulleted through space in the direction of the weak light reflection which had been observed on the Ganymede's photometer as moving towards the star cluster.

  Bell sat at the side of Tifflor, the young lieutenant. Tifflor flew the ship while Bell kept watch over the radar equipment. At a distance of light-minutes, the radar finder sounded for the first time. As the object drew nearer, it broke up into a cloud of spaceships, moving at terrific speed.

  "Distance, 100 light-seconds!" Tifflor reported. "Let's get closer!" Bell demanded. "I want to see them on video. Drop our speed!"

  "They'll shoot at us sir!" Tifflor objected, glancing at Bell from the side.

  "So they will, will they?" growled Bell. "Does that make you afraid?" Had he not been restrained by the shoulder strap, Tifflor would have leaped to his feet.

  "Sir, I—"

  Bell gestured with his free hand. "Alright, excuse me! I didn't mean it like that. Of course you're not afraid, now slow down!"

  Tifflor obeyed. Faint shadows appeared on the videoscreen – spaceship hulls reflecting the light of the star cluster. "Good lord!" he murmured. "Those spaceships are something else!" Thanks to the intensive hypno-training, Reginald Bell possessed the entire sum of Arkonide knowledge. He knew the ship-types of the Empire as well as any Arkonide - or, since the human mind was more capable than the Arkonide, perhaps even better. But what he saw here before him was more than he could register in a few seconds. Roughly estimated, the armada was comprised of about 380 vessels. The largest of them was around half the size of the Ganymede and the smallest only a weakly glowing point, certainly no bigger than theGazelle I.

  There were ship-types that had been modern in arkonide galactonautics thousands of years before and others that Bell did not recognize at all because they were apparently not of Arkonide construction. In any event, the Gazelle I was facing Arkonides.

  After Tifflor's short braking, the small craft flew at only 7% of light. Some seconds passed before the Gazelle I had overflown the entire width of the fleet. The aliens were operating cautiously: by leaving large gaps between their ships, they made it difficult for enemies to aim accurately. The Gazelle I was not fired upon. Tifflor breathed easier when the light-points of the 380 ships had shifted to the rear viewscreen.

  Bell looked at him and grinned. "I hope you enjoyed that. We have to go back through them again!"

  "Yes, sir!" answered Tifflor tersely and began to manoeuvre the Gazelle I. Inside of five minutes he had the ship going back the way it had come. With even less speed than before, he flew low over the widely spread formation.

  One of the crew suddenly yelled from his position in a gun-post. "They're shooting at us, sir!"

  A wide, glaringly lit streak traced itself across the videoscreen. Tifflor's hand shot to the control panel in an attempt to begin evasive action. But the energy mass zipped harmlessly past, only barely activating the defense screen. A few thousand miles away, the energy struck an alien s
hip squarely.

  The effect was shocking. For a few instants the vessel seemed like a balloon into which someone was glowing strongly. The hull began to glow. Finally the ship blew apart, scattering a rain of radiant white fragments in all directions. Then, the space where the starship had once been was empty.

  Bell gasped. "Get us out of here!"

  Tifflor reacted in a flash. At maximum acceleration and in a tight curve, the Gazelle I sped out of its dangerous proximity to the alien fleet. More masses of sheer energy streaked across the void, painting their trails in glowing streaks on the videoscreens and rushed on to find their victims among the alien ships. Blazing debris sprayed constantly on all sides, seemingly to the observers aboard the Gazelle I to change their color as the ship raced on at an increasing speed – the Doppler Effect was what astronomers on Earth had called the phenomenon.

  "Stop!" Bell ordered.

  The Gazelle I was two and a half light-minutes from the fleet now under attack. Those ships still remaining altered their speed and direction, hoping to elude the heavy fire. The fleet broke up and scattered in all directions. The flashing energy masses found only emptiness at the end of the trajectories. Then the invisible enemy ceased to fire.

  "What was your order, sir?" asked Tifflor.

  "Wait!" Answered Bell brusquely. "Turn the radio receiver onto the general frequency."

  Tifflor nodded. It was clear what Bell had in mind. Survivors were to be found after every battle, even space battles. If some members of the crew of a destroyed ship had survived a direct hit and floated helplessly in space, then he would turn on the emergency sender on his spacesuit and call for help.

  Four minutes later, the Gazelle I picked up the first distress signal. Out of the receiver poured the stammering words of an incomprehensible language, mixed in with background radio static. The direction-finder needed only a few minutes to fix the location of the sender with the automatically operating antennae. The Gazelle I started off once more.