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  So Lubkov took his hands off the levers the Druuf had thought would blow up the ship and took hold of others.

  "Blast it all!" thought the Druuf. "How did he find out those are the right ones? Of course, he isn't completely correct. He has to throw a switch, too!"

  Which switch, Marshall did not find out, but he told Lubkov what he had overheard and Lubkov began to search among the switches. That he did until the Druuf thought angrily: "By the eight devils of the eighth star! Now he's found that one, too!"

  In that manner the Terrans learned step by step how to operate a Druuf ship. When they had understood it, they exceeded the speed of light and approached Hades in a super-light flight through super-space.

  The braking manoeuvre proceeded perfectly. The angry Druuf, who in his pain and rage never realized that he himself had told the Terrans how to guide the ship, was an inexhaustible source of information.

  After they had come down from super-space, Tifflor came to. He needed a few minutes to orient himself in the new situation. Then he took over the command from Lt. Lubkov, who made no bones about his happiness at being relieved. All he had to do now was keep watch over the levers and switches.

  Hades finally appeared on the bow portion of the panorama screen. In less than two hours the lifeboat had traveled a distance of nearly 12 billion kilometers—no small feat, since it was piloted by Terrans who two hours before had not understood Druuf astronautics in the slightest.

  However, the most difficult part of their mission seemed to lie yet before them: the landing on Hades. Capt. Rous would recognize the lifeboat as a Druuf craft and probably fire on it. He did not dare allow a Druuf ship to come too close to the entrance of the cavern base. Tifflor had any number of ideas as to how such an error could be prevented—unfortunately, most of them would have taken too much time. For example, Tifflor thought that the lifeboat could fly in a course that spelled out Terran letters, such as R or S, at least until Capt. Rous got the idea. Or, one could find out from the Druuf how the ship's radio functioned, in the same way that piloting the ship had been learned.

  There were a hundred different things that could be done. But while Tifflor and Lubkov were discussing which of them promised the most success, John Marshall suddenly spoke up.

  What he had to say was sensational. Still a few hundred thousand kilometers from Hades, he had received Pucky's telepathic call. Pucky was on Hades and had observed the approach of the Druuf ship. The hatch doors of the Hades base stood open to take in the lifeboat.

  The mission had been a success!

  • • •

  At the agreed upon time, the Drusus and the Kublai Khan stood ready with their transmitters to take

  Pucky on board from Hades. At precisely the right second, Hades requested the green sign and received it. A moment later Pucky found himself back aboard the Drusus, about eight hours after he had left it.

  The news he brought was significant and exciting. Not only was Tifflor out of danger but he had taken a Druuf prisoner and captured a spacecraft outfitted with the mysterious ultralight-drive engines of the Druufs.

  On Hades, Capt. Rous had recognized its importance at once and instructed his men to take the lifeboat engines out as quickly as possible and dismantle them into easily transported sections. For that they had needed almost exactly six hours. At the moment that Pucky reappeared in the Drusus, the machinery, which had originally weighed 15 tons, was now scattered among single pieces each weighing about 200 kilograms, waiting to be shipped to the super battleships the same way Pucky was and flown to Earth.

  When Pucky had finished chattering his hasty report, the central radar announced that it had picked up a battle squadron of about 100 Arkonide units flying towards the current position of the two super battleships. In 12 minutes the Arkonides would be within firing range.

  Even so, Rhodan decided to take the risk. Getting the new engines into the Earth's possession was to important not to do so.

  Hades got the green light. Marcel Rous had already loaded all the transmitters in the base so that there would be no loss of time from his side.

  The Kublai Khan was informed of what to expect and then the loading began. Piece by piece, the separate parts of the engines crossed the distance from Hades to the waiting ships. Laboring frantically, men and robots cleared the receiving transmitters of incoming shipments and readied them to bring in more pieces. Marcel Rous on Hades knew nothing of the pressure of time under which the men of the Drusus and the Kublai Khan were working but he did his best to speed things up.

  The crew of the Newborn were transmitted along with the engine parts, and at last appeared the wounded Druuf.

  In 10 minutes it was all over. The Arkonide squadron was going into attack formation. But even before fire was opened, the two super battleships took off. The Arkonides tried to follow them but, before they had quite understood what was going on, Rhodan ordered the transition. Both Terran ships disappeared before the surprised eyes of the Arkonide commanders.

  It might be said that Perry Rhodan had just thumbed his nose at the Robot Regent!

  • • •

  They had hoped to accomplish entirely different goals but in the last analysis they had to be content with what they had actually done. They had wanted to arrange for the Druufs and the Arkonides to make war on each other and not stop until they were completely exhausted, or at least almost exhausted. The Terrans had hoped that with one single action they could create a situation in which Terran power was on a par with Arkonide strength.

  In that they had not succeeded.

  According to careful estimates, the Arkonides had lost 18,000 ships. That was a great many, considered by Earthly standards, but it was not enough to bring Arkon down to the Terran level.

  The Druuf losses were just as high but no one on Terra was concerned with that. The positronicon on Venus had stated that the overlapping front would soon close and that from then the Druufs would no longer constitute any danger.

  It was left to Terra to continue its observation of the great events of galactic politics from a considerable distance. The moment had not yet come in which Terra could step forward and put in action the will of mankind by force if necessary. Terra's great day had not yet dawned. This realization was one of the most important to come out of Julian Tifflor's mission.

  On the other side of the coin, two successes could be listed: the capture of a Druuf ultra-light engine and the taking prisoner of a Druuf who could be questioned about the technical development of his race.

  The Earthly scientists and technicians attacked with breathtaking enthusiasm the engine that the Drusus and the Kublai Khan had delivered into their hands. Their task was a double one: thinking their way through an alien technology and learning the manner in which a device functioned whose principle they did not even know.

  But after four weeks they had discovered the principle and it could not be much longer until they could duplicate the engine.

  One of the best-known explanations of the way in which the ultralight-drive of the Druufs worked came from Prof. Lawrence of the Terranian Technological Institute. The explanation attempted to explain the inexplicable in terms of familiar examples and basically it was as follows:

  "You can heat a piece of solid matter. You can conduct warmth to it and for every calorie conducted to it, its temperature increases accordingly a certain amount, depending on the specific warmth of the substance. But eventually you will reach a point in which the added warmth is no longer used to increase the temperature of the test substance but to change its physical state.

  "As a familiar example, take a piece of ice—H2O in a solid state, to be more precise. At 10°C, we'll start to heat it. The more warmth we provide, the higher the temperature of the ice will be, until we reach 0°C. When we conduct heat to ice at 0°, it does not get any warmer at first. Instead, it melts. It stays at a temperature of zero until it has entirely converted to water, or liquid H2O. Only then will the added warmth serve in raising its
temperature. The amount of heat which we have added at zero without raising the temperature of the test sample, we'll call the melting warmth of ice relative to the melting temperature.

  "You ask me, future galactonauts that you are, what melting ice has to do with your profession as space travelers. Let me explain that to you.

  "You conduct energy to your ship's engines and the engines increase the velocity of your ship. This principle does not operate without its limits, as you know. We have, up to now, believed that there was a very definite limit, namely the speed of light, which we could not surpass in this manner.

  "The Druufs do not believe that any longer. Like us, they conduct energy to their ships' engines to increase their speed. But then comes the point at which the additional energy is no longer used to increase the speed but to change the material state of the spacecraft—call it the solid state of matter for the sake of analogy. Naturally, a liquid ship does not result from a formerly solid ship, as with ice, but the state of the ship changes in that after the addition of a certain amount of energy the ship is no longer relevant to the four dimensional continuum but belongs to a higher level of space.

  "It is thus similar to the situation of ice: the function which describes the increasing temperature per unit of mass and per unit of energy in connection with the temperature, runs continuously up to the melting point. Then there is an interruption, a peaking. Addition of a certain amount of energy is now necessary to effect a small change in the temperature, you could say.

  "So it is with the Druuf spaceship: increase in velocity per unit of mass and per unit of energy, assumed as a function of the velocity, is a continuous function—to a point. Then there's a peak similar to a delta function. It marks the place in which the additional energy is used to transform the ship into another state of being.

  "Please, gentlemen, consider this as no more than a comparison. It lacks in many places. The structure of the energy fed to the engine must be considered, along with the type of propulsion—and many other things as well. What I have said should be considered only as a graphic illustration to help you visualize the process. Remember that you are operating in a realm of science for which lack of demonstrable proof is unavoidable. The attempt to project a model image borders close to the limit of what is permissible."

  That was Prof. Lawrence's comparison. Although Lawrence had not expected it, his words went into the technological textbooks, where they remained unchanged for several centuries.

  • • •

  The questioning of the captured Druuf produced only a few bits of knowledge concerning the means by which the camouflage device of the Druuf ship that had towed the Newborn through the discharge funnel operated.

  The Druuf knew that the device was still in the developmental stage—which explained why Terran ships had never had any trouble tracking Druuf ships before. Only a few ships were equipped with the new device and among them was probably the ship that had taken the Terran prisoners from the Arkonide ship that had captured them on Grautier sometime back.

  Moreover, the Druuf also knew that the effect of the device depended on the fact it absorbed two definite and quite narrow wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. The wavelengths were the visible part of the spectrum, wavelengths from 4,000 to 7,500 Angstroms, and a narrow band in which the typical frequencies of Terran radar systems lay. If another radar frequency was used, then the Druuf ship was clearly visible on the screen. As far as detection by microwaves was concerned, the new device offered an advantage only when the men at the radarscopes did not alter the frequency of their equipment or, as was the case with most of the old radar systems, if the frequency could not be altered at all.

  For Terra, this knowledge meant no great achievement. What could be learned about the device's principle was turned over to the high-frequency technicians with the instruction that they should mull it over. No one thought that anything useful would come of it very soon.

  After three weeks on the Earth, the Druuf died. He had refused to let a doctor look after him. His wound was greater than the authorities had believed, otherwise they would have paid no attention to his refusal to be treated, at least once they had interrogated him.

  Terra had come a step farther along. She possessed the ultra-light drive of the Druufs. And the Terran scientists began the work of taking another step in the direction of overcoming Arkon's superiority.

  CHECKMATE: UNIVERSE

  Copyright © Ace Books 1975

  Ace Publishing Corporation

  All Rights Reserved

  THE SHIP OF THINGS TO COME

  A FATEFUL PERIOD in this history of humanity. This is what lies ahead of mankind as Earth celebrates the inauguration of the year 2044 AD On Terra and on the far-flung colonial worlds of the Solar Empire, few realize the tempestuous events that the next 12 months will bring. WAR throughout Earth's domain could come at any moment—for a flame has been smoldering for 73 years in the alien star-system of the Topides. What will the answer be when the word goes out—

  PLANET TOPIDE, PLEASE REPLY!

  by Kurt Brand