Death Waits in Semispace Read online

  He felt pleased to note that the reaction of his body to the treatment was the same as it was 62 years before. He felt the harsh pain of dematerialization and had, as he later left the Physiotron, the impression that only a few seconds had gone by since his treatment had begun. However the clock showed 19:30 hours when he left the machine.

  Perry Rhodan came toward him and wordlessly shook his hand. Joy lit up his eyes. "We've done it, Reggie," he said finally, "for another 62 years."

  Bell raised his eyebrows. "Have we?" he asked sceptically. "Are you sure that it worked the way it should?"

  Rhodan looked around for the robot but Homunk had meanwhile vanished into the depths of the hall. "No, I'm not sure," he answered honestly. "But we can take precautions."

  Bell looked up in surprise. "Precautions?"

  "Right. Our time is up in 4½ hours. According to what Homunk told us, the cell decay should be noticeable right after midnight if the renewal didn't take effect. We'll stay here. We'll set up camp next to the Physiotron. As soon as we detect the first signs of decay..."

  "Aha!" Bell exclaimed. "I understand!" He became suddenly happy and clapped Rhodan heartily on the back. "That's a great idea, old pal!"

  • • •

  After waiting in the plaza for a few hours for something to happen—and nothing did—Nathan had decided to wander through the city. He glided through the streets and looked up at the huge buildings with astonishment. He felt that even his friend's vast spaceship would seem homey if he ever got back to it; as strange and unfamiliar as the spaceship might have seemed, the city was even more so.

  In his confusion Nathan did not notice that a spaceboat had landed on the great plaza. He continued through the city and returned to the plaza only once the large artificial sun was in the process of fading out.

  • • •

  Perry Rhodan and Reginald Bell stood in front of the Gazelle and stared up at the sky.

  "I can see only redness," Bell said. "No sun and nothing else."

  Rhodan laughed gently. "Alright, I can't even see the sun myself. It's already behind the buildings. But the sky is blue, as usual."

  He stretched out his hand and touched Bell's shoulder. He had already touched Bell several times before but he wanted to be certain that his fingers felt the plastic of the spacesuit and not something else.

  "Odd," he said reflectively. "We're in two different continuums. You've stayed behind in the Einstein universe while I'm in the same semispace as Wanderer. You see the sky as dark red,I see it as bright blue. And yet we can converse with one another, see each other and even touch."

  Reginald Bell was silent.

  "It looks," Rhodan went on after a bit, "as if organic life is able to overstep certain natural limits. A mystery which we'll have to..."

  He stopped when he saw the shadowy shape glide out of one of the streets opening on the plaza. He watched with astonishment as the transparent cloud formed a human figure and floated towards him.

  "Nathan!" Rhodan exclaimed. "Well, what do you know—Nathan's back!"

  At the same moment Its laughter rolled out over the plaza. It came so suddenly that Rhodan was startled. "Watch out!" warned the powerful voice. "Now it happens!"

  Rhodan saw Nathan's astral form disappear through the open hatchway into the Gazelle. Reginald Bell took a surprised step forward and asked: "What does It mean? What—"

  He did not have a chance to finish his sentence. The cataclysm took place suddenly and unexpectedly.

  Bell felt himself knocked to the side as though kicked by a giant. For some seconds he felt the same harsh pain of dematerialization as he had inside in the Physiotron. He did not know what was going on around him. It was dark and he could not make any use of his eyes. He was deathly afraid. He waited for something to happen that would tear him to pieces.

  But instead the pain suddenly melted away. It grew bright around him. He lay on the ground of the great plaza, staring up into a sky as blue as the Arizona sky in summer. And at the zenith stood Wanderer's artificial sun.

  • • •

  "I knew about it some seconds before it happened," said Atlan, smiling. "But I didn't have enough time left to tell you, Administrator."

  Perry Rhodan nodded. He felt exhausted by the terrible pain that had torn at him for a few seconds—the same type of pain he had felt when the Gazelle entered the field of the teletransmitter.

  Atlan sensed the unspoken request. "I said right from the beginning that the semispace in which this planet found itself was a highly unstable thing. One slight shock was all that was necessary to make up for the instability and push Wanderer permanently into either the 4th or the 5th dimensional continuums.

  "Well, it happened. Wanderer has returned to normal space. We've had radio contact with the Drusus for several minutes now. It stands no more than 10 light-minutes from Wanderer. The return into normal space cost us 1½ days, certainly not as much as our flight into semispace. It's now May third, nine o'clock in the morning."

  He looked around and met the impatience on all the faces with mocking laughter. "We'll understand things more easily if we consider that the difference between two differently dimensioned spaces is basically the difference in energy content. We can make a little experiment ourselves: we can create a small, closed space, a 4-dimensional continuum balloon and pump it full of energy. When we've done that long enough, the balloon will disappear. It will have gone into hyperspace.

  "The outcome is not really all that clear. If at the beginning we made a hyperspace balloon and pumped it full of energy, we don't know what direction it would move. It could go into a 6-dimensional continuum just as easily as it could return to the status of normal space. The results would be a matter of statistics: you could not predict the outcome of a single case.

  "The energy Wanderer's semispace needed to make the transition was rather small, considering its instability. The energy was obtained from the engines of the two Gazelles. Mr. Bell's engines were drained while he was flying his spaceboat northwards over the equatorial ocean. Our engines lost their energy while crossing over to this space in the transport field of the teletransmitter.

  "One more thing: Mr. Bell could have seen that semispace was increasing its energy content but he did not know how to read the signs. He saw the sky suddenly grow brighter when our Gazelle reached Wanderer, a clear sign that semispace was augmenting its energy."

  "Moreover: the energy absorbed from the engines was not enough to carry out the transition completely. A slight amount still lacked. A part of this amount came from the power station, with which Mr. Bell made our Gazelle capable of flight again. The total amount of radiated power would have been enough to tear Wanderer apart but semispace soaked up the greatest portion—Mr. Bell has already reported a 1r6law, right?—the rest was just enough for our engines to operate again."

  "In conclusion: the energy requirements for the changeover were almost fulfilled. A slight amount was still necessary, a few watt-seconds, to top it off. And who supplied that? Nathan! When he re-entered his body, exhausted from all his exertions, he left behind on this world the stabilizing energy he used to keep his astral form going. Those were the few watt-seconds Wanderer needed. The pent-up energy was discharged. The unstable structure became stable and Wanderer went back into normal space."

  "That's the whole story, or at least qualitatively. We'll work it out completely when we understand the theory of semispace well enough."

  He turned and smiled at Ali el Jagat. Jagat answered with a brief wink.

  Perry Rhodan stood up. He took a step and stumbled over Nathan's seacow-like body. Nathan made no secret of his joy at having found his friends again. He wriggled on the floor and emitted high-pitched sounds of happiness—which no one could hear because they were beyond the range of human ears.

  Rhodan looked at the vidscreen. 20 meters in front of the Gazelle gaped the tall opening of the door that led into the Great Hall. "What a strange world this is," he murmured.

&nb
sp; But stranger worlds lay in his future.

  DEATH WAITS IN SEMISPACE

  Copyright © Ace Books 1975

  Ace Publishing Corporation

  All Rights Reserved

  THE SHIP OF THINGS TO COME

  10,000 YEARS into the past.

  To legendary Atlantis, island named for an ancient Arkonide you have come to know and love: Time's Lonely One... the Crystal Prince.

  While Rhodan and Bell are busy seeking their boon of another life-boost from the infuriatingly playful mass-intelligence known as It , dweller on the manufactured Planet Wanderer, Atlan returns in memory to his young manhood among the Atlanteans.

  When something unexpected happens that alarms PUCKY for the safety of Perry and Reg, Atlan returns to be on the present scene.

  But in the meantime we will have seen a sight never before beheld by the eyes of 20th (or 21st) Century human beings, the unique, exciting event of:

  THE LAST DAYS OF ATLANTIS

  by K.H. Scheer