Power's Price Read online

  "Just watch out that you don't get taken to any woodsheds by the womenfolk there."

  Reginald Bell could only let out a very deep sigh of resignation.

  • • •

  Rhodan stood facing Rhodan—father to son.

  Ishibashi's hypnotic mind-block had been lifted from Cardif and he was again himself. He was the same young man who was obsessed by an irreconcilable hatred, who blamed his father for his mother's death.

  Rhodan made a last attempt to get across to him. "Thomas... not long ago John Marshall said to me: 'By the mausoleum on the Moon, if I were Thomas Cardif I would not take your hand either.' That hurt me to the core, son, but he explained it this way: 'You were caught in the dilemma of being both Administrator and his father. Thus you reached out to him as the Administrator and not as his father. This you were forced to do because to show partiality on the grounds of parenthood would have been to betray your official responsibilities.'"

  "But this time, Thomas... yes, for the first time in the many decades of my administrative position, I have used my power to bypass laws which I myself have established—so that I could find my way to you and you to me..."

  "Rubbish!"

  That was Thomas Cardif's answer. Rhodan felt as though he had been struck in the face.

  "Thomas, please think carefully about what you're saying."

  "And who murdered my mother, Administrator? For whom had she become too old and who sent her to Arkon so that she could come back a corpse to Terra?You! You were the one! You alone! You wanted to get rid of a woman who'd grown a little too old for you, you rotten, callous..."

  There was the sound of a sharp slap. Thomas Cardif's left cheek turned red under the blow.

  "I'm sorry I struck you..." The words came tonelessly from Rhodan's lips. And he staggered slightly as he went to the door.

  • • •

  "Yes!" said the First Administrator of the Solar Empire and with that word he buried his hope. It had decided the fate of Thomas Cardif.

  Atlan placed an arm around his shoulders. "Friend... what can we do with power while we are still human? To use it effectively one would have to become a machine-cold, heartless, ruthless. Then it would be a simple matter to sentence one's own son to death. Under such a condition... one might think the world would fly apart and crush everything in its dissolution. But that doesn't happen, friend! The world forces us onward into our mightiness. That is the price of power, friend Perry!

  They stood inside the giant dome of the Brain on Arkon 3 while Thomas Cardif lay under control of the hypnotron and appeared to be asleep.

  The hypnotic instrument processed this Terran with greater care than usual. The hypno-block laid back layer after layer of his mind. More and more, Thomas Cardif forgot who he was, where he had come from and who his parents were. Yet everything else remained untouched: his intelligence, his knowledge, his talents and natural tendencies. And hours later he was also unaware of having emerged from an abyss and stepped into the midst of a new life.

  His mind never asked: where have I come from or what has caused me to be what I am?

  When confronted by questions pertaining to his past he would always remain without an answer. Such questions failed to disturb him anymore. He would shake his head and smile distantly.

  Thomas Cardif, the smiling dreamer!

  He had forgotten why he had once been consumed by a coruscating hate.

  And, mercifully, for whom he had held that blind, destructive hatred.

  POWER'S PRICE

  Copyright © 1976 Ace Books

  by arrangement with Arthur Moewig Verlag

  All Rights Reserved

  THE SHIP OF THINGS TO COME

  Save them! Save them! Save them! This was the only thought that found room in Pucky's brain. I must save them from that flaming inferno. At least I owe them that. Who has made this attack on my home world? The Druufs? The Springers? The Aras?

  Oh, Perry, you must help me destroy those scoundrels! Pucky was blindly determined to get to Vagabond as soon as possible. He kept thinking desperately about the heat there: It was going higher than 135 Fahrenheit in some areas! For his own kind, the mouse-beavers, he knew this would be like the fires of Hell!

  All Hell breaks loose in next adventure—

  UNLEASHED POWERS

  by Kurt Brand