Peril on Ice Planet Read online

  The unbearably bright light from the blue dwarf sun had wandered out to the right of his observation screen. The dimmer orange-colored blotch of the main sun shone from the corner of the screen and bathed the little cockpit in a pleasant yellow light.

  How nice it would be--, Bell thought.

  That's when the alarm sounded again. "Ships at twelve o'clock!"

  Bell saw on the rangefinder panel once more the glittering swarm of 90 spaceships whose transition he had observed on board the Stardust one hour and a half before. The Z-13 aimed straight at it. With an angry expletive Bell gave his little craft another twist to the left. Although it brought him closer to the powerful enemy chasing him, he could thereby evade the menace of 90 more warships...

  Bell stopped short in the middle of the thought. Tommyrot! Another change of course and back to the old flight direction! What greater security could there be than seeking cover between the enemy's own ships!

  • • •

  After Etztak had followed the careening course of the strange craft for a few minutes he thought he had seen the weirdest pilot ever.

  "Look at him!" Etztak shouted and all eyes followed him obediently to the rangefinder screen. In the luminous substance the path of the hunted was traced like the tail of a comet.

  "What does he think he's doing, weaving from left to right?" the patriarch's voice thundered. "Does he really believe he can get away from us this crazy way?"

  Etztak got his answer from the rangefinder technician: "90 units of our battle fleet straight ahead, Lord! Distance seven light-minutes!"

  Etztak saw the points appear on the screen. The antenna followed their movements and depicted them on the screen as standing motionlessly which was the actual case with respect to the center of the system. And that midget—that ridiculous brazen midget—headed straight for the armada! Etztak realized that he had to act at once: "Fire broadside!"

  But the Springers were not trained to react instantaneously and precisely to an order which came a few minutes earlier than they had been led to expect. Shortly after the beginning of the pursuit Etztak had become aware that the acceleration potential of the strange craft was inferior to the ETZ XXI and had therefore issued strict instructions to open fire only after the distance had been reduced to less than 18,000 miles.

  Everybody was familiar with Etztak's reasoning. A shot from such a short distance would turn the stranger into a flaming torch of exploding gas, a lesson for all who dared oppose the Springer clan of Orlgans. It would have been a fine spectacle of the kind Etztak loved dearly. Then why did the old man withdraw his orders now? What had happened to change his mind?

  Nobody knew. The fire control officers were confused and the long barrels of the energy weapons slowly tracked their target.

  • • •

  "Daisy is already half dead!" Bell relayed.

  The Z-13 took a short painful leap upwards and went back to the same course again after a few seconds.

  Not a shot was fired. The gun turrets of the ETZ XXI were still busy homing in on their prey and Bell's acrobatic evasive leap had been superfluous.

  • • •

  "Okay," Nyssen said calmly. "I heard you!Solar System ready for transition!"

  The Solar System vaulted into hyperspace from a standing start without attaining the velocity which was normally a prerequisite for a transition. The ship jumped with an energy discharge of unimaginable proportions. The five-dimensional explosion, invisible to the human eye, hurled the Solar System into hyperspace.

  Nyssen felt the stinging pain and lost consciousness for a fraction of a second. When he recovered again the Solar System had landed in front of the glittering hostile ships. The Z-13 showed as a tiny speck on the rearview screen not far from the thin elongated body of a vessel. Nyssen was as startled as Bell a few minutes previously when the sensors delivered the result of the measurements: "The ship is cylindrical with torpedo-shaped ends. Length 2500 feet, diameter 250 feet."

  It was plain to see from Nyssen's position that the only imminent danger to the Z-13 came from the gigantic ship. All the others were still outside the usual range of energy rays.

  "All battle stations ready to fire!" Nyssen shouted into the microphone.

  The response was immediate. The cannons had already been manned before the Solar System went into, transition. Nyssen lost no time and rushed toward the tiny racing point and the even faster long ship on the prowl.

  "Distance 4.13 light-seconds!"

  Bell's instruments registered the Solar System the same moment it emerged and he sighed with relief. Not that he believed that all his troubles were over. The Solar System was at the moment of its appearance still too far away to join the impending clash. But at least he was no longer alone. If he could manage to outmanoeuvre the Goliath for a few more seconds, the Solar System would arrive on the scene.

  Bell did his best.

  • • •

  And Etztak wished all the powers of darkness on his Earth adversary. The turret guns were all trained on the target with perfection. Shot after shot was loosed from the funnel-shaped gun muzzles. Some blasted through space with a flash, others with a faint glimmer or completely invisible, in the all-out effort to blow up the little machine.

  However even the best of aiming mechanisms involved some lost motion. It took a few thousandths of a second to align the heavy gun barrels again in the new direction but this tiny interval was enough for a machine with the agility of the Z-13 and its superb thrust absorbers to perform a turn of more than five degrees. The rayshots from the ETZ XXI all whizzed by the Z-13.

  Etztak was seized by a terrible rage. He stamped the floor with his feet and shouted at his officers although there was not one man in the command center who could be held responsible for the misfortune. His observers had already located a minute and a half ago the craft which had so suddenly appeared—and the disturbance caused by the transition of the adversary was registered at the same moment it occurred.

  However that report never reached Etztak's ears. He raved on and on and was completely unaware that he himself was the sole reason that denied final success to the ETZ XXI.

  • • •

  "Commander to fire control officers! We have no intention of destroying the enemy. All we want to do is to get him off the back of the Z-13. Be prepared for a sudden return by transition!" The crew was alerted.

  The Solar System raced to meet the hostile battleship with maximum acceleration. The distance shrunk rapidly and the velocity of the Terranian ship increased by the second.

  "Ten more seconds to reach firing range!" the Second Officer announced.

  "Fire within range!" Nyssen commanded tersely.

  The 10 seconds seemed to be endless. Nyssen watched them tick slowly by on the chronometer, cursing his lameness.

  Still five seconds to go!

  What was the range of the enemy's guns?

  Nyssen had no knowledge of the events taking place on the ETZ XXI which had brought on Etztak's horrendous wrath. But he saw the disintegrator beams and the white-blue energy rays shoot through space as the little Z-13 dodged madly. Nyssen estimated the range of the energy rays by their luminosity. Calculating roughly with lightning speed he determined that it was comparable to his own cannons. No later than his own rayguns reached the enemy, the foe could hit the Solar System too. One more second! The green lamp started blinking at the same moment the alarm commenced wailing. The Solar System had begun to flight!

  • • •

  "Where is the enemy ship?" Etztak fumed. The rangefinder officer cited the co-ordinates with the last bit of self-restraint he could muster. Etztak glanced at the screen to see the picture of the foe.

  Even before he recognized it, he waved to the fire control officer. The officer passed the order on: "Focus on new target with rangefinder data!" Simultaneously Etztak saw the opponent. Not directly but the faint green bundle of rays which broke loose from a point in space and two seconds later filled the entire picture
screen.

  A jolt of unbelievable force jarred the ETZ XXI. The brilliant light disappeared and was replaced by the dim glow of the emergency lamps. Alarm whistles shrilled and a din of voices came out of the loudspeakers. Etztak was thrown to the floor. In spite of the tumult reigning in the command center one of his aides did his duty and rushed immediately to his assistance. He helped him to get back on his feet again. Etztak regained his self-control in a remarkably short time. "Hit?" he asked curtly.

  "Yes, Sire!" the man replied. "In the engine room." Etztak stroked his forehead. His towering rage had left him. For a few seconds he was a helpless old man. Then he called the engine room. He was told that two important aggregates had been knocked out and that the ETZ XXI was still operable although its performance was reduced to 60%.

  Etztak gave orders to break off the pursuit and turn around. The rangefinder reported that the large ship had disappeared. The little speck kept racing through the universe. During the seconds after the hit when the ETZ XXI had continued its forward motion without speeding up further, the little machine accelerated again and went beyond the limit where the cannons of the huge ship were lethal.

  "Let him go," Etztak growled. "Perhaps the battle fleet will get him. We'll return and join the others again. Pass on the order to the WENA and HORL."

  • • •

  For a fraction of a second Nyssen toyed with the idea of taking the Z-13 on board and jumping back together. However the operation would have taken under the best of circumstances at least half a minute and Nyssen considered it too risky to remain another half a minute under the guns of the enemy.

  Therefore Bell received the laconic message from the Solar System : "Daisy must take care of herself again!"

  Then the Solar System disappeared from this sector of space. Bell felt disappointed and relieved at the same time. He braked his speed as hard as he could and pulled the Z-13 around in a tight curve on his new course. The destroyer was carried past the Springer fleet at a distance of a few light-seconds, far enough to be safe.

  The warships didn't seem to have any intention of following him. Either Nyssen's success in disabling Etztak's formidable vessel had made them cautious or they simply figured they had come here for other purposes.

  Bell didn't try very long to find the explanation although he had plenty of time. After he changed his course by 180° be increased his speed to the extreme. But the Stardust was eight light-hours away and even with the relative shortening of time he would still require more than half a Terraday to reach security again.

  2/ Psychogrill

  On the ice planet—which they had given the name Snowman—nothing was noticed of the events that had occurred in outer space. Aubrey's capacity for observation was limited. He had been unable to spot Etztak's tremendous spaceship because it was too far from him above the Snowman surface and the cadets were unaware of the chase after the Z-13.

  The deceptive calm made the cadets nervous. They had realized that their presence on Snowman was required by Perry Rhodan for a definite purpose because he could have picked them up and saved them many times already. This was ample proof of his motives and they were now convinced that the whole uproar the Springers caused was indeed because of them. Tiff was at the mercy of Hifield who raked him over the coals.

  "Now that you got us into this mess," Hifield pestered "the least you can do is tell us what Rhodan has in mind for us."

  Tiff had told Hifield ten times already during recent hours that he knew as little about Rhodan's plans as anybody else. From the eleventh time on he simply refused to take notice of Hifield's reproaches.

  Periodically Tiff went over to the ravine to listen in on the automatic recording equipment of the patrol craft. Shortly after they had settled down in their cave, Rhodan had informed them by this method that they had to hold out for awhile longer and had promised them support. Since that short message however no other word had been transmitted.

  Tiff had hoped to be able to use the hypercom set to monitor the communications among the Springers. Unfortunately this was frustrated by the Springers who had immediately changed the frequency as a consequence of the loss of the patrol ship.

  The way from the cave to the little machine was rather difficult, at some places even downright dangerous on slippery ice. However the low gravity of Snowman favored the climber.

  On his way back to the shelter Tiff wrestled in his quandary with a decision whether or not to induce his people to move farther south—out of the zone of danger. Of course, during hours of marching they would be helplessly exposed to the rangefinders of the enemy. But the instruments of their pursuers would not cover every square inch of the ice planet's surface. If they were lucky...

  Should a strategist make plans trusting to luck? Tiff mused and laughed at himself for using the term 'strategist.' It seemed that his laugh was audible through the helmet radio in the cave. Mildred's mild voice asked: "What's so funny?"

  Tiff answered in amusement: "Oh nothing, really!"

  He was still about 100 feet away from the cave. On second thought he felt that Mildred's friendly question deserved a better answer. He began: "You know..."

  And then he hit the ground. He did it instinctively. There was not enough time for his brain to react sensibly to the black bales suddenly dropping from the sky. Tiff heard a whooshing sound in the outside mike and a dull thud as the dark objects landed on the ice. Simultaneously he heard a shrill whistle. He pulled up the thermobeamer he had taken away from the Springer and cautiously peered out of the snow at the strange bundles.

  Bombs! was the first thought flashing through his mind. Yet the objects didn't look like bombs.

  Tiff slowly got up and approached the packages with drawn weapon. "Stay inside!" he warned. "Something fell down from the sky."

  Mildred and Felicita cried in fright: "For heaven's sake, Tiff! Watch yourself!" And Eberhardt called: "Are you sure you don't want me to come out?"

  "Quite sure," Tiff replied.

  He stood only 20 feet from the first package when he discovered the figure. Tiff planted his feet firmly the snow and trained his weapon on the form. He stared with incredulous eyes at the three foot long figure clad in a special spacesuit, that was lying yards away in the snow. Slowly he lowered his weapon and put it back in his pocket.

  "Pucky!" he gasped. "I mean, sir..."

  "Oh be quiet!" Pucky ordered. "I took a stupendous spill." The mousebeaver raised himself up and hobbled over to Tiff, moving much slower than usual. Tiff saluted and stood at attention. Pucky, being a mutant of the highest order, held the rank of an officer.

  It might have looked ludicrous but Pucky had to be shown the proper respect of his rank.

  Tiff's face began to light up. "It's great that you came to see us, sir! Nonetheless you've given us quite a scare."

  "I regret that I was unable to announce my arrival," Pucky replied and his eyes sparkled mockingly through the faceplate of his space helmet.

  "Of course not, sir!" Tiff admitted. "May I show you our hideaway?" Tiff showed the way and opened the cover plate of the first partition protecting the inner recess of the cave against the forbidding cold of Snowman. A surge of warm air escaped and turned immediately to a fine fog in the cold.

  Pucky followed Tiff. He watched with a practiced eye how Tiff replaced the plate fashioned from molten metal and removed the closure of the second wall. "Good job!" he praised him.

  One by one they passed through six separating walls until they reached the living quarters behind the last partition which were adequately shielded from the cold and kept warm by Aubrey's thermobeamer switched on low.

  Pucky allowed that he had not expected to find so much comfort and commended them for their efficiency. Finally he said in a formal language he seemed to enjoy: "I herewith deliver a consignment of energy weapons, Arkonide transport suits, additional provisions and equipment which you'll find useful."

  "Where?" Eberhardt asked in a baffled tone. Tiff pointed back over his
shoulder to the outside. "In the packages Pucky has brought along with him."

  • • •

  Etztak ordered his ship to land. It had been determined that the damage from the enemy's shot was comparatively easy and quick to repair once the maintenance crew was on solid ground. Shortly after they had touched down Etztak requested the Springer Orlgans, Captain of ORLA XI, to come on board. Etztak made a request, although he had supreme authority over the entire clan in a time of crisis like this, because be considered it more sensible to retain conventional manners as long as it was possible and useful.

  The Springers were a peculiar people related to the Arkonides. The Arkonides had created a Galactic Imperium around their home world Arkon, building it up to a zenith of power and then sliding into a state of decadence. The Springers, however, had separated themselves very early from the original race and established a way of life of their own. They became traders. A claim to be the only people entitled to conduct interstellar trade was related to the ancient mythical beginning of their history. They never were a unified nation. Each captain, member of a special caste, owned his ship and took care of his exclusive trade and to snatch a deal away from another Springer was the most precious pleasure he could imagine.

  Nevertheless they all felt a kinship and the universe considered them as a distinct group. They had managed to amass such a wealth of experience and to make themselves so useful and indispensable in the Arkonide Imperium that nobody else carried on any trade worth mentioning. They had frequently run into belligerent resistance and had built an armada of warships with the fortune they had gained. The Springers benefited from the experiences of the Arkonide technology and from those of other races they came in contact with. Even at this time when the events on Snowman took place nobody really knew who was the more dominant power, the Springers or the Arkonides.