Secret Barrier X Page 2

  "And that would be?"

  "The robot brain repulsed me. The secret barrier repels everything in whatever form it exists. This includes pure energy. After we were prevented from landing, a total interruption of our radio communications was imposed. Now we were shown that five-dimensional energy currents of teleportation are intercepted, too. I must have been transferred to a time field of higher order during my dematerialized state."

  "Which all boils down to what?"

  "We're dealing with a discrepancy in the duration of my absence. All of you claim I was gone five seconds at the most. In my reality, however, my absence lasted considerably longer."

  As proof of his contention Tako raised his left arm, exhibiting the dial of his chronometer on his multipurpose bracelet. "My watch is two and a half hours fast. Isn't this valid proof?"

  They agreed. From this moment on the crew ofGood Hope V accepted with resignation the fact that they were unable to assist Perry Rhodan in the jungles of Venus. Rhodan and his companions were left to their own resources. They had to find the solution of their problems by using their wits.

  2/ OF SEALS & SORCERERS

  John Marshall ran for his life.

  Running had been his main occupation recently. He was running from the people of Terra and from the Venusian beasts. The entire planet had conspired to destroy him.

  Panting loudly he fell over the knee high root of a tree, rolled over his shoulder like a parachute jumper and turned around to face the creature. The root offered enough security as long as the threat came only from one side.

  He squinted upward but the trunk of the tree was too smooth. It was 30 feet up to the first branches, making it impossible for him to climb up. The beast approached rapidly. With its length of more than 300 feet not even the highest tree on Venus could have offered a safe refuge.

  Out of the underbrush slid the long pointed head of a slimy worm. It weaved left and right six feet above the ground. Failing to recognize any danger it advanced steadily.

  When Marshall had first encountered the ugly creature about an hour ago, he had reached in desperation for his automatic rifle. The fear that the shots might betray him to his human pursuers was greater than his horror of the Venusian monster. He knew that the slimy giant worm possessed very limited intelligence and that it was highly dangerous because of its instinctive reactions. A victim fallen in its grip could only say his last prayer.

  Against this seemingly boundless mass of repulsive flesh an attack with a conventional automatic gun was almost ineffective. After the first shock of surprise, therefore, Marshall took his thermo-impulse beamer and fired continuously for 20 seconds at the white body of the serpent. The result was only a division of the beast into two parts, both taking up the chase after him. The flight had cost Marshall his last energy.

  Now he was lying behind the tree root which curved like a protective wall before him.

  What if he aimed at the monstrosity in his gunsight squarely from the front?

  It was only an idea which, however, nobody had tried out yet. The attack from the side had severed the body of the snake. How about a frontal approach? It would penetrate the body head on and, by concentrating the focus, the whole slimy body would be dissolved by the energy radiating from controlled nuclear fusion.

  This was the way he had figured. He had no strength left to escape by running away. But he was still able to aim his weapon and pull the trigger.

  The telepath John Marshall leveled his impulse-beamer. The top of the root presented a good support for accurate aiming.

  His plan simply had to succeed because it was beyond his comprehension that he could die here away from human civilization and alone without witnesses.

  The head of the huge worm swayed in front of his gunsight. But it was not yet in the right position for his shot as the sinuous body still formed an angle with the axis of his impulse-beamer's bore.

  When the distance to the loathsome worm had shrunk to 20 yards, Marshall suddenly realized that it had apparently changed its mind. Of course it was stretching the point a little to speak of a mind in view of the low capacity of the creature's brain, which contained nothing worth calling reason. It reacted strictly with reflexes to stimulations. This was Marshall's explanation for the senseless action of the worm.

  It crawled toward the tree but passed it on the opposite side of the six foot trunk and continued sticking to a straight line in the direction of the undergrowth not far behind.

  John Marshall held his breath. Not only his excitement but also the penetrating odour, to which no man from Terra was accustomed, forced him to choke. It took more than 15 minutes for the worm to go by. Nauseated and tantalized he finally sighed with relief when the tail of the monster disappeared harmlessly in the jungle.

  Somewhere the worm would find a deep hole teeming with centipedes where it could crawl in and live in peaceful symbiosis with the scaly animals.

  Marshall wiped the sweat from his brow. The sight of the white tail end of the worm aroused his curiosity. An hour ago, when he had cut the worm in two with his impulse beamer, both ends were burned black. Soon after a crust formed to seal them off and the other half of the worm grew a new head.

  Marshall was aware of these strange peculiarities of life on Venus and he knew that he was not yet out of danger.

  It was his own fault that he had created two snakes out of one. And the reptile appeared just at the moment that he looked around to safeguard his position.

  What had caused the first one to suddenly ignore him after it had hunted him stubbornly and methodically for an hour?

  Marshall could think of only one reason. The movements of the fugitive had attracted its attention and prodded it continuously into his pursuit. When he threw himself behind the cover of the root and remained motionless, the goal had become unrecognizable for the primitive brain of the creature. The tactic of playing dead was valid for all worlds where the fight for existence took place according to eternal laws.

  However, John Marshall was soon disappointed in his new hope.

  Not that the second snake was smarter than the first one. But it just so happened by accident that it crawled exactly toward the root of the tree behind which Marshall was lying.

  This time Marshall had to defend himself. He saw at the last moment that he would not get away by merely keeping watch. And the vehement move with which he jerked up his impulse beamer sufficed to draw the attention of the beast to him.

  The white pointed snout shot forward. The first 15 or 20 feet of the serpent's length were on a straight line and the energy of the impulse beamer bored into the body.

  His speculation was correct!

  There was no partitioning and encasing in the lengthwise direction of the worm. Each of the transverse disks was a separate living unit. As soon as it was hit by the lethal energy it died away.

  His success gave him new courage. With a last effort he dashed out from his hiding place and attacked. In a bloodthirsty frenzy he raced along the 50-yard-long creature and sprayed its white back with continued fire.

  Then Marshall collapsed from exhaustion next to the mile-long slimy track. He had won but it resulted in utter helplessness for him. Even the pervading intolerable stench could not keep him from falling asleep on the spot.

  The sun was still low in the east behind a milky veil of vapors when Marshall woke up again. His first glance fell on the chronometer. He had slept six hours Terrestrial time and he was still alive!

  His nerves were calmer now and he was again in control of his limbs.

  The six hours were spent like a child in innocent sleep. Children may have their guardian angels but Marshall could not put his trust for the future in celestial fantasies.

  He looked at the sun in the east and checked the gyro-compass in his all-purpose wristband for his orientation. The flight from the worm had caused him to make a detour so that he was a few miles off. This deviation from his route was the least of his concerns. But it was essential that h
e reached the shore. It should be no more than 20 miles away. Considering that he had lost much of his strength this was quite a distance. It meant that he would have spent three, four Terra days on the march. Maybe even a whole week or more.

  He avoided mapping out the future in detail. The march through the wilderness had shattered much of his confidence. He was constantly plagued by hunger and thirst. He took a sip of his drinking water with the last bit of tea concentrate from his canteen. His breakfast consisted of half a pound of cold meat. After he had eaten it, he would have to go hunting again. But there was still time for that—till he got hungry again.

  He licked the last bit of fat from his fingers and turned toward the east. The ocean was presumably somewhere in that direction. And somewhere in the west behind him, the patrols of Gen. Tomisenkow were roaming in search of him. To protect himself from them was evidently more important than warding off Venusian monsters.

  The undergrowth was rather sparse in this environment. The ground was drier than in the lowlands. He encountered no particular trouble while covering the next miles. The visibility was not bad either. The breaking day with its uncertain future led him to take stock of his life. If one does not know what lies ahead and questions the wisdom of one's endeavors, it is best to recall how it all came about.

  It was 10 years since John Marshall, the telepath of Perry Rhodan's Mutant Corps, had first set foot on Venus. At that time they had discovered far up in the northern hemisphere a mysterious fortress built by the humanoid Arkonides. It was constructed in the same period when men on Earth began to make use of the invention of the wheel, ventured cautiously in primitive boats out into the oceans and laid the groundwork for the Euclidean geometry to come.

  During that era the Venus Arkonides, whose home was thousands of light-years away from the Solar system, were even said to have founded a colony on Earth. It later became extinct with the legendary Atlantis.

  The second encounter between mankind and Arkonides took place in modern times. They met when the nuclear moon rocket under the command of the American, Maj. Perry Rhodan, discovered an Arkonide spaceship which had crash-landed on the backside of the moon. Only two of its crew still survived, the scientific leader Khrest, and Thora the commander After Rhodan had established a politically neutral power in the Gobi desert with the aid of the superior Arkonide technology, the first expedition to Venus had lead to the discovery of the fortress in the north. The fully automatic positronic installation 'lived' by itself. The mighty robot brain conducted the defense of the Venus bulwark in accordance with the age-old programming until Rhodan first succeeded in aligning the positronic brain with his personal brain frequency so that it obeyed him now better than an Arkonide.

  Years of progress on Earth and major expeditions in the interstellar reaches of the universe caused public interest in Venus and its fortress to somewhat wane.

  But then political conspirators in the Eastern Bloc ignored their agreements with the New Power and provoked interminable entanglements. Concurrently, their spaceships invaded the Venusian planet in great numbers in order to subjugate it as a colony of the Eastern Bloc.

  This attempt was not very successful. Whereas the political differences on Earth could be ironed out and a sound relationship restored, the conquest under Gen. Tomisenkow's leadership turned into a farce. He was unable to take over the positronic brain in the Venus fortress. The fuel carried in his spaceships was only sufficient for the one-way flight there. A second fleet with supplies and reinforcements had been decimated by Rhodan's intervention and barely reached Venus in ruins.

  The invaders had become prisoners of Venus. The expedition disintegrated while living in the bush. Rebels split away from the main force remaining under the command of Gen. Tomisenkow. Illogical men like Lt. Wallerinski believed the time had come for another form of pacifism to be established by the brutal force of arms.

  Marshall had frequently contemplated the strategic situation on Venus. However it was all a matter of conjecture. There was only one certainty, namely that Gen. Tomisenkow had forged the remnants of his troops into an effective striking force. He was the one Marshall had to reckon with, since his patrols were close on his heels. Twice already in the past days he had only narrowly escaped his pursuers.

  Splinter groups like the pacifists under Lt. Wallerinski also constituted a danger. But only an accident could lead to a confrontation with them in the vast primeval forests and bushlands.

  Of course the hazards to Perry Rhodan's crew were not limited to these eventualities.

  Indeed it was only due to Thora's caprice that they had become mired in this situation. Thora had for years longed only to return to faraway Arkon. As this had not yet met with Rhodan's approval, she had summarily hijacked a Terrestrial spaceship to fly to Venus with a single robot to guard her. In her haste she had neglected to obtain the code signal so that the barrier on Venus had become insurmountable and her attempt was doomed. Rhodan didn't fare much better since his mind was exclusively set on her immediate pursuit.

  Both of their ships foundered in the defense barrier of the bulwark extending 300 miles out. They crashed and found themselves in a situation no better than the invasion corps. Thora even fell into the hands of Gen. Tomisenkow, who held her captive. So far, Rhodan had not been able to liberate her. He had suffered a wound in the shoulder from a shot in a night skirmish that put him temporarily out of combat action. Even prolonged marches became too strenuous for him. As a result, only the limping mutant Son Okura stayed with him.

  Marshall was sent on a special mission. It was a task that thrust him alone in the wilderness with the goal of reaching the shore of the ocean in the north.

  He stopped walking. His physical weakness increased his perspiration and he used his handkerchief more frequently to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

  What's the use? Why go on?

  He stared longingly at his multi-purpose wristband containing among other gadgets an efficient radio transmitter. However, Rhodan had strictly ruled out the use of radio communications when there was a danger of listening in and being spotted.

  His special mission tied in with an incident which happened years before. On the eastern shore of the two-hundred mile wide sea channel, Rhodan's men had previously encountered a semi-intelligent species of seals that proved to possess a very friendly nature.

  After Rhodan's shoulder was injured, the march of 300 miles to the Venus fortress seemed to stretch into an eternity. Even if his wound healed quickly, it would remain a decisive handicap for the Chief of the New Power. One had to be very fit in order to stand up to the adversities of the Venusian wilderness.

  Under these circumstances the recourse to the seals had been a very clever idea. If there was any help for them, the seals were their best hope of assistance. And if anyone could get in touch with the mammals, it was John Marshall, the telepath.

  At 94:00 o'clock he reached the beach. When he stepped out of the thicket he paused in surprise. The sudden sight of the ocean gave him a feeling of suspicion since his unconscious mind had already given him the suggestion that he would never reach his destination. Then he broke into a run. The level shore was overgrown with knee-high reeds behind which a beach with clean yellow sand stretched to the water. Marshall finally stopped when the water lapped around his ankles.

  The seals!

  He began to concentrate. He expressed his desperate situation in his telepathic call for help. After a couple of minutes he relaxed again. His mind became passive and attuned to reception.

  The impressions that closed in on him were frightening.

  The apparently dead environment was in reality full of life. It hid in the reeds and in the water. And it was rife with thoughts; but they were entirely inhuman. They were far below the level of comprehensive intelligence; they were nothing but pure emotions. Instinctive reactions of a strictly primitive animal state. Nothing as precise as mathematical formula but permitting instead, various interpretations like an abstract
painting. Nevertheless, Marshall believed he could understand the gist of the feelings. He could sense the lust, envy, hunger and ferocity emanating from the orchestra of emotions of the lowest creatures. But signals from the higher developed seals were entirely missing.

  John Marshall was ready to abandon his concentrated effort in disappointment when a sign of alarm aroused his brain. All of a sudden a human thought crept into his receptive mind. It was a murderous thought originating from the coast.

  He wanted to jump back and run away but he remembered in time that his life depended on keeping cool. The thought dwelled on killing and this intention was so dear that it revealed the choice of John Marshall as victim.

  "This is the spy from the New Power, Rhodan's informer. You've evaded us for days. But you're here at the ocean and can't run away. You're going to be wiped out. You deserve no mercy. I ought to challenge you and let you look into the barrel of my weapon and watch my fire. But you're one of the Rhodans. One of those with whom I can't take a chance."

  Marshall knew that the rifle was trained on his left shoulder. The man aimed for his heart. The minute he turned around the shot would be fired.

  Instead, he threw himself into the water.

  It was not deep enough to let his body submerge. But the reeds on the shore slightly shielded him.

  The shot had gone off as he plunged down and it went wild above him.

  The next thought at the rim of the forest was panic. The killer was no longer able to see him and was thinking about flight. Marshall's reaction whipped up his superstition. Then fear of his superior and of the whole Venusian wilderness mingled in his mental struggle.

  "I've got to kill him! If I don't get him, Tomisenkow will make my life miserable."

  John Marshall dragged himself through the foot deep water. Then he rolled onto the beach and crawled between the reeds, where he remained still and quiet.

  "These Rhodans are sorcerers! The anxiety is driving me crazy. Only when all the Rhodans are dead, are we going to have peace. We've got to get rid of this nightmare. He must be killed!"