To Arkon! Page 2

  Slowly and cautiously the ship approached the site of the recent battle. Half of the gun-crews had been instructed to watch for energy-masses. Since most types of rays had velocities no faster than 99% of light, the Gazelle I , with its unheard-of turning ability, had a good chance of dodging any offensive burst of energy aimed at it.

  Bell stared at the radar screen. The antennae oscillated without interruption, manifesting itself in a constant series of green bands moving across the screen.

  There!

  A bright spot lit up in a green band, paled at the antenna swung away and lit up again when it came back.

  Tifflor changed course. The ship neared the indicated point with the speed of an Earthly automobile. A faint reflection appeared on the videoscreen. Tifflor, the painstakingly trained officer of the Terranian Space Academy, guided the ship with the swiftness, accuracy and confidence of an experienced captain. He was in his element. Bell had laid down the general guidelines for the operation but now he gave the orders. "Two men leave the ship and pick up the man out there!"

  The two crewmen nearest to the airlock left their places, sealed their spacesuits and disappeared into the small chamber. A minute later they appeared on the videoscreen as shapeless, inflated figures, floating leisurely towards the reflection. Tifflor maintained radio contact. Both of the soldiers outside transmitted reports at regular intervals.

  "Distance still 200 yards, sir. We can see the man plainly."

  "Hurry!" Tifflor ordered. His glance went apprehensively to the screen. The area was dangerous and the distant, unknown ships could spot the Gazelle I at any time and open fire again.

  "We're there, sir." announced the voice of one of the two soldiers.

  "Bring the man in!" Tifflor ordered.

  "Yes, sir, but ..."

  "But what?"

  Gasping. Coughing. "It's ... not a ... man ... at all, sir!"

  "Then what is it?"

  "A ... well, something."

  Tifflor grew angry. "Is it an intelligent being or not?"

  "Probably, sir. Only ... it looks so odd."

  Tifflor had a few severe words on the tip of his tongue but at length thought better of uttering them. instead he ordered: "Bringit in – fast!"

  The brightness of the three light-points on the video increased. Contours became discernible: two clumsy plump but nevertheless human figures, and a third, box-shaped form. Silence reigned in the ship until the sounds of the men entering the airlock could be heard. Bell watched the control lights over the door to the inner lock and nodded to Tifflor when a row of green lights lit up.

  "Now fly back to the Ganymede as fast as you can move!"

  Tifflor began to manipulate the controls. As the Gazelle I started into motion, the two soldiers came out of the airlock. carefully they set down on the floor the large bundle which they pantingly carried. Bell unfastened his safety-belt, stepped around the control panel and examined the alien thing from all sides. He decided that the light grey, leathery casing was probably not part of the creature itself but rather its spacesuit, although he couldn't discern any seams. Upon a closer look, he found an area about a foot square where a sort of silvery plexiglass plate broke through the leathery hull and allowed a view inside. There, Bell saw a shapeless outline, striped in light and dark grey – that which the two soldiers had refused to call a 'man.'

  Bell tapped on the small transparent plate but there was no response from inside. The creature was either unconscious or dead. "Get us out of here – fast!" said Bell to Tifflor in a low tone. Tifflor nodded, his face grim.

  • • •

  Rhodan was notified when the Gazelle I was brought aboard the Ganymede. Khrest stood by him, watching the manoeuvre intently. Tifflor demonstrated his ability as a space pilot; he performed his tasks quickly but with high regard for safety. The space battle around the Ganymede raged on. The scattering of the alien fleet had apparently been only one single action within the far vaster conflict.

  Rhodan turned to Khrest. "Would you like to take over the examination? I think you would be the best one to handle it." Khrest assented and Rhodan added: "Let me know as soon as you find out anything!"

  Khrest went out and waited in the corridor in front of the control room until two of Tifflor's men brought the alien being down by way of the antigrav lift.

  "Take him into the laboratory, please," said Khrest.

  While the load was being brought in, Khrest set into operation those instruments he needed for the examination. He deemed it especially important to fill one of the experimental chambers built into the back wall of the laboratory with a methane atmosphere at considerable pressure: Khrest knew the race to which the helpless, dark and light grey-striped being belonged.

  He opened the leathery spacesuit near the experimental chamber, towed the limp and shapeless body into the airlock with all possible speed, drew the air out and allowed a fresh stream of methane to wash around the strange-looking body. A row of instruments installed in the chamber recorded and reported the alien body's functions. From what Khrest read, only that organ which could be compared with the human heart was performing any noticeable activity.

  The alien was dying. Its body temperature was too low. The heating system in its spacesuit had apparently broken down. Knowing exactly what had to be done, Khrest set the instruments to their next task. A deep humming filled the room as the encephalograph machine began to work. Its mission: to register the last fading brain waves from the methane-being and translate them into a positronic programme.

  • • •

  The trend in which the space battle was developing was unmistakable: the ship formations suddenly drew closer together and the photometers picked up a dozen more reflections. And in the middle of all the formations lay the Ganymede.

  They were still condemned to waiting. They could do nothing more than adjust the defense screen up to maximum so that a chance hit from one of the two powerful energy bursts exchanged by the battling fleets would cause no damage. Khrest came back after an hour. It seemed to Rhodan that he was more earnest than usual. He had in his hand a pair of plastic tapes which had been converted into impulse-carriers and laid them on the control panel in front of Rhodan.

  "Well?" asked Rhodan.

  "It was a Motuner," answered Khrest.

  "Was?"

  "Yes," Khrest nodded. "He died from being chilled. It was too late for me to help him."

  Rhodan pondered, searching through the confusion of information imparted to him by hypno-training for what he knew about the Motuners. They were a non-humanoid race of methane-breathers inhabiting the planets of an extensive solar system at the edge of the globular cluster. At the time of their takeover by the Great Imperium, they were already possessed of a highly developed technology. And never throughout their history were they the most doctile members of the Empire. The high level of their own civilization and the natural antipathy of the non-humanoid towards the humanoid had on occasion motivated the Motuners to fight for the freedom of their own part of the Empire.

  "Who are they fighting with?" Rhodan asked.

  "A great Arkonide fleet," Khrest replied. "According to my examination of the Motuner, the rebellion had hardly begun when a mighty Arkonide fleet appeared over the main planet and blasted its surface into an ocean of molten lava. Then the units of the Motuner fleet stationed on the remaining planet set forth into battle. That is what we are seeing on the videoscreen. There is no doubt, however, that this rebellion will end with the final destruction of the Motuners."

  Rhodan looked surprised. "Arkon is becoming vigorous then?"

  Khrest sank into one of the free seats, his movement one of dejection and resignation. "You cannot understand it as well as I can," he said softly. "True, you have all of Arkon's knowledge but you don't have the emotional impressions I took with me the day Thora and I took off from Arkon in our research cruiser. If the Motuners had been in revolt then, no Arkonide would have bothered himself about it. Motun is situated 46 ligh
t-years from Arkon. the Arkonides knew that the Motuners could do as they pleased because the automatic security measures protected the heart of the Empire. The rebels would not be able to attack the important colonial worlds – to say nothing of Arkon itself! The Arkonides would have merely continued to lay under the fictors—"

  "The fictors?"

  "The fictive-projectors ... waiting for the Motuners' fervor to fade away of its own accord."

  "But now ... this here ... this colossal activity ... ?"

  Rhodan let a little time pass before answering. "Thirteen years have gone by since you started out, Khrest," he then commented. "Don't you believe that ..."

  "Thirteen years!" Khrest protested. "Do you think 13 years are enough for the nature of an ancient people to change so drastically?"

  Rhodan thought about it. "Certainly this isn't the result of any natural developments," he admitted. "Perhaps there's been an invasion - perhaps even Arkon itself has been attacked - and the situation left the arkonides no other choice than to awaken from their lethargy?"

  With a sad smile Khrest gestured negatively. He had a reply on his lips - a reply that a people doomed to destruction does not turn from its downward path and would sooner accept ruin than defend itself. But before he could say even the first word, all hell broke loose.

  Alarm whistles shrilled their ugly, bone-rattling tones, filling the ship for some seconds with a painful racket. When the whistles died away, a voice yelled from the intercom:

  "There's a large unit of ships in direct flight towards the Ganymede! Distance, three light-seconds; speed, 0.05 light! Contact in 60 seconds!"

  2/ DETOUR TO NAAT

  Rhodan's first glance took in the dial reading for the defense screen energy level: the light point quivered on the red spot. Greater power could not be fed to the screen now. The Ganymede was protected against every conceivable stress it might have to bear in battle but the fleet approaching from space consisted of more than 3800 ships. Even the strongest defense field could not stand up to the fire from that many ships.

  Khrest had stood up and retreated to the background in the control room; he knew that others had to take over in such situations. In the passing of a second, the control-room crew became the oath-bound combat brotherhood it was always was in times of the highest danger. Each of the officers stood or sat at his place, waiting for Rhodan's orders with an excitement he could repress only with difficulty

  Even in the haste, Rhodan had not lost his sense of consistency. The radar took 10 seconds to perceive the form of the onrushing ships and conclude that they were of Arkonide origin. Rhodan needed 10 more seconds to send the code signal that, according to Khrest and Thora, would convince the Arkonide ship crew that they had a fellow Arkonide in front of them. And he required just two further seconds to realize that the Arkonide ships had not registered the broadcast and even less considered changing their dangerous course.

  The fleet opened fire on the Ganymede 20 seconds after the first alert. Hundreds of tightly bunched rays shot through space. Some missed their target altogether and others scored, causing the defense screen to glow.

  "Gunpost 1, ready to fire!" Rhodan ordered. Gunpost 1 was the teletransmitter, the most effective weapon aboard the ship. Confirmation from Gunpost 1 came in less than a second. "Shoot in direction Phi Null at medium energy," Rhodan directed. "Fire!"

  With his right hand he pushed the throttle to its "Full Speed" position. The Ganymede moved out, racing at maximum acceleration towards the giant fleet. With the help of the mysterious energy lines. The transmitter, it slashed its way through the alien lines. The transmitter seized its target, catapulted it through hyperspace and made it appear again at a point whose distance and direction could be chosen by appropriate regulation of the quality and polarity of the energy supplied to the device.

  A broad lane opened up before the Ganymede while the defense screen continued to glow under concentrated fire of the Arkonide ships. But the Arkonides quickly recognized the danger that was storming towards them. The fleet broke up as as the ships scattered in all directions to make aiming more difficult for the enemy. the direct hits lighting up the Ganymede's defense screen became less frequent.

  The Terran ship shot through the breach at maximum acceleration and hardly two minutes after the first alarm warning found itself in safety on the other side of the enemy lines. The sudden change in the Ganymede's position undoubtedly threw the Arkonide gun crews into disorder all down the line, since they had to turn their weapons so sharply.

  The Arkonide fleet reformed and turned its flight in the original direction. A few seconds later the first ray blasts could be seen, detonating blazing explosions in the deepness of space. The Arkonides received return fire but from a comparison of shots fired by their side it was easy to tell that the Motuners were hopelessly inferior.

  The 3800 battleships - minus the one displaced by the teletransmitter into another region of space - went for the rest of the Motuner fleet in one furious burst. The Arkonides left behind them a blazing welter of glowing ship-wrecks, which merged on the videoscreen into a luminous yellowish-red cloud.

  • • •

  After half an hour, Rhodan decided to resume the journey. Considering the uproar current in the outer reaches of the star cluster, it seemed to him a good idea not to expose the Ganymede to any more danger. Rather, the ship would cross the remaining 45 light-years in one last jump through hyperspace. Because of the high concentration of matter in the center of M-13, the preliminary calculations of data for the jump required an increased amount of information and a correspondingly increased amount of time.

  Meanwhile the ship remained on maximum alert. It was hard to say with any certainty that the Arkonides, once they had so rigorously cleared the Motuners out of space, would not remember the first enemy and come looking for him.

  Thora burst in on the preparations for the transition, interrupting Rhodan's thoughts even though they were concerned with other matters. Something seemed to have exited her beyond all bounds. As she swiftly strode the length of the control room, her long white hair fairly flew behind her. Rhodan smiled at her as she came up.

  "Those were Arkonide ships, weren't they?" Thora demanded.

  Oh yes, thought Rhodan. She's been watching everything on her own videoscreen and now she's come in here to tell me how I could have handled everything so much better. "Yes," he admitted.

  "Then why didn't you identify yourself?"

  "I did! With the code message, as a matter of fact."

  Thora was bewildered. The fire in her reddish eyes burned a little softer. "And they didn't..."

  "Answer? No, they didn't. On the contrary: they started shooting!"

  Thora let her arms sink limply. Anger and fervor had flown, leaving only helplessness behind. Khrest stood up in the corner where he had been sitting for the last half hour, wordlessly and motionlessly watching the astounding and shocking events out in space. He walked over to Thora, who turned to him, in her eyes the great unanswered question.

  Khrest stood at her side and nodded gravely. "It isn't any easier for us than for you," he said in Arkonidean. "We don't have any idea what happened."

  "But..." said Thora.

  "Some really fundamental change must have taken place on Arkon and in the Empire during your absence," Rhodan put in. "Since this change, Arkonide ship commanders have apparently been ordered to look upon anything that gets in their way as an enemy. Not even the old code signals are good anymore."

  "And...what do you plan to do now?" asked Khrest.

  Thora's terrified face answered before anyone else; Turn around, fly back home!

  Rhodan laughed gently. "Now, don't be afraid. We wanted to go to Arkon and we still want to to go there. We're going to make a sixth transition into the center of the cluster.

  "But there's something I want to tell you: the way things look now; it's considerably more probable that we'll be annihilated by your friends out there than that we'll reach Arkon wit
hout a fight."

  • • •

  "King Salomo penetrated the mysterious land of Ophir step by step while day after day of travel went past, all the time drawing closer to the gorgeous gold-filled palace of the King of Saba!"

  Rhodan looked smilingly to the side and watched his friend and co-pilot murmur the verses to Salamo and the King of Saba to himself for the third time. "Rather romantic, isn't it?" Rhodan teased.

  Bell did not look up from the videoscreen. "This makes me think of being in a movie theater. Take a look at that—" He made a wide-ranging gesture indicating the entire surface of the panoramic screen "and just listen to this !" He pointed to the telecom receiver built into the panel before him. The instrument was tuned to the general frequency and was picking up every broadcast emitted by any sender in this section of space.

  The view offered by the video was indeed fabulous. The stars were so close together that in places they blended into solid walls of light. In other areas they formed a tightly woven network of incredible brilliance.

  It was a sky such as a Terran had never before beheld.

  That coming out of the hypercom receiver was a jumble of at least a hundred thousand simultaneous conversations. When one considered that the normal range for the usual hypercom was only about 15 light-years, then he had to assume that the majority of these conversations were taking place within a radius of 15 light-years around the Ganymede. When one further assumed that of all the ships underway at the moment only a tenth at most were transmitting, then he was faced with the conclusion that within a theoretical sphere 38 light-years in diameter, with the Ganymede as a center point, there was at least one million ships.

  An impressive number.

  Reginald Bell began to understand what Rhodan meant when he said that even with all its decadence and decay the Arkonide Imperium would still be far more immense and magnificent than any Earthly mind could imagine. But with the irritation with which Bell usually reacted to strong impressions, he pushed aside feelings of his own smallness and worthlessness and advanced the audacious opinion about King Salomo that—