The Plasma Monster Page 3

  spherical object at its poles.

  "Alien ship velocity: 0.8 LV. Distance: 4.1 LH."

  "Direction of course!" insisted Fitzgerald.

  "Orion System," came the answer.

  The chronometer registered 18:56 standard time.

  "Berliez, can't you sharpen that picture any more?" Fitzgerald didn't realize that beads of perspiration were standing out on his forehead as he let Berliez get back to the keyboard.

  With practiced hands, the latter manipulated several vernier adjustments. The picture blurred out and then came again as sharp as a pin, only to disappear a moment later.

  "Come on! Come on!" yelled Fitzgerald impatiently.

  But the 21-year-old second lieutenant did not allow himself to become rattled.

  Now the picture was there again, clear and sharp. With unmistakable clarity it revealed a definite flattening of both poles of the alien vessel.

  It was 18:57.

  When Fitzgerald gave his instructions to the Com Room he only spoke six words: "Order 486. Red alert to Headquarters!"

  Order 486 referred to Rhodan's warning bulletin. Two short pulse bursts had been coded and prepared by the positronicon. They were beamed forth from the station's hypercom antenna. The Solar Fleet Headquarters in Terrania was advised by the interstellar operator in three short sentences concerning the observation of station Ori-12-1818

  Terrania did not return any questions. The contents of the dispatch were all they required.

  Alarm sirens howled on board the super battleship Drusus. To the three duty officers in the giant Control Central there could be no mistake about their signals. The Chief had given the alarm himself and that meant a crash takeoff.

  • • •

  Newsman Walt Ballin was fascinated by Perry Rhodan's lightning-swift but carefully considered actions. He finally began to realize that he was witnessing a key moment in which new developments were taking place.

  "Bell, are you there?... Marshall! All available mutants to the Drusus—red alert!... Freyt, you take over—I have to go!... Drusus...!"

  Now for the first time the loudspeaker came to life.

  "Yessir, this is Control Central of the..."

  "Emergency takeoff in 15 minutes. I want a 3-way hypercom channel hookup between the Drusus, Command Headquarters and Ori-12-1818!"

  "Understood, sir. Emergency takeoff in..."

  But Rhodan had already changed his connection to Fleet Headquarters. "Instructions to Orion Fleet Task Force. Do not intercept alien spaceship in Orion Sector. The Drusus is joining you. But in case additional alien ships appear you are to attack per Order 486-A. This is a red alert for all Orion Fleet units. That is all!"

  When Rhodan glanced sharply at him, Ballin was startled. "Care to come along?"

  The newsman felt a second shock run through him. "You mean me?"

  "Yes, I mean you, sir. Come along. We're taking off in 13 minutes!" Rhodan was already passing him on his way to the door, so all Ballin could do was follow him.

  The antigravitor carried them to the roof of the skyscraper. While they were floating up the shaft, Rhodan spoke to the journalist. "If you'd prefer not to, Ballin, you don't have to make the flight. It's my guess that some very heavy risks will be involved."

  "Are you kidding, sir? I'm grabbing the chancel. What profession doesn't involve a risk?"

  His words brought a smile to Rhodan's face but Ballin couldn't tell whether it was an expression of sympathy or mockery.

  "It's true what you say about risks in general, Mr. Ballin, but I doubt if you understand the difference between professional risks and those that are involved in flights such as this."

  They reached the roof just as Reginald Bell's aircar rose up and shot away in the direction of the spaceport. A few moments later, Ballin was sitting next to Rhodan in a second aircar. Under forced acceleration the vehicle hurtled toward that section of the spaceport where the giant spherical hull of the Drusus loomed into the sky.

  The bewildered journalist heard Rhodan saying: "I'm surprised you aren't asking any questions, Ballin. Naturally you should know where this flight is heading, and why I issued the red alert."

  He ignored Ballin's astonishment and once more scanned his thoughts. He could see that the reporter was aware of a big newsbreak of some kind but that he had no suspicion of the fact he was sitting next to someone who was equipped with special faculties.

  "Sir, this whole change of situation has happened so unexpectedly... I..." Ballin broke off in confusion when he heard Rhodan laugh.

  "For you, Ballin—but not for my closest aides and companions. We've become accustomed to these things and maybe it's a habit that's to blame for not keeping Terrans up-to-date on what's going on. But that's a task I'm handing over to you, Ballin. It's the reason why I had you come to Terrania. OK, so here we are!"

  Rhodan landed the aircar in front of the first of many towering telescope struts supporting the Drusus. He jumped out with a lithe, limber movement and was 10 steps away before Ballin could get into gear enough to follow him. Walt Ballin was completely disoriented and felt like a gawking tourist here. He had never stood directly under a super battleship of the Solar Fleet before and now he couldn't quite get it into his head that this colossus could actually move one centimeter off the ground.

  The huge ramp of the ground lock might as well have been another city street. The hatch door itself loomed like some mighty gate to Eternity. Then came this vast tube—the antigravitor, which carried them aloft with startling swiftness.

  "Better check your watch, Ballin." Rhodan's voice broke the bubble of his fixation.

  "19:12 standard, sir," replied Ballin, still mentally at sea.

  "Correct. In two minutes we take off. You'll have to excuse me just now because I won't be able to watch after you for awhile, Ballin. Just keep your eyes and ears open. Your job will begin when this operation is over with. Here now—don't let it get to you so soon, Ballin!"

  But at that moment Ballin had suddenly thought of a young woman named Yvonne Berclais, whom he had dated for tonight at 20:00 o'clock at the Trois Poulardes in Paris. Ballin had completely forgotten about the rendezvous!

  The antigravitor itself was a scene of hurried emergency traffic in personnel. Several hundred men were drifting upwards and downwards in transverse fields, each of them en route to an assigned station. Ballin had noted the fact even as they entered the Drusus that no one had even taken notice of the First Administrator's arrival or even saluted him. All this plus the overwhelming impression the titanic ship had made on him was momentarily forgotten as he remembered his date with Yvonne.

  For the first time he could appreciate the meaning of the old saying: to take one's heart in both hands. This he did now as he explained to Rhodan what had skipped his mind during the turbulence of the day's events.

  Rhodan grasped his arm firmly. "We get out here!" he said. Then they were suddenly on the main level that led to the Control Central. "Are you saying you want to go back, Ballin?"

  "No, but... but it isn't right, sir!" the newsman answered, still in confusion.

  "Come along, Ballin. Naturally there's a way of handling this. We have to go past the Communications Central, so you go in there and ask for a connection to

  Paris. Here—this is the place. OK? Good luck, Ballin!"

  Could Rhodan suspect that in this moment he had won anew friend?

  "What a man!" Ballin." whispered. He watched Rhodan's departing figure until it disappeared beyond the hatchway of the Control Central.

  He was about to enter the Com Central when he suddenly froze. The Drusus was thundering and bellowing. The great spacesphere, measuring 1500 meters in diameter, was starting to take off. The mighty impulse engines in the super battleship's equatorial ring had been opened to full power and the hull had

  begun to rumble in the grip of their unleashed forces.

  "Hello here, now who are you?"

  Ballin heard a powerful masculine voice behind him, in f
act almost in his ear. Simultaneously he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to stare into the freckled face of a man whom he had seen before.

  "Mr. Bell, I'm Walt Ballin from the Europa News. The First Administrator has invited me to come along on this flight of the Drusus."

  A pair of suspicious eyes flashed at him. "It's easy to see you're a stranger to this type of operation. I'll soon find out if your information is true. No way for you to get away now other than run around inside the ship. So what's your business in the Com Room? Can't you read? Restricted area!"

  "But the First Administrator..."

  Bell interrupted him with a brisk wave of his hand. "Lay off that right now! You'll do Perry and the rest of us a big favor if you'll refer to him as the Chief and not the First Administrator. But what do you want with Communications?"

  Ballin was well informed concerning Reginald Bell's general personality and disposition, so there was nothing left for him to do but to confess his sin of omission once more.

  Bell's sudden grin widened as he listened. "Man," he said, "now I've heard everything...!"

  With a startled cry, Walt Ballin drew back before a heavy blast of air as an animal three feet high appeared out of the shimmering whirlwind, mouse-like above and beaver-like in its lower extremities.

  Simultaneously the creature squeaked out in a piercing shrill voice: "Fatso, this youngster isn't pulling your leg! He was really about to stand up his girlfriend and I suppose you've never done that before, eh? Wasn't there a certain Sheila Gibbons, a Madeleine Ykes and Rosita Menderez and..."

  "Please, mister!" Bell told him anxiously and Ballin couldn't understand why Rhodan's Chief Deputy should do him the honor of holding the door open for him to the Com. Room, even gesturing to him to enter.

  But Bell knew very well why he was driven to this desperate move. He had hardly closed the door again before he turned toward Pucky, only to snort out a cussword. The little devil disappeared again in the same way he had come, after accusing him of all these things in front of the young newcomer.

  While Walt Ballin got his connection to Paris and waited for Yvonne Berclais' face to appear on the screen, in the Control Central Rhodan was studying the latest reports from Relay Station Ori-12-1818.

  Gen. Conrad Deringhouse was standing next to him. "Nothing much new, sir," he was saying in his quiet way. "But the little we have is bad enough. I believe they have come!"

  "As convinced as all that, Deringhouse?" Rhodan's question, however, carried no note of sarcasm.

  Without comment the general handed him the latest photos transmitted to them by hypercom. They revealed a small spaceship with a spherical hull and flattened areas at either pole. "And here's the oscillogram, sir, with the flattened curves. They are abnormal for our own type of transitions. If this isn't an Akon ship from the Blue System, then here we go again—faced with another alien race. But there's everything to argue against the latter supposition. That ship's configuration leads to only one conclusion, flat poles or no: we're face to face with the Akons."

  Meanwhile the Drusus had been picking up speed as it left the solar system, yet many a valuable minute was still required before the flagship of the Solar Imperium could enter into its first transition.

  At this moment Ori-12-1818 sent through some additional data and three Central Control officers proceeded to lay out the visible course of the unknown spaceship on the stellar map board. As Rhodan and Deringhouse came over to the map section, Bell entered unobtrusively and took up a position behind the two men.

  Typically, Bell expressed what he thought of the situation without being asked. "Doesn't look to me like they're headed for a landing on Betelgeuse 3," he said.

  "I have the same impression, Chubby," Rhodan replied. "But if our guests aren't going to land on the only inhabitable planet of the system, what are they doing here?"

  "Why not give them a hail and ask them? Speaking of radio calls, do you happen to know there's a youngster on this ship..."

  "I brought him along. But the young man is not the subject at the moment. Bell, you take over the hypercom yourself. I wouldn't give them more than three repeats of the IFF interrogation signal."

  Bell was standing next to Rhodan now and looked at him querulously. "You don't sound very optimistic," he commented.

  "I'll show a little of that maybe, once I know who's sitting in that alien ship and what they plan to do in the Orion Sector. Deringhouse, expand this alert to the entire Fleet and all military bases. Need I tell you that this situation is beginning to make me somewhat apprehensive?"

  After a mutual exchange of glances, Bell and Deringhouse left. One went to send a hypercom interrogation challenge to the stranger, demanding his origin and destination. The other attended to sending out a general alarm to all Fleet formations as well as to the heavily armed ground bases.

  5 minutes later, Ori-12-1818 transmitted further data. And another small stretch of the, alien starship's course was laid out on the star map. It could clearly be seen that its primary goal was the giant system of Betelgeuse. The red monster star was more than 100 million km in diameter, an M-type giant.

  Perry Rhodan's thoughts were turning ever more intensively to his recollections of the technically superior Akons from the Blue System—in the heart of the galaxy. That's where he had first discovered them while making a major test flight in the experimental Fantasy, Terra's only ship equipped with the Kalup-type compensator converter. For several thousand years the Akons had dispensed with ordinary spaceflight in order to travel from star to star. Instead they made use of high-powered interstellar transmitters. But whenever they wanted to emerge from their sovereign territory they had to fall back on regular starships if they did not have a transmitter-receiver installation on the planet of their destination.

  Again another piece of the alien's course was posted on the chart, bringing it still closer to the Betelgeuse system. Unless the Terrans were being thrown off the track by this ship, it was now becoming clear that its destination had to be one of the outer planets.

  Bell returned from the Communications Central. "They don't answer. They're maintaining a radio silence—not even any hypercom traffic of their own. At least the Orion relay station hasn't picked up anything yet." Bell wasn't happy with the situation. He had a healthy respect for Akon power. "What the devil do the Akons want with us? Their appearance so close to the Solar System isn't any coincidence—or do you believe in coincidences, Perry?"

  "As long as I know the Blue System exists I can't bet on coincidences any more. I hope I'm wrong and the Akons don't know the exact position of the Earth!

  That's right, Bell, you can stare at me like that all you want to but we're not going to be able to play hide and seek with the Akons as we did with the Arkonides and the Springers."

  "You're sure in a real terrific mood today," grumbled Bell, brushing a hand through his red hair. "And all this just because that flat-nosed meteorite is flashing across the Betelgeuse system. I don't see where there's a call for such pessimism."

  "And I don't see what the Akons are up to. Whatever it is, they're too obvious about it. They want us to see them. And whoever parades in the open like that must really have an ace up his sleeve."

  A boyish grin appeared on Bell's freckled face. "At least we have the edge on them in one particular," he said. "We even have their linear space-drive, Perry. With that we penetrated their screened-off system and against their will we got out again!"

  "You poor fellow!" replied Perry pityingly.

  "Well, you ought to know the score," answered his stocky deputy. "But if you carry on like that you're going to be as contagious as that 'stone-belly' plague. Hey! Do you think there's any connection between those sick Springers and the appearance of the Akons?" A new tone of excitement had come into his voice.

  "Those Springers are as fond of living as we are, Chubby. Try using your head before you make statements like that. Dying men can't very well be playing games and even, if there were any collu
sion between them and the Akons the doctors on medi-ship 3 would have advised us by now. Your theory is absurd, my

  friend!"

  "OK, Perry, so what's your theory?"

  "I don't have any. I'd just like to have an answer to one question: why are the

  Akons coming here?" As he spoke he glanced thoughtfully at the alien ship's course marking on the star chart.

  "Then do I take it you're convinced it's an Akon ship, Perry?"

  "So far, yes."

  "And you plan to intercept it with the Drusus?"

  "If it comes to that, yes. In spite of that little starship's greatly superior firepower, the Drusus' screens will be able to stand up under their attack."

  Bell regarded his friend suspiciously. "You're not telling me what's worrying you, Perry. What is it you're really afraid of in the appearance of an Akon spaceship?"

  "Everything! I haven't forgotten how they received us in the Blue System or how they treated us as though we were primitive bushmen instead of humans with a certain grade of intelligence."

  "The Akons are galactic snobs!" retorted Bell. It was with such vehemence that it made Rhodan smile.

  "That describes them alright," he agreed. And then he was aware of the general's arrival.

  "Sir, I've picked up something of interest. I've just gotten word from Lt. Fitzgerald on our station in Orion that sensor impulses have been emanating from the unidentified ship which nobody can explain so far. At first Ori-12-1818 was impacted by mysterious high-frequency pulses of unusual field strength and then patrol cruiser Nile reported that they had been surrounded by some kind of force that damped down their hypercom so badly that they were practically jammed. Before the relay station or the cruiser could make an analysis, however, it was over with. The Ori station alone was able to determine the field strength. Sir, the Oersted reading was 12 times 10 to the 12th power—and at that distance!"

  This area of the physical sciences was Bell's strong point. In one sequence of mental operations he established a relationship between the distance of transmission and the impact strength of the magnetic field that had been reported. His voice carried a note of conviction when he said: "In that spaceship there can only be Akons!"