Unleashed Powers Read online

  "Sir, the physical behavior of this fluorescent material is even more amazing. It doesn't show a reaction to any thing—completely inert!"

  "But you certainly must have determined its atomic weight, Grimpel!"

  "That we have done, sir, but it's a little bit hard to believe that the material in question is supposed to be just sand!"

  "Sand?" Rhodan's gaze strayed into distance. Sand, you say? And you spoke of a sandstorm on Vagabond? This heavy material is supposed to be sand?"

  Grimpel laughed in his embarrassment. "I asked the same questions of Dr. Innogow. At first he gave me a straight 'no' for an answer but then he hurried on to say that he had found traces of sand in it—maybe a 4,000th part of the total mass. He told me not to ask him what the rest of it was because he didn't know. And that just about winds up my report, sir."

  Rhodan regarded him thoughtfully. "Grimpel, I'm missing an important point in your report. Didn't you see to it that some contact was made with the mouse-beavers?"

  "Of course I ordered such action, sir," said Grimpel. "But we didn't come across a single one of them within a thousand kilometers. We found a few finally at the southern pole and two days later we ran into a large group of them on the other side of the planet in the equatorial zone. Unfortunately they made it impossible for us to communicate with them."

  "However cute these mouse-beavers may be, with that playful instinct of theirs combined with their telekinetic powers they made a madhouse out of our ship! Whatever wasn't bolted down began flying every which way. Things started doing flips and falling even from the ceiling... and three times I myself was caught in the telekinetic grasp of one of those little devils."

  "Sir, we had to get away from that bunch of little ruffians because after all we wanted to get back to Earth and not be forced to sit there in a demolished ship, waiting for a rescue expedition. Those mouse-beavers can be a regular plague! The only thing that surprises me is that Pucky is so good-mannered by contrast..."

  "If you only knew some of that little one's escapades, Grimpel," Rhodan cautioned him. But he was plainly not satisfied with the results of the reconnaissance trip to Vagabond. He still held the piece of mysterious substance between his fingers and now he looked at it again. "Grimpel, have you also checked the ground radiation?"

  "Sir," replied the other with emphasis, "I don't think we left anything untried in order to solve the riddle of that energy blast. But everything was without result—everything!"

  Grimpel met Bell at the door to Rhodan's office. Owing to his excellent memory for faces, Bell immediately recognized the Chief of the Energy-Sensor Center and he knew of the assignment he had been on.

  When he went into the office he sat down unceremoniously in the still warm seat Grimpel had left. "Well? Anything new, Perry?" he asked.

  "Yes, this," said Rhodan, and he shoved the small piece of fluorescent material across to his friend.

  "So what is it?" asked Bell without touching it.

  "My chubby chum, I'll have you know that one-4000th of that stuff is sand!"

  Reginald Bell leaned forward to look at the shining blue particle. When he carefully picked it up the first thing he noticed was its weight. "What the heck! This stuff's heavier than lead!"

  "It's some super-heavy material—but that completely exhausts our knowledge concerning it. It was found on Vagabond under 20 meters of sand. In fact, my friend, exactly at the spot that Grimpel determined was the focal point of that energy blast..."

  "Why didn't you let Pucky go along on that mission? For any action on Vagabond, he would have been the number one candidate!"

  "You must certainly be aware of the fact that he and Marshall are with Atlan on the Crystal World at the moment and that he's indispensable there."

  Bell smiled knowingly. "When you come on with that official tone of yours, Perry, you can fool others maybe but not yours truly. To take off the wrappings—the Vagabond excursion turned out to be a dud. Am I right?"

  "This fellow Grimpel didn't get a single chance on Vagabond to make any useful contact with the mouse-beavers!" There was an angry note in Rhodan's voice.

  Bell grinned. "Did he and his ship have to merk off?"

  "Right. Make a run for it."

  Bell cut him short. "And you can't blame him for it, Perry! Those mouse-beavers are really little rascals once they start playing. Have you forgotten already the tricks that Pucky played on us that first time and what we had to go through on Vagabond? I'm surprised that Grimpel even got out of there in one piece!"

  "Hm-m... You build a pretty good case for Grimpel."

  "All I'm trying to do is to consider the circumstances he had to face. But to get back to this lump of heavy material... have you given thought to the Druufs?"

  "We're ahead of you there. Of course it goes without saying that Druuf ships could have landed on Vagabond and may still be cruising around somewhere in our own stellar continuum, but in the meantime our people haven't exactly been asleep. Whatever we have on record concerning the Druuf universe has been retrieved in order to help us decipher the pattern charts and a very wild assortment of sine waves. In this connection I've submitted, questions to the positronic brain on Venus. It gave me a flat no on the Druuf possibility so they couldn't have had anything to do with that energy burst on Vagabond."

  Bell let out a groan. "Robot brain! Super-positronicon! The Think-Clinker on Venus! Always this mechanized think-tank business! Look—as a working tool I can go along with that contraption but that's the end of my sympathies for it. Perry, if only one breath of life could be breathed into it, then I'd recognize the decision of a positronicon. I'm sorry but I hate that cold-blooded number-shuffling monstrosity!

  "So in spite of all that, what if the Druufs have really been up to some kind of mischief on Vagabond? Are we as familiar with the Druuf universe as some people might think we are? I mean, do we know it like the back of our hands? In fact we should quit kidding ourselves that we're even at home in the starry jungles of our own galaxy! So Venus positronic, my eye! What do you really know? Imagination and the powers of extrapolation, the very things that distinguish us as humans—your positronicon has never heard of those. I have a notion that Druuf ships have been fooling around on Vagabond. What does your C-14 analysis show on this little heavyweight chunk—I mean, as to its age?"

  "Nothing. And just so there'll be no doubt in your mind about that, Bell... that little chunk you happen to be holding between your fingers has refused to respond at all to a C-14 analysis. So what do you say now?"

  Bell's gaze traveled several times between the small piece of material and Rhodan. He pondered the matter and then said: "OK, so no Druufs. No Druuf matter would fail to show some C-14. Well now, that does open up the doors! What next? Two weeks ago we were just getting acquainted with the water people of Opghan—and now this! But can we be sure the energy blast occurred on Vagabond and not off of it somewhere in the middle of the void? Are the readings of our sensors so exact that a mistake is out of the question?"

  "I wish I could tell you that the tracing was not precise. Unfortunately that isn't the case and it was also unfortunate that I made the mistake of not sending Pucky to Vagabond. I don't mean to criticize Grimpel's work but I can't shake off the feeling that he's overlooked something important. So from here on in we're going to keep the planet Vagabond under constant surveillance."

  • • •

  The monsters came a third time to Vagabond.

  They were detected neither by Arkonide nor Terran tracking stations.

  This time more than 500 double-hulled teardrop ships approached the equatorial zone on the opposite side of the planet. They landed in a gigantic circle formation which left a free area between them that was about eight km in diameter. And this operation was led by the gal chiefs themselves rather than by the shaftgals.

  Once more the mysterious unloading of their cargo holds ensued. And once again the two-faced monsters went hopping about in the central area, intent upon things that the concealed mouse-beaver observers could not understand. Nor could any human have made rhyme or reason of the strange proceedings.

  The monsters themselves were not aware of anything unusual about their activities. They had no capability of differentiating between good and evil. Any assignment was simply a task schedule to be carried out. Their very lives were nothing more than a continuing schedule of tasks. Even the lives of the shaftgals and—the topgal himself.

  All of them were members of a community which had no concept of either coercion or submission. Although they were outwardly indistinguishable one from the other and each might as well have been the other's duplicate, nevertheless they were capable of recognizing individuals in their swarm. This recognition was even easier when they spoke to one another by means of their organic transceiver systems.

  Each of them had an identifying wave pattern—a recognition characteristic that was fully as unique as human fingerprints. All it left out was the shaftgal prefix and the lifetime assignment number of each of the monstrosities. It did not seem unusual to them that they were registered at birth like so many physical commodities in a warehouse. Creatures who were alien to the concept of either joy or sorrow, who had never developed an individual ego and were merely components of a hive-intelligence—such as these could know nothing else.

  The unloading operations in the giant fleet went on for two days. The mouse-beavers living in their burrows near the landing area got their 'money's worth', so to speak, as they peered out curiously from their concealment and watched the soundlessly floating machinery and saw the individual assemblies moving under invisible forces as they joined together into a long, corkscrew-like formation.

  By the third day the observing mouse-beavers began to get bored. Eight members of a 5
0-member community finally got together and agreed that they would take hold of this corkscrew thing, in spite of its 100-meter height, and make it fly...

  This team of eight had the strongest telekinetic powers in their particular group. In altercations with other mouse-beaver packs or tribes they had always managed to be the victors. They would simply unleash their paranormal forces against any hill inhabited by unfriendly neighbors and send it flying a few kilometers into the sky. Falling from an altitude of three or four thousand meters, nothing was left of such hills but shattered clumps of earth which often buried the offenders.

  Thus, at a signal from their leader, the playful creatures reached out in concert toward the gigantic machine contraption. The structure appeared to break loose from the ground with a lurch but it had hardly started to move before the ill-fated mischief makers were seized by a titanic force that had nothing in common with their own telekinesis. At the same time the tremendous corkscrew construction was torn from its vertical position and soon lay hovering horizontally over the ground at an approximate height of one meter.

  However the entire 50 mouse-beavers, young and old, presented a frightful picture as they rolled across the ground in a paroxysm of pain. Their anguished cries were still ringing out over the dreary terrain as a wan of blackness swept upon the group of hills where the mouse-beavers had their burrows. The wall struck with the swiftness of lightning and then was gone.

  Of the assembled mouse-beavers there was not a trace. From one moment to the next, down in the deep tunnels and burrows and extensive subterranean community rooms, all life was extinguished.

  The monsters had struck back

  As though moved by magic, the huge machine assembly straightened up again and found anchorage in the ground. Once more it towered 100 meters into the air. From that time on, the busy comings and goings of the monsters had no further witnesses.

  Thegal known as Erin was inspecting the particular orgh on board his own vessel. Supported on an asymmetrical housing was an open, elliptical basin in which something floated which might have been plasma as well as a fluid mass of chitinish material. In the center of the sluggish fluid a bright spot began to glow with a brilliant intensity as one of Thegal's two faces turned toward it and focused one spherical eye upon it.

  He sent out a question over his organic communicator: "Orgh, are we being molested again?"

  From the open basin, the answer emerged on the same wave channel: "Gal-Enn, there are still three communities within 200couss of distance. May I eliminate the creatures?"

  "Eliminate them!" ordered Thegal. "Reveal yourself, orgh!"

  Thegal took a step back and then lowered his head slightly while one of his four eyes watched the oddly shaped housing under the basin become more and more transparent. A confused assortment of small dark elements and encapsulated modules became visible within. Tiny tendrils of lightning were cracking in all directions. Thegal raised an arm which came out of his waspish body at a point that would have been the breastbone on humans. He aimed the arm at a yellowish point between the capsule components. Spreading his 2nd and 3rd talons, he brought to light a tiny opening.

  A high-pitched singing sound indicated that an invisible ray of energy must have been projected from the opening, for immediately a visible change came over the yellowish area. It swelled out like a transparent rubber balloon, embracing all the nearby circuit elements in the process. This made it possible to see clearly into the interior of the thing: an organism composed of chambers, muscles and sinews, but also containing helical fields which revealed an iron-filing type pattern of magnetic flux. Here organic and technological elements were combined in one entity which was just now being supplied with additional energy from Gal-Enn.

  By the time Thegal cut off his energy beam, the yellowish sphere occupied fully a third of the underhousing's volume. The singing sound stopped and the expansion of the yellow globe ceased. Also the transparency of the support casing began to wane. Thegal dropped his arm and turned away. He exited the small room whose walls emitted a diffused light.

  Death came again to the mouse-beavers in the form of a soundless, lightning-swift wall of blackness. Doom had been unleashed and guided by the orgh, an inexplicable organic-electronic hybrid thing from a monstrous world, and in that moment several hundred Vagabond inhabitants ceased to exist. In a circular area of 1,000 kin around the landing place, Vagabond had truly become a desolate world in which not even a plant was alive.

  • • •

  On the 6th day after the landing, nine of the double-hulled ships returned from a flight over the planet. During the mission each ship had made two landings and in each instance one of the mighty corkscrew assemblies had been unloaded with the help of an orgh. The unwieldy mechanisms were buried in the ground until only a foot or so of the tremendous constructions protruded above the surface. However, prior to each takeoff from such an area, the black wall of death swept outward and cleared the terrain of life within a range of 80 square kin.

  The nine ships had barely landed at their original location before the last of the monsters disappeared back into their star ships. The huge installations in the clearing had been left to stand there in the eerie silence and desolation—an uncanny spectacle to any chance human observer.

  With the assistance of three shaftgals, Gal-Enn issued a series of orders to the Control Central of his ship. The three shaftgals stood before a dark grey, slightly concave console board which presented a haphazard-looking maze of thumb-sized knobs and other protuberances. Each of the monsters was using three arms at a time to manipulate one knob or another across the board without interfering with the apparently meaningless activity of his colleague.

  By the time Gal-Enn had beamed out his final instruction, not even a shaftgal made any further move.

  Considerably more than 500 alien spaceships lay on the surface of Vagabond, and each double-hulled vessel had its own orgh. By means of his special orders and with the help of the three assistant shaftgals, Gal-Enn had linked up all orghs into a single entity. Then with this single orgh the monsters proceeded to transfer their whole machine installation into the depths of the planet.

  They were manipulating forces that were unknown to either Arkonides or Terrans. What would have been difficult problems even for Arkonide or Earthly technology were taken care of by the monsters with apparent ease. At a depth of 10 kilometers the massive bedrock became molten. A series of arteries of molten rock came into being, each of which flowed away from the boiling central magma pool and found its way into peripheral natural caverns, which became outlet chambers for the lava thus created.

  Within a time span of half a day on Vagabond a great subterranean cavern came into being. The dome-shaped hollow space had a floor area of five square kilometers and an average ceiling height of 200 meters. Gal-Enn was no sooner informed by the orgh that the cavern had reached the required dimensions before he beamed out the command to start the transfer and installation.

  The three shaftgals at the concave console panel made only a few more adjustments of the knobs with their taloned hands. Outside beyond the alien ships a phantomesque drama was silently performed. One assembly complex after another disappeared, apparently dissolving into thin air. Without using a matter transmitter or receiver, a gigantic machine installation spreading over three square km was transferred 10,000 meters deep through earth and rocks into a cavern that had just been prepared for it. Unit by unit, the huge components were again assembled in a circle just as they had been on the surface within the cordon of spaceships.

  After the spectral performance had gone on for half a Vagabond hour, Gal-Enn received a signal which confirmed that the scheduled operation had been completed.

  Gal-Enn no longer needed the concentrated energy of all orghs combined. His three shaftgals received orders to reduce the master hookup to the former pattern of individual orgh operation. The manipulation of the protuberances on the concave control board began anew.

  Gal-Enn was not perturbed when a message came in over his alarm frequency: "Unidentified spaceship approaching planet!"

  With a complete equanimity, Gal-Enn answered: "Activate visual obscuration!" Whereupon the unidentified ship ceased to be of interest to him. He knew from extensive experience that his fleet's visual blackout screen was more than adequate.