The Psycho-Duel Read online

  Rhodan still saw a last hope in Atlan because after all the Regent had recognized Gonozal VIII and accepted him as the rightful heir to the imperial throne.

  But Rhodan still did not know the difficulties that Atlan was facing.

  • • •

  Wock considered himself to be a loyal supporter of the Imperium and a reliable servant of the Imperator—but such he was not. His conviction was merely based on the fact that so far nothing had happened to put his loyalty to the test. It was easy for Wock to be an "Emperor’s man" because until now nobody had tried to prevent it.

  His presumably incontestable loyalty had even continued when Atlan announced that he would be leaving Arkon 1 because he no longer felt safe in the Crystal Palace. Inasmuch as Wock knew practically everything that happened around the Imperator he remembered the recent treacherous assassination attempt which had only been thwarted by Pucky the mouse-beaver in the last second. So Wock had taken off with Atlan in a small ship from Arkon 3 and had come here a few days ago. He was aware of the fact that Gonozal VIII was worried but even that had failed to disturb his allegiance. What finally caused Wock to waver for the first time was a raygun of very considerable caliber—but it was the man behind the gun who actually brought Wock to the point of renouncing his imperial partisanship.

  Wock had just traversed the air-conditioned main hall of Atlan’s new residence when a man stepped out from behind a pillar. His first reaction was merely a sense of vexation because of the carelessness of the robot guards who certainly must have noticed the intruder. The stranger was tall and his eyes were cold, which indicated he knew how to use the weapon in his hand. Wock stopped and raised his arms above his head, implying that he was well aware of the futility of offering any resistance.

  "That’s fine, old fellow," said the stranger. "I see already that we understand each other." Of course Wock had never realized that communication between 2 people could be enhanced by means of a weapon in the hands of just one of them but at the moment he was ready to subscribe to the strange philosophy.

  "What do you want?" be asked, knowing that his voice had taken on the obsequious tone of an inferior. The man looked at him thoughtfully and scratched himself with a free hand on the back of his neck. "The two of us are going to carry out an experiment," he announced.

  Wock winced at the other’s sharp tone. Besides, he had never liked the word "experiment" because it had the connotation of some kind of action that had an uncertain outcome.

  "You will go directly from here to His Highness," ordered the stranger, "and you will offer him my compliments!"

  "The Imperator will call the robots!" Wock blurted out. "You will not leave this building alive!"

  "I’ll go as and when I please," the man assured him. "Now do what I said!" When Wock moved away with his back to the intruder he shuddered, expecting any second to be struck down by a murderous energy beam. Every muscle in him urged him to simply run for it but he managed to walk at a normal pace. Once when he looked back, the interloper was nowhere to be seen. In his excitement Wock forgot to knock when he entered Atlan’s chamber. He opened the door and stammered out the first thing that came to his mind. The Imperator was bent over his desk examining a strange device which must have just been installed there because Wock had not seen it until now.

  "Excuse me, Your Eminence!" muttered Wock indistinctly.

  Atlan straightened up, his face still expressionless as though he were mentally elsewhere. Wock pointed over his shoulder into the main hall.

  "There’s a stranger out there with a weapon!" he finally cried out excitedly. "He—he ordered me to send you his compliments!"

  Atlan struck the alarm button for the robot guards and simultaneously whipped a small pistol out of his pocket. A loudspeaker crackled as an impersonal voice was heard: "Alarm signal duly noted." The Imperator stared at Wock in sudden consternation. He leapt forward and closed the door, which made Wock sense that something was seriously wrong. He would have gladly run somewhere else where he could feel more secure.

  Atlan had a microphone extension with him. "I command you to search for the intruder immediately!" he said into the instrument. Then he covered it with his hand and whispered to Wock: "Something is not right with the robots. They usually respond immediately to an alarm and post themselves outside my door—but just now all the guard control did was to acknowledge my signal." The mechanical voice interrupted him. "We have orders not to accept any instructions from Gonozal VIII," it announced unobtrusively.

  Wock made a croaking sound of horror and dismay as he realized what kind of experiment he had helped the stranger to perform. The intruder knew something about the mysterious change that had come over the robot guards. He was here to convince himself that the fighting machines would actually leave the Imperator undefended.

  In feverish haste, Atlan established a direct contact with the Regent. Cybernetically the robot guards were subordinate to the Regent; therefore any failure to respond on their part must be attributable to the giant Brain itself. Atlan secretly asked himself if the crisis he had expected for so many years had finally arrived. He considered it a miracle that he was still alive because the countless attempts against him had only been thwarted by luck or some chance circumstance. Power and isolation were traditionally a bad combination because mighty men in their loneliness tended to become embittered and to react under mental tension. Members of the imperial nobility greeted him with icy formality and in spite of their outward show of subservience they made him feel that they considered him to be an unwanted anachronism in the Arkon stellar empire.

  Little by little they had taken all his friends away—even Moku, a little female dog that Rhodan had given him as a present. Fellmer Lloyd, the mutant, had been forced to kill the little pet because it had been booby-trapped to cause his assassination. So Atlan had chosen the old Arkonide Wock to be his personal aide although he well knew he was capable of betraying him. Yet Wock was too much of a coward to ever try something against him directly.

  The indicator lamp flashed red and Atlan switched on his voice channel to the Regent. "This is the Imperator speaking," he said, although the vast robot knew precisely who was speaking to it. For one thing, Atlan used a private channel direct line, and for another the mechanical optics of the Regent could

  "see" the great man by means of the video transmission.

  "What do you want?" came the calm response.

  Atlan frowned at the sudden absence of formality. The question was obviously impolite. The immortal admiral tensed. Something was not right with the Brain. It was vital to determine at once how the trouble could be rectified."

  "The robot security here, refuses to follow my orders," he said.

  "That is correct," came the reply.

  "Why?"

  "A decision has to be made," replied that section of the Regent which had been connected to this conversation.

  Atlan knew at once that he would not make any headway in this direction because the vagueness of the answer indicated that the Regent would maintain silence on the subject. There was only the single alternative of making his demands sound so logical to the Regent that he would have to carry them through.

  "Certainly my presence will be needed in some way for this decision to be made." Atlan strove to make his voice sound quite calm.

  "Very probably," agreed the Brain.

  Atlan smiled slightly because he thought he had outwitted the positronic behemoth. "But if I am killed now I can’t be present for this decision and so it could not be carried out. Logically, therefore, it is important for the guards to protect me."

  For awhile there was a silence in which only Wock’s rapid breathing could be heard. Then the Regent said: "Your death would change nothing. On the contrary, it could be a foregone conclusion."

  Then Atlan knew he could no longer depend upon the positronicon. His only help now would be the Terrans. With a hysterical cry, Wock charged out of the room. Atlan listened calmly to his waning foot
steps in the hall. He checked his weapon.

  Suddenly he could almost virtually see the vast expanse of the Greater Imperium in his mind’s eye and he wondered why this great burden hadn’t crushed him before. He played a major role in time and space—or at least this had been true until now—and yet he felt small and lonely and tired. He would have preferred to wipe away the whole picture with a sweep of his hand and vanish incognito among the stars. But that would not do.

  2 hours later he received news that all the countless worker chapeks, which were also subordinate to and guided by the Regent, had ceased their labors. The giant shipyards inside the war planet became empty and all manufacturing was brought to a stop. The Regent stubbornly refused to receive any instructions from Atlan.

  There was only one single man in the galaxy who could help him now and that was Perry Rhodan. Of course the Administrator was no doubt faced with his own troubles now but they also stemmed from the Regent. Thus there was little doubt that Rhodan would come.

  So Atlan sent his distress call to Terrania.

  • • •

  Atlan unconsciously held his breath as the Ironduke became visible on his viewscreen and prepared for a landing. He feared that the Regent might try something against the Terrans but nothing happened. Even the usual robot cars that always darted out to landing vessels remained in their stalls and it seemed that the giant Brain had become entirely lifeless. However, Atlan knew that this was not the case and that the Regent was waiting for some special event.

  Rhodan’s voice sounded from the loudspeaker: "Well, here we are, Admiral."

  "The Regent is being very quiet, Perry," reported Atlan over the telecom. "You should be able to disembark without any trouble."

  From his chamber Atlan could see on his viewscreen that the first heavily-armed men were leaving the linear-drive warship. He would have been happy to run out and meet them but he was convinced that he must not leave the security of this room. After awhile he observed Rhodan himself moving across the landingfield with apparently casual strides.

  In that moment Pucky, Ras Tschubai and Tako Kakuta materialized in his chamber. The 2 men wore a new type of weapon while Pucky spread out his empty small hands. "We’re the advance guard, old friend," he explained to the Imperator.

  Within a few minutes a large part of the Mutant Corps along with Rhodan, Claudrin, Maj. Krefenbac and Dr. Carl Riebsam had assembled in the administrative chamber of the Imperator. Atlan briefed them on the situation that had developed and confirmed that the Regent had ceased to respond to his commands.

  "We haven’t been napping in the meantime," said Rhodan gravely. "Our specialists have gone into the problem in detail. With computer help and the available data they’ve come to a conclusion which seems to me to be completely logical."

  Atlan looked expectantly at Rhodan but the Terran nodded to Dr. Riebsam. As the mathematician rose to speak, Atlan was impressed by his quiet manner. He knew the man would give him a true and clear exposition.

  "We have to face the fact that the 8 Akon saboteurs were able to change the Regent in a negative sense," began Dr. Riebsam. "It’s very probable that they concentrated on the A-1 security circuits because according to, what we know the programming in that section is very old and absolutely needs to be updated to present standards and conditions."

  "That’s right, Doctor," admitted Atlan. "You know that we’ve tried to make that approach but the Akons beat us to it.

  Dr. Riebsam brushed a strand of hair from his forehead. "I don’t believe the 8 men from the Blue System have gone about their work in an arbitrary manner," he said. "Undoubtedly they were specialists who knew precisely what they had come here to do. It would be my guess that they obtained the necessary information from the revolutionaries under Carba."

  "But the Regent would have defended itself at once against any false programming," objected the Imperator.

  "You’re perfectly correct, Admiral," Rhodan agreed. "And the rascals also thought of that. So they didn’t just go about trying to alter the original programming—all they did was to put in a few additional circuits."

  "Additional circuits?" asked Atlan, amazed. "That’s a rather vague concept."

  "Only at first glance," explained Dr. Riebsam. "Actually, any additional programming of A-1 would have to be very carefully studied so that it would not conflict with the traditional data involved. Therefore the logic areas the Akons had to work with would have been very restricted. In fact, it should be possible to define with a fair amount of certainty just what the extra circuitry contained."

  "By all the planets! Epethus! " cried Atlan, striking his forehead. "Of course! That’s the simplest way of all! They’ve merely forced the Regent to analyze the overall situation according to its own positronic logic. A-1 is nothing more than a part of Disaster Program Epethus."

  "Tell us more about this disaster circuit, Imperator," urged Riebsam with new interest.

  "A disaster input from Epethus would cause security section A-1 to take over power immediately and irrevocably—that is, if A-1 concludes that any Imperator recognized by the Regent has failed, according to the old Arkonides and the old empire security standards."

  Riebsam and Rhodan exchanged significant glances.

  "According to the old Arkonides," Perry repeated

  sarcastically. "Well, of course by their standards you’ve failed, Admiral." Atlan’s fists clenched and his eyes narrowed. "What a fiendish move!" he said bitterly.

  "Fiendish but carefully considered," said Rhodan. "As you say, it was the simplest of all. The only problem remaining was to get inside the Regent and to plug in the new circuitry. With the new inputs from, the additional programming, Epethus was awakened and caused A-1 to scan the overall status quo. But centuries have passed since these 2 sections have worked together and much has changed. Yet a positronicon can’t simply adapt itself to such things—it must act according to its data even if the data are out of date."

  "The Brain thinks I’m a failure," commented the Arkonide. "That’s why it’s put me on ice and follows none of my orders."

  Rhodan paced restlessly back and forth in the room. He knew that this was only the start of the difficulties because what the insurrectionists had achieved so far would not satisfy them. They had blocked out Atlan without killing him. In fact they had even managed to shut down the Regent until the point would be reached for that decision the robot Brain had spoken of.

  "That machine is like an old fool," said Dr Riebsam with the objectivity of a scientist. To him the Regent was an object or a thing that had been misguided by living brains. From a mathematical standpoint, of course, the actions of the Regent were entirely understandable because the vast robot was a prisoner of its own square kilometers of registers and data banks.

  By comparison to any positronic computer a human brain was slow, sluggish and stupid, a mere nothing beside the tower of knowledge contained in the mechanical memories of such devices. The one advantage of organic brain—and its deciding factor—was that it could adapt itself immediately to new situations and was able to sweep old standards and convictions aside. Col. Jefe Claudrin’s stentorian voice boomed through the room. "We have to find a way to program the Brain in our favor," he suggested.

  "The Regent refuses to give me access," explained Atlan bitterly. "The entire area of the robot Brain is closed off by an impenetrable honeycomb screen of energy. And even your mutants have to bow to that kind of barrier, John."

  John Marshall, the chief of the Mutant Corps, nodded confirmingly. "The teleporters can’t get through it," he said. "If they try it they’ll get thrown back by it. Not even Pucky would have a chance against it." Everyone seemed to become silent in thought but it could be seen by their expressions that no one had a usable idea.

  "Ship call, sir!"

  The voice of Stant Nolinow suddenly came over the speaker. The lieutenant had remained on board the Ironduke.

  "What’s the matter, Stant?" asked Claudrin in his usual bellowing
tones.

  "A small spaceship is making a landing approach. If I’m not mistaken it’s of Akon design. At any rate it’s spherical with flattened poles. The Regent’s scanners must have picked it up long before we did."

  "The Regent seems to be shut down," Atlan reminded everyone. Rhodan didn’t waste a second on useless discussions. "Pucky, you jump with me to the Ironduke immediately Ras, you bring the Admiral. We have to take action at once." Pucky waddled forward with an enterprising grin. Rhodan gripped his hand and waited until Tschubai and the Arkonide had dematerialized.

  "Let’s go, little one!" he ordered.

  For a brief moment the men could still discern the mouse-beaver’s face but then the image appeared to flicker and both figures vanished as if they had never been there.

  They materialized in the Control Central of the Ironduke and Rhodan joined Nolinow at once before the space surveillance indicators.

  "The Akon ship has beamed out some mysterious radio impulses, sir," said Nolinow. "We can’t figure them out."

  "They were probably identification signals for the Regent," interjected Atlan. "Apparently the Brain was to be informed as to who was making a landing approach. It looks very much as if the Regent has been waiting for this particular ship."

  "That’s it!" exclaimed Rhodan. "We have to hold back that ship under any circumstances—or perhaps even destroy it!"

  "I think that’s being taken out of our hands from another direction, sir." Nolinow pointed to the great panob screens where the seemingly endless spaceport could be observed. Although almost all the men present had seen the spectacle many times before, nevertheless the scene revealed by the screens lost none of its usual fascination for them. More than 1000 Arkonide robotships rose up from the landing-field like gargantuan black soap bubbles and climbed into the skies of Arkon 3.

  "They’ll make short work of that Akon ship," said Tschubai quietly. "Apparently the Regent decided in our favor at the last moment."