Caves of the Druufs Read online

  "What's wrong?" Freyt wheezed, gasping for breath. Betty did not answer. She knit her brows, her eyes half closed. It was obvious that she was 'conversing' with someone by means that would remain barred to most people, by means of telepathy.

  When Betty reopened her eyes and looked at Freyt she seemed to be on the verge of another laughing fit. "He is annoyed at us for laughing at him," she explained.

  "He is? Who is?"

  "Pucky, the mouse-beaver."

  Freyt's eyes widened. "Good grief!" he moaned. "Can he hear us at this distance?"

  "He said it was intense enough," Betty answered. "He would like to point out that the food supply policies of the Solar Empire would be in a substantially better position if everyone did as he does: provide their own nourishment."

  Conrad Deringhouse's face took on a wry expression. "On his next assignment," he said, "he will insist on being allowed to take a wagonload of homegrown carrots with him."

  Marshall Freyt had become serious again. "I shall instruct him to share the vigil with you at the mausoleum, Betty," he decided. "The mausoleum must be observed constantly. We must not miss any more of Ellert's calls. Pucky will be with you in a few minutes."

  Betty extended her hand to him. "I'll see to it," she promised. "Perhaps I will understand more if I remain directly in front of the entrance." Freyt nodded encouragingly. Betty took leave of Deringhouse and left the room. "What have you got in mind?" Deringhouse inquired after the door had closed.

  "Find out what's going on," replied Freyt. "We must know why Ellert is calling us. You will penetrate the

  Grautier area with the California and jump by transmitter through the overlap front to Hades. You know about Ellert: his human body is over there in the mausoleum—lifeless, seemingly dead. His spirit exists in a Druuf body on another time plane. I don't know how you will get through to Ellert. On no account should you attempt to land on Druuf home territory, on Druufon. Take along a powerful telepathist who is to contact Ellert on Druufon from Hades. Other than that, do as you see fit. I'm afraid I have given you too much advice already."

  Deringhouse smiled sarcastically. "I would gladly accept more," he said. "That reduces the responsibility."

  Marshall Freyt did not seem to have heard his reply. He gazed out the window pensively.

  "Let's hope Cardif doesn't give you any trouble in the meanwhile," Deringhouse took up again.

  Freyt turned and waved his hand contemptuously. "He and his followers are under observation. Should they try to undertake anything against the government they will be arrested and imprisoned. I don't think it pays to shilly-shally for very long with a man like Cardif."

  Deringhouse nodded. He knew Lt. Thomas Cardif from his own experience. Thomas Cardif was Perry Rhodan's son from his marriage to Thora the Arkonide. From his father he had inherited his outer appearance, from his mother that part of her former character that bristled with racial arrogance and profound contempt for the primitive inhabitants of the planet Terra. Cardif, as Deringhouse had come to realize, was a capable but unreliable man.

  A few days earlier after the destruction of the Grautier base by an Arkonide robot fleet, when the announcement of Perry Rhodan's death had been officially disclosed, Cardif had appeared at the official seat of the government and declared that he alone was the rightful successor to his father as he alone possessed the 'right blood'.

  It was his big moment. He was much too intelligent not to know that he could never achieve his aims in this manner. He had only intended to make a declaration and with it proclaim: I want the power. I have declared war upon you.

  Since he resembled his father, it was easy for him to find followers. Perry Rhodan had been the idol of the Terranians and there were a great deal of politically naive people who, simply out of devotion to Perry Rhodan, would be responsive to Thomas Cardif, his son. Although prohibited by the police, Cardif and his supporters had tried to stage a demonstration right through town—with chants, banners and all the usual attributes. The police had dispersed the demonstrators and the 'Cardifians', as Freyt called them, operated illegally after that.

  "No," Marshall Freyt declared again emphatically, "I am not worried about Cardif. There are people who are to be taken more seriously... for the time being, at least." He frowned at Deringhouse in mock anger. "Why are you still hanging around here? Kindly go about your business!"

  Deringhouse saluted stiffly. "At your command, Marshall!" he replied.

  Freyt shook his hand. "Make all the necessary preparations quickly but with great care," he advised. "I would hate to look for a new Fleet General. And look in on me again before you leave."

  Deringhouse nodded, then turned and left.

  • • •

  They needed 1½ hours to send all the signals they had, thought up. At the end of the 1½ hours they were so exhausted that they could no longer stay on their feet. They simply stretched out on the floor, gasping for air.

  It was at that moment of deepest exhaustion, when they would have been incapable of warding off the attack of a small child, that the innermost airlock opened, revealing a group of five Druufs poised in the lock with weapons drawn.

  Perry Rhodan raised his head. That was all he was still able to do. He saw the Druufs, their block-like, three-meter-tall gargantuan figures, and knew that his plan had failed. He lowered his head and beat his forehead hard against the floor.

  A mechanical, expressionless voice made itself heard:

  "It is astonishing how much enterprise you still exhibit even in futile situations. We are compelled to admire your tenacity. However, you will understand that we cannot idly stand by while you incite rebellion throughout space simply because you wish to cease being our guests."

  The voice was produced by an ingenious arrangement of small and large membranes, bands, cogwheels and electronic parts. It was not capable of injecting the sarcastic ring to the voice required by the last sentence. The voice spoke English. The Druufs had already mastered the language of both peoples whom they had thus far encountered in the alien specific time of the Einstein Universe: Arkonide and Terranian. The voice spoke remarkably slowly and solemnly. This was not due to faulty mastery of the English language, it was primarily due to the fact that the specific time the prisoners had brought with them from their universe was higher than Druuf specific time by the factor of two. A reaction requiring 10 seconds by a Druuf would take a Terranian five seconds. For the Druufs, the speed of light was 150,000 kms/sec, for Terranians it still had its usual value.

  Perry Rhodan remembered this as he was trying to sit up after awhile and hoped that it would occur to his three companions. The Druufs had not yet noticed that the Terranians were superior to them in speed and should the Terranians ever want to use this as a weapon, they had best continue to keep it secret.

  Ponderously, but to the Druufs in completely normal tempo, Perry Rhodan rose to his feet. "I am sorry that we have caused you difficulties," he said. "Of course we were not trying to withdraw from your hospitality. On the contrary, we were hoping that someone would hear our signal and come join us in being your guests."

  The three Druufs in front stepped completely into the room while two remained standing in the antechamber. Perry Rhodan saw the three gigantic figures approaching him and wondered what they were up to. The Druufs were descendants of insects. Their four faceted eyes, symmetrically distributed over the upper half of their spherical heads, testified to that as did their triangular mouths in which bright rows of teeth shimmered treacherously. The actual body of the Druufs looked like a crudely hewn block. It was supported by two columnar legs that would do justice to an elephant and the body bore in turn two strong arms that ended in absurdly tapered, long fingers.

  It was as hard to tell the mood of a Druuf by his facial expression as to find one's way in a foreign metropolis without a map or knowledge of the language. Perry Rhodan retreated a couple of steps but was immediately reassured by the voice issuing from the small communicator dangling aro
und the neck of the Druuf in front:

  "You have nothing to fear. We are no friends of brute force. Furthermore, we are sure that you will have no objections to our suggestions."

  "To which suggestions?" Perry Rhodan drawled so languidly that no suspicions could arise about the specific time he inhabited.

  "We believe," the communicator replied after awhile with equal languor, "that it might be getting too crowded for you here. You would certainly value our hospitality more highly if each of you had a room at his disposal."

  Perry Rhodan's thoughts worked quickly. So they wanted to separate them to prevent any further pooling of resources for an escape.

  "I think," he answered with a smile, "that offer is unacceptable to us because of the inconvenience to you it entails. However, I fear you will not pay too much attention to my opinion, right?"

  "That is right," confirmed the communicator. "Give me your hand."

  Rhodan obeyed in astonishment. He raised his hand and extended it toward the Druuf. The Druuf clutched it with his right hand and at that instant Rhodan spotted a little instrument in his left hand that looked like an injection needle.

  "What's that for?" he asked sharply and with more haste than he had intended."

  We want to save you the trouble of putting on those cumbersome suits during the move. This medication is utterly harmless. It reduces the vital functions of your body to a minimum for a few minutes only. For example, you no longer have to breathe. As a result the toxic methane air of this planet will not harm you.

  Perry Rhodan tried to withdraw his hand. But it was a futile undertaking to oppose the enormous bodily might of a Druuf—even if one weren't as exhausted as Perry Rhodan was at that moment. He felt a, short painful jab in the ball of his thumb and almost instantaneously his faculties began to fade.

  Before he slumped to the ground, however, a new idea came to him in a flash.

  • • •

  Capt. Rous considered Peter Rayleigh's discovery interesting enough to give it his intense personal attention. That was good, as Rayleigh alone would probably never have found out what was behind the mysterious, rapidly changing gravity fields.

  The readings of the G-meter had repeated themselves at more or less regular intervals in the past 1½ hours. Rous had observed the deflections of the illuminated pointer and got up after every deflection to remove the readings from the recording drum.

  During that hour and a half, the G-meter had reacted nine times altogether. Marcel Rous had eight readings spread out before him on the table: one that Peter Rayleigh had removed from the drum and seven others. The readings of the very first double impulse, the one where Peter Rayleigh had still believed that his weary eyes were deceiving him, was still in the drum and had meanwhile been covered with several subsequent layers of gliding paper.

  To Rayleigh's greatest astonishment, Capt. Rous insisted that this first reading be removed from the drum. Rayleigh had quite a time getting it out. They had waited almost an hour since the G-meter had last recorded and were now almost certain that the unknown gravity generator would not be heard from again. The recorder was stopped so that Peter Rayleigh could backspool it and tear off the short piece of the first reading. As he did that he wondered why Rous was so interested in it, inasmuch as all the readings were identical aside from differences in the time intervals between the jags.

  The entire hour Marcel Rous had spoken only when it was utterly necessary. Peter Rayleigh did not know him well enough yet to recognize how agitated the Captain was. His hands were trembling imperceptibly as he spread out the eight pieces of paper on the table and added the ninth which Rayleigh brought him. For a few minutes he stared at the row of readings. Then he turned to Rayleigh, who was standing behind him looking over his shoulder, and asked: "Is there something that strikes you about them, Sergeant?"

  Peter Rayleigh had anticipated the question. "No," he answered candidly. "Nothing strikes me, sir."

  Rous shook his head. "These young people," he murmured. "They have a minicom in their pocket and think they can just forget the venerable methods of communication used by their ancestors."

  This was a somewhat specious remark since Rous was not appreciably older than Rayleigh but Rayleigh did not notice. He had an idea. Rous had talked about 'venerable methods of communication', which could have only meant...

  "Compare the time intervals between the jags!" Rayleigh interrupted his stream of thought.

  "I was about to do that, sir," answered Rayleigh. "In the first three lines the interval between the two jags is around 20 to 30 seconds. In signals four to six the interval is 1½ minutes, that is 90 seconds. In the last three it is 20 to 30 again.

  Capt. Rous nodded his satisfaction.

  "Good. So we have: short-short-short... long-long-long... short-short-short. What does that mean?"

  "Why that's... that's... Rayleigh excitedly stuttered, "that's Morse code!"

  "You are a clever kid, Sergeant," Rous bellowed. "Yes, this is Morse code. It is the old distress call of the Earth's air and seaways: S.O.S.!"

  He stood up. "Stay at your post, Sergeant!" he ordered Rayleigh. "This station is on alert standby as of now. Call me the minute anything new develops. If I am not there, talk to one of the other officers. Is that clear?"

  "Yes sir."

  With unaccustomed haste the Captain strode to the door and went out, leaving Rayleigh alone, deep in thought.

  It was not as yet clear to Marcel Rous himself what the strange Morse signals meant—except that someone was in danger, someone who knew the Terranian Morse alphabet and consequently was in all probability a Terranian himself. Where the signals had originated could be soon clarified. On Hades there was a series of recording centers, such as the one Peter Rayleigh was operating. Hades was an advance base deep in enemy territory and thus equipped with every imaginable means of security. It only required the reading by another G-meter that stood a few hundred meters from Rayleigh's instrument to determine the origin of the SOS signal.

  Marcel Rous took the shortest route back to his office, announced a base alert over intercom and sent out a few positronic specialists to collect the automatically recorded readings of all the G-meters. In the interim he devised a basic program for the little positronic computer. Once he would have the readings from the other instruments he would only have to insert them in the blank spaces of the program and could immediately begin the calculation.

  While working out the program, his thoughts were occupied with the unknown sender of the signal. A few days earlier the last connection Hades had maintained with Terra, in the form of three supply ships, had been interrupted for an indefinite period of time. The interruption was due to security reasons. The space sector in the vicinity of the overlap zone was swarming with Arkon and Druuf ships. A great risk was incurred by Terranians operating individually each time they wanted to contact Hades by matter transmitter. The main forces of the Terranian Fleet had been withdrawn to the Vega System as no one knew how the political situation on Terra would develop after Perry Rhodan's death. The three supply ships had also been pulled back to a less dangerous sector and were awaiting orders.

  To Marcel Rous this meant: unless one of the three commanders had disobeyed orders, it was impossible that any of them was in distress within the Druuf Universe. Then the SOS signal must stem from someone else, someone who was apparently divested of all unusual technical means and thus had to employ an entirely unusual method to make himself heard.

  Marcel Rous was still mulling this over when the first recording results arrived. A corporal of the Positronic Division brought a stack of recording paper. It bore almost the same peaked curves as Sgt. Rayleigh's recorder had drawn. The intensity was different from time to time, clearly different. This pleased Rous, as it was only with the help of intensity comparisons that the location of the peculiar transmitter could be positively established.

  Rous set to work. He inserted the data into his basic program and let the computer run through th
e program once. The result contained two angle coordinates which Rous could not make much sense of right at that moment, and a distance. The distance amounted to one billion, 300 million kilometers. That number was so surprising that Rous had the computer repeat the calculation and only when it produced the same result the second time was he convinced. He added newly arriving data to the program in turn, increasing the amount of information and hence the accuracy of the result.

  As the computer buzzed and clicked, Rous gave the waiting corporal instructions to consult the catalog regarding the coordinates they had obtained and then see what was to be found at the designated spot. The corporal left with the material Rous had given him and returned after a few minutes.

  Rous regarded him attentively.

  "We are dealing with one of the 62 planets, of this system, sir," the corporal declared.

  "Which one?" asked Rout.

  "The 36th, sir, if one calculates by increasing middle sun distance in the usual manner. It has not been named yet."

  "What else do we know about it?"

  "It is the largest planet of this system, sir," replied the corporal. "Diameter more than 200,000 kilometers. Methane-ammonia atmosphere. Gravity at the surface 2.6-normal. Average yearly temperature five Celsius. Pretty cold all right. Uninhabited, of course."

  Rous dismissed this with a wave of the hand. "Don't say 'of course'. The signals came from there."

  The corporal, still unaware of the signals, looked bewildered. Marcel Rous was not bothered by it.

  He was thinking hard. An idea had suddenly come to him—so amazing and improbable that he wanted to abandon it immediately but it fascinated him and he could not shake it off. He racked his brain and decided that what he had in mind was indeed improbable but not impossible. And should his idea prove to be true, then from here, from Hades, one of the greatest sensations of Earth history was about to unfold.

  How did a Terranian who knew at least two letters of the old Morse alphabet get on a methane planet in the Druuf system? Certainly not voluntarily. Hence either a shipwreck or as a prisoner of the Druufs. The likelihood of a shipwreck could be eliminated almost with certainty. Ever since the base had been established on Hades it was no longer necessary for a Terranian to expose himself to the dangers of a direct flight. He could let himself be conveyed by transmitter by a ship waiting in the vicinity of the overlap zone.