Saboteurs in A-1 Read online

  Inderwood had gripped Blackard’s shoulder so hard that the latter fell silent. Somewhat uncertainly, he stared at his colleague.

  The sergeant asked him in a lower tone: "And then what do you suppose the robot Brain on Arkon 3 will have to say about that—this thing with its impenetrable program? Do you really think it’s going to say yes and amen to Atlan’s call for help? Do you know what that thing will do? I can tell you that much, Blackard, without being a prophet! That Thing will mobilize about 100,000 robot warships against the Solar Imperium! So now you tell me—what will be left of us if those 100,000 ships come charging down on us?"

  The four men stared at each other in silence.

  2/ BOMB BURST!

  John Marshall was chief of the Mutant Corps and the best of its telepaths, next to the mouse-beaver Pucky. The Solar Imperium’s ambassador on Arkon 1, Marshal Julian Tifflor, watched the mutant as he gathered his papers together and shoved them into his file case. Marshall carefully closed and locked the case because at the moment it contained secret documents which were classified as high as T-9 and T-10.

  "John, when are you ever going to bring me some cheerful news?" asked Tifflor. It was the type of question that was on the lips of many men these days, at least among those who were all current with the cosmo-political situation in M-13.

  Marshall’s distinctive features were marked with the gravity of the moment as he looked directly at the ambassador. "Tiff, I may be a mind reader but I’m not a prophet. Who can be cheerful about this whole unsettled mess? Certainly none of us in the Corps. If we ever get out of this we’ll never be the same."

  Only a few men close to Perry Rhodan referred to Marshal Julian Tifflor as "Tiff". However, the nickname came easily to the chief of the Mutant Corps because both men had been among Rhodan’s closest collaborators since the start of the Solar Imperium.

  Many long decades ago as a cadet in the Terran academy, Julian Tifflor had earned his laurels in the course of many almost incredible missions of valor. In the interim he had been on Wanderer a number of times for his cell-shower treatments and now as Solar Marshal he still retained his youthful appearance.

  "John, are you going to tell Atlan all the facts, just as you revealed them to me?" he asked.

  "I’ll tell him everything—including the opinion of the brain trust that the robot Regent’s A-1 circuits must be reprogrammed. I don’t think that the Imperator will he against this view. What’s so funny, Tiff?"

  "I’m thinking of our current ‘invasion’ of Arkon 3. Don’t you think that Atlan has already seen what’s behind it?"

  The tall mutant explained his own views in this regard. "The mass landing of our ships on Arkon 3 is only a precaution. I’ll only mention this to the Imperator after I’ve given him my report. Maybe the warnings from the brain trust will enable him to see for himself that it’s absolutely necessary to reprogram the giant Brain’s Security circuits. I’ll point out the acute danger that the Akons might be able to penetrate the Brain by use of their time machine."

  "The Imperator is not likely to ignore these things, John. I wish you success in your meeting with him. Frankly, I’m glad that it’s your turn to be the bringer of bad tidings for a change, instead of me. Will we meet again today?"

  "Certainly. If nothing unusual interferes, Tiff. I’ll see you as soon as I get back from the palace."

  • • •

  John Marshall went through the third robot checkpoint passed through the mighty entrance of the Crystal Palace which for many millennia had been the seat of the Imperators of Arkon.

  As usual he made his way toward the small antigrav shaft which offered the most direct route to Imperator Gonozal VIII, with only three interruptions. Along with ambassador Julian Tifflor, Marshall was the only other person who had unannounced access at any time to Atlan’s private chambers in the upper levels of the palace. As chief of the Mutant Corps he had been entrusted with the responsible task of protecting Atlan from assassins. For this purpose he had deployed most of the Corps in and around the Crystal Palace so that the threatened Imperator would be provided with the greatest possible security screen.

  But in addition to this all robots in the palace had been reprogrammed. The changeover had been handled in complete secrecy by Rhodan’s specialists. Not a single Arkonide in the palace suspected that the automatons would now only take battle commands from the Terrans or that any attack order from an Arkonide would be rejected.

  As Marshall approached the narrow lift-shaft he was mentally rehearsing his impending meeting, wondering which piece of news he should start off with when he made his report to Atlan. Thus deeply immersed in thought, he looked neither to his right nor his left, so he failed to notice an Arkon court official who was approaching him from an angle and who would have to collide with him if neither of them yielded the right of way to the other.

  The official also seemed to be in deep thought but if Marshall had made use of his paramental faculties at this moment and had read the other man’s mind he would have noticed that the Arkonide was making an intense effort to mask his thoughts with meaningless ideas. But Marshall was much too occupied with the task before him. Therefore it came as a shock to suddenly bump into somebody.

  An elderly court official was mumbling apologies to him in Arkonide.

  "Here now!" be exclaimed when he realized that the man had both arms around him as though trying to maintain his balance.

  The courtier apologized again as he stepped back and stood erect. "I should have been paying attention, sir," he said politely. Then he bowed slightly and said in a lower tone, "One should not be so preoccupied with his work."

  Marshall had the same thought in mind. He nodded affably. "You’re right about that!" he said, and each man continued on his way.

  It did not occur to Marshall to turn and look at the official again. If he had done so he might have noticed how swiftly the latter was moving now toward the exit, or he might have detected the man’s frenzied mental efforts to keep his thoughts fixed in certain channels.

  Marshall stepped into the antigrav shaft and the flowing force field carried him quickly more than 20 storeys into the higher levels of the palace. These this section of the gravitor ended but until only a few days before it could have only been used by Atlan himself. Now since the internal conversions it could be used also by the mutants and the robots. When Marshall emerged from it he was identified by the automatic security control.

  But he was already thinking ahead again to his meeting. He had decided to open his report by informing Atlan about the results of investigations in the Blue System. Meanwhile he walked about 20 paces through a narrow corridor to the continuation of the lift-shaft which would take him on this leg another 30 storeys and deposit him in the passages giving access to the top third of the palace.

  After covering this section and getting out of the shaft, he prepared to walk a short distance to his final connection. But here he was met by Wuriu Sengu, the "spy" mutant, who was coming from the opposite direction. One would not have guessed by the little man’s outward appearance that he possessed unusual paramental gifts and that he was able to "see" through the densest materials.

  "Is everything alright, Sengu?" asked Marshall.

  It would have been easier for him to read the other’s mind but among the telepaths of the Mutant Corps there was an unwritten law that prohibited them from penetrating each other’s thoughts except when they were on an active mission. The mutant chief did not consider the security cordon around Atlan to be that kind of an "active mission".

  "Everything’s in order, John," replied the "seer", and be came to a stop before him.

  "Did you come from upstairs?" By "upstairs" Marshall meant the private apartments of Atlan.

  "Yes. Atlan is still tearing his hair over the inquisition of court etiquette and protocol. If I were in his shoes I’d have given that irksome protocol chief the gate by now. That slinking Arkonide is a nightmare. I think he’d be telling Allan even how
to bend his little finger if he were given the ... "

  Marshall laughed. "Wuriu, I can see you haven’t got what it takes to be an Imperator."

  Wuriu only smirked in reply but as he looked closely at his superior officer there was an almost imperceptible change in him. The amused expression in his eyes vanished. He suddenly grasped Marshall’s arm and shouted hoarsely: "John, there’s a mini-bomb in your impulse beamer!"

  "What!" cried Marshall. But in the next moment the tall, lean mutant chief collected himself in order to take action immediately.

  His para-senses shot to maximum sensitivity as he sought in that terrible moment to contact Pucky by telepathy. He happened to know that according to their security plan the mouse-beaver must be somewhere in the palace—that is, if the arbitrary rascal hadn’t taken a notion to take an extra trip somewhere.

  Pucky, come at once! All of us are in grave danger! My location...

  Pucky was on the premises. I know where you are, he telepathed. Here I come!

  Even while Marshall was receiving his thought, the air shimmered in front of him and the mouse-beaver emerged from nothingness.

  He chirped immediately. "You mean that thing there?"

  Marshall had the uncanny feeling that there were only fractions of seconds left. Not wishing to waste those seconds he fell back on his paramental faculties. Take the weapon! Jump away as far as possible, to an uninhabited area. Then drop it fast!

  At the same moment he felt a slight tug at his holster.

  Simultaneously Sengu shouted a warning. He had not taken his eyes from the tiny bomb inside the raygun. "The timer is running!" His transmatter vision had enabled him to see the timer activation as the weapon was removed.

  But Pucky had already teleported away with the miniature atom bomb.

  "He’s dropped it!" announced Marshall suddenly. Like the Japanese mutant, he still stood there frozen to the spot.

  A brief thought impulse had reached him. It was evidently at the moment when Pucky emerged from his teleport jump and let the booby-trapped weapon fail away from him.

  "Where is he now?" asked Wuriu Sengu tensely.

  "I’ve lost contact," Marshall was forced to admit. "He’s cut off his thought waves. I just hope he hasn’t stuck his neck out too far again!"

  • • •

  Pucky’s little neck was in fact way out.

  He had materialized 4000 meters above the surface of Arkon I and at the same instant he began to fall. But this didn’t concern him in the least since he knew the rate of fall of the Crystal Planet. For him this constituted no danger because it was simple for him to "leap" to safety.

  Instead of this his thoughts were concentrated on the bomb in his hand, which could explode at any moment. While he fell he looked at the world below him. He couldn’t discover a single dwelling place or settlement. 30 km distant a single highway cut straight through a chain of hills.

  Then he dropped the infernal machine—but just as he was concentrating on a teleport jump back to his starting point he thought he saw some kind of aircar far below. Yet when he looked again to be sure he saw nothing.

  He never found out that there was an aircar down there which was racing at top speed to get away from the Crystal Palace. Nor could he know that the Arkonide inside it was that same official who had deliberately bumped into Marshall in order to plant the booby trap on him in place of his own weapon.

  What he did learn, however, was that the time between his return jump to the palace and the ignition of the miniature atom bomb was a matter of about 10 milliseconds!

  When he again emerged from nowhere in front of John Marshall and Wuriu Sengu the micro-macrobomb exploded 30 km away at an altitude of 3,800 meters. A miniature sun suddenly appeared in the cloudless sky. With a terrible howling roar it quickly expanded in all directions. The unleashed nuclear forces also struck a certain air vehicle and slammed it against the ground, where it shattered amidst trees and rocks. The heatwave threw a sheath of flames across more than two km of treetops in the low range of hills.

  • • •

  The shockwave had subsided. Under pressure of the raging air masses the vast, cone-shaped Crystal Palace had trembled slightly. After the sirens had automatically come on to give a radiation alarm they had finally sounded an all clear.

  Now, a few minutes later, Marshall, Sengu and Pucky were in Atlan’s private chambers. The Arkonide had failed to conceal how deeply he was shaken by this further attempt on his life. The attack also emphasized how seriously the Imperator was threatened here on Arkon 1, in spite of all the security measures. The hidden enemy would not give up.

  Atlan was standing in front of Marshall and Sengu but meanwhile the mouse-beaver had made himself comfortable on Atlan’s couch. Just as the latter was about to speak, Pucky interjected a warning. "Atlan," he chirped, "take three deep breaths and a couple of knee bends—then think it over. I believe that will be better than what you have in mind."

  The Arkonide stared at him in amazement. "You read my thoughts and I wasn’t aware of your spying!"

  Pucky refused to be disturbed by the sharp note of rebuke in the Imperator’s voice. He lolled on the couch and finally turned on his side. "Coincidence, Atlan—maybe because you’re too mad to think of anything else but your treacherous contemporaries. Forget what’s happened. It’ll do no good. Anger drains one’s potency, you know, and at your age that’s especially dangerous ... "

  The disrespectful mouse-beaver got only this far before John Marshall interrupted him sharply. "Lt. Puck, do I have to discipline you again and call the Chief?"

  Pucky revealed his single incisor tooth. The mouse-beaver was laughing at Marshall’s words and his warning. He was not in the least impressed by the prospect of being reported to Rhodan. He made a grand gesture of rejection and then proceeded to ignore him.

  But he appealed to the Imperator again. "Atlan, will you permit me to say something more? And if so, will you see to it that I am not interrupted?"

  John Marshall gasped for air. Wuriu Sengu signaled the mouse-beaver urgently, trying to tell him to keep his mouth shut.

  Only Atlan observed the cheeky mouse-beaver with interest. "You’re asking a lot of me, aren’t you, Pucky?"

  "So I’ll give you a good tip in exchange," the little fellow dared to reply. There was a roguish glint in his big mousy eyes.

  "Alright," answered the Arkonide ruler, "I accept your conditions."

  At once the mouse-beaver sat up and chirped in his high-pitched voice: "If I were the Imperator, Atlan, I’d move out of here in a hurry—and I’d go directly to the right place! I’d set up housekeeping inside the robot Brain on Arkon 3. From there you’d be in the best position to keep an eye on everything. And above all you’d be the safest there."

  Marshall drew a quick breath when he heard Pucky’s suggestion but when Atlan hesitated to answer the mouse-beaver continued. "Arkonide, after all you have one thing we haven’t got an extra brain. Doesn’t it tell you that the games are over with and that. these revolutionaries are starting to play for keeps—that they will pay any price to get you out of the way? Here your life isn’t worth a plugged knuckle. Just call that jumbo positronicon on Arkon 3 and let it run through some calculations. Have it tell you where you’d have the best chance for survival: here or inside the robot Brain. I’m anxious to know, myself, what kind of answer that big brute will come up with."

  Wuriu Sengu was nonplussed. Marshall didn’t move or say a word.

  "Pucky ... "began Atlan but he was suddenly interrupted.

  The telecom’s loudspeaker rang out: "Rhodan to Imperator! Urgent! Rhodan to Imperator!"

  Atlan turned to the apparatus just as the picture on the screen stabilized and Rhodan’s face appeared. The Administrator was speaking from a spaceship. "Admiral, I’m happy to see that you are in the best of health. I see that Marshall is with you. Is there anybody else in the room?"

  "Wuriu Sengu and Pucky are also here, my friend‘," answered the Imperator. "Yo
ur mouse-beaver has just made a suggestion to me that, if it were known in the Imperium, would sweep me from the throne,"

  "Would you tell me, Admiral, what Lt. Puck recommended?"

  Pucky was suddenly startled to hear Rhodan refer to him as Lt. Puck. It was an unmistakable sign that the First Administrator of the Solar Imperium was not in agreement with his present comportment.

  In a few short sentences Atlan related what Pucky had suggested. Rhodan listened to it with a straight face. When Atlan finished, he remained silent. Pucky was beginning to feel very uncomfortable. Rhodan’s silence was far too long. The mouse-beaver turned imploringly to John Marshall for help but the latter did not respond.

  However, the silence finally became too much for Atlan. "Perry, why don’t you speak?" he asked with a tone of insistence.

  "Was I really silent that long, Arkonide?" came the answer. "Where is Pucky?"

  The little one slipped off the couch and waddled into the field of vision of the camera. "Here I am, Perry!" he chirped while attempting to give a military sound to his voice.

  Rhodan’s eyes searched him penetratingly from the viewscreen. "Have you had telepathicontact with us, Pucky?"

  The mouse-beaver drew himself up and answered with a touch of repartée. "Perry, I was a little too busy for that, even if I’d wanted to. Besides, isn’t the Ironduke a teensy bit too far from Arkon 1?"

  "What you’re probably trying to say is that the assassins are becoming too active inside the Crystal Palace, isn’t that right? But who assigned you to the task of being an adviser to the Imperator?"

  Pucky’s answer was unique. "My brains, Chief. After all, I’m one of your closest friends and it was you who taught me to always take care of important things first. So I figured I had to give Atlan a tip. Wasn’t that a good thing to do, Perry?"

  "Very good, as a matter of fact. The reason I have called was to make an urgent recommendation to Admiral Atlan to transfer his government activities to Arkon 3 inside the robot Brain. Atlan, in the last 10 minutes I’ve been in constant contact with the robot Regent and I’ve asked it a number of questions.