Death Waits in Semispace Read online

  • • •

  Atlan's earnest assurance was the excuse for Perry Rhodan to come to grips for the first time with the thought that had been running around in his mind for weeks. He had always pushed it aside for there were enough other things to think about... or was it because he was afraid of it?

  Was he right in chasing after the phantom of immortality for weeks, or even months, at a time when, if he ever reached it, it would be available only to himself and a few of his friends and colleagues? Was he right in exposing men and ships to danger while searching for Wanderer? Would it not be more reasonable to follow the age-old pattern that had been in effect in Terran history from the beginning: the succession of generations and the replacement of the old by the young? Could he not find a successor for himself, retire and live his life to its end like a normal man? He was now 106 years old. More than half of that time-span he had stood at the apex of Earthly mankind and had created the Solar Imperium and made Terra a power to be reckoned with in galactic politics. Was that not a work that he could be proud of and content with?

  He suddenly felt that he had up to now taken too little time to evaluate himself. How much was he himself tied up with the rise of the Solar Imperium? To what extent had his own, person and Terra become identical and how much did those elsewhere identify him with the billions of Terrans who trusted him with leadership? What effect would it have if he now stepped back, gave his place over to someone else and died in a few days?

  He remembered It , the incomprehensible being on Wanderer. It had given him immortality almost with an absentminded wave of its non-existent hand, as though giving a not very valuable present away. It had said that It was giving the Terrans the same chance It had given the Arkonides 20,000 years before—the chance to conquer the Galaxy, plunge into the Universe and create a powerful and enduring realm. Should one not grant It a better grasp of the universe and admit that It would not have made such a present if it had not been necessary at all?

  What would happen, Rhodan wondered, if he abdicated? The continuity of the development would be disturbed. Without any exaggerated pride, he could say that at the moment none of the men under him would be able to hold the reins of the Solar Imperium as tightly as was needed. A split would result and the Solar Imperium would splinter—becoming defenseless booty for anyone who cared to take it. And they were legion.

  He thought also of the crew of the Drusus. Had there ever been even the slightest indication that anyone aboard doubted the worth of the risks involved in the search for Wanderer? Had Lt. Tompetch or Capt. Gorlat complained about their dangerous mission on Solitude?

  No!

  Everyone was convinced that Rhodan was doing the right thing. All knew that the Earth needed him more than ever before and all were ready to give their last to enable him to reach Wanderer. Not because he was a nice guy or whatever but because they felt responsible to the Earth.

  And he had been foolish enough to wonder if he should not retire and turn his mission over to someone else!

  • • •

  After he had thus come to a decision, Rhodan began to consider how he might learn more about the secret of Wanderer even before the mathematicians were finished with their intricate calculations.

  The automatic calendar showed 21:14 hours on April 24, 2042. The remaining time had shrunk to 171 hours.

  Perry Rhodan remembered that just before he had concentrated on working out whether he should retire or not, he'd had a brief and quickly disappearing idea. He tried to call the idea back into his mind and finally it occurred to him again—

  The intelligence from Solitude! The being from Solitude, the world on the alien time-plane, the being was capable of separating its spirit from its body. Though intelligent, the creature had been described by Reginald Bell as looking like a sea cow.

  He wondered why he had not thought of this before. The alien being, whom Bell had given the name 'Nathan', was on board the Drusus. It had chosen to leave its home world and not return until the specter of the Druufs had gone. The Druufs divided the Solitudians into six parts, rendering them immobile though still living, put them into boxes and used them as organic warning devices at outlying bases.

  If anyone at all were able to reach Wanderer from here, it would be Nathan. Not bodily but with the help of its astral form, which not only could separate from its body but lead a most independent existence.

  Perry Rhodan armed himself with a telepathic augmenter and made his way to the suite of cabins Nathan had been assigned.

  As Rhodan entered, Nathan rolled about, splashing in the shallow pool to which the largest of his cabins had been transformed.

  Nathan interrupted his pastime immediately. He, or rather his body, was really only a grey cylinder of considerable size. There were no limbs, arms or legs, no eyes, no mouth and nothing that could be expected to be found on the body of an intelligent living being. Nathan glided out of the container and onto a portion of the floor covered with a layer of soil and grass. He stopped in front of Rhodan.

  Rhodan crouched in the grass, set the augmenter down in front of him and put the augmenter's metal headpiece on and around his head. Then he said: "Hello, friend! I've come to ask for your help."

  Nathan understood quickly. Behind closed eyes, Rhodan saw an image appear that said: "Speak, my friend. I shall be glad to help you."

  With that Rhodan began to detail his plan to Nathan.

  Nathan had not yet spent very many hours aboard the ship and had stayed entirely in his cabin. He felt affection for the strange being who had called him friend and had saved him from the Druuf.

  However, Nathan was secretly afraid of the spaceship. His fear had grown so strong that it hurt. Nathan's race was one that knew nothing of technology. When Nathan's people wanted to move, they did so under the power of their own bodies, or if personal presence was not required, they sent their spirits out. They were a modest and unassuming race but a vital one; they saw their purpose in life as being able to think and play with the power of their thoughts. Nathan had never before seen anything as large as this spaceship. His fear led him to regard it as an enemy. Yet his reason told him that the ship was not a living thing and thus could be neither friendly nor hostile and that it would only take a little time for him to get used to his new surroundings.

  His friend the alien had asked him to come to the large chamber he called the control room. A number of other aliens were there, wanting to watch Nathan separate body and mind. His friend had told him that he was to try to reach a world floating invisible in space somewhere near the ship. The invisible world was no concern of Nathan's. Why should he try to find and reach it? But the alien was his friend and the request of a friend could not be denied.

  The large hatch doors opened as Nathan arrived at the control room. He saw his friend waving to him from the other end of the large chamber. He also saw quite a few other aliens standing in a circle around his friend.

  Nathan moved into the center of the room and stopped. He had already discussed everything necessary with his friend and there was nothing more to be said. Nathan relaxed his powerful body and began to disconnect his spirit from its material envelope.

  He felt nothing himself during the process. After all, it was his spirit that felt, sensed and thought, and he was his spirit. His body took part in nothing more than purely physical and chemical processes. Nathan knew that, even if he did not know the words 'physical' or 'chemical'. He left his body behind and floated above it. He knew—having observed his fellows do the same thing so many times before—that now he appeared as a barely visible, shapeless and cloud-like image. He concentrated on his friend and attempted to copy his shape with his mimicking ability. It was small at first, about a foot high, and because of the effect of compression, clearly visible. Then he grew, becoming more transparent. He looked around and discovered surprise on the faces of the other aliens as he formed a head that resembled that of his friend. He of course did not have the time to imitate every feature exa
ctly but the effect was unmistakable.

  Then he set off on his way to that invisible world floating somewhere out in the blackness of space.

  • • •

  "It's one of the oddest life-forms I've ever seen!" someone said when Nathan had left, leaving behind only his huge body which lay still on the control room floor.

  "It isn't quite as odd as on first thought," Rhodan answered. "The strange part is definitely the ability of separating the spirit from the body. But that which so strikingly reminds us of our childhood fear of ghosts surely has a quite natural explanation."

  The others looked at him expectantly.

  "Of course," Rhodan continued, "the astral form is immaterial. That which looks like a cloud to you is not at all a gas, in case you thought so. The astral form itself is nothing more than a field whose nature we know nothing about. It is, in any case, a field with inherent intelligence. What we see is the effect this field has on its surroundings. It seems to give off energy that affects the refractive index of the air around it. In that way it becomes visible to our eyes: the area where the refractive index has been altered appears to us as a cloud."

  "The oddest aspect of it all, however, is the field's ability to reflect nearby objects, even to the point of mimicking them exactly. You have seen how Nathan took on my form and tried to copy my face. I am convinced that he would develop his talent into a perfect skill if he ever took enough time with it. Please don't ask how shocked the Arkonide and I were when we first saw a spirit-form on Solitude!"

  The men were silent. The explanation had been illuminating but the phenomenon was still impossible to grasp. They all looked to where they suspected Nathan's spirit to be—out in the darkness of space where there was nothing whose refractive index Nathan could affect and become visible.

  Nathan was in open space for the first time in his life but he felt nothing out of the ordinary. At first he had been somewhat curious but he had lost his interest once he had seen that there was nothing unusual involved. He moved in the direction that had been pointed out to him and waited for something to appear that he could investigate.

  He did not know the speed at which he was traveling. He hurried, however, and after he had been underway for some time, he sensed a sort of suction take hold of him and pull him forward. He was surprised: never before in his experience in the astral form had he felt any physical influences. After all, his astral form was composed of nothing that could be sucked up or blown away. His curiosity awoke again and at the same time he felt a little afraid of whatever it was somewhere ahead that drew him closer and yet remained invisible.

  He suddenly wished he were back on board the ship that had disappeared somewhere behind him and looked no different from the many stars quietly shining through the dark background in all directions.

  But even if he had wanted to, he would not have been able to return. The attractive force was more powerful than his strength. He gave up his resistance and allowed himself to be drawn further.

  After some more time had passed he saw something come into view far ahead. It looked like a bright spot with no shape. Nathan saw that it was to this spot that he was being drawn. He watched as the point of light grew larger. Finally it had increased enough to have a shape and looked like a huge hemisphere. Nathan approached with fearful speed and a few moments later the hemisphere had grown so large that he could no longer see all of it at once. Now he saw beneath him broad planes that were evidently covered with grass, vast forests, rivers, lakes and oceans. He saw a collection of regularly formed shapes that seemed artificial and probably made up something his friend had called a 'city'. He also saw clouds floating slowly along below him but all that was as though viewed through a haze. The view was not completely open. There was something between him and the land below.

  He saw it at the last moment but then it was too late to react. A transparent wall suddenly hurtled towards him—the wall he had taken for a layer of haze. He felt a strong jolt as he hit it—and then felt as though he were sinking into something soft. He was terribly confused by it all. For a few seconds he had the sensation of being held captive by something. But then the suction stopped and he was free again. Nathan looked up and saw immediately above him the shimmering barrier he had just penetrated. He did not know what it was made of but since it no longer affected him he lost all interest in it. He made his way downwards.

  When he had covered half the distance toward the surface he suddenly sensed a distant feeling of amusement. He puzzled about it until it became clear to him that he was not the one being amused but rather that there was someone else transmitting his merriment by telepathic means. Nathan heard the shrill cries resembling the ones he and his fellows typically gave out when they were excessively pleased about something; and confused, he tried to understand how one of his race could have reached this peculiar world. Then his reason was in gear and he realized that merriment transmitted by telepathy must always sound to him like a shrill cry, no matter how the noise originally sounded. Nathan was the only one of his kind on this planet but there was someone here who was very happy about something and was communicating it with him.

  Nathan waited expectantly for what had yet to come while proceeding slowly towards the ground. Suddenly he heard a rumbling voice.

  "My poor friend," it called to him, "what did you come here for? Don't you know you can't go back? You've left your body behind and will never see it again!"

  Nathan was terrified—not so much at the prospect of having to remain a ghost forever, which he could not quite believe, but rather at the fact the stranger knew him.

  "How do you know that?" he asked timidly.

  "Didn't you notice the attraction field that drew you here, poor friend?"

  Nathan's mind could do little with the term 'attraction field' but he understood what was meant. "Yes, of course," he thought. "What about it?"

  "Couldn't you defend yourself against it?"

  "No, it was too strong."

  "You see! How are you ever going to get out of here again? You would have to overcome that field to return to your ship. And you can't."

  "That may be," Nathan thought, "but not so important at the moment. My friend will come pick me up when it's time... Who are you, anyway?"

  "I am the master of this world. I have no name."

  "Couldn't you turn that attraction field off?"

  "No, I cannot. There is much that I can do but that field lies outside my power. You must remain here, my poor friend."

  • • •

  When Nathan—or his astral form—had not yet returned by 13:00 hours on April 25, Perry Rhodan could only swallow his anger and go on. Inspired by the experience with Ras Tschubai, he had the structocomps searched to see if any cloud-like nebulosity had been caught in one of the resonator chambers. But the compensators were empty. Nathan had suffered a different fate than the African, it seemed.

  The time remaining had now shrunk to 150 hours and when one considered how little success had been obtained in the preceding 35 hours since the Drusus had finished its last transition, there was little reason to be optimistic. The team of mathematicians had been working almost without interruption but the results so far were only partial and even these were so incomplete that out of them no recognizable overview of the entire situation could be reached.

  Towards 19:00 hours, after another six hours had passed without result, Atlan requested a further conference with Perry Rhodan. As he entered the control room he carried with him a rather thick folder whose contents turned out to be a collection of diagrams and pages of mathematical formulae.

  "Have you cracked the mystery?" Rhodan asked after he had greeted the Arkonide.

  Atlan smiled, though it seemed a little forced. "It could be," he answered cautiously. "At least we can draw from this a number of useful deductions."

  He sat down and placed the folder in front of him. Rhodan watched him attentively. He mentally calculated that the Arkonide had not slept in more than 48 hour
s. That was no problem for the drugs stocked by the medical station but Rhodan knew about Atlan's ingrained caution towards pills and injections. The Arkonide's eyes, redder than usual, showed that as yet he had taken nothing.

  "Let's get started!" said Rhodan more harshly than he intended.

  Atlan pulled a sheet of paper out of the folder and laid it on the table. Meanwhile the officers present in the control room had grouped themselves around Rhodan and the Arkonide in order to hear every word. Atlan pointed to the sheet, which was covered with confocal ellipsis. A series of numbers and formulae stood by each elliptic orbit.

  "This," the Arkonide began, "is the structure of that part of space in which Wanderer is embedded. In other words, that part of space affected by the distortion of the coordinate axis. semispace is the name we've given to it. Wanderer's center of gravity coincides with one of the two focal points of all these ellipsis. So Wanderer with its entire circumference lies about like this." With his free hand he drew a figure representing a circle on the sheet. The circle intersected every ellipsis except for the outermost. "This entire system rotates. The picture here," and he tapped on the paper, "must be regarded as a stop-motion view of the scene. It shows, or rather the ellipsis show, how great an effect the shortening of the axis has on certain portions of space. The number of elliptical orbits shows the shortening factor: it's greatest inside and decreases towards the outside. These values change during the rotation, however, and in our view what this leads to is a most noteworthy phenomenon. As you can see, the META stability zone is not much larger than Wanderer itself. On every fourth rotation, a part of the planet's surface leaves the META stability zone completely. It appears then in normal space but remains invisible to us because this event takes place on the side of Wanderer turned away from us. The rest of the planet, still captive in semispace, has the effect of a screen and prevents us from registering any radiation. How long the appearance lasts is unknown to us: we do know that it is no less than 10 seconds and no more than 500 seconds. Just as unknown to us for the time being is how large a portion of the planet surface leaves the zone of META stability. However," he said, smiling, "I think it would be large enough to accommodate the landing of a Gazelle."