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  I couldn't avoid the last barb although I didn't mean to vex my friends unduly. Nor did Rhodan take offense.

  But when he answered, his tone was rather dry. "Thanks for the briefing, Admiral. In the meantime our findings have confirmed as much. By the time we land at the base our first remote-controlled spaceprobes should be back, the ones I sent into the critical zone prior to your arrival. They'll even give us the normal optical reconnaissance we're after. The plan and purpose of this flight was simply to find out what the Robot Brain's reaction was to this suddenly emerging danger. Naturally it sent out a super fleet, since it doesn't understand other alternatives."

  There was a note of reprimand in his voice but I suppressed my anger. Instead, I scowled at the grinning mutant, Wuriu Sengu. "And what alternatives would you suggest, little barbarian?" I asked disdainfully. But the question was really aimed at Rhodan.

  The latter yawned and touched a hand to his mouth. He blinked. "Who, me... ?" He stood up slowly and contacted the engine room. Moments later, with a monstrous thundering, the California picked up speed. It was only barely possible to hear one's own voice in the ensuing clamor. This flying speed bomb was of a design that the most daring shipbuilders would have considered insane. "We will go over there and have a very careful look around," he continued. "We'll be good friends and shake hands—that is, provided those over yonder happen to have any hands. But you, my friend, will have to join the crew that will be under my command when we penetrate that rip in the Einstein curtain and enter the Druid plane. Hm-m-m? Did you say something?"

  No, I had said nothing. He smiled at me, adjusted the safety of his weapon belt and disappeared into the computer room.

  But I asked myself what it was this man had done that could be so great and significant. At the moment, he almost seemed to be but an audacious adventurer with the limited mental capacity of a knight of Camelot in King Arthur's court; but then I thought better of it.

  Perry Rhodan, former major and test pilot for the legendary U.S. Space Force. In his basic nature he was an ingenious gambler who usually knew just when to play his trump cards. But if by chance he didn't happen to have a good hand he would bluff. Just now he didn't have a single ace up his sleeve, yet here he was with a perfect coolness, entering into a perilous mission which had come to be known as 'Project Galactic Power'.

  I also got to my feet and took a last look at the reactivated viewscreens which were connected with the outboard cameras. I could not suppress a remark to Bell: "Do you really think that you can conquer an entire stellar empire with a handful of super battleships and cruisers?"

  He frowned thoughtfully and brushed a hand through the red stubble of his hair before he candidly replied: "No offense, old boy, but your calcification is showing." So that was the kind of answer I got to a very serious question.

  Pucky, the oversized mouse with the ludicrous beaver's tail, broke into a loud and squeaky peal of laughter. As though stunned, I stared at his bared incisor tooth while a cold chill ran down my spine. But not because of that incisor, not by any means! When I thought of Rhodan's intentions, and the answer his Second-in-Command had just given me, I became slightly ill. What were these savages thinking of, actually? I felt like reminding them that without the help of my venerable race by now they would not have developed much more than a ridiculous thermal reactor for their space propulsion. Maybe they might have been on the track of a photon drive by this time but I could guarantee them they wouldn't have had the slightest notion of a trans-light propulsion system.

  I swallowed my retort, however, and went to the bulkhead door. So according to Bell I was stiff in my bones, was I? I would soon show them what an Arkonide fleet admiral was able to do!

  3/ THE SUPER SPYSHIP

  The new fleet stronghold on Myrtha 7 resembled a teeming anthill. The heavy fighting ships kept appearing daily out of the sky. The Terranians, who in a fit of megalomania had named their little planetary system the Solar Empire, were on the brink of demonstrating their habitual impudence by facing up to the greatest power in the Milky Way. In fact they had gone so far as to erect a military base practically under the guns of a huge space fleet, believing that they could remain undetected.

  Rhodan's intent was clear. He planned to be the hail-fellow-well-met on all sides, shake hands with everybody and become the profit-taking power in the background. It was a matter of 'You two fight and I'll hold your coats.'

  I couldn't be blamed for being plagued by doubts whenever I took a close look at what was going on. If Rhodan wasn't sticking his neck out too far this time, my name wasn't Atlan!

  This man who usually had such a clear head on him had even become inclined lately to underestimate the robot Regent of Arkon. And still more disturbing to me was the fact that these Earthlings were regarding the other life forms in the galaxy as a negligible factor. Their momentary rash of self-conceit was a malady that was rooted solely in the presence of the mutants. They relied on them too heavily, while forgetting that other intelligences could also learn from experience.

  Out of all these considerations I developed the view that these swiftly-rising humans were still a long way from maturity. Rhodan's early successes had been the result of unprecedented surprise action. I suspected that he was in for a painful head-knocking now. It just wasn't possible with a few battleships and cruisers to take on an empire whose industry had been dedicated to waging galactic wars for thousands of years.

  There were others besides myself who warned him. Rhodan probably saw my arguments but he still thought he was ready to face the unquestionably looming dangers ahead. If only he had refrained from setting up his forward base on Grautier, of all places!

  So it was that Rhodan and I had had some serious disagreements, although of course there was no actual animosity involved. On the other hand it wasn't my natural temperament to continue being a calamity howler. They would just have to watch their step in this whole affair.

  • • •

  By now the men of Terra had succeeded in constructing the mysterious matter transmitters of the Ferronians, with the help of the plans they had at their disposal. Previous attempts had failed for lack of the proper kind of micro-power supplies, because these transmitters had a characteristic of requiring their own integral power source. Only in the rarest of cases had they been able to do anything at all with a separate or stationary power supply but due to technical factors it had been necessary to use extremely short cable leads. Why this was so could not be determined by any logical process of reasoning. Such transmitters were found to work without interference defects only when the source of power was integral to the device itself. Probably this was due to 5th dimensional effects of dematerialization, where the force field of the power supply itself was also required for their generation.

  All the major ships of the Solar Fleet were now equipped with at least one of these transport devices. So from now on it was possible to transfer personnel and supplies from one spaceship to another over great distances without having to go through a protracted approach and docking procedure.

  My big, grey-eyed barbarian friend would not have been called Perry Rhodan if he had not at once applied this new advanced equipment to his overall planning. Just how he applied them, however, pushed me ever closer to what Bell might call a 'case of the hives'.

  I was already toying with the idea of withdrawing my voluntary assistance to Terra in favor of going my own way again, when I received a call from the underground bunker headquarters of the base on Myrtha 7. At the time I was on board the Drusus, the Solar Fleet flagship, where Lt.-Col. Sikerman and I had been engaged in some penetratingly frank discussions.

  The summons reached me in the small wardroom and mess hall next to the tracking surveillance section. Rhodan's face appeared on the telecom viewscreen.

  Instead of his normal greeting, he said: "Well, Your Eminence, have they succeeded in calming you down a little?"

  "Go to the devil, you—you pithecanthropus!" I retorted in sudden
rage. "Just 20 light-years away from here are more than 30,000 spaceships. We know now that the Druufs coming out of the other time-plane have met with complete disaster. Not a single one of their ships got more than two light-minutes from the discharge opening. Perhaps that will convince you of the incredible might of the Greater Empire, even though it is presently ruled by a machine. Or do you actually presume that you and your mutants can just sweep such a major task force out of the way? They may show you that you have another think coming—that there is some limit, after all, to your vaunted influence. No one is invincible, not even you. I think it's about time somebody 'gave it to you straight', as you savages say. So what's on your mind?"

  After a moment of silence, he gave me one of his inscrutable smiles. "Your considerations have been duly noted and accepted, Admiral. You know I'm not particularly anxious to lose the few ships I have. Nevertheless, I'm taking a hand in the game, with your permission."

  "You can keep your sarcasm. I'm advising you to play your cards very close to the table. This time you may need them desperately to save your own skin." Of course these were pretty sharp words to give to a man who was accustomed to rake in success with a mere flick of the wrist.

  Nevertheless, Rhodan continued to be objective. "Also noted and accepted, Admiral! The reconnaissance data from our remote-controlled spy probes have been evaluated. They show that we can definitely fly through the discharge zone without any need of generating a warp-field gate. How does that strike you?"

  "Then you will make a thrust into the other time plane?" I asked.

  "Precisely," he confirmed. "The California is fully equipped and ready for takeoff. For your information, for the time-being we've decided to take no part in the current conflict between the Robot Regent and the Druufs. We'll be observers behind the scene, so to speak, until we know just what we're dealing with."

  "The most sensible statement I've heard for lo these many days!"

  He laughed, and my tensions quickly subsided. So he was not crazy enough, after all, to make a drum-and-trumpet appearance on the battle front.

  "We'll be lifting off in half an hour. If you wish, you may join us on board."

  "In your primitive vernacular," I growled at him, "that's known as double-talk. You know very well I haven't any choice in the matter. You’re ordering me on board!"

  "Did I say that?"

  He cut the connection and I turned to the commander of the Drusus. Baldur Sikerman politely lifted a hand to his mouth and cleared his throat gently.

  "You know," I said, "about 8000 years prior to the New Age I should have permitted all you rascals to be swept away through the relativity front that was available to me at the time. Then I would have spared myself all kinds of headaches and ceaseless vexations. With your permission, my dear Lieutenant Colonel, you're getting on my nerves! Are you by any chance joining our little excursion?"

  Sikerman's big face reappeared from behind his hand.

  I regarded him as one of the most capable of officers and a bold man of action; yet he was also the sort of man who knew just when to use his intelligence. "I beg your pardon, sir—I'm not only going along; they've even placed me in command of the California ."

  I took a deep breath. It was suddenly clear to me that Rhodan was staking his best men in this venture. If Sikerman was leaving the Drusus to take over a relatively unimportant reconnaissance cruiser, the plot was getting thicker, as you Earthlings say. Probably I was going to meet the elite of the human race on board the little ship.

  This was now a stage of development where any further questions would have been pointless.. It was obvious that Rhodan was set on penetrating the discharge zone in order to find out what the real issues were inside the universe of the Druufs. Of course I had no objections to such a strategy, provided that he didn't get any wild ideas about playing the role of the strongman.

  • • •

  Ten minutes later I left the ground lock of the flagship. A dark and stormy night brooded over Grautier. Here and there only a few stars peeked through the cloud covering. The great spaceport was quiet. A few hours before a ban had been issued for all takeoffs because alien spaceships had been detected in close proximity to the system.

  I went on foot toward the barely discernible California. Her power plant was operating already but not a single ray of light emerged from her ports.

  I was hailed by two armed sentinels before the open airlock. I was more or less speechless when I stared into the clearly fluorescing muzzles of the two energy rifles but finally I gasped: "Has everybody gone crazy around here?"

  They demanded the password, which naturally I didn't know. A darkly scowling sergeant of the Space Commando unit came closer to look me over. It was only then that he lowered his murderous weapon.

  "That's a bit careless of you, sir," he advised me. "We have orders to shoot."

  "You what...!?"

  "That's right, sir—shoot to kill. Unauthorized persons may not approach within 50 yards of the cruiser."

  "What kind of cargo did you take on board—cosmic superbombs or galactic contraband?" I asked sarcastically.

  He stifled a grin. "Not quite, sir—just a matter transmitter."

  Transmitter? I frowned in thought as I was finally let through. What was so unusual about that? Lately such equipment was installed on all of the important vessels. I shrugged and went to my cabin. As it turned out they had reserved a room for me, so I knew that Rhodan had been counting on my presence all along.

  "The old rascal!" I whispered to myself.

  Within 15 minutes he put in a personal appearance. He was accompanied by Reginald Bell and the likeable mutant John Marshall, whose reserved and courteous manner I had always appreciated. Almost unconsciously I strengthened my mental mono-block against this man's thought-probing and I saw Marshall promptly smile. He had detected my defense.

  "Nobody's trying to raid your brain tonight," scoffed Rhodan. "Why are you so suspicious?"

  I dismissed the subject without a word. It was an ingrained habit to watch and control my thoughts. I looked at Rhodan testily and as he stood there before me I realized that in spite of all our friendship we were still worlds apart.

  "I plan to penetrate the time front," he said without preliminaries. "That means I'll have to do everything possible to keep from being detected. Our evaluation of the spy-probe data has come up with some amazing findings. It seems that the old Druuf time-ratio of 1-to-72,000 has reduced itself to one over two. It means that all of our movements will only be twice as fast as those of the aliens."

  This came as a shock. It changed the situation decisively.

  He continued: "So that theory of yours kind of falls apart, about two months going by for the Druufs since the events of 10,000 years ago, unless the new time adjustment has just occurred recently. However, the result will be some kind of displacement. Aside from a clarification of these things the phenomenon itself is interesting to me. But until we've had a chance to examine the situation at first hand it's useless to build up a whole complex of questions about it."

  This sounded entirely reasonable to me and not nearly as wild as our discussions of a few days before. We didn't spend much more time on the whole affair because I also wanted to probe the mystery.

  "I'm curious," he said, "as to what these characters look like. We may presume now, with a high probability, that this time we'll come into actual contact with the ruling intelligences of the alien universe. According to our construction of their celestial mechanics, the home center of the Druufs should even be close to the overlap zone. Any further rebuttals?"

  No, I had no further comments. But I asked about the addition of the transmitter which the security guards had mentioned.

  The slightest glimmer flashed in Rhodan's eyes, so I knew he had something up his sleeve. "If we get a chance," he said, "we're going to set up a base 'over there'. It would be a neat trick if the transmitter enabled us to transfer our operation to the other zone without being caught in the a
ct." He nodded absently, apparently absorbed in his lively imagination as he contemplated the daring plan.

  I was also captured by the idea, since it didn't seem at all impossible. The matter transmitters operated on the basis of 5th dimensional force fields. The materials to be transported would be dematerialized in the sending chamber, formed into a beam and radiated outward as pulses of energy. In a precision-tuned receiver, the reverse process would take place. By this means it was practically impossible to detect a transmitter transmission or even to cause interference with it.

  "So that's it—right?" commented Bell quietly before he followed Rhodan out of my cabin. Nobody asked me if I were more reconciled to going along now, in view of the new set of circumstances. Rhodan appeared to read me very well.

  Minutes later I arrived in the cruiser's Control Central. Sikerman had taken his place in the First Pilot's seat. Apparently Rhodan and Bell did not intend to occupy themselves with the direct operation of the ship.

  As we lifted off under minimum power a heavy storm was raging outside. Grautier was giving us a grim parting salute. The California only picked up speed long after the thick atmosphere of Myrtha 7 was behind us. Our tracking equipment gave us an all clear. The alien ships which had been briefly observed had now disappeared. Apparently their crews had considered the Myrtha System to be of no tactical importance.

  Rhodan handed me a mug of hot coffee and as he did so he bad such an ironic look on his face that I felt my blood race hotly. Even without words, we understood each other.

  "Just wait, you devil!" I said, highly provoked. "Some time they'll discover your presence here. What will happen then I can easily tell you now. Do you have an idea of just how many super battleships of the Drusus class the Robot Regent may have at his disposal? In a real emergency the two tele-transmitter's will hardly mean anything at all. If you are trapped in the crossfire of 20 such size, I'd estimate you would have a chance to make about six or seven successful strikes with your super weapons. That would leave at least thirteen ships facing you and you wouldn't make the eighth shot because by then you'd be destroyed.