The Venus Trap Read online

  With these words he began to untie the soldier. He removed the gag last. "Get up, my boy," he told him. The guard was dumbfounded and awkwardly arose. His first move was to reach for his gun. Then he stared suspiciously at Tomisenkow.

  Tomisenkow returned his gaze without blinking. After awhile he asked: "Did I give you a headache?" This seemed to surprise the soldier. He shook his head. Then they both started to laugh. Tomisenkow gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder. "You're alright, Corporal," he said. "I'll remember you when this unpleasantness is behind us."

  The guard left the tent and began to ponder what Tomisenkow could have meant. He was so busy thinking about it that he let the inspection pass and only said:

  "Corporal Wlassow! All is well."

  • • •

  For two hours John Marshall had continuously kept sending out his calls with his remarkable telepathic power. "Come help us, seals! We're friends in distress!"

  Two hours he waited, hoping that the shiny head of a seal would bob up from the water near the immobilized boat, but he waited in vain. Nothing showed up and the uninterrupted strain created a world of dancing colorful rings before his eyes.

  The luring telepathic calls had drained his body of its last strength. He knew that the seals were not living in the ocean. They inhabited the environment of the coast, preferably sea inlets cutting deep into the mountain's like fjords. The closest shore was at least 60 miles from the present position of their boat. Marshall had tried very hard to bridge this distance but he could feel his head swimming and realized that he'd be unable to keep it up much longer.

  A few more minutes, maybe eight or ten. That would be the end.

  Son Okura crouched apathetically at the forward end. From time to time he raised his head and scanned the ocean. Nothing. No menace and nothing to interrupt the monotony of waiting in the night. Perry Rhodan spent his time listening and mediating. He weighed alternative solutions to their present situation in case Marshall's calls were without success. Rhodan knew very little about the seals. It had been determined that they possessed a certain degree of intelligence—enough to have a language of their own—and that they should thus to able to respond to a telepathic message. What he didn't know was how they would react to such a message, assuming they received it. Perhaps it was a matter of indifference to the seals that they drifted helplessly out in the open sea. His listening was concentrated on some noise he expected to hear within the next hour. Considerable time had elapsed since they shot down the helicopters. Irrespective of what one might think of Colonel Raskujan's military prowess, sooner or later he was bound to dispatch a squadron of helicopters to check on the fate of the first two machines.

  In that case it would be the sheerest luck if their floundering life raft escaped their notice. Nobody can depend on such luck when making plans, Rhodan mused philosophically. Son Okura's muffled call aroused him. "They're coming!"

  Rhodan jumped to his feet. "Who's coming?"

  Okura too had leaped up and leaned far out over the rounded bow of the boat. Rhodan noticed that he looked at the surface of the water, not at the sky.

  The Japanese stretched his arm out. "There... the seals!"

  Rhodan heard a slight splashing which didn't coincide with the rhythm of the ground swell. Something dark and shiny emerged a few feet from the boat and approached hesitantly.

  "Marshall, come here!" Rhodan called.

  Marshall pushed himself up from the side of the boat and staggered forward. Meanwhile the heads of other seals surfaced and came closer. Rhodan counted a total of 30. It was obvious that Marshall was unable to stand it much longer. Rhodan patted him gently on the shoulder and said: "Only a few more moments, then it'll be over and done with. Explain our situation to them!"

  Marshall leaned over the bow to get as close as possible to the seals and to support his tired body. He described in simple, easily comprehensible thoughts what had happened to them and the kind of help they needed.

  Fortunately, the seals were not slow to understand and, most of all, they were eager to be helpful. Marshall advised Rhodan of their suggestion. "They can pull our boat if we've got enough ropes. They want to form teams of ten and take turns on the way."

  Rhodan agreed. "That's about the way I imagined it. O.K., we've got the ropes."

  They cut up the long anchor line in suitable pieces, used the landing ropes to make slings and tied them together, following the instructions by the seals as transmitted by Marshall. The entire task took less than 15 minutes. The seals slipped into the slings before they could sink and pulled them tight with their strong flippers. The thin ropes didn't hurt their leathery skin over the layers of fat.

  "The seals are asking where we want to go," Marshall inquired. Rhodan thought for a moment. "Ask them if they can take us to the peninsula where it joins the coast of the continent."

  "Nothing to it," Marshall reported their answer.

  Rhodan wanted to say something but the boat surged forward at the same instant. The seals required no further instructions. With a speed exceeding that of their old motor by more than half—as Rhodan estimated—their unwieldy craft streaked through the waves.

  Marshall was lost in thought as he gazed on the glistening heads of the seals pulling the boat and those swimming along to their left and right.

  Then he flopped down on the bottom of the boat. The back of his head landed in a puddle of slimy water they had failed to scoop out. This didn't bother him though. He had hardly laid down when he was fast asleep.

  Rhodan and the Japanese exchanged understanding glances. They both crouched at the bow of the boat and watched the seals. Rhodan found it amazing that 10 seals imparted a higher velocity to the boat than the 30 horsepower turbine. One and a half times the velocity meant more than twice the output, assuming the efficiency was equal. Under these conditions it could be figured that each of the 10 seals developed about 10 horsepowers.

  Their efficiency was probably higher than that of the more complicated motor with its propeller drive. But a minimum of at least four or five horsepower had to be ascribed to the seals. For the first time Rhodan understood how different life on this young world was from ancient Terra. For the first time he grasped the meaning of the concept of vitality.

  • • •

  Colonel Raskujan committed the error of worrying more about his two most important prisoners, Thora and Tomisenkow, than about the two gyrocopters he had sent out. He requested information about the aircraft from the radio station which had been set up some distance away from the spaceships in the vicinity of the coast and learned that nothing had been heard from them for two hours. The period of two hours didn't disturb him as such. A search over the open sea could easily require three or four times as long without producing any results but the radio silence caused him anxiety.

  The radio station had attempted several times to contact the two machines, each time without success. Now Raskujan decided quickly. He gave orders to a major to comb the surface of the ocean with three helicopter squadrons—giving special attention to the area where the strange streams of light had been observed. They were to look for the missing vehicles and spot any enemies who were around, to attack and destroy the enemy or capture him if possible.

  The helicopters took off within a few minutes after Raskujan issued his command. But meanwhile three hours had elapsed since they had last heard from the first two vehicles.

  • • •

  Two hours had gone by since the seals had taken over leading the boat. Rhodan estimated they had covered a distance of about 50 miles during these two hours. As the boat was proceeding now in a north-northeast direction, the distance to their hypothetical point of landing had grown by a few more miles. Rhodan guessed that they were about 90 miles from their goal, a ride of nearly four hours. He wondered what steps Raskujan had taken about his two machines that had disappeared. He didn't trust his luck to be great enough to make Raskujan refrain from any further action. Sooner or later more helicopter
s probing the ocean were bound to come forth.

  The only chance their little boat had against a flotilla of helicopters—except for their thermo-beam weapons—lay in the fact that they had put a considerable distance between themselves and the course on which the helicopters would presumably fly from their camp. Perhaps the search would take long enough to permit the safe escape of their boat.

  Perhaps—

  Rhodan was still mulling over these thoughts when a sound reached his ears that was different from the splashing noise of the seals. He tried to shield his ears from the splashing of the water with his hands and listened into the night.

  Irregular, humming sounds.

  Helicopters! An entire squadron!

  Still far away, Rhodan thought. Okura won't be able to see them yet. Nevertheless, he drew the attention of the Japanese to the noise and told him to keep his eyes open. As Okura could not have failed to see the hot exhaust from the engine jets if it were within range of sight, the only conclusion to be drawn from the fact he had seen nothing so far was that the machines were still below the horizon.

  The noise grew louder, reached a climax and diminished again. Ten minutes after Rhodan had first noticed it, it had disappeared again. "They're not on the right track yet," Rhodan smiled with relief. "I hope they don't find us for a long time!"

  He looked at the sleeping Marshall. If the helicopters came closer he'd have to awaken him from his well-deserved slumber. They'd need every raygun if the chips were down. Furthermore, Marshall had to warn the seals so that they wouldn't be placed in jeopardy.

  But there was no immediate danger.

  • • •

  More than 60 miles above this scene, someone else made a second and—for the time being—last attempt to intervene in the events taking place on Venus.

  Reginald Bell, the battle-hardened companion of Perry Rhodan and Minister of Internal and External Security of the New Power, had heretofore been concerned with his own safety and was unable to come to the help of the others because the mighty positronic brain in the Venus fortress had enveloped the whole planet almost to the limit of its atmosphere in an impenetrable protective mantle that sealed it hermetically off from all outside influence.

  Shortly after Rhodan had left, Bell took off from Terra in one of the spherical spaceships of the Good Hope class measuring 200 feet in diameter and officially called 'Guppies' when they served as auxiliary vessels on board a larger battleship.

  Thora had suffered a sort of mental short-circuit. Home sickness and the obsession that Rhodan didn't think of allowing her to return to Arkon, caused her to seek aid on Venus. The most important base of the New Power was located on Venus. Although it harbored no spaceships, it contained hyperwave radio transmitters with energy great enough to broadcast emergency signals that could reasonably be expected to be picked up by her people far out in space.

  Thora had blasted off in one of the newly built destroyers and was shipwrecked on Venus when she approached the defense zone of the fortress because her ship had not yet been equipped with facilities to remit the code signal. Subsequently she was captured by Tomisenkow and both of them were in turn taken prisoner by Raskujan.

  Rhodan followed her a few hours later but he and his two companions didn't fare any better than Thora. They had been able to avoid capture but their efforts to free Thora failed. The third of the team was Reginald Bell. It was presumably a simple matter for him in his Guppy to reach Venus without hindrance and to enter through the defense zone of the bulwark. With the technical gear available at the base he could have intervened in the battles, liberated Thora, rescued Rhodan and taught Raskujan a lesson to boot.

  The positronic brain, however, having been alarmed by the two previous unannounced flights, cordoned off Venus from the outer world and took over command of the fortress and the planet as a whole. As a consequence Bell was cruising with his spaceship outside the protective mantle and was not even in a position to communicate with Rhodan via radio. All electromagnetic frequencies down to the long wavelengths of infra-red rays were blocked out. Only once had Bell attempted to circumvent the barrier of the positronic brain by the deployment of a mutant, Tako Kakuta. The most remarkable of Tako Kakuta's amazing talents was teleportation. He was able to transport himself over distances up to 30,000 miles without recourse to technical conveyances. His medium for transport was the transcendental hyperspace. The method was thus equivalent to the transition of a spaceship with the exception of the energy source. Tako had returned from his first attempt instantaneously and half dead. He himself was under the impression that he had been absent for hours.

  The fact of the matter was undoubtedly that the positronic brain was prepared to repulse infiltration attempts of any kind whatsoever, even those taking place on planes of a higher order. It was questionable that the base permanently maintained a five-dimensional defense screen around the whole planet. This would have required an immeasurable amount of energy. But apparently the positronic brain reacted to the intrusion of a super-body quickly enough to eject it again from its realm.

  Tako Kakuta needed two days of Terrestrial time to recuperate. On the following day Bell asked him whether he'd be wiling to try it once more and gave a few reasons.

  "It's possible, for instance," Bell pointed out, "that the first failure was due to an accident. Perhaps you can get through to the fortress the second time without being molested. You remember that you once before entered the base with a tele-jump after Tomisenkow first landed with his armada of 500 spaceships and was scattered to the four winds with his crews. Of course, it's possible that the positronic brain considers the present situation much more dangerous than before and that it has therefore activated many more far-reaching defense measures. To be honest, it probably has. But shouldn't we try to make another attempt just the same?"

  Bell spoke in gentle tones that ran counter to his usual custom. He was under no obligation to plead with a mutant or any other member of the New Power. In situations like the present it was his right to give orders.

  But he knew what it meant to induce Tako Kakuta to undertake this task again. He had already reached the limit of his physical endurance the first time.

  To his surprise Kakuta didn't hesitate for a moment. With an uncertain smile on his round child-like face he answered: "Of course I'll try again. I hope it won't be worse than the last time when I felt like being run over by an armored tank."

  They prepared for the mission. Bell summoned two men of the crew to the command center and instructed them to hold Kakuta carefully when he reappeared in the ship. Tako Kakuta took up his position. He exhibited a suffering mien and announced: "Here I go!" The transition took less than a second. No sooner had they noticed his outline getting fuzzy than he had already completely vanished.

  Reginald Bell held his breath. For an interval of two heartbeats he dared hope that this time their attempt had been successful. Then the Japanese suddenly appeared again. His eyes were closed and his face distorted with pain. The men Bell had called to assist him, did their duty. The Japanese sank into their arms. He was unconscious.

  "Take him to his cabin and watch him!" Bell ordered. "Let me know when he wakes up." He turned around and stared at the observation screen filled with swirling, brightly lit masses of clouds. The second attempt had failed miserably! There were no more conceivable ways left for him to take a hand in the events on Venus. Rhodan had to carry on the struggle alone.

  • • •

  Son Okura saw the flat coast of the continent appear like a dark line. Still 40 hours to midnight.

  Marshall had woken up long ago and taken over Rhodan's post in order to give him a few minutes rest. Only Okura had been deprived of sleep the whole time. His eyes were still needed. The seals pulled the boat steadily and reliably.

  They had heard the helicopters a few more times. Each time the noise was a few decibels louder than previously. There could be little doubt that they were searching in sweeps either from south to north or i
n the opposite direction and that they were getting closer to the coast with each sweep, thereby nearing the fleeing boat more and more.

  Marshall had warned the seals. They waited for his signal to slip out of the slings in case of attack and to swim away from the unsafe region. Marshall hoped that it wouldn't come to that but he was none too sure that he had any right for hope.

  Rhodan got up again after his short rest and told the Japanese to lie down. Okura went to sleep and from then on they depended solely on their hearing. The eyes of the 'ultra-sheer' were missing.

  • • •

  Shortly after 201:00 o'clock Venus time the observer of the leading unit of the helicopter squadron caught a tiny blip on his radar screen. He notified the main flight group and learned that they had detected the same signal and it was determined that they had received a 'true' reflex. The precise position of the object was ascertained and it was found that it moved with considerable speed in a north-north-easterly direction.

  Five minutes after the observation was made, the group of gunships veered east and steered with top velocity toward the unknown object which meanwhile had moved close to the coast of the peninsula. The major in charge of the helicopter patrol felt certain that the observed object was somehow connected with the disappearance of the two lost machines. He instructed his observers to lock onto the blip in sight and to turn on the infra-red searchlight as soon as they came within range.