Power's Price Read online

  "I'll put it before the Chief and call you back afterwards, Doc. I'm glad that you, at least, had the guts to report this to me or we would have lost even more time!"

  With that, Bell switched off.

  "We've got to get hold of Atlan, Perry!" he said as he entered Rhodan's workroom.

  "Whatever for?" asked Rhodan. "We just left Arkon 1 a couple of hours ago."

  "We don't have any info, about the planet Solten and its friendly natives, that's whatever for! The ethnologist Dr. Olundson just called me up and ticked off a list of all the departments that don't have any info about this world in the Forit System. Even Defense can't give us any! Atlan's got to help us now!"

  Then Perry Rhodan asked a question that surprised Bell. "Who was it that brought up the Soltenite idea in the first place, Reggie?"

  "You did! I'd never even heard of these people before!" He paused, looking sharply at his friend. "Perry, don't you remember it, anymore?"

  Bell himself recalled only too well how a sharply defined region of his memory had been cut off by a strong suggestive block—caused by a normally gifted person who had been made into an unusually strong suggestor by the injection of an Ara toxin.

  Perry suddenly smiled at him. He had read his thoughts. "Don't worry, Reggie! But even so, it's odd that I don't know who or what brought the Soltenites to my attention. That bothers me but suggestion or hypnosis are out of the question!"

  "I hope you're right. What about calling Atlan?"

  "Let Atlan be. He has enough to worry about, being Imperator of the Arkonides. But thanks to him we can call on the Giant Brain directly. Get a hold of Mercant... I mean, go see him. He'll tell you everything you need to know. Then you'll have to go over to the big hypercom station. There you send everyone outside for the time being and take the controls yourself. Negative Telecom procedure!"

  Bell whistled, and rubbed his hands in glee. "Oh, those poor Springer decoders!" He broke out in laughter. He imagined how desperately they would watch the hypercom sine waves on the oscillograph, utterly unable to understand why they could not get any rational sounds although they had determined the pulse-bursts and scrambler timing to the fifth decimal place. "Well, Perry," he said, still smiling, "at least during this Negative Telecom Procedure I certainly won't be thinking about my poor kaput thumb and..."

  "Get out, Reggie! Rhodan exclaimed but it was not meant as earnestly as it sounded.

  Bell grinned broadly. "I'm gradually beginning to like you again, Perry..."

  Rhodan thought for a moment, then said: "It's not enough, just saying yes—you have to want to do it."

  I understand!" Bell was suddenly serious. "Thomas should have had my father as his parent for awhile. He was a high official in the police department but when he laid me over his knee... Boyoboy that was a painful lesson for me! Well, that's yesterday's meal. I'm going to see Mercant now."

  "But don't forget the conference with the mutants at 16:10!"

  "So you're sticking with Project Solten even though you don't know who gave you the idea?" Bell asked, penetratingly once more.

  "For the time being, anyway!"

  Not long after, Bell was sitting across from Solar Marshal Allan D. Mercant, Chief of Solar Defense. The technical side of calling the gigantic positronicon on Arkon 3 was being discussed; just then, Bell was explaining his observations to the attentively listening Mercant: "Perry rules hypnotic or suggestive influence out. But I can't forget my case, Mercant, and I just remembered..."

  "Hmm... Thora and the recommendation she made long ago of flying to the planet Honur. I understand you, Reggie. You have no objections if I inform John Marshall so that he can undertake some security measures?"

  Mercant expressed himself very hesitantly; Bell was of quite a different mind.

  "I agree completely. Perry will blow up if he finds out we're having him watched but better safe than sorry. If he wants to kick up a row about it, let him! All that, Mercant, simply because of—"

  Mercant suddenly groaned and raised his arms in defense. "Bell, put that thumb away! You'll make the entire Milky Way go crazy by New Year's!"

  Reginald Bell looked at the tip of his right thumb with some interest. "Atlan is someone else who gets nervous when I show him my thumb tip. It's nice that there are such simple ways to warn people so effectively."

  With that, Bell left, leaving the thoughtful Defense Chief behind. Half aloud, Mercant wondered: "What did Tubby mean by that? Does he believe in this hocus-pocus himself or is it simply his way of making sure we aren't asleep at the switch? He's perfectly normal otherwise but he's had this pea in his pod, ever since last New Year's..."

  He was not being quite fair to Bell: Rhodan's second-in-command was simply afraid of the year 2044, now coming to an end, and was showing his fear in a manner characteristic for him.

  • • •

  Enre, a giant more than two meters tall with a pockmarked face and uncombed hair and clad only in a simple robe, stared at the sine curves on the oscillograph.

  Enre was Archetz' best hypercom specialist and along with his clan he had become rich over the past decades by way of various inventions in the field of hypercommunications.

  Now he turned his head and looked mistrustfully at Olgall. "There's a constant hypercom sine curve on the screen and you mean to tell me you can't get anything intelligible out of it?"

  Olgall's expression was reminiscent of someone with a toothache. "Intelligible?" he demanded. "Intelligible? What we're getting doesn't exist—it's never existed! It's the howl of star devils! Listen...!"

  Angrily he set the switch to High.

  At the same time an unimaginable noise was suddenly to be heard. It was not a whining, nor a rustling of magnetic field disturbance, nor crackling, nor howling of heterodyning, mutually interfering waves; nor was it a distorted impulse, nor even a distorted radiating effect, which appeared only rarely in hypercom traffic but which for unexplained reasons broadcast the telecom signal in all directions except the one into which it was supposed to be sent.

  In the large subterranean hypercom station on the planet Archetz, the star devils seemed to be really having a get together and were loudly shouting in their own language.

  "Turn it off! Turn it off!" screamed Enre, holding his ears.

  Olgall smiled in self-satisfaction. He turned the hypercom speaker off and asked ironically: "Well now, was I lying to you?"

  Enre was boiling. "Give me that entire tape!" he rasped.

  The tape was a short punched strip taken out of the receiving positronicon. Enre shoved it into the telecom evaluator more quickly than he needed to. The evaluator transformed the impulses into a visible diagram on its positronic optical system. Only an expert could make sense of the apparent confusion of symbols showing countless relationships.

  Enre concentrated on it. Then he made it visible again, went from there to the wave-oscillographs, saw again the typical telecom amplitudes, and said, helplessly and not at all sure of himself: "But it's all normal, Olgall."

  "My earache isn't at all normal, Enre," Olgall answered bitingly. "I wouldn't be very much concerned by all this, except for the fact that it's an exchange between the Robot Regent and Terra."

  Enre drew the robe more closely around him. Olgall's alarm had torn him out of his sleep. Now only his tangled hair testified to that. He was now more awake than he had ever been in his entire life; he was on the alert now and he watched his own thoughts carefully.

  "One more time..."

  But even that offered no points of reference.

  "Should I play again?" asked Olgall. "But I'm leaving once it starts!"

  Enre showed no signs of wanting to strain his sense of hearing again. He looked thoughtfully at Olgall.

  Now he said, hesitantly: "I wonder if we'd get any further if we had the Terran brought in?"

  "Rhodan's son?" asked Olgall, astonished.

  "Yes. Perhaps he can give us some idea what kind of new encoding technique the Terrans are using.
Of course, if it's something on the Robot Brain's part, then he won't be able to tell us anything." Olgall cradled his head. "Patriarch Cokaze supposedly doesn't think too highly of this Cardif any more, Enre. I doubt if he'd let Cardif out for this purpose..."

  "Let out?" echoed the astounded hypercom expert. "Does that mean...?"

  "So I've heard. If it's true..." Olgall shrugged.

  Enre was undecided. "Olgall, for the purpose of comparison, give me another strip of tape of about the same length..."

  Olgall grinned. "Already did, Enre! But here it is, anyway!"

  Olgall had been right. Neither on the wave oscillograph nor on the telecom evaluator did the two simultaneously examined hypercom messages show any difference. An idea suddenly shot through Enre's mind. "Olgall, these Terrans have been covering their messages with a phono-variabler! An old, old trick!"

  Olgall was by now past being surprised. Exhausted by this intercepted telecom transmission, he had given up all hope of being able to decipher similar hypercom messages in the foreseeable future. "What is a phono-variabler? Never heard of it!"

  "A device that alters sounds. For example, it might change an A to a deep bass U, or the same consonant could go to a high-pitched treble one second and be changed to a croaking sound the next."

  Olgall simply had no desire to waste any more time with the undecipherable message. "I'll leave that to you, Enre! I'm not familiar with the phono-variabler and if the Terrans are letting it work according to the positronic laws of random factors... Well, have fun, Enre, with 123,000,000 possibilities. I..."

  Olgall grabbed Enre by the arm and pointed to the receiver, which was still tuned to the Robot Brain's hyper-frequency.

  Their station was just then intercepting a new exchange between Terra and Arkon 3.

  Enre tore himself free and stood before the control panel, looking at three instruments. It was as if his eyes were burning holes into them. Satisfaction grew in his eyes. At the same time, the computer was operating silently, searching for the pulse-burst and scrambler timing of the telecom transmission. "But no figures for a phono-variabler..." Olgall heard the expert say in disappointment.

  Then came comparisons of figures. The pulse-burst and scrambler timing were calculated again to the 5th decimal place. A small device stretched the brief short-impulse to its normal length; at the same time, the scrambling was compensated for. Now the wave-oscillograph needed only to be switched on. Then—

  "Stop!" cried Olgall, hitting the main power switch with his fist. "This isn't at all easy to bear. What have these Terrans invented this time?"

  "Or the Arkonides!" added Enre.

  At that, Olgall had to object. "Them? Never! But now I'm also in favor of bringing Rhodan's son here. If anyone can point us in the right direction, he's the one. Will you go to Cokaze, Enre?"

  • • •

  At the same time, Reginald Bell's capacity for premonition was working unusually well. After his second hypercom exchange with Arkon 3, he had himself taken back to the administration skyscraper. In his pocket was a mass of information about the Soltenites but he was not thinking of it. His thoughts instead revolved around the Springers, whom he called space gypsies when he was disposed to speaking unkindly of them.

  Evidently they amused him now for he was laughing silently to himself. He was so pleased that he was even rubbing his hands together and nodding, but even so, he did not dare give free rein to his fantasies.

  How was he to have known that both his hypercom messages to Arkon 3, beamed in Negative Procedure, had caused the Revolutionary Consortium on Archetz to be thrown into most extreme agitation?

  • • •

  Enre stood before a 12-member assembly of patriarchs, 145 kilometers beneath the surface of Archetz. It was two o'clock in the morning, Standard Time. All 12 patriarchs had been called from their warm beds but not one of them wanted to go back to sleep now.

  Their gaze was trained on Enre's lips. The most important hypercom expert of the Galactic Traders did not understand in the first place why the revolutionary council had been alarmed nor did he understand in the second place why his report caused such excitement among the experienced patriarchs.

  Atual and Ortece, the two proprietors of the Bank of Galactic Traders in Titon on Archetz, whispered with each other. Patriarch Cokaze, who had not been able to tolerate the two men ever since the day he had to put pressure on them, watched their whispered conversation with steadily growing discomfort but still listened to what Enre had to say.

  Cokaze nudged Gatru, who sat to his right. Patriarch Gatru was owner of the most modem underground factories, in which from 10 to 30 cylindrical spacers were mass-produced daily.

  "The bankers..." was all Cokaze whispered.

  Gatru muttered grimly and also began to covertly watch the two bankers.

  The leadership of the overthrow movement consisted of 12 patriarchs who had not given up their plan of destroying the power of the Arkonides and replacing the Arkon Imperium with a Springer empire.

  But 12 men did not sit at the horseshoe-shaped table: there were 13. The 13th was Perry Rhodan's son, Thomas Cardif, an officer of the Solar Fleet who had deserted and become Rhodan's most dangerous enemy.

  For his father he had only deadly hate. He saw in him the murderer of his mother, Thora! A vile rumor that had suddenly turned up on Pluto had found its way even to Rhodan's son, and when the Druuf battle was in progress around the Earth, he had taken advantage of the opportunity to leave the iceworld of Pluto and make contact with the patriarch Cokaze.

  He had only one goal: to destroy Rhodan!

  And he had the ability to reach his goal because he was Rhodan's son!

  Cokaze had been the first Galactic Trader to recognize Thomas Cardif's value. The bankers had sensed it when Cardif forced them to suddenly unleash the inflation and economic collapse within the Imperium. The Bank, as the Springers called it, was in relation to its capital and influence 100 times stronger than the State Bank of Arkon.

  The first blow against the Imperium had seemed to be right on target but then came the completely unexpected attack of a Druuf fleet of 3,000 ships over Archetz, which had turned the surface of this important planet into an expanse of rubble.

  Only one had not been deterred by it: Thomas Cardif! He had put his entire being into action by driving the Springers on to the next blow but out of his total plan they had decided to implement only the part about the cell activator. The cell activator was the capsule-sized wonder device from the planet Wanderer and its power had not allowed Atlan, now the newly named Imperator Gonozal VIII, to age in 10,000 years. The Springers planned to attack Atlan and steal the activator.

  The attack had failed. Segno Kaata, the Anti, had had to give up Atlan's cell activator in a life-and-death battle.

  The attack's misfire had resulted in Cardif's falling out of favor with the patriarchs. His current presence at Enre's report was due solely to the expert's request to question Cardif about the Terrans' new coding procedure.

  Today it was Gatru who was chairman. "Cardif, what do you have to say to that?" he demanded, referring to Enre's revelations.

  Thomas Cardif was the exact double of his great father, identical in his facial features, identical in his movements and identical in his ability to look at something in its totality and make the correct judgments about it but he lacked the maturity of character, that self-mastery that had marked the young Perry Rhodan even in the US Space Force before he had entered the Stardust and flown to the Moon with Bell, Fletcher and Dr. Manoli.

  Cardif stood up. His Arkonide eyes, an inheritance from his mother Thora, looked calmly around the group.

  "Terra's new coding method is unknown to me. In my opinion, it is not a world-shaking event. But utmost attention should be paid to the fact that Terra was speaking directly to the Brain although Atlan was on the Crystal World at the time..."

  "Thank you! Gatru interrupted him sharply. "We did not ask you to give us your suggestions. We onl
y wanted to hear what you know about the new coding method."

  Thomas Cardif smiled. His reddish eyes flashed briefly. His mouth was open for a sharp retort, then he closed it quickly and sat down again. He continued to look at Gatru long after he had sat but in an indescribable manner—in a mixture of mockery, anger and pity.

  Gatru, a king among the Springer clans and one of the Bank’s best customers, ice-cold, a businessman and heavy-industrialist, did not long tolerate Cardif's stare. While Fugir, a patriarch of the united Alton-Fugir clans, asked questions of Enre, Gatru turned to one of the robots and ordered in a harsh voice: "Take him out of here!"

  Ortece and Atual, heads of the Bank, brought forth thin, reserved grins as Thomas Cardif was pulled out of his seat by two steel robot arms and dragged out.

  Cokaze, torn between conflicting emotions, was the only one who did not agree with this development. The false grins of the bankers irritated him so much that he became angry and in that condition he turned to Gatru. "Was that necessary? Don't you really know this Terran yet?"

  Gatru answered shamelessly: "If you want to make us think you're a fool, Cokaze, go right ahead! But we've stopped being fools a long time ago! Didn't your stay on Terra agree with you?"

  Cokaze's trimmed beard trembled. He balled his fists. In his eyes blazed the fire of anger but the old patriarch did not explode.

  "Blind mole!" and with that he leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. He had allowed himself to insult the richest patriarch on Archetz and he knew that he was able to allow himself to do so. Behind him stood all the patriarchs who spent their lives flying between the stars on their clanships, and every single Galactic Springer saw his fellow Springer who lived on Archetz as a blind mole. It was the worst insult that could be applied to an inhabitant of Archetz.

  Gatru whirled about in his seat. His eyes became slits. His hands prepared to reach for Cokaze but then the mocking, superior look in the eyes of the old Springer forced him to withdraw them.