Shadow of the Mutant Master Read online

  Finally he somehow located a public bath and enjoyed the pleasure of washing the dirt off his skin. As he recovered from his ordeal in the warm tub, his clothes were cleaned and pressed with utmost care. They were ready and waiting for him in his cabin when he emerged with a shiny red skin and smelling pleasantly from the scented soap.

  Before he could finish dressing he received a mental warning when two Arkonide agents entered the baths. As they were shown to his cabin by the man at the service desk, Lloyd got away unnoticed through another exit, leaving the agents empty-handed.

  • • •

  Using tricks he had learned from the Arkonides, Fellmer Lloyd disguised his face so well that not even Perry Rhodan would have recognized him at first glance. In addition he put on other clothes which made him look like a spaceport worker, as he was anxious to take a closer look at Kuklon's landing field.

  He kept wondering about Ralph Sikeron's entry in his calendar on July 8! ...shipped on Klo-22 to Orro, Mutant Master.

  An air taxi took him to the spaceport. The huge administration building was illuminated by a flood of light and large areas of the landing pads were lit bright as day. Spherical Arkonide spaceships took off and landed but the cylindrical ships of the rich Springer clans were preponderant on the scene. Here and there spaceships of different construction from other worlds could be seen between them. A colorful variety of alien races arrived here at Volat or departed the planet with the warm and humid tropical climate.

  The Galactic traders occupied at least one third of the administration building. The section of the Aras, the galactic medical specialists, was almost inconspicuous, whereas the Arkonides had arranged their departments with military utility.

  Fellmer Lloyd went to the office floor of the Arkonides. A tall Arkonide girl took his request for information and passed it on. She scrutinized him unabashedly while they waited for the answer from the archives. "Do you speak the Arkonide language, Prebonian?" she asked after awhile.

  The mutant quickly analyzed her thoughts and what he learned was rather unpleasant. The girl doubted that he was a Prebonian and believed he was one of the degenerate Tregglians who were suspected by Arkon of conspiring against the Great Empire and to be in cahoots with some unknown shrewd connivers.

  Lloyd answered in excellent Arkonide, radiating friendliness and showing the greatest interest. Her behavior changed at once when she heard her mother tongue. She was utterly surprised by his perfect command of the language and that he spoke without an accent. "A few days ago I spoke to another Prebonian," she said. "He asked... Wait a minute, didn't you also inquire about the Klo-22?"

  "Yes of course. I'm waiting for the answer from the archives concerning the same vessel but this is no coincidence. My friend from Prebon has disappeared in Kuklon. The last entry in his notebook referred to the Klo-22 which was to take a cargo to Orro."

  "I seem to recall a ship by that name," the girl reflected. "I believe it stopped here for a few hours last week. Now it comes back to me. Your friend inquired about the Klo-22 and when he received the information and left, he was followed by three mean-looking Springers. Later a rumor was heard that a man was murdered between the spaceport and the city and that his body had vanished." The Arkonide girl realized for the first time that there could be a connection between the murder and the incident last week that she had described.

  Lloyd followed her thoughts telepathically and put her mind at ease with his sympathetic expression. He continued using the Arkonide language and suggested: "Your conclusions could be close to the truth. Would I be asking too much or could you tell me what these three obnoxious Springers looked like?"

  He had a faint hope that the girl might have one of those photographic memories which would enable her to remember faces regardless of how fleetingly she had seen them.

  Then he saw a bright look on the girl's face. "Wait a minute, Prebonian," she said and left the room.

  In the meantime he received the information from the Record Department that on the 8th of July the cargo ship Klo-22 had arrived from the Mgt system and went on after three hours to the planet Orro with a load of 51,365 Klodexal. Before leaving, the captain of the spaceship had tried to reach the broker in vain.

  Fellmer Lloyd was amazed that Ralph Sikeron had actually been able to make a transport deal in a few days and that the entry in his calendar was not fictitious. However it was now clear to him that the cue 'Mutant Master' had nothing to do with this business but was the result of an important discovery by the mutant.

  The pretty Arkonide girl, who was so happy to be able to talk with a stranger in her own language, returned. She had impulsively broken the rules and thereby revealed a secret of the Arkonide surveillance methods: Every person who visited an Arkon office inside the spaceport was unknowingly photographed.

  "Is he the one?" she asked Fellmer Lloyd and showed him the picture of the missing mutant. And when he acknowledged it, she continued: "And here, in the right corner, are those three unpleasant Springers. Do you know them?"

  Fellmer Lloyd recognized one of them. It was the spindly Jidif!

  As he tried to control his excitement, he felt a strange emptiness in his head. Why was his mental sensor not functioning?

  Before he fully realized the danger of this symptom, the feeling of emptiness vanished again but the tiny second brought home to the cosmic agent that there were things going on on Volat which were outside the realm of normalcy.

  5/ SUPRANATURAL POWERS

  With undisguised disappointment the friendly Arkonide girl followed the Prebonian with her eyes as he suddenly left, barely thanking her for her kindness.

  Fellmer Lloyd was in a high state of alarm. An unknown force had tried to take possession of his mind.

  He ruled out the Arkonide agents who pursued him as they assumed he was the Prebonian murderer they were looking for and he eliminated the Galactic traders with whom he had clashed at Uxlad House. A person with telepathic or other supranatural abilities was after him!

  And now it struck again and with ever more significant force: Mutant Master!

  Was that what Ralph Sikeron had meant? Could this supranatural power be present in Volat? Due to the discipline learned in Rhodan's school, Lloyd didn't obey his impulse to return to his Gazelle and flee from Volat in panic.

  Instead he drew the inevitable conclusions from the existence of this supranatural power on Volat which obviously had resulted in the murder of his colleague Ralph Sikeron but not before the unknown mentalist had extracted all the knowledge he was interested in from the victim's brain. Now the true facts were known to some one on Volat. Rhodan was no longer presumed to have perished with the Titan in space. They knew that Terra still was intact and they had learned the secret of the Solar System's location in the Galaxy!

  This explained the warning Three Bells and now Mutant Master.

  Ralph Sikeron must have had a premonition of his death and it must have been the reason he carried his miniature hyper-transmitter which enabled him to send his coded warning signal only seconds before his death.

  • • •

  Fellmer Lloyd had returned for a quick visit to his Gazelle. He had changed his equipment and was now on his way to the wild forest after completing his preparations.

  Ralph Sikeron had given him an urgent hint through Kuri Onere to get in touch with the Omniscient Mother and he decided to make every effort to meet these people who had developed from a race of insects to highly intelligent beings even though they still looked like insects.

  He had already learned many essential facts about the Volatians by hypno-training and he knew that they had no language in the usual sense. They communicated with each other using ultra-high frequencies far above 100,000 Hertz which could not be heard by human or Arkonide ears. The Volatians produced these frequencies in the 100,000 Hz range with their feelers which they thus used not only as tactile organs but also for the purpose of transmitting and receiving communication signals.

  Withou
t asking, Lloyd had borrowed a fast little craft at the spaceport and landed it a few miles from the edge of the forest in a swamp. Now he struggled through the forest on foot, his formidable thermo-gun in one hand and his shock-beamer in the other. He had not forgotten his encounter with the monstrous salamander.

  When night fell he had barely penetrated 30 kilometers deep into the primordial forest.

  Volat was as big as Mars. The continent on which Kuklon was situated was about four times the size of Europe. Two-thirds of it was covered by a jungle-like forest in which the peculiar towns of the Volatians and the abode of the Omniscient Mother was supposed to be located.

  Lloyd dozed all through the night in a state that did not impair his ability to react instantly. He flicked his searchlight on three times during his rest in order to fight off two attacks by meter-long nocturnal insects.

  At dawn he breakfasted on concentrated food pills and continued his trek. During the next hour he walked five kilometers but then the forest became a badly matted jungle and Lloyd would have been unable to penetrate it further without his thermo-beamer.

  He kept a worried eye on the energy consumption of the weapon but the little converter in the stock of the energy-gun was so efficient that the mark showed the highest value.

  A huge maggot blocked his way and he raised his beamer to shoot when he noticed that an arrow was impaled in the 10-foot-long body of the black-green maggot. It dragged itself on by means of 30 pairs of stunted legs, wheezing like a whistle.

  Lloyd didn't move. He observed the arrow, noticed its unusual construction but couldn't remember having seen anything similar before.

  Suddenly he picked up alien brainwave patterns. Volatians!

  He waited to discern them, turning around on his spot but all he could see was the twilight of the jungle, the dark ground and a few rays of light piercing the roof of dense leaves.

  The forest remained silent. The Volatians whom he had sensed from a distance of 30 meters also failed to make the slightest move.

  Lloyd intensified his sensing efforts. He realized he was at a disadvantage compared to the audio-monitor Ralph Sikeron who was able to hear the speech of the Volatians by perceiving directly their 100,000 Hertzian frequencies. The best he could do was decipher the brainwave patterns and interpret their meaning.

  Then he muttered in dismay as he noticed that the Volatians retreated deeper into the forest, abstaining from making contact with him.

  Lloyd had so far only determined their presence but now he tried desperately to get in touch with them by telepathic methods and he was astounded to discover that the Volatians had thoughts resembling human concepts.

  Unfortunately his connection with the aborigines of Volat broke off almost immediately after they had been established. They silently withdrew about three times faster than he could proceed and they neglected to recover their game.

  The enormous, repulsive-looking maggot was killed by a poisonous dart and expired a few steps behind Lloyd.

  • • •

  One hour later, the airspace above the forest was in a turbulent uproar and Lloyd was forced to crawl into the stinking burrow of a large animal in order to protect himself temporarily from the searchlights of the Arkonide reconnaissance planes. He could guess why the Arkon Administration and the Springers with the support of other colonial populations on Volat had become so active in this sector. The arrival of his Gazelle had not been observed on optical screens nor detected by their other rangefinders directly. However minute deviations disturbing the monitors had caused the positronic Brain to perform a routine evaluation of all data, leading to the conclusion that a spaceship of undetermined origin had landed on Volat and the location had been calculated with a minor tolerance.

  Lloyd listened to the whine of the Arkon engines and he could only hope that they would find neither him nor his Gazelle.

  Meanwhile his thoughts reverted again to the source of supranatural power and he was troubled by the recurring reference to the Mutant Master.

  The search of the area around him had lasted for three hours. The agent had probed the thoughts of the crews half a dozen times telepathically. His satisfaction grew when they failed to locate the Gazelle and the idea that he might be concealed in the jungle apparently never occurred to them.

  Lloyd considered this as new evidence that whoever the supranatural power might be, it had no connection with the Arkonide Administration of Volat. As he sat immobilized in the burrow permeated by the pungent animal odors, he relived again the attempt to seize his brain.

  It had lasted only a fraction of a second but it had been enough to make him realize the full extent of the danger. It was an inherent part of his biological nature as a mutant that he reacted with a feeling of emptiness in his head when an extraneous encroachment was perpetrated in the realm of his thoughts without his permission.

  "Mutant Master, aren't you dead? For heaven's sake! Can the deceased throw their shadows from the beyond?" he asked himself, murmuring in a low whisper. It was an indication of the dark fears the cosmic agent felt about the unknown enemy.

  • • •

  Lloyd's fourth morning in the forest dawned. Again he swallowed three concentrated food tablets and began to break a path through the tangled undergrowth of the tropical forest.

  He had already gained some experience with the flora. The little clearing he had just crossed had been a devil's meadow.

  Ferns had grown there but now they were gone. They had looked harmless as he approached without heeding them. However when he tried to wend his way between the ferns, their leaves suddenly became inflated like balloons. They quickly turned their dark sides toward him and sprayed him with gas.

  Other ferns close to him folded down their leg-sized stems and erected a wall of giant leaves on the ground. The sides of the leaves facing the light excreted a sticky slime in such incredible quantities that it spread a foot high over the ground.

  A rigorous training had quickened his reflexes and it enabled him to stop his breathing at the first whiff of gas. He whipped out his thermo-beamer and saved his life by eradicating the deathly trap.

  He gave one last look at the slowly hardening glassy flow in the clearing he had created. No plants would grow there this season.

  After resuming his way through the jungle he suddenly stopped in his tracks.

  He was surrounded by Volatians! Wherever there was a tiny gap in the maze of plants and tree trunks, they stood and stared at him with their hostile faceted eyes. The feelers above their eyes were in a highly excited state of continuous oscillation.

  The insect-headed Volatians stood motionless, their long insect-arms so thin it seemed they would break at the slightest touch. Their legs were not much stronger and the slender segments of their brown-black bodies looked extremely fragile as well.

  Lloyd received a flood of brainwave patterns and he realized at the same time that the Volatians could not be identified unless they desired it. But their combined efforts had the effect of a jamming station suppressing all normal broadcasts and he was inundated by their mental vibrations—which were all hostile.

  They forbade him to intrude farther into the forest. Go back! was the message they transmitted uninterruptedly from all sides.

  He slowly raised his hands and spread all fingers, trying to express his peaceful intentions.

  Go back!

  Fellmer Lloyd shook his head and concentrated on thinking: I'm staying! and I wish to see the Omniscient Mother.

  The Volatians started to move forward as if by command. They came closer and locked him in a tight ring. Their protruding facet eyes became more belligerent. Each of the Volatians raised his right arm holding a blow-tube which they used to shoot a Poison dart. This was the principal weapon of the Volatians.

  Damn! he thought, angered by his failure to start a conversation with the natives, how did Ralph Sikeron manage to make contact with them?

  Ralph Sikeron? The question swelled like a telepathic chorus f
rom all directions.

  Getlox Asargud, Lloyd thought, adding: Ralph Sikeron is Getlox Asargud!

  The bellicosity vanished from their eyes as if flicked off by a switch and the oppressive emanations from all those many Volatian brains ceased.

  He tried to impress on the creatures with increased urgency that he belonged to the same gender as Ralph Sikeron and that his trusted friend had told him to go and see the Omniscient Mother.

  He was certain of his success when he observed that a change came over the Volatians the moment he referred to the Omniscient Mother. They moved their heads in an almost human gesture of reverence and bowed their bodies.

  I must first ask my mother whether I have permission to show you the way to the Omniscient Mother!

  Fellmer didn't regard it as amusing to get this message. The society of the Volatians was matriarchal. The Omniscient Mother ruled her harmless and friendly people as hereditary queen. They lived contentedly in the wild forest, had never shown the ambition to develop a technology of their own and were happy to pursue their manifold intellectual arts and sciences.

  Fellmer Lloyd had to wait two days for the return of the Volat man. He used the time to assess his progress. He was not particularly satisfied with his achievements. There were few tangible results he could have reported to the waiting Lotus by radio, since the explanation for the reference to the Mutant Master in Ralph Sikeron's datebook still eluded him.

  And who was the Arkonide or Springer who had supranatural powers that made him the most terrifying opponent of the cosmic agent?

  Was the Omniscient Mother of the Volatians in a position to shed light on the secret?

  6/ MEETING WITH THE OMNISCIENT MOTHER

  The huge rocky plateau rose like a blunted pyramid from the bottom of the primordial forest. Its perimeter was lined with gigantic trees growing high into the sky.