Cosmic Traitor Read online

Ishibashi's mind and imaginative powers were transformed in Levtan's consciousness as his own experience and knowledge. They lost their extraneous quality and became one with the pariah.

  Levtan saw in his mind Rhodan's fortifications on Venus with their vast caverns hidden in mountains and excavations stretching for hundreds of miles, the gigantic spaceship manufacturing plants and factories pouring out incredible numbers of fighter robots and weapons on their conveyors.

  And Kitai Ishibashi's imagery conjured up pictures of gigantic Venusian spaceports, sunk deep below the surface of the soil and protected by defense screens and immense gates behind miles of rock, holding more than 100 cruisers of the Terra and Solar System class as well as 22 spherical spacers, looking exactly like Stardust II .

  Perry studied Kitai Ishibashi closely. The mutant seemed to be asleep. He sat in his chair, leaning slightly with hands folded and eyes closed. No sign in his face indicated the enormous effort with which he labored.

  Eventually Ishibashi opened his eyes and gave Rhodan at the same time a hint that it was now his turn as Head of the New Power to take over Levtan's guidance.

  Perry glanced at his watch. Only a minute had elapsed since Ishibashi had started the treatment of the Springer who now woke up from his state of suggestion and answered the last question he had heard from Rhodan before the 'treatment'.

  "Yes," the Head of the New Power replied quietly. "You can start in three days, Levtan. I believe we've worked out a good deal together, don't you?"

  Perry Rhodan knew exactly what Levtan saw in his mind. The outcast of the Springers saw in a figment of his imagination the fortress on Venus, more than a hundred cruisers and 22 spherical battleships a half mile big—an armada in fighting trim.

  He contrasted the value of this information with the importance of his own treachery and decided to agree with Rhodan's question. However even now his cunning nature came to the fore again. "But you've also gained other advantages, Perry Rhodan. Your robots have spied in every nook and cranny of my ship. I bet you've found many things on board which were new to you."

  "You still have too high an opinion of yourself, Levtan. Megalomania is the last step down the road of disaster."

  "It's easy for you to talk with your 22 ships of the Stardust class," Levtan said acrimoniously, plain envy in his eyes, but in the next moment he was again the smooth-talking operator versed in every trick of the trade. "Well, anyway I got out of a jam. You said I may leave in three days?"

  "You must leave, Levtan. Your four sick men have recovered and will be discharged from the hospital today."

  "Tomorrow, sir!" Kitai Ishibashi interjected. He felt so exhausted that he was unwilling to go through another session like this the same day. He knew that it would disturb Rhodan's time plan and felt relieved when Rhodan quickly corrected himself.

  "I get it," Levtan replied with a stealthy look. "I'm being thrown out! That's about what I had expected on Earth!"

  • • •

  Dr. Frank Haggard summoned the entire crew of the LEV XIV for an examination in the dispensary. Only Levtan was excused—he had already received his treatment.

  One of the clan grumbled about the vaccinations: "What are these shots for?"

  Haggard gave him a little lecture. Each shot lasted a minute. This was enough time for Kitai Ishibashi to apply his Strata Method.

  Ishibashi himself became the last patient. So far he had no resemblance to one of the roving star gypsies. Calmly he laid down on the operating table and placed himself in the capable hands of Dr. Haggard and his Arkonide medical science. He had already made sure that nobody on the LEV XIV would give it another thought when the fourth of the patients would leave the hospital one day later and return to the ship. The last thing Kitai Ishibashi heard before the anesthesia took full effect was the sound of music from an unreal world.

  4/ TO GOSZUL'S PLANET

  Three weeks after its landing on Earth the LEV XIV lifted off the Terranian spaceport again and ascended slowly into the cloudless sky over the Gobi Desert.

  Levtan the Springer, who had been expelled from the community of clans of the Galactic traders, now left Earth with a crew increased by four men to betray Perry Rhodan!

  The Galactic Interception was in full swing!

  • • •

  As the LEV XIV grew smaller in the distance the protective screen around the city of Terrania with its two million inhabitants closed again and there was not the slightest hint pointing to an alarm until Rhodan called for it.

  Take-off time was announced in the command centers of his four super-battleships. Blastoff in two hours!

  Seldom had the speculation about the destination of their flight been so unsubstantiated as today. "Proceed to Pluto's orbit!" were Rhodan's instructions.

  This was the same course Levtan's ship had taken. Did Perry Rhodan want to follow the pariah from a safe distance to find out where the LEV XIV was heading? Did he, in the final analysis, mistrust the knowledge his telepaths had gleaned from the recesses of Levtan's brain and did he after all have doubts about the impending conclave of the patriarchs in system 221-Tatlira?

  221-Tatlira. No system was listed under this name in the extensive star catalogue of Stardust II. However they had found its reference data in the catalogue of LEV XIV .

  At take-off Perry Rhodan manned the controls of the Stardust himself and the Centurio, the Terra and the Solar System followed in its wake. The speed was kept lower than light. There was an air of tension in the ships. Nobody was accustomed to such crawling.

  Four men of the Mutant Corps were missing: John Marshall, the telepath; the teleporter Tako Kakuta; Kitai Ishibashi, the suggestor; and the reticent Tama Yokida, who was never suspected by the uninitiated to be a telekineticist with improbable capabilities.

  Perry Rhodan didn't allow the question concerning their whereabouts to be broached. He had become a pole radiating calmness all around him. Only one person didn't believe in his inner calm: Reginald Bell. But he kept silent.

  Feverish excitement simmered inside Rhodan, and he resembled a volcano close to eruption. The Chief of the New Power was now embarked on his greatest and most dangerous enterprise. During Earth's history its fate had never hung on such a thin thread!

  The rangefinders of the Stardust kept a close check on the mercantile ship. Rhodan's four ships came to a stop near Pluto's orbit and remained motionlessly suspended in space. "We'll be waiting here," Rhodan declared laconically."

  He stood in front of the big positronic computer and glanced thoughtfully now and then at Ron's expansive control panel. Everyone gave the boss a wide berth, Bell included.

  Something was definitely in the air—or was Rhodan only waiting for the transition of the trading ship to take place?"

  Suddenly the structure sensor registered a hytrans jump and Rhodan quickly demanded all data. when he received them he submitted them to the positronic computer at once. Bell and the others watched him work. They were at a loss to understand Rhodan's hasty but nonetheless most precise efforts.

  Rhodan switched the lever connecting the computer of the Stardust with those on board the three other cruisers. When the result was emitted it was simultaneously received on the Terra, the Solar System and the Centurio .

  "Hytrans in three seconds!" Rhodan snapped into the mike.

  The count automatically began on all four ships. The mechanical computer Ron performed thousands of switching operations on each ship and they leaped as a coordinated group into hyperspace at the same instant.

  Under an incredible discharge of energy the mighty spherical ships left the normal universe through hyperspace and zero-time, phenomenons which still defied man's comprehension, and were hurled across enormous distances, materializing again in the familiar space-time continuum.

  As always Perry Rhodan was the first to awake from the twilight zone of impaired consciousness and to shake off the shock of transition. He immediately checked the most important instruments while the others slowly retur
ned to reality.

  "Sun-like system. Distance 1012 light-years from Earth. Seven planets. One of them, the second closest, is Goszul's Planet according to the catalogue of the Springers." Perry Rhodan pointed to the large panoramic screen of the Stardust where one star outshone all other suns.

  He noticed Bell's questioning look.

  "Object spotted!" an excited voice sounded at this moment.

  Rhodan turned calmly to the officer at the rangefinder. "If it's only a single object it must be the LEV XIV. Levtan is on his way to Goszul's Planet to reveal the strength of our baffle fleet to the patriarchs of the trader clans. Is it only one body?"

  "That's all, sir!" the man stuttered, overwhelmed by Rhodan's certainty. "It's moving at 150,000 miles per second toward the second planet. But..."

  "But what?" Rhodan asked curtly.

  "What about our transition jump, sir? The Springers must have picked up the space disturbance caused by us!"

  Perry Rhodan walked over and stood behind him, putting his hand on his shoulder. He said with a force that was almost hypnotic: "The LEV XIV had to traverse the distance of over 1000 light-years in two jumps. The second jump of the LEV XIV and our own jump coincided. If we're lucky the traders have noticed only one transition and when they see the pariah, they'll assume that he came alone!"

  Luck was with them.

  5/ HUMAN TIME BOMB

  Levtan shuddered when he recognized the flaming star 221-Tatlira after he had pulled out of the shock of the second transition. He was gripped by panic and fear of the patriarchs leading the Galactic traders because he had been banned from their society when they accused him of being a scoundrel.

  He approached the second planet at 80% of the speed of light, turning a deaf ear to the members of his clan. With a distorted face he kept staring at his instruments. He didn't know whether he was flying to his death or into a new life of acceptance in the community of the traders.

  "Leave me alone!" he barked at his nephew who sat in the seat of the co-pilot. "I'm flying the ship! This is my ship and I'm the Commander!"

  His shouting could be heard three doors away. Adjacent to the command center a luxurious room was occupied by seven men. The room was equipped with all the comforts, owing to the generosity of Perry Rhodan. His mutants had chosen it for themselves and Kitai Ishibashi had no trouble suggesting to Levtan that he offer it to them.

  Unobtrusively they exchanged glances. "The old man is slowly coming unglued," John Marshall

  commented lazily, fiddling with the fine adjustment control of his picture screen.

  "I hope we can pull it off," Kakuta worried. He had discovered a few points on the observation screen which had not been present a few seconds before.

  "Here they come!" they heard Levtan bellow in the command center.

  "I count six of them," Tako Kakuta stated.

  They made no comment but Levtan shouted: "A battleship, a battleship!"

  The amplifiers on the LEV XIV were turned up to the highest volume and everybody on board could hear in the farthest corners the query from the battleship: "Please identify your ship by number and clan!"

  Levtan was swamped by a new wave of panic. Instead of replying and stating the purpose of his flight, he veered from his course to port and accelerated to maximum velocity.

  A brilliant beam flashed from the depth of space aiming savagely at the LEV XIV. But it was a lucky hour in the stars for the pariah and he was thankful that his abrupt change of course had saved him and his ship from being turned into a cloud of gas.

  The next shot from the battleship also went wild Levtan turned his ship upside down, twisting and dodging. The seven men in the cabin next to the command center held their breath. They saw the sun 221-Tatlira swirl across the observation screen and disappear at the upper border.

  "Let me see how bad the weather is," John Marshall said and got up.

  "Bundle yourself up!" warned Dorget, one of the clan.

  "I want to go with you," Kitai Ishibashi spoke up, walking around two men and slipping into the corridor with Marshall.

  They looked at each other. Nobody in his right mind could have foreseen such an incident, not even Perry Rhodan.

  Suddenly the protective screens of the LEV XIV were caught in a devastating beam from the battleship. For a split second the energy for the ship's gravity regulator was cut off and every man in the spacer felt as though he were breaking apart under the enormous pressures.

  The danger point passed but two of the three protective fields of the mercantile spacer were knocked out of operation. The curses in the engine room became strong and audible.

  "Levtan is crazed by fear. He no longer knows what he's doing," Marshall told the Suggestor and tried to tune in again immediately on the treacherous Springer's thoughts.

  Kitai Ishibashi wondered whether the fault could be his. Perhaps he had failed to keep Levtan long enough in the state of deep suggestion.

  "I must go to the command center," Marshall whispered to his comrade, jumping out of Levtan's nephew's way as he came cursing out of the command center and stormed down the corridor to the engine room.

  The hatch door to the command center had not yet moved back again when John Marshall entered. Nobody paid attention to him as they all stared at the observation screen. There were four men present in the room besides Levtan.

  Marshall realized that the mind of the desperate captain was filled with pure panic and a mad whirl of disconnected thought fragments." If Kitai Ishibashi didn't intervene at once with his special powers, the LEV XIV could disintegrate any minute.

  New flashes blinked in three spots on the screen as the other destroyers jumped into the fray. They were far superior to Levtan's ship in every respect.

  Suddenly one of Levtan's closest relatives leaped forward, pulled him out of his seat and yelled into his twisted face: "You damn coward! Why don't you tell them who we are and why we came? Do you want us to be blown up, you fool?"

  A blinding light burst on the screen and blotted out John Marshall's sight. Luckily it was no direct hit, only a ray in close proximity.

  "Start talking!" the man kept yelling at Levtan and grabbed his head with both hands, pushing him in front of the hypercom microphone. "Tell 'em!"

  Marshall heard Perry Rhodan's name mentioned and that he talked about the base on Venus and the terrific fleet of heavy cruisers as well as the 22 super-battleships of the Stardust class.

  Outside the hatch of the command center stood Kitai Ishibashi. He seemed to dream. Not a muscle in his face indicated that he intervened with his power in the struggle which threatened them with instant death. His tremendous suggestive forces leaped across 25,000 miles, penetrated the protective screen of the space battleship and bored into the brain of its commander.

  Kitai Ishibashi didn't know that Levtan had already mentioned Perry Rhodan's name in his stammering. He was surprised to see how easy it was to influence the Commander. He virtually could feel it in his body that his mental defenses waned and that he almost eagerly absorbed the ideas he suggested to him.

  Relentlessly he pounded into the mind of the battleship's commander to give his instructions to the other destroyers to cease their attacks.

  Again Kitai Ishibashi applied his Strata Method. Though this procedure somewhat delayed the effect, it had the advantage that the layers, once they were built up homogeneously, were not felt as a foreign intrusion. The Commander genuinely believed he acted without coercion when he passed his orders to the destroyers via telecom: "Cease attack! Escort Levtan and wait for permission to land!"

  Levtan's scream from the command center woke Kitai Ishibashi from his dream state. He breathed heavily, rubbed his eyes and walked in a stooped gait back to his cabin.

  "Well," the teleporter Kakuta greeted him. "How's the weather?"

  Blandly, as if he had indeed checked it, Kitai Ishibashi replied: "It's better now but it won't last long."

  • • •

  The skirmish between the shi
ps of the traders had taken place far from the Stardust and the three cruisers, too distant to be seen on their huge picture screens. However the distance didn't exceed the range of their sensitive measuring instruments and the needles deflected wildly each time a disintegrator beam was shot at the LEV XIV .

  Deadly silence reigned in the command center of the Stardust. Perry Rhodan stood like a statue before the big panel and watched the array of instruments.

  "Why doesn't Kitai Ishibashi lift a hand?" he asked with utter dismay. What could have brought on Levtan's absurd and frantic behavior and bow could he have been so stupid as to refuse to identify his ship when the battleship of the Springers challenged him?

  Then they recognized Levtan's voice and his babbling on the hypercom.

  "That miserable wretch!" Bell thundered.

  The cowardice of the pariah threatened the debacle of Perry Rhodan's Galactic Interception and imperiled the life of his four best mutants.

  Five more disintegrator beams lunged ferociously at the LEV XIV. Perry held his breath involuntarily as he kept his eyes glued to three instruments set close together. Would the next deflection be even stronger and show that the LEV XIV was dissolved into a cloud of gas?

  Again the hypercom registered a call: "Cease attack! Escort Levtan and wait for permission to land!"

  Somebody in the command center was muttering: "And after the landing they're going to break down our mutants and make mincemeat out of them!"

  Perry Rhodan whirled around to the speaker. The young officer who had made the remark was bent with reddened face over his console.

  Rhodan became aware that he had not even informed Bell about his plan. "Our mutants won't be broken down," he explained quietly and his grey eyes twinkled a little. "The crew of the LEV XIV is under the constraint of suggestion and is not cognizant of the fact that they have four more men on board. You may rest assured that our men look just like their own gang."

  The observer reported: "Flotilla with LEV XIV on course to second planet!" But now the nerve-wracking tension in the command center of the Stardust had subsided.