Atlan in Danger Page 6

  Rhodan's idea had materialized into project Fly Swatter but only Marshall, Freyt, Mercant and Bell were able to envisage it.

  The cold composure acquired by the men after hundreds of missions could be clearly felt.

  Perry Rhodan made the decisive move: he was about to call the commander of the Druuf fleet of 3,000 ships.

  Harno, the mysterious spherical creature with the incredible ability of television, was gliding next to Rhodan. Before Rhodan could open his mouth to utter the first word of his message to the Druufs, Harno made the square, bulky body of the over-three-meters-tall Druuf commander visible. Apparently he had found him instantly among the large crews of the 3,000 ships.

  The leathery skin of the totally hairless creature gleamed brown-black in the color picture. Four eyes and the triangular mouth did not enhance the beauty of the noseless and earless round head, which measured 36 meter in diameter. But Rhodan and his men were accustomed to the frightening sight of the Druufs.

  Perry hesitated to call when he caught sight of the picture provided by Harno of the Chief of the Fleet. His body was seized by a light shiver. With the aid of that creature and his 3,000 combat vessels he intended to carry out a daring plan. But what would happen if this Druuf at some point ceased to hold to their agreements and acted on his own?

  Hundreds of reasons pointed toward that possibility. Human motives could be eliminated from the start. The mentality of the Druufs was nonhuman, descending from insects as they did. Fear of the Terran and expediency alone would perhaps make them stick to the agreement—if they arrived at any at all.

  "Sighting, sir, on yellow 18!" the lieutenant at the space tracker reported. "80 to 100 ships approaching. Speed 0.4 light; distance seven light-minutes!"

  Rhodan turned his head to the right. There stood John Marshall, chief of the mutants. Part of his Corps was on board the Drusus, the flagship of the Solar Empire.

  Marshall nodded in response to Rhodan's, glance. They had communicated telepathically and in the same manner Marshall now informed his group, taking up contact with the hypno, André Noir.

  The teleporters prepared for action. One of them was only one meter tall and looked like a cross between mouse and beaver: Pucky.

  He strapped on the little set of highly potent special bombs. One bomb ignited in a ship sufficed to turn it into a gleaming atomic sun. The set he had strapped on contained 20 bombs. The human teleporters had a double portion on their backs.

  They were only waiting for the command to jump. But they were kept waiting.

  The special tracker that measured linear hyperpropulsion alerted them to a menacing situation. Bell was standing next to the device. He reported: "400 Druuf ships exceeding speol at yellow 18. Distance about three light-days... Oh! Curses! There's another swarm of hornets less than two light-hours away, 60 ships strong!"

  "Then the time has arrived!" was Perry's comment. He shoved aside all other microphones, leaving only the microphone for the Druuf transmitter.

  "Rhodan to Chief of Druuf Fleet! Rhodan to Chief of Druuf Fleet! Come in, please! Rhodan to Chief of Druuf Fleet! Come in..."

  He repeated the call 10 times, then was silent. There was not a sound to he heard in Command Central other than the humming of picture tubes, spools and transformers. Suddenly a hissing sound could be heard, gradually becoming louder.

  The Druuf receiver was turned up to full volume by Communications Central but still only the hissing sound of unstable tension fields between the stars could be heard.

  Now Bell's voice was added. "The 400 fleet is now flying at about three times speol. Nice and fast..." There was a trace of envy because Terra did not have this fantastic linear hyper-propulsion which enabled them to move between normal and hyperspace above the speed of light and thus never have to endure the shocks of transition.

  The weapons deck reported over intercom. "Sir, I've switched all reserve power stations to the weapon towers!" The officer in charge had formed an impression of the situation based on Bell's information and was acting independently. His routine reports to Perry Rhodan often proved to be salvation from desperate situations.

  "OK!" Rhodan said. It could be heard via intercom throughout the Drusus.

  "The Druufs are speeding up even more! " Bell's voice was excited this time.

  "How fast?" Rhodan asked intently. Bell mustered the new positioner for structure shocks by linear hyper-propulsion "The thing is broken!"

  "A sighting!" an officer in Central called, pointing at the large panorama screen of the flagship. "Druuf ships reappearing in the normal universe!"

  At almost the same second the teleporters jumped over to the approaching formation of Druuf ships. But Rhodan knew only too well that this mission was not destined for a decisive victory. Confusion and unrest could be engendered in the Druufs by the mysterious destruction of a portion of their spaceships. Never, however, would this force this race of gigantic, cumbersome creatures to take flight with their entire fleet. Hence Rhodan repeated his call to the superior command.

  "Rhodan to the Chief of Druuf Fleet! Come in, please!" Rhodan to Chief of Druuf Fleet. Come in..."

  The apparatus switched from sending to receiving. Again there was only the loud hissing of fields of tension to be heard. "Sir, we are being encircled!" Rhodan was informed. He nodded absentmindedly it seemed. All preparations had been made for a flash transition but that was not what he was thinking about at that second. Nor did he have the danger in mind that was steadily approaching. There was too much involved! To win everything he had to stake everything!

  "Three men, sir..." Marshall whispered. Three minutes previously the teleporters had jumped. According to their schedule, the first bombs were to be ignited five minutes after the jump. This left a security lapse of 45 seconds to allow the teleporters to leave the ship.

  "Rhodan to Chief of Druuf Fleet! Come in, please! Rhodan to Chief of..."

  Through Harno he had been able to observe the behavior of the Druuf commander-in-chief and had seen him swivel around on his clumsy, columnar legs and head towards the device which Rhodan recognized as a transmitter.

  "Rhodan, Uong-zterds-klighf speaking, Commander-in-chief. What do you want?"

  Druuf names were all monstrous words—impossible to pronounce or remember. The humans had already determined that on their first visit in the Druuf Universe, which is why Rhodan did not make the slightest attempt to retain the name of the Druuf chief. But when his voice was suddenly made audible in the room by preset adapters, Rhodan sent a vital telepathic message to Marshall: call back the teleporters! No bombs detonated!

  Marshall only had to look at his chronometer to know that it was a race against time.

  His agent spacesuit was equipped with the same perfection as the suits of his active teleporters. Instantly John Marshall clapped his helmet shut, switched on the high output telecom of Swoon design and called his teleporters to immediately return with all bombs to the Drusus.

  The order was just crossing his lips as a squeaky voice, sounding quite irritated, asked: "And what am I to do with my bomb, since the fuse is already lit, John?"

  "Do what you can, Pucky!" Marshall sharply replied to the mouse-beaver and, sensing trouble, asked: "Where are you?"

  "On the flagship of the Druufs! Where else?"

  "Pucky, for heaven's sake, nothing must happen, there of all places..." Thereafter he could spare his words. A soft crackling sound informed him that Pucky could no longer be reached by telecom.

  Slowly Marshall opened his helmet. He could feel that his forehead was covered with perspiration.

  Meanwhile a lively conversation had developed between Rhodan and the Druuf chief. Complicated adapters on both sides were required to enable this exchange, for the Druufs did not have organs of speech in the human sense; they communicated with each other by means of ultra-high frequency which was outside the human range, employing bodily organic receivers and transmitters.

  The Druuf repeatedly inquired about Rhodan's flee
t. It must have appeared suspicious to him that they had only discovered the one, gigantic ship. It was obvious that he was thinking about the gigantic robot fleet which had compelled him to abandon the attempt to conquer the Solar System and flee to this inhospitable region of the Galaxy.

  And Rhodan repeatedly replied: "it is waiting for my orders! My fleet is tuned into our conversation!"

  He was bluffing. Rhodan could not tell whether the Druuf was picking up on his bluff. Suddenly there was a glaring flash between their two fronts. Both Rhodan and the Druuf gasped: "What was that?"

  Pucky could have told them in detail. It was the bomb exploding that was actually meant to destroy the Druuf flagship which Pucky had grabbed when the time fuse was already lit and, after a teleportation jump, hastily dropped in space.

  Pucky's special spacesuit, singed on the right side, testified to how close a call it had been. The mouse-beaver was even more explicit in his expressions when he returned "...and then I took off with the thing. There were three seconds left to the explosion! Out of the ship, into space, drop the thing! And when I was about to teleport to the Drusus..." None of the mutants laughed at Pucky's wild streak of profanity. Everyone comprehended what risk Pucky had undergone and some were honest enough to ask themselves: would you have dared to do it? And to answer the question negatively with equal honesty.

  "The explosion of the bomb and my teleporter jump must have been about a 1,000th of a second apart. OK, we lucked in once, but now I'm anxious to know how things will continue. Just take a look at how completely we've been surrounded by the Druufs!"

  The Mutant Central was a smaller version of the huge Command Central of the Drusus. There was no lack of tracking devices and screens with sliding optical magnification. Pucky was not exaggerating. If the Druufs so desired, the Drusus would soon cease to exist. There were over 2,000 Druuf ships participating in the encirclement and this concentration turned a transition into a hopeless enterprise.

  Perry Rhodan did not allow his feelings about the situation to show. "Commander-in-chief," he calmly addressed the stubborn Druuf, "your strength is your, weakness. The existence of your ships is only a matter of a few short days. You can flee wherever you want: we will not lose track of you. The chances of returning to your people in your Universe are nil."

  "Commander-in-chief, how many ships did you dispatch to the front to determine at which point you could best penetrate the overlap zone? I don't want to know the number of reconnaissance vessels but I do know that not one of them returned. And every hour that passes allows the discharge fissure to become more unstable and in proportion to its growing instability, the combat strength of the fleet is increased, thus preventing you from penetrating our Universe."

  "Words, nothing but words, Rhodan!" the Druuf interrupted. "You wished to speak with me; you have spoken with me and that is the end of our conversation."

  "And the end of you and your crews as well, Druuf!" Rhodan had changed the tenor of his approach but not his inflection. The adapters did not transmit the nuances of voice into ultra-high frequencies.

  Harno, the creature hovering exactly in Rhodan's line of vision, now showed him the awkward Druuf who was intertwining his fingers, so disproportionately delicate in relation to his massive body. The Druuf appeared to be thinking.

  "Rhodan, what do you have to offer?" The question came like a stroke of lightning from clear skies. A few officers in Com Central suppressed a startled cry.

  "Druuf, what are you prepared to give?" That was Rhodan's massive counter-question and it did make an impression on the head of the Druuf fleet, even though he could not show any human emotion. He did wave to his staff, assembled behind him, to keep silent.

  "What security do we have to guarantee that you will really provide the possibility for our return to our Universe?"

  That was the question Rhodan had been waiting for; the question that had to come!

  I will provide you with double security, Druuf," Rhodan declared unemotionally. "Give one of your ships the assignment to approach within 100 kilometers of my vessel. I will direct the ship into position."

  "That ship, but that one only, will be able to fly into your Universe. Its commander is to convince himself that he is really in his own continuum and on orders from you he is then to return to this Universe as quickly as possible."

  "I will make that possible, Druuf, and that is my first guarantee!"

  The 120-man team at the great lens field projector in the largest hangar of the Drusus was listening. 120 men waiting for the command to switch on the lens field projector, which by virtue of its power could open the portal to the Druuf Universe at all points that had once before been within an overlap zone.

  The time and locality schedule of the overlapping areas had been calculated in an inconceivably difficult communal effort in Terrania including astronomers, physicists and mathematicians.

  The bullet head of the Druuf suddenly seemed to be rigidly fixed onto his quadratic rump. Rhodan could anticipate what was now going on in this clever insect brain.

  "Druuf, an attack on my ship is pointless! With the first rays, the device that would enable the return to your Universe self-destructs."

  The commander of the 3,000 ships ignored the warning. "And what is your second guarantee, Rhodan?"

  "I will send five of my men as collateral on your ship!"

  By Druuf standards, this offer was no additional guarantee. But this clever Druuf had meanwhile realized that in this world of little bipeds there was a totally different ethical code which placed a high value on the security and life of the individual.

  "And what am I supposed to do, Rhodan?" the Druuf asked, revealing neither acceptance nor rejection of the offer.

  "You don't have to do more than make a flash appearance over a certain planet with your fleet. You will have the right to convince yourself with your own scout ships that I am not luring you and the fleet into a trap. Two of the five men I will place in your command will guide your reconnaissance vehicles directly to the target star and avoid all danger."

  "And what is the purpose of that, Rhodan?"

  "Nothing more than an intimidation attempt with which I hope to avert the outbreak of a revolution in a bloodless fashion..."

  The Druuf interrupted. "Rhodan, we have determined that there is not a great difference between our intelligence and yours but do you really expect me to believe this?"

  This compelled Rhodan to play a dangerous trump. "Druuf, to us you are monsters, a nightmare! The common man is terrified of you. Your spaceships engender horror. And that world, a powder keg with their revolution, will barely dare to breathe for fear that, after my warning an enormous fleet of Druuf spacecraft will appear above it."

  "Druuf, fly us a demonstration of might and intimidation and as surely as my name is Rhodan and by all that is holy to me... I swear that I will allow your fleet to return to your Universe by way of the portal."

  "Show me the portal, Rhodan. Let one of my ships fly through it and it will receive my command to return as soon as it is convinced it has indeed arrived in its own continuum. We will discuss the rest upon the return of my ship!"

  "Agreed!" Rhodan replied. "Have your ship approach within 100 kilometers. The exact position will be forthcoming." He covered the microphone with his hand and looked over at Bell. "Has Atlan's courier arrived yet?"

  "He reported in. He's waiting for the prescribed position, Perry. But do you really trust this Druuf?"

  "We'll discuss that later! Marshall, who let the bomb between the ships go off prematurely?"

  "Pucky! And he barely came out alive, sir!" Marshall said, trying to protect the mouse-beaver with his last remark. But there was no deceiving Rhodan's amazing sense of time.

  He regarded Marshall sharply. "Which means that Pucky must have ignited the bomb before the arranged time."

  Marshall only nodded. Rhodan likewise nodded, which indicated that the mouse-beaver had something unpleasant ahead of him.

  Th
e Administrator then had to turn his attention back to the Druuf commander.

  "Rhodan, I'm sending my fastest ship over. Can you see it yet?"

  It could be made out clearly, for all the ship floodlights were shining. The spacecraft was speeding closer, a blue-white gleaming stellar dot.

  • • •

  The economic collapse of the Great Empire was threatening to split the gigantic celestial empire in the cluster of M-13. From hour to hour the inflation took on a more terrifying form. At Arkon's command, the stock exchanges on all planets were closed; the rates were no longer quoted. It was useless to fetch money from the bank and take it home. It wasn't worth anything there either.

  The Galactic Physicians now had an additional reason for not delivering medications. They couldn't have, even if they had so wanted, because the Springers with their billion-ton freight capacity were not landing on any worlds anymore. In great bunches they had gathered between the stars, awaiting further developments.

  On Arkon 3 the first emergency in the assembly arose after 20 hours because more than 40 special spaceships that were to deliver important parts had returned empty.

  The supply policy of the gigantic computer had not failed in the question of spare parts. But due to the fact that the ships returned without cargo, the reserves for the next three months had to be tapped. As always, the Robot Brain was directing production. It did not occur to Atlan to take over control; he had enough to do replacing the old directives with new ones in keeping with latest developments. Yet even the work which could no longer be postponed could not be completed.

  Minute by minute the positronicon informed him of new, ominous events within the Empire. It became increasingly evident that Thomas Cardif, with the help of Cokaze, had unleashed an avalanche of galactic proportions.

  He now contemplated the Ring of the Nibelungs lying in front of him. He remembered having regarded Rhodan's courier in astonishment when he had greeted Atlan in the hatchway of his ship while the skies were blocked out by the gigantic dome on the other side.