Project Earthsave Read online

  By contrast, the two-headed Ivan Goratschin almost scared him and the black Ras Tschubai, never ceased to startle him.

  "So your big gathering is taking place day after tomorrow, Talamon? About what time?" Bell wanted to know. He happened to be standing by an apparatus that was unfamiliar to him. "By the way, what is this?" he asked, pointing to it.

  Since Bell's stocky figure concealed the equipment, Talamon moved his 13 hundred pounds to come over and take a look.

  "That's—" Talamon suddenly gasped. He made a frantic movement with his hand and pushed switches. His green complexion darkened when he shouted, "Who turned on the hypercom?"

  A stark chill ran through Bell.

  For an hour he had been conversing openly with the patriarch. Perry Rhodan's name had been mentioned a hundred times or more. They had discussed how many aliens the Mounder kept hidden on board the TAL 6, how fast the Gazelle in the secret hangar was and what its Right radius was.

  Bell shot a desperate glance at John Marshall. After a concentrated mental effort, the latter could only shake his head negatively. Tako Kakuta, the child-faced Japanese teleporter, had inconspicuously disappeared.

  "None of us touched the hypercom switches!" swore Kitai Ishibashi, breaking his silence. With lighting swiftness, he had scanned the minds of all his colleagues without finding any guilty consciences.

  With astonishing swiftness, the Mounder rediscovered his capacity to react. With a speed no one had thought him capable of, he went to the ship's P.A. system control. "Close all locks! Don't let anybody out!"

  Bell only nodded his agreement. Not only their own lives were at stake but now also the lives of all the clansmen were thrown into the gamble.

  Talamon had hardly shut off the hypercom when a notice came through from ship's security: "Patriarch Topthor wishes to see you."

  "I'm not on board!" the oldster roared back, breathing hard.

  "Sir, I have mentioned to the patriarch that you were here and—"

  With a Mounder's special curse, Talamon cut the com switch off. Then he cried out in loud alarm when the air in front of him began to shimmer. Out of the emptiness emerged a being! Tako Kakuta had rematerialized close in front of the Mounder.

  With every indication of horror, the old one retreated slowly, step by step, until he was obstructed by the cabin bulkhead. He stared at the small, delicately framed little man while the latter reported to Bell. Where was he supposed to have been? In the control center of hyper-communications for Laros?

  When? But he had just seen him a few minutes before, sitting beside the black mutant.

  "Ye Cosmic Gods! And the hypercom—"

  Bell shouted over Talamon's moans of despair. "This time your Cosmic Gods didn't have their thumbs in the pie!"

  Talamon had always been a civil and courteous person but he had often either failed to understand or at least only barely comprehended Bell's flowery and colorful speech, which was usually slanted toward Earthly meanings and comparisons. Now in his excitement he understood absolutely nothing. Talamon, the discreet and cautious, the reliable Mounder who always kept his wits about him—Talamon exploded and bellowed at Bell with such a desperation that it almost spun him around.

  His tirade was about the Gods and that they didn't have any thumbs and how could one blaspheme the Gods, anyway, in a situation like this? All the while Talamon failed to remember that he had not been especially pious in his day and that often in the process of turning a profit he had forgotten his Gods too easily.

  He swore loudly and earnestly that he would nevermore stray from the path of virtue nor deviate from the laws of the Great Godhead.

  If the cabin bulkhead he was leaning against hadn't deterred him, he would have flown from Bell's laughter. But this Earthman stood in front of him and even went so far as to put his hands on his shoulders.

  "Talamon!" he said. "Man, get a grip on yourself!"

  But Talamon saw the small, yellowish little human with the slanting eyes still standing next to Bell. Tako Kakuta meant well. He only wanted to show the patriarch that his faculty for dissolving and disappearing into thin air was nothing extraordinary. But he accomplished the opposite effect. The flickering and shimmering of the air almost robbed Talamon of reason. He sought to support himself against Bell.

  "Talamon!" Bell shouted at him. "The Com Control on the Titan must have scrambled our hypercom transmission or jammed it! There's no other explanation! For an hour now the Aras have been going crazy up in their hypercom central transmitter station—because no signals are getting out and no understandable messages are being received! Man, have you got rocks in your head?"

  Old Talamon pleaded piteously: "Bell, if only for just this once you could speak in a language that I can understand too! What is that supposed to mean—rocks in my head...?"

  • • •

  "Has Reg lost his marbles?" shouted Perry Rhodan and in the same moment became once again the expedition's 'safety switch'.

  He took action while his 3 dozen colleagues sat as though in a state of shock.

  Bell's voice was coming in over the hypercom—and what he was saying! But it didn't get very far.

  Without taking the safety of the Titan into consideration, from his seat he activated the ship's hypercom transmitter as a frequency jammer. First he jammed Talamon's frequency only but then he brought in the signal techs, demanding the impossible from them. A minute later he jumped into the problem personally and wrung boundless admiration out of his chief communications engineer.

  "I don't want any hypercom transmissions to leave Laros or arrive there. I want the Aras to think—who cares what they think! Bradger, why don't you switch the carrier frequency oscillator to 1604 megacycles? Come on, let's go! You can show me your disbelief later!"

  So it went for a 10-minute period. Rhodan egged his team on at such a pace that all of them were outmatched one by one.

  When the Titan was finally jamming all frequencies, Rhodan wiped sweat off his brow and then relaxed into his uncanny state of calm. "Now all I want to know is how long Bell thinks he's going to keep this show on the air!" His voice sounded as cool and collected as ever. His eyes remained calm. No feature of his face was disturbed. By his actions he forced his own composure upon others, as when he had demonstrated to the communications technicians how to put knowledge into practice.

  The Chief went back to the pilot seat and eased himself into it. There was only this one noise in the entire huge Control Central of the Titan. The others breathed without a sound and didn't dare move.

  Only Pucky the mouse-beaver seemed to be without awe. He teleported himself into Perry's lap. Perry was not in the mood for this kind of a visitation and was about to command him to get down when Pucky squeaked: "Hey, Chief, don't you think the termites in the memory banks of the Laros hypercom station have just about chewed their way out by now?"

  This was genuine Reginald Bell phraseology and Rhodan didn't grasp a word of it. Although he didn't show it, he was inwardly really burned up. What Bell had cost him with this open hypercom transmission of his was almost too much to bear!

  "Pucky, don't make me angry!"

  The mouse-beaver, an exceptional telepath, read Perry's thoughts as though they were an open book. He lisped softly: "But Perry, the Aras have the first 10 seconds of Reggie's speech in the memory registers! When they throw out the garbage they'll find our Laros operation in the bucket!" Thus Pucky pointed out the Achilles' heel of the situation. "Boss, let me take a jump! I'll show those Aras a thing or two! Okay, May I, Perry?"

  This little ragamuffin of a Pucky could beg like a little child but anyone defining his character on that basis alone would find himself disgraced forever. This being in animal form and yet who was not quite an animal—intelligent as a human and adept at teleportation, telekinesis and the art of mind-reading and whatever else that was slumbering in him—he could be cold-blooded, shrewd and a daredevil, a master of any situation.

  And now here was a situation that on
ly Pucky could save and that he would have to solve if everything that Perry Rhodan had thus far built up was not to be cast into oblivion.

  Perry's permission for the desperate teleport jump was very brief: "Come back in one piece, Pucky."

  The mouse-beaver disappeared from his lap without a trace.

  Laros was 20 light-hours distant from the Titan!

  • • •

  Chief Biologist Keklos learned to his satisfaction that the great space freighter had taken off from Gom, loaded with replacement supplies.

  Then, this shipload will arrive just in time for the great gathering of the Springer patriarchs he thought contentedly, and dispatched his directives.

  • • •

  Bell was startled by the impact of a heavy object on his shoulder. Before he had a chance to see what it was, he heard Pucky's squeaky voice: "Tubby, you know you just gave me the rough end of the deal! The Aras were just about to review data in their hypercom memory registers and they were about one hair away from hearing the dulcet tones of your voice! So I had a little fun with those pill-pushers. When I had their consternation at the right pitch, instead of hearing you on the retrieval tape they heard the 'Dance of the Howling Dervish. But the Chief is still chewing his nails, wondering who else in starsville may have recognized your voice. —See you!" Nobody laughed at the mouse-beaver's playful caper. Terror was still in their bones.

  Pucky rematerialized a second time in Perry Rhodan's lap and Perry sighed out his relief. Pucky pretended not to notice but he inscribed it deep within and was proud that Rhodan had worried about him to this extent.

  "Chief," he piped, "for the moment our fat friend is fairly free of trouble and so are the others. I read John Marshall's thoughts and he's still searching like mad for whoever pulled the trick with the hypercom!"

  Perry Rhodan's only reply was: "Not a very auspicious beginning..."

  • • •

  Topthor and Talamon sat face to face. Topthor scrutinized his friend carefully.

  Talamon looked ill. He had greeted Topthor almost listlessly. But this wasn't a social call—they were here to discuss the colossal business venture.

  As a good businessman he sought to thaw Talamon out a little. "Cekztel himself is coming today, friend," he revealed.

  Cekztel was the top chief of all the Mounder clans.

  Talamon could only think of the hypercom transmission that had been made from his ship. "So?" he said just to be polite.

  Topthor tried to take another tack. "This time Rhodan and his Earth will be taken care of!"

  "You think so?" Talamon asked by way of reply.

  Finally Topthor blurted out, "Is that business deal all you can think about?"

  "That what—?"

  Topthor had never been an especially humorous type but now he was completely humorless. He brought his fist thundering down on the table. "Once and for all, old man, let's have it out! What's wrong with you? You aren't thinking about your big deal at all! Cekztel arriving doesn't mean a thing! And you're not at all interested in us not having Rhodan and his Earth to worry about any more!—Talamon, are we two still friends?"

  Talamon sidestepped with a counter-question: "Would I have cut you in as a partner in my business otherwise?"

  "That's no answer, old boy," the sly fox bellowed at him. "You have troubles? Yes? So have I! The Aras are giving me a headache!"

  Finally Talamon began to show interest. He leaned forward and, although they were alone, whispered: "Topthor, there is a dirty traitor on my ship! One of my clansmen is trying to sell me short—and if he succeeds there won't be any TAL 6 any more!"

  "Does this have something to do with your big business deal?" asked Topthor testily.

  "Partly, Topthor, maybe so—and that's why I don't know yet if it's such a good idea for you to get mixed up as a partner

  The Mounder emitted a full-throated laugh. "It's more than a good idea, Talamon! After all, I'm the only Mounder, in fact the only one at all, who knows where to look for the Earth! Oh yes, Talamon, the coordinate data are tucked away very nicely in my ship's positronicon and..." Now his voice also lowered to a whisper "Look, I've secured the core-memory section with such sophisticated stuff that the most persistent Ara alive can never get that data without my permission!"

  Now Talamon's eyes lighted up. He knew that Topthor was not double-dealing with him. "Then you don't like them any more than I do, Topthor! I'd prefer Perry Rhodan a thousand times over, compared to them..."

  The other snapped at the bait immediately but in a way that strained Talamon to the utmost in order not to betray himself when his friend bellowed at him: "Me too! Yes sir, I almost orbited when I heard about the crime they pulled on Exsar and when I finally heard that Aralon had launched a cost-free rescue expedition and gambled over 6000 medicos in the bargain, I tell you the blinders came off my eyes!—I could have told them to forget about this meeting on Laros!

  "Was it you, then, who dropped the bomb on Goszul's Planet?" asked Talamon sarcastically and he felt that his mood was improving.

  "Small talk!" growled Topthor. "Let's get down to cases about going after Rhodan and no kidding around! Tell me, have you taken a fancy to Rhodan? You're not complaining about him, I notice, and that's not like you..."

  "Topthor, do you badmouth a being who has had the right and the power to kill you and yet has not used that right and that power? Because of him the Talamon Clan is alive, Topthor!"

  Abruptly Topthor got up. He looked at his friend long and thoughtfully. The other met his gaze firmly. Two individuals, both of them over 1200 pounds; old, shrewd and crafty; hardened by many a bloody space battle. They nodded at each other.

  Soberly, Topthor said, "If I'm not mistaken, then I, too, am still alive for the same reason—because Rhodan held off in the fight I had with him. He refrained from turning me and my ship into a gas cloud. But no, Talamon, I'll have to sleep on this a bit... Now this Rhodan of yours is starting to give me concern from a direction I had never suspected! Until tomorrow, Talamon, until tomorrow...!"

  7/ HYPERCOMFUSION!

  John Marshall's strange, fixed expression faded from his face. He passed a hand across his forehead in a gesture of exhaustion, then ran his fingers through his dark hair and sat up. Now he was the old John Marshall again, one of Perry Rhodan's oldest colleagues and one of his best telepaths. He gave Bell an eloquent look.

  "Well?"

  John Marshall remained seated; he smiled thinly. "Topthor is the only survivor who knows the position of our solar system and of the Earth."

  Bell and his mutant commando were still in Talamon's private cabin. They both knew that the crafty fox Topthor was visiting the ship at this moment. Marshall had not let the opportunity escape him and with his telepathic faculty had been able to 'listen in' on the conversation between Talamon and Topthor. He had been able to tap into their thoughts and thus he had discovered Topthor's most precious secret.

  Bell stated stubbornly at John Marshall. In the meantime the weird affair of the hypercom had almost been forgotten, yet Marshall couldn't help thinking about it because through 'monitoring' he had become aware of Talamon's worries and questions as to who had turned on the equipment.

  Now Marshall revealed another part of Topthor's secret. "The Earth's astronomical data are resting in the core-memory section of his positronic nav-computer."

  With one hasty addition, John Marshall caused Bell's satisfied grin to disappear. "And he has the whole thing under lock and key."

  Reginald Bell, who with Perry Rhodan, was the only one who had completed the highest phase of Arkonide hypno-school methodology, permitted John Marshall to make a complete exposition of what he had discovered. He listened expressionlessly, now cold and uninfluenced by any feeling, logical to the last degree. He thought the problem through as to how his mutants could reach Topthor's ship nav-computer, how they could get around the security circuits and how they could finally arrive at the core-memory section.

  Tersely, object
ive in phraseology, unambiguously, he shot supplementary questions at Marshall. The telepath concentrated to his utmost capacity.

  When Topthor revealed his secret to his friend and spoke of being in possession of complete details of the Earth's position, he had simultaneously thought smugly of a certain part of the electronic security setup which he had hit upon as a means of protecting the registered data against any unauthorized retrieval.

  "There's still something missing, Marshall," said Bell, still prodding the Australian telepath to a top level of alertness. "This last safety item, the thing about the ultra-barrier, is contradictory if there isn't also some auxiliary equipment of some kind that can change the polarity of the protection system when the data is to be gotten out. Topthor couldn't have thought of the one without the other. Go over your findings, Marshall!"

  Bell did not hurry him. His mutants comported themselves as though they were not present in the room. Kitai Ishibashi, the Japanese physician and psychologist, with the tremendously powerful suggestive power, was only hypothetically there. By means of his special faculties he found himself with Topthor, who meanwhile had left the TAL 6 and was going to his flagship at the moment, carrying on cogitations in his mind concerning Perry Rhodan.

  John Marshall suddenly started as though he been dealt a heavy blow. The same thing happened to Kitai Ishibashi.

  Bell only observed the phenomenon without having sensed it, which didn't surprise him. He was not equipped with the faculties of his mutants.

  Thoroughly shaken, John Marshall groaned, "My God, what was that?!"

  Bell had very seldom seen him like this and when he had it was always when they had been in the gravest danger.

  Kitai Ishibashi didn't appear to be any better off than Marshall. The tall, lanky Japanese had drops of perspiration on his forehead. "Something tried to take hold of me," he said, explaining his sensation, "but just as it started to take hold of me it missed!"