The Thrall of Hypno Read online

  "I can receive his thoughts, they're full of panic and wrath. The Supermutant already sees Mars as a glimmering red star which means that he's out in space. Yes, Sergeant, I do believe that he's getting away on board that interceptor."

  "What are we waiting for?" Pucky shouted indignantly. His high-pitched voice was so loud that Bell was afraid it would burst his eardrums. Nevertheless he ignored his objections and told Lieutenant Bings: "Call Rhodan! Hurry up!"

  Bings' face looked confused, giving Sergeant Adolf secret satisfaction and joy. "Do you want me to violate the radio silence, sir? Only in an emergency..."

  "This is an emergency!" Bell bellowed. "How much longer do I have to wait?"

  Tatjana Michalowna shook her head imperceptibly. It was the first time she had seen Bell so excited. There was not the slightest reason to be so incensed. Could it be that he was afraid to wage a head on fight against the Supermutant? Or was he really so meticulous about adhering to his directions. She listened for a moment to his thoughts and then smiled knowingly.

  Lieutenant Bings beckoned to his Sergeant. Adolf switched on the telecom set and in a few seconds got his colleague from the Stardust II on the screen.

  "Urgent call to Perry Rhodan. Personal!"

  "Just a minute." Soon Rhodan's face appeared on the screen. "Yes. Z-45?"

  "Lieutenant Bings, sir." Bings pushed his Sergeant aside. "Mr. Reginald Bell wishes to talk with you, sir."

  Bell, in turn, eased Bings out of the way.

  "The Supermutant has left Mars and is fleeing in the direction of Jupiter. Shall I pursue him? He's got only one interceptor."

  "I'm not sure that I should call on Ivan yet for help. It would be better if I follow you with the mutants in the Guppy."

  "That won't be necessary, Perry," Bell assured him. "We can handle him ourselves. Tatjana has already latched onto him and we can track him down."

  Rhodan thought for a moment and then assented: "Very well. Take up the pursuit but be careful. I won't be able to follow you that soon since Ivan still requires the attention of Betty and myself. I don't dare leave him alone without supervision. Good luck! Anyway, you're two interceptors against one."

  The telecom screen went dark again.

  Sergeant Adolf stood flabbergasted in the corner and looked reproachfully at Bings. "Thirteen!" he murmured disconsolately. "I knew it all the time."

  Lieutenant Bings ignored his friend and turned to Bell. "Sir, don't you frequently go to Venus? I wonder if you could occasionally bring me a Palpitating Eye butterfly?" Bell looked so dumbfounded that Pucky squealed with laughter and practically rolled on the floor. He smacked against the metal plates with his broad tail and squeaked: "Palpitating Eye! He wants a Palpitating Eye butterfly! Any other wishes, Lieutenant?"

  Bings seemed to feel insulted. He made no reply. Bell said rather helplessly: "Perhaps they can be found on Jupiter too..."

  6/ "MONTERNY MUST BE FOUND!"

  Clifford Monterny could feel that his telepath link with the mutant Ivan was getting weaker and weaker. In his desperation he gave Ivan one last command to detonate everything in sight but was frustrated by a strong hypno counterblock that intervened between him and Ivan and isolated his brain.

  The Supermutant finally realized that he had lost his most effective weapon and with it the last round. Rhodan and his mutants had proved to be too mighty for him.

  Give up?

  He slowly shook his head and surveyed the installations he had built during the last year under the surface of Mars. Most of the equipment had been salvaged from an interceptor, even the generator including the mini-reactors. The ship was no longer fit for action.

  If he decided to escape he could use only one of the interceptor and take only two of the remaining twenty-five men with him. The other twenty-three had to be left behind.

  And where could he flee?

  The only place where it was relatively safe for him was somewhere in the empty space beyond Mars. He had to try to find there a temporary abode till they forgot about him on Earth. Then he could one day return perhaps and...

  The thought of revenge restored his energy.

  He rose up abruptly and turned off the observation screens, severing his contact with the outside world.

  He took one last look at his hide-out and went out to the corridor. He stopped at another door, hesitated for a moment and opened it. A few men stared at him curiously.

  Their eyes began to light up. Perhaps he came to tell them that the time of their exile had come to an end?

  Clifford Monterny was able to read their thoughts and decided to play along. It would be the best way to keep the existing hypnoblock in force with the least possible strain.

  "After a few more preparations have been made the period of inactivity on Mars will be concluded," he said in a firm voice. "For this purpose it is necessary that I undertake a reconnaissance flight. You stay here and wait till I come back. If any strangers attempt to invade the fortress, you must prevent them at all costs. Wallers and Raggs, you'll accompany me. We'll take the Z-35 to scout."

  Two men rose up. One of them put his jacket on as if he were going on a short walk. Both took their oxygen masks. The hangar with the intact and the ransacked interceptor was also located beneath the surface and was connected by a walkway with the center itself, but it was outside the air supply system.

  The Supermutant carefully closed the door and went with the two men to the storage room. He put on a fur jacket and took a mask as well. For a moment he considered the five captured interceptors and their fifteen man crew in the uniform of the New Power. But then he shrugged his shoulders. Even if he manned the five ships with his own people it wouldn't mean more security for him. The risk of being detected was so much smaller for a single ship. Six interceptors certainly had more fire-power but Monterny had an inkling that this wouldn't matter very much any more in the long run.

  And so it happened that the fifteen officers and men of the five captured interceptors that belonged to the Good Hope VII and were held ready to start in a ravine near the plateau, sat in their quarters and didn't know that they were actually freemen.

  Monterny regulated the controls of the simple air pressure chamber that prevented a too rapid exchange of air between the fortress and the atmosphere on Mars. Then they quickly passed through the tunnel they had burned out of rock to the hangar that was covered overhead with a thin wire mesh, camouflaged with moss and lichen.

  The Supermutant herded the two men into the Z-35 where they manned the rayguns in the cockpit and at the aft end. He went into the little control compartment and closed the airlock.

  There was nothing to hold him back now.

  The engines began to hum, energy streamed through the conductors and activated the antigrav fields and the impulse drive. The ship vibrated slightly, rose up, retracted the telescopic landing supports and the bow broke through the camouflage net into the evening sky studded with stars.

  The interceptor soared with maximum acceleration out into space, passed the relay ship Z-45 at a great distance and proceeded toward the asteroid belt that separated Jupiter from the inner planets of the Solar system.

  This belt of small planetoids surrounded the Sun. Many of these planetary fragments were as small as a fist but there were also numerous bodies that were actual small worlds on which a ship could easily land and hide out. They trailed silently through the loneliness of space between Mars and Jupiter, circled the Sun once every two or three years and never returned to exactly the same place. On the other hand there were others that followed a circumscribed path which could be predicted precisely. Those were the larger asteroids with diameters of a hundred or more miles.

  It would have been easy enough for Monterny to simply fly past the treacherous belt of fragments and return later to the plane of the planet. But the more hazardous way was also the shorter one. Moreover, an asylum on one of the moons of Jupiter seemed on second thought less secure. He was sure that his flight would be dete
cted and the direction he took would similarly be noted so that it all obviously pointed to Jupiter as his goal. As a consequence of the high gravitation prevailing on the gigantic planet only one of the moons was practical for an extended stay. With the resources Rhodan had at his disposal it would not take long to trace him there.

  By contrast, the asteroids were mostly unknown and only a few were charted in the stellar maps.

  Clifford Monterny smirked when he passed the Z-45 on his right seven million miles away. He knew that the relay ship was not allowed to leave its station without orders and he felt reasonably safe. He assumed that its crew would notify Rhodan that the Supermutant had escaped in the direction of Jupiter. Rhodan would first have to check his abandoned place on Mars before he could embark on his pursuit. That would give Monterny enough time to find a new spot to hide on one of the passing planetoids. Once there he could switch off his engines and the most sensitive search instruments would be foiled by the ore contained in the rocks of the asteroids, making his detection impossible.

  When the first of the small planets became visible in their reflected light far ahead of him, he reduced his speed. He was forced to find his way slowly through the maze of fragments.

  Monterny lined the nose of his craft up against the general direction of the asteroids drifting toward him. He was not so foolish as to pick the closest asteroid where it would be easiest to find him. Little did he know that this was the mistake that decided his fate so tragically or he would have touched down on the first planetoid and gone into hiding.

  No matter how potent Clifford Monterny was as hypno and telepath he was not endowed with the gift of infallible clairvoyance.

  And thus he didn't know that turning into the path of the asteroid against the stream of the slowly drifting debris of an old planet would lead to his downfall.

  • • •

  The swearing Bell indulged in after a long fruitless search was too much for Tatjana. She operated the electronic instruments and the optical sensor. The door of the little radio room was open to the central control compartment. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Bell, using such language! Isn't it enough if you just think it?"

  "That'd be a total waste of effort," Bell lectured her without taking his eyes off the frontal observation screen. "If I swear it's for the sole purpose of relieving tensions and it works only when I speak. I've got to express it out loud if it's going to do me any good. As far as your tender ears are concerned, it would have been a useless sacrifice on my part to restrict myself to thinking without speaking for the simple reason that you're a telepath. You'd know all about my swearing, anyhow."

  Tatjana, who had listened incredulously to his lecture, shook her head. "Thank you very much for taking the trouble to explain your behavior in such a logical manner. Since I'm a telepath I already knew what you intended to say."

  Pucky squatted as usual in a corner of the compartment and played with a dried-up carrot. He suspended it in the middle of the room and made it slowly sway back and forth with his telekinetic mental currents. When Bell made a grab for it, it slipped away with lightning speed and landed in the chair of the second pilot where it remained standing on end.

  "The carrot is for eating, not playing," Bell yelled with irritation at the mouse-beaver. "You know I've strictly forbidden you to play such telekinetic games."

  "I'm practicing," Pucky tried to talk his way out, "so that I can handle the Supermutant properly at the moment of decision."

  "I'd have liked it better if that buzzard hadn't have given us the slip. We've tried to depend too much on our instruments and on Tatjana's telepathy," Bell nagged.

  "I couldn't know that Monterny is able to screen his thoughts. The thought patterns of his two companions are also partially shut out by the hypnoblock. We'll have to wait for a lucky break."

  "I'm not blaming you, Tatjana. We're going to find him in any case if we follow him in the direction of Jupiter."

  "Or the asteroids," Tatjana added.

  "That's possible, too," Bell admitted, looking out the window hatch where the Z-45 was visible at a distance. Lieutenant Bings had to leave his station in the orbit around Mars and escort Bell to take part in the search, since two ships could be more efficient than one alone. They kept in constant communication by UHF.

  Bell slowly turned his head and looked at Tatjana. "What did you say? Asteroids? Do you believe the Supermutant wants to hide out in the asteroids?"

  "Why not? It wouldn't be such a bad idea."

  Bell had to agree. "It might take us a long time to find him there."

  "Rhodan won't keep us waiting very long. With the search equipment of the Guppy we won't have much trouble finding the interceptor in the asteroid belt, regardless of how well he conceals himself."

  "H'm," Bell was skeptical. "Maybe we'll get lucky. I believe in luck, it has always helped me in my life."

  "I'd prefer rather to depend on good search instruments and my own telepathy," Tatjana replied and scanned the optical sensor. A wide panorama of the universe in front of the Z-13 moved across the picture screen with corresponding speed. The first of the larger asteroids rotated lazily in the feeble light of the Sun which stood at the rear of their ship. "Monterny can't keep his thoughts shielded forever without expending himself completely. Perhaps he'll become careless when he sleeps."

  "You're also hoping for a little luck," Bell gloated and grinned. "Let's hope that we can corner him. That's all we can do. Rhodan has given us instructions merely to pursue him. He wants to take care of him personally."

  "I'll..." Pucky began and shut up abruptly when he saw Bell's furious look. With an air of innocence he grinned with his big tooth and began to play with his beavertail. He seemed to have forgotten all about the carrot in the pilot seat. Bell noticed to his amazement that it was still standing on end as if held by an invisible hand. Was the mouse-beaver not only capable of telekinetically moving objects but keeping them immobile at a chosen spot for any length of time? Perhaps this was an ability of which he was not yet aware himself and that was only instinctively exercised by him. Bell decided not to say anything about it and to keep observing the phenomenon in secret. If his assumption were confirmed untold possibilities could open up.

  Necessitated by the perilous proximity of the first asteroids he turned his attention again to piloting his craft. One especially massive lump, at least thirty miles thick and irregularly shaped, sluggishly drifted clockwise around the Sun. It consisted of bare rocks and rugged gorges in which a little ship could easily disappear without being discovered.

  Z-13 slackened its speed and so did the Z-45. Bell called the relay ship: "Did you notice anything,

  Lieutenant Bings?"

  "Nothing, sir," the answer came promptly. "A dead little world."

  "Nobody expected to find life on the asteroids," Bell enlightened the Lieutenant. "Go around the rock to the right. I'll meet you on the other side." The Z-45 complied without a word and veered to the side, disappearing behind the right horizon of the miniature world. Bell descended till the cleft surface of the rocky planetoid was close below him and rolled along before his eyes like a relief map. Due to the lack of atmosphere each little detail was clearly recognizable. Nothing escaped the probing eyes of Bell.

  Meanwhile Tatjana concentrated on any mental vibrations that might be present and tried to receive them. She was convinced she could sense the Supermutant if he were in close proximity and that it would not help him to shield his thoughts. Pucky did nothing. He waited quietly for his chance. Nobody was to be found on the mini-planet. To explore the depths of the spectacular gorges Bell would have had to land. But he was afraid to waste too much time. Therefore he gave the order to fly on when Lieutenant Bings emerged with the Z-45 over the short horizon and reported that his search was futile. After the tenth attempt to catch up with the Supermutant on an asteroid, Bell groaned in disgust: "As far as I know there are 50,000 of these rockpiles in our Solar system. If we want to comb them all we'
ll be old before we run into the Supermutant. Perhaps we're looking in the wrong direction."

  Tatjana shook her head. "Clifford Monterny thinks logically and that's why he'll travel opposite to the direction of the moving asteroids, the same as we do."

  "Why would he do that?" Bell inquired. "Because he can proceed at the slowest speed and let the fragments drift toward him. That way he'll require less time to find a refuge."

  Bell didn't quite agree with Tatjana that this was logical but he admitted that it could very well be true. Without arguing the point further he aimed for the eleventh asteroid.

  • • •

  In the meantime a spherical spaceship touched down on the mesa back on Mars.

  Major Deringhouse had insisted on personally leading the planned campaign against the lair of the Supermutant. He considered it his duty to make amends for the ignominious setback he had suffered.

  There were several members of the Mutant Corps on board the Good Hope VII in addition to the regular crew of twenty-five men. It was André Noir's specific assignment to exorcise the spell of the Supermutant from the men still there. As they had already learned that Monterny had fled with only one ship, they could easily figure out how many of his men had remained on Mars.

  Betty Toufry, the most potent of the telepaths, first established contact with Monterny's men. They were under a hypnoblock but there was no barrier to their thoughts and they were easy to read.

  "They've been ordered to put up a defense," Betty explained with a puzzled expression. "Do you believe, Noir, that a senseless struggle can be avoided?"

  The hypno shrugged his shoulders. "Sengu will have to see where these people are waiting for us if they've already noticed our presence. Make sure that I work in the right direction. Then I'll try to break the block of the Supermutant. Have you been able to get in touch with the captured crew of our interceptors?"