The Ghosts of Gol Page 9

  If I don't finish it off, it'll cost us our necks.

  Something made him turn around and look back down the gangway.

  It was a second light body. It also proceeded around the corner onto the walk and came toward him.

  He lost his nerve and began to shoot. He struck the phantom which he had spied first. That seemed to make the thing very happy. It brightened up at the spot where he hit. It also approached him with increased speed.

  Screaming wildly in fear and anger, Bell whirled around and shot at the other intruder. It had the same effect and then the glowing clouds engulfed him.

  With amazement he noticed a prickly feeling which ran through his body as though he had come into contact with a low voltage source. The sensation was titillating—at least for a while. But then it became stronger. He opened his eyes wide and saw that the bright bodies blocked his sight completely. He saw nothing but a glowing, swaying, amorphous mass.

  The pain became worse. It grew and grew; Bell's head began to drone until the pain was finally alleviated by the bliss of unconsciousness.

  Thora was unable to cope with the events she failed to understand. She tried to advise Rhodan of the situation but he did not respond. Neither did Nyssen, who was waiting somewhere out there for the help of the Stardust.

  The observation screens had turned black after the ship was suddenly jolted and the floors were inclined.

  We're besieged, speculated Thora. They're absorbing all energy produced by the vessel.

  She did not suspect that the foreign bodies had already invaded the ship. She wanted to call Khrest and wondered why he had not come to her aid before when a second blow shook the ship.

  Concurrently Thora felt the same leaden heaviness she had experienced when the light bodies had attacked the first time. The generators were no longer working with full efficiency. She heard the people around her yell and curse. The light began to flicker and died out after hesitating shortly.

  Thora sank to the floor under the terrific weight induced by the extreme gravity and moved no more. She was not yet unconscious but it seemed best, under the prevailing circumstances, to lose herself in her own helplessness.

  "Have you got it?" asked Rhodan.

  "In a minute," panted Anne Sloane. "There's a duct in the rock and... oh, nothing!"

  According to what Anne had found so far by applying her telekinetic senses, there were at least a few hundred ducts the size of an arm running through the rock in any and all directions, ending nowhere.

  Anne had to search through all of them to locate the mechanism which opened the gate.

  But until then...

  Deringhouse made impatient noises. He had taken over Tanaka's job since the Japanese suffered again with intolerable head pains from the time the light bodies had appeared once more. Rhodan had been unable to contact the Stardust or Nyssen with his low-powered telecom. For ten minutes Deringhouse attempted it with the considerably stronger transmitter—with just as little success.

  The army of light bodies was posted in front of the horseshoe gate and seemed to wait for something.

  Rhodan was afraid that Anne might lose her strength before she could find the mechanism. He also feared that the Stardust had been attacked for the second time and that Nyssen had run into trouble. Anne's head jerked forward. She looked unreal. "I've got it!" she said with a low moan.

  Rhodan swiveled around in his seat. "Don't open it yet," he told her. "Wait a minute!"

  The vehicle rumbled on. It had stopped three hundred feet away from the gate; now it was two hundred fifty, only two hundred...

  The light bodies did not move. They blocked the gate and Rhodan worried about the question of how many of them would enter the mountain when Anne opened the gate. ...One hundred feet, fifty feet... "Open!" bellowed Rhodan.

  Anne gnashed her teeth. Nothing happened for half a second. Then a small crack formed at the bottom where the horseshoe met the ground. Rhodan watched and saw that the gate was pulled up like a stage curtain.

  He estimated the speed of the car and the height of the opening at the time the car reached the entrance. For a second he was tempted to brake because the gate was moving too slowly; but then he gave up the idea. He did not have time to watch the light bodies. There was a sharp knock as the roof of the vehicle rammed under the edge of the door and a loud and terrifying bang. They were through!

  "Shut the gate!" hollered Rhodan. He drove around in a wide circle without watching where he was going and turned the carrier at 90°. He felt reassured, looking at the observation screen and noting that the door had closed again and that, evidently, it all happened too fast for the light bodies. Due to their slow reaction time, they had not realized quickly enough what was taking place.

  There was a slight rustle at his side and then a plop. Anne had fainted after the exertions of the last fifteen minutes. Rhodan wanted to say something, but at this moment the observation screen flashed so brightly that they all were blinded and had to close their eyes. Rhodan blinked. Cautiously, between half-closed eye lids, he studied the picture on the screen.

  He found himself in a hall. It was circular with a diameter of about a hundred feet and fairly high.

  The light source which illuminated the scene was meant for eyes that were used to the blue-white splendor of Vega, not for human eyes. What surprised Rhodan was that the hall was completely empty except for one not especially large object. Rhodan recognized it. It was an impulsator such as they had already seen once before in another factory-like hall when they first attempted to track down the unknown stranger. At that time Bell had ventured too close and was carried off in an iridescent energy spiral.

  This device called an impulsator effected transitions through hyperspace. The person to be transmitted did not have to sit or stand at a particular place nor was it necessary to be connected to it. The transmitter functioned with a directed transport-impulse and was a refinement of the set which the Ferrons used.

  This one here was larger than the one they had seen in the factory hall. At least five times as big. Nevertheless, it looked lost in the vast hall. Rhodan pulled up. The same gravity prevailed in the hall as on the surface of Gol.

  The vehicle suddenly began to vibrate. Rhodan had noticed that the steering wheel had started to move and looked for the cause. He glanced at the observation screen and saw that the impulsator had wandered off downward.

  The transmitter? Going down?

  It was the carrier which had moved. It hovered a couple of feet above the ground and appeared to be rising steadily.

  "Do you see that, Deringhouse?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Regulate the neutralizing generator. Somebody's turning off the gravity. Adjust the generator accordingly so that we won't fly away."

  Deringhouse attended skilfully to his task. A few anxious minutes passed during which the car either just touched the ground or floated a mite above it.

  "That's it, sir," reported Deringhouse finally. "It's stopped."

  The vehicle had its own gravity indicator. The gravity outside amounted to one point two G.

  Rhodan closed his helmet Deringhouse did the same as well as Tanaka Seiko, who had regained full control of himself after they had left the light bodies behind. Anne was still unconscious. They closed her helmet without her noticing it.

  They had to get out. The vehicle had an exit but no airlock since nobody had expected that they would have to leave the carrier outside the Stardust.

  What was awaiting them outside, they did not know. Perhaps an atmosphere they could breathe, perhaps another unfit to breathe or maybe none at all.

  "Let's go!" ordered Rhodan.

  He opened the hatch. It was not difficult at all, just a barely noticeable little push. The hall had an atmosphere and the pressure differential between the atmosphere in the hall and the vehicle was not particularly great. Of what did the atmosphere consist? Rhodan did not take any chances. The helmets and the spacesuits remained closed.

&nbs
p; He turned his attention to the impulsator. Apparently it functioned on the same principle as the one they had encountered earlier at the other place. It had a row of colored buttons, a regulator for destination, a space-angle system and a target screen.

  All this Rhodan knew how to operate himself. He had learned it. He was able to select the destination and to review it. But the one thing he could not do was to activate the transmitter. He had learned at the prior occasion that it required the telekinetic capability of a mutant. There was no other way to close the contact.

  Rhodan pushed the buttons with the hard gloves of his protective suit. The screen lit up brightly. The picture was sharp and clear whichever range he chose, much brighter, as if shown in infrared light.

  He scouted unknown areas on Gol's surface. Level plains of methane ice crystals and wild, craggy mountains reaching up to endless heights. He turned the target knob in a direction he guessed to be north.

  Evidently, it was not quite correct, but it took only a slight rotation and the push of a button which adjusted the range to bring the Stardust into view.

  Deringhouse loudly expressed his surprise.

  "Sir, the vessel is leaning!"

  Rhodan nodded. He had expected it alter the communication with the ship was broken. The inclined position of the ship was not significant. If that was all that happened, the Stardust was built to take it. Something else attracted Rhodan's attention.

  The visual target system was evidently equipped with a wide-angle lens. The observation screen not only showed the Stardust but also the lake in which Rhodan's vehicle had almost sunk, the entire route they had traveled from the valley basin and rows of ice formations which had sprung up north of the lake shore as as a result of a weather change.

  "Miss Sloane is coming to," said the Japanese softly.

  Rhodan glanced at her. Anne stirred.

  She alone was capable of activating the impulsator. Is that what we're searching for? Rhodan asked himself.A transmitter? He never had had a clear idea of what was waiting for them on Gol. Another clue, he believed. A sign for the next stretch of the path they had undertaken to explore. Was it the transmitter? Did they receive the tips through it? It looked like it. The hall contained nothing except the transmitter. Rhodan did not know what would happen if Anne operated it. But he trusted the unknown who knew the situation to which those who were following his trail were exposed and the transmitter was bound to be a safeguard against the perils which lurked in this world. Anne rose to her knees. Rhodan helped her to get up.

  "Have you recovered?" asked Rhodan solicitously.

  Anne nodded. "It'll have to be all right." She smiled through her helmet's faceplate, which was clear as glass.

  "Okay. You know the mechanism. The target's set. Start it up."

  Anne closed her eyes. Rhodan tensed his muscles, anticipating the acute pain which had to come. And it came, indeed. In a tenth of a second the painful brightness faded. Rhodan was gripped by intense pains and he would have screamed if it had been possible during the transition. For how long—

  7/ BEYOND THE GALAXY

  —AN ENDLESS time.

  Nobody could judge the human sense of time during a transition. But it seemed to Rhodan that no prior transition had taken as long as this one.

  Hours seemed to pass till the spasmodic pain—indicative of the end of the transition—began again and light appeared once more before the faceplate of his helmet.

  If that wasn't—! There was a jolt as if he had been pushed down but he stood firmly on his legs. Deringhouse arrived beside him, lost his balance and brushed against him. Behind Deringhouse appeared

  Tanaka Seiko and Anne Sloane. And the place in which they had landed was the Command Center of the Stardust. Or was it? Thora was lying on the floor. She raised herself up on her arms, lifted her head and looked around in a daze. Her eyes caught Rhodan's legs, followed them up and she recognized his face.

  "You...?"

  At this moment of utter surprise Rhodan again displayed his capabilities which had nearly earned him the reputation of a monster among the psychologists of the scientific staff at the Nevada proving grounds during the last phase of his test pilot training years ago. They had arrived in a completely inexplicable manner from the hall in the mountain on board the Stardust. Good and fine! It was a mystery about which they could rack their brains later. More important was—

  "Everything in order on board?" he asked gruffly.

  Thora stood up. "How... how did you...?

  "Is everything in order?" repeated Rhodan with increased emphasis.

  Thora stared at him with open mouth. "No..." she stammered after a while. "... Bell... the light bodies..."

  "Where's Bell?"

  Thora had to think hard. "In the Technical Guidance Section!"

  Rhodan turned to Deringhouse. "Take care of the Command Center. Find out what happened. I'll be back right away."

  Bell was found. He was lying in the generator room, unconscious and in electrical shock. He received treatment and was up and around again half an hour later.

  He recounted what he had been up against, whereupon a search was made for the light bodies, but there were none to be found anywhere in the vessel.

  A few minutes after Bell had rendered his account, Major Nyssen and Captain Klein showed up at the Command Center. They were both rather excited. They reported that their damaged vehicle was locked in by mountains of ice. A light body had raided the carrier and had completely destroyed the drive generator as well as part of the protective screen generator. The latest impression they had gleaned from Gol was that the gravity had mounted to approximately ten G's. They had already made their peace with the world in their minds since the Stardust gave no answer and then—

  The tale was incoherent. They had the impression that their vehicle had gone into a transition. When they had regained consciousness after some time, they had found themselves and the carrier in one of the Stardust's airlocks. They had climbed out with shaking knees, ridden up to the Command Center and here they were!

  The Stardust's machinery was again performing faultlessly. The intrusion of the light bodies had left no permanent damage.

  Where had the ghosts gone?

  That's the wrong question, thought Rhodan

  Where are we?

  The wide observation screens of the Stardust depicted a space never before seen by Rhodan nor Khrest and Thora. The points of lights the stars were shining onto the observation screen could be counted. There were maybe fifty or sixty of them in the space sector. Anyone who had ever looked up to the sky with the shimmering galaxy of myriads of lights knew what the picture portended.

  When they had finished the transition which the impulsator in the mountain hall on Gol had triggered, the Stardust had landed in a sector of space which was beyond the galaxy they knew as home. A sky with sixty forlorn stars did not exist in the Milky Way.

  Rhodan had deduced it at once and harbored—for a few minutes—the foolish hope that Khrest might know where they had been thrust. But Khrest's Arkonide knowledge was no greater than Rhodan's. He was not familiar with this region of space but he patiently tackled the task of detecting, with the aid of maps, a known sign for the orientation of the Stardust.

  In the midst of this distressing uncertainty Tanaka received a message from the unknown mentor. The Japanese saw a glowing ball suspended in the middle of the Command Center and became terribly frightened, believing at first that it was a light body.

  Nobody except him, however, saw the ball nor did anyone else understand the message it conveyed:

  "You have been warned! Now find the world where the co-ordinates are secured. Remember that you cannot return home if you do not know the right way. Your goal is far!"

  He translated it and Rhodan nodded in assent.

  Khrest endeavored to identify a sign of recognition. After calm had returned and nothing else could be done while they waited for Khrest's results, Rhodan recapped the events which had occu
rred on Gol.

  He had some very attentive listeners, consisting of all those who had actively taken part in the events he described. There was, for instance, the engineer who, together with his twelve men guarding the generators, had been rendered unconscious by the light bodies and shoved into a comer of the generator room.

  "Gol is a world," Rhodan began, "which differs somewhat from normal conditions. It has an average density of one hundred fifty grams per cubic centimeter. This is more than the density of osmium, the heaviest metal we know."

  "Therefore, Gol must be something like a cold sun—even though it circles Vega like a planet. In its interior must be gravity fields which do not conform to Newtonian principles but must have other causes."

  "The light bodies appear to be a result of the special nature of this planet. They probably originate at the core of Gol which is in a non-Newtonian sphere of gravity."

  "They're not very intelligent, meaning no more intelligent than, for example, a dog or a cat. They are, shall I say, individual energy or energized individuals."

  "You know what I mean. Our language doesn't have words to describe such a thing as energy bodies."

  "When we dislodged them from the valley basin—with the aid of the revamped transmitter whose oscillation proved to be very detrimental to them—they behaved just like a swarm of disturbed wasps. They regrouped and returned for a renewed attack. In doing so, they took a different tack than we expected and we were tricked by them."

  "They penetrated the Stardust before anybody noticed it. They encroached, or rather one of them did, on Nyssen's vehicle and ruined the drive generator and therewith the source of current for the second hyper-transmitter which Nyssen carried. They also blocked our way but didn't get anywhere with that."

  He paused a moment.

  "That," he concluded, "is about all we know about the light bodies, and part of it is strictly conjecture. It would be very interesting to learn more about them but we now have to follow another way."

  His listeners had lowered their heads and were collecting their thoughts.

  They had entered a world which surpassed the imagination of humans and Arkonides as well. They had been rescued in a manner which was so peculiar as to be almost laughable.