Venus in Danger Read online

  Therefore, Tako Kakuta was the only one who could succeed in penetrating the barrier with which the positronic brain had surrounded the Venus fortress to keep out all aliens.

  Rhodan had considered this possibility before. Since it entailed a certain risk for the Japanese, he had preferred a different approach. Now he figured that survival of Tomisenkov's army was worth the risks involved for Kakuta and he did not hesitate to give the appropriate order to the Japanese who had already been prepared for his mission for some time.

  The radius of the protective mantle around the fortress measured 300 miles. Even though he wore a transport suit, it would take quite a while till Kakuta could enter the proper fortifications.

  • • •

  Rhodan's men were on the verge of exhaustion after the strenuous days on the planet Wanderer followed by the uninterrupted action on Venus. This became evident in their almost childlike joy when the silhouette of the Stardust emerged over the horizon. The transporters moved about 30 feet above the treetops of the jungle in their usual formation.

  They had overcome all perils and the comfort of the giant vessel aroused pleasant expectations. A soft bed, a decent breakfast—none of those Arkonide rations—and most of all time to rest and play. These were good enough reasons to get excited.

  Rhodan smiled and listened to the merry banter over the telecom. Reginald Bell had made the arrangements for the return of the little expedition. They could see through their binoculars from 10 miles away that the huge door of the southern airlock was open.

  Tako Kakuta had performed his space jump. He reported over the telecom, which was unaffected by the protective screen of the base, that he was on his way to the entrance of the fortress. Rhodan guessed that it would take at least another hour before Tako managed to obtain agreement from the positronic brain to lift the barrier.

  • • •

  "I've got it! "Capt. Liubol shouted enthusiastically. He stared at the target screen of the neutron beamer and pulled the lever he assumed to be the trigger. At first nothing happened but in a few seconds the trees which showed on the screen burned to ashes.

  Tomisenkov grunted happily. "It was about time!" he said. "Here they come !"

  He looked at the observation screen which displayed the area northwest of the vehicle. The dark silhouette of the mighty sphere disturbed him and he could not suppress the thought that his plan was too reckless and that it was foolish to expose his men to such odds.

  They had set the transporter into motion and attempted to find Rhodan's track. Instead of finding his track they had discovered the Stardust. They did not dare get close to the Stardust but they hoped to be able to intercept Rhodan and his group in the vicinity. Before they had depended only on their machine guns and mortars; but now—thanks to Capt. Liubol's constant experimentation—they had found out how to use the built-in weapons of the transporter.

  This considerably increased their chance of success.

  • • •

  "Alarm!" the man at the micro-wave detector yelled. But it was already too late.

  The hull of the transporter began to crackle. Rhodan diagnosed the noise at once as a hit from a neutron beamer. The craft and its occupants would have been lost, had it not been for Rhodan's unique capability to react within a fraction of a second to the most unexpected situations. He jumped forward and grabbed the joystick over the shoulder of the pilot, who was scared stiff.

  The transporter tilted and spun down the 30 feet into the foliage of the trees. Twigs and branches broke around it and when the vehicle came to rest it was buried 10 feet deep under the leaves and safely out of the sight of the aggressors. The radiation monitor beeped continuously. The neutron-induced radioactivity exceeded the safe level.

  Deringhouse reported in a monotone: "Enemy sighted. Commence firing."

  Derringhouse's transporter let go with the impulse-beamer. The first salvo would have made a lump of molten metal out of Tomisenkov's vehicle, had he not reacted quick as a flash and pulled away after his bungled attempt to destroy the transporter leading the flight.

  Deringhouse's shot caught Tomisenkov's machine in the tail. The rear end was the location of the gravity poles which were essential for the distribution of the neutral field. The transporter plopped down like a stone before Tomisenkov had a chance to make a manoeuvre to regain his balance.

  There was a loud whoosh as the craft crashed through the foliage and Tomisenkov's head was thrown so hard against the instrument panel that he was instantly knocked out.

  Meanwhile Rhodan had pushed the pilot out of his seat and taken over the controls. Through a gap in the leaves he saw the hostile vehicle plunge down, followed by another transporter.

  "Deringhouse, is that you?"

  "Yes, Sir! " Deringhouse called. "I won't let him get away!"

  "Leave him alone!" Rhodan ordered sternly.

  "But he's using our own weapons, sir!" Deringhouse protested.

  "Never mind!"

  Deringhouse came back and the transporters formed up again. Rhodan gave a short report about the incident to the Stardust and added: "Our vehicle and the occupants will have to be decontaminated. Have everything ready!

  Decontamination of radioactive bodies was a standard procedure on board the Stardust. As the refined product of an advanced technology, it was equipped for all such eventualities. The beeping of the radiation monitor ceased as soon as the transporter entered the decontamination shower.

  • • •

  Although he knew precisely how the positronic computer would react to his unannounced entry into the fortress, Tako Kakuta, the Japanese teleporter, felt uneasy as he approached the control center of the mechanical brain through wide, brightly lit corridors inside the mountain.

  He was under constant observation, there was no doubt about it. There were plenty of cameras and microphones concealed in the walls.

  When he had proceeded halfway into the mountain, the positronic brain had already detected his goal. The right wall of the corridor through which he walked opened up a few yards and from the opening emerged a group of robot guards who had watched over the security and maintenance of the fortress for thousands of years.

  Tako offered no resistance. The robots led him away and took him through halls and in antigrav elevators deep down under the surface to a room which served as an investigation center. The cerebrotronic machine applied the most effective and safest method for its inquiry, namely hypnotic interrogation.

  The inquiring machine could read Tako's mind like an open book and he had no control whatsoever over it. Tako gave the information that Perry Rhodan's last instructions should no longer be obeyed because they inflicted serious dangers to Rhodan himself.

  The brain machine exercised its own judgment and acted accordingly.

  It sent a message to the telecom receiver in the Stardust stating:

  "THE DEFENSE SCREEN WILL BE OPENED FROM 173:00 O'CLOCK. ADMITTANCE DURING THIS INTERVAL."

  Rhodan was ready with his ship.

  • • •

  Capt. Liubol sat in the top of a giant tree to watch the Stardust. A second man sat close behind him to watch for flying reptiles and to protect Liubol from their attack while his eyes were trained on the battleship.

  Gen. Tomisenkov—with a big lump and a smarting headache—kept asking impatiently from below what there was to see.

  The fourth man of the team, an electronics technician, climbed all over the precariously balanced wreck in the branches and tried to determine whether it could be fixed up enough to do anything with it.

  The Stardust presented a very imposing view; but when Liubol had waited half an hour and the gigantic sphere had not moved, he had the impression that he was wasting his time.

  As a result of his examination the electronics technician had in the meantime come to some conclusions which drove Tomisenkov to despair.

  The technician declared categorically that the essential parts of the transporter were damaged to such an extent that i
t would be impossible to put it back into operation without knowledge of the foreign technology.

  "At least pull out the cannon Liubol fired before!" Tomisenkov growled.

  "It's no use, sir," the technician replied. "All aggregates of the transporter and the weapons, too, drew their energy from a generator which sustained most of the damage."

  Tomisenkov did not want to believe him until the technician showed him the specific components in the vehicle and explained to him how they were damaged and how little anyone could know about the aliens' technology.

  Only then did Tomisenkov realize that he had lost another round of the game—a round with extremely high stakes.

  He understood now that he had to make peace on this world. Either they learned to cope with the environment on Venus or they wouldn't even live long enough for a rescue expedition to reach them.

  "Liubol, come down! " Tomisenkov shouted. "That vehicle," he said with a disdainful gesture of his hand after he had assembled his men on the ground, "is broken and out of commission. We'll have to work our way back to the camp on foot. It's going to be a tough march; but I've been able to do it alone, so the four of us should manage to get through. Liubol, take the compass and lead the way. The most important rules are: stick together and don't touch anything unless you have to. Let's go!"

  At first they did not think it was too bad. The undergrowth was tangled and sometimes animals ran across their feet and made them feel queasy; but they moved along and made fairly good time.

  Only when the sun began to set did they start to worry about the night which would last as long as five days on Earth: 120 hours in a dark jungle!

  And the more they thought about it, the gloomier their future looked to them. They had no ships to leave this planet. They were condemned to spend the rest of their lives on Venus!

  They did not talk for hours, lost in their melancholy thoughts.

  But then two of the animals that resembled bears got wind of them. Liubol noticed them first and Tomisenkov advised them how to deal with the beasts. Following his instructions they hid out in an ambush. When the animals, which were not too smart, stalked them and came close, they were killed with grenade rifles.

  Then they marched on.

  Before they reached their camp, they would have to fight many times. But their courage and a confident mood had returned; with it the burning pride to show the world that somebody had come who was mightier than the wilderness and its ponderous saurians, its huge reptiles and all its repulsive slimy worms.

  Whatever they believed in, whatever the ideology they had learned, no matter with how much injustice they treated each other—they were human. They were members of the proudest, most ambitious and daring race in the Galaxy.

  And they would survive—not all of them, but enough so that the chain would never be broken.

  • • •

  The positronic brain processed the information from the curved segment of the Wanderer's orbit and predicted that the entire problem would be solved within the next two hours.

  One more day and it would have been too late to ascertain the desired answer from the fragment. For the first time Rhodan's face expressed his great relief. He called Col. Freyt in Galacto-City. Freyt evidenced great relief when he learned that Rhodan and the Stardust would return to Earth in a few hours. "You know, sir," he confessed, "more and more of our own people are failing to understand me. They ask me to take some action to contain the expansionist policies of the Eastern Bloc and I..."

  Rhodan nodded. "We'll take care of all that. Don't worry about it. Don't breathe a word to anybody about our arrival, right?"

  Reginald Bell, who had listened in on the conversation, did not understand much of it. While the positronic brain was in the process of computing the Wanderer trajectory, Rhodan gave his explanation:

  "When we left Earth, I did not know when we would return. I appointed Col. Freyt as my deputy; but how well did I really know Freyt? How was I to know but what, with the tremendous power at his disposal, he wouldn't commit some foolish act at the first opportunity? I had to have absolute assurance. That's why Freyt was administered a hypno-block which forbade him to intervene in global politics. Moreover, a few mutants remained behind in Galacto-City who, in a sense, exercised thought control and made sure that he did not take any rash measures.

  "As we can now see with hindsight, the idea of a hypno-block was based on a miscalculation on my part—or let's say, my opinion about the development of global politics was too optimistic. I considered the situation to be fairly stable. It didn't seem thinkable to me that anyone could still be interested or succeed in disrupting pan-terrestrial unity." The Peacelord shrugged his shoulders. "Otherwise Freyt would have received quite different instructions from me. As matters stand now, he is not permitted to do anything but repulse an attack on the Gobi base, should one be made. His hands have been tied in all other respects."

  "You mustn't reproach yourself." Bell was sympathetic. "Nobody could have foreseen that we'd be gone four and a half years."

  Rhodan shook his head. He was severe with himself, as usual. "When you carry a responsibility as big as mine, Reg, you've got to consider all the contingencies all the time, no matter how unlikely they may seem."

  He elaborated on another case.

  "We were up against the same problem with the fortress. I was too cautious; I didn't take into account that some people other than our own might land on Venus. The robot brain reacted as programmed: it did not interfere with humans —Tomisenkov and his men—and if we hadn't intervened in the nick of time, they probably would have occupied the base. It was only when Tomisenkov with his rockets started shooting at us that the robot brain registered "unusual and alarming circumstances" and locked everybody out—including us.

  "I've taken precautions to change this. In the future when there are ships with you or me and a few others select in them, we'll send a coded signal to the brain so that it will open its entrance in the most critical circumstances."

  "Thank you!" said Reg.

  Perry was genuinely surprised. "For what?"

  "For the confidence."

  "Oh, you..." But Perry's reply was interrupted by a signal from the positronic brain. Its mechanical voice announced: "RESULT AVAILABLE IN 50 MINUTES."

  Bell got up. "What are we going to do now?"

  Rhodan's face suddenly became very serious, very determined. "I think we've shown patience long enough," he said with quiet resolve. "If the people of Earth haven't the sense, the will, the ability—if they don'twant to be united—they'll have to be for their own good. We can't afford to move out into the universe with the threat of disunity at our back. We must make a clean sweep and we'll start with the trouble makers."

  As he spoke his last words, a volcano in the west began to give signs of imminent eruption. "An omen!" said Rhodan.

  Propelled by tremendous internal pressure, from inside Venus a gigantic molten column of glowing yellow magma was ejected into the atmosphere. Hundreds of yards it rose, a brimstone barrage of extra-terrestrial pyrotechnics that illuminated the twilit land with an eerie phosphorescent light.

  "A beacon in the night," Bell murmured.

  The adventure continues in the next stirring story...

  Escape To Venus