by Leo Lukas
Nothing could have happened? If only they knew!
Without his diary, Levian Paronn felt like half a man. As though someone had pulled the floor out from under his feet and robbed him of his only support. More than that: his entire plan was suddenly in utmost danger! It was unthinkable what would result if the diary fell into the wrong hands before he could get it back. His cover would be blown—poof!, popped like a balloon. All his reflections and considerations were contained within the diary, all his secret intentions down to the finest detail. How he had manipulated Rhodan and Tolot and planned to manipulate them further so the Halutian would unknowingly take him to his goal ... How he had deceived the Keeper and sacrificed their friendship for the sake of a higher purpose ... If all that became known, he could no longer operate from the background. The puppets would rebel against the puppetmaster. He would lose, and all of humanity along with him.
And the final goal was so close, so close ...
He had to be the first to find the mutant and get the diary from him. At all costs. No matter what it took.
When Jars tan Aburrir arrived in Veehraátoru, Mechtan tan Taklir already had an attack of rage behind him. He, who had been so proud of the Seventh Fleet and its top leadership, suddenly suspected that he was surrounded by utter failures.
"They could practically have reached out with their hands and grabbed him!" he complained to Aykalie's husband without bothering with a greeting. "And he still managed to get away from them again."
"He ran into a power supply tunnel," one of the soldiers whom Mechtan had just chewed out said defensively. "It was too low for us to follow him upright, and too twisting and filled with cables for the antigravs to help. After leaving the tube, he found his way to a secondary control station that had a teleporter."
"And used it to get here to Veehraátoru. Of all the places in the system, it had to be Veehraátoru!" Mechtan tore at his hair. "You couldn't think of a better place to spread the germs to half the empire in no time. Achab!"
The Maphan had all the soldiers that they could mobilize posted to block off the area for a considerable distance around. They were also question the bouncers and concierges of all the establishments in this part of the entertainment district. Holding his com wristband at his ear, the Maphan waved to Mechtan with his free hand. "Just a moment."
"The Lemurian rematerialized in the foyer of this hotel, which also serves as a travel bureau and arranges trips to the love grotto," Mechtan informed the scientist. "Came out of the teleporter and ran like lightning on to the street. In the swirl of the crowd and with all the non-Akonians, particularly the various human-descended races adapted to all kinds of different environments, he won't attract a lot of attention. But when he runs into one of the buildings and jumps into a teleporter, somebody should be able to remember him. Meanwhile, we've shut down all the teleporters. If he's still in Veehraátoru, he won't get away from us."
"All the passersby within the cordon have to be taken to the hospitals that are standing ready and examined," Jars said. He cleared his throat. "The tan Abrurir family is making its private health facilities available. I've already made the arrangements."
"Excellent," Mechtan praised him. When the chips were down, the boy had more in his head than just big words.
"In addition," Jars continued, "assuming that you will approve, I'm assigning a hundred men from our special units as an intervention squad. They're all security people with the best possible training, the vast majority former space soldiers."
"Any help is welcome." Mechtan was familiar with the tan Aburrir private militia and knew of its quality. Jars's family paid considerably better than the government's own fleet. "They should stand by until we've located the fugitive."
As though on cue, Achab tan Mentec exclaimed: "We've got him! He ran into a betting parlor and had himself beamed to the Rotodrome!"
To the Rotodrome. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, Mechtan thought while his officers and Aykalie's husband ordered their respective soldiers to move out.
Perry Rhodan poked idly at his breakfast plate without any enthusiasm. He was frustrated because he hadn't got a single step further. The ACHATI UMA might be a constant source of delight for Solina Tormas and the other scholars, but there still wasn't any trace of the former commander, the first Immortal. Icho Tolot had seemed at a loss, too. When even his overbrain couldn't come up with any new insights, it was as good as impossible that they had overlooked something.
Even so, Rhodan couldn't avoid the impression that he had been deliberately put on the trail of the ACHATI UMA and lured to the Akon System. Why else would someone have adjusted the data storage unit on the LEMCHA OVIR so it would respond only to Perry Rhodan? That someone, whom Rhodan suspected could be none other than Levian Paronn, must have known him!
But from where?
Or had the Keeper made the data available to him? If Icho Tolot's double also had that knowledge, it was of course conceivable. But why didn't Paronn make an appearance now and identify himself if he wanted to tell him the history of the arks and bring him on board the ACHATI UMA?
What was going on here?
Rhodan's multifunction wristband put a call through. It was Solina Tormas. "I'm not sure if Admiral tan Taklir will approve of this," she said excitedly, "but I wanted to let you know that the Lemurian mutant that escaped from the NEANN OCIS has been tracked down. Or have you already heard?"
"No, I just got up. Even our kind need a little sleep now and then. Has he been caught?"
"Not yet. Apparently he's somewhere in the Rotodrome—that's a big sports stadium. And there's a big game going on there right now with nearly a hundred thousand people present."
"A hundred thousand ... " Rhodan suppressed a curse.
"Packed in tight. It's the Gravoball Cup finals, and it's being broadcast to every single world in the Akonian Empire. That's why Mechtan is holding back from stopping the game at once and having the stadium evacuated."
"He's taking the risks of infection into account?"
"Afterwards, all the spectators will be scanned and packed off to quarantined hospitals as necessary. But a major military operation at a point when the game is so close ... The danger of conflicts with crazed sports fans and a mass panic in front of the tri-vid cameras is too great. Mechtan is hoping to capture the fugitive inconspicuously before more than a small and justifiable percentage of the spectators are infected."
"Have the PsIso-Nets arrived? They were being sent by teleporter from Olympia to Xolyar ... "
"Yes, but only a portion of the troops could be equipped with them. Perry, I thought that perhaps you, since you've undergone that Mental Stabilization process, and with your experience ... We've been able to make a connection from the LAS-TOOR to the Rotodrome."
"I understand. On my way."
Boryk thought he was dreaming.
Up to now, he had moved through landscapes that had a certain similarity with familiar surroundings: caves and tunnels like those he had known in the Silver Mountain, a forest with a thick leafy covering. There had even been a kind of village square, although populated by more people than he had ever seen at one time, and surrounded by very strange, tall, and yet narrow cottages.
But now he was looking at a vista that was so unimaginably strange that it took his breath away.
This world was not just twice as large as Heaven or Hell. No, it was ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times larger. Drifting along the firmament were clouds—but uncountably many more and all very different, not the always the same and familiar four or five. They were much, much higher and more distant than a few kilometers. The same was true for the blindingly bright sun. Even so, Boryk thought he could feel its rays, striking down like silver fans through holes in the clouds, warm against his skin. His eyes burned and began to water. This world was to his homeland like the real volcano cliffs were to their illustration in a children's book. It stretched so endlessly far in all directions that Boryk couldn't have w
alked the distance to the horizon in weeks. He saw blue seas in which the Garden of Everwas and the Sea of Geneset could have found room many times over. Orange-purple woodlands of trees reared like mountain peaks, each one mightier and more complexly branched than the entire Silver Mountain. Green and gold waving fields, the entire populations of Heaven and Hell couldn't have tended. Innumerable flying machines swarmed in dizzying paths around settlements of buildings thousands of meters high that defied gravity. Many resembled sparkling, frozen waterfalls, others bushes with flowering clusters of colorful glass pearls. Still others seemed to be constantly changing, shimmering, net-like webworks, or enormous, gleaming white funnels.
Boryk had come out of the green archway on the upper surface of the very highest building. A wall somewhat higher than he was blocked his view down into the circular interior. A noise rose from within, a roar from thousands of throats.
Boryk trembled. Fear overwhelmed him. Never before, not even in the crèche, had he felt so small and insignificant. The endlessness of this world weighed down on him, crushed him, overwhelmed him. He sank to his knees.
Someone rushed past, a giant, calling something to him. The little box on Boryk's waistband rendered it as: "That's right, little guy! They say kissing the ground before you go into the Rotodrome will give your team luck! But hurry up—the game's already started!"
An intensively sweet odor trailed the giant like a plume. Boryk coughed, then gagged, and needed to take several breaths before he could stand up and stagger to the barrier. A mech-animal whose upper body partially resembled that of a harvest helper while its lower body was rooted in the wall, barked at him. "Please display your entrance authorization." Before Boryk could react, the control pad in his pocket beeped and the mech-animal gave him a friendly wave while a small door opened up.
Boryk climbed down a steep stairway, his head lowered as he concentrated on the high steps. Blinking arrows at his feet seemed to want to show him the way. He followed them down to the right, several dozen steps straight ahead, then down again into the tumult and clamor filling the vast bowl. To the left, along an aisle, past giant thighs, until he found a free seat. Only when he had climbed into it did he dare raise his head.
He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and gasped for breath. Once again he had to force himself to accept as reality what appeared like a hallucination to him. An Inconceivable amount of people sat in the colossal ring of tiers. They not only gave off a ghastly mishmash of odors, but they also made such an infernal noise that Boryk feared for his hearing. None of his neighbors took any notice of him. All attention was on what was happening in the center.
There was a huge structure in the form of a horizontally sliced, transparent pipe like a gigantic rain gutter, open on top. Colorfully clad figures roamed the inner surface on whirring skids that didn't seem entirely material. Soon Boryk realized that the players obviously weighed more at the bottom of the pipe than at its upper edges. Again and again they raced at a deadly speed down the curving surface in order to gain momentum and be catapulted up over the edge on the opposite side. They paused for a moment in the air, floating almost weightlessly. Then, with surprising agility, they turned, ignited small jets on the heels of their boots, and shot back down into the depths. They were like the metal flying beasts that cleaned the fields of Everwas of clutter.
The entire pipe rotated slowly within the gigantic central circle so that equally good views were presented to all spectators. Cubes of colored light were strung along the axis, below the edges. They showed huge enlargements of individual scenes in uncannily rapid succession. Apparently the players—all of them giants, though some had more than four extremities—belonged to two different hordes. They fought with considerable physical effort and not a little brutality over possession of a shining pumpkin that they threw to each other over large distances. In the center of the wall at each end of the tube, a few meters above the floor, glowed a perfectly circular, green ring. If the pumpkin was thrown through the ring, it flew out of its counterpart at the other end. At the same time a blaring, bone-shaking fanfare sounded. Then, about half of the spectators in the audience roared even louder than before, leaped from their seats, and waved arms in celebration. That happened frequently, sometimes several times a minute. It was a very fast game. An uninterrupted, hectic rush and free-for-all that demanded tremendous strength from the participants and carried the spectators along in an almost trance-like state.
Boryk was tiny and lost in the fanatic masses. Sweating, gasping, half-suffocated, his nose and throat were raw and congested with mucous and he was close to desperation. He desperately needed someone to take him back to his home world with its comprehensible proportions, or at least to the cavern with the many green gateways. But how could he recruit a helper in this madhouse? Not even the individuals sitting next to him heard him. No matter how loudly he yelled, they ignored him, completely caught up in the spell of what was happening on, in, and above the rotating playing field.
And then, instead of Boryk being able to force someone to his will, the collective frenzy began to turn on him.
Perry Rhodan went through the teleporter. He was immediately intercepted by an Akonian space soldier on guard duty, identified, and taken at a trot to Mechtan tan Taklir.
The Admiral didn't exactly seem overjoyed to see Rhodan, but neither did he raise any objections to his presence. "We'll get him this time!" Mechtan muttered. Holo displays showed images of the gnome-like Lemurian from various camera angles. The little man with the oversized, pear-shaped head, crouched inconspicuously at the edge of one of the spectator galleries in the fourth tier of the magnificent stadium.
"He went straight to that seat," Mechtan explained. "Hopefully that means only a very few spectators have been infected. Not much more can happen. We've got him in the cross-hairs of dozens of sharp-shooters. What would you do, if I may ask?"
Rhodan had sighted his multifunction-wristband on the Lemurian mutant's position. It lay diagonally to the right from the command post, which had been set up under the cover of a deflector field on the roofs of the communications booths. "I'm recording the little man's personal data so I can quickly pick up his trail again," he replied in Akonian. He had long been fluent in that language and so didn't use a Translator. "Just in case."
The micro-scanner of the six-centimeter device that Rhodan wore on the inner side of his left forearm had capabilities for passive mass, energy, structure, and outline scanning in the conventional as well as the hyper-physical realms. Its range was limited to about 100 kilometers. An active scanner, including laser distance determination up to about 2000 meters, also provided for various standard physical and chemical analyses. These included magnetic field measurements, air pressure and temperature readings, breakdown of atmospheric composition, and a rough indication of the danger level of any poison content in food and liquids. Supported by the wristband's pico-Syntron, Rhodan combined all these measuring methods to create an unmistakable overall profile. The Lemurian differed in terms of many physical characteristics from Akonians and other humanoids of normal size. Not the least striking was a deviation in the ultra-high frequency range of the hyper-energy spectrum, which was typical for markedly Psi-gifted individuals. There was also an unusual emanation which suggested a Cell Activator.
The process only took a few seconds to complete. Then Rhodan's picosyn had stored a kind of signature of the little mutant that it could find within a radius of about 100 kilometers.
"Why haven't you paralyzed him yet?" Rhodan asked the Takhan.
"My reasoning is that once we've stunned him, he won't cause any more trouble. But our officers on the ground are warning against a sniper shot if there isn't an absolute necessity. In the first place, people are constantly jumping up and down all around him. The snipers' synchronized targeting Syntrons could probably pull it off, but the main problem is that we don't know what dosage of stun-beam he can stand. Jars and his eggheads have found out that the inhabitants of the NEANN OCIS are
actually clones with considerably altered Lemurian genetic make-ups. We don't have anything to compare them with. Too small a dose, he'll be warned and maybe go pull some para-psychic stunts somewhere else. If we hit him too hard with the beams, he could suffer severe injury and maybe even die. That would result in a storm of indignation in the media that would sweep me away along with a lot of other members of the Council. Those blasted Arkies have become pop stars since their discovery, a real cult. Have you heard that a 'Back to Lemuria' party has just been founded and according to the latest surveys it has the support of almost twenty percent of the voters?"
With a smile, Rhodan said he hadn't. He was perfectly happy that he wasn't in the gruff Admiral's boots. Although he wasn't at all unmoved by the discovery that the fugitive very likely wore a Cell Activator. Had he appropriated the life-prolonging device with the help of his psi abilities?
Or was he perhaps even the ...
"No," Mechtan said, "as long as he sits there well-behaved and bewildered, we'll wait until the break at the end of the quarter. That'll be in about two minutes. Then we'll hit him without making a big fuss. With a little luck, no one besides the people in his immediate area will realize anything is going on, and we'll have to round them up anyway. For the others, scanners are now being set up at all the exits to make sure no one who's infected can get away from us."
"Good plan."
"I am honored by your praise, Resident."
Rhodan suddenly listened more intently. Something in the Rotodrome was changing almost imperceptibly. As before, groups of fans were singing songs like, "We're the Tavakt'son, the Tavakt'son of West Block!" or chanting choruses of fighting slogans like, "Hit them, bash them, mangle and mash them!" But a strangely inappropriate chant was gradually mixing in with the general clamor. If he understood it correctly, a growing number of enthusiastic supporters was shouting from the stands, "Take Boryk home!"