by Leo Lukas
Suddenly, he was seized as though by an invisible hand. Tractor beams! Solina realized. They pushed Icho Tolot back, in the direction of the two cones. He cried out, for once not with his usual reserve, but loudly enough that the frozen ground trembled.
Then he seemed to resign himself to his fate. "But of course. I understand," he said. He took the last step into the surging transport field under his own power and of his own free will.
Icho Tolot disappeared.
Rhodan had already thumbed the safety off his hand beamer and aimed it at the Beast. "Don't get any dumb ideas, my frustrated friend," he said. "Believe me, I'd be faster than you. And the Jet also has you targeted, to say nothing of the two battlecruisers up there."
Before Solina could comprehend Tolot's departure, the container, which according to the labeling belonged to the UMBERIA, landed gently on the ground. She could guess what was inside. Sliding doors opened silently, revealing a green-glowing teleporter archway.
And out of it stepped ...
It took Levian Paronn some effort to keep his balance. He didn't sense the ground beneath his feet, and felt bodiless and weightless, foolish and wise, transparent and clairvoyant. But with the discipline he had mastered, he kept himself on course, in check, and under control.
He had reached his goal. The time teleporter stood before him, close enough to touch. It was the second of the instruments that he needed to save humanity and eliminate the menace of the Beasts for all time. The first, the construction plans for the anti-Beast weapon developed in the Ichest System, he carried with him.
"So it's you," said the Terran Resident without taking his eye off the hideous four-armed monster that he held at bay with his aimed weapon. "Levian Paronn, I assume?"
He almost regretted not being able to completely open up to Perry Rhodan. The man had clearly shown himself to be on an equal level with him. Paronn would have gladly discussed his motivations at length with Rhodan, explained his plan and why there was no alternative. But he couldn't stay here any longer than he absolutely had to. So he merely nodded, walking slowly past the others in the group who stood closely together, towards the time teleporter's floating control.
A movement he saw from the corner of his eye made him stop and whirl around. The Space-Jet had landed. The dome hatch opened and the Keeper climbed out.
Icho Tolot.
"No," the Halutian said, with noticeably less reserve than usual. "Stop, Levian Paronn. I cannot permit this insanity."
"You will have to." With a leap, Paronn reached the group of Terrans, grabbed the closest one and dragged him along, holding a beamer to the man's temple.
"The gunnery officer of the UMBERIA has orders to shoot anyone who raises a weapon against me or otherwise attacks me. This is just an additional precautionary measure." Moving backwards, he approached the control module. "I'm sorry that it has to end this way. I enjoyed the time I spent with you, Keeper, and I would have preferred to part as friends. But no matter. I know you well. You won't risk anything because you cherish life and can't be responsible for the death of this innocent man. I can. His sacrifice would be a small step for me but a giant leap for all Lemurian kind."
"By which you will condemn innumerable generations to never having existed. If you bring about a time paradox and change the history of the Galaxy so drastically, there will be no Arkonides. No Tefrodians. No Terrans."
"They won't exist, no. You're right, as almost always. But there will be Lemurians everywhere. They will spread out over our galaxy and the neighboring ones without being thwarted in their development by the Beasts and brutally crushed. By going through this time teleporter and building the weapon before the first of you attacked the Galaxy, I will prevent unspeakable misery. I will bring peace to these galaxies for all time. The peace of Lemuria and Veéhrato. It is in the spirit of Veéhrato that I am acting, as you know, Keeper Tolot, and on his personal behalf."
Paronn reached the floating cube, swiftly ran his left hand over the holographic surface with the large symbols, and then began to program with flying fingers. He held Hayden Norwell in the choking grip of his right arm, the beamer pressed to the temple of the prospector who was paralyzed with fear.
Solina understood almost everything now. What Paronn had always wanted was this device that he called a time teleporter. It had just beamed Tolot into the past, where—or better, when—he would meet the Lemurian scientist and later become the Keeper of the star arks' inhabitants. At some point, somehow, as suggested in Paronn's diary, he would be tricked by Paronn. Then, with great difficulty, he would reach the LEMCHA OVIR and endure in cold sleep. Finally, back in the Ichest System, he would emerge from the debris of the wreck and fly off in the Space-Jet.
Why?
Of course—like all Halutians, he wanted to avoid a time paradox at all costs. He couldn't explain it to Perry Rhodan or the time loop would be broken. With that, everything happened as he remembered—since for him it had already happened. His younger self had to be called by the Resident for help. All events must take place exactly as they should so that Tolot finally reached Gorbas IV and was pushed into the teleportation field by himself.
But Levian Paronn didn't care one bit about time paradoxes. He was firmly determined to rewrite history. Intergalactic history.
The seething hot realization struck Solina that in a few seconds, when Paronn had also disappeared into the past, she would no longer have any memory of all this. Possibly she wouldn't even exist at all. Or, if she did, it would be in completely different circumstances. Without Terrans, there would be no Terran Resident Perry Rhodan, no PALENQUE, no "hostage exchange" with the LAS-TOOR. Nor would there be any star arks. When Levian Paronn drove back the Beasts in their first attack, fifty millennia before, with the help of the weapon from Ichest, the entire gigantic project would no longer be necessary. The entire Galaxy would be called Lemuria, and so would the neighboring ones.
And wasn't that an outcome worth striving for? Didn't Solina consider herself a Lemurian at the bottom of her heart, like all Akonians? Did it make a difference whether the flag that waved over this empire, the largest and most prosperous that all these galaxies had ever seen, was Akonian or Lemurian?
No.
But it made a difference whether a Terran named Perry Rhodan was born or not. And that had little or nothing at all to do with the fact that Solina—as she admitted to herself in that moment—was in love with the Resident.
The Beasts had done horrible things. But they were far from being the only ones. Lemuria would not simply endure over the millennia in peace and prosperity. Who would defend the Galaxy from the other, often technologically far superior aggressors, if not Perry Rhodan? Levian Paronn, perhaps? He also possessed a Cell Activator, however he had come by it. Not only that, he had duplicated it a number of times, which was a remarkable accomplishment. These devices even worked, although with certain limitations as she knew.
But when it came down to it, would Paronn be on Perry Rhodan's level? Would he, just to name one example of many, have the greatness to turn around at the Mount of Creation and refuse the answer to the Third Ultimate Question? He, the scientist who knew so much, but wanted to know everything?
No. Levian Paronn sought Paradise, but he would find Hell. And a true Hell, not a few cozy huts with mainly female inhabitants on the shore of a small, idyllic lake, as Boryk had.
Paronn had programmed the control cube and now walked, dragging Hayden Norwell with him, towards the time teleporter. Icho Tolot had climbed out of the Space-Jet and was stomping slowly towards the Lemurian. He made no move to drop down on his running arms, and that meant he could no longer reach the two in time.
Why didn't he attack? He could have covered the distance in not much more than a second. It was highly doubtful that the UMBERIA's gunnery officer would react in time. Could it be true? In order to save the life of the worn-down, useless prospector, Tolot was allowing such a drastic time paradox to happen! Was his own extremely strict moral code
blocking him? Apparently it was. Utter desperation could be heard in the rumbling he was making, and the knowledge that he had lost against the considerably less scrupulous Lemurian.
But wait.
If Paronn exterminated the Halutians—then there couldn't be an Icho Tolot, either. And thus no time loop through which the Lemurian managed to acquire the Anti-Beast Weapon and the Time Teleporter in the first place!
Or could there?
Or could the insistent rumbling not express anger and anxiety at all, but was more like a challenge, a reminder? And why was Perry Rhodan acting so passively? Why didn't he at least make an attempt to intervene?
Something pounded at the back of Solina's mind, like an idea trying to be let in. Knock, knock. There was still something, a factor Levian Paronn hadn't considered, couldn't have considered! Not before. Not now.
He isn't wearing a PsIso-Net! Why should he? He wrote Boryk off as fatally wounded.
Boryk, whom Paronn hadn't even seen when he passed by because the Lemurian was pressed tightly against Solina's thigh like a frightened child. Boryk, whom she now gently nudged. Looking into his huge eyes she very softly said in that dialect that had evolved out of Lemurian aboard the NEANN OCIS, "Only you can stop him, little one. Do it."
Boryk's skull buzzed. For some time now, everything had been too much for him. Yes, he had wanted to atone for his sins. But this world was literally over his head by several kilometers.
The giant woman, the friendliest of all those he had met, was asking something of him. But Boryk only wanted his rest, wanted to go home to the Garden of Everwas, to put his affairs in order and then to take off the sad goddess's amulet. The quarrels of these big people in this horribly huge world didn't concern him. He had no intention of getting involved in them any more.
Again she nudged him. "If that man goes through that door," the giant whispered quickly, "then your home won't exist. It won't have ever existed. And neither will you, Fosse, or your Mama. Or Duani. He will wipe them out as though they never existed at all."
Fat Fosse, yes. And his beloved Mama. It had been so long, long ago ...
And Duani.
"Do it!" the giant urged. With Duani's voice.
Boryk called for the cold fever and it came. He reached for the spirit of the Guardian that he had once overcome. And cried out: "Stop!"
The big one's surprise didn't last long. He looked at Boryk, moved his hand just slightly, and shot a white-hot beam at Boryk that burned his right leg off, far above the knee.
Boryk dropped like a rock and writhed in agony.
"Stay where you belong, clone," the giant said derisively. "What's going on here is a lot bigger than you are. Get in someone else's way if you like, but not mine."
He shouldn't have mocked him. Boryk had already resigned himself to the fact that he didn't belong in this world. That he was an outsider, an alien element, an outlaw because of the damage he had done. Even so, he, the Maffan, Majittri, and Matekten of the Garden of Everwas and the Silver Mountain, demanded respect. The giants named Solina and especially Perry Rhodan had shown him respect.
But not this one. He denied him the last thing that remained to Boryk—the feeling of being a man. A man who in spite of all his limitations and unforgivable mistakes had a right to his pathetic little life. Like Fosse. And Mama. And Duani.
The pain in the blood-spurting stump where his leg used to be threatened to make Boryk lose consciousness. He knew he was about to pass out. But before that ...
Before that he remembered how the fever had come over him on the shore of the Sea of Geneset. The flame of his will, almost blown out by his bodily pain, was ignited once more. The heat boiled over, the lava pulsed in his veins. The power blazed within him, and just as he had back then, he let it overwhelm him.
"Stop," Boryk the Ever-Young commanded. "Drop that which you hold in your hand and let the sweating man go. Step back from the gateway to other worlds. Sit down and shut your mouth."
His eyes wide and rolled up so that only the whites were visible. The giant obeyed.
Paronn fell over, collapsed. All the tension left his body in one blow. He actually did sit, covering his face with his hands.
Hayden Norwell staggered, reeled, suddenly free, stumbling a few steps further. By a hair he missed falling into the transport field, lurching just past it.
The revelations of the last few minutes were taking him longer to take in and absorb than the now seemingly placid Akonian. Or Lemurian. Levian Paronn, alias Achab ta Mentec. Or whoever he really was. Hayden held on tightly to a rock outcropping and concentrated on bringing his breathing from hyperventilation back to normal.
If the Halutian had started running ...
Don't even think about it, he told himself. Don't even think about all the things that could have happened.
Tolot coolly and calmly drew the heavy hand beamer from the holster of his battle suit and paralyzed the Beast. Then he disintegrated the control module and, as soon as all the functions came to a stop, the time teleporter.
Solina Tormas took a first-aid kit from her suit pocket and bent over the whimpering Boryk. Isaias Shimon told her that it was very probable that spores and germs from Gorbas IV had entered the mutant's circulatory system. Hearing that, Solina, with the assistance of Perry Rhodan and Hartich van Kuespert, treated Boryk with everything they could find in their supplies.
"Am I mistaken," Hayden croaked when he felt at all able to speak again, "or did this little clown just save the world as we know it?"
"Seems so," Rhodan replied. His voice sounded hoarse. "I admit that I was depending on him, and so was Icho Tolot. But I wasn't really entirely confident of the outcome, either."
And with a side glance at the ruin of Levian Paronn on the ground, he said, "But as someone has written, 'Vast and wide is the Universe, and for the most part horribly empty. But it is also filled with wonders.'"
Want to know how things are going to develop?
#5 The Last Days of Lemuria by Thomas Ziegler will be available from February 4, 2016
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© 2016 Pabel-Moewig Verlag KG, PERRY RHODAN digital, Rastatt
Editorship: Klaus N. Frick
Translation: Dwight R. Decker
Cover Artwork: Oliver Scholl
ISBN: 978-3-8453-3377-9
Original Title: Der erste Unsterbliche
Original Edition: © Pabel-Moewig Verlag KG, Rastatt
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