by Perry Rhodan
"Here, sir!"
Three men stepped forward.
"Which one of you was near my tent at the time of the explosion?"
Nobody spoke up.
"I saw one of you over there on the slope of the hill to the south. Who was it?"
Nobody.
"I don't suspect anybody," Rhodan explained as quietly as possible. "I just want to know if the man who was standing over there noticed anyone."
None of the three guards admitted to being the man Rhodan had seen on the side of the knoll. He did not press the men any further. He would clear up that matter without their information.
Deringhouse had found a convenient place. The men switched on the thermostatic regulators in their suits and lay down.
"You didn't have anything explosive in your tent, sir, did you?" Deringhouse asked.
Rhodan shook his head.
"That's been on my mind all the time. I don't believe I did. Besides, I've reason to believe that somebody was in my tent while we were observing the mouse-beavers."
He related the story of the vanished pocket telecom.
Meanwhile, Tanner kneeled at the edge of the crater. The hole was fairly deep, about ten feet. Whatever had torn Rhodan's tent to pieces, the force had been more m a downward than a horizontal direction.
If it had been otherwise, Rhodan thought angrily, the same thing would have happened to the other tents as to his.
Tanner got up. Rhodan saw him shrug his shoulders and wipe his hands on his spacesuit with a baffled gesture.
"Find anything?"
"No, sir. If you ask me, this was a stick of dynamite or TNT. Nothing modern. It stinks like burned powder."
Rhodan climbed down into the hole. In the glow of his flashlight he saw charred traces and some powder residue which covered the blasted sand. When he opened the aperture in the faceplate of his helmet and sniffed the incoming odor, he smelled the same thing as Tanner had, burned powder.
At the same time, Deringhouse had walked over to the hill where Rhodan claimed to have seen a sentry.
"Whereabouts was it, sir?" he called across. "Here?"
"A little farther to the right—in that direction—and up a few feet!"
Deringhouse followed the directions. The night was quite dark. Too dark to
recognize the details for which they were looking. Rhodan could not see what the major was doing.
Rhodan and Tanner stood at the rim of the crater, mulling over the cause. Tanner was about to say something when Deringhouse yelled.
"Come over here, sir!"
He seemed to be very excited. Rhodan bounded over taking advantage of the
weak gravity. He leaped hastily and barely missed landing on Deringhouse's back. Deringhouse squatted in the sand and pointed the beam of his lamp on something.
A track!
The sand which covered the slope of the hill and was kept in constant motion by the wind was not the most ideal medium for retaining a clear and lasting print.
But this was a track.
Two rows of impressions of parallel holes—spaced about the span of a hand apart—and leading askew up the hill. The distance between holes was no more than ten inches according to Deringhouse's measurement.
It was an altogether strange track.
Lowering his head. Deringhouse studied it.
"A two-legged being, I'd say. A four-legged track looks different."
"Beware of rash conclusions," warned Rhodan. "It could just as well have been a long slender centipede."
All at once it dawned on Rhodan that it was not a guard he had seen earlier. It had been the shadow of the being from which this track stemmed. The shadow of the being who had been in his tent and planted a bomb which had exploded five minutes after he had entered through the airlock, as though it had been rigged to the door with a time fuse.
Perhaps that's how it was, Rhodan thought.
He would have been blown to bits along with his tent had it not been for his discovery of the disappearance of the telecom. Considering the fact that the world around here was swarming with telekinetic activists, he had drawn very naive conclusions. It would have been more sensible to deduce that the unknown tricksters had played a joke on him with the telecom. But no, he had been convinced that the telecom was stolen.
What was this whistling and whining?
The wind. The perpetual wind in this world which continually churned up eddies of sand.
Deringhouse was just below the hill, not far from where Tanner was standing. Rhodan was at the spot where the mysterious track began. Three lost figures in a strange world. Deringhouse had turned off his light.
Nobody said a word. Rhodan felt a shiver running down his spine. Who had planted the bomb? Or—what had planted the bomb? A being that made peculiar tracks of holes starting somewhere and...
"Over here, sir!"
It was Deringhouse's voice. Rhodan was startled.
"I'm coming!"
Taking two long jumps, he was on top of the knoll. Deringhouse had already descended the other side of the hill and his flashlight was switched on again.
"At first I thought that somebody was lying here in wait for us," he joked with a contrived smile; "instead I found this."
Rhodan looked at it. It was the portable telecom set he had missed just in time to save his life. It was lying in the sand—thrown away as useless—and had a few scratches on its smooth plastic surface.
Rhodan picked it up and put it in his pocket. "And over there!" Deringhouse pointed something out at a spot a few feet below the place where they had found the telecom. Rhodan pinched his eyes together till he saw colored spots and opened them again.
But the sight had not changed.
The track ended at the place where Deringhouse had pointed. Deringhouse swept the whole area with his light without finding a continuation of the tracks.
"A track which ends as abruptly as it starts. What kind of a world have we entered?" Tanner asked in a gloomy tone.
3/ THE DANGER DEEPENS
The following morning they held a brief conference about the best way to proceed. Lieutenant Tanner was of the opinion they should follow the direction of the tracks regardless of its peculiarities.
Deringhouse pointed out that anyone who suspected he would be followed would never leave a trail with such obvious telltale marks.
Rhodan did not claim, after all, that the unknown being—although capable of handling explosive bombs—was endowed with human logic and he stuck, therefore, to his original plan.
He proposed establishing a base camp in the center of the hilly area and from there to comb the vicinity with open eyes and ears, letting Fellmer Lloyd put his unique talent to work to uncover the strange individuals. Last night's raid seemed to prove that this terrain was the home ground of the mysterious aliens.
On one point they all agreed: the unknown being who committed the attack belonged to the race from which they hoped to obtain further clues to the World of Eternal Life.
The Stardust reported all quiet on board. They had nothing for Fellmer Lloyd to do.
During an uneventful flight of several hours, the three auxiliary vehicles covered the distance to the base camp, a central location selected by Rhodan on the map. Rhodan did not take any chances. He kept the engines running under full power and maintained an average altitude of three hundred feet.
Without any further incident, the small column reached a gently rolling valley stretched between two rows of hills, the highest of which was about two hundred-fifty feet above the floor of the valley.
While they set up their camp—with one tent less than the night before, depriving Rhodan of his privilege of a private tent—he tried to figure out why the inhabitants of this planet had restricted their activities to the night. During their flight they had neither sighted any of the mouse-beavers nor one of those who had intruded into his tent.
The environment of this planet was hostile enough by day but at night the temperatures dropped t
o minus 22°F. Why then?
After a lunch out of cans from Arkon, Rhodan gave his instructions for the search. He did not intend to waste any time. At least one of the aero-cars was to be deployed at all times. Rhodan had assigned a crew of two—or three in an exceptional case—for each sortie. That way he always had well-rested reserves while the remaining men stayed in the camp. Each vehicle was equipped with efficient ultra-search devices so that the probe did not have to be interrupted during the night.
The mission was: to investigate everything that moved, take photographs and make a report. No single-handed actions!
Rhodan expected the search to last a maximum of ten days. He was convinced that he would find something before the end of ten days, although he did not know what made him think so.
After their assignments two of the aero-cars got ready for the first flight. Rhodan took the third and went with Major Deringhouse on a short reconnaissance flight which was not part of the program.
They cruised initially in an easterly direction, since the two other machines flew over the south and south-west territory. Rhodan was piloting while Deringhouse was on the lookout with his keen eyes.
Deringhouse did not consider this flight very promising. He would have counseled against it, if he had not been grateful for the diversion.
Vagabond's sun shone with a peculiar red light. In time their eyes got used to it but the colors were undergoing changes so that the blue-grey spacesuits, for instance, became a shade of green.
"A strange world!" Deringhouse mused.
"With strange denizens," Rhodan added after a while.
They were in constant communication with their camp and the other two reconnaissance vehicles. Nothing unusual happened anywhere. After the excitement of last night, boredom began to sink in. The aero-car's engine was humming monotonously. Deringhouse felt sleepy, but with Rhodan alert at the controls he was loath to admit to Deringhouse began to check the instruments in order to keep busy.
Outside temperature was 35.2°F., air pressure 89, violet sky, cloudless.
Time 16:05 local time. The local day had twenty-four hours and fifty-two minutes Terrestrial time.
Beep... beep... beep...
Rhodan looked at the grav-meter which showed a red light as a signal that it had registered some irregularity.
Rhodan called the Range Finder Section and reported:
"Weak, variable gravitation in northeast."
He decided to go a little lower. As the aero-car went nose down into a flat valley the grav-meter indicated the disturbance more clearly, a sign that the vehicle was approaching the source of gravity.
"What do you think of it, sir?" Deringhouse asked.
Rhodan shrugged his shoulders.
"Could be a gravity generator. Quite powerful. Somewhat stronger than the one we have in the aero-cars. None of our vehicles is in the neighborhood, so..."
He left the conclusion open.
The grav-meter indicated definitely where the gravitational force could be pinpointed. After a few seconds Rhodan determined that it was moving. The thing they were chasing seemed, indeed, to be a vehicle.
"Be ready to shoot!" ordered Rhodan. "I don't want to be caught unprepared."
Weapons were a regular part of the aero-cars' equipment. Rhodan had a variety of them installed.
Deringhouse was getting ready. When Rhodan turned around briefly to look at him, he saw him grin.
"Don't be reckless," he warned Deringhouse. "We shoot only if we have to."
Deringhouse nodded.
The sound signal of the grav-meter grew into a continuous, unpleasant beeping. Rhodan damped the sound.
The terrain over which the aero-car was now moving suddenly displayed a surprising regularity. The hills were all of the same height and size and shaped in an identical manner. They stood in straight rows and if they had not looked like the same sandy hills as all the others on this planet, one would have thought that they had been artificially constructed.
Rhodan kept the vehicle just a few feet above the ground and moved carefully between the two rows of hills. Nothing could be seen of the thing that caused the grav-meter to beep.
This was astonishing. According to the instrument the origin of the gravitation was no more than three hundred feet distant and they could see much farther than that in the clear atmosphere of the planet.
"Perhaps you can..."
He had not finished asking his question when all of a sudden he saw it. He had been looking for something comparable in size to their aero-car. But the thing which drifted out between two hills was a glittering sphere of no more than three feet in diameter.
"Damn it! Do we have light bodies here too?" Deringhouse cussed.
Rhodan merely shook his head. The thing out there was solid. It had walls of a glittering material with which he was not familiar but apparently could be felt if touched by hand.
Rhodan slowed down abruptly so that the aero-car was creeping forward by inches close to the ground. He approached the glistening sphere, which had now stopped in the middle of the shallow valley.
The distance did not exceed one hundred fifty feet. A great many thoughts crossed Rhodan's mind in a flash. Whatever it was over there—how could he make it clear to it that he had no hostile intentions?
"Get into the airlock!" Rhodan yelled at Deringhouse. "Open the outer hatch and wave or do something to welcome him! Go on!"
Deringhouse was startled but, nevertheless, nimbly climbed into the airlock. A few moments later Rhodan saw his arm vigorously waving from the hatch.
Still one hundred feet to go!
Within pistol range, he suddenly noted, and wondered about the thought. He stopped the aero-car at a distance of sixty feet. The sphere did not move but Deringhouse was still waving.
The aero-car touched ground; Rhodan got up from his seat and squeezed himself behind the ray gun. He did not exactly know why he did it but he had a feeling of impending danger and it was better in any case...
At this moment the scene changed.
The iridescent sphere suddenly jumped into the air like a rubber ball and went clonk on top of the vehicle's body. Rhodan felt a severe jolt and saw stars before his eyes as his head struck the gunsight of his thermo-beamer.
The whole world spun around him in dizzy circles. From somewhere came Deringhouse's angry, shouting voice. Hills, valleys and glittering spheres whirled turbulently around and even if Rhodan had been in control of himself after the hard blow he had suffered, he could not have found the target for his impulse-beamer.
Something soft and growling fell on top of him, moved back and was thrown once more against him at the next turn the vehicle performed.
It was Deringhouse. He had come out of the airlock and attempted to get the neutron-beamer into operation. Rhodan wanted to call him but something grabbed the vehicle with a mighty jerk and slammed it to the ground with a crashing sound.
Then silence returned again.
Rhodan had not lost consciousness. He knew what was going on around him although his head droned. He sat up and saw that he had fallen between two rear seats. The seats were in an abnormal position. The backrest was horizontal and the seat was vertical. He looked through the rear window and saw the sand on which the vehicle was lying. The side windows were lined up on top of each other instead of running from front to back.
"Deringhouse!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Did you get hurt?"
"No, but I can't move."
"Wait till I get there!"
The neutron-beamer was torn from its mounting. The front plate, which carried the entire weight of the heavy weapon, pinned Deringhouse down in his seat. Only with Rhodan's aid did he manage to shove far enough away to crawl out from under it.
"Everything all right?"
Deringhouse examined his body and took a deep breath.
"I'm fine, sir."
They closed their suits and climbed up over the seats to the hatch. Rhodan saw through the
side windows that the sphere had vanished. The outer hatch of the airlock was ten feet above the ground since the strange weapon of the mysterious adversary had turned the vehicle on its end. Rhodan jumped down, thermo-blaster in hand. But there was nothing around at which to shoot. They walked around the vehicle and found that the metal body had withstood the battering very well.
However, the vehicle's front end pointed skyward and it was thus incapacitated.
"We can try to rock it," Deringhouse suggested.
"Maybe we can make it fall down right side up." Rhodan agreed.
But first Deringhouse climbed on Rhodan's shoulders back into the vehicle to switch on the engine, so that the aero-car's fall would be cushioned by the gravitation field generated by the engine. They took their positions with the upright vehicle between them. Rhodan called the signals.
"Heave!" Deringhouse pulled to his side.
"Ho!" Rhodan pulled in the opposite direction. They got the heavy vehicle moving in no time at all. Soon it was swaying like a tree in a storm and it was only a matter of seconds before it would topple forward.
Rhodan relaxed his efforts in order to let the vehicle fall on the right side where Deringhouse stood. Rhodan had a fingerhold in a window frame as the smooth body did not offer much to grip.
"Heave!" Deringhouse shouted.
"Ho!" Rhodan answered.
As the vehicle swung back, he felt it jerk. Rhodan's fingers scraped and lost their hold. The vehicle tipped over with incredible force.
"Stop!" Deringhouse yelled. Rhodan saw him leap away from under the falling vehicle as if shot from a gun. He hit the ground, tumbled and got up in a cloud of dust.
The aero-car had landed just as they had hoped. The running engine had lessened the impact. Everything was in order except...