Galactic Alarm

by Perry Rhodan

  Perry Rhodan

  The Third Power #3

  GALACTIC ALARM

  PERRY RHODAN

  PEACELORD OF THE UNIVERSE

  Through hypno schooling, Perry Rhodan had learned the scientific knowledge of the star-roving Arkonides, and now his task was to construct a huge starship to open communication between Earth and the might Arkonide Empire.

  But the nations of Earth, in their fear, destroyed the remains of the lone Arkonide research ship on the moon - setting off an alarm to summon retaliation from the war bases of the stellar empire.

  As the massive space-fleet of the galactic dreadnoughts headed for Earth, its mission to turn the planet into a radioactive wasteland, only Perry

  Rhodan had a chance of stopping the onslaught. But for how long could the tiny planet of Earth continue to hold off the enormous war-forces of the mighty star empire?

  MISSION: DESTROY EARTH!

  Never before had the future of mankind been in such dire peril. An overwhelming space-fleet of galactic dreadnoughts was headed for Earth, its mission to turn the planet into a radioactive wasteland.

  Only Perry Rhodan, with his combination of human ingenuity and Arkonide technology, had even the slightest chance of stopping the onslaught.

  And even if he might succeed in repelling the first attack, how long could the tiny planet of Earth continue to hold off the enormous war-forces of the mighty star empire?

  GALACTIC ALARM

  by Kurt Mahr

  AN ACE BOOK

  ACE PUBLISHING CORPORATION

  1120 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, N.Y. 10036

  CHAPTER ONE

  "You won't be able to understand that! You will be unable to comprehend any of the impulses. Your brain will become utterly confused, and you-"

  Thora stopped short without completing her sentence. The words would not come as fast as her frantic mind demanded.

  How simple it is to see through her game, thought Perry Rhodan. It is not my brain she is worried about. Her real concern is to convince me that I am not yet sufficiently developed to grasp her secrets.

  "What difference does it make to you?" he countered. "What would you lose in me? And the sight of Rhodan as a babbling idiot should give you a lot of satisfaction. Or am I mistaken?"

  She was aware that he was trying to throw her on the wrong track, and it particularly annoyed her that he seemed to succeed so easily.

  "That isn't the point at all," she replied tersely. "The psychotapes can be played only a certain number of times, and we must be careful not to exhaust them unnecessarily, especially in this case, where failure is so clearly indicated."

  Rhodan extended his right hand in a pleading manner. "But you do me wrong, Thora," he said. "Haven't we managed so far to understand everything that's been presented to us?"

  Thora snapped her fingers with disdain. "Whatever you have learned before is nothing compared with what you will be faced with now!"

  Rhodan turned around to look at Khrest, whose face bore the usual serious expression. One had to know him well to recognize from the way the skin on his forehead was moving how much Khrest was actually enjoying this. I would gladly exchange 1,000 fictitious programs for a single situation like this, thought Khrest. Lord of all the universes! The most intelligent of all Arkonide women and a demigod of the human species ... and behaving like little children!

  But in reality there were quite serious things at stake here. After some initial resistance, Thora had no longer objected when the two members of the "underdeveloped human race" received instruction, via the hypno-schooling method, in some of the achievements of the superior Arkonide sciences. But now she offered strong resistance to their demand to open up the last secrets of the aliens treasury of highest knowledge. She deeply distrusted Rhodan's argument that this would increase his efficiency.

  Khrest supported Rhodan in his plea. He explained to Thora that the Arkonides' last hope lay in the inherent energy of the underdeveloped human race and the assistance they were giving to the two survivors of the Arkonide space expedition. This help could be increased many, times if Rhodan and his friend were given the necessary scientific information. In the end Khrest had to make use of the authority he had over Thora in his capacity as a member of the ruling Arkonide dynasty, before he could break her violent resistance to Rhodan's request.

  Rhodan had been affected by Thora's obstinacy more than he cared to admit even to himself. He expressed his gratitude to both aliens at the conclusion of the discussion.

  "Thanks for your confidence in my friend Bell and myself. It won't be wasted on us," he told Khrest. Turning to Thora he added, "As time goes on you will come to believe that I harbor no thoughts that would be detrimental to you or that would hurt your pride."

  Rhodan felt he needed to add this last remark for Thora's benefit, although he was well aware that Thora was none too receptive to such declarations of good faith. Not yet, at least.

  "Go to hell!" exclaimed Reginald Bell with deep conviction. At the same time he tried to hide the fear he had felt when Tako Kakuta suddenly materialized out of the void close to him.

  Tako was all smiles. His round, boyish face glowed pleasure.

  "Why to hell?" he asked in his high voice. "I deserve better fate. I am bringing you good news."

  "Good news?" echoed Bell. "Where on Earth would it come from?"

  "From Tai-tiang," smiled Tako. "He has finally understood that he can't do any harm to the Third Power, even with his pioneer divisions. His troops are withdrawing."

  This was exactly what Bell had expected would happen after Tai-tiang's unsuccessful attempt to penetrate the Third Power's domain. Tai had dug an underground tunnel to avoid the protecting energy dome around Rhodan's base. As soon as he reached a position immediately underneath the center of the base, he intended to place a hydrogen bomb there and detonate it, blowing up the Third Power's command center with all its crew. But before Tai-tiang's forces could even bring the bomb inside the underground shaft, Rhodan had sealed off the tunnel with the help of powerful Arkonide instruments. Thus, Tai-tiang's plans of destruction had been foiled.

  But still Bell found it reassuring to hear Tako's report of Tai-tiang's withdrawal. "Thanks, Tako," he sighed softly with relief.

  "So long, sir," said Tako, and disappeared.

  Bell kept staring at the spot where Tako had stood just a moment before. In the past few months he had come to believe that anything amazing and shocking was to be expected only from the Arkonides. Therefore, it would take quite a while for him to get used to the idea that Tako Kakuta was not an alien Arkonide but a member of the human race, even though, being a teleporter, Tako could suddenly appear out of thin air next to him and vanish just as swiftly as he had come.

  Reginald Bell was thinking about the extraordinary gift of teleportation, which seemed altogether, unbelievable to him despite Tako's daily demonstrations. To Bell it seemed on the same order of incredibility as a horse being capable of human speech. A slight hum interrupts d Bell's thoughts, and he glanced over to the wall, where the soft glow of a telecom screen lit up the cool twilight of his room.

  Rhodan's face became visible on the screen. "I would like to discuss something with you, Reg," said Rhodan. "Are you busy now?"

  "I have always time for you, my friend! Where? In your cabin?"

  "Yes. Khrest is here with me."

  Bell nodded briefly and left the room. Behind him the video screen grew dark. As soon as Bell entered his friend's cabin, Rhodan declared, "We plan to leave Earth for a few days."

  Bell listened attentively as Khrest continued the explanations. "We must leave Earth in order to be totally undisturbed when we administer the rest of the hypno-training to you two. But besides gua
ranteeing absolute quiet for you, this trip serves still another purpose."

  The Arkonide scientist's eyes seemed to light up with a faint degree of excitement as he continued, "We assume that our spaceship on the moon was not completely destroyed. I can't believe that terrestrial rockets could be that powerful. I am confident that we will manage to rescue a number of important items, if we take enough time out for such a mission with this trip."

  They decided to start their trip within the next forty-eight hours. In the meantime a feverish activity ensued, making the corridors of the vessel resound with the hurried steps of the crew, especially Rhodan and Bell. The Arkonide auxiliary vessel that had brought Thora down to Earth from the moon on her initial rescue mission was well supplied with a group of robots whose special function was to repair anything that was out of order. But in Rhodan's eyes their inactivity between repair jobs seemed a waste of their usefulness. Any second the robots spent in the storerooms was a luxury that Rhodan felt they could ill afford. Therefore, he suggested to Khrest that they work out a programmed activity schedule for the robots.

  "How soon will you be able to finish such a program?" inquired Rhodan.

  "In ten minutes."

  "Ten minutes!" Rhodan could not conceal his admiration. Khrest confirmed his words with a brief nod and turned to his desk. As Rhodan left the room he quickly note the time.

  Lost in thought as he hurried down the hallway, he failed to notice that someone was approaching from opposite direction. As he impetuously made a sudden around the corner he collided head on with Thora.

  "Oh, I'm so sorry!" he said with an embarrassed smile. She seemed to be in a good mood. She looked at him with mild irony. "If you grow still more energetic, maybe someday you will be able to look around corners and see what's coming."

  "And if you could someday walk with your nose not quite so high in the air, you might be considered an attractive female!" he replied. Thora bit her lip and left him abruptly, soon disappearing behind another bend in the corridor. With a sigh Rhodan continued on his way. Soon Rhodan rejoined Tako Kakuta, who had been waiting for him. Rhodan handed him a sheaf of papers on which he had made some notes.

  "Will you look through these, please, Tako? Later we can discuss them together,"

  "Yes, sir."

  Tako began to read the papers at once, while Perry remained a little longer before returning to Khrest's workroom.

  "You are just in time," the Arkonide scientist greeted him. "I have just finished."

  Together they left and took an elevator down to the storeroom where the robots had their quarters.

  "I have worked out a program for each of them," said Khrest, not without pride. "You will be amazed to see what the machines will have accomplished by the time we return from our trip."

  In the storeroom there were about twenty robots with different functions. The Arkonides had not permitted them selves the luxury of constructing them in their own likeness. These were no toys to them, after all; these were machines with work to do. So most of the robots looked like machines mounted on Caterpillar tracks. Rhodan noticed that they also possessed claws that enabled them to lift themselves up and over obstacles that could not be overcome by the tracks alone.

  The schedule Khrest had worked out for each of the machines was on a paper thin strip of plastic. "These strips contain all necessary impulses," declared Khrest.

  Then he began to feed the programs into the robot machines by inserting the plastic strip into a slot at a different place on each of the twenty robots. Khrest waited until the machine began to hum, which was the signal that it was now ready to work, as it devoured the plastic strip.

  "After such a long period of inactivity," explained Khrest, "it will take a few seconds for the activation to take effect."

  A few seconds seemed to Rhodan a ridiculously short span of time, considering the feverish activity the robots displayed within a few moments. Humming like bees, they began to leave their places and move about, carefully avoiding any collisions with each other. Then they all marched toward the elevator in which Khrest and Rhodan had arrived just a little while earlier. Rhodan burst out laughing after the last machine had left the storeroom on its way in the elevator.

  "I'll be twonked!" he groaned. "I'd never have believed such a thing possible"

  "You will be really amazed to see what these robots are capable of," answered Khrest. "They are true robots. Up to a certain degree they can think and act and make decisions on their own. I can't imagine what would have become of our Arkonide civilization without them.

  The Robots did not leave the ship immediately. First they collected all the items they had been instructed by their programmed schedule to take along with them to the outside.

  When Rhodan had first made plans to effect the task he had set himself, he had been obsessed with the idea that no time must be wasted. Rhodan saw a chance that was worthwhile taking if he could procure from terrestrial industry the various parts needed to construct a faster than light spaceship with an unlimited radius of action. All that was necessary was to place the parts in exactly detailed order. Their assembly would have to take place inside the protective energy bell. In view of the political situation of the great powers, as well as the character of mankind in general, it would have been an irresponsible risk to permit the factories of the world's population to proceed with construction of the spaceship itself.

  Rhodan knew that the space inside the energy dome sufficiently large to complete the assembly of the stars But he had never assumed that it could be accomplish within an area of less than thirty square miles. He watched with enthusiasm the nonstop activity an purposeful behavior with which the robots went about the task. After they had unloaded everything they would need from the space sphere, they stacked all items at a distant spot and set out to level the ground.

  There was no doubt in Rhodan's mind that they would have completed a greater part of the necessary work by time he, Bell and Khrest returned from their trip to the moon.

  Tako had finished reading the notes Rhodan had left him. When Rhodan returned to Tako's cabin, the Japanese was sitting thoughtfully in his chair.

  "Did you understand everything?" Rhodan asked.

  "Yes, sir. It won't be easy."

  Rhodan pulled up a chair and sat down beside Tako. "Listen, Tako," he began urgently, "we are up against a serious and difficult job. If we want to retain the two Arkonides as our allies, we are forced to build a ship for them that has the action radius they need. Unless we can bring them back to their own home planet and then have them return here with us, we shall be very, very old men before accomplish anything the world can respect. We need Khrest's help, and to get his fullest assistance we must have the right spaceship."

  "Yes, sir. I do understand," said Tako.

  "They will always be after you," continued Rhodan. "The secret services of the different countries will pursue you and you will constantly have to be on the alert. You will find many people who want to do business with us because of the money, and they will be ready to supply us with anything we need. But there will be also those who will make fabulous offers to you and then inform the police as soon as you turn your back. Never rely on your special talent alone., It will take about five to six days for the secret service to find out that you are a teleporter. From then on they will shoot first and then ask questions. They will lay traps for you and then try to finish you off."

  Rhodan bent his head closer to the intently listening Japanese as he concluded, "We will supply you with an Arkonide protective suit. That should be of great help to you. But you will carry the final responsibility for your own safety."

  Tako nodded resolutely. "Yes, sir. I understand."

  "It will be up to you where you want to start with your job. Perhaps you might do best to approach private industry. I Will give you a list of all the things we need before you leave. Khrest says that such a spaceship must have a diameter of at least 1,000 feet. There will be many people who will thi
nk you crazy to order scaffolding for a 1,000 foot high plastic structure, or fusion generators with a capacity of 100 million megawatts. In addition you must be careful not to place too many orders for certain parts with one firm; otherwise, they might guess what they are intended for.

  "You must not have any illusions-this is the most taxing task that anyone has ever asked you to carry out. You have until we are ready to start on our trip to prepare yourself for it."

  Rhodan got up. Tako rose and bowed low. Rhodan smiled and cordially slapped his back.

  "Lots of luck, Tako. A great deal depends on your success."

  Rhodan was busy making a list of the things that Tako was supposed to get for them. There were many items, and Tako would have to End them within a short time.

  Of course, man's industry would not be able to supply the faster than light drive. Khrest hoped to find the necessary components inside the remains of the destroyed vessel on the moon. The rest of the parts they required to construct the spaceship would have to be acquired separately and then assembled here inside the base of the Third Power.

  Rhodan was seized by a feeling of utmost excitement when he pondered what would happen within the next seventy hours. He would learn the secrets of the fast than light drive!

  He was startled out of his thoughts by the sudden arrival of Bell, who raced into Rhodan's cabin without even knocking. Bell was upset, and he was out of breath, as he had been running at top speed to get here.

  "Klein has sent the signal!" he said quickly. "We must send Tako to him."

  "Klein?"

  "I think we should hurry up. Klein won't care to crawl too long out there in the hot desert sand under the eyes of Tai-tiang," urged Bell. Rhodan flipped the switch for the telecom. Tako's smiling face appeared on the video screen.

  "Reg will explain to you what we want, Tako."

  Bell took over. "Klein has given the arranged signal. QPQ on the 6.3 megahertz band. He is waiting for you at the previously arranged rendezvous. Please hurry!"