by Perry Rhodan
Perry Rhodan
The Third Power #34
SOS: Spaceship Titan!
Spaceship Titan–the most powerful craft in the known universe. It can travel at the speed of light, can even avoid the coordinate scanners of the robot brain of Arkon. Or can it? Honur–a parched and inhospitable globe. Here Perry Rhodan must seek temporary sanctuary from the positronicon, and the insidious menace of the Mooffs. But here too Perry and his Mutants must battle to prevent the break-up of the Arkonide Empire–and survive the mysterious threat that lurks within the Thatrel System... This is the stirring story of–
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SOS: Spaceship Titan!
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1/ X MINUS ZERO!
SPACESHIP Ganymede —60 seconds from blastoff.
X minus 60.
The gigantic hull of the mighty spacer stretched into the sky. The cloud ceiling over the spaceport was 1500 feet but the great bird of space pierced it, its streamlined bill reappearing at close to 2500 altitude.
X minus 50.
Dense cloud formations drifted past the faintly gleaming fuselage at about half its height, concealing its upper structure and somehow magnifying its 600-foot diameter to more massive proportions than usual. The ship gave the impression of being some great tower out of ancient time. There where it pierced the drifting cloud cover was an impression of centuries-old battlements but its colossal tail fins finally forced a full perception of the ship's imposing proportions.
X minus 40.
The frantic agitation in the Ganymede's command center had subsided. The programmed computer directed the work and timing of all mechanical operations of the ship. Lift-off for Earth was imminent. The clouds and the bow of the spacer were still reflecting the light of the red sun Voga, a supergiant solar beacon, celestial energy source for 15 planets. The giant tail fins still rested on the synthetic surface of the launch base at Tagnor.
Tagnor, the immense spaceport, was the largest on Zalit, fourth planet of the Voga System. Here, more than 15,000 years ago, the first Arkonide ships had landed and begun to colonize this sector of the universe. For 15,000 years the ships of space had landed and taken off—but they had only been stellar travelers of the Arkon Empire or those of its satellites, never visitors from the unknown vastness of the outer void.
The Ganymede was not Arkonide in origin; she did not belong to the world of Star Cluster M-13; her home was Earth.
X minus 20 to Lift-off for Terrania!
Soon the Earthship would thrust aloft into space and the wonder of the unimaginable beauty where thousands of suns gleamed out of the supernal abyss like phosphorescent starfish, suns coalescing in veils of color to alleviate the awesome ebony maw of the Universe and transform this corner of the Cosmos into some enchanted boulevard of cascading fire fountains.
M-13-star cluster—34,000 light-years distant from Earth, a domain of more than 100,000 stars—that was Arkon. And Zalit, 4th planet of the Voga System within M-13, was only one of many worlds that had been colonized by Arkon in millennia past.
X minus 10. In 10 seconds the mighty Ganymede would rise and leave this alien Empire—an infinitesimal mote in the infinite. Colonel Freyt made this mental comparison while glancing at the countdown indicators and watching the second hand tick toward X minus zero. He was flying back to the speck of nothingness in the void by order of Perry Rhodan but—here he squared his chest and a gleam of pride came into his eyes—he would return to M-13 together with the Chief and turn this empire of a hundred thousand stars upside down.
It was the final second. The big panoramic observation screen revealed the spaceport of Tagnor. Hundreds of spacers were lined up down below but Col. Freyt only had eyes for one of them—the Titan —and again as always the impact of the tremendous sphere sent a tingle down his spine.
There! X minus Zero... and Lift-off!
In the midst of a thundering and roaring from its engines, the ship seemed to rise with carefree ease. It lifted slowly into the cloud ceiling. The drifting clouds appeared to be a tenacious substance into which the ship gradually pierced its way until the tail fins disappeared from view.
Then came the shock-boom from the force of the blast-off which shoved the Ganymede aloft. The cloud cover was rent asunder, roiling and tattering aside into shreds. A gigantic hole opened up, through which the red sun of Voga spilled its radiance over Tagnor, and in the center of this blinding montage of light the rising spaceship was boldly etched in all of its imposing magnitude.
It continued to accelerate and to recede, hurtling outward into the sunset, until in a final flash of light it disappeared.
Slowly, the mile-wide gap closed in the cloud-cover over Tagnor...
• • •
"Whoosh! and away!" said Reginald Bell, leaning way back in his armchair. He watched the panoramic observation screen in the Titan's command center with hands locked behind his head.
The Ganymede was no longer visible on the panob. The final dim flash of light had been a farewell of the departing ship to the crew of the Titan, which remained behind on Tagnor.
Bell made himself comfortable. For the moment he was content with the situation. The Ganymede was streaking toward its hypertransit point, from where it would reach the Earth in a few instantaneous jumps. There were a thousand hypno-trained specialists in readiness, every one of them a highly qualified man in his field, and all of them impatient to return on the Ganymede to form the crew of the biggest space fighter of the galaxies, the Titan.
And here in this super spacesphere sat Reginald Bell. Slightly on the roly-poly side, given to bursts of temper, a daredevil but a heck of an honest guy. He was Perry Rhodan's best friend, his deputy, a man firm as a rock.
He turned his head toward the pilot's seat to look at Perry Rhodan. Here beside him was a man who had the means at his disposal to be lord and master of the Earth, yet to whom the thought had never occurred. But Perry had another goal—one of the distant future: to make Earth the center of the galaxy! This lost speck in a remote arm of the Milky Way, this dust in the Universe, would take over Arkon's role, relieve the decadent Arkonides of their mission, which they no longer could accomplish, and then finally extend civilization to all the worlds of the Universe.
Bell watched him. Rhodan was tensely alert. He flipped a control switch, always ready to do what was needed when others were still in a shock mode. The next moment he sat there relaxed and waited for a report from the Hyper-Sensor section.
The coordinate-detection beams from the Titan were monitoring the Ganymede's Right. The Hyper-Sensors were triggered to detect the moment when the earthbound ship would make a hypertransition, thus warping the structure of surrounding space.
"Did you say something, Reg?" asked Rhodan, glancing at him earnestly.
Bell suddenly straightened up and replied a bit peevishly. "I sort of had a feeling I made an observation that the Ganymede had just whooshed off, Perry!"
"Interesting, Reg, but not relevant. Col. Freyt has a hypertran compensator at his disposal but we don't. He can 'whoosh off, as you put it, but we have to wait awhile until we have such equipment, so we can't enjoy the luxury of 'whooshing off' just now—although it would be such a joy, don't you think, my friend?"
Rhodan's first words had alerted Bell and both levity and petulance ceased. His eyes darted around the giant command central of the ship and he sighed wearily.
The Titan was in his opinion the ultimate of all ships in known space but this command center was, in his opinion, a nightmare. There was no one who would be able to read and comprehend all the indicators and instruments simultaneously. The Titan, a sphere having an approximate diameter of one mil
e, was the crowning achievement of Arkonide spaceship technology. The huge command central was in the form of a hall-like cupola whose walls bristled with indicators and meters and all sorts of automatic visual data readouts and scanners. Somewhere in all this jungle Perry Rhodan had spotted something of vital importance, something which Bell, naturally, had overlooked.
"I give up," whispered Bell. "What is it?"
"Pan-vidscreen, sector Beta-slash-eight!"
Behind Perry Rhodan stood the Arkonide, Khrest, his tall figure impressive and his intellectually sensitive features as always unforgettable. And now he, too, noted for the first time the designated area on the seamless panob screen. Bell saw the three blips in sector Beta-slash-eight and took comfort in the fact that even the top Arkonide scientist had needed Rhodan's suggestion to make the discovery.
"Spacers." Bell tried to sound casual but was unsuccessful as usual. He stole a sidelong glance at Perry, who smirked knowingly. He knew his chubby friend too well to be bluffed by him.
"Where's the comp data?" That was Perry Rhodan, the man in charge. He knew that the range and bearing computations for the trajectories of the three spaceships must have been retrieved by now if the bogey-tracker at the scan console were anything but a zombie. The comp data readout began to crawl across the screen.
Perry and Bell exchanged glances. Their grim expressions slowly changed to looks of relief. Rhodan turned to Khrest. "Well, we may have been recognized by the robot brain on Arkon but it doesn't quite trust us yet."
"A computer brain—a machine, Perry!" the old Arkonide argued contemptuously. "A machine is not human. A positronicon cannot know the value of Terranian integrity."
Perry Rhodan couldn't suppress a smile. "Thanks for the compliment, Khrest, but you exaggerate. We're not that honest. I don't even blame the positronicon for sending spacers after my Ganymede to check out the hypertransition. Between real friends there shouldn't be any secrets. Your fine mechanical Regent of Arkon seems to know that. It may have already questioned our motive for keeping the position of our home world a secret and as a logical consequence may have started to doubt our expressed readiness to support the Arkonide Empire."
"But you are supporting it," replied Khrest, somewhat shaken.
Perry could answer with unblemished conscience. "Yes, but not as unselfishly honest as the duty between friends demands. I have never for a second abandoned the plan to conquer Arkon's empire for the Earth."
At that moment an announcement from the Hyper-Sensor section blatted out over the speaker: " Ganymede transition executed under standard coordinate data. Hypertran compensator not used. Message received pulse-coded. Over to Com Control and out."
Through a rash of contact-switching and speaker cracklings, Communications Control followed up with: "To Commander-in-Chief. Three unidentified spacecraft on Ganymede course. Coordinate comp readout: origin, Arkon. End of message. Col. Freyt."
"Well?" asked Rhodan, and waited for Khrest's answer.
Khrest turned his eyes from the screen back to Rhodan, not able to suppress a trace of admiration. "Your suspicion was right, Perry. This Machine, the Lord of the Arkonide Empire, seems to mistrust you."
"And it will distrust us even more when the three spacers have to report that they've lost the Ganymede after the first hyperjump. The memory banks tell the Positronicon what I have proven once before—that we can execute transitions that escape its coordinate scanners. Khrest, I don't want to risk a fight with the reigning robot brain. Discretion is the better part of valor, at least until Col. Freyt returns with his thousand specialists and a jumbo-sized hypertran compensator for the Titan. Then I'll be ready to take up again the conversation with your robot, and not before. For that reason we shall leave Tagnor, too. Agreed, Reggy?"
Bell had taken another look at the great command center, with a nostalgic appreciation of the good old Stardust II. The cockpit there had been a harmoniously constructed unit which could be handled in emergencies by two or three men. But to attempt to control this command center with three men would be sheer madness—a guaranteed fiasco.
"Reg," Perry called to his friend a second time. "I'm asking you if you agree we should whoosh off."
It was unusual procedure for Perry but so was the situation with the gigantic Titan. The colossal spherical spacer was understaffed and whatever potential was contained in the ship could hardly be put in operation with their skeleton crew.
Bell was considering this when he answered, "Sure, I agree—but even if I'm accused of grousing I still don't like that corner of the universe we've chosen to hide in. I have a hunch about it but don't ask me why...!"
• • •
The Titan's proposed 'whoosh-off' did not materialize immediately. A million small trifles that were of great importance to the inhabitants of the planet Zalit kept Perry Rhodan on the ground for a few days.
Nobody talked any more about Zarlt Demesor, the ex-dictator who had lost his life in an attempt to take over the Arkonide Empire. On the other hand, the Mooffs were not only the daily subject of conversation but still caused a constant alert to be maintained. The search for these non-humanoids left no stone unturned.
The Zalites had not quite recovered from the panic caused by these jellyfish-like creatures. The Mooffs were intelligent beings of a non-humanoid race who had evolved in a world with a methane gas atmosphere. At least on Zalit they had lived in high-pressure spherical tanks which were filled with methane. But the question remained, who had brought them to Zalit in the first place?
For Bell there wasn't any doubt on that subject. "Definitely those stellar gypsies," he had declared; "the galactic traders! They offered the Mooffs to the power mad Zarlt. Of course he had no idea that he was only a tool for their purposes and he imported the telepathic monstrosities en masse to Zalit. His dream had been to send an armada of spacers with crews under mental control into a battle of total destruction against Arkon and the robot brain—incidentally, Perry, are the three Mooff specimens on board the Titan completely secured and their security foolproof?"
Perry answered curtly with another question. "Have you ever found anything on board the Titan that wasn't?"
Bell's grin in return meant that no reply was needed. He simply pointed to the center of the control room. There were still traces of some object, which had been organically fused and inter-blended, with the composition of the Arkonide steel decking. For a moment Perry did a take at him, wonderingly—then remembered the almost hopeless fight that the twin-headed mutant, Ivan Ivanovich Goratschin, had waged with the control automaton here in the command center.
This control automaton had been the all-powerful tool of the robot brain on Arkon, so powerful that its reach had no limit in the universe. Producing its own energy, built for the sole purpose of executing the orders of the mammoth positronicon, it also had the means of blowing up the Titan if it fell into enemy hands. But Goratschin had brought his unfathomable mental powers to bear on the automaton, causing fusion of enough calcium atoms to destroy it from within.
All this was on Rhodan's mind as signals from the propulsion drive section began to arrive. Micro-speakers rattled sequenced 'All Clear' announcements. Green lights climbed the checkout panels swiftly. In Bell's area it was the same: race of sounds, parity lights, indicator flashes. Only a brain with Arkonide schooling could control the mammoth complex.
A barely perceptible vibration ran through the space giant. The huge sphere, built of Arkon steel and supported by a ring of telescopic struts, seemed to keen toward the jump into outer space. It had the capability of accelerating to the speed of light within 10 minutes.
Eight days prior, the Ganymede had lifted off for Earth. Now in only a few minutes the Titan would leave this world behind.
The power generators began to whine under maximum load. More and more greens and all clears flakked through the countdown system. The force-field projectors signaled their readiness to start up. Also the powerful H-field generators poised themselves in their
coils for activation. These served to repeal meteors and other flying debris in spaceflight. If activated here on the ground, they could cut a clean swath through the spaceport for a radius of seven miles.
Rhodan never ceased to be overwhelmed with admiration for the know-how of the Arkonides. In palmier days what they had accomplished had been incredible. But now they were decadent, having allowed their magnificent galactic empire to degenerate until finally, only six years ago, they had accepted the mammoth robot brain as their overlord.
Rhodan knew that the Arkonides' empire of multiple worlds was what might be termed 'ready for plucking', yet he had no visions of coming here as a bloody conqueror to leave behind a trail of ruins and misery. Rather, he would build and create, not with the Arkonides but with Earthlings, with the young and the daring, with his own kind.
His vision of the future was interrupted by the accelerating signal traffic of the countdown process. The ship's master positronicon was in full operation.
"Lift-off commit!"
The X-count dwindled rapidly.
The propulsion units revved up to full power readiness. Breaker banks poised for cut-in.
"X minus Zero... Lift-off!"
A massive sphere almost one mile in diameter, the Titan became weightless and floated upward, retracting its huge multiple struts. The incredible became credible, perforce, because there it was: the most tremendous spaceship in the known universe was rising and gaining speed, until it finally hurtled into space.
The planet fell behind. Space seemed to rush past them, deepening to a well of blackness behind. And in that well the sun Voga appeared like a reddish cyclopean eye, balefully watching their departure. Then came the vaulted splendor of Star Cluster M-13, a bursting pinwheel of coruscating fire to light the demonic abyss.
"What a ship!" sighed Bell. "What a wonder world around us!"
The two Arkonides, Thora and Khrest, stood between the two seats occupied by Rhodan and Bell. They knew these wonders; this had been their home. Thirteen years before, they had left the star cluster of the Empire to explore the galaxies in search of 'Pel', the Planet of Eternal Life. Their journey had ended in disaster on Earth's moon. For 13 years they had been able to observe closely how the people of a 'barbaric' Earth had developed and matured, under the leadership of Perry Rhodan. Earthlings would soon be ready to take over the reins from the Arkonides.