by Perry Rhodan
Perry had set his eye on the rugged mountain range with its steep cordillera climbing to over 12,000 feet. He ordered the landing as soon as the ship moved into the daylight side of the planet. Bell groaned as the barren, burnt-out world with its hopeless terrain seemed to take over the control room. Perry himself was visited by certain foreboding but he was sure that his Titan, even though understaffed and unprepared for galactic battles, was strong enough to spar a few rounds with any local fleet of spacers.
During the orbiting of Honur the planet had also continued to revolve, so that the Titan's landing window had shifted farther southwest, right onto the lake and the river mouth. Rhodan took the controls. He wanted to become as familiar with this colossus as he was with the Stardust II He switched over to visual approach. Bell grinned companionably from his co-pilot seat, knowing Perry's mood at the moment.
All the operating gear and generating equipment in the equatorial bulge of the sphere began to thrum and howl; the awesome power reactors began to shriek. Millions of elements were in action to guide the steel giant. It took a course straight toward a fixed spot, like a bullet hitting the bulls-eye, because a single pilot was at the helm
For a short while Perry enjoyed himself with the Titan as though he were a child with a new toy. Bell saw in his friend an illustration of the adage about the true man being half a child, and he was glad. Because in Perry this child-in-man awakened was the fountain of his regeneration.
Now the Titan hovered between the lake and the first rugged mountains whose shadows darkened the observation screen. The ship glided slowly under the protective cliff wall. Perry pushed another button. Out of the lower hemisphere of the ship, the giant telescopic landing struts extended themselves like a forest of Titanic, outstretched fingers, equipped with pads on the ends.
"Sheesh! Some soil condition down there!" muttered Bell with a frown of apprehension. He was thinking of the multi-million ton weight of the Titan.
"Nice of you to remind me," called Perry. "I'll compensate for our tonnage with the grav-beams."
Bell grunted his surprise. "What'd I say...?"
"You were seeing our strut pads sinking into that sandy soil and the Titan's base becoming a part of the landscape, weren't you?"
Bell grinned his relief. "Maybe you've been around our telepaths too long, Perry!"
A bright, blinking panel light indicated that the Titan had made contact with the ground. Safe landing accomplished
4/ MESSENGERS FROM THE STARS
Col. Freyt, commander of the Ganymede, faced his colleague across their back-to-back desk in Terrania. He inspected the dispatches, which Col. Klein had silently pushed over to him, and was heard to cuss softly in Arkonide slang. "Sklargot!"
"Klein," he complained, "what gives with you people here on Earth? This is slower than Arkonide scheduling! At this rate I'll never make it to Honur on time. Why the devil does it take your plants so long to deliver the goods?"
Col. Klein, Perry Rhodan's deputy on Earth when the Chief was in outer space, shook his head in stem deliberation. "Freyt, you've told me so much about that industrial planet of Arkon 3 that you've lost your perspective of Terrestrial conditions. Don't forget that the hypertrans-compensator is an invention of the Galactic Traders. To build this miracle device we have to convert a whole group of our heavy industries! What I mean, this order's not for any run-of-the-mill compensator—it's a monster! It can't be done from one day to the next—we're not on Arkon 3. Earth isn't one big domino-row of factories."
"Sorry, Klein, that doesn't help me," retorted Freyt. "In my last coded hyper-gram I announced my arrival time on Honur. I just have to be there on time. Now I've got to have some reassurance from you because I don't like our vulnerability out there."
Klein arched a brow at him. "With the ship Perry's driving?" he turned to look through the windows at the tremendous spaceport of Terrania. There the 24-hundred-foot diameter sphere of the Stardust II sat on its telescopic struts next to the towering Ganymede, with all of the powerful space cruisers sitting on the ground behind them. It was obvious that Klein was picturing in his mind how the overwhelming size of the Titan would dwarf all this by comparison. He turned back, querulously. "Are you kidding?"
"Klein, my friend, you're looking through rose-colored glasses! Sure, Rhodan's ship has the right name—she's a Titan, all right. But the whole Arkonide Empire isn't kindergarten. We're talking about more than 100,000 suns and a flock of satellite galaxies, all governed by a giant computer brain that covers an area of about 4000 square miles!"
"Where's the logic to all of this, Freyt?" Klein interrupted him. "Is the Thatrel System and the planet Honur so insignificant? Isn't the Titan itself a factor of unconquerability? What can happen to Rhodan on Honur? Nothing! After all, he has a 700-man crew on board—and the Chief has demonstrated many times that he can get the mostest out of the leastest. So if the hytrans compensator should arrive a few days later, where's the disaster...?"
Freyt drummed his fingers on the desk. "All that's very nice, Klein—it makes a nice big breeze—but it's not going to let me sleep nights! I know you mean well but I can't fit it all in with what's going on out yonder. Rhodan may not even be on Honur any more. Who knows? And what can he do without the compensator? Any Arkon ship can figure his transitions. On his next jump the whole bunch could catch up with him. Don't forget the Springers, the Galactic Traders—not to mention the Mooffs!"
"On that subject you haven't briefed me very much," said Klein, hoping for a distraction at the moment.
Freyt got up and gazed reflectively out the window at the wide panorama of Terrania, Capital City of the New Power, located in the midst of the Gobi Desert-power center of Earth.
"The Mooffs," he began. "Those monstrosities are something of a galactic riddle.
• • •
34,000 light-years removed from Terrania, Perry Rhodan was saying practically the same thing to Khrest. "The Mooffs have been and still remain a puzzle—not their existence, as such, but that they succeeded in bringing a whole world under their hypnotic power. There's a strange contradiction here. They're too stupid to act on their own initiative. In fact I sometimes think they're not fully evolved—a child race of monsters not yet matured. So the ultimate question is: who talked the Zarlt into using the Mooffs? Who would you say, Khrest?"
Khrest as well as Thora could be counted among those few remaining Arkonides of the elite who had not fallen prey to the disease of indolence which was degenerating the Empire. They were all standing in Rhodan's large private quarters.
Khrest observed Rhodan's tall figure for several moments. "Bell has mentioned—" He smirked slightly at Rhodan's frown of puzzlement. "Bell feels that it's the Springers. At first I had the same suspicion but later I became a bit dissuaded from the idea. You might say the modus operandi does not fit. This procedure of using the Mooffs somehow doesn't align itself with the mentality of the Galactic Traders. They are in a way more straightforward, if you can use the word in connection with the Springers..." He paused as Perry started to smile.
"Khrest, you're being very coy in your statements but it sums it up pretty well. The Springers seem to be in the clear where the Mooffs are concerned. But the riddle remains: who's trying to break up your Empire? The Galactic Traders have shown themselves to be a little sneaky in that regard, since they gave false or half-true reports about Earth and us Earthlings to the robot brain on Arkon. Just as we are trying to search down the origin of the Mooffs, your robot emperor has been trying to guess where in the galaxy he can find the Earth, and how we Earthlings fit into it. Speaking of Mooffs, I have a new puzzle. How is it that Bell can't remember the meeting we had where Thora made her suggestion to come to this place, as a preferred hideout for waiting until the hytrans compensator—"
"Bell too?" asked Khrest startled.
"There's somebody else, Khrest?"
"Thora."
"Who says?"
"She herself, Perry. Yesterday after we landed, s
he confessed to me her confusion. She has no idea now as to why she should have recommended Honur!"
Rhodan was incredulous. "Khrest, you've got to be joking!"
"Unfortunately not, Perry."
A light bulb came on for Perry. He suddenly realized that it wasn't Reginald Bell's nature to have sensed such revulsion for the Thatrel System. It wasn't like him at all. He wasn't the nervous type or sensitive at all to premonitions.
"Khrest, let's visit the library!" Perry was on his way even as he suggested it. Khrest followed.
They had to use three different grav-lifts to get there. It required 10 minutes. The library constituted an entire deck section. It bore no resemblance to a Terrestrial library since there were no books to speak of. It was, rather, a futuristic data retrieval system. Rhodan went over to the data request control console. He had to accustom himself to this stupendous information bank, which was of course larger than that of the Stardust II. But after a few seconds, data began to be delivered from a micro-jungle of a hundred million memory cores, at lightning speed and in precise response to the inquiry. Throughout the veritable 'acreage' of drums, discs and registers, the microcircuit readout beads by the hundreds were culling the information. The data readout terminals consisted of both video-screen and voice speaker. They could both see the data spilling out on the screen before them and hear it spoken aloud.
"Gravitation 0.7 of Arkon One. Atmospheric conditions..." It rattled on in regard to oxygen content, temperature, humidity, meteorology, geological structure and so forth, adding charts and graphs. 'Primeval world,' it continued. "Settled by Arkonides 14,643 years ago. Final group of immigrants landed on Honur only 18 years later. Empirical Council rejected a climatic reconditioning project because costs outweighed gains due to poor natural resources..."
Perry winked at Khrest. "The holy bureaucracy again: on Earth, on Arkon—everywhere!"
Then came the unusual part of the report: "121 years after the first immigration to Honur the entire Thatrel System was declared 'Off Limits' for all spacers. This ban has not been lifted,"
The flow of data stopped. That was all concerning Honur. Yet Perry had ordered an exhaustive report on the subject.
"Is that supposed to be the end of message, Khrest?" he asked tensely.
Khrest was thoroughly familiar with the Arkonide positronic equipment and was able to state with assurance, "That is all, Perry. There might be some trivialities concerning old time-tables but if anything of importance were contained in memory it would have been code-keyed for register selection."
"But—" Rhodan protested, "a ban of all spacer traffic and no mention of the reason why? Apparently this 'Death Valley', as Bell calls it, is suspected of harboring some kind of danger..." He broke off, suddenly recalling that 15,000 years ago the Arkonides were merely classifying as 'dangerous' an imminent nova explosion!
"Come on, Khrest—let's go!" Rhodan stormed from the library, again followed by Khrest. The way back took only six minutes, with Khrest somewhat out of breath.
Rhodan called for a mobilization of all specialists on board. He thundered orders through the ship-wide
P.A. system. "Clear interceptor Gazelle for immediate takeoff!"
"Complete atmospheric analysis!"
"Send out robot sounders for core-samplings... use Arkonide programming and specifications."
"Make full scan of magnetic fields and planetary radiation. I want everything absolutely complete, re-evaluated and double-checked! Send all results immediately to Command Center, when and as available!" Then Rhodan buzzed Bell in his quarters. Bell was sleeping, as evidenced by snoring worthy of a tyrex that fed back over the P.A. But nobody laughed.
"Bell! To Command Central, on the double!"
"Coming!"
"I'm declaring an emergency Condition Two for the Titan!"
Sirens started throughout the ship, but in the undulating pattern that signified it was not a Condition 1. From the hangar: "Gazelle clear for lock launch!"
"Roger, Gazelle—and away!"
Khrest was filled with admiration for Rhodan. He didn't forget a thing. He worked with the precision of a positronicon—perhaps even more effectively. He was a man of Earth. Khrest had learned what that meant and it touched him with a certain sense of envy, thinking of the decadence of his own people. Now here he sat next to the man who was preparing to conquer the Empire for Earthlings.
The next report hit the speakers: "Probes in action... all areas covered!"
Rhodan confirmed and barked new orders into the mike.
Now the video scanning section reported hastily. Their special Arkonide observation equipment was capable of focusing on the slightest exterior detail of terrain, all the way to the horizon. "Sir, we're picking up movement near the lake shore. Good lord—it's people, sir! They're emerging from a narrow canyon. The first of them are moving toward the ship. No doubt about it—they're humans. Must be Arkonides, even though they look like a bunch of hobos. We count about a hundred of them..."
Tests, probes and samplings were processed through with lightning speed. One department after the other reported results and evaluations of their assignments. Bell had taken his place next to Perry and both men were reduced to mere nods and glances as they divided the workload and registered incoming data into the ship's positronicon.
Rhodan still found the time to mobilize his Mutant Corps. He didn't tell them much over the intercom. Each of them knew his own field of specialization. Hypno, esper, telekin, teleporter... Rhodan's flashing thought-processes omitted nothing. John Marshall, somewhere in the interior of the mighty Titan, received his mental impulses, took notes and passed the orders along to the other mutants.
The group of obviously very degenerate human colonists moved slowly closer to the ship. The mutants examined their mental condition, dissected their innermost thoughts and feelings.
All probe equipment and personnel had returned. Most of the results of tests had been analyzed and evaluated with a clinical accuracy.
"No danger!"
"Nothing threatening in this area!"
"Safe."
"Fauna and flora harmless."
Thus, the urgently desired reports one after the other.
Bell began to grumble. "Sounds just a shade too goody nice! Even if our trained watchdogs wag their tails and howl their praises, this whole Death Valley cemetery can go to blazes. I wish we'd left it in its grave..."
Perry heard him without a smile. He remembered Khrest's disturbing story about Thora's lapse of memory.
The Titan remained under a Condition Two alert.
Perry Rhodan personally was just about in Condition 1. Fourteen thousand years ago Arkon had banned this system from any kind of contact—and this ban had never been lifted. Where could the danger be hidden, which even the Arkonides had not been able to master...?
• • •
All four of them sat in front of the observation screen in the cabin: Rhodan, Bell, Thora and Khrest. The instrument was focused to the maximum of sharpness, giving close-ups of the people who squatted apathetically near the base of the spacesphere.
They were tall, slim, almost skinny people. An outstanding peculiarity was their total baldness, plus a strange sadness in their deep-seated eyes. Their skin had a brownish-red complexion, again reflecting the washed-out coloration that marked Honur's ugliness.
"Those poor devils are in rags," observed Bell. "Looks like they're ready for the Midnight Mission!"
"Could they represent the hidden danger here?" queried Khrest.
Thora blushed, which was rare for the otherwise proud Arkonide woman. She exchanged glances with Perry and once more lifted her shoulders in despair and let them fall again. "I don't know! I don't know! I just haven't the slightest idea why I suggested this system as a rendezvous point for us with the Ganymede. I don't know anything about Honur; I'm sure I've never before heard or read anything about the system. That's what's so frightening—and now this ban against landing here...!"
<
br /> On an impulse, Perry put his hand on Thora's arm. His voice, as he spoke to her, had a calming effect. "Thora, maybe all of us rely too much on the reliability of Arkonide data. Didn't we occasionally find cases where information was missing? Let's assume for the moment that the ban was actually lifted, say, 10,000 years ago. Perhaps the data wasn't ever registered—an omission that would be understandable in view of the hopelessly worthless condition of this small system. Maybe we're worrying too much!"
Bell got up. He put his hands in his pockets and said, emphatically, "Perry, so help me if you're not the puzzle now! What kind of a circus is this, where everybody wants to play clown? Thora here—she puts in a big plug for coming here to this Death Valley planet and now she knows nothing about it! And I'm supposed to be witness to a confab where we all agreed Col. Freyt would meet us here. So what happens? You of all people—you can smell a rat a thousand light-years away—you're covering all this with a flowery veil! You can't be serious, Perry—it just doesn't add up!"
Perry was still holding Thora's arm but his thoughts were elsewhere. He looked at Bell and expressed a new thought that came to him. "Are those three Mooffs still in their isolation section?"
"They are—at least as of an hour ago," declared Bell. "I always keep my distance from those beauties—but I don't think the Mooffs are involved in this. The whole game is way too foxy for those overblown squids. Perry, I'd be more likely to put my finger on those dauntless gypsies of the starways—the Springers! Somebody is hypnotizing us. Somebody who might remember that we stole their newest merchant ship and converted it to the Ganymede. Maybe this unknown entity is gunning now for the Titan, in exchange for it!"
None of the three men had been watching Thora. She had remained motionless under the touch of Perry's hand on her arm. Physical contact with him had caused a thrill of happiness. She had never before experienced such a sense of elation and a compulsion grew within her to rise up and embrace him, to place her face against his and to throw her arms around him. She had been ready to let go and surrender to these impulses when Bell's thundering discourse had caused something like a short-circuit and brought her back to reality.