by Perry Rhodan
"This surface isn't stable, sir," he reported. "The space-jet's already sunk in a little."
"Get yourself back here, Sikhra—on the double!"
As Sikhra started running with his men it seemed to him that a thousand greedy claws were clutching at his racing feet but it must have been his imagination. Or so he thought until he came close to the ship. The telescopic struts had disappeared completely into the greyish substance. He let his men pass him first up the ladder and then followed them.
The outer hatch had barely closed behind him before the propulsion units began to howl. Ignoring all else, he hurried into the Control Central to give a personal report. But even while in the crowded corridors he was aware of the fact that the disc-shaped vessel was not moving, in spite of the continued howling of the engines.
When he entered the Control Central he saw Rhodan standing next to Claudrin. Both men were staring as though entranced at the viewscreen where the monotonous surface of the planet still appeared to be unchanged.
Maj. Krefenbac came up to Sikhra. "I'm afraid you tipped us off too late," he said gravely. "We've landed on a planet of mud!"
Sikhra shook his head negatively. "No, sir, that's not mud or clay—it's something else. Entirely different. It offers a fair amount of support. Maybe the jet's just too heavy. It might not sink any farther, though."
"We're already mired in so we can't take off—the engines aren't powerful enough to hack it. Something's grabbed onto us for good. We're not getting loose."
"I can't understand it!" mumbled Sikhra, completely perplexed. "I was only outside for five minutes."
Rhodan cut into this ticklish conversation. "Sikhra, it's no fault of yours.
Nobody's to blame for the mess we're in. I'm afraid we're facing a completely unique situation. Just one question, Sikhra. Will the surface support a man?"
"Definitely, sir. It was only during that last second I realized I was sinking but it was because I had been standing there too long."
Rhodan frowned in thought. "That certainly doesn't sound as though we were dealing with ordinary mud or clay." He glanced quickly at Claudrin. After hesitating a few seconds he issued orders. "Keep on trying for a lift-off, Colonel. In the meantime I'll see to it that all hands are issued food and water supplies. They already have their weapons. We'll have to prepare ourselves for an extended stay on the planet—possibly without provisioning support from the ship."
"You can't mean, sir, that it may become submerged...?!"
Rhodan nodded. "But I do mean it, Colonel. It may sink more slowly when we've relieved it of our combined weight but the the elastic surface is thick enough it will certainly continue to sink. Who knows how far down the crust of the planet may be?"
By the time the first of the scientists stepped onto the surface of the uncanny world, the grey mass had already risen to the threshold of the outer airlock door. They were followed by the officers and crew. Rhodan was the last to leave the scoutship. As it was he had to climb up a cloying bank of the tough, yielding substance to get out and in his wake the greyish mass began to flow slowly into the vessel itself.
Within the space-jet all available energy was being automatically channeled into the radio transmitter, which was sending out an emergency call. No one could be certain whether or not the signals would be able to get through the mysterious mass of surface matter but they had to at least make an attempt to call for help.
Once removed to a safe distance, they all watched their lifeboat slowly sink from sight. They knew that the ground under their feet wasn't stable but it bore their weight. At least thus far.
When the upper dome of the scoutship disappeared completely, Rhodan switched on his micro-receiver and adjusted it to the wavelength of the distress signal. He heard nothing from the speaker. The grey mass absorbed the radio waves. Nobody would hear the call now—unless it had already been received somewhere. He switched off the instrument and stared helplessly at the spot where the ship had gone down Then he pulled himself together.
"Let's get going a ways. Maybe we'll find some solid ground where we can set up our camp."
They began to march. The sun had lowered somewhat and was now casting long shadows behind them which were not too discernible against the monotonous ground coloration. Rhodan was in the lead with Claudrin. There wasn't any fear now of an attack. This world appeared to be definitely uninhabited. There was no sign of life anywhere. And yet—a breathable atmosphere.
It was this point that Rhodan kept wracking his brains about. How could the planet have such a good atmosphere without having produced any life? And there was nothing here to renew it.
Somebody at the rear of the column suddenly emitted a shrill cry of alarm. Rhodan stopped. He looked around. And then he saw something that did not belong to reality. As though in a surrealistic dream, a fantasy of madness was materializing. Out of the gathering shadows behind them emerged a group of humanoid shapes, with arms and legs but no faces. They were grey in color as though they had taken shape out of the ground itself.
But they were moving! They were following his men!
3/ DISTRESS SIGNAL
It was a blind hyperjump.
When the Lizard rematerialized and the stars became visible again, the constellations were no longer familiar. Capt. Samuel Graybound began to swear like the veteran spacer he was. To him it was the fault of the blankety-twicetrouble-blankety nosy Fleet cruiser that had forced them to change their course and flee.
"They think we've got nothing better to do with our lives than spend the rest of our days zigging and zagging around in the universe!"
Lt. Rex Knatterbull calmly minimized the predicament. "Don't work yourself into a lather, Sam. We'll soon know where we are and then we'll calculate the new transition data. After all, the main thing is those characters didn't nab us. If they'd caught us, though, I'd like to have seen the dumb look on that Major's face, once he learned a little more about teddybears."
Graybound began to laugh heartily. The thought of having tricked the Fleet officer served to appease his anger over the detour and loss of time. "It serves those boot-polishers right!" he said in a self-satisfied tone. "Those bloodhounds! There used to be freedom of the sea—what happened to freedom of space? The universe belongs to everybody. Everybody can deal with anybody he pleases and where he pleases. That's the true democracy, for my money!"
Torero flapped his wings emphatically. "Long live Democracy!" he croaked. "Everybody's got a right to die!"
Graybound glanced in puzzlement at the parrot, then at Rex. "Hey—he never said that before! Who taught him that one?"
Rex tried to think of a suitable answer but he didn't get a chance to express it. Out of the Com Room dashed the small figure of Henry Smith who was waving
his arms excitedly.
"Radio signals! The hypercom gave an alarm!"
Graybound turned livid with new anger. "What—not again! It's just not in the odds that we could land again under the nose of a patrol ship! And I always thought the universe was a big enough place..."
"Sir, it was a short emergency pulse burst, like a distress call. It only lasted a few seconds and it was a sheer accident that I picked it up at all."
Graybound studied Henry Smith thoughtfully, knowing that the slight-figured little man was the sensitive type. When he finally spoke, his tone more or less summed up his inspection. "You blockhead! Can't you keep your fingers off of that stupid equipment? As if we didn't have enough to contend with, now we have to worry about other people on top of it! Where did the pulse signal come from?"
The Captain's words had startled Smith into frozen immobility. He stood near the door looking miserable, not quite following Graybound's trend of thought.
"I asked you, where did the signal come from!?"
"The range and direction haven't been determined yet, sir. It's not that easy..."
"In 10 minutes I want the position of the ship that called for help—and Satan will have your hide if you're getti
ng us into a trap!"
Smith vanished, somewhat baffled.
Rex roared with laughter and slapped his knees in glee. "That little bugger's a scream! But he knows his stuff!"
"I'll grant him that much." Graybound was frowning at the profusion of unfamiliar stars on the viewscreen. "Do you have the glimmer of an idea of where we are? Take a look at the charts."
They went to work with the star catalog and checked out all the more unfamiliar sectors. They could not identify a single one of the constellations.
"We'll have to reconstruct our last jump in a reverse playback," Rex suggested. "There's no other route we can go. Just leave it to me, Sam. We'll breeze out of this yet."
"Do whatever you want to," commented the skipper.
"Democracy!" exclaimed Torero with a note of commendation.
"Listen, you little hobo, when I want your opinion I'll ask for it!"
Torero drew in his head so that only his shrewd little black eyes peeked out of his feathers. Obviously he was pretending to feel guilty. Graybound growled like an angry tiger and took the creature from his shoulder. Without another word he placed it in its cage nearby and carefully closed the little gate. He pointed significantly at the sand in the bottom of the cage, a gesture which left nothing more to be said—even in parrot language. Then he stomped away into the Com Room.
Henry Smith stiffened and turned pale at sight of his boss.
"Well, Shorty-you got any results?"
"Right away, sir. The tracer antenna was in the wrong direction, so that's what took so long. I have to convert the impulse intensity on a reverse arc and"...
"Don't take my time with that technical jargon, Fuzz-Bug," Graybound cut in on him but he was actually in a tolerable mood. Otherwise he would not have used the name "Fuzz-Bug", which with him was a term of affection. "I want to know
the range and direction."
Smith turned back hurriedly to his work.
Rex Knatterbull shouted from the next room. "Hey, Sam! I think I've got it!
Whee-oo!—if that isn't a jump!"
Graybound clapped his communications man on the shoulder without realizing that he almost broke his collarbone. Then he went out into the Control Central.
"So? Where are we sitting?"
"Take a look for yourself, Sam. We jumped almost 20,000 light-years. How this old bucket stood up under that..."
"What did you say? Old bucket! Are you perchance speaking of the good ship Lizard? Another remark like that and I'll have you walk the plank without a suit!"
Rex grinned. "Sorry, it just slipped out by accident. Anyway, we're located just about here. High stellar density in this area. But from where we are now we can chart a course to Glatra."
Graybound had almost forgotten the business part of their adventure. And yet there was that distress call. He couldn't simply ignore it. He might be a little negligent concerning formal laws and regulations and maybe as a merchant he did have a few little 'sidelines', but if another man was in need he would give him a hand. That was his own law and never in his life had he circumvented it, even if it had cost him the shirt off his back.
"Hang loose for a while, Rex," he told his First Officer. "First we have to know where that distress call came from." Then he turned and shouted, "Hey, Sparks! Quit dragging your feet in there! Aren't you through yet? What do you think this is, a vacation or something? Get a move on!" Turning back to Rex, he continued, "Reconstruct our transition hop so that we can get back to about where we were when we met that cruiser. That way we'll get our bearings better."
"As good as done, Bossman!" Rex grinned. Then he looked toward the Com Room. "That bozo's really taking his time. You want me to make him shake a leg?"
"I've got it!" cried Henry Smith as he came stumbling into the Control Central. His whole face was beaming. "Distance is about three light-years. Direction: exactly five degrees to port off our stern course."
Graybound's face reddened with anger. "About...?!" he roared. It was so loud that Torero drew in his head in his cage. "What's that supposed to mean— about three light-years! I want the distance exact enough to make a hyperjump. Do you understand that, you excuse for a brass pounder?"
Smith waved his hands excitedly to interrupt him. "The distance has been determined exactly, sir," he shouted anxiously. "I only said 'about' because it's slightly less than three light-years. I have the data here."
He handed a slip of paper to Graybound who took it and studied it briefly. Then the red-bearded skipper grinned and nodded at Smith.
"That's much better, Sonny. You did real well." He stared at him for almost 10 seconds and then bellowed:
"Vaamooossee!"
Smith turned back into his own domain.
Rex took the data sheet from Graybound and studied it. "So it's 2.86 light-years away. The signal must have been pretty strong while it lasted, so that's why we were even able to pick it up."
"If it's a lousy Fleet cruiser we'll scram out. I don't have any reason to do them any favors." Of course Graybound didn't mean what he was saying, actually. He'd go to anybody's aid if they were in a bind, even for his worst enemy. He always went by the old adage that you could never judge the contents of a package by its label.
"Well, we could go have a look," suggested Rex.
Graybound stared at him in innocent amazement. "Were you thinking of anything else?" he asked. "You bet we'll have a look—if only out of curiosity!"
It took 20 minutes for the nav-computer to rattle out the necessary data. Then Graybound himself put the Lizard onto the right course and started the transition countdown.
Over the ship's intercom he briefed the crew concerning their situation and ordered them to man the camouflaged gun emplacements so as to be ready for any eventuality. He had no intention of being taken by surprise. If this distress call was a trap, then its perpetrators would find another reason to marvel at the
capabilities of the old Lizard.
Transition.
New constellations appeared on the viewscreen and very close by was a yellow sun. But they had hardly seen this before Smith's shout sounded again from the Com Room.
"Another distress call, sir! Normal transmission. The source... 20 light-minutes!"
Graybound frowned at this. It seemed he had made a miscalculation. The distress signals were coming from the system of that yellow sun, perhaps even from one of its planets. It wasn't from a ship drifting helplessly in outer space. Probably somebody was stranded on the ground somewhere and wanted to be picked up.
For Graybound it was anything but a pleasant thought to contemplate loading up the ship with strangers and having to forego his business venture. He began to curse himself softly. First of all he cursed his Corn man although the latter had merely performed his duty. Then he cursed himself for having such a soft heart.
"Somebody's stuck down there," remarked Rex laconically.
An idea came to Graybound. "Maybe somebody else picked up those signals and are on their way here. Let's hold off a little while. It would be great if somebody else could save us the trouble. If we go into orbit around the system with the engines dead, nobody will spot us. Well, what do you think?"
Rex Knatterbull was also intrinsically a better man than his reputation might have indicated, so in this case he had certain reservations. "But it could be that they're in serious danger. Any delay might mean curtains for them. I don't think we should be responsible for..."
"Pah, responsible! I'm responsible for the men, the ship, the company and the cargo. If I give those guys a helping hand it'll be of my own free will. Hm-mm..."
He fell to meditating. Rex utilized the pause to set the Lizard straight on a closing course. Now they were flying directly toward the nearby sun. With their present speed of 0.3 LV they'd reach their destination within an hour or so it they didn't alter course in the meantime.
"We could at least have a look at the situation," Graybound said finally. "If it doesn't amount to anything we can still pull ba
ck."
Rex nodded his agreement. It was a compromise you could do something with. If anybody was really in trouble, old Red Beard would know what to do. In another half hour they determined that the sun possessed four planets. The inner orb couldn't be considered but any of the other three were perfectly capable of serving as a temporary haven for shipwrecked survivors.
"Smith!!!"
When the Communications man heard his captain's stentorian bellow he came close to wrecking his equipment in his frantic haste to jump to his feet. "Sir?" he
stammered.
"Triangulations, man! Where are those signals coming from?"
Smith pulled himself together. "Sir... the signals have stopped but I was able to
get an exact fix on them. I'm just now reducing the data..."
"Let me have it!"
Smith dashed back into the Corn Room and quickly emerged with a
computation sheet. "Just my own notes, sir, before preparing a final log entry. I hope you'll be able to figure them out."
"Is this direction right?"
"The direction is certain but as far as the distance..."
"That's no big deal now," Graybound advised him. "Get back in there and stay glued to that receiver. If you hear the tiniest whimper I want you to let me know about it. You got that?"
"Very well, sir," muttered Smith and he returned to his work.
Basically, Smith actually had the greatest respect for Sam Graybound. In fact he didn't take offense at his blowups and rough-handed manner because he figured he was well paid for it all. Since he had dropped out of Government Fleet service because of certain minor infractions he was grateful for having found a job with Startramp. It was an outfit that wasn't too probey about a man's past. What counted was savvy on the job.
Graybound gave Rex the sheet of figures. "He says the direction's for sure... can you tie it in?"
The First Officer compared the data with output ciphers that were showing on the nav-computer's screen. He nodded. "It's the second planet, alright. If that distress call came from anywhere it would have to be from there. Should we go have a look?"