by Perry Rhodan
Then this terrible struggle came to an end almost instantaneously.
The robot fleet began to regroup in squadrons and slowly pulled back to the edges of the System.
"Over... the end," Bell said in a quivering voice as the Drusus sped towards the burning planet Archetz, constantly beaming its identity signal.
As they penetrated the cloudy ceiling and gained ground visibility directly over Titon's spaceport, a gigantic cloud of smoke surged towards them. Beneath it a city of 12 million inhabitants was crumbling in ashes.
Bell started. Some weight, a body had fallen into his lap. "Pucky—!" he cried and the smile on his face broadened.
His teleportation jump had deposited the mouse-beaver right in Bell's lap.
Pucky was exhausted. He was so weak that he almost fell asleep in Bell's arms. Pulling himself together one last time, he squeaked in a feeble voice: "All clear, Perry! All healthy! The guppy is somewhere down there. Shot down. We had to deboard. We..."
Pucky had fallen asleep and Reggie carefully carried him over to the couch at the side of the room. "I'd like to know what this runt had to do to get our astronauts out of the Druuf ship unharmed!"
A half-hour later the Drusus landed on Titon's almost totally destroyed spaceport. Rhodan dispatched his mutants to look for his son, Thomas Cardif, and to take him into custody. But John Marshall, the best telepath of the Mutant Corps, had already told Rhodan shortly before landing: "Sir," he is either dead or he has fled. I can't find him and I would have to discover some trace of him if he were on this world of debris."
Shortly after the mutants were dispatched the teleporters arrived. They had come within a hairsbreadth of destruction along with the flagship of the Druuf commander.
"Sir," Brigonne said enthusiastically with gleaming eyes, "without Pucky we would have never gotten away! Pucky is a miracle and so human!"
Rhodan smiled. "But please never say that to "Pucky! He doesn't want to be prized as a human; he is proud to be a mouse-beaver!"
• • •
For the third time within a short period Arkon's main transmitter in the star cluster M-13 made itself heard. It was no longer necessary for the stations to report what had occurred in the Rusuma System; the people of the Great Empire, frightened almost out of their wits, had heard about it when the battle had hardly begun and the downfall of the Druufs was not yet a certainty.
Still in their dismay they realized that this Admiral Atlan, who called himself the successor of the Robot Regent, had the power to take drastic and relentless action. Hence the billions of intelligent beings in the Empire listened well as the main transmitter from Arkon 3 beamed a new message. Among the multitude of intelligent beings, a few million started as they spotted a familiar face on the screen.
Perry Rhodan was addressing the people of the Arkonide Empire on Arkon's major transmitted
"...I bow before Atlan, the Emperor Gonozal VIII, who will lead Arkon's empire to renewed greatness!"
"I proclaim to the Great Empire as Administrator of my interplanetary realm: allegiance for allegiance!"
"Peoples of the Great Empire, realize that your task and ours lie in the far reaches of the Universe and not in mutual hate and discord..."
Atlan laughed bitterly as Perry Rhodan stepped back from the camera and approached him. "Friend," he said gravely, "you have now made me emperor but what use is the title if the people of the Great Empire do not wish to stay with Arkon? No, I'm not resigning, Perry, but I don't want to be a dreamer, either. Time, barbarian! Time, time and once again, time! I can't change anything from today to tomorrow that has been destroyed for generations by irresponsible Arkonides. Neither can I do everything by myself—but will the time even be granted to do anything at all?"
Rhodan was astonished. "This is the first time I have seen you pessimistic, Admiral."
"I'm not, Perry. I just have not forgotten a certain Thomas Cardif... and you are the best example of what one single Terran can accomplish!"
Rhodan ignored that. "I think that Thomas was killed on Archetz."
"I don't think so. A Rhodan does not die that simply. Especially not a Rhodan who calls himself Thomas Cardif."
ATLAN IN DANGER
Copyright © 1975 Ace Books
by arrangement with Arthur Moewig Verlag
All Rights Reserved
THE SHIP OF THINGS TO COME
OVER 70 years ago Ernst Ellert had been a member of the Mutant Corps. His faculty of being able to project his mind into the future had also shaped his destiny. An accident had separated mind from body. Restlessly his mind had wandered astray in time and space, ever seeking its own plane of the present but never finding it. What it did find, however, was a new present, which was a future plane by comparison to its own time.
Now it possessed a body again but it was not his own. The latter lay in a mausoleum on Earth near Terrania. Perry Rhodan, Administrator of the Solar Empire, had kept it preserved there. So the essence of that which was Ellert lingered on Druufon, the chief world of the Druufs. He had promised to send a signal when the time had come for him to leave his host body and when he would be able to return to the Earth.
Next issue the long-awaited event takes place and—
ERNST ELLERT RETURNS! by Clark Darlton