by Perry Rhodan
They had conjured up the Fire of Truth—whatever that might be!
Ron exerted an iron-willed discipline. It made no sense for him to continue swimming about in the light and exhaust his strength for no discernible purpose.
The heat increased. Ron began to perspire. How strange! He had no body—so how could he perspire?
The distorted faces surrounding him would not disappear. They hung motionless in the ocean of light, nothing but devilishly-grinning faces staring at him intently.
Ron heard some faraway voices mocking him: "Behold how he's squirming and writhing! He's caught in the Fire! The Ultimate Truth will punish he who dares scoff at it!"
And another voice screamed: "The same fate will befall any who dare deride Baalol!"
Gradually the heat became unbearable. The surrounding light turned a fiery red. Ron felt as though trapped inside a blast-furnace but he realized the torture was far from over.
Now he started moving again. He slowly drifted upwards, then reversed his direction; but wherever he went the heat was always the same and the temperature kept rising steadily.
Ron saw the priests' grinning faces come closer and their voices grow louder. He knew what this meant: they had recaptured him.
His thoughts became confused. He no longer knew where he was. The impression of suffering all these pains in a physical way grew more intense. His skin was itching, the sweat running into his eyes. He squirmed like a worm. Only one desire was left in him: to have hands and to be able to scratch and scratch his itching body all over...
He began to scream.
• • •
Larry Randall concentrated the ship's shock-absorbing protective screen onto the command center. Then he removed his hands from the console and waited patiently for whatever might follow.
Inside the command center they felt only a sudden jerk but on the outside the ship's hull tore apart, causing a huge cloud of sand and dust to whirl up into the air which enveloped their landing place in a cloak of invisibility.
Larry felt certain the ship's impact had sent sufficiently strong shockwaves through the desert floor to alert his people inside the temple city that the time for action had come.
• • •
Nike Quinto's agents had been trained to act on their own. They heard the howling of the crashing ship. Almost simultaneously came the thundering roar when the ship touched the ground and soon afterwards they could feel the jolt that rocked the earth like a minor quake.
Each agent grabbed two of the weakest sick people by their arms and dragged them out of the huts into the desert to where the huge dust cloud could be seen above the scene of the crash-landed robotship. The other sick men had to rely on the remainder of their own strength to struggle painfully as they followed behind. It was as if the hope for deliverance and rescue had infused some new force into their weakened bodies—for otherwise they could not have taken more than a couple of steps unaided.
All went according to plan. The dust cloud was still hovering around the crash-landed ship when the last of the 48 rescued sick Terrans passed through the last undamaged airlock to enter the command center. From there Larry directed them immediately toward a wire fence in the back of the room. A door stood open in the middle of the fence. Eagerly-helping hands shoved the arriving Terrans through this gate and closed it behind them.
And almost instantaneously each new arrival vanished. The place behind the door was empty again.
Larry kept an eye on the panoramic screens and watched how the dust cloud on the outside gradually settled to the ground. The top of the temple pyramid appeared again above the haze.
And Ron Landry was still missing.
• • •
It took awhile for Landry to comprehend that the grinning faces had disappeared and that he could think clearly
He was puzzled. Something must have happened that caused the priests to lose interest in him. Was he no longer important to them? Had their attention been diverted by something?
He did not know the reason for the turn of events but he felt greatly relieved that the light grew brighter again. With quick movements he swam through the ocean of brightness. Now that he had survived the greatest danger he remembered anew the missions he had to fulfill. And his foremost task was to locate his body and return inside it.
As if this realization alone had sufficed to accomplish the miracle, the world around him suddenly began to change. To his amazement Ron saw the light vanish toward one side. Then the outlines of the small cubes, cones and pyramids housing the sick captives loomed up before him.
Then once more all grew dark around him but now he had a hand with which he could grope around to orient himself in the darkness. He had legs and feet he could push against an invisible wall, and an elbow on which he could raise himself up to a sitting position. Up above he saw the small, bright hole in the ceiling. Now he knew where he was! Back again in the stone hut from where the priests had come to get him for another session of instruction.
He had returned to his body! He swiftly jumped to his feet. He felt that his body was bathed in perspiration. For a moment this puzzled him but then he comprehended that his mind had exerted a remote control over his body's reactions.
Ron allowed himself only a brief moment to shudder in recalling a strange and unreal world where body and mind existed separately from each other.
The fact that his four co-prisoners had disappeared proved to him that they must have already entered into the second, decisive phase of their enterprise. He ran out of the hut and saw the rest of the dust cloud which the robotship had caused to rise into the air. Through the haze that still remained he could barely make out the silhouette of the grey, spherical ship itself.
He ran toward it. How marvelous it felt to be able to run again on his own legs and not to have to rely any longer on the strength and dependability solely of his mind.
It took him five minutes to reach the ship. He flung himself through the open airlock and, arms raised high, greeted Larry Randall, who had been anxiously waiting for him.
"Get in there!" Larry urged him on. "You look a sight!"
Ron grinned in reply. Then he entered through the latticed gate inside the fenced-off area of the transmitter. Somebody pushed down a lever outside the transmitter. Ron felt the brief, gripping pain of dematerialization. Everything grew hazy before his eyes. When he could see clearly again he was on board the cruiser Florida. Dick Kindsom personally opened the door of the transmitter-receiver. He held his hand stretched out to him in welcome.
"Glad to have you back on board with us! I'm mighty relieved everything turned out alright in the end."
• • •
As Ron Landry was disappearing through the transmitter, loud booming sounds from a gong reverberated over the temple city. The priests were alarmed and confused by the crashing ship. They immediately abandoned their efforts to destroy the "mocker of Baalol" with the Fire of Truth and they set out to explore the danger approaching their sanctum. Some of them left the confines of their temple city, wishing to inspect the crash-landed craft at close range.
They noticed that part of their prisoners had vanished. They suspected that the strange ship might be connected with their prisoners' escape. Perhaps their servants might be found on board the craft. They deemed it an easy task to recapture the escapees—regardless of whether the ship's commander would give his consent or not.
They were wrong in that assumption, however. When they reached the ship and entered inside they found the commander and his skeleton crew busy trying to repair the emergency drive. There was no trace of the fugitives. Although the commander confessed apparent initial surprise when the priests asked permission to search the ship, he eventually acceded to their request without any objections. The priests made a thorough search of the entire ship—also those parts severely damaged by the impact on the desert floor. They had to admit that this ship obviously did not serve as a refuge for their escaped prisoners. They were quite positi
ve about this. For even if their servants had hidden themselves in the farthest, most inaccessible corner, the priests would easily have sensed their presence, not their bodily presence but their minds. For the Baalol priests were paranormals and the emanations of creatures' spirits were unmistakable evidence of their whereabouts.
No, there was no doubt: the escapees were not inside this ship. The Antis withdrew after they obtained reassurance from the ship's commander that within two hours he would have progressed sufficiently with the repair job of the emergency drive to be able to take off and at least be able to fly as far as the spaceport in Zanithon.
• • •
"No," declared Nike Quinto firmly. "For the time being we have no explanation for what happened to you."
Ron Landry and Larry Randall sat facing Nike Quinto. His answer was directed at Ron, who had regained his former appearance after his return to Earth.
"There are many things," added Nike Quinto, "our scientists have not been able to investigate to their satisfaction. You might remember in this context that we have failed so far to provide any satisfactory scientific explanation for our own mutants' special gifts. Well, these Baalol priests are to be placed into the same category as our own mutants, although Antis possess a much larger variety of paranormal faculties than members of our own Mutant Corps." He looked up. "You'll have to wait for awhile to obtain an acceptable theory for this phenomenon. I'd say another three to 400 years at least."
Ron reacted with a slight smile to Quinto's remark. "Well," he declared unperturbed, "even without a scientific explanation it was worthwhile to experience this adventure! Mind and body separated from each other!"
Nike Quinto wagged his finger. "Don't pretend any false enthusiasm," he reprimanded his agent in a high-pitched voice. "I can well imagine you didn't feel too comfortable in or out of your skin when they let you roast in their 'Fire of Truth' ".
Of course Ron had to admit to himself that Nike was right.
Quinto continued: "I've been instructed by the highest authority to extend the Administrator's gratitude to you. It turns out we fell into an affair just by accident which has far-reaching effects, much farther than any of us realized. It looks as if we are dealing here with a plot on a super scale against the Solar Empire. As I said before—it looks this way. We have no definite proof of it at this point. But we're certain of one thing: you saved 48 Terrans doomed to death from the clutches of the Baalol priests. And you also uncovered an important clue. This is why the Administrator has expressed his appreciation to you."
"I feel greatly honored," answered Ron. "However, I'd like..."
"You'd like what?" yapped Nike Quinto. "Remember my high blood pressure; don't upset me. Make yourself clear!"
Ron leaned back in his chair. "I fully realize we have saved 48 Terran citizens. But I know nothing of an important clue we are supposed to have uncovered. Would you please explain that?"
Nike Quinto broke into a wide grin. "So you know nothing about it yet?" he said, highly amused. "Don't you remember the photo you obtained from Armin Zuglert?"
"Why, yes, of course."
"It was a picture of the man who had introduced Zuglert to the drug Liquitiv, wasn't it?"
"Yes."
"And that man pretended to be a bio-medical research scientist by the name of Edmond Hugher?"
"Yes, that's true," answered Ron Landry, impatient to finally hear what Nike Quinto really had to say.
"Well, that's the trail you uncovered," declared Nike. "The photo has been examined by the proper authorities. Don't you have any idea who this really is?"
Landry was honestly in the dark. "No, sir, I haven't the faintest idea."
Nike Quinto was notorious for relishing the agonizing suspense his deliberately cultivated drawn-out manner engendered in those anxious to obtain information from him. For this occasion he rose to a new height of studied obtuseness which had Landry sweating on tenterhooks.
"Well, Landry, you'll no doubt be interested to know then what the team of experts has uncovered. By holographic projections and photographic comparisons augmented by painstaking artistic reconstructions they have been able to determine beyond the shadow of a doubt the surprising identity of the individual who was masquerading as a bio-medical research scientist. You haven't guessed his name? You haven't observed any resemblance to a prominent personage in interplanetary, in fact interstellar, intergalactic affairs? Well, I'll give you a helpful hint—"
Landry, having recently been outside his body, was now once again practically beside himself with suspense coupled with aggravation.
"His initials," Quinto continued with infuriating slowness, "are... T.C.
"The so-called scientist by the name of Edmond Hugher is in actuality the defected son of our
Administrator—
"Thomas Cardiff!"
THE DESERT OF DEATH'S DOMAIN
Copyright © 1976
Ace Books
by arrangement with Arthur Moewig Verlag
All Rights Reserved.
THE SHIP OF THINGS TO COME
THOMAS CARDIF declared:
"I want the Flaming Sword back, priest! With the help of Baalol, I want to wield it so mightily against the Solar Imperium that it will be turned into nothing but raving madmen! Rhodan must have pulled all his fleet units into action so that leaves his colonial worlds defenseless."
Having been released from his synthetic personality, Cardif's real self was revealing the heritage of his genius father. He had almost been equal to Rhodan in terms of planning and strategy. More than once he had thrown the Solar Imperium into its gravest crisis. Almost always his shrewd manipulations had served to block Rhodan's countermeasures.
Now, with frantic Arkonidean passion, he was determined to wreck the worlds of his father's domain, clean across the solar system from molten Mercury past the great gas planets clear out to the frozen wastes of the transPlutonian planet.
The machinery for Rhodan's destruction was–
THE LEPSO BLOCKADE
by Kurt Brand