The Target Star

by Perry Rhodan

  Rhodan reached into his breast pocket and pulled out some papers. He looked out searchingly at the 300-man crew of the cruiser. He saw wide-awake eyes and tense faces.

  "The second point to clear up concerns our target accuracy," he continued. "As on our previous test flights we will be able to see our target star with our paraoptical equipment. At a velocity of 25 millions times SPEOL we should be able to reach the red sun in about 14½ hours. On the basis of all previous experience, we should not be subject to time-contraction effects—provided the total screening of the Kalup field doesn't hold other surprises for us. We can't be sure but that's why we're trying to find out. The only thing we know for sure is that this new space-drive was borrowed, you might say, from the inhuman Druufs and with it they were able to reach their various target areas with an uncanny precision. We also know on the basis of investigations made by our cosmic agents that when the Druufs made their long-distance flights there was no occurrence of relativistic time displacements. I'm of the opinion that we'll take our own time-ratio right along with us so there shouldn't be any undesirable phenomena to contend with.

  "However if there should be any such distortion effects we have means of surviving them. But that subject belongs to the purely technical portion of Operation Target Star. Lt. Alkher ..."

  Brazo jumped when he heard his name called. In sudden confusion he noticed that all eyes were turning toward him. "Sir?" he managed to stammer out.

  "Have you looked over the Fantasy's Fire Control Central?"

  "Yessir!"

  "Do you feel ready to operate it?"

  "Completely, sir. It's no different from the fire stations in other ships."

  "Good. Thank you very much." Brazo sat down. "You should prepare to take instant action under emergency circumstances. The Fantasy's no super battleship—in fact not even a full-fledged heavy cruiser. Some of the weapons have been dismounted in order to make room other equipment. We're not much more than a flying power plant. If the need arises you will have to use the few guns we have—in fact so swiftly and accurately that we will not suffer any unpleasant surprises. I want you to focus your attention there and under no circumstances are you to be concerned with anything else."

  "Yessir, I understand."

  Rhodan clapped his notes together. After a glance at the clock he calmly concluded: "In half an hour we'll reach the orbit of Jupiter. There we will enter semispace and accelerate to top speed. Spacesuits will be required. You will switch on your helmet transceivers for voicecom contact and strap yourselves in. Of course we're hoping that we may have cured the causes of the hull resonance vibrations we recently experienced but safety is safety. Never forget that you are on board a prototype ship. This is an all-out attempt to find out what we must and it's an all-out risk as well. Always keep in mind that linear-drive space travel will bring humanity another step upward and outward. However foolproof the transition-type ships may be, a linear spacer is immeasurably superior to them, even if burdened with sources of error in the initial stages. After all, we haven't invested billions of Solars in this development for nothing.

  "Thank you very much. That is all. Are there any questions?"

  His listeners indicated that they were satisfied. Rhodan made a brief salute before he left the hall.

  For a few seconds there was a nerve-shattering silence. Then excited voices rang out. Suddenly the men fell into groups and huddles.

  "Ye gods!" exclaimed Stant Nolinow. "Over 42,000 light-years! This time he's really out to bag a comet! How do you feel, buddy?"

  Brazo smiled enigmatically. He was still lost in thought as he stared at the spot where Rhodan had just been standing. "Pretty fair—in fact very well. Do you know, Stant, I think I can understand now why that man has to stay young and healthy. Humanity would have had it if he were no longer around! The bubble would burst—we'd be in chaos."

  "Probably," admitted Nolinow. "But let's get off that. Right now the game goal is to get through this flight with the best possible results and no bruises. Can you form a realistic impression of what it means to be going 25 million times the speed of light?"

  "Not really," Brazo calmly asserted. "I think Rhodan gave us the right handle on it. It's not the speed ratio that counts as much as the time-span involved with a given distance. Looking at it that way you don't go croggo. The time-ratio approach makes it more normal and mentally digestible. Whatever the Druufs could or couldn't do with this kind of propulsion we ought to be able to do as well."

  "My sentiments exactly!" said someone in a high, thin voice.

  Brazo turned about and came to attention. It was Capt Slide Nacro, the Chief Engineer. He was carefully scrutinizing the tall Fire Control Officer of the Fantasy.

  "If you need any help, Mr. Alkher," he said, "you can call on me. To be on the safe side. I'm going to hold an auxiliary power unit on standby for your disintegrator cannon. In a real emergency you wouldn't make it with those synchro-converters. But if you think you need to fall back on an extra booster, don't think too long about it. We still don't know what's waiting for us out there."

  The Martian jerked a thumb over his shoulder. Evidently, by "out there" he meant the central core of the galaxy. With a light salute he departed. Brazo had a good idea why the small, barrel-chested man had become Chief Engineer of the Fantasy. Here everybody seemed to be a top-flight specialist and efficient crewman.

  Nolinow looked at the clock. "It's getting to be that time. How do you get along with your men?"

  Brazo frowned a moment in puzzlement but then smiled again in the same strange manner. "Oh, you mean the gunner crew? Right now I'm sort of a country cousin to them—a little wet behind the ears."

  "You think so? Hm-m-m...Let's wait and see," said Stant pensively. "Come on, let's go!"

  The 300 men gradually dispersed and vacated the mess hall. According to their assignments they went to their specific stations, where they waited for what was to come.

  In the central core of the heavy cruiser the control instruments—most of them provisionally installed—were put through their checkouts. Professor Kalup and his technical staff concerned themselves with the huge, 4-level converter that had been named after him. The largest hold in the special ship had been converted to accommodate the mammoth apparatus.

  By far the greatest space was taken up by the five main power plants. Their combined maximum output was 220,000 megawatts, exclusively to be used for building up the compensator field. Although it seemed to be an incredible amount of power, it was still as nothing when one considered the natural energy fields that the relatively small, spherical forcefield would have to struggle against.

  Three minutes before the entrance into semispace the final ready signals were received from the power and engine rooms. Capt. Nacro activated his power reactors and closed his distributor switches. The Fantasy became a living mechanical entity of consummate perfection.

  4/ EXPERIMENT PERILOUS!

  It was like a surrealistic dream, neither tangible to the mind nor to the senses.

  The manoeuvre of entry had been accomplished with perfect precision. After the Kalup compensator field had been built up and the structural transformation of the impulse waves had taken place, everyone had the impression that nothing on board the ship had changed. There had been no sensation of dematerialization pains as on normal hypertransition ships. No physical object had attenuated into nothingness. The optical view of the target area ahead of the ship remained unblemished. Only where the expanded edges of the para-stable echo beam became attenuated did the outlines of the galaxy appear to be blurred.

  The red target star gleamed from the special screen as a tiny point of light. They were flying on a direct line of sight without any complex calculations or adjustments to compensate for changing angles of incidence. The Fantasy was speeding so fast that the distant sun's own stellar motion became a negligible and easily adjustable factor.

  Deep beneath the Control Central the Kalup continued to thunder. Only a few
minutes after acceleration started inside the libration zone it was determined that the compensation converter had not reached its full loading capacity in spite of its soaring power absorption. The 220,000 megawatts were still not enough to satisfy the current-devouring monster.

  The computers were going full speed in the mathematical section. The energy concentration in the Kalup field had only shown an increase of 5% over earlier test runs although the newly-installed 5th power plant furnished an additional 20,000 megawatts. After an approximate period of eight minutes of acceleration within the artificially created semispace region, the maximum velocity was reached.

  The emission velocity of the structurally converted impulse waves was close to 25 million times the speed of light. Even if the desired total isolation of 4-dimensional energy effects might not have been achieved it was certain that no trick or artifice would serve now to increase the velocity they had attained to.

  Their view of normal space around them was blurred and diffused. Nothing could be seen but ghostly lines and streamers of light. Only in the propagation sector of the para-optical reflection beams were things in focus. The farther the distance ahead the wider the angle of sight.

  The first results of the instrument readings showed that the Kalup-generated screening field continued stable even though under expansion its flux density diminished.

  The target star at the focal point of the para-tracking beam was exactly in the center of the 3-D sensor screen.

  Owing to a rash of duties the crew of the Fantasy had almost forgotten by now that they were existing in an unreal and only mathematically conceivable segment of space. The 5th-dimensional effects had been completely screened off by the Kalup field. No other proof of that was needed than the fact that there were no signs of any dematerialization. Everyone was familiar enough with the effects of hyperspace to know that hyperphysical laws were inoperable within the libration zone.

  Rhodan had activated the auxiliary flight console. In an emergency he would be able to take over manual control of the ship. But Jefe Claudrin sat there so calm and composed in his special seat that Rhodan finally relaxed. The first quarter hour after the successful entry manoeuvre had been turbulent. Now the various reports from stations weren't coming through in such a headlong rush.

  Rhodan carefully felt of himself. Nothing seemed to have changed.

  Bell looked at him in amusement. His blue eyes gleamed with the spirit of adventure. "Were you thinking you could reach through your stomach and maybe scratch your backbone?" he asked.

  "Here anything's possible," said Rhodan. "How do you feel?"

  "Terrific. It just seems unbelievable that we're clipping along at this speed."

  "How often do I have to explain that speed is an unimportant ratio now—except as a mere mental reference? What's important is..."

  "... the actual distance in terms of time—I know."

  Rhodan got up from his seat. Moments later he instructed all hands over the P.A. system to open their suit helmets. "But be careful," he added. "It could happen that we might have to slap them on again in a hurry to shield ourselves from the environment."

  He walked over to the Commander's chair. Jefe Claudrin had his hands full trying to carry out Prof. Kalup's incoming instructions. Most of it had to do with jet aperture adjustments and small course variations! Rhodan remained standing behind the Epsalian, whose hands moved over the controls with an uncanny swiftness and precision. No autopilot had yet been developed for linear flight, so Claudrin's outstanding reaction capabilities were of inestimable value.

  Directly in front of him was the 3-D screen of the para-optical viewer. The rasters of the normal viewscreens only flickered with pale reflections.

  "Sir, this is fantastic!" mumbled Claudrin suddenly. "Kalup is trying to talk me into burning up some injection fuel. What do you think?"

  Rhodan pondered this for a moment. It was easy to follow Kalup's line of reasoning. With the compensator apparently at the upper limit of its capability he wanted to try every other means of increasing their speed.

  "Try it!"

  "What!" exclaimed Claudrin in astonishment. His broad face showed strains of consternation.

  "Go ahead and try it, Jefe! Cut in the injectors and givefull power.o the converters. I'd like to see what happens. We have to make at least one try at it."

  His instructions were overheard down in the mathematics section. Kalup's massive figure loomed from behind a hyper-plane triangulator whose pengraphs were racing madly. "Well, finally!" he blustered in his usual irascible manner. His blue-veined cheek pouches were more rigid now under the strain. "Just let me have that mike!"

  One of his staff technicians leapt quickly out of the path of the lumbering physicist. Kalup grumpily twisted the flexible mike arm toward him.

  "This is Kalup!" he said, raising his voice unnecessarily. "Sir, can you hear me?"

  "Loud and clear," came Rhodan's voice from the intercom speaker.

  "Good—at least that's something!" he said peevishly.

  "If you're ready to take the advice of a man of experience then let's get with it! For this test I'm going to need 32 tons of Bismuth per engine per second. Can your miserable turbo-chargers handle that?"

  "What?" Claudrin's voice thundered out of every speaker. "Did you say 'per' both times?"

  "That's right!" Kalup called back angrily. "Per engine and per second! Mister, who's the Chief Physicist here, anyway?!"

  "Arno, you're out of your mind!" interjected the Chief Engineer, who had meanwhile established a rapport with Kalup. "You're talking about a 4-stage concentration of nuclear plasma and in that quantity the energy output won't be controllable—and it's right next to the nuclear reactor! You're going to need a blanket screening and I need every kilowatt for your compensator. The output of the emergency plants won't be enough to beef up the kind of shielding that will be mandatory for safety!"

  "That plasma's controllable!" asserted Kalup in a fit of temper.

  "Sure—with at least three full power plants!"

  "With two emergency plants, you little runt!" yelled Kalup while gesticulating wildly. "What kind of physical laws do you think we're operating under at present? I'm going to prove to you that..."

  "All of you quiet down, please!" Rhodan's calm voice broke through the storm. "Mr. Nacro, turn up the Bismuth-tank heaters to 2700°. Set your turbo-chargers for the required fuel load. Impulse converters full on and get ready for the plasma injection. Prof. Kalup, there are a lot of risks being taken here. You realize that over a short period the thrust output of the engines will be quadrupled. I'm assuming that you have some supporting calculations at hand what safety coefficient have you allowed for, using 32 tons per second?"

  Kalup stared at his viewscreen. He controlled himself with a visible effort. His great bald head gleamed with perspiration. "Sir!" he almost hissed back, "the term coefficient is synonymous with the enumeration of a change of magnitude as a mathematical function—or in this case it's a number that expresses the expansive force of a substance. Did you think by any chance that I had neglected the safety factor?"

  Rhodan's expression remained unchanged. "I guess I know you, sonny.

  "What do you mean—sonny?!" raged Kalup. His face turned a bluish shade while his vast corpulent frame began to tremble. "Did you call mesonny."

  "Precisely. I was deep into trigonometry and force-vector triangulations before your great grandfather saw the light of day. Does that tell you anything, my son?"

  Kalup was nonplussed. All it took for him to lose the rest of his composure was to see the grinning faces of his assistants. Rhodan cut off before the physicist could explode completely.

  Rhodan turned to the Epsalian with a faint smile.

  Bell thought out loud: "I'm still going to pin a muzzle on him, that's for sure! Claudrin, I hope you come down with a heavy case of lockjaw. Maybe then you'll stop beating in my eardrums."

  The Commander laughed and it was like the thundering of Niagara F
alls.

  • • •

  Stant Nolinow almost fell through the heavy armored hatchway instead of climbing through it into the Fire Control Central. He sought support by hanging onto an automatic gunsight for a moment and then managed a few weaving steps toward his flight seat. Breathing heavily he sat down and hastily groped for the safety straps.

  According to orders, Brazo Alkher was sitting in front of his firing console, watching for non-existent targets. At sight of Nolinow he stared in puzzlement. The gunner crewmen perked up their ears when Stant gasped out his warning.

  "Maybe you'll buckle in too, pretty quick! Don't you have any idea of how Kalup's brainstorm can affect us?"

  Brazo was suddenly aware of a sense of uneasiness as he saw his subordinates reach with amazing dexterity toward their fastener buckles. He was still pondering what he should do when the video intercom buzzed and Capt Slide Nacro's tense, lean face appeared on the screen.

  "Alkher, I need every last watt your cannon converter can put out. Switch it over into power circuit 4."

  Brazo's soft boyish face suddenly became so hard and unfriendly-looking that Nolinow widened his eyes in amazement. The crew sergeant pursed his lips in a silent whistle as he looked across at his new Fire Control Chief.

  "I'm sorry, sir," replied Brazo, sounding very reserved. "My orders say that I have to keep the few weapons we have in constant fire-readiness."

  "But don't be silly!" urged the C.E. in obvious irritation. "Your gun stations can give me another 40,000 megawatts!"

  "As much as 43,000, sir."

  "Alright then. Shoot me the juice through your distributor main—now come on!"

  "Request denied, sir. I'm in charge here. My guns remain on operational standby."

  "My, aren't we brave and noble, Lieutenant!" said the Martian icily.

  "I hope so, sir. If I receive permission from the Commander to place the weapons power at your disposal—you're welcome to it, and Captain, if you'll permit a remark: I consider the Administrator's precautions to be justified. He must know to what extent Prof. Kalup's claims can be realized."