The Target Star

by Perry Rhodan

  Nacro cut off abruptly. The sergeant ran a hand across his mouth and looked questioningly at Nolinow.

  "Now watch it, buddy!" warned Stant. "Let's not make enemies! Why didn't you give him your few paltry megawatts? If that expanding plasma breaks through those weakened contraction fields, all six engines will be splinters!"

  "First grade molten steel," Brazo corrected him drily. "But aside from that: if the output from the emergency plants is not enough, then my cannon converters will be too little anyway. There'd be as much danger as ever, except for one difference. In case of contact with an enemy we'd then be helpless..."

  "Get off it! what are you talking about? Enemies here in the libration zone?"

  "The Kalup could go out. In that case we'd automatically drop back into normal space. Which means we could be in for some surprises.

  With meticulous care Brazo strapped himself in. No one was aware of the seething agitation he felt. This was the third time in his career as a Fleet officer that he had contradicted a superior officer.

  I'm covered by that command from upstairs, he thought to himself. But then he felt ashamed. No. I'll not hide behind orders-I'll stand up for my own opinions! Nacro has no right to cripple all the ship's armaments, regardless of whether we have an enemy contact or not.

  Stant was about to comment when the Fantasy's engines began to roar. Somebody was giving the countdown. At zero count the normal engine noise swelled to a sense-benumbing thunder.

  Brazo could see that Nolinow was yelling something. He couldn't make out a word of it. Two seconds after the jet fuel injection the cabins and sections of the heavy cruiser began to resonate. Within moments the vibrations became so violent that they began to break sensitive instruments.,

  A vast organ-like tone began to override the thunder of the engines. The Fantasy's spherical hull rang like a giant bell under a Titan's hammer. This inferno of sound was also augmented by the howl of sirens touched off by the automatic warning system.

  But suddenly it was deathly still. There was only a subsiding resonance. The ringing sound faded until it could no longer be heard.

  Brazo found himself gripping his temples. Somebody was trying to come through on the intercom but the crew's dulled hearing made the words unintelligible at first.

  It was some time before the men's sense of hearing returned to normal but then they immediately recognized the deep tones of Perry Rhodan's voice. The Administrator was speaking calmly but what he said brought a smile to Brazo's lips.

  "OK, Professor, that was it. The jet fields held although they were half-starved for power. In normal space we'd have gone up in smoke. As for the resonance vibrations you'll have to discount them. Even if we had tied in four full powerplants to those plasma fields we'd have been ringing loud enough to wake the dead. What kind of results did you get?"

  When Kalup's face appeared on the viewscreen it was beaming. "Alright so now maybe you'll forgive yoursonny boy!.e accelerated according to my calculations. The full evaluations are still being processed. But we have proof now at least that even residual 4-D space effects can be partially removed by artificially generated forces. What I need is an additional three high power plants."

  "Not onthis.hip."

  "Then build me one big enough and forget about cost. I'm not yet satisfied with this experiment!"

  Rhodan cut off the connection. Brazo turned to look at Nolinow. Stant got to his feet and silently checked his limbs. He finally ended up digging into his ears to try to open them up.

  The crew sergeant exchanged looks with the other gunners present. Finally he also got up and walked over to Brazo. Alkher felt nervous, anticipating a first breakthrough in communication.

  Turning away, the older man said. "About Capt Nacro, sir—I wouldn't worry about him. He's not the kind to hold a grudge and he has respect for a man's personal convictions. That's what we wanted to tell you, sir.

  "We...?"

  The sergeant pointed to the other crewmen. "All those chrakoes sitting there grinning at you, sir."

  In a few moments Brazo accompanied Nolinow to the inter-compartment airlock giving entrance to Fire Control.

  "You know, Stant, it's a wonderful feeling to have friends."

  "You don't have to convince me of that, buddy. Well, carry on—but don't forget the inner man in all this. You've got to eat, libration zone or not—and in spite of going 25 million times as fast as light. Will I see you in about half an hour? I still have to check over my combat robots. I hope the chapeks were smart enough to turn on their protective screens. Positronic micro-brains are very sensitive to vibrations."

  "Actually whatis.our speciality?"

  Stant made a theatrical bow. "Allow me to present—Stant Nolinow, Solar Fleet Lieutenant, which includes graduate engineer in hyper-frequency positronics. That's a specialty within a specialty but it all adds up to cybernetics. A bit confusing, wouldn't you say?" He laughed. and went into the lock as he called back: "In half an hour you can celebrate your first meal in semispace!"

  Brazo nodded mechanically. When he returned to his place he suspected that he had just become a charter member in a company of very capable crewmen—who were also his friends.

  On the Fire Control's console the big target screen revealed a gleaming red point of light. It was the distant sun that Rhodan hoped to reach within 15 hours.

  5/ COLLISION COURSE!

  Rhodan jumped when he saw it. He only needed the fraction of a second to grasp the situation. "Claudrin! Shut off the Kalup!" he shouted to the Commander.

  The Epsalian also realized that it would be impossible to veer from course at this incredible Speed The on-rushing ship had acquired far too much mass to be diverted.

  The target star had been plainly visible before them. Then suddenly it had been engulfed by the flames of a giant yellow sun. A one to 38 billion chance or "possibly never."

  The Fantasy hurtled toward the strange star at many millions of times the speed of light. Before Jefe Claudrin could react Rhodan had changed his mind. He grasped intuitively that it was already too late to inactivate the Kalup. Without a word he lunged forward and blocked him. The Epsalian's broad hand slipped past the emergency switch and glanced against the console edge with such force that it was splintered, then rebounded to strike Rhodan in the face! The Administrator slumped back with a groan.

  Under physical circumstances which were totally unknown and not even theoretically calculated, the Fantasy collided with the massive obstruction in its path. Rhodan's last conscious awareness was that the cruiser shot into the equatorial belt of the yellow sun. The almost instantaneous chaos that followed could only be reconstructed later.

  For an infinitesimal moment which was only a fraction of a micro-second, the Fantasy came close to splitting asunder. Then came effects which no one would have dared to even imagine.

  As in a timeless trance Rhodan heard the groaning and shrieking of overstressed steel. Every bolt and seam came alive with a voice of its own. The five big power plants surged to maximum output and the Kalup compensation converter developed a sound like a nuclear explosion.

  There were no outside witnesses to this most improbable of all occurrences. Moving at an inconceivable velocity a comparatively tiny man-made object hurtled into the star's white-hot atmosphere and broke through its superheated core without damage. It all happened so swiftly and under such strange para-dimensional conditions that the ship did not have time to be destroyed. Before the compensator field could collapse the Fantasy had already come through the dense, flaming inferno.

  In spite of the ship's swift penetration, great masses of matter broke from the heart of the sun and were hurled outward into space along with the fleeing linear-drive cruiser. The gaseous cloud moved away like a newly-born planet that was carrying an alien man-made object at its core. Like a synthetically generated protuberance an ultra-bright tongue of flaming gases whipped outward into the void. As it touched the fugitive its ravening forces overcame the Kalup field effect
s and once again the Fantasy was a stable component of the Einsteinian universe.

  A second phenomenon occurred which was as unforeseen as the first, having to do with gravitational effects of the normal protection screens. They had attracted and captured some of the gaseous matter that had been torn from the center of the star. More than 99% of the glowing masses fell behind but the remainder had been pulled along with the ship which was now flying at half SPEOL.

  By the time this whole combination developed a rotational motion of its own, the punctured sun had already become a faint light speck among billions of others.

  The first linear-drive spaceship from Earth had been too swift to be destroyed or captured by the ravening forces of a stellar body. It had shot through the sun like a small-caliber rocket going through a bucket of molten steel at hundreds of times the speed of sound, except that this particular projectile had the advantage of effective defense screens. They had simply not had time to collapse as swiftly as the event had occurred. Spinning like a top on its new-found axis, the glowing phantomesque mass hurtled away into the star-swarming abyss of the galaxy's core.

  The red target star was now way off to one side and hardly discernible. It was only months later that the men on board the Fantasy were to comprehend a third effect of the total phenomenon. It was not at all by mere chance that the tiny, freshly created planet was now flying toward a certain blue sun.

  It was many light-years distant from the yellow sun they had penetrated. No one on board the Fantasy suspected that at the moment of their collision a very unusual transition had occurred, involving some very specific energy characteristics. But it made little difference whether the cruiser's crew attributed their new course to an incredible coincidence or to the immutable processes of natural law.

  The crucial point was the fact that the Fantasy was flying directly toward the great blue star.

  • • •

  Rhodan struggled futilely to reach for the green emergency switch. His limbs were fighting against a pressure of at least five G's. Normally the automatic feature of the flight console should have come into play by now and arrested the cruiser's wild rotation by means of the powerful nav-stabilization engines. Apparently the automatic circuits had failed because of the collision. Rhodan was painfully aware of this as well as the fact that the Fantasy was spinning like a centrifuge around its polar axis.

  That the G-shock compensators weren't operating was even more of a puzzle. Perhaps when the Kalup converter failed it had caused a short-circuit somewhere and the power plants had shut down. The automatic emergency connections were malfunctioning and no current was being fed to the inertial absorbers.

  With painful clarity Rhodan was reminded of similarities between the present situation and that of the first manned spaceflight. At that time there had been no neutralizers to alleviate inertial effects but of course in those days astronauts had gone through a different kind of schooling. Those specialist pioneers had been trained for years under the severest simulated conditions so that five G's would not have bothered them overly much. Under such pressure they would still have been able to operate vital switch controls. They also had a different breathing technique to keep them from smothering under such a centrifugal load.

  Lying in a half-raised position, Rhodan was pinned against the wall just under the panob screens. Inside the ship it was strangely still. A blood-red emergency light illuminated the Control Central where the crewmen hung in their straps in their automatically flattened-out contour chairs. Only Rhodan had left his seat just before the collision. He strained futilely against the centrifugally produced gravity, realizing that with each passing second such a struggle made him weaker and more helpless.

  His vision was already blurring. His optical nerves were failing under the strain. The only sound he could bring to his lips was an unintelligible gurgling noise, which immediately brought on another threat of asphyxiation. He thought of Pucky, who as a teleporter would have been able to activate the emergency switch, but no doubt the delicately built mouse-beaver had long since fallen unconscious. Nor was he able to make telepathicontact with John Marshall.

  Out of it!he thought angrily while close to unconsciousness.Only a ridiculous five G's and we're not able to handle it!

  His brain was being drained of blood and he couldn't think straight any more. He was only able to make out the shadowy outlines of a broad figure nearby which groped upward with excruciating slowness. The right hand of the figure was working up the thick body toward a fist-sized device hanging on his chest

  Jefe Claudrin had to contend with two difficulties. Five G's wouldn't have been too much for him to take but he was under extra pressure because his micro-gravitator was still working. This placed an extra weight load on him. By the time he managed to shut off the grav generator, Rhodan was unconscious, but now Claudrin was relatively free. He moved against the terrible pressure and reached out his right hand, which grasped the green switch and closed it.

  Inside the spinning spacesphere the alarm sirens started to howl. The emergency automatics sprang to life, registered the situation and proceeded to make the necessary connections. Power plant three revved up to maximum output and the inertial compensators received their required supply of energy. Seconds later the unbearable load was lifted from the men. A roaring from the correctional jets indicated that the rotary motion was being arrested.

  When Rhodan awoke he saw Claudrin's bulky figure standing over him. Without a word the Epsalian lifted Rhodan into his ponderous arms and took him over to a contour couch.

  Everywhere in the ship the men were regaining their senses. Brazo Alkher also straightened up with a groan and gasped convulsively for air. His first glance was toward the target viewscreen. A bright red glare almost blinded him.

  With a seemingly superhuman effort he called to the Control Central. When the Commander answered, Brazo groaned out: "Fire Control ready and safe, sir. What happened? Did we hit something?"

  "If I'm not dreaming it seems we've flown straight through a star of considerable magnitude."

  "Good God!"

  "Remain at your station, Alkher. I still don't know the meaning of that reddish glow around us. In any case we're back in normal space."

  "Sir, maybe I'm crazy but it looks as if we were still in the middle of that sun."

  Claudrin was about to reply but then became silent for a brief moment. Then he spoke more slowly. "My boy, that gives me an idea! OK, now you look out for your men and send any casualties to the sickbay. Report your personnel situation to the First Officer—that is all!"

  "Right, Sir," muttered Brazo mechanically.

  He listened absently to the roaring of the power plants that were feeding the defense screens and protecting the cruiser from the dangers of outer space. Something did not seem right on board the Fantasy. It was no longer possible to use the para-optics.

  Brazo took a long deep breath.

  All there was to be seen on the screens was a bright glow.

  6/ LOST IN THE VOID

  "It's an accident that can happen to a linear-drive ship at any time," said Kalup calmly over the video intercom. His face looked pale and drawn and even his pouches had a taut look about them. He continued dispassionately: "The computations are in. I've used the tractor beam to bring in a sample of matter from outside. We've nipped off a piece of the sun's mass and brought it with us. But this little ship couldn't have done it—the compensator field is the culprit The sequence of physical events involved is fairly clear. It was lucky for us that at the moment of impact our screens were at full power. Otherwise we wouldn't have gotten out of there alive. It may sound foolish to say this but do you know where we are? We're at the center of a swiftly revolving cloud of matter which is cooling down fast because its nuclear activity has subsided. That seems strange to me but we're going to find out why."

  In the Control Central Jefe Claudrin turned his head to look at Rhodan. The latter sat exhausted in his flight seat. Under his left eye w
as a swollen bruised spot.

  Claudrin spoke as softly as his mighty voice would permit. "It's a good thing you knocked my hand away in time. Otherwise I'd have turned off the Kalup at the exact moment of the collision."

  Rhodan nodded. His lips tightened in pain. During the heavy G condition he had been lying against the smooth steel wall but probably he had broken several ribs. "I realized it at the last moment," he answered. "We were already too close. OK, forget it Kalup—what do you suggest?"

  "The wall of matter around us is still soft and yielding. We have to break through before it cools down. That brings up a few problems that have to be worked out."

  "That's why I'm asking you, young man."

  Kalup snorted impatiently and his face showed some color again. "Can the kiddy bit,please!.e have to operate now like a baby chicken. We have to break our shell from the inside and slip out of it. There's no other possibility. In order to do this we have two alternatives."

  "Oh, we have a selection!" said Rhodan.

  "Don't sarc me—this thing's too serious. At the present moment I'm not willing to risk turning off the normal defense screens, which would be necessary to put the compensating converter back in operation. It could be that there's some critical radioactivity still going on in that cloud and if we had a nuclear blast out there we wouldn't make it without the screens.

  "I see—and so?"

  "I understand you had the Fleet Command provide you with a Fire Control officer who has some special qualifications—is that right?"

  As Rhodan's eyes brightened with interest a certain young man named Brazo Alkher stiffened tensely. In startlment he looked across at his gunner crew. Sgt Enscath gripped the arms of his chair.

  "Jehoz!" exclaimed the latter. "I knew it would come to this!"

  "Are you saying, Professor, that you want to take a shot at that heat shell?" Rhodan's voice was on all the ship's speakers so that everyone could hear the conversation.