The Target Star

by Perry Rhodan

  "We ought to give it a try. In any case it's less risky than to chance shutting down the outer screens. Hello—is the Fire Control Officer listening to this?"

  "Yes...yes sir!" said Brazo shakily into his microphone. "Lt. Alkher here, sir!"

  "Good! I believe we ran into each other on the Moon, isn't that right?" said Kalup, laughing loudly as was his way.

  "Yes, that's right, sir. You were kind enough to save me from a fall."

  "I remember. Now tell me—do you think you could put a shot through that rotating shell out there? I mean accurately enough to carve an exit for us?"

  Brazo forgot his nervousness. Rhodan was watching him attentively on the screen and he nodded slowly in approval as he observed the young man's sudden change to hard-jawed alertness.

  Brazo's mental calculations had already been completed. In an entirely altered tone of voice which was all business now, he gave his answer: "It's not all that easy, sir! I believe you mentioned that the shell was rotating. That means the Fantasy's going to have to be spinning with it at the same speed if I'm going to hold my fire on any one spot long enough. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to concentrate my fire beam and all I'd be doing would be wasting energy in an ineffectual sweep.

  "Correct. I'm right along with you there—you can think, my friend. So get ready to concentrate your fire and use everything you've got. Just use the weapons that won't put us in danger under these conditions."

  "Sir, only the impulse and disintegrator guns can be used here."

  Rhodan issued final instructions. The ship's instruments located a good target in the surrounding shell which consisted of a prominent bright-glowing spot. The inertial neutralizers were set for synchro-mode. Moments later the Fantasy started rotating again but this time the motion was calculated and controlled.

  On Brazo's target screen the bright target spot became more and more stable in a relative sense until it finally swung into the cross-hairs and held steady. There were a few vernier adjustments to make. The heavy cruiser was spinning at a rate of 22.36 times per second on its polar axis. The fixed guns in their extended turret positions thus moved at a similar rate. The concentrated fire could begin.

  Claudrin's voice boomed from the speakers. "The distance to that condensation of matter is marked by our grav-magnetic defense screen—precisely 10 kilometers, Adjust your beams so that you can knock out a circular opening in that staff with at least a diameter of three K-Ms."

  "Wilco, sir," answered Brazo mechanically. His eyes were fixed on the target screen. His sensitive fingers moved across control keys on the fire console. All frontal cannons of the Fantasy were turned so that their line of fire would converge at the same point.

  "Fire when ready," said Rhodan.

  Brazo depressed the master switch for an automatic salvo and like some monster startled from slumber the cruiser began to bellow and flash with destructive thunderings. The violet streams of impulse energy were sunhot and almost as fast as light as they leapt from the shielded gun muzzles. The molecule-disrupting rays of the disintegrators could hardly be seen but they were even slightly faster than the beams from the the thermo-impulse guns.

  Brazo held down the salvo-release key for a duration of three seconds. The Fantasy shook heavily in every joint and seam. Outside where the fire was concentrated the spherical shell of condensing matter appeared to explode. Powerful nuclear reactions blasted against the ship's protective screening and threatened to destroy it. Beyond the vessels armor-steel hull the furies of Hell seemed to be unleashed. The suddenly reheated masses shot tongues of flame out into the void. Brazo was generating a miniature sun which was erupting with ravening prominences of exploding hydrogen.

  "Hold it—cease fire!" cried Rhodan over the intercom. "No good—it won't work! With all that nuclear reaction the exit hole will be filled with critical masses of gas again. Out of here before that cloud turns into a nova! Kalup, get ready for linear-drive. Nacro, set your engine piles for maximum.

  "That's senseless—we'll only take the cloud along with us!"

  "Just do what I say. Kalup, get us some speed. The compensator screen buildup and collapse of normal screening has to dovetail at the same moment. If they don't match exactly we'll be going up in steam. Is that completely clear to you?"

  "Oh, quite!" said Kalup with humorless emphasis. "Alright—wait for my signal."

  Brazo Alkher had moved his hands away from the console keys of his fire control. Outside all space was ablaze. He knew that his overheated weapons had initiated the nuclear reactions which physicist Kalup had feared. Now the cloud's fusionable hydrogen atoms were activated. It was high time to vacate the trap if they could.

  A rapid stream of commands came from Control Central. The thundering of the Kalup converter began to override every other sound. Two minutes later the engine room announced that full accelerating power had been reached. The swiftly-heating stellar material was being carried along with them. No escape seemed possible by this means. Moreover they were uncertain as to what would happen now that they were getting close to the speed of light.

  Rhodan issued final instructions. All hands closed the helmets of their spacesuits. Voice-com then continued by radio. The gas-cloud's chain reactions were increasing wildly. Just as the tremendous forces threatened to shatter the defense screen, Rhodan's voice came through again. As was unique with him at the most critical moment he, was unusually calm.

  "Jefe, it's your move. Give us five seconds of acceleration in semispace and then shut off the Kalup. That ought to be enough. Are you ready? Let's go!"

  Claudrin took a final look at the green indicators on the automatic vernier synchro. The building of the Kalup zone had to match the collapse of the normal screening within less than a microsecond. Then with an almost imperceptible motion the Epsalian cut off the manual override, which threw everything into automatic commit.

  It seemed that the cruiser was virtually exploding. The white-hot glow from outside appeared ready to burst through the viewscreens into the ship. The Kalup drowned out all other sounds and even the tortured ringing of the overstrained hull could not be heard. Only the earthquake of its vibrations could be felt.

  This lasted for a few moments and then without warning the blaze of unchained atomic forces disappeared. On the forward viewscreen of the optical system appeared the star-glittering background of the void.

  Rhodan sighed his relief as he sank back into the cushioning of his contour seat. Almost at the same moment a heavy shock ran through the structure of the Fantasy. The speed indicators dropped rapidly. It was as though the ship had ploughed into a sea of cotton wadding. The phenomenon lasted about a second but it was enough for Claudrin to shut down the Kalup within Rhodan's designated time-period of five seconds.

  Once deprived of its compensation field the test ship dropped back immediately into normal space where it continued in free fall at the velocity it had reached prior to the entry manoeuvre. The engines and the Kalup were silenced. On the normal viewscreens gleamed a giant blue sun.

  The mass detectors came to life with warning signals. Racing pengraphs indicated that this bright hot star possessed a considerable family of planets. But this was not surprising for the Fantasy's crew. It was nothing to worry about. Many suns mothered a system of planets.

  Rhodan fixed his gaze for a few moments on the giant screens of the panob view gallery. Five of the discovered planets were already showing green echo blips. He didn't pay any attention to them. What was far more important was that they had successfully pulled away from the center of an imminent miniature nova. Still, there was something else that might be of equal or greater importance just now: the peculiar drop in velocity which Claudrin apparently caused when he hurried to cut off the linear drive.

  "What was that?" he asked. "You noticed it didn't you?"

  "Of course, sir."

  Reginald Bell got up from his flight seat. He went over to the panob gallery and stopped directly under the viewscreens. His eyes narrowed
suspiciously as he observed the visible disc of the bluish sun. Once his eyes had adjusted themselves to the brilliant light, he saw that there was a faint blue shimmering in the empty space around the alien star. What was missing here was the star-strewn darkness of the normal universe.

  "Can anybody tell me where in the devil we are?" asked Bell. He shoved his hands in his uniform pockets and turned to look slowly from man to man.

  Kalup and a few other scientists came into the Control Central. It was characteristic of his swift reaction capability that he wasted no words on their successful escape flight. To him that part was taken care of so it was forgotten. He approached the screens with heavy steps, having overheard Bell's question.

  "Where are we? You can be sure we're not in hyperspace or any other mathematical quasi-universe. This is a completely normal solar system and it's a part of our own galaxy."

  "A completely normal system?" Bell repeated questioningly. There was an ironic innuendo in his tone. "Kalup, you're turning into an all-knowing oracle."

  With unaccustomed gravity and calmness the hyper-physicist shook his head. "It's just that I'm ahead of you in my observations and my conclusions. If the air envelope of a planet happens to shimmer, that's understandable, but when the vacuum of space around it also shimmers, that is entirely something else again! Or have you ever seen a vacuum that acts like that?"

  Now Rhodan narrowed his eyes in thought as a new suspicion occurred to him.

  Kalup continued: "During our brief linear flight we were slowed down by an unknown force. I presume that we penetrated a defense screen that is in some way similar to our compensator field. Otherwise we would have been repulsed or even destroyed. It's the defense screen that's generating that blue light. We ought to call this the Blue System."

  "A defense screen—out here in the middle of space?" said Bell, flabbergasted. "You mean a bubble of force so big that it can contain a large solar system with at least 15 planets inside it? Professor, do you really know what you're saying?"

  Kalup nodded, his eyes gleaming. As a scientist he saw the whole thing as a fascinating phenomenon. But Rhodan and the ship's leading officers were of a more practical mind.

  Maj. Hunts Krefenbac, who was the First Officer, lost his usual lethargic manner. He quickly drew the first available microphone to him. "Krefenbac to Fire Control: ready at battle stations! Channel your object sensor into Control Central—and confirm!"

  Brazo's fingers began their artistry on the console again. Alarms began to ring in the quarters of off-duty personnel. "Fire Control Central, Lt. Alkher here. Combat readiness is in effect. Object sensor switched to Control Central—over and out!"

  Rhodan glanced pensively at his First Officer and then looked at Kalup. "Now you know what the fighting men think of your Blue System."

  Kalup shrugged. But then he followed it with a gesture of vexation. "That's nonsense! We have to find out first what's going on here!"

  "Precisely, Professor! But while we're waiting to find out, Hunts has also ordered combat standby. It appears to me, young man, that the Third Epoch of human history is being heralded with a bigger roll of drums than expected. Krefenbac—what's your recommendation?"

  Before the First Officer could express an opinion the hyper-sensors in the next room went into such a sudden bedlam of alarm that within a few seconds all the fuses blew out Rhodan did not say a word. He only smiled strangely as he looked through the transparent plasteel partition into the tracking central where technicians were busy cutting in a safety backup system. The chief duty officer switched on his heaviest buffer circuits against overload shock.

  Once more the sensors were able to measure warp-distortions in 4-dimensional space and the result was an uninterrupted thundering of tracer signals.

  "Tracking to Commander," sounded the officer's voice through the speakers. "We have a warp wavefront, intensity 30, issuing from 15 red and 3.3° green. Heavy amplitude, sharp impact echo. There must be countless spaceships in transition or coming out of hyper but we can't make out a single one of them. Over and out!"

  Rhodan was perplexed. "What? With a continuous warp registration you have no trace of any ships?"

  "That's right, sir. The echo source is only 18.25 light-hours away but we can't make out a single ship!"

  Bell laughed humorlessly. "That does it!" he exclaimed. "Didn't I tell you we'd be in for some surprises this time? Our sensors are about to go up in smoke but there are no ships to be seen. So where's the warp front coming from? Who or what is causing them? You know if I weren't the most curious guy around—and if I didn't have to know exactly what's behind a thing like this—I'd say we ought to show this place some jet smoke!"

  "But you're curious as a cat." Rhodan gave him an ironic smirk. Then he turned to the others and spoke phlegmatically: "Well, gentlemen, before you spend an hour shouting me down and burn up my last reserves of nervous energy, let's fly onward and take a look at what's causing all the excitement. Of course I'd feel better if I had a super battleship of the Imperium class under my feet. We'll hold our speed at normal light velocity. Krefenbac, track the echo source exactly and dump the data into the autopilot system." He checked his watch. "In 10 minutes all ship's officers will be briefed. Mr. Alkher, that excludes you. I need you in Fire Control. You'll be instructed later."

  300 highly specialized crewmen stared at each other.

  Somebody said: "He wants to really find out, does he? Let's hope this Blue System is on the edge of the galactic core where the stellar density is supposed to be fabulous. That's where we are, aren't we?"

  "You'll have to ask your big brother," said another engine tech.

  "He isn't here."

  "Then shut your mouth. Actually I'd like to know, myself, who's setting off these hyper-fireworks. I hope we don't singe our itchy noses. Darned if we can ever resist scratching an itch!" He shook his head and went over to his station where he switched on the closed system video viewer for engine 2. He thought he could guess what the officers' briefing would be about. Nor was he wrong.

  Within another hour the first new orders began to be issued. The Fantasy lurched into action with a sudden thundering of machinery. The goal was the fifth planet of the Blue System. It had been clearly determined that the warp-shocks were coming from there or that they had been generated on that alien world.

  7/ THE BLUE SPHYNX

  Rhodan's first action after picking up speed was to order all non-essential personnel to rest. He knew that he could get more out of refreshed men that he could when they were at the shaky edge of exhaustion.

  Only 19 hours had passed since beginning their journey. Now they crossed the orbit of a planet in a strange star system. On the viewscreens passed the glowing spectacle of a cloudy Earth-like orb possessing great oceans, high mountain peaks and broad, green plains. Its gravity reading was 1.1 and was layered with a thick oxygen atmosphere. In this sector of space, everything seemed to glow with a strange bluish hue.

  Rhodan assigned the name "Sphynx" to this mysterious 5th planet. Sphynx possessed two moons. One of them was almost the size of Mercury whereas the second was an insignificant and apparently uninhabited satellite that wasn't much more than meteoric in size.

  These facts would have been of negligible interest if there had only been one spaceship in evidence at this close range to the fifth planet The men on board the heavy cruiser were faced with a riddle. Although the warp shocks had subsided somewhat they were still being registered in sufficient quantity to make one assume there was a lively movement of space traffic here. But in spite of this not one alien ship was sighted. Not even a short-range courier craft. It was as though the unquestionably extant inhabitants of the fifth planet had never heard of manned spaceflight. Yet this gave the continuous sensor echoes, which indicated a high state of technology, an even greater mystery.

  For 10 minutes the precision measurements of the Fantasy's tracking station had finally cast some light on the subject. The source of the continuous space-warps
was not on the fifth planet but rather on the Mercury-sized moon which also possessed an atmosphere suitable for humans.

  On the basis of this information, Rhodan decided to compute a course to the larger satellite.

  • • •

  The Fantasy was gliding into its final approach ellipse. Its velocity was down to 7.6 km per second. The Fire Control Central under Alkher's command had long since been under top alert. The heavy cruiser was ready for battle although there was still nothing to defend oneself against.

  A few brief sensor echoes were picked up. After analysis, the conclusion was reached that the moon's inhabitants possessed translight hypercom facilities. Why they did not have spaceships became problem number one.

  Sphynx was very prominent on the viewscreens. But the bare, desert-like surface of the principal moon was even more prominent. The satellite circled its planet on a 53-hour orbit. Rhodan had named it Rameses.

  At present the warp-echoes were not coming in as often as before. Yet once in awhile a powerful burst would be registered.

  Rhodan waited another hour, during which time he had the research ship approach the larger moon more closely. There was no sign of tracking beams from an alien ground station nor was there any answer to periodic friendly radio messages sent from the visiting humans. No ships took off to meet the strangers nor were they met with any challenging ground fire. In a way it was the weirdest reception that Perry Rhodan had ever encountered among alien intelligences.

  Meanwhile the astronomical and galactonautical departments of the research ship furnished information concerning the size of the Blue System. The hot blue sun possessed 18 planets among which only number five appeared to be inhabited.

  After the Fantasy circled the larger moon of Sphynx for almost two hours, Rhodan lost his patience. The men who knew him best could detect by his controlled movements and inscrutable face that he had made a decision.