by Perry Rhodan
"Thank you. We knew that already," Deringhouse answered. "Then my mission is completed," Ellert declared through Rous' mouth.
"We all owe you our gratitude," Deringhouse said. "By now we are pretty deeply indebted to you. Tell us what we can do for you when the occasion arises."
Rous' face remained motionless but Ellert's voice sounded as if he were smiling when he said: "I'll gladly do that. And if I am ever really in trouble, I will certainly call on you!"
At that moment a tremor went through Marcel Rous. He took a clumsy step forward, tripped, caught himself, looked around in bewilderment and drew his hand across his forehead. "Where... how?" It was Rous' own voice again: Ernst Ellert had left. For one amazed moment Deringhouse wondered what Ellert had done with his Druuf body while he had been there on Hades. Rous began to remember. "Ellert was here, wasn't he?" he asked uncertainly. Deringhouse nodded. "He was inside of you," he declared emphatically. Rous did not seem astonished. "I had a feeling like that..." he answered absentmindedly, almost dreamily.
And that seemed to end the discussion for him. Deringhouse and Ras Tschubai also seemed to consider Ellert's report as such fundamentally more important than the manner of his presence. Marcel Rous needed no further information. After reflecting briefly he recalled everything that Ernst Ellert had said. The final order was issued for the takeoff of the Gazelle.
5/ PASSAGEWAYS OF PERIL
This second attempt seemed to have soured the Druufs' taste for sarcasm. One of the three declared with the help of his communicator: "You will be given no further opportunities. This time we are going to tie you up!"
None of the three Terranians answered. By necessity they had reckoned with the failure of their enterprise. All that interested them at the moment was: what had become of Fellmer Lloyd?
"Come with us!" the Druuf ordered. "And I promise you one thing: at the least suspicious movement you will be shot!"
There was no one present who doubted that. They entered the storeroom. The inner airlock closed behind them. With drawn weapons the Druufs drove the prisoners into one corner of the room. The one with the communicator explained: "You will be given an injection, like last time. We are waiting for the medication."
Perry Rhodan did not think it prudent to protest. He leaned against the wall and glanced at the shelves in apparent boredom. He still had a faint hope that something would come to mind by which he could outwit the Druufs. He tried to contact Fellmer Lloyd telepathically but that was a miserable flop. Either Lloyd was too far away or he had switched off. This could just as well mean that the Druufs had already captured him and given him an injection.
A few minutes passed. Then there was the sound of the outer airlock opening. Probably the Druuf with the infusion, Perry Rhodan thought, and did not even turn in that direction to look.
The outer antechamber rumbled shut and moments later the inner door opened. Rhodan did not turn his head. His glance slid along the racks and remained fixed on one of the Druufs who stood facing him, his weapon ready to fire, his eyes trained on Rhodan. Perry Rhodan tried to let feelings of mockery and contempt show in his face but he was not sure that the Druuf was able to comprehend human grimaces.
His scornful look seemed to have baffling success after all. The Druuf took a small step forward, then fell over. The racket was horrible as his 800 pounds crashed to the floor.
That was not the only racket. Twice more the crash sounded as the other two Druufs collapsed. Perry Rhodan was utterly astonished. It was nonsense to think he had knocked over the Druuf with the force of his glance.
He looked up and spied an absurd creature under the chamber door. It seemed to be clad in a Druuf spacesuit but the suit was twice its size. It had tried to remedy this by gathering up the middle part of the suit with either rope or wire, exactly which, could not be discerned. The legs and arms were gathered in the same manner. Two heads such as the one belonging to the absurd creature would have fit into the pressure helmet. The top of its head did not even reach halfway into the helmet.
But one thing in the picture was not absurd: the weapon the gnome was holding in his right hand and the thoroughness and accuracy with which he used it to overpower the three Druufs.
Full of admiration, Perry Rhodan regarded the grinning face of the gnome through the view panel of his helmet and said: "You must tell me how you did it, Lloyd!"
• • •
Fellmer Lloyd opened the helmet and flipped it back. He did so adroitly, as if he had worn a Druuf spacesuit all his life. Before he began to speak he surveyed the unconscious Druufs with a long and thoughtful glance, then heaved a deep sigh. "That was sort of touch and go," he admitted with an embarrassed smile. "I didn't even know if the pistol would function."
"It did function alright," Reginald Bell responded, as he gradually recovered from his surprise. "It seems to be a shock weapon."
Perry Rhodan climbed over the body of one of the Druufs and scrutinized Fellmer Lloyd's outfit up close. "That is a solution, of course," he murmured. "How do you manage in the suit?"
"Not as comfortably as in my own," Lloyd admitted, "but incomparably better than without a suit."
Rhodan nodded. "How does it look outside? Is the passage still free?"
"It was when I came in here," Lloyd answered. "But that could change any second. It looks like the Druufs discovered our breakout."
"You are a clever child," Bell muttered in the background. He had bent over the unconscious Druuf and begun to undo his suit.
"Have you found anything of significance to us?" Perry Rhodan continued to inquire.
Fellmer Lloyd shook his head. "Nothing but the pistol. No trace of a transmitter, if that's what you mean, sir."
"But there must be a transmitter!" Rhodan maintained. "Nobody can convince me that the Druufs have no way of contacting Druufon."
Atlan stepped over to him. "The cavern has at least 1,000 rooms," he pointed out. "We know just about 30 of those right now. The transmitter could be in any one of the 970 others."
Reginald Bell had meanwhile opened the suit. He made his first attempt to get it off the enormous body of the Druuf but the massive bulk of the unconscious figure foiled all efforts.
Fellmer Lloyd watched him. "You have to turn him, sir," he suggested. "After you have rolled him once around the longitudinal axis he will have unwrapped himself out of the suit."
Reginald Bell realized that Lloyd was right. The fastening of the suit was designed to allow the wearer to shed it by turning once on his own axis with the fastening open. The suit naturally had to be held still in the process.
"I see that," Bell grumbled peevishly, "but how can I turn the monster?"
"I used a length of pipe," Lloyd eagerly explained. "As a lever, get it?"
Bell stood up and found a piece of pipe. He shoved the end halfway under the Druuf's body and applied pressure at the other end. Gradually the body raised, toppled to one side and rolled over. The spacesuit remained behind, empty, on the floor.
Perry Rhodan had meanwhile assessed their new situation.
"Each of us has a suit," he stated, "and each a weapon. We have achieved what we wanted on that score. The only thing that was not part of our plan is that the Druufs are aware of our escape. We can't change that now. We just have to accept it. And we shall continue to look for the transmitter. We must get word to the base on Hades. There is no other means of getting away from here. So we will drape ourselves in the suits like Lloyd did," he continued, "and try our luck again. We'll have to go back the way we came but since we are no longer dependent on the airlocks we can make much better progress. We do have one great problem, of course: the weapons those three Druufs were carrying looked just like the one Lloyd got, which makes them shock weapons. That means that we are not equipped to defend ourselves against robots. The Druufs will soon figure that out and send robots. That is when things will get precarious."
Reginald Bell had meanwhile slipped into the suit. He looked as if he had wrapped hims
elf in 50 square meters of plastic sheeting. Atlan helped him out of his predicament by tugging at the suit until Bell's head appeared in the helmet, as it should. The excess width of the suit slipped down around his feet, so that when Bell tried to walk he got entangled and stumbled.
"You look like his majesty the emperor in person," Atlan said appreciatively. "No one could deny you due respect."
Reginald Bell threw him a dirty look. "Utility is one thing," he answered, "and beauty another. Just wait. I want to see whom you resemble after you have worked yourself into the thing!"
Perry Rhodan laughed. "Let's not lose time on witty remarks," he admonished.
Following Fellmer Lloyd's method he freed one of the unconscious Druufs from his suit and slipped it on. There was plenty of wire around to gather together the excess folds of material. It only took a few minutes after seeing how someone else had done it.
They took the Druuf weapons and left the storeroom. The passage outside was quiet and deserted, only the monotonous murmuring of the conveyer strips could be heard.
They stepped on the slow strip and changed to the faster after they had become accustomed to the speed. Fellmer Lloyd led the way. The other three followed several meters behind him. The purpose of this was to allow Lloyd to concentrate on what lay ahead with his telepathic 'feelers' without being too disturbed by the thoughts of the people behind him.
They rode about 200 meters, passing the antechamber doors to their prison cells. The silence in the passageway made them suspicious and grated on their nerves. There was a sense of danger in the air, in the stinking, poisonous methane and ammonia air that filled the passage.
With no advance warning Fellmer Lloyd suddenly jumped over to the slow strip and, after a few meters, from there to the passageway floor. This happened so suddenly that the other three rode a bit past him on the strip before jumping off as he had done. They had the sending and receiving devices in the helmets switched on and heard Lloyd say: "There's something up there in front of us!"
None of them had any idea how long the passage still might be. The light that filled it came from all sides, throwing no shadows and blurring all contours beyond a certain point, so that they were unable to discern anything.
They waited and relied on Lloyd. "They are coming nearer!" he whispered.
"How about the rooms around us?" Rhodan asked. "Are they all empty?"
Lloyd nodded. "I didn't feel anything as we passed them," he answered.
There was one option left. As soon as they had determined that the Druufs had robots with them, they would just have to duck into one of the neighboring rooms and hide until the Druufs passed. There was nothing simpler than that.
Lloyd had been standing next to the wall, his back leaned comfortably against it. Now he suddenly stepped forward and turned his head to peer down the passageway. He could see nothing, of course. It was more of a reflex action. "It feels like they have suddenly become very agitated," he stated. "They seem to have discovered something new."
He meant the Druufs. Rhodan knew that Fellmer Lloyd could not perceive Druuf thought. It was not their mentality that was so alien to him but the structure of their brains. His telepathic gifts failed in that respect. Lloyd could still perceive thought patterns, however, which was enough to determine whether someone was in a normal state of mind or in a state of agitation.
Perry Rhodan reflected on what the Druufs might have discovered. They were up front in the passageway. Therefore, whatever had sparked their excitement could not have anything to do with them, the prisoners. They had never been up front.
However, the Druufs were wearing spacesuits. They themselves had switched off the receivers in their helmets. Had one of the unconscious Druufs regained consciousness and sent a signal? The three in the rearmost rooms of the passage no longer had their helmets. They could not have attracted attention. But Lloyd had knocked out two Druufs, as he had reported, and had left one of the suits behind. Had that Druuf alerted the others?
He was still deliberating when all at once a heavy blow struck his shoulder. He heard someone scream in pain. The blow had knocked him off balance. He stumbled and fell. The tug of the twofold gravity made him hit the ground hard. The painful twinge that shot through his ankle somewhat eased the numbness in his body caused by the blow.
Suddenly he knew what had happened. His thoughts had been on the wrong track all along. Nobody had sounded an alarm. Nobody had regained consciousness and warned the Druufs. The Druufs themselves had discovered them!
They had robots with them and the robots were not dependent on the lighting in the passage in order to see who was there. They had different organs of sight. For them the visible spectrum was broader by a few powers of 10 than for the human eye. They could see in the dark and the ultra-violet portion of lamplight served for them as an entire battery of spotlights. The robots had seen the fugitives! And the blow that Perry Rhodan received was nothing more than the direct hit of a shock weapon which had been fired prematurely and from too great a distance.
"Go back!" Rhodan cried. "They've seen us!"
He turned and discovered that Reginald Bell was lying on the ground behind him, writhing in pain. The greatest part of the shock charge had struck him. The distance from the gunman was too great to have totally thrown Bell's nervous system off balance but it was sufficient to enable the pain to develop in entirety.
With the help of Atlan the Arkonide, Perry Rhodan got his groaning, gnashing friend back on his feet. Fellmer Lloyd stood poised, ready to spring on the conveyer strip and seek shelter. There was no point in fighting against an invisible opponent. Safety was to be sought where enemy weapons could not strike, farther back in the passage.
They shoved Reginald Bell onto the belt. He did not have the strength to stay on his feet. He fell but remained on the strip and it carried him along. Fellmer Lloyd, Atlan and Perry Rhodan were right behind him. They hurtled themselves to the ground so as to offer the robots no target. They were not hit again. The enemy had stopped shooting—or he had shot over their heads.
The developments were anything but encouraging, thought Perry Rhodan. Now that the robots had spotted them it was senseless to hide in some room. Even the smallest closet would be searched by the Druufs as they went through the passage. All that remained was to continue down the passage but somewhere at the back, not even 100 meters away, it ended in front of a stone wall that could not be moved. There would be no other alternative than to position themselves there and wait until the Druufs were close enough to put them out of action with the shock weapons.
At last they were not out to kill the prisoners. That, however, was the only consolation.
As Perry Rhodan's mind worked feverishly the image of the conveyer strip, the way it disappeared under the crude stone wall, appeared before his inner eye. He recalled how they had explained this: the Druufs had not wanted to place the reversing mechanism in the passage itself and block traffic. Suddenly he realized how perfunctory this explanation was. In fact, since the strip went beyond the wall, anyone who wanted to ride from the back to the front of the passage was compelled to take a few highly troublesome steps. He could not walk around the strip, as was the case in the passages of the Terranian spaceships, and get on the other side to ride back in the other direction. Instead he had to walk back the passage, get on the opposite strip and switch over from it to the slow middle strip and then over again to the strip running forward. In other words, the contrary was true from what they had assumed: the fact that the reversing mechanism was behind the wall impeded traffic rather than facilitating it.
There must be a reason for it—and the reason was plain enough: the wall was a cleverly disguised door. Behind the door there was no reversing mechanism. Instead, the conveyer continued through a secret passage.
This meant renewed hope for the fugitives. If they could discover the mechanism that moved the wall they still had a chance.
The question was—could they manage this in time?
/> • • •
In this room there seemed to be more ships than there were stars to be seen in the sky. The position trackers of the Gazelle were continually occupied with tracing foreign vessels and conveying the results to the positioner.
Conrad Deringhouse, who was commanding the Gazelle, had accelerated at top capacity from the start and brought the scoutship to a velocity of 180,000 km/sec within minutes. He had thereby exceeded the speed of light valid in the Druuf Universe and hence no longer existed for the Druufs. On the other hand, a velocity of 180,000 km/sec still did not present serious manoeuvring difficulties, even in the relatively high material density of a planetary system. The Gazelle was safe until it reached the vicinity of the methane planet, Roland, where retardation would be necessary.
Two transmitters had been brought on board during the last hour before takeoff. Deringhouse had also ordered two additional transmitters to be held in readiness on Hades for the duration of the Gazelle's absence. They had to be prepared for discovery of their Terranian ship by the Druufs in the course of their venture. Then the situation would determine whether a quick flight would be possible or whether the crew would have to escape from the impending attack with the help of the transmitters.
No further word had been received from Ernst Ellert. That seemed to indicate that nothing substantial had changed in the situation on Roland.
After a flight of two and a half hours the Gazelle had neared within 35 million kilometers of its destination. Conrad Deringhouse had started the braking manoeuvre and was conducting it in a way most sensible for his situation: he braked with the maximum power the propulsion section could muster. Within a few minutes the distance to Roland reduced to a few 100,000 kilometers and the speed sank to that required for stationary orbiting.