Power Key

by Perry Rhodan

  “Short waves, sir, and only barely perceptible. It’s something that remains constant. They aren’t radio signals, although the frequency is the same as a hypersender’s.”

  He looked for help in the direction of Son Okura, our ‘frequency seer’, but Okura could only shrug. Rhodan’s bearing evidenced a suddenly developing nervousness.

  Bell came nearer, holding his beamer loosely in his hand. “What’s wrong? What are we waiting for? The hall is very long and there must be others beyond it. In my opinion there isn’t any danger for us here. Should we look around?”

  That was the question of a practical-thinking man. When he saw Rhodan’s face, his eyes narrowed. “Having trouble?”

  “Tanaka reports an unknown energy source.”

  “So? The foremost control stations of the Brain are right above us. Who knows what kind of energy is being used up there?”

  “It can’t be that simple,” I interrupted. “Our undertaking, which seemed so difficult to us, is emerging as nothing more dangerous than a walk in the park. Don’t underestimate my forefathers! The men who built the Robot Brain must have also done something to insure its security. Something here is illogical through and through.”

  “Didn’t we have to penetrate a defense screen behind a thick rock wall?” Bell inquired with some emphasis.

  “Yes, we did, but those don’t seem to me like adequate defensive precautions. The screen is relatively weak. I could neutralize it with a medium-power ray-cannon.”

  “Assuming you had one down here,” Rhodan considered aloud. I recall that we weren’t even allowed to take our relatively harmless service weapons along.

  Officially, anyway.”

  “That wasn’t always the case, although the Brain existed then, or at least a part of it. Sgt. Huster, wait a moment. Let’s look around first. Come with me!”

  I waved to the mutants and pulled my gun out again. I suspected that Rhodan was on the point of asking who was giving orders here. Huster looked over to Rhodan. When he silently nodded, the sergeant, his face expressionless, laid the ultra-bomb to the side. Still, he could not resist announcing, “Ready for timed detonation, sir. I have only to screw on the timer.”

  Seconds later, we threw ourselves into a hectic activity that was a stark contrast to our previous behavior. Something had been discovered that we could not explain.

  We quickly made our way between the rows of enormous reactors. Far above us the discharge arcs flashed at regular intervals into the spherical accumulators from where in turn the stored energy would flow into the power network in case of an overload demand.

  The machinery was controlled completely automatically. A few non-operating reactors showed that the energy needs of the user were not very high at the moment.

  We ran through the corridors. The vast hall had a slightly elliptical form and was at least 2000 meters long: with that even the massive support columns could be explained. All in all, this power plant had a capacity that would have easily been enough to supply an industrial planet the size of Earth with electrical current. Rows upon rows of reactors. Farther beyond, I saw monstrous machines that dwarfed even those in the engine rooms of the new super battleships. They delivered an estimated 12 million-kilohertz. The connected converters were hunchbacked giants and the reophores blazed in harsh violet flame.

  About 5% of the total power production was necessary for the creation of the screening isolation-tubular fields. This percentage of the total yield had been determined empirically and at the same time was also a compromise of the high-energy engineers.

  Even in my time we had tolerated higher losses of energy in order to be able to avoid using the antiquated cable conductors.

  The farther we went, the more the rumbling grew. We were nearing a transformer station whose closely spaced transformers were isolated from one another by narrow energy fields. Gasping from the long run, we came to a stop. Only Sgt. Huster and the two other weapons specialists had remained behind. Beyond the sector containing the monstrous transformers, the great hall narrowed to a tunnel no higher than a house and which evidently led to the next rock vault. The passageway was sealed off with neither steel doors nor an energy screen.

  We had to shout if we wanted to make ourselves understood to each other. Now almost all the converters were transferring their surplus energy into the gigantic condensers; a sign indicated that more and more reactors were being shut down. Was this only a coincidence?

  Desperately I began to think. Bell had now become nervous too. Had he met the violent resistance of a robot cadre while carrying out our self-imposed mission, he probably would not have thought twice about it. But not an organic living being was in sight nor could any robots be seen either. Yet I could not shake myself of the feeling that we had long since been discovered. Why was the gigantic power plant shutting down more and more?

  “I have a question!” I shouted to Rhodan, pointing to a reactor that was shutting down. “If this is the Brain’s main power station and if it can’t function without it, how can it afford to shut down one atomic pile after the other and transfer the leftover energy into the condensers?”

  Rhodan’s face paled. He looked around frantically. He had probably been asking himself the same question. The reactors that were stopping simply did not bear out the theory that the Robot Regent could not survive without his power plant. Why, then, should we destroy it?

  Bell whirled about and sprang for cover but the three figures rushing up were only Sgt. Huster and the two specialists.

  Breathing heavily, they came to a stop by us and Huster cried out: “Sir, the defense screen along the rock wall is taking on an intensive blue color. I’m afraid someone is watching us on a surveillance vidscreen.”

  Without a word, Bell ran over to the entrance of the tunnel, not very far away. We followed him, since it did not matter to our teleporters from what point in the power plant hall they took us into safety. Our plans called for our being returned to a selected location, which meanwhile was being readied by a squad led by Lt. Stepan Potkin for an inconspicuous arrival of our party.

  So we ran the few hundred meters to the tunnel, following directly after Bell, until we could see inside. It was higher and wider than we had thought. Also, its walls were jacketed in an enormously resistant metal-plastic and in its exact middle flickered a grid-like energy apparition, whose color and structure were something I was unfamiliar with.

  The defense screen looked as though it consisted of a system of silvery shimmering, 12-cornered honeycombs which could be seen only when the light was right.

  The entrance to the passageway was vaulted, about 30 meters high and just as wide. We could not see what lay behind the strange defense screen because the tunnel made a turn.

  “This is it!” said the tracker, Tanaka Seiko. His face was distorted and glistened with streams of perspiration. “Sir, the mysterious vibrations I sensed earlier are coming from there. It’s something monstrous. I feel pain boring into my skull. Sir, I can’t hold out much longer.”

  At that moment, my never-failing logic sector made itself heard: “Superimposed energy screen of a newly-developed type unknown to you. Beyond it begins the Robot’s sector.”

  “Bell, stay here!” I shouted to the man walking off. “Bell, no one can get through. We’ve deceived ourselves! The power plant behind us is a diversion! My forefathers did think to provide the Regent with effective security. We’ve got to get back or well be in the trap. Listen—the last reactors are running down. When they’ve all stopped, the power plant will be dead and then things will be getting serious. Bell, come back!”

  Rhodan stood with balled fists, trembling in subconscious anger in the tunnel entrance. He had understood completely that I was right. The light defense screen behind the forward rock wall was a diversionary manoeuvre. The power plant as such was probably unimportant to the Brain. No one could know where the energy generated there was normally used but most likely it was directed to some gigantic factory making
spaceships or other machinery.

  The last rumbling died. It became eerily silent in the formerly noise-filled cavern. Rhodan’s voice sounded painfully loud. “Sergeant, set the bomb timer at five minutes and activate the detonator. Tako, you’ll take the bomb through the honeycomb curtain. Put the bomb down someplace in one of the rooms lying behind the barrier and come back at once. Now let’s get going!”

  I stared at the tall man, shocked. Didn’t he know what he was doing? Huster did not lose any of his astounding cool for even a second. He adjusted the timer-detonator with a turn of his special key. “The five minutes are running,” he said quietly.

  The teleporter Tako Kakuta did not say a word. He knew that we had no time to lose. Something had to happen now. The surveillance control had probably delayed its attack only for as long as it took to shut down the last reactor and drain the injection conduits empty of the last bit of catalytic reaction mass. Otherwise a horrible atomic fireworks display could have developed out of a battle in the power plant, for the easily ignitable reaction material began the fusion process at just 4,000° Celsius.

  It had been arranged cleverly. Fiendishly cleverly. Now I understood why the formerly so weak energy screen along the forward rock wall had suddenly begun to glow. Someone who could not know that the intensity of an energy barrier meant nothing to our teleporters, wanted to block our way back. That was our only chance but Rhodan was in the process of exploiting it to its dangerous utmost.

  Tako pressed the bomb, a hollow body about 50 centimeters long, close to him. No one would have guessed the magnitude of the bomb’s explosive potential by merely looking at it from outside.

  The mutant’s eyes were trained unseeing at the clearly visible honeycomb screen. Mysterious, silvery shining, and here and there flashing a bluish glint, it blocked our way. I labored desperately, trying to dig out of my otherwise infallible memory an answer to the mystery of the energy screen. A Terran would have no doubt got a headache.

  It was no use. I had never seen such a form of energy. The screen was probably developed by the last of my people’s still-spiritually-alive top scientists at a time

  when I had been given up as missing and dead for thousands of years. I could not even guess what had been developed or created then.

  Tako’s body disappeared as suddenly and as completely as though he had never been standing only two meters away from me.

  Rhodan looked at his watch. “OK!” he said with a smile that struck me as malicious but he did not explain any further.

  We were startled by inhuman screams of pain. Disturbed, we looked around but there was no one to be seen who had shattered the stillness with his cries of unspeakable torture. Yet it could not have been anything other than a living being.

  The cries escalated into a shrill, outstretched shriek until, in the place where the teleporter had dematerialized, a spiral of light shining like a will-o'-the-wisp appeared.

  It seemed to be rotating at an incredible speed—and from it came the terrible sounds.

  “Tako!” Rhodan exclaimed. He wanted to run to the pale concentration of energy but I grabbed him roughly by the shoulders and pulled him back. He stumbled and fell at my feet.

  Entranced, we watched the incomprehensible thing taking place before our eyes until Tako’s body gradually took shape in the bright vortex, The cries of pain grew weaker as his outlines became more solid.

  Then the teleporter lay before us. His slender face was twisted and the knowledge of mysterious things was written in his eyes.

  When we stood him up he cried out again but now he seemed to be making an effort to not let his distress show all too plainly. Moaning, his entire body trembling, he leaned back against the rock wall. The dangerous bomb was still there; nothing about it seemed to have been changed at all.

  Tako suddenly quieted. Only his agitated eyes seemed to be still alive.

  “What happened in there, Tako?” Rhodan asked, pale.

  Sgt. Huster leaped forward recklessly. He fell heavily on the ground but in his hands he had the bomb. With two moves of his hand he had deactivated the running timer-detonator. His forehead was covered with sweat. He had evidently acted in the last second. But he said nothing.

  The teleporter gasped for breath, then spoke. “It was terrible. Something grabbed me, played with me, started me spinning and threw me back. I feel… I feel… Sir, I’m not doing that again,” Groaning, he slid to the ground, trying to dig his fingers into the armorplastic covering.

  Rhodan’s face was grey. He stared at me, eyes wide. He wanted an explanation. And I had one!

  “A stable structural field with probably a hyper-gravitational base. A form of energy which repels the superimposed pulse streams of a dematerialized body in the same manner as an ionized gas cloud is repelled by a normal magnetic field. Perry, we’ll never get through that!

  Now I know how my ancestors safeguarded the Brain. This screen is probably my race’s last scientific development. It’s beyond my experience and knowledge entirely. The Regent can’t be attacked.”

  Tako slowly calmed. Exhausted, he rested in Huster’s arms. Ras Tschubai stood silently in front of his comrade. When he looked at the honeycomb screen, so near and looking so harmless, a glint of fear showed in his eyes.

  Three seconds later, there was a new rumbling in the vast reactor hall. The stamping tread of purposefully marching robots interrupted the silence that had gathered.

  “They’re coming,” Bell commended in all calmness. “They’re probably swarming out of all possible holes and hidden niches. I give us five minutes more!”

  Rhodan awakened from his paralysis. While Bell was pronouncing useless words, the grey-eyed Terran had already acted. I recalled that in earlier times the psychologists had called Rhodan a man capable of instantaneous adjustments.

  “Marshall has been notified. The reception squad is waiting. Ras, take Huster and his two men out first. We’ll hold out here. Hurry—get going, and for God’s sake move faster than you’ve ever moved before!”

  Huster stood up and all but leaped on the mutant’s back. In the same moment Ras and his human cargo disappeared.

  “Bell, Atlan, Okura, Seiko, we’re going behind the transformers for cover. You stay with Tako. Tako, can you teleport yet?”

  The teleporter answered in a desperate voice in the negative. We asked no more questions. As we ran off, Ras Tschubai appeared once more. He was working at an unheard-of rate of speed.

  “I’m taking two men at once,” he called after us. I can do it.”

  Rhodan only waved.

  As I dived for cover behind the huge armorplastic base of a transformer, the first combat robots appeared up ahead.

  Thanks to the cone-like narrowing of the giant hall, we had the better position. Right behind us began the relatively narrow tunnel and before us lay only two wide corridors which merged into one just in front of the last row of transformers.

  I waited until I could clearly see the first combat robots. My impulse blaster had been adjusted in intensity to setting #3. I saw Rhodan raise his arm. Almost simultaneously, we pressed our firing buttons.

  I had narrowed my eyes to no more than slits. Even so, I was blinded painfully by the harsh atomic glare. A raging, finger-thick energy beam shot forward, striking the broad breastplate of an on-charging robot.

  A tenth of a second later, all hell had broken loose. We opened up our fire from five effective thermo weapons and the result was the rapidly climbing temperature. Communication was no longer possible amid the crackling and roaring of firing weapons and the whip-crack noise of air rushing to replace that disintegrated in the path of the thermo-beams. We shot at every recognizable target until just 100 meters away molten metal had flowed together into a river. The liquid metal was even turning into gas to some extent.

  Bright spots of light flashed out again and again, each a senselessly charging robot exploding. What happened was what had to happen.

  The heat grew unbearable after a f
ew salvos. A house-sized transformer leaned slowly and gravely to one side and finally fell into the boiling steel amid spray and hissing. Other transformers exploded amid roaring thunderclaps. When Rhodan at length began firing at the energy storage units hanging above the transformers, the chaos was complete.

  I screamed at him to stop the madness but he didn’t hear me. Storage unit after storage unit detonated and the discharges were so terrible that I felt a prickling all over my body.

  My last two shots were directed at the intersection of the corridors. The wide-ranging energy beams struck the metal-plastic and transformed it into a soft, flowing, lava-like goo that gave off poisonous steam.

  A last shockwave hurtled toward us. I was whirled out of my cover and it was then that I noticed the glowing air attacking my all but unprotected body.

  Desperately I forced my way back behind the cover of the transformer base.

  Then it was suddenly quiet. Nothing more was to be seen of attacking robots and the rear portion of the transformer station resembled a pile of rubble. I realized that the guiding Positronicon required a certain amount of time to assimilate the implications of such a violent resistance but no more than a few minutes would go by before the combat robots received new instructions.

  I looked over at Rhodan through the corrosive smoke. Just then he prodded Son Okura and pointed behind him. I followed his indication.

  Ras Tschubai had reappeared. Huster’s weapon experts had disappeared and from Tschubai’s back hung the bent figure of our misfortune-struck teleporter, Tako Kakuta.

  When Okura came up to Ras, he put his arms around him and suddenly the three bodies vanished in a glow of light. Now there were only four of us. Ras would have to spring twice more to bring all of us to safety.

  Rhodan waved to me. I refused with a vigorous hand movement, pointing to Bell and the tracker Tanaka Seiko. I wanted them to leave the danger zone the next trip.

  Some moments went by before Ras appeared again. He had probably never worked so fast in his life. I saw that Bell’s lips were moving. He was certainly not agreeable to our letting him get to safety first.