by Perry Rhodan
Marshall drove the wagon to the gang plank leading from the lowest of the three decks to the pier and they were immediately noticed from up above. "We've been sent by Vethussar at this hour of the night!" Marshall called.
These were the exact words of the message arranged by Vethussar's messenger with the captain of the Storrata. "Come on up!" somebody called back. They hauled the still unconscious Springer down from the wagon, carried him across the gangplank and boarded the ship.
A man in a uniform with splendiferous colors greeted them. Marshall probed his thoughts. Astonishment, curiosity and a little anger that he was ordered to put to sea at this late hour. "I'm Fafer," said the man. "Be welcome!"
Marshall expressed his thanks. "I'm very sorry we're causing you so much trouble. We had occasion to render your master a very significant service and he's anxious to show his gratitude. I'm convinced you'll be rewarded by Vethussar if you'll help us to leave the island quietly." Fafer's mood perked up considerably, as Marshall could gather.
"I'll do my best," the captain assured them. "Come with me! I'll show you to your cabins."
Close to the stern of the ship, narrow steps led to the middle deck. Fafer walked toward the stern and opened at the end of the gangway a row of doors leading to lavishly furnished rooms which astounded Marshall and his friends.
"The window over there," Fafer explained, "has the widest view aboard ship. Because the stern is slanted from the upper deck to the water, one can look up as well as down."
This was a convenient advantage and the other rooms had similar wide windows. Fafer politely inquired if his guests were satisfied with their accommodations and took leave after he had been reassured that they were as luxurious as any place they had visited.
"I'll have to perform an intricate manoeuvre," he excused himself. "The tides will change in about an hour. If the ebb doesn't carry us out far enough the tide will throw us back."
Fifteen minutes later three cannon shots shattered the quiet night and soon they watched the view from the window beginning to move. The lights of the harbor glided back and the dark outlines of other ships drifted by.
The Storrata left port.
• • •
The following morning a few people casually asked Vethussar about his guests. Marshall had predicted that something like this would happen and had told Vethussar not to make a secret of their whereabouts. Consequently Vethussar informed the inquirers that his four friends had sailed away on the Storrata. Because their mission had been so urgent Fafer had agreed to set sail during the night No, not to the Western Isles, to the Southern Continent.
Marshall knew that the first contact had been made and that the flow of information had begun.
• • •
Marshall's second medium was the prisoner Szoltan himself. For good reasons Marshall had refrained from searching his captive or taking anything away from him. Marshall was certain that Szoltan carried some device enabling him to give signals for tracing him.
This was precisely what Marshall wanted. After the Springers had learned of their presence in Saluntad there was no point in delaying their return to the Northern Continent. Their main reason to let things calm down after their first bout with the patriarchs and to wait for them to relax their vigilance was no longer valid.
However, in order to cover the distance of 3000 miles in a shorter time than it was possible on a sailing ship, he needed the Springers themselves. They had to be informed where Szoltan and his captors could be found.
Everything had worked out just as Marshall could have wished. The ship had cleared the harbor before the tides changed and with a fair wind in its sails in the morning the Storrata set course to the south.
4/ PUCKY'S TRIUMPH
Goszul's Planet was a name which had been in use for a short time—short compared to the old history of the people now called Goszuls.
The Goszuls called themselves Gorrs and their world Gorr. They were Arkonide settlers who had come many thousand years ago to this sector of the Galaxy from their homeland Arkon in huge spaceships. Thus the Gorrs belonged to the same race as Thora and Khrest to whom Perry Rhodan owed the phenomenal rise in technology by the New Power on Terra.
Certain climatic and physiological influences on the planet Gorr had caused first a slowdown and then stagnation of the civilization and technical developments of the settlers. About 1500 years after they had established themselves on their new world the technological trend had reversed itself completely and was sliding back to a stage where objects which had been used for centuries were no longer manufactured because they had forgotten how to produce them.
Of course this development came about at a very slow pace and the people of Gorr would have remained at a relatively high level of technology if the Springer Goszul had not discovered their world and decided to spur the backward trend of their development by artificial means.
The Springers had methods available to accomplish this. They were a race of traders who had no homeland of their own. They enjoyed a trade monopoly and were widely if unofficially regarded to be the most advanced group in the Galaxy because they traveled around more than all others The Springers as a race were related to the Arkonides and politically they formed a state within the Arkonide Empire. They maintained only tenuous relations among themselves as long as conditions were peaceful but if a member was threatened by an outsider they closed ranks and rushed to his aid at once.
The Springers had become interested in Terra when the captain of the ship ORLA XI had observed in the Vega sector that somebody was engaged in substantial trade without regard to the monopoly of the Springers. Captain Orlgans had dispatched his agents to Terra and eventually captured an important prisoner—but only because Perry Rhodan had planned it that way. Rhodan followed the Springer ship and took it under attack. However, he became involved in a battle with a fleet of warships which suddenly came to the defense of their confreres. Realizing that it would be beyond his capability to withstand such superior forces for long with his three or four ships, Perry Rhodan journeyed to the artificial planet Wanderer, the abode of the hyper-brain, to obtain the newest and most formidable weapon, a teletransmitter. The hyper-brain—the quintessence of conscious souls of physically extinct race of yore granted two transmitters to Rhodan for installation in his mightiest battleship, the Stardust, and no more. Thus Rhodan remained as technically inferior as before and had to use his wits to prevent the patriarchs of the traders from making strategic plans for the invasion of Terra at the Great Conclave called to convene for this purpose on Goszul's Planet.
The Springers had created a formidable military and industrial base on the Northern Continent after the patriarch Goszul had enhanced the retarding effect of the planet's environment. Accelerating the backward development by a factor of 10,000, he shaped a land which was inhabited mainly by natives with low intelligence. They induced the Gorrs, now named Goszuls, to accept a belief in Gods—and their Gods were the Springers themselves. They appointed robots as high priests and thereby exercised strict control over their lives.
Some of the more intelligent Goszuls were selected for a short hypnotic training with the aim of creating a cheap and humble workforce. On the whole Goszul's Planet—or Gorr—was a living example of the fate which threatened Terra if the Springers ever succeeded in conquering it.
• • •
It was getting close to noon. Fafer had changed his course to a southwesterly direction. Marshall and his team-mates had gone to the upper deck on a thorough inspection of the Storrata. Szoltan had been locked up safely. He was allowed to move freely in a cabin but unable to open the door to the ship.
Marshall sat down on a coiled rope and studied one of the cannons on the deck. When he got up and took a few steps, he heard Tako Kakuta call him back: "Look out! Over there!"
Marshall crouched beside Tako on the boards and looked along his outstretched arm. He was glad to see three black points coming from the north close above the water's surfac
e. "So they're coming after all," he exclaimed happily.
The sailor in the crow's nest seemed to have made the same discovery simultaneously. "Ship ahoy!" he shouted.
Fafer shouted back: "What is it?"
The lookout replied in a frightened tone: "Three vessels are approaching us from the north. They're moving above the water."
Marshall could see that Fafer was also alarmed. The sailors who had been close enough to witness the exchange of words murmured to each other: "The Gods are coming in their flying chariots!"
Fafer was calm again. "Carry on!" his voice boomed across the deck. "We'll soon find out what they want."
Marshall gave his last minute instructions. "We'll stay here on the upper deck. I guess they'll send a man on board to negotiate with the captain. I don't believe they'll attack the ship since we've got a hostage on board."
The three craft approached rapidly. In spite of Fafer's orders the crew stopped all work. The men threw themselves down on the deck when the flying machines began to circle their ship. One finally hovered close enough to the middle deck to let a man step aboard.
"Kitai!" Marshall whispered. "Get down there!"
Kitai proceeded along the edge of the deck and cautiously walked down the narrow stairs to the middle deck. Marshall watched him take up a position, hiding behind a mast. The Springer might have at first intended to talk to the captain but suddenly he changed his mind. Marshall saw him raise the portable radio to his mouth and talk into the mike.
The result became immediately apparent. The craft from which the man had disembarked landed on the deck and the second man climbed out. Then the second of the three machines took the place of the first near the edge of the deck and a third man emerged. He joined his two mates and they stood together on the middle deck, staring past the sailors who had meekly prostrated themselves.
"Tako!" Marshall gave him a terse order and Tako disappeared at once.
Kitai Ishibashi waved his hand from behind the mast to Marshall as a sign that he had a firm hypnotic grip on the three Springers who had left their craft.
Nothing happened for awhile.
Then the machine into which Tako had teleported himself began to move. Slowly at first, as if the pilot at the controls was not familiar with the operation, the craft moved away from the ship and gained height, coming to a stop after a few minutes.
Marshall kept his eyes peeled for airships.
The craft hovering in midair suddenly loosed a disintegrator ray which hit the third vehicle, which was still circling the sailing ship. Half of the struck vehicle was dissolved in a swirling cloud of gas and the other half plummeted like a rock and hit the surface of the water with a loud splash. It sank without trace in three seconds.
Marshall and Yokida descended to the middle deck. The three Springers were still standing completely immobilized. They had failed to observe that one of their craft was shot down and paid no attention to the men approaching them, who had been joined by Kitai.
"Fafer!" Marshall shouted.
Fafer had followed the strange events with amazement and had come to the conclusion that his passengers were far mightier than the Gods standing motionlessly on the deck. He came running, eager to please.
"Listen, Fafer!" Marshall instructed him. "You continue your journey to the Southern Continent. Put these men on shore at the nearest island. You don't have to be afraid of them—they're no Gods. The moment they lose sight of your ship they'll forget everything that happened to them. I promise you that you'll never suffer the slightest punishment. Do the same with the man we're holding prisoner down there in the cabin. This goes also for the Springer who'll leave the craft now coming in for a landing."
Tako set the machine down on the deck. He slid a few feet along its surface, none too gently nudging to the side a few of the sailors crouching there.
He climbed out with a serious face. "I had to kill him," he said gravely. "He tried to interfere with me."
"You'll have only four prisoners in your custody," Marshall said to Fafer, trying to hide his feelings of regret over the death of the Springer.
Fafer continued on the course of the Storrata without change after the strangers had taken off from his vessel in the two flying vehicles and disappeared to the north.
• • •
Nothing except the thoughts of the crew indicated to Pucky that the little reconnaissance craft had landed. The antigrav-neutralizers absorbed all jars which without them would have been noticed in the ship's body while braking and touching the ground. The crew got ready to leave the ship and so did Pucky. First he investigated the surroundings of the vast spaceport built by the Springers on the Northern Continent of Goszul's Planet. By teleporting himself in a far-ranging search he found a suitable hiding place in some nearby mountains for the equipment he had brought. He returned to the spaceship to perform the tele-transport.
As he had done 10 days ago on the Stardust, he made piece after piece of his baggage disappear. When he came to the last object, a heavy automatic disintegrator, the mishap occurred.
The telekinetic transport of articles required a high measure of mental concentration which could only be accomplished by breaking direct contact with the environment. Thus Pucky had no chance of noticing the maintenance robot who arrived on the corridor to check the condition of the ship after the crew had left.
Only a little accident—the fact that Pucky had to sneeze because of the dust raised by the equipment he so hastily removed—prevented him from transferring the automatic disintegrator to the hiding place. At the same moment that Pucky was about to finish his job after he sneezed, he felt a vibration of the floor.
He tried to determine by telepathy what was going on outside his room. However the attempt brought no results and before Pucky could take other measures the hatch to his little chamber slid open and a sturdily built robot bigger than a man came into view.
It was Pucky's good luck that the robot belonged to the category of repair machines and therefore reacted rather slowly and was not equipped with weapons.
Pucky went down on his forepaws and with lightning speed ripped open the contact seal of the water-and air-tight case in which the disintegrator was packed. The weapon was almost too heavy for the little mouse-beaver to lift the certainty that his mission would otherwise come to a premature end gave him enormous additional strength.
With a determined effort he raised the barrel high enough to aim at the center of the plastic metal torso and violently pulled the trigger with his foot. The shot dislodged a part of the robot's body, vaporized it and let the remnant of the machine crash to the ground in pieces. Pucky dropped the heavy weapon back into its case, closed the contact seal and dispatched the disintegrator to the other packets.
Then he made a mistake.
The mistake: to assume that the absence of an ordinary maintenance robot was not likely to be noticed very quickly.
Depending on his assumption, Pucky left the spaceship on all fours. He was certain that he would merely be regarded as a harmless animal if somebody were to see him. He carried only a small impulse-beamer for a weapon which he carefully hid in his fur. His spacesuit had been forwarded with the other baggage.
The limitless expanse of the spaceport seemed to be almost deserted in the bright light of the sun 221-Tatlira as it was called in the Springers' catalogue of stars. There were many other ships but they were so far away from Pucky that only their upper halves were visible above the horizon. The ships of the patriarchs were without exception of gigantic proportions. Yet from the distance they looked tiny and harmless.
Pucky toyed with the idea of teleporting himself on board a vessel and creating some mischief which would cause trouble for the patriarchs when they wanted to start up their spaceships. But he remembered his orders in time as well as Rhodan's warning: "So far the Springers don't know that the Terranian Spacefleet is involved in this action unless Marshall or one of his men couldn't keep their mouths shut. If anything happens to remind
them of an incident on Snowman or in the Wanderer sector or anywhere else we've been, they'll quickly draw the right conclusions. So be careful!"
Regretfully, Pucky discarded his idea. He was startled when he noticed a movement on the shimmering western horizon; He stopped and looked around. The same movement was discernible in the south, east and north. Squadrons of little lens-shaped airships zoomed across the wide, smooth field and columns of robots were running behind them. It all went so fast that Pucky was virtually surrounded before he realized that the mighty array was staged for him.
He was the radial point toward which everything moved in straight lines, airships and robots.
They've registered the loss of the robot, Pucky thought.
And one other thought occurred to him at the same moment: some events must have taken place to make the Springers exercise unusual caution since Rhodan had last heard from Marshall. Suddenly he became very curious to find out what Marshall had done in the meantime but he didn't care to linger much longer in his precarious spot.
He disappeared by teleportation before anyone could clearly recognize him or realize that he was the object of the search. He landed in the vicinity of the hiding place where he had transported his entire material. Pucky had no illusions that the Springers would be satisfied to search the landing field and drop the search if they found nothing there. They obviously made a major effort which made it likely that their failure to detect the culprit in the spaceport would lead them to extend their operation to the surrounding areas and the present cache was located only a few miles from the eastern edge of the spaceport.