Prisoner of Time

by Perry Rhodan

  Almost five minutes went by before the physicist lowered his head. "You're right, Lieutenant. To the left. I'd say at Mach 2 at most."

  "A centimeter per second. Hmm... what does it mean?"

  "Well have to wait and see. If we only knew where they were sending the pictures. Perhaps to a city, perhaps to another and larger ship."

  "I have a feeling," said Harras slowly, "that it isn't a good idea for us to stand out in the middle of an open plain like this. The alien ship is above us. If they decide to do away with us they can do it before we have an opportunity to defend ourselves."

  "Why should they want to kill us?"

  "Reasons...? Wouldn't we lose too much time trying to figure out their reasons?"

  "Harras is right, Lieutenant," Steiner said. "What do we know of the aliens existing in this dimension?

  Ragov wasn't so dumb, going into the mountains."

  "If we hurry up we can still catch him and Noir," Rous said. He looked up. "The ship is speeding up."

  Josua fingered the controls of his battle-suit nervously. Rous noticed it with raised eyebrows. But

  Steiner and Harras were following the African's example.

  "You don't want to fly, do you?" asked Rous.

  "What about making ourselves invisible? Up to now we've assumed the inhabitants of this alien time plane couldn't see us because we were too fast for their eyes. But if they've really discovered a method to make us visible..."

  "Or the energy defense-screens!" Steiner's suggestion was even better than Harras'.

  However, Josua shook his head. "No! We should fly away-into the mountains, into the caves!"

  Rous knew that a speed of up to three meters a second was not dangerous at all. It was thanks to the composition of the atmosphere that this relatively great speed did not have any unfortunate effects. One would sense the beginnings of frictional heat but no more.

  "We have to be careful," he reminded. "No one is to move faster than I do. I'm not keen on the idea of going by foot now myself."

  Steiner rose first into the air. Supported by antigravity fields, he hung weightlessly a few meters above the others.

  "It's great, letting your legs simply dangle like this. Are we flying in formation?"

  "I'd like to see the Druufs' faces when they see us now," Harras commented, also rising into the air. He was closely followed by Josua who looked quite happy that his suggestion had been followed.

  Rous followed last. "Stay behind me," he said, "and don't fly too fast. As soon as the heat can be strongly felt, slow down! Believe me, I never would have thought before that the thickness of an atmosphere is also dependent on the speed with which one goes through it."

  Though not altogether correctly expressed, Rous' comment neatly summarized the problem. It was Time that had changed this world and seemingly thrown all natural laws overboard. If the passage of time in this dimension could be speeded up 72000 times, then the world would look normal again.

  Or was it normal...?

  Was this alien time plane the real norm...?

  The question ripped through Rous like a lightning bolt and it seemed to him that here was the key to their problem.

  They floated just a few meters above the stony ground and Rous became aware of the odd fact that at the beginning of their adventure they had simply not realized that they could fly if they had to.

  They had all but completely forgotten their suits.

  Steiner glanced at the sky and called out: "The ship's following us but it isn't as fast. They don't want to let us out of their sight. Anyway-we're moving at Mach 60."

  "Do you feel the heat?" Rous asked. "There's an actual vacuum forming right behind us because the air moves so slowly." He looked upwards as well. "You're right, Steiner: their camera-ship is following us."

  They crossed the river and the valley and reached the level cliff that was already familiar to them. The small ship had been left far behind. It covered perhaps two centimeters a second, making a good Mach 4.

  "I wonder if they can still see us?" said Harras.

  "I don't think their range is that great," Rous replied. "If that were the case, they wouldn't need to follow us."

  A few minutes later they spotted two moving human figures among the rocks below-and any movement on this world of absolute motionlessness was instantly noticeable.

  Ivan Ragov and Andr? Noir!

  Rous had hardly touched his foot to the ground then he heard Steiner give a loud yell. With stretched-out arm the physicist pointed back towards the plain. The men followed his gaze and stared.

  Rous felt as though an ice-cold hand had grasped his heart for now he saw the practical illustration of his theories. There, where the gallows tree had stood, was now only a harshly bright ray of energy standing perpendicular to the rocky ground. The tree, now only an indistinct silhouette, was completely wrapped in the beam.

  The ray, about 10 meters thick, led straight up into the sky and lost itself in the violet-red of the cloudless portion of the heavens. It seemed to be coming straight from outer space. It stood like a gigantic pencil of pure energy out there in the plain, striking just that area where the Terrans had been an hour before.

  Rous figured that he could follow the energy beam with the naked eye up to an altitude of 40 kilometers where it was swallowed up by the sky.

  "They hesitated too long," he said grimly. "The deathray would have finished us and we wouldn't have had time to get out of the way. Light still moves at four km/sec, an unimaginable speed for this world where nothing at all moves. Maybe now we can understand what it means to cover 300,000 km/sec like light does in our universe. That out there is an energy beam fired at us from a ship flying at a very high altitude. That means we've discovered the Druufs. And we know something else: they intend to kill us!"

  "That out there... an energy beam?" stammered Josua, holding his head as though trying to collect all his knowledge of physics. "For so long?"

  Rous smiled gently. "What does the word 'long' mean here? Say they're firing an energy beam lasting 100th of a second. If the ship stands 400 kilometers high, then the beam will take a minute and 40 seconds to reach the surface. And then it will remain for approximately 12 minutes. For the Druufs, 12 minutes are 100th of a second. Unless I miss my guess, we'll see the beam dissolve. We'll have to watch for that because if it happens, we'll know then that even the speed of light is affected by the time dilation. The process of dissolving will begin at the top and continue along the beam at a speed of four kilometers a second."

  "It's completely unbelievable," Steiner murmured, then added: "But logical, all the same."

  "But it would be wrong to conclude that we could get out of the way of a ray beamed at us," Rous said thoughtfully. 'We were lucky because we happened to move to another place. If we had remained standing by the gallows tree, we would have been lost. If light moves only at four kilometers a second, we'll still see it only when it hits us. So practically speaking, there isn't any difference between a speed of four kilometers a second and 300,000 kilometers a second if a shot is coming directly toward us."

  Steiner looked up into the cloud-covered sky. "What if they're aiming again now?"

  Rous shook his head. "Don't worry, Steiner. I've already thought of that. But there isn't any danger for us here. Do you think the Druufs would kill their own people? They would hardly dare destroy one of their settlements."

  Ragov, who had bent down by one of the motionless Druufs, stood up again. A questioning expression was on his face. "I don't understand this," he concluded. "They have spaceships and energy beamers but they live in caves. How does that make sense?"

  Rous was not without an answer this time. "Just think of a hundred years ago, Ragov. How did things look on the Earth then? Josua's forefathers possibly still lived in the African jungle and were happy if they could kill a lion with the help of spear. Yet the first atomic bombs were being developed 5000 kilometers away. If such differences in technical and cultural development cou
ld exist between the inhabitants of a single planet, consider how great the differences might be when the same race inhabits entire solar systems.

  "You're right, of course, Lieutenant," Ragov said slowly. "One should never come to conclusions too hastily and forget one's own history. So you're convinced, then, that these caterpillars are the ruling intelligences on this alien time plane?"

  "We can only guess, Ragov. We'll know for sure only when we meet the Druufs face to face. I must admit, though, that I look forward to our first meeting with them with a certain amount of discomfort."

  Noir pointed into the heavens. "The camera ship has stopped. It isn't coming any closer."

  "It's only avoiding the energy burst," Harras supposed. He wiped his forehead and added thoughtfully: "It ought to be easy to fly up and shoot the thing down."

  Rous threw him a quick glance. "Are you crazy?"

  "What do you mean? We were attacked. It's our right to defend ourselves. Who knows how much time we'll have to spend on this world-I have no desire to have to be running away from these sneaks all the time we're here."

  "Harras is absolutely right!" Steiner said. Noir and Josua nodded in agreement and the expression on even Ragov's face was far from one of refusal.

  "Hmm..." Rous found himself outvoted. "it would hardly be as simple as Harras imagines. We don't want to forget that the Druufs can see us and..."

  "They can see us only so long as the camera ship exists. If it's destroyed, it will take them an eternity to get another one." Harras seemed possessed by his idea. "I'll take the hand-beamer and melt the cameras away. Then I'll try to damage the ship itself so much that it crashes."

  Rous looked up into the sky. "Look-over there!" he suddenly exclaimed. "The energy beam! It's dissolving!"

  They saw it clearly.

  The process ran from the top down, quite swiftly yet relatively slowly. For the first time in their lives the men could follow the passage of a beam of light with their own eyes. At least 10 seconds went by before the beam had entirely vanished.

  The 100th of a second was over.

  Harras fiddled with the controls on his belt.

  "Now," said Rous, "I've thought about some things and would like to let you know what I've come up with. A good hour ago we were afraid that we would have to give up the idea of firing our ray pistols because of a possible catastrophe: our beam would move at a speed 72,000 times faster than the speed If light in this dimension. We were even afraid of tearing apart the space-time continuum. Well, I don't think so anymore."

  "Why not?" asked Steiner matter?of?factly.

  "Because we can radio each other! Radio waves are just as fast as light waves. Have any of you noticed any effects? All right. Nobody! Nothing happens in this dimension when something moves faster than light-relatively speaking. So I think you can make use of your impulse-beamer without any worries, Harras."

  "Frankly," Harras said, trying to stay calm, "I had forgot all about our earlier speculations and would have fired in any case..."

  "You always were reckless," Ragov reprimanded, looking thoughtfully at the Druufs in front of the caves. "I hope I can find an opportunity to finally investigate these caterpillars."

  "It's a mystery to me how you expect to do that," Rous admitted.

  The scientist smiled. "Not to me any longer," he said evenly.

  5/ THE GREAT EXPERIMENT

  "The slowing process is still taking too long."

  "We'll never be able to kill them. They're too fast."

  "They've gone into the mountains. As long as they're so close to the winged slaves, we can't attack them."

  Relay contacts clicked, video screens lit up and color patterns flitted across curved projection screens. The reactors hummed somewhere in the depths of the ship.

  "We must try to accelerate the slowing process so that events don't take place too far in the past. How are we ever to eliminate an opponent who is always five or 10 time-units in the future? We'll never catch him."

  Again the shadowy faces bent over the videoscreens, especially the 10th one which showed the miraculous results of advanced technology. This screen showed what had happened just a few minutes before-and it showed it as someone who lived 70,000 times faster than the viewers would see it.

  "They can fly, Master."

  "And without wings! Probably antigravity."

  Again a long pause. Then: "One of them is coming towards us!"

  "Alone!"

  "What can he want?"

  And then, shocked and with sudden certainty: "He's carrying a weapon and flying towards our

  camera ship! But what we're seeing took place some time-units ago. We've got to do something and-"

  "Too late!"

  Within seconds all 10 video screens had gone dark.

  The aliens' slow-motion photography took precisely five minutes to process.

  Thus they lived precisely five minutes in the past.

  Five minutes too many...

  • • •

  Fred Harras was not altogether in good spirits as he slowly approached the all but motionless ship, fire-ready impulse-beamer in his right hand.

  The camera ship might have been an easy 10 meters wrong; they had not guessed wrong on the ground. 100 meters below Harras stretched the surface of the unknown planet. He hung weightless and controlled his flight with the instruments on the belt he wore beneath his suit. He felt as though he were floating in water.

  The ship was only a few meters away. He could plainly see the lenses of the 10 cameras. The first of them was now trained on him. Five minutes must have gone by before he was noticed. The theory that the slow-motion process required several minutes seemed to be confirmed by that.

  Harras spoke into the microphone of his ring-radio. "I'm within firing range. Should I...?"

  "What are you waiting for?" Rous' order came in the form of a question.

  Harras mumbled an assent and took aim at the first camera. Within the space of less than a second the fine energy beam hit and melted it. But the camera itself was a product of its own time plane and followed the natural laws of that plane. Harras could follow the melting process but the metal droplets and the resulting gas acted like all other objects in this crazy world.

  Unendingly slowly, yet noticeably driven on by the normal time-light-fast energy burst, the white-glowing debris floated away, growing ever slower.

  The second camera melted, then the third the fourth...

  The demolition work was completed in half a minute. If the aliens did not possess a second camera ship, then, they were now blind again.

  Harras hesitated. Should he return to the surface or shouldn't he rather attempt to shoot the ship down? It hardly moved and constituted no danger to them but perhaps its interior offered clues about the unknown enemies from another time.

  Rous would have to decide.

  And Rous decided: "If you think you can find it and destroy some appropriate spot, then try it, Harras. Perhaps then it will actually crash and Steiner can have some work to do at last."

  Maybe at the 'stern,' Harras thought, and moved carefully around the silvery shining aircraft. He was cautious not to blunder into the clearly visible exhaust, which forced its way out the lens-jets at just four kilometers a second. But what did four km/sec mean compared to real light-speed?

  He allowed himself to drop back and a bit to the side, raised his weapon and aimed it towards the lens system at the stem. Then he pressed the firing button.

  The result was obvious and decidedly impressive.

  The ship exploded.

  It exploded in slow motion: at first expanding at a speed of half a meter per second, then more slowly. Harras did not find it difficult to dodge the debris, which then began to sink seemingly as light as downy feathers. Finally, half a minute after the explosion, the debris seemed to hang in the air as though glued to various places on the outer surface of a vast and invisible sphere. Only when one looked at it for awhile did he realize that everything was fal
ling very slowly, the lower segments somewhat more quickly than the upper. The sphere was gradually becoming an egg, thanks to gravity.

  Through his receiver Harras heard the cries of his companions, who had witnessed the spectacle from the ground.

  "Incredible!"

  That was undoubtedly Steiner, who was still able to marvel over the optically perceivable effects of time-dilation even though he understood them well enough.

  "Come back!" Rous called, concerned. "Otherwise you'll be hit by a retaliatory beam from the mother ship... if there is one."

  "Who else would have shot at us?" Harras murmured, as he let himself sink towards the ground in a somewhat lateral direction. He caught up with the wreckage of the ship, which would land just 200 meters from the place where the Gazelle stood-in its own time plane.

  • • •

  Ivan Ragov had not been idle in the meantime.

  "It wouldn't have been believed possible," Rous said when the zoologist explained his plan, "that time has something to do with gravity too! How did you come to that idea, Ragov?"

  The scientist smiled almost shyly. "Well, the connection isn't quite as great as that between time and space but that there is one can't be denied. Don't forget that my thoughts are nothing but sheer theory. Only putting them to the test will decide whether they're valid or not. How did I get the idea? Simple! I was wondering how the inertia of these petrified caterpillars could be overcome. It can't be done with energy alone; something else has to he involved. So why not gravitation?"

  "You're right," Steiner conceded, glancing overhead to where Harras was taking care not to fly too fast and break the "heat barrier." He fell at a speed of four meters/sec. "You want to lift a Druuf in an antigravity field and move with it?"

  "Exactly!" exclaimed the Russian, adjusting the controls of his Arkonide battle-suit. "Besides, I'll make use of my energy shield: it creates an enclosed bell-shaped area and perhaps I'll be able to create its own time field inside, if you understand what I mean."

  The men looked at each other.

  Rous shook his head. "You've always got ideas, Ragov; I'll say that much for you. But its own time field? Are you trying to say that it's possible to make the different time planes approach each other closely enough that a new, neutral time plane can be created in which communicating with the aliens-that is to say, the Druufs-is no longer as hopeless as it might seem?"