by Perry Rhodan
Steiner waved to Rous and Harras as they slowly descended and softly landed. "I would have gone in myself already," Steiner said, "but that's your affair, Lieutenant. Is it really one of our own ships?"
Rous nodded grimly. "And how! More than that, it's my ship, which we gave up for lost three months ago when it was overtaken. I thought I'd never see my good old K-7 again. How did you find it?"
"Pure chance, Lieutenant. Just as I surpassed speol and slowed down again so I could turn around my instruments showed an ore deposit below. When I looked for the deposit, I found the Guppy." Only now did Steiner seem to understand what Rous had said. "What did you mean, Lieutenant-this is your old ship? Your ship? That would be...!" Words failed him.
Rous did not concern himself with him but instead walked towards the K-7. Harras followed after, sympathetically clapping Steiner on the shoulder. The physicist was occasionally slow about catching on.
The Guppy-and over the years that name for the smaller spacespheres had been made official-stood on its telescoping legs and seemed to be waiting for something. The open hatchway indicated that the crew felt safe here and knew that no danger threatened them.
While Lt. Marcel Rous approached the K-7, memories of past events swirled through his mind.
They had landed on the planet Mirsal 3 for a parley with the emissary from the robot Brain of Arkon. There they learned for the first time of the monstrous danger threatening their universe. And even as the alliance between Arkon and Terra was being sealed, the invisible enemy attacked Mirsal 3.
Cadet Becker and two other crewmen of the K-7 disappeared during a single action. Rous himself had been present when the impossible took place. A little later he left the K-7 to tour the deserted city. When he returned to the Guppy's landing place, it was gone as well. For the first time Terrans learned that the invisible and uncanny enemy seized not only organic life but inorganic material as well.
That had been at the beginning of September 2040. Now it was the beginning of January 2041: four months later.
And there, hundreds of light-years removed from the site of the first event, the K-7 stood unchanged as though nothing of importance had taken place during the meantime.
Rous had reached the ladder leasing up into the airlock. Harras stood next to him. The two men looked at each other. 50 meters behind them, Steiner was occupied collecting the debris that now belonged to his time rate.
"I wonder if they're still alive?" asked Harras in a low voice.
Rous shrugged. "I don't know, Harras. Too much time has gone by in the meantime."
"Maybe," said Harras meaningfully and began to climb the ladder. He did not even think of letting the leader of the expedition go first. "We'll soon find out."
Rous followed him into the roomy airlock. The inner hatch was likewise open. If they had been closed... how could one have opened them? Assuming, of course, that the K-7 was on the alien time rate and subject to its laws.
The corridor was empty.
"Let's look in the control room," murmured Rous and shuddered as the echo of his words bounced back hollowly from the empty hallway. "They could be having a conference."
No one met them and Rous' fear of encountering a closed door was fortunately never realized. The ship was as though deserted. But the door to the control room was only half opened.
A man in the light green uniform of the Solar Imperium had just stepped into the control room and was in the process of closing the door. Rous knew the man on sight. He belonged to the technical personnel. Motionless and as though carved from stone he stood there, face still trained on the empty corridor and his hand on the doorknob. He was closing the door but it would be hours before it was finally shut.
Rous carefully squeezed past him, bending to get in under the outstretched arm, and stepped into the control room. His guess had not been wrong: the entire crew was collected here. Of course, there was not much room, but all the men had found a place to sit down. Lt. Hiller, First Officer of the K-7, stood somewhat elevated on top of an overturned box and was speaking. His mouth was open and was probably forming the letter "o". Almost simultaneously Rous heard the deep and humming tone driving at his ears.
Lord-how long might an "ooooooh" last here? two or three hours...?
With only the exception of the man at the door, all eyes of those present were on Lt. Hiller.
"My God!" Harras gasped as he followed Rous in. "This is like an assembly of... of corpses...!"
"They're dead-at least for us," Rous commented. "Luckily we know now how we can bring them back to life. Ah..." He interrupted himself to point at a man in the uniform of a space cadet. "There's Becker. How he found the Guppy is beyond me. The aliens got him a good distance away from the others."
Harras did not reply. He came closer to the speaker, whom Lt. Rous had identified as Lt. Hiller. Harras looked at the round mouth of the officer for awhile, fascinated by the appearance of a man frozen in time. Then he listened to the bumming tone floating in the control room, which seemed unwilling to fade away.
"A single heartbeat," said Rous in the silence, "lasts between 15 and 20 hours."
Harras nodding, seeming to break out of a spell. "I know, Lieutenant, I know. How are we going to free them?"
"With the same method we used to bring the Druuf on our time rate."
Harras pointed to the door. "Shouldn't we hurry up? When that guy there's shut the door, we'll be stuck in here. Do you know how we could get out again? I don't!"
Rous went pale involuntarily. Harras was only too right: once the door was closed, there could be no getting out. The First Officer could speak for 10 minutes-and in reality about two years would have gone by.
In spite of the normal temperature, he suddenly felt uncomfortably warm.
How long had they really been in the alien time dimension?
How much time had really gone by on the other side in the meantime...?
Rous pulled himself together. "You're right, Harras. Well have to hurry. I figure it will be some hours before that door is shut. Call Ragov, Josua and Noir and tell them to come here. They'll have to help us. Take one of these men with you. I'll take care of Becker."
He switched on the antigravity field of his suit, caught Becker's body with it and manoeuvred him cautiously out into the corridor. Becker was as stiff as glass but in the weightless field he could be easily moved. Outside Rous explained things to Steiner, who had forgotten his pieces of wreckage and come up to the K-7. The new task seemed more urgent and, moreover, more interesting.
Then the physicist hurried into the ship to find a crewmember as well.
Rous activated his energy field and rose with Becker into the air. At an altitude of six kilometers he sped up and experienced the 'awakening' of his cadet. The man moved only slightly at first but then his movements increased in speed as the two rates of time neared one another and finally synchronized.
Becker's wide and staring eyes showed only too clearly what was happening. Rous waved to him and said: "Wait a bit, Becker! I'll explain everything later. Don't try to talk!"
Becker stared into the depths below where the planet's surface glided along beneath him. Rous went up to five kilometers per second, then made a U-turn in a wide curve and began to slow down. Finally they landed again by the K-7 and Rous turned off the energy screen and the antigravity field.
"Welcome, Cadet Becker!" he said, smiling wryly. "Now you can ask questions. In the meantime, my men will be freeing your comrades. I hope you realize you were prisoners. Prisoners of another time."
Becker nodded slowly, looked around and whispered timidly: "How did you get here? What did Sikerman say?"
Rous went pale and saw his suspicions confirmed. "Sikerman... eh... I mean. Sikerman has already forgotten the incident. Be very calm, Becker. Can you remember exactly what happened? Do you still recall how it all came about?"
"Of course I can. You sent me into the house-it had disappeared with all the other houses and the city. Then it s
eemed to me that something was tearing me out of the visible world-it must have been some kind of forced teleportation: because when I opened my eyes seconds later, I was here. I only stood on the plateau with Horrahk and Jeffers for a moment-then the K-7 materialized right in front of us along with its entire crew. We couldn't understand what had happened but the First Officer, Lt. Hiller, called us into the control room. He believed he had found an explanation. But hardly had he spoken one sentence when something strange happened."
Rous' thoughts began to spin. He could guess the whole truth already and was afraid of drawing the inevitable conclusions. For what had affected Becker and his companions was equally valid for him and his men.
Or not...? After all, they had not lost their own time rate by existing in the alien dimension.
"What happened?"
"It was like before. I saw Lt. Hiller gradually disappear from before my eyes, as though a cloud drifted in between us. Something pulled me away, although I didn't notice the change very quickly. Then I saw nothing more until I saw you."
Rous understood. The change in surroundings had taken place before Becker's nerves had a chance to react. "We retained our own time rate when we came into this time dimension, Becker. Steiner can give you all the details later. We found a way to bring living beings and even inorganic matter from the other dimension into ours and that's how we freed you. The question now is: what happens to the Guppy? It's too big for us to free it from the time prison."
Becker shook his head. "I'm going to go crazy yet! How could you do all that so fast? And who is Steiner? I don't know the others either, except for the hypno..."
Rous laid his hand on Becker's shoulder. "Tell me something and don't be surprised at my question: can you remember about how long it has been since the time you came out of the house on Mirsal 3... and the other time plane sucked you up?"
Becker looked at his superior officer thoughtfully. He noticed that Lt. Rous was holding his breath waiting for the answer. "Well," he said slowly, "I know for sure that it hasn't been any more than two minutes. I hardly came to rest on the plateau before the K-7 appeared and Lt. Hiller opened the batch to tell us."
Rous was not listening anymore.
He began to realize that if he ever saw the Earth again-at all-it could very well be an Earth thousands of years older, if some miracle did not take place.
He overlooked the fact that miracles had been taking place one after the other for hours now.
• • •
Somewhat later, Harras shook his head energetically. "No, Lieutenant, that's utterly hopeless! The K-7 will have to stay where it is! We could never bring it out of the other time rate and back to its own. And what would be the point? We now have a way to bring the food, water and anything else we need into our own time, so we can easily hold out until help arrives. Rhodan will certainly start looking for us when we don't come back. In the meantime, we can live in the K-7. We've already found out that we can open and shut the doors when the antigravity field is in operation."
"We've got a place to hole up, that's true," Rous answered. "But I'm worried. We don't want to forget that Cadet Becker and all the men aboard the K-7 aged two minutes while we became three months older. What will happen if the same natural law affects us while we remain in the alien time plane even though we've retained our own time rate? A slowing will result but we don't know how much of one or what relation it has to the actual passage of time."
Steiner waved it all away. "I think we're getting worried over nothing. If a really long period of time had gone by, Rhodan would have done something a long time ago. Or does someone here believe that Rhodan would leave his men in the lurch? Well, then! Nobody believes that. If he hasn't shown up yet, that can mean only one thing: not enough time has gone by for him to get worried."
"Or else," said Harras unmoved, "this place, wherever it is we are, has moved somewhere else in the meantime. How could anyone find us then?"
Steiner decided not to offer a counter argument. He did not have one.
Degenhoff, communications officer of the K-7, stood somewhat to one side and listened in on the conversation. Now he stepped in and said: "Lieutenant, if I may offer an observation... why don't we send out a message? A perfectly good hypercom stands right here aboard the K-7. What does it matter if the Arkonides or someone else picks it up? The main thing is that Rhodan receives our distress call."
Rous was about to dismiss the idea but stopped. His questioning glance took in Steiner and Harras. "How can we use the transmitter?" he asked.
"It's too large to be brought on our time all at once but it can be dismantled, Lieutenant. The single parts can be put back together again later."
"Excellent!" Rous remarked, smiling doubtfully. "But if we do all that, what will happen to our signals? Would they leave this time plane and reach the receivers on Terra? You probably can't give me an answer, either, Degenhoff
"No one could," Steiner said, somewhat reproachfully. "Anyway, trying something is better than talking about it. I vote we try Degenhoff's suggestion."
"Me too," said Harras, "although I'm convinced that something will alter the hypercom impulses. Either the time barrier will absorb them or they will be accelerated or slowed down so that no one can understand them..."
"Alright, then," said Rous, breaking off the discussion, "we'll try it."
Degenhoff went to work and could report two hours later that he had dismantled the hypercom transmitter into three sections: it had been decided a demontage of the complicated receiver was not worth the risk. Ana another two hours later the hyper-transmitter stood ready for operation in the shadow of the K-7. Degenhoff waited for the signal to start.
"It's hopeless from the start," Rous commented "because we have no idea in what direction the Earth or other receiving stations are to be found. You can see, Degenhoff, that not only time but space too is causing us problems."
"I'll ran the message tape repeatedly and keep the antenna constantly rotating. That way every sector of this hemisphere will be included. Later we'll have to fly the transmitter and reactor to the other side of the planet and repeat the whole process. Only then can we be relatively certain that our message will be picked up somewhere."
And what will be in that message?" Steiner asked sceptically.
Rous took a pad out of his pocket and began to write. Steiner looked up into the still-cloudy sky. His eyes searched for the lightning on the horizon. It had not changed and one gradually grew used to it. Altogether, they hadn't been on this world for even one full second. Josua who stood watch again by the burned hulk of the gallows tree, had reported just a few minutes before that the light ring had not yet appeared again. Noir would go relieve him in two hours. Someone had to be there at all times.
Rous had made some improvements on the text and now seemed to be satisfied with what he had written. "I think this will do," he murmured and gave Degenhoff the sheet of paper.
The com-officer took it and read it into the recording unit microphone:
"SOS! Time expedition of Marcel Rous calling for help! Attention anyone! Our way back is blocked, the Lens Field Generator broken down! Position unknown, our time rate constant. Crew of the K-7 has been found. We are in otherwise good shape.
Lt. Marcel Rous"
Steiner nodded. "Good message-if anyone hears it."
Degenhoff retorted almost angrily, "Someone will hear it, believe me. And even if these Druufs intercept it, it will take them some time to slow it down enough that they can listen to it at the right speed. Even then they won't be able to translate it. And as for the Arkonides-if they hear it Rhodan will find out about it."
Rous gestured impatiently. "What are you waiting for now, Degenhoff?"
Steiner's eyes narrowed as he walked away. When he believed himself out of Degenhoff's hearing and alone with Harras and Rous, he asked grimly: "Tell me, Lieutenant, are you really convinced that the message will do any good? Do you really think that it will break through the time
barrier? You don't have to spare me. I can bear hearing the truth."
Rous looked quizzically at the physicist, then smiled coldly. "Honestly, Steiner, I don't know, so I can't answer either yes or no to your question. Only time will answer that."
"And that," grinned Harras wryly, "will take time."
"I want to tell you something else, Lieutenant. We have yet another hope, even if the transmitter fails. I admit it's a crazy chance but it's well founded and in no way based on sheer theory or vague speculation. If nothing at all happens and no one comes to pick us up, then we can take the K-7 apart and free it piece by piece from the time prison. Once she's back together, we'll have a space-worthy vessel obeying the laws of our own time plane. I'll bet we could even find the Earth with it eventually."
"Yes, perhaps we could find the Earth. Hopefully it won't be an Earth where everyone's forgotten about us because thousands of years have gone by in the meantime!"
Steiner didn't answer. He narrowed his eyes in shock, hesitated a second, then walked away. He paused at the plateau and looked out over the broad plains.
Harras followed him. In no way did he show his feelings.
Degenhoff was already at work with the transmitter, preparing the recorded tape. Minutes later, the reactor began to hum. Invisible impulses radiated from the aerial and sped into the reddish sky of the unknown world at the edge of eternity.
Lt. Rous watched the com-officer for a few minutes, then turned and walked away. Without turning around once, he climbed the K-7's ladder, crossed the airlock and finally pushed his way through the still half-open door of the control room.
He sank down heavily into the pilot's seat and stared lost in thought at the dead control panel and unmoving instruments. Wasn't he himself as good as dead, prisoner of another time which might just as easily be past, present or even future?