by Perry Rhodan
Perry Rhodan
Atlan And Arkon #46
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Again: Atlan
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1/ PSYCHO-FENCINGb
THE SOLAR EMPIRE. That was what the small interplanetary realm was called. And the man who had founded it called himself Perry Rhodan.
Rhodan's people acted nice and friendly toward me, even tolerant, but—it was a big but.
Although many of them were scientists in uniform, most were battle-proven veterans of the space fleet who—so they explained to me—had risked their lives for Terra.
To them I was a member of a related biological genus and a sociopolitical foreigner. They never applied the classification 'racially alien' to me, confirming my favorable opinion of the improved ethics of mankind. They were less intolerant than in the past when disbelievers were persecuted and political opponents executed.
But although they had matured morally, this did not prevent them from considering me an enemy. "We've got nothing against you personally, my dear fellow," Lt. Gen. Kosnow had jovially stated.
"So why don't you let me go my way unhindered?" I had made the logical rejoinder. When I thought back on Kosnow's bittersweet smile, it made my blood boil. Only in my rarer moments of serenity was I able to treat it with amusement.
Of course they were not justified in considering it nor inclined to release me unceremoniously after my appearing in their ken under such mysterious circumstances.
As yet they knew nothing of my bathysphere anchored in the deeps of the Atlantic Ocean and I had further concealed from them the fact that I had fled to its safety for fear of an atomic war which appeared on the verge of exploding 69 years ago.
When I was awakened from my 7-decade-long hibernation by the biomedical robot machines in my sub-oceanic shelter, I learned to my greatest chagrin that the atomic war I had expected had never taken place. Subsequently I had occasion to see how far mankind had progressed during my deep-sleep interval.
I had managed to reach Terrania by various means at my disposal and there I met the most outstanding man of recent history: Perry Rhodan.
Nobody in the inhabited worlds of the Galaxy seemed to suspect what an audacious and resourceful force had made its entrance into the universal matrix in the person of Perry Rhodan.
It had been my intention to leave in a small space jet and return home to Arkon after I had waited a long long time till the technological development of the Terrans had achieved space travel.
When they finally succeeded in perfecting it, I had unfortunately retreated to the bottom of the ocean and slept through the first stages of their great leap into the future.
At the time Rhodan made his landing on the Moon and found the disabled research cruiser of the Arkonides, I had missed the best chance of my life by acting in a hasty and foolish manner.
While I had withdrawn for many decades into a bio-deepsleep, the erstwhile major of the Space Force had mastered the Arkonide knowledge and put it to work.
To cross the path of such a devoted man who had spent his life in a succession of various dangers and difficulties meant running the gravest of risks.
On my first attempt to escape from Earth I had boarded a spaceship piloted by Rhodan himself and we ended up in a duel on the desert of the planet Hellgate. I was the loser.
He had me arrested and taken away in handcuffs. During our bitter bout I passed up an opportunity to kill him. Why I had refrained from shooting him by deliberately missing the mark was the subject of my critical self-analysis.
Was I reluctant to take his life because he had spared my own when he helped me to escape from the burning spaceship?
No, this was no logical reason. A man who gives quarter to a determined enemy has no right to expect that his adversary would show mercy in similar circumstances.
Nevertheless I had felt grateful to him. Later on I had intentionally spared his life and told him by radio that my debt was paid. Only a few hours after that I had cause to regret my charity.
And still later when he made me look down the barrel of his blaster after saving me at the last moment, I realized that a strange love-hate relationship existed between us.
I couldn't help admiring him and he who was called immortal and was yet so vulnerable to violent death seemed to consider me a highly interesting subject for his studies.
Rhodan was too smart and worldwise not to suspect that I was no ordinary Arkonide and this was the reason he sent me back to Earth on a light cruiser and why I was now confined as a prisoner of the Solar Defense.
My relationship to the members of the Solar Defense was a tragicomedy of the first rank. Of course they knew very well that I had held the life of their idol in my hands but they also realized that I was not a rabid enemy of mankind.
The men of the Defense were psychologists up against a wall since I alone held the key to the puzzle confronting them.
Being aware that I held this key, the thing uppermost in their mind was how to wrest it from me.
When they summoned me to the first interrogation I was very apprehensive about the temptation they might feel to revert to their old nasty methods.
I had expected to be grilled very roughly. As I came to the door of the interrogation room my imagination conjured up the methods used by the inhuman Earthlings in times not too far past.
However I was not mistreated at all. The scientists in uniform threatened me only with grim faces which failed to impress me very much after the initial shock.
For a few days we fenced with each other. They used every trick in the book of psychology and I had to be on my toes. But I always held the upper hand. They couldn't match my background and had no knowledge of the events which I had learned from firsthand experience in the course of time.
It was paradoxical that I, an Arkonide, knew more about Earthlings than they themselves and it was a source of amusement to me that they gave me frequent opportunities to amaze them with my knowledge about Terra.
This was the situation when I was brought in for the second psycho-questioning at 8:00 o'clock in the morning on a fine summer day.
2/ UNKNOWN FACTOR, M.G.
Lt. Tombe Gmuna was the officer escorting me. I was very fond of the frank and jolly African.
I had been given a small house close to the administration center of Terrania. There were no barred windows or other conventional means of preventing escape.
Three robots had been assigned to me as personal servants but they were of no conceivable help in surmounting the energy barrier of my prison.
The radiating fence was 15 feet high and I could neither jump over it nor circumvent it by other methods. The energy control station was located outside the circular force field. I could easily see the little transformer building with its field projector but it was completely out of my reach.
Whenever I was led outside through an energy gap created in the structure at least three men of the Solar Defense crew accompanied me, carrying nerve weapons which were rather harmless but had an extremely painful effect. So far I had not taken any chances of coming in contact with the jolt of energy from these shockers.
This time Lt. Gmuna carried a regular service weapon in his belt. I recognized it beyond doubt as being a lethal thermo-impulse beamer. His candid face looked dismayed and a shadow darkened his eyes. When he saw my reproachful glance he said apologetically: "It's an order, Admiral!"
Since they had learned that I once had been in charge of an Arkonide fleet I was always addressed as Admiral. I had wondered for days whether this was supposed to be some psychological gimmick. Did they really believe they could win me over by this?
The title didn't mean that much to me. It was a long
time since I commanded a powerful armada of the Colonization Space Force. I couldn't allow myself to dwell on these memories as they evoked considerable melancholy in me which I never completely overcame. "What order, Gmuna?" I inquired.
"This impulse weapon," he said with an angry gesture. "A new man took over and he wants your escorting officer to carry an impulse-beamer from now on."
He looked me up and down and it took some time before he relaxed his countenance. "Oh well, there's nothing I can do about it. Just don't get any silly ideas of running away. You got away with that once."
"But I was invisible then," I emphasized.
"You made that quite clear, didn't you?"
I gave no answer and tried to hide my growing anxiety.
The lieutenant opened the door of the plain service vehicle. I sat down on the hard bench in the middle. Gmuna took his place next to the driver and the two soldiers threatened me with their painful shockers from the seat in the back. It was an escort worthy of an ex-admiral albeit one who had long ago given up thinking of his past glories.
In the course of the previous 21 interrogations it had been made abundantly clear to me that the reports in the Encyclopaedia Terrania were true to the facts inasmuch as my revered people had indeed mentally and physically degenerated to such a deplorable degree that they were no longer able to cope with life by themselves. But it remained a mystery to me how this could have happened in such a relatively short period.
The men from the Solar Defense had succeeded in breaking down my arrogance rooted in feelings of my people's superiority but they were unable to rob me of my pride. After all Perry Rhodan had learned his most essential knowledge from the scientists of my people. If our research cruiser had not crashed on their Moon there would be no interstellar space travel from Terra to this day.
This knowledge remained deeply ingrained in my mind and they did not try to deny that we had been their scientific mentors.
However they already surpassed the Arkonides in some respects. They had shown me some of the latest spaceships built on Earth and the details of their construction and equipment had taken my breath away.
This was one of the methods by which they tormented me. They were no longer so primitive as to press hot iron bars against my soles as had been their ancient custom, for instance.
Young Tombe Gmuna was a splendid specimen of the new and mature class of humans. Tolerant, clean living and always willing to respect the different traits of another being, he had exhibited such an unequivocal attitude toward me that I was compelled to regard him as the personification of a new generation.
He was like the bold conquerors that had been produced by my own people in their heyday. These times appeared to be a thing of the past and this realization plunged my soul into chaos. I had been away from Arkon too long to judge from personal experience how this had come about.
The biggest clout wielded by the Solar Defense was its constant harping on the alleged fact that the huge robot machine created by my ancestors now ruled the stellar empire.
Whenever I endeavored to be completely honest with myself I asked myself the question why I longed so fervently to return to the three synchron planets of Arkon and did everything in my power to reach this goal.
Was it what human beings called nostalgia? Such unconscious feelings were rather difficult to comprehend by people of my origin. From the day I had left my flagship and set foot on the soil of Terra I had never harbored such feelings.
Perhaps I had made too many good friends on Earth to indulge in temporary melancholic feelings of nostalgia.
My desire to return home at all costs was more likely the result of hurt pride. It had been a terrible shock to me to find after waking up from my deep bio-sleep that the little barbarians of the planet Earth had suddenly grown up. My spirit had gone from one extreme to the other.
I had the most ardent wish to see for myself whether the Solar Defense agents had told me the truth. Perhaps I would gladly return and offer my hand in friendship to Rhodan if they were right.
As the vehicle rolled down the road to the close by administration buildings I wondered about Perry Rhodan. He now had been gone for four weeks. Gmuna had dropped a few remarks, hinting that Rhodan was engaged in a perilous adventure again. In any case my worst adversary was absent from Earth at the present.
Adversary? I laughed softly as I contemplated the meaning of the word. Indeed he had been my foe up to the time when he let his robot give me water to drink. Then I knew that I could no longer bring myself to kill him in cold blood.
Gmuna took me to the nearest antigravitor. These young men treated such highly sophisticated inventions as casually as if they were steeped in the technological development of a thousand years. Everything was taken for granted. It never seemed to occur to them how long our own scientists had worked to harness the forces of gravity. The Terranians had simply taken it all over.
When I noticed such trivial manifestations I had to suppress my rising anger. They ought to show a little more deference to a person like me! How did they dare to have armed soldiers drag me off to be questioned like a common criminal? This was more than I could endure magnanimously.
If they had been exposed to a more decent civilization they would never have considered shackling or guarding a man of my standing. My word would have been all they needed to detain me. Evidently they knew nothing of the strict code of honor in the old Arkonide fleet.
They constantly made the mistake of undermining my desire to testify freely whenever I felt the urge. They always aroused my unconscious resistance and I disdained to enlighten them.
I paused for a minute on the 86th floor to listen to the roar of a super spaceship fading away in the distance. It was the most beautiful noise I could imagine. I looked at Gmuna, "A ship of the Imperium class?" I inquired with tense curiosity.
"The Drusus , Admiral. The boss has put in a call for it by hyperradio. If the chief gunner of the ship pushes the button then it's goodbye to the world."
His enthusiasm made me smile. It was very understandable that a gigantic sphere 1500 meters in diameter racing into space made the heart of a young man beat faster.
A few seconds later the armored sliding doors opened up and I entered the office of the special Solar Defense department.
As usual 10 men were present and I knew them all.
Lt.-Gen. Kosnow took a special place in my esteem. As Gmuna had once whispered to me, this man was believed to be as old as the hills. He possibly belonged to that small group of highly meritorious officers who first had founded and then consolidated the former New Power.
It was rumored that Rhodan had the privilege of conferring the biomedical extension of life to worthy people. How he accomplished it was an intriguing mystery to me. In my opinion I had so far not yet encountered a single person in his inner circle whose cells had been stabilized and undergone continual rejuvenation.
Nonetheless there seemed to be some substance to the rumors in view of the fact that Rhodan had not visibly aged.
The moment I saw the short, slender man I stopped abruptly.
He turned his remarkably smooth-skinned, virtually beardless face, which was dominated by two blue eyes, toward me. He looked harmless and very ordinary yet he aroused my instant suspicion. Was this the 'new man' of whom Gmuna had spoken?
If so, he was the one who had issued the order to the young officer to carry lethal arms forthwith. This didn't make me feel friendlier toward the stranger.
Lt.-Gen. Kosnow rose from behind his huge desk and greeted me. "How are you getting along, Admiral?"
I bowed my head ceremoniously, endeavoring to maintain my dignity.
"May I present Solar Marshal Allan D. Mercant, Admiral?"
Danger, caution! my extra-brain signaled. I could clearly feel the telepathic impulses emanating from the Grand Marshal.
Simultaneously my photographic memory began to work. Allan D. Mercant? I knew that name. I remembered having read in the Encyclopaedi
a Terrania that Mercant had been the chief of a worldwide secret organization called the International Intelligence Agency.
After Rhodan had returned from his trip to the Moon the IIA Chief had become an admirer of the Space Force major and subsequently went to work for Rhodan exclusively. Now the little man was the Solar Marshall and he was probably in charge of the entire Solar Defense. I was certain that Rhodan could not have found a better man for this job.
Mercant, who also seemed to possess a moderate gift of telepathy, rose and bowed a little awkwardly which, however, did not deceive me. Mercant was what my ancestors had called a dagger with a poison tip—looking harmless but delivering a deadly thrust.
"Pleased to meet you, sir," I said in a formal tone. "But don't bother trying to break my mono-screen. The best telepaths have failed to penetrate it. I'm perfectly able to guard the contents of my mind."
"Please excuse me!" Mercant said as if feeling embarrassed but his water-bright eyes spoke a different language.
His eyes made me acutely aware that I had judged him correctly. His ostensibly modest behavior was a mask. He was certainly not suffering from an inferiority complex.
"Please sit down!" he said amiably, pointing to a comfortable chair in front of the desks which were arranged in the shape of a horseshoe.
Rarely had I watched myself as closely as now. Unless I was badly mistaken, Mercant's interrogation stratagem would drastically vary from that of his subordinate Defense agents.
He began abruptly, just as I had expected, with a pouncing attack. It was his forte not to waste words. "You've been at least 70 years on Earth, Admiral," he stated calmly.
I could hardly control myself. How could he claim to know this? I remained silent.
"I've made it my business to check the fides of the former International Intelligence Agency," he smiled. "70 years ago the scientific department head of a private research institute hired a man who signed a contract with the name of Olaf Peterson. You were that man! Only four months later you were put in charge of your own department and you developed in a remarkably short time a so-called structure field-projector for high energy compression force fields. In a technical article you advanced the theory that it could replace the customary atomic core chambers and the thermally inadequate jets in spaceships. Three months after that you published your calculations for a compact reactor to generate power for spaceship aggregates. The new atomic pile improvement was an automatically controlled fusion device producing 500 kilowatts per hour. Amazing, don't you agree?"