by Perry Rhodan
Even the Solar Imperium was about to extend the 'battlefield' once more. A certain zone of the galaxy which had heretofore been regarded as unexplored was now suddenly very interesting.
41,386 light-years from Earth was a small yellow sun which was located near the core of the galaxy. Around it circled a planet that had so far remained unknown to anyone on Earth-a world called Okul. The two other worlds of the system were nameless and of no importance.
• • •
The government research centers on Earth had become beehives of activity. The composition and toxicological factors pertaining to Liquitiv had to be discovered, as well as a cure for its effects. It was a very overworked Perry Rhodan who met with Solar Marshal Freyt in the middle of the night to discuss certain findings which the robot Brain had worked out. The recorder tape that Desoga had sent in by special courier had been subjected to a full evaluation. At this same time, Reginald Bell and Allan D. Mercant were supervising the interrogation of the Aras who had been captured there. The Galactic Medicos were being processed by the members of the Mutant Corps. Rhodan was hoping to obtain very vital information from them concerning the narcotic liqueur.
"Good evening, sir," Freyt greeted him in his usual unperturbed manner. He had much in common with the First Administrator.
Rhodan glanced at his watch and smiled faintly. "You could just as well have said good morning," he answered. "It's past midnight already."
Freyt kept a straight face. "I didn't want to deprive you of the illusion that you still had a well-deserved night's sleep ahead of you."
He took a seat and Rhodan offered him some hot coffee which he had ordered brought in to the office. Rhodan knew that the marshal was a hard-working man who did not waste any words concerning his own deeds and accomplishments.
After Freyt had sipped his coffee, he cautiously opened the subject: "I hope you have good news, sir."
Rhodan nodded gravely and began immediately. "The probability factors show that Okul must be the source of raw material for making Liquitiv. So it really looks as if this Dr. Nearman was a good catch. Too bad he had to die on our hands but we're lucky we had a good agent on Lepso. Otherwise we wouldn't have gotten hold of this information at all. This man Miguel Desoga moved fast, thank God!"
"So what you're saying is, there's probably some kind of plant growing on Okul from which the narcotic ingredient is extracted?"
"Perhaps."
Rhodan pondered over the question for a moment. In the past few days his scientific advisers had been coming up with an increasing amount of information from their own investigations. There were indications that the drug was not necessarily a plant extract. In any case, however, Okul was important in the plans of the anti-mutants.
"At any rate," he continued, "we can be fairly certain that this Lepso information isn't the mere ravings of a madman. Desoga sent along his own evaluation of the interrogation and he's pretty definite about the validity of the data. He says Dr. Nearman was normally conscious at the last because he'd had a doctor give him a booster shot."
Freyt set down his empty cup. He knew now that there was only one course of action: Okul was the next step. The Solar Marshal was sure his friend was thinking the same thing. In fact he had a good hunch that was why Rhodan had called him here at this hour.
"Frankly speaking," said Rhodan, "at present we're pretty helpless. The Antis have gone under cover. They were able to distribute so much Liquitiv beforehand that by the time we perceived the danger it was already too late to take any really effective action." He studied Freyt for a moment. "I know that not all of the Fleet officers approve of lifting the blockade."
Freyt had known Rhodan long enough to realize that the Administrator was referring to his concern over loyalties within his own camp. "There's been some criticism," he confessed, "but mostly its because the danger of the liqueur was discovered so late in the game. They take a dim view of our standard control procedures for products imported from the outside. They don't have much faith in the effectiveness of tests made by food and drug control authorities."
Rhodan smiled ruefully. "And yet I'd stake my life on any of the scientists responsible for that control."
Before Freyt could give an answer there was a knock on the door. He turned in time to see Reginald Bell enter the office. The latter appeared to be as worn out as they were. He came forward without a word and sighed heavily as he sat down in a chair. "Good evening, sir," said Freyt with mock politeness.
When Rhodan started to smile, Bell cut him off angrily. "I'm half dead!" he grumbled. "These Aras are a tough bunch of thugs. It took John Marshall and five of his best mutants to drag everything out of them." He fanned his face with his hand as if to come up for fresh air.
Rhodan's features hardened since he knew what was involved here. Thomas Cardif had worked with the Aras. "So what did the mutants find out?" he persisted.
Bell avoided his penetrating gaze. Freyt was a sharp enough observer to realize that their stocky friend had unpleasant news. When Bell answered, his voice was flat and toneless. "The Aras have confessed. They told us who the real inventor of the Liquitiv is."
Freyt knew instantly whom he was referring to. He and Bell would have preferred at the moment to change the subject but Rhodan's pride forced out the next question.
"Who?" he asked coldly.
Bell and Freyt exchanged quick glances. Their friend's personal tragedy weighed almost as heavily upon themselves. There was a pained silence for a moment.
Then Bell said the inevitable: "It was Thomas Cardif."
A stranger, knowing that the name of Rhodan's son had been mentioned, would have thought the father to be an unresponsive block of ice. But Bell and Freyt could see through his armorplate of self-control. They saw nothing but sorrow and bitterness behind his expressionless facade.
Bell raised his hands imploringly. "Don't forget that Cardif was under a hypno block. When he collaborated in the development of Liquitiv he was not himself. Just remember he was living under the name of Dr. Edmond Hugher. He felt he'd been deceived by you. Maybe the Antis have succeeded in lifting the hypnosis with their mental powers but all Cardif's actions have only been directed at you in order to destroy you-thanks to a bunch of false rumors he believes."
"That was a very pretty dance around the Maypole," retorted Rhodan sarcastically. "When you boil it all down, what does it say? Thomas Cardif, the son of Rhodan, is a criminal."
Bell flared up on the defensive. "He's the product of an unfortunate chain of events, Perry!"
Rhodan's voice became louder also. "Have you forgotten the time he wanted to betray the Earth to the Springers? Don't you remember the clan chief, Cokaze? Cardif and that old patriarch were working hand in hand and they almost succeeded in destroying the Solar Imperium."
"One thing he got from his father, alright," countered Bell: "He could always make it hot for the opposition."
Reginald Bell was perhaps the only man who could dare to criticize Rhodan concerning private matters. He rarely used the prerogative but when he did it was, as usual, on impulse. And Rhodan seldom commented on Bell's reproaches, preferring to swallow them in silence. At the moment he knew that even he had made a mistake in having his son brought up by strangers. The boy had been raised without parental love. From a carefree young man he had come to be an embittered enemy of his father. Once Rhodan had sought to bring about a reconciliation and over Thora's grave he had offered him his hand. But before an audience of millions of TV viewers Cardif had abruptly rejected him. This painful scene remained indelibly in the memory of the First Administrator-the chief of a small empire which had come to be called 'Solar' and which was on its way to becoming a decisive factor of power within the galaxy.
"There's a theoretical possibility that Cardif is on Okul. Since our information points to that place as the hub of the narcotics production, it leaves us no other choice: we must switch to the attack mode."
With that Rhodan had spoken the decisive word. The
time of inaction had ended. The spider's prey was beginning to wriggle in the web-turning boldly toward its center.
Freyt was glad that the Thomas Cardif subject had now been left behind for the moment. "You've no doubt had some ideas concerning our next move, sir," he said. "Have you worked out any specific commands for the Fleet?"
Rhodan nodded in confirmation. New life had come back into his powerful features. The three of them were conferring here in the middle of the night and everything would depend upon their decisions.
"My operation against Okul involves a completely altered set of conditions," said Rhodan. "We have to make a lightning strike. When the enemy discovers us it must be too late-for him."
Bell massaged his neck His fatigue had suddenly vanished and now he sat forward in his chair. "The Ironduke," he said with emphasis.
The Ironduke was a battleship of the Stardust class, measuring about one-half mile in diameter, and it was equipped with the new linear space drive. Whereas on the original prototype, Fantasy, they had been forced to dispense with a full complement of armament, in this regard the Ironduke was a high-powered arsenal. Once inside the zone of semispace the Ironduke was immune to detection by any hypersensor. There was no tracking device that could trace its position. It moved in a kind of buffer zone between dimensions, which the converter invented by Dr. Kalup served to generate. A compensator field screened off any fifth dimensional or hyperspace effects so that no dematerializations could occur.
A linear-drive ship flew a phantom-like course in a libration zone where both fourth and fifth dimensional influences were equally ineffective. More than 50 years before, Terrans had succeeded in wresting the secret of linear flight from the Druufs, who were invaders from another space-time continuum, but it had taken a long while to convert theoretical plans into practical application.
"You're absolutely right," Rhodan agreed. "The sixth-dimensional absorption fields will keep the Antis from detecting us ahead of time. When we come out of the libration zone, they won't have time to set up any systematic defense."
Inwardly Rhodan knew that any attack against Okul would be of little use if a cure for the Liquitiv addiction were not discovered soon. What would be the point of reducing one Anti temple after another to rubbish and ashes-since the seeds of this illness had taken root and proliferated throughout the Earth and its colonial planets? At most, Okul was merely a faint glimmer of hope.
But Freyt and Bell did not appear to be concerned with such apprehensions. At this late hour they were busy working out a battle plan.
Rhodan realized that there was still something that had to be done before the Ironduke could take off. The most important item was the matter of weapons. Fortunately no one in the Solar Fleet knew of Rhodan's plan to equip the Ironduke's crew with perfect facsimiles of old-fashioned machine-rifles. A storm of indignation would have been the result.
Against the most dangerous enemy of all, was the Administrator going to operate with weapons which had been considered hopelessly obsolete for many generations?
7/ WRONG COURSE
In the course of his life a great many things had been said about John Emery's character. He had been called everything from lazy, ill natured and a loudmouth to 'pushy' and egotistical. Although such accusations may have been based on honest convictions they were nevertheless indicative of a poor understanding of human nature.
John Emery was nothing less than an organizer of the first water. In fact he had developed his talents in this area far more than he had in his career with the Solar Fleet. In the latter respect he was only a sergeant. Of course he could be proud of the fact that he was part of an elite troop that was only assigned to special missions but that was the extent of his military reputation.
Whenever Emery found out that somebody in the circle of his acquaintances possessed something that seemed desirable to him, it was only a matter of time before he would gain possession of the object of his wishes. Often there had been others in the Fleet who had sought to emulate Emery's 'hobby'. At times there were even some men who talked about having acquired as much loot under their bunks as he had. But in comparison to Emery they were amateurs.
John Emery worked with an irresistible swiftness which didn't seem to be compatible with his physical make-up because he weighed over 225 pounds and every bone was well padded. Also he didn't give anybody the impression of being either charming or even courteous. He was simply 'that certain something' which had made him what he was.
According to the legend that Emery had become, it was said that in his bailiwick there was everything imaginable: from a snipped-off Chinese pigtail to the electromagnetic tooth filling of a native of Ferbador. Whatever he did not have stashed away in his locker or cabin he could always get anyway. Whatever occurred to him to have he could always lay his hands on in a hurry. His fee for procuring things for others was also as unusual as the talent itself: he always asked for some rare item that belonged to his 'client'.
So it was that in the course of years, John Emery, sergeant of an elite unit of the Solar Fleet, had become a commercial power within his own domain. His friends maintained that there was nothing that could ever phase him.
It was the 9th of April of 2103 and Emery was in for a very bad shock.
He was lying on his bunk and plotting as usual. He was thinking of Eduard Gooding, the man from Nigeria, and how he could separate him from the carved death mask that he had brought from his homeland. Emery had no personal yen for death masks but that youngster Bergotta was crazy for this one. Since Gooding had proved to be as stubborn as a water buffalo, Bergotta had come to Emery to report his lack of success.
Emery was so deep in his broodings over how he could deal with the Afro-terran that he only heard his buzzer call on the third summons. The sergeant rolled out of bed. He had very definite plans for his furlough starting next day but this call at such an early hour was not what he had in mind. He turned on the video screen, which was of his own special design, and waited resignedly for the thing to warm up.
Finally the rather fierce countenance of a man appeared who did not seem to appreciate Emery's custom-made screen. "Does that thing always take that long to come on?" he asked irritably.
The sergeant regarded him with a mixture of concealed indignation and ironic humor. "More or less," he answered.
"You're going to have to cancel your leave," the man announced.
Emery could see now that the other was in uniform. He made a feeble attempt to make his pyjamas look more presentable by hitching the pants up higher on his midsection. Then he stuck a finger in his ear and sought to relieve an itch.
"Something biting you?" inquired the man glacially. Emery wanted to tell him that he had a right to itch wherever he pleased, without it being anybody's business. But he settled for a very obvious yawn.
"You will report to your commander immediately," the stranger ordered. "Your unit has to be lined up at the spaceport within three hours."
Emery's first thought was his private hoard of loot. His second thought was dedicated to the unfortunate Bergotta who would have to do without his death mask for awhile longer. And finally his third thought was of his furlough. "Very well, sir," he grumbled.
He made a new connection with one of his friends and assigned him the task of watching over his billet in his absence. He urged him to keep an eye on it every minute. Then he tried to reach Bergotta but wasn't able to find him.
One hour later, he proceeded to the giant spaceport of Terrania. He did not know that he was not part of a 5,000-man mission that was going to take off in the Ironduke but that was a piece of news he could adjust himself to without much trouble.
There was one other development, however, that would come as a great surprise: he didn't yet know that he was going to be issued a weapon that was practically a fossil-and yet he had sought in vain for years to add such an automatic rifle to his 'collection'.
• • •
Still in a disgruntled mood, Emery took a look
at the overcast April sky. Before him stretched the vast installations of the Terrania spaceport. From his long experience in the military he knew that the cancellation of his furlough on such short notice was a sign that some pretty important signals must be flying. Although a big operation was taking shape, nobody had passed out any information as yet. They were all standing out in front of a large hangar that was at some distance from the main field. The commander had shown up with a serious look on his face, which probably meant that he didn't know anything either.
Then came another man and at first glance it was apparent that this one knew the elite task force's destination. He was one of those types with a razor-sharp look in his eyes, the kind who had a way of taking hold of a problem and straightening it out. Walking with him were officers of the ship's crew, which served to emphasize his powerful figure.
No one could mistake Jefe Claudrin.
When the Epsalian spoke his voice was something like thunder. His physical proportions and tremendous strength were especially impressive on planets like Earth where the gravity was much less than that of Epsal.
Emery felt an elbow nudge from Hans Berker, the man standing next to him. "Claudrin!" muttered Berker. "That means we're taking off in a linear-drive ship!"
Claudrin only glanced briefly at the ground troops. He kept stomping along without stopping or wasting a word. One of the officers was conversing with Lt. Henderson, the commander of their special unit, but his end of the conversation only seemed to consist of nodding his head and muttering respectful "yes sirs".
Henderson only commanded a part of the 5,000-man contingent that was to board the Ironduke. His commando task force was specially trained for combat operations on alien planets under life-support conditions which were hostile to humans. This meant that Henderson and his men were a space infantry organization and space travel was only a means of transport to other theaters of operations.