by Perry Rhodan
"We do not believe you," the robot replied coldly. "You shall come with us and receive just punishment. Your successor will assume office."
"But he is not instructed," the Commander insisted.
Now the guard hesitated. He was not allowed to kill the Commander if there was no informed successor. In the short indecisive pause that ensued, PS5, who had unobtrusively slipped in from the next room, said: "The Commander is telling the truth, guard! I am a witness to that."
M7 also came in unnoticed, sliding along the wall behind the robots who had meanwhile entered the room. In his hand was the key which loosened the all-decisive adjustment screw. If he made it in time...
He managed with two of them. The third seemed to have noticed his first touch, for he awkwardly turned to aim his weapon arm at M7.
PS5 acted instantly. The energy ray of his hand weapon hit guard three in the head and drilled its way hissingly into the positronic brain. Seconds later it deactivated the fourth robot as well.
It was only the leader who had a slight chance, which he did not get around to using, because D3 had meanwhile emerged from his hiding place and was participating. He did not switch off his raygun until the fifth robot was a glowing heap of half-molten metal and the almost unbearable heat made breathing difficult in the Command Room.
"You were very lucky," PS5 said calmly as he put his weapon back into his pocket. "You almost became the victim of your own order—or at least of those orders the 'Master' issued. Now, O1, have you decided?"
The officer nodded. He was very pale.
"I am on your side—but I have one request. I want to see him, the one you call 'Master'. Is that possible?"
"You are entitled to see him, in fact," the Commander was the one to answer him. It had all happened so quickly that the Commander had not had the time to be shocked. Before he had comprehended, the danger was over. Only the five deactivated robots reminded him of how close he had been to death. "Come with me, O1. I will introduce you to the Master."
The two men left for the adjoining room. PS5 watched them go.
"I think," he said, "it won't take long now. Somehow the robots must have discovered what we are planning and they will take action. Perhaps the Master is in touch with them after all. If we only knew! Until now there hasn't been any sign of that, let alone proof."
D3 went over to the wall and opened the sliding door of a built-in closet.
"We have enough weapons to withstand any attack by the robots. All section heads are likewise armed. I see no more point in keeping our intentions secret. Let us officially declare war on the Master."
Before the other men could express their agreement, the intercom buzzed. PS5 depressed the button. The screen lit up and M4 said: "Report from the Laboratory Sector: we have acquired an unexpected ally. He suddenly showed up right in our midst. He has come from another ship and he doesn't look like us either..."
"From another ship?" the psychologist interrupted, baffled. "What does that mean? Are there other ships?"
"The Universe is full of them," M4 explained concisely. "There are inhabited worlds and entire realms of stars—but it would be too complicated to explain it in a few words. The stranger will do that when everything is over.
"I still don't understand—we didn't notice another ship. Where is it? How did the stranger get here?"
"He will tell you himself. Don't be astonished when you see him. I already told you that he doesn't look like us. He is smaller, covered with fur and speaks our language."
A certain suspicion was aroused in PS5. He cautiously said: "Perhaps he didn't I come from another ship at all. There is a lot in our world that we do not yet know. In the unknown regions
The face of M4 was suddenly shoved to one side and another face appeared. The psychologist was struck dumb when he saw it. Aghast and full of amazement he stared into the brown eyes of a creature the likes of which he had never before seen. He could not find any malice in the eyes, at most a jolly curiosity. What particularly struck PS5 was the yellow incisor.
"You can believe M4," the stranger said in a high and squeaky voice that would have drawn a smile from PS5 under different circumstances. "No, I have nothing to do with your 'Master'. Who is he, anyway?"
PS5 frowned. "Can you read thoughts?' he asked, startled.
"Yes," Pucky admitted simply. "And I can do more than that. I'm coming to you now and bringing M4 with me. It won't take long—five seconds at the most."
"Five seconds...!" PS5 gasped in bewilderment. The laboratory sector was at least 800 meters away from Central Command.
However, Pucky's face had already disappeared. Almost simultaneously a phenomenon occurred in the middle of the Command Room. The air began to flicker and out of the whirling circles of overlapping dimensions two figures crystallized: M4 and Pucky.
"Here we be!" squeaked the mouse-beaver behind the back of the psychologist, who had still been staring at the screen. Now he whirled around as if bitten by a tarantula and stared at the two intruders as if seeing ghosts.
"By the spirits of the ancestors...!" he gasped.
D3 had the opportunity to witness the materialization. While he could find no explanation for the miracle, he possessed enough imagination to envisage the wonderful capabilities of alien living beings. This did not even seem frightening. Instead it made an innocent and peaceful impression.
"Leave your ancestors in peace," Pucky recommended to the psychologist and listened in the direction of the cabin. "There are two men next door. Who are they?"
"How do you know that?" PS5 stammered, laboriously trying to regain his composure.
"I already told you that I could read thoughts," Pucky declared curtly. "Oh, I know—the Commander and a young officer. They are discussing something—but it seems senseless. It is as if they were talking to a third party who doesn't hear them and doesn't answer."
PS5 had recovered from his surprise. His brain began to function normally again. He realized that the little stranger could read thoughts. Perhaps this was their opportunity to expose the Master. In his delight at having found a way at last to uncover the secret, he failed to hear Pucky's last remark.
"The two men are speaking with the Master," he explained, and described to the mouse-beaver in a few words what was happening in the adjoining room. He concluded: "They have controlled our people since time immemorial and ruled through the respective commanders. They gave us the laws according to which we lived and died. They live somewhere in the unknown regions of this ship and only show themselves in the form of the old man who is called 'Master'!"
"On a picture screen," Pucky nodded. "This I have to see."
Together with PS5 and D3 he entered the room where the Commander and O1 were standing in front of the big screen, the face of the Master looking down at them.
For a few minutes Pucky listened to the discussion which was going in circles, leading to no positive result. The Master stubbornly rejected all explanations, repeatedly demanding obedience and the return to the old state of affairs.
The mouse-beaver narrowed his eyes and listened intently. His incisor had disappeared. Silently he squatted across from the screen and regarded the picture. However, try as he would to find the Master's thought impulses among the many that reached him, his efforts were in vain.
It was not easy to find the thoughts of a man who was to be seen on a screen. Bodily he was at some other place, which first had to be located. But Pucky had never needed more than two minutes to trace this sort of speaker.
Until today!
For almost 10 minutes he concentrated his listening, then he shook his head and waddled leisurely up close to the picture. PS5 had explained to the Commander and O1 in two or three sentences and they had taken a waiting stance.
The Master interrupted the lecture he had been rattling off as if he had learned it by heart. After a short pause he asked: "Who are you?"
"I just wanted to ask you the same question," the mouse-beaver squeaked. "Where are you?
Are you here in the ship?"
As the Master answered, Pucky tried again to get the bearings of the 'source of thoughts', to no avail. There was only one explanation for it!
"I am the Master, the deputy of the ancestors who built and started this ship. The secrets will clarify themselves when the ship reaches its destination. Until then I demand obedience. But you don't belong to us. Who are you?"
Pucky was quite sure by now but he wanted one last proof.
"Your goals may be good but do you think it is right that people are ruled by machines? Why does no one here know anything about the origin of this race? Why doesn't anyone know that they are Arkonide?"
The face of the Master registered astonishment but the voice remained placid and expressionless as ever. "The machines are more reliable and infallible than people! Counter-question: what do you know about Arkonides?"
Pucky bobbed his head. He had been expecting that. Without paying any further attention to the picture of the Master, whose eyes stared fixedly at him, he turned to the anxiously waiting men, the leaders of a revolution against robots. "I think we can do without entering this room in the future. We may ignore the Master, who claims to be the deputy of the ancestors. Furthermore I assume that something went wrong when the ship was started. This was not planned! Well, we shall soon see."
PS5 stepped forward and faced Pucky. "Words alone do not remove the Master from the world. He is there on the screen and he can see and hear everything that happens here."
"How right you are," Pucky admitted sarcastically. "That is why we shall not enter this room again. And then, friends, the Master is blind and deaf. By the way he is even mute!"
That no one understood, but Pucky knew exactly what he was talking about.
They locked the room and returned to the Command Room. There the Commander asked: "And—what now?"
The psychologist pointed at D3. "Now would perhaps be the right moment to think back on the weird discovery, we made in the center of the ship. It must somehow be connected with the Master. Our ancestors are sleeping there
Pucky let the psychologist tell him about it and found that the pieces fit together. Still what the purpose was of the undertaking remained unanswered—if there was, a purpose at all.
"I think," the mouse-beaver said after PS5 had finished, "I'd like to have a look at that. While we are at it, we will just turn off the Master's electricity."
"Turn off the electricity?" M7 cried in astonishment.
Pucky nodded. "Naturally! Or can one of you imagine a robot without energy—whereby it is of no consequence whether the robot has a face of metal or of plastic."
With his incisor exposed, Pucky enjoyed the amazed admiration his revelation received. With one sentence he had solved the great mystery.
Or at least it seemed so...
5/ WAR DECLARED!
Technician 39 did not fall for longer than a second but that second was like an eternity that would not end.
At any rate he had enough opportunity to perfectly perceive the fate awaiting him. It seemed to be of a different nature than they had all assumed.
The slide did not end in the atomic fire of the reactor. Ever since T39 had begun to slide towards the gravitation center of the ship, the temperature had not increased but steadily decreased. In those few seconds it had become downright cold.
The technician did not know that his limbs had already been brushed by the breath of eternal frost, which bit into his flesh, soon penetrating it. Still he was able to see, even though it was perhaps the last sensory impression his brain could register as it rapidly waned.
As he plummeted unsupported into the depths, he could make out an enormous hall below in which the motionless guards were awaiting him. They were standing around a rectangular basin made of some white material that looked like marble. It seemed to be filled with water, a fog-like film spread over its surface.
T39 submerged into the fog and then into the water. He did not feel the icy cold that immediately froze his body and decomposed his synthetic clothing.
The guards had been waiting for this moment. Cumbersomely they moved towards the edge of the basis. With pole-like instruments they pulled over the floating body of the technician and carefully lifted it out of the waters. They were not bothered by the fact that the average temperature in the hall was about –3,180° Fahrenheit.
A stretcher was wheeled into the hall and T39 was placed on it. The robots went about their work with great caution, they knew exactly that the slightest negligence could cause the stiffly frozen body to break.
Two guards rolled the stretcher out of the room. The others remained behind and took up their posts again.
They were awaiting the next victim but they did not know that they had just handled the last one.
Their time had run out.
• • •
PS5, D3 and R75 accompanied Pucky. The Commander and the others remained in the Command Room so that they could alarm the crew, should the robots rebel.
R75 pointed at the wall. "That is where we made the hole. Behind it are the coffins. But the combat guards are there, too, and they are waiting."
Pucky nodded his satisfaction. "They will be surprised alright, I think. You are well armed and will put on a fireworks show that will make their lens eyes pop out. I myself—well, I think I'll just have some real fun again, playing with them."
"Playing?" The psychologist was full of doubt as he looked at Pucky. He had still received no satisfactory answer to his question about where the mouse-beaver had come from and who he was. PS5 had merely accepted the fact that they had found a good confederate. "Do you think you can get rid of the guards that way?"
"It is called psychokinetics," Pucky nodded, watching R75 welding open the thick perimeter of the metal insert. "There is only one way to move matter without touching it and that is with the help of concentrated thoughts. I have deactivated entire armies of robots with it."
While that was an extreme exaggeration, it was true that the mouse-beaver had employed his psychokinetic talent to overcome many an opponent who could have otherwise crushed him with his bare hands.
The lid clattered to the floor and the opening was free.
"The guards normally appear within an hour," PS5 hastily explained. "Only—maybe they will be quicker this time."
"We shall see," squeaked Pucky and squeezed through the hole after the rim had cooled off somewhat. "Now come on, friends!"
This time they did not have to fear an attack from the rear and could concentrate all their attention towards the front, where the long rows of transparent glass blocks stood in the dusky hall. In them the motionless bodies of the slumberers were still resting.
Pucky took a few steps and stopped next to the first block. With one leap he swung himself onto the edge of the basin and looked in at the naked body of the Arkonide. What his companions did not know was no insoluble mystery to him. He had been aware of what was going on there even before entering the hall—he just did not know what purpose it all had.
PS5 came over and looked down at the slumberer. And then he was suddenly taken aback. He squinted his eyes and cast a quick glance at D3. "Have a good look at him," he said in a husky voice, "and then tell me if I am crazy."
The physician nodded. "You are not crazy," he confirmed in a hollow, quavering voice. "I know what you mean but before we make a mistake let's look for proof. In which block was the girl?"
"In the next one," replied PS5 and went over to the neighboring block. He looked in and recoiled in alarm, "Yes, I was right, they were switched. Why?"
Pucky, who not only heard the conversation but could read the men's thoughts as well, learned the whole story within seconds. He checked it. "You are definitely sure? This is the same room...?"
"A mistake is out of the question," PS5 declared. Other people were in those very same basins just a few days ago."
Pucky had to admit that he no longer understood anything. At first it had seemed that here in the c
enter of the ship Arkonides were lying in cold sleep. The milky fluid seemed to testify to that. It would have to maintain a temperature far below freezing without changing its aggregate condition, which remained liquid. That seemed to check out.
But why were other people now in the peculiar basins...?
Pucky's stream of thought was interrupted when the doctor suddenly cried out: "I know this man... it is T39. I have often treated him. He is here where the girl was. But..."
The psychologist cringed. He backed away in fright as both horror and a question crossed his face.
"The technician," he said hoarsely, "was picked up by the Death Squad an hour ago and put into the converter. He is dead."
Gradually Pucky began to piece things together. "An hour ago...? He was to die—and now he is here before us? Well, PS5 and D3, are you slowly catching on?"
The two men gazed expressionlessly at the mouse-beaver.
"But it is so simple," Pucky squeaked animatedly. "They have always told you that you must die when your time is up but in reality no one died. Now I know that those sentenced to death landed here in the freezing room and not in the converter. Just like this technician. That should be clear. But a new question arises: what happened to the people who were in this basin before T39? Where has the girl gone? We have to follow her trail to make progress."
PS5 slowly nodded. Even though it was extremely cold, he began to sweat. From one second to the next, all laws lost their validity. From one second to the next, the guards no longer appeared as merciless machine creatures but as benefactors.
But—what was the meaning of it all?
Pucky recognized the conflict in the psychologist's heart. He said: "The possibility does exist that we were unfair to the robots but still they kept you in uncertainty. It is all the same to me what will happen from now on. I only came because a telepathic cry for help reached me and from a man who was in deadly peril—it was probably this man here, whom you call T39. It seems that he is still alive—and may even live for quite awhile, until this ship reaches its destination, I assume. Therefore I could return to my ship and leave the rest to you..."