by Perry Rhodan
"Their hypnoblock is fairly weak. Perhaps you ought to try to free them first. They should be able to help us later."
Major Deringhouse left the ship together with Betty Toufry and André Noir.
• • •
Captain Berner and Lieutenant Hill sat in the control center of the Z-VIII-1 and whiled away the time with odd conversations. If an unsuspecting bystander could have listened in, he would have been greatly surprised.
"If these headaches persist much longer I'll be sure to go crazy," Hill complained, putting his hand flat on his forehead. "Perhaps I've lost my mind already."
"It's the same with me," Brenner chimed in. "For instance, I can't understand why we're sitting here on Mars and waiting for something we don't know what. Until yesterday I felt a coercion as if somebody directed me and gave me his commands. Since last night this coercion is gone but headaches just like yours remain. I've got the feeling I could do what I want. But I don't feel like doing anything because I don't know what I want to do!"
Hill shook his head. "Me too! And my men and yours the same. I know exactly how the Supermutant surprised us with his method called hypnoblock, if I'm not mistaken. We forgot to put on our absorber helmets. I know all about it but I don't have the strength to do anything to counteract it. It can't be right."
"It's not right as far as the Supermutant is concerned but it isn't right with Rhodan either."
"We must be mental hermaphrodites," Hill exclaimed and started to laugh as if he had never heard a better joke. Berner remained calm. He didn't find what his companion had just said in the least funny. After a while he touched his head and murmured: "I believe the pressure's getting stronger and at the same time fading away. What's more I want to leave the ship now. I must leave the ship! Are you coming with me?"
Hill gave no answer. Silently Berner rose up led the way to the airlock where he donned an oxygen mask. The other men of the crew joined wordlessly.
None of them expressed any surprise when they found that the crew members of the other four interceptors had also left their ships and stood around in the ravine undecided what to do next. They all had evidently followed the same order that intruded from nowhere into their brains.
At the exit of the ravine three figures loomed up and approached slowly. Hill perceived with certainty that the orders came from one of the three people toward whom he walked together with all the other men.
"You're rid of the Supermutant," he clearly understood in his brain. His headaches were suddenly gone. He seemed unfettered from a ring that had tightly been locked around his forehead and felt as if he could breathe freely for the first time in days.
He quickened his step and knew all of a sudden that the insidious spell of the cunning Supermutant had completely subsided.
The all clustered around Major Deringhouse, André Noir and Betty Toufry.
"We hope you'll forgive us, sir, but..."
"You don't have to tell me, Lieutenant," Deringhouse interrupted him and smiled. "I've been through the same experience. I even flew back to Earth and raised havoc on the territory of Terrania." He noticed that Hill was horrified. "I've been liberated by Noir just like you and he has given me back my life. At the same time we were able to gain possession of the most powerful destroyer the Supermutant had. He has fled toward Jupiter and is being pursued by us."
Lieutenant Hill wanted to reply but never got the chance. Betty Toufry abruptly pushed Noir and Deringhouse to the side and threw herself flat on the ground. "Take cover!" she shouted desperately. "We're under attack!"
The men scattered apart and ducked behind rocks and protrusions. They had scarcely time to find cover when the firing commenced. Bullets whistled above their heads and ricocheted from the rocks.
André Noir rolled over next to Betty. "Where's it all coming from?"
"From the left of the machine gun. They're planning to come out with their guns. Fortunately they don't have any rayguns, only small firearms. But we're completely defenseless. If you don't break the spell before their sally..."
Noir ignored the exploding bullets and began to concentrate on the invisible gunners. It was an arduous feat to reach the fettered minds but once it was done everything went smoothly.
The shooting ceased.
Deringhouse and Hill remained in their prone positions like all the other men. Only Noir and Betty rose up without fear and walked toward the well-camouflaged machine gun nest. Not a shot was fired. Instead two, three figures emerged from behind the rocks, followed by others.
They were the defenders of Monterny's stronghold. Their hypnoblocks crumbled away as Noir gave them the most intensive treatment and removed the last remnants of the evil will fostered upon them.
It would have been preposterous for anyone to claim that Clifford Monterny had selected the most valuable human stock. Rhodan had expressed no desire to recruit these men. They were to be taken back to Earth and delivered to their own governments. In the meantime they were given quarters in the Good Hope VII in a room they were forbidden to leave.
Now the last obstacle preventing radio communications had been removed and Deringhouse informed Rhodan of the events that had taken place and reported what they had found in the abandoned lair of the Supermutant. Then he asked for permission to establish contact with Bell. Rhodan did not hesitate long.
"I have some very urgent matters to settle. The negotiations between the governments concerning the contemplated One World Government have entered a decisive phase. I don't want to miss the next sessions under any circumstances. Moreover, I can't leave Ivan alone without supervision until I can be absolutely sure of him. Therefore I don't have any objections if you want to take part in the hunting down of the Supermutant. We must abolish the most terrible threat the Earth has ever known. If the Supermutant manages to lay low without being found, he'll come forth some day and profit from his experiences. Now he has been weakened and he is vulnerable. Monterny must be found!"
7/ MONTERNY'S WORLD
The planetoid had no name and its orbit had not yet been described by man. It measured about fifty miles across and its shape resembled a cube. It displayed a remarkably rapid rotation and turned about its axis in less than an hour. The surface consisted of an agglomeration of precipitous cliffs and deep gorges which were continually shrouded in darkness. The higher peaks were illuminated at regular intervals by the far away Sun.
Due to the fact that new peaks were constantly coming into the range of sunlight and that the sight kept changing by the minute, it looked from a great distance like the perpetual flashing of a beacon.
This special circumstance was responsible for the turn of events.
First of all the blinking light attracted the attention of the Supermutant and increased his vigilance. Only after he magnified the picture of the asteroid on the observation screen did he find the explanation for the phenomenon. At the same time he decided to choose this planetoid as his temporary refuge. It would have defied explanation why he picked this one in particular.
He adjusted the speed of his interceptor to the velocity of the asteroid and began to circle around it... He saw with satisfaction that. there were many good places to land. Even if one of Rhodan's ships were to fly over the asteroid it would be far from certain that he could be detected. And in case it really happened he still was equipped with excellent defensive armament and protected by the energy shield around the ship.
He quickly found a wide gorge with overhanging precipices.
The Supermutant was an outstanding pilot. He set the ship down in a smooth landing and waited calmly till the vibration of the hull was damped out. Then he ordered his two men to remain at their posts and to fire with their impulse-beamers at any ship that might show up. After that he went into the airlock, donned his spacesuit and left the interceptor.
Without knowing it he experienced what Bell always thought to have a special attraction: to float free and easy like a fish in water through a vacuum that was virtually without gravity. The Supermutant
began to realize that there were other things besides wealth and power which made life worthwhile. He pushed off from the airlock and sailed across the valley, sinking ever so slowly. When he reached the rocky ground and made an imprudent movement, he soared aloft again like a feather in the wind almost up to the ledges at the top, to descend in tranquility to the bottom.
He forgot all about his precarious situation and felt deeply intoxicated. With a mighty leap he jumped up again and shot like a rocket into the star-studded sky. Naturally he followed the rotation of the asteroid and thus almost remained over the same spot while flying higher and higher, though loosing some of his speed.
Eventually he would reach the point where his levitation became insufficient to overcome the minute gravity that exerted its pull to bring him down in slow motion tempo. At the apex he remembered the initial purpose of his excursion. He looked down but was unable to detect his ship. it was perfectly concealed by the cliffs jutting far out and no further camouflage was needed.
He waited serenely till he began to float down again. He was seized by a heretofore unknown majestic feeling of true freedom. He was unable to control the direction of his fall without using his hand raygun but this made little difference to him. There was plenty of space. He had a whole world to himself.
He consoled himself with the irony of fate. He always wanted to own the world—and finally a world was his. It was smaller than Earth and no life existed on it but it was a world that belonged to him and nobody would dispute it.
He landed gently on the ground of the valley, more than 1500 feet away from his ship. He cautiously bounced up at an angle and glided down in a parabola toward the interceptor, not rising more than thirty to sixty feet above the ground. He reached it with two leaps. The third one took him up to the entrance.
Here he remained for a moment to sort out his feelings and regain his composure. It was the first time he experienced such emotions. Floating weightlessly over a small uninhabited world had touched chords inside him that had never been plucked before. He almost lost sight of the reasons for his presence and the threatening pursuit of his deadly enemy.
At the rim of the gorge the light of the Sun crept like a living thing over the cliffs and fell into the shadowy depths, where it vanished. One hour later it would follow the same path and continue again and again.
For the first time in his life the Supermutant saw how beautiful the world could be even in such bare and lifeless surroundings. His mind opened up and accepted the wonders that were presented to him.
And precisely at the same second he perceived a silent and merciless voice in his brain: "Clifford Monterny, we've found you at last! Perhaps we'd never have caught up with you had you not become a human being in the end!
The Supermutant shuddered. His brain-wave shield! He'd forgotten about it. Unrestrained, his thought-waves flowed Out into space and a telepath had intercepted them. One of Rhodan's telepaths. It was too late to remedy his oversight. "Who are you?" he asked in his thoughts.
"Don't you recognize me? Tatjana Michalowna." To his sorrow the Supermutant realized that Rhodan had been so circumspect as to send a telepath after him who could not be influenced against her wishes. Tatjana was perfectly able to set up her insulation block and was sure to do so if it became necessary. But she probably had not come alone.
"So it's you, Tatjana. You've betrayed me. Aren't you satisfied yet? Do you want to kill me now? You're going too far!
"Not at all, Supermutant. You can make your own choice how you want to die. Hurry up! We don't have any time to lose."
It finally dawned on the Supermutant how his own victims must have suffered, now that he was on the receiving end. He was given an ultimatum that would result in his death. And why? Because for a short moment he had disdained power and ambition and had become a human being; because he had seen beauty in a ray of the Sun; in short because he had ceased being a monster for ten seconds.
Could it be that goodness was condemned to perish? "I'm coming!" he said loudly and he knew that Tatjana understood him. He took one last look at the inanimate world that had been his exclusive possession for a few minutes, turned slowly around and entered the airlock of the interceptor. Silently the ordinarily heavy, here almost weightless, door closed behind him.
• • •
The steady blinking had attracted Bell's attention. Without interrupting his conversation with Major Deringhouse, who had come to help him with the Good Hope VII and requested a position check, he corrected the course of the Z-13 and made sure that the Z-45 followed him. "So you'd like to participate in the hunt?" he asked while he tried eagerly to envision the source of the blinking. "It'd be best if you'd take up the search in the opposite direction."
"Why?" Deringhouse asked warily, knowing Bell only too well. "Did you find a clue there?"
"No, nothing at all. Where are you located now?"
"About 120 million miles behind you."
"Why don't you come here? Maybe you'll get here in time."
Of course Bell couldn't know that his words would turn out to be only too true. He switched off the transceiver, gave Lieutenant Bings a few instructions and took the strange light effect under observation again.
When the Z-13 had come close enough to the asteroid Bell verified the true nature of the spectacle. He called himself a fool for not having recognized it earlier and ignored Tatjana's faint smile.
Tatjana engaged her 'telepathic receiver' again as they skimmed across the rugged surface of the asteroid. And then she felt those bewildering thoughts infiltrate her brain. At first she could scarcely believe that they emanated from the Supermutant inasmuch as they were good and even beautiful thoughts, most unlikely thoughts to spring from the mind of such a fiend. But then all her doubts were stilled.
The Supermutant was in the vicinity and the fantastic beauty of the sterile planetoid had touched him deeply. And because of it he had neglected to shield his thoughts.
"Clifford Monterny," Tatjana said coldly, "we've found you at last..."
• • •
They waited at a distance from the asteroid. Lieutenant Bings in the Z-45 took up his position on the other side of the little satellite and maintained communication via telecom with Bell. In this manner it was impossible for the Supermutant to slip through in case he contemplated an attempt to escape.
Both men in the Z-45 put on their absorber helmets as Bell had done in the Z-13. Tatjana needed no artificial protection from the mental attacks of the Supermutant thanks to her inborn counteractive gift. Pucky was also able to screen his mind with a totally effective defense.
"How about locking you up?" Bell suggested jokingly.
The mouse-beaver tried to make his trusting eyes glower menacingly. His tail quivered with excitement. "I'd like to see you try it," he taunted Bell, looking him up and down. "Are you afraid I might take over the job of finishing off the Supermutant?"
"Nonsense!" Bell said, flying into a rage. When you get a whim to play you can cause a disaster. You can pilot the ship against my will and..."
"There's nothing the Supermutant can do to me," Pucky cut him short calmly. "I've got more powers than you and Rhodan suspect."
Bell shrugged his shoulders and turned his attention again to the rotating asteroid. The Good Hope VII was still too far away to share the action.
Suddenly Bell's head droned with a piercing pain. At first he believed it was some accident but peering at the telecom screen showing the interior of the Z-45 his worst fears were confirmed. Lieutenant Bings as well as Sergeant Adolf clearly exhibited symptoms of sudden nausea or head pains. Bing's eyes became glazed and fixed on some point out there in infinity.
"Tatjana!" Bell moaned with a last effort of his faltering will. "The Supermutant! He's trying to..."
The telepathic girl had already grasped what was happening. Although she didn't suffer any of the ill effects that imposition of hypnoblocks always entailed, the telepathic commands of the supermutant reached her as well b
ut had no damaging results.
The ship of the Supermutant came into her view as it shot up with dizzying speed from the surface of the asteroid and turned into the opposite direction from the planetoid's trajectory. Evidently the Supermutant had no intention of losing time with the destruction of his adversaries. He continued fleeing to an unknown goal.
Bell sat paralyzed in his seat and did not react either when Tatjana yelled at him.
Pucky squatted in the corner as was his custom and grinned. He did it with so much mischievous pleasure that it would have infuriated Bell to the extreme if he could have seen it. But Bell no longer saw anything. His brain had been rendered inactive.
Pucky waddled forward and swung himself with a fancy leap into the seat of the copilot. He fastidiously removed the carrot that was still standing there and looked out the window. The ship of the escaping Supermutant was still clearly visible to the naked eye. It raced along the path of the drifting asteroids and threatened to immerse itself in the visible swarm of celestial bodies.
"By golly!" the mouse-beaver growled, narrowing his harmless-looking eyes with great concentration.
It was beyond his power to move the big mass of the Supermutant's interceptor but he was able to operate the controls by intensive concentration. However this would have been too strenuous for a longer duration.
Therefore he took recourse in a method that had already been proven twice before: he separated the two elements of the drive mechanism by teleportation and put the energy reactor out of working order. The interceptor continued streaking into the asteroid belt with the same tremendous velocity it had already attained.
Major Deringhouse paled when Tatjana called him. "I can't get Bell out of the hypnoblock and I don't know how to fly this interceptor, nor can Pucky do it." She described in a few words how Pucky had stepped into the breach, and concluded: "You must get here as quickly as possible to prevent the Supermutant giving Bell orders against which I'd be powerless."