by Perry Rhodan
8000 INTERSTELLAR EXILES
The second Adventure of The colonists. In an Unknown Sector of the Milky Way. On the grey beast of a planet which they have named... Grauntier. These belligerent ex-Terranians, exiled from Earth, have begun to subjugate a new world. They could have created another Paradise on this uncharted globe but for the enmity of two strong men: one a determined defender of democracy, the other a fanatic disciple of dictatorship.
The democratic leader of the Free Settlers has suffered near fatal wounds... and this is where the medical knowledge of an alien life form enters the picture. Learn, now, of the way of life on Grautier... and the role of—
Perry Rhodan
Atlan And Arkon #54
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The Blue Dwarfs
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1/ ASSASSINS' MISSION
"IT'S PRETTY WEIRD!" said Milligan. "Booster's sick and whatever it is he's got is plenty strange."
Mullon, though not one for strict observance of the finer rules of etiquette, had originally been muchly miffed when Milligan threw open his door without knocking first but was instantly mollified by his report.
"Where is Booster?" he asked.
"At home. He just wanted to—"
"Alright. Have you told Doc Flaherty?"
"No, not yet. I—"
"Then run right over, man! Flaherty will have to take a look at Booster. Freddy will certainly go along."
A woman's voice rang out from the small house's second room: "Of course I'll come! Milligan, go get the doctor!"
Milligan turned and raced out.
Freddy came out of the room she proudly called her kitchen although it served for more than that single function and had been constructed accordingly.
"I'll be going, then," she said, brushing a vagrant strand of hair out of her face. "You finish up your list."
"At your command, Madame General!" Mullon smiled. "I'll be done by the time you get back."
Freddy left, leaving Mullon to his list, which he had been working on when Milligan came crashing in. When finished, the list would contain all the things a four man expedition to the northern mountains would require. The People's Assembly, of which Mullon was President, had accepted his proposal to send out an exploration party to scout the neighboring areas to the west of Grautier's new city, Greenwich. Mullon had maintained that no one could guarantee the town's safety if the surrounding territory remained unexplored. That much was evident to everyone—with the exception of a handful of Hollander's supporters—and a decision had been reached to send out at least two parties: one to the western mountains, the other to the east where the lowland jungles cut off the wide grasslands with an impenetrable wall. Since only a single helicopter had been salvaged from the wreckage of the Adventurous —the spaceship that had carried the 8000 deportees from Earth—it would have to be used by both expeditions: first by the one into the mountains, then by the one down into the jungle.
Mullon himself had been charged with leading both parties and he threw himself into the task of preparing for them with unparalleled energy and enthusiasm.
Even so, he did not succeed in completing his list before Freddy came back. Mullon turned to her—and her terrified expression frightened him.
"What is it...?" he asked.
"Booster's dead!" Freddy cried. "It was awful—it went so fast!"
Mullon leaped up. "What did he die of?"
"Nobody knows," Freddy sobbed. "Flaherty's at a loss. He called Weeney and Ashbury in but neither of them know any more than he does."
"What was the disease like?"
Freddy wiped the tears out of her eyes and answered: "Booster was about to plough up some ground so he could test some seeds. Suddenly he felt weak in the knees. At first he thought it was just an attack of weakness brought on by moving to another planet. You know—we've all experienced it at one time or another. So he laid down to wait for it to pass. But it didn't. When he tried to stand up, he fell down. He called for help. Milligan found him and dragged him home. By this time Booster had blue swellings all over his skin. When Flaherty and I arrived, he was hardly even able to talk. 10 minutes later, he was dead."
"What did they do with the body?"
"The doctors took it with them for an autopsy."
Mullon had grown extremely earnest. "I hope the disease isn't contagious!" he murmured.
It did not seem to be, as things worked out. Two days passed without a new outbreak of the disease being reported but on the third day two men came down with it. It was known that these two had never had anything to do with Booster in the past.
From them the disease followed a completely different pattern. As before, an attack of weakness came first, but some hours went by before the blue pustules appeared—and above all, in neither case did the disease end in the patient's death. Or, at least, not yet. Both of the sick men were put under the care of Drs. Flaherty, Weeney and Ashbury in their 'Hospital'—a cabin somewhat larger than usual in the middle of the small town.
Nevertheless the recent events were so disquieting that Mullon called a special session of the People's Assembly to hear the three doctors' report.
They did not have much to say. On the Earth they had all been general practitioners, after all, and now they had been forced to deal with Bacteriology for the first time in their lives. That branch of medicine was nothing easily learned and they were having their share of difficulty.
Weeney, youngest of the three doctors and giving the impression of being inordinately ambitious, stated that he had been successful in identifying the cause of the strange disease, isolating it and starting a culture of it. According to Weeney's opinion, the results of the research done so far indicated that the virus would react to the strongest Earthly medicines like an elephant would to a fly: which is to say, not at all. In any event, Weeney went on, more exhaustive research would require at least several weeks, so people should not let lack of success at the beginning terrify them.
The People's Assembly then decided that although the situation was quite serious, the planned expeditions should not be delayed because of it. On the strength of that, Mullon set the following morning for the first expedition's departure.
• • •
3 more outbreaks of the disease were reported the next morning. The newly infected persons were brought to the hospital, as well, and placed under round-the-clock observation. The disease was not taking with them the rapid course it had with Booster. Meanwhile, Weeney and his two colleagues had come to the conclusion that Booster's quicker death had been an exceptional case.
To accompany him on the expedition, Mullon had chosen Freddy, his wife; Milligan, a former member of the Adventurous ' crew; and Pashen, once an enthusiastic follower of Hollander but who now said that he had realized Hollander's plans were ultimately a fast way for the settlers to bring ruin upon themselves. Pashen had been a medical orderly on Earth, which was why Mullon had chosen him. He could not take a doctor along, since all of them were needed in Greenwich, so he selected someone who at least knew a little about medicine.
In the early morning hours the helicopter was loaded with the things Mullon had put on his list: among the more important were food, weapons and a small short-wave radio for keeping in touch with Greenwich while the expedition was in the mountains.
Mullon started at seven o'clock, local time, as the eastern horizon was becoming just a little lighter. The helicopter rotors, moved by small jets, began to revolve and the heavy craft lifted from the ground, humming and trembling, then shot upwards into the sky and disappeared into the early-dawn gloom.
No one noticed the four men at the small town's north-eastern boundary who were att
entively watching the helicopter's takeoff. One of the four was a small, heavyset man who, as one could see when he moved, limped in the tight leg. Walter S. Hollander, formerly the leader of the sect of Natural Philosophy and now Mullon's bitterest enemy, had recovered from his wound but the stiffness in his right leg remained as a constant reminder.
"Alright, let's go!" Hollander ordered. "It'll be light in an hour at most and by then you must be so far away that you can't be seen from Greenwich. You know what you have to do, of course?"
"Of course," answered one of the three others. "I just hope you know what you're asking from us."
Hollander nodded. "I'm well aware of that and you'll get your reward afterwards. You'll become my closest associates as soon as Mullon is out of the way. Now get going!"
The three men followed the order without a word. They went first off to the left, where the grass had been so trampled by preparations for the helicopter's taking off that it would no longer show their tracks, then turned to the west and in a few minutes disappeared in the early morning half-light.
Hollander watched them go. He was a hardened man but as he saw his three hirelings vanish, unseen by anyone else, into the faintly luminous gloom, their stolen weapons over their shoulders, he felt a premonition of what would happen.
No one would know where the three men who had stolen the weapons out of the arsenal had gone off to. When anyone started looking for them—and it would be at least a day before a search was begun—a letter would be found according to which 'three conscientious men have left the city on their own initiative to scout the immediate vicinity and thus contribute their share to the safety of Greenwich.' Under such circumstances the thievery of the weapons—all the city's arms were held by the People's Assembly—would not count for much.
However the three men—Harper, Glannon and Cislarczik—would ambush Mullon when he least expected an attack and return to a city where Hollander had long before taken advantage of the death of his enemy by taking over the rulership for himself.
If the plan fell through... well, a few men would stand ready west of the city to make sure that Harper, Glannon and Cislarczik were never seen again in Greenwich. Mullon would never then be able to use one of the three as a star witness against his enemy Hollander.
No, there would be no failures... only a delay at most. Satisfied with his plans, Hollander returned home, arriving before it was light enough for anyone to see where he had come from.
• • •
The distance from Greenwich to the first foothills in the north was about 60 miles. Mullon, sitting at the controls himself, flew the helicopter along at a moderate speed, several hundred yards above the ground. He thus reached the western end of the grasslands, which ascended gently all the way from the jungle at the other end, and crossed into the rocky mountain area just as the sun was coming up.
To the four occupants of the helicopter, the view offered by the radiantly clear light of the blue-white sun was overpowering in its size and loneliness. Mountains that no human eye had ever seen at close range reared far distant into the blue-white heavens, torn by faults and crevices that seemed to stretch deep into the heart of the planet itself. Where the mountainsides had consisted of relatively soft rock, rain, frost and storm had eaten away weird and uncanny shapes that seemed to stand guard over the ravines.
Mullon brought the helicopter up to 12000 feet for an overview of the foothills. Next to him sat Freddy, operating the built-in camera. Foot after foot of film sped humming through the machine from one reel to the other.
Meanwhile Milligan and Pashen surveyed the terrain below with their naked eyes. Shortly Milligan spotted a whitish-grey spot immediately below, moving swiftly across the face of a steeply rising mountain wall. So the mountains were not as devoid of life as they had seemed at first glance. There were animals down there and if one could see them from an altitude of about 6000 feet, they had to be rather large.
Mullon was a technician and knew his way around helicopters. He knew, therefore, that he could not descend much farther before he would be required to determine the patterns of air movements over the mountains. To descend suddenly into the confusion of conflicting winds and collisions of air masses of differing temperatures would be sheer folly.
Mullon spent the next two hours finding where the dangerous areas were and where he could move without risk. Then he let the helicopter drop to a low altitude and glide along just above the sides of the mountains.
But the animals Milligan had seen earlier had disappeared.
Mullon sent the helicopter through a narrow pass whose bottom lay some 7500 feet above the foot of the mountains. The pass stretched for some miles through the mountains, beneath extremely high rock walls that seemed to touch the sky on either side. On the other side of the mountain ridge, the pass opened up on a deep and broad valley which, to Mullon's surprise, was heavily overgrown with bushes and isolated trees. The valley ran more or less exactly from north to south and with its shadow-casting plant growth seemed so fitting for a temporary camp that Mullon landed the helicopter without further hesitation. He brought it down next to a huge plant growth that stood by itself in the midst of the valley floor.
The silence that followed the landing of the helicopter was not unimpressive. A soft wind blew through the wide valley and slightly rustled the smallest branches on the trees—and that was the only sound to be heard.
Freddy shut the camera off. Mullon turned around and addressed Milligan and Pashen. "Break out the tent and put it up under the tree. We're going to stay here for awhile, I think."
Milligan and Pashen responded by setting to work with energetic fervor while Freddy and Mullon remained sitting in the helicopter cab.
Freddy stared off into the sun-splashed valley where heat waves seemed to dance in the distance. She murmured: "A strange world... but a wonderful one!"
Mullon was less inclined to sentimentality. "It might as well be hell if we can't find any water nearby!"
• • •
In the meantime Harper, Glannon and Cislarczik experienced some hard going as the hours went by. Since stealing one of the caterpillar-tracked vehicles that had been salvaged from the Adventurous would have been too much of a risk, they had been forced to cover on foot the same distance Mullon and his companions had flown over in so short a time in the helicopter.
From sunrise on, the blue-white sun drenched the gently rising plain with a flood of unbearable heat. Their gun-butts began to burn in their hands and their hair grew so hot that it became painful to run their hands through it. It was hard to breathe and instead of appearing to draw nearer, the mountains seemed to fall even farther away in the shimmering air.
The grassy plain was dotted with scattered bushes and trees none very tall or large. Harper, leader of the trio, quickly realized he would not get very far if he attempted to walk across the plain in the usual manner so he and his men rested for at least a minute in the shade of each bush or tree they came to, then made a quick dash across the sun-scorched grass to the next plant, which was usually several hundred yards farther on.
In this manner they made relatively rapid progress but Harper figured they could keep it up for two or three more hours at most. The rest period they would need then to recover from exhaustion would take more time than could be allowed.
Harper realized that Hollander had sent them off at the wrong time. It was crazy to make a forced march of 25 if not more miles across an all but shadeless plain on a sunny day. If they wanted to get much farther, they would have to make the trek at night.
Towards eight o'clock Harper called a halt in the shadow of a tree. "We aren't going to get very far this way," he said.
"You can say that again," said Cislarczik sarcastically, looking around. "I'm surprised my tongue isn't already hanging out like a dog's. But what are we going to do now?"
"Wait," decided Harper. "We'll wait until the sun goes down and things cool off a bit."
"We'll lose almost 30 hours t
hat way!" Glannon objected.
"So? It's better to lose 30 hours than kill ourselves in this heat," Harper retorted.
"OK, you're right," said Cislarczik, "but what'll we do right now? Can we take a drink?" He reached for the canteen hanging from his belt.
"Don't do anything stupid!" Harper exclaimed. "We may need the treated water more later on. The river can't be far from here—we'll get our drink there."
Cislarczik looked at him angrily. "What do I care about the treated water?" he demanded roughly. "I'm thirsty and I'm not going to take another step—I'm going to get a drink!"
Harper glared back, dangerously quiet. "Just try it!"
Cislarczik had known Harper for only a few days. He did not know what it meant for Harper to speak so softly and quietly. He unsnapped the canteen from his belt, unscrewed the cap and started to drink.
Before the first water droplets even touched his lips, Harper's fist slammed into his face from the left. With a yell, Cislarczik let the canteen fall and staggered to one side.
"Why, you—" he growled. The pain had made him almost a madman and some moments had to pass before he could see clearly again.
Then he threw himself at Harper. Cislarczik was a tall, broad-shouldered man and he was certain he could knock the smaller Harper to the ground in the first rush. He did not take into consideration the fact that Harper had something he did not: a cool head.
Harper stepped back and let Cislarczik rush past, then grabbed his neck in a lightning move, pulled him back somewhat and slammed the side of his right hand into Cislarczik's back, between the shoulder blades.
Cislarczik fell on the ground.
"The canteen!" Glannon cried, looking as though he had only now recovered his senses. "The water's running out of it!"
Harper looked around. Cislarczik's canteen lay a few steps away in the grass, its contents slowly flowing out and draining into the dry ground. Harper picked it up, held it with the mouth pointing downwards and allowed the rest of the water to fall out. "That'll teach him," he muttered.