Realm of the Tri-Planets

by Perry Rhodan

  Rhodan entered the large comfortable ball and saw Pucky gloomily sitting on the floor near the counter. During the last four Arkon days the mouse-beaver had been busy investigating as many rooms as possible, especially the weapons storage places. Rhodan scooped the little fellow up and put him on his arm. Pucky squealed with delight.

  Babbling nonsense, he manager to whisper in between: "Fully equipped with all armaments, Chief! Arkon bombs, impulse-beamers and disintegrators. Only the stock of foods is incomplete. I've been practically everywhere."

  "Where did they put the fighter robots?"

  "On deck 2, far down just above the bottom batch. I've counted 300 of them in addition to the 25 that are posted as guards up here. Big machines, Chief!"

  Rhodan sat down at the large table with the other officers. Thora and Khrest had gone to their own dining room. It was not proper for them to dine in the same room with the Zeklonides.

  Rhodan ate his food mechanically. His thoughts were far away. Before long he sent out an impulse:

  Marshall?

  The telepath acknowledged his call.

  Watch for my thoughts. I've not yet learned to send messages flawlessly. Do you understand me?

  Marshall raised his hand unobtrusively and Rhodan kept quietly eating.

  Send out your three teleporters and have them hold three portable disintegrator guns in readiness. When the action starts we'll have to forestall an attack by the robots. The teleporters and telekins have got to beat them to the punch. You must keep the Command Center deck clear till we get inside. Can you do it?

  Again the telepath gave a little sign.

  The talk grew more stilted and meaningless. False laughter rippled from some of the tables. Nobody could have failed to notice the mute conversation and they all had heard that 1500 Naats would embark in four hours.

  It was obvious that this meant trouble which was too much to handle.

  Thora called on the telecom. As before her message took the form of official directions. "TanRo, I've just been advised of the imminent arrival of 5000 heavy fighter robots of the new series. The Great Coordinator deems it necessary to warn the Naats, who are due to get in shortly thereafter, that any altercations will be severely punished at once. It is your responsibility as Deputy Commander to see to it that the robots will be housed in the appropriate locations. Is that clear?"

  "Perfectly, Illustrious One," Rhodan replied, expressionless yet pale. It was impossible to fail to notice the shadow of desperation in Thora's eyes. "Furthermore," she added in a brittle voice, "you are required to appear at the Hall of Examiners after completion of the embarkation. Your brain is slated to be probed in a special analysis. It won't be painful and you'll be able to return at once for another machinery test which I have scheduled."

  Her picture blanked out on the screen. Rhodan sat down very slowly. For a few seconds it had become very quiet in the large room which accommodated more than 500 men.

  "This means that the robots are due to arrive in three hours at the latest. Finish your dinner and get ready!"

  Sgt. Rous was the first to put his dishes aside. He ostentatiously cleared his throat and summoned the members of his technical team. Anne Sloane's face was white as frost. It was obvious that they could even less afford to wait for the 5000 heavy fighting machines to show up than for the 1500 Naats. They might have been able to cope with the latter if necessary but never with so many machines that promptly followed each order of the central.

  Bell touched the inside pocket of his colorful tunic. It was a sign that the data for the short transition to the fifth planet had been programmed. He had done it by using an electronic microcalculator which he had taken along, despite the risk it involved, from the supplies of theGazelle they had left behind.

  They couldn't have taken the chance of using one of the numerous sets on board. It was a desperate plan which was all the more daring as the time element grew shorter.

  "Faster!" Rhodan urged. "Let's give them a worthy welcome!"

  9/ DRAGON'S TEETH

  They had barely set foot in the wide corridor leading to the Command Center when something happened which neither Rhodan nor the other men had expected, especially not at this critical point in time.

  The micro-intercom set inside Rhodan's tunic gave off a shrill buzz. Since it was tuned in to a certain frequency, it could hardly have been an accident. The buzz sounded three times, then came a short pause and again five more times. Rhodan hastily tore open his uniform and took out the little set. "This is the New Power speaking," he quickly answered.

  Nobody except Col. Freyt on board the far-offGanymede had knowledge of the prearranged call signal. He was given strict orders to use the powerful transmitters of his ship only in case of extreme emergency or danger.

  Col. Freyt's face appeared on the tiny screen. "I'm glad to see that you're still alive, sir," his voice came through the microspeaker. "Situation 'dusk' has occurred. A search commando lead by the Naat Novaal has discovered that you, Khrest and Thora are no longer aboard. Novaal is going to make a report. My directional antennas are set for Arkon 1, 2 and 3. I hoped to find you somewhere, sir, because we're in serious danger. The robot brain will inevitably draw the logical conclusions and then we'll be done for."

  Rhodan imperceptibly twisted his face. "Thank you," he panted. "I'll be there in about 30 minutes but it could get a little later. We're coming with a superbattleship. Prepare plan Vesuvius. Risk everything!"

  The men were ready for action. Suddenly weapons appeared from the depots and were thrown from hand to hand.

  "This is it, hop to it!" Rhodan called out. "Every man at his post. Ivan, get going! You must get inside the Command Center at any cost. The brain will have found out in a few moments who we really are. Our high IQ will tip it off and cause it to check up on us. It'll make the robot suspicious that 55 people like ourselves have disappeared there. Pucky, jump with the other teleporters to the munitions depot. Reg, give the programming data to Tifflor. He'll make the transition. Run, Ivan, run!"

  Pucky, Ras Tschubai and Tako Kakuta suddenly dissolved. They knew exactly which weapons were needed to repulse an attack by the robots.

  The other men took off in a hurry without wasting words. It was a race against time. If the Naat had already handed in his report the robot brain was bound to act unerringly. Especially the strange furry animal was sure to be recognized at once.

  Rhodan dashed away. He ran with heaving lungs and pounding feet toward the distant Command Center. Thora and Khrest came rushing out of a side corridor. It was the moment of the alarm. Somewhere a warning whistle began to shrill and others joined in.

  As Rhodan darted past the main elevator the armored door hatches of the Command Center slid shut before him. In addition a protective energy shield enveloped the center in a loud detonation and its bluish glow made the normal lights look dim beside it.

  "Get back!" Thora shouted, terrified. Rhodan barely stopped before leaping.

  "Ivan's already inside," Wuriu Sengu called from the background. "I can see him."

  Panting heavily, Rhodan pushed his men back to the elevator. The warbling of the alarm still pervaded the wide halls of the superbattleship.

  Ivan Goratschin was hurled to the ground by the hatch doors as they slammed shut. The two heads coordinated each other with a nod. About 120 feet ahead of them the separate protective curtain of the control automaton flared up. A high-pitched whine issued from its interior. The machine had switched over to emergency power.

  Both heads concentrated with wide eyes transfixed on the control station. Invisible, supernatural mind-impulses penetrated the energy structure of the protective shield with the greatest of case.

  The first carbon compounds were detected in the armored shell itself. Ivan refrained from attacking this overabundant source of concentrated atomic energy. It would have unleashed an explosion of devastating proportions.

  In the soldered connection of a circuit they discovered minute traces of calci
um.

  "There!" the left head panted. "It's not too much. Ready?"

  A powerful impulse pierced the energy barrier and the armored cupola.

  The younger of the two heads screamed fiercely. Both arms of the mutant were jerked up before the blinded eyes against the will of the other head and the hulking body helplessly toppled over.

  White hot flames shot from the exploding automaton. The jet of fire lunged upward to the arched ceiling of the Command Center and engulfed the full length of the gallery containing the apparatus for astronomical analysis, spreading severe havoc.

  The armored cupola of Arkonide steel did not dissolve its matter. It merely showed a fissure the size of a man's leg and the furious holocaust raging inside. The energy curtain flickered and collapsed as the automatic fire-fighting system went into operation.

  The shrill signals of the alarm whistles ceased abruptly and the red lamps above the armored doors of the Command Center lit up again. All normal operations of the ship were restored, being no longer under the control of the destroyed auxiliary robot brain.

  Ivan cried out. His brother was barely able to pull the heavy body out of the path of the retracting inner door.

  Rhodan leaped in, brandishing his weapon. The opening mechanism had functioned perfectly after the sudden elimination of the energy curtain.

  Burning flashes were still spewing forth from the cracked dome and a searing wave of heat met the men rushing into the room. The stench of blistering insulation caused the climate control system to switch to emergency measures.

  Rhodan shielded his face with his hands and ran to the high-backed pilot seat. Not far behind him followed harmless repair robots who worked only under the direction of the ship's own automatic control center of technical functions.

  The sprays from the jets of the fire extinguishers hissed as they iced the hot spots, rapidly cooling off the temperature in the Command Center.

  "Thora, take over the energy stations!" Rhodan shouted. "Activate the protective fields. Hurry!"

  The beautiful Arkonide operated the controls with nimble fingers. Sgt. Rous reported that all was clear. He had already reached the Engine Control room. The first rumbling sounds of high energy blasts droned out of the loudspeakers.

  Marshall and Sengu pulled the huge moaning mutant back up to his feet again. Ivan was urgently needed.

  The vast panoramic observation screens lit up again in front of Rhodan. Simultaneously power stations #1 to 4 went back into service, rapidly climbing with a howl to maximum output.

  As the extra heavy field projectors received the influx of energy, pandemonium seemed to spread across the gigantic spaceport.

  A tremendous flood of energy flashed around the spherical hull of the battleship.

  The heavy steel plates covering the spaceport were vaporized and blown away with brutal force by the hyper-magnetic defense field.

  The Hfield for the repulsion of materially stable bodies shot out two miles. Spaceships standing close were thrust away by invisible forces with such power as if they had started under full blast of their engines.

  An area four miles in diameter had been laid waste. Nothing was left in place. Where the energy touched the ground mile long discharges flashed into Arkon's sky. Showers of flaming debris streaked back to the soil. Farther away a small cruiser exploded in a blinding cloud. It was a spontaneous atomic reaction which could only have been caused by the detonation of a nuclear bomb.

  A firestorm swept the terrain, consuming buildings and spaceships, blasting more wreckage into the upper atmosphere.

  Power stations #5 to 8 were now running too. Rous recklessly pushed up the titanic reactors. A sea of lava boiled all around the spaceship, yet no pressure wave came through.

  Rhodan could hear himself scream but he didn't know what he bellowed as he was carried away in a frenzy of ecstasy, giving vent to the excitement of the last few days.

  Thora reported that the antigrav field and the thrust absorbers worked properly. The full power of the energy stations was finally available.

  However the engines started only slowly. Bell and Khrest called from the Engine Control room in a flurry of excitement. Engine #16 sputtered and lagged behind. The fusion ignition had taken place before the appropriate temperature had been reached.

  But seconds later this totally self-contained aggregate joined in the droning of the machines running at idling speed.

  Rhodan switched over to manual emergency steering and hit the starter.

  The vivid green light of the emergency controls indicated that the main automatic system had been activated. From now on the highly efficient positronic correlation governor functioned on its own. For whatever operation Rhodan started the related output of all essential secondary machines would be adjusted continually to the right level, as for instance in the particular case of neutralization of the inertia forces to be overcome at the start.

  "Why don't you start?" Thora cried anxiously. "Start up!"

  Rhodan saw nothing but a white hot blaze all around him on the observation screen. It was sheer lunacy to set up the stupendous energy shields of the battleship in a dense atmosphere and such madness was even surpassed by shrouding an object at rest in it.

  Terrible walls of fire raced all over the ground, hotter, more violent and destructive than the pressure waves of heavy nuclear bombs.

  The air around the energy screens was burning up. The resulting vacuum became more and more perilous as the heating process proceeded and Arkon 3 seemed to be threatened. to perish in the inferno.

  "And all I did was activate the defense screen," Rhodan briefly reflected. Then he shifted the coupled lever for all engines into the starting position.

  It took three seconds to show the green light for the synchronized thrust.

  With a muffled roar the gigantic sphere lifted off from the boiling, steaming lake of Metal where once had been the surface of the spaceport.

  Weightless due to the perfectly coordinated antigrav field, the engines had to move only the mass of the tremendous vessel and overcome the resistance of the air.

  The landing field receded and the ship climbed to an altitude of 20,000 feet in two seconds.

  "Look out!" Tifflor yelled as he instantaneously ducked behind a console for safety.

  A bright and blinding thermo-ray shot from the energy dome of the Great Robot. No sooner was it

  caught by the eye than it was already at its goal.

  There was a brilliant flash at the outer screen of theVeast Ark and thunder blended in with the droning of the engines. The superbattleship had rendered the deadly thermo-ray innocuous with so much ease that the hit had barely been registered.

  "What a ship! What a ship!" Rhodan shouted. "Tifflor, set the automatic transition! I'm getting ready to make the jump."

  Rhodan's second acceleration was sufficient to turn the spaceship into a veritable flash of lightning. He started to accelerate at 60 miles per square second, causing the turbulent displacement of masses of air and raising another storm.

  They left a flaming landscape behind where only the energy dome of the robot brain remained intact to show where once lofty buildings and vast factories had stood.

  The bright glow of the protective mantle suddenly disappeared after two more seconds. TheVeast Ark had passed through the upper strata of air and entered the empty space.

  Rhodan threw all caution aside and raised the thrust to the limit. He had never before heard such a mighty howl of engines.

  By radiating powerful impulses at the speed of light the superbattleship forged ahead by leaps and bounds until it raced through space at 400 miles per second.

  Tifflor feverishly worked out the programming of the transition, now that it could finally be done.

  Next to him Thora inserted the precalculated astrogation course into the positronic automatic pilot. At present the ship hurled through space in a random direction.

  "When will you get the data?" Rhodan shouted to the frantically worki
ng man and woman.

  All of a sudden Rhodan noticed some moving objects on the observation screen. The sensors immediately identified them as two battleships of the Imperium class.

  The spaceships opened fire with all their guns and scored five simultaneous hits which would have obliterated any other ship. They smashed against the defense screen and nothing but a short quiver of the hull's resonant vibration gave evidence of the pitiful failure.

  The next moment they were already out of sight. The Imperium spacers could only accelerate at 300 miles per square second whereas the superbattleship reached 400 miles per square second.

  At last the observation screens became clear and the deep blackness of space came into view. Soon their blinded eyes were able to recognize the brilliant sparkling of closely clustered suns.

  "Automatic set," Thora called. She was near collapse. Rhodan waited for the green sign of the autopilot. When it came he disconnected the manual steering with the push of a button.

  A tremendous roar shook theVeast Ark. The sphere was roughly pulled out of its course, almost too roughly for the pressure absorbers operating at maximum level.

  At the next coordination, manoeuvre four G's came through and Thora was thrown to the floor by the sudden effect. Tifflor's knees were shaking.

  "It's all over," Rhodan panted. His tense face relaxed with a smile for the first time. "All over!"

  A last thrust correction followed. The indicator needle slowly veered toward the programmed coordinates. The superbattleship of the Universum class was strictly on course.

  Rhodan was about to wipe the sweat from his brow when he got a call from below. It was Bell, who had left his station. He acted as if nothing much had happened. He said in an almost perfunctory manner: "We're up, eh? Splendid; the only question is how long. Our four-armed friends react badly to our shooting. They're coming up through the ceilings. Every other moment one of them pops up where you least expect him. I've closed down the antigrav elevators. It would be nice if you could spare a few men."

  Rhodan knew his deliberately lackadaisical manner. When Bell expressed himself in this fashion he faced disaster.