by Perry Rhodan
They had arranged that each would be on guard duty for six hours a day. The two teleporters had to be
ready for action 12 hours each and every day. The one to take her task most seriously was little Betty Toufry. Betty was the strongest telepath working in the mutant corps of the New Power. At the same time she was just as powerful a telekineticist. Rhodan had discovered her when she was still a little girl. She had come along on the long trip to the planet Wanderer. Now she had reached the age of ten and with all the zeal typical for her age she mustered all her powers for the protection of the New Power.
This afternoon John Marshall came to relieve her from guard duty around six P.M. Betty looked quite dejected. "Nothing happened. Again nothing at all." Marshall smiled at her. "Don't worry, Betty. Something is bound to happen some day soon."
"Will we really concentrate and watch out?" she asked eagerly.
"I promise I'll do my best." In the livingroom of the small apartment Tako Kakuta was lying on a couch reading a magazine. Marshall couldn't see his face but he heard him yawn.
"Good evening, Tako!" said John Marshall to the Japanese teleporter whose turn of guard duty was not up yet. Kakuta put down his magazine. "Good evening. Any news?" Marshall waved his hand disparagingly. "Nothing! What shall we do? Play chess, talk or read?" Tako thought for awhile. "Chess," he said finally, "if that's alright with you."
"What's the difference how I kill the time?" Kakuta sat up and pulled a little table closer to the couch. Marshall put his briefcase full of books on the floor—he had made sure he would have something along to while away the long tedious hours of uneventful waiting—and opened the door of the low cabinet where they kept their chess set.
It happened as he pulled out the set from the bottom shelf of the cabinet. He straightened up and hit his
head against the edge of the top of the book cabinet. Something strange, very delicate, seemed to reach into his brain. At first still hesitant, then it grew, became stronger and took the form of concrete orders—instructions directed toward some stranger who this moment had penetrated the domain of the New Power.
Marshall dropped the chess set. The noise startled the Japanese, who quickly jumped to his feet. "He's here!" gasped Marshall. "Administration building, between the 10th and 20th floor. Has orders to kidnap Khrest! Hurry up, Tako, get going!"
For the fraction of a second Tako stood rooted to the spot, his face bare of any expression, as if he
hadn't understood what Marshall had told him. Then the air was wavering and without any further warning the teleporter vanished. Marshall started to get busy now. He pulled a switch and established telecommunication with the administration building. Major Nyssen, acting as a substitute for the absent Reginald Bell, received the alarm signal. He took immediate care to have the entire wing of the building evacuated where the intruder had been reported to have penetrated. Major Nyssen took into consideration that the unknown hostile teleporter would need some time to find his bearings in the unfamiliar surroundings and that he would not be aware of the evacuation taking place. Tako Kakuta would need to be free from any interference to obtain best results.
Rhodan had been informed that the enemy apparently intended to kidnap Khrest. He was deeply worried, for Khrest was about the most precious asset the New Power could lose. The unknown intruder appeared to be very confident of attaining his goal. It was important to find out why he would feel so sure of himself.
Nyssen directed Marshall to leave his quarters at the outskirts of Terrania and to move inside the protective barrier dome. He was supposed to take up his new position in front of the main entrance of the administrative building, then to establish direct contact with Nyssen via micro-telecom. Thus he would be able to immediately inform the major, who was waiting in the command center, in case the intruder started making any unforeseen moves.
There was no change in the strange sensation that Marshall was subjected to as he was approaching the administration building. He was under the impression that this sensation was not related in any way to the distance that separated him from its source. He would have been hard put to describe this feeling. It was like a headache, a constant pressure, which quite unlike the usual type of headaches carried the information where it came from. Overlying the sensation of pressure he could clearly distinguish varying instructions directed toward the unknown teleporter.
Marshall established himself under the main portal of the gigantic administration building. He reported to Major Nyssen: "Arrived at new location, sir. So far no new incidents to report. The man's moving very slowly; in any case he is not making any sudden displacements via teleportation."
Tako Kakuta's jump ended as planned in the main cross corridor of the 20th floor. The corridor was empty and brightly lit. Tako knew that in case of an alarm situation the endangered part of the building would be evacuated immediately.
Tako was wearing very light and soft shoes. He was marching along the passage without making any noise. Dead silence reigned all around him.
Tako didn't bother to enter and search any of the rooms leading off the corridor. He had heard from Marshall that the stranger was under orders to kidnap Khrest. Therefore he would not be staying in a room where at the first glance he could establish the fact that Khrest was not present.
Tako entered one of the gravitational elevators and went up to the 21st floor. Here too he limited himself to walking along the main corridor and then to checking the peripheral passages.
Nothing—no sound, no feeling of impending danger.
The same on the 22nd floor and the 23rd. Marshall had indicated the target area to be somewhere between the 20th and the 30th story. Tako had no idea exactly how Marshall could pinpoint the place. It was quite possible that he would have to go up as far as the 40th floor before he would find the stranger.
24th floor.
25th floor.
26th floor.
No call from the command center. The stranger still seemed to be moving along on foot.
27th...
There it was!
Tako felt the peculiar drawing sensation for the first time in his life; but he knew at once that the enemy was right before him. He crouched in one of the recessed doorways and waited.
While he was waiting he tried to analyze the sensation he was feeling in his brain. What was it? Tako realized that he had no telepathic abilities at all. It was impossible that this gentle, constant pain should be caused by the stranger. But the intruder was subjected to a strong hypnotic influence. Perhaps this was what had warned the Japanese?
Tako heard a sound. He pressed himself even closer against the recessed door, then slowly advanced his head toward the edge of the niche so that he could look around it.
There stood the man!
Tako had a good side view of him. He was a young man. A Caucasian. He was studying the nameplates on the doors and didn't seem to know where he should go next.
He couldn't see Tako. Tako stealthily stepped out from his hiding place and pointed his thermoray gun at the young man before he spoke. "Stay where you are! Put your hands above your head!"
Tako saw the stranger stiffen up with fright. The man's fingers spread apart as he slowly and hesitatingly raised his arms above his head. Cautiously Tako came closer. He was nearly 15 feet away from the stranger when he suddenly felt the overwhelming, powerful mental shock-wave emanating from the man's brain as he was readying himself for the teleportation jump that would save him.
This was what Tako had been counting on. The stranger would have been the first teleporter who would not have escaped from a threatening weapon by an immediate jump to safety.
Tako was in his own element! A fraction of a second was sufficient for him to grasp the wave pattern the man was radiating and with it the energy the stranger was activating for his leap. Five dimensional energies which are required for teleportation are vectors—a physical quantity with both magnitude and direction. The moment Tako had absorbed this pattern and adapt
ed to it he knew not only the answer to 'how far?' but also to 'where to?'
He jumped the same instant the stranger did. Tako was still holding his thermoray gun in his hind ready to shoot.
He was seized by the tugging pain of the teleportation. For one thousandth of a second all light seemed
to be blotted out around him.
"He's jumped!" shouted Marshall excitedly. "The stranger's gone, sir! He's disappeared!"
Nyssen reacted at once. Two seconds after Marshall had finished speaking the telecom line to Kakuta was established. "Hey, Kakuta! Do you hear me?" called Nyssen. "The guy has vanished. Return, please! All clear!"
There was no answer.
"Kakuta! Can you hear me?"
Still no reply.
Nyssen had a short conversation with Rhodan. He learned from him that teleporters have the ability to recognize the target of another teleporter who is executing a jump close by by absorbing the shock-wave pattern. It was therefore a foregone conclusion for Rhodan that Tako had followed the fleeing intruder.
Hardly an instant was left for Tako to look around the place to which his pursuit had taken him. He saw a moderately sized room whose walls, floors and ceiling were obviously made of reinforced concrete. There was a table, three old chairs and a locked wall cabinet. No windows at all. The room was illuminated by one lone neon tube, six feet long, fixed to the ceiling.
At the other end of the room, just a few yards away, the stranger had made his appearance out of thin air.
Tako was about to challenge him when suddenly an unknown power invaded his brain with unbelievable force.
Tako fell down headlong on the floor. The thermoray gun slipped out of his hand. Tako pressed his face against the cold floor and pushed both hands against his temples to fend off the horrible pain.
For nearly half a minute he was unable to move. With waves of alternating amplitude the alien influx was coursing through his brain, causing him to forget why he had come here and making a whimpering helpless bundle of human misery of him. But then he remembered that he had a special ability with which he could save himself. As fast as he could and as intensively as the pain would permit he concentrated on the place from which he had come. And the instant the strange influence relented for a brief moment and became bearable, he jumped. He felt how the piercing, flowing pain of teleporting was nothing compared to the agony he had endured in the last few seconds.
He was grateful to perceive the starry sky appear above him again. He felt the coarse-grained sand under his knees. He looked around.
He could see the lights of Terrania shining over to the west. He had landed some six miles from his intended destination.
The excessive exertion he had just gone through made itself felt. He tried to stand up but his legs gave way under him. He fell headlong and fainted. He came to rest on a tiny strip of yellow desert sand that had persisted despite all the artificial irrigation between two large garden plots.
4/ THE CLUE OF THE MICRO-FREUDS
"We have news from Kakuta!" reported Nyssen toward midnight. "He's lying six miles east of the city between two gardens, too weak to move. He wants us to pick him up!"
Rhodan nodded his head in agreement. "Get a car ready, Major!" he ordered Nyssen. "I'll drive out there with John Marshall."
Nyssen confirmed the order. Minutes later a car was waiting for them. Rhodan first picked up Marshall from his apartment in the city, where he and Ras Tschubai had again taken up guard duty against possible intruders. They drove toward the east perimeter of the city.
Rhodan was in communication with the Japanese via micro-telecom. "When you see our headlights, Tako," he instructed the mutant, "please direct us! We've no idea where you are. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir," replied Tako in a weak voice.
"How are you feeling?" inquired Rhodan.
"Just miserable," came Tako's frank answer. A few seconds later he called excitedly: "I can see your headlights, sir! You're on the right track. But keep a bit more to the north, please."
Rhodan followed his request.
"Stop!" shouted the Japanese. "That will do. Now drive straight to the east... but please don't run over me."
A few minutes and they finally found him. He was still lying flat on his back, hardly able to sit up on his own. Marshall and Rhodan lifted him up, put him in their car and then drove back to Terrania.
"How is he, Eric?" asked Rhodan.
Dr. Manoli shrugged his shoulders and looked quite dejected. "Total exhaustion," he answered. "Never in all my life have I seen anybody so completely worn out as Tako Kakuta."
"How long will it take till I can interrogate him?" inquired Rhodan.
"Oooh... five to six weeks I would say."
"Weeks?" Rhodan shouted in disgust. "I don't think you realize how much depends on the evidence Tako can supply us. Use whatever you have in your medicine chest here and get Tako back on his feet in a couple of hours, you hear me?"
Dr. Manoli shrugged his shoulders once more. "It's not only Tako's exhaustion we have to deal with," he demurred. "I've taken an encephalogram. His brain activity is quite upset and is only very slowly returning to normal. During his absence Tako must have been subjected to some extraordinary, strong mental influence..."
Rhodan knitted his brow. "Is it... serious?"
Manoli shook his head. "No, it's mainly confusion."
"Hmm... how long will it take you to put him back on his feet for at least two hours or so?"
Dr. Manoli pondered for a few seconds before he replied: "Let's say... about 10 hours."
"O.K., that'll do. Let me know when he'll be ready."
Tako Kakuta insisted on being out of bed, standing up and completely dressed when he would be seen by Rhodan. Dr. Manoli had suggested it would be preferable for his health if he were to stay in bed during the interview but Kakuta refused to do so.
"Then get up, you stubborn guy!" Manoli growled irritated, "and don't forget to tell me in time if you're going to feel sick!"
Kakuta promised with a smile.
Rhodan received him in his office located on the top floor of the administration building. Tako sat down in a comfortable chair across from Rhodan. Then he began his report.
He didn't conceal anything—starting with Marshall trying to fetch the chess set from the cabinet, the sudden appearance of the unknown teleporter on the 27th floor of the administration high rise, till his total collapse in that unknown basement room with cement walls, and finally his return to Terrania.
Rhodan listened intently and didn't once interrupt Tako's account. When Tako had finished, Rhodan rose from his seat and walked over to one of the wide windows which afforded a marvelous view over the city and the surrounding countryside.
The window panes were almost free of reflections; the glass had been selected on purpose to provide as clear a view as possible. Only a very weak and vague picture of hazy outlines could be seen of Tako Kakuta, who was now sitting diagonally behind Perry Rhodan.
"I suppose you've never seen that strange teleporter before, Tako?" asked Rhodan. He was satisfied to observe a blurred image on the window pane as Tako shook his head behind him, still sitting in his chair.
"No," said Tako, "he was a complete stranger."
"I wonder," continued Rhodan, "did you see him clear enough that you would have recognized him without any doubt if you had ever met him previously?"
A hazy movement in the almost completely transparent glass. It was Tako as he nodded and answered: "No doubt about it."
Another movement, this time a bit lower, near Tako's hip.
"Do you have any idea what the location of the place is where you landed after your tele-jump?" Rhodan inquired.
The answer came promptly. "I could jump right back to the same spot if that's what you mean, sir. But I don't think I'd be able to give the geographic coordinates."
Tako was performing all kinds of hasty movements while he was talking. Nevertheless, Rhodan let him go on speaking until
he had finished. Even then Rhodan let several seconds pass before he said in a harsh voice: "You're holding a neutron raygun in your hand, Tako! Who the devil gave you that? In the last few seconds we've been talking, you've been busy getting the weapon ready to use. And now you want to kill me. It won't work!"
Rhodan whirled around and stared at the Japanese mutant. Tako's face, normally so friendly, harmless and gentle had changed to a fierce grimace full of red and thirst for blood. Tako had raised his right hand and pointed the neutron raygun directly at Rhodan. Tako's hand was absolutely steady.
Rhodan smiled although it cost him quite an effort. Tako's right index finger curled tightly around the broad trigger. A weakly fluorescent ray, hardly the breadth of two fingers, shot out from the barrel of the weapon.
The same moment, a layer of air about five feet in front of Rhodan, reaching from the floor to the ceiling, lit up, creating an artificial wall of painful brightness. The protective barrier screen absorbed the tremendous energy of the neutron ray amidst noisy crackling, then activated the energy reserves of the raygun and devoured these too.
Rhodan heard Tako scream aloud in pain—then silence. The crackling of the protective wall died down the same instant. Rhodan waited until the light effect vanished. Then he went to care for Tako.
Tako had slipped from his armchair and was lying on the ground. His hand which had held the weapon showed two fresh burns. The excessive strain placed on the weapon had caused an electric charge to flow from the high potential of the neutron generator over to Tako's hand. The electric shock had rendered Tako unconscious.
Rhodan informed Dr. Manoli of the outcome of the interview with Tako, then called an ambulance to take the Japanese away.
"A hypnotic block of tremendous intensity," explained Perry Rhodan, "so skilfully applied that Manoli's rather superficial examination of Tako's brain activity could not detect any trace of it."
Khrest was staring pensively at some invisible point in the air. "What kind of a monster would be