by Perry Rhodan
Tako took careful aim and let go of the bomb. It crashed against the head of the trader, bounced off and hit the floor with a loud bang. The Springer was knocked unconscious. Tako counted till 10 but it remained quiet in the depot. The guard sprawled out on the floor was apparently the only one present in the storage room. The teleporter kept Marshall's order in mind: "The bomb must blow up in three minutes!" The incident had already cost him a precious minute.
He had a choice of an enormous variety of atom bombs of all calibers but none of them had a fuse. He leaped down in the aisle next to the unconscious Springer. The two impulse beamers quickly changed owners and were a most welcome acquisition. With one of the bombs pressed under his arm he ran along the aisle. It was only a few steps to the next crossing between the stacks of bombs. He quickly looked left and right and found a fuse within reach of his hand.
A minute and a half had elapsed by the time he had attached the fuse to the mini-bomb. In less than a second Kakuta bounded back into the huge meeting hall where the Great. Conclave of the patriarchs was assembled.
• • •
"Blast the bomb in three minutes!" John Marshall had told the teleporter, thereby setting a deadline which was fraught with danger for himself and his friends.
If they used the broad center aisle it would require at least one minute to reach the main exit provided none of the patriarchs made an attempt to hold them back. And then they had to reckon with running into the robots outside.
"We'll leave through the exit behind the platform," Marshall whispered his order.
Once again Kitai Ishibashi gathered all his strength to blanket the crowd of patriarchs' surrounding the dais with his suggestions. They were short but intensive instructions to regard their exit without undue concern. Although a day on Goszul's Planet was longer than on Earth, Marshall used the Terranian time as his standard. It would take them 40 seconds to get to the small side exit.
The patriarchs around them were engulfed in an Undiminished panic nourished by the haunting thought spreading through hundreds of brains that it was sheer lunacy to tangle with Perry Rhodan. Tama Yokida saw a vehicle outside the long building front and utilized his telekinetic powers. The vehicle raced to him, winding around all obstacles as if driven by a top-notch expert. When it came within a couple of hundred feet, they noticed that it was occupied.
For a few seconds Kitai Ishibashi intervened again with his Strata Method. The time sufficed to make the trader in the vehicle forget his astonishment and not try to stop the vehicle. He took it in stride when the car halted in front of three strange men. He simply climbed out, greeted them and said: "Please!"
John Marshall had counted to the end of the second minute. There were only 60 seconds left to put enough distance between them and the building when Kakuta detonated the bomb. They jumped into the car and zoomed off while Marshall listened with his inner ear to the patriarchs they were rapidly leaving behind. With his great penetrating power he perceived a mixture of fear and anger. It took him a few seconds to sort out his impressions and then he realized what events were in progress in the auditorium.
Etztak had dispatched a party from his clan to apprehend a few more victims from Levtan's men for the brain-analyzer and the victims put up a stiff fight in their defense.
At this moment Kitai Ishibashi shouted for the third time: "How much time do we have left?"
Achingly Marshall returned to the realities of his present environment. The vehicle sped past a detachment of robots. The metallic creations paid no attention to them and were merely intent on securing the main entrance. Tama Yokida steered the hovercar and turned into a broad boulevard leading to the big spaceport when suddenly the vehicle was wrenched by a terrific invisible force and hurled up into the air.
Kitai Ishibashi's scream was drowned out by a thunderous roar.
• • •
With the death dealing bomb under his arm Tako Kakuta materialized again in the cellar under the huge assembly hall. He carefully deposited The bomb, performed another teleportation and wound up hanging high in the rafters of the ceiling, where he surveyed all participants below in one quick glance as a last situation check. Down he went again to the cellar. The darkness didn't bother him. There was a weak lamp shining at one end of the basement. He picked up the bomb and dashed to the light. There he was able to recognize the time scale on the fuse.
The three minutes were up. Of this he was certain as he had an unerring sense of time.
Ignition in 10 seconds!
Thoughts of John Marshall, Tama Yokida and Kitai Ishibashi flashed through his mind. He was ready to concede that his friends were wizards who could pull off the most unlikely jobs. The timer of the fuse was ticking away. Tako Kakuta concentrated his thoughts on his next goal and teleported himself to the spaceport.
• • •
Thora, the Arkonide woman had quietly entered the command center of the Stardust II. The beautiful willowy woman was one of the few beings in Arkon's stellar empire who didn't suffer from the lethargy which caused the might of Arkon to crumble away slowly. She looked searchingly at Khrest. The scientist silently shook his head.
"Stranded? Lost?" Her question was more of a statement, an assertion which precluded all contradiction.
Reginald Bell whirled around in his chair. "You're mistaken!" he retorted belligerently. He was utterly disinclined to stomach the debilitating pessimism of the Arkonides, not today anyway.
"Show me proof that I'm wrong, Reginald Bell!" she replied sharply, disregarding Khrest's pressure on her arm with which he implored her not to lose her temper.
But Thora was in no mood to control herself. She wanted to go home to Arkon and force Perry Rhodan to keep his promised word. In her excitement she failed to notice the suspicious glint in Bell's eyes. Perry Rhodan had observed it and had a good idea what kind of a harangue the irritated Bell was ready to pour out.
"Gladly, Thora," Bell began with deceiving politeness. "I'll prove it to you with your own claims, according to which we're uncivilized barbarians. But primitive people are much more stable and resistant than a highly bred race that has reached a state of passive existence—But, Thora, you were so eager to hear my rebuttal..." Bell kept grinning long after the hatch had closed up again after the Arkonide woman who had fled the command center in disgust.
Apprehensively Khrest turned to Bell. "You'll have only yourself to blame if Thora one of these days commits another of those rash acts you call a dangerous stupidity."
Bell made a disparaging gesture and began to loll about in his chair, when the rangefinder section sounded an alarm. The Springers had launched spaceships on Goszul's Planet. Not just a few but more than a hundred had been monitored by the rangefinder section. Everybody in the command center remembered the small atomic explosion which had taken place less than half an hour ago on Goszul's Planet.
"Structure disturbance!" the officer at the structure sensor shouted excitedly. "Lord, it's close!" Close meant near Goszul's Planet.
Disregarding all reason the Springer ships went into transition without consideration for the safety of the planet's inhabitants.
"Transitions are continuing without a pause!" the officer reported in growing excitement.
Now the authoritative voice of Rhodan, bringing calm to his staff, was heard: "Transition in 10 seconds! Retreat to a distance of eight light-days!"
Stardust II and Rhodan's three heavy cruisers were programmed by the positronic computer on board the super battleship to perform transitions without the slightest delay.
"...43... 44... now three together... 48..." The Officer monitoring the structure sensor kept counting the transitions.
There were five seconds left for Rhodan's fleet before the execution of the short transition. The manoeuvre was so synchronized for the four ships as to cause only one single disturbance of space. Thus it was next to impossible for the Springers on Goszul's Planet to keep tab on the Terranian fleet's movement since the space-time continuum was
being severely strained by their own transitions.
Perry Rhodan and Reginald Bell looked at each other. The countdown had reached zero. The universe with its splendor of brilliant suns suddenly vanished for the four ships simultaneously and burst open to swallow the battleship and the three heavy cruisers in a transition.
• • •
Tako Kakuta materialized again in the command center of the LEV XIV. Three traders jumped up terrified as a man suddenly appeared out of nowhere. But the terror felt was not so strong as to prevent them from reaching automatically for their weapons. Spontaneously Tako pulled the triggers of the two impulse beamers he had seized a few minutes earlier. He shot three times. Then the ventilation system sucked three gas clouds out with a whining noise.
The teleporter spun around and was now able to take his first look around. The hatch door behind him was closed. If there were other sentries posted on board the ship, they had apparently noticed nothing at all of the brief scuffle. Tako made a quick check. Suddenly his eyes widened and he started to swear. A critical piece of equipment was destroyed—the guidance system. In a mad rush he scanned the panoramic screen trying to find a cylindrical spaceship of the same type as the LEV XIV. He discovered such a ship at the other end of the spaceport.
Within a second he transported himself into the command center of the alien ship. He materialized behind a dozing Springer and knocked him unconscious with the butt of his impulse beamer before the dazed man knew what happened.
"Praised be the Arkonide technology!" Tako murmured as he pulled out the guidance system instrument with one grip of his hand.
Arkonides used no wired, potentially dangerous connections, nor easily melting solder or printed circuits. The Arkonides had found simpler methods. Tako Kakuta was still enthused about their expediency when the ship was rattled by a horrendous pressure wave which buckled half a dozen support braces. The next instant he was back on the LEV XIV but he was now prepared for the pressure wave. He tore the demolished set out of the console and threw it away. Then he pressed in the 'borrowed' replacement and remained unperturbed as the pressure wave reached and shook the LEV XIV .
"Praised be the Arkonide technology!" he murmured once again and then listened outside.
The pressure wave of his atom bomb had thundered past the LEV XIV without causing any damage. On the long way from the opposite end of the spaceport it had spent most of its destructive force. Tako set out to clear the LEV XIV of troublesome traders. He found none and after his search went to the big airlock. He kept a sharp lookout for his friends. Suddenly he narrowed his eyes when he saw them coming and grinned. It looked like Tama Yokida. The telekin had transformed the hovercraft into a flying race car. With his extraordinary power he propelled the vehicle at fantastic speed toward the LEV XIV. From a height of 1000 feet he bore down on the ship of the pariahs. Tako held his breath when the vehicle failed to brake its breakneck speed close to the ground near the ramp. The violent impact of the crash he feared never occurred. The hovercraft set down gently as a bird and Tako's comrades scrambled up the ramp in a hurry.
"Let's get out of here!" Marshall shouted. "They're after us! Etztak is boiling mad!"
• • •
Walls crumbled like cardboard around Etztak and the ceiling came crashing down burying members of his clan under the debris. Yet he saw and heard but little of the grisly cataclysm Radiation! pounded his brain;lethal dose of radiation!
He threw himself against a door hanging askew on its hinges and broke into a side room where a supply of spacesuits was kept. Such a suit saved him now. He escaped through the hole in the ceiling and, bucking the storm unleashed in the atmosphere, pushed through to the assembly hall. He shuddered when he saw the grim devastation wrought by the explosion as far as the eye could reach. He floated down through the hole in the ceiling, which was almost totally destroyed, and found life among the ruins. His dosimeter indicated that the radiation in this vicinity was below the danger level. He opened his helmet and grabbed the first patriarch who staggered across corpses to get outside. After he had stopped 10 or 20 people he finally found a man who had observed three men of Levtan's crew leaving the Great Conclave through the exit behind the dais.
Etztak mumbled a curse and used his spacesuit to carry himself across the hall to the platform. Among the heaps of bodies he found Levtan's documents from Perry Rhodan lying undamaged at his feet. He stuffed them hastily in his pockets and considered the find a good omen. Having a far more urgent task to pursue than remaining at the scene of the disaster he ascended in his spacesuit to the hole in the ceiling and hurried to the spaceport.
"Three of that treacherous clan have escaped!" He gritted his teeth, seething in a terrible rage. "They've taken bitter revenge but they forgot to reckon with me! I swear I'll avenge myself as soon as I overtake them! My ship is faster...
Etztak's hate grew by leaps and bounds and he had no inkling that John Marshall received his thought waves as if they were broadcast by a powerful transmitter.
• • •
The engines of the LEV XIV whined with a high pitch, piercing the ship as if lifted off the ground and soared into the clear day. John Marshall was at the controls. Not a word was spoken in the command center. Marshall's mind was still on Goszul's Planet while his body was on board the LEV XIV zooming into space. He lived vicariously through the panic of the patriarchs who had survived the horrible blast of Tako Kakuta's atom bomb.
A mortal fear gripped all elders including those who resisted Kitai Ishibashi's treatment Even the stupendous shock of the explosion—which they didn't immediately attribute to Perry Rhodan—paled beside the terror felt of his awesome power.
Tama Yokida stared at the velocity indicator as if it were his enemy. "The LEV XIV accelerated at a miserable rate. Goszul's Planet sank away below them but only gradually changed to a sphere. In the south at the other end of the continent a far flung city appeared on the panoramic screen but was soon covered by a deck of clouds.
"Ships approaching!" Tako Kakuta called out. "Here they come! And if I'm not mistaken they're destroyers and a big commercial vessel."
"That's Etztak!" Marshall observed.
"How fast are they coming?" Kitai Ishibashi asked.
"Too fast to stay alive. Marshall, we'll have to fly to the side of the planet where it's night. It's our only chance. They'll shoot us down in five minutes." Tama Yokida's voice sounded calm and unaffected by the gloomy prospects.
"Close your space helmets!" Marshall ordered.
Four destroyers and one Springer ship had taken up the chase with furious speed and were closing in on the LEV XIV as it desperately veered in a sharp curve to the night side of Goszul's Planet. Altitude under 20,000 miles! It was all the engines yielded. Marshall took time out to send a quick, condensed message in code to Rhodan. Three sentences only: "LEVTAN DEAD. MEETING BROKEN UP WITH A-BOMB. ISHIBASHI HAS..."
Nothing more was received by the Stardust II waiting with the three heavy cruisers in a standby position eight light-days away from the Tatlira System and secure from detection by the enemy's rangefinders. The message to Rhodan was interrupted by a heavy disintegrator beam penetrating the protective field of the LEV XIV and grazing the ship itself. The aft end dissolved in glowing vapors and the forward section of the ship plummeted down on the nocturnal side of Goszul's Planet.
• • •
At 2000 miles altitude they 'disembarked'. Abandoning the ship was no act of senseless desperation. Their Arkonide spacesuits were self-contained tiny spaceships with propulsion and protective screens. Two thousand miles above Goszul's Planet they floated like minute grins of dust at the edge of outer space and watched the forward section of the deserted ship burn up as it collided with the denser atmosphere.
They had not abandoned the ship in a panic. Instead they had, before vaulting into space, taken time to remove a part of the equipment which had been stowed away in ingenious hiding places when the ship was being refurbished in Terrania.
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br /> Perry Rhodan's four mutants formed a chain—a chain descending into the depth. As soon as they entered the dense atmosphere they encountered jetstreams and struggled bravely against whirlwinds roaring at more than 200 miles per hour. John Marshall drifted away. The night seemed to have swallowed him up. Kitai Ishibashi found him again and Tama Yokida brought him back with his telekinetic skill.
With the major part of their miniature generators' energy diverted to the protective screens, the spacesuits' antigrav fields operated with little power. The mutants plummeted through the first layer of clouds. Hailstones unexpectedly peppered their shields, giving them the weird feeling that they were being shot at with machine gun bullets. The clatter and vibration was very unpleasant and had a menacing feeling to it—but was preferable to the hissing of the evaporating aft end of the LEV XIV, a death note which still echoed in their ears.
"Caution!" Marshall warned his companions. "We're now only 30 feet above ground."
The falling astronauts increased the magnitude of their suits' antigrav fields and gently floated down to final stop. They had landed again on Goszul's Planet, albeit as shipwrecked spacemen.
• • •
When the next morning dawned they activated the deflector device in their suits, causing themselves to become invisible. Although this was an inconvenience—not being able to see each other—it was preferable to being exposed to unknown prowlers. They stayed grouped together by referring to geographical reference points on the landscape.
At about 60 miles an hour they skimmed over the continent at whose southern end they had seen a spacious city during their flight the day before in the LEV XIV. This city was their goal as they drifted at a low altitude over the land in a southerly direction. The longer they traveled the more convinced they became that the authority of the Springers was felt to a far lesser degree in the country.