by Perry Rhodan
"You'll have to speak more plainly that that, Mr. Bell."
Bell crossed his arms on his chest. "I'll be glad to!" he answered but he took a deep breath before continuing. "I haven't been able to get this thing off my mind ever since John Marshall told me the Chief was projecting his thought patterns inwardly. Mercant, I'm coming to the conclusion that these frightening changes in Rhodan are due to a lot more than the shock therapy. It would be hard for you to imagine how shook up I am over the fact that Perry brought back a cell activator with him from Wanderer and that now the thing is half sunk into his rib-cage and has become a part of his anatomy. We all know that It has a sense of humor that's not for humans but I don't think that spook would try anything really creepy. Mercant, do you think maybe It is trying to tell us something or that It's sort of rapping Rhodan's knuckles for him? I'm wondering if Perry tried something on Wanderer that he wouldn't have thought of doing if he were in his right mind."
"Bell, you're playing with fire again-trying to sell the idea that the Chief is insane!" Mercant's voice carried a note of warning. "You know if he hears about it you're liable to get yourself in trouble!"
Bell laughed grimly. "If you only knew how little I care about that! I've given up that kind of thinking. The real steamroller for me is time! It's only a matter of hours now before I'll have to take action. And if it comes to that, Mercant, you know I'll be working for my sick friend but never against him. Is that clear?"
"You didn't even have to mention it, Mr. Bell. I know how you feel about the Chief-even at present. It's just that I fear you'll step in too soon..."
Bell's heavyset figure seemed to bristle as he interrupted the wily Chief of Intelligence. "Too soon, eh?-when two Imperiums are ready to wipe each other out? Too soon, when Atlan starts making deals with the Akons? He might as well throw a noose around his neck and get it over with! In our last conversation I made it plain enough to him that he should play it cool-that what he feared from the presence of our Fleet in the Arkon Imperium would not come about."
In matter-of-fact tones, Mercant remarked: "Intelligence has indications that the Chief overheard you slip that little assurance to Atlan."
Bell shrugged without quivering an eyelash. "That's fine with me! I have nothing to hide-but I can't understand Atlan."
"Maybe I can," said Mercant dourly. "Atlan once told me that he could have had many friends during his life here on Earth but it was only after more than 10,000 years that he found the friend! One can't blame him for his bitterness, considering the state of affairs. And don't forget that in many ways Atlan thinks as we do and not like an Arkonide."
Bell flared up at him. "Doesn't he have an extra brain he refers to as his logic sector?" As the videophone buzzed he glanced at it in new exasperation. "All right, so now what...?" he muttered.
The main clinic in Terrania announced: "Administrator Perry Rhodan has been admitted here a few minutes ago. The nature of the problem is unknown at this time."
5/ THE LOOM OF DOOM
Brazo Alkher and Stant Nolinov had landed on a plateau that was approximately 300 meters over the basin floor and perhaps 5-km distant from the temple area. Although they had hardly hoped to come through the murderous barrage of energy beams they had finally reached a point of relative safety and were sure that by now the Antis must consider them to be casualties. What neither one suspected, however, was that the energy barrage had been unleashed for the express purpose of driving them to this spot. Nor did they know that the Antis had been keeping them under continuous observation by means of television.
Having ducked into a small rocky crevice, the two Solar Fleet officers tried to recover from the exertions of their flight. Knowing that voice traffic between their helmet phones could easily be intercepted, they had shut off their radios. Alkher kept thinking of the chance conversation he had overheard between an Anti and one of the attacking Springers and it was still a mystery to him that the Galactic Trader up there in his long-ship had actually received instructions on where to place his beam fire. It tempted him to switch on his radiophone but at the last moment he desisted, realizing that it was too much of a risk.
Thus Nolinov was still, in the dark concerning what he had accidentally heard and soon Alkher had other things to think about as a new attack on the Anti stronghold broke out. Nolinov felt Alkher grip his arm and the two men looked at each other, passing a signal between them with their eyes. Alkher cautiously slipped out of the niche in the rock, adjusting his defense screen against the raging hurricane and crept to the edge of the plateau.
He wanted to see what was left of this manufacturing center after the heavy attack. There was nothing but an impenetrable sea of clouds. He could not make out the slightest sign of the Baalol temple complex. He turned up his outside microphone even though the thunder of explosions in the valley basin threatened to rupture his eardrums. As he listened he heard the occasional roar of impulse engines. A large fleet of the Traders' long-ships had to be circling over the area, which served to strengthen his suspicions. Under such a massive attack by heavily armed ships, shouldn't the whole installation have been destroyed by now?
In other words, had the attack against the temple been genuine?
Yet the terrific tongues of flame blasting out from impact points below were so convincing that Alkher was about ready to abandon his suspicions. Following the wildly spreading flames of explosion came a thunderous blast that left him momentarily deaf.
Suddenly, off to his right, he saw a shadowy shape which turned out to be a wobbling and careening auxiliary spacecraft. It was a type of lifeboat used by the Springers on their cylindrical long-ships in case of a space catastrophe. It landed 100 meters behind him, about 30 meters away from the niche where Nolinov was waiting for him to return.
Alkher decided to take a risk. He switched on his helmet radio. "Stant..."
His companion seemed to have been waiting for his call. "OK," Nolinov promptly interrupted him. "I'll see what can be done!"
What Stant Nolinov could do when he spoke in this tone had become a small tradition in the Solar Fleet. From his concealment he had observed the lifeboat landing and behind his faceplate his eyes had narrowed suspiciously. He wasn't sure whether or not the small craft's careening gyrations were genuine or merely a trick to lure him into a trap. He could not detect any sign of damage to the hull but then he was amazed to see the airlock open to reveal two staggering figures-apparently wounded Springers. One of them had to be supported by the other. The latter finally dragged his companion toward the stern.
Nolinov watched them, ready for action, but burning to know if these two were the entire crew. He and Alkher were weaponless so they had to be very careful.
"But maybe we can do something about that..." Nolinov heard himself mutter.
He took another look at the two Springers who were looking at the propulsion end of their ship. As a thick cloud of smoke came over the rim of the plateau and drifted toward the spacecraft, Nolinov plunged in its wake, using it for cover. Twice he fell in the process but his suit protected him from bruises. In spite of the 1.3 gravity he managed to jump into the open airlock. One look into the interior of the ship told him that it was empty! He heaved a sigh of relief.
From his training he was familiar with this make of vessel and he knew where the weapons cabinet was located. In three steps he was in front of it. He opened it and found a small arsenal. He helped himself swiftly but did not neglect looking them over for their charge indications. After checking the third weapon he had chosen, he grinned in satisfaction. The Springer in charge of this cabinet must be the careful type, he thought. Every blaster was loaded to its maximum charge.
Then he looked about inside the craft. The tail end revealed signs of a relatively harmless hit. When he happened to glance at the floor he noticed a puddle of blood which gave mute testimony that what he had seen must be real. This emergency landing could not be a ruse, he thought. Yet he was unaware that the blood was artificial and that t
he spacecraft's landing was all a part of the Antis' strategy.
Suddenly Alkher's voice rattled in his helmet phones: "Stant, I've got them-both of them!"
With weapons in hand, Nolinov moved outside swiftly. At the moment the visibility was good on the plateau. The closest cloudbanks raced away more than 100 meters below, driven before the storm. Nolinov ran toward the stern end of the ship and found Alkher with his knee on one of the Springers while the other one lay motionlessly nearby on the ground...
"One of them's wounded, Brazo!" Nolinov advised over his radio.
"I sort of got that idea, myself," came the answer. "They both folded before I even had to get rough."
Nolinov joined him and turned the motionless figure over on its back. He saw a bearded face, one side of which was smeared with blood. By all appearances the man was unconscious.
"What'll we do with them?" he asked hastily. He was suddenly in a huffy to get going. If they could get the auxiliary craft started and the engines had not been seriously damaged, it was likely that the two of them could be back on the good old Ironduke in a matter of hours.
"We leave them here!" Alkher decided. "This character will be coming around soon and it's not too far to the temple. There are enough of the big boats swarming around upstairs-he'll make contact with them. Let's hope this little flier can get off the ground!"
Nolinov handed him one of the weapons and the two Terrans took one last look at the motionless Springers before they made a dash for the airlock. Once inside, Nolinov showed Alkher the light damage to the hull. To Alkher it looked like a plant and he was again reminded of the incongruously friendly conversation he had overheard between the Anti and the Springer concerning the latter's firing strategy.
"Close airlock-air pressure on, Stant!"
Alkher swept into the pilot seat. Nolinov made no objection to being subordinated in command. He closed the lock door and set the air pumps going to get rid of the Saos atmosphere inside. Meanwhile, Alkher checked the engines by inspecting the instrument board.
"It's a setup!" Nolinov heard him say. But he didn't know what Alkher meant by it nor did he ask. There was little time for conversation now, as every second could be crucial.
Neither Alkher nor Nolinov could know, of course, that at this moment Kutlos was rubbing his hands in satisfaction as he watched his viewscreen. It showed him a small Springer spacecraft sitting on a rocky plateau, high above the valley basin. Although the two Terrans were unaware of this surveillance, on the other hand Kutlos did not realize that his very costly plan to identify Saos as Trakarat was almost a complete failure already. The young Solar Fleet officer who looked like such an innocent youngster was just about in a position to see through the entire camouflage.
"Red herring or not, we'll take it!" Nolinov heard Alkher say. "What's the cabin pressure?"
Nolinov checked the manometer and advised that it was normal. The spacecraft's hull began to tremble as Alkher fired up the engines. A warm-up period was not necessary because the ship had just been in operation. Meanwhile the two men had opened their helmets in the pressurized cabin.
The auxiliary ship shot away like a torpedo. Alkher banked it sharply before the cliff walls and came around. Seated beside him in the co-pilot spot, Nolinov could see by the instruments that they were flying toward the north.
"What are you trying to do!" he yelled. "You want to saw off the top of the pyramid?"
"No, but I want to see how many of those Springer longboats are there and what kind of a clambake they're having with the Antis."
"What are you, a humorist or something?" asked Nolinov, confused. "You should be grabbing all the sky you can get, man!"
"I think somebody's putting on a show and I'd like to know who the sponsor is... There-you see those ships down there?"
They caught a glimpse of the temple complex through a rift in the clouds. The whole area should have been nothing but wreckage and ashes by now but there was actually very little evidence of any damage. Still more remarkable was the fact that seven or eight cylindrical warships lay peacefully on the landing field with their personnel ramps plainly extended.
"Fire from the left!" shouted Nolinov sharply.
A raybeam-shot from an Anti ground battery came just a hair too late. Alkher swung the ship so sharply that it strained the hull but the risk involved paid off: the energy beam missed them by at least a kilometer.
"You think that wasn't a put-on?" growled Alkher, glancing at his companion.
"You're an optimist!" countered Nolinov, Although he was beginning to go along with the theory. "Maybe just another streak of luck. You make it sound as if the Antis brought us this boat for a bye-bye present!"
"You're getting the picture, Stant-that's exactly what they did! Even the raid by the Traders was a bluff! We were supposed to fall for it. They wanted us to escape, those helpful little brothers of Baalol-so we could go to the Chief like good little boy scouts and tell him that Saos is also known as Trakarat! And I was mighty close to being sucked in! It was lucky I happened to overhear them plotting our escape. You see anything on the tracker yet-any ships following us?"
"No. All the time you've been talking I've been wondering about that. With that fleet down there it would be simple to rake us in. What did you overhear-something on their radio band?"
Alkher told him of his experience while the small craft gained altitude and Saos dropped away below them. When he finished, Nolinov let out a whistle and stared at him wonderingly.
"I don't know if I would have caught on as quickly as you did," he confessed. "But have you ever heard of Trakarat before?"
"Never. But I'll lay you odds that Trakarat is an Anti top secret. Stant, set up a message tape for the hypercom. I have a hunch this information can't get to the Chief any too soon!"
Within a few minutes Nolinov prepared the text of the dispatch and managed to put it into a simple code. This particular ship was not equipped with pulse-burst and scrambler transmission devices but it did have a small positronicon. Nolinov used it to process his tape, tying in the last known code-of-the-day for the Fleet. The computer only required a few seconds to convert everything into positronic language and transfer it to the transmitter.
Within half a minute they received a response: "Text unclear-repeat!" Alkher and Nolinov only grinned at each other.
"The devil we will!" retorted Nolinov. "That would be real friendly, to tell it to the galaxy in open text so that the Antis can know we've caught on to their tricks! I'll just beam out a distress signal. I'm not going to breathe easy until I'm on board the Ironduke again. If only..." He fell silent as though he had said too much.
"What's the 'if only' part?" insisted Alkher while programming the computer for a transition.
"If only I had my thinking straight-about the Chief. That's the thing that dims the whole scene about going back to Earth, Brazo. I guess I must be skoned or something."
"Then you've got company, Stant. That's a real dim scene. I even have cold feet when I think of facing the Chief again. Coming back from Wanderer and while we were on board the Baa-lo, he came on real skondola for me-weird-I still don't understand it!"
• • •
Kutlos was seated between the video surveillance panel and the hypercom console. He watched the screen as the auxiliary craft carrying the two Terran officers broke through the line of Springer ships above the base and raced into the void.
He gave instructions to the radioman: "The lifeboat is not to be followed!"
The agent who had met Thomas Cardif on Earth expressed his apprehensions. "But the Terrans flew quite low over the temple, Kutlos. They could have seen the long-ships that were sitting there."
"So?" queried the other sharply. "Couldn't they look like our own ships-perhaps surprised by the Springers' attack? We've brought this plan too far along now-it has to be carried through We'll have to hurry to dismantle the production facilities here and trans-ship them out of here before a fleet formation from Earth shows up
over Saos."
The agent still appeared to be concerned. "I hope everything develops the way we planned, Kutlos. But when I think of that young lieutenant, I keep wondering if he could be so easily fooled. When I was on Terra I did some investigating. He happens to be the best weapons officer in the Solar Fleet!"
Kutlos grinned back. "So much the better! The Terran's report will carry more weight with his fleet command." Kutlos' grin faded and his eyes suddenly flared angrily. "But why do I learn only now about his importance?"
The temple's hypercom receiver picked up the first message that Alkher and Nolinov beamed out to the Solar Fleet.
"It's in code," said the operator, "but we'll have the clear text available within a few minutes!"
It was not an underestimation. The positronic decode machine made child's play of the simple code, But then the Antis on Saos had the same problem as the crew of the cruiser who radioed back to the fugitives: "Text unclear-repeat!"
While he read and re-read the decoded text of the message the Anti agent frowned in puzzlement, even though he knew the Terran language as well as his own. Finally he shrugged resignedly. "I don't understand it!"
Kutlos wasn't interested in knowing what the other did not understand about it-he just wanted to know if the name Trakarat was in the message.
"Twice, without mentioning any other names. Once it mentions the word 'Central' but I can't make out the related context..."
The hypercom interrupted him and the agent immediately translated the intercepted message. The three words were significant as well as the identification. A Solar Fleet cruiser somewhere in star cluster M-13 was asking the two fugitives to repeat their information.
Kutlos' features finally relaxed and he slowly got to his feet. "We should be satisfied," he said. "The Terrans have swallowed the bait. The plan is in operation."
• • •
The hyper room message from Alkher and Nolinov had been picked up by State-class cruiser Ganges, sixth Task Fleet Pursuit Flotilla. The request for a repeat had already gone out before the commander learned about it. The names Alkher and Nolinov alerted him immediately and he had some harsh words for his Corn Central officer.