by Perry Rhodan
"Pucky is the only one on board who gets to eat fresh carrots. The rest of the crew is limited almost exclusively to food concentrates or canned foods because of their lower cost and their space-saving features. Pucky on the other hand always needs something to nibble at or gnaw on. Since he had taken Muzzel so close to his heart, he shared some of the carrots with him, even though he claimed the main portion of the now doubled ration for himself. Muzzel ate practically everything, including the carrots, so Pucky assumed that they must taste all right to the possonkal."
"But what can a robot do with organic food? It can't adequately assimilate it so it has to get rid of it somewhere. And that's what Muzzel proceeded to do. He deposited the contents of his stomach in the airshafts. Although he was for the most part an organic being, Muzzel's digestion didn't quite work the same. His-um-designers, shall we say, came to his assistance there. They had to take into account the fact that their robot-android creation, Muzzel, would have to get rid of his food intake sooner or later if he was to be kept from bursting. So they added a sort of extra gland which permeated the masticated food with an Arkonide type of fermenting enzyme so that it could activate the swiftest possible digestion. Nobody would have noticed such an arrangement had Muzzel relieved himself in a proper location-but he did it in the ventilating system and that was his first crucial mistake. I found the first clue and followed it up.
"The most damaging evidence, however, was found in the data retrieval room. While the Drusus was in its top emergency situation, he had sneaked in there and stolen the Earth's coordinate data. He hardly possessed any specialist capability in the operation of positronic equipment-especially this kind, which is of Terranian origin-yet he did operate the data retriever. And one other thing: he was too small to be able to reach up to the upper switch panel, so he had to jump. In doing so, he scratched the panel board. The claws of a normal possonkal would have been too soft to be able to scratch a metal-plastic panel plate but after all Muzzel was part robot and not everything on him was genuine. The claws, for example, were not. They also consisted of plastic metal and were much more prehensile than dog claws, since they had to carry out difficult manipulations.
"At the moment lie had finished, Commander Rhodan appeared on the scene. We don't know if Muzzel had planned all along to sneak out through the ventilation system. Certainly an escape route through the air duct had been prepared beforehand because Muzzel had removed the screws from the dust screen.
"In any case his robot brain told him-he actually had two brains as you will learn later-that Rhodan would have seen him if he had gone out through the main hatchway. So he got away by his usual route. The square ducting of the air system, even in the smaller distribution channels, was just right for him. In this manner he could reach any desired place on the ship and allow Pucky to search for him, since Pucky didn't concern himself much about how the dachshund could get from one place to another so quickly. As a teleporter, perhaps Pucky doesn't have a proper time-sense for foot travel.
"And oh yes, that second brain of Muzzel's! The designers of the almost perfect spy had thought of everything. They also knew that we had telepaths at our disposal who would have immediately recognized a soulless robot. So Muzzel had to radiate genuine thought impulses.
"We will probably never find out what kind of brain they transplanted into the Possonkal's head but Pucky has given us certain clues which lead us to believe that it was the small brain of a water animal, perhaps some kind of a fish or maybe a jellyfish..."
Atlan stopped in amazement as somebody started laughing, loudly and in unabashed glee.
It was Reginald Bell who stood near Rhodan, holding onto his sides. His laughter was so loud and roaring that it seemed to be catching. Soon half the crew was laughing without knowing what the cause of the merriment was.
Finally Bell fell silent but as it turned out it was only because he was out of breath.
Atlan turned to him courteously. "May I ask what has excited such hilarity in the gentleman? I don't seem to recall..."
Bell was almost ready to explode but he finally pulled himself together. Almost inarticulately he blurted out: "When I think... ha-ha!... that all this time Pucky was... hee-hee!... playing around with just a squishy jellyfish... and slept with him... and even gave him carrots to eat!" He burst out laughing again.
Atlan waited patiently, unmoved, until things quieted down. Then he continued speaking. "Kulman knew nothing of all this. He believed that he had already known Muzzel for weeks or perhaps months but perhaps yesterday was the actual first time he saw him. What is in all probability quite certain is the fact that Arkon gave the assignment to the unknown leaders of the project to give him a new memory. Kulman had to forget why he sent out the top alert and secondly he had to bring Muzzel on board the Drusus or some other ship that would be returning sooner or later to the Earth."
Rhodan spoke when Atlan made a slight pause. "And the micro-transmitters...?"
"Oh those!" Atlan nodded as though they had just now come to mind. "Muzzel had about 150 of them in his stomach. We would have had to do some real fancy jumping around out here to trick him out of those, one at a time. Each transition only subtracted one from his supply, which was kept in a sort of storage pouch. By a certain movement, Muzzel could shove a transmitter into a small tube at any particular time, and this tube terminated in his mouth. Also, when a transmitter left the pouch to enter the outlet tube, it would set the device's timer for the desired time.
"Muzzel's procedure was as follows: after waiting for a transition to end, he would leave Pucky under the pretense of going somewhere to hide. He would spit out one of his transmitters somewhere and then let Pucky search for him and find him. It all went quite smoothly and without arousing any suspicion.
"It was only in connection with our last transition, which was announced beforehand and was ostensibly to take us back to Earth, that Muzzel placed a transmitter prior to the hyperjump. Pucky had heard the P.A. broadcast and Muzzel had learned from him that the two of them were supposed to remain in the Command Central during the transition. Oh yes, and during that transition I noticed something else."
A faint smile touched Atlan's lips as he looked at the remains of the android-robot spy. They had been placed in a box for thorough examination later. "While each of us including Pucky suffered the usual pains of transition, Muzzel remained unaffected. He sensed nothing-absolutely nothing. But a possonkal is a living creature like any other. He would have had to suffer pain like the rest of us. When I observed this fact I was completely certain of my deductions."
Rhodan broke into the momentary silence. "I think that very soon now we're going to have to pick a bone with somebody about this."
"With whom?" Bell wanted to know, while Atlan continued to smile.
"With the Robot Regent of Arkon-if I'm not hurting the sensitivities of our friend Atlan."
Atlan made a minimizing gesture. I think I've already explained to you how I feel about that two or three million ton metal monster. That's no true Arkonide: you can don't have to handle the Regent with kid gloves on my account."
Rhodan knew that three vital tasks lay before him. A return visit to Swoofon could not be avoided. The Earth could not afford to have in its immediate vicinity a world whose marvelous micro-technology was at the beck & call of the Springers... which in the final analysis meant Arkon itself.
This grim realization reminded Rhodan that he had not yet heard Kulman's actual account of what happened. The details must be retrieved as soon as the agent awakened from his convalescent sleep.
The second task before him was the refreshment of the Robot Brain's memory in regard to the treaty between Arkon and Earth and emphasis that in no way could Earth be pleased by the way Arkon's ruler was choosing to interpret that agreement. It had to be drilled into the Regent's armor plated skull that without Terra's help the positronicon would lose its battle against the unknown menace from the alien time dimension. A machine has very little sense of
real time and this fact worked against the interests of Arkon.
The most difficult mission of all, however, would be to confront those timeless beings who were lurking out there somewhere in the interstices of spatima, only waiting for the two space-time continuums to make contact in order to manifest again. They remained the greatest danger of all, a menace that the Peacelord took very, very seriously.
Rhodan nodded once more to Atlan, then turned to Sikermann. "Put the Drusus on course for the Swaft system. I'll give you the time for the hytrans as soon as we have Kulman's report. Till then, for my part I'm going to give my eyeballs a rest for an hour. I'd suggest you do the same if you don't have any deck watch coming up soon. See you later."
Bell watched Rhodan leave for a well-deserved nap. "Actually I should be following suit," he said to himself, "but I guess I'd rather have a chat with Pucky. Now that he's lost a friend he'll probably need some consolation."
As he departed on his errand of mercy, Atlan called after him: "If you can use some consolation in a little while, I'll be around."
In deep space, there being no atmosphere to filter their rays, the stars do not twinkle, else there might have been the stellar spectacle of a panoply of stars blinking at the unconscious irony of Atlan's statement. "I'll be around." An immortal man, whose life history already spanned many millennia.
SPYBOT!
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The Blue Dwarfs