Life Hunt

by Perry Rhodan

  Marshall still did not know why the folder in his hand was as important as Egmon suggested.

  "Ixt," said Egmon with good-natured restraint, "I wouldn't have risked getting this if Rohun hadn't pressed it on us to go through fire for you. What you now hold in your hand is the positronic evaluation of all the inquiries made about you by the Ara Secret Service!"

  "Surely they'll notice the file is missing!" Marshall knew about the Aras and their bureaucratic red tape—it was as tedious and overly precise as on Earth.

  "18 agents in the field, Ixt!" Tulin reminded him. "3 of them are employed in the Ara Secret Service! Ixt, there is now no mention of you in any file anywhere on Tolimon! Isn't that enough for you...?"

  At that moment all the ray-screens in the Hall of Dreams collapsed!

  Arkonides and Springers, man-like beings from faraway worlds here to throw themselves into the arms of their addiction, broke out in loud protests. People lay in a stupor on the floor everywhere one looked. The rayscreens inducing invisibility had disappeared and the famous security of the Hall of Dreams was no more.

  A giant loudspeaker boomed: "The Ara Secret Service has blocked every exit! No one leaves the Hall of Dreams!"

  Tulin and Egmon stared at John Marshall. Written on their faces was—Now they've got us!

  John Marshall calmly put the file into his pocket and stood up, nodding commandingly to the two Springer agents. Near them stood a group of excited Galactic Traders and John Marshall idly walked over. Tulin and Egmon followed, although it mattered little to them where they were when the Secret Service checked them.

  While Marshall outwardly pretended to be an attentively listening Springer following the conversation, he tried to concentrate as much as he could on remembering how many exits the Hall of Dreams had.

  To one after the other he sent his searching thoughts and at the fifth exit he had to smile.

  He quietly gave Tulin and Egmon the sign to follow him.

  They strolled as though bored towards the fifth egress, where six armed Aras were standing guard, men from the Secret Service! three of them were exceptionally unhappy with their tour of duty today, since they had had to cancel all their private plans for what should have been their day off. While mentally examining the guards at each exit, Marshall had become aware of their discontent.

  Thus those particular Aras became victims of his psychobeamer even as they stood guard in the Hall of Dreams. Then Marshall took on the three remaining, more zealous Aras. Egmon tried to bother him about something but he persevered with his efforts. Marshall did, however, give Egmon such an angry look that the Springer fell back a step and changed his eye color in terror.

  The psychobeamer streamed Marshall's will unceasingly at the Aras, transmitting to them the order to let Marshall and his companions through after a make-believe strict check.

  While at three other exits—especially at the main exit, the noise and protests were growing louder than ever, there was little for the six Aras to do at Exit #5.

  They looked up curiously when they noticed Marshall and the Springers approaching.

  Tulin moaned. "And here I've got three different ray-pistols on me! I'd better throw them away before—"

  "Don't throw anything away!" Marshall growled at him, managing somehow to accommodate this tiny interruption in his hypnotic influence over the Aras.

  Tulin, too, was forced to be quiet by the sheer pressure of Marshall's authoritative glance.

  Then they stood at Exit #5.

  A pair of Aras tended to each Galactic Trader.

  John Marshall was searched by two grim-looking officers. Tulin broke out in a cold sweat from all pores, standing as he was directly behind Marshall and seeing the Positronic file in one of the Aras' hands. Then he remembered his three ray-pistols which the Aras were even now removing from his pockets!

  I've had it now! thought Tulin, not even daring to breathe.

  And then the Aras put the pistols back in his pockets!

  "You can pass!" growled an Ara, throwing a curse after them.

  Finding themselves still free, Egmon and Tulin were as happy as little children but they couldn't understand why they hadn't been arrested.

  "Do you know why the Secret Service raided the Hall of Dreams?" Marshall asked them once they had gained the street and were engulfed by the passing throngs.

  "Certainly not because of us," said Tulin doubtfully. He thought of his three ray-pistols, how the Aras, had found them and yet had not seemed to react. And most of all, how he had not been arrested.

  "It was because of Egmon!" John Marshall said, looking at each of them in turn. "The Aras must have installed their watch-robots everywhere at once. A Watcher must have seen Egmon taking the file out of the Secret Service Tron and sounded the alarm!"

  The tall, white-blond Springer went pale. He could guess the consequences but Tulin, the red-haired daredevil, was cut from a different cloth.

  Tulin looked at John Marshall in distrust. "Ixt, you seem weirder to me all the time! Why are you trying to pressure us with your shameless lies? What did we do to deserve that?"

  Tulin's question was justified. He believed that the animal dealer had known nothing of their action against the Ara Secret Service—therefore his contention that a watch-robot had spotted Egmon at the Positronic could be only a bald-faced lie.

  "Watch out...!" was all Marshall could say. Right then he had time for nothing other than to take care of an Ara from the secret service who had suddenly appeared. Intent on his mission, to judge from the look on his face, the Ara was going straight for Egmon through an open space in the crowd.

  The Ara stood even now in front of the white-blond Springer, his hand shoved in a pocket whose bulge meant he had a ray-pistol zeroed in on Egmon.

  "Egmon of the Rohun Clan!" snarled the Ara and grabbed for him.

  Half-unconsciously, John Marshall pushed Tulin's arm back down before the redhead could attempt anything. Then Tulin exhaled a curse, mainly to gasp for breath because the Ara—just seconds before a walking personification of grim and relentless duty—had suddenly become the very picture of warm friendliness. His steel grip on Egmon's shoulder melted into a hearty backslap and then came pleasant small talk—"I've really enjoyed seeing you again, Egmon! Well, I've got to run along now, so until next time, good luck!"

  He nodded, friendly as a puppy, took his hand out of his gun pocket and departed.

  Both of the Springers were badly confused. "Ixt, you're uncanny! What did you do to the Ara to make him change his attitude so suddenly?"

  "Luck like that we probably won't have the next time, said Marshall, avoiding the question. "Egmon, now will you believe a watch-robot saw you at the Secret Service Positronic?"

  Egmon had an opportunity to answer only some minutes later, once, the three had descended to a lower traffic level and stepped aboard a public transport that would take them out of the city as quickly as possible. Even then, Egmon only posed a counter-question. "By all the stars, Ixt, how do you know that?"

  And to that, too, John Marshall could give no answer. "What are you going to do, Egmon?"

  Egmon muttered his reply. "Rohun's got to come back and pick me up because once the Aras are on somebody's tail they get him sooner or later! Now nothing's going to come of my deal with the 5000 shaks!"

  Perry Rhodan's mutant could only admire the reserved Springer agent's cold-blooded courage.

  6/ LOVE LEAPS FOUR CENTURIES

  For two days Marshall lived in a state of constant tension, expecting to be jumped at any minute by the Ara secret service. But when nothing of the sort happened, he gradually relaxed.

  His second visit to Kolex, head of Central Purchasing, was not for the sake of courtesy. By way of the influential man he hoped to come in contact with the group of galactic physicians responsible for manufacture of the life-giving and prolonging serum. That was why he had offered Kolex the shipment of unknown creatures from the stench-planet in the first place. That he had made a
good profit on the deal did not interest him in the least.

  Kolex was brimming over with charming friendliness. Their conversation naturally revolved around the unusual animals.

  "Animals?" Kolex was saying. "That isn't the right word at all. We found only eight species that could be called animals. All the rest are intelligent! Some are even smarter than our froghs! That was the greatest sensation of all and you wouldn't believe all the recognition I've received for risking a two million purchase!" Kolex was beaming and according to what the mutant found in his thoughts, filled with nothing but gratitude for Marshall.

  "I suppose it's too bad for these intelligent aliens that they were caught," John offered.

  Here he had hit a sore point and Kolex protested hotly, speaking of research and serum carriers and then about serum manufacture itself. "We're helpless without serum carriers, Ixt! Every serum carrier must be healthy or otherwise his affliction will ruin the results! I swear to you—captive intelligences don't have it so good anywhere else as in our zoo!"

  "Were the intelligent creatures from the stench-planet put behind energy barriers, too?"

  Kolex told the truth. "For the time being, yes. We have a task—I can't speak of it—a task of galactic importance that requires us to treat our captives in this fashion! We Aras are miracle workers in medicine but we aren't magicians and... Ixt, you look at me so oddly, so reproachfully. I know what you're thinking! You surely know the law set down by the ruling Positronic on Arkon... Ixt, when the stakes are so high, even breaking the law can be justified!"

  "Hmmm," murmured the mutant, reading Kolex's thoughts, which centered entirely around the life-prolonging serum. For its production, the Aras needed intelligent beings in levels C, B and even A! In holding intelligent beings captive and using their bodies as natural serum producers, the Aras were breaking one of Arkon's strictest laws. Were the infraction to be discovered, it could mean instant annihilation of all the Ara worlds.

  The robot Brain on Arkon knew no feelings. It acted solely on the basis of the logic of its programming.

  With his vague hints Kolex had already betrayed far too much—and his thoughts betrayed even more!

  Together, everything formed conclusive proof for Marshall that the Aras had long passed the experimental stage of their work and were now manufacturing the life-prolonging serum in large quantities.

  "Now I just hope I don't have any more trouble with the Ara Secret Service," John said to himself as he took his leave from Kolex and went down the Street of the Great Moh towards his shop.

  • • •

  Four people from the Earth of the 17th Century lived behind an insurmountable energy barrier in Tolimon's enormous zoo.

  Laury Marten had met all of them: Mtumbo, the superstitious and dull-witted Kaffir; Alf Tornsten, who lived apathetically from day to day, broken in mind and spirit by the to him incomprehensible fact that he was not growing older; Nara, a worn-out old Mongolian, keeping to herself in her nomad's hut. She was insane and no longer able to speak rationally.

  Like Alf Tornsten, Mtumbo spoke only a mangled and broken Intercosmo Duke Rodrigo de Berceo, however, was brilliant in the language and when Laury Marten came to visit him for the third time, they conversed in the Arkonide of the "Upper 10,000".

  The Aztec palace concealed a secret that made two persons happy: Laury Marten and Duke Rodrigo were in love!

  It had come over them like a deluge—stormy, forceful... and wonderful. Their love bridged the gulf of four centuries.

  In love, the beautiful mutant continually forgot that she had been sent by Perry Rhodan to Tolimon on a mission. Even though the lives of Thora and Khrest depended on the success of that mission, she forgot nonetheless.

  From Duke Rodrigo, Laury Marten learned how at the age of 22 he had been riding through his parents' estate when he saw something shaped like a cylinder shoot through the clouds. He had been frightened and tried to flee but a small flying thing picked him up and took him on board what turned out to be a Springer ship. The Springers shut him up in a cabin with three other people: Mtumbo, Alf Tornsten and Nara; and little attention was paid to them until they were unloaded at Trulan. Now they lived like animals in a zoo.

  Laury had decided to forgo explaining to him what she had meant by zoo but on the second visit she had not forgotten to ask Rodrigo de Berceo why he had aged only slightly in 400 years.

  In reply, Rodrigo spoke of a mighty palace and the more he talked about it the more clearly Laury recognized it as X-p. He had been taken there again and again, examined in procedures lasting for days and finally given an injection of the life-prolonging serum.

  "The day will come when I show the Aras with my sword that I am Duke Rodrigo and no degenerate Aztec! Here, my gorgeous flower, gaze upon this shining blade—soon to drink deeply of the blood of my tormentors!" And with a theatrical gesture that might have belonged to the courtly customs of the 17th Century, he ripped his short sword out of its scabbard.

  Laury Marten, the practical-minded girl of the 21st Century, was in love, and love enchanted all it touched. Addressed as a "gorgeous flower", looking into the flashing and passion-filled eyes of her lover, feeling his strong arms about her—all this made her happy. All her thoughts revolved around one point only—freeing Rodrigo from Ara captivity!

  Rodrigo could not remember just when he had last received the life-prolonging serum but it was about 90 years before, Earth time.

  What did 90 years mean to Aras who often lived to be over 800 years old?

  The information that Laury obtained from Rodrigo was important because it confirmed that the serum was being made in X-p.

  Again and again Laury felt her conscience remind her just why she was on Tolimon—and then hours of self-reproach and guilty feelings followed. And each time it happened, she promised herself to tell Marshall about her love for Rodrigo de Berceo during their next telepathic exchange.

  However—John Marshall as yet still knew nothing of it!

  • • •

  Laury Marten finally tore herself away from Rodrigo. She had been with him for over two hours, Tolimon time, and now she stepped through the gap in the energy barrier created by her disintegrative ability.

  Then, as she was walking towards her vehicle, the head of a frogh appeared over the rim of the long, deep gully on her left and stared at her with its serpent gaze.

  As though rooted to the spot, Laury Marten stopped and stood stock-still. She tried to pick up the frogh's thoughts but with no success—in her excitement she could not find the frequency on which the frogh's mind operated.

  The frogh's voice was cold and even colder was the glitter in its staring eyes. "It will interest the Aras very much to learn that you can walk through energy barriers without having to turn them off, Arga Silm."

  Her first impulse was to destroy the frogh with her raypistol but Perry Rhodan's rule of killing only in an emergency was too deeply imbedded within her mind to let her.

  Her situation now was an emergency but only because she had been negligent. She was still strong enough not to deceive herself on that score but she felt exhausted nonetheless. She half-unconsciously reached into her pocket, found a concentrated energy tablet and swallowed it.

  Its effect was immediate and so obvious that the frogh had to ask, "What was that you just swallowed, Arga Silm?"

  While desperately trying to think of a way out, she told him.

  "May I try one of those tablets?" asked the frogh—that monstrous mixture of centipede and snake—leaving the gully and coming up to Laury Marten. It stretched an arm to her that ended in a grasping claw.

  Thinking only to win time, Laury gave the frogh a tablet. She expected nothing else—but when the frogh swallowed the tablet, it stiffened! Laury was frightened and inconspicuously slipped her hand into her gun pocket. As far as she was concerned, the frogh had to die.

  The frogh's hideous laugh forced her a few steps back. Laughing even harder, it raised the first third of its body and r
egarded Perry Rhodan's agent from a height of two yards. "Did I frighten you, Arga Silm? Please excuse me because I only wanted to thank you!"

  "By turning me in to the Aras?" demanded Laury, who felt herself being mocked in her hopeless plight.

  "Arga Silm," the frogh went on, its voice dropping to a whisper, "I'll do nothing of the kind if you bring me a thousand energy tablets tomorrow. Do that and I'll be your most faithful servant, Arga Silm." A gurgling laugh ended his most peculiar-sounding suggestion.

  Suddenly Laury realized what state the frogh was in the concentrated energy tablet had made it euphoric! The tablet had the effect of a stimulant on it, inducing an exaggerated happiness!

  The frogh's condition grew increasingly disordered. The viper-stare disappeared. The eyes radiated an almost human good nature and then it resumed begging, wheedling her to bring it vast quantities of tablets the next day or the day after.

  "If I can depend upon your silence, Agzt," Laury answered.

  In reply she heard: "I could have even turned the energy barrier off for you, Arga Silm! Can't we trust each other on that basis?"

  When Laury Marten had finished her day's work in X-p that evening, the frogh Agzt had still not reported her slipping through the energy barrier.

  She slowly began to believe that Agzt had meant it honestly.

  7/ LAURY'S OWN DEATH SENTENCE

  John Marshall had sent his fifth message to Hellgate over the hypercom in his office and now switched the device to Rohun's frequency.

  He had no fear of being overheard by the Ara surveillance. The special equipment, as with the other hypercom in his slum quarters, was protected against eavesdropping even if the receiving unit was only a normally equipped hypercom. But for safety's sake, Marshall and Rohun made use of a distorter and coder when contact between them was established.