Perry Rhodan Lemuria 6: The Longest Night E-Book

Hubert Haensel

• Herausgeber: Perry Rhodan digital
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Perry Rhodan Lemuria
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Perry Rhodan has discovered a huge space ship, an ark in space, carrying a population of humans who set out on their journey 55,000 years ago, from Earth - Lemurians, the legendary forefathers of mankind. A new onslaught of the Beasts is imminent. These organic killing machines have learned about the arks and used them - unnoticed by their inhabitants - for their own purposes. Meanwhile Levian Parron sets out to go back in time to undo the onslaught, including 55,000 years of history. Only Perry Rhodan can stop the Beasts as well as Levian Parron ...

Leseprobe

#6 The Longest Night

by Hubert Haensel

Perry Rhodan has discovered a huge space ship, an ark in space, carrying a population of humans who set out on their journey 55,000 years ago, from Earth – Lemurians, the legendary forefathers of mankind.

A new onslaught of the Beasts is imminent. These organic killing machines have learned about the arks and used them – unnoticed by their inhabitants – for their own purposes. Meanwhile Levian Parron sets out to go back in time to undo the onslaught, including 55,000 years of history. Only Perry Rhodan can stop the Beasts as well as Levian Parron ...

LEMURIA 6

The Longest Night

by Hubert Haensel

Translated

by Dwight R. Decker

1

Delbert Brouk left the antigrav shaft in the control center and took two steps forward. His gaze settled in disbelief on the deserted seat at the hyperdetection station. He looked across the control center, then jumped back to the absent hyperdetector's monitor. A shadow darkened the captain's expression.

"Well?" Brouk said nothing more. Just that one word sounded cutting and cold at the same time.

The stars of the galactic center shone brightly in the GOLDEN GOOSE's holo panorama. They seemed like an impenetrable wall of matter, light, and seething energy. Fascinating, mysterious, and dangerous. A place where stars were even now being born while others ended their existence, flaring up in one last angry outburst.

"No significant incidents!" The report came from the com station.

"None?" Brouk bit his lower lip and turned to Janna Pagnell. "'All stations combat ready!' was the order. Around the clock. We aren't taking a pleasure cruise to Vega and back—that should be clear to everyone ... "

"Rudolph Cavins said exactly that, too," the second pilot stated. "Not in those words, but more or less ... "

"Continue!" The captain's gaze shifted between the deserted hyperdetection station and the panorama display. He tried to convince himself that no threats were lurking in this region. What existed here besides untouched stellar jungle, anyway? At most a few automatic relay stations. Or some aging prospector ship flown by men and women who hoped to find their fortune some day. In reality though, they just wasted their lives. They subjected themselves to the effects of intensive radiation storms and worked on planets where no space traveler who had half his senses still intact would ever voluntarily land.

We're right in the middle of it. The thought was bitter in Brouk's mind although it had seemed to him like an appealing change just a few weeks before. Exploration in the galactic center. He still felt the enticement, the allure—but now the danger as well. A secret operation, searching for new sources of raw materials while strictly avoiding any contact ... The last item was not a problem. It was absolutely necessary, since all space faring races would swarm like flies on any new deposit of hypercrystals as soon as its location became public knowledge. The sector was a no-man's land. Who would regulate ownership claims and mining rights here?

"There isn't anyone to continue." The voice of the Second Pilot sounded insulted. "Cavins turned his station over to the syntron and temporarily excused himself from duty. He felt sick, he said."

The captain dismissed it with a vigorous wave of his hand. "His entire imaginary sickness is his damned honesty. It affects his stomach. Cavins needs to grow a steel skin if he wants to get anywhere." With a groan, Brouk sank into the hyperdetector's chair and called up the log.

Rudolph Cavins had left his post only a few minutes before, going off duty in accordance with procedure. No replacement possible, the captain read. Bucio has it worse than me.

It was clear to him that Cavins had been on duty for fifteen hours without a break. Conditions were rather different than they were on the usual freight runs. An hour before, the GOLDEN GOOSE had completed its last short ultralight jump with considerable strain. April 28, 1327 New Galactic Era was at 15:28 ship's time no longer exactly a fresh new day.

The ship had been lingering in no-man's land for weeks. That last damned radiation storm had tossed the GOLDEN GOOSE through space like a nutshell. Since then, the converters had operated at only half power. The engines overheated unbelievably fast, and the morale of the crew was dangerously close to zero.

"Course?"

"Unchanged. According to the cartographic data there isn't any star system suitable for us along our line of flight."

Brouk waved the problem aside. "The star maps are anything but complete. We'll find a planet where we can land and repair the damage. You have my word for it."

"How long will the ultralight drive hold out? Every jump causes more problems."

The sudden silence was somehow paralyzing. Minutes passed while the captain did nothing but play back the accumulated sensor readings. When his fist slammed down on the console, it sounded startlingly loud.

"I'll have his hide! Rudolph didn't even consider it necessary to run the basic sensor scan!"

"Could it be that he's really sick?" Janna Pagnell asked.

Brouk swung around in his chair. His gaze was piercing as he first started at the com operator and then the rest one by one.

"Very well." He rubbed the bridge of his nose and blinked. "Let's continue. The sooner we find something ... "

He didn't finish the sentence. Everyone knew what he meant. ... the sooner we can go home.

Space seemed filled with radiation that caused interference. The source was a strange dark nebula that was being torn apart layer by layer by radiation from the surrounding stars. The incoming new data blended with the visual image registered by the optical sensors to make a composite picture. Outlying streamers from the nebula drifted like coils of smoke through space. In its heart was a region of stars, highlighted by whirling billows of matter and streams of energy. There were several massive concentrations there in which the fusion process had not yet begun.

Delbert Brouk changed the search parameters for the area. He gave the time readout a fleeting glance. Fewer than three more days until his 57th birthday. Then, at last, he would be able to take this damned crate on a homeward bound course before the machinery finally gave out entirely.

"There's something!" Janna Pagnell's announcement didn't follow protocol in the least. "A signal ... " she quickly added.

"Could you be a little more specific?"

"Yes, of course." For several seconds, the com operator allowed herself to be distracted by Rudolph Cavins, who had just appeared in the control center. He was pale with tangled hair hanging in his face. Then she turned back to her console, manipulating the displays with controls that responded to her eye movements.

"Hypercom pulse!" She moved her head in a jerk. In the semi-darkness of the control center, the flickering of the holos was reflected in her face. Her expression had hardened. "Compressed and on a little-used frequency. Not anything used by the Fleet or civilian space traffic ... "

"Point of origin?"

"Impossible to locate. The transmitter is only a few dozen light-years away, but the incoming signal strength is fairly low."

"So it's not a large ship?" Cavins asked from the doorway. "Not even a planetary station?"

When the com operator didn't immediately answer, the captain gave in to the temptation to make a pointed remark. "You've left your sickbed, Cavins?"

"The medobot injected me with a circulation-boosting stimulant."

"That's not enough. I want to know what's really going on with you before you collapse completely."

"Everything's fine." Cavins gave him a pained smile. "I'll stick it out to the end."

Brouk hesitated. Another two or three losses in the crew and not every post could be filled. A one-hundred-meter spacesphere of this type was too large for just twenty-five crewmembers, even if half the ship consisted of cargo holds.

"There's no signature that allows me to draw any conclusions about the sender," the com operator said. "And there's no encoding, for that matter."

"So it's plain text. Let's hear what it says."

"It isn't plain text, either. Just symbol groups. Something like that hasn't been used in a long time. If it comes from a spacecraft, the ship doesn't belong to any known race."

All eyes turned to the captain.

"We'll just say the hell with it and let it go," he said curtly. "We're here because there are solid business reasons for it. Even if we fly this ship into scrap metal, we can't let others spot us."

"The GOLDEN GOOSE is the only spacecraft within a radius of three-quarters of a light-year," Cavins said.

Moments later, Janna Pagnell reported two new hypercom pulses. " ... They seem like echoes of the first symbol group, but they're apparently independent transmissions. Neither compressed nor encrypted, though still not comprehensible."

"Evaluation ... ?"

"No results as yet. The syntron is still chewing on it."

The captain grinned slightly at the thought of a computer literally munching away on something.

"The first group of pulses probably triggered a response," Janna continued. "There's something strange ... "

" ... Neither of Akonian nor of Arkonide origin and impossible to classify?" When the com operator hesitated, Brouk pressed further. "Do we have an approximate location for the transmitter?"

"Very close this time," the woman replied. "The position data still isn't exact, but I'll put it up."

A colored mark lit up in the panoramic holo. The GOLDEN GOOSE's course would actually skirt the area.

Brouk gnawed on his lower lip until curiosity won out over all his reservations. Perhaps this is the chance we've all been waiting for.

A small course correction and some caution—that was all that was needed for their salvation. Perhaps even for their success.

2

The first perception was a sharp, stabbing pain. Just as quickly as he opened his eyelids, he closed them again, pulled his eyes in and waited until the throbbing under the top of his skull had ebbed away. Everything within him yearned to bellow loudly from the agony caused by the glaring flood of light, but he wasn't even breathing.

He waited.

Time passed that he couldn't measure. Nor did it interest him. Because the concept was nothing other than the abstract description of a phenomenon that was difficult to grasp.

Time is subjective.

The statement arose from within him without any conscious thought on his part. It had been formulated by one of his two brains, the existence of which he was only now becoming aware.

Time is the proof that I am alive. I cannot stop it by ceasing to live or sealing myself off.

Now breathe!

Something close to him was making noises. He heard a bubbling sound like flowing liquid. Names and concepts took , although he knew that he had never heard anything like them before.

Before?

There was no before.

His memory began with the. Still, he knew a great deal without ever having come in contact with anything. He had only to concentrate and seek for the right answers.

The brightness seemed to be fading, but perhaps his eyes were merely growing accustomed to it. A second awakening stimulus shot a new wave of pain through his body.

As before, he wasn't breathing. Nor did he need to in the narrowly confined world around him. Everything else was strange and cold.

After a while, he involuntarily moved several. Then he couldn't prevent himself from clenching his hands into fists. At the same time, a feeling of unsuspected strength flowed through him.

As he opened his fists once more, he sensed for the first time each individual finger—six on each of four hands—and stretched his arms.

A new sound reached him, a muffled pounding that even echoed as vibrations through the floor. It approached him, then stopped.

"Wake up, Ion Lissos!" a voice thundered. "I see that there is life in you! You have a mission to fulfill!"

He remained silent, now driven only by a single challenging thought: How long can I exist without breathing? If he wanted to learn about himself, that was the first thing he had to find out. . Then, after that, there was so much else to discover about his body.

"Defective growths terminate in the converter!"

A terrible blow struck him in the side and knocked him to the floor. He fell backwards, landing first on his shoulders, then on his body, and finally on his skull. He felt the floor give way beneath him, warping and possibly even breaking apart.

The pain was unbelievable. Ion Lissos' outcry was a primordial bellow—and only then did he realize he was breathing without consciously willing it.

He rolled over in an instant. His two chest arms were shorter than the other limbs but he could use them to push away from the ground with a powerful heave. He did the same with his legs. He tensed his muscles almost to the point of tearing them apart—a process that he didn't even consciously perceive—and leaped.

Five or six paces away, a massive figure loomed in front of him. He saw it only dimly with all three eyes, blinded once more by the flood of light that again flowed over him. In his leap, he threw up his manipulation arms, but the other who had violently kicked him, slipped to one side just as swiftly.

Ion Lissos fell into the emptiness, landing heavily yet again ...

... and sensed that his body had changed. He no longer felt the pain, just as he didn't feel the additional kicks that slammed into him.

His body had become insensitive and as hard as steel.

Molecular transformation of cell structure, his overbrain realized. The process can be consciously controlled and provides possibilities for defense and attack.

Again the other struck. This time Ion Lissos' manipulation arms shot out, both hands closed around the attacker's ankle joint, and jerked him off balance. The colossus hit the floor with a crash. At the same time, Lissos threw himself forward in blind rage, struck the fingers of one hand in the opponent's face, and tried to push him down.

He couldn't do it. Their limbs thoroughly entangled, they rolled on the floor and smashed equipment that Lissos couldn't have identified as they pounded away at each other.

"Stop it!" the other finally gasped.

Ion Lissos rammed the top of his opponent's head with his jaw. Blood spurted. Accompanied by angry bellowing, the blows now rained down on him.

"You are insane, Lissos, a damned defective growth!"

Ion Lissos already had enough to do defending himself against the unrestrained onslaught, but then two others of the same appearance were there seized his arms and legs and pressed him to the floor with their weight.

Bleeding profusely, his first opponent stood up. Lissos stared at him with all three eyes. His headbutt had driven the other's sharp-edged teeth into their upper lip and shredded the flesh. The black-skinned opponent moved very close to him and set his foot on the area between his body and hemispherical head. If he put his strength into the step, he would kill Lissos.

Despite that threat, Lissos chose not to harden his cell structure. He instinctively sensed that doing so would only provoke the other even more.

"You asked for this fight," he exclaimed angrily. "I will not allow myself to be treated this way. Not by anyone."

They stared at each other. Lissos saw the all-consuming fire in his opponent's eyes. At the same time he was certain that he didn't look any different.

"You react too impulsively."

The reproach made no impression on him; he didn't even think about it. He pushed his three eyes a little out of his skull and turned each of them towards his opponent. The different images overlapped in his perception.

Only when Lissos closed his forehead eye did the combined image grow clearer. At last he saw the two figures next to him as plainly as he saw the colossus that stood erect before him, one manipulation arm pressed against his jaw. Blood still oozed from the wound.

Ion Lissos felt grim satisfaction, even though it was evident to him that the three were "Old Ones."

And he himself?

Newborn ...

Grown ...

Created to carry out and complete a mission that had begun in the distant past.

Only when the wounded individual made a growling sound did the other two Old Ones step away.

"I am not a defective growth!" Lissos gasped. Humiliated, he still lay on his back, both pairs of arms spread out, but no one answered him. Snorting contemptuously, he rolled to the side and pushed himself up. As he did so, he watched for any telltale movement from the others.

They were like him, and watched him just as intently. Slightly bent over, they stood on short, pillar-like legs. Although their manipulation arms hung down from the sides of their bodies, their chest arms were outstretched, as though they were about to attack him again. They had half-closed lids like slats over their circular, glowing red eyes; it was not a sign of exhaustion but more of watchfulness.

Their thick, dense black skin glistened with an oily sheen. But that was mainly a side effect of the flood of light, which made it impossible to get an overall view of the room. Lissos had the impression that he stood in a gigantic hall. Towering semi-transparent shapes extended in all directions.

Breeding tanks, it occurred to him. I am only one of many, created to do my duty.

He turned his extended eyes back to look at the Old Ones. He called them that because they had been there before him. Their task had been to monitor his awakening. Along with that of all the others.

"Am I ... the first?" he found himself asking.

"Number thirty-seven in this arsenal. The activation signal has been received repeatedly and relayed onwards."

He didn't see any variations in bodily structure. The only difference was that he was naked while the Old Ones wore tight-fitting, steel-reinforced battlesuits. Arm and leg attachment joints were protected by metal rings, along with the region between the body and the head.

"Where are all the others?"

His opponent had by now pulled his arm away from his jaws. Shreds of flesh hung down over the narrow lips but that didn't seem to concern him anymore.

"They have not caused us any problems. Therefore they were sent on to pick up their equipment and receive instruction."

"You are Necc Magot?" Lissos suddenly knew the name and its accompanying image; both were part of a block of knowledge that provided information without his conscious action.

Magot was the leader of the Paggosh Arsenal, some 3000 Lemurian years old and a veteran of numerous battles against the Lemurians. He'd played a decisive role in the destruction of the fifth planet in the Lemur System. Later he commanded a Fleet squadron in support of the blockade of the Multi-Star Teleporter in the center of the Galaxy. Then he had been withdrawn to assist in the establishment of the first depot planets.

It was basic knowledge, similar to a skeleton without tendons, muscles, or flesh. It was too little by far for Lissos to draw his own conclusions from.

Zeut. The name came to him along with other knowledge. That had been the name of the fifth planet in the Lemur System. And Kahalo had been the switching station on the Lemurians' escape route to the neighboring galaxy. How long ago had it been now? More than 50,000 years by the Lemurians' reckoning of time. The calculations had already been made; it was simple to determine from the constellations how much time had elapsed.

In that long-ago era, the Lemurians had represented a threat that had to be taken seriously. Vermin that infested the universe with their monstrous reproductive frenzy. Exterminating them had not been successful. The fact that Ion Lissos existed proved it.

Now history would have a second chance.

This time we will defeat them! Lissos thought confidently. That was why he had been brought to life. Millions of others like him would follow over the course of the coming weeks and months.

"I am ready!" He clenched his fists and slammed them resoundingly against his body. "My life in battle against the Time Criminals."

"We are the first and our mission is to secure the Arsenal. We still do not know what is waiting for us, but we will find out."

Listening with only half an ear, Ion Lissos had proceeded to put on the battlesuit. Fastening it had been more difficult than he had expected. It had also crackled suspiciously when he slipped his arms into it. The millennia had not passed over the material without having their effect, though it proved to be still impervious to tearing.

"Not all have survived the awakening process. Their hearts did not develop sufficiently to sustain life or their minds had suffered. They were nothing more than empty shells."

"How many are we?" someone asked.

"Thirty-seven," Necc Magot replied, "out of a projected sixty First Warriors."

Lissos gave a start. The magnetic seam of his dark green battlesuit had only half-closed as he looked up. Thirty-seven, he thought in alarm. That means I am the last of the first group. But did that also mean his own existence had been threatened? The risk of not maturing properly was the same for everyone.

"The high loss rate is not typical and will not occur to this extent in the following groups of cultures," Magot said. "While we Old Ones endured the span of time in cold sleep, your cell cultures matured under extremely reduced biological functions. The receipt of the signal was only the initial trigger for the awakening process. The signal indicated that unmistakable signs of Lemurian activity have been detected."

Lissos made a gesture of affirmation. The production of smaller, faster, and above all more powerful combat spacecraft was running at top speed, and the regularly relayed signals were being received everywhere, in all the arsenals.

Lissos reached for one of the weapons that were lying ready. He chose a hand beamer as long as his chest arms and with variable functions. He was amused by the thought that Lemurians could lift this small weapon only with difficulty, having to use both hands. These creatures were weaklings. How they had been able to expand their Tamanium to encompass almost the entire Galaxy would probably always be a mystery to him. Perhaps their extremely high reproductive rate was responsible for it. In that respect they reminded him of the swarms of insects that appeared on countless planets and always left a barren landscape, stripped of everything edible, behind them.

Lissos weighed the weapon appraisingly in his hand.

"They are Time Criminals!" Magot exclaimed just then. "They are playing with forces that threaten the existence of us all, and they have no scruples ... "

The Old One had not finished the sentence when the alarm howled through the base.

Moments later, the image transmission stabilized. Everyone could see what was approaching Paggosh.

A spherical spacecraft. Hardly larger than their own small combat units. Even though the typical equatorial propulsion rim was lacking, the construction was of unmistakable Lemurian origin.

"The ship dropped out of hyperspace just moments ago."

Coincidence? Lissos wondered, and his fingers wrapped around the beamer's grip.

"That means the Lemurians know where we are," the Old One said. "But they have not known for very long or they would have attacked the arsenal before now. It is to be assumed that a larger fleet contingent will follow this small ship. We will take off immediately in two units."

Necc Magot then designated those who were to bring in the enemy ship. When he heard his name, Ion Lissos took off running towards the hangar.

3

"Give me the gun!"

Perry Rhodan reached his hand out. He stood three steps in front of Levian Paronn, whose face was frozen in rage.

"Give it to me!" Rhodan repeated forcefully. It wasn't easy for him to size Paronn up. The Lemurian had shown that he was prepared to do anything. The shot he had fired at Boryk had been more than a warning—it was an expression of his desperation. Now there was no longer a time teleporter, no way back to Lemuria. He was trapped in this era, on Gorbas IV, this planet of the Beasts.

An intense fire blazed in Paronn's eyes. He had waited an eternity just to be able to make his way back. Back through space and time! He would take with him an effective weapon against the Beasts and the hope to put an end to their war of annihilation against the Lemurians before it had even begun. Now the time teleporter was destroyed and the path was blocked.

Levian Paronn felt cheated of his life's work.

"If another disaster happens now," said Perry Rhodan, "neither of us will ever be able to forgive ourselves. We can talk about this, Levian Paronn."

"No!"

More than fifty millennia separated the Lemurian from his home. Even so, Perry Rhodan wondered if that really could still be Paronn's world. For some considerable time the man had lived unnoticed among the Akonians—ever since he had left his star ark and flown with Icho Tolot to the Ichest System.

Levian Paronn's hand trembled slightly. But his finger was still resting dangerously close to the trigger of his weapon. Lord knew what an unpleasant feeling it was to be looking into the flickering mouth of the thermobeamer from such close proximity. Rhodan hoped that none of his companions would try to be a hero.

Hartich van Kuespert? The physicist stood somewhere behind him. But Rhodan didn't believe he would make a grab for the weapon.

Isaias Shimon? He and Solina, the Akonian woman, were taking care of the severely wounded Boryk.

That left only Hayden Norwell. The prospector was always reacting angrily to something, and Rhodan could easily believe he might lose his nerve.

Icho Tolot stood motionless more than thirty meters away, half bent over the paralyzed Beast whose heavy beamer he had rendered unusable. He was probably the only one who realized what an ill considered movement could lead to. Rhodan noticed that Paronn's eyes shifted uneasily to the Halutian.

Now Paronn's cheek bones protruded sharply. There was a twitch at the corner of his mouth. That was the first expression of rage and anger following his paralysis, perhaps even hatred, that could change at any moment into aggression.

"Please!" Rhodan repeated. "You are in a state of mind that isn't exactly ... "

"My state of mind doesn't concern you in the least, Rhodan!" Paronn exclaimed, breathing heavily, and not sounding very Akonian. "What would you do if someone had just killed your people?"

"No one did that—neither my people nor yours. So that question doesn't apply to either of us." Rhodan took a step forward.

Paronn gave him a sharp look. "Stay where you are, Terran!" He angrily spat out the words, his voice rising with each one. "You've been scheming and you're responsible for everything that happens now." All too obviously, almost in slow motion, he rested his index finger on the trigger. The standard spacesuit that Rhodan wore couldn't deflect the deadly energy. If Paronn fired now, it was all over.

"Levian!" Icho Tolot exclaimed in his booming voice. "Levian Paronn, is it no longer enough for you just to deceive your friends? Now do you want to kill them?" He could cross the distance of about thirty meters in two powerful leaps.

Tolot's call had no effect on the Lemurian. It was as though he hadn't heard it at all. At length Paronn's face twisted into a grimace.

"Stop right there, Rhodan!" he choked. "I don't have anything more to lose. Do you really think that your life or my own still means anything? The Beasts have returned and I could have stopped them."

"You can still do that," Rhodan said, softly but emphatically. "You will get your chance, Levian."

If Paronn had the opportunity to return to his own time and destroy the Beasts before they could establish themselves in the Galaxy, there would no longer be a Terran humanity. Nor any Arkonides, Antis, Aras, or Springers, either. There might still be Akonians, but even they would be merely a part of a larger people. The foundation of 50,000 years of familiar Galactic history would be wiped out at a stroke.

Perry Rhodan knew all that as well as anyone else. His thoughts culminated in the realization that he himself would cease to exist. Then he would be no more—never would have been and would never be. No soul, or whatever the conscious component of an intelligent being might be called, would survive his physical death because it never would have come into being in the first place.

Simply wiped out ... had never existed ... Just the thought of it was madness.

Paronn gave a start. Only now did he seem aware of the strain he was under. He took a step backwards, then another, keeping his beamer trained on Rhodan, as though he had to make the Terran responsible for all his misfortune. Then his eyes swept over the small group and up into the sky.

The sun burned down. At some considerable distance, clouds were gathering, assuming they really were clouds and not some new surprise, which would be only too typical for this planet. The two Akonian battlecruisers hung unchanged at an altitude of a few kilometers. They hovered far enough apart that they would not offer a simple target to suddenly appearing Beasts. Still, no shots had been fired for some time now; all the gun positions appeared to have been destroyed.

Suddenly, without warning, Paronn took off running. He headed towards the large cargo container and the still operating teleporter.

It would be best if we never saw you again! Rhodan was startled by his own thought. He couldn't condemn Levian Paronn so easily, not after all he had learned about the Lemurian. Paronn believed that he was doing what was best; he just wasn't considering what that meant for all the races in the Galaxy in the year 1327 NGE. It was not his time. Paronn continued to live in the past and Lemuria was important to him. Everything else was the future, one of a countless number of possible lines of development. He was not doing anything evil if he changed the course of history in a new direction. He didn't consider that the races of his future saw their time as the correct one and spoke of Lemuria, if at all, as only something in the dark and distant past.

From up in the sky, there was a distant roaring, as though from a rapidly approaching storm. Then there was a bright flash ...

... the engine emissions of the two Akonian battlecruisers, flying away at an enormous speed. Within two or three seconds, the blazing points of light disappeared like shooting stars fading away. Both starships had left the planet's atmosphere and were presumably accelerating at maximum velocity.

"He got away through the teleporter just like that!" Hayden Norwell shouted, not bothering to hold back his anger. "That lousy bastard!"

The container stood unchanged where the tractor-beam had set it down. The teleporter arch could still be plainly seen but the dematerialization field had been deactivated. This had been triggered either by an automatic system that had registered Levian Paronn's passage or from the receiving station as soon as the Maphan had reached his flagship.

"He ran away and left us on this hell-planet?" demanded Solina Tormas, the Akonian historian, in disbelief. "He can't really mean it!"

"But he can," Icho Tolot replied in his rumbling voice. "This is not the first time that Levian Paronn has done this. I should have known."

"He's underhanded," Norwell said. "And we were crazy enough to let him fool us. He thinks we're stupid! But he can't do this to me, I'm telling you! I won't let him fool me again."

Tolot gestured dismissively with two arms. "Levian Paronn is obsessed. Once he has something in his head, he will let nothing stop him. He wanted to return to Lemuria and has never intended to do anything else. That was his plan all along, and he has spent a great deal of time on it—and I mean real time. The centuries on board the star arks in dilation flight hardly count. I do not believe that he has ever sought refuge in cold sleep. He has always cared only about obtaining the anti-Beast weapon, by any means. That was hundreds of years ago. He doubtless carries the plans in some form on him."

"Then he's possibly intervened in Akonian history." Rhodan had expected something like this, but it was surprising to discover relatively precise dates. It was several hundred years ago in real time that Levian Paronn and Icho Tolot had left the star ark ACHATI UMA together, when it was still in dilation flight.

"No," Icho Tolot stated with conviction. "Paronn has definitely not intervened in history, because then he would have been able to alter a great deal. The risk that he could change the course of events with such actions and endanger his own plans would have seemed too great to him."

Rhodan nodded thoughtfully. "If that was the case, he must have a long and terrible stretch of time behind him. He was fixated on this day alone—and he probably never knew when it would actually come."

"Even if Hayden has a different opinion," Solina said, "we've foiled him completely."

"We have prevented Paronn from rewriting history, changing it so completely that none of us would even exist." The Halutian looked with two eyes at the young woman, who wore her copper-colored hair in a bulging knot behind her neck, and gave a rumbling laugh as he saw her bewildered expression. Then he turned to Norwell. "Paronn had a ghastly game with time in mind."

"Perverse," Norwell added.

"Would it really be so bad?" Hartich van Kuespert attempted a crooked grin, but didn't succeed. "I mean ... " It was only occasionally that he had to search for the right words, but this time he had problems. "I mean ... we wouldn't have been aware of it at all," he went on hastily. "We wouldn't exist, we never would have existed ... "

"On the contrary," Rhodan told him. "We would have always been present on this time track. Until today."

"Yes and no," Icho Tolot said.

"Oh, our Halutian is expressing himself with extreme scientific exactness." Van Kuespert risked a cynical grin, and this time pulled it off. "The theory of the uncertainty principle for time might possibly have been proven."

"That's utter nonsense!" Norwell shook his head. "How can any of you prove anything if you don't exist anymore? Maybe I don't understand a lot about this, but for me the thing that stood there not even ten minutes ago was something like a time bomb. Literally."

"That thing no longer exists," the Halutian rumbled. "Not in our time, anyway."

Isaias Shimon cried out in warning. Faster than expected, the sky had filled with heavy, dark clouds.

"Those aren't clouds," Rhodan pointed out. "I have a suspicion they're another one of this planet's lifeforms."

"We've been here too long already," Solina said.

His eyes narrowed, Norwell looked at her quizzically. Then he turned back towards the cloud masses and drew his beamer. "We can take care of that. Someone just has to reactivate the teleporter. The sooner we get out of here, the better."

Van Kuespert hurried to the container almost at a run. "There's only Akonian lettering on it! Nothing in Intercosmo. Our friends still seem to believe they have to isolate themselves."

"I always thought nothing was too difficult for a physicist." Sighting along the barrel, Norwell aimed his beamer at the clouds. The fog-like seething had now descended to less than 200 meters.

"Run to the container!" Rhodan called.

Van Kuespert busied himself with the first control settings.

Tolot had his heavy beamer, practically a small cannon from a human standpoint, in his hand. "Whatever it may be, it is radiating a great deal of heat." Tolot's infrared-sensitive eyes registered such temperature differences immediately. "We should not approach this phenomenon too closely."

"We?" Norwell looked up at Tolot with puzzlement. "It's coming towards us, not vice versa."

"We should retreat." Tolot stamped towards Shimon and Solina, who had alleviated Boryk's pain with several injections, and lifted the dwarf-like Lemurian clone with extreme care. Hardly anyone who didn't know the Halutian well would have expected the colossus to be incapable of such delicate sensitivity. Boryk whimpered softly.

That was the moment when van Kuespert realized that the teleporter could no longer be activated. "The controls are blocked. They've been set to allow only one connection—with Paronn's flagship. But the ship isn't sending a confirmation signal."

"It's turned off?" Norwell went pale. "They simply turned it off and left us behind? They're ... "

"Criminals," the Akonian woman said. "All Akonians are criminals, right?"

The prospector looked at her without saying anything. He pressed his lips together, then turned around again to observe the low-hanging cloud-like manifestation.

Moments later, a thin fog dropped down over the remains of the wrecked time teleporter. From the seething mass, tendrils extended in all directions, and wherever they touched the ground, it seemed to change into a thick, molten glaze. Metal fragments glowed and then melted.

"We won't be able to defend ourselves against that." Worry lines appeared on van Kuespert's forehead as he took stock of the fog growing thicker all around them. The sun still stood large and shining just a little below the zenith. The atmosphere was amazingly clear, almost as though it the first hint of the nearby supernova's radiation front sweeping away everything in its path. Gorbas IV would soon be incinerated by the blast from the neighboring star's explosion.

"It's time for our ships to arrive," Solina said. "Someone has to pick us up."

Isaias Shimon gave a start. "You don't think that ... "

The physicist looked at Solina inquiringly. "Paronn's battlecruisers versus the PALENQUE and the LAS-TOOR? If he wants revenge, nothing would be easier than to eliminate us that way."

"Jere tan Baloy won't abandon us," the historian replied. "He'll get us out of here. I'd stake my life on it."

"Be careful about making bets like that." Van Kuespert shook his head. "None of the Akonians know that Achab ta Mentec is actually Levian Paronn. And even if they did ... He has command authority that no one will dispute."

"I'm not getting any com contact with either the PALENQUE or the LAS-TOOR," Rhodan said. "My wristband unit is picking up increasingly powerful interference. The helmetcom probably doesn't reach far enough into space."

Shouting a shrill warning, Norwell suddenly lifted his beamer and fired into the air. Tolot fired as well. His heavy beamer discharged with a hiss, but the energy trail seemed to be greedily soaked up by the descending curtain of fog. It could be plainly seen that the manifestation thickened around the energy beams. Pseudopods formed and probed in the direction from which the rays had come.

"Cease fire!" Rhodan exclaimed.

Norwell reacted too late. Almost simultaneously, a hair-thin thread of fog shot towards him. A flickering glow flowed around his beamer. The prospector was knocked backwards by an invisible fist and fell. He had lost his grip on his beamer. Even before it touched the ground, the energy magazine reacted in a violent explosion. For several seconds, a form that was difficult to see clearly seemed to condense around it.

Observing the event from a distance of some twenty meters, Shimon thought he had seen a many-limbed something, a kind of tangle of many meter-length tentacles as thick as a finger. They had been in constant twitching motion—but it was no more than a momentary snapshot, burned into the retina for just a fraction of a second because the helmet filter had reacted with a slight delay to the sudden burst of light.

"We've got to get out of here!" Tolot abruptly pulled Shimon and Solina along with him for some distance. Rhodan and Norwell followed the Halutian. Only van Kuespert was slower. The physicist could hardly tear his eyes away from the sight of the container and the Akonian teleporter melting away in the fog like a wax sculpture under fire from a heavy beamer.

Solina reached out an arm and pointed to the paralyzed Beast. A streamer of fog crept towards the colossus. "We have to hel ... "

"Help the Beast?" Norwell demanded in disbelief. "That is a war machine, nothing else. It would show its gratitude by tearing you to shreds."

"Tolot wouldn't do that."

"My God." The prospector shook his head. "Are you an Akonian or do you belong to the Star Missions? As an historian, you should use a little of your knowledge."

"I know that the Halutians are descendants of the Beasts ... "

"And that there is a damned Beast. From the past. Get this through your head for once, Solina. That is not a plushie-doll Halutian."

Tolot roared with laughter. Without the volume regulators in their helmetcoms, all their eardrums would have burst. Even so, they grimaced in pain.

The first tentacles of fog had reached the Beast, and the metal clips and buckles on its battlesuit began to glow.

"This phenomenon is blocking communications almost completely," Rhodan said.

The fog billowed nearer. The impression that it was some kind of living being could no longer be denied.

"What's keeping our ships?"

"They won't be coming," Norwell declared. "And Boryk can't help us this time." He looked around searchingly. "I have damned little desire to die here. Perry, get us out! Our Space-Jet is somewhere over there." He stared in the direction in which the PALENQUE's auxiliary craft stood. Tolot had landed in the Space-Jet, but nothing of the discus could now be seen. The fog billowed so thickly over the remains of the time teleporter and the container that it was impenetrable.

"There's no way we can get through that fog," Perry told him.

Norwell stared angrily at him.

"We're getting out of here," Rhodan went on, "but by going down below."

"To the ... " Norwell looked back at the black-skinned colossus, now completely covered by the vapor. " ... Beasts?"

"From the frying pan into the fire," Tolot rumbled. "That's what the Terrans say, isn't it?"

They looked around one last time.

No spaceships.

Even the sun gradually faded away in the mist. This solar system would soon be destroyed in the radiation from the nearby supernova. And with it everything that could not escape.

4

The end of the short ultralight jump was unspectacular. The shining starlight simply disappeared from a large area of the panorama holo as though someone had covered it with a black cloth. Remaining were interwoven dark veils, swelling like storm clouds. The outermost tendrils of the dark nebula reached almost to the GOLDEN GOOSE.

Here and there, the flash of a distant star shone through the billows of matter.

The density of matter in space had increased abruptly, but despite the ship's high momentum, it still didn't present a safety risk. The protective force field absorbed the flood of particles before the atoms of the hardened steel of the ship's hull could be worn down.

"What does the hypercom say?"

"Nothing new received. The frequency spectrum is dominated by the nebula's emissions and individual outbursts of gamma rays."

"We are probably dealing with a spacecraft," Janna Pagnell said hesitantly.

"Cavins?"

The hyperdetector shrugged. "If we are, then the ship is buried so deep inside the mass of the nebula that any signs of its energy emissions are being drowned out."

"I need a new com signal for a triangulation," Janna said. "If we sent one on the frequency in question ... "

"Denied!" The captain gestured dismissively. "Until we know what's there, we're not sending any signals! I have no intention of waking sleeping dogs. We just need a planet where we can land undisturbed and make repairs."

"I've got something!" Cavins announced. "The mass sensors just picked up a fairly large object!"

"Energy emissions?"

The man at the hyperdetection console shook his head. "Nothing."

"So it's a derelict, then? How large?"

"About two hundred kilometers." Cavins quickly manipulated the controls. Several times he rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. He was under a lot of strain. "It's a small planet, a world without a sun."

Soon the visual display showed a surface scarred by craters, crevices, and deep chasms. It was a surface that could have taken shape only over a span of millions of years.
"It really is a dark planet," the captain said in surprise.

"And a stray," Cavins added. "This chunk of rock is moving counter to the direction of the galaxy's rotation. Not fast enough to be worth mentioning, but still at several meters a second."

Brouk stared at the increasing amount of hyperdetection data. He put his hands together and rested his chin on his thumbs.

Perhaps he had shown that he really did have a nose for these things. Vagabonds like this space object were not all that rare, although extremely difficult to detect. Some were half-incinerated planetary corpses that in a blast of heat had escaped the fiery death of a parent star as it went nova. Heat, pressure, and radiation had further modified the often already heavy elements in the core and transformed them into extremely valuable raw materials.

"Distance?"

"Eighty-seven million kilometers."

Just five light-minutes, then. The GOLDEN GOOSE was approaching the dark planet at 45,000 kilometers per second. That meant a period of half-an-hour in which he Brouk had to reach a decision. He nodded in satisfaction. He had taken on the position of captain to escape the treadmill, even though at the beginning it had seemed he had bitten off more than he could chew. Terra—Olympia, Olympia—Plephos, Plephos—Ertrus and Epsal and back to Terra—those had been the monotonous stations of his life that had long since lost any charm. Freight runs between the planets of the League of Free Terrans; he had wondered for years if there was anything else besides such jobs, which robots could do just as well.

Who am I to take work away from robots?

Brouk gave a start, tearing himself from his thoughts. He sensed that something had changed. Everyone else was looking at him, waiting for his orders. He had already hesitated too long.

Out of uncertainty? Whatever couldn't be fitted into the established pattern represented a threat to some degree. That was something he had learned as he went from being an inspector who checked power units for reliability, to a second officer, and then, just a year later, to captain of a freighter. He had already reached the top of his career ladder at the age of fifty, and unless he completely rearranged his life, he would not go any further.

"We will maintain our present velocity," he heard himself saying without having thought about it. That was routine. "Keep a close eye on energy detection and com signal readings. I want to know where that transmitter is located."

The minutes crept by slowly while the dark planet grew larger. After a quarter-of-an-hour, it filled the display in the panorama holo. Only a narrow crescent could be made out as a fissured rocky waste in the contrast of light and shadow. The dirty gray deposits in the lower regions were either snow or ice, or they indicated an atmosphere that had long since condensed and fallen.

The gravity was just about equal to one Terran standard unit, which was surprisingly high.

"If that isn't a sign of heavy element deposits ... " Brouk turned to the hyperdetector. "Can we tell yet if we've hit pay dirt?"

A fleeting grin crossed Cavins' face. "I'm asking myself that as well. The mass sensor shows indications of seam-like concentrations. They appear to run through half the planet at a depth of several hundred meters."

Not even forty million kilometers to go yet ...

No com message demanded that the GOLDEN GOOSE come to a halt and declared the territory taboo for Terrans.

Brouk suddenly lurched forward. There was an inset image, a red, pulsing circle over the dark planet's equatorial region ...

"Detection!" Cavins exclaimed. "We're picking up stray energy readings from a spacecraft engine!"

A second blinking circle appeared. Both lay in the area of an extended chain of craters.

"Energy readings distancing themselves from the surface! Two hundred kilometers per second and increasing!"

Launching spacecraft! The detection could mean nothing else. The captain bit back a curse. He had allowed himself to be tempted into believing the seeming lack of any presence by others. Now he had just been presented with the bill.

The glowing indicators increased their distance from each other. That meant the spacecraft were following different course vectors.

The mad hope that the GOLDEN GOOSE could remain undiscovered was destroyed by Cavins' next announcement. "Clearly an intercept maneuver. One ship is on an intercept course. Intercept in five minutes, assuming present acceleration rate is maintained. The other ship is approaching from the opposite direction."

"Have they identified themselves?"

"No com contact," Janna Pagnell replied.

Brouk nodded hesitantly. "Then we'll send our ID, at both normal light-speed and by hypercom."

"Will the two attack?"

"I don't know," the captain replied, "but who would fire on a virtually unarmed freighter, anyway?"

In fact, the GOLDEN GOOSE was equipped only with two thermocannons and a weak disintegrator. All three were intended for defense against asteroids, and the disintegrator for wide-range ground clearance. It was nothing that would impress an opponent.

"We're too well-armed to die, not enough to survive," one crewmember had declared just before takeoff, and had been privately reprimanded by Brouk for it. Strange, it was now just that sentence that echoed in his mind.

Make a run for it! hammered beneath his skull. We can escape into hyperspace with an evasive maneuver!If the engines hold up. But he hesitated because any deviation from their course seemed to him like an admission of guilt.

"Still no contact?"

"No reaction to our ID signal."

"They're spacespheres, too!" Cavins announced. "Neither one is any bigger than our ship. Possibly flattened polar areas."

"Akonians?"

We could have run across worse,