I'm in the observation dome. Iltu. Same as on board the Caesar. Teleport over here—and hurry!

  He waited. Seconds passed.

  Once more the mysterious thought impressions were weaker but there was no doubt that the aliens were looking for him. He had vanished before their eyes—or did they have eyes? Even that time on Barkon he had seen that they were not capable of teleporting and that their movements actually were fairly slow. He could always manage to get away from them, again and again—but was that the answer?

  Who were these beings who came out of invisible realms and attacked everything that entered the inter-galactic abyss? They apparently didn't venture into the galaxy itself. Their habitat seemed to be in the vast emptiness between the universes. They were unassailable and represented the greatest menace that the Terrans had been confronted with thus far.

  The air shimmered in front of Pucky and then Iltu appeared. She wore her combat suit and carried a second outfit with her.

  "Terrific, girl!" chirped Pucky, and he immediately pulled on the suit over his uniform. Then he picked up his raygun and thrust it into his outer belt. "Turn on your defense screen so that they can't hurt you. Ow—speaking of hurt... !"

  Iltu had helped him with the suit because he could hardly move his left arm. Concernedly, she stroked his sleeve where the wound was located.

  "Does it pain you a lot, Pucky?"

  He nodded and smiled appreciatively, "Only when I laugh. Ps-s-t! They're coming again!"

  She listened inwardly. "Yes, I'm picking up their thoughts. But how strange they are! It's just like you were thinking when I was in contact with you. Where do they come from? Who are they?"

  "Nobody knows," muttered Pucky, and again he sensed the immediate presence of the sinister intruders. The fact that they had found them here indicated strongly that they were telepathic. "We'll try to make them visible. Let's hope our screens will stand up against their weapons."

  Iltu nodded bravely. She took up a position next to Pucky with her back to the wall and drew out her beamer. Her normally gentle eyes gleamed venturesomely. It wasn't supposed to be in her line of duty to—

  The blue energy beam flashed not two meters away and struck Pucky's defense screen. It divided there and glanced off of him without doing any damage.

  "Fire!" shouted the mouse-beaver as he activated his weapon. Iltu complied.

  The two streams of energy intersected and glanced from an invisible obstruction. Back on Barkon, three such beams had been necessary to make the unseen creatures visible. But now it also succeeded with just two.

  Of course the effect was not as penetrating or lingering.

  The flame-lined outline of the enemy became dimly discernible. His body was resistant enough to reflect the beams of energy. A small onslaught like this couldn't hurt him but the force of four or five simultaneous shots could kill him. This Pucky knew from his experience on Barkon.

  But nothing more.

  The invisible entity assumed a shape for several seconds before it ducked out of harm's way. The figure was entirely human although no face could be seen. Two arms, a torso, two legs—that was all. But it was enough. Judging from that it had to be a material form.

  With gun in hand, Pucky sprang forward and tried to grasp the shadow phantom. He clutched at emptiness. His hands encountered no resistance. Evil thoughts streamed into his mind, so filled with hate and rage that he drew back involuntary. Never in his life had he encountered such venomous thoughts.

  He sprang back next to Iltu, where his neutralizer field enabled him to join his defense screen with hers. He took her by the hand. "I'll teleport and take you with me. You don't have to do a thing."

  He jumped—and landed directly in the concentrated blue fire of six or seven energy weapons. Although the mouse-beavers' doubly strengthened screens were able to deflect the deadly beams, their micro-generators were strained to the limit. Pucky was much too flabbergasted to react wisely. He raised his own weapon in order to return the fire.

  Then it was Iltu who saved both their lives. Instead of thinking uselessly of a counter-offensive she concentrated on making a short teleport jump. A Fraction of a second before their screens could collapse, the 2 mouse-beavers vanished and rematerialized in one of the peripheral corridors of the ship.

  "That was close," muttered Pucky, releasing her hand. "Well done, little one!"

  Iltu was about to retort something but she decided to remain silent. It was enough that Pucky praised her deed, even though he called her "little one". Perhaps that, too, was a mark of esteem.

  "I have to switch over the controls, Iltu. Only then can the boarding crews operation. If the shadows are faster than we are, they'll rob the ship and we'll be in a fix. Do you want to wait here or are you coming along?"

  The question was unnecessary. Iltu went along.

  As far as Pucky could make out, the Control Central was empty. The invisible ones were apparently all engaged in the search for him and Iltu—which could mean that there weren't very many of them.

  The main circuits were in an adjoining room. With a certainty which was surprising even to Pucky, he found the interface capsule behind the proper access panel and removed it. from that moment on the mighty ship was dependent upon the manual operations of living intelligences. Even though there were other independent automatic systems on board, as of this second they had been cut off.

  Another jump brought them into the launch chamber where Cadet Wilkovski was still standing, weapon in hand, with his back to the wall.

  "Call Col. Sukril!" Pucky ordered, while turning off his defense screen. "Tell him to start the takeover operation—for this ship and the others. We'll try to divert the shadow spooks. There can't be many of them."

  Cadet Wilkovski passed on this information over his helmet radio and then made a new attempt to open the outer hatch. This time he succeeded. The heavy lock gate swung into its retainer well and the Caesar became visible. There they could see the great hangar locks of the battleship opening up to disgorge a swarm of auxiliary craft and Gazelles which promptly headed for the various robotships.

  The actual operation had begun. The die had been cast. As long as the men wore their combat suits and kept their screens up, they would be relatively safe from the invisible enemy. Moreover, they could defend themselves with concentrated fire from multiple weapons.

  But Pucky did not yet realize how greatly he had underestimated the unknown opposition. "Iltu, you stay here," he said. He was watching some of the other robotships in the distance as the boarding commandos opened their locks and entered them. Evidently his switching over this flagship put the rest of them on manual control. "I have something else I have to take care of," he added.

  "I'll go with you!"

  "No—you stay here. It's too dangerous. You aren't ready yet for real precision jumps. And the distance is too great."

  "What are you going to do?"

  Pucky looked straight at her. "Look for Germa. He's our friend."

  "Then I've got to go with you!"

  Pucky remained adamant. "It's not only the danger of it, Iltu. I have to know I've got somebody here I can depend on." He swallowed with difficulty. "I can depend on you, can't I, girl? Somebody had to stay here to divert the shadow people from the commando crews. It's a rough job and you'll have to keep on the jump all the time. Depend on the troops and make sure they use a concentrated fire against the spooks whenever they show up. You're the only one who can tell when they're around."

  "Alright, Pucky, as you wish. But—I'll come if anything happens to you."

  "I'll call if I need you," he reassured her. "But don't forget that you represent me here now. Col. Sukril is depending only on me, not you. He mustn't see that we've switched places. But I can't leave Germa in the lurch."

  She pressed his paw. "You can depend on me." She smiled and revealed her pretty incisor tooth. "Until later. Grandpa."

  Pucky was forced to admire her tooth for a moment. Then he raised a threatening finger to her, finally thought better of it—and vanished.

  But Iltu had overcome her secret awe of Pucky in that moment. She watched the oncoming transports, which were carrying more than 2000 troops. Her task would be to protect these men.

  3/ GALACTIC ALARM

  After the Caesar and the 11 robotships had dropped from sight, nothing else changed. The distances were too great for that.

  Lt. Germa slumped in the pilot seat and stared at the useless flight lever. During the past 20 minutes he had tried often enough to move it back. Even the navigation controls were blocked. Invisible hands had manipulated the machinery—but to whom did those hands belong?

  He looked about him again but outside of himself and his three companions there was no one else in the control room. By now the weird presentiment of lurking menace had disappeared, which they had all sensed so clearly before. It was. as if the invisible ones had left the ship, having accomplished their objective.

  Once more he attempted to make contact with the Caesar and this time he succeeded. The com system was still intact.

  Sukril sounded somewhat impatient with him. "No, we haven't forgotten you, Lieutenant! I just haven't had time. The operation's started. The men are boarding the robotships."

  "Where is Pucky?"

  Sukril suppressed a bitter remark. "Also on the mission," was all he said. "Be patient, we'll pick you up soon enough. We have you on the tracking scanners and can locate you at any moment. But first I have to know that everything here is in order. We seem to be up against some very unusual opposition. The enemy is invisible and possibly even disembodied."

  "Invisible!" gasped Germa as he felt his hackles rising. "How is that possible?"

  "To be invisible isn't so impossible," replied Sukril. "The unusual part is that they are apparently immaterial. I've already sent a report on this to Terra so that Rhodan will know what's going on."

  Germa nodded to himself. "Well then, thank you, sir. We'll wait and depend entirely upon you."

  "You do just that," Sukril admonished, and he cut off.

  It seemed that at the moment he had plenty to do. Germa felt better about it because he realized that he himself was not in immediate danger. Later it would be child's play for the Caesar to trace him and find him.

  But in the meantime the Gazelle was racing onward into the depths of the intergalactic void. The velocity of light had been reached, which was the limit of speed in the Einstein universe. Brado, Hansen and Lester sat silently at their stations to Germa's right and left. In spite of the fright they'd been through they had become fascinated by the aspect of empty space. The white band of the Milky Way still marked the location of their home but the Gazelle was hurtling directly in an opposite direction. They were moving toward the distant nebula which hovered far ahead in the infinite vastness. For one horrible moment Germa had the thought that the shadow beings might stem from there but then he rejected the idea.

  A race that could fly at will from universe to universe would not be lingering around the edges of a galaxy and attacking stray robotships. They wouldn't be out to conquer a planet or star but an entire galaxy.

  What was keeping Pucky?

  His thoughts returned to the mouse-beaver. He liked him very much, that was for sure. He liked all animals—but was Pucky what one one might commonly refer to as "animal"? Wasn't he actually more than that? In this cosmic age, outer differences of form and color of skin ought to be a thing of the past. In fact when men first encountered extraterrestrial beings, the concept of racial barriers was shattered. Humanity itself melted into a single unity. People learned to judge others by character rather than by outward appearances. This was the only way they could adjust themselves to a contact with other intelligences.

  Through his deeds and comportment, Pucky had contributed much to this kind of understanding. He had lost his home world and his own kind but had found a new home on Earth among humans. He loved humanity but he was immensely proud of being a mouse-beaver.

  "Lieutenant!"

  Cadet Hansen had chanced to turn around to search again for signs of the unknown invaders in the control room. He had not yet gotten rid of the feeling of being under constant observation.

  Germa forgot his philosophical contemplations and whirled around, instinctively grasping his beamer, which lay on the flight panel. But then he breathed a sigh of relief. He had just been thinking of Pucky—and here the mouse-beaver was, emerging out of nowhere.

  "Pucky! At last!"

  "Man—that wasn't so easy!"

  Pucky released the helmet of his combat suit and shook himself. He nodded encouragingly at the four men and then, as far as he was able to determine by telepathy, he assured himself that the invisible foe was neither in the control room nor on board the Gazelle.

  "I was tracking your brain impulses, Germa," continued Pucky as he took over the last remaining seat, "but that alone wasn't enough. The distance was so great that I couldn't zero in exactly. I simply jumped and naturally I materialized immediately in the middle of nothing." He shuddered again at the memory of the unpleasant experience. "Man, I can tell you, that was something creepy! There I was in the middle of nowhere, out of sight of the Caesar and the Gazelle. Only the thought impulses were left. I could pick out Sukril's thoughts, alright—strictly military. After all, he was running the mission. But your thoughts, Germa, were something else. They were very good ones." He produced a friendly smile, which caused his incisor tooth to gleam brightly. "That's what made it easy to find you. So here I am!"

  "Where is Iltu?"

  "A brave girl!" exclaimed Pucky happily, although he added immediately: "Of course she's a bit young and inexperienced but all the same..."

  Germa made no further comment, of course not knowing what had happened in the meantime. He pointed to the controls. "So now what do we do? The flight controls seem to be welded in place. I can't change the speed or the course. Can you bring us back to the Caesar all by yourself?"

  "That could be a possibility but I don't want to have Sukril chew me out." Pucky started to laugh and then gave a pontifical imitation of the commander: "That mouse-beaver! He was entrusted with a ship and left it to an uncertain fate!"

  Germa had to grin, as did his three companions. It was really comical the way the mouse-beaver imitated the colonel's speech characteristics. Of course he couldn't reproduce the Skipper's deep deep tone of voice but otherwise it was a good try.

  "How can you free up the controls?" he asked.

  Pucky promptly forgot Col. Sukril. "I don't have any idea, Germa. I'll have to look them over."

  It wasn't actually what he meant because there wasn't much to see. There was only one way to find the probable obstructions—he had to put his telekinetic faculties to work. He carefully probed along the length of the flight lever with his psychokinetic emanations. In this way he penetrated deep into the control mechanism until he encountered a resistance.

  "That's probably it," he muttered, while trying to determine the shape of the obstruction. It had an uneven shape but there was no doubt that this was what kept the lever from moving. Pucky took a deep breath and grasped it telekinetically. Now that he had found the cause, the damage should be easy to correct. It all depended upon whether or not his powers were greater than the energies which held the obstruction in place.

  "Shift the level to neutral!" he said suddenly.

  Germa reached out to it. The lever was quite easy to move. It clicked audibly to the intended slot. The velocity of the Gazelle did not lessen due to the force of inertia. At light-speed it made no difference whether the propulsion system was working or not.

  Then Pucky got busy on the frozen nav-controls. He succeeded only after a number of trials, again encountering an unknown type of resistance. It seemed to be something that had been melted down and then hardened again but there was no explanation of how it had gotten there. Was it possible that the invisible ones could penetrate into solid matter?

  "You can try it now."

  Gazelle actually changed course and responded obediently to every manipulation he shook his head in amazement. "Wow—-we'd all better take up telekinesis! How did you do it, Pucky?"

  "To tell you the truth—I don't know exactly, myself," the mouse-beaver admitted. "I'm a boob in arms compared to those aliens. They seem to be able to do anything."

  "Haven't you just outsmarted them?"

  "Well, not really, Germa. I had to search a long time to clear the obstructions out of the way. But they put them there in seconds. I'm afraid we're still in for some surprises with those spooks. They aren't material substance in our sense of the word. Maybe you could go so far as to say they are bodiless, even in their own dimension. I don't know, Germa, when we first ran into them that time on Barkon, we racked our brains trying to figure them out-with no results. We thought then that it was a one-time contact and we almost forgot them after that. And now... " Pucky fell silent, having become very pensive.

  Germa spoke up. "Col. Sukril should ask Rhodan for support."

  "I'll recommend that to him," said Pucky, pointing to the control board. "Do you want to try locating-the Caesar?"

  Germa turned on the radio and put out a call to the flagship. There was a two-minute delay before the Caesar answered.

  "I already told you, Lt Germa, that I would send somebody——"

  Germa interrupted the angry voice. "We're already on our way back, sir. The phantoms have let go of us. I only wanted to inform you that Rhodan would be very interested in their presence here because he met them once before. May I recommend, sir, that you get into personal contact with him at once——?"

  "I've had an appropriate message sent," replied Sukril in a rigid tone of voice.

  "Did it describe the phenomena we've just experienced?"

  "Would you care to explain that?"

  "Yes sir. These shadow people are not only a local menace to us here but for the entire galaxy. Pucky told me about them. It's absolutely necessary to bypass official channels on Earth and go directly to Rhodan. The red tape would take too long... "

 

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