Sukril did not seem to realize that Germa could not have spoken to Pucky—since he wasn't aware of the mouse-beaver's present location. "Alright, Germa, then you take care of getting back here on your own. I'll get into direct communication with the Administrator. Does that satisfy you?"

  Germa sighed his relief and glanced briefly at Pucky. Thank you, sir. I believe you'll be doing us all a big favor. Don't worry about me, I can find my way back without help."

  Sukril grumbled something unintelligible and cut off the connection. Germa also shut down the com unit and looked at Pucky.

  The Old Man seems to be taking it pretty calmly. Do you think he knew about the danger already?"

  "It looks like it," Pucky nodded. He stared at the Milky Way and pointed in their direction of flight. "It's my guess that you'll catch sight of the Caesar and the robots in about five minutes. Better start decelerating."

  The Gazelle responded to the retropulsion controls. The ships came into view after 15 minutes. After arriving at the Caesar, Germa flew the Gazelle into the wide-open hangar and landed it gently. He had hardly done so before the mighty lock gate started to close.

  Germa had gotten up and was about to leave the Gazelle when Pucky suddenly tensed and grasped his arm.

  "Wait, Germa—something's fishy! Why are they closing the hangar hatch? The action can't be over with yet. Besides, I'm picking up the spook thoughts again." He looked about but couldn't see anything suspicious other than the fact that the hangar itself was strangely deserted-looking. "Stay in the Gazelle, Germa. Turn on the energy screen! And don't turn it off until you see me over by that wall and I give you a signal. Have you got that?"

  "Yes—but what gives?"

  "Don't ask me now. Just a precaution, that's all. OK, I'm making the jump. Turn on the screen in 10 seconds. See you later." He dematerialized before the eyes of the four men and vanished.

  Germa made a reassuring sign to his men. Of course he didn't know what was on the mouse-beaver's mind yet but he trusted him blindly. After the prescribed 10 seconds, he switched on the screen. Now the Gazelle lay under a protective dome of energy which isolated it completely from the outside world.

  Only then did Germa note how unusually quiet it was on board the Caesar. There was no sign of the hangar personnel. No crews had hurried forward to receive the Gazelle. He sat down. "Let's wait," he said. And they waited.

  4/ GHOST SHIP

  Iltu's hour of trial had come.

  When the special troop carriers landed in the giant hangar and the commandos leapt out with ready weapons to swarm into the corridors, she was immediately spotted by Maj. Borovski who led the mission.

  "Oh there you are, Pucky!" he cried out as he ran past her.

  "I am Iltu!" she chirped indignantly, trying in vain to keep up with the towering major. "Wait a minute! I have something important to say to you!"

  Borovski stopped. "Oh—Iltu?" he said wonderingly. "The other mouse-beaver!"

  "A girl mouse-beaver!" she corrected him, coming to a stop beside him. "Pucky is fetching Germa. I'm

  here in his place."

  "Fine!" retorted Borovski. "Then do it!"

  He was about to take off again but Iltu furiously grasped him by the leg of his trousers.

  "Wait, I said! Do you want to listen to me or don't you? Pucky has left some instructions for you. They

  have to do with the invisible enemies who are here on the ship.

  Borovski kept a straight face and stood still. The men running passed him were seen to grin as they noted Iltu holding him by the pants of his combat suit. Only a few of them came to a stop.

  "Alright, Iltu, tell me."

  She gave him a brief report on her experiences with the shadow people and how they could be combatted. She advised Borovski to keep his men in groups of at least five and to keep their screens turned on. As soon as anyone fired at them out of the emptiness they should set up a crossfire. They should keep it up until the enemy became visible and died. Then of course he would vanish back into the nothingness he had emerged from.

  Maj. Borovski had a good faculty of perception. "And you can pick up their thoughts? I mean—you can tell when some of them are close by?"

  "Yes."

  "Good!" he decided. "Then you come with me. You can ride up here on my arm."

  Iltu didn't hesitate long. She climbed up his lanky form and established herself in the crook of his left arm. Borovski carried his beamer in his right hand. He turned on his defense screen and then beckoned to the men who had remained with him. The search of the robotship began.

  Not everyone had come equipped with combat suits so they formed in groups around those who were so protected. They sent the protected men ahead of them to lure the phantoms out of hiding. As soon as there was any firing out of the air, the others were to close in and join in the answering fire.

  Maj. Borovski's group achieved the first results although he was honest enough later to explain that it was actually due to Iltu. There were seven men in the group. The major was leading the way with his activated defense screen. Iltu sat on his arm and searched for the enemy's thought impulses, which she knew must be able to come through their own protective screens. The other six men were a few steps behind and covered all sides with their weapons ready to fire.

  The first impulses that came to Iltu were very weak. The aliens were approaching slowly but steadily. It seemed as if they were especially attracted by Iltu's own brainwave patterns.

  The small commando group was moving along a wide passageway. To their right and left were the doors of the empty cabins. The dim emergency lights were still coming on automatically as they progressed but all they revealed were the naked deckplates of the corridor, since on such ships there was no plastic floor coating or carpeting.

  Borovski came to a cross passage and stopped.

  "Where to?"

  "To your right," whispered Iltu and pointed into the narrower corridor. "The impulses come from there. We should be meeting them any minute."

  "Let's go!" the major whispered to his men.

  Iltu felt the impulses getting stronger. She wondered anxiously if she would be safe here under Borovski's defense screen. What would Pucky have felt in her place? Was he really as fearless as he always acted or could he also sense fear?

  "Stop!"

  Maj. Borovski complied at once. "Do you see something?"

  "You can't see them," she whispered tensely. "But I sense somebody. One of them is here."

  The six other men had come to a stop and taken cover. At the first sign of attack they would charge forward. Borovski couldn't rid himself of a very uneasy feeling. He was accustomed to facing an enemy he could see but here there was no one visible. Iltu couldn't even tell him where the phantom was

  standing. She only knew that he was here—that was all.

  "He's thinking—hate! Now it's still more hate! He's going to attack!"

  She had hardly spoken before a blue-white energy beam flashed out directly in front of Borovski. It struck his screen and was deflected harmlessly in a spray of pyrotechnics. The major aimed his weapon and pressed the trigger. Simultaneously the other men joined him and opened a furious counterfire against the phantom. Within fractions of a second his outlines became visible under that sheet of flame but the Terrans kept on firing. As the figure sank to the floor they followed it with their beams and saturated it with energy.

  During the fighting a fairly human outline had been seen. It was a colorless silhouette against the background of the wall and then the floor except that it was 3-dimensional and seemingly material since the energy beams virtually encircled it as it went down. Borovski closely observed the phenomenon while he was firing. Now the thing lay on the deck. The blue-white flashes from its weapon had ceased. The phantom offered no further resistance because it was dying. Then if faded back into invisibility.

  Iltu could sense that the thought impulses also died away. At first they had been emanations of pure hate, then rage and a will to attack. Finally there had been anguish and pain—followed by the calm of death.

  At any rate, the uncanny foe could be conquered. That is—on an individual basis, for the invaders as a whole were far from being beaten. Nor was it all to be as easy as this.

  • • •

  Maj. Borovski learned over the radio that the enemy was not present on the other robotships. According to plan, each vessel was taken over and manned. They waited within 2 km of the Caesar for the further instructions of Col. Sukril.

  But the colonel did not respond to any of their radio calls. The Caesar hovered silently and motionlessly in space. It seemed as if Sukril had withdrawn from the operation and preferred to leave everything in the hands of the commando leaders.

  Maj. Borovski gave up trying to make contact with the commander; he had more important things to do. With help from Iltu he was able to track down 3 more phantoms and kill them but then there were no more impulses. It was as if the invaders had been swallowed up by the ethers of Eternity.

  On the other hand, up in the Control Central the troops of Sgt. Bering ran into a well-prepared death trap.

  Bering was no telepath so he was not sensitive to the thought emanations of the aliens. Unsuspectingly he came into the Control Central and occupied it with his men. There was no sign of hostiles here so they began to feel took over the radio console and reported in to the Caesar. He received no answer.

  Bering deployed his men in groups so as to offer the required defensive pattern. The only mistake he made was to think in terms of only one attacker. It was thus a deadly surprise to see blue energy beams emerging simultaneously from 3 different directions.

  Iltu had slipped out of Maj. Borovski's arm when she picked up the thoughts of the hard-pressed men. She oriented herself swiftly and cried out: "In the Control Central—it's a concentrated attack! I'll jump ahead —you follow!" And with that she vanished.

  Borovski comprehended at once. He and his men stormed into the nearest antigrav lift and arrived 2 minutes later in the Control Central. What he saw there he would never forget.

  3 men in the pastel green service uniforms of the Terran spacefleet were lying on the floor. There could be no doubt that they were dead. Out of sheer nothingness the blue energy beams were sweeping through the room in search of new victims. Under cover of their defense screens, Sgt. Bering and Iltu opened fire on the invisible enemy but their 2 weapons were not enough to kill them or even to drive them away. Three or 4 men had thrown themselves to the deck and crept into various niches, from which cover they fired haphazardly at the invaders.

  "Get the one on the left!" yelled Borovski and he signaled his men to take cover before retaliating.

  Bering caught on. He concentrated on the spot, in the middle of the air, where an energy beam was emanating from the left. Seconds later the enemy became visible under their combined attack. He sank to the floor and ceased firing.

  The second one was also put out of harm's way but the third phantom disappeared without leaving a trace. Nobody knew it but at that moment all of the aliens withdrew at once. It was as if they had obeyed a silent command to retreat. It came five minutes too late because 3 Terrans lay dead in the Control Central of the vast robotship.

  The enemy casualties were both invisible and immaterial. They could not be counted but it was certain that their losses had been greater than those of the Terrans. It was a poor consolation in spite of their victory.

  "Call the Caesar !" shouted Borovski after the various group leaders reported that there were no further signs of attack. "Looks like the ship is ours." He signaled into the Com Room at the operator who had already turned on the equipment again. "Make contact with Col. Sukril—on the double!" After that he paced restlessly back and forth while his men took care of the fallen ones.

  "Sir, the Caesar still doesn't answer!"

  Borovski's brows shot up. "What the devil's that supposed to mean? Are they sleeping over there? Try it again!"

  Iltu felt strangely alerted by this. In the past few minutes she had gained still more self-confidence and knew that she could depend on her faculties. Pucky had been an excellent task-master. She tried to establish contact with Sukril's mind but was blocked by the confusion of hundreds of other impulses. For a moment she thought she caught an emanation from Pucky but then she lost it again. It was equivalent to trying to pick out one person's voice in the shout of a thousand-man multitude—and also attempting to identify him.

  The Com Man came back. "No contact, sir. They don't answer."

  Iltu spoke up. "Should I have a look, Major? All I have to do is teleport."

  Borovski looked about him uncertainly. "And if they show up again—the shadow people?"

  "I can be back right away."

  He nodded. "Alright—but hurry it up! If I only knew where Pucky was! He ought to be here."

  Iltu said nothing. She was beginning to worry about her fellow mouse-beaver. She concentrated and vanished without attempting to answer the major's unexpressed question. No one could say that she was a weak and uncertain teleporter. She had only to think of the Caesar 's Command Central—and there she materialized.

  Col. Sukril was slumped motionlessly in his flight seat before the controls. The Nav Officer, Capt. Henderson, also seemed to be unconscious or dead. His head was resting on the chart table. The finger of his right hand was curled around the butt of his weapon. Three other officers were stretched out flat on the deck. The door of the Com Room was standing wide open. There was no sign of life from the chief operator.

  Iltu took all this in within seconds. With a shrill whistle of alarm she pattered over to Col. Sukril. He was breathing weakly but steadily. His brain convolutions gave out an abstract pattern of dreamlike communications. At any rate he was alive.

  Iltu didn't deliberate for long. For the moment there was nothing here she could do and Maj. Borovski was waiting for her. He must be informed of this at once. So she teleported back into the robotship. She briefly described what she had seen. For about 10 seconds Maj. Borovski stared at her in disconcerted amazement. Then he turned to the radio operator in Bering's detail.

  "Are you familiar with the com equipment?"

  "Yes sir. It's the same as on the Caesar."

  "Including the hypercom?"

  "Yes sir."

  Borovski took a deep breath before giving his order. "Make a hypercom connection with Perry Rhodan. Straight to Terrania. But make it fast—we've no time to lose!"

  He leaned back against the control panels in the Com Room and waited. In his right hand he still held his de-safetied weapon. Iltu sat on his left arm and used her esp. She was to warn him if the phantoms were getting ready to make another attack.

  But there were no phantoms present. At least not here.

  • • •

  Sgt. Gork ran into some real trouble.

  When he had panicked and leapt into space he had not given any thought to how he was going to reach the Caesar. The main thing was to get out of the terrible ghost ship. He somersaulted slowly and some seconds went by before he could orient himself. Naturally he had missed his mark and ended up drifting past the Caesar just as its locks opened up.

  Laboriously he drew his handgun and fired it carefully. His turning motion became slower and finally stopped. He had to fire another shot to get out of the way of the commando craft that were emerging from the Caesar 's launching locks.

  His freefall course brought him above the Caesar and the formation of robotships. He could observe everything quite clearly. In his helmet phones was a confusion of orders and answering confirmations mixed with reports and conversations. The special commando details were boarding the robotships.

  Gork altered his direction of flight again but just when he was about to give himself a boost of speed the energy weapon slipped from his fingers. He tried in vain to reach for the slowly drifting gun but it receded irretrievably into the void. He himself hovered motionlessly in emptiness. Beneath him the Caesar reminded him of a vast planet with robotships for moons.

  It took him 10 minutes to realize that the warship's artificial gravity had caught him in its field and that he was sinking toward it with exasperating slowness. Another half hour passed before his feet touched the hull. He moved carefully in order not to launch himself into space again. After a few steps to the nearest open hatch, he entered the hangar inside.

  It was empty.

  Which in itself wasn't so extraordinary. The commando units had left the Caesar and gone to man the robotships. Everything appeared to have operated according to plan and schedule. He, however, had more or less deserted his post.

  The thought struck him for the first time that he could only have fled from a phantom. In one sense it was a relief to know this but in its final consequences the possibilities were not so pleasant. An explanation would be demanded of him. Well, maybe the disappearance of the Gazelle with Lt. Germa would help to explain it—or the launch gate of the robot battleship.

  But where the devil were the usual hangar personnel?

  Gork looked around. He was alone. No other crewmen were in evidence. Some of the doors leading into the corridors were standing wide open. The air must have escaped from the pressure-equalizing chambers. That was completely against regulations and was unexplainable.

  He stirred himself and, choosing the nearest door, closed it behind him and turned on the air supply. When the pressure was equalized he took off his space helmet. Of course he no longer carried a weapon but he didn't see any reason why he should need one now. He still didn't realize what had happened.

  Out in the main corridor he ran across the first unconscious crewmen. They were men from the hangar who must have been called from their regular posts by the alarm because they had even forgotten to close the outer launch gate. Some of them had only partially put on their spacesuits before they had fallen unconscious.

  Gork sniffed the air testily but could smell nothing suspicious. Had they all been knocked out with some kind of gas?

 

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