When the mental pressure became unbearable for him, Pucky made a short teleport jump in an easterly direction. Here the pressure was only half as strong.

  "Pressure...?" he heard himself saying. He realized that what he had come across involved some kind of natural impulses of extraordinary power. Instead of attacking him they were merely streaming past him. "Gosh darn it all!" he exclaimed. "Everywhere there's always something different to face! To the devil with it!"

  However the trouble with Pucky was that he was Pucky whose chief characteristic was curiosity. Struggling to ignore the mental pressure, he deliberately followed the impulse stream and finally obtained a telepathic bearing on the direction of its origin.

  "It's behind me!"

  He jumped, and yelled out when he rematerialized. In an agony of pain he threw himself onto the searing sand—only to be free of the torment in the same moment.

  "Well, what the—?!" He started to exclaim in wonderment as he got up again but he had only straightened up halfway before the sensation struck him again.

  In a flash he dropped down again and lay on his stomach. From that position he activated his searchlight. There was something very uncanny about this pain phenomenon. The beam of his searchlight still did not penetrate far through the swirling sandblast of the storm. He finally began to crawl, taking care not to rise up too far at any time. Like a thief he slowly circled the area.

  Suddenly he discovered something black in front of him which curved upward at an odd angle. He recognized it as something he had seen before. It was exactly what Bikre had shown him—a corkscrew-shaped antenna!

  Once more Pucky did not dare move. His insistent curiosity did not quite reach that far. Seventy years of training under Perry Rhodan had instilled caution in him although at times he had ventured where a full battalion of daring men would not have gone.

  The twisting antenna towered four meters above the ground. The heat storm was sweeping more and more sand away from it and more of the structure was being exposed.

  "What kind of star-hoppers managed to install this gadget from Hell?" he asked himself angrily.

  He probed upward with his arm for a moment but pulled it back with a shrill squeak of pain. The mental pressure had struck like a titanic fist as though his arm itself had served as an antenna to receive the eerie force. It took him some time to recover. He did not try it a second time. But when he sought telepathically to track the source again his mental tendrils seemed to reach into nothingness.

  A soft warning hum inside his suit advised him that his cooling system was being overloaded. The remaining air masses of Vagabond were actually beginning to glow! His outside thermometer was not registering which meant the temperature was over 1,475° Fahrenheit.

  "Sssaossao!" Pucky cried out in a high pitch, in his excitement reverting to his native tongue. "Pretty soon even the sand is going to start melting!"

  He looked at the small meter panel inside his helmet, just below his faceplate and saw that the inside temperature had risen to 82°. He quickly switched all generator outputs into the cooling system, with the exception of one protective field screen. He needed that to keep the red-hot sandblast from him.

  Seconds later the warning hum was silenced. The mouse-beaver resumed his telepathic search for the source of the alien impulses. And once more he seemed to be reaching into emptiness. But then he suddenly sensed something. Something was there!—a very weak impulse somewhere far beneath him. He could not know that he had tracked down an electronic-organic hybrid—that alien life form which was known as orgh.

  "Just you wait, chum," exclaimed Pucky, "you're in for a surprise!" And he teleported toward the impulse source.

  He landed 10,000 meters under the superheated surface of Vagabond in a gigantic dark cavern. Using his searchlight he was able to make a quick survey of his surroundings. Pucky was seized by a grave sense of foreboding as he observed the frightening array of huge machines. They all stood there in absolute silence like harbingers of doom.

  He felt the naked fear rising within him which gave him an urge to flee from these uncanny apparitions in a single teleport jump. But his curiosity held him long enough to remember his best friend, Perry Rhodan, who would never have run away from something that was merely black and operating without a sound.

  But where was this creature whose impulses he had detected through 10,000 meters of thick rock and heavy layers of earth?

  Pucky stood between two giant machines which were as high as a house and he played the searchlight beam across them. Two hundred meters overhead was the curving rock ceiling. His concentrated light beam ran along it until it became lost in the distance. It gave the mouse-beaver his first real impression of the size of this subterranean power room. But his search for the source of the impulses revealed nothing.

  He teleported as far as his searchlight had reached. Suddenly he almost forgot to breathe as he discovered something that filled him with a morbid fascination. It was a covered or enshrouded contraption of some sort that reminded him of a giant worm, yet his thought probes still revealed no alien impulses.

  He didn't want to admit to himself how much this whole situation was disturbing him. He concealed his uneasiness with the argument that the other one whom he had detected from above near the antenna was probably capable of screening off his thought emanations.

  But basically he did not believe this was the case. He sprang about in short teleport hops, crossing the vast chamber from one side to another and going from end to end of it. The longer his search remained futile the more uneasy he became.

  Then the second seismic shock struck the planet Vagabond. Even as Pucky teleported to the surface he heard the first roll of thunder almost in the planet's very core. He figured it would be better to be melted by heat rather than be buried under 10,000 meters of rock.

  The half-hour he spent waiting on the surface was like an eternity while the ground shook and the titanic gaseous hurricane raged above. But the planetary trembler ceased as abruptly as it had begun. Pucky teleported back down below to the giant installation, prepared for any magnitude of destruction, yet to his amazement there was no sign of damage. And once more he started an intensive search for the other presence.

  The whole thing seemed to become more eerie and uncanny as time passed without event. He couldn't understand why no one attacked him in spite of the fact that his brilliant spotlight made him a perfect target. Nevertheless he had not given up the idea of detonating this cosmic power plant so that its energy eruption would attract Rhodan's attention. However, the longer he moved around these dark, shrouded machines of alien design and form the more difficult his plan appeared to be. He could no longer regard the project as offering a 100% probability of success.

  By now he had made well over 100 separate teleport jumps around the mighty cavern and his watch kept telling him how much precious time was passing. No one needed to tell him that Vagabond had meanwhile come still closer to the sun or that it was only a matter of time before his native world would plunge to its fiery destruction.

  Suddenly during one of his teleports he was struck by a powerful impulse. He traced the source swiftly and was soon standing in front of a dark, asymmetrical housing. He immediately sought to communicate with whatever might be inside the thing but there was no answer—just the steady stream of impulses.

  The mouse-beaver began to doubt his senses. He was receiving thoughts but why didn't he get an answer to his questions? And why wasn't he able to understand the mental impulses that came to him?

  He was reminded of Barkon again but there he had clearly sensed that the incomprehensible thought-streams were hostile to him whereas here there was simply a neutral impulse emanation—nothing more.

  His widened searchlight beam embraced the entire small structure which measured about two meters in height and five meters in length. And he suddenly noticed that numerous connecting cables led to this installation from all directions.

  Slowly, he raised the muzzle of his impulse blaster until it was aimed directly at the center of the shrouded contraption but he could not find the courage to activate the weapon. Once more he gathered all of his telepathic powers and sent out a command to the thought source, insisting that it communicate with him.

  Again with no results.

  There was only the continuing stream of impulses.

  "What do you think this planet is—a football?" asked Pucky threateningly.

  He hesitated a few seconds more and then the pulse beam of his blaster broke through the thing's outer shroud and bored into the interior of the alien structure. The next moment he gasped aloud, not trusting his eyes. He turned off his searchlight and only the blaster beam illuminated his surroundings. But it was not consuming the outer shielding of the contraption. It penetrated it but did not destroy it. And somewhere in the heart of the assembly there was something that simply arrested the destructive beam.

  Suddenly he wondered if he were the victim of a hallucination. Deep within the thing he perceived a strange yellowish point of light. The point began to grow. It became bigger and bigger as though being inflated and it was this light globe that was blocking his energy beam!

  Of all times, a new planetary earth-shock began to be felt. Pucky held the firing contact of his weapon firmly depressed, still aiming at the swollen balloon of yellow light. It's you or me! he exclaimed mentally using the maximum output of his telepathic faculty. Speak! Make yourself understandable!

  But an orgh is not a telepath. He can only communicate on the organic wavelengths of the monsters. He received Pucky's telepathic impulses as an additional source of energy but he did not recognize them as a form of communication. As for the blaster's fiery beam, he also regarded it as nothing more than new energy. What he couldn't absorb organically he deflected into the electronic portion of his being.

  Such was the orgh's concept but the reality of the matter was that the impulse beam was an alien form of energy—and it was deadly!

  It was then that the mouse-beaver realized where the terrible rumbling had come from at the inception of each seismic shock. The orgh was rumbling! Its energies rumbled, thundered and raged.

  Pucky teleported but he had caught just a glimpse of the beginnings of a mighty bolt of lightning. He teleported more than 2,000 km from the focal point but at the moment of rematerialization he had to close his eyes against a blinding flare that shot 10,000 km into space and reduced the sandstorm to a zephyr by comparison.

  Perry, there's my call!

  Such was his prime thought as he teleported to the last group of living mouse-beavers on Vagabond, while the entire planet trembled under the impact of a catastrophic explosion.

  • • •

  At this moment on the monster world agal was reporting to his shaftgal: "Our stellar experiment has been ruined in its final stage. The best orgh we ever developed has failed us!"

  7/ PUCKY'S GREATEST PERIL

  Toward the end of September 2044 a routine inspection was made of all spaceship logbooks but a certain important positronic entry was overlooked. Shortly after the turn of the year a special detailed inspection was made of all old logbooks and included among them was the ship's record of a certain light cruiser which had visited the planet Vagabond in the previous year.

  This time all log entries were being processed case by case through the main positronicon in Terrania and finally on the night of January eight of the new year the inspection commission put in a top emergency call to Perry Rhodan.

  Perry Rhodan reacted to this by waking up Reginald Bell and Allan D. Mercant, the Chief of Solar Intelligence, as well as a certain group of scientists. Also Dr. Innogow was awakened along with all his colleagues who were still helplessly baffled by the pea-sized chunk of blue fluorescent material from Vagabond. In addition an alert signal reached the supply depot manager in charge of Stores Unit 18/Omega. A few minutes later this man rushed in desperate haste to the depot compound and searched feverishly for a certain wave-reflector device which had been dismantled from a light cruiser in September of the previous year. He finally found it and raced with it to Rhodan.

  While en route he exclaimed to himself: "The Chief wants this thing? Glord, what can he want with such an obsolete piece of junk?"

  But the device worked. In fact it operated perfectly with an error deviation of only 0.0005%.

  It was then that Terrania's great hypersensor station cut into the emergency conference. "Sir—tremendous energy eruption on Vagabond! The planet must be in flames by now and is in danger of flying apart within a matter of hours!"

  Rhodan's face froze. Bell turned pale. The two men exchanged frightened looks. Rhodan's hand jumped to the alert button. It was the signal control for sending a red alert to the Solar Fleet. The viewscreen lit up and with it the hypercom panel for interstellar communications came to life.

  "What ship have you got in the area of Vagabond that's carrying mutants and teleporters? This has top alert priority!"

  A dozen men around him held their breaths when he asked this question. And the answer came back promptly.

  "Sir, no ship with teleporters is in the area designated..."

  "What light cruiser's closest to the planet?"

  "The Burma under Joe Pasgin, on a course to..."

  "Thank you!" Rhodan cut the hypercom connection and turned to the viewscreen, which was on a closed channel to the telecom station. "You heard that?"

  "Yes sir!"

  "Emergency order to Burma ! Set course for Vagabond! Max speed! Pucky is in terrible danger! Also alert Arkon 3. Request robot Brain also beam this command to the Burma. Advise me immediately contact is made with Pasgin! Also rush all sensor and analysis data on Vagabond to me as fast as possible—that is all!"

  Then he cut off this connection as well and finally leaned back in his chair with his eyes momentarily closed.

  Bell was shaken and despondent. "And here both of us figured we were making Pucky happy with that vacation leave!" If I had a nice sound-proofed padded cell I'd like to yell my head off..."

  Rhodan cut him off with unusual vehemence. "Do you have to make it harder on me?"

  Rhodan's stocky companion took no offense at the reprimand. Bell reached past him and made a connection with the spaceport.

  "Message to Drusus ! Emergency standby for priority takeoff! The Chief and I are coming on board—that is all" Then he looked grimly around him at the assembled group of experts. "Gentlemen, you will kindly accompany us!"

  When he stood up he turned on his wrist minicom which established an interference-free connection with the hypercom station. Although the briefing in Rhodan's office did not break up in a panic, nevertheless there was not a minute wasted.

  Eleven minutes later they all entered the groundlock of the Drusus. This was Rhodan's flagship, almost one mile in diameter, and was the largest class of battleship in the Solar Fleet.

  At the same moment that the super fighting ship thundered into the night above Terrania, Pucky held a mouse-beaver baby tenderly in his arms and whispered: "If my friend Perry Rhodan didn't see those fireworks it's going to be curtains for all of us! But you just keep on sleeping, little one. This headache isn't for you—it's for Perry Rhodan now! He's the greatest, though—only one of his kind. If anyone's going to yank us out of here it will be Perry!

  Pucky gently stroked the little creature's silky fur.

  • • •

  Lt. Hendrik Olavson, a natural born spacer, shoved in an intercom key almost as soon as the emergency order was heard on the hypercom speaker.

  "Emergency order to Burma! Change course with top speed for Vagabond! Major energy eruption detected there. Pucky presently on Vagabond. In maximum danger. Signed—Rhodan."

  The Burma was a light cruiser of the 100-meter class. Just 15 minutes before this the ship had emerged from hyperspace and had gone into an approach course to 456LL4, a planet of the Arkonide Empire, where it was to relieve the Terranian crew stationed there.

  Joe Pasgin, commander of the Burma, was jolted from sleep in his cabin by the emergency. "Olavson!" he shouted as he sprang out of bed.

  Olavson interrupted him from the pilot's seat in the Control Central. "Burma'son new course—the positronic's already working out the coordinates. Transition about five minutes!"

  "OK!" was all Pasgin had to say as he pulled up the last zipper on his uniform.

  Then the telecom speaker rang out again. The unmistakable voice of the mammoth Brain on Arkon 3 could be heard. It repeated the same emergency message verbatim.

  My God!—thought Joe Pasgin on his way to the Control Central—if Arkon 3 is also relaying the message there must not be much left of Vagabond!

  Lt. Hendrik Olavson didn't even glance sideways as his commander sat down in the copilot's seat. He had his hands full to get the Burma onto its new course but he seemed to be orchestrating the ship's complex systems like a musician. A kind of 6th sense always seemed to tell him what he should do and Hendrik Olavson never failed to prove that his reactions were correct—usually within a fraction of a second before the unexpected happened.

  The ship's positronic computer chucked out the data strip for a transition to Vagabond. Olavson clipped the plastic strip to his flight console and fed in all the required hyperjump programming, not neglecting meanwhile to bring the small spherical ship to the necessary transition velocity. He was not fond of going into transitions from a standstill. In spite of his daring temperament he considered such a manoeuvre much too dangerous.

  The Burma, carrying a regulation crew of 150 men, was a class of ship that had an almost uncanny acceleration capability. It could be brought to speol in five minutes. Naturally, since the heavy propulsion units were of a magnitude somewhere between those of a heavy cruiser and ships of the Solar class, all those accoutrements normally taken for granted on such vessels had to be sacrificed—and this included its armaments. Spacers of the State class were long range reconnaissance ships and because of their super engines could reach the most distant goals with lightning swiftness.

 

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