Perry Rhodan.

Checkmate Universe.

1/ TIFF ABDUCTED!.

JULIAN TIFFLOR was certain that he had never seen the two men before. They were young, rather slovenly dressed, and each held a small thermobeamer in his hand. The weapons were aimed directly at Tifflor's chest Tifflor thought over his situation and decided that there was nothing else he could do but do what the two gentlemen wanted-whatever that was. He was not afraid. He was in the middle of the great city of Terrania. He had just stepped out of the restaurant where he had eaten supper and the street lay broad and empty before him. It was too late for pedestrians. A few autos glided past on the trafficways but they were too far away for their occupants to be able to see what two holdup men were doing with the uniformed man at the edge of the street.

The situation was not at all favourable for Tifflor. As he had left, the restaurant had had only a few customers. It would be some time before the next guest came out. But for the moment Tifflor still thought the two men were simple b.u.ms. They were out for money and had thought they would have the best chance of finding a victim in the vicinity of a high-cla.s.s restaurant. Tomorrow, when it became known that Col. Julian Tifflor of the Terran s.p.a.cefleet had vanished and the vast and powerful apparatus of the police was being set into motion, the two men would be overcome by fear and quickly let him go-if he had not thought of anything better by then himself.

When one of the two asked if the grey car parked at the curb belonged to him, he answered almost cheerfully: "Yes, of course. Nice car, isn't it?"

The man didn't seem to possess much in the way of a sense of humour. "Shut up and get in!" he ordered, motioning pointedly with his gun-hand. "In the back seat!"

Tifflor did not move. "I am a colonel," he said dryly. "I take orders only from generals."

He had not been paying attention to the other man. He heard a quick step next to him, then felt a blow on his skull. He staggered and fell almost to the ground, when hands grabbed him roughly under his shoulders and held him upright. As though from somewhere far in the distance, he heard an angry voice say: "We don't mess around with jokes! Now do what you're told."

Tifflor did not hesitate any longer. If they beat him unconscious beforehand, he would not be able to defend himself later. He freed himself from the grip supporting him and went to the auto. He opened the electronic locking system of the doors and motor, climbed through the rear door and sat down. It was good to sit down. The blow had been a hard one and Tifflor felt himself getting sick.

One of the two gangsters sat down next to him. The other sat behind the controls and when the small vidscreen of the microwave interceptor, which registered traffic on the beltway, showed that the way was clear, he let the vehicle move out. He drove directly to one of the fastest belts, which lay almost in the middle of the wide street, and there let the car be taken along the moving roadband as it would. Up to now he had chosen no driving program. That and the fact he had selected an inner belt convinced Tifflor that their destination was no small distance away, probably outside the city.

He tried to question the man next to him. First he asked direct questions and when he did not get even a single answer, he resorted to taunting and jibing him. However, the man seemed immune to every sort of psychological tactic. He sat as silent as a statue.

Tifflor pondered his chances of not being noticed if he attempted to pull out the weapon he carried in a holster under his uniform jacket. He tried once to reach into the pocket where a slit in the lining led straight to the b.u.t.t of the small beamer. The man next to him suddenly came alive and held the barrel of his weapon close to Tifflor's face, saying quietly: "Keep your hands in your lap, buddy. We know all about how fleet uniforms are tailored!"

Tifflor gave up.

Some thoughts came to him relative to the opinion of the two men which he had formed when he first encountered them. They gave the impression of knowing precisely what they wanted. His rank and the certainty that in five hours at most they would have the police and the secret service hot on their trail did not seem to affect them. Tifflor was not so certain any more that they were really common thugs. He remembered the unrest that had reigned a few weeks before when Perry Rhodan was still thought dead. The unrest was past. It had quieted down the moment Rhodan had reappeared and explained to mankind that there was no reason to be excited. But there might still be hotheads determined to actualize their political beliefs-no matter how.

Had he fallen into the hands of such people? The thought struck him as absurd. Right-he was a colonel. But who, in heaven's name, would be so naive as to believe that Perry Rhodan and the Solar Council would change their decisions merely because their political opponents held a colonel of the Fleet as a hostage?

The situation was confused and unpleasant. Tifflor came to the realization that he would have done better if he had made more noise back on Goshun Road before being taken away.

It did not look as though he would have another such favourable opportunity to attract the world's attention to his abduction.

Julian Tifflor had experienced his most impressive adventures in the depths of galactic s.p.a.ce. Earthly gangsters were something he had never run across before. He had an idea that the trip the two kidnappers were taking with him in his own car would end somewhere in the wilderness of the steppes at some old, tumbledown and wind-ravaged house.

And he was right. The house was almost exactly as he had imagined it. It looked as though it had been built 400 years before as a shelter for marauding nomads. Tifflor knew that just 70 years before there had not been a single house in the entire region but that did not detract any from the impression which the strange building made on him.

He revised his opinion once he stepped inside the house. He thought for a second that he had come into a modem hospital. The halls gleamed with cleanliness and the illumination was bright and the room to which he was finally led was equipped with devices that were the most modern in the field of psychophysics.

Tifflor realized what the equipment was going to be used for and decided that if he ever wanted to regain his freedom he would have to do something at once. If he was put under the influence of those devices he would no longer be in control of his own will; he would instead be forced by posthypnotic suggestion to do whatever he had been told.

The time was now. Although he saw that both of his abductors were more watchful than ever at that moment, Julian Tifflor showed his courage by beginning to act.

When they entered the building, they had put him between them. Only once had they stopped on their way through the ground floor-and that was to remove the thermobeamer he carried under his jacket. There had been no possible way to prevent them from taking it.

He was still between them as they shoved him into the room packed full of psychophysical equipment. One of the two grasped him by the shoulder and led him farther into the room while the other remained a few steps behind and carefully locked the door.

This was the right moment. Tifflor did not worry that the man next to him was looking at him closely and mistrustfully. He set his right foot behind his left and pretended to stumble, falling forward as he did so and causing the foreign hand to slide off his shoulder. He came up again, propelled by the force of all his anger. Clenched fists were not necessary, the impact of his shoulder alone knocked his guard two steps back and-sent him falling. Tifflor knew what was necessary to guarantee his safety, he leaped behind the fallen guard, yanked him to his feet and held him in front of him as cover from the second kidnapper at the door.

The man he was using as cover was stunned but not unconscious. When he understood what was happening he made an effort to make it difficult for Tifflor. He turned under the hard grip and tried to kick Tifflor's shin. With a sudden jerk Tifflor pulled the man to one side and banged his head against the metal base of an encephalograph. Then he slugged him and the man went limp under Tifflor's fist.

Tifflor stepped back a short distance. The arm with which he held the unconscious man began to hurt. Tifflor looked up at the door and realized with a start that the second man whom he had thought would be there had vanished.

He whirled around, letting the unconscious man fall, and ducked between two large machines for cover. Then he listened, hoping to hear some sound the other man might make and thus find out where he was.

All he heard was his own panting. He made an effort to suppress it. He opened his mouth widely so that he could breathe with as little sound as possible. But there was nothing beyond the pounding in his temples and the dull pain of the blow from which he had not yet recovered.

Tifflor wished he had a weapon. Any weapon. It did not even have to be a thermobeamer. A hand grenade, a rifle-or anything else.

He turned around slowly so as not to make any sound. The unconscious man lay two meters behind him and another two meters farther on lay the small beamer the man had had in his hand and dropped. Four meters! Tifflor began to move. He had come out from behind the two machines, which were both as tall as a man, and step over the unconscious man. He did it carefully and quickly, looking around constantly in the process.

What had become of the second man?

Julian Tifflor did not have a chance to find out. When he had come close enough to the ownerless weapon that he needed only to stretch out his hand to touch it, he was struck by a violent blow that set his entire body to vibrating painfully. Before he lost consciousness he was able to realize that it was the sort of pain caused by being hit by the impact of a shockbeamer.

He sank into a deep dark abyss.

Then a bright light suddenly lit up in the darkness. It had no shape, it seemed unreal. Yet Tifflor had the feeling that his eyes were hurting unbearably.

He tried to move his eyelids. In doing so he realized that he had closed his eyes. He was not able to open them. The light, then, was not a normal one. It did not come from outside.

A voice began to speak. It came from the light but naturally the speaker could not be seen. "Julian Tifflor." said the voice. "Listen well!"

It spoke in a tone ridiculously deep and slow. Tifflor felt a sudden urge to laugh. But before he could laugh, the voice continued to speak. And the longer it spoke the more the slowness and the deep, full tone fascinated him. He could do nothing else, he had to listen. He soaked up the words like a sponge soaking up water, knowing that he would never forget a single word.

Besides, that which the voice had to say was most surprising-not to mention sensational.

With his usual casualness, Reginald Bell entered the broad room from which Perry Rhodan had once more been guiding the destiny of the Solar Imperium since his return to Earth.

From his seat at the table, Rhodan could look out through a large window and see a vast section of the city of Terrania. The room was on the top floor of the tall administration building. Rhodan had attached great importance to having his office here. The view of the city was a constant reminder of the gravity of the decisions that were made in the room.

"Everything's in order," Bell announced, closing the door behind him. He seemed to be confident that Rhodan would understand what he was referring to.

Rhodan broke off from the work he had been doing. "What did he say?" he asked.

Bell grinned almost maliciously. "He knocked out one of the two guys before he knew what was going on, and the other one afterwards. Both of them are now undergoing treatment. But I think they understood how Tifflor was feeling at the time."

Rhodan nodded smilingly. "What did Mercant's agents have to say about it? Did they observe anyone?"

Bell shrugged his shoulders. "They saw a few suspicious characters following Tifflor's car up to the city limits, although not all the way to the Psychostation. Mercant has put them down on his list: they are possibly galactic spies, although they don't know exactly what's happened. They'll start to make sense of it when Tifflor disappears. It looks as though everything's in fine shape."

Bell had come closer and sat down in one of the comfortable chairs that Rhodan had provided for his visitors.

"I still don't know what we expect to gain from this business, Perry," Bell continued.

Rhodan did not seem to have heard the question. He looked past Bell and out the window. The clear white winter's sun stood two hands' breadths over the horizon. It was 9 A.M. Half an hour before, frost had gleamed from the roofs. The year was coming to an end.

"There's much we can gain from it," Rhodan answered at length. "Like a serious weakening of the military potential of our two enemies, the Druufs and the Arkonides."

Bell cleared his throat. "I recall that just two months ago we intended to attack Arkon directly. Everything was ready for it. Only a small incident kept us from going through with it. Why don't we put the same plan into operation again?"

Rhodan looked at his friend. "What you call a small incident," he replied, amused, "came very close to costing us our lives as well as the lives of others. Have you forgotten so quickly? Don't you still remember how it looked when the entire planet Grautier exploded beneath our feet?"

Bell nodded. "Sure. It was serious for us. But in comparison with the scale of galactic politics, it was only a small incident. We lived through it and now we can take the plan up again, right?"

Rhodan answered quickly, "No, we can't We've had to realize that we aren't ready to take the Arkonides' place yet. Our feet aren't big enough to fit their shoes, so to speak."

Bell leaned forward. "That's a colourful metaphor," he said irritably "but I don't think it applies."

Rhodan glanced in the direction of a stack of paper-thin sheets of plastifoil lying on the table in front of him. "It's no wonder you feel that way," he answered. "You haven't seen the latest data from the Venus Positronicon yet."

Bell stood up. "No," he affirmed, "actually I haven't yet. I didn't think Atlan worked so fast."

Rhodan smiled at him. "His people built the positronicon on Venus-10,000 years ago. There's no one who can work with that machine faster than he can."

Bell nodded. "All right, that's why you sent him to it. Now what does that positronic wonder have to say?"

"I just told you, our feet aren't big enough!"

Bell grew silent and reached for the plastifoil sheets. They were about the size of notebook paper and divided by thin lines into 20 narrow, vertically running areas. The sheets were covered with dots, crosses and small circles, symbols belonging to the machine code of Arkonide computers. Being able to read the symbols without the help of a positronic transcriber required practice but Bell happened to have had such practice.

He read some of the sheets and laid them back down. He looked out the window, as though thinking heavily about something.

"The Arkonide Imperium is in an uproar," he finally said, putting what he had read into words. "The Robot Regent is mobilizing its last reserves so that it can overcome the Druuf threat. It doesn't know-and isn't even able to understand-that the Druufs will be a threat only for a very short time to come. The overlapping front where our universe and the Druuf universe meet is diminishing and is drifting towards the centre of the galaxy. Once the overlapping front has disappeared, then there will be no more natural means of going from Einstein s.p.a.ce to Druuf s.p.a.ce or vice versa. That means that from then on, the Druufs will no longer const.i.tute a threat to us." He glanced to the side and regarded Perry Rhodan. "I didn't read any farther," he admitted, "but the conclusions are pretty obvious, aren't they?"

"I'll be able to answer that if you tell me what you think."

"The Robot Regent on Arkon," Bell continued, "has mobilized its entire realm. That means it has at least 80,000 warships under arms. It is not able to comprehend the actual phenomenon of differing rates of time. It's limited to what it can understand-the Druuf s.p.a.ceships coming into our universe from time to time and the overlapping zone through which its own ships can penetrate Druuf s.p.a.ce. When nothing more is heard from the Druufs because the overlapping zone has disappeared, the Regent will take that for a trick of some kind and continue its vigilance because it believes the Druufs could reappear at any moment."

He paused, running his right hand through his hair. He did not look at all happy. "Whoever attacks Arkon," he went on, "now and in the near future, will have to deal with a fleet of 80,000 units, which doesn't count the new ships constantly pouring out of the factories. When you consider that the Terran fleet consists of only a few thousand ships... yeah, then you certainly do come to the conclusion we'd better stay out of this business for awhile."

Perry Rhodan was silent. Bell, waiting for an answer, asked after awhile: "That was what you meant, Perry, right?"

"Yes, that's what I meant. We're too weak and we've realized that only at the last moment. When you take the number of ships alone, the Robot Regent is superior to us by a ratio of 20 to 1. That says nothing about morale, however. Ours is better than that of the allied races serving the Arkonides. That's beyond all doubt. Nevertheless, our situation is even worse than that of Frederick the Great in the Seven Years War. And... naturally we can't count on a miracle like the one that saved old Frederick from destruction back in the 18th Century."

Bell turned and went to the window. "Do you think Tiff's mission will help us any?"

"Tiff is only a small stone in a vast mosaic. From now on the Earth will limit itself to dealing out such small blows. We can reach our goal only step by step. We have to gnaw away at the Arkonide Imperium like mice at a cheese. One day the little mice will have entirely eaten away the big cheese."

"While I don't particularly like the a.n.a.logy you've used," said Bell, "I think you're right."

He went back to Rhodan's table and picked up the rest of the sheets which he had not read.

2/ THEFT OF A STARSHIP.

The man had a swollen chin and claimed to be named Franklin Lubkov, 27 years old. Tifflor could not vouch for his name and age but the fact that the man had a swollen chin was beyond dispute.

Franklin Lubkov was a lieutenant in the Terran s.p.a.cefleet and now that he had the first, unfriendly portion of his mission behind him, he showed his superior the proper respect. When Tifflor ordered him to take his hand away from his chin and a.s.sume a friendlier expression, he obeyed.

"It still hurts, sir," he said. "I wouldn't have ever thought you could hit so hard."

Tifflor changed the subject. "Tell me all you know about this whole business," he requested.

"There isn't a whole lot to it," Lubkov replied. "Sgt. Fryberg and I were given the a.s.signment of picking you up on the evening of 10 December after you had finished supper at Tai w.a.n.g's restaurant, and to bring you to a building whose location was described exactly to us. We were also instructed to make the pickup 'gangster-style'. Then our faces were disguised with makeup and we were given shabby suits. We were told how important it was for everything to look genuine."

"But who told you to do all this?" Tifflor interrupted impatiently.

Lubkov made a wry expression. "Marshall Mercant, sir. In person and well-identified with credentials and IDs."

Tifflor whistled through his teeth. "And so all you had to do was obey, eh? All right. After you had brought me here... what was to happen then?"

"That wasn't part of our mission, sir," Lubkov answered. "We were to lay you out on the table there, tie you down, and disappear. Marshal Mercant told us that someone else would take care of you."

"And you never had the feeling that what you were doing was unlawful and under certain circ.u.mstances could cause no small amount of harm to the Solar Imperium?"

"No sir. For a feeling like that you would have had to a.s.sume that Marshal Mercant's brains had gone spaggy (21st century slang for "Flipped His Lid." Spaggy derives from spaghetti.). Besides, when the order was given, Marshal Freyt was present, too. I had no doubts about what I was doing."

Julian Tifflor turned away and paced a few steps to and fro. "Well," he said finally, turning his back to Lubkov, "now what?"

"That I don't know, sir. We were told we would receive further instructions from you."

"Where are the others?"

"Down in the cellar, sir. They're waiting for departure."

Tifflor turned around. "Go down to them and tell them that we're taking off at 20:40 hours. That's an hour and a half from now."

Franklin Lubkov saluted and left. In a uniform and with the makeup washed off his face, he left a much better impression than he had the night before when he and Sgt. Fryberg had waited together outside Tai w.a.n.g's restaurant.