He determined that the object was moving. It was coming straight for the Newborn. If the radar could be trusted, it was no more than 10,000 kilometres away. Here, right in front of the overlapping front where starlight shone only from one side, the object would probably not show up on the optical screen until it had come within a few hundred kilometres.

Tifflor tried to figure out what it could be. He thought of a small cosmic dust cloud but with its small size it would have had to have an improbable density to reflect microwaves with such intensity that a perceptible image showed up on the vidscreen.

Tifflor refused to believe that it was a s.p.a.ceship. There was no way that a ship could be so perfectly hidden or camouflaged that it could not be clearly made out at such a slight distance. There must not be such a way Tifflor added grimly to himself, for a fleet of ships so equipped would have a dangerous advantage over its enemies from the start. Tifflor admitted that this was not a logical way of thinking. He tried to stay calm but he was not successful: the thought of such perfect camouflage was too terrifying.

He had to find out what was going on.

He alarmed the men at the gun posts. He told them that Fryberg had discovered a mysterious object and that the Newborn was now going to investigate it. At present there was no danger but they should keep their eyes open.

He knew that he was departing from his very strictly laid-out instructions. Once he had broken through the Arkonide front he was to do nothing other than proceed with the Newborn undetected into the Druuf Universe. What he was doing now could possibly lead to discovery by Arkonide ships and ruin the entire mission.

Nevertheless the matter had to be investigated. He had no other choice and the men who had written his instructions had not reckoned with an incident like this one.

Engines operating at low power, the Newborn began to describe a curve. Taking the discharge funnel as a reference point, then the unknown object was behind the Terran ship. The Newborn made a U-turn and as it took on its new course, moving slowly so that the engine activity was not too clearly visible, it headed towards the Arkonide blockade fleet instead of away from it as had been ordered.

For a few seconds Tifflor grappled with the thought that the weak radar image might be an Arkonide trick. He tried to imagine the reasoning of an Arkonide strategist and what kind of effect would be expected if in the vicinity of the discharge funnel there were something that caused a weak response on the radar screen aboard the awaited Terran s.p.a.ceship.

There was no sense to it. If some sort of psychology was behind it, it was too subtle for Tifflor's understanding.

The Newborn flew along at a low speed towards the object. The object continued in the same direction as it had before. The Newborn's course had been so calculated that it would arrive at the same point in s.p.a.ce as the uncanny object in about half an hour.

The thought of what would happen then troubled the men in the control room. Conversations died away. No one said another word. The low humming noise of the equipment, something everyone was used to, was the only sound in the circular room.

The pale fleck slowly approached the centre of Sgt. Fryberg's radar screen. Fryberg watched it, feeling his mouth grow dry. If the object was a ship, perhaps it would wait patiently until the Newborn trustingly and imprudently approached within a few hundred kilometres and then tear its weak defensive forcefield to pieces with a single well-aimed salvo.

We wouldn't even have time to blink before it hit us, Fryberg thought.

He raised his hand and glanced nervously at the panorama screen. The image had not changed. On one side lay the dark red overlapping zone, on the other the luminous ma.s.s of stars. Nowhere was there a point that stood out by way of its unusual shine. Nowhere was there the dull shimmer of a ship's bull.

Maybe it isn't a ship, thought Fryberg. The devil with it! It'd better not be a ship! I don't want anything to do with a ship that can make itself as invisible as a piece of coal in a black sack.

He noticed that his nerves were about shot. He leaned back in his seat and breathed deeply. Air hissed through his teeth, sounding like an old steam kettle.

Pull yourself together, old boy, Fryberg told himself. It isn't any ship. It's moving on an inertial course. There isn't any sign of it being steered. It's a meteor made out of fibregla.s.s or some such.

Then he suddenly shouted. His shout resounded through the circular room and brought the other men out of their seats.

"It's moving out of its course!" Fryberg cried, full of terror. It's coming straight at us!"

It was a miserable feeling, seeing the object coming directly towards the ship and not knowing what it was.

At first it remained a washed-out fleck on the radar and in the place where it had to be, the optical screen showed only the usual picture.

Tifflor repressed his wish to whip the Newborn around and make a run for it at top speed. When he had directed the Newborn toward the object, he'd had to take into consideration the possibility it might turn out to be an alien ship. Now that he knew it was one, a retreat would make the whole matter meaningless, and meaninglessness was one of the things Tifflor hated.

He did not issue a fire-order to the gun posts, despite the looks on the faces of his men urging him to do so. They sat at their places, trying to hide the fact they were trembling with nervousness, and looked at him with wide, earnest eyes.

Tifflor knew what they wanted. Silently he shook his head and they understood.

The fleck came nearer and finally came the moment in which the astrogator cried out: "Something's wrong with our course! We're going off!"

Tifflor reacted instantly and instinctively. He shut down the engines and watched the needles on the instrument dials come to a stop. The speed of the Newborn remained at the value that had been calculated by the amount of energy used.

That proved nothing-at least nothing about the actual speed of the ship. The astrogator had better figures in his possession, such as those relating to red shift and parallax displacement.

"Give me some exact figures as soon as you have them," Tifflor said.

The astrogator bent over his equipment and worked feverishly. Tifflor stared at the radar screen and realized in astonishment that the pale fleck had come to a stop. Fryberg noticed his glance. He knew the question that had to be asked and he answered before it was spoken: "Distance, 1,320 kilometres, sir."

Tifflor looked up. As far as the panorama screen was concerned, the object still did not exist. Had it possessed the usual size of a s.p.a.ceship, it should have been clearly visible at that small a distance.

Tifflor felt even more at a loss. He had no more new ideas. The phenomenon was utterly alien.

"This much is certain," said the astrogator. "We're moving towards the discharge funnel along with the object."

Tifflor listened attentively. This was something he could understand. The object seemed to be standing still because the Newborn was moving at the same speed and in the same direction. Without any influence from its own engines, the Newborn had changed its course. Instead of away from the funnel, it was moving towards it.

There was only one explanation for it: the object was towing them! It was radiating a tractor field that pulled the Newborn along behind it!

Tifflor had no objection to this sort of treatment as long as the trip continued in the direction he had originally intended to go. However, it remained to be seen what measures the aliens would undertake to carry out their designs.

For cases like this there were the standard SA alarms, SA standing for 'sudden acceleration'. The alarms notified the ship's crew that they could expect sudden acceleration jolts until the alarm was ended. The jolts could possibly prove so violent that the antigrav absorber might be able to render them only partially ineffective. After giving the alarm, Tifflor started up the Newborn's engines again. With suddenly awakening strength, the Newborn fought against the pull of the tractor field, trying to free itself from it. Within seconds the engine power had climbed to its maximum. Tifflor saw in the trembling of the instrument indicators the struggle between the engines and the tractor field. He also saw the needles jump suddenly as the Newborn broke out of the field and went its own way.

The astrogator let out a triumphant cry. With a hoa.r.s.e voice he read in rapid succession a series of figures that showed Tifflor that the surprise manoeuvre had been a complete success. The object had not reacted quickly enough to the sudden efforts of the Newborn. The Newborn had escaped from the tractor field.

Tifflor did not want to hear any more. He turned the propulsion direction 180 and brought the Newborn back behind the alien object. He guided it to the place it would have been had it not escaped the tractor field, then let the field take it over again.

Meanwhile he tried to imagine the expression on the face of their unknown captor. He would have had to have seen how the captured ship escaped him and then came voluntarily back into captivity.

Tifflor doubted if he would be able to make any sense out of it.

Tifflor was thoughtful while the Newborn was slowly drawn by the tractor field through the discharge funnel and neared its narrowest place.

The object had reacted very slowly to his escape attempt. The meant it was not robot-piloted, for otherwise it would have taken only a fraction of a second for it to become aware of the new situation and increase the strength of the tractor field. It was not a robot-ship, then, and so probably not an Arkonide.

But even if one a.s.sumed that an organic being was at the controls of the object, the being's reactions could only be termed slow-as though it were half asleep or not paying attention. Now, 15 minutes after the manoeuvring had taken place, Tifflor wondered why the answer had not occurred to him in the first place, for the reaction time was a rather obvious hint of certain characteristics of the being at the controls of the alien craft. Someone in his situation would not be sleepy or inattentive, he would have all his senses fully alert. If he reacted slowly, it was because he could not react any faster.

The reason was simple. The alien's personal rate of time was different from a Terran's. If a Terran needed one second, the alien required two, for he came from another universe, from another time-plane, and his personal rate of time differed from that of the Einstein Universe by a factor of two.

That was a description that applied to, all Druufs.

Tifflor had no more doubts that the unknown object was a Druuf ship. He did not know yet how the ship had managed to remain invisible to all equipment except the microwave sensor but he intended to find out.

For now, he decided, the most important thing was that the Newborn was going in the right direction.

Excitement reigned beneath the brown sky of Druufon. A giant red sun and a smaller but brilliant green sun shone over a people who faced the future apprehensively.

A number of Druufon days before, the Druufs had believed that the way stood open into a new universe that would be theirs for the taking. Through a hole in, s.p.a.ce they had, plunged into an alien universe and all the organic intelligences living in that other realm had fallen victim to them without any resistance.

Then came the day when an entire wall opened up to them instead of just a hole-and with that the Druufs' misfortune began. Each time the Druufs attempted to pa.s.s through the gateway into the other universe, entire fleets of alien ships fell on them and drove them back faster than they had come. The Druufs held quiet for awhile, then undertook the same experiment once more-with identical results. The enemy lying in wait on the other side of the wall was superior. And worse yet: he was able to move faster than the Druufs could think.

Naturally the Druufs were aware of the phenomenon. The superior speed of their enemy was a result of the two different rates of time. If the Druufs had not gone to enormous efforts to overcome the phenomenon, they would have been hopelessly inferior to their opponents. Originally their rate of time was 72,000 times slower than the enemy's. In the time it took a Druuf to draw a breath, the enemy could a.s.semble a gigantic fleet and scatter the Druuf ships to the four winds as soon as the Druufs emerged from their own universe.

The Druufs had been able to solve the problem up to a point. Their scientists created a time-field which could alter rates of time. It could slow down or speed up the pa.s.sage of time relative to its normal speed, and the Druufs of course were most interested in speeding it up.

They were able to reach a rate of time half that of the enemy's. That was the time-field's limit. The Druufs had to grant the enemy the advantage of operating at twice their speed.

They no longer tried to force their way into the alien universe with large fleets. Their losses had been enormous. They sent single ships which, when the crews had been sufficiently trained, succeeded in breaking through the enemy blockade and making patrol flights through the other time-plane. After the terrible losses of the first ma.s.sive attempts to break through the blockade, the Druufs were happy that at least the small-scale penetrations were effective and that so far the enemy had not launched a general attack on their universe.

That now seemed to have changed. The last ship to have come back from 'outside' reported large-scale fleet movements taking place near the overlapping front, near the opening. The enemy blockade fleet had been reinforced. Everything pointed to an attack. Only a few optimists among the Druufs, encouraged by the successful repulsion of the first attempts at penetrating the Druuf Universe by robotships, believed that the undertaking would end in failure for the enemy. Just in numbers alone, the relation of Druuf ships to those of the enemy was considerably unfavourable, and beyond that there was still the disadvantage of the slower rate of time.

It looked as though the Druufs had to fear for the continued existence of their empire.

Then, apparently at the last minute, a new bit of news reached the capital city of the planet Druufon. The experts studied it carefully and reached the conclusion that the final returning patrol ship was bringing a ray of hope with it, if not exactly a complete reversal of fortunes.

In the last a.n.a.lysis, the outcome depended on merely finding a few people able to react to an enemy attack as quickly as the enemy himself.

Those people seemed to have been found.

5/ AN OFFER HE COULDN'T REFUSE.

It was a different universe. That could be seen in the colour of the background from which the stars shone in their usual glory. For Julian Tifflor, going from Einstein s.p.a.ce into Druuf s.p.a.ce for the first time, the view was something uncanny, almost terrifying.

s.p.a.ce should have been black, for it was nothing more than emptiness given shape. But this s.p.a.ce was deep red. It was glowing, as though someone were heating it up from inside.

Tifflor overcame the uneasiness that the sight of the alien universe had caused him and everyone else who was seeing it for the first time and kept his eye on the unknown craft ahead. It was no longer a washed-out fleck on the microwave screen. It had grown to a glowing point and even the optical screen showed a dully-shining red spot of light standing out clearly from the stars by virtue of its peculiar light.

The Druufs had dropped their camouflage.

The Newborn did not attempt anything. The Druuf ship had to know it had been identified. It had taken the Terran cruiser in tow. It was the one which should make the first move.

The tractor field was still in effect. However, the Druuf ship was braking, and an hour after pa.s.sing through the funnel neck it had come to a complete stop. Another half-hour went by without anything happening. Tifflor decided to radio the Druuf ship himself if nothing was heard from in the next 10 minutes. He did not have to wait that long. When only one of the 10 minutes had gone by, an entire squadron of long, cylindrical Druuf ships emerged from the deep red darkness and surrounded the Newborn. Tifflor had ordered the gun posts not to fire unless there was compelling reasons to do so, and although their trigger fingers itched badly, his men followed the order to the letter.

A few minutes after the appearance of the Druuf ships, the telecom sounded. Tifflor switched on the receiver and said in English that he was willing to listen to anyone who wanted to speak to him. The vidscreen stayed dark. The Druufs either did not place any great value on conducting video conversations or their sender was not equipped with an image transmitter.

The seconds ticked sluggishly by after Tifflor had declared himself ready to listen. He mentally pictured a Druuf aboard one of the newly-arrived ships speaking into a small device hanging at his chest and waiting for the device to relay his words, now translated into English, to the microphone sitting on a table in front of him.

Tifflor reflected that the Druufs could not have known whether the ship they had captured was Arkonide or not. The shape of the s.p.a.ceship did not offer any relevant clues, for with few exceptions the spherical form was almost exclusively utilized by ships in the Einstein Universe. It would be only logical if the Druufs took their captive for an Arkonide ship. However, they did not seem certain of it, or they would not have gone to so much trouble once they had pa.s.sed through the funnel.

In the middle of his thoughts, Tifflor was interrupted. The receiver began to crackle and then an inhuman voice spoke: "You are a Terran ship. What do you want here?"

Tifflor was ready with his answer. "To warn you," he said after letting a few seconds go by. He delayed his reply in an effort to keep from overwhelming the more slowly moving Druufs with what would have seemed to them an instantaneous response.

"Warn us of what?" came the next question.

In astonishment, Tifflor noticed that the translating device the Druufs were using was seemingly perfect, at least as far as its capability with the English language was concerned. The sentences were, fluent and correct. Only the voice caused the listener to shudder.

"Of a ma.s.sive Arkonide attack," Tifflor answered. "One is imminent and I thought that you would be grateful if someone were to make you aware of it."

This time a few more seconds went by before the Druuf spoke again. No emotion registered in the voice, no emotion could in a mechanically produced sound. However, suspicion could be plainly read from the reply, "Are you expecting a certain kind of grat.i.tude?"

Tifflor had antic.i.p.ated even that question. "In case you're thinking I was wanting to earn some money through treason," he said, unmoved, "the answer is no! Anyway, what's the point of this distrust? Do you want to carry on this entire discussion over the telecom?"

Again some time went by before the answer came. "Come with two of your men and unarmed aboard my ship. Do you have an auxiliary craft or should I have you picked up?"

Tifflor grew angry. "In the first place," he declared bluntly, "I'll come as I am or not at all. I have a general issue beamer hanging from my belt and there it's going to stay. Do you think I want to conquer an entire s.p.a.cefleet with one gun? In the second place, I do indeed have an auxiliary craft. You don't have to go to any more trouble except to show me which one of those dozen ships out there is yours."

The Druuf did not seem to have any objections. "I shall be expecting you," he said. "Your craft will be given a tracking signal to guide you to my ship."

Tifflor broke off the connection. He turned and faced his men. "Now It's getting critical," he said. "Tschubai, Marshall... get ready!"

It was reported to Door-Trabzon that not far from the WaKelan, which was flying slowly towards the overlapping front, two alien s.p.a.ceships had been spotted. Door-Trabzon's first reaction was confusion, for it was clear from the course of the two ships that they were flying together, and up to now Door-Trabzon had been expecting the appearance of only one Terran ship.

His confusion reached its height when the radar gave the first exact figures pertaining to the size of the two ships. They made Door-Trabzon's powerful ships look puny in comparison. They were s.p.a.ce giants with a firepower that could temporarily surpa.s.s the energy output of an average star.

Somewhat hastily Door-Trabzon gave the order for the unknown ships to be surrounded and attacked. To be certain, he requested a squadron of 200 cruisers and battleships but hardly had they started to move out when one of the alien ships made radio contact with the WaKelan, claiming it and its companion had come with peaceful intentions and their plans were in full accord with the Regent of Arkon.

That took the wind out of Door-Trabzon's sails. He rescinded his order and instructed the squadron of battleships and cruisers to await the course of events from a distance. Then he had the WaKelan proceed ahead so he could look things over.

Even before he got that far, he received a brief message from Arkon stating that the Terran commander, Perry Rhodan, had suggested that he himself take part in the search for the deserters' s.p.a.ceship, and that this suggestion had seemed reasonable and desirable to the Regent.

That threw Door-Trabzon completely off balance. For one thing, Perry Rhodan was a name that had resounded throughout the galaxy for decades, and for another, Door-Trabzon was too familiar with the relationship between Terra and Arkon-or more accurately, between Perry Rhodan and the Regent-to understand why Rhodan of all people would be allowed to move freely among the ships of the Arkonide search and blockade fleets.

However, Door-Trabzon knew that the message from Arkon was to be considered as an order. He had no other choice than to act accordingly. He was of the opinion that Perry Rhodan would never search for a single escape ship unless there was some advantage for him in it. But this opinion was worth nothing as long as he could not convince the Regent of its logic.

He tried to do so but he seemed to have picked an unfavourable moment for it. The Regent did not even reply.

Door-Trabzon did not know that at that time the Regent was occupied in issuing a series of instructions to the central positronicons of its blockade ships. The orders were rather close to what Door-Trabzon would have ordered himself-had he had the possibility of doing so.

The Regent remembered the suspicion expressed by his logic sector when it first learned of the fleeing ship from Perry Rhodan's information. A certain degree of probability that was too much to be overlooked indicated that the business with the deserters was very simply a bluff. So far, however, the logic sector had not been able to determine what the purposed such a deception would be, or at least it had come up with nothing substantial enough to form the basis for a definite course of action. To that end the Regent directed the orders it issued the positronicons. Their task from now on was to keep track of the course followed by the Terran ships and to report any manoeuvres they undertook to the Regent at once. For his part, the Regent waited impatiently for his logic section to be able to formulate probabilities on the basis of the now-incoming information. From such probabilities it would be possible to work out a plan of action that promised success.

The Regent had not forgotten that Terra stood or fell with Perry Rhodan and that just a few weeks before he had had Perry Rhodan almost in his grasp as a prisoner. Here a new opportunity offered itself. If everything worked out, this would be Perry Rhodan's last undertaking.