What he was depending on at that moment was the battling Druuf units' surprisingly effective coordination, which, once they had practiced with it some, worked so well that it was as though all the vessels taking part were a single unit. It was more due to this than to Tifflor's superior reaction time that the Arkonides had suffered such high losses.

Tifflor opened fire when the Arkonide group was still 40,000 kilometres away. The Druuf ships had adjusted their speed to that of the Arkonides. The effect was as if all 90 ships were standing still in s.p.a.ce.

First, new fireb.a.l.l.s flamed into life. Their glaring brilliance outshone the flares far to the rear in the middle of the Arkonide fleet. The Arkonides seemed to be hopelessly confused. There was no sign of resistance.

Or so he believed until he suddenly lost the floor beneath his feet and was knocked into the air. He struck his head hard against the ceiling. His antigrav absorber slowly adjusted to the new situation and brought him back down to the floor. His skull throbbed and he felt ill. He heard shouting voices, recognizing Lubkov's among them, but he did not understand what they were saying.

He remembered the lifeboat. He glanced at the vidscreen and saw the flickering light of the collapsing defence screens. The ship had been hit. Not directly but enough to be out of commission. From somewhere came the grinding sound of rending metal. Tifflor felt a new shockwave and at the last moment held on to a lever for support.

Suddenly someone stood next to him. Through a whirling layer of pain he recognized Lt. Lubkov's concerned face. He saw Lubkov's lips move but he needed some time to understand what he was saying.

"We've got to get out, sir! The ship's breaking apart!"

Tifflor nodded and hoped Lubkov would know what he meant by the gesture. Lubkov let go of him and ran off. It looked as though he were running along the wall. Tifflor pulled himself together. He shook his head, trying to exorcise the pain, and walked towards the hatch. Besides the robots, no one else was in the room.

Something seemed to have happened to the floor. Tifflor felt like he was running up a rocky slope. He did not look around. He had only a single thought: you've got to get to that lifeboat before the ship goes to pieces!

He did not notice a robot getting up. The jolt had knocked it to the floor and damaged some of its circuits but it still knew what its duty was if the alien should try to do something that was forbidden.

It aimed one of its weapon arms at the hatch. And when Tifflor attempted to climb through it shot.

Tifflor felt a violent blow and a burning pain that spread rapidly through his body. He cried out, desperately trying to hold on to the edge of the hatch.

But his arms failed. They seemed to be no longer obeying him. His hands came loose and Tifflor rolled across the tilted floor to the nearest wall.

He was unconscious before he stopped rolling.

8/ "BY THE 8 DEVILS OF THE 8th STAR!"

Perry Rhodan knew very well what he had to do. If Tifflor were in danger, he had to help him. Both the Drusus and the Kublai Khan had to plunge into the Druuf Universe and try to find Tifflor.

He issued the orders for just that.

He did not know that the part of the Arkonide fleet remaining in Einstein s.p.a.ce was carefully registering every movement of the Terran ships and noticed immediately when they altered their course and headed for the overlapping zone.

The Robot Regent was informed. It decided the moment was a good one and ordered the attack. When the Drusus and the Kublai Khan had approached the overlapping front to within a tenth of a light-year, a squadron of heavy Arkonide units appeared in front of them and opened fire without warning.

Rhodan recognized his inferiority. He ordered an immediate transition, not even having time to pay any attention to determining a specific direction for it. The important thing was just getting out of range of Arkonide fire.

The Drusus' defence screens were glowing under the first salvo when the colossal ship undertook the spring into the 5th dimension and disappeared into hypers.p.a.ce.

It was hardly more than a lucky chance that the Drusus and the Kublai Khan made a transition in the same direction and with the same distance. When they reappeared in Einstein s.p.a.ce, they were only a short distance apart. Swift measurements showed that they had put the overlapping zone more than 15 light-years behind them.

For the moment they were safe. But they could not remain where they were. Tifflor was in danger and needed their help. They had to go back!

Rhodan lost no time in useless reflection. There was no point in reconsidering his responsibility to Julian Tifflor. He could not shirk it, not even with the argument that he was risking two of Terra's largest ships in the attempt to go after Tifflor.

There was no plan of battle that he could devise. There was only one thing he could do: strike out and try to find a hole in the Arkonide front.

Rhodan instructed the Kublai Khan to coordinate its movements with those of the Drusus. Two Terran battleships had an enormous firepower. They had nothing to worry about as long as there were no more than 15 Arkonide ships opposing them.

The problem was that the Arkonides knew that too and would send groups of more than 15 ships after the Terrans.

Nevertheless Rhodan ordered the return flight. The two ships took off and within a few minutes went into transition.

The ship bucked like a wild horse.

In front of the gigantic control console stood the Druuf pilot, his gaze trained directly ahead at the dark vidscreen as though the confusion filling the small room behind him did not concern him in the slightest.

Next to him was Andre Noir, the suggestor. His face was frighteningly pale. His eyes were closed and shining, and thick drops of sweat stood out on big forehead. In spite of the tremors rushing through the ship, Lt. Lubkov tried to stay constantly nearby. He was worried about Andre Noir being able to hold out despite the terrible strains on him. His collapse would have meant catastrophe, for no one besides the Druuf would be able to take the lifeboat away from the dying ship and steer it on a safe course. If Noir collapsed and the Druuf awoke from the hypnosis, they could shoot him but then they could not save themselves.

Marshall, the telepath, was the last to come in. Nimbly he climbed up the ladder that ran through the belly of the lifeboat up to the control room, and the first thing the men heard him say was: "We're in trouble! Something's happened to Tifflor!"

Lubkov whirled around. He knew that the telepath was able to tell from a considerable distance whether someone was awake or asleep or if he was sick or wounded or well. Marshall was able to tell from the person's radiated thoughts.

"Where is he?" Lubkov cried.

"Hard to say," Marshall answered quickly. "I'm only picking up unclear signals. He seems to be unconscious. Near the control room, I'd say."

A new jolt shuddered through the ship. Lubkov felt himself raised high into the air and then not very gently get down again. He fell and landed heavily.

"Tschubai!" he called, not paying any attention to his pain. "The ship's going to go any second now! Go look for Tifflor! We've got to take him with us!"

Tschubai did not even take the time to answer. He made an effort to call the image of the large control room before his mental eye, and when he had it, he sprang.

There was nothing to be seen of Julian Tifflor. The control room floor was tilted and the robots were somewhere far ahead, occupied with repairing a piece of damaged equipment. The panorama screen was completely out of action. The lighting flickered, went out and then came back on. Even a fool could see that the Druuf ship was at the end of its endurance.

At least it had not been hit again. Tschubai would have liked to know what was going on outside, whether the Arkonides had been defeated or if in that very moment they were readying a new attack that would finish off the badly damaged s.p.a.ceship once and for all.

But there was no way of finding out. The equipment was out of order and there was no sign of Tifflor.

The robots paid the African no mind. They were busy with their repair work. Ras Tschubai did not think he had anything to fear from them. And that was probably Tifflor's luck, for otherwise the African would not have climbed into the control room and casually looked around, and he would not have found Tifflor, who lay unconscious between floor and wall where the declivity of the floor had allowed him to roll.

Tschubai slid down the floor and quickly looked Tifflor over. It seemed to him that he saw his chest slowly rise and sink. Tifflor was not dead. Something had apparently struck him but the odd thing was that there was not a trace of a wound anywhere on him.

The ship shook as though feverish, as though it had become a living being in its last moments and was defending itself against its inevitable death.

Ras Tschubai took hold of Tifflor by the shoulders. He knew that he did not dare lose another second.

He looked around one last time. Up ahead, a Druuf robot approached with cautious steps over the tilted floor. Tschubai did not know why, but suddenly he was afraid of being seen by the robot. He closed his eyes, held Tifflor's unmoving body tight and thought of the small control room in the lifeboat. When the picture stood clearly before his inner eye, he closed the contact that activated the extra portion of his brain and disappeared before the eyes of the Druuf robot.

The shot with which the mechanical being had intended to destroy him and the unconscious man he held tore a man-sized hole in the metal wall of the control room.

When Tschubai returned on board the lifeboat, Andre Noir was lying on the floor. All his bodily strength had deserted him. The Druuf still sat stiffly at the controls, aware of nothing that went on around him. Noir's hypnotic influence was still effective.

The worst part of it was that no one could say how long it would remain effective.

For Lt. Lubkov, who had taken command, Ras Tschubai's return was the signal to take off. He bent over Andre Noir and shouted: "Let's go now! At once!"

Noir blinked for a second. That was the only sign indicating that he had understood.

Moments later, the Druuf began to move. With powerful arms he pulled down a crowbar-sized lever. The delicately-membered fingers pressed huge switches. The floor began to vibrate. The vidscreen glowed into life and showed the interior of the large lifeboat hangar.

The lifeboat glided towards the batch. Lt. Lubkov had never before seen a Druuf hatch in operation. The one through which he had come aboard the Druuf ship had been standing wide open. It fascinated him to see how the huge wings on each side of the hatch slid away and he did not think that the airlock could have been pumped empty of air when the outer hatch slid to one side and gave pa.s.sage into open s.p.a.ce.

He saw the upper right edge of the hatch suddenly tip to the side. The Druuf at the controls did not react to it. At high speed the lifeboat shot through the open hatchway and left the Druuf ship behind.

Lubkov glanced back at the panorama screen. He saw that he had not been deceived. The falling away of the hatch edge had been no hallucination. In that moment the Druuf ship broke up-just as the lifeboat exited the hangar hatch. The escape had been accomplished at literally the last second. A moment later the lifeboat would have been crushed by the wreckage of the huge ship and whirled out into the depths of s.p.a.ce with it.

Lt. Lubkov made a motion with his hand that seemed to mean he had wanted to wipe the sweat from his brow but the helmet of his s.p.a.cesuit was securely sealed and his hand wiped uselessly across the upper edge of his visor.

Once Lubkov had overcome his fear, he began to keep a lookout for the Arkonides. To his astonishment he noticed that in the vicinity of the lifeboat there were far fewer of the dully-shining points, distinguishable from the stars by their type of glow, than he had actually expected. Far in the background the fireb.a.l.l.s of destroyed ships still blazed and every second a few more were added. But the sector through which the lifeboat moved was amazingly quiet.

Lubkov was unfamiliar with the Druuf equipment. He searched in vain for an instrument similar to the radar screen that had been on board the large ship. He could have had Andre Noir find out what he wanted to know from the Druuf but any question meant an additional burden for the suggestor. Lubkov decided not to press it.

He a.s.sumed that Noir had already instructed the Druuf where to take the lifeboat. Otherwise he could not have explained why the Druuf manipulated the controls so determinedly and constantly increased the sped of the lifeboat in the direction of a definite point in s.p.a.ce.

The weak light-points that were ships-Arkonide or Druuf, enemies in either case-gradually fell back. The lifeboat left the area of the largest s.p.a.cebattle in which A Terran had ever taken part. Lubkov had no way of learning the outcome of the battle or what losses each side had suffered.

For the moment he was satisfied that the lifeboat was out of danger.

Or so he thought!

Ten minutes after takeoff, when the lights of the stars on the vidscreen began to show their colour, Andre Noir gave up the ghost. With a weak, barely audible groan, he relaxed and lost consciousness.

At the same moment, the Druuf began to stir. He seemed to remember that he had never been ordered to unconditionally obey a group of Terrans.

He turned and looked at Lubkov. Lubkov was not skilled in reading Druuf expressions but he thought sure that the Druuf was determined to resist.

They had made three attempts to break through the front and three times they had been thrown back. The Drusus had been hit once-not seriously but it had knocked out one of its defence field generators. That meant from now on the Drusus would have to be even more cautious. On Earth, the generator could be repaired within a few days, but out in s.p.a.ce there was no way it could be done.

The fourth approach was used to ship Pucky via transmitter back to Hades. A time was arranged in which the Drusus or the Kublai Khan would be standing near the overlapping front, ready to take Pucky back on.

In the meantime, they waited. Pucky was a.s.signed to finding out what had happened to Tifflor. There were three possibilities: Tifflor's body-sender was operating again at the usual strength, it was still weak and disturbed by static, or it no longer functioned at all. The first and the last cases would mean that the involvement of the two superbattleships was no longer necessary. The second case meant they would have to try to break through the front and enter the Druuf Universe a fifth, a sixth and, if necessary, a hundredth time.

The Arkonides did not by any means limit themselves to waiting for the Terrans in the vicinity of the overlapping zone. Around 10,000 ships, at least half the blockade fleet, were constantly in motion, searching through the adjoining regions of s.p.a.ce, ready to engage the Terran ships when they were found.

Rhodan took care that each transition of the Drusus and the Kublai Khan brought them at least 10 light-years away from the discharge funnel, knowing that the Arkonides would not follow them so far away.

The minutes remaining until Pucky's return pa.s.sed with feverish tension. The nervousness on board the two superbattleships grew.

Nothing made people unhappier than, being able to do nothing in a critical situation.

The Druuf possessed no translator nor did the Terrans have one.

Lt. Lubkov did what he felt was necessary, he posted four of his men with drawn weapons in front of the Druuf, hoping that the Druuf would understand what was meant.

Then he stepped next to the Druuf, lay hold of him as high as he could along the Druuf's cube-shaped body and tried to turn him back to the way he had been standing when Andre Noir was still conscious, in front of the control console, busy with moving levers and switches.

That was clear enough. It meant, go on! It was not possible that the Druuf could misunderstand it.

Whether the Druuf did not understand after all, or if it did not want to understand-in any case it made only a slight motion with its body and let its arms follow. Lt. Lubkov received a brutal blow and was knocked clear across the room. He hit shoulder-first somewhere and cried out with pain. But he was quickly on his feet and saw that the Druuf had turned and was reaching towards the levers.

Since the Druuf had hit him, that could mean only one thing: he wanted to change the lifeboat's course!

Lubkov raised his weapon and fired. His weapon was a small disintegrator with enough energy in a single shot to destroy a man. But the Druufs knees buckled and no more.

It was deathly still in the control room as the Druuf fell to the floor with a rumbling din. Everyone seemed to share the same thought, how are we going to get anywhere now?

Marshall's shout suddenly resounded through the control room, freezing the blood in their veins. "Careful! Leave him be! He's thinking... and I can understand it!"

When Pucky landed on Hades, the loud chirping of Tifflor's telepathic sender struck him like a shock. Pucky had come to Hades filled with all manner of fears but the possibility that everything might have gone all right again for Tifflor in the meantime had not occurred to him at all.

Hastily he informed Capt. Rous of the purpose of his second visit. He explained that evidently things were in fine shape for Tifflor now and that he had the feeling that Tifflor was approaching the base on Hades, although he could not give any explanation of how that could be possible.

Hearing that, Capt. Rous instructed his radar stations to turn their attention to the sector of s.p.a.ce in the direction of the overlapping front, and the radar, thus trained on a specific target, needed only a quarter of an hour to perceive an unknown object approaching Hades at a considerable speed. Through a comparison of the observations made by the radar with what Pucky was telepathically sensing, it could be determined that Julian Tifflor was with high probability aboard the unidentified ship. How he had gotten there, what he was doing there, why he was on the most direct route to Hades-no one knew.

The s.p.a.ce battle at the edge of the Druufon System had been watched from Hades, although the base had held quiet and not intervened in the battle. The single light flashes of exploding ships had been recorded on film. Later, the films would be evaluated and information over the development and the outcome of the battle would be obtained. At the moment, of course, no one knew what had happened out there and what the results would be.

Everyone's interest was now in Tifflor, who was apparently on his way to Hades in a Druuf s.p.a.ceship.

It had not been simple but they had done it. Lubkov had pretended to manipulate the controls and the wounded Druuf had mockingly thought: "He's going to blow the ship up if he does that!"

Marshall had been able to pick up his thoughts. The pain that the Druuf felt and the anger that had been growing within him had broken the barriers that previously had prevented telepathic communication between Druuf and Terran. Marshall was a skilled telepath. He did not let the Druuf know he was listening to his thoughts. Each time he understood a thought, he muttered it to Lubkov in a low undertone.

So Lubkov took his hands off the levers the Druuf had thought would blow up the ship and took hold of others.

"Blast it all!" thought the Druuf. "How did he find out those are the right ones? Of course, he isn't completely correct. He has to throw a switch, too!"