The Sleeper of the Ages Page 15

  —What we do not yet know. But—they are becoming dangerous.—

  In the course of long evolution, in the midst of the hopeless chaos of growth and decay, certainties took hold as often as errors. Twice a year, millions upon millions of Menttia were thrown into passionate mating frenzy. The growing swarms chose certain areas that contributed beauty and uniqueness to their whirling passion. The Menttia of the White Winds loved the vast landscape of the polar region. From their swarm came a definite thought:—It is good that the large ships cannot land!—

  The Menttia of the Snowmelt formulated the answer and sent it in all directions:—It is better that the strangers cannot exchange information with each other. We are thereby forcing them to undertake something without their technological means!—

  —Very well. Let us split up and observe what they do when they are cut off from each other.—

  There was no animosity between the two swarms, but the difference in opinion became clearly perceptible. The collective memory went back more than 50,000 planetary years. Both swarms circled high above the four tiny craft that stood on the ice expanse, deprived of a large portion of their energy. The Menttia of the Snowmelt formulated a compromise suggestion.—We could release them at any time or partially or completely paralyze them. Let us wait and see what they do!—

  —We have time. We will wait. But it will be interesting to observe how they behave in this crisis situation.—

  The Menttia, whose homeland was the entire planet and far out into space, had deduced the nature of the universe from thousands of single observations. Now, for a second time, they had an opportunity to study alien visitors in all their details. Uniformity in action, they had learned, meant stagnation and decline into entropy.

  They waited with infinite patience.

  A few minutes later, the fire spindles began to move away from the vicinity of the Space-Jet. In separate, whirling groups, they disappeared or withdrew into the gray, low-hanging clouds. The Space-Jet's occupants reflected silently on the mystery but came to no conclusions as to what to do. Only one thing was certain at present: both crawlers, the Shift, and the Space-Jet were unable to take off, fly, or communicate.

  "Should we wave or signal with light flashes or carve pictograms in the ice?" Hyman Mahal asked, wiping the sweat off his brow.

  Rhodan looked thoughtfully at the data in the close-range scan holo. "It would be a good idea if we came up with some suitable means of communication. How can we even begin to convince them that we're completely harmless?"

  "I don't think that's necessary any more," said the exo-biologist, looking outside.

  The gold-shimmering swarm dissolved. More and more flaming spindle-beings flitted to the north and then straight up into the air. They were followed by smaller and larger groups. Only a few beings raced around the Space-Jet and finally they, too, left. The light faded out and gave way to the gray of early evening. The disc of the sun could be weakly seen, as though outlined by a thin red line.

  Rhodan exhaled in relief. "So we don't have to make any gestures to show our humility." He looked at the rapidly flickering numbers on the craft's chronometer. "We should take a look at what our Akonian friends have found. But I hear my stomach growling loudly. Shall we have a quick on-board bite? I don't see any reason to hurry."

  Dr. Mahal nodded. "My job. Give me a few minutes to pick out some rations that won't poison us and I'll whip something up."

  "Very good. Thank you," Rhodan said and absorbed himself once more in the data supplied by Solina Tormas's team. While the odor of heated ration packages and instant coffee wafted through the cockpit, he tried to make sense out of the readings and energy patterns.

  There was very little to see in the holo with the naked eye. Solina Tormas scanned below a layer that shifted between impenetrable white and vaguely transparent expanses of ice. Her readings revealed angular dark objects, and irregular individual forms that probably represented rocks that had been buried by the ice. Just as with the battered object that had recently melted its way into the ice, some stray energy trickled out. To Solina, the shadowy outlines suggested a forgotten installation or a small settlement.

  Ameda Fayard bent over the hologram. Her bleached hair fell heavily over her forehead. She seemed to be considering the difficulties that awaited them. "These lines here are power connections," Ameda said as Solina switched to the next level of depth. "How old could this installation be?"

  Solina shrugged. "Ancient. We can't even guess how long the ice took to cover the buildings. As an archaeologist, you should be able to tell us that more precisely."

  "I don't have any experience with buildings or artifacts covered with ice. If we could go into such a building and find some additional reference points ... "

  The few shadows beneath the Shift had grown longer. Thin strips of cloud covered the sky. Kealil Ron drove the Shift in a tight circle around the area in question, which proved to be more extensive than was first thought. The sensors of the mass detector reached down to a considerable depth, but the weakly detectable masses below were probably only the highest projections of the base.

  "We could melt a hole in the ice," Ameda suggested.

  "We'll probably have to try that."

  On the third round, they spotted an irregularity in the surface of the ice. Ice floes had been pushed upwards from a rock beneath the ice, then broke off and were piled up into a hill of rough-edged fragments. Some portions formed a triangular tunnel that opened out onto the ice surface and seemed like an entrance into the structures below. "We'll make our attempt there," Solina said. "Why is it suddenly getting bright?"

  Gold-shining things had suddenly appeared in front of the Shift. Spindle-shaped, perhaps one and a half meters long, swift and somehow like fish made of light. They grew more numerous and circled the Shift in rapidly changing paths. The control lights in front of the pilot flickered and blinked in a mad rhythm, and the swarm of spindles became even more numerous until there were several thousand of them. Darting swiftly, they completely enveloped the Shift like a spherical shell.

  "They're attacking us!" the pilot exclaimed. "And for no reason!"

  "Be careful," Solina admonished him, feeling fear clutch her. "Perhaps they're the guardians of the base in the ice."

  "Well, I'm landing in any case," Kealil Ron gripped the control lever more tightly. "The risk is too great."

  The braking engines immediately went into action. For one terrible moment, the Shift's antigravs failed and the angular body of the craft dropped like a rock. It caught itself when the power came back on and rocked back and forth.

  Arsis pressed the sensor on her com unit. "We're losing power! We've got to land!"

  Kealil Ron manipulated his controls silently and determinedly. The Shift tipped forwards, then tilted far to the right, and kept on dropping. The swirling of the swarm of uncountable radiant beings suddenly and silently changed as they combined into a mass that spread out and formed a kind of Saturn-like ring around the Shift. The warning system began to bleat just as the pilot increased the power of the antigrav fields. Still seven meters ... five ... the engines howled one last time, then ice splintered and crystals hailed against the craft's sides. It came down on first one end of its inactive caterpillar tracks, then the others.

  Almost at the same time, the Shift lost all its on-board power. The Picosyn needed three seconds to switch on the sealed emergency back-up batteries and the life support system sprang back into life.

  Ameda Fayard stretched her tall body upright from the floor, clutched her back with a groan, and sat back in her seat. She massaged her neck. "Those creatures practically killed us!" she exclaimed. "Not exactly a friendly welcome. I'll go out and drive them off with a few shots. Or should we use the on-board cannon ... ?"

  "Wait!" Solina said sharply. "Do you intend to shoo them away with pieces of ice?"

  As Ameda reached for the joystick for the cannon control and threw two security switches, the pilot grabbed her wrist a
nd yanked it away. Kealil Ron all but leaped out of his seat and shoved Ameda to the side with his shoulder.

  "Stop!" he shouted. "They're just playing with us! Don't you understand that yet? They could kill us if they wanted to."

  "I'll show them that we won't let them play with us!"

  The pilot flipped the switches back to their zero settings. "No. You'll only provoke the spindles unnecessarily."

  Ameda reached for the handbeamer at her belt, lifted it up, and aimed it out the front windshield at the silent creatures that still circled the Shift. Then she turned, took three long steps half bent over through the cockpit, and pressed the sensor that operated the inner door to the tiny airlock. Tortuously slowly, the rising panels slid open and closed again after Ameda slid through and stepped into the airlock. The outer hatch could only be opened with a hand wheel after the archaeologist had levered up a bar. She leaped down, ran out of the cover of the Shift, and breathed in ice-cold air.

  In the last fraction of a second, she pulled herself together and fired into the ice in front of her. The explosion blew splinters and a plume of steam into the air. Then she fired three shots straight up into the sky, into the eye of the small typhoon of shining beings. The swarm jerked to the side and split up. Both halves took flight along the discharge trail above the Shift. They sped into the cloud layer and disappeared. Four bursts of lightning in the sky flashed and nearly blinded the Akonian. She let her beamer sink and only now felt the biting cold on her skin.

  In order to overcome her disappointment, Ameda silently quoted a few lines of an ancient Akonian drama. The warning of her father occurred to her: Because you are beautiful and not of the noble class, you must be doubly capable.

  "Right, Papa," she murmured. "But I succeeded."

  She was not as beautiful as Eniva ta Drorar. She was just under two meters tall with a round face and beautiful brown eyes. She was interested in everything that was old and had left traces behind, and above all fascinated by everything that contained information from the past. Although not from a noble family, she had fought her way up the entire scholarly ladder and had stumbled across the Ochent expedition. Now she stood next to a crash-landed Shift, she was freezing, and she was still angry.

  Until just recently, she had not known if her professional qualifications would be necessary on this mission. Now it was clear to her. Up to now, everyone she ever met had ended up feeling that her deeply penetrating look could see into their most closely hidden secrets. Here in the Shift she felt unfulfilled and underrated.

  Originally, she had not been enthusiastic about the expedition because the Ochent Nebula promised her a great deal of galactic wasteland without any ruins, artifacts, or deeply buried mysteries. But now there were these astonishing beings. A kind of scholarly compensation? Hardly. Perhaps they would yet find sensational relics of the past, and then she really would be happy. But she had imagined it all very differently.

  Ameda muttered a highly expressive curse and climbed back into the airlock. She felt completely helpless and was unsure what to do next and was a little ashamed of her overly dramatic performance. Even so, she had successfully driven off the pesky little creatures. When she once more stood in the cockpit, bringing an icy breeze in with her, she saw that nothing had changed concerning the status of the energy block.

  "We're still alive," Solina said. "Only Perry Rhodan can help us now. So we'll just wait—for now."

  "Because there isn't anything else we can do," Kealil Ron added with resignation.

  8

  A Frozen World

  "The less high-tech equipment we use," Perry Rhodan said, "the less can fail. So let's remember the glorious tradition of the ancient explorers of the North and South Poles of Earth."

  "To my knowledge, most of those heroes miserably froze to death," Hyman Mahal replied morosely.

  As they equipped themselves from the Space-Jet's storage locker they discussed whether one of them should remain in the Jet and keep watch over it. Although Isaias Shimon, the exo-biologist, volunteered, they finally agreed that there was no risk in leaving the Space-Jet unguarded.

  Night had fallen and they were now walking in single file towards the Shift's landing place. As Rhodan had expected, their backpack flying units did not function. Their spacesuits were sealed and connected with each other by thin plastic ropes with steel cores. Perry led the group forward. So far they did not need their long icepicks. Now and then the reflection of a spotlight flashed in the ice.

  Suddenly Rhodan's voice resounded in their helmet speakers. "It's about ten kilometers to the wreck of the sphere and the buried objects. It'll be a boring trek, though I hope it won't be too difficult. Why don't we pass the time by singing Terran and Lemurian hiking songs?"

  "You can't be serious," Shimon said.

  "No, I'm not," Rhodan admitted. "It occurs to me that there are a lot of questions that I haven't answered. Questions that our young guest asked."

  "About Terran songs?" wondered Isaias. "Like the lyrics to Alemaheyu's crazy pretend-plucking?"

  They made good progress through the snow cover on the flat, obstacle-free ice field. Now and then Rhodan glanced at the small magnetic compass which showed they were marching in the direction of 260 degrees. In the Space-Jet he had discovered that Mentack Nutai's magnetic north pole was not at 360. Accordingly, he had determined the course they needed to follow on the basis of the position scans.

  "Speaking of which," Hyman Mahal added, "players of invisible guitars are certainly better paid than ships' doctors by the stingy owners of our company."

  The group plodded on step by step, mostly in the tracks left by their leader. The darkness was not illuminated by any of the shining natives of the planet who seemed to have vanished without a trace. The joy of discovery, curiosity, and not least the intention of providing help for the stranded Lemurians made the march easier. So far their progress had not been especially difficult, but swirling snowflakes and ice crystals indicated the possibility of being caught in a storm.

  "Probably better paid, yes," Rhodan said, "but you couldn't buy the experiences we're having here."

  Mahal's muttered reply was almost inaudible. "I think I'd gladly pay not to have some of the experiences we're having here ... "

  Onward into the darkness! There was no guiding light by which they could orient themselves. They put their trust in Rhodan, who led them at a moderate pace. He noted, with some concern, that the swirling flakes were becoming more numerous and flying almost horizontally through the beam of his spacesuit's spotlight.

  A jagged-edged ice flow appeared in the light beam in front of Rhodan. He turned to the left and marched onwards. The exterior microphone caught the crunching of spacesuit boots in fine, powdery snow. Rhodan wondered where the crawler could have landed.

  During the meal break, he had told Denetree about Halutians and showed her pictures and videos of them. Peaceful Halutians, among them his friend Icho Tolot who was not one of the Beasts. Denetree had looked at the pictures filled with reverence, murmuring the word "Keeper" more than once.

  The first, heavy snow flurry blew in from the side and enveloped Rhodan and his companions. Twenty paces further, Hyman Mahal, who was last in the line, called out, "Those damned light-things are coming back, Perry!"

  "For the moment," Rhodan said, turning around, "we'll act as though they don't exist. Where are they?"

  "Somewhere above us, mostly invisible."

  Rhodan leaned back and looked up through his helmet faceplate. Barely perceptible between the driving snow clouds, three or four dozen of the energy beings flitted around. They buzzed here and there, uniting into a small swarm and circled the area. Their glow penetrated the falling snow, casting faint shadows of the team members. But the spindles did not attack; they seemed to be expectant, circling and waiting.

  "I see them. Let's go on. We'll be just as defenseless up ahead as we are here."

  "That would be best," Shimon agreed, not sounding happy about it eithe
r way.

  Rhodan pulled on the connecting cord and set out again. The driving snow became thicker and a few storm gusts blew out of the weak wind. He could still take long steps and follow the compass. Minute after minute, they continued in silence, accompanied by the golden spindles.

  Rhodan and his companions took two and a half hours to cover the distance to the Shift. As they neared the end of their march, storm gusts blew in from the west and tore at the team. They first saw the dark shape of the Shift when they were only two dozen paces away from it. From the outside, the Shift seemed undamaged. Rhodan unhooked himself from the rope, went to the entrance ramp, and banged the grip of his handbeamer on the outer hatch. Three small spotlights flared on, then the hatch opened.

  Ameda Fayard put her round face in the light. "Perry Rhodan!" she exclaimed in surprise. "How did you ... ?" Then she saw Denetree, Mahal, and Shimon, who were coming through the snow cloud half bent over. "How did you get here? The power ... "

  "On foot," Rhodan said, opening his helmet. "Are you all right? No one injured?"

  "No, just these fire spindles. They've hit us hard." She pulled Rhodan into the cramped interior of the Shift and waved to the others. "I fired a few warning shots at them and they pulled back."

  "They accompanied us and are still observing us," Denetree said, smiling at the Akonian historian as she greeted her.

  The newcomers piled their loads in the corner of the airlock and went into the cockpit. Shimon and Mahal found just enough room and noticed that the Shift was being powered from the emergency battery. Rhodan pulled off his glove and shook Solina's hand.

  "We've apparently entered dangerous territory," Rhodan said, and leaned against a seat. On the folding table stood cups and food scraps. The air circulation system hummed at full capacity. Water dripped from the four ice-cold spacesuits, to which two centimeters of snow still clung. "We've analyzed your readings and location scans very closely. There are two discovery sites. I think it's because we've approached them that the golden spindles are so excited. After all, we're intruders or at best visitors to their planet."