After the Caesar and the 11 robotships had dropped from sight, nothing else changed. The distances were too great for that.

Lt. Germa slumped in the pilot seat and stared at the useless flight lever. During the past 20 minutes he had tried often enough to move it back. Even the navigation controls were blocked. Invisible hands had manipulated the machinery—but to whom did those hands belong?

He looked about him again but outside of himself and his 3 companions there was no one else in the control room. By now the weird presentiment of lurking menace had disappeared, which they had all sensed so clearly before. It was. as if the invisible ones had left the ship, having accomplished their objective.

Once more he attempted to make contact with the Caesar and this time he succeeded. The com system was still intact.

Sukril sounded somewhat impatient with him. "No, we haven’t forgotten you, Lieutenant! I just haven’t had time. The operation’s started. The men are boarding the robotships."

"Where is Pucky?"

Sukril suppressed a bitter remark. "Also on the mission," was all he said. "Be patient, we’ll pick you up soon enough. We have you on the tracking scanners and can locate you at any moment. But first I have to know that everything here is in order. We seem to be up against some very unusual opposition. The enemy is invisible and possibly even disembodied."

"Invisible!" gasped Germa as he felt his hackles rising. "How is that possible?"

"To be invisible isn’t so impossible," replied Sukril. "The unusual part is that they are apparently immaterial. I’ve already sent a report on this to Terra so that Rhodan will know what’s going on."

Germa nodded to himself. "Well then, thank you, sir. We’ll wait and depend entirely upon you."

"You do just that," Sukril admonished, and he cut off.

It seemed that at the moment he had plenty to do. Germa felt better about it because he realized that he himself was not in immediate danger. Later it would be child’s play for the Caesar to trace him and find him.

But in the meantime the Gazelle was racing onward into the depths of the intergalactic void. The velocity of light had been reached, which was the limit of speed in the Einstein universe. Brado, Hansen and Lester sat silently at their stations to Germa’s right and left. In spite of the fright they’d been through they had become fascinated by the aspect of empty space. The white band of the Milky Way still marked the location of their home but the Gazelle was hurtling directly in an opposite direction. They were moving toward the distant nebula which hovered far ahead in the infinite vastness. For one horrible moment Germa had the thought that the shadow beings might stem from there but then he rejected the idea.

A race that could fly at will from universe to universe would not be lingering around the edges of a galaxy and attacking stray robotships. They wouldn’t be out to conquer a planet or star but an entire galaxy.

What was keeping Pucky?

His thoughts returned to the mousebeaver. He liked him very much, that was for sure. He liked all animals—but was Pucky what one one might commonly refer to as "animal"? Wasn’t he actually more than that? In this cosmic age, outer differences of form and colour of skin ought to be a thing of the past . In fact when men first encountered extraterrestrial beings, the concept of racial barriers was shattered. Humanity itself melted into a single unity. People learned to judge others by character rather than by outward appearances. This was the only way they could adjust themselves to a contact with other intelligences.

Through his deeds and comportment, Pucky had contributed much to this kind of understanding. He had lost his home world and his own kind but had found a new home on Earth among humans. He loved humanity but he was immensely proud of being a mousebeaver.

"Lieutenant!"

Cadet Hansen had chanced to turn around to search again for signs of the unknown invaders in the control room. He had not yet gotten rid of the feeling of being under constant observation.

Germa forgot his philosophical contemplations and whirled around, instinctively grasping his beamer, which lay on the flight panel. But then he breathed a sigh of relief. He had just been thinking of Pucky—and here the mousebeaver was, emerging out of nowhere.

"Pucky! At last!"

"Man—that wasn’t so easy!"

Pucky released the helmet of his combatsuit and shook himself. He nodded encouragingly at the 4 men and then, as far as he was able to determine by telepathy, he assured himself that the invisible foe was neither in the control room nor on board the Gazelle.

"I was tracking your brain impulses, Germa," continued Pucky as he took over the last remaining seat, "but that alone wasn’t enough. The distance was so great that I couldn’t zero in exactly. I simply jumped and naturally I materialized immediately in the middle of nothing." He shuddered again at the memory of the unpleasant experience. "Man, I can tell you, that was something creepy! There I was in the middle of nowhere, out of sight of the Caesar and the Gazelle. Only the thought impulses were left. I could pick out Sukril’s thoughts, alright—strictly military. After all, he was running the mission. But your thoughts, Germa, were something else. They were very good ones." He produced a friendly smile, which caused his incisor tooth to gleam brightly. "That’s what made it easy to find you. So here I am!"

"Where is Iltu?"

"A brave girl!" exclaimed Pucky happily, although he added immediately: "Of course she’s a bit young and inexperienced but all the same …"

Germa made no further comment, of course not knowing what had happened in the meantime. He pointed to the controls. "So now what do we do? The flight controls seem to be welded in place. I can’t change the speed or the course. Can you bring us back to the Caesar all by yourself?"

"That could be a possibility but I don’t want to have Sukril chew me out." Pucky started to laugh and then gave a pontifical imitation of the commander: "That mousebeaver! He was entrusted with a ship and left it to an uncertain fate!"

Germa had to grin, as did his 3 companions. It was really comical the way the mousebeaver imitated the colonel’s speech characteristics. Of course he couldn’t reproduce the Skipper’s deep deep tone of voice but otherwise it was a good try.

"How can you free up the controls?" he asked.

Pucky promptly forgot Col. Sukril. "I don’t have any idea, Germa. I’ll have to look them over."

It wasn’t actually what he meant because there wasn’t much to see. There was only one way to find the probable obstructions—he had to put his telekinetic faculties to work. He carefully probed along the length of the flight lever with his psychokinetic emanations. In this way he penetrated deep into the control mechanism until he encountered a resistance.

"That’s probably it," he muttered, while trying to determine the shape of the obstruction. It had an uneven shape but there was no doubt that this was what kept the lever from moving. Pucky took a deep breath and grasped it telekinetically. Now that he had found the cause, the damage should be easy to correct. It all depended upon whether or not his powers were greater than the energies which held the obstruction in place.

"Shift the level to neutral!" he said suddenly.

Germa reached out to it. The lever was quite easy to move. It clicked audibly to the intended slot. The velocity of the Gazelle did not lessen due to the force of inertia. At light-speed it made no difference whether the propulsion system was working or not.

Then Pucky got busy on the frozen nav-controls. He succeeded only after a number of trials, again encountering an unknown type of resistance. It seemed to be something that had been melted down and then hardened again but there was no explanation of how it had gotten there. Was it possible that the invisible ones could penetrate into solid matter?

"You can try it now."

Gazelle actually changed course and responded obediently to every manipulation he shook his head in amazement. "Wow—-we’d all better take up telekinesis! How did you do it, Pucky?"

"To tell you the truth—I don’t know exactly, myself," the mousebeaver admitted. "I’m a boob in arms compared to those aliens. They seem to be able to do anything."

"Haven’t you just outsmarted them?"

"Well, not really, Germa. I had to search a long time to clear the obstructions out of the way. But they put them there in seconds. I’m afraid we’re still in for some surprises with those spooks. They aren’t material substance in our sense of the word. Maybe you could go so far as to say they are bodiless, even in their own dimension. I don’t know, Germa, when we first ran into them that time on Barkon, we racked our brains trying to figure them out-with no results. We thought then that it was a one-time contact and we almost forgot them after that. And now … " Pucky fell silent, having become very pensive.

Germa spoke up. "Col. Sukril should ask Rhodan for support."

"I’ll recommend that to him," said Pucky, pointing to the control board. "Do you want to try locating-the Caesar?"

Germa turned on the radio and put out a call to the flagship. There was a 2-minute delay before the Caesar answered.

"I already told you, Lt Germa, that I would send somebody——"

Germa interrupted the angry voice. "We’re already on our way back, sir. The phantoms have let go of us. I only wanted to inform you that Rhodan would be very interested in their presence here because he met them once before. May I recommend, sir, that you get into personal contact with him at once——?"

"I’ve had an appropriate message sent," replied Sukril in a rigid tone of voice.

"Did it describe the phenomena we’ve just experienced?"

"Would you care to explain that?"

"Yessir. These shadow people are not only a local menace to us here but for the entire galaxy. Pucky told me about them. It’s absolutely necessary to bypass official channels on Earth and go directly to Rhodan. The red tape would take too long … "

Sukril did not seem to realize that Germa could not have spoken to Pucky—since he wasn’t aware of the mousebeaver’s present location. "Alright, Germa, then you take care of getting back here on your own. I’ll get into direct communication with the Administrator. Does that satisfy you?"

Germa sighed his relief and glanced briefly at Pucky. Thank you, sir. I believe you’ll be doing us all a big favour. Don’t worry about me, I can find my way back without help."

Sukril grumbled something unintelligible and cut off the connection. Germa also shut down the com unit and looked at Pucky.

The Old Man seems to be taking it pretty calmly. Do you think he knew about the danger already?"

"It looks like it," Pucky nodded. He stared at the Milky Way and pointed in their direction of flight. "It’s my guess that you’ll catch sight of the Caesar and the robots in about 5 minutes. Better start decelerating."

The Gazelle responded to the retropulsion controls. The ships came into view after 15 minutes. After arriving at the Caesar, Germa flew the Gazelle into the wide-open hangar and landed it gently. He had hardly done so before the mighty lock gate started to close.

Germa had gotten up and was about to leave the Gazelle when Pucky suddenly tensed and grasped his arm.

"Wait, Germa—something’s fishy! Why are they closing the hangar hatch? The action can’t be over with yet. Besides, I’m picking up the spook thoughts again." He looked about but couldn’t see anything suspicious other than the fact that the hangar itself was strangely deserted-looking. "Stay in the Gazelle, Germa. Turn on the energy screen! And don’t turn it off until you see me over by that wall and I give you a signal. Have you got that?"

"Yes—but what gives?"

"Don’t ask me now. Just a precaution, that’s all. OK, I’m making the jump. Turn on the screen in 10 seconds. See you later." He dematerialised before the eyes of the 4 men and vanished.

Germa made a reassuring sign to his men. Of course he didn’t know what was on the mousebeaver’s mind yet but he trusted him blindly. After the prescribed 10 seconds, he switched on the screen. Now the Gazelle lay under a protective dome of energy which isolated it completely from the outside world.

Only then did Germa note how unusually quiet it was on board the Caesar. There was no sign of the hangar personnel. No crews had hurried forward to receive the Gazelle.

He sat down. "Let’s wait," he said.

And they waited.