1/
  A REAL "GONE" ROBOT

   Even for a robot it isn't too healthy or desirable to float around weightlessly in space without the slightest foothold—especially when that space is absolutely empty.
   Yet that is precisely what Meech Hannigan was doing. His positronic preservation system had held up with out much strain during half a year or so of meaningless drifting out here but owing to a continuous loss of heat his complex internal "life" processes were starting to be endangered. His bodily temperature was already within 30 degrees of Absolute zero and if it sank much farther some of his circuit elements would go into "super conductance"—and that would be the end. For a long time now Meech had lost the fine outward appearance that his friends remembered. The cellular surface tissues which had provided a baffling imitation of human skin had fallen prey to the murderous cold of the void in the 1st l0th of a second. It had become a brittle black envelope which he had been able to scratch away from his plastic metal body without much effort.
   So now he really looked like a robot.
   He had occupied the first few "days" of his involuntary space flight by trying to analyze his situation. It had all started when he had sought to transport himself on board the space cruiser Joann through the transmitter which was installed on the Terran BOB (Barrier-line Observations Station) 21. The station had come under attack by alien intelligences yet was being defended from within by equally alien beings. The whole installation was ready to explode. It was under heavy bombardment by a box-shaped vessel, the likes of which had never been seen before in the galaxy. As a result the transmitter's power supply was not functioning properly at the time. Instead of reaching the Joann, Meech Hannigan had emerged from the projection somewhere in the empty void. He had peeled off his useless skin envelope and turned on his emergency generator for supplying him with the necessary bodily heat. Then he had finally tried to orient himself.
   Somewhere in the depths of the spatial abyss was a great, milky patch of light. Meech had thought that this must be his own home galaxy although the assumption was problematical. Because if that was the case he was about 240,000 light years away from it, and it would have taken the energy output of more than 6 transmitters to project him that far.
   There were other nebulous patches here and there but none was as large and bright as the first one he had discovered. In this lonely vastness, of course, there was a total absence of stars.
   He had worked out a coordinate system, using himself as the zero point of reference. The X-axis went through the bright patch of galactic light. This he had registered in his memory and from then on, by a process of continuing observations, he had been able to calculate his direction and velocity of drift. He also worked out relative coordinates for the other light patches and compared them with the position data that were supposed to represent them in the star catalogs-that is, after reconverting the figures from Milky Way references into the galacto-centric values.
   By this procedure he made a discovery. The light patches of the alien island universes were located more or less where Meech expected them to be but after he went over his calculations and refined them, as was his habit, in each case he determined that there was a slight deviation. He thus knew the speed with which he was moving, relative to the other galaxies. It turned out to be too small to produce obvious Relativity effects, so something else must be involved which might explain his strange situation.
   He tried the double-system experiment. Actually he wasn't aware of performing the experiment. The device which performed it was built into his body and functioned on the following principle:
   Effects dependent upon a given velocity are simultaneously a function of the direction in which time moves, in that temporal system in which the experiment takes place. For example if one were to thread an electrostatically charged ball onto a wire so that the wire served as a guideline, and then if it were brought into the influence of an electrical field, at first the ball would start to accelerate. But when the friction of the wire increased to a value equalling the force of the field the speed of a ball would remain constant. If two people tried this experiment in two different time systems where their watches ran in opposed directions, in comparing the results of their experiments they would find that the same natural laws affected the motions of the balls. The situation would change if the accelerating force of the electrical field were to depend on some kind of motion. For example the wire guide could be swinging up and down. Here the field generator is so connected with this movement that in time-system 1 it generates a stronger field on the upward swing of the wire and a weaker field on the downward swing, whereas in time-system 2 the opposite action takes place. After carrying out the experiment in both systems the two men would discOver to their satisfaction that their watches were running in opposite directions and thus that their two time systems were opposed to each other. In other words: t-1 = minus t-2.
   Within his metallic body Meech Hannigan did not have such a ball and wire arrangement. In place of the charged ball was an ionic beam. In place of a swinging wire the entire sensor element moved up and down. The results were indicated in degrees of deviation from normal."
   This was in circular measurement, which Meech read as 2 X 10 to the minus 4. The phase angle between his present time vector and that of the galactic system was thus slightly less than 1 minute of arc.
   That wasn't much but actually the amount of the phase angle wasn't the important part. What mattered was that the angle existed that it varied from reference zero. Because it meant that Meech was in some different time system. If he were to operate his radio equipment, nobody would hear him. At least he would not be heard by those he wished to contact. They existed in another time-space relationship.
   All this Meech had determined at an early stage of his unwilling sojourn in empty space, and he had since arrived at other conclusions. The transmitter on space station BOB 21 had not been powerful enough to project him 240,000 light years; moreover, it would not have been able to stabilize a transport object in another universe. Other factors must have been involved. By a process of logic he could make no other assumption than that the events just before the explosion of the station must have had something to do with it.
   How was it that he was just In this particular area? Was there something in his vicinity that had influenced his delivery here? If so, then this something was related to galactic time and would not be visible to Meech. Apparently the effect of the transmitter and this other presently unknown effect had intermingled to produce just this result and no other.
   Meech began to keep a lookout for any signs of super-ordinate surveillance. This wasn't an easy task. Even for a robot it was difficult to screen out first and second-order effects so as to recognize much weaker third or fourth order effects. But he kept on trying and finally succeeded.
   Something was in his vicinity. Whatever it was, its emanations of energy were such that just a fraction of them penetrated the barrier between the two time systems. Of course Meech didn't know what it could be but of one thing he was sure: there were no Terrans that close. No earthly spaceship had ever ventured this far into the vast gulf between the galaxies. So if there were any Intelligent life nearby it would have to belong to one of the two alien races who had just recently come within range of earthly perception.
   Meech had decided to spend some time in observation, which had by now stretched into half a year. The conclusion was that he was in a very undesirable situation. This was because his state was not stable but rather metastable. In other words, the barrier between the two time systems was very weak and could collapse at any moment. This also meant that his signals might be heard in the galactic system if he were to operate his hypercom at full power. Unfortunately, not only Terran ships might hear him on one side of the strange barrier but also the unknown entities on whatever side they might be.
   There was just one hope. By passing from one system into another his transmission might become distorted. Echo effects could arise which would make a signal trace difficult in the immediate vicinity, if not even impossible. On the other hand a more distant receiver might be able to pick up his transmission without such effects.
   Meech sent out a coded signal.
   His bodily temperature was now at 29.8 degrees on the Absolute scale.

*

   The coded symbols ran a confused and complicated course but finally they arrived at their intended destination.
   They were first received by the Vittorio, a patrol cruiser assigned to the lonely reaches beyond the edge of the Milky Way. Pal Jerome, the cruiser's 3rd officer, recorded them on a magnetic tape and had them evaluated positronically. It was obvious to Pal that the signals must be coming from the same source that had first been heard from out there a half year ago.
   At that time the easily deciphered symbols had asked the strange question: "Are you a true life form?"
   The positronic radio code of the Posbis had been incorporated into all deciphering equipment in the Terran Fleet. Pal was sure that the ship's positronicon would furnish him with a translation of the message within a matter of seconds. He was quite surprised when nothing happened even in several minutes. In fact it was a quarter of an hour before a reply came thru: INSUFFICIENT DATA.
   Pal let Gut a few rather spectacular cusswords and tried a rerun using other codes. The results were always the same. The code in which the message had been framed was unknown to the positronic brain of the Vittorio. It was also too complicated to be deciphered by hand.
   Pal Jerome informed the commander. The commander decided that the radio Solar message should be directed to Intelligence. Jerome passed it on accordingly. 25 minutes after its first reception by the Vittorio, the cryptic message was in the hands of Solar Marshal Mercant.
   Mercant knew the code. It had been developed by Division 3 of Intercosmic Social Development and Welfare and was considered to be unbreakable.
   Mercant did not hesitate a second. He determined the location of the cruiser Volta, which was currently active in the service of Col. Nike Quinto, chief of Division 3, and he instructed the Vittorio to contact the Volta directly.
   Sensing that the matter was fairly important, Pal Jerome prepared a second hypercom dispatch and beamed it to the Volta which was cruising somewhere beyond star cluster M-13.
   The peculiar thing was that the unknown transmitter kept on sending the same signal uninterruptedly, with the same group of symbols.

*

   This was the 5th brain session in 24 hours, thought Ron Landry resignedly. Always on the same subject—and always without results.
   Nike Quinto had leaned far forward in his chair. His face was more flushed than usual. His crown of sandy yellow hair around the central bald spot was in obvious disarray. His pudgy lips were pursed forward in a mood of contradiction. His hands were folded and his short, thick fingers kept interlacing as his nervousness increased.
   Larry Randall had put his right elbow on the arm of his chair so that he could support his chin conveniently. He could still look at Quinto and listen attentively. Lofty Patterson, the gray-haired oldster from Passa, sat in the background as usual and only made a remark now and then.
   Somebody was missing here, thought Ron. Each time like this his absence was felt. Meech Hannigan. Half a year had passed since he had disappeared and there was no chance that anyone would ever find him again, dead or alive. Strange, Ron reflected, that one could be so attached to a robot.
   The discussion took place as usual in the officers' wardroom on the Vittorio. Nike Quinto was nominally the ship's commander but he left the running of the vessel to Cmdr. Ellington so that he could be free to concentrate on his own affairs. The room was more comfortably furnished than one might have expected on board a warship.
   "That's impossible!" snapped Quinto in response to Larry's last argument. "If Frago had already been in existence for a long time, the Posbis' uncontrollable hatred for anything organic would have caused them to attack our galaxy long before this."
   "It could be that they held off due to some other reason," Larry suggested.
   It's always like this, thought Ron. Whenever a point was reached where there was no further basis for discussion, the Old Man would say anything that came into his head. He could tell by Larry's expression that he was wondering how to treat the rebuke as immaterial, without conjuring up a storm. However, before he could think of something, Lofty spoke up from the background.
   "Perhaps at your opportunity you gents might take note of the fact that the intercom has been blinking for several minutes...."
   Nike Quinto jumped up. The small vid-screen next to the main door was blinking red. At the same time it gave out an audible buzzing sound. In the excitement nobody but Lofty had heard it. Nike ran over to it and spoke a code word into the apparatus. The face of the 3rd officer appeared on the screen.
   "Our code?" echoed Quinto in surprise as he heard the message. "Yes, of course, I'll come at once!"
   Nike signed off. He opened the hatch door and ran out. It was characteristic of him not to tell anybody what was happening.
   Lofty Patterson chuckled. "That caught him off guard. You can tell him almost nothing and he'll get all excited—but at least he stops talking about his blood pressure."
   They waited in silence. After 10 minutes, Quinto came back. He was pale. There was sweat on his forehead and he staggered. Ron jumped up and ran over to him but Nike waved him off.
   "If it keeps on like this," he gasped, "I'm not going to see my next birthday. My blood pressure—oh-h-h...!"
   Ron breathed a sigh of relief. When ever he started talking about his state of health, things were back to normal. "May I ask, sir, what all the excitement's about?"
   "No, you may not," he chided. "Get me a chair so that I can take this stroke sitting down."
   Larry jumped up and shoved a chair over to him next to the door. Quinto sank into it and then leaned back, closing his eyes.
   "It's a put-on," muttered Lofty.
   Quinto evidently didn't hear him. After some time he straightened up again. He grinned mockingly at the others, one after another, and finally explained: "They've located Meech Hannigan!"

*

   Abruptly the whole picture changed. Meech felt inundated by a torrent of stray radiations which indicated the presence of machines that were either consuming energy or generating it. Then the view of distant nebulas blurred, to be replaced by gray walls. For the first time in half a year, Meech felt something solid under his feet.
   He was standing in a long passage way whose metal walls gleamed dimly in the bluish light of a series of lamps. The passage was empty as far as Meech could tell, but from everywhere came a soft humming sound that impinged upon his perception centers. The floor vibrated steadily. He knew that wherever ever he might be it was a place of high activity.
   The condition of meta-stability had also ceased. He now found himself in a stable continuum. He didn't doubt that it was the same system he had left 6 months ago, judging from the direction of the time vectors involved. All he wondered about was what he should do now or how he should react to his surroundings.
   He moved cautiously along the corridor. There was a series of devices built into the walls whose purpose Meech was unable to fathom. The technology of his new environment was totally alien. There was no doubt now that he had arrived on board a space fortress or ship that belonged to one of the two alien races.
   He had shut off his code signaller, not wishing to attract attention unnecessarily. He had enough trouble on his hands without that.
   After progressing about 15 meters he reached the entrance to a side passage which was very dimly lighted. From somewhere along this new corridor came a rattling and clanking sound. He stopped briefly and ascertained that the noise was approaching him. The energy field of that poWerful machine made an increasing impact on his receptors. This could mean danger, yet on the other hand he had to find out what was going on here if he was to orient himself to his new surroundings.
   He was definitely aware of the return of warmth to his body, judging especially by the way his internal devices were coming back to their old reaction capabilities. By human standards it was still not very warm in these passages. The temperature was at about -40 Centigrade, but for Meech that was still hundreds of degrees warmer than where he had been but a few minutes before.
   He also determined that the gravity here was greater than on board earthly spaceships. Obviously the beings who had built this vessel came from a heavier world.
   These observations had required only the fraction of a second. Immediately thereafter he turned his attention back to the lateral passageway. He could now make out the outlines of something that was coming toward him. He saw a crate-shaped object with slanting contours which was approaching at a moderate but steady pace. It was about 5½-feet tall and the arrangement of its angles and surfaces. defied all concepts of symmetry.
   Meech recalled the boxlike spaceship that had been observed from BOB 21. There was no doubt that this animated crate represented the same technology. It was apparently a robot. Meech could now identify the sound it was making. It was moving on tractor chains hence the rattling and clanking.
   Meech stationed himself so that the machine entity would see him. The result was almost baffling. The rattling stopped at once. The crate became motionless but a half-second later a beam of white-hot energy hissed past Meech and barely missed him. He would have been hit but at the last moment he detected the positronic impulse from the thing which gave a firing order, and he reacted in time.
   He ducked back from the corner of the lateral corridor. The crate-shaped creature started rattling again and came closer. Meech prepared to fire. When the metal deck began to tremble under the thing's weight, he took a flying leap across to the other side but in the fraction of a second of his exposure he fired at the clanking monster.
   Then he turned and prepared for a second jump. He could not hear any rattling and energy emanations had become weaker. Nevertheless Meech remained cautious. He only abandoned his cover when a cloud of gray smoke emerged from the side passage. The sharp-angled thing had fallen on its side with one of its caterpillar tread assemblies sticking straight in the air. Meech's ray beam had shattered one of its side plates and penetrated into its positronics circuits. Smoke poured out of it and filled the corridor.
   Meech climbed over the contraption and got through the pall of smoke as fast as he could. Now and then he stopped to listen. On board this ship they would not be friendly toward him. He knew it would be best to first find a retreat position where he could conceal himself and from which he could operate without interference. While he proceeded through the narrow passageway he  chanced upon a circular metal disc that was apparently fastened to the wall. It reminded Meech of a bulkhead hatch such as was used on earthly spaceships. The disc-shaped slab measured 2 meters in diameter. Perhaps there might be a usable hiding place behind it.
   There was no visible opening mechanism. Meech explored the periphery of the disc. Then he worked inward from the edge toward the center, leaving not a square cm of it untouched. His hands moved deftly and swiftly. When they reached the mid-point of the plate, it rolled aside and gave access to a tubular passage. It was brightly lighted and appeared to extend into measureless distance.
   He climbed into the tube and realized that it must be some kind of duct or conduit perhaps for fresh air or some other gas that was used in large quantity on board the ship. The circular walls were as smooth as a mirror, devoid of any flaw or unevenness as far as he could see.
   The most unusual feature of it was its length. Of course the gleaming metal did not permit any accurate optical evaluation but Meech used his radar and noted that the echo return required 20 microseconds. So the signal must have covered a distance of 6 km. Thus the tube was 3 km long. Meech wondered what the ship must look like from the outside if it could contain metal ducts that were this long.
   He crouched against the curving wall and decided to try his double-system experiment again. So far he had merely assumed he was back in galactic time but he had to be sure. The results were startling. In Meech's positronic brain a series of data based on mere assumption was suddenly erased, and if one could speak of an emotional reaction in this case it was something very much like astonishment mixed with fear.
   The deviation was double his previous reading. The phase angle between Meech's own time vector and that of the alien galaxy was now 2 minutes of arc.
   He had further removed himself from those who might be able to rescue him.

*

   Somewhere not more than 2 km from Meech's hiding place, two strange beings were exchanging information. One of these entities had the appearance of an old-fashioned mortar grenade, except that it was about 8 feet tall with a base that measured 1 meter in diameter. In general the missile-shaped thing was rather sleek and elegant looking. The other entity was much less symmetrical in form. It consisted of two shallow bowls or slightly distorted discs, the larger one being about 5½ feet across and the smaller one being placed inside the main dish at an eccentric angle. The entire assembly was not over 30 inches high. Beneath the main bowl were two series of shining metallic bristles on which it could move at a considerable speed. At the moment, of course, it was motionless.
   "Alien observer is still present," said the "grenade." It communicated in a manner which would not have been perceptible to human ears.
   The "dish" creature replied: "Troop unit 7-2-3 non-functional. Existence terminated by alien observer. Repair not possible."
   "Organic, per indications," continued the Grenade. The irresistible hatred accompanying this thought was reciprocated by the Dish.
   "Destroy," demanded this one.
   "Destroy," agreed the Grenade.
   "Is it considered unnecessary to further investigate whether or not observer is organic or kindred to us?" asked the Dish.
   "We have no time to lose," retorted the Grenade maliciously. "Our perception is conclusive. Alien observer appeared shortly after the last remote energy transport. It gave no recognition signal as any kindred type might have done. That is proof enough. And it has killed one of us. No non-organic kindred would do that. No further investigation is necessary."
   Apparently the Dish creature had no difficulty in making sense out of this rather confusing explanation. It began to move swiftly on its metallic bristles toward the slanting rear wall of the room. No door was necessary since it departed from the dome-ceilinged and concave-floored command chamber by simply going through the wall.
   The death sentence for Meech Hannigan had been pronounced.

*

   It was obvious to Meech that he would have to get out of this place if he ever wanted to be rescued. Here he was farther removed from his friends than ever before. However uncomfortable outer space might be with its near Absolute-zero temperatures, it was nevertheless more promising than this alien space giant.
   Unfortunately he was totally unfamiliar with whatever physical effect had brought him here. And as long as he didn't understand it he wouldn't be able to return whence he had come. In any case he would have to leave the dubious safety of this conduit tube because here he could find no answer to his questions.
   He stood up and returned to the hatch cover. It opened as soon as he placed both hands In its center. He stepped out into the corridor. The disc plate closed behind him. In the same moment he sensed the energy emanations from powerful machines which were approaching him from both directions. He heard a great clattering and clanking and the deck trembled noticeably beneath his feet.
   Unemotionally, he realized that they were attacking his position. Evidently they had known all along where he was. If he had waited just a few seconds longer they would have trapped him in the tube. His logic circuits concluded that he had made the right decision at the right moment, even though on the basis of a technologically alien process of evaluation. It was the positronic equivalent of a feeling of relief.
   He turned to his left because in that direction he at least knew a part of the way. And somewhere back there was the wreckage of the box-like thing that had first challenged him. Maybe he could use it as a cover if things became serious. Meech moved swiftly, taking no pains now to be quiet. Those who were approaching were making enough racket anyway, and besides—they knew more or less where he was already.
   He saw their shadowy forms looming in the corridor ahead. They seemed to fill its entire height and width. Against the bright illumination of the main passage he caught an impression of rocking towering shapes, glittering spirals and indented spheres. It was an oncoming maze of coils, cylinders and cones. It was a task for his positronic brain to absorb the wavering impressions. Meech realized that the leading members of this strange attacking force had already passed the wreckage of the crate creature. He had come too late. His way out into the main hall was cut off. Behind him another horde of motley contraptions was closing In. In a minute or two they would have him in their vice.
   Meech prepared himself for battle. With the factual unremorsefulness of a robot, he realized that his chances had been just about reduced to zero.

*

   The troop advance demanded a high energy output. The Grenade was a very foresighted entity. It had requested a further remote energy transference and justified the proposal on the basis of the unusual events which were taking place on board the vessel. And of course the request was granted. The energy transference had begun. At the moment, however, the Grenade had no idea that by this procedure it had made a false step.

*

   Meech's only alternative to annihilation was swift action. A confused blur of stray energy fields enveloped him. He could not make out how many of the enemy were ahead of him and behind him. He merely raised his weapon and fired. He levelled a half-second salvo into the passage ahead, on full power, then whirled around and repeated the blast in an opposite direction.
   Suddenly he was in an inferno. Several of the alien creatures exploded in a storm of hissing and thunderings. Metal fragments ricocheted through the corridor, striking objects with a deafening hail-like clatter. Dark smoke rose up and drifted toward him in thick clouds.Meech could only make out that the victims of his attack had formed a heavy barrier to those pressing through from behind; then the smoke obscured his vision. The situation was too confused to orient himself by means of radar.
   Glaring bolts of lighting shot through the gloom. They were returning his fire. The beams were landing far ahead of him, hitting the ceiling and the deck. The metal under his feet became hot. Meech waited patiently. If he failed to move now they might get the idea that they had taken care of him already.
   But the firing continued. The impacts were striking nearer. Meech recognized the fact that these strange creations had no capability of operating independently. They had no tactics of their own—not a trace. Yet he would have to defend himself if he wanted to live through this.
   Again he fired two high-powered salvos, to be answered by a din of thunder. The smoke thickened and his bodily temperature was close to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Yet the hostile firing continued. Meech knew that his attackers were too many on both sides for his single weapon to handle.
   He had gained time but nothing else. Sooner or later they would get him but he felt duty bound to take as many of them with him as he could. It was a part of the program that had been built into his system by his creators. Now he was firing incessantly, sending his salvos back and forth in either direction. The walls of the corridor began to glow with the rising heat. The deck was even bubbling in places. The blasts from the explosions made it difficult for him to stay on his feet.
   In blind mechanical persistence the enemy kept pushing its attack. The number of casualties made no difference. The ranks behind kept climbing over the remains of those who had been destroyed, thus gaining ground step by step. The two fronts that were closing Meech into their trap were now only 6 meters apart.
   Meech figured that he'd be struck down in the next fraction of a second. As it was his situation had become highly improbable already since he should have been dead by now. A raybeam hissed close by over his shoulder and the electromagnetic energy of it knocked him backwards. His plastic-metal body crashed to the deck but he rolled swiftly to one side and regained his feet.
   No serious damage, he determined impartially. His brain reported that he had lost 5 grams of metal plastic, which had been melted off of him. He had continued shooting. If they didn't hit him soon now he would have to surrender because the barrel of his weapon was starting to soften. They had to hit him! There wasn't any other possibility.
   A blinding burst of light flashed before him. Meech's mechanical eyelids closed. The optical system must not be overloaded. His sensor system was in a top alarm mode. He searched himself for the damage the shot may have caused but couldn't discover any.
   On the other hand he discovered that his inner temperature was falling rapidly. And after a few milliseconds of positronic confusion his perceptor devises revealed that he was no longer receiving an influx of stray energy fields from the hostile troops.
   He opened his eyes again. And once more his logic circuits had to erase data from his registers which were no longer valid. This was no longer the super-heated corridor Inside the giant spaceship—here was no longer the site of a raging battle. This was outer space with which he was very familiar by now. It was the cold, empty void with the distant dim patches of island universes all around him. Meech measured the phase angle of his time vector. It was back to the old value: 2 X 10 to the minus 4.
   He was unable to calculate the percent of probability involved in the process which had brought him out of the danger zone. In any case it had been a very narrow margin.
   Meech switched to Terran terminology and registered the memory of his salvation as a miracle.

2/  THE POSBI POSSE

The Volta had received new orders to fly to Arkon 2, the commercial planet belonging to the tri-planet one-orbit system lying within the heart of the Arkonide Empire. Col. Nike Quinto had been instructed to land at any spaceport. He hadn't quite understood this order but he began to comprehend when he attempted to obtain landing permission on Arkon 2.
   "Spaceport Vorpan to ship Volta from Terra. All landing restrictions 100% in effect. We refer you to neighbouring port of Pallida." The Volta flew onward toward Pallida, which lay 200 km farther to the northwest. Cmdr. Rex Ellington asked Pallida for permission to land and received an answer from the robot central.
   "Spaceport Pallida to ship Volta from Terra. All landing restrictions 100% in effect. We refer you to neighbouring port of Vorpan."
   "Volta to Pallida," growled Ellington. "We lust came from there!"
   "Then we refer you to the neighbouring port of Lymoor 1."
   Lymoor 1 made the same excuse. It referred them to Lymoor 2. And very curiously Lymoor 2 announced a 100% landing restriction. Whereupon Rex Ellington called the spaceport chief and told him he'd better hurry up and repair his traffic control positronics. The Volta flew onward.
   Lymoor 3 and Lymoor 4—small, unimportant ports—all fully restricted. Parathon, Aylor, Thap, Phoort and Thalass nowhere was there any place for the Volta.
   Nike Quinto became uneasy and discussed the situation with Ellington, trying to reason out the cause of such a space traffic tie-up. Nobody could come up with anything valid. Speaking from the wardroom, Quinto was still arguing with Ellington when Lofty Patterson came out of his cabin. He listened to Quinto's arguments and waited patiently until the conversation was ended.
   Then he grinned cheerfully at Ron Landry and Larry Randall. "If anybody around here would make the effort to think of the obvious," he chortled, after Quinto had gone back to his chair, "then we'd know already what's going on here." He stared triumphantly at Quinto.
   Nike shouted at him angrily. "And what, in your opinion, is so obvious?"
   "One thing for sure is not to keep arguing with a commander who doesn't know what's happening, either."
   Quinto reddened almost to a glow. "Up your nose!" he snorted scornfully. "You will dispense with such remarks. My heart is pounding already like a... like a...."
   "Piledriver," suggested Ron.
   "Yes, like a piledriver. It'll be your fault if I die from high blood pressure." But he calmed himself suddenly and continued in a normal tone. "Alright, so what's on your mind?"
   Lofty grimaced and showed his gleaming teeth. "I was thinking," he said good-naturedly, "that something very unusual must be wrong down below. So why not pick up some intelligence?"
   "Intelligence! What kind of intelligence ?" Quinto demanded.
   "Haven't you ever heard that there are Intelligence stations on Arkon 2?"
   Quinto looked as if he were going to explode again but he also struggled to control his temper. "Of course! Alright, so what have you picked up, Lofty?"
   "Panic on Arkon 2," Lofty answered calmly. "There's a revolt in the Lyddia System."
   "What's that got to do with spaceports? The Arkonide war fleet is on Arkon 3."
   "The war fleet isn't the issue here. But there are at least 10 million Lyddians on Arkon 2—most of them wealthy merchants. They're afraid of government reprisals against them because after all it's their own people who are making the revolt. So—they're fleeing from Arkon. Almost 1 out of 4 of them owns his own ship. That's about 2½ million spaceships, all of them trying to get out at once, and that's too much for even Arkon 2 to handle."
   "Why doesn't the government block their flight?" asked Quinto irritably.
   "That isn't something an Intelligence station is about to put on the air for anyone to hear—one way or another."
   Nike Quinto merely stared.
   Lofty chuckled. "If you ask me, I think I know why they don't block them."
   "Why?" snapped Quinto.
   "Well, figure it out . . . 10 million wealthy tycoons are bailing out of here. In a panic like that they're not going to be able to take much with them. Most of their assets are more or less sitting in the banks. After the local Lyddians have pulled out it should be fairly easy for the Arkonide Government to brand them as insurgents. After all, it's obvious they're leaving in order to stand by their people on Lyddia, wouldn't you say? But it's legal to confiscate the assets of insurrectionists. 10 million fortunes, each one maybe averaging 1 million Solars, amounts to... Well, how much does it come up to?"
   "10 billion," said Larry obligingly.
   Quinto sprang to his feet. "That's ridiculous speculation!" he shouted. "And it's also beside the point! The question is—where can we find a place to land?"
   For a while no one trusted himself to suggest anything but finally Ron Landry cleared his throat and spoke up. "The only thing left is the free port, sir."
   Nike Quinto stared at him and then mumbled: "Yes, I think you may be right, Landry."
   He called Cmdr. Ellington on the vid-com and instructed him to fly to the free port. Ellington received the order without flickering an eyelash.
   A few minutes later the 3rd Officer announced that the Vittorio was no longer receiving signals from Meech Hannigan.

*

   "Pretty soon they'll be calling me the Roving Administrator," said the tall man with the gray eyes. "I wouldn't be surprised. Today Arkon, tomorrow Terra, the next day—who knows where?"
   His lone listener was a medium-sized man, apparently in his early forties, who wore the rank insignia of a General Major in the Terran spacefleet. The conversation was taking place on Arkon 2. The two men were in a moderately-sized room which had been furnished according to earthly tastes. Its large windows offered a view of verdured grasslands but looming in the background were the conical towers of the permanent Galactic Exposition—or that particular sector at least which was dedicated to luxury items. The Gen. Major was Everett Peterson, Acting Adjutant to the Administrator. The man who had made the more or less self-criticising remark was the Administrator himself—Perry Rhodan, the immortal.
   Peterson remained silent. Rhodan had been speaking in a monologue and no answer was expected. He followed Perry's gaze as the latter looked out the window. Far beyond the funnel-shaped towers a long-range transport ship made a shimmering point of light which descended out of the sky and approached the vast landing field of the free port.
   "You have news from Quinto?" asked the Administrator.
   "Yes, sir. He's coming into the free port. He doesn't know yet that the instructions to land on Arkon 2 were given by you. I've been on the horn with him." Everett Peterson grinned his amusement. "You know our difference in rank isn't enough to keep him harnessed. Besides, Nike Quinto is an important—man and he knows it. He let me know in no uncertain terms that he regarded the order as nonsense. In the first place, he said, the whole thing was purposeless, and in the second place it was delaying him in his search for the robot, Hannigan."
   "Why? Has he traced his location already?"
   "He can't, sir. He hasn't been getting the signals directly but he seems convinced that the Vittorio knows the coordinates."
   Perry Rhodan turned away from the window, also amused. "Yes, I know—he makes himself the prey of his own high tension. Anyway, what do you hear from the Vittorio?"
   "The coded signals are coming in again as they did before. The interruption lasted only 13 minutes."
   "How's our positronics section doing?"
   "All data from the Vittorio are being fed in automatically—intensity, antenna direction, ionization characteristics... everything. Capt. Inquart estimates that the results will be ready in 3 or 4 hours."
   The Administrator laughed. "That's plenty to convince Nike Quinto that he's not suffering any delay just now. But to continue—is there any news from Arkon 1?"
   "The uprising in the Lyddia System is in full swing. The Arkonide garrison there is mostly made up of other races and they've disbanded. The insurgents are practically in control of the central planet."
   Perry shook his head meditatively. "How can they possibly think they'll get away with it? Within 4 or 5 days—6 at the most—the Fleet will have crushed the revolt. What are they after, anyway? What do they want?"
   "Freedom, sir," answered Peterson curtly. "They feel they are being subjugated by the Imperator and they don't like it."
   "But they must know that they won't get what they call freedom by going after it this way..."
   The Gen. Major permitted himself an unmilitary gesture. He shrugged. "The way I see it, sir, they're gambling on the hope that one particular thing will happen."
   Rhodan looked at him sharply" And that would be...?"
   "Uprisings are flaring up throughout the Arkonide Empire. You know the Arkonide mentality, sir, especially that of the Arkonides here in the heart of the Empire. For my money, the insurgents are hoping the time will come one of these days when the Imperator will get tired of issuing orders to put down these revolts. They're counting on his giving up some day and saying to the devil with it... let them do what they want... I've had my fill of it!"
   Rhodan raised his brows in some surprise. "I'll admit there are some grounds for such a conjecture—from outward appearances—but they underestimate the Imperator. Atlan will never yield, and Terra supports him in this stubborn attitude. What we refuse to countenance is the prospect of a collapsed and fragmented Arkonide Imperium."
   "I known sir," nodded Peterson.
   A few seconds later an orderly interrupted to announce that the cruiser Volta had landed at the free port.
   Perry Rhodan grinned. "Now the fun starts for Nike Quinto."

*

   When the Volta landed, Quinto was in the Control Central. With narrowed eyes he observed the bustle and traffic of motley throngs out on the spaceport and clear to the edge of the field. The interstellar regulation that any ships landing, parked, or taking off should have a clearance between them of at least 10 km was certainly not in effect here. The spaceships were standing next to each other like ground cars in a metropolitan parking lot. It was everyone's personal responsibility to get out of critical range of any engine blasts. And it was every skipper's responsibility to find a spot where he could land.
   The free port was a private installation. The consortium that managed it made annual payment to the government of 1½ billion Solars of Arkonide currency. It was the highest tax revenue presently being turned in by any single institution. The next highest source was only a hundredth as large.
   Trade at the free port was carried on in all commodities that the galaxy had to offer, including everything from bizarre and exotic reptile hides to hover gliders from Terran factories, from electronic micro devices to giant space transports, from blue-skinned slaves to the very liberation papers with which the same slaves could regain their freedom. In actuality, however, the port was one big gaming table. It was not always easy to find a buyer because just beyond the port area was the barrier ring of the Customs Service. Whoever acquired something at the port might have to show it to Customs and pay duty on it if it was demanded of them. There were some things that could be brought in tax free, such as the Terran glider cars, for example, while other items were not permitted to cross the borders of the free port under any conditions, such as the slaves as another example. The fact that nevertheless there were more slaves on Arkon than Terran gliders indicated that there were loopholes—natural ones or the kind that were forced open by the rich flood of money.
   At the free port fortunes could be made and lost in a matter of minutes. The place held a magical attraction for merchants and traders throughout the galaxy. Even the representatives of races one would never see anywhere else but on their home planets managed to rendezvous here.
   "Have you ever landed at the free port before?" Quinto asked the commander.
   "No, sir," answered Rex Ellington, "but I've heard some pretty wild stories about it." He picked up the intercom mike and gave an order. "Landing ramp ready for extension."
   The order was confirmed. On one of the viewscreens Quinto saw the gliding ramp emerge from under the bulge ring of the spherical ship and lower gently to the ground. In an instant a throng of variously dressed people clustered about the foot of the ramp. The more aggressive ones sought even to run up the moving belt but Rex Ellington reversed the action and sent them tumbling back.
   "What do they want?" asked Quinto in some bewilderment.
   "They're selling things," Rex grinned. "You'll be amazed at what they have to offer."
   The ship-to-ground telecom screen came to life and Rex received the call. The image of a man in uniform appeared.
   "Port Authority," he said by way of introduction. "You will please remain on board. We will be making an inspection."
   "Inspection!?" snorted Rex angrily. "What for?"
   The officer gestured regretfully. "I'm sorry, sir. New regulations. It has to do mainly with hygiene. In the past 2 months we've had a few cases of an unusually contagious virus."
   "Well alright," grumbled Rex. "But I'll tell you one thing... we'll not wait longer than 10 minutes, Terra time!"
   "Very well—I'll hurry!"
   The connection cut off. A few minutes later an open hover car containing two uniformed figures approached the landing ramp. The driver steered the car to the foot of the ramp with such verve that the crowd waiting there had no other choice but to jump out of his way. One of the men waited in the vehicle and guarded it with a drawn weapon. The other swung onto the ramp belt and glided up to the lock. Meanwhile, Rex Ellington had reversed the motion. An orderly received instructions to meet the man at the airlock and conduct him to the Control Central.
   Shortly thereafter he stood facing Nike Quinto. He was the same one who had spoken to Rex on the telecom. He did not look like an Arkonide and he said that his name was Xen Holla.
   Quinto spoke first. "How is it the Arkonide Port Authority uses a non-Arkonide for an inspector?"
   Xen Holla gestured uncertainly. "Perhaps because there aren't enough Arkonides they can find for the post."
   "Where the devil are your instruments?" asked Rex Ellington. "You going to inspect the ship with your bare hands?"
   Xen now seemed to be very much embarrassed. "Well, you see... it's like this," he said finally. "I want to make you a proposition."
   Ellington was about to blow up at him but Quinto grasped his arm.
   "Alright, then make it!" he demanded of the officer.
   Xen was visibly relieved. "We'll skip the inspection," he said, "if you will accept an unusually favourable proposition from us."
   "And what is that?"
   "Your purchase of 15 tons of Laktronian incense wood for only 10 million Solars."
   Apparently undisturbed, Nike Quinto turned to Ellington. "That's cheap, isn't it?"
   "Oh yes, very!" growled Rex. "When you consider that on the inside, beyond the Customs barrier, a ton of incense wood brings the exorbitant price of 300000 Solars."
   Quinto pretended to be surprised. "How is that? Just a minute now! That's not even half as much as our friend is asking for!"
   "That's the point," said Ellington grimly.
   Xen became anxious, moving his feet nervously while he talked with his hands. "Of course we can make arrangements. It was just a preliminary offer. Prices for aromatic wood have gone up a great deal in recent days. Perhaps your information is...."
   Nike Quinto's hasty hand movement made him be silent. "Now you listen to me, my young friend," he said in low tones. "I'm going to make you a proposition!"
   Xen had turned pale. "Yes...?"
   Quinto continued. "Either you get out of this ship in one minute and don't ever let me see you again, or...." His voice became louder. "I'll box your ears for you and have my men throw you out!"
   Xen Holla put up a howl of indignation. "I am an official of the free port! You can't threaten me like that! I'll register a complaint against you! I'll" He broke off when Nike turned to Rex Ellington.
   "You keeping your eye on the clock?" asked Quinto.
   "Yes, sir."
   "Good—then tell me. Does he still have a chance to get out of here on his own feet in one minute, after talking such nonsense?"
   "No, sir."
   "Alright, then...."
   With this laconic remark, Nike turned back to the foreigner. Moving faster than Xen could follow him, he swung his arms and landed a resounding blow first to his left ear then to his right. Xen jumped back with a howl of pain. When he began to shout again, Nike went after him with new blows to the head until he staggered to the exit hatch. Ellington's men picked him up bodily and in a very short time he was seen on the outboard screens, tumbling down the accelerated ramp, head over heels.
   There was a burst of laughter in the Control Central, Nike Quinto made a gesture with the palms of his hands as if brushing off the dust.
   "Another incident like that and I'll have to be treated for my high blood pressure!" he said.
   The general amusement was not deterred by this remark. Quinto summoned Ron Landry to him. On the way from his cabin, Ron must have heard what happened because he had a grin on his face when he arrived.
   "What are you smirking about, Major?" Nike demanded.
   "Excuse me, sir. I've just heard about your unusual powers of persuasion with wheelers and dealers here."
   "Is that so... well, alright then. You'll soon have a chance to put your own powers to the test." Nike turned and pointed to the viewscreen. "Do you see those people there at the foot of the ramp?" When Ron acknowledged the obvious, he continued. "Pine. I want you and Capt. Randall and Lofty Peterson to be the first ones to leave the ship. See to it that you attract everybody's attention down there. Start bargaining with them over their goods. As far as I'm concerned you can even buy something if you want to but nothing over 200 Solars, do you understand? I'll be slightly behind you and hopefully I can get past them without losing my scalp."
   Ron briefly scanned the situation below. Meanwhile Rex Ellington gave an order to prepare two surface gliders. One of them was immediately launched and set down at the foot of the ramp, from which spot the unfortunate Xen Holla's car had long since departed. Ron left the Control Central to acquaint Larry and Lofty with their new assignment.
   A little while later the 3-man detail was seen gliding down the ramp. Quinto watched with satisfaction as the hordes of waiting tradesmen immediately moved toward them and hemmed them in. He saw Ron Landry waving his arms defensively, and Lofty Peterson had to use his fists against the chest of one of the more aggressive men, striking him so hard that he crashed back against two of his companions and all three were thrown to the ground.
   "The operation's in full gear," Nike grinned. "Commander—my car!"
   A few seconds later a second hover car stood next to the first one. The traders outside paid not the slightest attention to it because they were fully occupied with their three victims. Without an escort, Nike Quinto went out of the ship. Unobserved, he glided down the ramp and after skirting the edges of the yelling and bargaining mob, he got into his vehicle and flew away.

*

   "How is your blood pressure these days, Colonel?"
   It was the first question Nike Quinto heard from Perry Rhodan.
   During the flight from the spaceport, Maj. Gen. Everett Peterson had prepared him for the fact that he was to meet the Administrator. In that connection, Quinto became mindful of the conversation he had had with Peterson prior to the Volta's landing. He was sure that the adjutant was well aware of the opinion he had expressed concerning this interim landing on Arkon 2. And now he had learned that the order had been given by the Administrator himself. So Nike had called the order a nuisance. He didn't feel particularly comfortable just now.
   Nevertheless he responded fairly calmly to the other's good-natured sarcasm. "Thank you for your concern, sir," he answered politely. "A man in my condition is never in good health. But at the moment I can't complain."
   Perry Rhodan winked at him in amusement. Then he became serious and went directly to the core of the situation. "I understand you didn't think it was necessary to come to Arkon," he began—and Nike braced himself for a lacing. But the Administrator continued in another vein. "However, I believe I can dispel your doubts. The Vittorio isn't equipped to make a full trace of the robot's signals. The repeated message keeps coming to the ship in a distorted condition. It's necessary to clear the distortions and amplify it. That's why we're here on Arkon 2, to maintain constant contact with the Vittorio. Our positronics are able to further process the input. In 2 or 3 hours the tracking results will be ready. So you see you couldn't have done anything earlier, anyway."
   Nike Quinto nodded attentively. "May I ask you something, sir?"
   "Yes, of course."
   "Has Meech started coming through again? During the approach to our landing here our connection with the Vittorio was broken...."
   "Yes, the robot is transmitting again. The Vittorio is picking up the same coded signals as before. There is some kind of effect that's influencing the transmission, and it's not just due to the distance involved. That we know. Your robot must be in a situation that doesn't permit him to transmit in a normal fashion."
   When Quinto said nothing to this, the Administrator continued. "Alright, so that's the first leg of the argument. Now here's the second point. For me this thing is important enough that I'd like to take part in your search expedition."
   Nike stared at him in sudden surprise but apparently the Administrator wasn't intending to give an immediate explanation.
   "So I'll take off in the Theodorich, either just before or just after the Volta leaves Arkon, considering the circumstances. You can see why it's been necessary to work out this affair as casually as possible so as to be inconspicuous. I'm ostensibly here on Arkon because the Imperium is in trouble again. I'm playing the role of a galactic watch-dog, you might say. The Arkonide public knows that I am here. Without wishing it on my part I seem to have become an important factor in general Arkonide affairs. If I were to call a staff meeting of my fleet officers here it would attract attention. Then it would be noticed also that shortly after my meeting I departed from Arkon. Having made that observation, they might get the idea that Terra is no longer interested in keeping order in the Imperium. The result of that would be a stock market crash, political hysteria and inner political difficulties for the Imperator."
   "So we can't afford to let that happen. That's why the Volta's landing here was made to look like an incidental visit, a mere interim stop. You were in no apparent hurry. You drifted from port to port until you finally found a landing post. That its commander should first pay a visit to the Administrator shouldn't appear unusual to anyone. Nobody could read anything important into it such as a major action. The Volta will take off again and disappear. Also nothing unusual."
   "We happen to have a tight news blackout on the present location of the Theodorich. So our taking off won't be noticed. As far as public knowledge is concerned the Arkonides will still think that I'm somewhere on Arkon. That way we won't have any worries."
   Nike Quinto had listened to this political exposition only half-interestedly. Of course he could see why they had to be cautious. He could also understand that his interim landing on Arkon 2 had not caused him any delay. If the tracking coordinates were not yet available, what could he have done In the meantime?
   However, the main thing that aroused his excitement was Rhodan's intention of accompanying the flight of the Volta on board the Theodorich. It was not just because the Theodorich was the Administrator's flagship and the mightiest ship of the Solar Fleet. That in itself was interesting enough but it was much more astonishing that the Administrator himself wanted to take part in the search.
   Why? What was so important about the fact that the robot Meech Hannigan in Division 3 of Intercosmic Social Development and Welfare had shown up again after a half-year of silence? Quinto failed to notice that the Administrator was regarding him closely. He had been too deeply immersed in his own thoughts and he only came back to the present situation again when he heard Perry Rhodan's gentle sarcasm.
   "I can see you are racking your brain, Colonel. I won't leave you in the dark any longer. I already told you about the strange effects that are distorting the robot's incoming signals. Our scientists are at a loss to imagine what kind of effect could alter a hypercom message in this manner. This in itself is enough to arouse our interest."
   "But there's something else. Although the Theodorich's computer hasn't yet come up with the exact coordinates of Meech's position, it has approximated the distance involved. Even this rough estimate indicates quite clearly that Hannigan must somehow be in contact with the aliens who appeared on the rim of the Milky Way about a half a year ago. Because no galactic spaceship has ever penetrated the outer abyss that far."
   Quinto could not suppress his uneasiness any longer. "Please, sir—how far?" he asked.
   "240000 light years beyond the edge of our galaxy," was Rhodan's unsmiling answer.

*

   Nike Quinto was still in a daze when he reached. the Volta He stepped on the gleaming ramp and allowed himself to be transported swiftly up to the airlock. Rex Ellington met him and went up with him to the Control Central. On the way, Quinto spoke to him as though in deep thought.
   "Commander, you'd better tank up. We have a long trip ahead of us."
   Rex laughed. "With what we have on board now the Volta could take us as far as 200000 light years. That ought to be enough, don't you think?"
   Nike Quinto shook his head. negatively. "No."
   Rex Ellington almost staggered from his shock of surprise.
   "No!?" he cried out. "Then how far are we....?"
   "240000 light years one way," Nike answered. "That's a round trip of 480000—not counting a ridiculous small hop of 12000 light years to our jumping-off point. Better figure on 500000."
   Rex had come to a standstill. "500000!?" he blurted out.
   "Yes—precisely. It'll be the longest journey any spaceship from our galaxy has ever made."
   "Made?" echoed Rex. "I only wish we already had it behind us!"
   "Well, don't let it get to you. We'll have strong escort protection."
   Rex looked at him questioningly.
   "This may give you a real jolt," said Quinto. "Not everybody gets such preferential treatment. Her Majesty the Theodorich herself is going along."
   With mouth agape and eyes staring, Ellington struggled to digest this revelation. "The... the Theodorich!?" he finally stammered. "My God, what the devil is going on?"
   Nike shrugged. "Now you're asking me more than I know."

*

   When Ron Landry and his companions returned from their diversion assignment the Volta had already been fuelled, and after a long period of reflection Nike Quinto had regained his usual energetic composure. He received Ron in the wardroom.
   "Did you make any expenditures?"
   "Yes, sir, 180 Solars."
   Nike sprang to his feet. "180! Man, have you lost your mind? What did you buy?"
   Ron Landry remained calm. "An apparatus that the former owner didn't know what to do with." Quinto fell back into a chair. "And what are you going to do with it?"
   "Take it apart and inspect it very thoroughly," answered Ron. "It's supposed to have something to do with warping time fields."
   "Baloney!" retorted Quinto. "What ever made you get taken in on a gadget like that?"
   "It was the description the seller gave me of the... uh... 'man' that he got the gadget from."
   "How's that?"
   "The seller was from Agladynn—some kind of little world, way out. He claims that one evening out in the countryside he was met by a strange creature who spoke to him. He said at first he wanted to run away in fright but the thing seemed to be friendly in fact, it appeared to be in need of his help. It asked him for a litre of hydrochloric acid and a bar of zinc. So the man...."
   "Aha! He wanted to make hydrogen," interrupted Quinto.
   "Yes, probably. The man ran back to the town and brought the stranger what he wanted. As a present he received the box that he sold to me. When the Agladynnian saw the creature slug down the acid along with the zinc he figured he'd better vacate the scene. It turned out later that it was a good hunch. A grass fire broke out in the field he was in and spread rapidly all around. It only died out the next morning due to lack of fuel."
   "Ah—and the strange creature had disappeared?"
   "Yes. No trace of him was found, so there was no chance of his having died in the fire. The man from Agladynn was convinced that the fire had been started to trap him, instead."
   Nike Quinto stared past Ron in narrow-eyed deliberation for a while before he suddenly spoke again. "Alright, so now suppose you tell me what this alien being looked liken according to your informer?"
   Ron stretched out his hands as if to estimate the size of an invisible object. "Very unevenly formed," he said. "Something like a cube that somebody had played football with. It was crazy looking and hard to conceive of, the Agladynnian told me."
   There was a moment of silence in the wardroom. After a while, Quinto's collar made a scratching sound as he turned his head to look at Ron again. "Seems to ring a bell, doesn't it?" he said.
   Ron Landry agreed. "According to the description, it couldn't have been anything but a Posbi...."

3/  INTO THE ABYSS

   The Volta took off two hours later. Nike Quinto had been informed that the Theodorich would leave the planet after another 40 minutes.
   Meanwhile the position coordinates had come through from the positronic section. The preliminary estimate had proven to be correct. The point where the robot Meech Hannigan was located lay 240000 light years beyond the edge of the Milky Way. The crews on board both ships were aware that the Theodorich and the Volta were about to undertake the longest voyage that a Terran ship had ever made. More than this, not even the Arkonides could take credit for ever having penetrated so far into the starless gulf between the galaxies.
   Although the occasion merited it, there was no official announcement to this effect. The Administrator was not in favour of regarding the enterprise as something unusual or unique. Nevertheless the men on board the two ships were gripped by a slight sense of uneasiness.
   Far outside the Arkonide system the Volta picked up additional speed but soon its energy consumption was even greater by comparison as it transited into a linear flight mode and soon accelerated further. The stabilized bubble of the Kalup field screened the ship from the forces of semi-space which could otherwise repel all foreign objects. Within this protective envelope the Volta required less than a quarter of an hour to reach a velocity which in the Einstein continuum measured 10 to the 8th power of c, or 100 million times the speed of light. Complex devices called linear perceptors more or less created a "hole" in the wall between semi-space and the Einstein universe for electromagnetic waves and similar radiations so that normal space could be observed directly without relativistic distortions. In this way it wasn't long before the Kalup bubble of the Theodorich hove into view. Rex Ellington compared his course data with the flagship's commander. Finally when the coordinating positronics announced an "on course" confirmation, he allowed himself to relax and left the engines and controls to themselves.
   Meanwhile a new heated discussion had broken out in the wardroom of the Volta. It revolved around the question: what is a time field?
   The officers in Division 3 were scientifically trained men who always kept abreast of latest developments. If Ron Landry should have ever had to leave the service, with his doctor's degree in science it would not be difficult for him to find another position. And of course the same was true for Nike Quinto. As for Larry Randall, although at the time he only had his bachelor's diploma he was on his way to obtaining his doctorate also.
   Nike Quinto claimed that a "time field" was purely nonsense—something
somebody had invented because they liked the sound of it. Ron Landry opposed this view.
   "It all depends on how you approach the problem," he emphasized. "Our science has accustomed itself to a structural concept in which real time has various energy levels. It regards these levels no differently than it did the quantum levels of an atom or nucleus over 150 years ago, more or less."
   "There are discrete energy differentials which can either be overcome by a precisely defined jump or by nothing at all. I have to say this... that so far this model hasn't been very successful. Where real time is concerned our advancements have been minimal. And it may be that we've been proceeding on the basis of a model that doesn't fit the situation. Theoretical atomic physics probably wouldn't be as far along as it is today if 150 years ago Fermi had used a gas-filled balloon as his model instead of taking the nucleonic approach with his exclusion principle. Who knows?"
   A sarcastic gleam appeared in Quinto's eyes. "So I suppose you've come up with a new theory of real time?" he queried in his high-pitched voice.
   Ron shook his head. "By no means. But I think I could work out a new model."
   Nike Quinto snickered maliciously. "Then let's hear it!"
   Ron was not exactly sure of himself and he was uneasy. He had only recently been racking his brains on the subject. He felt that he was pursuing a promising course but the mental concepts behind it were not quite ripe for expression. He secretly chided him. self for having gotten into the discussion with a chief like Nike Quinto. However, now he would have to show his colours or Nike would rib him on it for at least half a year.
   And so, hesitantly, he began: "In a formal sense, consider the distance between two points as a potential. To justify this picture we have to postulate a repelling force which tries to keep an object from moving from one point to the other. For example, friction or the effect of a gravitic field. In other words, the energy that must be exerted to move the object from a point, expressed by the integral over the force times the distance differential. Further, assume a force constant in this case and then you can extract it from the integral, whereby the distance the object moves under the influence of the force becomes a measurement of the potential difference between the two points. Putting it more simply: let's say you take a block of iron and shove it from the hatch door clear across the room to the opposite wall. The total expenditure of your energy will depend upon the route you choose. It will be the least if you send the block straight across but the energy needed will be much greater if you decide to shoot it around the walls that is, by a detour route."
   He paused to look questioningly at Quinto, who nodded, this time with less cynicism in his expression.
   "I can follow you," he admitted.
   "OK. So we've defined a position line that represents the potential difference between the two points. In other words, the potential difference is a function of the distance." He looked first at Larry, then at Nike, and finally he sought to locate Lofty Patterson in the back shadows of the room. "I know this sounds a bit nutty," he said in some vexation, "but you have to find some way to present the picture."
   "You don't have to be so modest," Quinto reassured him. "So far it sounds quite interesting."
   A little of Ron's nervousness subsided. "Now consider two points that are not separated by distance, but by time. Each has its own system of real time. But we don't know the rate of time for either point. Yet just as in the other case we can consider time-distance here as the potential difference. If we want to move an object from one point to another we have to expend energy. The existence of a repulsion force similar to friction has been established. The physicists call it T-impedance. We can also conceive of a force constant that the object is subjected to. Now instead of a line of orientation that is responsible for the potential difference between two spatially separated points, we have time lines. The sum of all conceivable time lines could probably be called a time-line field, or simply a time field. The most direct time line would have the least potential difference.
   "So the gadget. I picked up for 180 Solars is supposed to have the capability of influencing the course of time lines. At first glance that doesn't seem to make much sense. Time lines are something that we've just tried to figure out, according to a structural model that doesn't permit much warpage or bending. But for example the device might be able to have the following effect. It might be able to block certain lines of time flux between two temporally separated points. That is, the energy factors for overcoming the time differential along those lines would be greater. The unknown being who sold the device to the Agladynnian could have meant this when he spoke of a warpage of time lines."
   He leaned back with a sigh. As seen in retrospect, what he had said hadn't sounded too enlightening, in fact it may have seemed to be pretty far-fetched. But somehow he felt that he was on the right track. Now he was prepared for Nike Quinto to frown at him for a while before breaking out with laughter.
   But Nike did nothing of the kind. He sat there for a few minutes in meditative silence. Then he looked up at Ron again. "It all sounds very reasonable. I really think you've found a hopeful line of approach on this. We should have a couple of T-experts do some brain-storming on the idea."
   It was more than Ron had expected. But Quinto continued, and what he said detracted slightly from Ron's triumph at least for the moment.
   "But you've forgotten one thing," he told him.
   "Is that so?"
   "The way you see it the gadget wouldn't be able to block the time flux along specifically chosen lines between two points, whereby the minimal energy factor would be increased. That's according to your theory, isn't it?"
   "Yes," admitted Ron.
   "Well, if it works that way," said Quinto, "it should be able to accomplish the opposite effect. Let's assume that somebody has concealed himself behind a field of warped time lines. Maybe in this case the gadget can 'unwarp' the time lines so that the access to the other side is easier."
   The idea was close to crystallization. They all recognized this as soon as Quinto expressed it. They all had the presentiment that they had stumbled upon something of momentous consequence.

*

   Within a period of 20 hours, both ships conquered the tremendous distance to the point of destination. Meanwhile further tracking scans were undertaken and by the time the Theodorich and the Volta finally came to a stop with relation to the home galaxy it was considered as a certainty that the robot was somewhere within the radius of 1000 km.
   A closer search by the automatic tracers began at once. To locate a man-sized object within a spherical volume that measured 2000 km in diameter was harder than finding a specific drop of water in an ocean. So they had to content themselves with the probability that it might take another 10 hours or so to get results.
   In the meantime the men took time to adjust themselves to their new surroundings. The endless darkness was depressing. As seen in the aft viewscreens the once familiar Milky Way was a broad patch of light that hung motionlessly in the cosmic void. Since it was observed edge on it appeared to be a dimly glowing nebular strip that only occupied half of the field of vision. Within that wisp of light were billions of suns, each of them a giant in terms of mass and radiant power, a gaseous inferno. Around all those suns orbited a 100 billion planets, and of these at least 20 million bore intelligent life. Somewhere in that glowing mass, thousands of billions of intelligent beings at this moment were going about their daily business or were resting. Millions of spaceships were en route among those stars. Wars were being fought or settled and celebrations were in progress, new discoveries were being made and old knowledge was being forgotten. All was in motion. Cultures flourished and died again. Races went and others superseded them.
   And all of that was going on in a nebulous strip of light, out there somewhere across the gulf of darkness. The light being received by the outboard cameras had already been under way when the first human got the idea that a stone axe could be used for certain things instead of his hands. It took considerable reflection to grasp how incredibly distant they were from home. During those first few hours there was not a man on board the Theodorich and the Volta who didn't think about it.
   The heavens around them were devoid of stars. There was only blackness. The light flecks representing their own and other island universes were like so many smudges made by a careless paint brush. Surrounding space was devoid of temperature. Temperature was dependent upon the amount of energy in molecular motion. The cold here was not due to the lack of such motion but due to a lack of the molecules themselves. Perhaps every few km there would be a stray proton and maybe a few electrons here and there, but that was all. Far too little to have any effect on an object or to raise its temperature from Absolute zero.
   This was a complete vacuum. An absolute void. A man couldn't be exposed directly to such an environment for more than a few hours before he would lose his reason.

*

   The hours passed. The auto-scanners swept through each cubic meter inside the target zone, performing their work with meticulous thoroughness. The plastic-metal body of the robot could not escape them, not at this small range. All they needed was time.
   The time was allowed but still without results. The scanners were put to work again. Meanwhile the hypercom receivers were picking up the robot's call signals in full strength, except that they were still distorted by the strange effect concerning which the scientists were remaining silent for the moment. New triangulations on the signals were undertaken and Meech Hannigan's position was determined within 1 km. The scanning equipment was now directed to a much smaller search area.
   But it was all in vain. They failed to pick up anything.
   Meech Hannigan simply wasn't there.
*

   In the semi-darkened chamber with the domed ceiling and concave floor the Grenade was staring at a metal mosaic plate. To the Grenade's delicate sensors the plate was highly activated. From each facet of the mosaic hundreds of thousands of short pulses radiated. They were assembled in the Grenade's brain where they formed a picture.
   It was the picture of two spaceships, one small, one large.
   Hate filled him and for the fraction of a second it clouded the picture. There they were, organic beings, hideous creatures with red fluid flowing in their veins—or green or whiten but in any case a fluid. Somewhere under their skins they each had a repulsive, pulsating thing that always kept the fluid circulating through their bodies. Their reasoning centers were located in a nauseous, gooey mass of white-gray pulp and they saw through orbs of sticky dark slime.
   Rage drove him to touch a series of levers and activate certain processes which would finish them off over there in a matter of seconds. But then he suppressed the compulsion and cancelled the settings. His orders were: you are to remain unobserved under all circumstances.
   So—for the present his station was still unobserved. How could those ghastly idiots out there have any conception of the undiscoverable hiding place where their enemy was to be found? How could their pitiable minds ever conceive of such an idea?
   No. The station would have to remain quiet. The order was more important than any emotion.
   All the Grenade could do to at least partially satisfy his hatred was to enjoy his amusement over the bungling efforts of these organisms as they searched around for something that their stupidity would never enable them to find.

*

   The scientist with the rank of captain entered the small room with the proper amount of respect, in fact perhaps too much so in view of his military salute. At the moment he was wearing his lab smock which made his gesture seem a bit comical.
   But that was the only thing that was incongruous about the situation. The lighting here was low-keyed by a small lamp on the desk. From behind the desk the Administrator looked up when the scientist entered. He responded to the salute with a straight face. There was tension in the air.
   "We have an indication of something, sir," said the man in the white smock.
   "Have a seat, Akkainen. What have you found?"
   Akkainen, a slightly built man with dark hair, sat down on the edge of a chair. "That something out there isn't right, sir," he blurted out.
   Rhodan chuckled drily. "You don't say! Whatever gave you that idea?"
   Akkainen realized that he had started off wrong. "I'm sorry, sir," he apologized. "I mean that we have indications now that we're dealing with a time-distortion field."
   Perry Rhodan's brows came together. "What's that?" he asked quickly.
   "Well, it's... it's.... Sir, I'm not sure," the scientist stammered. "Perhaps... it may be better to describe the experiment we made."
   When the Administrator nodded silently, Akkainen began his report.
   "We wanted to take a measure of the real time structure in the area, so we sent out an auxiliary craft equipped with photometric devices. Our photometer was coupled to a discrete timer which could be triggered from the Theodorich by a hypercom signal. That is, we also sent out a normal light signal simultaneously, but the latter beam was subject to a natural time lag whereas the hyper signal was not. So observers on the small ship could read the time-lapse on the photometer timer—that is, how much time the normal beam took to cross the intervening distance. Incidentally our light signal was actually a laser with a flash duration of 8 nanoseconds. We sent our test boat out about 1000 km and had it cruise back and forth in a pattern that would cover test points in 100 km circles. In the opinion of the tracing crew the robot Meech Hannigan can't be more than 300 km from us, so he had to be somewhere between our test position and the Theodorich."
   "The majority of our measurements were perfectly normal. The laser flashes required 3.3 milliseconds to cover the distance. Our total readings were within 90% of this standard. That is, to that extent the light travelled normally and found no obstacle between the test craft and the main ship."
   Akkainen looked up at the Administrator to see if he was following him but before he could even register an impression Rhodan's next question came like a shot from a gun.
   "What about the other 10%?"
   "No input, sir," answered Akkainen quickly.
   "None?"
   "So far, none, sir. We even sent the test ship back over the spots where we weren't getting anything, and nothing happened. There is the possibility that we could still receive the output signal if we stayed there long enough. There's some kind of delay involved."
   "Aha. And that's what you're refer ring to as a time-distortion field?"    "Yes, sir. As you know, the time distance between two points in the Einstein universe is the linear distance divided by the speed of light. But that standard has been altered here. What seems to be happening is that somebody has changed the 'time distance'."
The time lines representing the shortest time channel have been bent. That's what I consider to be a time distortion field."
   Rhodan nodded thoughtfully. "It seems that you knew what you were going after before you started," he said. "What gave you the idea in the first place?"
   "The suggestion came from Major Landry, sir."
   "Send Landry to me." Rhodan replied. "And thanks for your report, Captain. It could well be that this is the break we've been looking for."

*

   The test ship had been manned by men from the Volta. And since the experiment was important, Nike Quinto had insisted that Larry Randall should pilot the craft while Lofty Patterson kept an eye on the photometric instruments. This was not so much due to the fact they were looking for some mysterious hidden area but because one of his own men had developed the theory they were going on, and thus the arrangement was only logical.
   Everything had gone according to plan—at least in the beginning. As was also to be expected, Lofty kept up a grumbling complaint about it. He was by no means in agreement with a situation where he was sent out into space to be stuck in a lab chair between a bunch of indicators while other people got to sit in nice soft seats while orderlies brought them refreshments.
   In spite of his scolding, however, Lofty was fully alert to what was going on. Each time the timer was triggered by the Theodorich, a small buzzing signal was heard. All he had to do then was turn to one side and check the digital readout on a rear-lighted indicator, which told him the microseconds that had transpired between start and reception of the laser flash. Of course he was never aware of the timer actually functioning because microsecond intervals were too brief to be registered in human consciousness.
   A moment finally came when he turned in habitual response to the buzzer and saw that the digital indicator was dark—no readout. This meant that the timer was still running. It also meant that the light signal that should have been received by now was still on its way.
   At first Lofty tried to figure out all sorts of reasons for this variation, including a false adjustment. He called the Theodorich and asked if the signal might not have simply bypassed him because the test craft was in the wrong position. The laser beam only had a spread of fractions of a second of arc. At 1000 km its width shouldn't be more than 10 meters at most. The way Lofty saw it, it was highly possible that his own vessel was more than la meters off target, and that's why the expected signal had missed him.
   However they told him that an error in alignment was unthinkable. Within mere centimetres the test craft was exactly where it was supposed to be. If the photometer didn't respond, this could only mean one thing: the signal had not yet arrived.
   The small vessel moved farther on. In the course of several hours, many measurements were taken throughout the test area that the scientists had designated. There were 30 positions where the light signal failed to be received. Under instructions from the tech staff the flier finally returned to one of the places where the experiment had been negative, and there it began a period of waiting. Ron Landry contacted the two men on board and explained their situation to them.
   "It can be hours yet before the signal comes thru," he emphasized. "So please don't lose your patience. Just stay in one place. Naturally we'll bring you whatever you need in the meantime."
   Then the long vigil began. Ron was right. Hours passed without anything happening. The mood on board the test ship changed subtly to one of brooding uneasiness. The two men were primarily aware of the complete darkness and the terrible emptiness outside. Due to the absence of light the two ships 1000 km away were only to be seen on the scanner screen as two ghostly green blips. They had a feeling that beyond the not overly thick plastic-metal walls of their small craft a kind of hell was lurking that no one could comprehend. The more the time went by without event, the more the impression grew that the void outside was not content to be merely empty and silent. It wanted to reach for them, to find a way of penetrating the ship and devouring anything inside that was alive.
   They were afraid but they didn't want to admit it. They were members of Division 3 and though it wasn't according to human nature their thorough training had given them nerves of steel, or perhaps no nerves at all.
   Yet they experienced fear.
   Then there was also the thought that in the end all their efforts would prove to be in vain. Perhaps the test ship was properly aligned in its position but the laser beam could have been falsely adjusted. Maybe their photo-receiver wasn't working or something else had gone wrong—and they could be waiting here for all of Eternity for a light signal that had long since shot past them into the endless night.
   Weariness overcame Lofty first and relieved him of his worries, at least for a while. He was the oldest of the two. Larry voluntarily passed up his rest break which he also needed. He took a tablet that drove the sleep from his eyes and took over Lofty's place behind the indicators.
   Lofty slept 5 hours. He was tired enough to have slept longer but he was worried about Larry. That got him up. When Larry finally laid down to rest, they had been 20 hours at this position and the signal had not arrived. Lofty started to calculate. If the signal really existed then by now it would have travelled almost 22 billion km by some twisted detour. And that was within a real time sector of space whose maximum distance was only 1000 km.
   Lofty's watch period also came to an end and Larry took his place again. Lofty slept 6 hours and awoke a second time. The signal still hadn't come thru. What arrived instead was a 2-man shuttle from the Volta bringing them fresh provisions and supplies. Before Lofty was relieved for the third time he prepared a feast of almost feudal magnificence under the circumstances, and he and Larry devoured it avidly. Strangely, the fears that had haunted them disappeared under the influence of full stomachs.
    When 60 hours or 2½ days had passed the Theodorich advised that the maximum vigil would be limited to 100 hours. After that time the Administrator would either order an abort of the mission or he would have the two men relieved at their observation point.
   "Still 40 hours," sighed Lofty. "Almost 2 days. That's some consolation!"

   70 hours went by. The experience had taught the two that the best remedy for nerves was a square meal. By now they had accustomed themselves to their environment.
   At the end of 77 hours, Lofty once more relieved his weary companion. He drank the coffee that Larry had fixed for him, ate an improvised hot dog, and finally smoked a cigarette. All the while he kept a weather eye on the photometer and the timer readout device.
   After that he merely hunched in the uncomfortable chair in front of the console and passed away the time by doodling on a scratch pad. Having fallen into daydreaming he did not remember how much time he had been doing this when he suddenly heard a buzzing sound.
   He jerked his head up and saw the numbers coming up on the digital readout. The final figure read: 288123, meaning seconds of elapsed time.
   Lofty made a lightning calculation. After just about 80 hours the light signal had finally arrived.

4/  BEYOND TIME'S DOOR

   Nike Quinto spoke in his most characteristic tone of voice but gave no one the least impression that the theory he was talking about was his own idea.
   "There before us," he declared, "right in front of our noses, is a spot that we can only reach by making a detour. One of our light signals took 80 hours to snake around it by some ungodly backdoor route. If we measured the straight distance in terms of the Einstein universe we'd say that it should have only taken, at the most, a number of microseconds—maybe even a matter of milliseconds. But the fact of the matter is that, if we don't leave the Einstein universe, it will take us 80 hours to reach the last position of the test ship—that is, if we take the same route that the light signal did.
   "This distortion field, as they've called it on the Theodorich, didn't come into existence all by itself. It's been generated synthetically and it's hiding something. The linear time lines lead around it, which is a detour of 80 hours. To cover this distance in time, which would seem to an impartial person a stretch of a second or two, we would have to travel 80 hours into the future minus those few seconds, or fractions thereof. So on the same basis we can say that the unknown entities out there in front of us have hidden themselves that far into the future."
   He looked around and realized that his common-language, popular-science explanation had been wasted. Ron, Larry and Lofty sat there staring at the floor, lost in thought, as if they hadn't been listening. The only unprepared listener was Rex Ellington. He stared at Nike Quinto with his mouth agape, and it was clear that he hadn't understood a word.
   Nike became impatient. He cleared his throat. "And the point of all this is the following," he said. "Somebody is going to make a trip into that future. The Administrator himself has given the order."

*

   It was an uncomfortable feeling to be floating weightlessly on a square sheet of metal plastic in the middle of nothing. Especially when the metal platform measured less than 6 feet on a side and you had to keep your feet in stirrup-like wire straps to keep from drifting off.
   Much worse was the fact that a spherical ship measuring almost 1000 feet in diameter could disappear into the darkness in a matter of seconds although the platform was only moving at a ridiculously slow rate of speed. The Volta couldn't be more than 1 km distant by now but Ron could not see it anymore, even though it should have been looming over them like a mountain. The ship had vanished in the absolute blackness of the breath-taking abyss. Nothing at all of the Theodorich had been visible from the start.
   Ron finally bent his knees and managed to sit down with a minimal inertial jolt on the surface of the metallic slab. Next to him the little device was firmly lashed in place—his "180—Solar gadget," as Nike Quinto had dubbed it. He turned his head carefully so as not to generate any undesired kinetic moments of force. Looking thus to his left he could just make out the pressure-inflated legs of Lofty's spacesuit. Lofty was still standing up and trying to look for the two vanished ships.
   "Unbelievable!" he muttered, and then he also sat down.
   There was a note of uneasiness in his voice. Ron tried to see him through his faceplate but even at this close range there wasn't enough light to make out his features.
   "We have time to get used to it," he answered. "We don't start anything for two more hours."
   "Well, that's what gripes me doing nothing."
   "I know—but Nike says we have to give ourselves time. We can't do much if we're still shaking in our boots."
   "Pah—who's shaking!?" retorted Lofty scornfully. "This isn't much different than sitting in a dark room with your eyes closed."
   Ron laughed. "It's something like that."
   Time dragged with a painful slowness. The platform was moving at a rate of about 50 ft per second but their motion was imperceptible because there was no point of reference by which to judge.
   After a while, Lofty spoke again. "I wish I understood a little more about the theory we're going on. Then maybe I could get a better idea about our chances."
   "I can try to make it a little clearer for you," offered Ron. "If you pick out any piece of Einstein space to examine you'll find that between any two arbitrary points there are straight lines—linear time lines. You can't see them, naturally, but you can assume they are there by their course. And, well... they're straight enough if you disregard the general curvature of the universe. The smallest imaginable time difference between the two points is the time it would take a light beam to travel from one to the other. Right?"
   "I guess so."
   "Alright, then. Now suppose somebody comes along and does some fooling around with the time lines. He bends them. Any line between the two points is now no longer straight but curved and therefore it's longer than before. So the minimum time difference between them is also greater. But go back to normally straight lines for a moment. Think of a third point between the first two. Wait a minute—let's give names to these points. Let's say where you're sitting is point A. The far point we mentioned is B. The new point between the two we'll call C.
   "So now you start out from A toward B. The linear time line isn't bent yet. While en route you decide you'd rather go to point C instead of to B. Quite simple. The distance to C isn't as great as it is to B. C is located right on your course. As soon as you get to C you come to a stop."
   When he caught a glimpse of Lofty's silhouette nodding, he continued. "Now somebody comes along and bends your time line. He makes the time difference between A and B much larger by bending the line way out. Let's say you start out again from A toward B but when you decide to go to C you can't do it anymore. Because in the meantime the time line between A and B has been bent C is no longer on your course."
   "That wouldn't be much of a problem," declared Lofty. "I could get off of the lousy line, couldn't I? I could choose a 4th point, say D for instance, and from there I could go to C."
   "Good thinking!" said Ron. "But what happens if our unknown dabbler has bent all the time lines around point C?"
   "Well then I'd... I'd..." stammered Lofty. "Then I guess C couldn't be reached."
   "Right! And that's exactly what seems to have happened here. Somewhere ahead of us is a point that can't be reached by way of 4th-dimensional time lines. All lines lead around it. The laser experiment has proved it. The effect that causes the lines to bend is called a distortion—field a pretty descriptive name, don't you think? So the gadget we've brought along with us is supposed to correct the distortion in order to make our time course straight again and enable us to get to point C."
   Ron could just make out the deeper shadow of Lofty's hand as he placed it on the mysterious box beside him.
   "Do you think this thing can really deliver what it's supposed to?" he asked dubiously.
   "That's what they claim. Our boys in the lab have taken it apart and examined it. Since they knew what to look for it didn't take them long to find it. That box generates a second distortion field. If we aim it so that it straightens out the first effect, it will remove the barrier wall."
   "Hum-m-m...." It was Lofty's only response, after which he remained silent.
   Ron checked his watch with a penlight. Nike Quinto had advised him to wait 2 hours before he went to work. He had also taken other precautionary measures. This metal platform was one of them. The enemy—if there was any—had to be prevented from tracing any energy outputs from such complex equipment as the generators of an auxiliary craft or even from an Arkonide transport suit. Ron and Lofty were wearing standard spacesuits. The energy they used was generated from small radiation sources. In addition, their helmet radios were set to the minimum range. Of course this didn't mean too much in a vacuum where resistance to electromagnetic emissions was at the absolute minimum but in the background the two mighty spaceships' transmitters and other emissions were blanketing anything that the small helmet radios could produce.
   For the time being this was all they could do. It wasn't much and everybody knew it. Nike Quinto had made no secret of the fact that he was sending two of his men on what was practically a suicide mission. The enemy wouldn't be kindly disposed to anyone who tried to force an entrance into his hiding place.
   Still 8 minutes to go, thought Ron.

*

   The Grenade couldn't rid himself of his mental vision.
   Ugly, loathsome, nauseating organic creatures.
   There must be an unbelievable number of them over there. They packed themselves on board their ships like worms in a chunk of putrid flesh. Worms—that was the right comparison. Yet for the Grenade it wasn't exactly a comparison. The word was synonymous. Worms and maggots were organic. The creatures over there were organic.
   The small trace of intelligence among them didn't make a very big difference.
   The Grenade liked to imagine himself slicing that bigger ship out there in half so that the nauseous organic maggot things would start pouring out by the thousands and tens of thousands. And then when he had them in front of him he would destroy them. He would do it with a series of shots, each of which would be an unleashed inferno.
   His compulsion to do this grew strong again. And once more he had to force himself to obey orders. The standing order was that he should remain undetected. No one must suspect that he was here.
   So the Grenade convinced himself of his duty once more. But his great revulsion made it difficult for him to remember. Memory of the command and his revulsion came from two different sources, and each impulse was as strong as the other. But finally the memory of his order prevailed. The Grenade was a responsible unit.
   It was an irony of fate that in the very moment when he overcame his revulsion the warning system went into action.
   The Grenade could see in his mosaic disc that something was wrong with the time field. The field generators were functioning perfectly, however, so this meant that somebody from the outside was manipulating it.
   Somebody had found the hidden place.
   Therefore, the standing order was no longer applicable!

*

   For a second time, Meech noticed that something unusual was going on around him. He was registering strange radiations that emanated from a point behind him. "Behind" him meant in the direction of the largest patch of light, which would have been his own galaxy if he had been in the right continuum. Naturally, the surrounding void was empty. There was no way of making a direct observation. All he was picking up were confused and unintelligible impulses.
   He knew, however, that the strange giant space fort or ship in which he had made an impressive "visiting performance" an earthly day or so ago was in front of him. So what could this new observation mean? Those weird creatures—poles, cones, towers, discs and beakers—could they have left their ship? Were they out here somewhere moving around? Or in the meantime had the entire structure changed its position to a point in the opposite direction?
   There was no way of determining this. He would have to wait and gather further data. Of course the thought came to him that his incessant signals might have been intercepted by some Terran spaceship and that the call had been followed up. After all he was a robot and his logic system weighed every possibility. But his logic circuits gave this last idea such a small possibility that all he did was register it in his memory bank. As for registering it in his consciousness, however, he dismissed it for the present.

*

   He waited just a while longer.
   The 2 hours were up.
   Meanwhile Ron had adjusted himself to the emptiness and the absence of light. But his uneasiness regarding the absolute uncertainty that lay before him had increased continuously, so basically he felt more miserable than in the beginning. For the first time in his career he was frustrated by not being able to simply go back to Nike Quinto and tell him that he was through with all this, that it wasn't his cup of tea.
   You're afraid, he told himself—actually afraid.
   Lofty was kneeling on the leading edge of the platform with his boots almost out of the wire stirrups. He had released the little generator box from its fastenings and taken it with him. The device was oblong with a square base that measured 6 inches by 6 inches and was 12 inches high. Lofty had opened a cover, disclosing a little control panel with dials and switches. The tech team on board the Volta had installed a little lamp that illuminated the panel. Under each control was a little metal strip with stamped in letters. They, too, were new. When Ron had bought the device from the Agladynnian on Arkon, it had not been equipped with any decals.
   "Want to begin?" asked Lofty.
   Ron noted that his voice was quite normal. He seemed to be unafraid.
   "Yes, I'm ready. The two hours are up." Watch—it he told himself. It was the 5th time he had said this in the last two minutes, at least to himself.
   Lofty moved his hand. Ron slid over to him.
   "Now this control," he said hastily, and he pointed with a thick glove finger to one of the larger dials.
   Lofty turned it slowly to its limit.
   "Now the generator is building up the distortion field," said Ron. Lofty already knew that and Ron realized that he had only said it to calm his nerves. "Now wait 3 minutes until the field is steady, and then change the direction."
   Lofty's answering nod was a shadowy movement in the darkness. Ron kept a light on his watch so that he could check the time. The three minutes slipped by swiftly.
   "Alright—start in!"
   Lofty started to turn other knobs. Many of them were so small that he had trouble grasping them with his cumbersome space mitt. But he did his work well. He moved his fingers as slowly as possible, changing the direction of the distortion field so gradually that they could not fail to observe the moment in which it would start to affect the large hostile field they were looking for.
   Ron stared to intensely into the darkness that his eyes smarted. He placed a hand on Lofty's arm, signalling him to hold up for a moment. It was unbearable to stare like this into emptiness without the slightest reference point for orienting one's vision.
   When his hand slid away, Lofty turned the direction knob further, millimetre by millimetre. Spots of colour danced before Ron's eyes. It was useless and painful. Maybe the enemy would appear at a distance of 500 km and he might be staring at a spot just 2 meters off. In the fraction of a second when Lofty turned the knob through the critical area he wouldn't be able to see a thing.
   He was about to signal Lofty to stop again—but then it happened.
   It emerged from the depths of dark ness like a phantom shape. At first it was a dim, ghostly glow which Ron attributed to his eye strain but in fractions of a second the apparition took form. A mighty hexahedron loomed before the platform, towering far above and extending far below, with lateral dimensions which seemed endless.
   "Stop! We see it!"
   This was the prearranged signal from the Theodorich. It had been feared that owing to the lack of light the two men wouldn't be able to see their target—even when it emerged from its hiding place. Therefore both vessels had been sweeping every possible angle of the suspected area with radar, and in this moment the first echoes had come back. Over an as yet undetermined area the little generator had counteracted the enemy's distortion field.
   Ron estimated the distance. They must have been about 100 to 300 meters from the wall surface that was closest to them. It couldn't be farther than that in any case because it simply wouldn't have been visible in this darkness.
   Ron felt a chill run down his spine. Once before he had seen a surrealistic shape like this. The wall dropped at an angle into the depths below and rose above them like a rocky escarpment. It was far from being smooth and even. Here and there towering protuberances rose up like stalagmites in a cavern. Blank metal domes bulged out from flat surfaces and spiral coils extended out motionlessly into space—probably antennas. Grooves and channels ran between the domes towers and spirals and ended in circular basins, negative counterparts of the domes. The two men on the platform seemed to be looking at an entire landscape. An alien landscape that was as depressing as a schizophrenic's dream.
   Ron craned his neck to try to see the upper edge of the wall but it was too far away for the feeble reflections of the distant stellar nebulas to make an impression on his vision. It was the same when he looked below. The wall simply sank into darkness to a point where it was invisible. Nor could the extremities be seen but Ron was sure that all its corners and edges bent around somewhere to meet each other. The whole giant structure had the same kind of geometric form as the fragmented alien spaceship he had seen a half a year ago.
   Lofty was still sitting on the edge of the platform. Ron could see his helmet moving as he looked up and down and back and forth over the artificial landscape. He could hear his heavy breathing.
   Then he sensed that the perspective was changing. So far he hadn't been sure whether the wall was really above or below him, in front of him or behind him. In a condition of weightlessness there was no such a concept. But now it became clearer to him that the wall was "downward" from him. He understood immediately. The thing, of which the wall was only a part, had such a tremendous mass that it generated a gravitic field. It wasn't especially strong but it was enough to establish the difference now between "up" and "down."
   "We'll have to slow down, Lofty," Ron muttered. "Our speed is increasing. We'll crash against that thing."
   "I've been hitting the brakes all the time," Lofty answered.
   Ron found it necessary to shake off the terrifying impression of the wall and bring his thoughts under control again. Lofty was fussing with the controls of the two little jets attached to the under side of the platform and he finally brought their unusual craft to a standstill.
   The Theodorich called a second time. "X minus 10 minutes," came some body's announcement.
   Ron sighed with relief. Just another 10 minutes out of here and then they could start the return flight. He'd be happy and satisfied to be back again in the cargo lock of the Volta.
   10 minutes to go—even though this thing spawned from Hell radiated an aura of doom in its deadly silence. In actuality it simply hovered there and didn't move.

*

   But the Grenade moved, and a series of switches was activated.

*

   A dozen green bursts of fire flashed on the big tracking screen of the Theodorich. Somebody yelled a warning but nobody heard him. 3.3 milliseconds is an extremely short space of time.
   The warning shout and everything that followed was drowned in a chaos of sound that could have matched the trumpets of Jericho. Something struck the mighty ship and made it reverberate like a giant bell. The Theodorich recoiled from it as if it were a ball hit by a bat. For the fraction of a second a murderous inertial shock ran through the cabins and corridors. The absorbers couldn't handle the jolt so quickly. After the first hit half of the crew was unconscious or wounded, or both.
   Nobody knew what was happening except that the ship was being shaken by a tremendous bombardment. All hands knew that the defense screens wouldn't be able to withstand for long what was coming at them from outside. Also the screens were transmitting the mechanical effects of the trummeling on into the hull and the interior of the Theodorich was an inferno of screeching, howling and rattling thunder. Machinery tore loose from the decks and crashed against metal bulkheads with a deafening roar. One of the hits paralysed the air-conditioning system and the ship began to slowly accumulate unbreathable gases.
   Only two men were left at their posts in the Control Central. All the rest were not even able to lift an arm. Through the bedlam and shrieking the two men finally heard the. voice of the Administrator. Thus alerted, they made out his face on the intercom screen. His eyes were narrow slits and his jaws were clamped so tightly together that the skin was stretched tightly over his cheekbones. His mouth didn't seem to move but for a second time he bellowed out a command that for a moment rose above the thunder of the bombardment.
"Take off—now!"
*

   The Volta was smaller than her mighty companion, the Theodorich. But the information channels were correspondingly much shorter and thus communications required less time. Moreover, Nike Quinto was a man who occasionally could act without apparent scruples.
   When the first blow struck the ship he was lifted out of his upholstered chair and was catapulted feet first against the nearest wall. He remained conscious but he had sprained something or other and his legs wouldn't support him. He called out to Larry Randall who was in the room with him at the time but even if Larry had been able to hear him above the thunderous noise he wouldn't have been able to answer. The jolt had thrown him head first against the edge of the main table in the wardroom and now he lay on the deck, no longer aware of the confusion around him.
   Nike crawled to the wall where the intercom was located. He clenched his teeth and forced himself to think that nothing was wrong with his legs. Using his muscles, which were actually functional, he raised himself up and grasped the apparatus on the wall. Supporting himself with his left hand he lifted the microphone and gave Rex Ellington the order to leave at once.
   He didn't have to know what had gone wrong outside. The continuous pounding that shook the Volta clear to its frame was warning enough.
   "Get out of here!" yelled Nike a second time.
   And Rex Ellington heard him in spite of the racket.
   Since the Theodorich was more heavily armed than the Volta, Quinto was counting on the battleship to support the defense. It was the only reason he had sounded a retreat so quickly. Otherwise he might have had some second thoughts about the situation.
    At any rate the Volta departed from the scene a half minute ahead of the Theodorich.

*

   The gates of Hell seemed to open.
   Ron's first warning of it was a painfully bright bolt of white lightning that shot from one of the domes in the wall below him. A tremor ran through his wire stirrups and suddenly they jerked him with them.
   He turned from the wall and opened his eyes, which was almost worse. Above him in the blackness of the void he could see sun-bright flashes shooting away—and while he looked, with coloured spots before his eyes, two more went by, and two more, and two more, until space was filled with the painful glow of flame.
   The side effects of the close bombardment were causing the platform to rock and toss as in a tempest. Ron turned on his stomach and hung on, with his boots in the straps on one side and his hands gripping the deck stirrups at the other end. The only thing he could think of was to keep from being thrown from the spacecraft.
   He had closed his eyes again but even through the lids he was aware of the dazzling brilliance of the flashes. After he had gotten a firm hold his thoughts began to organize themselves once more. The platform itself wasn't in danger but between the thing with the surrealistic landscape and the two ships there was apparently a gun battle going on. The lightning he had seen coming from one of the domes had been a raybeam shot. What was happening to the Theodorich and the Volta? Were they putting up any resistance to the enemy? Were they preparing to attack?
   He turned on his side and carefully opened his eyes. Close before him, seemingly within touching distance, was a small section of the wall with its numerous defense turrets and domes. In the interim the spacecraft had approached it by at least another 100 meters. The horizon had narrowed down. Far to his left Ron saw a second hellish flare from one of the domes. He jerked his head around and almost at the same time noted a burst of light behind him in the darkness.
   He observed the wall beneath him. It still looked the same as before. The heavy guns of both ships had been unable to land a hit or do any damage. Ron knew what that meant. The Theodorich and the Volta were no match for the alien Colossus. It must have a defense screen around it that was impenetrable to the weapons of the Terran spaceships. In which case, what was the only thing left that the two vessels could do? They couldn't just hover there in empty space like clay pigeons until their screens collapsed under an enemy bombardment just because two of their men were out here somewhere on a miserable plastic metal slab with two hastily mounted jets underneath to push them through the darkness.
   The realization ran through Ron like a shock. Logically considered and after looking at all arguments, the Theodorich and the Volta could not do otherwise. They had to retreat if they didn't want to be destroyed.
   So the two of them were on their own. There was only one route to take—forward!
   Ron turned to look at the surrealistic landscape beneath the raft and saw that it was coming closer. For a third time he saw one of the domes outlined in a brilliant glare, after which it faded back into darkness in a fraction of a second.
   A thought came to him. The enemy was fully occupied with the battle. He would have no time to bother about a small spacecraft carrying two men toward the Goliath from one of the two ships. He wouldn't even notice it if the platform landed on one of its outer walls. No attention would be paid to the immediate surroundings here until the two Terran vessels had pulled away.
   Now was the time for action. They were in a blind angle from possible observation points at the moment. If they managed to land on the outer hull and find their way into the alien fortress ship, they'd be a step ahead.
   Suddenly Ron was galvanized into action. The raft was only rocking slightly now. He ventured to let go of the wire straps and sit up. "Let's go, Lofty!" he cried out. "We have to get down there!"
   When he turned to look at his companion it was the first time he noticed that Lofty was gone.

*

   At 100 light hours from the scene of the battle the two Terran ships re-established contact with each other. Reports were exchanged. On both vessels an astonishing number of observations had been made with regard to the effectiveness of the enemy weapons. Most of such observations of course had been made by automatic recording devices because everything had happened too swiftly for the human eye.
   The Volta had come away relatively unscathed. Two machine assemblies had been ripped from their floor bolts and knocked to pieces against the bulk heads. These would have to be rebuilt from spare parts and set up again, which would amount to several hours, work. Such labour, however, could be delayed if necessary because the damaged equipment was unrelated to life-support systems.
   The half minute longer that the Theodorich had remained in the battle zone had come within a hair's-breadth of being fatal. At least such were the reports the Volta received within minutes of recontact. According to the incoming data the inside of the Theodorich evidently looked like a junk shop that had been hit by an earthquake. Within 30 minutes the flagship had its first damage report and general status survey, which revealed that the situation was not as bad as at first surmised. The transmission of percussion shocks from the outer screens to the interior of the ship had knocked out ¾ths of the crew and half of the machinery. However, both the medicos and the tech crews were optimistic. By far the majority of injured men could be put back on their feet again within a few hours. Of the incapacitated equipment and machinery, not too many items were absolutely vital in an emergency. To put these back in order was also going to be a matter of only a few hours. According to this at least, the Theodorich was manoeuvrable enough to be able to return to the scene of events and make further observations. Of course after the mission was over with a complete overhaul in the home-base shipyards would be mandatory.
   Nike Quinto had the honour of speaking over hypercom with the Administrator himself. But in this particular case he would have preferred doing without the honour, because the Administrator instructed him to take the Volta back immediately to the area it had left. He also made it clear that he'd be on his own for the next 5 or 6 hours because the Theodorich wouldn't be able to take part in the action for that length of time. Rhodan expressed his deep concern for the two men who they had been forced to abandon under the enemy's guns. He commissioned Quinto to look around for them and to give them help if they needed any.
   Quinto cussed inwardly although he dared say nothing aloud. How could he explain to the Administrator that if he knew Ron Landry the way he did the man would have to be either out of danger by now—or dead? How could he get across to him that under these circumstances any thrust now by the Volta would be a uselessly perilous undertaking? The odds were 1000 to 1 that the enemy guns would start spitting death as soon as the Volta came within range again—and meanwhile it had become obvious to everybody that there was no defense against such weapons.
   Before Rhodan finished speaking, Nike stiffly acknowledged the order with a salute. Then he turned around and shouted to Rex Ellington, telling him to get his ship moving again.
   "Move it!?" Rex shouted back irritably. "Where to?"
   "Back where we came from—where else?"

*

   For a ghastly moment Ron was motionless, gripped by horror.
   Lofty was gone! He must have lost his grip while the platform was caught in the magnetic storm caused by the bombardment. Now he was out here somewhere in the darkness and would be falling slowly toward the fortress-sized ship below.
   He knew he had to search for him.
   But then he rejected the idea. How was he supposed to search for him? This tin slab he was on was restricted to very limited handling. It wasn't designed for sailing around in space and making fancy manoeuvres.
   There was only one thing left. Against Quinto's strictest orders he increased the power of his helmet transmitter. Then he began to call out Lofty's name. Under the excitement of Lofty's disappearance he had become a bit careless. He had hardly begun calling before a dome beneath him flashed briefly and the platform was shaken as tho by an angry fist. Ron was hanging with only his feet in the wire stirrups. The only thing that saved him from being thrown off was his instinctive lunge forward to grasp the other straps.
   He waited, until his primitive craft quieted down, and then he started calling Lofty again. He did so without much hope. Lofty had probably landed on the strange hull of the enemy warship by now. The mass of the flying fortress was presumably not great enough to cause a human body to be smashed against it on impact but it would be easy for a mishap to damage a spacesuit—and that was even worse than being crushed by a fall. By human standards, Lofty couldn't—
   The thought broke off when he heard a sound. It sounded like a moan. He thought at first his ears were deceiving him but while he listened breathlessly he heard the moaning a second time. This time it was plainer. It must be Lofty. He was drifting around somewhere close by and was suffering in pain. Maybe he was even unconscious.
   "Lofty!" yelled Ron. "Where are you?"
   For answer he heard more moaning sounds. Ron bent over the edge of the platform and looked down toward the uneven wall of the alien ship. For a moment he was aware of being only about 100 meters away from. it and that he'd soon have to do something in order to make an advantageous landing. But for the moment he didn't have time to think about that. Lofty was more important. Maybe he was lying down there somewhere.
   "Lofty! Come in if you hear me!"
   It was useless. An object as small as a human being couldn't be discerned at this distance. The darkness was too complete. The enemy guns were firing only at long intervals now and usually at distant points along the fortress wall. The brief illumination from the various domes and turrets didn't reach the space underneath the platform.
   Ron was about to call again when he heard a weak, broken voice in his earphones.
   "Here... Ron! I'm coming. Got to...help me!"
   Ron looked around, "How can I help you when I don't know where you are?" he responded.
   Lofty gasped aloud. "Here—real close! I—"
   Ron looked around him a second time. Something was moving at one edge of the platform. When he leaned closer he could hardly believe his eyes. What slowly came over the edge and groped for a hold was the glove of a spacesuit, unwieldy yet flexible enough. Following the inflated glove came an equally inflated arm, and finally when Ron saw a shoulder emerge he grasped the hand and pulled the entire man up onto the platform.
   Lofty remained lying flat on the deck. Ron carefully slipped his companion's feet into the wire stirrups. Although the shooting had largely subsided, at any moment the raft could be jolted again. But suddenly the tension and uneasiness that had gripped Ron seemed to leave him temporarily. The humour of the situation struck him and he began to laugh.
   "And all this time you were on the under side of the platform?"
   "Y—yes...." Lofty muttered with an effort. He seemed to be in pain. "At the first jolt I was thrown loose from the straps. I flung around to grab something and the first thing I knew I was hanging onto one of the jet pods on the underside. The platform was still bucking around and I had to get a better grip. There weren't any tie-down straps but you know each jet pod is fastened on with metal stays. I shoved my left arm through the stays and figured I couldn't get tossed away any more unless the jet assembly was ripped away. For a while it looked as if I was OK. But then the raft went into its dance again. Each new jolt pulled at my left arm and I think it went out of joint. I didn't let loose but the pain was so bad that I must have passed out. When I came to again I was still dangling there—and somebody was calling. It was you."
   Ron nodded. "How do you feel now? Still feel any pain?"
   "Yes, sure—but I can stand it."
   "Good. What we have to do is go down below." He pointed over the edge toward the wall of the great ship. "I need your help in steering this thing."
   Lofty raised up. "Down there?" he asked, horrified.
   Ron explained what had happened in the meantime. He made no attempt to hide the fact that the Theodorich and the Volta had retreated. "So we don't have any other choice," he concluded.
   Lofty got the point and they both got to work at once. They activated the jets while keeping their feet in the deck straps. The platform started moving at once and the great wall rushed swiftly toward them. Ron was braking their course when the highest towers were already thrusting above them. The raft was gliding along a declivity that led toward a circular depression, some 100 meters ahead.
   At the stern jet position, Lofty gave the raft a gentle upward impulse. The improvised vehicle completed the rest of the way in a shallow curve. They cut off the jets and let the gravity of the fortress take over the final stage of landing. The platform came down at the edge of the basin-like depression. It struck with a jolt that threw Ron and Lofty against each other but this was only a soft pat on the back compared to what they had experienced during the magnetic storm during the firing.
   When Ron stepped from the spacecraft he found the local gravity to be very light—but it could be felt. It at least generated a feeling of certainty about what was "up" and "down." Ron looked around. To his left the basin sank to a depth of about 50 meters. Its slopes were smooth, offering no sign of a means of entry into the ship.
   A flat area stretched out to his right but about 50 meters away a peg-like tower rose into the darkness. Hardly visible beyond it in the gloom was one of the domes. In between was more flat metal.
   It was a depressing aspect. Ron had to avoid the impression of having landed on some alien and exotic planet. He was forced to remember that he was on the outer hull of an enemy spaceship.
   He took a second look at the peg tower and decided that by human logic there would be a greater likelihood of finding an entrance there. He said as much to Lofty but the latter was worried about something else. He had been searching for the small field-distortion generator that had produced a gateway into the enemy's hiding place. The device was nowhere to be seen. Until now, Ron hadn't noticed this fact."
   It must have been yanked off the raft," muttered Lofty. "It wasn't too firmly tied down when we turned it on."
   Ron shrugged it off. "We don't need it anymore. Either we'll find our way back with some kind of help from the enemy or not at all. With our flying slab there we wouldn't ever have climbed out of this."
   Lofty studied the spacecraft reflectively, and after a while he nodded. "I guess you're right."
   Ron patted him on the back. "Let's go over there," he said, pointing to the tower. Somehow we have to get into this monster."

5/  COLOSSUS AT BAY

   The Grenade was confused.
   He had struck the first blow with full force but apparently nothing had happened to the ships of the organic creatures. They seemed to have powerful defense screens. They had retreated unharmed and now the hiding place was known.
   The Grenade made sure that at the moment the space around him was empty for a radius of 5 light hours. His weapons range was 5 light hours and what lay beyond that point was immaterial.
   At least they had taken flight. The Grenade found it regrettable that he was unfamiliar with the mentality of these organisms. Or at least this objection was made by his logic circuits. The rest of his consciousness was convinced that in certain cases it was unnecessary to know the mentality of an organic life form in order to predict its behaviour. For example, in this case after a taste of bombardment their cowardice had been so great that they had fled. They would fly to the farthest corner of the void and never dare to show themselves again.
   "The Grenade reminded himself that the hiding place had been revealed. But he concluded that those who knew about it now would never make use of their knowledge. Any creature with a strong instinct of self-preservation would be glad to come away in one piece.
   The Grenade ignored the fact that its mechanical logic had rebelled strongly against this conclusion. It was too hasty and insufficiently founded. His mechanical consciousness attempted to issue a warning but the Grenade was deaf to it. Even before the battle it had taken him an effort to suppress his emotional consciousness but meanwhile the latter had fully taken possession of him. On board the fortress ship all activity went back to normal routines. The only thing abnormal was the task of cleaning up passage C-121-0011 where the fight with the organic intruder had left much wreckage including the remains of many kindred units. Among the regular routines was the continued observation of galactic nebula 00-101101-01 (per the nomenclature of Grenade's kind). In fact that was the specific purpose for their presence here in the starless abyss between universes.
   The incident with the two organically-manned ships was transferred into the memory bank central and erased from consciousness.

*

   In the moment when they found the entrance and the tension of their search subsided, for the first time Ron fully realized that they really had practically no chance at all.
   Where were they? On board an enemy spaceship, so huge that it might as well have been called an artificial planet. The place was gigantic. Undoubtedly it contained 100000 of these strange entities who hated everything organic with the greatest intensity. Against them, on the other hand, were two Terran spacemen, definitely organic, who had come here for no other reason than that they had nowhere else to go. They were anything but familiar with the layout of such a synthetic, planet-sized fortress. If they opened a hatch door they couldn't be sure if it were a death trap or a harmless room. They didn't know if their every step were being watched or not. They had no way of comprehending the thought processes of the aliens nor were they even able to guess whether or not the enemy would automatically regard them as hostile. But one thing they could assume was that they'd better have their weapons ready for any eventuality.
   Worst of all, they didn't have any idea of what they were doing here in the first place or where they should turn to or why. Naturally they would keep their eyes open and try to learn as much as possible. If Ron and Lofty could really discover some things about this place the Terran war machine would be able to make great strides in preparing its galactic defences. But would they find out anything? Even if they did, everything would then depend upon their getting back out of this floating fortress-planet still in possession of their brains, and provided that a nice handy Terran ship was waiting to pick them up.
   Both conditions lay far beyond any reasonable probability. All this came to Ron as he looked down the endless passage before him, which slanted away into gloom and was lost in distant darkness. Before they took ten steps the enemy could be on top of them, and an open conflict with these robots was about the last situation possible in which one might hope to survive.
   "What now?" asked Lofty.
   The inner hatch of the airlock had closed behind them. Out there lay the steel-faced landscape with its towers, domes, antennas and its channels and concavities. Before them lay the interior of the Colossus, alien and unknown.
   "Down there," Ron answered, pointing along the corridor.
   When he started off he noted that the gravity here inside was considerably stronger than it had been outside on the hull, in fact even stronger than normal Earth gravity. He also sensed definitely that the corridor was descending, and he wondered what the reason would be for such an arrangement.
   They progressed 10 steps, even 20—30—50—and nothing happened. A row of strange devices appeared along the walls and receded in perspective behind them as they went along. Any one or all of them could be observation instruments which kept the passages under surveillance. They could be registering their images now and projecting them on some remote viewing screen. If this were the case, however, then either nobody was watching the screen or the system hadn't been turned on. At any rate, they advanced meter by meter without anyone blocking their way.
   Each time they encountered cross-passages, at such intersections the way would open up into an oval or cross-shaped chamber with a domed ceiling and a floor area that was divided by man-deep channels. Neither Ron nor Lofty could imagine what the purpose of such an arrangement could be. They simply accepted what they saw. Walking across the ridges between the channels, they continued farther into the interior of the ship.
   There was a constant humming sound around them which came from unseen machinery. It was the only indication that they were not wandering through an empty and long-forgotten ghost ship. In fact the unusually deserted aspect of the place was food for thought. Ron felt that this colossal structure could not be a spaceship in the traditional sense of the word. Just its enormous size alone argued against the idea. Of course where that was concerned one might also assume that these aliens were used to other standards of measurement. Yet in a spaceship designed for intergalactic journeys, its halls and corridors should have been seething with the activities of a whole swarm of personnel. And nothing of the sort was to be seen here. The passages were still and lifeless.
   So far, Ron had not attempted to open any of the hatch-like doors that were unevenly spaced along the walls but he was convinced that even behind these doors he would find no sign of activity. Which brought him to another idea. Perhaps the mammoth structure wasn't a spaceship at all. For example it could be a stationary observation station. This might explain the gaping emptiness here. A fairly small crew was all that was needed to operate a station that hovered motionlessly in one part of the void. This could be one explanation.
Whether or net it was correct was something they didn't know at the moment. Perhaps they could find out more if they penetrated farther into the interior.
   The passage finally opened into a cylindrical chamber. The mouth of the corridor was located in the center of the circular bulkhead wall. Between the floor of their passage and the floor of the big chamber there was a difference of 7 or 8 meters. It was fortunate that the passage exit was fanned out in the shape of a funnel. Ron and Lofty were able to slide down the smooth metal to the bottom of the long chamber. Slightly shaken, they got up and looked around. The hall they were in stretched away like the interior of a giant barrel or tube. However the view was limited by ring-shaped intermediary wall sections which framed the circular wall of the tube at apparently equal intervals. The hall itself had a diameter of 15 meters which of course was matched by the outer edges of the ring sections, whereas the circular openings of each section measured only 6 meters. Th e distance between each ring was about 10 meters. So every 10 meters there was an obstacle that Ron and Lofty would never have been able to get past had it not been for the fact that there was a narrow slit in the Bottom of each ring which reached to the floor of the tube.
   This whole arrangement was so peculiar that it made Ron start wondering about its purpose, even tho he had intended not to rack his brains over everything he encountered here. The whole thing looked like a series of resonance chambers. In this case the space between the ring sections would have to represent the wavelength of the resonating energy, whatever it might be 10 meters.... In the electro-magnetic spectrum that would be a short-wave frequency of 30 megacycles. Of course this still didn't explain the purpose of the tube. What were they supposed to accomplish with such gigantic resonating chambers?
   Ron and Lofty continued on their way. The floor of the tube was as smooth as it had been in the corridor. Everywhere in this space monster, smooth and polished metal was used. They made rapid progress through the slits in the rings although they carefully observed each section they came to before stepping into it. With the passage of time this proved to be unnecessary. The tubular chamber was as empty as all other places they had seen.
   However, as they went along they noticed that the monotonous humming sound that filled the interior of the Behemoth was steadily growing stronger. When they came to another funnel-like opening at the end of the barrel-shaped chamber they had the feeling that they were close to a large machinery center. At this end they had to painstakingly climb up the funnel flange but when they got to the terminus of it there was no continuing corridor. Instead it opened into a wide area that was hard to classify. Judging from its size, Ron was inclined to call it a hall. Where the funnel ended, of course, it was only about 10 meters wide and half as high but then it widened out into considerable dimensions. However, the lateral walls went in a zigzag course and the ceiling formed a confused pattern of small opposed surfaces and ridges.
   In surprised wonderment, Ron came to a stop and looked around. He tried to recall everything he knew about the Posbis, which wasn't very much. In the half year or so that the earthly Fleet had clashed with them here and there, they had always managed to conceal the secret of their nature, characteristics, intentions and goals. All that was known about them was that their logic was completely alien, and also that their state of consciousness was based simultaneously on mechanical and organic functions. All of which still failed Ron in his attempt to explain the curious design of the vast space-island fortress. It seemed impossible that the incredible confusion of forms and shapes here could be the result of whimsicality on the part of the builders. Some kind of rhyme or reason had to be behind it. Perhaps these zigzag walls and multi-faceted ceiling areas were a special means of concentrating a field of energy or some kind of greater chamber—a machine or apparatus of some kind—which would be the source of the field or transmission, and if so....
   "Look over there—do you see that?" said Lofty suddenly. His voice sounded hoarse in Ron's earphones. "It's a machine...."
   Ron squinted his eyes to see, because the more distant areas of the room were hazy in the semi-darkness. The Posbis didn't seem to be fond of bright illumination. Ron could make out a dark, shapeless clump of something in the area Lofty was pointing to.
   He felt that his theory was confirmed. That thing over there must be a generator that produced the field or energy emanation which was then shaped or modulated in some definite way by the canted wall surfaces and the ceiling baffles. What kind of field it was and why it was formed just in this way—all that was indeterminable. In any case, Ron wanted to make a closer inspection of the generator.
   No one deterred them from approaching it but as the distance lessened it became obvious that the machine was of monstrous proportions. It towered almost to the ceiling which in this location must have been about 15 meters high. This giant apparatus was one of the sources of the continuous humming sound the two Terrans had been hearing. By the time they reached its base the deck shook so strongly under their feet that the outlines of their surroundings became slightly distorted. The machine itself appeared to be in a curious state of incompletion. Its inner workings were exposed since there were no cover plates or enclosure panels. Ron could even make out a number of wires that weren't even insulated. Of course they were arranged so that there was no danger of unintended contacts. He studied the arrangement of the conductors, conduits, tubes, switches, distribution banks and other things that he couldn't identify, and he concluded that he would have to accustom himself to the thinking processes of a fully alien technology before he could comprehend the function of the machine. The entities who operated it were robots. Only they knew the workings of it even down to the smallest detail. Not being organic they were not inclined to make any thoughtless movements and run the danger of getting an electric shock.Thus no protective panelling was necessary. On the contrary, cover plates and panels were inconvenient if one wanted to get to the insides of the thing, such as in the case of repairs or switch adjustments or circuit changes. What seemed to the organic eye to be an uncompleted hodge-podge was actually an expression of pure functionality.
   Understanding this much, Ron gradually formed an idea of how the machine worked. Unexpectedly he had discovered something familiar, certain similarities to something he had seen before. Seeing certain clues, he followed them. And finally he realized that they had made the most important discovery that they could hope for on board this enemy supership. The machine was nothing more than a magnified copy of the device he had brought from the Agladynnian on Arkon. It was the generator of the distortion field that was concealing the enemy.
   When Ron explained this to Lofty the latter appraised the whole assembly distrustfully. "In that case we're at the end of the road, wouldn't you say?" he asked.
   Ron nodded pensively. "Yes. If we can sabotage this thing so the Posbis can't get it going again, then they'll be sent out in the open without a hiding place."    "That is, if they don't have a spare," cautioned Lofty.
   "Not highly probable," countered Ron. "But even so... there's no other choice."
   Lofty agreed. "Alright then, so let's get started," he muttered.
   They were both aware of the fact that they wouldn't get much farther than this one act of sabotage. Perhaps they could destroy the generator but within seconds the whole horde of Posbis would be on their necks and that would be the irretrievable end.
   "Better step back a ways," Ron advised. "You don't know what might happen when I fire at it." When Lofty had complied, Ron drew his weapon from his belt. It was one of the hand disintegrators with which Nike Quinto armed his men on special occasions—one of the most effective weapons in the universe.
   Lofty had moved back to a distance of 20 meters in order to be safe. Ron gave him one final glance and then commenced firing. He worked on the machine from the top section down. Up near the ceiling the needlesharp beam was quickly lost in a sluggish cloud of greenish vapour. The hissing sound of the disintegrator beam drowned out all other sounds in the room. More and more of the mighty machine vanished under the destructive sweep of the weapon. Swirling gases expanded, vaporizations of metal now reduced to atoms. Ron hardly dared to breathe. Before his eyes the colossal assembly was growing shorter, meter by meter. Then the spitting ray found a vital spot and a blinding flash resulted. Ron tumbled back as debris thundered about him. Something struck him hard on the shoulder and threw him to the deck.
   He heard Lofty shouting: "Look out—the thing's falling apart!"
   Half-stunned, he pushed himself across the floor as fast as he could. With all the strength he could muster, he rolled over several times and then lay still. There were sparks and circles in front of his eyes. The thunderous sound was somewhere behind him. The machine seemed to be collapsing upon itself. The deck beneath him rumbled as if in an earthquake.
   Then all was still, at least for a few moments. Ron started to relax—but then he raised up defensively when he heard a loud, metallic clattering. He still couldn't see anything but he heard Lofty's astonished voice.
   "My God—what kind of thing is that?"
   He straightened up. Close in front of him, something was crouched on the floor. He got up and came closer to it—and there he saw the most awful-looking robot that he had ever encountered.

*

   He still held the disintegrator in his hand because he had gripped it tightly even while being buffeted about. He slowly raised it and aimed it at the head of the thing that sat before him on the floor.
   It bared its white teeth that were mounted in a jaw-like metal framework while its voice cords rattled out a plea: "Please don't shoot, sir. I am Sgt. Meech Hannigan... even tho you've never seen me like this before."
   In his shock of surprise, Ron almost dropped the weapon. "Meech!" he exclaimed. "Where in the devil did you come from?"
   Meech stood up. He was a frightful figure of metal and plastic but his movements were as supple as ever. "I'm not quite sure, myself, sir," he answered. "I was in a meta-stable condition in time but a few seconds ago everything changed. So now I'm here. But I don't think we have much time to figure it out. My guess is that we're soon going to have to put up a defense against some of the enemy. I can sense that they're coming."
   Ron turned around. Where the distortion-field generator had been standing there was only a metal stump. "Where are they coming from?" he asked.
   Meech pointed toward the rear of the hall. "From there, sir," "OK, then let's get out of here—that way!" Ron pointed in an opposite direction. "Lofty?"
   "I'm ahead of you already!" called Lofty. "Come on!"
   The echoes of Lofty's shout had barely subsided before Ron heard a metallic clanking in the semi-darkness of the rear part of the hall. The enemy had reacted with lightning swiftness.
   They ran as fast as they could go. From time to time, Ron glanced back but the dim light of the place reduced the range of his vision. The enemy continued to be invisible. But they were still in pursuit, judging by the clearly audible clanking noises. However, they seemed to be taking their time because they were not gaining on them. This in itself was also something to worry about.
   "How fast are they moving?" Ron asked Meech.
   "Slower than we are, sir," the robot answered.
   "You think that's because they're sure we're trapped?"
   "Yes, sir—that's the most probable explanation."
   Ron considered the way that lay before them. The airlock they had come through was probably locked or guarded by now. And even if it wasn't they would have no chance of getting away from the enemy ship on the spacecraft. They'd have to make a detour some where. Beyond the tubular hall with the multi-ribbed walls there were many cross-passages. If they were to take a side passage to the right or left perhaps they could hold off the moment of decision a little longer.
   When they slid down the funnel opening into the cylindrical hall they found that it was still empty. Evidently the enemy was attacking them from only one direction. They really seemed to be sure of themselves.
   Ron shouted to Lofty and told him that he should take a left into the first cross-corridor as soon as he came through the resonator tube. Lofty confirmed this and ducked through the next niche in one of the ring sections. Ron followed him one section behind, and Meech brought up the rear.
   Suddenly, Ron heard the robot speaking to him in his headphones. He spoke quite calmly when he announced: "Sir, I have hypercom contact with the Volta. They say this Posbi station is clearly visible on their viewscreens now."
   Ron sighed his relief. They weren't alone anymore. Nike Quinto was waiting out there with the Volta. He would do everything possible to get them out of here.
   But in the next moment he asked himself what good that would do. Even Nike Quinto couldn't help them.
   They were as good as caught.

*

   For a considerable time now the Grenade had been aware of the reappearance of the organic creatures' spaceship. And of course it didn't escape his notice that this was the smaller of the two vessels which had taken to its heels under the heavy bombardment from the station.
   The Grenade was confused again. The emotional portion of his consciousness had to concede that it had been self-deceived in its judgment of the organic creatures' behavioural pattern. The mechanical side of consciousness took over, declaring that it had anticipated such an eventuality. But even the machine logic didn't know what else to say.
   The Grenade decided to wait.
   That is, it held to this decision for just a few seconds before the time field collapsed and suddenly exposed the station to the gun muzzles of the enemy spaceship.
   And of Course the Grenade did not hesitate more than a 10th of a second. He reacted immediately.

*

   It was fairly disconcerting to suddenly see the irregular cube shape of the alien fortress emerge from the blackness of the void. Fortunately at this moment Nike Quinto was on hand in the Control Central of the Volta. It took him very little time to make a decision.
   He based his action on the hunch that the distortion field the enemy had been hiding under was their only protection. He guessed that there was no other defensive screening, so the hostile Colossus lay unprotected before him.
   Quinto gave the order to open fire.
   The Volta's gun positions began to spew out mighty streams of destructive energy at the enemy ship. The dark abyss of the starless void was transformed into an inferno of brilliant fire and blinding explosions. Nike Quinto noted with relief that the Volta's broadsides were reaching their goal and doing effective damage. So the enemy was not invulnerable as had been believed until now.
   Then the Volta itself received its first retaliatory blow. The outer screen glowed white and the ship jumped like a goat. But one of the firing officers had been alert. He had seen a ray flash from one of the fortress domes, which was brought under fire, and seconds later the enemy gun position ceased to exist.
   Finally the big surprise came when Meech contacted them over the hypercom. The robot described the situation in a few terse words. He gave them to understand that he and his two companions had no way of leaving the enemy ship and that they were waiting for help.
   For a while Nike Quinto was deeply perplexed. How was he supposed to help two men and a robot on board an enemy super warship when it was all he could do to survive the encounter himself?
   He did not remain indecisive for long. He thought of one last possibility. It was a desperate gamble with odds of 1 to 1000 but he had to grasp at any straw he could find. He issued his orders: "I need 10 robots and a portable sender-receiver for an Akon-type transmitter. Our transmitter here has to be tuned in to the fictive transmitter on board the Theodorich. On the double! Every second counts! The only way out for those two and the robot is through the Theodorich's fictive transmitter!"

*

   Organic beings on board! Ugly, loath some, nauseating things of flesh and blood! They had destroyed the time-field generator and left the station unprotected.
   The Grenade's hatred knew no bounds. All kindred units were called upon to hunt down the enemy and kill him wherever they could find him.
   The chase began. The organisms ran away as was to be expected. But they were as good as captured. They had no way of leaving the ship. This time they would have to face that fact!

*

   Lofty waved from one of the branch passageways but Ron raised an arm and yelled at him.
   "Keep going! Don't just stand there!" Lofty disappeared. Ron looked back toward the robot who had come to a stop. Meech appeared to be listening. From far beyond him came the clanking sound of the ship's fighting forces. By now they must be in the rib-walled barrel chamber.
   "The Volta," said Meech. "They need a continuous tracer signal. They want to help us."
   Ron suppressed a question. There was no purpose now in trying to find out how the Volta crew intended to accomplish a rescue. Meech wouldn't have been able to answer him because he didn't have time.
   "Give them a beam!" he ordered. "And then come on!"
   Meech started moving again. From that moment on a complicated device inside of him would be transmitting a continuous signal which could be picked up by the Volta. By this means they'd be constantly informed as to his position. His signal beamer could be traced with an accuracy of plus or minus 10 meters.
   The side corridor that Lofty had taken opened up after 50 meters into an empty room. The walls were smooth but the ceiling arched overhead in a series of concentric ripples. Again it was one of those chambers the purpose of which was a mystery—except to the Posbis.
   The sound of pursuit had become too faint to hear. The head start the Terrans had won was so great that they couldn't hear the metallic noises anymore. They gave themselves a breather while they stood there panting and waited for a miracle.
   Now that they were resting they became aware of the heavy tremors that shook the floor. They heard a distant rumbling and Meech, who had been in contact with the Volta without their knowing it, suddenly gave them a report.
   "They have the station under fire. There's no protective screen now. Our guns are causing heavy damage."
   Lofty laughed sarcastically. "Then they'd better hurry up and haul us out of here before the thing explodes."
   Ron cursed bitterly to himself. If he only had an idea of Nike Quinto's plans! Maybe then he could make preparations or do something to hasten the rescue. He ordered Meech to ask the Volta what they had in mind, and although the robot beamed out the question he wasn't able to return the answer.
   From the other end of the chamber they saw gleaming metal things gliding toward them through the air. They were much swifter than the fighting forces the Terrans had heard for some time behind them. They glided forward soundlessly and opened fire when they came within 20 meters of the Terrans.
   "Take cover!" yelled Ron.
   They jumped to one side and a series of raybeams struck the wall and made it glow where they had been but a second before. While Ron fell forward to the deck he pulled out his disintegrator and aimed it at one of the strange flying robots, an oblique angled cubical thing that measured only about 2 ft in diameter. The beam hissed its way to the curious creature and vaporized it, leaving a cloud of dust and gases.
   Meanwhile, Meech and Lofty had opened fire. Meech didn't seem to be the least bit hindered by the absence of his synthetic flesh covering because his metallic skeleton held his weapon just as expertly and every shot found its target. Against this kind of massed defense the flying Posbis were helpless. Their answering shots were confused and poorly aimed. For a minute or so it seemed as tho the Terrans were getting the upper hand.
   Then two things happened at once.
   A new swarm of flying Posbis whirred toward them from the rear of the chamber. Without hesitation they opened fire on the Terrans. The latter turned in stubborn anger toward this new invasion but before the first exchange of shots could have any effect, Lofty Patterson jumped up with a wild cry.
   "Hey! Look at that!"
   The Posbis stopped firing as if they had understood his shout. Ron turned on his side and was just in time to see 10 robots materialize, as if right out of the air. Each of them took a short step and then came to a stop in the middle of the room. They were all of Arkonide-Terran design. One of them carried a box-shaped device under its arm.
   Another called out in a wailing tone: "Help us, kindred units! We are like you and we are in trouble!"
   This cry was accompanied by a series of positronic code pulses which only Meech Hannigan could comprehend—that is Meech and the flying Posbis with their sympathetic attachment to anything that was not organic.
   The battle had come to a standstill.

6/  HANNIGAN'S TRIUMPH

   Ron grasped the situation immediately. The robots, having been sent through over the fictive transmitter, represented at least a temporary reprieve. The Posbis would turn their attention to them and while so occupied they would forget about the two enemy organic creatures on board. The box carried by one of the robots was an Akon-type sender-receiver unit for a transmitter. There wasn't any doubt that Nike Quinto had activated the Volta's transmitter in order to make an escape bridge for them—one that would take them through time and space to safety. The device brought over by the robot was to serve as an access path to that bridge.
   There were just two problems. First of all, the box had to be taken from the robot without the Posbis rebelling against it: and secondly the transmitter needed about 10 minutes of warm-up time before it would reach the right power level.
   "Take it from him!" Ron half whispered.
   The command was heard in the outer speaker on his helmet and Meech understood immediately. While he carefully approached the robot in question, Ron and Lofty kept a critical eye on the Posbis who were fluttering around the newly arrived fighter robots. Several of them had landed on the metallic shoulders of the combat machines. From their squarish bodies flexible metal arms had extended, and with these they appeared to be more or less petting their visitors reassuringly. The scene was grotesque. Undoubtedly the Posbis' concern for these "distressed" kindred creatures was much more important than continuing the battle. The big Terran-Arkonide robots stood there stiffly without moving, thus giving the impression that they were actually in need of repairs. Nike Quinto had programmed them that way—and in this moment Ron thanked him fervently for it.
   Meech was not hindered when he came close to the robot that carried the box. Although the Posbis were swarming around him, Meech didn't seem to be bothered about it. Without further hesitation he went to the robot, took the box from him, and came back.
   "Come on, back to the rear!" ordered Ron. "They can switch their attention to us at any moment and we have to be given time to get this thing going."
   Lofty set off on the double toward the rear of the chamber, with Meech following him. The heavy device didn't seem to be a load for him. This time Ron brought up the rear. He was concerned about the 10 robots. Naturally, in an emergency he would leave them behind but if it wasn't absolutely necessary to do so he was going to try to get them back to the Volta. He had no idea of what further programming Quinto had given them but he simply relied on their coming to life at the right moment.
   Lofty finally came to a stop when he saw that the Posbis were still back in the semi darkness with the other robots. Meech put down the transmitter device and Ron looked around to inspect the area. Here the chamber was larger than up front. Beyond his position he could dimly make out an end wall that was semi-circular in shape, with a number of doors. The place they had picked was anything but safe but Ron couldn't lose any more time. He ordered Meech to turn on the device and lock in on the Volta's receiver-transmitter.
   He himself stood guard. From this point he could no longer see the motionless tall figures of the combat robots and the fluttering Posbis, who had been fussing over their new friends like so many Florence Nightingales. They were too far away and the light was too dim. Sounds could be heard back there but apparently the fighter robots had not yet begun to move.
   The floor was still being shaken by the rumbling shocks of battle outside.
It occurred to Ron that the firing had gotten heavier. He finally turned back to Meech who was just adjusting the last control.
   Meech straightened up. "8 minutes left to go," he announced.
   At that moment Lofty let out a yell of alarm. As Ron whirled about to look at him he saw his arm stretched out, pointing to the curved wall in the background. Ron froze.
   Something had come through one of the doors and was approaching them—a thing almost 4 meters high, which looked like an artillery grenade.

*

   The Grenade's emotional side had allowed his rage to build up without restraint. Since the repulsive organic creatures had destroyed the time-field generator everything had gone wrong. The face of the ship that was turned toward the enemy vessel was a mass of craters, pits and fissures caused by explosions, and none of the gun positions there had been left intact.
   He had started to rotate the station slowly so that in the course of the next few minutes other defense domes would have the target in sight. But he was not sure that these gun emplacements wouldn't suffer the same fate as the others.
   Besides that, these organic things were still here inside the ship. They had run away from one of the search groups only to be trapped by a second detail of defenders. It had all gone as planned until the 10 alien kindred units had appeared and asked for help. Of Course his flying troops would have to render this aid to them, yet the Grenade could not rid himself of a suspicion that the kindred machines had only put in an appearance in order to give the organic ones a breathing space. He realized that this idea was evil and unheard of but once it had taken root in his emotional consciousness he couldn't get rid of it.
   He had finally observed that the organic creatures had come closer to his own position, and so he had overcome his revulsion and left his domed chamber to look into the situation personally.

*

   When Lofty reached for his ray weapon, Ron hissed out a quick command: "Hold it! Don't shoot!"
   "6 minutes yet," announced Meech calmly. Then he turned to face the Grenade. With unfleshed eyeballs in his metallic face he observed the alien creature unblinkingly. He excluded all cluttering and distracting thoughts from his positronic consciousness and concentrated his attention on the thing that was approaching him—a robot like himself. And he began to understand the pulses that the alien machine was sending out.
   "You are a kindred unit!" Positronic impulses—more of a declaration than a question. "What are you doing with these nauseating organisms?"
   Meech hesitated. In fractions of a second he considered a thousand possibilities. He needed some ruse that would give him another 6 minutes—until the transmitter was functioning. He had to delay this alien machine. He mustn't admit that he was a robot because then it would be over with and the Grenade would try to kill Ron and Lofty.
   He finally hit upon a plan. "Where did you get that idea?" he retorted. He made an effort to use the same code patterns as the Grenade, so that he would understand. And he also spoke the words aloud so that Ron would know what he was trying to do. "You almost killed me when I first came on board."
   "So that was you!" returned the Grenade, matter-of-factly. "You made an unauthorized entrance and did not give notification. My units treated you like an organic intruder. But now I know that you are not one of those."
   "You're mistaken," answered Meech. "I am organic, even tho in a form you're not used to seeing."
   He could vaguely sense the workings of the Grenade's logic circuits. "How can you be organic?" came the counter question. "You have a metal body and you understand my pulses."
   Meech bared his teeth which were the only last vestige of his synthetic organic disguise. "I have a mechanical body with positronic aids but my brain is organic—and that's what matters."
   "I'll agree with you on that point," the Grenade conceded. "And that's why I'm going to destroy you."
   Still 4 minutes, though Meech. The rush of impulses in his brain was akin to an emotion of desperation. "I warn you," he said with a code of menace injected into his signals. "You'll regret it if you try to attack us. We didn't come here to let ourselves be killed by a stupid robot."
   He was gambling on a slim chance—attacking the emotional part of the Grenade's consciousness. He had to get him irritated, and in that he succeeded.
   The Grenade registered the insult as a shock. The small patch of plasma which was coupled hypertechnically to his mechanical brain now penetrated his consciousness and took control. "You hideous organic. worm!" he exclaimed in a burning stream of impulses. "I'll crush you—I'll stamp you out! You aren't worth even a second glance from one of—"
   "Why don't you shut your mouth, you pile of tin and plastic!" interrupted Meech. "You're too stupid to understand the simplest conversation. How could you overcome three of the most highly-developed beings in creation?" "Highly-developed beings!" If the Grenade had been organic, himself, he would have been foaming at the mouth. "There is nothing superior to us! We are the personification of beauty and utility! But you are repulsive. A foul liquid flows in your bodies and your feeble center of reasoning is in a twitching mess of gray mush."
   "So how is it with you? Currents creep slowly through your wire veins and you also have to keep warm to make your circuits work. Your brain works slowly because the contacts are dirty. You call such a ridiculous arrangement beauty and utility personified?"
   Two minutes to go—and the Grenade seemed ready to explode. In this moment he was no longer a robot even tho he represented the "species." His emotional consciousness now had complete control over all his remarks. His positronic circuits were only operating to serve such emotions. Meech was inundated by a blur of impulses which he could only partially understand:
   "...disgusting... useless... a stain on existence... wipe them all out... now, at once...!"
   But then Meech sensed that the torrent of positronic vituperation was subsiding. He still retorted with uncomplimentary remarks but he felt that the Grenade was struggling back again to his old, cold reason. He couldn't hinder the process. The thing was a robot, and somewhere an emergency circuit would have to come into play which would give the upper hand to his positronic brain. This moment had apparently arrived—but the transmitter still needed another half minute to be ready.
   Then the miracle happened that Ron and Lofty had been waiting for.
   A vicious, rumbling shock went through the vast ship. Meech was knocked off his feet and crashed to the floor. He noticed that Ron and Lofty hadn't fared any better. The transmitter box slipped slightly across the deck and stood still again. The Grenade, however, had been in the process of switching over to another state of consciousness and was fairly catapulted from his position. Meech heard a grinding crash against the back wall but he knew that the Grenade's defense screen would keep him from being severely damaged.
   However, the half minute was up!
   "Get ready to jump!" he yelled.
   From the other end of the chamber came a thunderous stamping and pounding. Ron was already in front of the transmitter where a shimmering ring of energy marked the threshold of the 5th-dimensional transporter field. He was ready to go through it and return to the Volta but he paused when he heard the new noise.
   "The robots!" shouted Lofty.
   "OK, get going!" yelled Ron. "I'll follow them!"
   There was not a second to lose. Lofty complied without any arguments. He stepped through the ring and vanished.
The combat robots came looming out of the gloom. Ron did not have to direct them. Their programs told them where they were supposed to go. One after the other they stepped through the ring.
   Meech was watching the Grenade. Having recovered from his shock, he was coming toward them again. And from the far end of the room came the flying Posbis. They were on the trail of their erstwhile "kindred units" who had just asked for help and had been so deceptively motionless.
   A second heavy shock shook the ship, causing new confusion. But Meech sensed that this couldn't have been caused by the Volta. It had to be due to something else.
   When the last of the Terran-Arkonide robots disappeared, Ron Landry followed them. Meech Hannigan brought up the rear—perhaps 2 or 3 seconds before a direct hit struck the chamber and ripped the ceiling open from one end to the other.

*

   At first everything went off according to plan on board the Volta. It turned out that the enemy was by no means as invulnerable as he had been considered to be before. Nike Quinto attributed it to the fact that during the first attack the protective distortion field had only had a small opening in it but now, per Meech Hannigan's report, there wasn't any field. Ron Landry had destroyed the generator.
   Meech Hannigan's reappearance had been noted with wonder and amazement but under the general pressure of events no one had had too much time to think about it. The enemy gun positions were systematically brought under fire. From time to time an enemy salvo would strike the Volta and shake it to its frame bolts but the overall advantage lay decisively on the side of the Terran warship.
   Meanwhile 10 robots had been trans ported out with a transmitter projector With a tie-in to the flagship's fictive transmitter it would now be possible to rescue Ron Landry and his companions. Quinto estimated that the Volta would have to hold out for another 5 to 10 minutes. If nothing unexpected came up, they would be able to survive the period without any permanent scars.
   He had no sooner concluded this thought than the unexpected happened.

*

   The tracking screens flared brilliantly white when they came. It seemed as if the men could actually hear the thunder of their emergence from hyperspace—5 tremendous Colossal, box-like, odd-angled spaceships from an unspeakably alien civilization.
   There could be no doubt about their intentions. They attacked the Volta. They had come to attack their station fortress—or at least that's what Nike Quinto believed in those first moments.
   From one second to the next the Terran cruiser was transformed into a rattling, roaring, stamping madhouse. The outer screens flamed white-hot under the unbearable onslaught. Nike Quinto strapped himself into his seat and brought the mike to his lips so that his commands could be heard.
   "Ready for blastoff! Start full acceleration in 100 seconds! Kalup generator—full power! We have to get out of here!"
   His throat felt dry. If he didn't want to risk the ship and the entire crew he would have to leave Ron Landry and his companions behind. He glanced desperately at the viewscreen that tied him in to the transmitter station—and suddenly tensed. A station officer was waving his arms and yelling something that Nike couldn't understand above all the noise. But behind the officer Quinto made out the familiar figure of Lofty Patterson. Then one of the robots that had recently been sent out from the Volta crossed his field of vision, and suddenly there were the rest of the robots followed by Ron Landry—and something else! It was a hideous-looking metallic creature, or what was left of Meech Hannigan.
   Quinto unfastened his seat belt so as to he ready to go anywhere he might be needed. Then a new jolt from outside threw him to the floor. Just as he was getting dazedly to his feet he heard a triumphant shout.

*

   "The Theodorich...!"
   He got to his seat and stared at the viewscreen. A fire-spitting Colossus shot right through the flickering flames of the outer defense screen, straight toward the 5 monster ships of the aliens. The enemy forces were thrown into confusion. The Volta was given a last-minute reprieve. The shaking and jolting subsided—and then Nike Quinto observed something that was incredible.
   One of the odd-shaped vessels was still firing but its blinding salvos bored into the walls of the giant station—that multi-faceted, surrealistic monstrosity that Nike had thought the aliens had come to rescue. These distorted warships were destroying their own station! Quinto saw it with his own eyes.
    Then the 100-second countdown was ended. Under full power the Volta vanished from the place where it had come within a hair of being a derelict.

*

   "I'd like to express my appreciation to you men," said Rhodan, by way of opening the post-mission debriefing session. "Especially to your Sgt. Hannigan —if he's at all responsive to pats on the back."
   "He is," smiled Quinto.
   "He has shown us the entire film record he took of these events. We still haven't analyzed the overall applications of this material but we know that they will be extensive. He has been able to describe his experiences to our scientists so graphically that we're now fully aware of what happened to him. Through an unfortunate coupling of the defective transmitter field on board the BOB 21 with the distortion or Relativity field of the attacking Posbi ship he was drawn into a meta-stable time zone on the edge of the alien station's distortion field. Why he landed there of all places, of course, we can't yet explain. At some critical moment it seems that the ship attacking the BOB 21 made contact in some manner with the station in the abyss, and there was some kind of unusual energy transfer.
   "From what we can gather from Hannigan's registered data it seems that another energy transfer brought him on board the station shortly there-after. Almost miraculously, he went back in the same way into his meta-stable condition. It was only when Maj. Landry completely destroyed the enemy's distortion field generator that Sgt. Hannigan was finally free. Even for a robot, he has handled himself marvellously well.
   "During the Theodorich's first encounter with the station, its own instruments recorded events which have revealed a great deal to us concerning the methods and weapons of the enemy. Apparently the Posbis use a type of gun that projects a concentrated form of energy but just before the target the total energy seems to materialize or expand in such a way that its effect is much more like that of a super hydrogen bomb than an ordinary energy beam."
   "As for the time-distortion field, we seem to have made good progress there. Your own scientists have gone into the small generator that Maj. Landry picked up on Arkon 2. They've taken it apart and will soon be able to duplicate it. So it's only a matter of time before we will have larger units of this type for our own use."
   Rhodan looked thoughtfully toward Nike Quinto. "That's about all I wanted to tell you, Colonel. After the contributions your division has made, I felt that you should be one of the first to know these things." He smiled enigmatically. "These compliments, however, aren't all lust from the kindness of my heart. In the near future I'm planning an expansion of the range of your operations. Now that the Posbis have turned their attention to us and other galaxies we can depend on having our hands full."

*

   When Nike Quinto entered the wardroom on board the Volta, his entire group was assembled there. Now no longer quite so exhausted, Ron Landry lounged comfortably in an upholstered chair. Larry Randall was passing refreshments around. Lofty Patterson had served himself and was savouring his drink with pleasure. In the back of the room stood Meech in all his present ghastliness.
   "Get that scarecrow out of my sight!" shouted Nike. "If I have to see that metal skeleton any longer I'm going to have a stroke for sure! Robot, you get some new skin on you as soon as possible!"
   Ron Landry rose up slowly from his seat. "You're insulting my friend, Colonel," he said seriously. "Have you ever seen a robot insist he was human so that he could save two men's lives?"
   Nike forgot his protest. "No," he said wonderingly. "How did that happen?"    Ron explained. "We were just about to be wiped out by one of the Posbis—a giant thing shaped like a grenade shell. That's when Meech started to call him out with insults. He called him a pile of junk with rusty wires and messy contacts. He laughed at the thing for thinking that it was the most perfect of creations and told him there was nothing higher than organic life. He made the Posbi so mad that it delayed it from shooting at us. You should have seen it, Colonel. Even you couldn't have defended the human race as well as he did!"
   Quinto stood there, momentarily thunderstruck. Then he did something that nobody would have expected of him. He went to Meech and extended his hand.
   "You're a splendid fellow, Meech," he said appreciatively. "I'm supposed to more or less pass on to you the praise of the Administrator so I might as well toss in some praise of my own."
   Meech took his hand and grinned widely with his naked teeth, just as if he were truly pleased. Quinto returned to his place again and took a glass from Larry's tray.
   And just to show that he was still his usual self, he said: "But all the same, Meech, you'd help my bad blood pressure condition a lot if you'd get some skin on you as soon as possible!"

THE END

So far the Posbis, the mysterious robots with bio-positronic brains, have always been underestimated, although Van Moders, the genius Terran robot scientist, has again emphasized his theory concerning the outstanding learning ability of the Posbi mentality.

But lust how far the Posbis have really been underestimated is graphically described by Kurt Brand in the next Perry Rhodan adventure, THE POWER OF THE SINISTERS...!