Perry Rhodan Lemuria 1: Ark of the Stars (3 page)

Today, her sweatiness had a specific name: Perry Rhodan.

A low cheeping tone brought Alemaheyu back to tending his console. Since the unforgettable near-wreck of the crawler, Alemaheyu had formed the habit of checking the data stream at regular intervals. Usually, hourly checks were often enough, but here in the Ochent Nebula, with its five-dimensional anomalies, hyperstorms and unusually active stars, he was checking more frequently.

He called up the data for each of the crawlers in quick succession. Seven of them were on the surface of various planets and moons, gathering rock samples and readings, while the other five were either on the way to a highly promising celestial body or already returning to the
Palenque,
their missions completed. Crawler Four was still in the communications shadow of a Jupiter-like planet five light-years from the prospecting ship.

Concentrating, Alemaheyu reviewed the data streams. Everything looked normal, no anomalies, though Crawler Nine's data did show a tiny deviation—so tiny that he almost missed it.

He zoomed in on the irregularity and directed the syntron to analyze the data status. It found that the crawler's g-force absorber currently would function at 99.93 percent capacity, which was insignificant as long as the vehicle operated on the airless surface of the moon it was surveying. This variance could possibly be deadly when the crawler lifted off and accelerated.

Alemaheyu considered. A hardware failure? Improbable. G-force absorbers were the product of a proven, safety-critical technology in common use for thousands of years. And the crawlers' technology had been selected with especial care: in order to save precious space, the mini-labs carried no redundant components. Every system had to function at 100 percent.

A software error? Alemaheyu went through the crawler's log data. After a few minutes of searching, he found an entry that struck him as unusual. He followed that lead, and finally found the problem. Part of a software update package installed a week earlier had somehow been skipped. This exact issue was a point of contention between him and the syntron specialists.

Alemaheyu felt that since the crawlers operated flawlessly, they shouldn't be changing things. But nobody on board listened to him. To the control-center crew on the
Palenque,
he was just the comm officer, not Mama.

Alemaheyu sent the update to Crawler Nine, then tested the absorber with a simulation routine. All the values showed 100 percent.

A disturbance at the entrance to the control center distracted Alemaheyu. The men and women whispered to each other, then he heard a series of "Good mornings."

Their passenger must have arrived on the bridge. The most effusive greeting even the commander herself could hope for from the control center crew was a nod and a murmur.

"Good morning, Perry," Sharita Coho said a moment later, confirming Alemaheyu's conclusion. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yes, thank you. Is there any news?"

"No. No ores. And no Akonians."

Alemaheyu wondered for the nth time if he should buy Rhodan's story. The Ochent Nebula was a no-man's-land, officially unclaimed by any of the galaxy's great powers. The region bounded the spheres of influence of various Blue races and the Akonians, but up to now had proven too uninviting to inspire any desire to possess it. The number of life-bearing worlds was small, the frequency of hyperstorms high, and the strategic value precisely zero. Anyone who occupied the Ochent Nebula would take on diplomatic complications and outrageous maintenance expenses for new bases on which expensively trained soldiers would die of boredom.

But the sector was hardly deserted. In recent years it had attracted an increasing number of prospectors: Terrans, Blues, mixed crews without a common origin but united by the expectation of a big find and, most recently, Akonians. So far, the prospectors had invested considerable work and capital with nothing to show for it, but the probability of that suddenly changing grew with each day that passed.

A vein of five-dimensionally radiant quartz ... the high-tech relics of an extinct race ... an ore deposit of high purity—any such find could trigger a race of the galactic powers and change the undeclared cold war that gripped the galaxy to an active conflict.

Rhodan had come on board the
Palenque
to seek contact with the Akonians in order to preempt such a crisis. He wanted to draw the Forum Raglund, of which the Akonians were among the most important members, to Terra's side.

Alemaheyu had laughed loudly when he heard that. Just how naive was the Immortal, anyway? The Ochent Nebula was one of the few remaining galactic frontiers. Did he expect that the Akonians—and even the Blues, who historically could not get along with themselves—would withdraw based on his suggestion, taking a pass on the opportunity to make the find of their lives? God only knew that Alemaheyu had no love for the Dishheads and the arrogant Akonians, but to dream that they would simply pull out on the basis of a request and an analysis of the galactic political situation? Even they weren't that crazy ... .

"They'll show up yet," Rhodan said, facing the commander.

"Yes, sooner or later," she replied. It was clear that Sharita was not exactly excited about the prospect of having the Immortal on board for weeks on end.

Alemaheyu observed Perry Rhodan from the corner of his eye. He was a man of average height with dark blond hair. The simple uniform he wore revealed nothing of his rank. If Alemaheyu had encountered Rhodan on the street, he wouldn't have recognized the man who had led the human race to the stars nearly three thousand years ago. Rhodan seemed like an average man.

Really.

The
Palenque
's comm officer didn't have any words for it, but something changed on the ship's bridge every time Rhodan appeared. Of course, small, external things changed. The control-center crew attempted, with varying degrees of success, to suppress the curses; the conversational tone wasn't quite as rude; there was less talk in general. But all that was easy to explain. People were like that: they sought tight communities, and when they found them, they closed themselves to outsiders.

But it was more than that. Alemaheyu caught himself sitting bolt upright at his console instead of lounging in his usual posture. And his work ethic kicked up a notch, too. Not that he would have otherwise been tempted to take his eye off the crawlers—a mama does everything for her children, doesn't she?—but he even conscientiously took care of the bothersome minor duties that human lives didn't depend on.

And it was all because of Perry Rhodan.

It was the same for Alemaheyu as it was for the commander of the
Palenque.
He wasn't able to ignore the knowledge that in his long life, Rhodan had encountered an unimaginable number of people, and had mastered dangers and tests of his skill and courage that Alemaheyu could only guess at. Much as it annoyed the
Palenque
's comm officer, he simply wasn't able to behave naturally in Rhodan's presence—even though the Immortal hadn't so much as hinted with a single word or gesture that he expected special treatment. On the contrary: Rhodan slept in a standard cabin, ate the standard food, and performed standard duties. Yesterday, in fact, he had turned up in a hangar and helped a technician with the maintenance on one of the crawlers.

Rhodan was the friendliest and most sociable passenger the
Palenque
had carried in a long time, and yet it was only with an effort that Alemaheyu could keep from stuttering with excitement when he spoke with the Immortal. It was enough to drive him up the wall.

After greeting Rhodan, Alemaheyu and the rest of the control-center crew went back to their duties. There was not much to do. The crawlers did the actual work. The
Palenque
stood ready in case something unexpected happened. Akonians appearing, or something like that, which certainly wouldn't happen as long as they had Rhodan on board. That was life: if you wanted to avoid something, it was always on your heels. But if you were looking for it, it was nowhere to be found.

"Mild hyperstorm," the hyperdetection officer called out. "Sectors 72Z to 84R."

Not unexpected. Hyperstorms were the rule rather than the exception in this area. Alemaheyu called up the hyperdetection data. No reason to worry. The storm wasn't strong enough to endanger the crawlers. Besides, only one of them was in the affected area.

Alemaheyu made contact. "Crawler Eleven!"

"What is it, Mama?"

"There's a hyperstorm brewing along your course. Rather weak, nothing that should bother your crate."

"Okay. Then why are you calling us?"

"Because Mama always worries." The two men, Alemaheyu Kossa on the
Palenque
and Mikch Theyner on the crawler, laughed. The joke had long since worn out, but they couldn't resist making it. It had been Mikch who had given Alemaheyu the nickname in the first place. "But seriously," the comm officer went on, "it's possible the data stream will be interrupted for a few minutes. I just wanted to let you know so you don't worry about it."

"Too late. Our pants are already sticky and stinky. Catch you later!"

"Be seeing you!"

Alemaheyu had barely finished speaking when the data stream broke off. The crawler had been caught in the storm. The craft would now be thoroughly shaken. It would do Mikch and his people good. Remind them of how comfortable they had it on the
Palenque,
remind them of their place. Very little could go wrong. Without guidance from the
Palenque,
the crawler was effectively blind from a navigational standpoint, but it was operating in a slow, sublight flight.

It would be hours before it came near a moon or a planet.

Sharita Coho and Rhodan had retreated to the rear section of the control center and were conversing in whispers. Alemaheyu tried to eavesdrop, but they were too far away. He only caught the word "Akonians" a few times.

A soft chirping reminded the comm officer that it was again time for a routine check. He immersed himself in the work, exchanging a few words with the crews of the various crawlers. Four reported in. The craft had left the planetary shadow and was in the process of landing on a highly promising high plateau after an optical scan of the surface.

Alemaheyu wished the crew good luck in finding pay dirt. When he returned to his status review, he felt a stab of unease. What was going on with Crawler Eleven? The data stream was still out.

"Hyperdetection!" Alemaheyu called. "What about the hyperstorm? Is it still going on?"

"Yes," came the reply. "It'll reach its peak in about an hour."

"Roger," Alemaheyu said. Then he had a thought. "Position?"

"Shifted to Sector ... "

"Shifted? What about the area where it originated?"

"Nearly normal readings now."

Alemaheyu called up the communications module on the holoscreen and attempted to make contact with Crawler Eleven. No result, either from the crew or the crawler's syntron. The comm officer gave the hypercom maximum transmitting power, focusing the beam on the sectors in which the hyperstorm had raged. No response. It was as though the crawler had ceased to exist.

A lump developed in Alemaheyu's throat. He suddenly wished he had a joint to smoke to calm his nerves. But all that would've gotten him was a burst of Sharita's wrath. The comm officer leaped up and hurried over to Rhodan and the commander.

"Sharita," he said, as she looked up at him angrily, "I'm sorry to disturb you, but I think we have an emergency."

A vague sense of unease drove Denetree that evening.

She was used to taking off on her bicycle after the shift. Most metach on field duty were too tired afterwards to do more than drag themselves back to the half-gravity of the Middle Deck, eat with their Metach'ton, plug into the Net for an on-line game, or just sit and wait for the next day.

Not Denetree.

Yes, the work was hard, but after a Ship-year—more than half her obligation as a field hand was behind her—she had gotten used to it. In the beginning, only her thighs had developed, and she had otherwise looked like a beanpole. But now she had put on some flesh. Her arms, her entire body had become muscular. In the first months, the effort of cycling had almost completely burned her out. The gravity of the Outer Deck crushed newcomers mercilessly toward the ground, after a few minutes making every movement a torture. There was very little help from machinery in the fields, allegedly to save the always limited supply of energy on board. Denetree felt certain that was true, but exhausting the young metach in performing their service for the Ship seemed to her an equally likely intention. It kept them from getting dumb ideas.

In theory, at least. In practice, Denetree became an example of the opposite. In the unanimous opinion of everyone who knew her, Denetree's endless rounds through the Ship on a bicycle after the end of her shift fell clearly into the category of dumb ideas. Except that it was harmless. Denetree didn't bother anyone, and as long as her rides always took her back to her Metach'ton, and her work performance the next day didn't suffer, no one tried to stop her. Not her neighbors, not the Naahk or the Net.

Immediately after the end of her shift, Denetree climbed on the bicycle she considered "hers." Of course, it wasn't really her own. None of the metach owned their own bicycle, no matter how highly they were placed. The bicycles belonged to all equally—which didn't necessarily mean that every metach could use every bicycle.

Denetree had made a number of changes to the bicycle she used: "optimizations," as she called them. Her bicycle's rims had a smaller diameter than the standard model and the tires were wider with a studded tread—designed for better traction rather than minimal rolling resistance, as was typical. Denetree pumped the tires full enough that only the center of the tire rested on the ground, creating a narrow, smooth strip that made it easier to ride on uneven terrain, but was apparently inferior in direct comparison to the standard ultrathin tires.