11/ CAPTIVE OF THE PEACELORD
A splashing sound abruptly woke me up again. When I opened my eyes, I saw the metallic feet of a robot. I painfully rolled my body around.
My eyes became clearer and the last shadows vanished. The robot held a pitcher of water in his hands and poured it over the head of a man.
Rhodan’s face was disfigured by burns and scars but he grinned in a broad smile with such obvious relief as I had never seen before in Arkonide or man.
However this was rather unimportant at the moment, since all my aspirations were confined to the water the robot so lavishly doused on Rhodan’s face.
I mumbled something I couldn’t even understand myself. My hearing was intact again; otherwise I couldn’t have understood Rhodan’s words. "You gave me a tough nut to crack, brother," he said haltingly. "Open your mouth and the robot will give you some water. I beat you by 10 seconds, Arkonide."
When the first drops touched my lips, I believed I was drinking something infinitely more delicious than mere water.
Rhodan was quiet. He silently watched me as I revived my spirit of life. My body soaked it up like a dried out sponge.
Now and then the robot withdrew the pitcher from me to keep me from gulping it down too hastily. Nevertheless I could feel my alertness quickly return and I regained my ability to speak.
Rhodan laughed softly. It sounded as if he were lost in thought and far away. "Incredible," he said, speaking to himself; "this fellow almost killed an immortal!"
I was so stunned that I splattered a mouthful of the precious water. Suddenly I knew why this man looked so amazingly young and vigorous. Immortal! So the rumours about the fabulous cell shower which preserved his youth turned out to be true after all.
My mouth opened with a hoarse laugh. It was downright tragicomic.
Rhodan didn’t know what it was that induced my strange amusement and I wasn’t going to tell him, although the laughter still tickled my throat.
"I’ll find everything out in due time," he mused aloud. His eyes bore a quizzical look and I was careful to shield my thoughts completely. Let him rack his brains!
I winked at him and looked at the raygun he had levelled straight at me. It brought home to me that I could not afford to act foolishly. Apparently he had regained consciousness a few seconds before me.
I felt bewildered and confused. The events seemed now like a horrid nightmare. "How much time did we spend out there?" I asked in a rasping voice. My throat still was irritated.
"About 20 hours, thanks to your intransigence," he complained. "Anyway I’ve got you in my power at last."
"It was sheer luck," I rebuffed him against my better knowledge. It was due to his enormous stamina, not mere luck.
He looked right through me and his grey eyes smiled ironically. "Your psycho-trick wasn’t bad at all, Atlan. Your absurd verse about the wet water almost robbed me of my good senses. Where did you get the idea?"
I shrugged my shoulders, already feeling much better. I slowly sat up and leaned my back against the metal wall. Rhodan squatted on the floor.
The interior of the cupola was only partially visible to me but it seemed to be a very well equipped base indeed.
"Where did you get the idea?" he reiterated his question.
"It just occurred to me; how else could I have made you shoot at me?"
I stared at him with newly awakened curiosity. The muzzle of his weapon tilted up ever so slightly. "Take it easy!" he warned.
I motioned with my hand. "I’m no fool. Besides, your robot is watching me, too. One question, barbarian: how did you escape injury from my fire?"
He smiled so gleefully that I felt the warmest feeling of affection rise in me, although I was loath to let him notice it.
"Your first shot missed me by at least 3 feet. Of course you were blinded by your own beam and so I immediately jumped up and ran for cover in another spot I had already picked out. It was a small hollow under massive stones."
How simple he made it sound but it surely couldn’t have been as easy as that. He must have leaped like a beast of prey. "And then you began to follow me?"
He simply nodded. "You never even looked around. I could have shot you in the back."
"Oh no you couldn’t," I laughed. "You were glad you were still able to walk."
Rhodan shrugged his shoulders and I thought that everything had been said between us. However he abruptly asked with pointed coolness: "And now I’d like to know how you got on Earth and what you want there?"
"Make a guess!" I challenged him.
"I’m not in the mood to indulge in guessing games. My radio call has already been transmitted to Earth. Here we’re on an unpopulated planet 12,000 light-years from Earth."
"I wish I had known that," I said with resignation. "In that case I couldn’t have let you land first and then have taken action against you."
"Tough luck, Arkonide! One of my spacefleet cruisers will land here in 3 hours and in the meantime I want to find out what your intentions are. I can’t allow any aliens to intrude in my Imperium."
"In your so-called Imperium," I corrected him. "You aren’t that big by a long shot! As to what I want, all I want is to go home."
"I know. I was able to figure that out for myself. Obviously you’ve been away from Arkon a long time. You still don’t believe your worlds are ruled by a robot brain, do you? When did you arrive on Earth?"
"Some time ago," I replied evasively. I was reluctant to tell him anything about my retreat in the Atlantic depths. He was very suspicious. On the other hand I was not anxious to be subjected to a parapsychological interrogation.
We continued our verbal swordplay till we heard the muffled roar of a rocket landing. It was the promised cruiser and its commander soon appeared in the dome, accompanied by 5 heavily armed men.
The commander didn’t mince matters: he pulled out a pair of old-fashioned handcuffs from his pocket and snapped them around my wrists. "You don’t mind, do you?" he said sarcastically.
"A temporary inconvenience," I replied.
Rhodan addressed me hesitantly. "I sense there’s something… wrong… about you. You’ve a secret you don’t want to reveal. I’ll be back in a few days and then we’ll have a serious talk. Right now I’m short of time. Think it over and let me know if you’re ready to tell me the facts."
The soldiers brought me a spacesuit of the type with which I had become so familiar. I grimaced painfully. "Is this the best you can do? Don’t you have an armoured pressure suit of something similar?"
"Sartorial style isn’t our long suit," the commander replied gruffly.
Rhodan chuckled. He seemed to know his people well. At this moment I decided to give him a small clue concerning myself. I raised my hands and pointed my eyes at the encircling metallic ‘bracelets’. With weighted words I said, "These primitive gadgets are not go much different from the ancient style. The metal bands were only slightly wider in the days of the religious wars between Wallenstein and Gustav Adolf."
My intimate knowledge of obscure ancient European history obviously perplexed Rhodan. Did he suspect that I knew it from firsthand and not out of a book?
In the 19th century one would have said the immortal yet very vulnerable man had suddenly ‘lost his composure.’
In the 70s of the 20th century, he would have been said to have ‘lost his cool.’
In the 21st century the current description for his flustered condition was: ‘He flaked his snow.’
But, as Thora has observed of her husband: Perry is not the type to flake his snow for long. Anyone acquainted with him knows he’ll have his cool back in his thermo-flask before you can count to 3 in Intercosmo.
Jen, jev, jek!