1/ RUNAWAY REJUVENATION
A CELESTIAL ORB synthetically constructed by means of an unimaginable technology, it was a world without horizons.
Super-intelligent beings had built and established something here that forced an exclamation of wonderment and admiration from my lips during those first moments of my arrival.
Far overhead near the barely discernible defence screen, the glowing ball of an artificially created sun glided along its prescribed course. On the planet Wanderer, so named by Perry Rhodan, technological and scientific perfection reigned supreme. After having looked about in the various control rooms I realized that all the knowledge and skill of my own venerable race was meagre by comparison, having been far surpassed by what I saw here.
An apparently ancient galactic people had immortalized here what we Arkonides had only hoped to discover someday. When I thought of Arkon, my distant home, I was overcome again with sadness, and yet upon closer self-inspection I realized that my longing and nostalgia for the tri-planet world of my origin was not as burning as of yore.
Slightly more than half a mile away from my position, the gigantic steel hull of a spaceship towered into the blue sky of this synthetic world, which had been surrounded by a mighty screen of energy. It was the Drusus, a super battleship of Arkonide design but constructed on Earth.
Nothing had convinced me more of the rise of the formerly barbaric human race than this latest and most modern addition to the Terranian spacefleet. Its spherical hull was approximately 1 mile in diameter, exclusive of the equatorial ring bulge.
Perhaps it was this spaceship and other such examples that had allowed my longing for an eventual return to my home world to become less insistent. My long existence on the planet of humans had all but erased the impressions of my younger years. Memories of Arkon had grown dim and vague.
I squinted upward toward the synthetic sun and tried to consider by what technical wizardry the nuclear ball was being held in its circular orbit inside the bell-shaped energy field that protected Wanderer from the vacuum of space.
I thought of recent events with a shudder. Wanderer had been trapped in another time-plane by an overlapping of the 2 dimensions. The ruling intelligences of the alien universe had not wanted the artificial planet to escape and so it came about that the eerie collective entity of Wanderer had brought all the might of its technological powers into play. This had finally resulted in a transition-like hyperjump out of the Druuf plane of existence.
Nevertheless, Perry Rhodan and I were mutually faced with the problem of locating this world which was no longer in its normal orbital location. In doing so we had to overcome physical phenomena that were incomprehensible because any logical approach to them was mind-boggling from the start. I felt inwardly void and burned out. It had been too much to experience: what we did in that completely unstable structure of semispace between the 2 comprehensible dimensions. It had been a sheer accident that saved us and had served to complete those levels of energy which finally led to the stabilization of space.
My head reeled when I recalled the mathematical problems involved. After awakening from an abysmal sleep of exhaustion I found that Lt.-Col. Sikerman had already landed the Drusus, which had been waiting in the normal Einstein universe.
I glanced once more at the mountain of Arkon steel-plastic armourplate. From my position I could not take in the entire mass of the super battleship, as though I were at the foot of some cordillera whose peak lay inaccessibly remote in the distance. Yet this monstrous spaceship was astoundingly safe and reliable to fly.
The light throbbing in my chest reminded me of my biological pacer, a special cell activator about the size of an egg, which had held off the aging processes of my body for thousands of years. Ever since I had found out that Perry Rhodan and various members of his staff had received a biological treatment for cell conservation, I had been burning with curiosity. I still clearly remembered the day that had brought me the incredible gift from my unknown benefactor.
It had been long ago, almost 10,000 years by Earth chronology. During my wanderings through the various epochs of Earth’s development I had almost forgotten to ponder the origin of my cell activator. But ever since I had been associated with Perry Rhodan the subject had again occupied my mind.
Curious parallels and points of coincidence in the course of events had come to indicate without any doubt that my own small apparatus could only have originated with the same mysterious being who had also given Rhodan a certain measure of immortality.
We learned just how much this ‘eternal life’ was to be interpreted as a relative quality when we strove desperately only a few days before to even be able to locate the synthetic planet Wanderer. It was there alone that the so-called Physiotron existed, in which the human body could receive the cell reactivation. This complex process was more simply known as a biological cell shower and in Rhodan’s case each treatment remained effective for about 62 years. At the expiration of this time period, all those who had been so processed were required to find and revisit the Physiotron if they wished to avoid an immediate aging acceleration.
Rhodan managed to get there at the last permissible moment. He and Reginald Bell had entered the charging chamber’s dematerialising forcefield when something happened that, for the life of me, I could not define. At any rate, rather than being a mere regenerative type process, it was exclusively the product of what had to be termed a perfected biochemical technology and which came as close as possible to the secret of life itself.
Most curious was the undeniable fact that I myself had never been forced to return to the synthetic planet at regular intervals in order to receive the cell shower. In spite of this I had not aged but had always remained at that stage of my existence which I had reached by the time I submitted to the influence of the small device within me.
Naturally I was in search of an explanation for this. I had come here in the hope that I might obtain fuller particulars from the ruler of the planet Wanderer. And in this regard the purely technical phase of it was a secondary interest. What seemed more important to me was the why?
For what reason should this mental entity have given me something that kept me forever resilient and young? When I wanted to ask these things of the entity, It had been too busy to answer. It seemed to have Its ‘hands’ full with the task of rescuing Wanderer from semispace. And after we had all come through that crisis, It withdrew into seclusion. The collective being remained silent, as though It had never been interested in trifling with humans and Arkonides.
The gentle throbbing in my chest became stronger. A current of invigorating impulses seemed to flood through my body. There could be only one logical explanation:
The micro-activator must be a variation of the large Physiotron. Attuned to my personal vibrations it always seemed to take over whenever my metabolism and the processes of cell division became unstable. Since I had never been dematerialised, as was the case in the large cell shower apparatus, my bio-pacer must operate on the basis of carefully programmed stimuli which guided my normal life processes and corrected them as was required. I had not been able to find any other explanation.
I glanced at the special automatic watch on my wrist. Engraved on the watertight cover were the words: Made on Terra. The well-known phrase had always seemed strange to me. Everything I wore had been produced on Earth—even the Arkonide Admiral epaulettes on my shoulders and the insignia of my ancestral house had been made by human hands in terrestrial factories.
With these things my long period of wandering through the earlier history of humanity had come to an end. Rhodan, whom I had looked upon as an enemy 2 years previously, had become a friend. Now all that remained was to solidify this relationship and to prove to him that I had given up my plans of escape. I knew now that our ancient Arkonide Empire was under the rulership of a robot brain. Of course Rhodan understood that ultimately my allegiance was more with my people than with his but this was not cause for any disharmony in our relationship.
I had lived on Earth for approximately 10,000 years. Now the time had come to visit the place of my birth again and it was a foregone conclusion that Rhodan could be helpful in this regard. So it behooved me to help the leader of the Solar Empire to the best of my knowledge and ability—that is, if he still needed them at all! The state of Terranian technology was such that I was not able to offer much more to its science, although the earlier ancestors of present-day humans had once revered me as a demigod.
I leaned my back against the seamless wall and gazed across at the distant Drusus. They had grown big and powerful, these little barbarians from the 3rd planet of Sol. I had been a witness to their awakening, their joys and sorrows and fears, their tragic mistakes and their quiet heroism. They were now deserving of the leadership of this clear-sighted man who would guide them in the right direction.
A deep thundering sound tore me from my nostalgic reveries. Somewhere in the giant hull of the super battleship a gun turret had opened up. I saw the glistening energy beam race toward the sky. Far aloft its incandescent fire struck the impregnable energy screen of the synthetic planet and before the heated shock wave reached me I was already on the ground crawling for cover while groping for my MVR—my micro-video-receiver.
I pressed the activator button and waited for the green light. When it came on, Rhodan’s face appeared simultaneously on the postage-stamp vidscreen—which meant he had deliberately placed himself before the ship’s camera pickup, anticipating my response.
"Ahoy, Barbarian—what’s going on?" I said into the microphone.
I could see his lips tighten in a tiny grimace. His voice emerged somewhat shrilly from the tiny speaker. "Nothing at all, Arkonide! That was the only way I could remind you that somebody’s alive around here besides yourself."
For a moment I was nonplussed. Could it be that this grey-eyed Terranian had simply blasted off with a big heavy-calibre gun from the Drusus just to remind me to turn on my MVR? "That’s a pretty rough way of tapping a friend on the shoulder," I reminded him reproachfully.
His laughter rattled the speaker. "That’s a matter of opinion," he retorted calmly. "May I ask where you are at present? I’ve been calling you for the past 15 minutes."
"I’ve been close by, out here behind the main control room of the power plant tower, having a look at the distribution setup. Somebody around here came up with the idea of hooking up the defence screen generators with the hypersensor computers. The result is: if a hypertransition spacewarp takes place anywhere within a radius of 10 light-years, the phase distortion triggers automatic controls here, switching the field output to maximum, which is about 10 billion kilowatts."
"Come again?" Rhodan’s face seemed to reflect incredulity.
"10 billion kilowatt hours is the maximum output rate," I told him. "A nice current consumption, wouldn’t you say? No, I haven’t lost my mind. This planet may look like a cake dish with a cheese lid on it but it is a world of superlatives. I’m sorry your primitive intelligence isn’t able to grasp it all?
We grinned at each other. Rhodan and I had developed the habit of ribbing each other once in awhile. I wasn’t able to resist reminding him occasionally that his ancestors were still living in caves during the golden age of Arkonide development.
"Did you go on foot?" he asked abruptly.
The strange tone of his voice was a bit disconcerting. He must have been able to see me completely on his large viewscreen.
"Alright," he continued, "I’ll send over an air glider from the Drusus. If you’ll come over to the Physiotron chamber immediately, Your Eminence, I’ll be much obliged."
"To the cell shower? Why?" I asked, almost breathless.
"I’m dispatching the glider," he answered evasively. "See you!"
The tiny viewscreen on my wrist communicator darkened. Rhodan had disappeared.
For some moments I lay there on the ground and stared unseeingly at the Drusus. Perry had acted very strangely. Something had happened—I could feel it!
I began to feel nervous. I thought of the bewildering effects of semispace and of Perry Rhodan who had entered the cell shower converter during an unstable axis shift. There had been no time to wait any longer. Without question, if we hadn’t risked the cell-charging process, Rhodan would be a feeble and senile old man by now.
I waited impatiently for the disc-shaped antigrav glider, whose pilot would no doubt be able to enlighten me as to what was going on. However, I saw nothing moving on the steel face of the super battleship’s hull. At this short distance I would have been able to see the bright spot of light resulting from opening an airlock.
I got up slowly and began to dust off my Terranian uniform as a matter of habit but it took a few seconds for me to realize that there was no such thing as dust on Wanderer, at least not in the vicinity of the few cities that It had built, more or less as a caprice. It was no great technical problem to maintain a dust-free environment. The tiny particles could be made to hold an electrical charge and then remotely controlled magnetic fields could sweep them up.
I waited tensely a few more moments until out of the corner of an eye I suddenly perceived a shimmering apparition. Not 10 yards away a small figure had materialized.
I was always somewhat at a loss when confronted by the paraphysical problem of teleportation. The ancient Arkonides had already known the principle of moving material objects by means of mental power but we had never been able to accomplish the feat ourselves. However, among Rhodan’s mutants this complicated and mathematically ultra-dimensional form of paramechanics appeared to have developed into a sport. I had come to know 3 teleporters, 1 of whom was a non-human, and all of them shared a sort of fiendish delight in taking these so-called ‘jumps’ through nothingness. If one knew how to effectively apply such forces of the mind, it became a convenient mode of locomotion or transference. As for myself, I’d never be able to get the hang of it!
With affected indifference I turned to look at the little 3-foot creature who, like myself, had not been born on Earth. Rhodan had aptly dubbed him ‘Pucky’ because of the mischievous sprightliness in his big, shining eyes. He differed, however, from Shakespeare’s immortalized imp in that he was a combination of a giant mouse and a beaver with a furry, spoon-shaped tail. The intelligent little fellow stood on 2 short legs which were encased in an elegant pair of custom-made hip-boots. In addition, Pucky wore the pale green space uniform of the Solar Empire. Gleaming on his left shoulder was the insignia of a lieutenant in the secret Mutant Corps.
This comical-appearing character was nonetheless a sly one, obviously loaded with guile clear up to his floppy ears. Ever since I had come to know him, from the time of my flight to Venus, we had enjoyed a curious sort of friendship which mostly found its expression in cryptic remarks and subtle arguments.
"Hello, tattletale," I greeted him. "Would you perhaps be the ‘glider’ Perry promised me?"
The long mouse muzzle opened. I looked with fascination at Pucky’s single, large, incisor tooth, which he was fond of displaying at every opportunity. The non-Earthling’s shrill laughter was painful to my ears but when it stopped suddenly I was startled. Since the time on Venus when I had thrown a piece of rotted wood at his head, I knew that he normally laughed long and heartily. The members of his race had an insatiable appetite for play. Laughing and fooling around were all a part of this characteristic.
The mousebeaver made a grandiose gesture with his hands. "I am the glider," he announced. "Give me your hand, spy!"
I frowned slightly as I watched the easygoing little fellow waddle toward me. To him I was still an Arkonide spy. When he was next to me I bent down and took hold of his arm without a word. He was light in weight, perhaps too much so for his height. Probably the creatures from the planet Vagabond possessed very delicate skeletons, which was certainly offset by the power of their brains.
Pucky’s large eyes were fixed upon my face. His incisor tooth had disappeared inside his mouth. We looked at each other for several moments in silence, during which I sensed that he was trembling with an inner turmoil. He did not attempt to probe my mind by means of his telepathic gift. I had become accustomed for some years now to shield my brain behind a closed screen.
"What’s the matter?" I asked. "You seem to be acting a bit strangely. Since when have you been satisfied to merely call me a spy? You usually have a few rascally comments to make, on top of your normal insults. So…?"
I saw him clench his little fists momentarily and then he grasped my arm with both hands. "Do you know how the cell shower works? I mean—can you calculate its effects or maybe redesign it?"
His voice was shriller than usual. He spoke swiftly and with a surprising earnestness. The pressure of his little hands increased. The mousebeaver was very deeply disturbed.
"Well, the technical concept is fairly understandable," I replied cautiously. "But just knowing the function of a decomposition field is still a long way from comprehending the resulting biochemical processes. After all, I…"
"Hold on tight," he interrupted me. "We’ll jump together. You have to get to the shower chamber. Oh gosh, I can hardly concentrate!"
I noted that he was extraordinarily pressed to achieve the condition he required and I asked him several times to tell me what was agitating him so.
"Bell!" he exclaimed, trembling in his anxiety. "It’s Bell! He was in the cell shower machine when the phase-distortion started. Something’s happened to him. No, wait—don’t think so hard. You’re sending out interference impulses. That makes it hard for a teleporter to transfer you. Don’t think of anything—tighten up your defence screen!"
To me it seemed as if this whole accursed world were coming apart. On the one hand, Rhodan fired off one of his heaviest guns, and on the other hand here was unquestionably his most capable mutant, trembling with fear for Reginald Bell.
I conquered my nervousness and strove to screen off my brain waves. Moments later I felt a quick, painful tug. Pucky and I had made our ‘jump’, as he blithely referred to the complicated process of building up a mass transfer field in the 5th dimension.
When I rematerialised I recognized the inner contours of the pillared Physiotron chamber. A tall, lean figure slowly approached me. In Rhodan’s eyes was a frightening coldness. I had seen this look on his face once before when we had faced each other on a desolate world in mortal combat.
He came quite close before he stopped. "How good is your arithmetic, Admiral?" he asked. I think I’ve run out of numbers." He stepped to one side so that I could see the cell-activation converter.
Close to the colour-marked ring of the safety zone stood a young officer with a stubble of rusty red hair and a smooth, unwrinkled face. I had to look carefully to be convinced that it was Reginald Bell, Something seemed to stick in my throat. I almost staggered as I walked toward the danger zone. The man with the water-blue eyes did not move.
I searched for the deep furrows that had been etched into Bell’s forehead during the past few years. The first wrinkles of care of course had appeared long before after his first Moon landing, which he had made in the company of the expedition leader, Perry Rhodan. On the 14th of May 2042, Bell would complete his 104th year of life. At this moment it was May 5 of that year, so his birthday was only a few days away.
Some 62 years before today, he and Rhodan had both received their first biological cell shower on Wanderer. 5 days ago he had entered the Physiotron a 2nd time in order to submit to the indispensable cell activation process.
I risked still another step before I stopped. This young man with the smooth, barely distinguished features—was this Reginald Bell, Rhodan’s 2nd-in-command?
"Reginald, is it really you?" I asked falteringly
The full young lips hardly moved. His stocky, broad-shouldered physique revealed less fat around the hips than I had been accustomed to seeing.
"This is the way I was back in the 60s, more or less," he answered tonelessly, "when a certain Gen. Pounder sent me to the new Space Academy. At that time I was 27 years old."
A sense of horror welled up within me. Simultaneously I received a signal from my auxiliary brain, which had been activated thousands of years ago on Arkon. The message from its logic transmitter was short: "Beware—breakdown during the 2nd cell shower. Regeneration can be retrogressive. He is becoming younger!"
This awareness was like a blow to the face. I struggled to hold on to my self-composure. My smile must have looked sickly, if anything, but Bell did not seem to notice it. I could sense that this energetic man had inwardly given up any hope of survival.
I turned to look at the others behind me. In addition to Rhodan, only the scientists and officers of the Drusus were in evidence. Dr. Arnulf Skjoldson, chief medical officer, stood next to Dr. Ali el Jagat, head of the mathematical department.
Jagat’s thin, aquiline face remained expressionless as he handed me a sheet of synthetic material on which a line diagram had been drawn. Without preliminaries he plunged into his explanation. Which I could understand because I sensed that there was no time to lose. It would have been purposeless to try discussing all the whys and wherefores of Bell’s life and destiny. So it was typical of Jagat to call out the facts as he saw them:
"This is the first evaluation, Admiral. At the present moment Bell is at a stage which represents the 32nd year of his life. Those pulse spikes show the beginning of the retrogression process. The flatter curves mark the time-lapse since the 2nd activation. The chart is saying that an uninterrupted development of the process will bring him to a critical phase within about 60 hours. If we don’t do anything to stop it, within 3 weeks he’ll be a babbling baby."
The mental image of Bell as a flailing, kicking infant might have been amusing under less tragic circumstances but here there was no one who seemed to be amused in the slightest degree. The chart was the result of a test computer run and it didn’t require a mathematician to determine when the critical point would arrive.
I looked searchingly at the doctor. Skjoldson made a helpless gesture with his hands. A mop of his straw-blond hair hung over his furrowed brow. "You have no solution, doctor?" I asked him.
"None! What has happened here with this equipment goes beyond my comprehension. I don’t even understand the purely physical processes involved—and that goes for the biochemical changes as well. It is incredible to me that a maturely developed man should become younger. This goes against all the laws of Nature."
"Like everything else on this artificial planet," interjected Bell tonelessly. "OK, you can cut the chatter, men. No diapers for me. Before I get to that stage, count me out—curtains!"
His youthful face was grim. He looked at each of us, devoid of any hope. Finally his attention was focussed upon a tall, lean figure back in the entrance hall. I followed his gaze.
We had given the biopositronic robot the name of Homunk, which was short for homunculus. He was the product of what had to be considered an exclusive and esoteric science. He could not have been constructed more perfectly without coming close to duplicating the work of the Creator.
Homunk’s biosynthetic facial film exhibited a compulsory smile. Beneath the virtually living yet synthetic tissue of his bodily ‘flesh’ envelope operated a mechanism that had no counterpart in the known galaxy.
The fully positronic micro-laminar brain was more efficient than I had ever seen in the best of our own machines. In this highly complex computer brain there were more circuit elements packed into the space of a cubic centimetre than we could have stored effectively into a cubic yard and still get anywhere near the same performance. Its electronic speed was something like 80 million bits of information per second. How big the memory storage was we did not know. In any case, Homunk was something that one could designate as being perfect.
His builder-designer had fashioned him in the outward appearance of a human or an Arkonide. His speaking mechanism was a biological masterpiece. Using a positronic oscillator, it could convert electromagnetic control pulses into understandable and perfectly modulated words, with the help of its semi-organic vocal cords. Homunk was a walking miracle—but at present he seemed to be failing us miserably.
Rhodan beckoned to the robot. He approached with swinging, elastic strides. His stereotyped smile provoked me into making an unfriendly remark. "It appears to me that your great master has come to the end of his wits. Where is that creature and all of his roaring laughter now?"
Homunk came to a stop and his ersatz eyes looked at me. He called me "Sir", as he did everybody. "Since his escape from semispace he has not communicated, Sir. I am disquieted."
A cosmonaut officer from the Drusus laughed humourlessly at the idea of a robot being worried about anything. But then silence pervaded the large chamber.
At this moment I knew that the 2nd catastrophe had just made its appearance. It had disappeared! The being in whom the mentalities of millions of disembodied intelligences were combined into a titanic psychic force seemed not to have survived the chaos of the return out of semispace. At the moment, we ourselves were practically the proprietors and rulers of the synthetic planet Wanderer.
Perry Rhodan only looked at me. He had apparently asked his decisive questions before my arrival so now he left the initiative to me.
Inwardly I began to despair. People of my race do not perspire; however, I felt a dampness around my eyes. My logic sector remained stubbornly silent. Apparently even my auxiliary brain saw no practicable way out.
Since my silence persisted, Rhodan interjected his thoughts. "Homunk has suggested that we reconstruct the entire experiment—and repeat it. Some weeks ago Wanderer was trapped by an overlap of the Druuf timeplane. Owing to the forceful method of its escape, the planet landed in an unstable intermediate dimension. If we were to deliberately penetrate the time wall again and risk making an escape under the same conditions we would actually have to land in semispace. Circumstances permitting, Bell could then reenter the cell shower."
Rhodan’s cryptic smile indicated to me that he did not consider the plan to be very promising.
I bluntly rejected the idea. "Impossible! How are you going to get the titanic mass of a celestial body like this through the warpfield?"
"With the powerful equipment available here we could generate a correspondingly large energy-lens to gate us through."
I made a negative gesture. It was senseless to even discuss it.
"Until something like that happens, I’m done for," interjected Bell calmly. "Atlan, do you have a better idea? I remember your work during and even before the breakout."
"He should enter the converter again and make an all out try to stop the process," said Lt.-Col. Sikerman.
I shook my head. No, that wasn’t the answer, either. The problem lay in our lack of knowledge concerning the function of the Physiotron. While he was being charged, Bell had only been caught a short length of time in the distortion forces of the phase shift. We knew now that the existence of the planet in semispace had been a question of energy levels. Unquestionably the intermediate plane was related much more closely to the Druuf zone than with our own space-time continuum.
I only learned later that I had stood for more than an hour in a trance-like state in front of the perfect robot. The men of the Drusus continued their silence after I was awakened from my brooding by a painfully heavy pulse from my logic sector. I had found a temporary, solution but whether or not it would stand the test of application was another question.
"You’ve arrived at something," said Rhodan. "What can we do?"
I felt exhausted. The mathematical problems involved were getting too big for even an Arkonide brain. For the time being I could only come up with general information. As I tried to look about attentively I noticed that my eyesight seemed to fail me to some extent. Rhodan came close, his face showing concern.
"You’re still exhausted from your last effort," he said softly. "Can you still concentrate? I have a certain conceptual grasp of what’s going on. Let’s wait to see what your dice have come up with. Maybe our opinions will coincide."
I smiled at him and asked myself why I had ever considered this man to be my enemy. On Hellgate I had almost killed him. The humans associated with Rhodan reminded me more and more of the old Arkonides under my command who fought and suffered in the Earthly solar system many thousands of years ago.
They had been wonderful friends and rugged soldiers, as worthy of affection as these Terranians were gradually becoming. Reginald Bell for example was the personification of self-control. For several minutes now he had started to defy his fate. I could read in his eyes that he had determined to show no sign of weakness. Of course he knew only too well that with a continuation of the retrogressive process he would lose his high-spirited courage.
A simple concentration or contraction of his cell structure or molecular combinations could not be involved here. Had this been so, we would probably have seen his body begin to shrink.
But instead he became younger! It was something that I could neither understand nor express in mathematical symbology. Of the greatest secret in the universe, which was life itself, I knew practically nothing. I was a high-energy engineer and a specialist in cosmic colonization which also included the field of cosmo-psychology. But I couldn’t guess what was happening to Bell’s cellular structure. Nevertheless I hoped for a miracle which might be brought about on the basis of a fleeting calculation in the field of probability.
I looked at the relatively small Physiotron. It was a columnar-shaped apparatus with a thick, circular platform. Farther beyond them I recognized several high-powered reactors, similar to all the others of their kind, which were in evidence everywhere on Wanderer. The cell shower’s energy was supplied without wires.
"Are you able to service the Physiotron consistently?" I inquired of Homunk. When he confirmed this, I continued: "What power stations are required for perfect functioning of the Physiotron? What special circuits do you have to take with you?"
"Take with him?" repeated Rhodan with some emphasis. "Arkonide, I think you’ve hit on the same idea that I have. Keep talking. I’m all ears!"
Homunk explained the technical operation. It was relatively simple to understand until he came to the impulse converters, which had been built into the base of the apparatus. From there on my thinking capacity began to strike out. As for example I couldn’t exactly visualize the process when the robot mentioned the creation of the stabilization effect.
A living organism also consists of atoms, from which molecules are formed. The principle of the Physiotron was based on a catalytic cycle in which the atomic agglomeration or cohesion is held stabilized and unchanged for about 62 years.
So it was clear in principle what had been achieved with the machine. The aging process of the cells had not been attacked at the cell core directly but at the infinitely smaller level: the atom!
After Homunk had answered my numerous questions, I saw things a bit more clearly. I looked at my watch. Then I stepped closer to Bell.
"Bell, until now I’ve only had a vague idea. What we will do is tear the cell shower and its power plant out of the foundation by means of antigravity beams. We’ll have to be careful not to damage any of the mechanical installations. The combined operating unit will be mounted on a large freight platform, which we’ll fit out with a vibrodrive unit. The Drusus will build up an energy lens-field that will be 1,500 feet in diameter so that we can make an exit from normal space. We will penetrate the Druuf time-plane where we will try to synthesize or imitate the unstable conditions of semispace—which we hope to do through a concentration of energy inside a defence screen we’ll have to erect. We know that semispace is an unstable condition or form of the 5th dimension, somewhat comparable to the unusable isotope of an element. An approximation should be possible but I’m still going to need every computer and electronic brain on the Drusus for calculating these effects. Are you in agreement with this?"
Bell remained motionless but he asked: "Looks like the operation will take about 4 or 5 days. Where in Druuf space will you get the energy for levelling the continuum?" He had grasped completely what the whole thing depended upon.
In this connection, Rhodan had also arrived at a solution. "We’ll use another antigrav platform so that we can take one of the planet’s major reactors with us. Homunk, can you arrange that for us?" he asked.
The robot calculated swiftly. After ½ a second it replied: "In 12 hours and 14 minutes a semispace generator will be ready for transport!"
"Good Lord! What’s a semi—?" asked Sikerman bewilderedly.
The robot only simulated a smile. It did not seem to be capable of any other human mimicry. "It is a special converter for supercharging an outer ring field—one that is warped in upon itself and closed so that 4th dimensional influences will be reflected from it."
With that we knew for certain! I gradually perceived that the technology of the collective entity was incomparably beyond our own.
"We can do it in 5 days," said Rhodan after doing some figuring in his head. "Maj. Forster, I want you to take charge of beefing up the propulsion unit of the antigrav platform. Sikerman and Aurin, you 2 get slidexes (Slidex: mini slide-rule automatic calculator.) busy on what strength you want in the mag-projector traction beams. Homunk will fill you in on the best way to break loose the equipment out of the foundation. Atlan, you and I have the small chore of making an overall integrated systems checkout. Let’s get started." His tall, lean figure turned to go. For Perry the situation was taken care of for the moment.
"What about me?" Bell called out.
The Chief of the Solar Empire halted, turned to face him, leaving his back to the rest of us momentarily. "I’ve already spoken to Dr. Skjoldson. Until preparations have been completed, you will remain in the medical section’s sickbay. A bio-chem deep-sleep shot will reduce your physiological functions by at least 80%. It could be that your runaway rejuvenation process may be slowed down or held off by it while you’re under. Skjoldson will handle all that. Alright, what are we standing around for?"
He was right. What were we waiting for? There was nothing much more to discuss. Pucky, that curious imp from the planet Vagabond, followed close on my heels.
"Want me to pop you over to the Drusus?" asked the little fellow plaintively. His big eyes seemed to be a sea of tears. It almost seemed to me that he was close to an emotional breakdown.
I bent down without a word and picked him up in my arms and in this manner the 2 of us moved toward the great, arched entrance gate of the Physiotron chamber.
Behind us a hectic hustle and bustle ensued. Sikerman’s loud voice was unmistakable. Homunk, the perfect robot, stood motionlessly among the hard-pressed crewmembers of the super battleship, his synthetic smile still radiating its irritating charm and graciousness.
When I reached the open square in front of the building, Rhodan was just opening the door of a small pulse-glider. Silently he indicated the rear passenger seat. I came to a halt right next to him and looked at him penetratingly. In his case, nothing seemed to have changed. His body was as young and strong and limber as ever.
His smile told me he’d guessed my thoughts. "It was luck," he said. "I finished the cell-activation process at 17:24 on the 1st of May, so I wasn’t hit by the phase-shift phenomenon. Bell didn’t come out of the machine until about 19:30. The distortion effects must have attacked him during the dematerialisation."
"We are aware of the facts," I answered reflectively. "But to me there’s an equally important question: what’s happened to It? Where is that collective entity keeping Itself?"
Rhodan’s ironic laugh caused Pucky to whimper and cling more tightly to my shoulder. "That’s Problem #2, Atlan. I guess you’d like a few words of explanation from him, wouldn’t you?"
I nodded slowly. Naturally I’d be glad to find out why I had been furnished with a strange apparatus some 10,000 years ago by Earth reckoning. I felt the chest area of my uniform involuntarily. The activator hung there firmly on its unbreakable body connector.
"Let’s go," said Rhodan, and there was an undertone of hopelessness in his voice. "I don’t relish the idea of losing a friend. Or perhaps it would be interesting to see how far the retrogressive process goes. Where or how does it end? In the ultimate germ cell?"
It made me dizzy to think of such a possibility even by inference. One thing was certain: Nature had played a nasty trick on the biophysical processes of a highly developed intelligent being.