"THE JUMP!

"Please, sir, you should let me make it! This is my kind of job, not yours!"

I waved my hand in a signal of refusal. Ras Tschubai, a teleporter of the Terran Mutant Corps, had called to me over the helmet phone. He looked at me once more imploringly and then went out.

The energy arc of the matter transmitter took form. Blue fire streamed up from the twin floor projectors, turning to a flaming red at the apex of the arc. The thundering of the nuclear power generator drowned out all other sounds, which had forced Ras to use his radio. Between the fiery legs of the arc a darkness yawned, representing the exta-dimensional dematerialising field. I clutched the bomb that was suspended from my neck. It had been constructed in the atomic laboratories of Terra and was of a thermonuclear design. Its detonator had a built-in time delay which would allow me time to get out of the danger zone, if everything went according to plan.

"IF—!" said my logic sector.

I had already closed the helmet of my Arkonide combatsuit. The oxygen supply and the air conditioning were functioning properly. I was ready except that I could not activate my defence screen as it would cause interference with the lines of force in the Akon Transmitter.

The Akons! They were the unseen masterminds behind the galactic stage. Without their help and technology it would be impossible for a certain treasonous Arkonide to deceive the robot Regent. About 3 months had passed since my escape. Now I was once more in star cluster M-13 but this time, instead of being the ruling Imperator, I had come here as a dethroned outcast.

"Full power in 42 seconds," I heard somebody say over the radio and I recognized Perry Rhodan’s voice. He was in the Control Centre of the Ironduke.

The Terran linear-drive ship had emerged but a minute before from the semispace generated by the Kalup fields. We were within 20 light-years of the outer defence ring of the Arkon System but could not risk coming any closer. In fact the robot Brain’s fortresses.

"It’s disgraceful!" I thought bitterly.

"Nonsense!" retorted my extra-brain. "It’s a tactical necessity."

The sound of the reactors became deafening. I was alone in the transmitter room. In the few seconds remaining before the start of "Operation Last Ditch", as we called it, recent events ran through my mind as in a fast-moving film.

Three months before, a contest between myself and Carba from the insignificant ancestral House of Minterol had ended in a check-mate situation but he had been named Imperator Minterol I. Meanwhile the Solar Secret Service had reported that Carba’s reason had been wavering because of an over-driven brain activation and that he was probably on the brink of a mental collapse by now.

Which was all the more convenient for those who had used him for seizing power in the Arkonide Imperium. Those masterminds were the ones who manipulated the robot Regent through this puppet ruler whom the brain recognized. The vast Positronicon was unable to differentiate between Carba’s voluntary and involuntary commands.

In the construction of their super robot my venerable ancestors had sought to prevent the very situation which had now developed: the Empire was being taken over by aliens; it was being split up and divided among various interest factions. It was the end of a 20,000-year stellar imperium and perhaps it also meant doom for Earthmen. Rhodan had already performed miracles in the buildup of the Solar Imperium but he was not a magician. Without the support of the robot fleet, Terran was lost.

From all indications an offensive was being planned, and apparently the Regent’s fleet would not be operating alone. There were only a few intelligent races who were favourably inclined toward the Terrans, who had become all too irksome or troublesome to others. Most aliens hated them, in particular the Galactic Traders, the Aras, the Antis and of late the Akons, who had suffered the greatest defeat in their history because of Rhodan.

My own power was gone. My alliance with the Earth might have been gratifying to the Terrans but it was no longer to their advantage. In fact a deposed Arkonide Imperator was more of a burden than a support to their extra-terrestrial political structure and policy.

Rhodan had been fully aware of my metal and emotional distress. He had not brought up the question or placed any pressure on me until I myself had made the proposal to blow up the Regent. It was then that I learned that Solar Intelligence had already made all the preparations.

Once the Brain was eliminated it would be up to me and the Terrans to save the Imperium. I hardly dared think of the magnitude of such a task at the moment. The Regent controlled industry, the entire food and supply administration and the military might of the Empire. If these controls suddenly vanished it would cause a catastrophe. However, we had conscientiously asked ourselves if those revolts and petty wars which would come as a result could be worse than the present splinterings and divisions caused by the greedy powers of the galaxy.

I had to do it! The criminal augmentation of Carba’s intelligence was leading to destruction. By nefarious means the Regent had been convinced that Carba’s supercharged mind entitled him to the position of Imperator. During the mental duel, which was carried out on an almost incomprehensible plane of robot logic, my opponents had been able to "prove" that I had become an incompetent ruler. They claimed that I had violated the doctrines of our ancestors by supporting the development of the Terrans, that I had furnished them with technical secrets and had thus enhanced the advancement of an almost invincible enemy.

The Robot had not understood my real concerns for the Imperium. It had responded to the ancient catastrophe program "Ephethus", according to which an Imperator was to be removed immediately as soon as he was not exclusively concerned with the well-being of the Empire. I had not succeeded in giving a purely logical proof that the friendship of the alert and highly intelligent Terrans would be of great benefit to the State. In the end, Carba had been named Imperator and I had been forced to escape.

"Transmission in 3 seconds," Rhodan announced. "Good Luck, friend."

It shocked me back to the present and I was aware of the stark reality of the bomb. I would have to ignite it within the inner circuits of the Regent.

"You should have sent a Terran mutant," my logic sector informed me.

Certainly a teleporter would be able to help himself better in a dangerous emergency. However, this destruction of the most magnificent creation of my ancestors was strictly my affair. By virtue of my heritage and my office it was I who must make the attempt to preserve the Imperium.

"Very heroic!" retorted my extra-brain.

I ignored it. My synthetically activated logic sector had little use for sentiment or feelings. Actually it was an organic computer which transmitted its conclusions or perceptions. But it was up to to me to either respond to its admonishments or to reject them.

The energy field had thickened visibly and the transmitter arc was high enough to admit a man. When the violet signal lamp began to flicker I advanced toward the yawning darkness between the rising legs of the arc. One more step and I would emerge inside the Brain 20 light-years away. The Terrans had been able to analyse this Akon technology so that the formerly long-range transmitter no longer held any secrets for them.

I felt the pull of the dematerialising field. Taking a deep breath I cast aside all thoughts of the pros and cons of my actions and prepared myself for the "jump".

"Stop—get back!" somebody shouted. "Danger, Atlan! The receiver station’s been short-circuited!"

I responded without thinking, as had become my habit in recent years. When a person is continuously threatened by assassins he develops a 6th sense. Before I had consciously registered the warning cry I had already leapt back but I still fell to the deck within a yard or so from the transmitter arc. My heavy equipment prevented me from moving swiftly. I had to crawl back into the room until I was beyond the marked-out danger zone and could take shelter behind the thermal defence screen.

The hatch swung open and 2 men rushed in with Ras Tschubai in the lead. Without a word they snatched me from the transmitter room and set me on my feet outside. "Are you all right sir?" asked the second man, who was younger than the African teleporter.

I recognised Lt. Brazo Alkher, one of the backup cadre of officers who would one day have a voice in the destiny of the Solar Imperium.

"Yes, thank you," I answered. "What happened?" But I had not spoken loudly enough because of the thundering of the converter, so I repeated the question.

Alkher pressed the release button on my helmet and it glided back onto my shoulders, where it was magnetically anchored. Ras Tschubai smiles apologetically and relieved me of the bomb. he seemed to concentrate for a moment and then he disappeared in a bright flash of shimmering air. It was all happening too fast and my brain refused to register the events in their proper sequence.

Rhodan and the commander put in an appearance. Jef Claudrin had turned off his micro-grav generator and came along the passage in mighty strides, just as if there were no gravity at all on board the Ironduke.

Once more I received no answer. They led me away as though I were a child. Apparently they had recognized my state of confusion as a form of temporary stupor. In fact I was becoming drowsy by the time Rhodan brought me into the Control Central and bedded me down on a contour couch.

Here it was more calm and quiet. The humming of the equipment and instruments was more pacifying than disturbing. I was wondering about my condition. Normally I should have been fairly agitated under the circumstances but in this case I could barely move. It was similar to a state of shock. I had been torn abruptly from a condition of high concentration and weeks of nervous tension.

A medico gave me an injection and after a few moments I felt more collected and able to move. Perry was squatting beside me, surrounded by the officers of the Ironduke. I sat up, staring at them, unable to miss Prof. Kalup’s heavy figure in their midst.

"Maybe old soldiers never die," he said ironically, "but you came very close to fading away. Do you happen to know, sir, that you were already within the range of the dematerialising field? How did you manage to jump back just in the nick of time like that?"

"Instinct, self-preservation—I don’t know … "

"Most likely instinct. The transmitter was short-circuited just as you were about to enter it—which meant that the other end of the line wasn’t able to receive you. Anything going into a mess like that would have been shuttled back and forth about a hundred thousand time per microsecond."

Rhodan chuckled unconvincingly and clapped me on the shoulder, hoping to reassure me. "Forget it, friend. We caught it just in time."

However, my thoughts were racing. During the considerable period of my office as Imperator Gonozal VIII, I had succeeded in setting up a transmitter station in the subterranean section of the robot Regent. The Brain had never become suspicious because it was not equipped to detect the equipment’s extra-dimensional forcefield. Moreover the device had been built by Terran specialists and it contained security circuits which were unknown even to the Akons.

Who had caused it to short circuit? Who would have been capable of it?

A strange sound gripped my attention. It sounded like the whinning of a hound. Rhodan was staring at a viewscreen which revealed the inner room of the ship’s transmitter station. Within moments the sound became shriller until it resembled the shrieking of a power-saw.

Rhodan was shouting to me. "We’ve sent a robot into the field! there—take a look at that!"

I jumped up. Once more my legs seemed to move involuntarily and I realized that I must have become frightfully pale.

The dematerialisation field between the bases of the energy arc was normally black but at present it was aglow with a greenish flame. Within it was silhouetted a nebulous shape which appeared to become more deformed with each passing second.

Jefe Claudrin gave an order and the transmitter was shut off. There was a lightening flash from the armourplate bulkhead of the sending room and remained fastened to it.

When the thunder of the power pile subsided we were still staring at the viewscreen. The robot had apparently been compressed to a lump of metal the size of a fist. The densified mass clung to the steel plate, glowing white hot and seeming to pulsate like something alive.

I couldn’t utter a word. Everyone in the Control Central could well imagine what I would have looked like by now if I had not jumped back in time. Rhodan cleared his throat but also said nothing.

Kalup wiped his bald head with a handkerchief. "The atomic regrouping there doesn’t seem to be very tidy," he said. "Could you give me an idea, sir, of what’s happened to your transmitter receiver? I thought you had concealed it."

I suppressed my excitement, realizing that this whole thing had become futile. No one said anything until after I had struggled to express what was really on my mind. "A good question, Professor! The Regent could never have found it. Nor could Carba, either. So it meant that somebody must have penetrated the robot who is familiar with Akon transmitters."

"Terran transmitters," corrected Kalup irritably, "based on the Akon principle."

I shrugged. "Have it your way. I know you and your experts took special pains with it. Nevertheless the equipment has been discovered and evidently somebody was able to understand the technology involved. They were waiting for our sending station to beam out the ready signal and that’s when they caused the short circuit. So it seems I’ve escaped once again. But how to destroy the Brain now is a whole new problem."

Kalup turned away. I watched his portly figure until he disappeared through the door to the tracking central. His gruff tone did not disturb me anymore. I knew it was only an expression of his choleric nature and that he was not half as formidable as he sounded.

Rhodan was leaning with both hands on a map table. His gaze seemed to bore through the top of it. Without looking up he made a statement that I could not refute. "that was the last possibility of attacking the Brain with relative safety or at least a minimum of risk. Now Akon scientists have penetrated the situation and they are allowed to do things that we were always prevented from doing. It’s certain that the Regent’s basic security circuits have been reprogrammed; therefore the machine has become a general menace. Our observations indicate that a large part of the robot fleet has been deployed into the Arkon system. An open attack would not only be hopeless but it would also threaten the existence of humanity. And since our mutants can’t enter the Brain’s interior it would appear that the tele­transmitter is the only solution."

The idea startled me. The special transmitter was located on board the Fleet flagship. "It’s been proved that the Brain’s honeycomb screen is impenetrable," I said. "The Akons have modernized the defence weapons. Besides that they also have linear-drive spaceships. What do you have in mind?"

He looked at me cautiously. Jefe Claudrin avoided my gaze. That’s when I realized that the Terrans had been discussing something that I was not aware of as yet.

"Nothing, Atlan. Or at least nothing yet! It would have to depend on your decision … "

"Pertaining to what … ?"

"It would require your agreement to strike Arkon 3 with nuclear fire—it would mean the destruction of the planet. Wait!" He raised a hand and I checked my angry reaction. "Let me finish. We’re quite aware that the delicate gravitational balance of the three Arkon worlds would be disturbed . Without the mass of the war planet, the tri-planet configuration created by your ancestors might fall apart. The synthetic orbits would be destroyed. The Crystal World of Arkon I and the industrial planet, Arkon 2, would be ravaged by annihilating earthquakes and catastrophic floods. To say the least the climatic conditions would undergo a violent change. This much must be admitted."

I turned to go into the tracking centre, struck to the core by Rhodan’s words.

"I am against the plan," he said.

When I turned to look at him his face was expressionless. "Thanks for that," I told him. "It won’t work. Billions of Arkonides would be sacrificed. I might go along with the destruction of Arkon 3 since hardly anyone lives there. An evacuation would be possible. The Crystal World and #2, however, must not be disturbed. I haven’t given up yet."

The armoured hatch opened and I stepped through. I knew that we had reached out wit’s end in the matter. Rhodan followed me and we came to a stop before the echo screens of the energy sensor. Jefe Claudrin’s voice reached us from the Control Central. He was ordering an engine warmup.

The sudden roaring of the hypersensors did not come as a surprise to me: I had expected an enemy sighting. Rhodan interpreted my weary smile correctly.

We had come here to destroy the Regent. If it ceased to exist, Carba’s plans would come to nought. The alien power groups would lose their interest in him. Far more importantly, however, about 100,000 ships of the Arkonide robot fleet would be put out of operation.

"If!", said my logic sector.

I ignored the interjection. The Akons had been behind the revolt of the degenerated Arkonides and now they had reached their goal. The Regent was acting illogically, which proved that they had been able to influence it decisively.

The sensor mumblings indicated transitions. Therefore, we were being attacked by the Brain. I hardly paid any attention to the howl of alarm sirens. The Ironduke was in battle readiness. Within seconds after the first long-distance sighting, the warship had begun to pick up speed. As usual in such moments, the commands seemed to come so fast that they overlapped each other. The off-duty crews were hurrying to their combat positions. The heavy gun turrets emerged from the hull as if to say that Terra was not as helpless now as it had been 100 years ago.

Following the hyperspace entry manoeuvre of the detected warships the hypersensors registered a second set of shockwaves. On the mass-sensor’s echo screens appeared 4 green blips, and seconds later the evaluation came through. The Terran translight sensor-tracking system worked on the principle of hypercom-reflex analysis. The equipment could also pick up return echoes from physical objects in normal space, so the state of the art was no longer dependent upon tracing energy contrails from the impulse engines of other vessels. Although the latter technique served to determine range and bearing, the new features permitted an estimate of the size of the tracked objects as well.

The voice of the O.D rang from the speakers. Presently the Ironduke, was hurtling into deep space with an acceleration of 600 km per second squared. "Four superbattleships, Imperium class, in close formation—red 33.467, vertical 7.274. Broadside action—turn about and open fire."

I frowned, realizing that the robot-controlled space giants had unquestionably received orders to destroy the Ironduke. What astonished me was that our main positronicon had responded to the open fire without an override. The 4 battleships had emerged from hyperspace at a distance of about 10 million km and their speed was close to that of light itself. It was ridiculous to assume we were in effective range for a hit. The distance was also too great for overtaking a swift opponent.

Rhodan did not concern himself with the invisible energy beams sweeping past us.

"Broadside pattern sustaining," came a voice from tracking. "Lousy, too—excuse me, sir!"

I ran to the Control Central where the bogie blips were more discernible on the larger screens. The Imperium-class ships were in a braking manoeuvre. Even the Regent would not be able to handle the complex factors this introduced to the firing coordinate data. The thunder of our engines made normal communication impossible. I snatched up a radio helmet, slapped the earphones to my head and switched the receiver on. And at once I was aware of Rhodan’s shouted orders. He was sitting in the commodore’s flight seat while next to him the commander monitored the navigation and defence controls.

" … should give it a try," I heard Perry say. "Fire when ready!"

I looked in surprise at the outboard monitor as something leapt away from one of the launching domes. It was an old-fashioned rocket of the type we had used in our fight against the Antis. For a brief moment its micro-impulse engine flamed brilliantly as it broke through the reverse-polarity field Iaminations of our defence screens, and then it vanished. But we could still see a green blip on the energy-sensor screen. The missile was accelerating at a maximum rate of 800 km per second squared. It was self-guided, employing 3 different principles which a robotship would find it difficult to recognize. For thousands of years, projectiles had not been used as weapon carriers.

"Do you think it’ll work?" I asked.

"The proof is in the pudding, as they used to say on Earth. We’re working just now with the mass detector. If it’s jammed out the energy sensor will take over. That in turn becomes ineffective if they cut their engines. Residual radiation is too weak for long-range tracking. The crudest method is used by the laser-amplified echo-tracer. It starts working when it comes within range of the return beams reflected from the ships. I don’t think they’ll try dampening the echoes. At any rate, the missile will home in on the leading vessel."

I was impressed. These men never hesitated to use any weapon they had to, from situation to situation, even if it involved such an archaic device that any other intelligences would have haughtily rejected the thought of employing it.

The robotships were still firing at us. Their courses were approaching ours although they had broken up their formation. Before we penetrated into the Kalup-generated semispace zone, tracking announced a massive energy burst at a range of 8 million km. One of the echo blips disappeared and in its place appeared a glowing orange-red fleck of light.

"Approximately 40,000 megatons," announced the duty officer in the tracking centre. "A dead hit—total destruction. Their nuclear fuel helped amplify the chain reaction."

Rhodan leaned back in his seat while I fairly trembled in reaction. Had the Regent become so sloppy that its ships could be destroyed by a primitive nuclear projectile? I myself could have figured out at least 10 different ways of handling the clearly detectable rocket, either by weapons fire or by outmanoeuvring it. I avoided Rhodan’s gaze.

The howling of the compensating converter died away. The star-strewn firmament of the normal void disappeared from the viewscreens and once more I was captivated by the phenomenon of translight linear flight.

Rhodan’s voice rang in my headphones. "The Brain is at the end of its rope. I wouldn’t have thought I could hit an Imperium-class battleship this way, much less destroy it. It’s time to wipe out that machine. It’s a source of growing disaster. Within a few months the galaxy will be in an uproar and by that time Carba will probably have gone mad. From then on the Akons will try to tighten the reins, whereas at present they still have to move cautiously. Can you imagine what will happen when they have a free hand?"

I nodded dejectedly. Yes, I could well imagine. Even though these 4 robotships had acted erratically the Terran fleet could not hold out against 100,000 of them. The Springer fleet units would also penetrate into the Sol System, in addition to the ships of countless colonial races who would still be in support of the Arkonide Imperium as ever before.

In spite of this, however, I still believed that I could shut off the Regent. In our case the mammoth Brain was the sword with which the Gordian knot could be cut.