Rhodan suppressed an exclamation of bewilderment as he saw the astonished looks of the others. In Pucky’s assertion were 2 impossibilities at the same time. They had to be proved or disproved.
“Pucky, you couldn’t have jumped only 10 seconds ago because it’s already been 3 minutes since we atomized that ship with the teletransmitter. So you must have made a mistake in your timing.” Rhodan drew a deep breath. “And that you were on Earth in the meantime can only be a hallucination—or what…?”
In the mouse-beaver’s brown eyes flickered a shadow of fear before the unexplainable and uncanny that could yield no answer. Almost pleadingly he clasped his little arms to his chest. “Perry, I jumped 10 seconds before I arrived here and I was also on the Earth. I saw the blue sky, I smelled the familiar air—and I saw you!”
Rhodan recoiled slightly. With a quick glance he reassured himself that Col. Sikerman wasn’t letting the black ship of the Druufs out of his eyes and was ready at any moment to react instantly. “You saw me?”
Pucky nodded. “You stood in a broad meadow with high grass and blooming flowers. There were no clouds in the sky. I materialized close to you, not 2 yards away. I called to you but you didn’t hear me. Without any sign of recognition you remained standing there while I approached you. I wanted to shake hands. And then…”
Pucky’s voice trailed off with a pitiable sound of genuine anguish. The recollection of the weird experience was about to overwhelm the mouse-beaver who was normally plucky and shrewd but when Khrest came to him and placed a hand on his shoulder he pulled himself together again. “Perry, my hand went through you. I didn’t contact you but just your ghost or something. Oh no, it wasn’t any dream!” He looked down at himself and suddenly stooped to brush his feet with his fingers. “The pollen from the flowers is still there.”
Rhodan glanced uncomprehendingly at Khrest and Atlan. “How is it possible? Maybe a hallucination?”
Atlan came closer. He nodded confidentially to Pucky and then turned to Rhodan. “No, Barbarian, it was not a hallucination. There are things that we still cannot comprehend because they are beyond the capacity of our understanding. But we should at least attempt to find a logical explanation. So we will presuppose that Pucky has not deluded himself—with the exception of the duration of his jump. In that area there has to be a deception because we knocked out the ship that Pucky was on 3 minutes prior to his appearance here. So Pucky was underway for a total of 3 minutes, even though he believes he only took 10 seconds for his jump.”
“Keep going, old friend,” invited Rhodan as the Arkonide made a slight pause. “Don’t leave us up in the air.”
Atlan dampened their expectations. “I’ll have to disappoint you. I don’t know much more than that. During his teleportation, Pucky was in some kind of time-field. He concentrated on you, Rhodan. One thing is certain: At the moment Pucky jumped, you were not here in this spot but—on the Earth.”
“That’s crazy!” said Rhodan, shaking his head.
But Atlan persisted. “Let us grant that Pucky sprang into some kind of an energy barrier that the Druufs had placed around their ship. Who says that it was even an energy barrier—or still is? Can it not also be a time barrier? Pucky jumped into it and was transplanted either into the past or the future. Yet his brain had to obey the command to bring him to Rhodan. However, you were still on Earth—or back there again as the case may be. So Pucky transferred to the Earth. That’s the only explanation I can find for the phenomenon.”
Khrest nodded slowly and went back to his seat.
But Rhodan still wasn’t satisfied. “And why was I a ghost? Didn’t you hear Pucky say that his hand simply passed through me?”
Atlan nodded, not particularly impressed by the problem. “We don’t know the effects or consequences of a time trip. However I can well imagine that a meeting between 2 people would not necessarily be on a material basis if they were separated by past, present or future. In other words: Pucky saw a Rhodan as he once was or as he will only be in the future. And you, Rhodan, were not aware of him at all.”
“Fantastic!” murmured Rhodan, although he was now convinced that Atlan might have a point in his argument. “So you’re saying that Pucky dipped into the future for 10 seconds?”
“Or into the past,” confirmed Atlan with a touch of his unfathomable and mysterious personality. “Of course I’m not able to explain why he didn’t stay there. After the 10 seconds he came back into the present. Otherwise he couldn’t be on board the Sherbourne.”
“Then if that’s so,” interjected Khrest, “Pucky must have succeeded in breaking through both time-planes. He must have lived for 10 seconds at the real-time rate of the normal universe and then by returning he again lapsed into the alien time-plane’s time-rate. So the whole thing is a bit shaky, to say the least.”
“The whole thing is pure madness!” said Marshall, breaking into the ensuing silence. “It goes against all natural laws and understanding. A person would have to be crazy to believe—”
“On the contrary,” Atlan interrupted him calmly. “It would be quite insane not to believe in such possibilities because then a man would deny himself the chance of fathoming the ultimate mysteries of the Universe.”
This time, there were no further contradictions.
* * * *
When the telepathic contact broke off, the Druuf knew that the prisoner had escaped. Almost at the same moment he noted on the viewscreen that his unknown opponent was going into an attack position.
“Activate the time barrier!” he commanded.
At the same time he had the magnetic clamps pulled in and released the smaller ship. The bow cannon was extended and it fired off its ineffective shot at the enemy.
And then—in the transition from one second to the next—the smaller fighting ship of the Druuf disappeared. It seemed as though it had gone into a hypertransit.
His connection with the 17 ships surrounding the light-ring was still intact and clear. The Druuf utilized the ensuing pause to inform himself of the general status of things. So far nobody from the other plane had attempted to come to the alien’s assistance.
“Maintain energy curtain! Repulse all attacks! Stay together! The enemy can only destroy our ships on an individual basis.”
That was pure supposition, nothing else. For what did they know so far about their opponent? How had he been able to break through the time wall? And to what purpose?
The Druuf brooded silently and sought to answer his own questions. He arrived at nothing except a decision to make one last try at overcoming the unknown enemy.
The Kruukhs lived on an isolated planet at the edge of the universe and had no actual civilization of their own but they had served the Druufs for thousands of years.
This was understandable in view of their unusual characteristics.
* * * *
Atlan was standing by Rhodan when the shimmering energy screen—or time curtain—suddenly vanished from around the Druuf ship. At the same time the barrel of the energy weapon pulled back into the black ship; the bow hatch closed again. It looked as if the Druufs were giving up the attack.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Rhodan uncertainly.
They stared at the viewscreen and searched for an answer. Far beneath them the Crystal Planet turned slowly on its axis. Life on its surface had awakened and there was no longer any difference to be noted between the 2 time-planes.
Under other circumstances Rhodan would have taken interest in the caterpillar civilization and might have taken a hand in the task of setting free the Arkonides and other races of people who had been swept away from their own worlds by the moving time front, but now that he was also a prisoner of this alien dimension he considered it more important to think first of his own safety and return.
With their respective propulsion systems inactive, the Sherbourne and the large Druuf ship hovered at a meagre distance from one another and orbited about the Crystal Planet.
Atlan raised his arm to point. “A lock is opening.” And after a slight pause he added: “But that’s no weapon port.”
Col. Sikerman looked questioningly at Rhodan. His right hand was on the command switches for the defence weapons. Capt. Rodes Aurin was standing by in command of the Fire Control Centre.
Rhodan shook his head almost imperceptibly. Just like all the rest, he stared at the viewscreen which clearly showed the open lock of the Druuf ship. For the first time humans were to be given a glimpse of the inside of the black giant.