Meanwhile, Steiner and Ragov reached the K-7 and alerted the unsuspecting crew. Seconds later everything was a turmoil.
Noir relaxed somewhat. He knew that it wasn’t a matter of seconds now. Why should he rush just because everybody else was? Without pushing himself he went to the cages where they kept the Druufs. Altogether there were 5 specimens which were no longer in their own time ratio and now lived at the same biological rate as the humans. And of course their movements were correspondingly as fast.
Druufs…?
All of a sudden Noir was sure that these caterpillars were not the actual rulers of this alien dimension. Their overall reactions pointed to this fact unmistakably. Their comportment did not resemble that of intelligent beings who were the lords of a universe. These creatures here acted and carried on like a subordinate species. Servants or slaves, perhaps, but not rulers.
Rous sprang to aid Harras as the receiver began to operate. The loudspeaker interrupted its monotonous hum and then everybody on the plateau heard the blaring voice which at this moment seemed to be the voice of salvation.
“This is light cruiser Sherbourne—Commander Perry Rhodan! We’ve received your signals. Track our bearings now and beam in—keep on transmitting to us!”
With a shout of joy, Harras hugged Lt. Rous and slapped him on the shoulder. More than a week of uncanny experiences and frustrating waiting was over with. Soon they would no longer be prisoners of time but would be able to return to their own normal universe.
Rous turned to Steiner as the latter came running up from the K-7.
“What happens now, Lieutenant?” asked the physicist. “Do we have to put on the suits or should we wait till they find us? Maybe we should make our position known to them or give them a signal…”
“Harras is on it already with the transmitter,” Rous assured him. “You’d better get busy with Noir and Ragov, collecting the prisoners. We’ll take them with us. Our telepaths will soon worm the secret out of them as to who the attackers were. We have to leave the K-7 behind. When Rhodan gets here we won’t have any time to lose!”
Steiner started to laugh. Rous figured it was nothing more than a reaction of sudden relief, a release from the terrible tensions of the past week in which they had been time prisoners.
“Not lose any time!” Steiner blurted out in an uncontrolled fit of amusement. “Which time and whose time, Lieutenant?”
Rous gave a slight smile and refrained from answering. The truth was, he wasn’t sure he could answer the question…
* * * *
At the same second that the Sherbourne broke through the barrier gate into the other time-plane, Rhodan knew that he had lost communication with the Drusus. Bell’s face had blanked out on the screen as though it had never been there. The radio signals went dead. The sky itself changed. It became red with a tinge of violet.
Immediately Rhodan heard garbled words in English. With a quick movement he adjusted the receiver dial and was able to make out the distress signal of the lost expedition. He breathed a sigh of relief. Lt. Rous and his men were still alive after all!
He answered quickly in order to establish communications. Then when the signal-tracer indicated the direction, the Sherbourne continued its journey.
During these first exciting moments, Pucky sat on the couch and used his ESP in a search for stray thought-waves. Since distance was no obstacle it was not surprising that he was soon making announcements in his high-pitched voice. “Everything’s OK with Lt. Rous, considering the situation, I guess—and that goes for the other members of the expedition. I also can’t see that the K-7 crew has suffered any damages, and besides—”
Rhodan had only been listening with half an ear but suddenly something struck home. He interrupted Pucky abruptly: “What’s that you say? The crew of the K-7? What do you mean? The K-7 was lost more than a year ago.”
Pucky straightened up, losing some of his languid composure. “Lt. Rous has found the K-7 and its crew and a method was discovered by Ragov or Steiner that made it possible to bring them from the alien time-rate to the normal time-rate. As far as I’ve been able to read in their minds, 7 months ago when they were brought out of the alien time-rate their first encounter with the Timeless Ones had happened almost 4 months prior—and yet for them the elapsed time was 2 minutes.”
Sikerman muttered without enthusiasm: “I’m afraid we’re in no position to define the laws that govern the corresponding time-rate differentials. Maybe we are already subject to some decisive real time slippages.”
“Don’t anticipate trouble like that!” complained Rhodan almost beseechingly. “Take a course from your new bearings and land in the area where Lt. Rous is located. Pucky, you keep scanning the thoughts of our castaways so that we’ll have as much of their story behind us as we can by the time we get there—it saves time and that’s our main objective now. I’m afraid we’re not going to have a second to lose—if we don’t want Bell out there to die of impatience from waiting for us!”
They understood immediately what he meant and knew how serious he was when he said it. If only 2 minutes were equivalent to more than 3 months on the outside, what would happen now if they were to spend a matter of hours in this dimension? But they already knew that there was no yardstick for measuring the time lapse here; only experience could give the answer.
Come what might, however, they were here.
Rhodan looked below at the rigid plain and the crystalline glitter of the rivers with their waves frozen in time. Ahead on the horizon it must be raining but hours and days would pass before the raindrops reached the ground, so slowly were they falling. By a rough estimate, maybe half a foot per hour.
Col. Sikerman’s voice penetrated the brooding silence. “The instruments show a heavy loading of the energy screens. What can that be?”
With a swift glance Rhodan scanned the meters. Each indicator’s reading remained firmly in his almost photographic mind, which was the reason he was able to find an answer in a very few seconds. “Air resistance, Sikerman! Everything here is subject to the natural laws governing this alien time-plane and that includes the atmosphere. In a relative sense we’re ploughing through the air at maybe 10,000 times the speed of sound. Without a defence screen we’d be incandescent, maybe melting by now. Anyway, you can slow your speed, Colonel. We ought to be there soon.”
The tracer signals became stronger. Then, moments later, Rhodan discovered the K-7, which rested motionlessly on a high plateau. Tiny figures ran back and forth—the members of the lost Time Expedition and also the crew of the auxiliary flier that had previously disappeared on Mirsal.
Moments later, Lt. Rous and Rhodan stood facing each other. “I’m happy to have found you, Lieutenant. However, we don’t have any time to lose. Save your report for later. I learned the essentials through Pucky and my telepath, Marshall, so I’m fairly well informed. Order the crew of the K-7 to board the Sherbourne. What’s with the prisoners? They look like caterpillars.”
“We named them Druufs because their cries sounded at first like a muffled druuuf when they were stretched out by their own time-rate. At first we assumed they were the leading intelligences of this alien time-plane but in the meantime Noir has come up with another theory: he thinks they’re either the slaves or the servants of the actual rulers here.”
“So the Druufs aren’t really the Druufs,” observed Rhodan with a fleeting smile. “I only hope that one day we’ll get to know the real Druufs.” He did not suspect how close that day was.
“At any moment we can expect an attack from their side,” Rous stated pointedly. “The Druufs have had enough time to prepare for it since we struck back at them a few days ago and destroyed their time-delay equipment.”
“Time-delay…?” queried Rhodan softly.
“Yes, because you know in their eyes we are invisible,” Rous explained quickly. “Our movements are so fast that they can’t be perceived by them. So they mounted 10 cameras in a small aircraft of some kind and were able to detect us. They ran the film or vidtapes super fast and then slowed them down in stages. In the 10th camera they were able to see us as we really are. A pretty smart idea, you’ll have to admit.”
“We could reverse that process and do the same thing but it would be more difficult from a time standpoint,” replied Rhodan with a thoughtful smile. “Are you saying that by using one of their time-delay setups they may be able to launch another attack?”