There was a voice on the loudspeaker. Bell’s voice! “…didn’t expect you back so soon! What’s all the spit and thunder? Should we switch off…?”
Rhodan reached for the telecom microphone. “This is Rhodan! Cut off the warp-field generator immediately!”
The answer returned in 10 seconds: “It’s shut down! So now let us in on what happened…”
Rhodan sighed with relief and sank down into his seat. It was as if a heavy stone had been lifted from his shoulders. Atlan came up to him from behind.
“Shouldn’t we ask Bell how much time has passed here?” he said. “Only then can we relax…”
But even before Rhodan could answer him, Bell’s voice was heard again on the loudspeaker: “How come you made such a quick retreat? You weren’t even 2 minutes among the Druufs…”
Rhodan almost jumped out of his seat. He looked at Atlan. “Well?” he muttered shakily. “What do you say now?”
The immortal shrugged. “What am I supposed to say? The opposite has happened from what we expected.”
“Pucky!” said Rhodan, interrupting Atlan with a forced composure. “Don’t you have the funny feeling that your time-differential with the Druufs had something to do with it?”
The mouse-beaver shook his head and made no reply.
Meanwhile Sikerman had slowed his flight so that he could bring back the Sherbourne in a wide curve. He put the ship down close to the giant sphere of the Drusus.
Then Khrest spoke up: “And we also have our own time-ratio again.”
A glance at the viewscreens confirmed the statement. Outside they saw a man emerge from the airlock of the Drusus and descend the conveyor ramp at a normal rate of movement. He came toward them.
It was Bell.
5 minutes later he was on board shaking hands with Rhodan and the others.
“Well, so you didn’t pull it off—or did you?”
“We were a number of hours over there, buddy,” Rhodan hastened to make clear. “Don’t ask me to explain the time differential because I haven’t any answers.”
“But I do,” said Atlan, to everyone’s surprise. “It’s quite simple. We’ve already touched on the subject, I believe. The teletransmitter must have something to do with it. It slammed the Druuf ship against the time-wall and jarred us back into the past at the same time—a number of years, in fact. That’s the only way it could have been possible for the differences between the 2 time-planes to match so closely—even though it was pure coincidence. We were lucky, that’s all.”
At that moment the intercom buzzed.
It was Ivan Ragov. “My caterpillars, sir! They have become motionless again! They don’t move any more! Also this fellow, Kruukh—he’s like a block of stone. What should I do?”
“Nothing,” Rhodan told him and cut the connection. He looked at everyone gravely. “So all that should be enough to convince us that there can never be an understanding between us and the Druufs. It isn’t that we or they don’t wish it but that neither of us can bridge the gap. Nature is against it.”
“A miracle might happen,” said Khrest softly.
Atlan nodded in agreement. “Yes, Khrest is right. There’s still too little that we know about the other time-plane but we’ve found a road to the Druufs. Our first attempt failed. We didn’t make the contact we wanted. But the next time it may be different. I wouldn’t give up hope, Barbarian. Have humans ever actually done that?”
Rhodan studied Atlan for some time and then slowly shook his head. “No, Atlan, that they have never done. You’re right. For a moment I forgot that we are human beings. We never give up, no matter how difficult the problems may be. Someday we will meet the Druufs again—and then we will demand a few explanations from them.”
Bell broke in impatiently: “Why not have a try at it right now? So far we’ve only lost a couple of minutes. The day is still young…”
But Rhodan placed a hand on his shoulder. “Good old Bell—just a couple of minutes, you say. Only by a freak accident does it happen to be minutes. It could just as well have been a couple of centuries. I’ll think it over a thousand times or so before I’ll even dare to make another jump through the time-wall. We’re going back to Earth.”
And there it remained. After docking the Sherbourne inside, there was nothing more on board the Drusus to remind them of the adventure on the Crystal Planet.
Nothing other than a few motionless caterpillars, frozen in the positions they had been trapped in at the moment of break-through of the time wall. The caterpillars… and a statuesque creature named Kruukh.
* * * *
Several months later Perry Rhodan stood on the outskirts of Terrania shortly after sunrise in a place that over half a century before had been desert. Now isolated trees grew here and deep grass.
The Peacelord was fond of coming to this spot whenever he could in order to admire the sunrise. Not far distant was the tomb of Ernst Ellert, the astounding man whose mind had been capable of reaching into the future. But one day, from the realm of Chronos, his mind had not returned. His astral projection must be wandering somewhere in the maze of the futurity, searching for his body. The body that now lay preserved from the ravages of time, waiting for the return of its owner’s entity.
One day, perhaps, Ernst Ellert would revive.
Suddenly Rhodan sensed that he was not alone. The sky gave an indication that in a day or so it might rain but for the moment it was clear weather and flowers were blooming in the deep green grass. A light breeze gently scattered the flowers’ pollen, proliferating the new growth of spring.
The feeling that he was not alone in this solitude of Nature lasted only 10 seconds, than vanished as swiftly and inexplicably as it had come. A cold shudder passed swiftly through his tall frame, the next moment was dispelled by the warming rays of the sun.
He turned to reluctantly leave this sanctuary of serenity. Duty called in Terrania.
He stopped short.
Close to the spot where he had been standing he discerned small, unmistakable tracks in the dry earth. He recognized them at once: they belonged to Pucky! Yet 10 seconds before they had not been there!
Pucky’s paw prints? Here on Earth… when he was presently residing among the colonists on Venus?
Impossible!
Unless—!
Rhodan’s brain made an intuitive lightning leap to those uncertain minutes and hours on the Crystal World which had long been submerged in a timeless sea.
And suddenly he knew that the circle had closed, the enigmatic anachronism had completed its Moebius trip.
He walked onward to his waiting car and one hour later when he took up his daily work in Terrania no one observing him would have suspected that just 60 minutes before Perry Rhodan had once again been grazed by a touch of eternity and a memory that had long since been a part of the past.
Or was there also such a thing as a memory of the future…?
THE SHIP OF THINGS TO COME
CHELLISH.
A mysterious messenger from Earth.
His mission—one given him in great confidentiality by Perry Rhodan himself.
A role he is to play on distant Grautier, the new home of the 8000 Exiles from Earth.
A world of grey beasts . . . semi-intelligent monkeys . . . and the weird Blue Dwarfs with the astonishing parapsychological powers as well as paramechanical.
And then, dropping from the skies of this untamed and largely unknown New World, come—the Whistlers!
Interplanetary invaders!
The Grautierians have need indeed of—
THE GUARDIANS
By
Kurt Mahr