The location of the main control station on Mechanica was known.
Claudrin stiffened when a lamp among his controls flashed. The Communication Room of the Ironduke was calling him. He pushed a button and said: “Commander speaking! What is it?”
Claudrin’s voice matched his enormous physique. It was loud and booming. Even when he whispered he sounded like a drill sergeant barking commands at recruits.
“Hyper-radio call from the Sirius, sir.” “Rhodan?”
“Yessir. Shall I switch it to the Command Center?” “Of course. Why not? Hurry up! Don’t keep us waiting!”
Claudrin remained seated in his chair and waited till the radio officer switched the call and Rhodan’s face appeared on the picture screen. He looked as if he spoke somewhere aboard the Ironduke instead from a distance of 50,000 lightyears.
“Any news, Colonel?”
“All quiet and in exemplary order, sir,” Claudrin boomed, suppressing a fleeting grin. “We’re waiting.” “We’re thru waiting,” Rhodan replied. Claudrin detected a grim inflection in his voice. “Knock out the main Control Station on Mechanica as instructed.”
“Shall I use force?”
“You’ll have to, Colonel. We won’t need the station and nobody will get killed. There’s no intelligent life left on Mechanica. We’ve seized control of the harvestship but we must prevent it from receiving orders from Mechanica. The Control Station, which is nothing but a powerful radio station, had to be shut down for good. It’s the only way to insure that the harvestship follows exclusively our directions. We know the code of the necessary radio impulses and have no need anymore for the station on that planet. Any questions?”
“When shall I begin the attack?”
“At once! I give you 5 hours to carry out your mission.”
“5 hours?” Claudrin looked at Rhodan. His tense lips betrayed his doubts. “That may not be enough.”
“It depends on the circumstances,” Rhodan replied. “Make sure that they are favorable.”
“You can trust us, sir.”
“I know,” Rhodan affirmed before his face faded from the picture screen.
Claudrin kept staring a few seconds at the empty screen before he turned the connection with the radio room off. Then he switched on the intercom which piped his voice into every cabin of the gigantic battleship. In a few words he gave an outline of the situation and alerted the ship for the attack. The men rushed to their battle stations. Their almost imperceptible state of tension vanished completely. Each man knew his duty and place in the complicated machinery of the ship which still depended on the skillful operation of its crew.
Claudrin waited till his officers – except those who were assigned to special commando teams – had assembled in the Command Center. Then he gave the chief pilot the signal to approach the target.
The planet virtually leaped toward the Ironduke as the battleship gathered speed on its new course, hurling itself at the robot world like a bird of prey. Speed, Claudrin knew from experience, was the best tactic to apply in this case to evade the automatic defense installations. Once he had destroyed the main Control Center of Mechanica it would be the final blow which turned it into a dead planet.
Mechanica did not possess an energy screen for its defense. The Ironduke pierced the upper layers of the atmosphere and began to slow down only after the cities in the desert swooshed by in a blur underneath the ship.
“Forward gun position ready!” Claudrin called thru the intercom.
“Ready!” confirmed the officer in charge in a calm voice. He couldn’t get excited about an attack on automatons after having been thru many a fierce fight.
Claudrin didn’t leave the observation screen out of his sight. He had no trouble orienting himself. He vividly remembered the deep impression of his first visit to the planet and had not yet forgotten its topographical features. Then the deserted world had looked eerie because neither he nor Rhodan knew what its surface concealed. Now the situation was different. Mechanica was bereft of life and the remaining robots followed outdated orders given in the millenium of masters perished long ago.
As the ship reduced its speed the cities became clearly visible. However there were no overt signs of a defense. A low chain of mountains rose in front of them and
disappeared behind the ship as suddenly as it had seemed to spring up.
Desert. A city.
And then – the gigantic master station complex with its domes and installations bristling with batteries half covered by sand!
The Ironduke dodged a small fleet of useless harvestships still circling over the desert in search of spores. Its speed was still too high to execute an effective attack on the target. Altho Claudrin had expected to find the station, he was surprised by the abruptness of its appearance. “Keep going!” he ordered his pilot. “We can’t stop now. Turn around behind the next mountain and fly low!” He turned to the intercom. “Prow gun! Stand by to fire!”
The battleship raced across the desolate wasteland, quickly leaving the master station of Mechanica behind. They watched it shrink on the horizon and reached the mountain 20 seconds later. The Ironduke veered in a wide curve and further reduced its excessive velocity. By making the turn they crossed a certain place in the mountain twice, a crucial circumstance which came close to being fatal for Claudrin and his men.
*
For hundreds and perhaps thousands of years the sensitive scanning instruments of the robot station had failed to receive and transmit the frequencies of alien bodies. It had always been the same impulses emanating from the same harvestship to which it had responded with customary routine.
The automatic scanner was connected to the powerful machinery deeply imbedded in the slope of the mountain which operated the narcosis gun independently of a central command. Altho its function was not directed by the orders of the master station, it received its energy impulses from there and would have been only a mass of metal without it.
The scanning robot seemed to awake from a long sleep when the alien ship appeared on the horizon and headed for the mountain. Relays began to click and solenoids closed circuits. The awesome power of the cannons was still locked up in the safe recess of the mountain and the positronic banks slumbered undisturbed until excited by the impulses from the alarm contact.
The machinery suddenly sprang into action. Energy began to flow thru the connections of its circuits. The inexhaustible source of the wireless master station were tapped from the distance.
The gun turrets were rolled out but the Ironduke had already crossed the mountain between 2 peaks. It looped around to return as the mountainside opened up and the guns slid from their bunkers. Sensor rays shot in all directions, searching for the enemy – and locked on to him.
After the Ironduke had swung around it took a straight course toward the master station beyond the horizon of the desert. Colonel Claudrin’s massive figure rested firmly in his special seat as he issued terse instructions to his pilot.
“A little faster!”
The Ironduke accelerated again.
“Lower!”
The ship dropped 200 meters after passing over the mountains which quickly blended into the sand.
The observation screen of the Ironduke showed the details of the view in great magnification. When Claudrin looked for the lastime at the mountain slopes, he noticed a gleam in the reddish shine of the distant sun. He detected the gun which was out in the open and saw it raising its menacing barrel. Nobody knew the effective range of the weapon altho they had tried to arrive at exact calculations. However Claudrin knew that he was at this moment still in its zone of influence which had been so difficult to guess.
He reacted with incredible speed. “Switch to automatic control! Hold course to master station!” he bellowed at the startled pilot, who instantly followed his order. The dark mass of the planetary positronicon which had just appeared on the horizon moved a little to the right into the center of the range finder as the automatic pilot took over.
“Open fire!” Claudrin’s second command went to the gunner at the prow. “Maintain automatic continuous fire!”
The beam of fire hit the desert and drew a deep sizzling furrow thru the sand. Claudrin watched it, realizing how much luck he needed to save everybody.
The trail of fire melted the sand in a straight line of destruction. In a few seconds the sand became glazed and the straight furrow was long enough to show its direction. Following its line, it aimed directly at the dark complex of the master station which kept rapidly moving closer.
Claudrin felt the sudden numbness of his limbs, which frightened him altho he had foreseen it. He knew that his entire crew would also be exposed to the same influence at this moment. They would more readily succumb to it than he because his resistance was so much greater, being stronger than Terrans and more adaptable to his environment. However he was reluctant to gamble on his superior strength and therefore had earlier given those 2 instructions. Now it became evident how necessary they were.