Perry Rhodan Lemuria 1: Ark of the Stars (10 page)

Not so on the Middle Deck. The paths were lined with metach enjoying the evening. Children played with balls they had made themselves. Adults sat or stood together, eating and gossiping. The houses of the Metach'ton stood close to each other and the narrow spaces between them were filled with impenetrable bushes.

The plants on the Middle Deck had been bred to provide the highest possible carbon dioxide-to-oxygen conversion rate; food crops were raised on the Outer Deck. Launt greeted people to the left and the right and smiled happily, as though the Ship had assigned him an especially pretty partner in order to fulfill his reproductive quota, and Denetree did her best to force joyous anticipation onto her face.

At length, Launt stopped in front of a house that stood by itself, surrounded by a high wall.

"What kind of house is that?" Denetree asked. It was too small for a Metach'ton and too large for an individual. Not even the Naahk had such a big house—or so she imagined. No one she knew had ever been to the Naahk's quarters.

"It's mine. Being Tenarch requires much thought and reflection, and thought and reflection require peace and quiet."

The gate opened automatically. Launt rode through and parked the bicycle. "No one can take it from here. That's important to you, yes?"

Denetree nodded.

They went into the house. It was huge. Four rooms for one person! In her excitement, Denetree almost forgot the circumstances that had brought her here.

Launt led her into a room with a single, narrow bed. He smiled kindly. "As I said, thought and reflection require peace and quiet. I'll sleep in another room."

Denetree wanted to protest—she was strong! She didn't anyone to take care of her!—but suddenly she felt terribly tired. She sank onto the bed.

"Sleep," Launt said gently. "Sleep, and tomorrow the world will look completely different."

Denetree sat bolt upright. Launt's words shattered her illusion of safety. "No," she said. "It won't. Unless you can do something for me."

Launt seemed only mildly surprised that she would ask. "And what's that?"

Denetree explained.

When Pearl Laneaux arrived in the hangar, less than two minutes after the call for the med-team, she found Sharita, Rhodan and a body missing a head and right shoulder. The body's dead fingers clutched the grip of Sharita's beamer.

The first officer held a primed, heavy beamer. Half the control center crew, also armed to the teeth, crowded the corridor behind her.

"What's going on?" she exclaimed.

"I called for a med-team," Sharita retorted, "not an assault squad." If Pearl didn't know her commanding officer better, she would have guessed Sharita was unaware of the dead body lying on the floor. But Pearl knew Sharita. She saw the minute trembling of her eyelids—and the glaring evidence of her beamer in the dead man's hand. Sharita Coho had never given her beamer to anyone else.

"Doc is at the back of the line," Pearl said in the casual tone she always used in conversations with Sharita. "Your call was interrupted by laser fire, so I assumed that medical help would be a secondary priority." Pearl pointed to the corpse with the hand holding her beamer. "It seems as though I was partly right. He doesn't need a doctor any more."

Sharita and Rhodan didn't repond. An answer seemed superfluous.

"What happened here?"

"That's what we'd like to know," Sharita replied. She knelt next to the dead man, gingerly took the beamer from him, then secured the weapon's safety and holstered it. "This guy did himself in."

"I can see that," Pearl said. "With your beamer."

Sharita rolled her eyes. "Very observant."

Rhodan stepped in. "He killed himself, Pearl. We found the man in this compartment, already half dead. We tried to help him. I spoke to him reassuringly, and though he didn't answer, I got the impression that my words calmed him. And then, suddenly, without any obvious reason, he grabbed Sharita's beamer and turned it on himself. We couldn't have anticipated that. It wasn't Sharita's fault."

Pearl nodded. "I understand." Then she shook her head. "No, no, I don't understand a thing. Here's a man holed up in a wreck going along at nearly light speed through the ... well, the backside of the galaxy without the slightest hope for rescue. But when help does arrive—by some chance with such slight probability I don't even want to try figuring it out—the fellow has nothing better to do when he sees his rescuers than to blow his own head off."

"We're at as much of a loss as you are."

"Well, let's retrace the sequence of events, see if we can figure out what happened. Did you do anything that might have frightened him?"

"Sharita did have her beamer pointed at him, at first," Rhodan said.

"No," Sharita contradicted him. "I had my beamer in my hand. I wasn't aiming at him, or not consciously, anyway. And even if ... look, if he's afraid of a weapon being aimed at him, killing himself with that same weapon isn't exactly a triumph of logic, is it?"

"Fear isn't logical," Rhodan said. "But you're right. It wasn't the beamer. He was only really aware of you after you had dropped the weapon."

For some time, the only sound was the footfalls of the command crew as they swarmed over the wreck to make sure there weren't any other survivors.

What had driven this man to suicide? Pearl looked around the tiny compartment—Lord, it was freezing in here!—then back at Rhodan and Sharita. She cleared her throat. The commander wouldn't like what she had to say, but it was the obvious conclusion. "Sharita, it must have been something to do with you."

"Pearl!"

"It's a statement of fact, not a reproach. But according to what you've said, he reacted positively to Rhodan."

"What's so different about Perry? This guy couldn't possibly tell that he's immor—"

"Sharita, he isn't wearing a uniform."

Sharita looked down at her black uniform, then turned to look at Rhodan's brightly colored slacks and shirt. "All right, I'm wearing a uniform. Since I'm the commander, that isn't so unusual, is it? Anyway, all this is pure speculation that we'll never be able to prove one way or the other."

"I disagree. We do have clues to work from," Rhodan said.

"Oh? Like what? This fellow here can't tell you anything."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that. Pearl, would you be so kind as to bring forward the ship's doctor?"

* * *

Hyman Mahal, the
Palenque
's medical officer, was a stocky man with a receding hairline. Without a word, he bent down next to the corpse, sparing only a passing glance at the large wound sealed by the beamer's ray.

Mahal was a man of few words, and few of his shipmates knew much about him. Pearl's sympathetic nature invited confidences, however, and in a sentimental moment some months earlier, Mahal had spoken of his early career.

As a young doctor, the medical officer had been stationed on a mining world. There was little competition for such jobs, which was why even a new graduate with average grades could get hired for the position. Mahal believed being stationed even to a mining post would be a great adventure; all he had to do was make the best of it, and sooner or later he would move on to bigger and better things. A mere six months later, he stood on the verge of alcoholism, worn down by his monotonous duties, prodigious amounts of overtime, and loneliness. Comradeship was for those who went into the mines; everyone else lived in safety and isolation.

When he thought it couldn't get any worse, a fully loaded freighter, a steel globe a kilometer and a half in diameter, had crashed into the planet, and the resulting earthquake collapsed every mine. Mahal spent the next six days treating the maimed and dying, then the six months left on his contract recovering horribly mangled corpses.

"One good thing came out of it," Mahal had concluded, as Pearl sat in shaken silence.

"What is that?" the first officer had asked.

"It's all behind me. I've seen enough death for ten lifetimes. What can bother me now?"

Pearl was a long way from such philosophical acceptance. The sight of the headless corpse made her ill. She would have liked nothing better than to run out into the corridor and throw up—and then not come back.

"Doctor Mahal," Rhodan said, "I have two questions that I hope you can answer. The first is: Is this a human being?"

Mahal set to work without acknowledging Rhodan's question. He had his medical kit with him, a mobile, antigrav-supported mini-laboratory. At his direction, the kidney-shaped device lowered itself onto the corpse's chest. Pearl heard a humming and a hissing as the mini-lab extended its nano-feelers and took tiny tissue samples. At the same time, Mahal examined the dead man the old-fashioned way. He felt the corpse, lifted its arms and legs, tapped on the knees and elbows. He spent a particularly long time examining the hands and fingers.

He took a pointed scraper from his pocket and slid it under one thumbnail. When he withdrew it, a tiny black clump clung to the point. Mahal inserted it in an opening on the mini-lab.

"I thought as much," he murmured, more to himself than those waiting. "Soil. Enriched with microorganisms."

"What? That's impossi—"

The mini-lab interrupted Sharita with a sustained buzz. Mahal read the results of the evaluation on a directional display.

"Well?"

"The corpse is definitely human, of Lemurian descent."

"Any unusual characteristics?"

"He is strikingly healthy. He seems to be accustomed to physical labor. He is less than twenty-five years of age, and shows no trace of the deposits typical of an unbalanced diet, even though practically all human beings have them."

"Anything else?"

"He has never been sunburned. The skin samples are definite on that point."

"That doesn't necessarily contradict the dirt under his thumbnail," Sharita said. "Maybe he was really careful about using lots of sunscreen. Why is no sunburn so significant?"

"His genes are severely damaged—to an impossible degree for a planet-dweller, and certainly for someone who has never been exposed to the sun without protection."

"That can be explained, too," Pearl put in. She had been concentrating on the faces of Rhodan, Sharita and Mahal, and so her nausea had decreased to an almost bearable level. "This wreck can't have shielded him very efficiently from cosmic radiation in open space. Thus the genetic damage."

Mahal shook his head. His fingers played absentmindedly with the scraper he had used to sample the dirt from under the dead man's thumbnail. "Not a bad guess, but the nature of the damage is against that explanation. This could only be the result of years worth of exposure to cosmic radiation penetrating through insufficient shielding."

"This compartment was the only section of the wreck that remained airtight. There is no evidence that he had any supply of water or food—no empty containers or scraps—and the air supply had to be limited, as well," Rhodan stated.

"He can't have spent years in this compartment."

"Exactly. And that brings me to my second question. Can you tell us, Mahal, how long he was drifting through the vacuum on this wreck?"

"Hmm." The ship's doctor gave the mini-lab's syntron new commands. New values appeared on the display. "Based on his condition and assuming he didn't have any food or water with him, I'd estimate between thirteen and fifteen days, seventeen at the maximum."

"Thank you, Mahal. That's all I need to know," Rhodan said. He turned to the commander. "Sharita, I suggest we go back to the bridge. There's nothing else to learn here."

Sharita nodded without argument—a telling sign of how deeply the suicide had affected her.

* * *

The rest was a simple exercise in calculation, some fast talking and a stellar performance by the
Palenque
's hyperdetection officer.

Rhodan presented his theory to Sharita Coho and Pearl Laneaux at the map table in the control center. The other members of the bridge crew and the crews of the crawlers were connected in real time.

"The calculation isn't difficult," Rhodan began. "We know how long the dead man was confined in the wreck: between thirteen and a maximum of seventeen days. The wreck was traveling at near light-speed, so the point at which the shuttle came apart has to be roughly half a light-month away, plus or minus ten percent."

"Assuming that it didn't change its speed," Sharita interjected. An undertone in her voice hinted that she had regained her self-confidence in the comfortable surroundings of the control center.

"Anything else would be highly unlikely," Rhodan replied mildly. Pearl wondered if the Immortal could be made to lose his composure—and if the sight would be worth being around him in such a moment. "The shuttle broke into two sections. Our half had no means of acceleration."

Sharita grimaced.

Pearl intervened before Sharita could voice the violent retort that surely was on the tip of her tongue. "So, we know where the shuttle broke apart. What do we accomplish by finding that location?"

"We find answers. The shuttle didn't collide with another object. As the fate of the crawler proves, there wouldn't be anything left but a cloud of particles if it had. Someone shot at it."

"The Akonians?" Sharita guessed. "The Ochent Nebula has been swarming with them these past few weeks."

"Probably not," Pearl said. "I've had the techs take a closer look at the wreck, and this shuttle was struck by a conventional warhead—hardly more than an oversized firecracker. Neither we nor the Akonians use anything like that. And it was not an accident. We've found the entry point."

"All right, so it wasn't the Akonians. Who, then?"

"I don't know." Rhodan shrugged. "In order to find out, we have go where the attack took place."

"And then what?" Sharita balled her hand into a fist and struck her other palm. "Do you think the attackers are just sitting there waiting for someone to bring them to justice? And think about the company you're in. We're prospectors, not saviors of the universe intent on righting every wrong. We're out here to make a profit!"