LITMIR.BIZ

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legs, they died.

      "Venron! What have you done?" Tears flowed from Denetree's eyes, for the first time she could remember. "That ... that's ... what will they do to you?"

      The loudspeaker gave her the answer. "The traitor has already met his well-deserved fate. And those who helped him will share it!"

      4

      The crewmembers of the Palenque might resemble a randomly assorted mob hurriedly thrown together in some remote spaceport in the galactic backwoods, but Rhodan had to give them this: they were fast.

      The Palenque came out of hyperspace at Crawler Eleven's last known position less than five minutes after the comm officer announced loss of contact.

      "Hyperdetection!" Sharita Coho barked. In her severely tailored uniform, the commander seemed ludicrously out of place among the prospectors. The men and women of the Palenque took pride in their individualized personal appearance. Rhodan still found it hard to believe that the commander and the comm officer, for example, belonged to the same ship. Alemaheyu Kossa reminded Rhodan of Jimi Hendrix, an Old Terran rock musician who had died shortly before man's first flight to the moon, except that Alemaheyu had darker skin and usually didn't bother with a headband to keep his mane of frizzy hair under control.

      "In progress," replied Omer Driscol, the hyperenergy detection officer. The stocky black man had his face so close to the holos projected above his console that his nose almost interrupted the images. "Last outliers of the hyperstorm ... "

      "Those go without saying," the commander interrupted him. "Any results?"

      "Nothing so far. Evaluation running." Driscol seemed unaffected by Sharita's curt tone.

      Is he just used to it? Rhodan wondered. Or is he suppressing his anger out of concern for his comrades on the lost crawler?

      Sharita turned her head. "Alemaheyu? Contact?"

      The comm officer shook his mane. "No."

      "No good. Keep trying."

      The skinny Terran bent over his virtual keyboard and typed a series of commands while murmuring to himself. Rhodan thought he heard, "Come on! Come to Mama!" but decided he had to be mistaken. Not even these prospectors could be that eccentric.

      "Decrease velocity to half light-speed. The crawler was moving at just ten percent light. We can cover its entire flight path in half an hour."

      Tense silence reigned in the control center for several minutes, then Alemaheyu spoke up again. "Sharita."

      "Have you made contact?"

      "Not with Crawler Eleven, but the other crawlers have reported in. They want to help."

      "There's nothing to help with. We're their eyes and ears—and we're at the scene."

      "Yes, but they still want to help."

      "That's ridiculous! Tell them that they ... "

      Sharita broke off when Pearl Laneaux, first officer of the Palenque, stepped up next to her and rested a hand on her arm. Pearl towered over Sharita by more than a head.

      "What is it?" Sharita snapped.

      "Don't do it." Pearl gazed at Sharita with doe-eyes. The two women seemed polar opposites. With her military bearing and spotless uniform, Sharita might have passed as an overeager cadet on a battlecruiser in the League of Free Terrans fleet—but the LFT didn't offer many opportunities to seventy-four-year-olds. Pearl, by contrast, seemed like gentleness personified, a delicate beauty completely at odds with the stereotype of the rough-and-ready prospector.

      Their contrasting personalities could have put the two women at loggerheads all day long. And sometimes, like now, they were. But in Rhodan's view, every quarrel between the two top-ranking officers seemed to clear the air like a good storm. When the thunder and lightning faded away, the intelligence of both women had contributed to a decision.

      "What?" Sharita demanded, her eyes flashing with anger.

      "Don't brush off the crawler crews. Of course they can't help with the search—they know that as well as you do. The gesture is what matters to them."

      "Feh! Gestures!"

      "Sharita, you know how close the crawler crews are to each other. Don't make it harder for them by denying them the chance to even try to help."

      Rhodan saw Sharita's neck muscles strain against the tight-fitting collar of her uniform. For a moment, there was a distinct possibility of violence. Instead, Sharita pushed Pearl aside and called: "You heard her, Alemaheyu! Let the crawlers come. But tell them that the lost time will of course be deducted from their shares. We aren't out here for the fun of it."

      The search got under way as one crawler after another materialized near the Palenque. The flying laboratories shot back and forth like a flock of birds, performing their task with an agility that surprised Rhodan.

      It was no use. The Palenque and the smaller craft accompanying it covered the entire sector without finding a trace of the crawler.

      "I'm sorry," the hyperdetection officer finally said, rubbing his hands with a helpless look. "The sector has been swept clean. There's some cosmic dust here and there, but otherwise nothing."

      "But that's impossible!" Sharita retorted vehemently. "The crawler can't have gone far!"

      "Why not?" Rhodan interjected. "It could have accelerated, or even activated its faster-than-light drive. The FTL dematerialization energy signature could have been lost in the hyperstorm."

      "I gave no order permitting them to do so. But ... " A grim smile appeared on Sharita's face. "But that doesn't mean much. Who here listens to my orders?"

      No one in the control center dared laugh.

      "Widen the hyperdetection sweep!" Sharita ordered. "Make it a radius of one light-year. I want a close look at every speck of dust!"

      The control center crew went to work. Every man and woman bent over the console instruments in their niches. Every ship in the LFT fleet possessed sound and optical isolation fields in the control center that allowed each station to perform its work without interruption or distraction. On most ships, these fields ran almost constantly, with holos ensuring that the control center crew remained aware of the current situation at all stations.

      On the Palenque, a contrary culture had evolved. The prospectors enjoyed the close contact with each other, and Rhodan suspected that someday they would tear out the screening field systems entirely, considering them useless junk.

      Now, the prospectors worked in silence, focused on their own tasks yet perfectly aware of their fellow officers. Rhodan heard the occasional muffled curse and heavy breathing, but the report they were hoping for didn't come.

      Rhodan caught himself tapping his fingers nervously on the arm of his chair. He wasn't used to sitting inactive in moments of crisis. But the seat he had been given allowed only passive viewing of the data; he could not access the ship's syntron and its subsystems.

      Sharita cleared her throat and paced. The fingers of her right hand tapped heavily on the grip of her uniform's holstered beamer. Rhodan felt each tap like a heavy drumbeat.

      "Hyperdetection!" Omer Driscoll exclaimed. It was a cry of joy. "Object at distance of just one light-hour. Mass ... "

      "Yes?"

      "Mass triple that of a crawler," the hyperdetection officer replied tonelessly. "No idea what it is, but it isn't our people."

      "Is the syntron getting a visual of it?"

      "Just now coming in. The outliers of the hyperstorm are still interfering with detection. And whatever it is, it's moving damned fast. But we've got something."

      "Put it up!"

      In the middle of the control center, a holo taller than a man appeared, like a window into the blackness of space.

      The object shown in the holo was nothing more than a dark shadow

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