who could never leave it now, because their muscles had atrophied. Despite this handicap, they claimed to know better than everyone else about life on the Ship. They would test Venron until they found something. They would find out about his explorations, treat him with injections and pump him full of their drugs until he could only murmur his name and "Be loyal to the Ship!" Then they would let him go, a reformed member of the greater community.
But he would live.
Unless he was too strong. Then, the Magtar would turn him over to the Pekoy.
Ahead, Denetree saw one of the rudimentary shelters that had been built at regular intervals in this part of the Ship.
He would live ...
The Pekoy would ask questions. Why did he explore? Who else explored with him? Treason was a contagious disease. It would ripen in one individual, then spread to others, growing like an ulcer. To prevent it from endangering the entire community, treason had to be burned out. Completely. If she asked the Net to find Venron, the Star Seekers also would be discovered. They would all fall down the Ladder of Life, and if they were lucky, they would be allowed to begin again at the lowest rung. Maybe.
He would live ...
The Ladder of Life held no meaning for a dead man.
Every shelter contained a terminal for use in emergencies that was fully connected to the Net.
Denetree rode past the shelter, then turned around and stopped at it. There was a bicycle leaning against one of the posts, but no one was in sight. The floor of the shelter and the small touchscreen of the emergency terminal had been hastily wiped clear, most likely by children who had been caught playing with it. They must have run away in order to escape a beating, and left the bicycle behind in their panic.
Denetree bent over the touch screen.
Live, she thought. Venron must live!
She touched the display to activate it, thinking hard to come up with the words she would use to report her brother as missing. Afraid of losing her nerve in the last second, she imagined him dead: his stiff, unmoving body, unseeing eyes.
I'm sorry! She apologized in her thoughts to the other Star Seekers, who surely would be exposed. I'm sorry. But Venron must live.
The display lit up. But instead of the input menu, she saw Venron.
"Brother!" she exclaimed in surprise. "I was so worried about you! Where ... "
The blare of the display's loudspeaker cut her off. "Look into the face of the traitor, metach! Today, this man, Venron, attempted to destroy the enterprise to which we have all sworn our lives! He has put us all in deadly danger! See his heinous deed!"
Venron's face disappeared. In its place appeared a long shot of a huge room. In the center stood a large, lumpy machine that Denetree did not recognize. At one end bulged two translucent domes like the eyes of an insect, but from the place where the animal would have had a mouth projected a long, three-part device. For a few moments, nothing happened. Denetree thought she saw movement behind one of the domes, but the surface was reflective and showed only what appeared to be the silhouette of a man.
Then large doors opened behind the machine. The Tenoy ran inside. The guardians wore body armor and aimed long weapons at the machine. A voice echoed through the room: "Come back! You can still turn around!"
The device on the front of the machine began to rotate toward the wall of the room, and the Tenoy dove for cover. The device stopped turning.
The image froze. "Observe closely what this murderer did!" crackled the loudspeaker.
The projection spat fire. Once, then a second time.
"Venron, no!" Denetree whispered at the recording.
A gigantic jet of fire shot out from the lower part of the machine and catapulted it through the roiling wall of flames and smoke it had created.
The wall was broken by a jagged opening, and through it Denetree saw the stars. For the space of a heartbeat she forgot her fear. The stars! Venron was not taking his own life, he had found a way to the stars!
A loud hissing noise from the loud speaker dragged her attention back to the display. It looked like invisible hands were dragging at the Tenoy with terrible force. The men and women tried to hang on, but the naked metal floor offered nothing to grasp. One after another they flew through the opening to the stars where, with eyes bulging out of their sockets and desperately flailing arms and 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."
