IT WAS SENSELESS to attempt to take cover. The narrow observation slits of the reinforced concrete bunkers were changed into organ pipes, emitting hellish howls.

Compared with this inferno, a hurricane would seem like a mild breeze. In the last moment Thora had given up her intention of destroying the cordon of troops encircling the energy dome. Nevertheless, it was necessary from her point of view to teach a lesson to these primitive creatures.

Khrest, of course, could understand Thora’s motivation. But it was almost incomprehensible for Rhodan why she had to unleash this horrendous storm. As a representative of a galactic empire, she bad been deeply humiliated by the constant bombardment of the energy wall she had erected around the Stardust I. Her emotions were identical with those experienced by the old time colonial officers of the planet Earth, who considered any revolt of the underdeveloped dark skinned colonial population a blasphemy directed toward the white skinned ruling class.

The mighty space sphere was hovering close to the vaulted dome of the energy bell. It was beyond Rhodan’s imagination how Thora had caused this hurricane’s fury. But then, what could poor Earthlings grasp of the intricate workings of such a superior alien civilization and its machinery!

The enormous waves of pressure swept outward. The fire of the innumerable batteries died down so fast that it was hard to see how it ever could have constituted a threat to the besieged inside the dome. The men of the Asiatic elite divisions could barely manage to cling desperately to any hold inside their excellent trenches until the additional effect of null gravity made itself felt.

The sudden release from the gravitational pull of mother Earth robbed men and any nonalive matter of its foothold on the ground. More than 150,000 soldiers rose, whirling like dead autumn leaves out of the trenches, toward the open desert.

Heavy guns and stacks of ammunition presented a much larger target area. They were seized by the howling waves of pressure and tom loose like toys.

That was the only weapon used by Thora. Most probably she considered it rather primitive. Besides, it was a rather humane weapon, as Rhodan had reluctantly to admit.

The nonstop barrage of gunfire had been silenced abruptly. There was simply nothing left on the ground still capable of shooting.

Only the strong ground bunkers could withstand this inferno. Any other structures or objects that had not been fastened down tightly were pulled up in the air and then gently deposited outside the powered antigravity field, where the raging hurricane, too, had spent its strength. Thus, safe zone. They could still see the energy dome, but their gun emplacements had all disappeared.

The moment Captain Klein felt firm ground under his feet again and began to overcome his nausea, he observed the collapse of the energy screen. A roaring structure descended slowly into the formerly cordoned off area. Occasionally one of the bunkers opened fire with small arms, but the bullets fell far short.

From then on Klein no longer bothered looking at his watch. The critical moment had come and gone. Now it had become quite superfluous for Rhodan to ask for a truce.

Klein assisted the Chinese commander in chief to push aside the shattered remnants of a small card table. Only then could Lieutenant General Tai-tiang free himself and stand up again.

Outside, the sun was shining brightly. The organ-like roaring had completely died down. But inside the Concrete bunkers there reigned total chaos. Men picked themselves up off the floor, some cursing, others too shocked to utter a sound. Several Scientists looked about in a puzzled but inquisitive manner. Never before had Klein been able to observe so easily the full range of human emotions on either pale or flushed faces.

Colonel Donald Cretcher, liaison officer of the Western Defence, came tramping up from the depths of the Command bunker, bleeding profusely from his forehead. A brief glance around the room was all he needed to assess the situation. A few words by Cretcher accomplished what Klein had hoped for so fervently.

"Sir, under these circumstances we deem it advisable to cease fire immediately. It is absolutely senseless to remount our attack."

"Who?" stammered Tai-tiang. "The batteries … ?"

"Have been torn loose from their positions. Panic all along the line. A little while before this unknown spaceship landed near the Stardust I, I received an important message from our headquarters in Greenland. We—that means my colleagues and myself—have arrived at the conclusion that we should bide our time now, rather than act."

Major Butaan, former officer of the Asiatic Federation Secret Service, did not waste any unnecessary remarks. He barked roughly, "Cease fire at once! I’ll be responsible for everything."

This made Tai-tiang finally realize that he had lost. There was no protesting the orders given by Major Butaan.

General Tai-tiang staggered across the room to the wall. In a daze he perceived through the observation windows the horrifying spectacle outside. There was the energy dome again, but bigger and mightier than before.

The first reports arrived from the various commando posts via radio. The cordon around the Stardust I no longer existed. The military detachments were in the process of complete dissolution.

Klein rubbed his sweating palms dry on his trousers. He and Kosnow exchanged a brief glance. The faint grin of the Eastern Defence officer told everything. Rhodan had won … at least for the time being!

She arrived displaying the grandiose power of the "Great Empire" and with the insulting arrogance of a goddess.

Rhodan’s stature seemed to shrink next to hers. His remarks became futile, and his arguments were simply ignored. Her reply consisted of a momentary frown, full of exasperation.

At this point the commander apparently resigned himself and with a very odd smile followed her figure, which soon disappeared through the exit door of the tent.

Reginald Bell could not comprehend what was happening to him. Full of fury and indignation, he was struggling helplessly in the steely grip of a robot soldier that had just emerged from the huge auxiliary vessel. And that robot was only one of a small troop of automated humanoid war machines.

The so-called auxiliary vessel had turned out to be something far different from the normal human concept of a small space nodule to be used in case of emergency. It was a gigantic Structure with a diameter of almost 200 feet, with mighty engines and power stations.

It represented an exact duplicate in miniature of the original Arkonide research cruiser that the Stardust I crew had encountered on the moon. Yet this "auxiliary vessel" surpassed any earthly spaceship in dimensions and, of course, in equipment.

From the distance the Arkonide robots were similar to a teeming stream of ants. Closely following each other, they left the gaping air lock in the lower part of the space sphere.

Rhodan could distinguish several varying models of the automatons. The robot soldiers had two pairs of many jointed arms. Two of these limbs apparently served exclusively as weapons. Rhodan had no doubt that any of these machines was the equivalent of a full company of human soldiers. Still, this was a difficult notion to accept. To realize the full extent of the robot soldiers’ efficiency, one had to see them in action. A demonstration was indispensable for the human brain before it was willing to admit the unquestioned superiority of a nonhuman technology.

A sharp command caused Bell to cease struggling. As soon as he complied with the order the steely claws of the machine relaxed their hold on him.

A monotonous tinny voice issued from the invisible loudspeaker inside the robot. "You are requested to remain calm and stop any resistance. You are not to leave this spot!"

Reginald staggered over toward Rhodan. In the meantime the upper polar dome of the spaceship began to light up and construct an energy screen, glowing in a deep violet hue. This convinced Rhodan that the Stardust’s crew need no longer fear any danger from their terrestrial enemies.

Beyond the energy screen’s perimeter there reigned absolute silence. With growing alarm Rhodan kept wondering what the fate of the Asiatic divisions might have been. A slight moan came from Bell’s direction. Rhodan’s face relaxed as he turned toward him.

"Don’t melt your ice, friend!" he said emphatically. "Keep it cool." With narrowed eyes he peered over toward the tent where Thora was probably being brought up to date about Khrest’s state of health.

"Our most revered lady friend is just about to commit the biggest blunder in her life. Well, let her! Unless I’m greatly mistaken she’ll be a bundle of raw nerves about ten hours from now; just like any other woman who has been hurt to the quick. Don’t say another word. Leave everything to me. We’ll wait here till she comes out of the tent again. That’s all there is to it."

"I don’t understand a darn thing you’re saying, I assure you," replied Bell gruffly.

"She will be reduced to a nervous wreck," Rhodan continued with emphasis. "And she will be forced to pass on to us some of her superior knowledge, if she ever wants to see her home planet again. She will have no other alternative, in case the big research cruiser has really been totally destroyed. She is very near sighted. She is generally inclined to underestimate her opponents. She is going to be taught a bitter lesson, and that at the hands of people that She, in her incredible arrogance, regards as primitive and inferior."

A glimmer of understanding began to dawn in Bell’s eyes. Now he realized the reasons behind Rhodan’s Strange behaviour.

"I’m beginning to see the light," he said slowly. "You are convinced that the three moon rockets will score a hit, aren’t you?"

"It looks like it," murmured Rhodan. "But don’t let’s discuss this any further now. She will be back here in a moment. Khrest has a much better grasp of the situation, particularly a more objective one."

Soon after, when the tall slender woman came running out of the tent, she found both men sitting quietly on the ground. Breathing heavily and shivering because of the the insufficient warmth that this planet’s weak sun was generating for one of her race, she stopped near them.

Rhodan looked up with studied equanimity and an enigmatic expression in his eyes. She was panting with great effort, he chest heaving. The first signs of uneasiness were showing in her exquisite face, which was of an unearthly beauty.

"Hello. How are you?" inquired Rhodan in deliberately calm tones. "May I thank you most sincerely for your help. Khrest will be able to leave with you. He is cured. His last traces of weakness should soon disappear with plenty of rest and the proper diet. There is nothing to hold you here any longer. You can depart any time it suits you."

Thora’s whole body seemed to stiffen. She looked down at the man sitting so relaxed on the ground, her face displaying a mixture of fear, perplexity and indignation. Her voice came shrilly, rapidly firing away at him, full of accusation. "Why was I not informed at once about the impending attack? I have—"

"You have behaved like a hysterical schoolgirl," Perry interrupted. His eyes were aflame. "You broke off radio communication with us before I had a chance to make my report to you and to explain the reasons for our temporary radio silence. I can give you only one good piece of advice—get back to your moon base as fast as you can, and let’s hope they leave you enough time to reach your research space cruiser. Have your instruments located the three foreign intruders? Well, don’t stand there like a deaf mute. Did you get any word from your position finder?"

She nodded an affirmation. The pallor of her face intensified. Her hands started to tremble.

Rhodan got to his feet. "And what countermeasures have you taken?"

Thora did not answer his question but instead began to stammer, "Come along with us-please, do come along to our moon base! When were the rockets launched? What kind of armament do they have on board? Khrest mentioned something about a—"

"Meson catalytic bomb," Rhodan finished for her. "A fusion weapon that will not react to your antineutron screen. Have you at least made provisions for any eventualities and taken care of the necessary defensive programming instructions to your robot brain? Any commander of a terrestrial spaceship would have made sure of that."

Thora did not waste a second. She did not even bother to give any explanations, which told Rhodan clearly that she must have neglected to take any precautionary measures whatsoever.

She was running as fast as she could, and Bell and Rhodan stayed with her. A thought crossed Rhodan’s mind while he tried to keep up with her fast pace. He was struck by the similarity of their current situation and the Bible story of David and Goliath. Haughtiness on the one hand and lack of foresight on the other could lead to the destruction of the supergiant space sphere by the feeble but alert young opponent. This was particularly true since the deep apathy of the alien crew would, judging by previous experiences, prevent them from taking quick action against any threatening danger.

The gravity elevator deposited them directly in the control center of the auxiliary vessel. Thora had travelled to Earth in it all alone. She explained nervously that this was a fully automated vehicle that could be directed by any living being capable of individual thinking.

Rhodan looked around and began to feel dizzy. The complicated instrument panel of the Stardust seemed, in comparison with these fantastic installations, like a primitive native’s log canoe compared with an aircraft carrier of the U.S. Navy.

There were no launching preparations with long-drawnout procedures. The leap into space occurred as abruptly, as matter of factly and without any noticeable transition, as if an experienced driver had simply started his car. Never before had anything made Rhodan realize so sharply the gaping abyss between the Arkonide level of knowledge and that of Earth.

Thora directed the spaceship’s drive by a few slight manipulations that seemed simplicity itself. Innumerable robot instruments began to function at a simple touch of a lever. Rhodan was suddenly startled by the roar of the power unit that had started up. Lights were flickering across screens, and panels glowed in soft illumination. Rhodan was all set to experience the well-known unpleasant effects of sudden high acceleration, but nothing happened. The sphere simply lifted off the ground in vertical drive at tremendous speed.

The ground fell back beneath them. Before Rhodan relaxed his tense posture, the better to withstand the anticipated effects of high G pressures, he could already see the curvature of the Earth. The Pacific Ocean became visible, and then the outline of the West Coast lay beneath them like a design on a giant globe.

The shrill howling and whistling of tortured air masses subsided. In a few moments they had left behind them the last traces of the Earth’s atmosphere. Space opened up ahead of them.

Rhodan turned around. Reginald Bell was crouching with an air of total consternation in one of the high backed chairs, which apparently could not even be folded over to form a horizontal couch. Perry judged accordingly that there was no problem connected with the effects of sudden acceleration as far as the Arkonides were concerned. He estimated that the ship must have been accelerating in excess of 1,000 G’s. Nevertheless, he could not feel the slightest discomfort.

"How on Earth do they manage that?" wheezed Bell with trembling lips. "For heaven’s sake, how is this possible? We are racing straight into the moon. Thora … !"

The last word came like a scream. Rhodan whirled around. The moon’s globe was fully visible on the front side screen. Seconds later only partial sections of its surface could he contained on the picture screen.

The thunder from the unbelievably powerful engines grew to an unbearable ear splitting level. White hot streams of fire leaped from the nozzle openings of the equatorial bulge. They shot out in the opposite direction from the drive. The Arkonides no longer needed to counteract their forward speed by turning the main engines around! Rhodan just could not believe his eyes. He was fighting with his rebelling mind against emotions coming from the unconscious. His reasoning told him that such things were impossible and beyond imagination.

He was taken with leisurely, meandering thoughts that could not be forced to focus on one firm viewpoint. Rhodan became a creature torn by divergent feelings.

He was torn out of his reveries when Thora called out sharply. Her hand jerked upward. On one of the other picture screens three glimmering dots became visible.

"The moon rockets!" said Bell. "They are now just above the lunar south pole!"

They were coasting in free fall. The automatic steering impulses had ceased as soon as the remote control stations on the manned satellites had initiated the first circular orbit of the Stardust II.

This had still caused a most fearful shock to Major Rhodan on his approach to the moon with the Stardust I. But First Lieutenant Freyt, Commanding Officer of the Stardust II, did not experience the slightest alarm when the remote control steering was abruptly discontinued.

The three rocketships remained exactly in their prescribed orbits. Nothing else happened that Freyt could interpret as defensive measures emanating from the alien moon base.

Captain Rod Nyssen took over the command after they had twice circled the moon from pole to pole. The ship’s sighting mechanism was functioning with great precision. The automatic steering brains of the three rocket bombers constantly received new impulses via the commando unit of the Stardust II.

Nyssen waited until the light signal changed to red. A spherical structure appeared on the radar screen. Lieutenant Rickert, who was in charge of the optical direction finder, announced that the identification of their goal was established beyond a doubt. Lightning fast calculations of the computer stated the true dimensions of their target.

First Lieutenant Freyt proceeded to the last step of this desperate enterprise. "Commander of Stardust II to escort vessels: target sighted, location fixed. Attention all bombardiers, watch for orders when to release bombs. Captain Nyssen, all clear."

Captain Nyssen was calmness itself. He counted aloud the last seconds. The automatic steering mechanisms built into the nuclear warheads were clicking away in the store-rooms of the rocketships. Final corrections were made.

"… three … two … one … fire!" came Nyssen’s order over the radiophone.

A fire spewing missile left each of the rocketships. They were visible as bright flares for just a fraction of a second on the screens of the outside TV cameras; then they disappeared from sight as they zeroed in on their target like homing pigeons to their roost.

The automatic steering systems of the rocketships began to reverse the ships’ direction almost immediately, and the roaring engines pulled them off-course at extremely high speeds.

All the lieutenant had in mind at this moment was to make a fast getaway. The detonations would be terrible. The ship raced off in a steep angle. Far below them, more than 500 miles away, the swivel mounted steering jets of the Rak missiles were already moving. Their aim had been automatically locked in tight absolutely immovable.

A nuclear explosion in a vacuum must of necessity have an effect quite different from that within a dense atmosphere.

One of the main destructive effects, namely, the horrendous waves of pressure caused by the highly compressed, glowing hot air masses, would naturally not occur on the airless moon.

Since they lacked any experimental data about the radius of atomic effects in a vacuum, they had decided to detonate the heaviest H bombs upon impact on the target. Their aim was directly under ground zero, where the nuclear processes of the three missiles were scheduled to take place simultaneously.

Whatever was in the target’s bull’s-eye must therefore be enveloped by the inner gas ball of the three merging explosions and become not only pulverized by them but also vaporized by the ensuing temperature, comparable to that of a white hot sun.

Radioactive radiations had been considered as negligible, at least in this particular case. The effect of the pressure wave must decrease much faster in airless space than in a dense atmosphere. Practically, it would be limited to the area over which the gases could be expanded.

Thus, nobody had counted on the creation of an artificial sun. The white bluish ball appeared first like a pinpoint of intensely bright light, which expanded with incredible speed to a gigantic, fantastically brilliant formation.

Nothing like the infamous mushroom cloud developed. Instead, the south polar region of the moon was transformed into a boiling, evaporating crater, from which giant masses of rock were hurled skyward.

The steadily growing ball of energy, or primeval forces set free, could be observed even from the space stations circling the Earth. The white hot glowing gas formation had become so enormous that it stretched beyond the still recognizable horizon of the moon.

The Arkonide auxiliary vessel was rushing into the outer fringes of this awesome explosion. When it was over Rhodan could no longer remember what he had felt or thought during the few seconds their ship had penetrated and raced through this blazing hell.

He knew only that all of the space sphere’s high capacity reactors had been switched over to the energy screens by their unbelievably fast functioning positronic control.

The vessel had been thrown off-course and hurled far out into space. Only there had the automatic control managed to stabilize it again.

Ten minutes had passed since the attack. The Arkonide sphere, as if motionless, stood in empty space. Thora was strangely quiet. With lifeless eyes she gazed at the picture screens that showed in all clarity the extent of the catastrophe. Somewhere in the center of this boiling witch’s cauldron must have been the Arkonide research cruiser.

Rhodan waited a few minutes before he asked softly, "You are blaming yourself now, aren’t you? Don’t, please— it is senseless. Why don’t you learn from my own race? I can’t believe that your ship can have withstood this onslaught. But in any case you will have to wait until the reaction has died down."

For Rhodan, the utterly clear thinking man, devoid of any illusions, the Arkonide cruiser’s destruction was an accepted fact. He was too much of a realist to cry over spilt atoms. It was not worthwhile for him even to waste any thought about things that could no longer be changed. He warned Thora, "Thora, don’t think of retribution! Abandon your plans for reprisal. May I suggest that we land at once in the Gobi Desert? You can choose between undignified, caveman type vengeance or the exigencies of logical deliberation. Make your choice. Neither you nor Khrest would be helped in any way should you decide on a punitive action. And besides, I assure you, you would encounter serious difficulties from my side."

She looked down at the weapon in his hand. A bitter expression played around her full lips.

"I simply underestimated you, that’s all," she replied in a monotonous voice. "Do you really believe that a Commander of the Great Imperium would go to pieces over a destroyed spaceship? Such things happen to us quite frequently. So what do you suggest?"

Rhodan knew then that he had finally won. The panicky actions of a frightened mankind had accomplished something that, although he did not agree with these actions in principle, he had considered in his innermost thoughts to be the basis for attaining a position of cosmic power.

Both Arkonides, Thora and Khrest, were definitely stranded now in this corner of the galaxy. There was no way back for them. With this in mind Rhodan declared thoughtfully, "Why don’t you land first? I shall try to have the Third Power declared a sovereign state, fully recognized by all the nations of the world. Just leave that all to me."

She was a defeated person, crushed and helpless. Rhodan knew it. A short hour later the space sphere touched ground again on the stony expanses of the Gobi Desert.

Far out in space, still at a great distance from their home planet, twelve men breathed easier. They were the crews of the three returning rocketships.

"I wish we were as far advanced as that!" whispered First Lieutenant Freyt, throwing a last glance at the video screens. "Did you see that racing comet? If only we were at their stage of progress—with ships like that the whole galaxy would be ours!"