Beyond The Barrier of Space

  GIMEL WAS IN THE

  GRIP OF A MANIAC!

  “This power,” said the Professor respectfully, “could be used clinically to overcome neurosis or psychosis, but it would have to be very carefully controlled. In the hands of an unscrupulous government, the drug is worse than any weapon man has yet devised.”

  In the hands of Recman, the potent Formula 29 X would be enough to turn every man on Gimel into a sort of Recman robot. It would turn the dream planet beyond the barrier of space into an automatic state. All citizens would be blind followers of the dictator, and no man s mind could escape...

  BEYOND

  THE BARRIER

  OF SPACE

  PEL TORRO

  A TOWER BOOK

  BEYOND THE BARRIER OF SPACE

  Copyright © 1968 by John Spencer & Co., Ltd.

  A TOWER BOOK

  Published by Tower Publications, Inc.

  185 Madison Avenue New York, New York 10016

  All Rights Reserved

  Printed in U.S.A.

  CHAPTER ONE

  TAXI!

  RECMAN

  THE VICTIM

  GENERAL FOSDYKE

  THE BATTLE FOR G1MEL

  DEFEAT

  THE TUNNEL AND AFTER

  PROFESSOR HENRY DAVIDSON

  THE RESISTANCE

  PROGRESS

  THE DEATHLESS ARMY

  THE EYEWITNESS

  FORAGING EXPEDITION

  BILL STOKES

  INTO THE DEN

  FOUR ON THE MARCH

  CHAPTER ONE - TAXI!

  Big Dan Matheson came out of the government building deep in thought. He was a tall, broad-shouldered individual, with bushy brows, clear, intelligent eyes, and an open face. Dan Matheson was that rather rara avis, an honest politician. Perhaps more unusual still, he was a sound man in every respect. Dan Matheson was more than sound, he was a good man. Not good in a pious, sanctimonious way, but good in the sense of being trustworthy, reliable and humane. He was the personification of the program on which his party fought their elections, and if the colonists on Gimel, the third planet of Alpha Centauri, had really taken their judgment with them to the ballot box Dan Matheson’s radicals would have been the over-all party, instead of prominent members of the coalition. But even as one of the bulwarks of the coalition, Dan Matheson made his presence felt very considerably. But running with a coalition, working with other men inside the limits of agreement, and the narrow margins of democratic safety, took a great deal of thought, tact and diplomacy; a great deal of patience and negotiation. Matheson was a good negotiator; he was broad-minded enough to take a wide judgment and to see the other fellow’s point of view, even when it was at variance with those humanitarian principles which inspired his own reforming ideals.

  He raised a hand automatically as a hovercraft taxi glided along the broad plaza in front of the government buildings. The door opened as the driver pressed the automatic control button in his cab, and without even glancing up, Matheson climbed into the hover-car.

  “Government domestic quarters, please,” he said down the speaking tube connecting the passenger compartment with the driver’s cab.

  “Certainly, sir.” The voice had rather an odd edge to it, but the fact was lost on Matheson at that moment. His mind was completely absorbed in the problems of what looked like becoming an inevitable war. Dan Matheson hated war, but he could see no possible alternative at this moment. He smiled rather grimly as he thought of the recent stormy scenes in debate. The Gimel Congress was modelled, as far as its procedure was concerned, on the legislature of ancient distant earth. In some ways it was slow and cumbrous; they had even imported some of the traditions and ceremonials, but the humanoid colonists of Gimel, third planet of Alpha Centauri, the third and outermost plane of Alpha Centauri, for that matter . . . were of terrestrial stock, and, as is sometimes the way with colonists, they had a greater admiration for the old traditions, and the cultures of distant Earth than Earthmen who had not left their native world.

  It suddenly occurred to Dan Matheson that the taxi was taking rather a long time to reach the residential buildings, where the legislators of Gimel lived, moved, and had their being while the planetary Congress was in session.

  Dan glanced up. For a second he did not recognize the scenery. When he did his great bushy brows knitted together in a frown of anger and surprise. He picked up the speaking tube.

  “And just where the devil do you think you’re going?” he asked. His only answer was a laugh from the driver. Dan was the kind of man to whom panic was as foreign as green spotted pseudopods. His philosophy was simple, direct, straightforward, and hitherto, effective. When big Dan Matheson found himself faced with some difficulty he went straight at it. Not blindly, like a bull at a gate, but forcefully like a battering ram at a door.

  “Kidnapped!” He thought aloud, grimly; at my age! There could only be one possible explanation, and Dan Matheson knew it. The present democratic coalition was not only threatened by the prospect of external conflict from the peculiar Zurgas of Aleph, the innermost planet of the system, nor, solely from the reptilian Quen of the jungles of Beth. The most insidious danger was the danger from their own world, danger here on Gimel. Political danger in the form of Karl Recman and his uniformed thugs. If there was one thing about which the legislators could agree, it was in their common dislike of the insane, prejudiced policies of Karl Recman, would-be totalitarian dictator of Gimel . . . The constant raids on the humanoid planet by Zurgas and Quen had added fuel to the flames of Recman’s protests. Not all the colonists were by any means as level-headed as Matheson. A threat of war had driven large numbers of them into that political hysteria in which men can be stampeded into handing over power to a dictator. Whatever powers Karl Recman lacked, he did not lack political ability. He was ruthless, dangerous and completely unscrupulous. All sorts of thoughts ran through Dan Matheson’s mind.

  The recent debates had left the coalition in a singularly perilous position. He and his opposite number, the conservative leader, were as close to dissolving the coalition as they had ever been. There had been a very heated exchange and the popular press of Gimel had naturally played it up for all it was worth. Some of the less responsible and more sensational dailies, not to mention some of the more excitable television correspondents, had almost given the impression that there was a strong personal breach developing between the two men. The pattern of Recman’s scheme took shape in the shrewd socialist leader’s mind. Soon he could analyze the situation: the Fascist’s plan would be to remove him quietly and to allow the blame to rest upon the conservative leader. The seasoned old campaigners probably wouldn’t fall for it, but some of the more excitable younger men very likely would. If enough of them in both the moderate democratic parties got excited enough, that could spell the end of the coalition. A country, or a planet, threatened from outside cannot afford to be without a government. Recman would then use all the publicity which his highly financed organization could command, and having screamed from the housetops that democracy had failed Gimel when Gimel was in its hour of need, it would be a comparatively simple matter for his uniformed thugs to seize power without any serious protest or opposition and once a regime like Recman’s Fascist party had seized power, it would be impossible to unseat them without a great deal of bloodshed and sacrifice, without getting rid of Recman himself, first.

  Above all things else Dan Matheson was a very practical man. He was a man in whose makeup there was no place for selfishness. If he disappeared without trace, then it would be very easy for the Fascist leader to throw the blame upon the Conservatives. Matheson was not prepared for any such thing to happen if he could possibly avoid it. He was a very muscu
lar man, and, despite his grey hairs, he was as strong as he had ever been. The speaking tube was not the firmest of fixtures. If he could crash the hovercraft, then to be found dead among the wreckage would not cast the blame on anybody. There was also the chance of getting out in repairable shape. The question was to lure the driver into unhooking his end of the tube. Matheson took a very firm grip on his part of the tube.

  “Driver,” he said, “I think you and I might be able to make a little deal. I’m talking money, big money.” There was silence for a second, but he had not misjudged his man.

  “How big are you talking?” asked the driver’s voice.

  “This big!” shouted Matheson, and pulled savagely.

  Under the impetus of those great muscles, the tube was renched from its moorings. The hooked end which the driver held was rather like a shepherd’s crook. It hooked around his neck, and as Matheson tugged savagely there was a strangled scream from the other end. The hover-car veered wildly out of control. Matheson hung on grimly. They were in an open space, there was no other vehicle in sight. One side of the car dipped down. There was jolting and there were sparks, and a hideous grating sound.

  Gimel seemed to stand on its head. It repeated the maneuver a couple of times, and in one incongruously microsecond during which nothing was moving, Dan Matheson tore open the door and flung himself away from the dancing hover-car. He landed in a patch of soft soil. It looked like a flower bed in the course of preparation. It was the one-in-a-thousand chance that he needed....

  He rolled lightly and easily, for despite his age he was an extremely athletic man. He found himself in a sitting position, dazed and a little breathless, but otherwise unhurt. The hover-car was not in the same happy state.

  It looked rather like a toy which had been inadvertently left lying on the nursery floor, and received the full benefit of a proud, but heavy, parent’s heel. It looked like a little tin car that had tried to face down a steam roller.

  Matheson got to his feet and went over to examine the wreckage. The driver looked more like a blob of strawberry jam than any living man has a right to do. He moaned. Just as Matheson reached him the driver died.

  He looked down at the mutilated corpse, and despite the kidnap attempt, and the dead man’s part in it, Matheson felt sorry. He walked slowly away from the wreck, pressed the button of the nearest audio-visi-phone and called the police.

  CHAPTER TWO - RECMAN

  Dr. Andrew Fell had a face that was as innocent of human emotion as a blank wall. It might have been the face of a statue instead of the face of a man. The eyes were contrastingly alive. It was as though all the energy that ought to have been invigorating the facial muscles had been drained off by some strange unnatural process, and was now radiating from the eyes, as though it possessed a sentience of its own. Andrew Fell had hair the color of mahogany, round, steel-framed spectacles, and a general sinister air that seemed to warn the world at large that Andrew Fell was a good man to keep away from. Karl Recman, of course, did not consider himself tarred with the same brush as mere humanity. If everybody else kept away from the sinister Dr. Fell, that was all the more reason for Karl Recman to be attracted to the macabre doctor.

  Recman was sitting in his headquarters. His headquarters were strongly fortified, although at a casual glance the fortifications were not outstandingly noticeable. The window shutters were not particularly thick, but nevertheless they were lined with bullet-proof steel panelling. The doors did not look as though they were made to withstand a long siege, yet those doors were ramified by very powerful force-fields, built into the frames into which the doors fitted. The force-fields themselves would have barred ingress or egress, irrespective of whether the door was closed. There were other things in Karl Recman’s headquarters. There were trap doors that could be opened at the touch of a button; there were projectiles that could be fired; there were things that could drop from above, and there were secret bolt-holes that led away to unexpected places. Recman in his den was as dangerous as a spider in the heart of its web. Not only was the Fascist headquarters devilishly cunning in the way that its bolt-holes and booby traps were designed, it was also the nerve center for a vast number of observation screens. These observation screens were concealed in the most unlikely places.

  The thing that seemed to be a harmless insect buzzing past was no such thing; it was a miniature, mobile, automatic micro-transistorized telescanner. It was a buzzing, remote controlled eye, and the Fascist leader had dozens of the things all over the planet. Their present locations and the pictures they were transmitting, flashed up on a huge polyscreen viewing bank to the left of Karl Recman’s desk. Fell was looking at the Fascist leader expressionlessly, but there was a certain excitement in the doctor’s eyes. He had held a medical laboratory flask in his left hand and a hypodermic syringe in his right. Those who knew him very well might have detected just a minute trace of smug self-satisfaction on the normally emotionless face. The excitement in the eyes, the look of anticipation, meant to those who knew him well enough to read his appearance, that it was the harbinger of the discovery which Andrew Fell had obviously just made and was anxious to impart to his chief. The sinister doctor opened his mouth as though to speak, but before he could do so, Karl Recman’s barbaric face creased in lines of anxiety. The anxiety deepened. Recman was scowling savagely at the screen. On the screen one of his tiny little flying scanners was faithfully transmitting a picture of the phoney hovercraft taxi which had been sent to kidnap Dan Matheson.

  Recman crashed one great, ugly, hairy fist into the palm of the other hand as the little buzzing thing showed the wreck of the fake taxi. Recman held his breath to see whether the driver would be in any condition to impart information to the Socialist leader. One look at the wreckage told Recman that he was one man short, but he smiled cynically, stood up, clasped his hands behind his back in what he fondly believed to be a masterful pose and took a pace around the room.

  “Fortunately our man will not be able to talk,” he said in carefully cultivated accents.

  He paused for a moment, closed his eyes and shook his head, as though to clear his thoughts completely, then, reopening his eyes, he fixed his gaze firmly on Dr. Andrew Fell.

  “You are brimming with news, my good doctor, what news do you bring?”

  “I have made a major breakthrough,” said the doctor.

  “A major breakthrough? That is good, that is very good.”

  “This is Formula 29 X.” The voice was as expressionless as the face, yet beneath the quiet of the deadly syllables there lurked the same kind of insane, fanatical energy expressing itself via two different media.

  “Tell me more. We need a little success after this bungling stupidity.” Recman indicated the screen angrily. The micro telescanner now depicted Matheson calling the police on the audio-visi-phone.

  “The exact formula,” said the doctor, “has been eluding me for months. Now I have it.” He held up the beaker. “In here is the Key to the minds of men!”

  “The key?” enquired the Fascist leader.

  “You shall insert it yourself, to the Lock of Destiny,” hissed the sinister doctor. “The Tumblers of Time within the Lock of Destiny shall turn to the irresistible strength of your hand. You will travel beyond the barriers of space. Worlds shall know of the power of Recman. They shall tremble and be afraid. This will be a god. It will be more than God.”

  “More than God!” exclaimed Recman and paced around the room. His barbaric eyes gleamed. Paranoia was written in every line of his face and in the wild expression of his eyes.

  “More than God!” he hissed again. He turned to the doctor and looked at the flask reverently. “Tell me,” he commanded, “tell me everything!”

  “Much of human personality has a physical basis,” said the doctor. “Our emotions, our feelings, our very thoughts are, to a large extent, governed by, and dictated by our physical condition. A healthy mind in a healthy body makes a healthy man; a complete man; a totality; a unity. O
nce the health of the mind has gone, the health of the body can be undermined. Worry and anxiety will exhibit themselves in all manner of eruptions of the dermis, nervous indigestion, odd pains, twitches, spasms, paralysis, headaches, sickness, glandular disorders . .

  “Yes, yes, yes; I know all this,” said Recman. “Go on man, go on!”

  The doctor bowed and held up the flask containing the strange new formula.

  “This is based upon the knowledge that much of personality is a physical thing.” He said each word slowly as though he enjoyed the taste of it. He dropped each word reluctantly as a tiger drops tender pieces of meat from the comer of its mouth, while it swallows larger pieces.

  There was silence for a second.

  “Go on!” said Recman, testily.

  “Now,” said the doctor. “My formula will put the mind of the patient completely in the hands of the injector. It will make the mind completely plastic. It will mean,” he spread his hands expressively, it was an unusual gesture for him, “it will mean that you can break down completely and re-build completely! You can make men exactly what you want them to be. The Automatic State is just around the comer. With trained, selected leaders working closely with you, Recman, the whole of humanity can be your slave.”

  “So this flask has given me a galatic empire!” said Recman softly. “First we must conquer Gimel, then Beth and Aleph.”

  The doctor nodded.

  “First, Gimel! ” he agreed.

  “You have done very well. Your service in the cause of Recman is great! Recman does not forget his faithful servants . . . You shall be honored and rewarded when we come to the glory of our power.” The doctor bowed obsequiously.

  CHAPTER THREE - THE VICTIM