FALCON 2: MECHANON
FALCON 3: THE RACK OF BAAL
FALCON 4: LOST IN TIME
MARK SMITH AND JAMIE THOMSON
SPHERE BOOKS LIMITED London and Sydney
First published in Great Britain by
Sphere Books Ltd 1985 in association with
Commodore Business Machines Ltd
30 32 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8JL
Copyright © 1985 by Mark Smith and Jamie Thomson
Illustrations by Geoff Senior and Nic Weeks
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Set in Andover
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Collins, Glasgow
A third of the land's surface is populated with cities which stretch miles up towards the Ionosphere and are also tunnelled deep into the Earth's crust.
The world is united - war within the atmosphere of a single planet can only lead to total destruction. Government is carried out by Executives, each having full powers within a certain area. The Food, Health, Pleasure and Enforcement Executives are centred in Alpolis, a city covering what was once an independent country - Switzerland - and it is here that the most recent Executive, TIME, exists.
People live for fun, not to work. Most tasks are performed by robots, so life is quite easy. Only 10% of the population still works, and then only for fun or out of a sense of social duty. Food is plentiful, the main source being a fungus grown in huge vats under artificial light. Luxury foods, such as meat, are a rarity. Communications have improved so as to transform society: holophones connect all homes across the Space Federation so it is possible to be in direct contact with many alien species light years across space. Travel on earth is done by hovrail, jetcopter or stratocruiser, so that the longest journey need take no more than an hour.
The average Earther lives for two hundred and fifty years and the ageing process only begins during the last fifty years of life. Life-prolonging drugs, called Anagathics, are freely available, and transplant surgery is now a simple operation. Unfortunately, because people live longer, there are many problems. There is overcrowding and very little to do which has resulted in a rapid increase in violent crime. With so many people needing new hearts, lungs and other organs there is a shortage of spare parts for use in transplant surgery, so the Enforcement Executive has passed a Termination Code. All violent crimes are punishable by painless death. The Enforcement Executive has had sensors set up to catch criminals, especially Bodybrokers who deal illegally in organs for surgery. If Energy Weapons are used by criminals, for instance, a police jetcopter will be there in seconds.
Earth, using Hyperdrive, faster-than-light travel, has established itself as head of the Space Federation, which includes all the earth colonies and alien planets. The Navy patrols the colonies: Lastlanding, Proxima Centauri, Ascension and so on, as well as the alien worlds: Kelados, Sundew, Dyskra, Clyss, Rigel Prime, the Hive and others. Contact with alien life forms is commonplace and the colony ships of the twenty-fourth century are still approaching the centre of the galaxy.
Travel through time involves crossing a fourth dimension, 'Null-space' or the 'Void' as it is known. This dimension joins all points in time and space from the beginning of the universe to its end. Imagine time as a cable. Earth's Timeline (or past, present and future) is a single strand of this cable stretching from Earth's beginning to the end of time. The Timelines of other planets run alongside this and weave around each other, because events on one planet affect things on another. These strands, or Timelines, are insulated from the fourth dimension in the same way that an electrical wire is insulated. At certain points there are holes in the insulation allowing travel from one point on the wire through this hole to a different point on this or another wire. In this way a Time Machine may move from one 'Timehole' to another and from one point in space to another via Null-space.
The Timeholes are formed when the fabric of time is damaged by unknown forces. They can be larger, but are usually less than five miles across. Timeholes come and go as new damage occurs and older Timeholes close up naturally. The Monitoring Section is responsible for keeping the map of current Timeholes. Your up-to-date map is at the beginning of the book. At least one hole has been there for a long time - the Eiger Vault, near the TIME Building in the Alps. It is thought to be a permanent Timehole and your Time Machine, Falcon's Wing, is kept there along with those of the Lords of TIME and other Agents. Some Timeholes are safer than others and it is possible to go back in time only to find that the hole through which you travelled has closed up, trapping the unfortunate traveller in the past. Time passes at the same rate in all Timeholes as on Earth. If you begin a journey to a Timehole ten minutes after somebody else does you will arrive ten minutes later than them. Only those with Psychic Awareness can navigate across Null-space.
In certain paragraphs you will have the chance to attack an enemy. When you choose to do so, you will be asked to make an Attack Roll. To do this, roll two dice and add the numbers together. You will be told which paragraph to turn to next, depending on your score. In all combats you are more likely to succeed if your score is high than if it is low.
Whenever you make an Attack Roll you must add or subtract your Attack Modifier to the dice score. Your Attack Modifier may change as the adventure unfolds and you should keep a note of this on your Agent Profile (at beginning of adventure). To begin with your Attack Modifier is zero.
In certain cases you may need to avoid the attack of an enemy or escape from a difficult situation. You will be asked to make an Evasion Roll, to which you must add or subtract your Evasion Modifier. This works in the same way as the Attack Roll and Attack Modifier as described above. Your initial Evasion Modifier is also zero.
Some paragraphs will offer you the chance to make a mental attack, either a Thinkstrike or Power of Will. Make an Attack Roll, just as if you were attacking normally, but add or subtract your Thinkstrike or Power of Will Modifier, not your Attack Modifier. In all other ways mental attacks work in the same way as a physical attack. To begin with your Thinkstrike and Power of Will Modifiers are zero, as noted on your Agent Profile.
Your Psychic Awareness operates at all times and you will be told when you have discovered anything of interest.
You, Falcon, start the adventure with 20 points of Endurance. If you are wounded in combat, suffer something unpleasant such as an acid atmosphere without a space suit, or become exhausted, you will lose Endurance points. A running total of your Endurance should be kept on your Agent Profile. If at any time you fall to zero Endurance or less you are dead and your adventure is over. Endurance points can be regained by visiting the Autodoc in your Time Machine (see equipment list) and you will be told when you can use your Autodoc.
You will notice as you use this book that certain paragraph numbers are followed by a letter in brackets. If you wish to score your performance as Special Agent Falcon, you will need to make a list of the letters following these numbers on the box provided on your Agent Profile every time you come to one of these paragraphs. If you should be killed or fail in your adventure, you should delete your current recorded letters except for all the Qs which must be kept and begin again. Each letter corresponds to a score, and you will be given a rating, depending on what the total of your scores is. The letter scores may be found at the back of the second book of this series, Mechanon. This is necessary, since printing the scores in this book would allow you to find out what the right decisions to take in this adventure are!
ITEM i: MODEL A3 TIME MACHINE [see accompanying specifications]
Your own Time Machine, Falcon's Wing, is silver with bright scarlet markings and is the eleventh machine capable of travel through time ever built. Its cost cannot be computed, since it involves the use of certain materials and scientific skills which are priceless. The silver and scarlet hull will withstand enormous pressure, heat and exposure to harmful gasses and liquids, as well as providing protection from radiation.
The six hydraulic legs which support the machine are extended when it materialises in a new Timehole, to provide stability on uneven ground. The Main Access is operated by invisible Tractor Beams (energy beams that can be used to grip and lift) that will draw the Time Traveller up into the cabin, to rest on the Access Disc. This disc is matter but is changed to air as you move through it by the Molecular Converter (see Item 4). The pressurised cabin is lined with instruments and gadgets. The crash couch is moulded to fit your shape and can be moved up to the command console or up into the Flyer (see Item 6).
The air inside the machine is kept pure by the life support unit and can be flushed out and replaced within ten seconds. The Main Access will work only when its Memory Scanner recognises your own brain patterns. Specially sensitive cameras and power floodlights are mounted on top of the Machine. The Variac Drive, which forces the Machine into null-space, is housed beneath the deck and is controlled through your computer (CAIN, see Item 7).
TIME MACHINE
TIME MACHINE
Each Time Machine is equipped with a Hologram Generator - very important if the First Law of TIME is to be obeyed. The Generator changes the appearance of the Machine by casting a hologram around it, so the computer can make the Machine look like a small wood, hayrick or grassy hill etc, which is very lifelike unless you are within two metres of the Machine itself. This stops people in history being curious at the sight of a highly technological machine.
Due to the existence of Hologram Generators you may find it difficult to see other Time Machines. As a member of the Time Police you have been given a Hologram-detector which is portable and operates to a range of fifty metres. This will reveal the presence of a hologram and therefore another Time Machine.
Each Time Machine is equipped with a Molecular Converter, a device which uses the rarest of all elements, Polybdenum, as its fuel. Small articles, placed in the Converter, are transformed into whatever the computer decides. In this way, Time Travellers have disguises which allow them to pass undetected amongst the intelligent beings of other times. CAIN, your computer, carries information about the Timeholes shown on your map, so that the blueprints required by the Converter to make the disguises accurate, are usually available. Your Psionic Helmet, for instance, can be turned into a legionary's helmet, while keeping its modern powers.
This is a couch-like device which has needles, a drip, a blood supply and surgical robo-arms. You may lie in the Autodoc
during the time taken to travel from one Timehole to another, for instance, and come out healed, restoring your Endurance by up to twelve points. You will be told when you can use your Autodoc.
Your crash-couch swivels up onto the platform of your flyer when you wish to use it. The flyer is a small hover-raft which is catapulted out of the Time Machine through the Launch Doors, two sections on top of the hull that slide apart. Once safely away from the Machine the Ion Drive can be cut in, giving the flyer a top speed many times the speed of sound (Mach 6). It can hover which allows you to use it as an observation platform, but it is too small to carry a Hologram Generator and should only be used when strictly necessary. Fortunately, its Ion Drive is almost soundless. You are also issued with a Homing Beacon, which, when activated, will make the flyer move to its location as quickly as possible. The flyer is then piloted by its micro computer. The Beacon is magnetic, and about the size of a die.
FLYER
FLYER
CAIN is one of the most advanced computers known to man. Its data banks offer information on all subjects and historical data on all Federation and alien planets. Its memory banks are continuously updated with information concerning the Time- holes and it is able to link with the massive memory banks of the TIME Service Computer at the Eiger Vault. A holophone, through which you can contact any other holophone in the Federation, is built into CAIN and you also have access to most of the files kept by TIME. CAIN answers to your spoken commands and runs the Time Machine for you. It can display information visually, via the terminal screen, or verbally, using its melodic chimes.
This is your Standard Starship Trooper issue Plasma Pistol. It fires superheated plasma to a range of 100 metres, and the Energy Pack is sufficient for ten minutes continuous use. You have more Energy Packs in your weapons locker. Your blaster is labelled, 'For use in exceptional circumstances only'.
BLASTER
This helmet helps your Powers of the Mind by damping all other thoughts. It senses when you want to use your power and activates automatically.
PSIONIC ENHANCER
A light, pressurised suit for use in vacuum, inhospitable atmospheres and extreme ranges of temperature which monitors your life signals such as pulse and temperature. It is compatible with your Psionic Enhancer.
ENVIRONMENT SUIT
Special Agent (TIME)
Codename: Falcon
For three years you have studied at the Academy as a cadet attached to TIME: the Temporal, Investigative and Monitoring Executive, and you have passed the difficult training programme with flying colours. You have been selected from the Academy to be a Special Agent because of your unusual talents, having been born with Powers of the Mind: you can sense things that others can't and even influence their actions through thought alone. These powers have been strengthened and focussed during your training and you have been issued with a Psionic Enhancer, a helmet which increases these mental powers. You have been taught to attack the minds of others with a blast of mental energy you call Thinkstrike. Your Power of Will allows you to control the minds of those weaker than you, and your Psychic Awareness allows you to sense things that others cannot, including the presence of another with such mental powers. This Psychic Awareness also lets you navigate your Time Machine through time and space. Few have such powers and even fewer are trusted with one of the small number of Time Machines in existence.
You are expert in survival - including combat — armed and unarmed. History and detective powers of deduction have also been major subjects of study. You are now an Agent in the Time Police, whose job is to guard the Timelines of the past and to ensure that no-one tampers with past events in any way that would change things as they are now.
TIME, the Temporal Investigative and Monitoring Executive, was set up in Alpolis forty years ago shortly after Time Travel was discovered. The realisation that anyone with access to Time Travel could change the past so that the entire human race might cease to exist was worrying, so Time Machines were built for the Time Police in their crystal domed TIME headquarters, in order to stop this. TIME is headed by five Lords, representing the most powerful groups in the Space Federation. Each of these has Powers of the Mind, and their own Time Machine.
The Executive is divided into four sections: Administrative, Research, Monitoring and the Special Agent Section (or SAS). The Monitoring Section, headed by Section Chief Jobanque, is responsible for noting any disturbances in the past, or Timelines, of the planets in the Federation. The Research Section, headed by Section Chief Skirrow is responsible for all equipment used by Special Agents and is also examining the possibilities of travel into the future, as yet impossible. Your own Special Agent Section is headed by Section Chief Agidy Yelov, a Siriun humanoid from the Federation member planet, Sirius Secundus. Agidy Yelov and others have told you the importance of the First Law of TIME when on active service: 'A TIME Agent must, in all cases, act naturally according to the time in which he is currently operating, thus minimising any disruption of the Timelines his or her presence might be causing'. As Yelov once said to you: There's no point in coming back to 3033 if you have left an atomic hand gun near Hitler's bunker, because this would change the present - in fact, you'd probably find you had never existed!' As with all Special Agents, your bloodline has been traced back, in your case to the French Revolution in 1789 AD. Should any one of your ancestors fail to produce the next in line it would be as if you had never existed.
Your mission to find the Renegade Lord is a race against time, Falcon. You must catch up with the Lord before history can be changed or you will have failed, perhaps never have existed at all. You may find it useful to make a note of the places and times to which you travel so that you can form an idea of where to go next.
The rules are very simple - you could almost play this book without reading them at all. But reading the Personal Background and of course, the Mission Brief will help you to understand what is happening as you begin the adventure. If you come across something you don't understand, don't worry, check the Equipment List and this may give you a clue. If not, carry on anyway, it will probably come clear later.
Good luck, and remember, the fate of the Space Federation rests in your hands.
Touching the pad which changes the walls of your home to tranquil white you casually note how smart you look in your Dress Uniform in the mirror wall. It is less than an hour to your graduation ceremony, when you will stand before the Lords of TIME in the Hall of Honours and, taking these moments to relax, you remember the excitement of simulated ship-to-ship combat, the long hours of concentration as you worked on your Powers of the Mind, and the fascinating vid-lectures on history that were part of your course at the Academy. Though you excelled in all of these things, you are well aware that the job which you began officially today as a Special Agent of the Time Police will be the most challenging of any Federation citizen. The responsibility of guarding the past for all who live today weighs heavily but such sobering thoughts are interrupted by the quiet tone of your holophone.
You click your fingers and the remote accepts contact. Your section commander, Agidy Yelov, seems to appear in the room before you. The slitted pupils of his amber eyes narrow as they adapt to the white light. Tall, lean and cat-like, Yelov looks imposing in his steel grey uniform, his blue-black hair framing a face which betrays nothing. 'Falcon, I must see you before the ceremony. Come straight to my office.' He taps his desk, breaking the hob-link and vanishing before you can reply. Seconds later, you are on the moving pedway leading to his office in the Security Wing of TIME headquarters. As you leave the domed apartment, the blue sky is clear, and it is due to remain so for a further 4.5 days.
The door to Yelov's office slides open at your touch - the building's Service Computer recognises your fingerprints. Agidy Yelov, standing before his Corn-console, beckons you in. 'Your pardon for this untimely intrusion, please be seated.' It is only as you step through the doorway that you notice Yelov is not alone. Jobanque, head of the Monitoring Section, is lying on a couch, a welcoming smile stretching his black features. You sit and the chair expands with a hiss to fit you snugly. Looking at Yelov, you might think him nervous if you didn't believe him unable to feel anxiety. 'I have no time for the usual pleasantries.' His voice is hard. 'I know that this is your first mission, but Jobanque and I have picked you because you're the best person I've got. The fate of every being in the Federation and billions beyond will depend on you. We have lost an Agent. Q has been killed while on active service, investigating a disturbance of the Timeline of the planet Kelados. It seems he had found out who was responsible.'
Jobanque speaks next: 'His final transmission reported that he had identified the culprit as a Lord of TIME.' He pauses to watch your reaction to this incredible news. 'Unfortunately, Q died before he could tell us which one of the Lords is trying to change the past in order to gain power here and now, in 3033.'
Yelov continues brusquely: 'Of course, we can't arrest them all, they are our superiors and it is a difficult situation, particularly as far as the alien Lords of TIME are concerned. Because of this your mission has to be completely unofficial, but we must arrest or terminate the Renegade Lord as soon as we have proof and before anything disastrous occurs. When you have proof, do whatever you feel is necessary, Falcon. Is that understood?'
'Understood,' you reply.
Yelov continues: 'It will be a race against time; you may need to deal with an attempt to change the past within the next few hours.'
'Yes,' Jobanque breaks in, 'Q had already foiled one attempt in the Kelados Timeline, in 2710 AD. He was a fine agent. It is too late for you to do anything to save him, time passes in the Timeholes at the same rate as it passes in the present and if you travelled back to the same hole you would arrive after his death. I have identified an even earlier Timehole on Kelados, but Skirrow's men in the Tech Section say we can't send you back there and put you into cold sleep, to awaken at the time of Q's arrival, because of the rapid ageing effect of being away from your own time for extended periods.'
'Your machine is ready in the Eiger Vault,' Yelov goes on. 'We have no idea what the Renegade Lord's next move will be but all the Lords will attend your graduation ceremony. All five of their Time Machines are logged in at the Vault, so none of them are meddling with the past as we speak. Go to your ceremony but remember, one of them is a traitor, a traitor to TIME and to the Space Federation. Good luck, Falcon. If you are not successful we may never meet again...'
As you turn to the door, Jobanque rises and says: 'Well be seeing you. Falcon.' You salute and leave, to begin your search for the Renegade Lord, wondering whether in fact you will ever see them or any of your friends again. The fate of worlds rests on your shoulders. Now turn over.