" Perry Rhodan 0012 - (06) The Secret of The Time Vault" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)

shipwrecked Arkonides natives, Khrest and Thora, could now return to Arkon
whenever they pleased, even though their home planet was more than 32,000
light-years distant from Earth. All along they had been eager to do so, but
Rhodan had so far skilfully thwarted their attempts, for Earth's exact
location in the universe had to be kept a secret at all costs. Mankind was not
yet ready to become a decisive factor in cosmic politics, therefore it was
wiser to keep out of it until the time was ripe. Bell sat up slowly, then
swung his legs over the edge of his couch onto the floor, whose covering, like
the rest of the spaceship, seemed somehow to have mysteriously withstood
thousands of years of use. Bell yawned. 'I've slept an eternity, but I'm
tireder than I was before. Did it work all right?" Rhodan nodded. 'Yes, the
transition has worked fine тАж so far, at least. We have to check our position
first, though, then we'll know for sure. I had instructed the positronic brain
to let us rematerialize near the orbit of Pluto.' 'Shouldn't we see how the
others are getting on?' Bell asked. 'That won't be necessary,' replied
Rhodan, and got up after the robots had left the room. 'The robot nurses will
take care of them much better than we can. Besides, why shouldn't they make it
if we did?' The visiscreen above the control panel lit up. Slowly the colours
fell into a pattern and then turned into 3-D pictures. The brightly flaming
star to the left side in front of the craft's nose was the sun, Bell and
Rhodan recognized. Directly before them floated a weakly glowing celestial
body, covered by a whitish icy layer тАж Pluto. The hyperspace jump had been a
success! 'Our Pluto base crew doesn't know our new ship yet,' said Rhodan.
'You'd better inform them at once. They might already have located us with
their spacewarp sensors, or even have given the alarm.' The spacewarp sensors
were an invention of the Arkonides. They reacted over great distances to any
vibrations in the four-dimensional space-time structure and could pinpoint
their location. Each hyperspace jump caused such a tremor, which propagated
itself faster than light and without any loss of time. Gravitation, as the
Arkonides had known for thousands of years, was nothing but ' five-dimensional
energy radiation, which needed no time to displace itself through space. Bell
went to the transmitter to call Pluto. He used a simple set rather than the
hyperwave transmitter. He wanted to make sure no unauthorized listeners
somewhere light-years away would intercept his message. Fortunately for Rhodan
and his men the post on Pluto had not yet relayed the news about the strange
spaceship. Bell breathed a sigh of relief. He reminded the men on Pluto to
remain on the lookout for any approaching spacecraft and to notify
Galacto-City at once. 'We should warn Earth of our coming,' suggested Rhodan.
'Otherwise they might send a reception committee to greet us. The new space
fleet should be completed by now. They might be overwhelmed at the sight of
this giant of a ship. After all, our Good Hope had a diameter of only a
hundred and eighty feet, just like the other twelve auxiliary vessels we have
here on board with us. Use the hyperwave transmitter, but pinpoint the beam so
that it can be received only in Galacto-City.' With the help of the
faster-than-light hyperwaves, communication with Terra was established within
a few seconds. Galacto-City, Rhodan's power center on Earth, came on; but
before the radio officer on duty could say anything, Bell ordered: 'Switch off
your transmitter at once. Don't broadcast with hyperwaves! Now here in brief
are the instructions for your commanding officer: The Good Hope was lost in
the Vega system in a space battle between the Ferrons, our allies from the