"(novel) (ebook) - Perry Rhodan - Atlan 03 - Pale Country Pursuit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)

The doom cloud grew, finally taking a steady plunge down the slope. It picked up speed and doubled its size again. Then the tumbling masses began to churn and billow, causing even the snow at lower levels to start shaking loose behind us It was as though a giant tidal wave were trying to overtake a lifeboat.
"Faster!" yelled Ice Claw, almost losing his voice. "We'll get buried and be smothered!"
"What can we do?" I bellowed at Fratulon.
"Nothing," was his laconic reply.
We raced on. Now the avalanche wave widened out and its fringes reached out toward the hurtling snowmobile. The unleashed forces of Nature that the snow ghosts had started became a pounding Juggernaut that struck the small forest behind us and flattened it like so many straws. Several boulder-sized snowballs crashed like thunder against our battered stern. The overworked drive mechanisms shrieked and howled. We began to smell fumes inside the cabin but took little note of them. Now the final wave of the avalanche reached us. A mighty fist struck us from behind and shoved us onward.
We were virtually lifted as though we had been a feather as the plunging snow pushed in under the wheels and tractor chains. We glided along as if on a flood crest, gathering speed, as the snow came inside and threatened to cover us. Ice Claw screamed in animal panic. I felt the girl's hand gripping deep into my shoulder. Before us the landscape seemed to change and came rushing at us like an animated nightmare.
"Made it!" I heard Fratulon's groaning shout of relief.
Two long arms of loosely packed snow overtook us to the right and left of the car and then came to rest. Our hurtling pace slackened. The wheels began to turn again and we climbed ahead out of the snow.
"We're saved!" said Fratulon matterнofнfactly and he steered back onto his course to the right. The cabin was full of snow and it was starting to melt under the effects of the internal heat. Our boiler pressure had fallen and we were clattering along quite slowly. "Get this cursed snow out of here!" he ordered. "It's needed out there for the next spring thaw!"
I joined the others in the necessary work of digging ourselves out. By afternoon we were all exhausted but we found ourselves far removed from the snow-denuded mountain slope and we were still sticking to our shortcut.
Fratulon pointed to a distant hill ahead of us. "We have to go over that hill. Once we've made it we'll take a rest."
It was nothing less than a miracle that our poor rattletrap steed was still running and hadn't long since fallen apart. We actually made it to the hill but didn't relax until we had reached the top We were unspeakably tired.
Fratulon leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, and once more his thoughts were of things I was only to know of later.
Still 7 or 8 days yet to Adjover-the infamous hole of the North. And before that, the Valley of Steam. I hope we get through it. After Adjover we have to make it without this spunky jalopy and really start to sweat. Especially to get over the glacier. So there's still no sign of Sofgart's Kralasenes-hm-m... This lad here is really remarkable; with his mere 17 Arkon years he can run rings around others of his age.
Three days yet to the Valley of Steam... no use telling them ahead of time. Better to let them see the facts as they come.
Can only afford a one-hour rest-otherwise we'll never pull ourselves together. The farther we go the more dangerous it's going to get. I'm glad I have Atlan with me. If we reach the base in time, that's when I'll need him the most.
Fratulon opened his eyes and gave me one of his challenging grins.
"What were you thinking about?" I asked.
"About that infernal tea that Farnathia is brewing," he answered, "and about the days ahead out there in the Pale Land." He pointed ahead and added drily: "Beyond the hills to the North."
I warmed my hands around the hot mug that the girl had given me. I tried to recall what little I knew about the place called Warm Spot. It was a circular region surrounded by jagged terrain which was higher at the edges than in the centre. Measuring about 10 kilometres in diameter, its main feature was a lake of glowing magma. It boiled and hissed continuously and since time immemorial there had been no snow inside the crater. At the most, only heavy mists had been reported. Also, snow couldn't hold up against the head of its surroundings. The place couldn't be avoided because we had to stop in Adjover to overhaul our equipment and add to our supplies. But I wasn't concerned so much with the crater and its strange phenomena as I was with the lawless settlement itself.
I emptied my mug and hoped for better days.
"You thinking about Adjover?" my friend asked me.
"Yes."
"We'll be given a hostile reception-it's always that way with them."
"Because of who we are," I asked calmly, "or for other reasons?"
"All strangers are met there with hostility and suspicion. They are lawless outcasts."
I nodded; this is what I had often heard. The men up there were the off-scourings of the planet. As a boiling kettle gets skimmed off the top or overruns, civilization had rejected these men and driven them away as contaminants of various racial cultures. Their type wouldn't even be found in the slum sectors near the spaceports.
"I see."
"They don't have enough women to go around," he half-whispered in a very conspiratorial tone.
"You mean... "I didn't finish the question, since the answer was self-evident. It meant that the sight of a beautiful girl would send them raving. So I'd have to watch Farnathia every minute and not let her get an inch from my side. Whenever I had her with me there I'd have to be carrying a loaded gun.
"Do you understand?"
I swallowed with difficulty. "Yes."
We ate our fill, washed it down and then inspected the snow car. Apparently the plucky old crate would hold up awhile yet but the farther we drove it the more it was likely that our sole means of transportation might suddenly drop out from under us.
Fratulon's next remarks made me wonder if he had read my mind. "It's a statistical certainty that each additional kilometre we drive this thing is going to add to its deterioration. The farther we travel ahead the more we should start getting used to the thought that we might have to be on foot the last few days."
"If the boiler bursts we'll take to the air!" prophesied Ice Claw, only proving, however, how macabre humour can sometimes get.
Fratulon shook his head. "Going it on foot will be a picnic compared to the terror and mayhem in Adjover. I ask you-all three of you not to forget that for a second. And now, let's get on with it!"
"I'll drive," I told him, and once more we exchanged places.
A shortime later I was again following the compass, whose steel finger kept pointing in the direction of our goal. We left the hill behind us and now came into a region that looked like the haunt of ghosts, even in the late afternoon.

* * * *

"My friends," said Fratulon with unaccustomed gravity, "we are in a vast and empty wilderness. Basically the Pale Land is not dangerous in itself. The normal manifestations of Nature are only deadly for fools and blindmen. However, shortly ahead of us we are faced with three distinct dangers. You can believe me because I know this planet as well as a handful of others I've knocked around on in my time. These dangers are: the snow ghosts, the Valley of Steam and Adjover. Once we have gotten these behind us we'll only have to struggle with Nature plus our own fatigue and sagging efficiency as a team. That's the gist of what I had to tell you."
Before us lay a typical polar plain of permafrost, as Sawbones called it. Our iron steed rattled along over it at a modest but steady rate. I reasoned that taking it slightly easier would prolong the lifespan of the snow car. Whether that might prove to be a right choice or a fatal mistake only the future could tell.
By now the Kralasenes, the hired mercenaries of the Arkonide Emperor, would have been well-advanced on our trail. We knew there could be no question about it, even though we had received no confirmation of it as yet The main question was, how far were they behind us? As for myself I was rather optimistic. They weren't sure exactly what direction we had taken and for the most part our tracks had been obliterated. Besides, between the point where they had started their pursuit and the place where we had begun our rapid march North lay a considerable stretch of the Spider Desert. And there the drifting sands had left no track or sign of our passage.
"Thanks for the briefing, Fratulon," I said while watching every detail of the terrain ahead of us. "But what can you tell me about this weird no-man's land we're heading into?"
Sawbones shrugged his wide but chubby-looking shoulders and grunted. "I wish there were something special I could tell you but one never knows out here. At any rate we have to watch out for the snow ghosts yet."
"No doubt," I muttered and we drove on in silence for awhile.
The broad plain stretched indiscernibly to the horizon, or in other words it reached out before us to where the eye could no longer distinguish the line between ground and sky. The terrain was basically flat and was covered rather evenly with about a yard-thick layer of snow. But from this white background rose trees, rocks and cone-shaped objects or hillocks which made the landscape look like a mad painter's nightmare. The basic colour of everything was white but the ice-encrusted trunks of the bare trees glistened with a predominantly greyish colour whereas the rocks and hillocks gleamed with a strange unreal tone of brown. I heeded Sawbones' advice by carefully steering a zigzag course through this region... northward toward Warm Spot and the Pole.
"Snow ghosts..." I mumbled half aloud to myself as I thought of them. Semi-intelligent mutated descendants of the enigmatic beings who had once established a highly advanced culture on Gortavor. In the course of centuries and millenniums they had degenerated into animals and for some unknown reason they furiously attacked anyone who entered their domain.
I steered around a tree that rose up like a grotesque skeletal fragment. Then I guided the clanking and puffing steamer around a conical hillock. The snowy surface beyond was completely smooth.