"(novel) (ebook) - Perry Rhodan 0019 - (13) The Immortal Unknown" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)

1/ STARDUST TO... STAR DUST?


Aboard the giant Arkonide spaceship Stardust II a whisper materialized in the control room. It reached the sense organs and was transmitted to the reacting brain. It seemed to emanate from Manuel Garand, the engineer, who was on the telecom. His chubby cherubic face shone in amiable content.
Perry Rhodan smiled involuntarily. Garand's appearance seemed beyond reproach. He was the living personification of cool containment, soothing the frayed nerves of the crew.
But his voice-Something about it seemed... Unnatural... peculiar. Rhodan listened to the soothing whisper until a severe shock suddenly convulsed his body.
A man writhed and groaned in pain in the high-backed pilot's seat. Two hands tried to clutch throbbing lungs. It was senseless, as senseless as the sounds of torment dictated by the unconscious.
"Wherever I look, I see nothing that isn't perfect," Garand said solemnly.
A rotating mass of light blotted out his face. Only a grey-white spot remained.
Perry Rhodan, Chief of the New Power and Commander of the Stardust II, finally freed himself from the chaotic frenzy which gripped his senses during the great transition through hyperspace.
Suddenly everything sobered. He clearly realized where he was-the functional surroundings were not exactly cozy-and what had happened.
As he came out of his daze and opened his eyes, he observed a twisting image. It took a few moments for him to recognize his own face reflected in the instrument panel. The huge command centre of the immense space ship was real enough.
Reginald Bell, Capt. Klein and Khrest seemed to be still unconscious.
Rhodan's voice returned hoarsely. "Hello, Garand, are you there? Garand-what were you saying just now?"
The telecom screen remained blank. Manuel Garand, chief engineer of the Stardust, had not spoken.
Perry Rhodan managed to shed the last shred of hallucination and once again his mind was completely lucid. His lean face tautened. He murmured under his breath and slowly eased himself out of the pilot's seat.
On the large frontal panel of the circular observation screen a giant sun was shining. It was a flaming blue star of incredible brightness. Even the automatic ray-filter couldn't screen out a considerable amount of hard ultra violet. Rhodan's eyes began to ache.
Was this Vega? Could this bloated ball of fire be the sun whose planetary system they had left a short time ago?
Panic surged up in Perry and his face grew pale. Without moving his head he called out for reassurance. "Reg!"
But Reginald Bell, his closest companion, did not move. Only his broad face twitched under the impulse of his stimulated nerves.
Perry Rhodan-noted from his years in the U.S. Space Force for his remarkable ability of instantaneous decision in response to emergencies-reacted with the mechanical exactitude of a machine.
His hand hit the bright-red alarm button. Even though he couldn't understand the full extent of what had happened, he grasped the situation with sudden clarity.
Something had gone awry despite his careful planning. The hypertransition, a faster-than-light jump through the fifth dimension, appeared to have been successful. The state of the unconscious men in the command centre was not unexpected and could be considered normal under the circumstances. It was quite possible with hyperjumps across 35,000 light-years that the reactivating of completely dematerialised organisms would cause some complications. Rhodan, too, seemed to have been unconscious, but he had recovered somewhat quicker.
Stardust II had been strained to the limit of its capacity. It would have been unreasonable to expect humans to withstand more than that.
Rhodan could wait calmly for the crew to wake up. What seemed to be out of kilter was this shining blue, strongly pulsating giant star which bore a faint resemblance to Vega.
Rhodan's alarm signal had warned of a catastrophic danger. Although his men were still incapacitated, the positronically programmed robots on board the super-battleship sprang immediately into action.
"Determine our position according to transition coordinate ground values. Calculate relativity factor of transition time. Survey star in sight. Transmit data. Carry out mass probings, search for possible planets. Stop. Evaluate immediately."
The ship's robot brain acknowledged receipt of the rapid acoustic programming. The verbal concepts were converted into mathematical symbols in the innards of the giant ship. Thus the positronic brain was fed the correct basic information for its calculations.
Rhodan glanced in passing at the control dials of the super robot. The machine was humming and functioning normally. It would determine faster than an entire team of scientists whether the transition had been indeed successful and investigate the reasons that the strange occurrence had taken place.
Rhodan sank back into the massive pilot seat. The engines of the spaceship-a sphere with a half-mile diameter-rumbled at zero output. Only the power station in sector II was running at full capacity. It had to furnish the electric current for the numerous auxiliary motors and the enormous amounts of energy required for the defence screens of the supergiant. It indicated that the reentrance manoeuvre into the normal continuum of four-dimensional space had succeeded without a flaw.
Stardust II raced, approaching the speed of light, toward the still distant sun.
It was suspended on the front screen of the circular observation system in a splendour of unreal radiance. Apparently, mighty explosions were occurring on the star. Ultra-high protuberances seemed to shoot far out into space.
"If this ball of fire doesn't soon turn into a gigantic atom bomb, I'll swallow the whole Stardust like a headache pill," somebody said with a hoarse and scratchy voice.
Rhodan turned around. Bell had quietly awakened. His wide freckled face resembled a faded blotch of colour. His rusty bristles of hair rose even higher than usual from his terribly pale forehead.
Bell coughed and the corners of his mouth twitched.
"Any pain?" Rhodan inquired solicitously. "If so, where at?"
"None," Bell replied laconically. "I feel like a tender little rooster who lumped out of the cook's frying pan at the last moment; with plucked feathers, of course Do you follow me?"
Rhodan grinned fleetingly. That was just like Bell.
"Everybody's asleep in the neighbourhood, huh?" the squat man growled."Give me your energy blaster, Chief. I left mine in the gun locker."
Rhodan's eyes narrowed. Bell displayed a peculiar smile. It was too frozen to look genuine.
"What for?"
Bell creakily got up from the seat of the second astronaut. He gazed at the screen, studied the image of the flaming sun and answered quietly:
"I'm sorry, but I'll have to shoot Pucky. I hope you realize that mouse-beaver's played one of his practical jokes again. At our last transition, which was meant to take us across a relatively small distance of 2400 light-years to Vega, that creature manipulated the operation with his enormous telekinetic powers so that we jumped 35,000 light-years and were confronted by an intelligent race we didn't have the slightest desire to meet. We lost time, you know, precious, sorely needed time because of an absurd incident on a world which doesn't concern us humans. I maintain that the mouse-beaver has fooled around again just before we made our leap. He simply can't leave it alone; just as I can't forget about eating. It's in his nature."
"Oh?"
Bell got red in the face and clenched his powerful fists. "You're taking chances," he warned. "You took a fancy to that creature and you don't want to accept the fact that this beast can cause a disaster with his innate passion for playing. I'm going to shoot the rat!"
"He'll make you look down the barrel of your own gun," Rhodan scoffed. "Pucky is an intelligent being and don't you forget it. Nobody will be shot on board my ship."
"Would you condone a mass murderer? This mouse-beaver can destroy the entire vessel. We've got 500 men on board!"
"I'd court-martial a murderer. Pucky isn't responsible for our predicament."
Rhodan slashed his hand through the air in the direction of the observation screen. The sun slowly grew. The evaluation of the positronic brain had not yet come through.
Over to the right sat Khrest, the chief Arkonide scientist. His tall lean body stooped forward. His face was slightly distorted. Khrest's white hair, a mark of his race, fluoresced in the light from the multicoloured control lamps.