"(novel) (ebook) - Perry Rhodan 0070 - (62) The Last Days of Atlantis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)

"Everything alright on board." In my helmet loudspeaker, Tarth's answer was garbled by interference sounds. "I'm just weaving in and out of their fire and taking occasional potshots. How far along are you?"
"We're just getting on board. Be careful-the island appears to be going down. We've registered powerful earthquakes."
"The whole planet's acting crazy. In the big ocean to the West, a new continent is rising out of the waters. The axial position of this world is changing! We can expect to see a global deluge! Over and out!"
As I closed the pressure-resistant cupola of the flat glider we were washed out of the bunker by the frothing waves. For some moments the craft danced about in the quake-shaken turbulent water, while Cunor pointed eastward silently.
I suppressed a cry of horror when I saw the titanic moving front of overlapping time zones. It must have had a velocity of more than 6,000 miles per hour. Its presence was discernible because of the shimmering of the air and the darkening of the sunlight as it progressed. It occurred to me then that we had lost 9 days because of a mysterious time shift-and meanwhile the dreaded full opposition of Planets 2 and 3 had arrived.
The swiftly travelling catastrophe approached us silently. It was a typical overlap curtain that spared no form of life in its wide sweep.
Cunor swung down the rheostat lever of the gravo-mechanical pressure screen. Immediately the water was pressed back away from the boat hull. An air-exhausted zone was generated which acted as a protective cushion between the thin hull material and the pressing water.
The flood tanks filled. We sank like a stone. We didn't notice a lessening turbulence until we had descended 150 feet beneath the surface. However such powerful submarine shockwaves assailed us that I feared for the stability of our screen.
The infrared searchlights snapped on. We looked for the pressure dome that Feltif's specialists had constructed, knowing it must be about 50 fathoms under the surface. I had only been there once before for the purpose of having the impulse detector of the guiding robot brain pick up my physical vibrations.
I knew that at this depth a submarine plateau began, its massive cliffs reaching to the ocean floor. We had anchored the foundation of the structure there. The dome could withstand any conceivable pressure because in an emergency it could be strengthened by repulsion screens.
But the plateau could not be found! Cunor's face paled so swiftly that I could clearly guess his thoughts. The ground quakes had also swept our last refuge place into the deeps.
"Down!" I ordered harshly. "Down deeper! The dome can't have been destroyed. Its anchorage pilings were built into the planet with Arkon steel using thermal injection moulding. I'd like to see any force of Nature capable of loosening it!"
Cunor nodded resignedly. At the same time I thought despairingly of the men on the Tosoma who by this time must be in a frightful predicament. I dispensed with the last of my inner resistance and called to the dome's robot station over the submarine transmitter. The control machine answered immediately.
We were gripped by remote guidance controls and drawn downward at a dizzying pace. The 400-foot diameter stronghold was ground-fastened but the ground kept sinking. By the time we could finally make out the bluish gleaming contours of the dome we were more than 550 fathoms deep.
The identification surveillance by the robot brain was accomplished by means of the prescribed, brain-frequency test. I placed the feedback probes on my skull and turned on the transmitter.
"Entrance permitted, Your Eminence," came the tinny voice of the automaton a few seconds later.
We were taken hold of by a tractor beam and hauled with breathtaking speed into the opening high-pressure lock. I listened impatiently to the high-pitched whining of the pumps. When the chamber was empty and air streamed in, I instructed Cunor hastily: "Wait here. I'll put in the program add-word that will make the gates respond to normal code signals. Then we have to go up again in order to call the Tosoma. It's no longer possible to call them from this depth. The dome doesn't have a hyper-transmitter."
A plastic-covered robot simulating an Arkonide appeared in the inner lock port. I simply dashed by him and sprang up the few spiral stairs to the programming room.
Beyond the dome was heard a rumbling and thundering. The labouring sounds of the mighty energy station indicated to me that the central brain was compensating for the resulting pressures with protective force screens. There was an alarming grinding and crunching sound in the foundation. The pressure effects of the stone masses moved by the quake must have been of unimaginable magnitude.
A violent movement suddenly flung me to the deck. I waited until the wave of earth tremors had passed and then staggered, gasping, into the control room. The CPU or Central Programming Unit of the small but highly effective brain was encased in a man-high, bell-shaped steel cabinet. I was received with a stereotyped "Welcome, Your Eminence."
Wordlessly I ran my fingers over the program board in order to cancel the individual block mode of the machine's operation, placing it instead in the normal mode where it would open the locks to ordinary code signals. The call word was identical to my name.
Without questioning the machine, I ran back to the main lock. Cunor was waiting impatiently. "Over a mile deep already," he announced with amazing composure.
I paid no heed to it. Moments later we were out in the water again but this time a number of erupting volcanoes here and there on the sea bottom turned the waters into dangerous, steel-hard looking spouts-submarine pillars of turbulence that glowed red from the flaming undersea eruptions.
Atlantis was dying!
But at least continents would be changed so that new lands would be born.
We required 10 minutes to reach a safety depth under the surface. We couldn't actually go higher because we didn't know whether the time-front had passed through yet or if perhaps straggling offshoots would be following.
"The time-wall's speed was high, Your Eminence," said Cunor. "It must have really gone away by now."
I staked all we had on one move. Although we would have been safer in the depths of the sea, we surfaced. The timefront had actually passed on but we were met with such a tidal wave that our craft became a helpless plaything of the giant billows. Only the highest mountaintops of Atlantis were still to be seen. I saw water wherever I looked. But there was no trace of the Tosoma.
Even the enemy ships had ceased their attacks. If their commanding officers had even a grain of sense they would have to know that there was nothing more here to destroy. That department was being adequately taken care of by the quakes and the terrible tidal waves.
We took the shaking and buffeting for 2 hours while I sent out uninterrupted calls on the craft's strong transmitter. High aloft, above and beyond the dark hurricane clouds, there was a far-outstretched light phenomenon. It couldn't be the sun because the sun was never in the North.
I knew what the scattering atomic fires of an exploded spaceship looked like but I didn't want to believe my eyes. Then the next overlap front came racing toward us.
Secretly broken-hearted, I gave the order to dive. My friends were no longer among the living.





8/ DEEPSLEEP

In 10 minutes I would be medically dead. According to instructions I lay loosely relaxed on the contour couch and listened to the soporific strains of hypno-music. Poised over my skull was the probe helmet of the pulsator. My normal vital rhythm was gradually slowing down.
Still to come was the automatic injection of preservative serum, a technique that my worthy race had known for a long time. Healthy subjects were able to survive biomedical deepsleep for more than 500 years entirely without harm. Life functions, such as metabolism, were reduced almost to zero.
The pressure dome had been fitted out with the necessary equipment. Formerly the installation had been on board a hospital ship belonging to my full squadron but we had transferred it here.
I relaxed my will completely in order to yield to the insinuating effects of the music. The time had come for me to retreat into the absolute calm and peace of deepsleep if I didn't want to lose my reason. I had become the loneliest living being on the planet.
It had taken about 4 months before the elements had subsided enough for us to even consider emerging to the surface. After that we had begun our long and futile search.
I had not been able to discover either Arkonide or native Atlantean. The protective fortresses and pyramid silos erected by Feltif still existed but the people had disappeared.
A sense of despair had driven Cunor and myself from place to place in senseless haste. We finally located life here and there but they were creatures of such a frightfully primitive state that we avoided making any contact with them. The barbarians of the icy North had been spared but our truly intelligent Atlanteans and the colonists in the East and West were no longer there. Either they had been killed by the mountainous tidal waves or they had been drawn up into the numerous time-fronts.
For 6 long months we had searched, sent out radio calls, searched some more and signalled again and again. Arkon appeared to have forgotten us completely. The irreplaceable radio stations of Atlantis and the 2 southern continents had been destroyed by the effects of enemy action. The transmitting capability of the undersea dome was comparatively weak and could never bridge the gulf between the home worlds and us. I came to regret not having installed a powerful, major class transmitter in the submarine stronghold. At the time it had seemed purposeless, since hyperwave installations had no business being under the surface of the sea. The dome was supposed to be a refuge only a provisional shelter on a short time basis. Why should we install such large, space-consuming equipment when we needed every corner, so to speak, for the really vital installations?
So it was that we flew over every continent in the glider. The face of the 3rd planet had changed. Great islands had sunk and new oceans had come into being. Among the sunken lands was Atlantis, which was only marked now by a small archipelago of islands that were actually the mountaintops.
Our pressure dome base of operations had finally come to rest at a depth of 9,348 feet, which was more than 1,500 fathoms below the surface.
Then, shortly before our time of final resignation, Lt. Cunor was struck down with a stone hand-axe by a stupid barbarian of the North. I had stood dry-eyed over the grave of my last companion for a long time, finally flying away in a state of inexpressible weariness and exhaustion.