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

But now here I was with the pitiful remains of a once-proud squadron, facing an enemy whose space-flight technology was phenomenal. I was a high-energy engineer and I could evaluate the significance of Lt. Kehene's observations. If alien spaceships could emerge from a paradimensional hyperspace I without appreciable space-warp phenomena, this meant that their designers had mastered a considerably simpler method of trans-light travel than our own. But a lot still depended on the evaluation of the TO-4 data.
Tarth loomed before me. Not a muscle moved in his aged and furrowed features. "Any special instructions, Eminence?"
"To you, my friend, I am Atlan, the same as always," I told him somewhat absently. But finally I looked at my staff officers. They were all there, with a knowing gleam in their eyes.
Behind and to their left the mighty Paito towered on its great landing struts. It was a miracle that precisely my 2 strongest ships had remained to me from my attack squadron. There was no help to be expected from Arkon so it behooved us to act on our own in a timely manner. My veteran combat officers awaited my orders.
My gaze fell upon Kosol, the new chief of the mathematics department. Next to him I saw Capt. Feltif, our colonial planner. He had set up our 8 defence bases on Atlantis. The propulsion engines salvaged from the cruisers Titsina and Volop had been installed as stationary 5th-dimension impulse-beam projectors.
On the larger continents to the East and West of Atlantis, top specialists had erected stone fortresses, pyramid-shaped silos and other such emergency stations and billets. What we had in mind was that in case of a major attack we would evacuate the intelligent native peoples from the equatorial zone of the planet.
Aircraft were standing by in case it was necessary to also evacuate the deployed crews from their gun positions, in those areas where we might expect an interzonal meshing of the 2 time-planes. For the Arkonide settlers in Atlantis an undersea bio-survival dome had been constructed. In an emergency we could quickly house up to 10,000 people inside the dome. On the 2nd planet of Larsaf's Star it had been revealed that fish and other water-based life forms were not entrapped by the relative-energy front, as long as they remained in the, depths. This had been a valuable discovery for us.
However, all of our preparations had been made against the possibility of a normal passage of the dimension overlap. But if from here on the unknown enemy was going to be able to make a direct entry into our own continuum, the situation would take on a much darker complexion. Then it would be a matter of life and death.
I took a last look upwards at the blistered and partly melted battle sear in the side of the damaged flier. Then I turned to the waiting men. "The Tosoma and Paito are on ready alert status. Commanders will go on board. We will make an armed reconnaissance flight near the orbit of Larsa. Feltif, get your ground commandos into the gun stations and bring the impulse-cannons to idling level. Tarth set up a hypercom connection with the Imperator. The text of the message will be given to you shortly. Native inhabitants will be evacuated. Unfortunately families will have to be separated wherever the Arkonide married men belong to ship crews or gun crews.
I glanced at Inkar out of the corner of my eye. I had heard he was supposed to be happily married. The young commander stared straight ahead without a quiver on his face but I knew that my orders must have weighed heavily on him.
"The Arkon colonists are to be advised to make all necessary preparations for a flight into remote land areas. Henceforth our headquarters are transferred to the submarine pressure dome, which the engineering teams are to make ready for occupancy."
I looked at my watch. It was a little after mid-day. The yellow-white sun stood at its zenith above the spaceport. It was a beautiful, Arkon-kind of world with every prospect for a magnificent development. And in that moment I resolved to defend this 3rd planet with every means at my disposal.
"Takeoff in 1 hour," I announced. "The instrument readouts from the TO-4 are to be brought to me at once.
I raised my hand to the men. Silently they bowed their heads. Whatever could be said at this time had been said.
Tarth, who was also Chief of Staff, walked beside me to the ground car. The old man's towering figure was a symbol of staunchness and strength. Since he had received his rejuvenation treatments his step had become livelier and more supple.
As I was about to get into the car, Tarth suddenly spoke to me. "Atlan, if it were a normal time-zone overlap we could easily avoid it because of its negligible speed. But now our only chance is to make an all-out attack and to hit them hard! If we wait around until they come at us out of that trick funnel of theirs, we are lost!"
"I know," I agreed calmly. "That's why the takeoff is set. I'm just afraid that both effects will occur at once. It's imperative that our most indispensable ships be in deep space, if there's going to be a zonal overlap at the time of opposition of the 2 planets. But right now the main thing is to see those instrument readouts from the TO-4. Let's hold everything as is for the moment."
As we drove off we knew that we were going against our better judgment. Come what might, I was' determined to make a thrust through the field-stabilization funnel in order to make one grand blasting attack of annihilation.
Before us loomed the magnificent buildings of Atlopolis, the capital city of Atlantis. It was the cultural and commercial centre for our widely dispersed colonists, who had settled practically the entire continent.
Our escort vehicles cleared the way with shrill whistles. The natives, who were colourfully dressed in hand-made fabrics, sank reverently to their knees. It was always distressing to me to see people at this stage of intelligence act so submissively. However, Tarth and the colonial commandos considered a certain amount of glorification to be essential.
To my surprise I heard old Tarth grumble out an unusual suggestion: "We ought to try to train and improve the most intelligent men of this race with accelerated hypno-schooling. That's one way of finding out if they have the mental capacity at this stage to understand our technology."
I nodded with some sense of irony. My old fire-eater was gradually becoming more dove-like in his old age. Tarth had formerly counted himself among those Arkonides who landed on alien worlds and loaded their cannons before they said hello.
"Such a program has already been established," I replied.
"Huh...?"
I was amused by Tarth's nonplussed expression. As we sped along the broad, winding avenues toward my administrative palace, I noticed that his sharp old eyes examined the natives who were working along the verdured parkways. These tall, brown-skinned people were physically quick and strong. Whether or not their brains had developed as splendidly as their bodies would be revealed through our first experiments with the highly secret hypnotic accelerated education machines.
A thundering arose from the now distant spaceport. The thrust engines of the mighty Tosoma generated a fiery wreath of superheated air masses. If I had possessed 10 ships of her class I'd have felt a lot better.
40 minutes later the instrument data recorded by Lt. Kahene were transmitted to me over the video intercom system. The flagship's positronicon had worked swiftly and dependably.
Kosol, my new chief mathematician, was at the transmitter end. "It is a large-scale natural phenomenon, Eminence, which may be repeating itself about every 5 billion years. The 2 time-planes seek a mutual stabilization level, which implies a discharge of energy from the dimension having the higher state of force tension, volume-wise. Those outlet funnels are identical to unstable energy fields of much wider magnitude. They provide an assimilation of differentials in opposed field currents. Practically described, they are virtual conductors. It's conceivable that the aliens over there have grasped this fact on a mathematical basis and put it to practical use for their own purposes. The quick thrust made simultaneously by the 4 spaceships indicates that they knew the exact moment of penetration. By the same token, it seems they also can figure out when to return."
"And what are the prospects to be extrapolated from this?" I asked grimly.
"Not good for us, Your Eminence. In about 14 days a stage of complete mutual balance will be reached. What we can infer from that is that the previous state of instability will take on a stabilized condition that may be constant for weeks or even months."
There was no need for Kosol to tell me more. I thanked him and cut off the connection. Tarth stood beside the great windows of my office and brooded out at the panorama beyond. We were alone. With slow deliberation he said: "We have 2 possibilities. If we flee from here this world will be spared from a nuclear inferno but the organic life here including the people would then disappear without a trace. And that would cause an interruption of natural development. But if we put up a resistance, things will really get hot-mark my words! It's possible for #3 to be turned into a glowing oven."
He looked at me pensively as I answered him calmly: "You took the words out of my mouth, old friend. I'll have to chance it. Even if half of this world is destroyed there will still be enough livable areas left to save the present intelligences from an ultimate doom. However, we shall attempt to repel the enemy."
Tarth said no more. His broad hand clapped loudly against the left side of his chest. His commander's radio helmet, decorated with planetary symbols, was clamped tightly under his arm as he strode stiffly toward the door.
20 minutes later he announced from the Tosoma that the squadron flagship was ready to go into deep space.
As I was leaving my headquarters, the Paito was already blasting through the brilliant blue skies over Atlantis. Below in the great harbour of the island continent, the native fishermen and merchant sailors frantically reefed in the colourful sails of their wooden ships. From sad experience they had learned how devastating the shockwaves from a large ascending spaceship could be.
At the ground-level airlock of the Tosoma a fleet ceremony met me with the usual demonstration of homage. Tarth placed great value on usage and custom. 3 minutes later the impulse converters of the 15 remaining propulsion engines were cautiously extended. We took off in a torrent of sound that was like an erupting volcano.
Empty space opened before us. The 3rd planet fell away and quickly became a shimmering ball of reflected light. Owing to the conversion of 3 propulsion units into hyperdimensional energy projectors, it now required almost 13 minutes for us to reach the natural speed of light. So the old Tosoma was no longer the kind of ship that should be waging a modern space war. We flew a direct course toward Larsa, the 2nd planet of the system. The primeval jungle world was supposed to have been stripped bare not only of all human life, according to reports, but of most of its animal life as well. Due to the numerous passages of the relative-energy front, all creatures had been dragged into the other time-plane. We were not particularly fond of the idea that Larsaf #3 should suffer a similar fate.






5/ PREPARING FOR BATTLE

Everything worked out quite differently from what I had imagined. Those energy discharge formations that mathematician Kosol had called 'outlet funnels' turned out to be unpredictable in their nature. Whenever such a phenomenon occurred we never knew exactly how long it would hold.
Our ship's positronicon was one of the most modern calculation units in the Greater Empire. In spite of this it was unable to determine the definite intervals of the occurrences or even to approximate the persistence time of the discharging energy fields. We were lacking observational data obtained over a longer period, on the basis of which we might have derived more exact constants for a reference.
There wasn't a thing more that we could do with the orthodox type of 4-dimensional math. A non-linear proportional calculation of the approaching total overlap was easy enough to carry out on the program board of the machine but the results never aligned themselves with reality.
Then we tried to approach the problem with the hypermath section of the robot brain. But that only led to such garbled results that it was senseless to even discuss them. Finally we recognized that the outlet funnels must be some kind of lightning discharge but which functioned abnormally and were subject to completely different laws.
We were not dealing with 5th dimensional field quantities but with something that was based on normal universe phenomena. The fluctuating factors could only be identified with some sort of incomprehensible time-rate shift, all of which took on an increasingly unstable configuration in the course of a mutual field stabilization.