"(novel) (ebook) - Perry Rhodan 0082 - (74) Checkmate Universe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)

The Druufs made no hostile moves. They simply stood there and no one could tell in what direction they were looking.
"Please answer a few more questions," said the commander. Tifflor registered with astonishment that the word 'please' had been used for the first time. "The main question is this: why did you go to so much trouble to warn us? For the sake of friendship?"
Tifflor narrowed his eyes. The question had been inevitable and he did not let himself be taken unawares. "No!" he gritted. "Because I hate the Arkonides!"
All of a sudden there was some movement among the Druufs. Heads turned. Faceted eyes sparkled. Tifflor was convinced that they were talking to one another but the sounds were inaudible to human ears.
Only after considerable time had passed did the commander turn back to Tifflor. The mechanical voice spoke from the translator: "In our opinion, you are speaking the truth. We are almost certain because we were already aware of the threatening danger before you came. All preparations have been made for defence against the Arkonides. You don't need to convince our government... It already is convinced."
"As a consequence, you don't need to make the long and difficult trip to our home world. We are grateful to you and certain that you want to help us. Thus we have a request to make of you, stay here and take command of part of our fleet. You are familiar with our inferiority against the Arkonides as regards our reaction time and even the speed of our ships. Stay here and help so that at least part of our fleet can react quickly enough to the enemy's manoeuvres to come through successfully. That is our request!"
With that Tifflor knew that his plan had fallen through.
There was no way out. It would have looked suspicious if he refused the request. The request was reasonable and he should have expected the Druufs to make it.
There was no turning back. He had to say yes. If he refused, he still would not reach his goal. The Druufs would be suspicious and certainly think no more of taking him to Druufon.
The undertaking had miscarried. Without the participation of Ernst Ellert no substantial success could be obtained.
Tifflor had difficulty hiding his disappointment. "Of course," he answered as steadily as he could. "Of course we'll help you defeat the Arkonides."








6/ BAITING THE ROBOT REGENT

The plan had been to put the Druuf government in an uproar. There was no doubt that Ernst Ellert, in the form of the Druuf scientist Onot, would have been able to do this together with the alleged deserters.
The plan had been to lead the Druufs into making a sortie into the Einstein Universe-into making a move, then, that the Arkonides were not expecting anymore-and to bring to their attention all the different ways in which they could cause damage to the Arkonides. Attacking isolated bases, for example, or destroying trading outposts, or other single actions. Naturally the Arkonides would have retaliated but that was part of what the plan hoped to accomplish as well.
The purpose of the plan was fundamentally to cause the Arkonides to lose so many ships fighting with one another that Terra would remain out of danger and end up more powerful than either survivor.
The plan could not be carried out now. The Arkonides were not really planning to attack the Druufs in their own universe-or at least not in the foreseeable future. The fleet movements that had caught the Druufs' attention were the result of the Robot Regent wanting to capture a single Terran ship manned by Terran deserters.
It would not come to an all-out battle. At most, border skirmishes. The decisive weakening of Arkonide and Druuf fighting power would remain unaccomplished. Without the falsified information supported only by Onot's authority as a scientist that was to be supplied to Druufs and which indicated an alleged Achilles heel in the Arkonide Imperium, the Druufs would never undertake a drive into Einstein Space. They were now too convinced of their own inferiority to attempt it.
Tifflor's hands were tied. True, he could try to make the Druuf commander aware of different possibilities for plaguing the Arkonides but even the commander could not act without authorization from his government. The evaluation of Tifflor's suggestions would take up time-and time was something Terra no longer had.
In a few months the overlapping front would close. Then there would be no contact between the two universes and no more opportunity to set one enemy against the other.
Depressed, Tifflor prepared for his new role as commander' of a section of the Druuf fleet. He was convinced that he would never have to exercise any authority in that role. Why not? Because there would not be any battle. The Druufs were staying over here; the Arkonides would stay over there. Before the overlapping zone closed, there would be at most a few small border skirmishes.
But the plan had counted on a destruction of from 40,000 to 50,000 ships.

* * * *

Pucky the mousebeaver gave the roomy interior of the control room one last benevolent look although his vision of it was slightly hampered by the meshwork of the transmitter cage.
Then he closed his eyes and pressed the button on which his paw had been resting for some time.
He did not feel anything. When he opened his eyes once more, he found himself in a large hall hewn from solid rock. There were several rows of machines similar to the one Pucky was in and to the one he had been in a few seconds before on board the Drusus.
He saw a few men standing in front of the transmitter cage door but he paid them no attention. He listened. He extended his telepathic tendrils and tried to pick up the signals broadcast by the man for whose sake he had come here to Hades.
And he picked them up.
They sounded like a gentle but clear chirping. They came from the depths of space and Pucky had no trouble learning from them that the man radiating them was enjoying the best of health, the signal transmitter that he carried in his body was a semi-organic device whose functional capability rose and fell with the bodily condition of its carrier.
Pucky was satisfied. Julian Tifflor was somewhere in the area, no more than a few billion kilometres away by Pucky's reckoning. The telepathic signal transmitter, which Tifflor carried around with him as a sort of parapsychological beacon, was working at normal power.
Meanwhile the men outside had opened the transmitter door. Pucky strutted out, his bushy beavertail-a most peculiar addition to a spacesuit-dangling behind him. The men smiled. Pucky noticed and replied with a scornful look. He was used to humans smiling at his appearance. He looked like a cross between a beaver and a mouse that had by mistake gotten too large. People had a large number of fairy tales and fables in which speaking and intelligent animals appeared but when those people encountered in real-life a mousebeaver, which could speak and think logically, then they didn't know what to make of it in their astonishment. So they smiled.
Pucky sat on his rear legs, supporting himself with his tail. He made an effort to give his large-eyed mouse face a look of importance and said, lisping, "I was told to get in touch with Capt. Rous immediately. Please inform Capt. Rous I'm here."
The men began to laugh but after a few seconds they stopped again. Captain Rous came down the corridor between transmitters.
"I'm already here," he said. "Our transmitters seldom get green lights. Something seems to be going on there, right?"
He knew how important it was to Pucky to be treated as a human, and gave him his hand. The mousebeaver returned the greeting with a cheerful, almost charming gesture. "You'd better believe something's going on!" he answered importantly. "A whole lot of things are coming off. Colonel Tifflor and 14 men have taken an obsolete cruiser and gone into the Druuf Universe to tell the Druufs of an imminent attack by the Arkonide fleet." As he spoke, he narrowed his eyes-just as he had seen humans do.
Rous laughed. I don't quite understand it all," he admitted, "but surely you're going to tell me the whole story."
"Oh, of course!" Pucky assured him. "As soon as I have something to eat."
Marcel Rous made a wry expression. "Good grief!" he exclaimed. "We don't have any carrots!"
Pucky exposed his single large incisor, trying to produce something on the order of a smile. "That's alright," he said generously. "If I have to, I'll be satisfied with a can of whatever you have."
He excited good humour on all sides. Suggestions were made as to what to offer their guest and Pucky, who loved all kinds of playing, including word-games, did his part to keep the merriment going.