"(novel) (ebook) - Perry Rhodan 0082 - (74) Checkmate Universe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)
So the third stage of the plan had succeeded. The fourth and most difficult now lay before the Newborn. It had to penetrate the overlapping zone and play its part for the Druufs.
Tifflor set the ship into motion. He accelerated towards the vague red cloud and went into transition as soon as sufficient velocity had been attained. So far there had been no sign that a second Arkonide ship had spotted the Terran vessel.
If only things continue to go so well!
4/ VOLUNTARY CAPTIVITY
By Arkonide standards Door-Trabzon was a remarkable man, even though he looked exactly like an Arkonide-or perhaps because of that. One would have expected that after taking command of the 20,000-unit search fleet he would have turned all his duties over to the robots and installed himself on a nice, comfortable couch to watch a stimulating program on the fictive projector.
Door-Trabzon took command but otherwise he did nothing that was expected of him. He was an Ekhonide. The Ekhonides were descendants of Arkonide emigrants and had the same language and physical appearance as their forefathers. And yet they were different from their cousins, the true Arkonides. The Arkonides, after millenniums of peace, prosperity and galactic power, had become a race of decadent, bored aristocrats without ambition. The Ekhonides, on the other hand, had retained their energy and competence. Door-Trabzon was a high officer in the Ekhonide fleet, which consisted of 300 units, and no better offer could have been made to him than command of an armada of 20,000 ships. Door-Trabzon had every intention of carrying out his assignment, and then some. He arranged to be informed of everything that went on within the area of the search fleet and he wanted to make at least half of the necessary decisions. The other half had to be made by the central positronicons but that could not be avoided.
Since Door-Trabzon assumed office, the Arkonide ships no longer communicated only via short impulses over the hypercom but also transmitted each message in Arkonese at the same time so that Door-Trabzon could do something about it himself if he chose to.
Door-Trabzon's flagship was a spacesphere of the largest class. When he had taken it over, it bore the impersonal name KK-17. Now it was called the WaнKelan, named after the most famous general in Ekhonide history. Door-Trabzon was proud of the name and the ship that bore it, and kept his crew, which included half a battalion of robots, in constant activity.
He learned of the positronic breakdown that had immobilized a ship in the fleet about three light-years from the WaнKelan. It was not a pleasant thought to him to take a ship from its post simply because of a breakdown, but after all, he had no other choice. He sent an armed transporter to replace it.
A few minutes later the transporter reported that the damaged ship was nowhere to be found. Instead there was a thin cloud of rapidly expanding plasma at the place where the ship should have been. The crew aboard the transporter analysed the plasma and found that with only a few slight variations its composition matched that of a spaceship and crew. That meant the ship had blown up. Door-Trabzon cursed in Ekhonide but he did not get overly excited. He was commander of 20,000 ships and one less was no great loss. The crew of the exploded ship probably got what was coming to it: even with positronic damage, the reactors could be turned down and not allowed to run at full blast.
No, for Door-Trabzon there were much more important things than the loss of a single ship. He was on the track of a Terran ship. He did not precisely know why he had been given 20,000 ships to chase after one enemy ship but since the advantage was on his side it was all right with him. The Regent had assured him that although the fate of Arkon was not hanging in the balance, nevertheless a great deal was involved with capturing the Terran ship.
Door-Trabzon was convinced that the enemy would not elude him. The search fleet was not standing still. It moved constantly, crossing through every cubic kilometre of that sector of space.
Let the Terran ship try to get through!
* * * *
The transition had been completed. The dark red wall of the overlapping field stood huge and prominent on the Newborn's vidscreens. A few thousand kilometres away, the mouth of the discharge funnel was open, pointing the way into the Druuf universe.
Tifflor was going this route for the first time. He had been used to regarding the matter as a problem of natural science and mathematics but now as he looked at the yawning funnel, he did not feel altogether comfortable. The glowing red, slowly pulsating mouth looked like the entrance to Hell.
At the moment the Newborn had yet another task. Its crew had to determine if a breakthrough to the other universe would be noticed by the Arkonides. To that end, the ship moved towards the funnel at a minimal speed and Sgt. Fryberg and his two men were busy listening in on empty space for suspicious hypercom messages.
That was mainly a mathematical undertaking. The message density of that sector of space was known to the Terran fleet. The number of hypercom conversations being conducted within the Arkonide fleet was almost constant. Shortly after the encounter with the damaged Arkonide ship, it was determined on board the Newborn that since the last recording made by Terran patrol ships, the message constant had risen by a factor of 1.333. It could have had nothing to do with the appearance of the Newborn, for the figure had not climbed to that level from a lower one after the Newborn had emerged from hyperspace but had been that high from the start.
Nor had it changed now. That could only mean that the number of Arkonide ships had increased by a factor of 1.333. In turn, that was a most happy omen for it meant that the Robot Regent on Arkon had fallen for the Terran bluff and was making an extra effort to capture the ship of the 'deserters'.
In addition, Fryberg took a few random samples. He decoded some of the messages that had come in and found that they concerned matters of little importance, instructions transmitted from one ship to another, routine reports and even private problems.
Everything indicated that the Newborn had not been discovered. No one seemed to suspect that the explosion of the damaged ship had been the work of the Newborn.
Tifflor's courage was renewed. Fate no longer seemed to be frowning on the Terrans.
He began to set the ship into full motion again when Sgt. Fryberg suddenly reported. "There's something in our vicinity, sir," he said uncomfortably, his voice uncertain. "But I can't quite make it out."
Tifflor's attention perked up. "Let me see it," he ordered.
Sgt. Fryberg threw a switch. On Tifflor's intercom-vidscreen appeared the image that showed on the radarscope and had startled Fryberg. At first Tifflor could see nothing more than the dull dark-green surface of the empty vidscreen.
"Up in the right, sir," explained Fryberg. "It's a pale, washed-out spot."
Tifflor turned off the lights shining on his control console and made another attempt to find the foreign object. In the upper right-hand corner of the vidscreen he saw what Fryberg meant. It was not even a spot in the true sense of the word-it was a barely perceptible tinge, as though the vidscreen glass was slightly fogged over. "What does the rest of the equipment say?"
"Nothing, sir," answered Fryberg. "The matter detector hasn't sensed it at all but that could be because the thing's too far away. It doesn't seem to be giving off any light and the area is free of fuel residue. Only the microwaves are picking it up."
Yes, thought Tifflor, it's reflecting microwaves just about like a handful of soot reflects light.
He determined that the object was moving. It was coming straight for the Newborn. If the radar could be trusted, it was no more than 10,000 kilometres away. Here, right in front of the overlapping front where starlight shone only from one side, the object would probably not show up on the optical screen until it had come within a few hundred kilometres.
Tifflor tried to figure out what it could be. He thought of a small cosmic dust cloud but with its small size it would have had to have an improbable density to reflect microwaves with such intensity that a perceptible image showed up on the vidscreen.
Tifflor refused to believe that it was a spaceship. There was no way that a ship could be so perfectly hidden or camouflaged that it could not be clearly made out at such a slight distance. There must not be such a way Tifflor added grimly to himself, for a fleet of ships so equipped would have a dangerous advantage over its enemies from the start. Tifflor admitted that this was not a logical way of thinking. He tried to stay calm but he was not successful: the thought of such perfect camouflage was too terrifying.
He had to find out what was going on.
He alarmed the men at the gun posts. He told them that Fryberg had discovered a mysterious object and that the Newborn was now going to investigate it. At present there was no danger but they should keep their eyes open.
He knew that he was departing from his very strictly laid-out instructions. Once he had broken through the Arkonide front he was to do nothing other than proceed with the Newborn undetected into the Druuf Universe. What he was doing now could possibly lead to discovery by Arkonide ships and ruin the entire mission.
Nevertheless the matter had to be investigated. He had no other choice and the men who had written his instructions had not reckoned with an incident like this one.
Engines operating at low power, the Newborn began to describe a curve. Taking the discharge funnel as a reference point, then the unknown object was behind the Terran ship. The Newborn made a U-turn and as it took on its new course, moving slowly so that the engine activity was not too clearly visible, it headed towards the Arkonide blockade fleet instead of away from it as had been ordered.
For a few seconds Tifflor grappled with the thought that the weak radar image might be an Arkonide trick. He tried to imagine the reasoning of an Arkonide strategist and what kind of effect would be expected if in the vicinity of the discharge funnel there were something that caused a weak response on the radar screen aboard the awaited Terran spaceship.
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