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

There was no sense to it. If some sort of psychology was behind it, it was too subtle for Tifflor's understanding.
The Newborn flew along at a low speed towards the object. The object continued in the same direction as it had before. The Newborn's course had been so calculated that it would arrive at the same point in space as the uncanny object in about half an hour.
The thought of what would happen then troubled the men in the control room. Conversations died away. No one said another word. The low humming noise of the equipment, something everyone was used to, was the only sound in the circular room.
The pale fleck slowly approached the centre of Sgt. Fryberg's radar screen. Fryberg watched it, feeling his mouth grow dry. If the object was a ship, perhaps it would wait patiently until the Newborn trustingly and imprudently approached within a few hundred kilometres and then tear its weak defensive forcefield to pieces with a single well-aimed salvo.
We wouldn't even have time to blink before it hit us, Fryberg thought.
He raised his hand and glanced nervously at the panorama screen. The image had not changed. On one side lay the dark red overlapping zone, on the other the luminous mass of stars. Nowhere was there a point that stood out by way of its unusual shine. Nowhere was there the dull shimmer of a ship's bull.
Maybe it isn't a ship, thought Fryberg. The devil with it! It'd better not be a ship! I don't want anything to do with a ship that can make itself as invisible as a piece of coal in a black sack.
He noticed that his nerves were about shot. He leaned back in his seat and breathed deeply. Air hissed through his teeth, sounding like an old steam kettle.
Pull yourself together, old boy, Fryberg told himself. It isn't any ship. It's moving on an inertial course. There isn't any sign of it being steered. It's a meteor made out of fibreglass or some such.
Then he suddenly shouted. His shout resounded through the circular room and brought the other men out of their seats.
"It's moving out of its course!" Fryberg cried, full of terror. It's coming straight at us!"

* * * *

It was a miserable feeling, seeing the object coming directly towards the ship and not knowing what it was.
At first it remained a washed-out fleck on the radar and in the place where it had to be, the optical screen showed only the usual picture.
Tifflor repressed his wish to whip the Newborn around and make a run for it at top speed. When he had directed the Newborn toward the object, he'd had to take into consideration the possibility it might turn out to be an alien ship. Now that he knew it was one, a retreat would make the whole matter meaningless, and meaninglessness was one of the things Tifflor hated.
He did not issue a fire-order to the gun posts, despite the looks on the faces of his men urging him to do so. They sat at their places, trying to hide the fact they were trembling with nervousness, and looked at him with wide, earnest eyes.
Tifflor knew what they wanted. Silently he shook his head and they understood.
The fleck came nearer and finally came the moment in which the astrogator cried out: "Something's wrong with our course! We're going off!"
Tifflor reacted instantly and instinctively. He shut down the engines and watched the needles on the instrument dials come to a stop. The speed of the Newborn remained at the value that had been calculated by the amount of energy used.
That proved nothing-at least nothing about the actual speed of the ship. The astrogator had better figures in his possession, such as those relating to red shift and parallax displacement.
"Give me some exact figures as soon as you have them," Tifflor said.
The astrogator bent over his equipment and worked feverishly. Tifflor stared at the radar screen and realized in astonishment that the pale fleck had come to a stop. Fryberg noticed his glance. He knew the question that had to be asked and he answered before it was spoken: "Distance, 1,320 kilometres, sir."
Tifflor looked up. As far as the panorama screen was concerned, the object still did not exist. Had it possessed the usual size of a spaceship, it should have been clearly visible at that small a distance.
Tifflor felt even more at a loss. He had no more new ideas. The phenomenon was utterly alien.
"This much is certain," said the astrogator. "We're moving towards the discharge funnel along with the object."
Tifflor listened attentively. This was something he could understand. The object seemed to be standing still because the Newborn was moving at the same speed and in the same direction. Without any influence from its own engines, the Newborn had changed its course. Instead of away from the funnel, it was moving towards it.
There was only one explanation for it: the object was towing them! It was radiating a tractor field that pulled the Newborn along behind it!
Tifflor had no objection to this sort of treatment as long as the trip continued in the direction he had originally intended to go. However, it remained to be seen what measures the aliens would undertake to carry out their designs.
For cases like this there were the standard SA alarms, SA standing for 'sudden acceleration'. The alarms notified the ship's crew that they could expect sudden acceleration jolts until the alarm was ended. The jolts could possibly prove so violent that the antigrav absorber might be able to render them only partially ineffective. After giving the alarm, Tifflor started up the Newborn's engines again. With suddenly awakening strength, the Newborn fought against the pull of the tractor field, trying to free itself from it. Within seconds the engine power had climbed to its maximum. Tifflor saw in the trembling of the instrument indicators the struggle between the engines and the tractor field. He also saw the needles jump suddenly as the Newborn broke out of the field and went its own way.
The astrogator let out a triumphant cry. With a hoarse voice he read in rapid succession a series of figures that showed Tifflor that the surprise manoeuvre had been a complete success. The object had not reacted quickly enough to the sudden efforts of the Newborn. The Newborn had escaped from the tractor field.
Tifflor did not want to hear any more. He turned the propulsion direction 180░ and brought the Newborn back behind the alien object. He guided it to the place it would have been had it not escaped the tractor field, then let the field take it over again.
Meanwhile he tried to imagine the expression on the face of their unknown captor. He would have had to have seen how the captured ship escaped him and then came voluntarily back into captivity.
Tifflor doubted if he would be able to make any sense out of it.

* * * *

Tifflor was thoughtful while the Newborn was slowly drawn by the tractor field through the discharge funnel and neared its narrowest place.
The object had reacted very slowly to his escape attempt. The meant it was not robot-piloted, for otherwise it would have taken only a fraction of a second for it to become aware of the new situation and increase the strength of the tractor field. It was not a robot-ship, then, and so probably not an Arkonide.
But even if one assumed that an organic being was at the controls of the object, the being's reactions could only be termed slow-as though it were half asleep or not paying attention. Now, 15 minutes after the manoeuvring had taken place, Tifflor wondered why the answer had not occurred to him in the first place, for the reaction time was a rather obvious hint of certain characteristics of the being at the controls of the alien craft. Someone in his situation would not be sleepy or inattentive, he would have all his senses fully alert. If he reacted slowly, it was because he could not react any faster.
The reason was simple. The alien's personal rate of time was different from a Terran's. If a Terran needed one second, the alien required two, for he came from another universe, from another time-plane, and his personal rate of time differed from that of the Einstein Universe by a factor of two.
That was a description that applied to, all Druufs.
Tifflor had no more doubts that the unknown object was a Druuf ship. He did not know yet how the ship had managed to remain invisible to all equipment except the microwave sensor but he intended to find out.
For now, he decided, the most important thing was that the Newborn was going in the right direction.

* * * *

Excitement reigned beneath the brown sky of Druufon. A giant red sun and a smaller but brilliant green sun shone over a people who faced the future apprehensively.
A number of Druufon days before, the Druufs had believed that the way stood open into a new universe that would be theirs for the taking. Through a hole in, space they had, plunged into an alien universe and all the organic intelligences living in that other realm had fallen victim to them without any resistance.