"(novel) (ebook) - Perry Rhodan 0088 - (80) The Columbus Affair" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)

The California vanished from the normal Druuf continuum. Due to the hyper-compensator, no shockwaves were propagated. Thus the prospects were good for making a surprise appearance in the Siamed System.








7/ THE BATTLE FOR TERRA

The 13th planet's librational fluctuations were a cause for concern. It was apparent that its impossible-seeming orbital path was bringing it closer and closer to the giant red sun. By astronomical standards it was not very hot but for crew members of Hades, the Terranian base, it was like an atomic oven whose blazing tongues of hydrogen flame threatened at any moment to vaporize the planet's surface.
Hades was a so-called orbital rotation body, meaning that only one portion of its surface always faced the sun. On the day side the average temperatures exceeded 340░ Fahrenheit. The eternal night side had long since surrendered its last traces of heat to outer space. There the temperatures approached Absolute zero.
The base had been built in the 'twilight' zone between the day and night hemispheres. It was roughly 80 km in extent but its spread-out features were subject to such changes that its configuration was never very constant.
Capt. Marcel Rous looked at the special wristwatch of his heavy spacesuit The air-conditioning blower in the back of his oversized pressure helmet drowned out any faint sounds from the outside. Hades had turned another fraction of a degree. Apparently the gravitational influence of the nearby giant sun had such a powerful effect on the Mars-sized planet that the former twilight belt was slipping into the direct range of the solar rays.
Rous looked across at the Hope Mountains with an increased uneasiness. During the first Terranian visitation of this world, a camouflaged station had been built into the mountainside and in the course of ensuing months it had been expanded and improved.
It had grown brighter. Deep red shafts of light touched the craggy rim of the low cordillera and fanned upward into the dark sky. It would not be long now before this semi-twilight region would be like a smouldering melting pot. Rous drew back slowly behind the protection of a steep tower of rock. It was high time that he left the unpleasant outside world to seek the more favourable climate of rooms inside the stronghold.
About 1 km behind him the first evaporated wisps of frozen gases were rising. There was a notable increase in temperature. In a few hours this area would be visited by a considerable storm of vaporizing gases.
Rous decided to leave his observation post but just once more he bent back his upper torso in order to elevate his field of vision. Breathing deeply he looked outward into the star-spangled depths of space, which began practically at the planet's surface. These mere traces of gas could not be considered to be an actual atmosphere.
Out there Rous could see what the men in the California had not been able to discover. In the midst of the empty void was the glowing dark red mark of Druuf technology. It began as a thin, tubular formation somewhere near the 17th planet and stretched away into immeasurable distances. When Rous leaned back to his limit he could plainly see the beginnings of the funnel.
With a grunt the captain reached out for a support and got up. The heavy suit was cumbersome. In spite of the negligible pull of 0.35 gravs, every movement was an effort. On his mind was the fact that it had been some days now since he had been in contact with the Terranian communications cruiser. Any hour now he expected a transmitter ship to arrive outside the nearby discharge zone.
At this far advanced secret base, Rous felt somewhat isolated and lost. Maj. Matsuro, the commander of the Nippon, had been the last one to give him any news of happenings on the faraway home front. He had spoken of a surprise Druuf attack and then he and his ship had vanished.
Rous had a graphic vision of what must be going on in the Sol system at present. He cursed the fate that tied him to this infernal planet. Disgruntled, he looked once more at the nearby mountain range. The gaseous wind became stronger and the angle of the sun's rays intensified the heat and glare. If he had his druthers, he reflected, he would leave this post within the very next hour.
While preoccupied with these thoughts he was surprised by the sudden crackling of his helmet receiver. Lt. Kagus was on the radio. "Hello, Marcel-you still alive out there?"
"Thanks for your kind concern," Rous answered irritably. "If I could, I'd junk this lousy rock. Libration's increasing. In 3 or 4 hours it'll be about 360░ out here in front of the cave entrance."
"Sounds real comfy. All the more reason you should get here on the double. I think we just traced a transition jump by a Terranian ship. At any rate it wasn't the usual warp shock and it wasn't the kind of flicker the Druufs put out when they make a hop. It's pretty likely that somebody's just gone into hyper under a frequency damper."
"Now you tell me!" yelled Rous.
"What do you mean now? I only just opened my yap."
The captain got under way. In 10 minutes he reached the narrow manlock that was so perfectly camouflaged that it could have only been discovered by accident. He waited impatiently as the armourplate hatch swung leisurely back to reveal the small airlock behind it. When the hiss of incoming air became audible, he hit the magnetic release of his helmet ring and his pressurized internal air escaped like a small explosion. Without saluting the guards at the inner hatch, Rous ran down the passage that lay beyond. The stronghold's tracking and communications rooms were besieged by the men of the base crew.
To the left of the area were the cavernous chambers where the matter transmitters had been installed. With this equipment it had always been possible to establish a direct contact with the fast ships of the Solar Fleet, without any necessity for making a dangerous breakthrough. The matter transmitters operated through hyper-dimentional channels. When two of them were exactly attuned to each other a contact could be made with practically no possibility of interference from existing influences of the normal environment. Once there had been a mis-channelling but these side effects had since been overcome.
Somebody activated the sliding panel and Rous stumbled into the room, where he flopped into a chair, exhausted.
Lt. Kagus sat tensely at the vernier tracker. Without turning from the console, he said: "They've emerged into normal space again. I'll bet my head it's a Terranian ship. These flat curves are typical. Somebody's jumped through under a residual energy screen. Here, see for yourself."
Rous shook off his cumbersome spacesuit and let it fall to the floor. The wave pattern was indeed typical of what they hoped for. They could not be picking up the wave shocks of a regular warp. Only the residual traces of an operating compensator had come through, which the highly sensitive special instruments were registering.
"Who can it be?" asked Rous. "Do you have any idea? First of all, how did they get into the Druuf plane? If they had penetrated the discharge front we'd have known about it from all the fireworks. For days now the Druufs have stopped all penetration by that route. They've set up whole fleets across the entrance zone."
He strained closer to the RE-tracker but saw no further impulse patterns.
Kagus took off his head phones. "If I'm not mistaken, the folks back home remembered the old ring-field generator. They can also get in here with one of those, you know. Maybe we should get ready for a field overlap at any time."
Rous stared searchingly at his friend. "Field overlap? Does that mean you expect a collapse of the exit cone?"
"Right you are. If the Chief has put any of his boys through the warp-ring and brought them here into the Druuf plane, you can bet they're no normal men. I'm thinking of a mutant commando outfit. The last thing we did was to tell the Nippon's commander about the weird formation that's built up in our neighbourhood. Of course I don't see how a funnel in this area could be used for a surprise attack on the Earth but anyway there's always that possibility. At any rate we can assume that Maj. Matsuro wouldn't have kept the information to himself. That's why it seems logical that Perry Rhodan must have decided to take action."
He was tapping the plastic readout strip of the sensor with his fingernail Marcel Rous had become pensive.
"Let's wait and see what happens. If our people have arrived here they'd hesitate to put out a radio call. The danger of being traced is too great. Anyway, we should prepare for trouble. Under the circumstances they may be forced to land on Hades. Sgt. Eicksen, you get your group into the transmitter room. If the machines give a green signal I want to be notified at once."
Thus they had covered the basics of the situation. The small crew of the agent headquarters on Hades was aware of what was going on in outer space-up to a point. What they did not suspect was the scope of the Druuf invasion. In their own concept the new force cone must have come out into Einstein space somewhere near the naturally generated discharge zone. But it emerged near the Earth; and therein lay a slight difference.
As Rous and Kagus were leaving the tracking station, the captain stopped at the door. "Do you really buy that theory of yours-mutant commandoes?"
Kagus grinned. "You ought to know the experts in High Command better than I do. Don't you think they would have evaluated our report immediately? In any case, just a few minutes ago a Terranian ship made a hyperjump. That had to be inside the Druuf universe or we wouldn't have been able to detect it. If our people locate that new cone, we can get set for anything to happen."
"If they're not shot down before then," answered Rous gravely. "The Siamed System is swarming with all shapes and sizes of fighting ships."

* * * *

The position within 10 light-hours of the Siamed System was very temporary. After determining that they had not been spotted by the Druufs, Tifflor had immediately prepared for another transition jump.
During this operation the heavy flight traffic among the 62 planets came to the aid of the California. It was apparently impossible for all ground stations to sift out the traces of the relatively small cruiser in the massive presence of their own hard-driving ships.
The new funnel had not yet been sighted. In the course of the feverish search, one of the scientists of the mission team hit upon the right idea. It was plain to see that an energy trace of this nature was prohibited just now by the heavy interference effects of their surroundings. However, considering the tremendous size of such a funnel it should have become visible before now in their optical instruments.