"Perry Rhodan 022 - Escape to Venus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)

Rhodan was sitting in the pilot's seat. To his right was Marshall and to his left the Japanese. Son Okura was wearing narrow-rimmed glasses. What irony of fate that he of all men, who was the only one able to perceive invisible light waves, had to depend on spectacles if he wanted to recognise any objects in ordinary daylight. He had very poor eyesight under normal circumstances. He had used to work as an optician in a camera factory before Bell's search troops had discovered him and he had subsequently joined Rhodan's mutant corps. Now, finally, his hour had come to help the New Power with his special talent.
"Do you think Thora will land close to the station?" asked Marshall.
"Sounds logical to me," replied Rhodan seriously. "She plans to inform Arkon of our planet's existence so that they will come and rescue her from her exile. The hyperwave sender is inside the station. It stands to reason that this is where she will land."
"I have been on Venus some time ago," remarked Son Okura in his formal and rather reserved manner. "This is where I received my training as a mutant. It's not a very pleasant place to be, if I may say so."
"We have no choice in the matter, Okura," said Rhodan. "But on the other hand, I don't think there will be much of a chance that we will ever get near those jungles. As soon as we touch down at the base, I'll give my counter orders to the positronic brain. Let's hope that Thora has not yet gotten as far as the transmitter, so she can be stopped in time."
"Let's hope we won't be too late," murmured Marshall and gritted his teeth. "I'd rather not think what might happen otherwise."
Rhodan looked straight ahead, where Venus had grown from a bright point of light to a bright disk.
"Yes," he agreed in a matter of fact voice, "it would be a catastrophe."
Then all were silent for a while.
It did not take long before Venus increased even more in size and they finally descended into the planet's atmosphere. The direction finders located the station and by then they found that night was about to fall. Soon it would be totally dark-five long Earth days.
For the moment this did not present any worry but Rhodan was very pleased in any case to have taken along Okura on this mission.
He checked the instrument panel.
"The station is 900 miles to the west from here. We'll descend closer to the surface to get better visibility. If I only knew how far Thora has gotten by now."
Nobody answered.
Below the ship they could see the roof of the jungle which seemed to speed toward the now darkening eastern sky. They flew across a small primeval ocean, then a higher mountain range and finally again jungles and swamps.
"500 miles to go!"
Far ahead of them the horizon became hazy and seemed to meld into the cloud cover. Beyond they saw a dark red spot hovering in the milky mass-the setting sun. It would be five days before it would rise again in the east.
"Another 350 miles," said Rhodan. We'll be at the barrier zone within five minutes."
Marshall said calmly: We've made it safely to the base."
But he was wrong.
He was just as wrong as Thora had been some time earlier.
Once again the electronic guard installation inside the ancient Arkonide base came to life. Once again the sensors spotted the new arrival and probed it with their far reaching sensitive fingers. Once again the request to respond to the identification signal remained unanswered. The request was repeated but destroyer A did not reply.
Rhodan had forgotten that the special code installations of the three destroyers had not yet been positronically prepared. An understandable oversight in the hastily undertaken pursuit but with catastrophic results, even if at the same time it prevented Thora from reaching her destination.
The ship was unable to carry out any defensive measures for Rhodan was blinded by the sudden flash of the disintegrator ray. He could feel a powerful concussion race through the ship's metal body. He was jolted upwards, jerked out of his seat. The horizon seemed to reel crazily as the destroyer crashed toward the ground.
Fortunately, only the ship's rear had been hit by the disintegrator beam. The engines had been destroyed but the front and command centre had remained undamaged.
Rhodan's fist automatically flew down hard onto the exit button.
Unlike earlier in destroyer C, here the whole mechanism was still working. The entire command centre was ejected from the destroyer and stabilized itself horizontally thanks to its anti-grav projectors. The emergency jets began to work at once and propelled the central cabin sideways and out of the barrier zone. This saved them from further bombardment from the station's disintegrator cannons.
The roof of the jungle came slowly nearer. Treacherous looking swamp pools seemed to emit a weak iridescent light. The sudden silence was rent by the dull roar of a saurian whose voice penetrated the cracked cabin wall. Something moved clumsily down below in the morass. Okura, who sat quite still, his eyes fixed on the uncertain depth below, began to shudder.
"Oh, those beasts!" he groaned. "they have got wind of their prey."
"That's just a figure of speech, I hope," said Marshall.
The Japanese did not reply. He knew the Venusian jungle only too well.
The emergency aggregate of the command centre, which now had been separated from the ship itself, made the small Arkonide reactors work ceaselessly to produce corpuscle streams sufficient to brake the ship's downward fall. The cabin floated toward the ground much slower than if it had been carried by an emergency parachute.
Off to one side, Rhodan saw the rest of the destroyer tumble toward the ground. It had remained still inside the barrier zone. Another direct hit split it neatly in half. All matter near the point of impact was instantly vaporized so that two big fragments finally tore a hole in the jungle roof. Strong branches broke the fall of the two pieces that eventually came to rest a few feet above the filthy matted jungle floor.
"Hope we won't land in some lake," said Okura. He sounded very worried; he must be terribly afraid of the saurians.
"This cabin will float," Rhodan tried to comfort his frightened companion. Rhodan glanced around the cabin. "If only our weapons have all been placed in their proper places in our weapon rack! The destroyer was not yet fully equipped, not quite ready for take-off. Our crash is ample proof of that. The code installation was incomplete. Let's hope we'll have better luck with our arms..."
"We don't have a radio transmitter."
"Just the tiny transmitters in the all-purpose bracelets. But they are too weak, their signals can't reach Earth."
They were now at an altitude of about 300 feet and could already make out their probable landing area. There were no special irregular features in the landscape, no swamp lakes, no rock outcroppings, only the undulating roof of the virgin forest.
"I don't expect any problems-at least not during the landing," stated Rhodan in a firm voice. I wish I could say the same for later on..."
The highest treetops came closer. Rhodan was fully aware that the actual ground was still much farther below. The tree trunks of the jungle giants often had a diameter of 40-50 feet and could reach a height up to 450 feet. In between and on them grew a profusion of parasitic plants also considerably bigger than their counterparts in the jungles of the Earth.
The cabin floor touched the first branches and slowly dipped down into the relatively soft nest formed by the leaves of the treetops. The reactors were still working and still braking the cabin's fall.
And then the cabin came to a halt.
It rested at a tilted angle in the midst of the green ocean. Dusk began to fall and coloured the eternal cloud banks in dark, almost black shades. From the west came the glow of the sunset as if the sky had caught on fire, threatening to burn up the entire planet.
Rhodan waited no longer; he switched off the aggregates. All at once the cabin's normal weight returned, putting a heavy load on the supporting branches. Some of these could not withstand the sudden change in pressure and broke off, while others bent steeply downwards. The cabin began to slide down.
Before Rhodan could manage to correct the situation, the entire cabin crashed toward the jungle floor, twisting and tumbling until some horrifying seconds later it came to rest again among some branches about two feet thick.
Now they had finally landed on Venus.
A few minutes passed. John Marshall awoke from his superficial unconsciousness. His forehead hurt and his first thought was that it would be a long time until their search for Thora would be completed. He sat up and noticed Okura bending over Rhodan and carefully examining his head. He intercepted the thoughts of the Japanese and knew at once what had happened.
Okura turned around. "He is badly cut. He hit his face against something. Very hard. All is bloody. Hope it won't be serious..."
Marshall quickly regained his strength. He got to his feet, held onto the cabin will and walked toward Okura. Rhodan lay stretched out on the cabin floor, breathing weakly.
The Japanese staggered to his feet. The cabin floor was at a slant; one had to get used to it. He found bandages and medicines in the medicine cabinet on the wall. Rhodan received an injection of some powerful stimulant, antibiotics and fever depressants. Soon his shallow breathing became regular again. The two men placed him on two seats that had been pushed together to form a provisional bed where a beneficial sleep would work its cure.