"Perry Rhodan 031 - Robot Threat- New York in Atlan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)

1/ HOUR X

Transition out of hyperspace.
They came from the 5th dimension where they had been nothing but energy and had merely consisted of structures reflecting their natural identity.
The process always caused the same bodily pains. Routine practice was of no avail: each new transition brought a new shock.
It was an aching in their bones and as normal space reclaimed their bodies their eyes had to slowly readjust. Colourful dancing figures appeared from out a peculiar twilight. They vanished slowly as reality became visible piece by piece. And then Rhodan looked into Bell's broad grin, which was not too convincing.
Reginald Bell was not ashamed to groan aloud and to swear as he rubbed his neck. It did not matter to him that the entire crew of the STARDUST Command Central was watching. He was convinced that everyone was primarily concerned with himself because the pain and the shock had befallen them all.
"Thank God! We are home!"
These could only be the words of someone who had lived for a long time in cosmic concepts. After all, they were still far beyond the orbit of Pluto, about 80 astronomical units from Earth.
On the other hand, when one considered that this space jump could carry them a distance of 320 light-years within a minimal period...
A droning buzzer pierced their random musings. It sounded as if 100 transformers had become defective all at once. Instantly the waning ache in their limbs was forgotten. A siren could not have caused more uproar.
"You see! Our hyperjumps just had to go wrong sometime! I don't want to look when the bow screen warms up." Reginald Bell was not the only one experiencing fear. A sound, no matter how familiar, loses its insignificance when it occurs simultaneously with the return from hyperspace. In spite of all the safeguards provided by the highly developed Arkonide technology, humans instinctively remained suspicious.
By now Rhodan, who had experienced the shortest moment of anxiety, was grinning. "The screen is warm, gentlemen. I don't know why you are getting so excited."
The instrument panels in Command Central had long since sprung to life. The familiar constellation of the Sol System was glistening on the screen. Search beams and radar were automatically extended. Complicated antennas were picking up all recognizable impressions from the electromagnetic spectrum and relaying them in comprehensible symbols onto the central observation panel before the eyes of the chief pilot.
There could be no more doubt: the transition had gone smoothly. They were home again. Still Rhodan's grin only lasted a few seconds.
The noise had been caused by the overly powerful hypercom system of the ship. Within moments it had absorbed a lengthy message with its electronically controlled impulses, each one-tenth second long. The synchronized automatic decoder saw to it that Perry Rhodan had the text within a few moments.
Cruiser Terra to Stardust!
Cruiser Terra to Stardust!
According to investigations by the Tifflor team the enemy agents being sought on Earth are Arkonide robots. There is reason to suspect that the robots are owned and operated by the New Power. Inquiries lead to the conclusion that specialized Traders have surreptitiously reached the Earth and were able to program the robots for their purposes. Acute danger for Earth!-Cruiser Terra to Stardust-Cruiser Terra to Stardust!
The tape replay stopped with a click. For seconds deathly silence reigned in the spacious Command Central of the giant vessel measuring 800 meters in diameter.
"So it did make sense to send Cadet Tifflor on this secret mission," Rhodan stated. The message seemed to satisfy him, since it confirmed his plans, rather than to disturb him. Bell, however, was not in the least inclined to feel triumphant about such bad news.
"Your little Tifflor will get you into a monastery yet, where you can meditate in peace!" the blue-eyed man scolded. "You don't seem to have grasped the deeper significance of that message. Perhaps you will allow me to interpret that aspect for you: on Earth all hell has broken loose! That takes care of number one! And number two is: we have to set Venus aside and fly back to Terra instantly."
"We still have three minutes to make that decision, my boy," Rhodan declared dryly, intending no sarcasm. "A change of course in our position doesn't make a difference of more than one angle second. But it is essential to go into top acceleration..."
As he was talking, Rhodan supplied necessary instructions to the flight console board. Propelled by gigantic forces, Stardust shot forward seconds later. In the body of the ship it became very lively. The concert of the wailing propulsion generators competed with the noise of the straining gravity absorbers.
The welfare of the crew was not impaired in the least by all the proceedings. The cosmos seemed to be moving, not the ship. The Command Central was like a supportive pole, like the middle of the universe.
Rhodan leaned back in his pilot seat. "And now we need patience, 12 hours of patience until we land on Terra."
That was the irony of the laws of nature. The space-jump of 320 light-years could be compressed into objective minutes. But normal flight to the border of the speed of light-which had to be observed within inhabited sun systems for safety reason-required half a day for a stone's throw of a good 10 billion kilometres.
Patience!

* * * *

The situation on Earth had entered a new, critical phase.
Rhodan was eager to fulfil a promise of many years standing and finally prepare the two Arkonides, Thora and Khrest, for their permanent return to Arkon very soon. However, he considered it urgent to achieve a total political solution-an encompassing world government-for Terra. And mystifying events were causing renewed unrest in the peaceful structure.
Two three-man destroyers belonging to the New Power had not returned from a patrol mission. At about the same time a spaceship of the auxiliary craft class, a so-called guppy, had vanished. And this all occurred in a most peaceful period with no perceivable threat of an outer-Terranian invasion.
But that was not all. Now on alert, patrol vessels of the New Power had discovered that unknown ships had landed on Venus and then taken off again shortly there-after. Disturbances in the space-time structure yielded measurements of transitions which could only have resulted from hyper transits by unknown units. The largest positronicomputer within the sun system, permanently positioned in the northern hemisphere jungle on Venus, assumed with well-founded probability factors that an unknown power from the depths of space had discovered the position of Earth but was avoiding an open conflict.
After this had been determined, Rhodan alerted his mutant corps, dispatching them around the entire globe in exhausting tours of duty. To no avail. Even his extrasensory corps members, some of whom were telepaths, returned empty-handed.
In Terrania, the capital of the New Power in the midst of the Gobi Desert, they were at a complete loss. By all indications the various enigmatic events on Earth could only be accounted for by the presence of foreign agents. But no one could find them. And if a mutant was unable to find them, one could truthfully admit that all resources had been exhausted.
But not Perry Rhodan!
He turned the tables. "If Mohammed will not come to the mountain, then the mountain must go to Mohammed," he figured and proceeded to turn one of his promising cadets, namely Julian Tifflor, into a suspicious agent of the New Power. Tifflor was the bait.
And the unknown adversaries nibbled at it.
They overtook his spacecraft K-9, flying under the command of Maj. Deringhouse, and with a tractor ray skyjacked it to the double sun system, Beta Albireo, 320 light-years away.
Immediate pursuit was taken up by Stardust with two guppies on board and escorted by the two 200-meter cruisers Terra and Solar System. Still Rhodan was prudent enough not to overestimate the combat effectiveness of his little fleet. He could not risk an open attack, keeping a safe distance for the present and merely observing the situation instead.
The information supplied by the Arkonide Khrest only confirmed his policy.
They had meanwhile learned that they were dealing with the legendary Galactic Traders: the base location, Beta Albireo, was a sure sign of that. And Khrest was able to give them an elaborate rundown on the guild.
8000 years ago, by Earth-time reckoning, the Traders, Arkonide descendants, broke away from the Central Empire. Their unsteady mode of life drove them into a nomadic existence, although they had developed an independent culture and technology. While the once so mighty Arkon degenerated more and more, they found power and wealth in the reaches of the galaxy. Their essentially unmartial nature did not hinder them from attaining their objectives by any means. One of these objectives was called Earth.

* * * *

Patience!
Rhodan's demand was a hard trial for all of them, even for him.