"Perry Rhodan 064 - Prisoner of Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)

"We have to be careful," he reminded. "No one is to move faster than I do. I'm not keen on the idea of going by foot now myself."
Steiner rose first into the air. Supported by antigravity fields, he hung weightlessly a few meters above the others.
"It's great, letting your legs simply dangle like this. Are we flying in formation?"
"I'd like to see the Druufs' faces when they see us now," Harras commented, also rising into the air. He was closely followed by Josua who looked quite happy that his suggestion had been followed.
Rous followed last. "Stay behind me," he said, "and don't fly too fast. As soon as the heat can be strongly felt, slow down! Believe me, I never would have thought before that the thickness of an atmosphere is also dependent on the speed with which one goes through it."
Though not altogether correctly expressed, Rous' comment neatly summarized the problem. It was Time that had changed this world and seemingly thrown all natural laws overboard. If the passage of time in this dimension could be speeded up 72000 times, then the world would look normal again.
Or was it normal...?
Was this alien time plane the real norm...?
The question ripped through Rous like a lightning bolt and it seemed to him that here was the key to their problem.
They floated just a few meters above the stony ground and Rous became aware of the odd fact that at the beginning of their adventure they had simply not realized that they could fly if they had to.
They had all but completely forgotten their suits.
Steiner glanced at the sky and called out: "The ship's following us but it isn't as fast. They don't want to let us out of their sight. Anyway-we're moving at Mach 60."
"Do you feel the heat?" Rous asked. "There's an actual vacuum forming right behind us because the air moves so slowly." He looked upwards as well. "You're right, Steiner: their camera-ship is following us."
They crossed the river and the valley and reached the level cliff that was already familiar to them. The small ship had been left far behind. It covered perhaps 2 centimetres a second, making a good Mach 4.
"I wonder if they can still see us?" said Harras.
"I don't think their range is that great," Rous replied. "If that were the case, they wouldn't need to follow us."
A few minutes later they spotted 2 moving human figures among the rocks below-and any movement on this world of absolute motionlessness was instantly noticeable.
Ivan Ragov and Andrщ Noir!
Rous had hardly touched his foot to the ground then he heard Steiner give a loud yell. With stretched-out arm the physicist pointed back towards the plain. The men followed his gaze and stared.
Rous felt as though an ice-cold hand had grasped his heart for now he saw the practical illustration of his theories. There, where the gallows tree had stood, was now only a harshly bright ray of energy standing perpendicular to the rocky ground. The tree, now only an indistinct silhouette, was completely wrapped in the beam.
The ray, about 10 meters thick, led straight up into the sky and lost itself in the violet-red of the cloudless portion of the heavens. It seemed to be coming straight from outer space. It stood like a gigantic pencil of pure energy out there in the plain, striking just that area where the Terrans had been an hour before.
Rous figured that he could follow the energy beam with the naked eye up to an altitude of 40 kilometres where it was swallowed up by the sky.
"They hesitated too long," he said grimly. "The deathray would have finished us and we wouldn't have had time to get out of the way. Light still moves at 4 km/sec, an unimaginable speed for this world where nothing at all moves. Maybe now we can understand what it means to cover 300,000 km/sec like light does in our universe. That out there is an energy beam fired at us from a ship flying at a very high altitude. That means we've discovered the Druufs. And we know something else: they intend to kill us!"
"That out there... an energy beam?" stammered Josua, holding his head as though trying to collect all his knowledge of physics. "For so long?"
Rous smiled gently. "What does the word 'long' mean here? Say they're firing an energy beam lasting 100th of a second. If the ship stands 400 kilometres high, then the beam will take a minute and 40 seconds to reach the surface. And then it will remain for approximately 12 minutes. For the Druufs, 12 minutes are 100th of a second. Unless I miss my guess, we'll see the beam dissolve. We'll have to watch for that because if it happens, we'll know then that even the speed of light is affected by the time dilation. The process of dissolving will begin at the top and continue along the beam at a speed of 4 kilometres a second."
"It's completely unbelievable," Steiner murmured, then added: "But logical, all the same."
"But it would be wrong to conclude that we could get out of the way of a ray beamed at us," Rous said thoughtfully. 'We were lucky because we happened to move to another place. If we had remained standing by the gallows tree, we would have been lost. If light moves only at 4 kilometres a second, we'll still see it only when it hits us. So practically speaking, there isn't any difference between a speed of 4 kilometres a second and 300,000 kilometres a second if a shot is coming directly toward us."
Steiner looked up into the cloud-covered sky. "What if they're aiming again now?"
Rous shook his head. "Don't worry, Steiner. I've already thought of that. But there isn't any danger for us here. Do you think the Druufs would kill their own people? They would hardly dare destroy one of their settlements."
Ragov, who had bent down by one of the motionless Druufs, stood up again. A questioning expression was on his face. "I don't understand this," he concluded. "They have spaceships and energy beamers but they live in caves. How does that make sense?"
Rous was not without an answer this time. "Just think of a hundred years ago, Ragov. How did things look on the Earth then? Josua's forefathers possibly still lived in the African jungle and were happy if they could kill a lion with the help of spear. Yet the first atomic bombs were being developed 5000 kilometres away. If such differences in technical and cultural development could exist between the inhabitants of a single planet, consider how great the differences might be when the same race inhabits entire solar systems.
"You're right, of course, Lieutenant," Ragov said slowly. "One should never come to conclusions too hastily and forget one's own history. So you're convinced, then, that these caterpillars are the ruling intelligences on this alien time plane?"
"We can only guess, Ragov. We'll know for sure only when we meet the Druufs face to face. I must admit, though, that I look forward to our first meeting with them with a certain amount of discomfort."
Noir pointed into the heavens. "The camera ship has stopped. It isn't coming any closer."
"It's only avoiding the energy burst," Harras supposed. He wiped his forehead and added thoughtfully: "It ought to be easy to fly up and shoot the thing down."
Rous threw him a quick glance. "Are you crazy?"
"What do you mean? We were attacked. It's our right to defend ourselves. Who knows how much time we'll have to spend on this world-I have no desire to have to be running away from these sneaks all the time we're here."
"Harras is absolutely right!" Steiner said. Noir and Josua nodded in agreement and the expression on even Ragov's face was far from one of refusal.
"Hmm..." Rous found himself outvoted. "it would hardly be as simple as Harras imagines. We don't want to forget that the Druufs can see us and..."
"They can see us only so long as the camera ship exists. If it's destroyed, it will take them an eternity to get another one." Harras seemed possessed by his idea. "I'll take the hand-beamer and melt the cameras away. Then I'll try to damage the ship itself so much that it crashes."
Rous looked up into the sky. "Look-over there!" he suddenly exclaimed. "The energy beam! It's dissolving!"
They saw it clearly.
The process ran from the top down, quite swiftly yet relatively slowly. For the first time in their lives the men could follow the passage of a beam of light with their own eyes. At least 10 seconds went by before the beam had entirely vanished.
The 100th of a second was over.
Harras fiddled with the controls on his belt.
"Now," said Rous, "I've thought about some things and would like to let you know what I've come up with. A good hour ago we were afraid that we would have to give up the idea of firing our ray pistols because of a possible catastrophe: our beam would move at a speed 72,000 times faster than the speed If light in this dimension. We were even afraid of tearing apart the space-time continuum. Well, I don't think so anymore."
"Why not?" asked Steiner matterнofнfactly.
"Because we can radio each other! Radio waves are just as fast as light waves. Have any of you noticed any effects? All right. Nobody! Nothing happens in this dimension when something moves faster than light-relatively speaking. So I think you can make use of your impulse-beamer without any worries, Harras."
"Frankly," Harras said, trying to stay calm, "I had forgot all about our earlier speculations and would have fired in any case..."
"You always were reckless," Ragov reprimanded, looking thoughtfully at the Druufs in front of the caves. "I hope I can find an opportunity to finally investigate these caterpillars."