"Rhodan, Perry - Between the Galaxies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rhodan Perry)

FOREWORD

In May of the year 2012 at the University of Terrania the Institute of Cosmobiology opened a series of lectures. One of these seminar talks was on the subject of contact with extra-galactic intelligences. In the course of his lecture the speaker said:
"Here within our own galaxy we Terrans have perceived that not all intelligent life forms can evolve according to Terran standards. We've, come to understand that an intelligent being does not necessarily have to walk on two legs nor does he have to have two arms, two eyes, two ears, and one mouth and one nose. There are other forms of life and nowadays we can sometimes encounter an alien creature who might offer us a tentacle instead of a hand in greeting, if such a gesture is known to him - yet do it with a certain ease or simplicity which heralds a growing state of cosmic thinking.
"But what still lies ahead of us? How-ever variegated the races of our galaxy may be, there are signs that they all have certain common characteristics. For example we have not found any mode of thinking that is essentially alien to our own. However, what should we expect when we make our first contact with a race from an alien galaxy? Can we hope to find features and characteristics with which we might all have something in common?
"The answer is no! Even within our own galaxy we have found grades of differentiation which begin to get pretty far off the norm. So in considering any extra-galactic contacts we would have to expect to encounter some rather wide differences. We can't expect them to regard friendship as something good or hate as something bad. We can't even expect them to have any concept of good or evil. What could be 'beautiful' to us might be 'green' to them, if you know what I'm driving at. We can't depend on being able to even converse with races from an alien galaxy when we first encounter them-not as we are accustomed to doing with other races in our own galaxy. Misunderstandings will be common at first but such misunderstandings could have devastating consequences.
"One might accuse me of talking about rare eventualities such as a 3-headed calf, and in fact at first glance this subject seems a bit far-fetched. However, in this age of trans-light spaceflight that first contact could occur any day and at any hour. This is especially so if we wish to concede that some hypothetical life form in any particular alien galaxy may be far advanced over the state of development of Arkonide-Terran civilizations.
"For that moment-the moment of the first contact - we should be prepared. It is highly possible that it could be vital to the further existence of our culture. we cannot afford to just sit complacently around and wait. We have to foresee and anticipate such an event. Our situation demands it."
Quite contrary to expectations, the words of the speaker were heeded. Men began to prepare for such an extra-galactic contact. That is, preparations were made as far as they could go under the circumstances. Any effective program of this nature required at least some knowledge that could define the objectives, but no such knowledge was available. No one had even the slightest idea of what lay ahead for humanity.
Still, there were the probability calculators, mighty positronic computer installations which were provided with highly detailed programs. These machines worked out hundreds of thousands of possible situations and prescribed an equal number of modes of operation. Of course even these advanced machines could not assume a success probability higher than 53% on the average for any proposed method of procedure.
So basically everything was still up in the air, if one discounted at least the act that men had begun to get used to the idea of an intergalactic contact, which was in contrast to what they had done prior to that May lecture of 2012.
Later it seemed to be a strange quirk of fate that the first contact occurred almost 100 years afterwards to the day. Of course in a more basic sense that eventuality was foreordained when Perry Rhodan first encountered the Arkonides . .







1/ "ARE YOU A TRUE LIFE FORM?"

There was nothing but a deathlike silence and emptiness in this region of the universe.
In a ship suspended in space far removed from the outer rim of the Milky way, the mass detectors had nothing to detect. The only equipment capable of picking up anything was the broad-surfaced collector shields on trans-C velocity ships which now and then probed into this abyss between the island universes. In about every 10 cubic meters there might be a single hydrogen nucleus. To collect just a single gram of matter it would be necessary to comb through a space sector big enough to contain 5000 planet Earths.
That's how empty it was out here. Well, to the devil with it, thought Eric Furchtbar. He only had a few, more days to go before they'd come to pick him up.
No one was assigned to duty for more than three months on board the BOB (Barrier-line Observation Station) 21. In the beginning it had been estimated that the men could endure a half year of service out here but it hadn't worked out. After about 31/2 months the crews began to get "space happy." They would start seeing ghosts and begin to hear mysterious cries emerging from emptiness.
It wasn't so bad if a man took time to think about it, theorized Eric Furchtbar. All you had to do was sit still somewhere and get it into your head that there were no such things as ghosts and that sounds were impossible out there in the awful void. But who ever had time to go into such meditations? Usually they sat with each other and conversed. What did they talk about? The terrible emptiness. How ghastly it was and how hard it was to imagine such an endless abyss. They thought of how frightful it would be if the BOB 21 suddenly sprang a leak-although it would not be any worse than a leak occurring somewhere in the middle of the galaxy.
And then it would happen suddenly. When they went to bed and started to fall asleep. All of a sudden they would hear voices. And then they would see the grey shadows flitting about. Instead of becoming meditative they would start to yell and rave, or the more impressionable ones would shiver under their sheets.
In short, they would go out of their minds.
Eric had to admit that it wasn't always so simple. He looked around him. The room he was in was rectangular if one overlooked a slight outward curvature of one of the lateral walls. The walls were covered with instruments, meters, viewscreens and control panels. There were a few seats located here and there. In the centre of the room was a large table that was covered with star charts, coordinate tables and stacks of programming sheets which were still in the original order as on the first day. No one had ever used the positronic input forms.
There was no reason to make any new programming inputs. Nothing ever happened. The 25-man crew of the BOB 21 spent their time in merely determining that this sector of the universe was absolutely eventless. Day after day, week after week, month after month.
The instrument needles stood at zero as if they had been turned off. Every 10 minutes Eric would get up and press the switch of the master test board. A green lamp would light up to reveal that all instruments in the room were working and ready to respond. Of course Eric knew this but he only went through the routine each time to see the lamp come on. Just that at least was an event to break the monotony.
The only equipment that was really shut down was the viewscreens. Matter tracers and reflex sensors were capable of picking up anything coming from the outside much faster than the conventional optics. Besides, the aspect of the empty void between the galaxies wasn't worth turning on the screens. on the contrary: it increased the anxiety factor.
No, it really wasn't pleasant duty here. If you took the psychological problems into consideration, the BOB 21 was actually undermanned. At least two men should be in each room together. Eric would have liked to have somebody to talk to but he was sitting here alone in a room that was almost 50 square meters in extent. 8 other men were sitting somewhere in other rooms, and the remaining 16 were off duty.
Eric got up restlessly and slowly paced the room. With his almost 61/2-ft frame he might have had an imposing figure if he had not been so frightfully thin. His uniform, which was the right length but too wide for him, hung in rather dismal folds about him. But that didn't seem to bother him. The only thing he was really aware of was his bald spot, which was shiny enough to catch his eye wherever he saw his reflection. As a man of 31 years he endured it with what little of dignity that remained to him.
As he walked alone the curved wall he almost took a masochistic pleasure in the realization that only about half a meter of distance separated him from the lightless vacuum that stretched out from here over millions of light years to the next galaxy. He wondered how he might feel if he thought that the plastic metal hull really was the only thing between him and that awful void. Would it make any difference? About 140 years ago when Terrans were first venturing into space, the hulls of spaceships had been made of ordinary steel and by comparison to these walls were they were as thin as an onion skin. And in those days there was no such thing as the defence screen that protected the BOB 21 from the outer environment more effectively than any material walls.
No, decided Eric, he would still feel safe without the outer screen. Way out here there were no meteors. What could possibly happen to do any harm?
To the devil with all these grey ghosts and phantoms, he thought angrily. He almost wished that something really would happen. He turned and went back to his seat. Sitting down with a sense of boredom he chanced to glance at one of the meters.
The blue-white illuminated needle stood trembling at the upper end of the scale.

*

It was the fastest Eric Furchtbar had ever moved to get onto his feet. In three long strides he reached the main panel and activated the alarm. Sirens started to shriek, signal light blinked, and the viewscreens flashed into operation automatically.
The mighty observation station virtually bristled with a sudden vigilance,
like a man startled from sleep.
Eric returned to his seat. The instrument that had given the first indication was designed to register para-energy radiations. It only reacted to hypertype emanations below a certain threshold of energy and which had no detectable modulations. Such radiations could come from any number of possible sources. If this had been inside the galaxy, that particular indicator wouldn't have been quiescent for a single second.
But way out here . . . ?
Eric scanned meters on other instrument panels along the walls. Other needles were quivering with subtle activity now. One of them registered a light hypergravity shock, and some of the hyperoptic channels were acting up.
All of it was hyper, thought Eric in wondering puzzlement. No direct indications.
He looked at the viewscreen. They revealed the same black void as they al-ways did when they were turned on. There was still nothing to be seen. Whatever may have happened it must have occurred too far away for the light to have reached the station yet. He waited a while longer. Then he got his first call on the intercom. It came from the Analysis Section. On the small screen he recognized the red-haired younger man whose freckled face wore a perplexed and slightly confused expression.
"We've gone over all the input tapes, sir. There's no doubt about the indications. somewhere out there a sun has suddenly come into existence."