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

Eric Furchtbar almost choked. "A sun..!" he cried out. "You can talk plainer than that, Kirkpatrick!"
Kirkpatrick unconsciously wiped his brow. "Taking all observations together, sir, there is only one straight answer. Somewhere out there is a sun. On a detailed basis- "
Eric interrupted the freckle-faced analyst with a wave of his hand. "Forget the details! How can a sun come out of nothing, just like that!?"
Obviously the question was too much for Kirkpatrick. He stammered: "That's something... I-I can't tell you, sir..."
"OK, skip it! How far away is it?"
"Between 400 and 500 light years, sir."
Eric sighed and looked at the main screens. It would be 400 to 500 years yet before the light reached them. He wouldn't live to see that. "Alright," He said resignedly. "Stay with it, Kirkpatrick, and call me again when you get the full results from the positronics."
He sank back into his chair. Kirkpatrick was one of his most dependable men. If he said that a sun came into being out there a few minutes ago, then there was a sun out there.

*

Art Cavanaugh was sitting in the messhall when the alarms started. He had just picked up one of the colourful Gogo pieces from the bevel-edged playing board and was calculating the move that would beat his partner, Ken Lodge. When the sirens shrieked, Ken Lodge jumped up and knocked the board and the pieces aside. The figures rolled off the table and fell to the floor.
"Alert!" he shouted.
Cavanaugh got up more slowly, wearing a frown. "That came just in time for you, didn't it? one more move and I'd have wiped you out!"
He turned calmly to look at the lighted call panel at the other end of the room. His eyes narrowed. "It's coming from the main control room," he said. "The old Man's on duty . . . !"
Suddenly he began to move so fast toward the door that the powerful figure of Ken Lodge couldn't keep up with him. The passage outside was filled with shouts and the sound of running feet. Art Cavanaugh was only a sergeant like his giant friend, Ken Lodge, who stamped out after him with rumbling complaints. But he had a lively imagination and was trying to imagine what had set off the alarm. He had studied the awesome void beyond the walls of the station and had almost become convinced that nothing would ever happen out there to merit their attention. But now something had occurred.
What could it be?
Ahead in the corridor was the green light outside the Com Room. Art caused the heavy entrance hatch to slide to one side. A man sat there surrounded by hundreds of instruments. He grinned at him when he came in.
"You didn't waste a second, did you?" he commented.
Art dismissed the remark with a wave of his hand. "What's going on? what caused that alarm?"
"No idea," said the com man. "It came from the main control room. I haven't seen anything suspicious here."
"Get up from there," Art ordered.
The Com man had the same rank as Art but Art was older. When he took over the other man's place his fingers flew over the test buttons. Green indicator lamps responded. All equipment was in order. He turned around. "Nothing at all?"
"Not a peep, Art. Everything's quiet as a mouse."
Ken Lodge had come in almost aimlessly with his hands in his pocket. He joined Warren Lee, the younger Com man who was standing behind Cavanaugh. Art had just turned back to inspect the long rows of indicators.
Then all of them heard it at once. With a shrill whistle the hyper receiver came to life.
No one would have been able to move as swiftly as Cavanaugh. His quickness was incredible as he switched on the oscilloscope and adjusted it. The swiftness of his movements was unbelievable as he tuned the receiver frequency so that the signal came in clear and legible.
There was nothing else to do. They watched breathlessly as the green scope began to show a waveform which the hypertransmission was tracing on the fluorescent screen. The basic oscillation took on the shape of a pure sinewave. Nothing in the outer void could generate such an exact configuration unless it had been specifically created for that purpose.
Created...
Somewhere out there was a transmitter.
Somewhere out there were intelligent beings-there in the vast abyss between the galaxies.

*

Eric Furchtbar knew what he had to do. A sun and a hyper signal that so far nobody could decipher-that was enough to set the machinery going, of which the BOB 21 was only a small part.
He had the positronics work out a coded report which clearly and concisely described both observations. The computer delivered the required encoding pattern, which Eric fed into the directional-beam transmitter. A hundredth of a second later the beamed message was on its way to the Earth. The receiver station there decoded it automatically and relayed it on to the responsible officer.
That officer was Nike Quinto, head of Division 3 of Intercosmic Social Welfare and Development. If Quinto hadn't been alone at that moment he would probably have complained loudly about the rise of his blood pressure, which such unexpected events always seemed to aggravate.
Judging by the reaction to Eric Furchtbar's report it seemed as if the Earth had been doing nothing for a hundred years other than wait for the first message from intergalactic space. The ship that Nike Quinto and his men always used to get to the scene of the action was standing ready for takeoff. There was nothing left to do but to go on board and give the order for departure.
The Earth really had waited for this moment. Throughout the years ships had been held on standby, ready to take the members of the Mutant corps or Intelligence or Division 3 to various trouble spots affecting galactic politics. Each time the Terran technology took a step forward, such ships were always modernized. Thus for the more important missions, first-class equipment was always available.
Also, Nike Quinto's men had been fully prepared. What they might expect in intergalactic space, what they had to watch out for, how the situation might be when they were thousands of light years removed from the farthest rim of the Milky Way and encountered an alien intelligence-all this is firmly anchored in their minds. Hypno-training had given them all necessary information, in such a manner that they would never forget it.
It was a specially selected team that Nike Quinto took with him on that same day, May 2nd of the year 2112. His immediate companions were Maj. Ron Landry, Capt. Larry Randall, Sgt. Mitchell HanniganШnicknamed MeechШand the sworn-in but unenlisted assistant, Lofty Patterson. on previous missions of Division 3, each of them had proved his mettle.
Quinto's ship was exactly half a year old as of that day. In the casual vernacular of Division 3, the Joann was a cruising work shop. It was classed as a battle cruiser but in addition to its excellent armaments it was fitted out with a full work shop which enabled the crew to build or repair a number of complicated equipment on board. thus the Joann was only dependent upon her home base to a very limited extent, which included any other sources of maintenance and supplies.
Quinto knew that in this case such a feature was important. When you were 500 light years beyond the rim of the Milky Way you operated on different tactics than you did inside the galaxy where every small hop could bring you to an inhabited world.
The Joann used its trans-light linear spacedrive to cover the 34000 light years to Arkon 3. After landing, Mike Quinto advised Eric Furchtbar on the hyper-beam that he was now considerably closer to his position.
For his part, Eric Furchtbar had a few new items on hand to report.

*

The receivers registered a 2nd transmission on another frequency. the first signal had been holding steady for 5 hours. It could be clearly seen on the scope screen that a definite modulation pattern was repeating itself every 14 minutes.
Art Cavanaugh had explained to Furchtbar that it looked like some kind of distress call which was sent out by an automatic transmitter-in a repeated pattern until somebody answered it. Eric had retorted that such an assumption could be made if they were dealing with inhabitants of the Milky Way. But one had to be more careful about anything that came from "out there," at least as far as seemingly logical deductions were concerned.