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

It was just you-here in your observation station. Between the edge of the galaxy and that alien transmitter there is nothing-nothing at all, except the BOB 21...!"
This almost took Eric's breath away. "But-how could they know...? I mean-" He broke off, unable to finish his question.
Quinto smiled reassuringly. "Better not batter your brains over it just now," he said. "We don't know what technique these aliens are using. Maybe they have sensitive enough equipment to trace the small radiations of this station over hundreds of light years. They could also have looked you over at close range without your knowing it. We can't be sure of anything-except one thing the aliens know the position of the BOB 21. That's why it's too late to worry about that part of it. We've nothing to lose by giving them an answer. In fact, we want to find out what they'll have to say then."
Eric Furchtbar gave up. He arranged to have an answer sent out in the same code pattern in which the original question had been received. It's simple statement was: "Yes, we are a true life form."
Neither Eric nor the men who transmitted the message felt especially relaxed about the situation. They had a feeling that they were reaching out their hand to something monstrous and they didn't know it the monster would shake it or tear it off.
Nike Quinto considered that his task on board the BOB 21 had been taken care of and he said his adieus. He assured Furchtbar that the Joann would back him up if he got into any danger. Eric expressed his appreciation but he knew that things could happen faster than a ship could move to come to his aid if it was cruising around somewhere else in the void.
Nike and Ron returned to their "cruising factory." A few minutes later the Joann got underway. While picking up speed it grew smaller and finally disappeared from view.
The BOB 21 was alone once more.

*

The next few hours on board the station were passed in a state of nervous tension. Furchtbar had explained to his men what had happened, what the situation was at the moment, and what they might expect. Everyone was strangely convinced that there would be an attack, so he told them unequivocally that they could only expect help from the Joann if the hostilities developed slowly enough. But since nobody figured that an alien force bent upon conquest was going to take much time, what it all boiled down to was that there would be no help.
Eric gave orders to put the gun positions through a thorough inspection. He told the men to make sure that the weapons would function at the moment when they were needed. Basically the order was rather superfluous. If anyone wanted to know if the weapons were still in working order, all he had to do was press a couple of buttons on the IFPM panel and green indicator lamps would confirm that there was no cause for worry. But the instruction he had given would occupy about 10 men for at least a couple of hours, and that was Eric's main objective. As a final test, each of the guns would have to be fired, and that might also help the morale.
Another 10 men were also at their various posts. The com Room had a double crew. Five men were on duty and a sixth was soon going to join them, which was Furchtbar himself. He was just about at the end of his stamina. One hour after the Joann departed he turned over his post to the 1st officer, Lt. Hynes. He then went to his cabin and dropped onto his bed. A few seconds later he was fast asleep.
Lt. Hynes took his work very seriously. He meticulously recorded a series of new bomb explosions out in the far abyss. The first hypercom signal the station had received was still being transmitted without interruption. However, they couldn't make anything out of its analysis. It was obvious that, unlike the other message, it was not intended for human eyes and ears. The code was indecipherable. An alien logic had produced it.
There was excitement on board when at 15:23 hours the question concerning a true life form was received a second time. Hynes was sure that he was acting in accordance with Eric Furchtbar's thinking-and above all with Nike Quinto's wishes-when he had the BOB 21 send back the same answer a second time. The fact that the question was repeated indicated that the first answer had not been understood.
Or at least that was a possibility, Ed Hynes corrected himself. He realised he was using Terran logic, and those out there were far from being Terrans. For example they might have the custom of not recognising that something was said until it had been repeated several times.
At 15:57 hours the 68th bomb explosion was registered. Then after that there was a sudden cessation. At 16:02 the continuous signal finally broke off, and 3 minutes later the question was repeated for the 3rd time: "Are you a true life form?" Hynes had the same answer sent out also for the 3rd time, and after that all was quiet in the vast darkness of starless space. It seemed that the battle had ended, the automatic transmitter had been destroyed, and the strange questioner was no longer interested.
Until 19:00 the void was as silent as it had been all the days before but the nervousness on board the BOB 21 only increased. So far the events registered had been happening at a distance of 410 light years but now the sudden cessation of activity could be variously interpreted-such as the possibility that the aliens were approaching the Terran station. The men were so tense at their posts that a momentary surge in cosmic ray reception came within a hair of setting off the alarms again.
The men didn't begin to believe that the danger was over with until 4 hours later. The strangers had not been heard from and was not another indication of there existence on the detection instruments. The tension on board slowly began to subside. Meanwhile Eric Furchtbar had returned to take over his post again and one hour after midnight he sent the men off duty back to bed. The station was back on its normal schedule.
That was about 20 minutes before the catastrophe began.

*

Art Cavanaugh was alone again. Ken Lodge and Warren Lee had greeted the end of the alert condition with a sigh of relief and had disappeared immediately. Ken Lodge would probably go to the messhall to look for a new partner at Gogo, and Warren would no doubt hit the sack and go to sleep.
Art rubbed his eyes. He himself was tired. Yet he still thought that Eric Furchtbar had jumped the gun in cancelling the alert this soon. Since the first bomb explosion had been registered, hardly half a day had gone by. He smoked a cigarette while he watched his instruments. The receivers were quiet. The alien transmitters remained silent. The radiation gauge showed the usual constant-17 nanowatt per square meter, which was the diffuse radiation from the home galaxy, 5000 light years away, and from other island universes afar off across the starless gulf.
Everything was so quiet that even Cavanaugh's anxiety began to slowly subside. The chronometer read 1:19. Just about 20 minutes since the alert condition had been lifted. Maybe he could risk taking a little nap. He had a built-in sensitivity to his instruments and knew he'd wake up instantly if any of them showed any activity.
He placed his arms across the top of the console and lay his head down. He slowly closed his eyes and began to take in the atmosphere of peace and quiet around him.
It happened then...
The aliens arrived with a roll of drums. There was a crackling and hissing of instruments and luminous meter needles danced wildly across the semi-dark scales. A small transformer box was jolted visibly under the surge of sudden energy. It started to smoke and then shorted out with a loud hissing sound. Within a 10th of a second the peaceful Com Room was transformed into a madhouse of dancing and jumping indicators and deafening sounds.
For just a few seconds, Art Cavanaugh was too stunned to move. Then his reaction brought him up out of his seat. Oblivious to the bedlam and flashing lights around him, he worked the dials of the tracking scope with both hands. As the wide screen lit up, powerful beams of hyper-electromagnetic energy raced outward into space. They were promptly reflected by the foreign object and returned to form an echo image on the sweep screen.
When Art saw it he struck the alarm button.
The thing was obviously a space ship. The energy blast that had made the instruments go mad was the effect of its sudden emergence out of hyperspace into the Einstein continuum. At the moment it was still 3 light hours away. The vessel was not moving especially fast. It could take it at least 12 hours to reach the station-even longer if it went into a braking manoeuvre.
While the alarm sirens filled the corridors and rooms with a raucous clamour, Cavanaugh noticed something else. The stranger was not following a straight course. He weaved to one side and then the other of a direct line of flight and was also slowly revolving. It looked as if the alien ship were in a drunken stupor. Its spinning motion was clearly discernible and it wasn't difficult for Art to figure what that meant.
That ship out there was severely damaged.

*

So far Lofty Patterson hadn't spoken a single word during the discussion. He sat silently in his chair and listened to the others, an older man whose face was touched with a thousand small wrinkles and crinkles of kindly good humour and whose grey hair and beard looked as if they hadn't been touched by a comb in years. It was only when he sensed that the discussion was getting bogged down that he ventured to make a rebuttal.
"Apparently," he began, "everybody takes it for granted that whoever's making all that clatter out there is some kind of extra-galactic intelligence-isn't that right?"
This seemed to irritate Nike Quinto because his voice went to its highest pitch when he answered. "Of course that's right! Patterson, stop acting as if you've been sleeping all this time! My blood pressure is high enough without any further aggravation."
Lofty Patterson was not easily disconcerted. He knew this chubby-faced man with his perpetually florid complexion. Nike Quinto actually did appear to be perpetually on the verge of a stroke. He was small and portly and usually perspired profusely. Yet among other men of his age there were few who were more healthy than Quinto. Everybody knew this and goodнnaturedly endured the colonel's ravings about his blood pressure and threatening heart failure.
In fact Lofty piqued the other's ire even more with his next question. "So who says that these aliens are really extra-galactic in origin? After all, they could be people from our own galaxy who may have gone astray out there, wouldn't you say?"
Nike laughed scornfully. "And you think I haven't racked my brains already over that idea?"
Lofty watched him carefully. "Well, at least you haven't said a word about it, sir."
Why waste words over the obvious? The objections to your argument are also obvious. All of our Barrier-line Observation stations have been deployed for more than a year now, beyond the rim of the galaxy. Only the Akons and ourselves have the secret of linear space drive. All other known spacefaring races use the hyperjump system of propulsion, and any such transition out of the galaxy.would have been detected by at least one of the BOB stations. But nobody's gone out, so who is there to come back in?"
Lofty nodded with satisfaction. "That still leaves two possibilities open, sir. Either these unknown people have been out there more than a year-or we're actually dealing with Akons."
"No, that's not possible. For political reasons the Akon System is under such close surveillance that not even a small freighter could sneak through our control ring, let alone a larger ship capable of making an inter-galactic run. Besides, in the past year none, of their trips has been longer than a few thousand light years. So that eliminates the Akons. I don't think that any ship from a local race would be able to stay out there over a year-and above all I can't imagine what race from our own galaxy would send us a message asking us if we're a true life form...!"
"Also aside from the fact," put in Meech Hannigan, "that no known races fool around with fusion bombs in the thousand gigaton range. They may be old-fashioned but their wallop must be colossal."
Lofty finally surrendered. The counter-arguments were convincing. Yet he persisted in another vein: "How can we be sure we've really understood that hypercom message? I mean, if we're really dealing with extra-galactic beings it's theoretically possible that their mode of thinking is so different from ours that there's no way we can understand each other-at least not at the first contact."