" Perry Rhodan 0002 - (1b) The Third Power" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)

Major Perry Rhodan, commander of the spaceship STARDUST, found more than anyone
had expected might exist on the moon — for he became the first man to make contact with
another sentient race!




The Arkonides had come from a distant star, and they possessed a knowledge of science
and philosophy that dwarfed mankind’s knowledge.



But these enormously powerful alien beings refused to co-operate with the people of
Earth… unless Perry Rhodan could pass the most difficult test any human being had ever
faced…




CHAPTER ONE



The silence was deceptive.

The mirrorlike surface of the Koshun salt lake in northern. China was unbroken by movement. Still as
death, the lake lay sprawled across the wide desert. Not the slightest breeze could be felt, and the
atmosphere was oppressively hot and dry. The glimmering air was buoyed above the heated stones and
lost itself in the blue of a cloudless sky. Far away on the horizon rose a ridge of low mountains, from
which had come the river that fed the salt lake.

The river was the only thing that stirred in this part of the Gobi Desert. Heavy and sluggish the river
flowed, neither wide nor deep but never becoming completely dry.

Vegetation could not have grown on this stony ground, and animal life would not have found food
amongst the flat rocks. Nothing was alive; yet the silence was deceptive.

A slender structure of glittering silver stood close beside the banks of the river. It did not fit into the
picture of this lonely wilderness, for it was an interplanetary craft more than ninety feet long whose
aerodynamically designed hull and delta wings were in stark contrast to an environment so inimical to
human life.

TheStardust , the first terrestrial spaceship ever to land on the moon, had returned to Earth and landed
in the Gobi Desert. The whole world already knew this, but only a few would begin to suspect that it had
been not an emergency landing but an intentional manoeuvre.

In the hull of the vehicle, a rectangular opening appeared. A man came into view in the opening. His gaze
swept along the river, across to the mountains and then to the lake, where it remained. Captain Reginald
Bell, test pilot for the U.S. Space Explorations Command and engineer of theStardust , drew in the air
with eager breath, although it was anything but refreshing. The captain was short and heavyset. He wore