" Perry Rhodan 0019 - (13) The Immortal Unknown" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)

 The control centre of his ship, an auxiliary craft of theGood Hope class with a diameter of 60 yards,
seemed to turn into a rattling loose tin can. The fine tuner of his range-finder conked out and the entire
space-structure sensor threatened to self-destruct under the resounding vibration from the acoustic signal.

McClears’ foot was a millisecond later. He kicked the main switch and the droning ceased.

"A structure disturbance?" wondered Lt. Everson, his deputy commander on board the auxiliary ship
S-3. "Some zip, wow!"

"Don’t drive me nuts, will you!" Capt. McClears snapped.

"I won’t," Everson muttered. Slowly he rolled his burly body around to the now useless structure sensor.

"O.K.," he nonchalantly continued, "let’s get this bucket ready for action. Looks as if it won’t he long
now. And I thought we had chased those lizards out of the Vega system for good! I guess at least 10 big
ships must have jumped out of hyperspace."

"Or one that is colossal," McClears panted. Exhausted, he fell back onto his control seat. S-3 had only a
crew of 10 on board. Nobody expected to get into serious trouble.

McClears was one of those young spacefighter pilots who were drilled and trained to a fine polish by
Rhodan. Once it had been his highest ambition to fly a roaring rocketship of the U.S. Space Force to the
moon and he did not expect to go beyond that in his fondest dreams; but toward the end of training,
circumstances changed so rapidly as Rhodan established the New Power within a period of a few years,
that he had soon become one of the first officers of the old, now defunctGood Hope under Rhodan’s
command.

In due course he had arrived in the Vega system and by now had been given the command of a ship
which, a few years ago, would have caused him utter amazement. He probably would have regarded his
S-3 as a miracle of titanic proportions. A miracle it was indeed. But he had meanwhile realized that it was
far too small to be called titanic.

His lips were pressed against the microphone of the faster-than-light telecom.

"McClears to all Guppies, urgent. Evacuation operations to be immediately discontinued. Rendezvous at
Ferrol spaceport. Be prepared to start at alarm signal. I must know what is zooming in on us out there.
Let’s hope it is the Chief. Otherwise we’ll have to get ready for the worst. Stop."

His message was confirmed by the other seven ships. Everywhere on the eighth Vegan planet the rescue
operations were interrupted. The armoured hatches closed and the engines began to blast.

The local population retreated in headlong flight from the starting crafts. Desperate outbursts followed as
they fled to subterranean cities and tunnels, the only remaining places where survival was still feasible.

A ball of fire spewing searing heat and shining blinding light menaced the sky above the planet Ferrol.
Ferrol had always suffered from extreme UV rays but it had never been as unbearable as this.

The commanders of theStardust ’s eight auxiliary ships had been fully aware that it would be quite
impossible to evacuate five billion Ferrons in time. Moreover, the entire system with its 42 planets was
bound to be destroyed if the heretofore quiescent Vega had really changed into a nova.