" Perry Rhodan 0029 - (22) Fleet of the Springers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)

he suddenly thought of Nyssen. Nyssen! Nyssen was crawling around the other
ship. Perhaps he was falling at this very moment into the same trap! He
rallied all his waning strength and spoke: "Nyssen... a G-bomb... concealed...
in the wreck. Watch yourself!" Perspiration flowed from his forehead and ran
into his eyes. He moaned and turned his head back to its original
position. His helmet radio crackled. "Nyssen to Commander! We've found
nothing, sir! Anything wrong with you? Shall we come over to help
you?" Preposterous, Rhodan thought angrily; he doesn't even know what a
gravity time-bomb looks like. "Look out..." he began again, "for a tube...
three feet long... one foot... diameter. Be careful!" He heard Nyssen breathe
heavily. "Cylindrical? Three feet long and one foot in diameter?" There was
a pause. Then Nyssen's cracked voice shouted: "Commander! We've just loaded
this thing onto our platform!" Rhodan fainted for a few moments. When he
recovered consciousness, he heard Nyssen still talking: "Why don't you answer
me? Hello, Commander!" Rhodan muttered something. His vocal chords were no
longer able to form articulate sounds. But Nyssen seemed to understand. "We
just had enough time to push the thing off the platform at the last moment,
sir!" he explained. "It went off when it was about 40 feet away and it pulled
the platform behind it. Our engines managed to break away. Now it's drifting
out in free space." Rhodan's brain struggled against the paralysis in which
his body was confined. He called out as loud as he could: "Don't let the bomb
get away!" Then he lost consciousness again. He didn't know how much time
had elapsed till his mind became clear again. However, he could hear Nyssen's
urgent voice: "Where are you, sir? I can't hear you! We've harnessed the bomb
with ropes. It's floating about 75 feet away from us." Rhodan could have
hugged him. "Great!" he whispered. He felt his strength ebbing away. The
gravity emanating from the bomb already exceeded 20 G. He had only a few
minutes left to explain to Nyssen what he wanted him to do. "Come over... to
our wreck!" he panted. "We're in the forward end... of the ship. Place your
bomb... so that..." "I get it!" Nyssen shouted in sudden inspiration. "You
don't have to explain any more. Save your strength!" Nevertheless Rhodan said
one more word-so weakly that Nyssen had trouble understanding
him: "Hurry...!" .... Even the chronometer finally ceased to work. It
stopped at a time when the destroyer had nine hours left to find a landing
place. Since that failure Tiff tried to guess the passing of time although he
had nothing to go by. A little later the destroyer traversed the line between
the two suns. The far more preponderant gravitation of the blue dwarf
exercised its dominant influence and forced the craft into a new course. Yet
there was no danger at any time that the little destroyer would be drawn into
the sun. Klaus Eberhardt had indeed fallen asleep. Tiff had only managed to
doze a few minutes at a time. This was not enough for his body to regain its
strength. Tiff felt the point creeping up on him when nervousness and
disappointment would make him bawl-just as Felicita had. He tried to divert
himself by imagining the kind of planet on which the destroyer would land and
to picture what they could do there. It was merely a mental experiment. If
they really were to find a planet, it would be one nobody had seen before.
None of them could know what it looked like. But musing about it was a
welcome distraction. Tiff also remembered that lie had a robot on board as
did all destroyers. He lay deactivated in the small storage room in back of
the craft. The robot was equipped with its own generator and Tiff racked his