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

floating somewhere in space and don't know where to look." He had meanwhile
regained his optimism. Orlgans was still as sceptical as before. "I'm not so
sure that you're right," he replied. "I wouldn't be surprised if the next few
minutes..." The alarm cut off his words. The whistling was shriller than
Orlgans and Ornafer had ever heard before. The enemy must have emerged in
close proximity. The structure-sensor reacted at. the same time but Orlgans
paid no attention. He listened to the hysterical voice of the observer coming
over the loudspeaker. "By the lord of all stars, its an Arkonide ship!" Half
a second later Orlgans saw it burst onto the picture screen. It was a
spherical ship, as built by Arkonides, and was no more than 6000 miles
away. Orlgans was aware that he was outclassed by the alien. "Full speed
ahead," he shouted into the intercom to the engine control room. "Hurry!" The
machinery worked precisely. The tremendous power of the engines tore Orla XI
out of its circular track and forced the ship into open space. Orlgans
watched the movement from the command centre. He realized that he had
underestimated the velocity of his opponent. The spherical ship had emerged
from the transition almost with the speed of light and ruined the Orla's
effort with a mad run. Orlgans was an experienced captain who had already
performed more than 10,000 transitions. He knew what risk was involved in
reentering at such high velocity-close to the critical limit-from a
transition. He never had dared it himself and knew full well that an Arkonide
captain would be even less inclined to risk it. Who was this daredevil? So
far Orlgans had merely been sceptical but now he was scared. An Arkonide ship
with a strange captain at the helm! The spherical ship easily caught up with
Orla XI and raced past. At the position of least distance a pale light grey
beam flashed from the mighty body of the hostile ship, shot above the Orla and
lost itself in the depth of space. "We're lucky their aim is poor," Orlgans
muttered and warned his few gunners to beware. .... The fact that the Orla
started to move away with the prisoners in tow went unnoticed in the
mess-hall. The neutralizers of the K-7 continued to operate perfectly and
would have compensated for far greater acceleration than the ship presently
experienced. Tiff kept glancing at his watch from time to time. Still 10
minutes till zero. Major Deringhouse grinned in spite of his pain. It was now
rather quiet in the mess hall. One could easily bear him as he said from his
cot: "I'd give a year's pay to see their faces." At first Tiff was shocked.
On second thought he realized that Deringhouse was not really pressing their
luck. Even assuming that the Springers would submit each of their remarks to
the positronic translator, it would take more than 10 minutes before they
could see the translation of the English sentence and a little more than that
to grasp its true meaning. About three minutes before zero, one of the cadets
began to hammer against the door as planned. In less than a minute the door
slid open and the faces of two guards appeared in the frame. "What do you
want?" one of them asked. "We're starving," Tiff answered quickly. "Make
yourselves something to eat!" "We don't have a thing." The guard laughed and
turned around. "Honnap, get something to eat!" Honnap's loud voice answered
from the main corridor: "I can't go across. It's much too dangerous at this
acceleration." The guard turned again to Tiff. "Right," he chortled. "We've
been moving for a few minutes. You'll have to wait till we stop
accelerating." Tiff was greatly surprised but he knew that he couldn't afford
to let this moment pass without acting. A second time the guards were not