" Perry Rhodan 0042 - (34) SOS Spaceship Titan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)

She shook her head as if to clear it of unpleasant thoughts. "Could this ugly discolouration be an
extended forest?" she asked in return.

"Home, Home on the Range!" sang Bell tauntingly as an expression of old-fashioned American tastes for
landscapes, which this one certainly didn’t satisfy. "Where the deer and the antelope…" His voice trailed
off under their combined scrutiny.

Far ahead on the horizon appeared a few more rivers, all ending in small lakes and basins, but no trace
of an ocean. Honur was a dry planet. It was a single inhospitable continent. Slowly the nocturnal
hemisphere appeared where darkness seemed to enshroud the ugliness in secret shame.

"Well, anyway," Bell tried to cheer himself up, "it’s better to land here after a hyper-transit than
smack-dab in the middle of a space battle! But I still don’t dig this king-size Death Valley!"

Thus was a second name given to Honur…



****



Perry Rhodan’s decision to land after the first orbit of Honur was based on his conviction that further
delay could expose them to possible tracking by other ships, thus heightening the danger of discovery by
the robot brain of Arkon.

Perry had set his eye on the rugged mountain range with its steep cordillera climbing to over 12,000 feet.
He ordered the landing as soon as the ship moved into the daylight side of the planet. Bell groaned as the
barren, burnt-out world with its hopeless terrain seemed to take over the control room. Perry himself was
visited by certain foreboding but he was sure that hisTitan , even though understaffed and unprepared for
galactic battles, was strong enough to spar a few rounds with any local fleet of spacers.

During the orbiting of Honur the planet had also continued to revolve, so that theTitan ’s landing
window had shifted farther southwest, right onto the lake and the river mouth. Rhodan took the controls.
He wanted to become as familiar with this colossus as he was with theStardust II He switched over to
visual approach. Bell grinned companionably from his co-pilot seat, knowing Perry’s mood at the
moment.

All the operating gear and generating equipment in the equatorial bulge of the sphere began to thrum and
howl; the awesome power reactors began to shriek. Millions of elements were in action to guide the steel
giant. It took a course straight toward a fixed spot, like a bullet hitting the bulls-eye, because a single pilot
was at the helm

For a short while Perry enjoyed himself with theTitan as though he were a child with a new toy. Bell
saw in his friend an illustration of the adage about the true man being half a child, and he was glad.
Because in Perry this child-in-man awakened was the fountain of his regeneration.
 Now theTitan hovered between the lake and the first rugged mountains whose shadows darkened the
observation screen. The ship glided slowly under the protective cliff wall. Perry pushed another button.
Out of the lower hemisphere of the ship, the giant telescopic landing struts extended themselves like a
forest ofTitan ic, outstretched fingers, equipped with pads on the ends.