" Perry Rhodan 0051 - (43) Life Hunt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)

1/ MISSION: LIFE SERUM



AT STAKE: the life of his wife Thora. And of his Arkonide friend, the venerable Khrest. The medical
technology that had so far arrested the inexorable toll of physical decay now worked its miracle no
longer. A new serum developed on Earth had held out hope but even that would soon prove inadequate.

On Wanderer, the Planet of Eternal Life,It , the keeper of the secret of the cell-shower, the life-renewal
process, had refused to grant its boon to the Arkonides.

So now Perry Rhodan sat on the planet Hellgate, 12,348 light-years distant from his home world,
contemplating a dark future and preparing to listen for the first time to the reports sent over the past few
months from his agents on the planet Tolimon.

Meanwhile, a light cruiser was taking off for Earth with Atlan the Timeless aboard as prisoner.

Perry activated the hypercom message-storage unit. Reports of no special importance issued first; these
he barely listened to. His gaze wandered out of the steel dome—the only place where human life could
exist on this heat-bathed world—and out across the desert shimmering in the pallid yellow radiance of
Star ZW-2536-K957.

Needing a secret base of operations as close to the planet Tolimon as possible, Rhodan had selected
this sun’s satellite Hellgate, a dead and useless world on the outermost perimeter of the Arkonide
Empire. Tolimon itself was 81 light-years from Hellgate and orbited Revnur’s Star, a G-type sun, as the
2nd of 6 planets.

A year had passed since Perry Rhodan’s attention had first been drawn to Tolimon. He was always
interested in the activities of the galaxy’s race of medical geniuses, the Aras, and Tolimon was one of
their worlds. More importantly, it was probably unique in the known universe: an entire planet dedicated
to a single purpose: a galactic zoo.

Rhodan’s reasoning followed the form of an equation: Galactic Doctors + Zoo = Research. His
conclusion led him to send 2 of his Mutant Corps to Tolimon, where they had now been for 8 months.
The mutants, telepath John Marshall and his feminine colleague Laury Marten, had been given the
assignment of solving one certain problem. At irregular intervals over the subsequent months they had
sent hycom reports to Hellgate and it was to these that Rhodan was now listening.

The recorder played back a message sent 3 weeks before. John Marshall’s voice was unmistakable. He
spoke only 3 sentences and each one was disappointingly negative: he and Laury Marten had been
unable to make any further progress on Tolimon.

There were no more messages after that. Perry switched off the machine. For him a long period of
waiting was now beginning—but he had no time to wait.

Death by natural causes had seemed inevitable for Khrest and Thora—but then Rhodan’s agents had
brought back rumours concerning Tolimon, rumours of men living in the giant Ara zoo for centuries…
never growing old.

Merely rumours?—or a ray of hope?