" Perry Rhodan 0054 - (46) Again Atlan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)

1/ PSYCHO-FENCING



THE SOLAR EMPIRE. That was what the small interplanetary realm was called. And the man who had
founded it called himself Perry Rhodan.

Rhodan’s people acted nice and friendly toward me, even tolerant, but—it was a big but.

Although many of them were scientists in uniform, most were battle-proven veterans of the space fleet
who—so they explained to me—had risked their lives for Terra.

To them I was a member of a related biological genus and a sociopolitical foreigner. They never applied
the classification ‘racially alien’ to me, confirming my favourable opinion of the improved ethics of
mankind. They were less intolerant than in the past when disbelievers were persecuted and political
opponents executed.

But although they had matured morally, this did not prevent them from considering me an enemy.
"We’ve got nothing against you personally, my dear fellow," Lt. Gen. Kosnow had jovially stated.

"So why don’t you let me go my way unhindered?" I had made the logical rejoinder. When I thought
back on Kosnow’s bittersweet smile, it made my blood boil. Only in my rarer moments of serenity was I
able to treat it with amusement.

Of course they were not justified in considering it nor inclined to release me unceremoniously after my
appearing in their ken under such mysterious circumstances.

As yet they knew nothing of my bathysphere anchored in the deeps of the Atlantic Ocean and I had
further concealed from them the fact that I had fled to its safety for fear of an atomic war which appeared
on the verge of exploding 69 years ago.

When I was awakened from my 7-decade-long hibernation by the biomedical robot machines in my
sub-oceanic shelter, I learned to my greatest chagrin that the atomic war I had expected had never taken
place. Subsequently I had occasion to see how far mankind had progressed during my deepsleep
interval.

I had managed to reach Terrania by various means at my disposal and there I met the most outstanding
man of recent history: Perry Rhodan.

Nobody in the inhabited worlds of the Galaxy seemed to suspect what an audacious and resourceful
force had made its entrance into the universal matrix in the person of Perry Rhodan.

It had been my intention to leave in a small space jet and return home to Arkon after I had waited a long
long time till the technological development of the Terrans had achieved space travel.

When they finally succeeded in perfecting it, I had unfortunately retreated to the bottom of the ocean and
slept through the first stages of their great leap into the future.

At the time Rhodan made his landing on the Moon and found the disabled research cruiser of the
Arkonides, I had missed the best chance of my life by acting in a hasty and foolish manner.