" Perry Rhodan 0082 - (74) Checkmate Universe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)

 Julian Tifflor had experienced his most impressive adventures in the depths of galactic space. Earthly
gangsters were something he had never run across before. He had an idea that the trip the two
kidnappers were taking with him in his own car would end somewhere in the wilderness of the steppes at
some old, tumbledown and wind-ravaged house.

And he was right. The house was almost exactly as he had imagined it. It looked as though it had been
built 400 years before as a shelter for marauding nomads. Tifflor knew that just 70 years before there
had not been a single house in the entire region but that did not detract any from the impression which the
strange building made on him.

He revised his opinion once he stepped inside the house. He thought for a second that he had come into
a modem hospital. The halls gleamed with cleanliness and the illumination was bright and the room to
which he was finally led was equipped with devices that were the most modern in the field of
psychophysics.

Tifflor realized what the equipment was going to be used for and decided that if he ever wanted to regain
his freedom he would have to do something at once. If he was put under the influence of those devices he
would no longer be in control of his own will; he would instead be forced by posthypnotic suggestion to
do whatever he had been told.

The time wasnow . Although he saw that both of his abductors were more watchful than ever at that
moment, Julian Tifflor showed his courage by beginning to act.

When they entered the building, they had put him between them. Only once had they stopped on their
way through the ground floor—and that was to remove the thermobeamer he carried under his jacket.
There had been no possible way to prevent them from taking it.

He was still between them as they shoved him into the room packed full of psychophysical equipment.
One of the two grasped him by the shoulder and led him farther into the room while the other remained a
few steps behind and carefully locked the door.

This was the right moment. Tifflor did not worry that the man next to him was looking at him closely and
mistrustfully. He set his right foot behind his left and pretended to stumble, falling forward as he did so
and causing the foreign hand to slide off his shoulder. He came up again, propelled by the force of all his
anger. Clenched fists were not necessary, the impact of his shoulder alone knocked his guard two steps
back and—sent him falling. Tifflor knew what was necessary to guarantee his safety, he leaped behind
the fallen guard, yanked him to his feet and held him in front of him as cover from the second kidnapper
at the door.

The man he was using as cover was stunned but not unconscious. When he understood what was
happening he made an effort to make it difficult for Tifflor. He turned under the hard grip and tried to kick
Tifflor’s shin. With a sudden jerk Tifflor pulled the man to one side and banged his head against the metal
base of an encephalograph. Then he slugged him and the man went limp under Tifflor’s fist.

Tifflor stepped back a short distance. The arm with which he held the unconscious man began to hurt.
Tifflor looked up at the door and realized with a start that the second man whom he had thought would
be there had vanished.

He whirled around, letting the unconscious man fall, and ducked between two large machines for cover.
Then he listened, hoping to hear some sound the other man might make and thus find out where he was.