" Perry Rhodan 0083 - (75) Planet Topide Please Reply" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)

Perry Rhodan 083 Planet Topide Please Reply #75 1/ BELL PUTS HIS THUMB IN
IT Evil! The shadow of misfortune... a foreboding of ill-fated destiny. Was
2044 to be the year of disaster? The omens began on New Years Eve... In the
personal, inner circle of those few men who held the fate of the Solar Empire
in their hands, the death of Thora still gloomily pervaded their thoughts, yet
they celebrated the passage of the year 2043 according to custom-though not in
the usual frame of festivity. It all began on that particular
occasion. Inadvertently Reginald Bell knocked a cognac glass from the table.
Its contents splashed all over; the glass shattered against the floor. When he
stooped down to pick up the pieces, he cut the tip of his left thumb. In a
few minutes the New Year would begin. After straightening up swiftly and
regaining his seat, Bell sat there motionlessly with his thumb in his mouth,
peculiarly pale and staring at the large clock. "Hope that isn't bad luck..."
he mumbled somewhat indistinctly around his injured thumb. Perry Rhodan,
Khrest, Freyt and Mercant observed him with a mixture of derision and
amusement. Yet the incident had jolted them strangely. They were unprepared
for this kind of a Reginald Bell who would give credence to crystal gazing or
evil omens and other such hocus-pocus. The congenial atmosphere of the small
group had been interrupted. Perry Rhodan also looked at the clock. In 3
minutes the year 2044 would begin. It was time to pour the champagne. Bell
finally took his thumb out of his mouth. He extracted a neatly folded
handkerchief from his coat pocket and wrapped it around the small but bloodied
wound. He was about to comment again about the evil aspects of the incident
but was suddenly drowned out by a burst of riotous sound that came into the
room from outside. The New Year had arrived! Terrania, capital city of the
Solar Empire, greeted it with every noisemaking device appropriate to the
occasion. Sirens howled, alert horns blasted, fireworks screamed with an
infernal racket into the clear night sky and at the spaceport the mighty pulse
jets of the spherical spaceships suddenly contributed their thundering to the
New Year's reception while synchronized traction fields held the vessels of
the Solar Fleet firmly to their launching pads. In the pleasant comfort of
Perry Rhodan's home, which was so seldom used by this most powerful man in the
Solar Empire, the five friends clinked glasses together. They had no reason to
expand upon past triumphs and successes or to revel in such memories because
the general situation didn't justify it. Nevertheless they possessed a proper
amount of healthy optimism. Bell alone was the single exception-the one man
who would have been least expected to dampen a celebration. "What's the
matter, Chubby?" Rhodan asked his heavyset friend whose red stubble of hair
stood up like the bristles of a brush. "Are you superstitious or
something?" "No," Bell replied, setting his glass down. "But just look at
that mess!" He indicated the fragments on the floor. "That goblet was made of
unbreakable glass! But there lie the shards of its invulnerability. I'm not
superstitious exactly but when I even cut my thumb on the splinters of
something that's supposed to be safe and unbreakable, then let's face it-it's
got to be some kind of omen of impending disaster!" "But you're still not
superstitious, Bell, is that right?" smirked Rhodan, and he glanced at his
colleagues and friends, who were gently derisive of Bell's dire remark. "That
I am not and never have been!" protested Bell vehemently and he was about to
start in all over again when he was interrupted by Allan D. Mercant, Chief of
Solar Intelligence. "Where is the logic of it, Mr. Bell?" Bell answered