"(novel) (ebook) - Perry Rhodan 0010 - (5a) Space Battle in the Vega Sector" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)

The alarm had been activated by the ship’s own warp sensors, which had registered strong disturbances along the curvature of space. It lasted a few moments; then the registrations subsided, and gradually the warning lights died out.Rhodan looked around him silently. Thora’s pose revealed such an experienced adjustment to the whole experience that he withheld his burning question.Bell did not have such good control. He staggered over to the viewscreens. Expressionlessly, he asked, "Are we there—all in one piece?" Is that Vega?"Somewhat too coolly, the Arkonide answered, "What did you think? Our ships always make successful hypertransitions."

"A transition of twenty-seven light-years?" Bell swallowed hard, then mumbled an oath under his breath. Without another word, he went back to his seat and started collecting the reports that were reeling out of the control console. So everything was all in order. What had been a world shaking experience for the crew had come off with the ease and precision of a fine watch. No one seemed to be very excited by it, least of all the Arkonides.

Khrest stood anxiously in front of the warp sensor calculators. The fully automatic output indicated bearing on the first planet. Countless green flecks of light appeared on the screens, and these objects attracted the Arkonide’s burning interest."Our ships!" whispered Khrest, enraptured. "A small fleet. Look at the warp sensor data. More than fifty units emerged simultaneously from hyperspace."

His gaze met Rhodan’s expressionless eyes."When?"

"Precisely concurrent with us."

"Excellent!" said Rhodan. "In that case, they will not have detected our own warp disturbance. Coincidence, don’t you think?"

"I think a mutual detection would be desirable," Thora put in heatedly. "I do not intend to search any farther. Please start the galactonautic calculators on the course equations for the eighth planet. I guarantee you we’ll find our research ships there."

"You could have a point there," Rhodan said slowly. Then came the sharp command, "Bell! All hands to battle stations! Thora, you take the scanner controls. Bell, you’re in charge of the weapons control center!"The clamour of alarms rang through the various sections of the Good Hope. Men sprang to their feet and stared at each other.

Deringhouse announced himself over the intercom. His two space fighters were clear for takeoff.

"Have you gone mad?" Thora trembled, her eyes raging with anger. She drew herself up haughtily before the long, lean man whom she believed she actually hated at this moment.

"Maybe," Rhodan said calmly. "And maybe not. In any case, I’m not so crazy that I’m going to go joy dancing into an unknown solar system without good reason. Didn’t I tell you that I don’t believe there are any Arkonide ships? Please go to your defence post·" He watched her silently as she turned from him in a rage."Captain Klein, climb onto those direction finders! Wuriu Sengu, stand by. We will be through the system in about eight hours. There are forty-two planets to cover. The distances between them are very great. Thank you, I believe that will be all."

As he took his control seat again the isolated flux reactors started to howl. Around the outer hull, after a brief shimmer, the defence screen began building up extradimensional energy quanta. Then came the repulsion field for protection against materially stabilized bodies. Thus the Good Hope became as well secured as was possible with the Arkonide technology.

The little points ot green light still flickered on the sensor screens as before. They were still at some distance, more than three light-hours, which could be traversed under the Good Hope’s normal velocity."I demand a short span transition!" Thora’s voice shrilled.Rhodan did not answer. Though she held herself under control, she nevertheless persisted. In the rear of the control room the five mutants sat grouped together. Betty Toufry and John Marshall listened to thought streams that an ordinary mortal could never have sensed.

After a moments the girl said tonelessly, "I hear the crying of souls. Someone is dying. Space is filled with whispered grief and sobbing. Despair, pain, death!"

Her eyes seemed of boundless depth. Bell looked askance at the girl. On the detector screens of the interstellar spaceship, still more green flecks assembled. Rhodan established full alert on board. The positronic fire control system came on. On the screens that were receiving the image of Vega, the great star gleamed at them like the blue cycloptic eye of a great dark god…Far ahead in the depths of the mighty planetary system, something was happening that was as yet incomprehensible…

The cry echoed hollowly through the control room. No one had actually anticipated what was going on now, and that which ensued overtook them with the impact and speed of a charging beast of prey.Gigantic Vega, principal star of the constellation Lyra, hung like a monstrous iridescent soap bubble in the normal range observation screens. It was a giant type star.



So it was that some time passed before anyone began to discern the distant hairlines of light rays and exploding light blobs. The wide screen scanners with their enormous magnification were the first to make it clear that terrible events were occurring in the vicinity of the fourteenth planet.

Five minutes after positive detection, the hyperfast field sensors responded. Their shrill clamour still continued. The highly sensitive equipment, which reacted to the presence of energy discharges had not been activated in vain. It was too late, because the Good Hope still maintained its near light velocity. So it would have been impossible to turn aside from the unheralded ships appearing so suddenly or to avoid crossing their confused trajectories.

The space sphere’s twin starboard drivers roared into a blazing thrust of power. A small course deflection even at this mad velocity would still suffice to bring the Good Hope out of the immediate area of danger. But then the inertial absorbers began to scream their complaint. They were wolfing in a part of the available power that only moments before, Rhodan had channelled exclusively into the projectors of the overlapped defence screens.The alien finger of light that raced now toward the Good Hope could not have been propagated at the speed of light. If it had, the optical visiscopes would have discerned it only at the moment of contact. It approached swiftly enough, however, to bring a bellow of alarm from the men in the control room. They recognized this gleaming phenomenon, which for all its seeming harmlessness carried the sting of death.

Rhodan turned up the variac control of the starboard drivers still more. Try as it would, the Good Hope could not be torn out of its course. Even Arkonide science had its limitations; the mass of a near light speed object could not be retarded. Deviation manoeuvres could never be made abruptly and certainly not at right angles. A course deflection curve of 1,200,000 miles radius was all that could be hoped for. Mass in motion remained mass in motion, and nothing could change it.

The matter straining crash manoeuvre was sufficient to pluck the space sphere out of the centre line of danger at the last moment. The finger of light, which was nothing less than a sharply focused energy beam of obviously high intensity, snapped past the swerving ship only a thousand yards away in the emptiness of interplanetary space.

"A fine reception!" shouted Rhodan, giving vent to his anger.

The white faced Arkonides stared at his hard lined face for a moment. Then, what could only be inevitable in this swarm of ships occurred.

On the visiscreens what had been points of light before had now become mighty shapes that hung rank upon rank in space and filled the deep darkness with an endless filigree of varicoloured lines.