"Perry Rhodan 029 - Fleet of the Springers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)

The alarm cut off his words. The whistling was shriller than Orlgans and Ornafer had ever heard before. The enemy must have emerged in close proximity.
The structure­sensor reacted at. the same time but Orlgans paid no attention. He listened to the hysterical voice of the observer coming over the loudspeaker.
"By the lord of all stars, its an Arkonide ship!"
Half a second later Orlgans saw it burst onto the picture screen. It was a spherical ship, as built by Arkonides, and was no more than 6000 miles away.
Orlgans was aware that he was outclassed by the alien. "Full speed ahead," he shouted into the intercom to the engine control room. "Hurry!"
The machinery worked precisely. The tremendous power of the engines tore Orla XI out of its circular track and forced the ship into open space.
Orlgans watched the movement from the command centre. He realized that he had underestimated the velocity of his opponent. The spherical ship had emerged from the transition almost with the speed of light and ruined the Orla's effort with a mad run.
Orlgans was an experienced captain who had already performed more than 10,000 transitions. He knew what risk was involved in reentering at such high velocity-close to the critical limit-from a transition. He never had dared it himself and knew full well that an Arkonide captain would be even less inclined to risk it.
Who was this daredevil?
So far Orlgans had merely been sceptical but now he was scared.
An Arkonide ship with a strange captain at the helm!
The spherical ship easily caught up with Orla XI and raced past. At the position of least distance a pale light grey beam flashed from the mighty body of the hostile ship, shot above the Orla and lost itself in the depth of space.

"We're lucky their aim is poor," Orlgans muttered and warned his few gunners to beware.

* * * *

The fact that the Orla started to move away with the prisoners in tow went unnoticed in the mess-hall. The neutralizers of the K­7 continued to operate perfectly and would have compensated for far greater acceleration than the ship presently experienced.
Tiff kept glancing at his watch from time to time.
Still 10 minutes till zero.
Major Deringhouse grinned in spite of his pain. It was now rather quiet in the mess hall. One could easily bear him as he said from his cot: "I'd give a year's pay to see their faces."
At first Tiff was shocked. On second thought he realized that Deringhouse was not really pressing their luck. Even assuming that the Springers would submit each of their remarks to the positronic translator, it would take more than 10 minutes before they could see the translation of the English sentence and a little more than that to grasp its true meaning.
About three minutes before zero, one of the cadets began to hammer against the door as planned. In less than a minute the door slid open and the faces of two guards appeared in the frame. "What do you want?" one of them asked.
"We're starving," Tiff answered quickly.
"Make yourselves something to eat!"
"We don't have a thing."
The guard laughed and turned around. "Honnap, get something to eat!"
Honnap's loud voice answered from the main corridor: "I can't go across. It's much too dangerous at this acceleration."
The guard turned again to Tiff. "Right," he chortled. "We've been moving for a few minutes. You'll have to wait till we stop accelerating."
Tiff was greatly surprised but he knew that he couldn't afford to let this moment pass without acting. A second time the guards were not likely to be so careless.
Tiff looked around. He could read the same surprise in the faces of the others. One of them inquired: "Acceleration? Why does the Orla accelerate?"
Tiff started to whistle the song again. He saw from the look in their eyes that they began to understand. The Orla racing away with the K­7 and nobody knew why. Now was the time to strike!
Tiff leaped forward and clamped both arms around the big neck of the guard. The force of his rush carried him out into the corridor but Tiff braced his feet firmly and quickly pulled the husky Springer through the open door back into the messhall.
The guard went limp and Tiff let him drop.
"Watch him!" Tiff shouted.
And the five cadets who were assigned to guard the defeated Springers took the motionless guard into their custody.
Hifield and two other cadets overwhelmed the second guard.
Meanwhile Honnap had become suspicious. He approached with clacking boots. Tiff and Eberhardt lunged toward him together. Honnap's thermo-gun was useless. He was unable to raise the long barrel fast enough. A wild shot hissed through the wide corridor but a moment later Honnap lay unconscious on the floor.
"Four to go!" Tiff panted. "Let's make a dash for the command centre!"
None of the four other guards were in sight. A throng of cadets stormed down the main corridor.

* * * *

"The ship!" Ornafer shouted in desperation. "It got loose!"
At first Orlgans didn't get what he meant. The ship? The ship got loose? Then he glanced to the side at the observation screen.
The little sphere of the captured enemy ship had disappeared, not completely disappeared in as much as it was still visible as a little speck in space. Yet it was separated from the Orla.
Orlgans started to swear. He felt the urge to pursue the escaping spaceship and to capture it again. However there was still the faintly shimmering spot on the front screen showing the large hostile ship whose disintegrator shot had missed the Orla by only a few hundred feet.
There was the greater danger, Orlgans decided.
He didn't know how his captives had succeeded in gaining their freedom but this was at the moment of secondary importance.