Perry Rhodan NEO: Volume 16 [Complete] by Hermann Ritter Michelle Stern

Author:Hermann Ritter, Michelle Stern
Language: eng
Format: epub

2.

The Ruins of Gorr

Hisab-Benkh

Panting, Hisab-Benkh squinted in the face of the sunlight. His two assistants were standing on the white earth, their demeanors combative. He hoped they would come to their senses before he had to intervene.

“I’m going in first!” Emkhar-Tuur pounded her tail against the dusty ground so hard that the fine sand rose up like a cloud, landing on Hisab-Benkh’s suit and in the grooves between the brownish-green scales of his face. She had pressed the backs of her hands into her sides to make herself wider. Her gaze was directed at the ruined building now exposed before them. A cylindrical robot was rolling slowly on its flexible chains toward the entrance, scanning and analyzing.

“No, I’m going first! You’ll just break something again, Emk! Remember the robot arm you tried to repair yesterday?!” Tesla-Lehergh’s lips twisted with derision. She rocked her head back and forth as a sign of disparagement. “It went snap!” She spitefully imitated the sound of the breaking arm with a click of her tongue. As she did, she looked with greedy eyes at the entrance to the millennia-old building, of which only the lowest level remained intact.

Although the building’s walls exhibited heavy erosion, the architecture still made it clear that it didn’t originate with the planet’s natives, the Gorrans. The material was too advanced for that. Even in their heyday, the inhabitants of Gorr hadn’t been able to produce any comparable substance. Nor had they built high into the sky as if they wanted to touch the sun. Hisab-Benkh believed that the original buildings, before their destruction, had been taller than the skyscrapers in Sendschai-Karth. Only Arkonides could have erected them. Presumably, this area had been the capital city of a large colony.

“The joint was loose!” Emkhar-Tuur said in his own defense, stirring up more dust; enough that a Berrak on a branch above them wailed indignantly. “I hardly even touched it!”

“You amputated it!”

The Berrak fluttered away from the tree with its four wings. “Kaslar,” came the discordant sound from its mouth. In Gorran, that essentially meant “idiot.”

“What does that have to do with anything? I’m going to—”

“Quiet!” Hisab-Benkh reached into the wide utility pocket on his belt and pulled out a fine-bristled brush. He ran it over his facial scales to get the sand out of the grooves. “Neither of you is going first. That’s what we have robots for.” With or without arms.

He wagged his tongue and wondered why his two assistants couldn’t go a single day without getting into an argument. If it were the full-moon constellation on Topsid, it could at least be blamed on the instinctive increase in aggression caused by heightened readiness to mate. But the two of them were combative regardless of the moon. Maybe their egg had gotten particularly hot while incubating—certainly, the twins came from one shell and thus had produced more warmth than usual. It was impossible to say which of the pair was more obstinate than the other.

“Then I’m going first after the robot,” Tisla-Lehergh demanded.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.