Transformers: Ghosts of Yesterday - A Novel

Informationen zum Autor Alan Dean Foster Klappentext The first human-alien contact. The last word in galactic warfare. The story you must read-before Transformers rockets to the big screen! A mammoth robotic being! clearly of alien origin! has been found beneath the Arctic ice. Its advanced engineering dwarfs known human technology! and unlocking its secrets will catapult American science eons into the future. In search of the mysterious artifact's origin! a covert government agency sends the manned craft Ghost 1 on a perilous journey of discovery. When a mishap maroons Ghost 1 in the far reaches of unknown space! the ship's distress beacon reaches the very alien race Ghost 1's crew has been seeking: the Autobots. The gigantic mechanized beings are also on a quest: to find the Allspark! a device crucial to the salvation of their home world! Cybertron. But they're not alone. The Decepticons! the Autobots' brutal enemies! have their own sinister purposes in seeking the Allspark. As these adversaries are drawn together once more! the stage is set for a death-dealing new battle in which each is driven by a single-minded aim: total annihilation of the enemy. Leseprobe Standing taller than a thirty-six-story building and weighing six million, seven hundred thousand pounds, in the year 1969 the Saturn V moon rocket was the biggest man-made object ever sent into space. Representing the epitome of human research, it was a technological marvel that awed even those whose dedication and long, hard labor had come together to make it a reality.   No one on Earth suspected that there were forces at work throughout the galaxy, good as well as evil, to whom the massive rocket was nothing more than an oversized firecracker.   Though not the first Saturn V to be launched from Kennedy Space Center, Apollo 11 was special. The three astronauts waiting patiently in the capsule atop what was, after all, little more than a gigantic but hopefully domesticated flying bomb had trained long and hard for the coming mission, but they were still human. They were not machines, and they were certainly not robots. All three of them had families and lives they fully intended to return to. No one doubted the success of the forthcoming venture, but that did not mean they had no qualms. The tons of explosive fuel waiting to be ignited just aft of their backsides were enough to induce second thoughts in even the most highly trained individual.   Too late for any kind of thoughts now except those essential to carrying out the launch. Switches were thrown, readouts checked and rechecked, the primitive computational devices of the late 1960s engaged. Over the craft’s internal speakers the three waiting astronauts could hear the composed voice of Mission Control.   “T minus thirty seconds and counting.” Simple words for some of the most complex coordinated activities humankind had ever attempted. The men on board responded as they had been trained to do.   “Astronauts report all systems check out,” the controller announced. “T minus twenty-five seconds and counting.”   While the men onboard devoted their full attention to their respective instruments, they still managed to find time for personal thoughts. Uppermost among these was the certain knowledge that if the launch failed and the rocket blew, they would likely never know what had happened to them.   “T minus fifteen seconds. Guidance going to internal.” The briefest, most significant of pauses, then, “Twelve, eleven, ten, nine, ignition sequence start, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero. We have ignition of the Saturn Five, we have ignition.”   The kind of rumble one experiences only beneath the center of a supercell thunderstorm erupted from the base of the rocket. It was as if half a dozen tornadoes had been recorded spinning around a common axis. Those observers not stationed at a distance a...

Product details

• Authors: Alan Dean Foster, Alan Dean/ Cian Foster
• Publisher: Del Rey
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 27.03.2007
• EAN: 9780345497987
• ISBN: 978-0-345-49798-7
• No. of pages: 304
• Dimensions: 108 mm x 173 mm x 20 mm
• Series: Transformers (Ballantine Books; Transformers (Ballantine Books; Random House Worlds
• Subject: Fiction > Science fiction, fantasy