"Linda Evans - Time Scout 1 - Time Scout" - читать интересную книгу автора (Evans Linda)

not be permitted to pass Primary. Please have your baggage ready for
customs..."
Malcolm stopped listening. He'd memorized the up-time departure litany
years
ago. Besides, departures down-time were always more entertaining than watching
a
bunch of government agents search luggage. The real fun at Primary wouldn't
begin until the new arrivals started coming through. Malcolm's gaze found the
countdown for Gate Six. Any second now...
A hum of sub-harmonics rumbled through the time terminal as Gate Six, the
biggest of TT-86s active gates, came to life. Outside the range of audible
sound, yet detectable through the vibration of bones at the base of one's
skull,
the sound that wasn't a sound intensified.
Across the Commons, tourists pressed behind their ears with the heels of
hands in an attempt to relieve the unpleasant sensation. Malcolm traced his
gaze
up a pair of broad ramps-one of which descended toward the waiting area from a
wide catwalk, the other of which would handle departures-and waited eagerly.
Up at the edge of the catwalk an utterly blank section of wall began to
shimmer. Lake a heat haze over a stretch of noonday highway, the air rippled.
Colors dopplered through the spectrum in odd, distorted patterns. Gasps rose
from the waiting area, distinctly audible in the hush. Then a black spot
appeared in the dead center of the blank wall.
Tourists gaped and pointed. For most, it was only the second time in their
lives they'd seen a temporal gate up-close and personal-their first, of
course,
being Primary on the down-time trip to Shangri-la. Conversation, which had
begun
to pick up again in the wake of the first shimmer, died off sharply. Baggage
handlers finished tying off their loads. Last-minute transactions led to more
money changing hands. More than one guide gulped down the last scalding coffee
they'd taste in two weeks.
The spot on the wall dilated, spreading outward like a growth of bread mold
viewed on high-speed film. In the center of the darkness, as though viewed
through the wrong end of a telescope, Malcolm made out the shape of dim
shelves
and tiny amphorae stacked neatly in rows at the back of a long, deep room.
Then
light flared like a twinkling star as someone on the other side lit a lamp.
Tourists on the floor exclaimed, then laughed in nervous delight as a man
dressed as a Roman slave, but moving with the purpose and authority of a Time
Tours organizer, stepped through. He rushed at them like a hurled baseball,
growing in apparent height from a few inches to full size in the blink of an
eyelash, then calmly stepped through onto the metal grating. He landed barking
orders.
Tourists, some looking dazed and ill, others talking animatedly, all of
them
visibly tired, spilled through the open gate onto the catwalk and down the
ramp.