"Keith Laumer - The Monitors" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

Blondel waited for a moment when the coast was relatively clear, then hitched up his pants,
swallowed hard, stepped out and headed across the lawn at a brisk walk. He had covered about
half the distance before somebody called - - yelled would be too strong a word. Blondel put his
head down and sprinted. He zigged and zagged to confuse any tacklers, made the bushes with the
kind of spurt that wins gold medals under more favorable circumstances, and was slamming
through tough thorny stuff that ripped at him like fine- gauge barbed wire. He ploughed on,
bounced off a denser mass of rubbery branches and leaves, clawed his way through a barrier like
the fence around the nurses' quarters at a hardship post. Twice he went down hard, but came up
still digging, finally burst through into the clear and was back on the lawn, six feet from where he
had first dived into the hedge, watching no more than fifty stalwart young athletes in gold suits
converging from three sides. He backed a step, took a gouge in the hip pocket from the thorns,
tried a dash to the right. A Monitor loomed before him, friendly smile in place, one hand upraised.
Blondel ducked under it, pelted for the front of the house.
At that moment, with an ominous rumble, something large and dim in the gloom burst through
the hedge directly in his path. He shied, saw light glint on an armored prow above rubber- shod
tracks. There was a dull woof! and a white mist jetted from orifices low on the tank's sides.
Blondel caught a whiff of fresh-cut hollyhocks, turned to run in a new direction, felt himself
keeling over slowly like a wax figure left too long in the sun. On all fours he saw the heavy
machine lumber forward, halt beside him. A hatch popped up and a dark figure jumped down,
bent over him. He tried to gather his strength for a swing, fell on his face instead. Hands gripped
his arms, pulled him to his feet. His eyes focused on a pair of boots, sole- up on the lawn,
connected to a set of yellow-clad legs. There was another supine Monitor beyond the first, two
more in sight beyond him, ...
Then the hands dragged him back, lifted him, thrust him through a narrow opening into dim
light, dumped him on cold metal and webbing. There was a deep-throated roar, a surge of motion
as the canopy thumped down, cutting off the flow of cold air.
"About time," someone was saying over the rumble of engines. "We've been hovering in the
underbrush for six hours, waiting for you to show yourself."
Blondel got a firm grip on his head, swung it around far enough to see a curly head of dark hair
and a set of horn- rims.
"Hey," he said weakly. "This is ... I was ... you were ... "
"Take it easy," Maxwell said. "You didn't think we'd run out on you, did you?"
 CHAPTER FIVE


After a quarter of an hour, the fumes had cleared sufficiently from Blondel's head to enable him
to sit up and look around at a corrugated metal floor, a padded curve of door, the clear plastic
canopy and a spread of lighted instrument faces before which Maxwell and another man sat,
hunched forward over a small screen that threw a theatrical light on their faces. Blondel saw that
it was an illuminated map, unreeling steadily across, the frame. Maxwell glanced up. "Ah, you're
feeling better," he called over the shrill of wind and the roar of the engines.
"I guess so. What's going on?"
Maxwell pointed to a glowing blue dot at the center of the screen.
"This is our present location. We ma de the pickup here" -- he indicated a spot on the map - -
"and our destination is to the north of here." He tapped the upper edge of the screen.
Blondel fought back a sensation of seasickness induced by the swaying, bobbing motion of the
vehicle. "This is quite a machine you've got here," he said. "Who owns it, the Army?"
Maxwell patted it affectionately. "Our Z- car has been quite a little surprise to the enemy.
Radar- negative, nuclear- powered, impregnably armored. Nothing they've got can touch it." He
frowned. "Everything works but the guns. I'll have to speak to the General about that."