"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 09 - Kingdom of Royth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

Then there was a further wait, while Blade's impatience began to build. Of course Leighton had to
double-check everything. Still, why did he always have to be so bloody slow about it? Blade took
several breaths as deep as the straps permitted and tried to relax.
Finally everything was ready. J moved aside and raised a hand in farewell as Lord L stepped slowly
up to the main console and poised his hand over the master control switch. He turned and looked
inquiringly at Blade. "Ready, my boy?"
"Ready, sir."
"Good luck."
The gnarled hand pressed the master switch. There was a hum of surging power, then the shrill
wailing of a hundred thousand flutes filled the chamber and made the air turn a liquid green. Everything
around Blade turned green too, except for the figures of J and Lord L. They turned blue, then shrank and
became dwarfed and monkeylike, scratched themselves and clambered frantically up the face of the
computer. The electrodes writhed and twisted and pulled themselves free from his body, turning to
snakes as they did so. The snakes wriggled furiously across the floor and swarmed up the face of the
computer after the fleeing monkey figures.
 Just as the snakes reached them, the face of the computer itself cracked open in a hundred places.
Blade cringed as the great slabs of facing came pouring down on him and then poured through him, and a
tangible blackness flooded out from the vast hole where the computer had been, gushing out until Blade
was completely surrounded by it and the snakes and monkeys were both gone.
Then the blackness receded slightly, and Blade was standing on a concrete block with harsh blue
lights pouring down on him from all around. A voice was chanting tonelessly,
"Five-four-three-two-one-LIFT-OFF!" Fire spewed out from under the block and he and it together
began to rise into the sky. Quickly they were out of the blue lights, rising again into thick blackness, until
the flames gushing from the block died and it fell away. Blade hurtled alone through the dark, then felt
himself slowing. His climb ceased; he rolled over and began to fall, silently, with no sensation of air
rushing past or of anything except the falling, the endless falling.


CHAPTER 2
┬л^┬╗
Blade suddenly realized that he had made the transition into Dimension X. The fall was now a real,
physical one. Before he had even had time to wonder where he was going to come down, he hit water
with a tremendous splash. He plunged deep enough for the light to turn green, then kicked his way to the
surface. The water was cool enough for the coolness to be noticeable, but not enough for it to be
uncomfortable. That was fortunate. He might have landed in the local equivalent of theArctic Ocean , in
which case he would have been dead within three minutes. Even so, this was the first time he had found
himself in water immediately after a transition.
Treading water, he took stock of the situation as he had done eight times before. As always, he had a
splitting headache. And as always, the loincloth had gone, leaving him as naked as any fish that might
swim in thisтАФriver, lake, sea?тАФwhere he had landed. He licked his lips. Salt. So it was an ocean or sea.
Next question: how far was he from shore? He was a powerful swimmerтАФtwenty miles was nothing to
himтАФbut if he was out in the middle of something the size of, say, the Atlantic Ocean, he was in a sticky
situation. Before, it had been a question of landing in the middle of battles or at least of some inhabited
territory where he had to fight or at least communicate with the local inhabitants immediately. Now, half
his problem was the lack of people.
The headache had faded enough now so that he could raise his head and look around. The sea was
calm, broken only by a gentle swell no more than two or three feet high. Above its surface nothing moved
except the faintest of breezes. The air itself was warm and moist, faintly scented with something Blade at
first had trouble identifying. Then he realized it was the smell of smoke. Smoke? In the middle of an
ocean? He resumed his scanning of the horizonтАФnot far away, for a man in the water.