"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 12 - King of Zunga" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

Blade 12: King of Zunga

by Jeffrey Lord

CHAPTER ONE
"Blast," said J,. and dropped the sheaf of papers down on the desk in front of him. It took an effort for
him not to throw them, down, or even throw them across the room.

From behind the broad, polished desk, Lord Leighton stared at J. The scientist was bent forward in the
pose that made his hunchback and his polio-twisted frame most comfortable for him. His gnarled,
knob-jointed hands were splayed out on the varnished desk top. It seemed to J that for a moment there
was a fleeting look of sympathy on Lord Leighton's gnomelike face. But it vanished quickly, and was
replaced by the man's usual professional detachment.

The scientist shrugged his humped shoulders and said quietly, "It's not my fault, old chap. Really it isn't."

J sighed: "I know, damn it!" His dignified civil servant's face broke into a wry grin. "I suppose the one we
could blame is Richard himself, if we wanted to." That made even Lord Leighton smile, at the incongruity
of the idea.

J leaned back in his chair and considered. Here in this office two hundred feet below the Tower of
London sat two of the key men in Project Dimension X, the most important and most secret research
project in England. Sometimes J wondered if they needed all the secrecy. Would the average man or
even the average member of Parliament really believe in the project if he heard of it, let alone understand
it? J wondered. He was a well-educated man and had been in secret intelligence work since World War
I. He had often dealt in his work with things too fantastic to believe. But never with anything like Project
Dimension X. Every so often, when his mind confronted some new part of the project, it more or less
tried to go on strike. What would the man in the street say?

Project Dimension X involved, very simply, putting a man into alternate dimensions. Eleven different
ones so far, but the number was doubtless nearly infinite. With Lord Leighton's computer linked to the
man's brain, he would vanish from beneath the Tower-from Home Dimension. He would
awaken-somewhere else-in Dimension X, always naked, usually with a splitting headache; and more
often than not with a great need to both think and act fast to stay alive. The dimensions varied widely,
and most of them sounded like a madman's ravings when put down on paper. But they all seemed to
have one thing in common-they were all filled with deadly dangers.

The project revolved around four key men. Lord Leighton had developed the computer-a monster two
or three generations beyond anything else believed possible in the rest of the world. The Prime Minister
provided the money that the project gobbled up by the hundreds of thousands of pounds, and fought off
indiscreet questions from curious M.P.s. J acted as liaison and field man for both the scientist and the
politician, since he had more freedom of movement than either. And as head of the secret intelligence
agency MI6, he had provided the fourth key man.

Richard Blade. Recruited by MI6 while still at Oxford, he had fulfilled his early promise ten times over.
He had been MI6's best agent for the better part of twenty years, expert in both the thinking and the
rough-and-tumble ends of the business. He had been the secret of many of the agency's most successful
operations. He had, in fact, become virtually indispensable. J would have esteemed him highly even if
Richard had not been so much like the son he had wanted.