"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 14 - The Temples of Ayocan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

could grip. Lord Leighton finished his visual inspection of all the readouts. He never omitted this, no
matter how many automatic controls and monitoring devices he installed in the computers. "The human
mind is still the best monitoring device when you can't be sure in advance of what you're going to find," he
often said. Then he turned to Blade, ran one hand through his scanty white hair, and poised the other
over the red master switch.
"Are you comfortable, Richard?"
Blade would have shrugged if the straps and electrodes on him had permitted. "I'd have to say I'm as
comfortable as I could expect, under the circumstances." Not that his discomfort or comfort would make
any difference in another few seconds, when he was whirled off to Dimension X. But Lord Leighton
obviously wanted to hear that his guinea pig was comfortable. So why not humor the man?
Lord Leighton smiled thinly. Blade fixed his gaze on the gnarled hand as it drifted down to close over
the switch. He kept it fixed as the switch slowly moved down in its slot, toward the red line-and over it.
 Sudden, terrible, total disorientation struck Blade, all his senses blacking out at once. There was an
instant when he was not even aware of his own body, and barely aware of the workings of his own mind.
There was just enough self-awareness left for him to feel a stabbing, numbing fear.
He was dying.
The computer had finally run amuck and destroyed his mind.
This was the last moment of awareness he would have, before he went out forever like a snuffed
candle.
If he had had a throat, he would have screamed in that moment. But he had to scream inside his
mind. And then the moment passed.
Light and sound and the sensation of movement returned to him in an explosive rush. For a moment
he wanted to scream again, as the sensations poured down on him like a waterfall, making his mind reel.
Then his mind reacted and stabilized itself, sorting out all the impressions tearing at it into something
coherent.
He was sliding down an immense shimmering black slope, whirling around and around as he did so.
Overhead pulsed a glaring sky filled with terrible silver light, so brilliant that he had to narrow his eyes to
keep from being dazzled. There was no feeling of air rushing past him as he plunged downward, no
feeling of friction with the blackness under him. It was as though the black surface was so perfectly
lubricated that he slipped over it as effortlessly as a bit of dandelion fluff.
Then the air around him began to grow thicker, seemingly trying to wrap itself around him and slow
his passage. He began to feel as if he was falling ever more slowly into a bottomless mass of thin, watery
doughтАФsticky, clammy, and cold. He found himself holding his breath, then discovered that the dough
was growing thicker and beginning to tighten around his chest. Each time he breathed out, he found it
harder to breathe in again. Then he could not breathe in at all, and once again he felt a moment of panic.
And then there was blackness.


Chapter 2
┬л^┬╗
Being able to breathe again told Blade that he had made the shift into the new dimension. For a time he
did not try to move, except for the muscles in his chest. He lay where he had landed, savoring the luxury
of cool air flowing in and out of his body. He did not even bother to open his eyes.
When he did, bright sunlight stabbed into them, which did not make his throbbing head feel any
better. He closed his eyes again and turned his head to one side and kept it in that position until the
headache had faded. Then he opened his eyes, lifted his head, and looked around him.
He first saw mountainsтАФhigh mountains, snowcapped, rearing jaggedly against a blue sky. For a
moment the mountains seemed so close that he thought he could reach out and touch themтАФor they
could rise up and topple over on him.
Then his vision cleared, and perspective returned. It was the crystal clear air and the flat land