"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 19 - Looters of Tharn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

try again.

This time he picked a belt of teksin with a number of iron discs tied onto it. Again he leaped, again his
arm whipped out, again the belt soared through the air. Being heavier, this one flew a good deal farther.
Blade was back flat on the ground before it even reached the peak of its flight. The machine's turret was
turning even as the belt hit. The light blinked again. Then the tube sank down until it was aiming at the
belt, and a solid bar of searing, glaring purple light stabbed out of it. Blade buried his head in his arms and
listened to the angry sizzling noise as the beam stabbed out, again and again.

He had been right. The war machine had unleashed another weapon, the most powerful yet.

Chapter 5

Blade had expected fireworks when the machine unleashed its heavy weapon. Clouds of smoke,
wreckage flying high in the air, the belt and an acre of grass around it blasted to fragments or burned to a
cinder, a ground shock or concussion violent enough to knock him unconscious.

Almost nothing happened. A slight quiver in the ground, a purple glow and a slight wavering in the air
above the grass where the belt lay, a hiss of disturbed air. Then even the after-image of the searing purple
glare was fading from Blade's eyes. He stared toward the belt. The grass around where it had fallen
looked fresh and undisturbed. No smoke, not a blade out of place. The machine stood motionless, its
turret still turning slowly and steadily.

Blade crouched in the grass and began to run his thoughts back over what he had just seen. He was no
scholar, but he had a mind superbly skilled in analyzing any practical situation. It was a mind that had
worked with computerlike efficiency long before Lord Leighton had gone to work on it. If it hadn't,
Blade would never have lived long enough for Lord Leighton to deal with him.

Some sort of warning device tracked targets for the main weapon, the purple ray. Some targets called
that ray into operation, some didn't. What was the difference? Blade considered how he had thrown the
two belts. He couldn't remember any real difference in the way they had flown through the air or landed
in the grass.

No, it was something in the targets-the belts, in this case-themselves. The two were virtually identical in
size, shape, and weight. But-they weren't identical in material.

Blade's mind raced. The first belt had been made of leather and the teksinlike plastic. The second had
been made of leather with iron discs sewn all over it. Iron, a metal. Or at least something
nonorganic-something that had never been living. Now suppose the plastic was really made of something
like the mani plant of Tharn? Then it would be organic. Leather was certainly organic.

Blade's mind raced on even faster. The detectors in that machine worked on a principle that Home
Dimension scientists hadn't even imagined, let alone studied! The ability to distinguish between even small
amounts of living or once-living matter and any and all nonliving matter seemed to be there. It was hard to
believe, but it was there.

There was an awesomely advanced science behind that machine, however battered and rundown it
might have become. Getting a closer look at it was something worth enormous risks. Getting inside it
would be even better. The idea that there was such a detectable difference between organic and
nonorganic matter would throw a bombshell into half a dozen branches of Home Dimension science. The