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

idea that machines might be built to detect it was something that might leave even Lord Leighton
temporarily speechless. Blade suspected there were a good many people, J included, who would enjoy
the spectacle of a speechless Lord Leighton.

One thing was certain-this dimension could hardly be Tharn. The neuters of Tharn had served well at
keeping all the complex machinery functioning. They had known more of magnetism and gravity than
Home Dimension scientists could have imagined.

But the neuters had not had creative, curious, exploring minds. There was nothing of interest for them
beyond what they already knew well. They had not discovered anything for many centuries, nor had they
any need or wish to do so.

When Blade was among them, they certainly had not discovered anything that might have gone into
making the war machine.

So he had solved one problem. But he still faced another-how to approach that machine which squatted
grim and gleaming, so tantalizingly close at hand.

If a target carried metal-or at least some nonorganic material-it presumably was not an animal and might
be dangerous to the machine. Then the purple ray was called into play. What it did to what it hit, Blade
still didn't know. But he remembered those skeletons bleaching in the grass. Had they been struck down
by this same purple ray, to lie there until the flesh was rotted and weathered away from the bones?

Perhaps. Well, the machine would find that Richard Blade was a tougher opponent than those poor
helpless savages! Blade mentally shook his fist at the war machine. The effort cleared his head. His mind
leaped ahead again, mapping out a strategy.

To get any closer to the machine would risk detection. But what if he was detected as nothing but a
moving mass of organic matter, nothing but a large animal for all the machine could tell? The machine
seemed to be programmed to fire at anything that might be an intelligent and therefore dangerous being.
But it might not fire at all on something that merely registered as an animal. Or it might at least hold its fire
until Blade was too close to be hit.

That meant stripping himself of all his equipment. He didn't much like going up against the machine naked
and barehanded. But if his reasoning was correct, he had no choice. The first belt he had thrown was the
only item of gear that wasn't metal or metal-studded. It was unfortunate that the people of this dimension
hadn't learned to work their plastic into effective sword blades as had been done in Tharn.

Blade laughed at himself. It was unfortunate that the people of his dimension hadn't provided him with a
good many things that would have made him feel better about tackling the machine, starting with that
antitank rocket. But regretting their absence wasn't going to conjure them out of the ground or out of thin
air.

Moving slowly and carefully, staying low to the ground, Blade stripped off his equipment. He piled it on
the grass beside him, marking the place by pulling out several clumps of grass. It might be handy to be
able to find the gear again in a hurry. The war machines weren't necessarily the only enemies roaming in
this land.

Still moving slowly and carefully, he crawled away from the gear, occasionally sticking his head up
through the long grass. The war machine showed no sign of moving. But something new was happening in