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

The machine's legs flexed, and it let out an ear-torturing howl like a dozen fire sirens all going at once.
But before the machine could move, Blade reached the platform in the rear. He grasped the railing and
vaulted over, landing on hands and knees with a clang and a thump. It vibrated and quivered under the
impact of Blade's two hundred and ten pounds.

The turret continued to turn until the ray-tube was pointing directly backward, over the platform and only
a foot or so above Blade's head. Blade flattened himself against the hatch as the tube sank down. With
an audible click it reached the bottom of its slot and stopped. The siren died away. Apparently something
in the machine had concluded that the danger was past or that the ray would be no good against it. Blade
hoped it was the first and raised his head to look about him.

The smoke was rising from nearly a dozen places in the city now. The individual clouds merged into a
vast sullen gray black pall that was spreading ahead of the wind. The hissing noises were louder now and
almost continuous. So was the crashing and rumbling of great weights falling. Something powerful and
destructive was at work in the city.

It certainly wasn't the other two war machines. They still stood motionless where they had been, their
turrets turning slowly. They seemed to be paying no attention to anything that was going on in the city.
They also seemed to be ignoring what had just climbed aboard their companion.

Blade turned toward the hatch. It would not be a bad idea to get away from here for a while. Something
much more powerful and destructive than the purple ray was at work in the city. Blade couldn't help
feeling that it would be wise to be ready to leave in a hurry if the something turned his way. The best and
fastest way to leave would be aboard this machine. If he could learn to run it, he could put a good many
miles between himself and whatever was tearing the ruins apart, then study the machine at his leisure.

Step one get inside the bloody thing! Blade examined the hatch. It offered no obvious knobs, dials,
latches, handles, wheels, or any other way of opening it. It was simply a slightly recessed circle of metal
about three feet in diameter, set in the rear slope of the machine's hull. Blade thumped the center with his
clenched fist. The metal resounded with a faint hollow boom, but that was all.

There were no visible hinges, and it wouldn't have helped Blade much even if there had been. Without
tools he would have been hard put to dismantle them. He went to work with both fists, systematically and
carefully tapping the whole surface of the hatch.

A metallic rattling from the front end of the machine interrupted Blade. He broke off his examination of
the hatch and craned his neck to peer around the curve of the machine's hull.

Four long flexible metal tentacles were creeping out of the ports in the front of the machine. They
seemed to be composed of hundreds of circular segments, like giant earthworms. At its base each
tentacle was a good six inches in diameter. Three of them tapered to whip-fine tips. The fourth ended in a
flared section, crowned with a circular knob. All four crept slowly out of their ports until they reached out
a good thirty feet or more. Then they began to rise, bending backward as they did so, over the turret,
toward Blade.

Blade stopped his work on the hatch and froze, his eyes fixed on the tentacles as they arched toward
him. His mouth was dry again, but his mind was still racing furiously. The tentacles could only be a
back-up defense for the machine, to handle anything that got through the other defenses.