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

"Or at least nobody has seen a living Looter and lived to tell about it."

"Have any tried?"

"Quite a few of our bravest young men and women have tried. None have succeeded, nor have any
come back from the attempts." Krimon's face was grim at the memory.

But the machines were there, and in terrible strength. There were the war machines, like the one Blade
had captured. All of them had the fear-making sound, the mindnumbing light, and the deadly purple ray.
There were also the tentacles, to tear captives limb from limb-or kill them in ways far slower and more
agonizing.

"That means there must be living creatures inside the war machines at least some of the time," said Blade.
"Only living creatures take pleasure from the pain they can inflict on other living creatures. Machines do
not have that bad habit."
 Krimon was able to describe for Blade the effects of the purple ray. Blade concluded that the ray
somehow burst every blood vessel in a victim's body. The victim dropped on the spot, dead almost
before he hit the ground.

Unfortunately Krimon's account didn't tell Blade anything about his own theory that the machines could
distinguish living from nonliving matter. He decided against raising the question now. Why get the poor
neuter's hopes up before giving the theory the thorough testing it would need anyway?

The Looter war machines were bad enough. But there were also the great boxlike machines that fired
the rockets. The rockets were sometimes used as weapons, but not often. Mostly the big machines used
a destructive red ray.

"Could it possibly be that the Looters do not have very many of the rockets?" asked Blade.

Krimon shrugged. "I do not know. I do not think anyone else does either." It was obvious to Blade that
the neuter had never considered the possibility of the Looters having any weaknesses at all. Morale in
Tharn seemed to be down lower than a snake's belly. He was going to have some work to do there.

However, being a god was a real asset when it came to getting people to believe in you.

There were the big box machines. They seemed to be in command. There were other kinds of boxlike
machines that carried cutting rays, or large metal claws that scooped things up. Finally there were
machines that were nothing more than enormous platforms, the size of a village square, with a small cabin
in one corner. They carried away the machinery, the stone, the metalwork that the Looters stripped from
the cities they attacked.

The Looters had started far to the east of the city where Blade saw them at work. So far they had
destroyed five Tharnian cities.

"When the Looters have finished taking from a city everything they can use, they destroy it the way the
release of the power destroyed Urcit. A terrible ball of flame rises up, and then a great cloud of smoke
soars into the sky, spreading out at the top."

The mushroom cloud of an atomic explosion. It was hardly surprising that the Looters had the atomic
bomb, considering everything else they had.