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

Now there was more than that teksinlike material to make him wonder if he was back in Tharn. Seen
closer up, a good many of the city's buildings were beginning to remind him of Urcit, the capital of Tharn.
Urcit was gone now, destroyed by the final explosion of its Power. But parts of this city might have been
Urcit's ghost-if a city could have a ghost.

Again, this could be coincidence. But two coincidences between this dimension and Tharn? Blade
couldn't help wondering. He also couldn't help moving forward even faster than before, until be was
almost trotting. He covered the next mile at that pace, then stopped again.

No, the resemblance to Urcit was just a coincidence, startling as it was. Blade couldn't see a single case
of the phallic theme that had dominated art and architectural decoration in decadent Urcit, with its people
of beautiful, sex-starved women. Several of the buildings bore large, complex designs in red. They
looked to Blade more like three or four large snakes having an orgy than anything else. Definitely they
weren't the magnificently explicit phallic themes of the people's art.

He felt almost disappointed. He remembered Zulekia's face hovering before him as the computer
worked on his brain, thrusting him into this dimension. He would have liked to see the changes made in
the time since he left Tharn. He had broken the mold in which both the people and their barbaric
enemies, the Pethcines, had been trapped. He had given them-call it their freedom, for want of a better
word. What had they done with it?

He doubted that he or anybody else from Home Dimension would ever find out.

He rose to his feet again and started forward. Then in the next moment he stopped, stared, and threw
himself flat on the ground.

Out from behind a building on the edge of the city slid a gleaming metal machine. It rode some thirty feet
off the ground, and the air blurred under it. With one glance Blade could see that it was a machine built
for one purpose, and one purpose only.

War.

Chapter 4

The machine was so ugly that Blade couldn't imagine it being used for anything but war. It was swinging
back and forth across a narrow arc as it moved cut from the building. The movement reminded Blade of
a hunting dog in the field, casting about for a scent. Blade watched it move steadily closer, noting details
as he made them out.

The machine must have been a good forty feet long, twenty feet wide, and ten feet from its flat silver
belly to the domed turret on top. It looked like two half eggshells, flat side down, a smaller one perched
on top of a larger one. At the rear of the main body was a railed platform.

From the front of the turret a long silvery tube stuck out, ending in a glowing purple lens. Seven antennae
sprouted in all directions from the top of the turret. On either side of the turret were streamlined but
featureless bulges. Four other bulges projected near the front of the hull, two on either side. At the bow
itself were four circular ports. As the machine drew closer still, Blade could see four more bulges on the
otherwise flat bottom of the hull. The polished metal of the hull and turret shimmered and gleamed in the
sun.