"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 25 - Torian Pearls." - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

Blade 25: The Torian Pearls

By Jeffrey Lord

Chapter 1
A gray mist swallowed the downhill path less than a hundred yards ahead. The big man still came down
the path at a steady lope. His eyes were fixed on the mist ahead, but his long legs never broke their
rhythm and his feet in their scarred hiking boots always struck firm ground. He carried a heavy pack on
his back and a long staff in one hand, while ragged hair and beard suggested that he'd been on the move
for days if not weeks.

Richard Blade had indeed been moving across the Highlands of Scotland for fourteen days, living rough,
traveling far, sleeping little and eating less, getting steadily more tired but also steadily happier. Now he
was covering the last few miles as fast as his legs would carry him. Physically he was weary, but within he
felt stronger and readier to face this world or any other world than he'd felt for months.

Richard Blade was a man who had to face many worlds. He was the only man on earth who could travel
into other Dimensions and remain alive and sane. Even for him it wasn't easy. If Blade hadn't been a
nearly perfect combination of mental and physical qualities, he would have long since lain in a grave in
some other Dimension far away across infinity.

In fact, if Blade hadn't been that nearly perfect combination, no one would ever have known of those
distant Dimensions. Lord Leighton, Britain's most original and creative scientific mind, conceived the
experiment of linking a computer and a human brain, to form an instant genius. The human brain he chose
was Richard Blade's.

Then came the accident. Instead of becoming the intended superbrain, Richard Blade vanished entirely
from Britain. He appeared in a strange, violent, and primitive land where he had to use all his strength and
wits to survive. Somehow he succeeded, and in time Lord Leighton managed to reverse the workings of
the computer and bring him back to Britain.

It was an accident, but it was one that could be repeated over and over. It could be repeated as long as
there was someone able to travel into what they called Dimension X and return alive and sane. So far that
meant Richard Blade, and no other living human being.

Project Dimension X was balanced precariously on the life of one man. Such a vulnerable project would
normally have never been allowed to grow to anything like the size of Project Dimension X. In Britain
research money did not grow on bushes-as Lord Leighton had to be reminded frequently.

There was nothing normal about Project Dimension X, however. Carried far enough, it just might give
Britain the ability to draw on the resources of Dimension X at will. Would the end of this be a new British
Empire, stretching across infinity instead of across the earth? It could be. Certainly it was a magnificent
dream.

So Project Dimension X would go on, whether it had one man or a hundred ready to send out.
Meanwhile, the secret of the discovery would be kept, at whatever cost in lies, money, or human lives. It
was easy to imagine what Britain's enemies might do with the secret of Dimension X. It was almost as
easy to imagine how some of Britain's friends might suddenly become enemies if the secret got out.
 Project Dimension X would go on its way, and Richard Blade would go out time after time, to face one
new and nightmarish world after another. He'd gone out twenty-four times, he'd faced twenty-four