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

strange worlds, he'd returned to Britain twenty-four times.

Over the past two months he'd begun to wonder if he could do it again.

Richard Blade had always survived his adventures in Dimension X. Some of the people who'd been
caught up in those adventures hadn't been so lucky. There were two in particular who preyed heavily on
Blade's mind.

One was Katerina Shumilova, a Russian secret agent who'd made an involuntary trip into Dimension X
after being detected trying to sabotage the Project. Lord Leighton decided that making her disappear into
Dimension X was the best way of preserving the vital secret.

She survived her original trip into the hands of the savage Ganthi and a meeting with Blade. She even
survived a second trip across the Dimensions, to the black jade city of Kano. By that time there was love
between her and Blade, and both of them knew it.

Then in the battle to save Kano from the Raufi of the great desert, she died. A little of Blade died with
her. She was a woman with all of his own strengths, and that made it seem unimportant that she'd begun
as an enemy.

The other woman was named Galina Haran. She came from a Russia that was not Russia, a place called
Russland in a monstrously strange Dimension where things were almost as they were in Home Dimension,
but not quite. The Red Flames of Russland fought against the Empire of Englor. From Galina Haran's
discoveries in genetics and cloning, they bred flying dragons to swoop down on Englor. In the end Blade
led airborne commandos to destroy the dragons in their nest, deep inside Russland. Then the computer
drew him home to Britain and Galina came with him, carrying all the notes on her discoveries as well.

That should have been a triumph, for Britain's biological sciences, for Project Dimension X, for Richard
Blade. Perhaps it would be, in time. Meanwhile, the passage across the Dimensions left Galina with no
more mind than a six-month old baby. Her brain was physically intact, so in theory the damage should
not be permanent. But none of the doctors who'd examined Galina had much hope for her recovery.
Galina Haran would spend years and perhaps the rest of her life as a helpless idiot. Blade couldn't escape
the feeling that this was his fault.

Blade told himself that he had to go on doing his duty to Britain, at any cost to himself or to other
people. Every other possible duty to himself or to anyone else had to take a back seat.

He told himself this every waking minute of the day, and in the daylight it seemed that he made sense. It
was different by night. In the darkness Katerina came to him, her face twisted with her final agony, and
also Galina, her face blank and drooling. They came so often and so vividly that he began to feel haunted.

He knew he had to get rid of this feeling, or it would sooner or later end his life and therefore Project
Dimension X. Nightmares never killed a man outright. They would eventually slow a man's physical and
mental reflexes. He would go off into Dimension X- in that condition, and from that journey he would not
return.

Perhaps he could have driven away the nightmares with liquor or women. Too much liquor took the
edge off mind and body as surely as any nightmares. As for the women, Blade could not use other
people simply as weapons to fight his own nightmares. He would have to fight and win this battle alone.