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

flowed along the corridor.

Every foot of the corridor was watched every minute of the twenty-four hours of the day by
computerized systems of electronic monitors and sensing devices. Every few yards were archways
concealing more sliding steel doors. Like a ship's hull, the complex was divided into compartments that
could be sealed off in seconds against any attack. Trapped and immobilized, the attackers could be dealt
with almost at leisure.

They would be dealt with harshly, Blade knew. The defenses of the complex included several of the
latest, nastiest, and most expensive security devices. They also included some of Lord Leighton's own
devices, products of his endlessly fertile mind and somewhat gruesome sense of humor. Blade didn't
know anything about most of Lord Leighton's devices and wasn't quite sure he wanted to know. He did
know they would work, and that was enough.

The two men walked swiftly along the corridor, passing through eight successive archways before they
reached the computer rooms at the far end. There were five of those rooms. The first four held the
steadily increasing mass of auxiliary equipment and storage facilities for the computers and the technicians
to handle it all. Katerina Shumilova had infiltrated the complex as one of those technicians.

As they passed through the rooms, it seemed to Blade that every inch of floor had something on it and
every desk had at least three people using it. It would soon be time to add another room to the complex.

Blade wondered if the money would be available. Project Dimension X could not draw on regular
Parliamentary appropriations for research and development. It depended on the Prime Minister's Special
Fund and the sale of whatever Blade brought back from Dimension X.

When he brought back gold or jewels, that was easy money. Often he brought back materials or devices
that defied the scientists' best efforts to duplicate them. Sometimes he brought back only the knowledge
of something centuries beyond Home Dimension science. These exciting discoveries were invariably
useless without many millions of pounds of additional research and development.

Sometimes luck was with him. From Englor Blade brought home knowledge of several new alloys and a
new chemical fuel that could revolutionize aircraft design and performance. With luck they would need
only a few years before they were in production, and meanwhile they'd generated a million pounds for the
Project. But even a million pounds was only a fraction of what the Project could use.

The two men passed through the rooms of auxiliary equipment and reached the door to the main room.
Beyond it lay the heart of the whole Project, the immense master computer that hurled Blade into
Dimension X and drew him home again. So far it had always done both.

Lord Leighton was confident that it would go on doing so as reliably as it had done in the past. Blade
could only hope the scientist was right. Certainly the old man would do his best. He found it hard to care
about anyone or anything except the pursuit of knowledge and openly admitted as much. But he did care
what happened to Richard Blade. There was no doubt about it, although Blade suspected Leighton
would rather be burned at the stake than admit it.

The door slid open as Blade and J approached it. For once Lord Leighton was neither waiting to greet
them or bustling about making last-minute checks on the computer. He was sitting calmly in a chair in
front of the main control panel, a cup of tea in one hand and a well-thumbed copy of the British Journal
of Computer Research in the other. In his stained, ragged, and rumpled laboratory coat and threadbare