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

black trousers, he looked more like the computer's caretaker than its creator.
J looked at the scientist. Wry amusement spread across his face and sounded in his voice. "My
goodness, Leighton. Is the pace getting to you?"

Leighton's bushy eyebrows rose. There was nearly as much white hair left in those eyebrows as there
was on the scientist's head. "On the contrary. Everything is ready and the main sequence initiated. It
would be quite pointless to do anything else until Richard is ready to be hooked up. I am not, after all,
one of those types who feels obliged to demonstrate his energy by rushing about to no purpose."

That was quite true. Leighton had plenty of other chances to demonstrate his energy. He demonstrated a
phenomenal amount of it, considering that he was past eighty and had lived most of those years with his
legs twisted by polio and his spine bent into a hunchback. His daily routine often left men half his age
unable to keep up with him.

The next move in the familiar routine was Blade's. He made his way between the enormous gray
crackle-finished consoles of the computer to the little changing room carved out of the solid rock of the
wall. Inside the room he stripped naked, smeared himself with smelly black grease to guard against
electrical burns, and pulled on a loincloth. The loincloth was more a gesture than anything else. He'd
always arrived in Dimension X naked, sometimes with embarrassing results.

Once he'd been able to take a ruby ring with him, and another time a knife. This time he was taking
nothing, since there was nothing on hand that might have a good chance of making the trip with him.
Adding random bits and pieces of gear simply made still more complicated and dangerous a trip that was
already complicated and dangerous enough.

He retraced his route to the center of the computer room. A glass booth stood there, with a metal chair
on a rubber mat inside it. The chair looked as if its purpose was executing condemned criminals instead
of sending Richard Blade off into Dimension X.

Blade sat down in the chair, leaned back against the cold rubber of the back, and stretched his legs. He
began to breathe regularly and deeply, to saturate his system with oxygen and ease any tension as much
as possible. J pulled the folding observer's seat down from the wall and sat on it.

As J sat down, Leighton rose from his chair with a speed and grace surprising in someone of his age and
physical condition. He carefully marked his place in the magazine, put it on the chair, set the teacup on
top of it, and came over to Blade.

Now Leighton seemed to explode into action, darting around and around the chair with the speed and
agility of a whirling dervish. To every part of Blade's body he taped cobra-headed metal electrodes.
Each electrode was attached to a wire running off into the computer. Leighton had once told Blade there
were only a hundred and sixteen of the electrodes. Looking down on himself, Blade found it hard to
believe there weren't several times that many.

Eventually all the electrodes were in place. Leighton made a final inspection, untangling a purple wire
from a yellow one, shifting one electrode a few inches down Blade's thigh, putting on an extra piece of
tape to hold another one firmly where it was. Then he backed away, wiping his hands on his laboratory
coat.

He backed away until he stood by the main control panel, eyes scanning the flashing lights, hand within
easy reach of the red master switch. He waited there until the familiar dance of the lights told him the main