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

sequence was finished and the computer ready to do its work. Then the long-fingered hand on the end of
the arm darted at the switch and drew it in a single smooth motion down to the bottom of its slot.

The room, the computer, the two men watching, the booth itself all vanished from around Blade in the
time it took him to blink his eyes. He blinked again, and a vast cliff of fissured and scarred blue-gray
stone reared itself before him and towered above him. He was still sitting in the chair, but now it rested
on yellow sand.

Blade craned his neck upward, looking for the top of the cliff. He could not see it. So high above that he
could not even guess how far, the blue-gray stone faded into a swirling gray sky. It was as if the cliff itself
became the clouds, melting from solid blue-gray rock into gray mist.

Blade stretched his legs and started to rise from the chair. As he did, the ground under him shuddered
violently, swaying from side to side and then heaving up and down. The movement was sharp enough to
send the sand swirling up in clouds around him. He closed his eyes, but he could feel the grittiness
between his teeth as the sand found its way into his mouth.

After a little while the movements of the ground ceased. Again Blade started to rise, and realized that
somehow he could not. It was as if the joints of his arms and legs were locked, or his back and buttocks
were firmly glued to the chair. It was an annoying sensation.

Blade tried harder, and still harder, until the muscles stood out along his arms and thighs and neck in
ridges and lumps. He put all of his enormous strength into trying to rise, until his chest was heaving and all
his muscles began to ache.

As he tried to relax and gather strength for another effort to rise from the chair, the ground shuddered
again. This time the movements were even more violent and went on longer. The sand rose up around
Blade in a swirling yellow cloud that blotted out everything more than a foot in front of his nose.

The movements of the ground slowly faded away, and the cloud of sand subsided. As it did, a faint
rumble sounded from high above. Blade looked upward, and his eyes opened wide.

A vast section of the solid gray-blue rock was peeling off the face of the cliff and dropping directly down
on top of him. As it fell it crumbled and cracked, splitting into three pieces. Each one of those pieces
seemed as large as a house, more than large enough to smash Blade like a bug under a hammer when it
landed.

He was not in a real world, though, so nothing would happen to him even if the stone landed. Or was
he? Was this weird world as real as Britain, and would his death here be as real and permanent? That
chilling thought drove him to a still more desperate effort to rise from the chair and somehow get clear of
the base of the cliff. He heaved himself upward as if he wanted to leap into the air. The chair quivered,
but he did not rise.

There was still one thing he could do. He threw himself violently to one side, and the chair rocked under
him. He did it three more times, and each time the chair tilted farther and farther. At last he threw it down
on its side. With a tremendous twisting of his thighs and torso he landed on hands and knees, the chair
riding on his back like the shell of a crab.

The chair now held his head down so that he could no longer look upward, but he knew he had no more
than a few seconds. He heaved himself desperately forward, fingers and toes clawing at the sand.