"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 26 - City of the Living Dead" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

finally and fatally gone wrong. The computer wasn't sending Blade into Dimension X. It was slowly and
agonizingly killing him.

Then the computer hurled Blade down into blackness, and as he plunged, Blade felt his body shredding
apart, until all that was left was a dimly conscious mind hurtling down through darkness. Then the last dim
consciousness vanished, and there was only blackness.

Blade drifted slowly back up to consciousness. He felt a yielding surface under him, then something over
him slightly restricting his movements. Some unknown time later he realized he was lying on a bed with a
sheet and blankets over him. Suddenly he knew that he was lying safely in his own bed in the bedroom of
his own West End flat. His pajamas, the pillow under his head, and the sheet under him were all soaked
with sweat.

The nightmare of blazing pain had been just that-a nightmare. He looked at his watch. He would really
be on his way to Dimension X in another twelve hours. For the moment he was safely at home, in no
danger of anything except falling out of bed. The underground room, Lord Leighton, the computer, the
electrodes, the pain-they'd all been creations of his sleeping mind.

Blade suddenly found that he was incredibly thirsty. He threw back the covers and climbed out of bed.
He was relieved to discover that he was steady on his feet. He wouldn't expect a nightmare to affect his
coordination, but it wasn't impossible. Since he'd entered Project Dimension X, impossible was a word
Richard Blade refused to use.

Twenty-five times he'd sat down in the chair and been wired into the computer. Twenty-five times Lord
Leighton had pulled a switch. Every one of those times the computer had twisted his brain so that all his
senses now registered some part of that vast unknown called Dimension X.

The first time it had happened by accident. All the other times it had been deliberate. There was an
incredible wealth of knowledge and resources lying out there in Dimension X. If that wealth could be
tapped for Britain's use and the secret of Dimension X kept in the meantime-well, all the wealth from the
North Sea oil fields would look pitifully small by comparison.

If that wealth could be tapped, if the secret were kept, and of Richard Blade remained alive and sane
long enough.

How long would be long enough? Nobody knew. So far there was nobody else alive who could make
the round trip. The search for such a person was still going on, but no one expected quick results.

Fortunately, Richard Blade was one of the most perfect specimens of physical and mental development
alive. He was very likely the most unkillable human being in the world. He'd faced wild animals and still
wilder peoples, both savage and civilized. He'd faced wind and waves, icy cold and searing heat, a dozen
kinds of monsters, even an intelligent race of aliens from somewhere far out in interstellar space. He'd
survived them all. He was quite prepared to go on pitting himself against the perils of Dimension X as
long as he was needed.

Yet what if his own brain were beginning to turn traitor?

Blade knew perfectly well that no human brain was really adapted to being twisted completely around
twenty-five successive times. Not even his. The Project had given him psychological problems before-a
prolonged period of impotence, a shorter period of excessive drinking. Was this nightmare the first sign