"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 27 - Master of the Hashomi" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

agent, and loved the younger man as he would have loved a son.

Lord Leighton, the Prime Minister, J. Three of the four who knew the secrets of Dimension X. The
fourth was Richard Blade, the man on the spot. Secret agent, natural adventurer, a man whose physical
and mental gifts made him the most nearly indestructible human being alive. Veteran of twenty-six trips
into Dimension X, and the only living person who could come through one alive and sane. There were
doubtless others, and sooner or later they would have to be found and put to work. Meanwhile, Blade
was not only indestructible, he was indispensable.

That was by no means all of the story, if one wanted to tell it completely. There was more money, some
of it spent to good purpose, much of it spent on Lord Leighton's whims. There were men and women
dead all over Dimension X, killed by Blade in the process of surviving to return to Britain alive and sane.

There were men and women dead or in prison in a good many places in Home Dimension, killed or
confined to protect the secret of Dimension X.

There were unexpected and totally lunatic moments, such as the time Blade saved a dozen lives in a train
wreck outside London. He had to flee in order to escape publicity that might have endangered the
security of the Project. Because he fled, Scotland Yard decided that he may have been a wanted
criminal. For several months Britain's own police were hard at work, making it impossible for Richard
Blade to live a normal life even when he was in Home Dimension. J had finally tidied up that mess, but
there would inevitably be others, probably even worse.

Simple? No, the word made no sense at all here. The only way Richard Blade would ever face anything
"simple" was when his luck finally ran out.

Death was simple enough, at least when it was all over.

Chapter 2

For now, Blade was alive, safely in Dimension X, unhurt except for the usual headache, and in no danger
of anything except sunburn. The sun and the hot wind blowing across his skin made him suspect he'd
landed in a desert.

He opened his eyes and sat up. Sunlight flamed and his head started throbbing again. He saw gray
mountains to his left, red-brown desert to his right. With the dazzling sunlight and his throbbing head, he
had a moment's sensation that both the mountains and the desert were alive and watching him.

Slowly his eyes adjusted to the glare and his head calmed down. He found he could stand, look around
him, and see the landscape for what it was.

He stood on a rocky slope that rose from the edge of the desert toward the mountains. A monstrous,
incandescent sun poured light and heat out of a sterile blue sky. The mountains lay to the west, the desert
to the east.

The desert began about five miles to the east and nearly a mile below Blade. It stretched away toward a
distant flat horizon, patches of gravel alternating with patches of sand. Blade saw gulleys that must have
been carved by water, but no vegetation, let alone birds or animals. In the clear air the horizon was a
good thirty miles away-two days travel, for a man taking it easy and saving moisture. Every one of those
thirty miles looked dead, dry, and sterile. It would be too much of a gamble heading out across the