"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 30 - Dimension Of Horror" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

returned from one of the X dimensions with a horse. This animal, perhaps the largest thing ever
brought back from the "other side," had nearly wrecked the laboratory before the tranquilizer gun
had arrived, and Leighton had reasoned that Blade might someday return with another horse, or
something worse, and had kept the pistol, never dreaming that he would have to use it on
Richard.

When Richard's fit of violence finally subsided and he lay in a crumpled, semiconscious heap,
Leighton made a hasty inspection of KALI's components in the immediate area, but found no
damage. J looked on, stunned.

Leighton pressed the button on the intercom and summoned a squad of technicians with a
stretcher and a straight jacket. Blade's powerful body, such an asset in the field, had become a
liability, even a danger.

Still unable to speak, J followed as Blade was carried to the elevator and transported to the
hospital complex an additional hundred feet below the computer rooms. Lord Leighton hobbled
at J's side, keeping up with difficulty on his stunted legs, but J was only dimly aware of him.

As the elevator door hissed open at the bottom of the shaft, they were confronted by a red-faced
fat little man in tennis shoes, white slacks and an appallingly flowery short-sleeved Hawaiian
shirt. This was Dr. Leonard Ferguson, Principle Psychiatric Officer for Project Dimension X.

The doctor raised an eyebrow. "A straight jacket? We're not following our standard operating
procedure, are we?"

"Obviously not," Leighton snapped.

J shared Leighton's dislike of Ferguson. Neither could he forget that Ferguson had once
attempted to force Blade's retirement from the project on the grounds of an "impairment of
decision-making powers." In a certain Report 97, Ferguson, with the support of his team of
consulting psychiatrists, had predicted that Richard's mental condition would "in the future lead
to some dysfunctional withdrawal at a crucial moment."

J had overruled Ferguson, but now . . .

J glanced at the fallen giant on the stretcher and thought with anguish, Perhaps Ferguson was
right!

J's gaze swung to the fat man's face in time to detect the faintest trace of a triumphant smile.

"This way," Ferguson said crisply, starting down the hall. "His bed is ready."

J slept and woke again, there on the couch in the Staff Lounge. In the underground hospital there
was no night, only an endless artificial day. When he awoke the second time, J took out his
pocketwatch and inspected it with bleary incomprehension for a considerable period before
realizing that it had stopped.

He dragged himself to a sitting position and looked around. The room was empty at the moment,
but he harbored dim memories of doctors and nurses coming and going, conversing in low voices
so as not to disturb him.