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

The door slid open. J and Blade entered. The elevator dropped through two hundred feet of solid
bedrock with a speed J had never quite gotten used to, then slowed to a stop. They stood in
silence until the heavy bronze door hissed open.

They stepped out into a brilliantly lighted foyer, bare except for a desk and two chairs freshly
painted an uninspiring olive drab.

"Where's Lord Leighton?" Blade wondered aloud.

"I fancy he's waiting for us in the computer area," said J.

Blade moved through the foyer with a catlike lightness that belied his powerful two-hundred-and-
ten-pound mass of rock-hard muscle and bone.

They walked briskly through long corridors, passing closed doors, closed doors and more closed
doors. J could hear muffled voices behind the doors, the clatter of typewriters, the whir of
spinning computer tapes, but within the hallways not a soul was to be seen. No human guards
were needed. Electronic sensors followed their every step, checking and rechecking that they
were who they were supposed to be, and were going where they were supposed to go. As long as
the sensors functioned, no stranger could enter these passages without setting off an alarm, no
matter how careful he was.

At the end of the final passage, a massive door slid open automatically for them and they entered
the central computer area. J glanced around and frowned.

In these rooms surrounding the heart of the whole project J was accustomed to seeing a crew of
technicians hard at work, but now there was nobody here. In fact the computers themselves had
changed. They had been changing slowly over a period of time, but this was the first time J had
really noticed.

The consoles, which had once been so large they filled the rooms, had shrunk and become
fearfully silent, though the lights that blinked and glowed and the screens that displayed
everchanging patterns, numbers and words seemed to indicate that everything was turned on and
running. J understood. Bit by bit diodes and transistors had replaced big bulky tubes, and had
been in turn replaced by tiny integrated circuit chips that contained whole libraries of
preprogramming in an area the size of a thumbnail. Everything had become smaller, cooler,
quieter, yet at the same time more powerful. Now the last step had been taken. Automation had
replaced human control, and the last human operator had been banished.

"Lord Leighton?" J called out. The bare rock walls threw back a disquieting echo.

"There he is." Richard pointed.

Lord Leighton, in a rumpled green smock, had blended in so well with his beloved computers he
had been almost invisible. The machines were not, as they had been, dull gray with crackled
finishes, but, except where a spot of gleaming chrome or spotless red plastic showed its contrast,
all were in the same muted matt green as Leighton's smock.

"Ah, welcome, welcome!" Lord Leighton came scuttling forward. "How do you like my new