"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 36 - Return to Kaldak" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

Blade 36: Return to Kaldak

By Jeffrey Lord

Chapter 1
The dark green Rover pulled into a reserved space in the parking lot. The man who got out wore a
tweed sport jacket, corduroy trousers, and nondescript walking shoes. The clothing didn't disguise his
powerful frame or his athlete's grace of movement as he walked toward one of the brick buildings around
the parking lot.

He was hatless, so the breeze ruffled thick black hair cut unfashionably short. Women were apt to
describe his face as ruggedly handsome. This did no justice to the penetrating quality of his large gray
eyes. They flicked their gaze continuously from point to point, never leaving anything around him
unobserved for more than a few seconds.

Then the man reached the door of the building and vanished from the sight of the two men watching from
the window above. The taller one turned to the other and said, "As much as I hate to admit it, Richard
looks in splendid form."

"You don't really hate to admit that he's fit for another trip, do you, J?" said the second man.

"Not really, Leighton. But if I thought he weren't, I'd insist on a delay no matter what hopes you had for
your new booth!"

Leighton ran his long arthritic fingers through what remained of his white hair. Then he smiled thinly. "I
hardly need to be reminded of that, J."

"True." Lord Leighton was actually being exceptionally moderate. His scientific genius was world
famous. So was his temper. When someone seemed to be in the way of one of his experiments, he
behaved like a she-bear defending her cubs. Although he was past eighty, he showed no signs of
mellowing.

But then, J reflected, that was hardly to be expected. The man was a bloody genius, and had a right to
be proud of it, particularly when he was still producing fine work. Also, if you're born with a hunchback
and half-crippled by polio as a child, you learn to fight your own battles early. No one else will fight them
for you. Not for the first time, J thanked whatever or whoever was responsible that he himself still
enjoyed good health at an age when he could have been drawing his civil service pension.

The main reason J wasn't retired was the man who'd just entered the building. His name was Richard
Blade. J had picked him as a promising candidate for the secret intelligence agency MI6A when Blade
was fresh out of Oxford. He'd more than fulfilled that promise.

Then Lord Leighton conceived the experiment of linking an advanced computer with a human brain
Blade's, to be precise. He hoped to create a superior combination of human and electronic intelligence,
by having the computer generate a field matching Blade's brain waves. The actual result was Blade's
being hurled off into a parallel world. Leighton christened it Dimension X after Blade got back.

Giving the mystery world a name didn't make it any the less mysterious. It didn't help, either, that Blade
turned out to be the only man in the free world who could make the journey. Others returned insane or
not at all. Millions of pounds and dozens of Lord Leighton's experiments later, this was still true.