"H. Beam Piper - Police Operation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

pistollike weapon lay on the desk. It had a conventional index-finger trigger and a hand-fit grip, but,
instead of a tubular barrel, two slender parallel metal rods extended about four inches forward of the
receiver, joined together at what would correspond to the muzzle by a streamlined knob of some light
blue ceramic or plastic substance.

The man with the handsome immobile face deposited his rifle and musette on the floor beside the chair
and sat down. First, he picked up the pistollike weapon and checked it, and then he examined the many
instruments on the panel in front of him. Finally, he flicked a switch on the control board.

At once, a small humming began, from some point overhead. It wavered and shrilled and mounted in
intensity, and then fell to a steady monotone. The dome about him flickered with a queer, cold
iridescence, and slowly vanished. The hidden room vanished, and he was looking into the shadowy
interior of a deserted barn. The barn vanished; blue sky appeared above, streaked with wisps of high
cirrus cloud. The autumn landscape flickered unreally. Buildings appeared and vanished, and other
buildings came and went in a twinkling. All around him, half-seen shapes moved briefly and disappeared.

Once, the figure of a man appeared, inside the circle of the dome. He had an angry, brutal face, and he
wore a black tunic piped with silver, and black breeches, and polished black boots, and there was an
insignia, composed of a cross and thunderbolt, on his cap. He held an automatic pistol in his hand.

Instantly, the man at the desk snatched up his own weapon and thumbed off the safety, but before he
could lift and aim it, the intruder stumbled and passed outside the force-field which surrounded the chair
and instruments.

For a while, there were fires raging outside, and for a while, the man at the desk was surrounded by a
great hall, with a high, vaulted ceiling, through which figures flitted and vanished. For a while, there were
vistas of deep forests, always set in the same background of mountains and always under the same blue
cirrus-laced sky. There was an interval of flickering blue-white light, of unbearable intensity. Then the
man at the desk was [Pg 7] surrounded by the interior of vast industrial works. The moving figures around
him slowed, and became more distinct. For an instant, the man in the chair grinned as he found himself
looking into a big washroom, where a tall blond girl was taking a shower bath, and a pert little redhead
was vigorously drying herself with a towel. The dome grew visible, coruscating with many-colored lights
and then the humming died and the dome became a cold and inert mesh of fine white metal. A green light
above flashed on and off slowly.

He stabbed a button and flipped a switch, then got to his feet, picking up his rifle and musette and
fumbling under his shirt for a small mesh bag, from which he took an inch-wide disk of blue plastic.
Unlocking a container on the instrument panel, he removed a small roll of solidograph-film, which he
stowed in his bag. Then he slid open the door and emerged into his own dimension of space-time.

Outside was a wide hallway, with a pale green floor, paler green walls, and a ceiling of greenish
off-white. A big hole had been cut to accommodate the dome, and across the hallway a desk had been
set up, and at it sat a clerk in a pale blue tunic, who was just taking the audio-plugs of a music-box out of
his ears. A couple of policemen in green uniforms, with ultrasonic paralyzers dangling by thongs from their
left wrists and bolstered sigma-ray needlers like the one on the desk inside the dome, were kidding with
some girls in vivid orange and scarlet and green smocks. One of these, in bright green, was a duplicate of
the one he had seen rubbing herself down with a towel.

"Here comes your boss-man," one of the girls told the cops, as he approached. They both turned and
saluted casually. The man who had lately been using the name of Richard Lee responded to their greeting