"E. E. Doc Smith - D' Alembert 1 - The Imperial Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

The man had come prepared for this eventuality. Beside him on the ground was a long fiberglass pole.
Picking it up, he backed off some twenty meters from the wall and then ran at it full tilt. Well-trained leg
muscles helped push him upward as he dug the shaft into the ground and polevaulted over the barrier.
Four meters high the wall went, but he cleared it with easily twenty centimeters to spare.
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He hit the ground beyond with his legs coiled under him; he rolled over and used his momentum to propel
him into a running start across the open courtyard between the wall and the house. This was a dangerous
stretch, for there was no cover but the darkness. He crossed the fifty meters of ground silently, then
pulled up panting alongside the building. As far as he knew he was still undetected. He was sweating
profusely inside his insulated clothing, but gave not a thought to his discomfort. There were bigger
matters demanding his attention.

He walked slowly all around the house, checking the windows. None were open - he hadn't expected
them to be -but the alarm system on them was of the standard variety. Reaching into his belt again he
took out two wires and clamped them to the edges of the window frame, thus jumping the alarm circuit.
With this done, opening the window and slithering inside was a routine matter.

He found himself in an unknown room cluttered with furniture. He dared not bump into anything and make
a noise; and turning on a light, of course, would have been sheerest folly. Flipping a tiny switch on his
belt, he turned on a portable radar device, a type invented for blind people. Instantly, the returning radio
echoes painted a picture of the room's layout for him. The door he wanted was three meters away; it
would only be a matter of navigating past a few chairs.

Still he didn't move. Reaching again into a belt compart ment, he pulled out the sensor he had first used
on the wall to check the floor. It was free of electronic gadgetry, so he walked silently across the room to
the door.

The portal was also wired with an alarm. He bypassed it the same way he had taken care of the window,
opened the door and looked out into the hallway. It, too, was dark, and there were no sounds anywhere
along its length. His radar vision informed him that the corridor was free of obstructions, but the scanner
indicated that certain planks in the wooden floor were pressure sensitive, and would give him away if he
trod upon them. Exercising the greatest of caution, he stepped gingerly out into the hall, moving toward
the staircase one agonizingly slow step at a time. Involuntarily, he found himself holding his breath, fearful
that even such a slight chest movement would set off the alarms with which this house was booby
trapped.

He reached the stairs and stopped again. According to his informant - a totally reliable one, since he had
been incapable of lying under the influence of nitrobarb - the room he sought was on the second floor.
Checking out the stairway, he found that a majority of the treads were wired for detection, and that the
banister was carrying enough elec trical current to light a small city. The man in black set his jaw
determinedly and proceeded to climb the stairs two, three, and sometimes four at a time to avoid stepping
on the alarms.

Third door on the right at the top of the stairs, his involuntary informant had told him. Tracing his way
around the sensors in the floor, he arrived at the desired door. The handle, his instruments told him, was
a bomb that would explode at his touch, blowing him into more pieces than he cared to think about. But
there had to be some way of getting into the room and he was going to find it. He scanned the wall and
found that it was loaded with electrical circuitry. His eyes read the schematics and discovered that one
inconspicuous nailhead in the wall beside the doorsill was really the button that would open the portal.