"E. E. Doc Smith - Lensman 7 - Masters Of The Vortex" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

that's trickling in. Every little bit helps.'
The heavy metal of the door was glowing bright-to-dull red "over half its area, and that area was spreading rapidly. The air
of the room grew hot and hotter. Bursts of live steam billowed out and, condensing, fogged the helmets.
The glowing metal dulled, brightened, dulled. The prisoners could only guess at the intensity of the battle being waged.
They could follow its progress only by the ever-shifting temperature of the barrier which the zwilniks were so suicidally
determined to bum down. For hours, it seemed, the conflict raged. The thuddings and jarrings grew worse. The water,
which had been
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a trickle, was now a stream and scalding hot.
Then a blast of bitterly cold air roared from the ventilator, clearing away the gas and steam, and the speaker came to life.
'Good work, Cloud and you other two,' it said, chattily. 'Glad to see you're all on deck. Get into this corner over here, so the
zwilniks won't hit you when they hole through. They won't have time to locate youтАФwe've got a semi right at the corner
now.'
The door grew hotter, flamed fiercely white. A narrow pencil sizzled through, burning steel sparkling away in all
directionsтАФ but only for a second. It expired. Through the hole there flared the reflection of a beam brilliant enough to
pale the noon-day sun. The portal cooled; heavy streams of water hissed and steamed. Hot water began to spurt into the
cell. An atomic-hydrogen cutting torch sliced away the upper two-thirds of the fused and battered door. The grotesquely-
armored lieutenant peered in.
'They tell me all three of you are QX. Check?'
'Check.'
'Good. We'll have to carry you out. Step up here where we can get hold of you.'
'I'll walk and I'll carry Jackie myself,' Ryder protested, while two of the armored warriors were draping Cloud tastefully
around the helmet of a third.
'You'd get boiled to the hipsтАФthis water is deep and hot. Come on!'
The slowly rising water was steaming; the walls and ceiling of the corridor gave mute but eloquent testimony of the
appalling forces that had been unleashed. Tile, concrete, plastic, metal тАФnothing was as it had been. Cavities yawned.
Plates and pilasters were warped, crumbled, fused into hellish stalactites; bare girders hung awry. In places complete
collapse had necessitated the blasting out of detours.
Through the wreckage of what had been a magnificent building the cavalcade made its way, but when the open air was
reached the three rescued ones were not released. Instead, they were escorted by a full platoon of soldiery to an armored
car, which was in turn escorted to the Patrol station.
'I'm afraid to take chances with you until we find out who's who and what's what around here,' the young commander
explained. 'The Lensmen will be here in the morning, with half
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an army, so I think you'd better spend the rest of the night here, don't you?'
'Protective custody, eh?' Cloud grinned. 'I've never been arrested in such a polite way before, but it's QX with me. You, too,
I take it?'
'Us, too, decidedly," Ryder assented. 'This is a very nice jail-house, especially in comparison with where we've ...'
'I'll say so!" Jackie broke in, giggling almost hysterically. 'I never thought I'd be tickled to death at getting arrested, but I
am!'
Lensmen came, and companies of Patrolmen equipped in various fashions, but it was several weeks before the situation
was completely clarified. Then EllingtonтАФCouncillor Ellington, the Unattached Lensman in charge of all NarcoticsтАФ
called the three into the office.
"How about Graves and Fairchild?' Cloud demanded before the councillor could speak.
'Both dead,' Ellington said. 'Graves was shot down just as he took off, but he blasted Fairchild first, just as he intimated he
would. There wasn't enough of Fairchild left for positive identification, but it couldn't very well have been anyone else.
Nobody left alive seems to know much of anything of the real scope of the thing, so we can release you three now. Thanks,
from me as well as the Patrol. There is some talk that you two youngsters have been contemplating a honeymoon out
Chick-ladoria way?'
'Oh, no, sirтАФthat is ..." Both spoke at once. 'That was just talk, sir.'