"S. M. Stirling & David Drake - The General 01 - The Forge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M)

highlights of their faces, and then slapped his hand on the
control. There was a chink sound deep inside the wall, and the
door shifted slightly. So slightly that he would not have been
conscious of it, except for the tremor of metal against his palms.

"Well, let me try muscle if scholarship won't budge it," Raj
continued, forcing cheerfulness into his tone. "And hsssssssaaaa
!"

There was a moment of quivering tension, and then the door
began to move; in a squealing jerk for the first centimeter or so,
then more rapidly. Halfway open it stuck again with a soundless
authority that told him something solid had fallen across the
trackway. Raj leaned head and shoulders through, squinting and
blinking against a fall of dust and the dim light.

"I can see where the light's coming from," he said.

Thom crowded up beside him, craning for a look. Beyond the
door was a corridor five meters across, running right into
darkness; on their left was a square of brighter light, another
door. And the floor was two meters down from where they stood,
the sagging remains of a metal stairway offering more hindrance
than help.

"If you lay and held onto my wrists, I could drop to the
bottom, Thom said.

"And how in the Outer Dark would you get back up?" Raj said
dryly. "Here, let me have your belt."

The smaller man handed over the narrow dress belt of his
jacket; it was rogosauroid hide traded down from the Skinner
country north of Pierson's Sea, and strong enough to hold four
times their combined weight; Raj's was much the same, except
that it was broader and less elaborately tooled. He looked
thoughtfully at the door, tapping the heel of his palm
experimentally on the edge. It seemed to have stuck fast. On the
other handтАж The pry bar was just a little shorter than the width
the door had opened; he laid it in the opening and stamped on it
until it seated firmly, the wedge-end driven under the bottom
between runway and door.

"This'll hold the belts," he said, buckling one to the other. "I'd
better go first."

Raj took the leather in one hand and his pistol in the other,
bracing his boots on the wall and rapelling down in three
bounds. Dust spurted up under his feet and bone crunched,
spurting more dust. He swore and spat, unpleasantly conscious