Джеффри Лорд - Guardians Of The Coral Throne

Everything seemed to check out. Leighton looked at Blade, an inquiring frown on his ugly face. Blade deliberately looked at J first, grinned in farewell, then looked back at the scientist and nodded. Leighton's hand rose, then came down on the red master switch and swept it down to the bottom of its slot.

It seemed at first that the lighting in the chamber was flickering on and off. Then Blade realized that it was not just the lighting. Everything around him-Lord Leighton and J, the computer, even the rock walls-was flickering in and out of existence. As the world flickered, a highpitched drone began to fill Blade's ears, like the buzzing of a swarm of gigantic bees flying around and around the chamber.

Gradually the droning grew louder, until his ears began to ache from it. His surroundings flickered on and off faster and faster and began to change color. Lord Leighton turned gold, J turned bright glowing red, the computer consoles turned silver with all the blinking lights on their faces turning blue, the rock walls above and beyond turned dark green.

The droning grew still louder, until it seemed like a solid object being driven into Blade's ears to rupture his eardrums and pierce his brain. The world around him began to soften around the edges, then flow and slump downward like a stick of butter melting in a hot pan. As it flowed, it gave off gurgling and rumbling noises that rose even above the droning. The noise around him was now so terrible that Blade wanted to scream. His mouth was open, but he knew that he would never be able to tell if any sound was coming out.

The world around him finished dissolving. All the colors broke up and flowed madly into one another and around one another and over one another. It was like being in the middle of a gigantic whirlpool trying to whirl in three or four directions at once. Blade saw streams of incandescent color flowing through him, but felt nothing.

Still the droning went on. The world was all madly racing colors and terrible noise, more and more furious each moment.

Then it was nothing at all but a blackness and a freezing, silent cold that Blade felt in the split-second before he stopped feeling anything at all.

Blade popped into the new Dimension with his mind still filled with memories of the bone-chilling cold in the blackness between Dimensions. He found himself shivering violently as he drifted up to full consciousness.

He was lying on his stomach, on a hard, cold, rough surface. He could not see more than two feet in front of his nose. In those two feet he saw rough gray bare rock, with a few pebbles here and there and a small clump of sickly grass.

He shivered again, and realized that there was still a chilly wind blowing over his bare skin. As it always did at this point, his head ached. But it ached much less than usual. Blade raised himself on his hands and knees, scraping his skin on the rough stone. When the movement didn't make his head throb or spin, he gathered his legs under him and shakily rose to his feet.

He was at the bottom of a small draw in rugged, broken country. All around him rose gray rocky hills, seamed and scarred by millions of years of harsh weather, supporting a few stunted trees and a few patches of grass. The air was chill but dry and crystal clear, and in the brilliant sunlight that poured down from a flawless blue sky every detail of the landscape stood out dramatically.

One of those details was a column of brown smoke that rose into the sky from beyond the next hill. If Blade had landed one valley farther over, he would have landed practically on top of whoever or whatever was making the smoke.

Blade tested his muscles one by one, then did a few quick exercises to loosen up his whole superbly trained and conditioned body.

He was not surprised to find that everything still worked as well as ever. He would have been surprised to find that anything didn't. He knew as a matter of sober fact that he had not only an athlete's body, but a warrior's. He also had a warrior's skills in armed and unarmed combat, with weapons and techniques from Stone Age to modern. Without these skills, he would never have survived any of his journeys into Dimension X. If he ever started losing them, he would not survive many more journeys.

Knowing he was as ready as possible for anything he might have to face, Blade headed for the smoke. He chose to climb the hill. That way he might be able to spy out the smokemakers from a high, invisible perch before going down to greet them-or turning and putting as many miles as possible between himself and them.

Blade soon found himself almost regretting the decision to climb. The slope of raw gray rock was steeper than it looked, and much rougher. Over long stretches he could not even walk upright, but had to haul himself upward from handhold to handhold.

In one place the only way up was a crack in an almost vertical slab of crumbling rock. Blade inched his way up the crack, feet braced against one side and back against the other. He mentally blessed his experience climbing in the Alps, hoped the crumbling rock would not crumble at the wrong time and place, and winced as jagged points and sharp edges scraped and gouged his bare skin.

Nothing happened until he was just clear of the crack. Then with a rumble and a crashing roar several tons of rock peeled away from one side of the crack, plunged downward, and spilled out on the slope below. Boulders and slabs larger than Blade went sliding and rolling away down the hill, with more rumbles and crashes that echoed around the empty valley like an artillery barrage. Blade winced, less now at the pain of his scrapes and gouges than at the noise of the rockfall. Anybody within five miles could hear it, unless they were stone deaf. Anybody who took the rockfall as the sign of an approaching enemy would be alert and waiting. But Blade was no more inclined to turn back than he had ever been. One of these days, he suspected, this habit of pushing on would turn out to be his last mistake. In the meantime it helped him get into things a lot faster and find out a lot more. As secret agent or explorer, finding out what was going on had always been the heart of his job.

He continued his climb and reached the ridge in a few minutes. Near the top he dropped on hands and knees and crawled the rest of the way: Peering down between two boulders, he scanned the slope and valley below.

Two hundred feet below him, a dozen men sat around a small fire. Two gaunt and swaybacked horses were tethered to stakes driven into the ground just beyond the fire. Beyond the horses a naked, filthy, human figure crouched, also tied by the ankle to a stake. It was so gaunt and dirt-blackened that Blade could not tell whether it was a man or a woman.

He turned his attention back to the dozen men around the fire. They were not much cleaner than their prisoner, and their hair was just as long. All wore beards and all wore fur tunics and baggy leather boots and breeches. All wore long knives, and several had short swords in battered sheaths hanging from bleached leather belts. They were alternately spooning something out of a large communal brass pot and gnawing meat off the bones of several small animals.

Apart from the knives and swords, none of the men were wearing any weapons. But each seemed to have a good set piled ready to hand behind him. Blade couldn't tell exactly what was in each pile. But it looked as if these people were well able to take care of themselves, and if not exactly looking for trouble, well able to handle it if it came to them.

Blade made sure that the damage he had taken climbing up the hill hadn't slowed him down. Then he scrambled to his feet, stepped out into full view of the men below, and held out both arms, hands spread out in the standard gesture of peace.