"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 13 - The Golden Steed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

successfully. But things had not turned out as the scientist planned. Blade had awakened in a strange,
barbaric world in which savage tribes and the votaries of even more savage religions roamed about and
warred on one another. Thanks to his training, his muscles, his quick reflexes, and his quicker wits, he
had survived and somehow been snatched back to Lord Leighton's laboratory.
Immediately Lord Leighton's original project went aglimmering for here was something ten times as
important. The existence of alternate dimensions—Dimension X—had frequently been theorized. Now it
had been proved. And now it seemed possible to travel at will into those dimensions, explore them,
discover their resources of knowledge and raw materials, bring wealth back toEngland . It was a
discovery of enormous national importance.
So Project Dimension X was born. Lord Leighton's fertile brain created successively more
sophisticated computers. The prime minister's authority and political skills produced money and turned
aside awkward questions—at least so far. J traveled about on a hundred odd items of needed business.
And Blade himself went into Dimension X—twelve times now—explored, wandered about, and helped
the people he found there. All twelve times he had arrived in Dimension X naked as the day he was born,
and all twelve times he had survived and even flourished by his trained mind and athlete's body.
But perhaps this time would be different. "Number Nineteen" was the code for one of the
innumerable subprojects the whole Dimension X business had spawned. Blade had become wearier and
wearier of having to contrive even the most basic clothes and weapons when he arrived in a new
dimension. After his return from his last trip, he had taken the matter up with Lord Leighton. He had
pointed out, among other things, that he was relying too much on luck to keep sending him into these
violent worlds stark naked. It was time to start seeing about sending a survival kit through the computer
with him. J, who loved Blade like a son, had supported him.
Lord Leighton was used to having his weakness for subprojects criticized. He ignored these
criticisms, of course, and plowed ahead. But now both Blade and J were actually urging him to go off on
a new tangent. It was commonly believed that the scientist had a smaller version of one of his own
computers in place of a heart, but Blade knew this wasn't quite correct. Still, Leighton must have been
gratified, because he had gone straight to work on developing the survival kit. And he must have worked
like a beaver, if the survival kit was ready so quickly. It had been barely a month since Blade returned
from his last Dimension X trip to the warrior people of Zunga.
 After breakfast the next morning, Blade checked out of the hotel and drove his rented Renault back
intoCannes . There was a flight leaving forParis at 10:15, and with a good deal of scurrying he just caught
it. FromParis , another flight took him on toLondon . The airport bus trundled him into the city through a
dreary late autumn afternoon, gray skies hanging low and threatening rain, fog, or a combination of the
two. It was a relief to finally reach his own apartment, unpack his bags, and improvise a dinner.
Then there was a note for his charlady. She would probably wonder why he was dashing off again
just after getting back from southernFrance . But she would wonder privately and quietly. She was not
bound by the Official Secrets Act, of course, but MI6 had done a quick and quiet check on her before
they let him hire her. The report had come back: the perfectly respectable widow of a sergeant in the
Coldstream Guards, anything but a gossip.
There were times when Blade could work up a mood of blazing resentment against all the secrecy
that surrounded his life. The Official Secrets Act had smashed his engagement, would probably keep him
a bachelor until he retired, and had elbowed its way into his life in all sorts of little ways.
Eventually he went to bed because he couldn't think of anything better to do. When there was
another trip into Dimension X coming up, he found it hard to concentrate on anything else. Home
Dimension, his apartment with its books and bottles, even the women who shared his bed for a night or a
week, all came to seem insubstantial and fleeting.
The heart of Project Dimension X was Lord Leighton's underground complex, two hundred feet
below theTowerofLondon . It included offices, laboratories, a small but well-equipped hospital where
Blade was examined and interviewed after each return, and the gigantic computer itself. Guarded on the
surface by a squad of Special Branch men and down below by the latest electronic gear, the complex