"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 18 - Warlords of Gaikon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

Blade suddenly felt an impish and almost uncontrollable desire to say something memorably
scandalous, something that would have turned Lord Leighton's remaining hair white if it hadn't been white
already. Then he fought down the desire. They didn't know much about Dimension X. But they had
begun to suspect that what Blade was thinking about at the moment of transition might be connected with
where he wound up. So it might not be wise to go sailing off into Dimension X with a bawdy joke on his
mind.
Then Lord Leighton drew the master switch downward in its slot. The chamber vanished.
For a moment the after-image lingered in Blade's vision. It lingered so vividly that for another moment
he doubted whether he had even started the transition. Something had gone wrong; he was still in the
chamber below the Tower, and Lord Leighton—
Then he realized that he was standing alone and naked in the middle of an immense, dark red plain.
As far as his eyes could reach it was the color of old blood and as featureless as a tabletop. Above it
arched a totally black sky, without a single star. There was no wind, no feeling of, either heat or cold, and
a silence that could not have been more complete if Blade had been marooned in outer space.
The silent red plain and the silent black sky were beginning to become oppressive when Blade
noticed something high in the sky, directly above his head. A pulsating spot of raw, rich gold appeared in
the sky. Then the spot began to rotate. It whirled faster and faster, throwing out long streamers down
toward the horizon.
The golden streamers reached the horizon. As they did so, the plain under Blade's feet began to
rotate in turn, slowly at first, then faster and faster, until it was matching the speed of the golden spot high
above.
The golden streamers began to waver and dance wildly, shimmering and hurling sparks and bits of
fire down out of the sky like meteors. The plain under Blade's feet whirled faster and faster. Now it
began to quiver like a driven piece of machinery and give out a high-pitched hum.
Still faster. Blade began to feel a weight pressing on his chest, making it hard to breathe. He tried to
raise one hand to shade his eyes against the fire from the golden streamers. His arm seemed to weigh a
ton.
He looked down and saw that his feet were beginning to flow, melting into the plain like hot wax
under the weight pressing down on him. His feet went, then his ankles, then he was standing on
fast-dissolving knees. He melted up as far as the waist, stayed there for a moment, then continued to
vanish. In seconds he could no longer see how far his body had spread, for the horizon was getting closer
and closer as he shrank down and melted into the plain. In a few more seconds all that was left was his
head, his chin resting on the plain itself. Somehow he managed to raise his eyes for a final look at the
nightmarish dance of the golden streamers against the black sky.
Then his head dissolved, and there was only blackness.


Chapter 3
«^»
Blade's first sensation was the usual pounding headache that followed a transition into Dimension X. It
proved that he was alive, and it always went away after a few minutes. Meanwhile the best plan was to
lie quietly. Blade cautiously opened his eyes and looked around him.
A chilly wind was blowing over him and whistling in the tops of nearby trees, and mist swirled above
him. Under his naked body he could feel a thick layer of dead needles and leaves on rocky soil. He was
lying with his feet higher than his aching head, which lay between the half-exposed roots of a tree that
soared up into the gray mist. A branch heavy with long green needles hung down almost to Blade's nose,
arching and curving as the brisk wind tossed it. There was no sight or sound or smell of anything
dangerous, human or animal. Blade decided to go on lying still until his head cleared.
The fresh air helped, and soon Blade could stand up. He stepped around the tree to get its thick
trunk between himself and the wind and took a more thorough look around.