"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 29 - Treasure of the Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

Blade walked in a wide circle around the crater, finding bits of metal, black, twisted, half-melted, chunks
of stone and concrete, blobs of glass, slabs of what might once have been a road leading down to the
river. He couldn't even guess what might have stood here before the bomb. Whether or not it hit its
intended target, it did a thorough job where it struck.

Blade wondered if the rest of the bombs that must have gone off in that long-ago war had done an
equally thorough job. Probably not-this civilization still had enough sophisticated jet planes to fly them
over this wilderness every day. However much they'd mangled themselves, they weren't a bunch of
cavemen.

What else were they? Blade wondered as he made his way across the open ground. He kept low, his
eyes searching the sky, ready to dive under the nearest bush or into the nearest patch of long grass at the
first sound of a plane. The only way to find out more about these people was to push on until he met
them, but he still didn't want to be spotted by one of the planes. It would be hard to prove he was
friendly by waving at the pilot, and hard to survive if the pilot decided he was an enemy.

Blade left the open ground behind well before dark. The next day he found himself in the woods again. It
was no longer virgin wilderness, but second growth on land which had once been farms. Every mile or so
he passed traces of stone walls, farm buildings, bridges over streams, even a road. No traces of violence,
though. Had nature covered them over, or hadn't there been any? Perhaps the people of the area simply
packed up and left after the war, or perhaps they died from something that left their homes and walls
intact. Radiation, disease, chemicals, starvation, radiation-induced sterility?

Blade found himself more and more reluctant to push on with no weapon but his rough club. He tore off
a length of tough vine, then went down to the riverbank and picked out a handful of rounded stones, each
about half the size of his fist. With a little practice he had a fairly useful sling. It might not slay Goliath, but
he could hit a man in the head with one of the stones at twenty-five yards. After the stones were gone,
the vine was tough enough to use as a strangling cord. Blade made a belt out of another length of vine
and a pouch out of the hide of one of the squirrel-rabbits. Then he dropped the stones into the pouch and
moved on.

If they could only work the bugs out of getting some equipment into Dimension X along with him! He
wouldn't ask for much, just a few essentials like boots, a canteen, emergency rations, and some sort of
weapon. He'd even be happy if the scientists would let go of his old commando knife, which had made
the round trip with him. The scientists insisted they still needed it for further study, Lord Leighton
supported them, and against that combination even J's protests couldn't do anything.

That evening the planes seemed to be coming overhead in squadrons. Blade was careful to get well
under cover, and when he started off the next morning he moved more cautiously than before.

It was a good thing he did. Just before noon he saw nearly a dozen planes diving on something only a
few miles ahead. Then he heard a steady crashing of explosions. After a few minutes the explosions died
away, the planes flew off, and several new flying machines came whirring in over the treetops. They
looked like immense gleaming sausages with lift propellers in the wings and drive propellers in their high
tails. When one of them hovered, then landed a mile ahead, Blade decided to get out of sight. He was at
the base of a tree when he heard the soldiers approaching. By the time they came in sight he was thirty
feet up, hard to pick out even if they'd thought of looking.

When the soldiers passed, he still wasn't completely sure he ought to try meeting them. They looked as if
they were on a combat mission, they might be rather trigger-happy, and if they were they were carrying