"Andre Norton - Operation timesearch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

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"Can you get him back?" Hargreaves pushed aside
speculation, reaching as ever for hard fact.

"It will take at least four days, maybe more, to build up the
power in the beam again. These things have to be timed.
Why do you suppose we selected this particular date and
hour to try it this time? It isn't just a matter of pressing a
button to open a door. There has to be a careful working
from code. Four days-" He stared around him. "And we
have no way of telling how fast time passes over there. He
won't be just sitting there for four days-he has no idea that
we'll try to get him back. He may be miles away when we
are ready."

Hargreaves turned away from the mound to look out over
the raw cutting. "But it will have to be done. And the
sooner we get to work doing it-"

"Of course." But Fordham sounded as if he knew already
they faced a hopeless task. Hargreaves still gazed at the cut.

"Atlantis-no!" And there was determined refusal in his voice:

Ray stumbled, to sprawl face down in sand near a fireplace
rudely built out of rocks. Exhausted, he was content to lie
there, paying small attention to the

hunters and those others who awaited them in this camp,
but he was not left undisturbed.

Legs, slightly bowed, encased in boots of stiff hide to which
patches of thick hair still clung, moved into his restricted line
of vision. Then one of those boots was thrust under him,
and he was rolled over, face up to the sky. The newcomer
wore the same leather tunic as the hunters, but a kilt
fashioned of metal strips clashed together as he moved.
Instead of a metal-reinforced jerkin, he wore breast and
back plates cast in single pieces to fit his barrel chest and
wide shoulders snugly. His left arm from wrist to elbow
was sheathed in a metal cuff guard, but his right was bare
save for two jeweled bracelets.

He was bareheaded, and the long black strings of his hair
were whipped about his face by a rising wind. But he
carried in the crook of one arm a helmet with two bat like