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

The weather for early December was surprisingly mild. Ray
Osborne opened the collar of his leather jacket. His ex-
paratrooper boots flattened ragged clumps of last season's
grass. The shadow of the Indian mound enclosed him now.
Early Sunday morning-Wilson had been right in his
suggestion about the time. The fence had had a gap just as
he had promised. There was only one building in sight, the
tower part of the hush-hush installation. And on this side of
the mound, he was safely out of sight, even if anyone was
on duty there.

What were they planning to build anyway-clearing it flat
with bulldozers? What would people do when there was no
more open country at all? Ray turned to face the mound,
readying his camera for the shots he had been sent to take.
His finger pressed

And, as if that had thumbed the red switch of final doom,
the world went mad. Ray staggered back, aware only of
intolerable pain in his head, pain associated with violet
flashes that blinded him. Silence- He rubbed at his watering
eyes. Mist faded, and he stood, swaying drunkenly, staring
about him in stunned disbelief.

The raw wound of the clearing, the distant earthmoving
machinery, and even the mound were gone! He was in the
shadow, not of mounded earth, but of a towering giant
tree, with another and another beyond!

Ray put out a shaking hand. He could feel rough bark-it was
real! Then he began to run down a moss carpeted corridor
between trees whose girth was that of monsters. "Get
back!" shouted something inside his head. "Back?" asked
another part of his dazed mind. Where was back?

Minutes later he burst from the dimness of that incredible
forest into a grass-grown plain. A withered root protruded
from the earth to send him sprawling, and he lay drawing
air into his lungs with panting gasps. Soon he became aware
that a hot sun beat down

upon him, far too warm for winter. He pulled up to his
knees to look about him.

Ahead no break in that plain, behind him the forest--nothing
he had ever seen before. Where was he? Shivering,
though the earth under him was warm, Ray forced himself
to sit quietly. He was Ray Osborne. He had gone out to the