"A. R. Yngve - Darc Ages" - читать интересную книгу автора (Yngve A. R)

The four robot servants entered the lichen-covered ruins of what had once been the cathedral of a large
city, many centuries ago. The remaining walls reached up at the sky like the half-buried hand of some
submerged giant, trying to claw itself up from the rubble of time.



The moon was out of sight this night, but the sensors of the robots registered infra-red heat from living
beings as well as ultra-violet light; they needed no daylight to search the ruins. The red glimmer of their
visorplates moved about the place as they scanned the dark earth and rocks for any sign of metal --
anything unusual that might interest their owner, Lord Bor Damon.



A muffled whirring of servomotors, the occasional clicks and low hisses of their hydraulic systems, was
all the noise they made. They did not communicate; their objectives were clear. Find something of interest
and return to Damon City before dawn. Should the Lepers find you, you and the aircraft must
self-destruct immediately. It is not easy to say whether these machines could feel genuine fear; their richly
ornamented, helmet-shaped metal heads were incapable of expression. Nevertheless, they treaded about
as silently and carefully as a man-sized, two-legged robot could.



After a few minutes of searching across the huge church ruin, something happened. The robot bearing
the name Vhustank -- engraved on its forehead below the crest of the Damons -- stepped on a wide,
grass-covered slab of stone. Unexpectedly, the slab yielded to its steel-and-lead foot. With a sucking
sigh of inrushing air from below, Vhustank fell. He did not say a word.



The sound of his fall alerted the three other robots: Surabot, Avton, and Lachtfot. They marched forth to
help their fallen comrade -- perhaps not so much out of compassion, as because their directives ordered
them to protect their owner's property; but who knows? As they looked down the square hole where the
ground had caved in, they saw what no human eye would have discerned in the darkness: Vhustank was
undamaged.



He and the slab upon which he rested had fallen a few meters, landing on a heap of old rotten coffins,
which had crumbled like soft paper under their weight.
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"Are you still functioning, Vhustank?" Surabot asked in a very low, metallic tone -- constructed to be
understood by humans as well as machines.