The man called J stood in the autumn rain at the Tower of London and waited for Richard Blade. A gray, wet, dismal day in London always made him feel particularly old. When he was waiting on a day when Richard would be taking a trip into Dimension X, he felt even older.

J's erect bearing and dignified manner hid a good part of his age from the casual observer. They didn't conceal it from himself. He was aware of every one of his years, more than forty of them devoted to a by-now legendary career in espionage. He had begun it behind German lines during the First World War. Like all spies who lived long enough, he was ending his career behind a desk, watching younger men go out to carry out his orders or die trying. The strain resulting from this could be concealed like his age, from casual observers, but not from himself.

Watching Richard Blade go out into the unknown was the greatest strain of all. J did not love any of the others like the son he'd never had. None of the other young men traveled so far, or faced such dangers with nothing but their own wits and muscles. None of the other young men were doing work so important for England.

Quite some time had now passed since the day Lord Leighton had wired Richard Blade's brain to a computer and sent him off into the somewhere called Dimension X. That somewhere had deserved the name then, and it still deserved it now. They didn't know all that much about it. There were times when everyone except Lord Leighton wondered if they ever would!

But they did know that an infinity of other worlds lay out there in Dimension X, each world with its own knowledge, people, resources. If the day ever came when England could regularly tap that knowledge, those resources-well, perhaps the sun might rise on a new British Empire.