If that wealth could be tapped, if the secret were kept, and of Richard Blade remained alive and sane long enough.

How long would be long enough? Nobody knew. So far there was nobody else alive who could make the round trip. The search for such a person was still going on, but no one expected quick results.

Fortunately, Richard Blade was one of the most perfect specimens of physical and mental development alive. He was very likely the most unkillable human being in the world. He'd faced wild animals and still wilder peoples, both savage and civilized. He'd faced wind and waves, icy cold and searing heat, a dozen kinds of monsters, even an intelligent race of aliens from somewhere far out in interstellar space. He'd survived them all. He was quite prepared to go on pitting himself against the perils of Dimension X as long as he was needed.

Yet what if his own brain were beginning to turn traitor?

Blade knew perfectly well that no human brain was really adapted to being twisted completely around twenty-five successive times. Not even his. The Project had given him psychological problems before-a prolonged period of impotence, a shorter period of excessive drinking. Was this nightmare the first sign of some new problem?

Blade didn't know. He would mention it to Lord Leighton and J, of course. They would pass it on to the Project's staff of psychologists. Meanwhile Blade would be off to Dimension X. One nightmare, however gruesome, wasn't enough reason for canceling a trip. A gamble? Yes, but every trip into Dimension X was a gamble that would have given a normal person not just one nightmare but fifty.

Richard Blade wasn't quite normal. He was too fond of matching his own skills against great danger to be a very comfortable citizen for any peaceful twentieth-century country. Field intelligence work had been the most rewarding career he could find-until Project Dimension X came along.