At times Blade grumbled over Lord Leighton's latest whims and fancies. At times he felt like a beast of burden. He was never happy over the innocent people who got caught up in his battles and adventures to end up dead or mindless. Yet he could never imagine leaving the Project entirely. It was too important to Britain-and too important to Richard Blade.

Blade went to the kitchen, poured himself a tall glass of beer, drank it, and went back to bed. It was several more hours to dawn, and the best thing to do with those hours was sleep: His first few days in a new Dimension were usually rather busy, and it helped to be as well-rested as possible.

Blade's alarm woke him at eight-thirty. The housekeeper appeared and produced the large breakfast that Blade always ate before a trip into Dimension X. Like sleep, food was sometimes rather hard to come by at first in a new Dimension.

Filled with porridge, bacon, eggs, toast, marmalade, and coffee, Blade left the flat and hailed a taxi. The taxi carried him through the traffic-clogged streets of London to the Tower and left him there. The Special Branch men guarding the entrance to the underground complex checked his identification and passed him through. The elevator took him two hundred feet down in a few seconds, and when the door whispered open at the bottom, J was waiting for him. Blade couldn't help blinking. The memory of the nightmare was so vivid he'd half expected J not to be on hand for today's departure.

They shook hands. «You look rather surprised to see me, Richard,» said the older man. J was nearer seventy than sixty, but the gray eyes in the long aristocratic face missed very little. They never had, one reason why J was still alive.

Blade explained the nightmare as they walked down the long central corridor toward the computer rooms at the other end of the complex. J listened without comment, his face expressionless.