He was going into Dimension X again, and this might be the last time he'd ever see any of these familiar English sights: So far he had always returned, often battered and bruised and lame, but there was always the possibility of something going wrong with either the computer or his own skills. He might be trapped; he might be killed. The lust for adventure was strong in him, but as he looked around the pub, it occurred to him that his Dimension X travels might be too much of a good thing. Then he paid his bill and went outside to where his MG was parked, his equipment already in it. Annie was on her way back to London, so there were no good-byes to be said before he fired up the engine and trundled the little sports car onto the motorway for London.

During his absence the cleaning lady had whirled through Blade's West End apartment like an orderly hurricane. All the carefully cultivated clutter of his bachelor life had been swept away and rearranged in appropriate places-or at least what Mrs. Griggs thought were appropriate places. Blade could not help laughing at the sight. The guerrilla warfare between bachelors and their cleaning ladies had been raging long before he was born and would be going on long after he was dead. Undoubtedly, it would go on until cleaning ladies became reconciled to clutter or bachelors became tidy-neither of which would happen this side of the Day of Judgment.

It was certainly more than silly to worry about Mrs. Griggs' peculiarities, when within another twenty-four hours he was going to-well, what was the correct word for moving into Dimension X? Lord Leighton himself was still trying to pin down the exact relationship of Dimension X to Home Dimension.