He was also unique in the whole world. He was the only living human being who could travel into other Dimensions and return safely. It was because of Blade's uniqueness that he and J were walking along the echoing corridor far below the Tower of London. At the end of the corridor lay a series of rooms, and in the last of those rooms stood an enormous computer. That computer was the creation of Lord Leighton, who had the most brilliant mind and usually the worst temper among all of Britain's scientists. Richard Blade's brain would be linked to that computer, so that they formed a single circuit. Then Lord Leighton would pull a red master switch, activating that circuit, and Richard Blade would whirl off into-somewhere else.

They called that «somewhere else» Dimension X. When the great computer had finished twisting Blade's brain and senses, he saw and smelled somewhere else, heard and felt somewhere else, fought and moved somewhere else. Somehow he always survived and came back alive, sane, and reasonably healthy, to tell of what he had done and seen in the unknown. He was the only living person who could do that, in spite of all the efforts made to find others.

There was much more to what had now become Project Dimension X than simply giving Richard Blade a chance for one incredible adventure after another. Out there in Dimension X lay vast resources of all the things that Britain so desperately needed-land, metals, knowledge. Blade had gone out twenty-three times and come back twenty-three times, but he'd never been able to bring back more than tantalizing samples or hints of the wealth of Dimension X. In spite of all the money, work, thought, and good intentions that had gone into it, the Project still seemed to be doing very little except giving Blade those exotic adventures.