Blade let out a yell of triumph. He'd done it again! Once more something from Home Dimension had made the trip into Dimension X with him. Knowledge was growing, bit by bit.-His delight at this discovery drove out the last of his headache and he sat up.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Blade's superb night vision began to pick out details. He was sitting in a shallow depression that ran up and down the side of a steep hill. The hillside was strewn with boulders and rose high above him, blocking off half the dark sky and making the world around Blade even darker.

Blade did not feel like standing, not yet and not in this wind. Instead he shifted position until he was on hands and knees, then crawled slowly up out of the depression.

That move saved his life. As he sat down again, there was a faint rattle, then a series of rumbling and crashing noises from the darkness above. A boulder twice the size of Blade himself came bouncing and rolling down the depression, straight across the spot where Blade had been lying. If he hadn't moved, it would have crushed him to a bloody pulp.

Blade decided that it was time to get to his feet and get out of here, in spite of wind, cold, and darkness, before the hill rolled any more half-ton rocks down at him.

Blade moved downhill as fast as the steep slope and, the uncertain footing would let him. As always when he started moving, he felt his full strength return swiftly. Below him a spreading dark mass curled around the base of the hill, like the sea around a rock on the shore.

Several times more as Blade descended the hill the wind sent boulders crashing down close enough for him to hear them. Soon he could make out the dark mass at the foot of the hill. It was a vast expanse of pine forest, hundred-foot trees bending, bowing, and tossing their long branches in the wind. The forest seemed to stretch away, endless and lightless.