That was the first human encounter with Dimension X. It was not and could not be the last. Dimension X was rich in land, resources, knowledge. If that wealth could somehow be tapped, it would mean a mighty rebirth for Britain. Dimension X would have to be explored and that exploration kept a closely guarded secret.

So Project Dimension X came into existence. Richard Blade left his post as a top agent for the secret intelligence agency MI6 to begin a new profession as the world's first interdimensional explorer. Tomorrow he would begin his twenty-third expedition into Dimension X.

Blade was not only the first person to explore Dimension X; he was the only one who had ever done so and was still alive and sane. Others had possessed the qualities of mind and body needed to travel into Dimension X, but they were all dead. It was just as well that some of them were dead, for they had been agents who might have given the Dimension X secret to the Soviet Union. How much damage that might have done no one even cared to guess.

Yet there was no doubt that more people were needed for the project. One man could only do so much exploring, even a man as gifted as Blade. Dimension X was vast and varied, full of enough complexities and unknowns to baffle even Lord Leighton. Every trip into Dimension X produced a little more knowledge-and also more proof of how much there was to learn. A dozen men might grow old exploring Dimension X without more than scratching the surface, and Blade was only one man.

Even so, he was pushing back the unknown, a little bit at a time. On his last trip he had taken a ring with him from Home Dimension into the forests of Gleor and back again. No object before that ring had made the round trip. It was only a small beginning, of course, but it might promise more for the future. Perhaps in time Blade and those who came after him could travel into Dimension X and not arrive naked as newborn babes, with nothing but their wits and muscles between them and sudden death.