Before these thoughts could go any farther, Blade realized what was wrong. His face was covered from hairline to mouth with something like half-melted tar. It smelled and tasted like rotten vegetables, but it wasn't doing anything except completely covering his eyes. He raised one arm and began carefully scraping the muck off his face with his fingers.

Slowly the world around Blade came into sight. The noises hadn't lied-he was in the middle of a jungle. Above him the vine-grown trunk of a massive tree soared up until it vanished into a canopy of shaggy green leaves which left the ground in a sort of greenish twilight. In every direction the ground was covered with a nightmarish tangle of thorny, bushes, creeping and climbing vines, and small trees, most of them bearing vividly colored flowers. It was impossible to take a breath without being half-choked by the smells of flowers and decaying vegetation.

It was also going to be difficult to move more than a few yards in any direction without getting caught in the undergrowth. This jungle was about the last place Blade would have chosen to land naked as the day he was born. He would have considered selling his left hand for a machete to wield with the right, as well as something to protect his feet and skin from thorns and insects.

He sat up and finished cleaning off his face. Then he realized that his chest and left arm and leg were also covered with the same saplike liquid. It seemed to be getting stickier, as if it were congealing on his skin. It was also beginning to itch. He started scraping it off as fast as he could, pulling handfuls of leaves off the vines to help him.

Eventually Blade got himself as clean as he could manage. There were streaks and strings of drying liquid all over his skin, itching like a mild attack of poison ivy. A good deal of it was also clinging to his hair, which now stuck out in all directions like the quills of a porcupine. Blade suspected he looked more like the Thing from the Bottomless Swamp than a human being, and hoped any natives he met wouldn't decide to shoot first and ask questions afterward.