Blade stood up and did a series of exercises to loosen up his muscles. He decided that his body had come through the transition into Dimension X in first-class condition. In fact, he'd never felt nearly as good this soon after the transition. Everything was in place, everything worked, and he didn't have the faintest trace of a headache.

The twilight seemed to be getting brighter. Blade looked up and couldn't tell whether the sun was rising or just coming out from behind some clouds. At least right now he had enough light for traveling.

He'd have to travel, unless he wanted to stay here by the tree until he took root along with it. Never mind the vines and thorns in his path. There was no water in sight, no fruits or fleshy plants, no birds large enough to be worth trying to catch. There was life all around him in the jungle-the up roar proved that. But he wasn't going to be able to get much use out of it here.

He also wasn't going to be able to find the human life of this Dimension, if there was any. Not that moving on would necessarily bring him to civilization, of course. In this jungle an army might pass half a mile away without his seeing it, and he might wander around until the computer drew him back to Home Dimension. A bloody lot of good that would do for the Project!

Or there might be no people at all-nothing but dinosaurs and birds. In that case Blade would finally end up, as he'd put it, «Playing Tarzan without any apes to help me.» Pointless, certainly uncomfortable, but hopefully not too dangerous unless the wildlife was too wild! That was another thing to find out by doing some exploring.

So it was time to move out. Find water and food, get a weapon, then go hunting for the natives. It was almost a routine for Blade, but not boring. Each new Dimension held too many surprises to ever let Blade become bored, and more than enough to kill him if he left anything out of this «routine.»