J frowned. «Not at all well, unfortunately. The psychologist who was in charge of developing the testing program for new candidates also developed a few-ah, personal vices-which required his being taken off the project. Nothing nasty, you understand. We just sent him back to private practice, carefully wrapped in the Official Secrets Act. But this does mean bringing in somebody new, and by the time he has been cleared and briefed, three or four months' work will be gone. So it will be that much longer before we can test out anybody who might come forward to replace you as thoroughly as Lord Leighton insists be done.»

«No helping it, I'm afraid,» said the scientist. «Rather a silly proposition to send somebody through the computer and have him come back insane or not at all. Waste of effort.» The offhand manner, Blade strongly suspected, concealed very real scruples about endangering a man's life or sanity. He also suspected that Lord Leighton would sooner have admitted to burgling Buckingham Palace than to the possession of anything so unscientific as a conscience. But Leighton was hurrying on to another topic.

«No new people, I'm afraid. But we do have some new circuitry that should cope with the time distortion we suffered last time. The installation required some alteration in Modules A2 and A4, but-«and Leighton was off into one of his interminable technical discussions that neither Blade nor J ever pretended to understand. Blade gathered only that Lord Leighton had developed (or thought he had developed) some method of coping with the problem that had suddenly popped out of nowhere on the last trip-Dimension X and Home Dimension time getting badly out of phase with each other. On that last trip, to the Ocean world and its beleaguered Kingdom of Royth, nine months spent there had been only a little more than four months to Lord Leighton and J. It was obviously something to be eliminated or at least brought under control. Blade could not have agreed more heartily with Lord Leighton's notion that the fewer wild variables in the project the better, particularly when he was going to be left holding the baby if one of these variables came up spectacularly the wrong way.