Now that his worst problem was solved, he checked the wire. It was still in place on his thigh. Gently he peeled it loose and wound it around his left wrist like a bracelet. Where it had been was nothing except a red mark from the glue. So far Lord Leighton's experiment seemed to be working.

Blade saw that he'd landed in a sort of tropical rain forest. Except for the steep bank where he'd fallen, there were trees everywhere, with moss hanging from their branches and flowering vines wrapped around their trunks. The spreading branches overhead made such a thick canopy that the ground was clear of everything except dwarfed ferns and bloated blue-white fungi the size and shape of soccer balls. Blade picked up a rotten branch and experimentally prodded one of the fungi. It promptly disintegrated into a cloud of foul-smelling powder. He hastily stepped back and mentally wrote off the fungi as a source of food.

In spite of this unpromising start, Blade doubted that a forest so heavily overgrown would be short of food or water. He'd never landed in a Dimension where the biochemistry was so different that he couldn't eat and drink enough to keep alive. He also hoped he never would. It was difficult enough encountering hostile aliens and managing to return intact to Home Dimension, without worrying about starving to death, or growing so weak that somebody or something could kill him.

The branches overhead did let in enough light to tell him that the sun was shining, but not to let him tell directions from it. However, unless the law of gravity didn't apply in this Dimension, water still flowed downhill. If Blade also went downhill he'd be more likely to find water. With water and a reasonable amount of almost any sort of food, he could survive as long as he had to.