Blade said: «About being out there five times, Lord L–I am the man who has done it and it has been my intuition, my hunches, if you please, that have kept me alive more often than not. I have survived all those various hells because I have followed my instincts. I think I had better follow my instinct now.»

The old man was making scribbles on onion-skin paper. He did not look up. «Very well. If you are so determined-it is your life, Richard, and you know best how to safeguard it. And, no matter what J thinks, your safety has always been my chief concern. It was, in fact, my main reason for implanting the crystal in your brain-so the machine could tap your stream of consciousness and, by means of the encephalographic code, give me a printout of your thoughts at the very instant they were occurring. I would know, Richard, exactly what you were thinking every moment. I would be aware of every situation in which you found yourself. In times of great danger I might be able to help by reversing the process and feeding my thoughts to you through the machine. Two heads are often better than one, Richard. It might save your life.»

Both Blade and J recognized the last appeal. The old man did not give up easily.

Richard Blade went to a chair, sat down quietly and did not speak for a few minutes. He had given much of himself to the DX experiments and he had not shirked duty. His body was still intact, but for the myriad scars, and he was not mad. Yet his brain was not the same and never would be again. Each time the computer altered his brains cells, restructuring them so he could perceive and exist in a new dimension, new deviation from the norm took place. The machine never restored the cellular configuration to exactly what it had been. The Blade who sat in this room now, thinking these thoughts, was as different from the Blade who had undertaken Mission No. I as the puling infant Blade was different from the grown man who had graduated Oxford and gone straight into MI6.