That would be an immense relief to everyone, starting with Richard Blade himself. He was still the only living human being who could travel into Dimension X and return alive and sane. Being the Indispensable Man is a rosy dream only for those people who haven't really had to be one. For them, it's a nightmare.

So Leighton was allowed to go on experimenting with the KALI case. Blade took his remarks about «human elements» and «why I prefer computers» as hints Leighton might be experimenting more boldly than that. Blade was the last man in the world to stand by and let this happen.

The nightmarish affair of the Ngaa led directly or indirectly to some thirty deaths. One of the dead was a woman named Zoe Cornwall. Once she and Blade hoped to marry, until the increasing demands of Project Dimension X and the Official Secrets Act, which protected it, drove them apart. Blade hadn't really stopped loving her, and her lonely death on a distant world left scars that he didn't expect to heal soon, if at all. Leighton would start translating his more exotic notions into experiments again only over Richard Blade's dead body.

Now he'd heard Leighton admit that he'd made a mistake-what was more, a mistake involving computers. Some of Leighton's friends would no doubt say this proved the old man was finally losing his grip. Blade hoped it really meant that Leighton was no longer convinced of his own infallibility.

Leighton cleared his throat, and Blade realized that he'd been standing there like a zombie, paying no attention to what Leighton was saying. The scientist started over again.

«Fortunately there's no damage to the capsule, and that saved most of the really irreplaceable components. It would take a year to replace that. The testing gear was mostly off-the-shelf hardware. We'll lose a month and a few thousand pounds, nothing more.»