His anger at Lord Leighton slowly passed off. Cheeky had known what he was getting into, as well as his mind could grasp it. He was a volunteer. And certainly the failure of one of his most cherished and promising experiments would be its own punishment for Lord Leighton. He'd be miserably disappointed.

So was Blade. He hadn't realized until now how much he'd hoped that the problem of facing a new world alone was solved. He'd always been a loner, too much so for a safe, sane, twentieth-century existence. But a man can fight only so many singlehanded battles before he starts wanting someone to guard his back and share his campfire.

More than his own peace of mind was also involved here. Why send two people into Dimension X if they didn't arrive together? Blade was going to spend several days looking for Cheeky before he started exploring this Dimension. He'd have spent even more time looking for a human companion.

It was frustrating, to put it mildly. Trying to solve several problems at once, they'd wound up solving none of them! They weren't quite back to where they'd started, but they were close enough to make Blade angry.

He let his anger out with a few heartfelt curses. The outburst frightened a rabbitlike creature out of the grass. It hopped away in such obvious panic that Blade had to laugh.

He'd just stopped laughing when he heard a highpitched droning from the direction of the river. He hurried down the bank to where he could hide in the grass and still look out at the river.

A hovercraft was cruising slowly along the main channel. It looked remarkably like a Home Dimension machine, with propellers mounted on top to drive it and a flexible skirt containing the air cushion under it. It looked battered, and there was some sort of lettering on the side. Like the yellow-green reeds, the lettering looked vaguely familiar to Blade. He strained his eyes, wishing he'd been willing to risk bringing on this trip a pair of binoculars. Some were all plastic, but all were obviously products of a high technology, and might have aroused suspicion in some Dimensions.