So Project Dimension X was born. Lord Leighton's fertile brain created successively more sophisticated computers. The prime minister's authority and political skills produced money and turned aside awkward questions-at least so far. J traveled about on a hundred odd items of needed business. And Blade himself went into Dimension X-twelve times now-explored, wandered about, and helped the people he found there. All twelve times he had arrived in Dimension X naked as the day he was born, and all twelve times he had survived and even flourished by his trained mind and athlete's body.

But perhaps this time would be different. «Number Nineteen» was the code for one of the innumerable subprojects the whole Dimension X business had spawned. Blade had become wearier and wearier of having to contrive even the most basic clothes and weapons when he arrived in a new dimension. After his return from his last trip, he had taken the matter up with Lord Leighton. He had pointed out, among other things, that he was relying too much on luck to keep sending him into these violent worlds stark naked. It was time to start seeing about sending a survival kit through the computer with him. J, who loved Blade like a son, had supported him.

Lord Leighton was used to having his weakness for subprojects criticized. He ignored these criticisms, of course, and plowed ahead. But now both Blade and J were actually urging him to go off on a new tangent. It was commonly believed that the scientist had a smaller version of one of his own computers in place of a heart, but Blade knew this wasn't quite correct. Still, Leighton must have been gratified, because he had gone straight to work on developing the survival kit. And he must have worked like a beaver, if the survival kit was ready so quickly. It had been barely a month since Blade returned from his last Dimension X trip to the warrior people of Zunga.