Lord Leighton's idea of «a few basic necessities» turned out to resemble the equipment of a Himalayan climber. Boots, an insulated suit, three all-purpose knives, a sleeping bag, a hundred feet of light rope, a week's emergency rations, a canteen-the list went on and on. Looking at the growing pile on the floor, Blade was struck by two things. One was Lord Leighton's generous notions of what one man could carry. The other was that everything except the knives was made of natural materials.

The scientist frowned. «Do you think there's too much here?»

«For a hiking trip in rough country, no. I've handled a sixty-pound pack in the Alps with no trouble at all. But I wasn't trying to move fast there. And I certainly wasn't planning on doing any fighting.»

J nodded. «Richard's right. You'll have the poor chap loaded down like a World War I infantryman.» J, Blade recalled, had been just that, so the old man should know what he was talking about.

«Very well,» said Leighton with a smile that seemed almost sheepish. «We didn't have time to get a security clearance for a survival expert. So I read up on backpacking and made up the kit myself. I was largely — ah-guessing.» For Lord Leighton to admit to «guessing» was equivalent to most men's admitting they had robbed the Bank of England. Again J and Blade exchanged grins.

«As for the natural materials,» Leighton went on, «that's a little less a matter of guesswork. We looked for some common factor in all the items you've managed to bring back from Dimension X, and found it. All of them are very stable chemically, even under the extreme conditions of an inter-dimensional transfer. Natural materials tend to have that same quality, while some of the more common synthetics don't. That's why everything is natural except the knives, and we couldn't very well send you off with wooden knives, could we?»