«Bring it straight back when it's run,» Lord Leighton told the programmer.

«There's a backlog,» said the young man with the long but well-kept hair. «If you'd like me to give this priority-«

Leighton's desire to have the data back right away fought with his equally strong desire not to call unnecessary attention to what he was doing. The first desire won. «Give it priority, then. How long will it be?»

The man looked at his watch. «With luck, I should have it back by four o'clock. Without luck-«He shrugged.

Leighton smiled thinly. He knew everything that could happen to a computer much better than this young man ever would if he lived to be a hundred. Leighton had been working on computers before the programmer was born.

The programmer picked up the briefcase with the «secret» label on it and hurried out. Leighton sighed with relief, then leaned back in his custom recliner as far as his hunchback would let him. After a moment he closed his eyes and listened to the spattering of rain on the office window. He hoped a few minutes relaxing would get rid of his headache, but doubted it. Nothing would do that except learning if his latest scheme for Project Dimension X was all he hoped it would be. The next best thing would be to have the KALI capsule which sent Richard Blade into Dimension X back in operation. If he didn't get either of these, he'd be happy enough to get the Project's master computer back on line. He wasn't wildly optimistic about any of them.

The trouble started with Richard Blade's return from the Dimension which held the city of Kaldak. He returned seated in a complicated piece of electrical equipment: one of the control chairs used for the fighting robots of the Dimension. Somehow, current had surged into the KALI capsule, but circuit breakers failed to operate, and Blade was brought back to Home Dimension in the chair instead. There was no damage to the computer, but with the KALI capsule heavily damaged and Blade's jaw broken when the chair fell over, the Project was going nowhere fast. While both the capsule and Blade's jaw were being fixed, it seemed like a good time to downline the master computer for a major inspection and overhaul.