He told himself this every waking minute of the day, and in the daylight it seemed that he made sense. It was different by night. In the darkness Katerina came to him, her face twisted with her final agony, and also Galina, her face blank and drooling. They came so often and so vividly that he began to feel haunted.

He knew he had to get rid of this feeling, or it would sooner or later end his life and therefore Project Dimension X. Nightmares never killed a man outright. They would eventually slow a man's physical and mental reflexes. He would go off into Dimension X- in that condition, and from that journey he would not return.

Perhaps he could have driven away the nightmares with liquor or women. Too much liquor took the edge off mind and body as surely as any nightmares. As for the women, Blade could not use other people simply as weapons to fight his own nightmares. He would have to fight and win this battle alone.

So he pulled on his oldest clothes, slung a pack on his back, and walked off into the Highlands of Scotland.

Now it was fourteen days later, and he was walking out again. He was walking out with his pack nearly empty, his boot soles worn thin, bruises or blisters or a coat of dirt on every part of his body, and peace of mind for the first time in months. The two weeks in the Highlands had done the job he'd hoped they would do-two weeks of being alone, two weeks of walking himself into a healthy exhaustion every day and sleeping a dreamless sleep every night. He could look himself in the face now, without wondering if he was looking at a murderer. Once more he could face the world and his next trip into Dimension X.

Blade had chosen a part of the Highlands where human dwellings were rare and telephones were rarer. So it took several hours' more stiff hiking before he was on to a decent road. He had two more hours of traveling along the road, with the light fading and the mist thickening around him. At the end of it all lay a country hotel, where the owner and his wife waited for Blade with a hot bath, clean clothes, good whiskey, a meal large enough for two ordinary men, and finally a telephone connection to London.