Richard hadn't found the Fountain of Youth in Dimension X, but he'd found something far more important in the Highlands. He'd found the ability to live with himself and his duties, an ability he'd been losing. J had been wondering if Blade would lose it for good, and he'd feared the worst.

In spite of this, he hadn't been angry with Blade. He loved the younger man like the son he'd never had, and also knew Blade's ordeal from bitter personal experience.

At some time in his life, every good secret agent realizes that he moves through life leaving behind him a steadily lengthening trail of bodies. It is something he has to face and learn to live with.

J had known agents who could not learn to live with this responsibility. He'd also known agents who never realized that they had any. In different ways both kinds became unreliable and even dangerous. Both kinds tended to end up dead or mad or both if they continued their careers as agents and didn't retire in time to something less demanding.

There were also those agents who faced their responsibilities in the same determined way they faced enemy guns. They were the good and even the great agents, who could be relied on for almost anything. J had always been sure that Richard Blade was one of those men, who would meet and master his personal crisis when it came. Now he had done so, and J could not help being immensely relieved.

He walked over to the sideboard and drew out the brandy decanter and a glass. Richard Blade's latest victory called for a celebration, not just a glass of brandy. But the brandy was all it would get.

That was nothing new. Blade and J had spent their lives in secret work, winning their victories and taking their defeats in the shadows, never able to either celebrate or mourn too loudly.