A pair of jet engines was sunk into the root of each wing and a cluster of gray cylinders looking unpleasantly like bombs hung from a rack near each wingtip. The undersides of the planes were blue-gray and the tops camouflaged in blobs and stripes of green and brown. There was some sort of insignia on the wings, but the planes were gone before Blade could make it out.

The whistle and roar of the jets died away. Blade walked a little farther under the cover of the trees before sitting down to think. He didn't want to run any risk of being spotted now. If those gray cylinders were really bombs, each plane was carrying enough to demolish a good stretch of forest if they thought he was a suitable target.

He wished he'd been able to make out the insignia on the planes. It would have answered one awkward question. Those jets looked odd, but they were at about the same technological level as Home Dimension. Blade knew only one world in Dimension X where this was so-the strange world where an other-England called the Empire of Englor fought an other-Russia called Russland. Was he back in that Dimension, one of the weirdest and deadliest he'd ever visited?

If he was, he might have a problem. The presence of the jets suggested he was in territory ruled by one or the other of the two great powers. There was no wilderness like this anywhere in Englor or any of its allies, as far as he knew. Was he in Russland or some Russland satellite?

If he was, he was in danger. The rulers of Russland were an iron-fisted military elite called the Red Flames. Their policy toward strangers was shoot on sight-unless they wanted to ask a few questions, in which case the stranger was better off being shot. If he was in Russland, by some quirk of the computer or the unknown forces governing Dimension X, he might actually be better off playing Tarzan in the wilderness until the time came for him to return home.