So the man waited until the soldiers were well out of sight before climbing down from the tree. He stood for a moment at its base, listening carefully. The soldiers were still moving as noisily as ever. He could follow them without any trouble. He swung the club in his right hand and set off on the trail of the soldiers.

He moved with grace and power, putting his feet down with great precision yet still covering ground quickly. Every movement suggested the flawless coordination and reflexes of some powerful animal. Yet the heavy-boned dark face was too alive and aware to be an animal's, and the dark eyes were searching, restless, almost frighteningly intelligent. In this man, mind and body had joined to create a superb fighting machine, one that didn't seem to belong in the same world with those clumsy soldiers in green.

In fact, the man wasn't from the same world as the soldiers he followed. His name Was Richard Blade, this was Dimension X, and he'd come across infinity by what might be called science but still seemed more like a miracle.

Richard Blade actually didn't belong in his own homeland, modern Britain, much more than in Dimension X. He was a man whose mind and body were made for the lonely, dangerous, and frequently short life of the professional adventurer. He would have been a tower of strength to Francis Drake raiding Spanish galleons in the sixteenth century. In the safe, sanitary, ordered life of a modern industrial country, he was a man out of place.

Every so often, though, even the most oddly-shaped peg will find a suitable hole. When Blade left Oxford, a man called J was head of the secret intelligence agency MI6. He suspected what skills this young man might have, and made him a field agent straight out of the university. Blade justified J's confidence by becoming MI6's best field man. Time after time he succeeded in assignments which would have been suicidal for any other agent. He still knew he had nine chances out of ten of dying violently, but accepted this with open eyes. It was part of the price to be paid for doing his duty and living a life which so well suited him.