So Blade found himself caught up in the most vital top-secret project in British history. Lord Leighton continued as scientific head of Project Dimension X, producing larger and larger computers. A staff of hand-picked security-cleared technicians helped him as much as he would let them.

J added handling the security of the Project to his other duties. Less formally, he kept an eye on Blade, heading off Lord Leighton's wilder schemes when they threatened to put Blade in danger for no good reason. J was nearer seventy than sixty, a man nearing the end of his life, a many who'd been married to his duties all that life. Blade was the son he'd never had.

Inevitably, money was needed to expand and continue the Project, money by the millions of pounds, which had to be found somewhere. The Prime Minister's Secret Fund helped, and so did selling what Blade carried back from Dimension X-gold and jewels, strange drugs, stranger metals, the secrets of advanced technologies. Project Dimension X never got rich, never even showed a clear, profit, but somehow kept going.

Blade made trip after trip into Dimension X, and little by little some of the mysteries vanished. No one could call the Project a failure, yet somehow the big successes everyone hoped for continued to be just out of reach.

None of the technological secrets Blade brought home could be exploited without years of expensive research and development.

There was no way to predict where Blade would end up, when Lord Leighton pulled the master switch on the computer. He'd visited some Dimensions more than once, but usually he entered a new world on each trip. Dimension X could never be explored or exploited this way.

Finally, the strain of travel from one Dimension to another was beyond most people's endurance. No one ever came back from Dimension X with Blade and stayed alive and sane for more than a few hours. No one except Blade had ever made the round trip from Home Dimension and stayed alive and sane at all. They'd been looking for another person with Blade's qualities for a long time, without finding one.