Then he came back out into the main room and sat down in a rubber-padded chair standing in a glass booth in the middle of the computer's consoles. J watched as Leighton scurried around Blade, attaching cobra-headed metal electrodes to every part of Blade's body-ears, fingers, toes, even his penis. From each electrode a colored wire trailed off into the computer.

Meanwhile Blade hyperventilated, to fill his system with oxygen. Slowly he felt the tension flow out of him to be replaced by an eager anticipation of what he might find in Dimension X this time.

Leighton finished his work and gave it a final inspection.

He walked to the main control panel and watched the master timer as the computer readied itself for the great moment.

Then J raised a hand in a farewell salute, Lord Leighton's hand came down on the red master switch, and Blade whirled off into Dimension X.

Chapter 2

Most of the time Blade traveled from Home Dimension to Dimension X in an explosive psychedelic bombardment of all his senses. Sometimes it was merely spectacular, sometimes terrifying, sometimes agonizingly painful.

This time there was nothing like that. The computer room and everything in it vanished. In its place was an endless blackness, with silver and golden lights twinkling starlike in a thousand places. Blade felt hints of a terrible cold all around him, felt his skin beginning to prickle-then blackness and all the other sensations vanished. A moment in limbo, then a bone-jarring thud as he landed on a solid surface which seemed to be covered with some sort of padding.