The taxi stopped outside the Tower. As he paid the man, Blade glanced back. J's man was also paying a cabby. Blade smiled. Within a few minutes now J would know where he was, and J would come running. J would suspect what he was about to do and J was not going to like it. J was dead set against Blade going through the computer again.

So was Blade, for that matter. Or had been. Now he had changed his mind. A complete and absolute change in environment?

The doctor in Edingburgh, all unsuspecting, might have been talking about Dimension X.

Lord Leighton, in a very few minutes now, was going to be very pleased. Blade did not give a damn one way or the other. The computer, he knew, had somehow bitched him up-was responsible for his impotency. He knew he would find danger out there-fear and suffering-and he might not make it back, but at the moment he was not in a mood to worry about that. With an older man it might be different, but he was a strong young animal and he could not go on living this sexless existence. Better Dimension X, whatever the hazards.

CHAPTER 2

Lord Leighton's humped figure shuffled to the enormous instrument complex and pressed the red toggle. J was there, white faced and nervous, mouth open in last useless entreaty, still begging Blade to change his mind.

A few minutes before, as Lord L bound him into the chair with a web of electrodes, Blade had found the courage to try to explain to J.

«I must go, J. I don't want to go, but I must. I am in deep trouble and I must.» He sought to recall the Edinburgh man's exact words. «I must seek out a highly successful sexual climate. Where else but Dimension X? I have never had any sexual difficulties there. I am going, J. Wish me luck.»

Then Lord L pressed the red toggle. A mist filled the little computer chamber. A mist that soon dispelled. He was still in the chamber, bound to the chair, with Lord L fussing and using bad language.