Blade's first sensation was the usual pounding headache that followed a transition into Dimension X. It proved that he was alive, and it always went away after a few minutes. Meanwhile the best plan was to lie quietly. Blade cautiously opened his eyes and looked around him.

A chilly wind was blowing over him and whistling in the tops of nearby trees, and mist swirled above him. Under his naked body he could feel a thick layer of dead needles and leaves on rocky soil. He was lying with his feet higher than his aching head, which lay between the half-exposed roots of a tree that soared up into the gray mist. A branch heavy with long green needles hung down almost to Blade's nose, arching and curving as the brisk wind tossed it. There was no sight or sound or smell of anything dangerous, human or animal. Blade decided to go on lying still until his head cleared.

The fresh air helped, and soon Blade could stand up. He stepped around the tree to get its thick trunk between himself and the wind and took a more thorough look around.

The dense forest and the swirling gray mist cut off his vision close at hand-sometimes to only a few yards. But he could see enough to gather that he was in rugged, heavily forested country. It looked like uninhabited, almost virgin wilderness.

It was pointless to try to tell the time of day as long as the mist cut off the view. But if it was this raw and cold by day, Blade had no intention of staying out here to face the night in the forest, naked and alone. He was tough enough to do it if he had to, but exhaustion from exposure could leave him less able to fight or run. Much better to find whoever lived in this dimension, get fed, get warm, and start learning his way around. If anybody lived in this dimension. So far he had never landed in a totally uninhabited dimension, but there was always a first time for-