One moment Blade and Cheeky were surrounded by the wire-mesh booth that was linked up to the computer in the Project laboratory. The next moment there was nothing except the indescribable otherness between the Dimensions. Blade lost awareness of his body, and he couldn't tell that he was gritting his teeth and clenching his fists in an effort to hold the mental link with Cheeky so they could land in Dimension X side by side.

The sense of the otherness around him grew stronger, but the sense of Cheeky's mind linked to his grew no weaker. Blade let himself hope for the best. He also began to expect one of the psychedelic displays he'd endured in transitions using the old booth with its electrodes, before the KALI capsule and all the changes since then.

Before that happened, there was a sudden pop of changing air pressure, so sudden that Blade had to swallow to clear his ears. He felt chilly breezes on his face, and underfoot a sloping surface of loose stones.

Then the stones started to slide, and he started to slide with them. He shouted a warning to Cheeky both with his mind and with his voice and threw himself backward, arms outflung to either side. His head struck the rocks with jarring force, but the downward slide stopped. The rattle and clunk of the sliding stones came to an abrupt end. An unpleasantly long time later, he heard the faint sound of those stones hitting the bottom of something a long way down.

All this happened so fast that Blade hadn't opened his eyes while his trained reflexes were operating. Now he looked up to see cold blue sky overhead, and Cheeky's small face peering worriedly into his own. Since Cheeky's face was completely covered with feathers, it was rather hard to read his expressions. However, the mental message was clear-a picture of Cheeky sitting and mourning by Blade's corpse, with an implied question added. As clearly as if he'd been speaking English, Cheeky was asking, «Are you all right?»