There was no point in dressing up for a trip to Dimension X. He always began the trips wearing nothing but a coat of foul-smelling black grease and a loincloth, and ended them wearing nothing at all. All the clothes he was pulling on now had to do was keep him from getting wet, cold, or arrested for indecent exposure until he got to the Tower.

The taxi crept through London's traffic and deposited Blade at the Tower. The grim-faced Special Branch men who guarded the entrance to the underground complex checked Blade's identification and passed him through. The elevator plunged two hundred feet down in a few seconds, and the long echoing corridor led him to the computer section.

J met him at the far end of the corridor. When they were at the door leading to the main computer, out of earshot of the technicians and programmers, the older man turned to Blade. «The Prime Minister wasn't very happy about your report on the American trip,» he said.

«I didn't write it to make the old-the man happy,» said Blade shortly. Actually, there was no point in being harsh. The Prime Minister was another man doing his best and enduring a great deal of trouble. Without his efforts in providing money and discouraging inquisitive members of Parliament, Project Dimension X would long since have fallen apart.

«No, but he did have hopes that the Americans might be able to contribute more. I'm afraid he has the usual notion that in the American intelligence services money grows on trees and they can give it away by the barrel to any likely project.»

Blade laughed and shook his head. He'd gone off to the United States with some of those same notions himself. He'd spent a working vacation, taking desert-survival and underwater-demolitions refresher training, looking over a few possible candidates for Project Dimension X, and generally keeping up his contacts in the American intelligence services. Parts of the month had been pleasant enough, but in the end he'd been disappointed.