He was tanned and in better condition than usual, if that were possible. This was the result of a month spent diving for Greek vases off Smyrna, varied with nights ashore in Turkish bars, sipping good raki and watching the belly dancers. And before that there had been a month at his Cornish cottage. That month had been just as pleasant but not quite as relaxing. A lovely and charming young German exchange student had kept him agreeably busy for a good part of that month. Two pleasant months, and now it was time to earn his next spell of leave.
He wondered where he would end up this time. The variety had already been so incredible that he wondered if Dimension X had anything left that could really surprise him. Of course landing in a polar ocean, or in the crater of an active volcano would be surprising. Very surprising. But he wouldn't live long enough in either case to appreciate the surprise. Or he might land in a dimension with no human inhabitants. That hadn't happened yet either. But that would not be terribly interesting. In fact his main survival problem in that case would be not dying of boredom before the computer brought him home.
He shrugged. He was trying to predict the unpredictable and measure the infinite. He would be dead or retired long before Dimension X ran out of surprises. In fact a thousand men could make regular trips into Dimension X for a century without exhausting its possibilities, or so Lord Leighton said. And that was something Blade rather liked. He knew he liked to be always on the move in search of something new. So here he was, involved in a project that handed him on a silver platter as much adventure and as much novelty as any human being could very well cope with. He was content. Not complacent or self-satisfied, but content. He knew he had out of life nearly everything he could reasonably ask.
The traffic began to break up just before Blade was going to climb out and walk, so he eventually climbed out of the taxi at the Tower of London as he had intended. He gave the driver an extra tip for fighting his way through the traffic and poor visibility and watched the taxi's lights shrink away and wink out in the fog. It was rolling in thicker and thicker now. Blade was frankly glad that he wasn't going to have to face a trip back in it tonight.
The Special Branch men assigned to the project handed him on with even more dour faces than usual. The fog and darkness seemed to be weighing heavily on them. Blade was glad when the door of the elevator closed, shutting out the dank chill of the evening and the silent watchdogs.
The elevator dropped the two hundred feet to the level of the computer complex in the usual few seconds, and the heavy bronze door slid open as noiselessly as ever. J was standing in the corridor to greet him. The old man's face lit up as Blade stepped forward, and they shook hands.
«You're looking remarkably fit, Richard.»
Blade briefly told of his last months' doings as they walked down the brightly lit corridor toward the computer room. At each door there was a slight delay as they stood still, to be scanned by electronic sentries that had their characteristics memorized down almost to the fingernail. Each time, the image they presented matched the sentry's memories of people permitted to come this way. Each time the door ahead swished open.
«Where's Lord Leighton?» asked Blade.
«Already down with the computer. You know how he is about that blasted machine. Always fussing over it like a cat with one kitten. He hardly lets the technicians even dust the consoles.»
Blade grinned. «Frankly, I don't mind that if it helps get me into Dimension X and back safely.» J nodded. That was an unanswerable argument.
Lord Leighton's sanctum lay deep inside the computer facilities, beyond several rooms filled with the auxiliary equipment needed for the project and the technicians and operators needed for that equipment. More and more incomprehensible pieces of electronic wizardry seemed to have been installed each time Blade passed through the rooms. Lord Leighton's fertile mind had generated all sorts of new ideas for increasing the computer's powers. Each of those ideas had in turn generated its own family of new gadgets. Blade wondered what was going to happen when there was no more room in the existing net of underground rooms. Excavate some more? How the Prime Minister would love getting the bill for that!
Then they stepped through the door into the main computer room. All around and above them the massive computer consoles loomed. Their gray crackled finish seemed to absorb light and make the cramped room even gloomier than it would have been otherwise. In the middle sat the glass-walled booth and on the rubber floor of the booth stood the chair where Blade would be sitting in a few minutes. He had never liked the look of that chair. With the booth, it looked more like a place for executing criminals than for carrying out major scientific experiments.
Lord Leighton was at the main control board when they entered, too engrossed in examining the dials and readouts to do more than give a brisk nod to Blade. A glance at the board told Blade that the main sequence was already underway. He had been around Lord Leighton's computers long enough to pick up some vague glimmerings of how they worked.
It was time to get ready. He went into the tiny dressing room and took off his clothes. The loincloth and the pot of black grease to prevent electrical burns were laid out waiting for him. When he was naked, he dipped both hands into the grease and smeared it over every inch of skin, from hairline to toenails. It neither smelled nor felt any better than usual. Admittedly he couldn't expect it to be perfumed, but did it have to smell like a cheap insecticide? Fortunately the grease never stayed on his body through a the transition into Dimension X. Unfortunately, neither did the loincloth. One of these days he was going to land in a public place, among a people who frowned on nudity, and spend his first few days in the new dimension in the local jail on a charge of indecent exposure.
Blade strode into the room and sat down in the chair. The seat and back of the chair were chilly against his bare skin. Lord Leighton abandoned the control panel to its own devices for a moment and came over to wire Blade into the computer, briskly attaching the forty-odd electrodes and their connecting wires. The electrodes had the form of polished metal cobra's heads. Blade looked as though he were being attacked by a monstrous swarm of tiny snakes.
Finally Leighton was finished and stepped back to the controls. J had already perched himself on the chair that Leighton had put out for him. From the expression on the older man's face, Blade realized that J was probably more nervous than he was. He grinned and raised a hand in salute as far as the wires would permit.
Then Leighton turned. Blade saw that the scientist's eyes were filled with very nearly the only excitement he ever permitted himself to show. «Are you ready, Richard?»
«Ready and eager, sir.» That was very nearly true. He felt fit and rested and hardly nervous at all. If anything, he was looking forward to the challenge that a new dimension would throw at him.
Leighton nodded, and pulled down on the red master switch.
Instantly smoke began to pour out of the consoles in great swirling yellow-brown clouds. For a moment Blade thought that the computer had finally blown up. Then as the smoke swirled around him and he took a sniff, he realized that the computer had him in its grip after all. He was sliding out of Home Dimension. Leighton and J and the computer consoles and then even the walls of the booth slowly vanished into the smoke. It seemed to be pouring up from below now, eddying and flowing as though unfelt puffs of wind were disturbing it.