And there was this urge, this hunch or intuition, telling him to go now.

He tried to tell them. He spoke briefly and saw, after a few moments, that even J did not understand. Lord L sulked and only half listened.

Blade faced them. «So if you like, sir, I am refusing to obey an order.» This to Lord L. «I go tonight, sir, or I do not go at all. You do have a backup man, after all, and maybe it would be better if-«

Lord Leighton suddenly looked like a peevish child. He waved a pencil and said, «Come now, my boy. Nobody said anything about orders or any of that rot. Forget that. It is just that I am a scientist and I distrust intuition. But have it your way, by all means. I will make the setting on the machine-it may take me an hour or so before the cycle is right and then we will go. By all means.»

The old man hobbled out of the room, mumbling to himself even as he fussed with a slide rule.

J had his pipe going at last. He peered at Blade through blue smoke. «You are feeling all right, my dear boy?»

Blade shrugged his massive shoulders. «Never better. In the pink. I really can't explain any of this, sir, except that somehow I know it is better to go now. Other than that I suppose it is just another DX mission. Routine. I am sorry to upset Lord L's schedule, but it is the way I feel and-«

J nodded. «You do as you damn well think best, boy. Don't let that bloody old boffin get to you. He really can't help it, you know. He doesn't mean to be insensitive or inhuman-he just is! He is a scientist, not really a person.»

Blade had to chuckle. «Oh, come now, J. He really isn't all that bad.»

J very seldom used bad language. Now he said, «The hell he isn't. But as I say-he can't help it. Well, lad, this is the last time out.»

«I hope so,» Blade said. «I sincerely hope so, sir.»

And he did. He had had quite enough. Yet he knew that if there was a reason for more ventures, if duty called him, if his country needed him, he would go. He did not foresee the possibility, and never had he more devoutly wished that a circumstance would not arise. He had had it up to his neck with Dimension X. He knew now what a bomber pilot must feel like before embarking on his last mission before going home.

J, his pipe steaming, had picked up a ruler and was tapping it on his palm. «You've been worried about your mind, eh?»

«A little, sir.»

J would never understand that, either. The nightmare of black sweat and screaming, the pitiless alcoholism, the raging drive of satyriasis, the double and triple vision and loss of memory, the old friends offended and the girls lost because he could not explain. The Official Secrets Act that bound him like a net.

And the blackouts, the terrible and frightening blackouts. He had wakened once in Liverpool with some doxy by his side and absolutely no recollection of the events of the week before. True, he had sought help and it had been given by J and Lord L and the most famous specialists in England-but it was not enough. There were times when a million famous doctors could not have helped him.

J said, «Lord L has always assured me that the machine restructures the brain cells, but it does not cause them to deteriorate.»

«I know.»

And he did know. He trusted and admired Lord L. And yet he did not really believe.

Lord L hobbled back into the office and waggled a finger at Blade. «I have the cycle upcoming on the machine. Half an hour. You had better get ready. Unless-you've changed your mind?»

«No,» said Blade.

J came to shake hands. «I don't believe I'll go with you to the computer room this time, my dear boy. Not in person, at least. But I will be-well, you know.»

«Of course, sir.»

They shook hands. «Bless and keep,» said J.

Lord L glanced at his wristwatch. «Best get a move on, lad. If we miss the cycle it will be a lost twenty-four hours. And since you're so dead set on going now. .»

Blade grinned. The old man died hard. «I am,» he said. «Let's go.»

As Blade followed Lord L through the maze of corridors and past the various security checks into the computer complex, he conceived the weird fantasy that Lord L was not really Lord L at all, but a white-smocked Apollyon leading him into the Pit. Which might well be. You never knew, until you had gone through the computer and landed in Dimension X, whether it was to be hell or paradise. In most cases it was a bit of both. Which this time, and in what proportions?

They passed the final security check and walked amidst the smaller computers, heading for the room that housed the monster machine that would launch Blade. All around him the lesser brood hummed and clicked and flashed and rang bells and made complex decisions in a billionth of a second. The big man felt his usual antipathy taking over; he did not like computers and no use pretending he did. Now and then, when they passed a white-smocked figure in attendance, a human being in charge of all these electronic brains, Blade felt a small positive charge of relief. The machine had not entirely taken over. Not yet.

At last they came to the central room that housed the master computer. Lord L did what he had never done before: he followed Blade into the little disrobing cubicle. The old man talked as Blade stripped and donned a loincloth and began to smear himself with the tar salve that prevented computer burns.

Blade took off his toupee and flung it into a corner. His naked skull glistened blue in the fluorescent light. The toupee looked like some small dead animal; it would serve, Blade thought, as a reminder to take care of his hair when he returned from the mission. If he did.

It came hard for Lord Leighton to beg, but he was near it now.

«I wanted this word alone with you, Richard, away from J. He is against me in everything these days. And he treats you like a child, you know. He is like a mother hen with a chick. That's all wrong, Richard. You're the dominant one, the hero, the adventurer. It is you who must go into DX and suffer whatever comes. So all final decisions should be yours.»

Blade smeared tar salve on his bottom. «Exactly, Sir. I agree. I do. I am-making the final decisions.»

Was there ever such an obdurate old boffin?

«If you would only wait for a month, Richard? Surely that isn't asking too much and I, er, have so much to do yet.»

Blade shook his head. «No. I also have things to do, sir. I want to get into Dimension X and get it over with. Now.»

«You don't understand,» said Lord L. «None of you really understands what I am trying to do.» There was real despair in his voice. «The computer-cortex link, my boy, is only the first step in what I am trying to do, what I can do. Even Dimension X is of secondary importance compared to what I am really after. I want to change the world, Richard! I want to change people and so the world. But I need time and I haven't much. I am an old man and my sands are running out.»

Blade rubbed tar salve between his toes. The old boy was never so dangerous as when he waxed dramatic and turned to florid usage. In self-defense Blade was flip.

«I'm sorry, sir, but there is nothing I can do about your sands. Shall we get on with it?»

Lord L glanced at his wrist. «Another ten minutes. I had thought, Richard, to implant another electrode in your brain. In the hypothalamic region. As a part of the new ESB experiments I am undertaking. It would not take very long and if we delay-«

«No,» Blade said. For the first time he began to understand what the old man was really up to. The computer-cortex experiments had evolved into something new, something of such a magnitude and importance that Lord L had all but forgotten DX. He was trying to phase one experiment out and leap headlong into a new one. And he needed Blade, for of all the men alive in the world only Blade had a brain already geared to receive and react to computer signals.