It was just after dawn, with a morning mist hanging low over the ground. A yellow glow higher up told of the rising sun, and patches of blue sky promised a clear day. But in the swirling grayness of the mist, six gigantic dark shapes loomed up tall and grim. They soared up to incredible heights-a mile or more, if Blade was judging their distance correctly in the mist. But even through the mist their outlines were too regular to be natural.

As the mist began to lift, Blade realized that he was standing almost at the base of the seventh of the gigantic towers. The seven formed a huge circle, a good three miles in diameter. In the middle of the circle Blade could make out a sunken, cleared space about half a mile across. The sunken circle seemed as bare, flat, and featureless as a military parade ground. It was paved-with a yellowish coating that reflected more and more brightly the rising sun.

Blade turned his eyes upward, to examine the tower looming over him. He had to crane his neck until it ached, to see the top. In fact, looking up at it gave him a sickening moment of vertigo. It rose so high from such a slender base that Blade almost expected it to stagger suddenly, to topple over on him and crush him into the rocks and vegetation around its base.

All seven seemed to be as identical as seven automobiles of the same make and model turned out on the same assembly line, except for their colors. The one towering above Blade was a glossy dark green that reminded him of a ripe avocado. From left to right around the circle, the other six gleamed orange, dark blue, golden yellow, flaming red, somber flat black, and glossy white. Except for the black one, all seven were so highly polished that the sun blazing off their towering sides struck painfully into Blade's eyes.

Each of the seven rose well over a mile from a base not more than five hundred feet square. Blade did not know very much about architecture, but he could recognize a building technology decades or centuries beyond anything known in home dimension. How had these seven towers come to be where they were, apparently all by themselves? The mist had almost entirely lifted now. He could see no signs of any other buildings beyond the circle of towers, or any signs that the towers themselves were inhabited.

Blade looked up at the green tower above him again. As he did, his doubts about whether these monsters were inhabited were suddenly answered. Around each of the seven towers, two hundred feet or so above the ground, ran a two-story balcony, jutting out some fifty feet or so on all four sides of the towers. Dark figures were appearing on the balcony above Blade, dwarfed by the distance. Blade could not at first even tell whether he was seeing human beings or some more fanciful and perhaps much less agreeable creatures.

Then one of the figures stepped to the edge of the balcony. Without stopping or hesitating, he stepped out into space. Blade suppressed a gasp and watched. He expected to see the figure plunge downward, to smash itself among the rocks and shrubs at the foot of the tower.

Instead, the figure seemed to float slowly, as if it had no more weight than a soap bubble. As it descended, Blade realized that it was in fact human. The man was dressed from head to foot in the same glossy dark green as the finish of his tower. Blade thought he could also see a sword blade on the man's belt, flashing in the sun.

For a moment he wondered if he should take cover and wait to see what happened. Certainly there was room to hide around the base of the tower. A belt of tumbled boulders, shrubs and small trees, long grass, and little gullies and hills extended for nearly a mile around the base of the green tower. The other six also seemed to be surrounded by such a fringe of semi-wilderness. Did these people preserve those tracts for recreational purposes-as parks-or was it that they simply didn't care? Blade remembered the Sleepers of the Dimension of Dreams, and how they had let an entire city crumble to ruins while they sank into their Dreams.

Blade decided that he was trying to analyze not only ahead of the facts, but at the wrong time. The man in green was less than a hundred feet above Blade's head now, and descending steadily. He was definitely wearing a sword-no, two swords-at his belt. On his head was a cylindrical helmet with cheek pieces and a crest from which a green plume waved. A warrior, obviously.

Now Blade understood how the man was descending so effortlessly through the air. He was riding down on a kind of flying trapeze. Three stout bars of glossy green metal formed an equilateral triangle. The warrior stood on one of these and clung to straps fastened to the two side-pieces. Blade could see no rope or wire attached to the trapeze. Had these people conquered gravity, like the alien Menel in the world of the Ice Dragons? That was an intriguing thought, but Blade reminded himself sharply that this was not the time for analysis or speculation.

Should he duck for cover or go forward to meet the warrior? It was almost too late to hide. Besides, he had to make his first encounter with the inhabitants of this Dimension sooner or later. The odds were good on their having something worth taking back to home dimension. Advanced civilizations usually did, and these people seemed to be quite highly advanced.

As Blade reached this decision, the warrior in green reached the ground. He did not ride his trapeze down the last few feet, but instead jumped while it was still eight feet above the ground. He landed and rolled like a trained tumbler or paratrooper. Blade mentally noted this as suggesting a high level of training among this Dimension's warriors. The man was up again almost instantly, and as the trapeze settled to the ground beside him, he snatched it up and held the upper end of the triangle, against his face. There was apparently a microphone in the trapeze, but the warrior's voice boomed out loud enough to have been heard on the balcony two hundred feet above without any electronic help. Certainly Blade heard it clearly enough, as he crouched behind a bush a good one hundred feet away.

«I, Kir-Noz, Warrior of the First Rank of the Tower of the Serpent, declare that I am First on the Ground this day of war against the Tower of the Eagle. Let those who have the keeping of the Book of Honor record this day.» The warrior dropped the trapeze and spread his arms wide, drawing his two swords as he did so. They flashed in the sun, a long sword and a shorter one, both curved, both with green-enameled hilts. Then he thrust the swords back in their scabbards and began to walk slowly away from the base of the tower, his eyes on the ground.

He had covered perhaps fifty feet when Blade rose from behind his concealing bush. The warrior's eyes opened in amazement, staring at this unexpected apparition. His jaw sagged so that his mouth gaped open like that of an idiot or a dying fish. Blade took two steps forward and held out both hands, palms outward in a gesture of peace.

«Greetings, warrior,» said Blade. He could be certain that the warrior would understand his language as well as he understood the warrior's. During the transition into Dimension X the parts of Blade's brain that controlled his language skills changed. As a result of these changes, Blade reached each new dimension with an instinctive command of the local language. It no longer surprised him as it had the first few times, although he didn't fully understand the reasons. (Neither did Lord Leighton, in fact.) But it was no less welcome now for the fifteenth time than it had been the first. Sign language was more useful in adventure novels than in survival situations where your life might depend on getting your message across fast and accurately.

Seeing that the warrior was too astonished to reply for the moment, Blade continued. «My name is Blade. I come in peace to the people of the Tower of the Serpent, from a distant land called England. I would speak with the rulers of the Tower of the Serpent.»