There was no sign of Cheeky.

Blade controlled both his fear for Cheeky and his anger at Lord Leighton until he'd finished checking his clothes, his equipment, and the shape of his body. He was intact, and he had everything he'd taken into the booth-except for Cheeky. He waited a minute, for signs of either the feather-monkey or less-welcome company. Then he pulled out his canteen and walked down to the water's edge.

The water of the river was too scummy and dark with decayed vegetable matter for drinking, but a clear stream flowed down the bank a few yards away. Blade drank, filled both canteens and added water purification tablets, then hooked the canteens to his belt. At last he started searching for Cheeky in earnest, using not only his eyes and ears but his mind.

Cheeky, where are you? Cheeky, answer me. Cheeky, are you hurt?

Blade sent his thoughts out over and over again, keeping the message simple. For all the answer he got, he might as well have been trying to explain Einstein's Theory of Relativity.

He didn't see or hear anything, either. He began to wonder if perhaps Cheeky had thought Blade was dead or hurt and gone off in search of help. He went back to where he'd awakened and looked at the grass. It was flattened, but not crushed as if he'd lain there for a long time. Also, if he'd been there long enough to make Cheeky think he was dead, he'd feel chilled and stiff.

No, Cheeky was-lost. Blade would not use the word «gone,» let alone the word «dead,» even in his mind. Cheeky was lost. The main problem for now was to find him again.

His anger at Lord Leighton slowly passed off. Cheeky had known what he was getting into, as well as his mind could grasp it. He was a volunteer. And certainly the failure of one of his most cherished and promising experiments would be its own punishment for Lord Leighton. He'd be miserably disappointed.

So was Blade. He hadn't realized until now how much he'd hoped that the problem of facing a new world alone was solved. He'd always been a loner, too much so for a safe, sane, twentieth-century existence. But a man can fight only so many singlehanded battles before he starts wanting someone to guard his back and share his campfire.

More than his own peace of mind was also involved here. Why send two people into Dimension X if they didn't arrive together? Blade was going to spend several days looking for Cheeky before he started exploring this Dimension. He'd have spent even more time looking for a human companion.

It was frustrating, to put it mildly. Trying to solve several problems at once, they'd wound up solving none of them! They weren't quite back to where they'd started, but they were close enough to make Blade angry.

He let his anger out with a few heartfelt curses. The outburst frightened a rabbitlike creature out of the grass. It hopped away in such obvious panic that Blade had to laugh.

He'd just stopped laughing when he heard a highpitched droning from the direction of the river. He hurried down the bank to where he could hide in the grass and still look out at the river.

A hovercraft was cruising slowly along the main channel. It looked remarkably like a Home Dimension machine, with propellers mounted on top to drive it and a flexible skirt containing the air cushion under it. It looked battered, and there was some sort of lettering on the side. Like the yellow-green reeds, the lettering looked vaguely familiar to Blade. He strained his eyes, wishing he'd been willing to risk bringing on this trip a pair of binoculars. Some were all plastic, but all were obviously products of a high technology, and might have aroused suspicion in some Dimensions.

The hovercraft vanished behind a grove of trees before Blade could see more. When it reappeared, it was too far away for him to have any hope of making out the lettering.

Blade gritted his teeth. His first day in this Dimension was beginning to look like one of those days when everything goes wrong. It was particularly unpleasant to think about what might have happened to Cheeky.

At least he had one small consolation. The hovercraft showed that he was in a technologically advanced Dimension. It was a little less likely that Cheeky would be shot on sight as an evil spirit, or slaughtered, plucked, and popped into a cooking pot for some tribesman's dinner.

Another consolation for Blade was being able to reach into his rucksack and pull out some food. He decided to eat it cold, rather than risk a fire. Where there was one hovercraft there might be others, and their crews might be armed and trigger-happy.

When he'd eaten, he curled up in his poncho, dry and almost warm. No hunting for a pile of dead leaves to put between his bare hide and the night winds this time!

If Cheeky had just been snuggled up under the poncho with him, Blade would have fallen asleep quite happily.

Blade woke before dawn, feeling better than usual after his first night in a new Dimension. At least he felt better until he thought of Cheeky. Then he had to tell himself all over again that he wouldn't find Cheeky by worrying or blaming Lord Leighton.

Without leaving cover, he ate a chocolate bar and watched dawn break over the river. Several small boats passed slowly down the main channel, trailing fishing nets and lines. The fishermen wore broad-brimmed hats, and both men and women were bare to the waist.

From farther upriver a whistle sounded. Then a stern-wheel steamboat appeared, trailing a thick cloud of gray smoke. Her decks were crowded and she towed several heavily loaded barges. A boat the size of a large cabin cruiser followed in her wake, gliding along silently without noise or smoke. The fishermen waved as the two larger craft plowed past. The people aboard the steamer waved back.

Blade knew it was time to start moving. He wasn't going to find Cheeky or learn much about the Dimension by sitting here. The mix of technologies-steamboat, hovercraft, and rowboat-was odd but not unbelievable. He might be in some developing country or a land recovering from a nuclear war. Neither would be anything new.

He emptied one canteen, then headed for the stream to ref-ill it. He was bending down when he heard the drone of propellers from high overhead. He looked up, and stopped with the empty canteen dangling from his hand to stare at what was approaching.

You could call it a flying train, if you had to find a handy name for it. The locomotive was a squarish metal box with a wedge-shaped nose that was mostly tinted glass. It looked rather like the cabin section of a helicopter with the rotors and tail cut off. Two large propellers whirled on outriggers near the nose. Two more were mounted aft, blowing over large rudders.

From between the rudders a long cable stretched astern, to the nose of a large sausage-shaped balloon. Three more balloons followed, tied nose to tail like railroad cars. A long gondola hung from each one. Blade saw shrouded piles of cargo, men moving among them, and guns at the bow and stern of each gondola.

The whole train made a weird sort of sense, if you assumed the «locomotive» was held up by some sort of antigravity. Certainly the propellers could never have done the job alone, nor could the balloons, which were brightly colored, in checkerboard patterns of yellow and green or blue and white. Each of them had what looked like a number on its bulging flank, and there was lettering on each gondola. It looked like the same tantalizingly familiar lettering Blade had seen on the hovercraft. It was also out of sight before Blade could get a good look.

On any previous trip, it would have been common sense for Blade to go where the balloon train was going. That way probably lay civilization-there, or along the river. On this trip, needing to think about Cheeky was changing all the rules.