«Blast,» said J, and dropped the sheaf of papers down on the desk in front of him. It took an effort for him not to throw them, down, or even throw them across the room.

From behind the broad, polished desk, Lord Leighton stared at J. The scientist was bent forward in the pose that made his hunchback and his polio-twisted frame most comfortable for him. His gnarled, knob-jointed hands were splayed out on the varnished desk top. It seemed to J that for a moment there was a fleeting look of sympathy on Lord Leighton's gnomelike face. But it vanished quickly, and was replaced by the man's usual professional detachment.

The scientist shrugged his humped shoulders and said quietly, «It's not my fault, old chap. Really it isn't.»

J sighed: «I know, damn it!» His dignified civil servant's face broke into a wry grin. «I suppose the one we could blame is Richard himself, if we wanted to.» That made even Lord Leighton smile, at the incongruity of the idea.

J leaned back in his chair and considered. Here in this office two hundred feet below the Tower of London sat two of the key men in Project Dimension X, the most important and most secret research project in England. Sometimes J wondered if they needed all the secrecy. Would the average man or even the average member of Parliament really believe in the project if he heard of it, let alone understand it? J wondered. He was a well-educated man and had been in secret intelligence work since World War I. He had often dealt in his work with things too fantastic to believe. But never with anything like Project Dimension X. Every so often, when his mind confronted some new part of the project, it more or less tried to go on strike. What would the man in the street say?

Project Dimension X involved, very simply, putting a man into alternate dimensions. Eleven different ones so far, but the number was doubtless nearly infinite. With Lord Leighton's computer linked to the man's brain, he would vanish from beneath the Tower-from Home Dimension. He would awaken-somewhere else-in Dimension X, always naked, usually with a splitting headache; and more often than not with a great need to both think and act fast to stay alive. The dimensions varied widely, and most of them sounded like a madman's ravings when put down on paper. But they all seemed to have one thing in common-they were all filled with deadly dangers.

The project revolved around four key men. Lord Leighton had developed the computer-a monster two or three generations beyond anything else believed possible in the rest of the world. The Prime Minister provided the money that the project gobbled up by the hundreds of thousands of pounds, and fought off indiscreet questions from curious M.P.s. J acted as liaison and field man for both the scientist and the politician, since he had more freedom of movement than either. And as head of the secret intelligence agency MI6, he had provided the fourth key man.

Richard Blade. Recruited by MI6 while still at Oxford, he had fulfilled his early promise ten times over. He had been MI6's best agent for the better part of twenty years, expert in both the thinking and the rough-and-tumble ends of the business. He had been the secret of many of the agency's most successful operations. He had, in fact, become virtually indispensable. J would have esteemed him highly even if Richard had not been so much like the son he had wanted.

But those same exceptional qualities of mind and body that had made Richard Blade a superlative field agent had also made him the perfect man to travel into Dimension X. Or perhaps not perfect, but so far the only man in the Free World able to travel into Dimension X and return alive and sane. He was able to explore those Dimensions and bring back their science and technology to aid England. And more often than not, he managed to help the people in each Dimension cope with problems of their own. Richard was a natural leader. Set him down in the middle of a wilderness full of howling savages, and in a few months his wits and his muscles would have enabled him to rise to power. That had happened more than once out in Dimension X.

But Richard was not superhuman, and he was not invulnerable. There was always the risk of the pitcher going to the well once too often. Apart from the personal feelings he had for Blade, J knew that the whole Dimension X program would come to a standstill if Richard were ever killed, disabled, or lost. One other Englishman had made the trip into Dimension X, and even returned alive. But he now sat in a padded cell in an obscure corner of the North Counties, insane for life. Even without being killed, Blade might come to that. Not even Lord Leighton could do more than guess what the repeated jolts to Blade's brain from the computer might do in the way of permanent effects. Blade had already suffered problems with drinking and sex as a result of brain trauma. One of J's outstanding and continuing nightmares was that Blade would one day come back from Dimension X with that athlete's body of his intact. But there would be only the ruins of a mind behind those piercing blue eyes. J shuddered at the thought, hardened as he was to seeing his agents take risks.

So there was a search on for other candidates for Dimension X trips. The Prime Minister was searching England's pool of likely candidates, while J busied himself checking with the Americans. The search had been underway now for the better part of two years, both men doing their best. And that frustrating sheaf of papers that J had dropped on Leighton's desk was the only result.

J looked at Lord Leighton, half hoping that the scientist would say something to offer a way out of this dead end. «Do the graphs mean what I think they do?»

Leighton nodded. «We took Blade's qualities and set up a series of indicators. A hundred of them, each with a scale of zero to one. Then we graded all of the other possible candidates that you and the Prime Minister together had presented, using the same indicators. You've seen the results.»

J sighed wearily. «I know. Blade works out to 92.7 out of a possible 100. The next highest, an American Special Forces man assigned to the CIA, works out to 64.3.»

«And the doctors and psychiatrists have interpreted that to mean that he has virtually no chance of making a trip into Dimension X and coming back alive and sane,» said Leighton. «We did a rough application of these indicators to that poor fellow who did come back insane, and he worked out to 77.1. The guess right now is that nobody with much below an 85 is even worth trying out. It would be sheer murder to send them through the computer.»

J felt like using the kind of language he hadn't used in forty years. He had to take several deep breaths until the urge passed. Then he asked, «Are you sure that we've got a comparable amount of information on all the other men? After all, Richard's been examined more thoroughly than any other ten men in the world today, and by the best doctors and psychiatrists.»

«I thought of that,» replied Leighton. «But it doesn't matter. The difference between Blade and the others is too big for any lack of information to account for it. No, we just have to face the fact that Blade is the most nearly perfect human being known today.»

«Perhaps you should tell him that someday.»

Lord Leighton's white eyebrows went up. «How do you think he'd take it?»

J fixed the scientist with a cold stare. «Having known Richard for longer than you have, I would say he'd take it-like a gentleman.»

While Leighton and J sat and argued in the office far underground, the «most nearly perfect human being» was sitting in a taxi on his way to the Tower of London. He was cold, because the early autumn evening was unseasonably chilly. And he was impatient, because a proper London fog was moving in on the city and the poor visibility had slowed the taxi to a crawl. If the driver couldn't speed things up a bit, Blade was half inclined to get out and walk the rest of the way to the Tower.