He scowled as the image formed in his mind. Sir David, peruked and black-gowned, his white bands glistening in contrast to the dark and feral face, the parrot nose and thin lips, the small eyes not quite wide-set enough. A perfect picture of a hanging judge. The Rope. The old bastard, Blade thought with what he acknowledged was irrational anger, must be seventy. Or very near.

As the taxi stopped near the ancient Tower, another picture flashed into Blade's mind. He was in the dock and Sir David on the bench. The Old Bailey was crowded and they all knew. Sir David knew. He was puttifig the black kerchief on his periwig as he prepared to announce sentence.

«You, Richard Blade, sometimes using the nom de plume of Hercules, have been tried and found guilty of the crime of consupiscence toward the Lady Diana. You have, further, known the lady carnally and in so doing have defiled the coastal waters of Her Majesty. For this heinous crime I sentence you to hang by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead.»

Blade laughed. J was watching him with a puzzled expression. «What is it Richard? We're here, you know.»

«Nothing,» said Blade. «Nothing at all, sir. I just thought of something ridiculous.»

J paid the cabby. «I wish 1 could think of something plausible to tell Lord L. He won't believe traffic. He only leaves his labs once or twice a year, and then he goes in a limousine to see the Prime Minister.»

«I'm sure he will forgive us, sir. Here comes our escort.»

The burly Special Branch men who met and escorted them around to the site of the old Watergate were new to Blade. J saw to that. These men were outsiders, on the fringe of things, never allowed in the sanctum newly carved from the rock far below the Tower. They served for one tour only and were forever after bound by the Official Secrets Act.

J and Blade followed the men down a long tunnel, through the now-familiar maze of sub-basements to a bronze elevator door. One of the Special Branch men pressed a button and they waited. A hydraulic sighing began in the shaft.

One of the guards, a beaky nosed man with. shoulders nearly as wide as Blade's, eyed J and said, «His Lordship has called up several times, sir. Inquiring for you. Seemed to think you had gotten lost in the Tower somehow.»

J acknowledged this with a nod and a grunt. A moment later the car arrived. J stepped into it with Blade. He was now permitted to accompany Blade as far as the master computer room, a privilege that had not been easily won. Lord Leighton was a tyrant in his own domain. There were those, in fact, who considered the old boffin a tyrant in any domain.

There were no controls in the car. As some signal was given from below it began to dive, down and down, gaining speed. Blade, and J, had both been through this many times and still could not keep their stomachs in place.

The elevator car seemed to be in free fall. J clung to a handrail, biting fiercely on his pipe, a look of near panic on his face. Blade laughed. He knew that Lord L himself manipulated the elevator. His Lordship was having his little joke-and paying them back for being late.

Brakes gripped and held and the car began to slow. It eased to a stop and the bronze door slid back. Lord Leighton was waiting for them in a well-lighted foyer, barren except for a desk and two chairs. His Lordship stood, supporting himself at the desk, his polio-racked body encased in a white gown that hung on him like a shroud. He was a hunchback and as they moved toward him he grimaced and shifted his position to ease the constant pain in his hump. He glared at them with his yellow lion's eyes and directed all his venom at J.

«Where in the bloody hell have you been, man? How many times do I have to tell you that when I make a setting on the computer we must stay on schedule. To the 1000th of a minutel Now you've gone and bloody well bollixed up things-now I'm in the middle of a cycle. We'll have to wait until I can reset.»

J was a man who did not, as a rule, allow himself to be bullied. He often quarreled viciously with Lord L. Now he turned the other cheek and made propitatory sounds. Lord L ignored him and crooked a finger at Blade.

«Sit down, Richard, sit down. Sorry there isn't another chair, J, but then we don't really need you, do we?»

«I don't mind standing,» J said calmly.

«Suit yourself.» Lord Leighton shrugged and slipped crabwise into a chair at his desk. He picked up a pen and began to riffle through a thick sheaf of papers. «Might as well stay here. We're as private as we would be in the computer cage. It will be an hour or a bit more before I can bring the machine into exact phase again. You're looking extremely fit, Richard. Fit and ready. You are ready, I presume? No qualms? No last minute doubts?»

Blade, who had remained standing in deference to J, said that he felt very well.

«No more than the usual qualms and doubts,» he. added. He thought of what J had said about finding a replacement and was about to mention it when he saw J shake his head. It was not to be spoken of. For a moment he wondered why, then sloughed it off. J must have his reasons, as would Lord L. It would be most difficult, Blade thought, to find a replacement for him. He was not given to false modesty. But he had been through the computer six times, his brain structure twisted and altered to enable him to perceive and adapt to Dimension X. He could not-they all knew it-go on indefinitely. Of late Blade had often likened himself to a veteran fighter who wanted to quit before his brains were hopelessly scrambled. But for now he must forget that. The mission was upcoming.

There was another factor. Only now, for the first time, did he admit it to himself, bring it into the open, let it seep from the unconscious to the conscious level. He had met, at long last, a girl who might make him forget Zoe Cornwall. Who might fill the void in him, ease the ache, banish the pain. She had come from limbo into the June day and then limbo had swallowed her again. Now that he knew who she was, his Diana, it looked even more hopeless than before. Yet Blade was ready to admit, only to himself, that he might have fallen in love. The incident, and the girl, were past forgetting. He did not want to forget.

Lord Leighton made chicken tracks on his stack of papers and muttered to himself. J, his pipe going like a blast furnace, paced the foyer. Blade smiled wryly and wondered at their reaction should he tell them the truth: that he had found a girl he wanted above all other women. That he had as much right as any other man to a normal life, to give and take love and to have children and a home, and he was bloody well going to do it. He did not have to go through the computer in-he glanced at the Greenwich chronometer whirring over the desk-in less than half an hour. There was no law in England that could force him to do so.

He could resign. Resign and go back to his town flat and pack and start looking for Diana. J would understand, J would even approve, and there was always his job with M16. J, beneath his proper exterior, had come to loathe and fear the computer experiments. He would welcome back the Richard Blade who had been, BTC, one of his top intelligence agents.

And Lord L? The old scientist would go first into convulsions, then turn canny and coaxing, eventually threaten, and if all this failed he would in the end acquiesce and never speak to Blade again. Not because Blade had failed his country, but because Blade had failed Lord Leighton, and science.

Lord L glanced up at the chronometer and dropped his pen. «It's time to go, Richard. By the time I do the reset and get you properly hooked up the phase will come around. We mustn't miss it a second time.»

A blank steel door led out of the foyer. J went as far as this door, then halted and held out his hand to Blade.