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Tralthos' grin broadened still further. "Horsemen with messages rode over the
bluff not half an hour ago. Said we'd put four brigades between the pirates
and the beach and the other five on their front and right. If they're smart,
they'll surrender now. If not, it'll take a while to kill them all, but there
won't be anything left but bandits in another two weeks."
Blade nodded again. He had no more questions at this point and no energy to
ask them even if he had. But Tralthos was going on.
"Pelthros is on his way back to High Royth posthaste. Can't wait to get back
to his crafts, I wager, now that he doesn't need to be a big fighting man any
more. He'd still rather leave that to people like you and me. But you'll be
getting more rewards for this, believe me! He'll be lucky if the people let
him get away with making you a count! And when you marry Alixa "
But Blade suddenly could no longer hear the cheerful soldier. The ache in his
head suddenly flared up to the point of driving in on his fatigue-dulled
consciousness, flared to an agonizing wrenching as the computer reached out
across the dimensions to snatch him home. He could no longer even sit; he was
falling face down on the sand.
Then the sand that he was digging up with his clawing fingers and toes turned
completely over, and he was clinging to the roof of a vast chamber, filled
with a murky green vapor that curled about him.
Half-hidden in the vapor, Tralthos and his soldiers hung head-down from the
same ceiling, like bats from the ceiling of a cave. And then they were bats,
squeaking and beating their wings and darting off to become lost in the
darkness.
A light appeared below, soft and pearly, spreading out, taking shape, taking
the shape of Alixa, her proud body bare, rising toward Blade. And Blade let
himself fall away from the sandy ceiling, down, down toward Alixa, down into
her, down through, down into the murk that suddenly lost all its tint of green
and turned cold and black.
CHAPTER 22
«^
"And now," said J as he and Lord Leighton settled themselves in armchairs, "I
think it's high time we thrashed out some questions this last mission has
raised."
"Certainly, certainly," replied the scientist, opening a cabinet beside his
chair and pulling out a bottle and glasses. "Would you care for some brandy?"
J shook his head. "Not now, thank you." They were in a small but lavishly
furnished waiting room, part of the hospital complex that lay a further
hundred feet down below the computer room under the
Tower. Three rooms away, Richard Blade, bathed, bandaged, and electronically
monitored down to the slightest wiggle of his little finger, was sleeping
peacefully. It was a hypnotically induced sleep, into which he had been sent
after finishing his narrative of his latest adventure in Dimension X. It was
this adventure and some particularly disturbing things about it that J wanted
to thrash out with Lord Leighton.
Lord Leighton poured himself a small glass of brandy and sniffed at it, then
set it on the cabinet and
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made a steeple of his thin fingers. "I hope you realize that the chronic
distortion involved in this mission is a very disturbing phenomenon.
Previously we have had a one-to-one congruence between X Dimension and Home
Dimension time. That is, if Blade felt nine months had passed in Dimension X,
nine months had also passed here. But now Blade comes back after what was the
better part of a year to him, and only four months have passed here. The
chronic distortion has reached two for one or more the first time we encounter
it."
J nodded. That was indeed one of the matters he wanted to discuss with Lord L
but not the principal one. "Frankly, I think what we need to consider is
whether we had any reason to keep him there so long at all. If he had returned
after only "
"Quite true, quite true," said Lord Leighton, in a tone of voice that J
recognized as actually admitting nothing of the kind. "But we have to consider
this in the perspective of repeated missions. Suppose the next time we get a
distortion but in the reverse direction? Let us say Blade stays in Dimension X
a time that is for him only a few days, but several months pass here. It lends
an extremely disturbing element of unpredictability to the whole Project."
"As if we didn't have enough already," said J rather sourly. He was not
particularly interested in running to earth this particular hare that Leighton
had started. But he held his peace for nearly ten minutes while the scientist
wandered off into totally unintelligible realms of technical and scientific
abstraction.
Even Lord Leighton, and even when discussing a scientific topic dear to his
heart, could run out of things to say, however. When this finally happened, J
was ready.
"It's all very well to worry about things we can't control oh, very well,
that we can't control now but the more immediate problem is something else.
Richard was gone nearly nine months, came as close to being killed as he ever
has and for what? The people in that Dimension were, frankly, a collection of
the most unprepossessing specimens I've ever heard of. Life there seems to
have been 'dull, nasty, brutish and short,' but Richard spent nine whole
months there, helping them to solve a perfectly ordinary problem with pirates
that they probably could have handled just as well themselves."
Leighton sipped his brandy and nodded.
"My God, Leighton, when I think of how close we came to losing him in some
squalid little affair with a mess of pirates ... Pirates!" He uttered the word
as though it were the blackest obscenity he could think of.
J was still shaking his head in disgust when a nurse entered, trim and crisp
in her hospital uniform.
"Excuse me, gentlemen. Mr. Blade is awake and asking for both of you."
Leighton laboriously pulled himself out of the chair and stood up. "Well,
then, since Richard is awake, why don't you ask him yourself?"
"Eh?"
"Did he think it was worthwhile, getting involved in that 'squalid little
affair'?"
They followed the nurse out of the waiting room and down the hall to Blade's
room. He was sitting up in bed, looking tired but cheerful, and
greeted them warmly as they entered. After the initial handshakings,
Leighton looked at J with a well-why-don't-you-ask-him expression written all
over his face. J cleared his throat, looked first at the ceiling, then at the
floor, then finally at Blade, and said:
"Richard, there's something I've been meaning to ask you about this last
affair. Did you think it was worth it, in terms of what Project Dimension X
set out to do?"
"Meaning exploring the various phases of Dimension X to bring back things of
value for England's
use?"
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"That's one way of putting it, yes."
Blade appeared to be having an unusual amount of trouble phrasing his
answer. He grimaced, frowned, pulled at his lower lip for a time, then said,
"Yes, sir, I think it was. In an odd sort of way, I'll admit. There's nothing
that I can see wrong with exploring these X Dimensions forEngland and bringing
back materials and techniques for our use here. But it seems to me that we
ought to be able to offer them something in return. Since we haven't yet
worked out a way to take anything material through the computer transfer,
the next best thing seems to me the sort of thing I just did helping them cope
with their problems. Sometimes I have a perspective on the problem that they
don't, or skills, or something like that. And this wasn't the first time I've
spent extra time helping the local people. Remember Tharn?
Or the Gnomen?"
J did. Lord Leighton smiled. "I see your point, Richard. Well, as long as you
are willing to keep at it, you'll have plenty of opportunities to arrange your
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