«I'll see that you don't get it,» said J angrily. «I goddamned bloody well will see to it. The boy has done enough. Maybe too much. There are already personality changes in him that I don't like.»

Lord L gave him a bland look, hooding his yellow eyes in the way he had. «I suppose so,» he murmured. «Bound to be a few changes, my dear fellow, when your cortex has been restructured as many times as Blade's has. No help for it. But you overlook a point — such changes are not necessarily for the worse. I am quite as fond of Blade as you are, and I study him most carefully — though I admit I lack the emotional overload you carry — and so far I have seen nothing harmful, no cause for alarm.»

J knew he was no match for this aging little hunchback. Lord L had a mind like a razor and he could slash you to bits with it. J set his jaw and retreated into stubbornness.

«I remind you, Leighton, that I am head of MI6A and that Blade is under my direct command. There will be no such operations as I am sure you have in mind. If necessary I will go directly to the Prime Minister. He was in the infantry. He will understand about combat fatigue.»

His Lordship, when he found the going unpleasant, was given to non sequiturs. «In my war,» he said mildly, «they called it shell shock.»

J was shocked at his own reply. «I don't give a good tinker's fuck what you called it in your war. That boy has been into Dimension X four times and tomorrow he goes out again. All right So be it. But when he comes back this time, if he comes back, I am going to pull him out of Project DX. Blade has done his bit. You had better start looking around for a new boy.»

Lord L smiled sweetly and leaned to tap J's knee. «I think we shall have to leave that up to Blade himself, J. And I also think that you know what his answer will be if it comes down to a question of country and duty. In any case it is all very much in the future. Now please do be quiet and let me think — I've a nasty little problem in quadruple feedback circuitry to solve.»

His Lordship slumped in his seat, eased his hump, and began to scribble on the back of an old envelope.

J's first anger had faded. He now regarded the old man with his usual mixture of admiration and loathing. The cold-blooded old bastard was right, of course. Dick Blade would do anything that was asked of him. Meet any test, volunteer in the face of any danger, keep going out into Dimension X as long as he was needed. It was just the way Richard Blade was made.

J leaned back and tried to relax. The train was racing through a small village where a few lights still gleamed here and there. A crowd was spilling out of the local, laughing and shouting cheerful good nights.

J thought that he would call Blade as soon as he got back to his office. He would not be sleeping tonight anyway and there was work piled on his desk. He would just call and check to make sure that Blade was ready for the ordeal tomorrow. His fifth time through the computer into God only knew what.

Again he wondered what Blade was doing at the moment. He hoped it was something pleasant. Something very pleasant.

Chapter Two

Richard Blade was at the moment enjoying himself. Not many men, even fine swimmers and top-flight athletes, as Blade was, would have shared his enjoyment. He was half a mile from shore in the icy Channel. A raw mid-March wind was slicing off whitecaps and whipping up waves. The water was, as Viki complained, fit only for polar bears. But Blade found himself reveling in it.

Blade was naked but for a jockstrap. He floated and stared at the sullen dark sky, overcast and with no hint of stars or moon. A cold wave slapped at him viciously. Blade rolled through it and slid down into the trough. He was feeling better. The muzzy feeling from too many brandy and sodas had gone. He ran his teeth over his tongue and felt the thick coating. It had become a regular morning thing — the coated tongue. He was putting away too much booze. Far too much. He did not seem able to stop the drinking and he never got drunk. Weary at times, utterly weary, and with moments of desolation and despair that he had never known before, but never drunk. In a way it was a cheat.

And there was the little matter of satyriasis. Blade's smile was grim. His sexual appetite these days was excessive, to say the least. Not at all like the old Blade. Then he had been satisfied with one woman and very little booze. But that had been the old Blade. Before Dimension X. Before he had gone four times through the computer. He had had Zoe then and they had planned to be married. All this before Lord Leighton and the monstrous computer and Dimension X. And the Official Secrets Act which precluded Blade from so much as hinting at his real job or the reasons for his long absences.

Zoe had left him and married another man.

Blade let a wave carry him toward the cove where Viki waited, a slim forlorn figure shivering in a British warm. She thought he was a little crazy. Blade went deep and swam powerfully beneath the turbulence, thinking that perhaps his latest girl was not too far off the mark.

Not that he had any real doubts about his sanity. He didn't. And he had never been in better physical shape. It was just that he knew, and admitted — and so must J and Lord L — that the brain-scrambling trips through the computer were affecting him. Looking at it dispassionately, Blade mused as his lungs began to pain, it would have been extremely odd if his brain had not suffered a few changes. It was to be expected. The important thing was not to panic — don't push the panic button. It was nothing he could not handle. He felt sure of that.

Viki — pronounced as though spelled with a C — Randolph was at the moment dancing in a West End musical. She had a speaking part — two lines — and considered her career well launched. She was a tall girl with an elfin face and gypsy eyes, slim legs and arms and a tiny waist, and surprisingly large cone-shaped breasts. Her real name was Poldalski and her father was a dustman in Putney. This latter Blade had ascertained more out of idle curiosity and boredom than anything else; he was not a snob and could not have cared less about the antecedents of his bed partners. It had been something to do, finding out all about Viki, and between trips into Dimension X he badly needed something to do. For with the advent of Project DX he was no longer permitted to work at his profession of secret agent. J might have allowed it, but Lord L was adamant. His Lordship had no intention of losing Blade to a bullet, knife, rope or poison.

He surfaced, blowing hard, and struck out for the cove in a fast racing crawl. Viki waved, and desire surged in him and despite the shockingly cold water he began to achieve tumescence. The hard bind of the jockstrap caused him a slight discomfort. Nothing, he thought, to what Viki would presently feel. She had complained of soreness only that morning, after half an hour of his compulsive lovemaking.

Blade felt bottom and began walking in to shore. Yesterday morning, yesterday afternoon, twice last night and then that long bout this morning. Yes, my boy. Definitely you are afflicted with satyriasis. The Oxford Dictionary called it «insatiable venereal appetite in the male.»

Ask Viki. For that matter, ask Hester or Stella or Babs or Pam or Evelyn or Doris.

Do you see, Lord Leighton, what your goddamned machine has done to a onetime English gentleman by name of Richard Blade?

Blade grinned and laughed aloud into the mad March wind that was tearing across the little beach. Why blame it on poor old Lord L and his computer? Maybe it was just his true nature emerging at last.

He left the water and stalked toward the waiting girl, droplets of salt water beading on his massive tanned body. To a sculptor's eye Blade would have seemed fashioned of brown concrete, with every muscle and tendon defined with the precision of a Praxiteles. So perfectly formed and proportioned was he that at first glance the eye was fooled. He appeared much taller than his six-foot-one and much heavier than his two hundred-ten pounds, and he had taken blues in all major sports at Oxford with an ease that suggested games for babies. Which, to Blade, they were. His physical prowess had been, quite often, a source of actual embarrassment to him. He did so easily what other well-endowed men could not do at all.