He rose to his feet. As he did so, the smoke around him swirled away on all sides until he stood in the middle of a patch of clean air. Beneath his feet the surface showed pale blue with gold threads running through it.
He stepped forward, and the edges of the clear space in the smoke writhed and jerked as it tried to keep up with him. He moved slowly at first, one step at a time. Then bit by bit he increased his speed, as though there were a siren voice calling him somewhere ahead in the smoke. He had no will to do anything but keep moving steadily forward, now at a walk, now at a jog, now at a run. The clear space around him kept pace.
Then he felt the surface under his feet begin to change. First it stopped being smooth, as though there were a thin layer of mud on it. Then it was not quite so hard anymore-the mud seemed to be getting deeper. And then it unmistakably began to slope downward. At first it was a gentle slope, then it became steeper. Blade tried to slow down, to hold back, but found that he couldn't. He felt the surface under him turn liquid, then the angle of the slope increased still further, until it was almost vertical. He was falling, falling down in a waterfall of liquid, falling endlessly. The smoke stopped trying to stay clear of him and moved in on him again. As it touched his skin, he felt sensation leave him. As it swallowed him up entirely, it was like being swallowed up in a great black pit, without light or sound or sensation.
CHAPTER TWO
Blade awoke lying on his back in tall grass. His head was throbbing with the usual splitting headache that followed being hurled into Dimension X. But that was now more or less a welcome sign. It indicated that he was back in the real world, instead of being stuck in some limbo halfway between dimensions like a kitten up a tree.
Directly above him, the branches of a tall tree spread across his field of vision. From the branches drooped pale green leaves nearly three feet long stirring slightly in a faint, hot breeze. A glaring yellow sun burned down with tropical fury through the leaves, making Blade wince and turn his head aside. The glare did not help his headache. Around him in the grass he could hear the buzz and hum of insects, and once a flock of birds flew squawking across a patch of blue sky visible through the leaves.
A tremendous bellowing roar suddenly sounded nearby, a single blast at first but echoed at once by half a dozen more. It sounded like a chorus of foghorns. Then the sequence came again, definitely louder. A heavy, irregular vibration came to Blade through the ground. When the bellowing sounded for a third time, he did not wait any longer. Ignoring the stabbing pains in his head; he scrambled to his feet and climbed the tree as fast as he could. He preferred to watch whatever was approaching from a safe and high perch, where he would be in no danger of being trampled underfoot.
High above the ground he perched himself in the fork of two stout branches. On three sides the land stretched away as far as Blade could see, level as a table and covered with the long grass, occasional low trees, and extensive patches of shrubbery. On the fourth side the trees and shrubs slowly thickened, until a few hundred feet away they became a solid mass of greenery. The bellowing sounded for the fourth time. A tremendous crashing and splintering followed as bushes and small trees went over or came up by the roots. Then a line of huge gray beasts came lumbering out of the forest.
They were at least a hundred yards away, but Blade was quite happy that he was already up in a tree. They were easily the size of full-grown African elephants, and very nearly the same ashy, dirty gray. But these beasts were built lower to the ground, with four thick legs splayed out to the side and ending in massive blunt-clawed feet. The head was almost square, with small ears now standing erect and a blunt piglike snout instead of a trunk. But what drew Blade's eye most was the tusks.
From the cheeks of each beast, two enormous, dirty, yellow-white tusks jutted forward. The shortest pair was easily six feet long. Blade noticed that they were slightly flattened at the ends as well, like the blades of gigantic shovels. The beasts kept streaming out of the forest and lumbering onto the open plain, all except for one. That one was the largest, with tusks that must have stretched a good nine feet. It stationed itself at the edge of the forest, and every few seconds it threw its head back and gave the bellow Blade had first heard. When the last of the beasts was clear of the forest, their leader turned, gave a final bellow, and then set off at a fast rolling trot to catch up with its followers. Only when the whole herd of two dozen or more of the beasts was well out on the plain did Blade consider climbing down.
Now his problem was getting something between his bare skin and the sun. It was glaring down on him with a fury that was already bringing the sweat out on his skin. It was fortunate that he had tanned himself to a turn in the Mediterranean. Otherwise he would have faced the prospect of spending the next few days recovering from a bad sunburn.
A quick experimental tug showed that the three-foot leaves of the tree came loose easily enough. Blade climbed out on the heavier of the two branches until he felt it begin to sag under him, snapping the huge leaves off short and dropping them to the ground. By the time he scrambled down the tree, scraping his skin on the rough bark, a couple of bushels of leaves lay on the grass.
As a trained survival expert, it was no great matter for him to take the grass and leaves and weave himself a hat and a sort of apron or loincloth. These would be enough at least to keep the sun off his head and the thorns out of his genitals.
Now for a weapon. Not for use against the big, tusked animals-short of carrying a big-game rifle, the best thing to do about them was to climb trees. But there were bound to be other less unmanageable but perhaps no less dangerous animals. He had seen no sign of human beings; perhaps this was finally the uninhabited dimension. But he wasn't going to assume he had the forest and plain all to himself, not yet at any rate. Finding out the hard way was too dangerous in Dimension X.
He set off toward the forest. After a hundred feet his path met the trail beaten through the grass and shrubbery by the herd of tuskers, and the going became easier. As the forest rose to meet him and rose around him, Blade became more and more alert. He found himself trying to watch the trees for things jumping down on him, the ground ahead for snakes and thorns, and all around him for whatever other dangerous life this forest might hold.
He had covered about a hundred yards in from the edge of the forest when he came to a cluster of saplings lying scattered in all directions. The tuskers had been at work here, obviously, using their tusks to uproot the saplings and then leisurely stripping them of their leaves. Most of the saplings were bare sticks now. Blade bent down and searched the wreckage until he found a sapling broken off into about a six-foot length. He picked it up, swung it first with one hand, then with the other, then with both. It balanced well enough for green wood, and it was certainly better than bare hands. Much better than bare hands for Richard Blade, who knew a great deal about the use of the quarterstaff and more than a little kendo.
He was not more confident or less wary as he moved on along the trail. Only a very foolish or untrained man thinks that he can be careless just because he has a weapon in his hands. Blade had never been foolish, and he hadn't been untrained since before he came to Oxford. He had been a fencer and a boxer at his public school. He had no more intention now of getting into trouble than he had before picking up his staff. But he at least hoped that if trouble came to him, he would have a better chance of getting out of it.