Then Blade was staggering back, away from the railing. He felt himself losing his balance and falling. He braced himself for the bone-jarring crash onto the blood-covered deck.

But there was no jar. Instead it was like falling into a bottomless pile of gray feathers, that swallowed him up and took him steadily downward. The light faded; the feathers turned from gray to black. And the tension and pain went out of Blade, as he knew that he was leaving the crystal seas behind.

He was going home.

Chapter TWENTY

The nurse scurried out of the hospital room as J entered. He came over to Blade's bed and looked down at him.

«How are you, Richard?»

«Still sore, I must admit. But if the doctors are trying to convince you I need to be kept here for another-«

«They haven't said a word, at least not to me.»

Blade grinned. «That's a refreshing change. Perhaps they've decided not to play God anymore.»

J smiled. «Or perhaps they've remembered what an absolutely impossible patient you can be when you think you're being kept in bed longer than necessary.»

«Possibly. They're certainly not doing anything to encourage me to want to stay around here. I've never seen an uglier set of nurses!»

J laughed out loud, but Blade caught an underlying tension in that laugh that he didn't quite like. Then J's face sobered. «Richard, would you be willing to help with a new subproject?»

Blade clapped his hand to his forehead in mock horror. «What has Lord Leighton got into his bonnet this time? I thought he was working full-time on getting the last few bugs out of controlled return. I hope he succeeds, incidentally. And when he does, I would like to put in for going back to the crystal seas. You people managed to snatch me away just a bit too soon.»

«You managed to finish off Duke Tymgur, didn't you?» said J. There was an edge in his voice that Blade liked even less. «What more could you want?»

«I-oh, what the devil! You're right. But nonetheless, I want to go back there just as badly as Leighton wants to send me back to look at the Menel. I can argue that with him, however. What's the new project?»

«I can't discuss it in any real detail here and now,» said J. He seemed both relieved and tense at the same time. «Apart from security reasons, we're still taking observations, and since we're having to use some covert operations for it-well, it's taking time. It may be a couple of months before we can really be sure where we want to go, let alone how to get there.»

«You're talking in riddles,» said Blade gently.

J sighed Wearily, and Blade felt a moment's guilt at adding to the burdens the old man was obviously bearing. He hadn't seen J like this in ten years, since the nightmare week when four of MI6's best agents were killed and a fifth defected and had to be tracked down and «terminated.»

«Richard, I'm sorry. But the whole matter involves a good many things I don't really understand, and won't understand even after we've got a better picture of what's involved. But basically, it's a question of paranormal psychology.»

«ESP and hypnotism?» asked Blade.

«Yes, and what young drug-users call 'altered states of consciousness.' «

«Like LSD?» said Blade.

«Yes, but much more complicated, and it doesn't necessarily mean drugs, either,» said J. «There's been a lot of legitimate research done on the matter under scientific conditions. Unfortunately, most of it's been done in the Soviet Union.»

«Oh,» said Blade.

«Yes,» said J. «I think you see the possible implications.»

«Not all of them, but-yes, I'm game for your project.»

«Good,» said J. He got up to go. «And I promise you, Richard, I'll stop talking in riddles as soon as possible.»

«I know, sir.»

After J had gone out, Blade lay back in the bed and ran the conversation over in his mind. It had been weird and disjointed, but he was willing to take it seriously if J was. He trusted the old man that much, or more.

But it was one more complication to Project Dimension X, and that meant one more complication to his own existence. For England he could and would do and endure much but there was a limit to what one man could cope with.

Blade had a horrible feeling that he might be approaching that limit.