I shall need a job. Put what can I do? What am I good for? Perhaps, with a bit of night school, I could qualify for C.P.A.

Zoe's face filled his eyes, but it was oddly blurred. He could see through her, as if she were transparent. Behind her appeared a puzzling scene.

There was a nurse lying on a white floor in a strange dim light in front of a kind of altar. She did not seem to be breathing. He looked closer.

My God, it's Zoe!

The dead woman snapped into sharp focus. Blade whirled toward the circular entrance to the Chamber of the Innermost Self and shouted, «Is that your final offer, Ngaa? Is that it? You'll let me live out the rest of my life in a dream of what might have been if I'd never entered Dimension X?»

«You'll be happy, at peace, no longer lonely,» pleaded the Ngaa. «Please…»

With a howl of berserk rage, Blade hurled himself through the door in a shower of bone fragments.

The Chamber of the Innermost Self, illuminated by a pulsating dim blue light from the fleshy walls, was circular and domed and rumbled with the thunder of the mighty matter-antimatter engines beneath the bony floor. At the hub of the room, towering almost to the ceiling, stood the Mind of the Ngaa, a seemingly infinite number of intertwined serpentine strands of glass tubing, some thick, some thin, some tapering from thick to thin, all glowing with a subdued and everchanging multicolored light. The thinnest of the tubes were like strands of fine white hair, the thickest were heavy pipes through which gusts of bubbles ceaselessly rose, pipes which occasionally hissed and gurgled loud enough to be heard above the din of the engines.

Ebbing and flowing, swirling, drifting and billowing, the Ngaa's cloud of glowing blue-white energy hovered around it like a defensive shield, like a garment covering the Ngaa's naked body, and in the cloud tiny points of light winked and twinkled like stars. The room was hot and filled with such a strong, stinging stench of ozone that Blade found himself half-blinded and coughing. The Ngaa slipped in and out of focus, now clearly seen, now hardly more than a blur.

It was because of his impaired vision that he did not see, when first he stumbled forward into the room, the crowd of silent naked people gathered between him and the Ngaa. When he did see them he stopped, stunned and horrified.

He had seen them before, on his first visit, but only in a trance, a trance that blunted his perceptions, prevented him from understanding what he saw. These were the Ngaa's human slaves, the sons and daughters of some of those citizens of Home Dimension, of Earth, who every year vanish without a trace. At last he saw them as they were, dirty, gaunt, unshaven, with fishbelly-white skin that had never known the sun and wasted bodies that had never been nourished by anything but chemicals. Their eyes were the worst; their staring, dilated, mindless eyes.

And these slaves now stood between Blade and his enemy, ready to defend their master with their lives. They watched Blade from expressionless skeletal faces, young faces, old faces, male faces, female faces, all alike. They did not move or speak, only waited.

So he hesitated, unwilling to fight the Ngaa's innocent victims, but then he realized it was the Ngaa who had done this to them, and he advanced to meet them, telling himself they would be better off dead than living if they must live like this.

But before he could come to grips with them, he felt an invisible force snatch him into the air and hurl him against the wall.

Stunned but still conscious, for the wall was not hard, he tumbled to the floor.

In his mind the Ngaa said, «We do not want to kill you. Don't make us kill you.» The tone was like a whimper. Richard thought, Without me, you'll be trapped here.

Abruptly Blade felt a stabbing pain in his head. The computer was groping across the dimensions, trying to drag him home. He realized with anguish that he must complete his mission in minutes, perhaps seconds, or he would no longer be here.

He would be in the computer room under the Tower of London.

And the Ngaa would be with him!

The pain faded. He lurched to his feet. In his mind he could feel the Ngaa's mood change, could feel the hope that suddenly transformed the creature. The Ngaa had felt KALI's probe, and knew what it meant.

Blade charged a second time, and a second time the invisible force snatched him off his feet and hurled him against the wall. He tried to rise, but could not. He was not seriously hurt, but he had had the wind knocked out of him.

The crowd of naked mindless slaves came shuffling toward him. He sucked air into his lungs, ignoring the stench of the ozone, ignoring the other stench that now reached his nostrils, the sour smell of human flesh that has never been washed.

The pain of KALI's probe struck again, then passed. One more probe and they'd have a fix on him.

One of the slaves bent over him.

With the sudden fury of an exploding bomb, he launched himself into the heart of the mob!

In his mind the voice that was many voices cried out in panic, «Kill him! Kill him!»

The crowd closed in, still expressionless, still silent, yet with fists that pounded him, long dirty fingernails that clawed him and searched for his eyes, feet that kicked him, yellow rotten teeth that bit him, hands that clutched at his arms, his ankles, his hair. His fist lashed out. Bone gave way with a crack and blood flowed. His fist lashed out again, and there was a shower of broken teeth. He kneed someone in the groin, punched someone else in the stomach, rabbit-punched yet another.

Then he saw, just beyond his reach, the head of one of the slaves twist at an unnatural angle, then rip free of the shoulders and go spinning overhead.

Instantly he understood what that meant.

You're looking for me, Ngaa, but you can't find me! You can't tell me apart from all these other struggling naked humans.

The glowing blue cloud swished past and a woman nearby burst into flame. She did not scream, did not even change expression, but the stench of burning meat made Blade feel like vomiting. His universe seemed filled with black, oily smoke and fists, and claws, and clutching fingers and the stink of sweat and the taste, the salty taste, of blood.

A child burst into flame and was hurled through the air, a hideous living comet that smashed itself to a shapeless blazing mass against the wall, a mass that stuck there, bleeding.

The sheer weight of the slaves was dragging Blade down. Individually they were no match for him, but their mass brought him to a standstill, then crushed him to his knees. The Ngaa's terror pulsed in Blade's head, wordless, insane. The blue cloud darted here and there, searching without pattern, burning and tearing without sense.

Blade gathered his strength and, with one last mighty push, surged forward and broke out into the open!

For an instant there was nothing between him and the glowing tower of the Ngaa's innermost self but a few feet of bare floor. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the glowing cloud wheel and start for him.

He leaped!

Two hundred and ten pounds of bleeding, bruised, battered flesh crashed into the delicate traceries, shattering fragile glass, spilling bubbling, foaming liquids that stung his skin. The air was filled with falling crystalline shards, glittering, sparkling, sharp.

In his mind Blade heard the final despairing soundless scream of the voice that was many voices, the scream of a whole race of thinking feeling beings, a scream that ended a history of millions of years, a history longer than man's.

Blade landed, sprawling awkwardly on the bone floor beyond the collapsing Ngaa, the scream echoing in his mind as it would go on echoing as long as he lived.

He sprawled.

And watched.