Leighton had obviously been thinking matters through quite systematically. Blade nodded. «It sounds very much worthwhile, sir. But I can see at least two problems.
«First, the suit is going to have to be easy to take off and put on without help. Second, it's going to have to be cheap enough so that I can afford to lose it or even throw it away if necessary.»
Leighton frowned. «I don't imagine either will be impossible. But may I ask why these are problems at all? Do you like romping naked through strange Dimensions?»
Blade laughed. «Hardly. But consider that the suit is going to be centuries ahead of the technology of most Dimensions. They may think technology that is too advanced to understand is magic. Magicians sometimes get an unfriendly reception. I've had better luck with my 'traveling warrior' or 'exile' cover stories. I'd like to be able to strip off the suit and hide it any time it would spoil my cover.»
«I see your point,» said Leighton. «In any case, I wasn't proposing to suit you up for this trip. Nor are we yet ready to try sending another person into Dimension X. It will take a few weeks to make the alloy into enough wire-the stuff's fiendishly hard to work, as you might expect. I was thinking of starting this time by gluing this piece onto your skin and sending it through with you.»
Again Blade and J looked at each other. Both minds held a single thought: Leighton becoming cautious and conservative? Either he's gone round the bend or the age of miracles isn't over yet.
Both Blade and J realized that an alloy-wire suit and equipment would increase Blade's chances of survival in Dimension X without making it more dangerous to get there, and it would also increase the survival chances of some other Dimension traveler. However, such a man or woman, even if he or she was as tough and sane as could be, would still lack Blade's positive genius for surviving bare-handed, bare-skinned, and bare-witted in the strangest environments. Thus, Leighton's caution was admirable.
«Very good, sir,» said Blade. «I'll have no objection to being wired up.»
It was a feeble pun, but Leighton seemed to think it called for a drink. In fact, they eventually decided it called for quite a few drinks. However, Leighton served excellent brandy, which didn't leave even the faintest trace of a hangover. Blade was entirely clear-headed the next morning when he glued the wire to the inside of his left thigh and climbed into the KALI capsule for his thirty-third journey into Dimension X.
Chapter 2
Blade got the worst headache he'd had in several trips into Dimension X, but that wasn't the fault of the KALI capsule. He landed at the top of a steep bank, lost his balance, rolled down, and banged his head against the tangled roots of a large tree at the bottom. The world danced around him, and he wasn't sure if the singing he heard was from birds in the tree or from inside his own skull.
Blade crawled deep into the damp, musty shadows under the tree, lay down on a mat of leaves and needles, and breathed deeply until he could sit up. Then he tested all his limbs and joints to make sure they were working, and propped himself up against a root until the headache began to fade. When he felt his head there was a tender spot, but no swelling, no bleeding, and definitely none of the symptoms of a concussion. That was good news. A mild concussion could have disabled him for a couple of days. A bad one could have left him defenseless for weeks. Blade had always accepted the fact that a disabling injury on his way into Dimension X might be the end of him. Since there was nothing he could do about it, he stopped worrying. He'd learned very early in his career with MI6A that unnecessary worrying was a dangerous luxury.
Now that his worst problem was solved, he checked the wire. It was still in place on his thigh. Gently he peeled it loose and wound it around his left wrist like a bracelet. Where it had been was nothing except a red mark from the glue. So far Lord Leighton's experiment seemed to be working.
Blade saw that he'd landed in a sort of tropical rain forest. Except for the steep bank where he'd fallen, there were trees everywhere, with moss hanging from their branches and flowering vines wrapped around their trunks. The spreading branches overhead made such a thick canopy that the ground was clear of everything except dwarfed ferns and bloated blue-white fungi the size and shape of soccer balls. Blade picked up a rotten branch and experimentally prodded one of the fungi. It promptly disintegrated into a cloud of foul-smelling powder. He hastily stepped back and mentally wrote off the fungi as a source of food.
In spite of this unpromising start, Blade doubted that a forest so heavily overgrown would be short of food or water. He'd never landed in a Dimension where the biochemistry was so different that he couldn't eat and drink enough to keep alive. He also hoped he never would. It was difficult enough encountering hostile aliens and managing to return intact to Home Dimension, without worrying about starving to death, or growing so weak that somebody or something could kill him.
The branches overhead did let in enough light to tell him that the sun was shining, but not to let him tell directions from it. However, unless the law of gravity didn't apply in this Dimension, water still flowed downhill. If Blade also went downhill he'd be more likely to find water. With water and a reasonable amount of almost any sort of food, he could survive as long as he had to.
Blade stretched his arms and legs to their limits and shadowboxed briefly, then did karate exercises until his head started complaining. He didn't want to lose water by working up an unnecessary sweat. He might not find a stream or pond for at least a couple of days.
Blade laughed. He'd come to take surviving under improbable conditions for granted, because the skills that made this possible were now so much a part of him that he seldom had to think about them. How would an observer have looked at him, casually marching as naked as Adam through something that didn't look much like the Garden of Eden?
How would he have looked to Zoe Cornwall, even if he'd been able to tell her how he made a living, instead of being gagged by the Official Secrets Act?
He'd met some women who had all the survival skills he had, and it was possible they might have been able to travel with him to other Dimensions, but Zoe hadn't been one of them. She was lovely and warm and intelligent, but definitely someone who could survive only in the heart of modern civilization.
Blade was different. He could survive on the fringes of civilization as a spy or far beyond it in Dimension X. In fact, he was more at home in such places. That was a big difference between Zoe and him. In the end, would it have been too big a difference for a happy marriage? Blade wondered.
Then he put the question firmly out of his mind. It was both depressing and supremely irrelevant. Zoe had died a grim, lonely death in a far Dimension, killed by the monstrous Ngaa, and Blade had never seriously contemplated marrying anyone else. By now, it was more likely than not that he'd die a bachelor. In the improbable event of his living long enough to retire from Project Dimension X, he'd be too old and set in his ways to make any woman a good husband.
Blade picked up a stout branch to use as a club, then studied the forest for the best way to go. «Downhill» was away from the slope, but otherwise there didn't seem to be much reason to choose one direction over another. He shouldered the club, picked the widest gap between the trees, and started walking.
Blade must have arrived in this Dimension no later than mid-morning of a long day. His mental clock was fairly accurate, and he guessed it was a good eight hours before the light started to fade. By that time he'd found a stream that widened at one point into a clear, deep pool. He drank until he was no longer thirsty, then examined the mud on the bank of the pool for signs of any animals large enough to be dangerous. One kind of footprint showed unmistakable claws, but it was small. That didn't completely reassure him-Home Dimension leopards were no more than half his size and weight, but one of them could tear him to pieces. Blade plunged into the pool and swam around until all the sweat was washed away and the itching and stinging from thorn pricks and insect bites faded.