Champions Of The Gods

Chapter One

The man called J stood in the autumn rain at the Tower of London and waited for Richard Blade. A gray, wet, dismal day in London always made him feel particularly old. When he was waiting on a day when Richard would be taking a trip into Dimension X, he felt even older.

J's erect bearing and dignified manner hid a good part of his age from the casual observer. They didn't conceal it from himself. He was aware of every one of his years, more than forty of them devoted to a by-now legendary career in espionage. He had begun it behind German lines during the First World War. Like all spies who lived long enough, he was ending his career behind a desk, watching younger men go out to carry out his orders or die trying. The strain resulting from this could be concealed like his age, from casual observers, but not from himself.

Watching Richard Blade go out into the unknown was the greatest strain of all. J did not love any of the others like the son he'd never had. None of the other young men traveled so far, or faced such dangers with nothing but their own wits and muscles. None of the other young men were doing work so important for England.

Quite some time had now passed since the day Lord Leighton had wired Richard Blade's brain to a computer and sent him off into the somewhere called Dimension X. That somewhere had deserved the name then, and it still deserved it now. They didn't know all that much about it. There were times when everyone except Lord Leighton wondered if they ever would!

But they did know that an infinity of other worlds lay out there in Dimension X, each world with its own knowledge, people, resources. If the day ever came when England could regularly tap that knowledge, those resources-well, perhaps the sun might rise on a new British Empire.

So time after time Blade went out into Dimension X. Each time he risked his life, each time he added a tiny bit of knowledge to the little they already had. Eventually they would learn the key to Dimension X or Richard Blade would not come back. No one knew which would happen first.

J turned away from that grim train of thought as Richard Blade appeared in the doorway. He moved toward J with that distinctive stride of his, a stride like a tiger on the prowl. Some secret agents could look like bookkeepers or refuse-lorry drivers. Richard, God help him, could never look too different from what he was, a superbly skilled man of action.

The two men shook hands. «I hear the psychiatrists have been giving you a particularly hard time,» said J.

«I suppose you might say that,» said Blade. «As usual, they seem to think there's something important about whether I bit my nails as a boy. And if I did, which hand did I bite more often, and which finger of that hand did I start with?»

J laughed and pressed the concealed button to summon the elevator up from Lord Leighton's secret research complex two hundred feet below. They stood in silence until the heavy bronze door to the shaft hissed open.

When they were safely out of earshot in the descending elevator, J spoke again. «They gave you a clean bill of health, though?» Damn it, that sounded like the question of a nervous old grandmother! But J knew he was always nervous when it came time for Richard to be shot off into nowhere. Since he didn't have anything to do now except sit and watch, he didn't even have to pretend to be calm. Not with Richard, at least.

«Oh, they did. My head's in the same shape as always, both inside and out. But they took a bloody long time to decide it! Frankly, it's a relief to be heading off into Dimension X again.»

J smiled. «Leaving me to face the day-to-day routine?»

Blade had the grace to sound slightly embarrassed.

«Well, sir, you must admit you've always had the better head for administrative detail. I could never have done half of your job.»

«No, Richard. You've always been the perfect and complete field man. You'll still be one, even when we find someone else to send into Dimension X and stick you behind a desk yourself.»

«I wonder when that will be?»

«Getting tired, Richard?» J did his best to make it sound like a joke.

«Not precisely. But I must say I'll be a damned sight happier when the whole Project doesn't depend on me alone. I can cope with swords and slippery roads, but there's always such a thing as simply running out of luck.»

That was a fact J had accepted long ago, but thinking about it never improved his mood. The Project was Richard, when all was said and done. No other living man could travel into Dimension X and return safely.

Without Richard, alive, sane, and ready to go, Lord Leighton's giant computer was so many millions of pounds' worth of useless components and circuitry. Nor would all of J's administrative work and all the Prime Minister's help for the Project have any purpose either, with Richard gone. Once more J uttered a silent prayer for just one other person to send into Dimension X.

But he had been praying for quite a while. So far nobody had turned up. He was beginning to wonder if anybody ever would.

Damn! He certainly was in a grim and gloomy mood today. He didn't need to look calm with Richard, but he jolly well owed it to the man to at least look more cheerful!

They walked from the elevator down an underground corridor leading through the whole complex to the computer rooms. Every step they took and every word they spoke was monitored by the electronic surveillance network that guarded the secrets of the complex and the Project. So far no one had learned those secrets and lived to carry them to hostile ears.

The first few computer rooms were packed with auxiliary equipment and the technicians to handle it. There seemed to be more of both each time J came down here. One technician was certainly new-a tall, almost statuesque blond woman with a strong face that was handsome rather than pretty.

J saw that Blade was noticing the woman too. That was something else that didn't change, either. One couldn't say that Blade had a weakness of women, however. No woman ever affected his work in the slightest. In this as in so many other ways, Richard was both an English gentleman and a superb professional.

Lord Leighton met them at the door to the final room, the one holding the main computer. The scientist looked tired. J realized with a slight shock that this was only the third or fourth time Leighton had looked tired. Normally he bustled around in his filthy, once-white lab coat like some aging but still robust gnome. But he was more than eighty years old, his spine twisted by a hunched back, his legs twisted by the polio he'd had as a child. It was a minor miracle he hadn't been in his grave ten years ago.

The three men shook hands all around and passed through the last door. The room beyond was almost entirely filled with the vast gray crackle-finished masses of the main computer, rising to the rock ceiling and looming high over the men below. There was so little in this room that seemed made for human beings or even to human proportions) The computer consoles seemed like the images of strange gods in the crumbling temple of some forgotten and sinister religion. The metal-framed chair in its glass booth in the middle of the room seemed like an altar where Lord Leighton would shortly sacrifice Richard Blade to those gods.

J looked at Blade and smiled, amused at the workings of his own imagination. Richard, as usual, was as calm as if he had been preparing to step into a swimming pool for half an hour's brisk workout. Or if he was showing any emotion, it was anticipation, anticipation of what might be waiting for him in Dimension X. J knew that he himself had once gone off on field missions in much the same frame of mind. But those days were far behind him now.

J pulled out the folding spectator seat installed for his benefit on one wall and sat down. Blade had already vanished into the changing booth. J leaned back as far as he could, wished he could light a cigar, and watched Leighton bustling about the room, making final checks on the computer.

A few minutes later Blade emerged from the changing booth, stripped to a loincloth and smeared from head to foot with a sticky, strong-smelling black grease. The grease was supposed to prevent electrical burns. The loincloth did absolutely nothing that anybody had ever been able to figure out. Blade always landed in Dimension X alive, sane, his head aching, and naked as a new born baby.

Blade sat down in the chair in the glass booth and Lord Leighton went to work. Like a gardener fastening vines in place, lie fixed scores and hundreds of wires to every part of Blade's body. Each wire ended in a cobra-headed metal electrode taped to Blade's skin. When Leighton was finished, Blade reminded J of a statue-a statue in some city long abandoned to the jungle, now completely overgrown with a tangle of creepers and vines. As always, Blade sat perfectly still. With all the wires attached to him, he couldn't have fidgeted even if he'd wanted to.

As Lord Leighton moved over to the master control panel, remembered to ask one of his usual questions. «Any tricks this time?»

«No. We're still accumulating data on Blade's return to Tharn.»

J nodded, relieved. Lord Leighton was firmly determined to improve the Project in every possible way. So far all they could do was land a stark-naked Blade somewhere and bring him back with whatever he happened to be holding on to at the time. There was a lot more than that to be done if England was ever to benefit from all the millions of pounds poured into Project Dimension X.

So far, though, nothing they had done had broken the pattern. Once Blade had returned to a Dimension he'd visited before, the land of Tharn. But that had apparently been pure accident. Lord Leighton hated «accidents» with a violent passion, and sometimes he became a little too determined to prove the superiority of the scientific method. When that happened, he sometimes threw novelties into the computer without consulting anybody else or even taking proper thought for Blade's safety. So far they had been very lucky. Richard himself had said that there was always such a thing as running out of luck, however. As he always did, J mentally crossed his fingers and prayed that this would not be the time.

The lights on the control panel showed that the computer was reaching the end of the main sequence. In a few seconds it would be ready to receive Lord Leighton's command to hurl Blade into Dimension X.

Lord Leighton reached out with one thin, twisted hand, in a surprisingly smooth and sure gesture. The long fingers closed on the red master switch. The scientist seemed to draw himself almost straight. This was his moment, the moment when the miracle he had made possible would take place again.

Lord Leighton pulled down on the switch. There was no sound, no thunderous roar to mark the power let loose, not even a faint hum or hiss. But a searing golden light flashed through the chamber. Every bit of metal and glass sparkled and glowed as if it had been dipped in molten gold.

J squeezed his eyes shut against the glare. When he opened them, the chair in the center of the room stood there in its glass booth-empty.