Dimension Of Horror

Chapter 1

Ponderously Big Ben tolled midnight. The lean balding man on the couch awoke and sat up in the semidarkness, tossing off his blanket. He swung his bare feet to the carpeted floor and sat a moment in his rumpled undershirt and drawers, stretching and gathering strength, trying to shake off a paralyzing dread that clung to him from a nightmare he only dimly remembered. He had had many such nightmares in recent weeks.

«Damn,» he grumbled. «Bloody nuisance.»

The only reply was the muffled murmur of the city.

He stood up and groped toward the shadowy mass of his desk. The telephone rang as he knew it would. He picked up the receiver.

«Twenty-four hundred hours, sir,» came a bored masculine voice. «You wanted to be called… «

«Thank you, Peters. Could you have the car brought 'round?»

«Right away, sir. Main entrance or side?»

«Main. No, wait. Make that the side, on Lothbury.»

«As you wish, sir.»

He hung up and lit his desk lamp.

His craggy face, illuminated from below, was for a moment a ghastly mask of black and white patterns, a face of unguessable age, the face of a man whose demanding profession had never allowed him the luxury of growing old. Blinking, sighing and shivering in the muggy cold, he peered moodily around his barren office cubicle, leaning against his heavy teakwood desk. There were three chairs: two uncomfortable wooden ones in front of the desk and one comfortable leather-upholstered one behind the desk, his only self-indulgence. No pictures hung on the wall, not even a calendar. The tall black filing cabinets were, as-always, locked. The black metal wastebasket was stuffed with paper that would, as usual, be carefully shredded and burned before leaving the building.

The two tall arched windows that ordinarily provided a view of Lothbury's congested traffic now had been transformed by the fog into irregular mirrors that distorted his reflection into a mocking caricature. Looking at this face that was his, yet not his, he felt the dread returning. He wondered, Is this a hunch? Should I call the whole thing off? He paid attention to hunches. Because of hunches, he had outlived nearly all the men he had known in his youth, though his was not a profession noted for longevity.

«Not this time,» he reassured himself out loud. «My deuced imagination is acting up again. Mustn't let it bowl me over.»

He strode to his closet, opened the door, and peered within. There hung his white shirt, his blue-striped Cambridge school tie, his waistcoat, his dark-gray suitcoat, his pinstriped gray and white trousers. His rolled umbrella leaned against the wall, gray suede gloves draped over the handle, next to his dark brown attache case. All in all, the uniform of a successful stockbroker, if you added the black bowler that rested on the shelf above eye level; but he was not a stockbroker.

A stockbroker would not have had in his closet, hanging casually from a peg, a shoulder holster containing an old Webley service revolver. He kept the weapon cleaned, oiled and loaded at all times, though he had not worn it, except at the practice range, for over twenty years. He did not wear it now.

Instead he shaved, then dressed quickly.

The stockbroker image was almost too perfect. Surely this was one of Britain's captains of industry: vigorous, aggressive, yet imperturbable and urbane! He not only looked his part, he felt it too. Setting his derby on his head at a jaunty angle, he grinned defiance at his reflection. Nothing to worry about. What are a few bad dreams, eh?

As he left his office he locked the door behind him, then, as always, tried it to make sure it was locked.

Outside the Lothbury Street exit a black four-door Rolls Royce awaited him at the curb, polished chrome gleaming. A gray-uniformed chauffeur sprang to attention and, opening the car's rear door, said crisply, «Your car, sir.»

«Not so military, Watkins.»

«Sorry, sir.»

The seeming stockbroker glanced at the building behind him, a towering Victorian monstrosity that had survived two world wars. It had never been damaged or, it would appear, cleaned. On the grimy brick wall a well-burnished plaque identified the New East India Copra and Processing Co. Ltd. There was indeed such a company within, but there was also the headquarters of MI6A, a very special branch of the Special Branch of the SIS, or Secret Intelligence Services.

Once this seeming stockbroker had had a name, but he had all but forgotten it. Now he was known only as «J,» head of MI6A, answerable only to the Prime Minister. To even be informed that J existed, it was necessary to demonstrate what the intelligence community called a «need to know,» yet J had more than once bent the course of history in Britain's favor, always working quietly, behind the scenes.

J climbed into the Rolls and settled himself into the seat with a grunt of satisfaction.

Watkins slammed the door, then bent over to ask, «Where to, sir?»

«The London Tower, Watkins.»

J closed his eyes as the powerful vehicle nosed out into the stream of traffic. He thought, Everything seems fine, but something's wrong. I can feel it!

The fog thickened as they neared the Thames, slowing their progress considerably as they threaded their way down Great Tower Street. J made an unsuccessful attempt to read his pocket-watch, then snapped it shut with a muttered curse and jammed it into his waistcoat pocket.

At last the vast angular bulk of the Tower of London complex hove into view, almost invisible in spite of the floodlights that shone on the central «White Tower.» That there were eleven other lesser towers clustered around it was something that had to be taken on faith.

At the curb Watkins held the door while J stepped to the sidewalk.

«Shall I wait for you, sir?»

«No. Come back in an hour and a half.»

«As you wish, sir.»

J watched the red-haloed taillights of the Rolls dwindle and fade, then started toward the rear of the Tower grounds, using his rolled umbrella as a blind man uses a white cane.

Out of the blackness an amused light baritone voice asked, «Nice evening for a stroll along the Thames, eh what?»

«Is that you, Richard?»

«Of course.» Richard's familiar heavy platinum cigarette lighter flamed, revealing an ironic half-smile on the younger man's rugged features. This was indeed Richard Blade, calmly lighting a Benson hen cutting off the flame with a click.

The men shook hands with a warmth that would have surprised some of J's associates. J had a reputation, for the most part deserved, for being a man without human feelings, able to order other men to their deaths without hesitation. Though he knew it was unprofessional, J had been unable to avoid caring about Blade. Was it because they had worked together so long? J had personally recruited Richard at Oxford, been Richard's superior officer through twenty years of espionage that included some rather sticky capers and more than their share of what the Russians call mokrye dela, «wet stuff,» executive actions involving bloodshed.

Or was it because J, a lifelong bachelor, had made of Richard a kind of unofficial adopted son? J had pondered the question often but had never discussed it with anyone: a gentleman does not express his feelings.

The two men walked slowly in silence.

At last J said, «I understand it won't take very long.»

Blade laughed.

«And what,» J demanded, «do you find so amusing?»

«'Won't take very long.'. Those are, if memory serves, the exact words you used to summon me by phone for the first one of these little experiments. 'A few hours at the most,' you told me. Those few hours have become years, sir.»

«That's true. I'd forgotten. Your memory never ceases to amaze me.» And not only your memory, J reflected. According to the doctors' reports from Blade's last physical, Blade continued to be the most nearly perfect physical and mental specimen in MI6. A lesser man would not have survived the incredible punishment Blade had suffered in mission after mission. A lesser man would long ago have demanded a transfer to less hazardous duty.

J added, «You're free to refuse the assignment.»

Again the mildly amused voice. «I know that. I'm always free to refuse, but I never have.»

J thought, How many times have I sent you out into God knows where? Twenty-five? Thirty? I've stopped counting. Someday you'll pass through that bloody machine and you won't come back.

J's eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness… or had the fog lifted a little? He could make out the outlines of Richard Blade's massive six-foot-one-inch frame, clad, it appeared, in the usual light wool Burberry coat with no hat. As Blade inhaled, the tip of his cigarette glowed brightly, faintly illuminating his clean-shaven, square-cut features. Blade was smiling, but it was an odd little smile, a smile that reminded J of the ancient Roman gladiator's motto, «We who are about to die salute you.»

Two other overcoated men materialized out of the fog. A flashlight snapped on, blazing in J's eyes. An emotionless voice said, «Good evening, sir. Identification please.»

While the Special Services men examined his papers, J shifted impatiently from one foot to the other, angry at the cold, angry at the dampness, angry at the delay. Blade, by contrast, appeared abnormally calm and impassive. Feverishly J glanced around, seeking something in the real world that would justify the uneasiness that had followed him out of the world of sleep.

The Special Services men returned the documents. «Everything seems to be in order, sir. May I trouble you for this week's password?»

«Raven,» answered Richard Blade, pocketing his own documents matter-of-factly.

«Countersign nevermore,» said the man.

«Very good,» said Blade.

«Follow me, please.»

The man gestured with his flashlight beam.

The Special Services men led and J and Richard Blade followed. They trudged along an ancient causeway, past a grassy sward that had been, before it was filled in, a moat. They passed through a grove of leafless skeletal trees interspersed with hulking cannons from some bygone era. On their left arose the outer walls of the Tower complex, the top lost in whiteness overhead. On their right, beyond a stout retaining wall, flowed the River Thames.

A ship was out there, heard but not seen, its diesel engines rumbling softly as it went by. A moment later the waves from its wake broke against the shore with a rhythmic hiss.

This was not, J reflected, a site he would have selected for England's most secret project, had he been given the choice. In the afternoons, when the tide was out, that narrow sandy shore became a beach on which antlike hordes of children from Stepney and most of the East End swarmed, laughing and shouting and wading and feeding the ill-tempered swans. Above the beach, in the narrow strip of park between river and wall, tourists from every country in the world strolled and gossiped and took pictures. God, how they took pictures! Once J had seen two Russian sailors taking snapshots of each other in the very shadow of the entrance to the secret project.

«One moment, sir,» said the taller of the two agents. They halted before a heavy grillwork gate beneath the broad archway at the base of Saint Thomas's Tower. The gate was secured by a chain and combination padlock at the center, and the taller Special Services man now busied himself with the tumblers while his partner held the flashlight. Richard leaned forward to watch; J knew Blade could memorize the combination of a lock by watching someone open it just once, and that he practiced this skill whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Richard said softly, «The Tower of London frowned dreadful over Jerusalem.»

«What's that supposed to mean?» J demanded.

«It's poetry,» Blade explained. «William Blake wrote those lines way back in the eighteenth century. He rather caught the spirit of this place, don't you think?» Richard had memorized an astonishing amount of classic verse at Oxford, and had a habit of quoting it at the most unlikely times. «Blood! Horror! Doom! That's what we think of when we hear about the Tower of London, and small wonder. Some of the grandest rascals in English history passed through this old Watergate on their way to torture, imprisonment or beheading. That's why it's called the Traitor's Gate.»

J thought, The Traitor's Gate! How apt. Two Russian spies have passed through here in very recent history and penetrated to the heart of the secret project, in spite of all our fanatic security precautions. Neither had returned alive to reveal what went on there, but next time…

J shuddered.

«There you are, sir,» the tall man said. The gate opened with a creak. J and Richard Blade stepped inside.

The Special Services men locked them in and vanished into the fog, returning to their posts. In the yellow light from a bare electric bulb in the ceiling, Blade and J proceeded onward, locating the almost invisible secret door that led into a long, dim, damp tunnel, into a maze of sub basements, and finally to the familiar door of the elevator.

J pressed the elevator button, aware that the button was photographing his thumbprint as he did so. Far below a computer would compare his print with that of everyone who had a security clearance for the project and, deciding that J was «all right,» would, in a few seconds, send up the elevator.

The elevator arrived with a rush.

The door slid open. J and Blade entered. The elevator dropped through two hundred feet of solid bedrock with a speed J had never quite gotten used to, then slowed to a stop. They stood in silence until the heavy bronze door hissed open.

They stepped out into a brilliantly lighted foyer, bare except for a desk and two chairs freshly painted an uninspiring olive drab.

«Where's Lord Leighton?» Blade wondered aloud.

«I fancy he's waiting for us in the computer area,» said J.

Blade moved through the foyer with a catlike lightness that belied his powerful two-hundred-and-ten-pound mass of rock-hard muscle and bone.

They walked briskly through long corridors, passing closed doors, closed doors and more closed doors. J could hear muffled voices behind the doors, the clatter of typewriters, the whir of spinning computer tapes, but within the hallways not a soul was to be seen. No human guards were needed. Electronic sensors followed their every step, checking and rechecking that they were who they were supposed to be, and were going where they were supposed to go. As long as the sensors functioned, no stranger could enter these passages without setting off an alarm, no matter how careful he was.

At the end of the final passage, a massive door slid open automatically for them and they entered the central computer area. J glanced around and frowned.

In these rooms surrounding the heart of the whole project J was accustomed to seeing a crew of technicians hard at work, but now there was nobody here. In fact the computers themselves had changed. They had been changing slowly over a period of time, but this was the first time J had really noticed.

The consoles, which had once been so large they filled the rooms, had shrunk and become fearfully silent, though the lights that blinked and glowed and the screens that displayed everchanging patterns, numbers and words seemed to indicate that everything was turned on and running. J understood. Bit by bit diodes and transistors had replaced big bulky tubes, and had been in turn replaced by tiny integrated circuit chips that contained whole libraries of preprogramming in an area the size of a thumbnail. Everything had become smaller, cooler, quieter, yet at the same time more powerful. Now the last step had been taken. Automation had replaced human control, and the last human operator had been banished.

«Lord Leighton?» J called out. The bare rock walls threw back a disquieting echo.

«There he is.» Richard pointed.

Lord Leighton, in a rumpled green smock, had blended in so well with his beloved computers he had been almost invisible. The machines were not, as they had been, dull gray with crackled finishes, but, except where a spot of gleaming chrome or spotless red plastic showed its contrast, all were in the same muted matt green as Leighton's smock.

«Ah, welcome, welcome!» Lord Leighton came scuttling forward. «How do you like my new toys?»

Leighton was a monster, a troll, a grotesque Quasimodo lurching along with a halting, crablike gait on legs that had never quite recovered from a near-fatal childhood attack of polio. Yet under his high balding forehead with its sparse strands of white silky hair pulsed a brain of terrifying power. In the field of computer technology Leighton might well be the greatest genius England-indeed the world-had ever seen. Every device in this project had begun as a gleam in these dark-pupilled yellow-rimmed bloodshot eyes that now stared up at J through the thick distorting lenses of a pair of steel-framed glasses.

J replied uncertainly, «Very pretty toys. Very pretty.»

Leighton extended a small dry claw and J shook hands with him. Toys? Was it proper for a man of Leighton's advanced age to go on prattling about toys?

Now Leighton was shaking hands with Blade, bubbling over with gargoyle enthusiasm. «I've solved it at last,» the little man boasted. «At least I think I have!»

«Solved what?» Blade was grinning, caught up in the scientist's excitement.

«Our most challenging problem of all. Before this we've never been able to send you to the same place twice, except by accident. If I'm right in my theories and calculations, I can now, once I've established the coordinates, send you again and again to the same destination. The replicator is ready!»

J raised a questioning eyebrow. «Really?» J had all but given up on this part of the project. From the beginning the replicator had been top priority, yet it had never come to fruition.

J did not become infected with Leighton's high spirits. Instead he looked around once again at all the new equipment, and his sense of impending disaster returned stronger than ever. New equipment? That meant untested equipment, hazardous experiments made more hazardous. Again and again Lord Leighton's demonic device had hurled Richard into other universes, other dimensions that no one before had dreamed existed. Somehow it had dragged him back each time, sometimes seconds before some particularly unpleasant death. The very names of the places he'd been rung with a shimmering occult sonority. Tharn! Sarma! Jedd! Patmos! Royth! Zunga!

Where were these places? In the distant past or the distant future? On planets that circle other suns in this galaxy or some other? In divergent or parallel time tracks, worlds that might have been? In universes that coexisted with this one, but which we could not see? J had no idea. With each trip the whole bloody business had become harder to understand. Even Lord Leighton, full of glib explanations at first, had gradually become as baffled as Blade and J.

Yes, though nobody honestly knew what they were doing, the experiments went on. Perhaps the time had come to halt, to stop doing and start thinking.

But Leighton was clutching J by the arm, saying, «Come along, old chap. The best is yet to come.» J allowed himself to be half-dragged toward the innermost computer room, the place where the impossible had happened already so many, many times.

J hung back when they reached the massive entrance door. «Perhaps it would be better to wait, to be careful… «

It was Blade, surprisingly enough, who answered, «No! I want to go.»

J studied the younger man a moment. It's said one can become addicted to anything. Was Blade addicted to the machine? Here was a possibility they'd never considered, a dangerous possibility. And what if Blade found on the «other side» a world he liked better than stodgy old England? Could the computer bring Blade home against his will?

The door opened.

Blade and Lord Leighton went in, J trailing behind.

Lord Leighton had been chattering on all this time, and Blade, listening intently, had been nodding at intervals and asking questions in a low voice.

«As you see, the most drastic changes are the ones I've made in here,» said the hunchback proudly, gesturing toward the place where once the familiar electric-chairlike device had stood. With alarm J noted that a new contraption occupied the center of the room, a sort of upright Iron Maiden or Egyptian mummy case, but with a tangle of wires attached to it.

Lord Leighton was explaining, «This case is molded so that it fits you exactly, Richard my boy. No one else can use it. And all the electrodes that I used to attach to you, one at a time, are now pressed into positive contact with your body automatically when the box closes.»

«Interesting,» said Blade. «A definite improvement.»

«A part of an overall plan,» said Leighton. «The replicator, you see, is not a separate unit to be plugged into a preexisting whole. It is a strategy for the organization of the entire process. When I put the electrodes on by hand, there's no way I can ever put them on exactly the same way twice. I, myself, was inadvertently introducing variation into something that must be exactly the same every time. And look here.» He gestured toward a completely remodeled control console. «I have eliminated the red sliding switch you've so often seen me throw an instant before you-er-departed.»

«Then how do you start the final sequence?» asked Blade.

«I don't. Once the program is fed into the computer memory banks, only two switches remain active: Program Start and Program Stop. And when Program Start is pushed, the preliminary sequences begin and run themselves out, one after the other. That's nothing new. The innovation is that the impulse that starts the final sequence comes directly from the computer, automatically, when it comes to the end of the prelims. I never touch the controls unless I think something is going wrong. Then I hit Program Stop. Normally everything is completely automatic, including the closing of the box. The computer even turns itself off after you've been launched»

Blade asked, «What's the point of that? Oh wait, I see. The machine repeats every step exactly the same way every time, and thus should produce the same result, so long as nobody changes the program.»

Leighton beamed up at him. «Exactly! You should have been a scientist, my boy. You have the mind for it. What we had failed to see was that no human being could do things as perfectly as a machine, not even a human being as unusual as myself.»

Blade smiled at Lord Leighton's unconscious egotism. The scientist continued, «The only variation that remains is your thoughts. You must try to think of the same things every time you're going to the same place. Do you think you can do that?»

«I can try.»

«Excellent! Tonight we'll only do a quick one. We'll send you through for ten minutes, no more. Then the computer will bring you back. Do you think that in ten minutes you can somehow make note of where you are well enough to recognize it again?»

Richard nodded. «There's always a moment of wild dreamlike disorientation before my mind focuses on the other world, but I don't think that takes up much objective time. There used to be an undetermined period of unconsciousness after I passed through, but I think that's dwindled down to nothing or next to nothing. I believe I made the trip to the Empire of Blood without blacking out at all, and the customary headache passed away very quickly. As Dostoevsky once said, 'Man is the only animal who can get used to anything.' Is that all you want me to do? Look around and see where I am?»

«That's all.»

«Then ten minutes should be quite enough.»

«Good. We'll bring you back and, when you're ready, we'll send you through again with exactly the same program. Unless I'm sadly mistaken, you should go to the same place both times, and if you do… «

Blade finished, «… all our work will not have been in vain. We'll have ourselves a means of transportation, not an unusually expensive form of Russian roulette.»

«Exactly. Any questions?»

Richard shook his head. «No. Compared to my previous missions, this one looks like a piece of cake.»

«Then I'll activate the preliminary sequences.» Leighton's forefinger moved toward the Program Start button. «Richard, if you'll strip down… «

J burst out. «Confound it, you two! Can't you listen to me for a moment?»

They turned to look at him with mild surprise. «What's wrong, J?» Richard asked, puzzled.

J understood that puzzlement. Blade was not used to seeing his superior upset. Normally J maintained a facade of British reserve and imperturbability that made him seem hardly human. «I don't know what's wrong, but something is. I feel it!»

Leighton said coldly, «Feelings have no place in a laboratory.»

Blade laid a hand on J's arm, saying softly, «I know there's danger, sir. There's always danger. But when you're pushing into the unknown, you have to obey the unwritten law of science.»

«Which unwritten law?» asked J.

«The law that says, 'If you can do it, you must do it,'» said Blade. He turned away from J and headed for the changing room. This time J made no attempt to stop him. Richard had missed the sarcasm behind J's remark. Leighton pressed the button. A green-glowing digital clock lit up and began the countdown.

Stiffly J asked Lord Leighton, «What generation computer is this now?» J did not really want to know. «Tenth? Eleventh?»

«A new series,» said Leighton.

«Really?»

«I call it the KALI Mark L»

«Kali? Why do you call it that?»

«That's what the initials of its scientific name spell out. Kinematic Analog Leighton Integrator.»

«Kali is the name of a Hindu goddess.»

«You don't say! What sort of goddess?»

«A goddess of destruction!» said J grimly.

«Coincidence, old boy. Pure coincidence. Doesn't mean a thing.»

Richard Blade emerged from the changing room, naked. In times past he'd worn a loin cloth into the machine, but the cloth had always remained after he'd departed. Even the coat of black grease smeared all over his body to prevent electrical burns was no longer needed.

With a glance at the rapidly changing countdown clock, Leighton said sharply, «Quick, Richard. In you go. We don't want to have to abort the mission, do we?»

Richard stepped into the upright case and stood in the gleaming copper-colored many-segmented interior, saying, «Like this?»

Leighton's finger hovered over the Program Stop button, but he said cheerily, «That's it. Now lean back slightly. Perfect!»

The three men waited.

The clock flickered. It was into the low numbers now. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. On the count of six, without warning, the heavy curved door of the case swung shut with a thump. Five. Four. J became aware of a low hum. Three. Two. One. Zero.

There was no sound to mark Richard's departure, but J was almost blinded by that mysterious golden blaze of light he'd seen so many times before, a light that seemed not to come from the case, but from everywhere and nowhere, as if a giant rip had opened in the very fabric of space, letting some unknown sun shine for an instant into the underground room.

The case swung open, and J saw, with eyes that had not yet adjusted back to the normal intensity of light, that Richard Blade was gone.

He turned to Lord Leighton and commanded, «Start the sequence to bring him back.»

«No, no. I can do nothing. KALI will bring him back. It's all in the programming,» said Leighton. J noticed that Leighton's mottled face was pale. «Sit down. Try to be comfortable. This goddess, as you call her, is on our side. She can count out ten minutes far more precisely than either you or me.»

In a daze J pulled out the folding spectator seat, installed for his benefit on one wall, and sat down. The digital clock, he noted, was counting down again.

J and Lord Leighton carried on a trivial, absent-minded conversation punctuated by long silences during which J often pulled his pocketwatch from his waistcoat pocket and compared it with the digital clock on the instrument panel, as if the upstart electronic timepiece might require correction from an older, more reliable source.

As the flickering green numbers began counting the final thirty seconds, even this conversation ceased. Both men turned an expectant gaze toward the open case.

Nine. Eight. Seven. Six.

The case closed.

Five. Four.

The humming had begun. Three. Two. One. Zero.

Again the searing golden light filled the room, fading almost instantly, but an odd bright blue-white haze remained, unlike anything J had seen before. The haze, glowing and pulsating, appeared to be seeping rapidly out from the seams where the cover joined the case, and there were tiny glittering points of light in the haze, like dust motes in sunbeams. The haze could have been steam except for its color, yet it did not move like steam. It moved purposefully, independently of any current of air in the room.

J sprang to his feet, alarmed.

The case was opening.

The cloud of haze, with a speed J would not have believed possible, streamed out of the case and off toward the exit with a curious high rushing sound, like an indrawn breath but much louder. As it passed, J felt a curious tingling sensation, like static electricity on an exceptionally dry day. Glancing at the back of his hand, he saw the hairs rise like a nest of charmed serpents and sway as if they had lives of their own.

Half-turning toward Lord Leighton, J blurted, «What… what was that?»

The little scientist did not answer. His attention was entirely on the case, which now stood fully open. In it stood Richard Blade, but a Richard Blade inexplicably changed. Though he had been gone only ten minutes his angular chin was shadowed with at least a day's growth of stubble.

Blade had often returned from the X dimensions dazed, unconscious or even dying, but never before quite like this. His eyes were open, but fixed and staring, and his expression was one of abject terror, every feature contorted into a mask of fear, the flesh pale and gleaming with sweat, the muscles in his neck standing out like cables.

J took a step forward. «Richard?»

This could not be! Richard had always been the one man in all humanity who could not be frightened by anything.

«Richard?» J called again.

Blade did not reply, but went on staring blindly at nothing.

Lord Leighton advanced carefully, right hand clutching an air pistol, loaded, as J knew, with tranquilizer darts. It had been standard equipment in the laboratory for some time now. «Easy does it,» Leighton said gently. «Everything's all right, Richard. You're home.»

At last Richard moved, leaning out of the case like a huge falling tree, landing on his hands and knees with a force that must have been painful.

Lord Leighton took aim.

«Wait,» J said, raising a restraining hand. «I don't think he's dangerous.»

Richard's head lifted, tangled black hair dangling over his glistening forehead.

«What's wrong?» J asked gently. «You can tell us, Richard.» Leighton had not lowered the pistol. «He's a big man, J. If he gets rough. «

«He won't get rough.»

Richard raised a tightly clenched fist.

«Get back, J,» Leighton warned.

The fist came down, striking the floor with an alarming thud. When the fist raised Richard's knuckles were bleeding.

Then Richard began to scream, frightful howls, more animal than human, that echoed and reechoed in the hardwalled cavern room. Again his fist crashed down, and again and again, each time leaving a red stain on the floor. At last he half-turned, as if about to attack the delicate structure of the device from which he had emerged.

Leighton squeezed the trigger.