The Golden Steed

CHAPTER ONE

The ringing of the telephone broke Richard Blade's sleep. As always, he was awake in an instant. In his profession those who were slow to awake didn't last long. He reached one long tanned arm out of bed and picked up the receiver.

«Hello, Crawford here.» That was his cover name when traveling abroad on personal business. He was no longer an active field agent for the secret intelligence agency MI6. But here certainly must be people who remembered that a «Richard Blade» had been one of MI6's top agents for nearly twenty years. In those years he had done a good deal to give many people scores and grudges against him. If his name showed up nakedly on a Riviera hotel register, some of those people might be tempted to try settling those scores. And Blade preferred to take his holidays without interruptions or excitement. He got more than enough excitement on his new job.

«Ah, Francis,» came the familiar paternal voice on the other end of the line. Fuzzed and distorted as it was by the long-distance line from London, J's voice was unmistakable. The old spymaster had been Blade's chief in MI6, and was in an odd sort of way still his chief. «How are you? Riviera agreeing with you?»

«Very much, sir.»

«Have anything doing that you can't break off?»

«Nothing in particular, sir.» That was approximately true. There had been an American girl, on her way to Oxford. But she couldn't be called particular. Decidedly not. There was an impressive number of hours in that young lady's bedroom log, Blade was sure. «Has business suddenly picked up?»

«Not worth mentioning. But his lordship wants to call a conference on the twelfth to discuss one of the new lines. Number Nineteen, I think he said.»

«Very good, sir. I'll be there in plenty of time.»

The line went dead. Blade put the receiver back in place and lay back in the bed. Like his identity, his profession was concealed while he was abroad behind a cover story and a code. But there were reasons for concealing his profession that went beyond his personal safety.

There was no single word to describe Blade's profession, a profession unknown to the public-or so he and J both devoutly hoped. And Blade doubted if there ever would be a word. How can you describe a man whose job it is to travel into alternate dimensions-not quite on alternate Thursdays, but much the same way a deep-sea sailor goes on a long voyage? Blade didn't know. All he knew was that he was the best man in the world today for that job. And he enjoyed it. He had an adventurous temperament, but he had managed to be born in a century when there were few professions that offered that much chance for adventurers. He knew that he was very lucky.

His luck had begun the day that England's most brilliant and eccentric scientist, Lord Leighton, had decided to make an experiment. The experiment consisted of linking a man's brain directly into an advanced computer-or at least what had been an advanced computer then. Compared to what Lord Leighton used now, that first computer was hardly more than a child's toy. Leighton's goal was to radically increase the powers of both the human and the electronic intelligences, each taking strength from the other.

A good idea. Blade rather hoped that one day the original experiment could be carried out successfully. But things had not turned out as the scientist planned. Blade had awakened in a strange, barbaric world in which savage tribes and the votaries of even more savage religions roamed about and warred on one another. Thanks to his training, his muscles, his quick reflexes, and his quicker wits, he had survived and somehow been snatched back to Lord Leighton's laboratory.

Immediately Lord Leighton's original project went aglimmering for here was something ten times as important. The existence of alternate dimensions-Dimension X-had frequently been theorized. Now it had been proved. And now it seemed possible to travel at will into those dimensions, explore them, discover their resources of knowledge and raw materials, bring wealth back to England. It was a discovery of enormous national importance.

So Project Dimension X was born. Lord Leighton's fertile brain created successively more sophisticated computers. The prime minister's authority and political skills produced money and turned aside awkward questions-at least so far. J traveled about on a hundred odd items of needed business. And Blade himself went into Dimension X-twelve times now-explored, wandered about, and helped the people he found there. All twelve times he had arrived in Dimension X naked as the day he was born, and all twelve times he had survived and even flourished by his trained mind and athlete's body.

But perhaps this time would be different. «Number Nineteen» was the code for one of the innumerable subprojects the whole Dimension X business had spawned. Blade had become wearier and wearier of having to contrive even the most basic clothes and weapons when he arrived in a new dimension. After his return from his last trip, he had taken the matter up with Lord Leighton. He had pointed out, among other things, that he was relying too much on luck to keep sending him into these violent worlds stark naked. It was time to start seeing about sending a survival kit through the computer with him. J, who loved Blade like a son, had supported him.

Lord Leighton was used to having his weakness for subprojects criticized. He ignored these criticisms, of course, and plowed ahead. But now both Blade and J were actually urging him to go off on a new tangent. It was commonly believed that the scientist had a smaller version of one of his own computers in place of a heart, but Blade knew this wasn't quite correct. Still, Leighton must have been gratified, because he had gone straight to work on developing the survival kit. And he must have worked like a beaver, if the survival kit was ready so quickly. It had been barely a month since Blade returned from his last Dimension X trip to the warrior people of Zunga.

After breakfast the next morning, Blade checked out of the hotel and drove his rented Renault back into Cannes. There was a flight leaving for Paris at 10:15, and with a good deal of scurrying he just caught it. From Paris, another flight took him on to London. The airport bus trundled him into the city through a dreary late autumn afternoon, gray skies hanging low and threatening rain, fog, or a combination of the two. It was a relief to finally reach his own apartment, unpack his bags, and improvise a dinner.

Then there was a note for his charlady. She would probably wonder why he was dashing off again just after getting back from southern France. But she would wonder privately and quietly. She was not bound by the Official Secrets Act, of course, but MI6 had done a quick and quiet check on her before they let him hire her. The report had come back: the perfectly respectable widow of a sergeant in the Coldstream Guards, anything but a gossip.

There were times when Blade could work up a mood of blazing resentment against all the secrecy that surrounded his life. The Official Secrets Act had smashed his engagement, would probably keep him a bachelor until he retired, and had elbowed its way into his life in all sorts of little ways.

Eventually he went to bed because he couldn't think of anything better to do. When there was another trip into Dimension X coming up, he found it hard to concentrate on anything else. Home Dimension, his apartment with its books and bottles, even the women who shared his bed for a night or a week, all came to seem insubstantial and fleeting.

The heart of Project Dimension X was Lord Leighton's underground complex, two hundred feet below the Tower of London. It included offices, laboratories, a small but well-equipped hospital where Blade was examined and interviewed after each return, and the gigantic computer itself. Guarded on the surface by a squad of Special Branch men and down below by the latest electronic gear, the complex represented an investment approaching ten million pounds.

Ten million pounds, almost every penny of it out of the British taxpayer's pocket, as the prime minister kept reminding Lord Leighton. And as the P.M. commented even more frequently, what had that investment produced? Blade brought something back from every trip, of course. From Zunga he had returned with a ruby the size of a man's fist on a gold chain around his neck. From the land of the Ice Dragons he had returned with the knowledge that somewhere else in the universe there was a non-human intelligent race. But all the wealth, all the knowledge, was in little bits and pieces. There was nothing that the P.M. could show to an inquisitive Parliament to justify those millions of pounds-not yet. As the taxi carried him toward the Tower, Blade was saying to himself, «Perhaps this is the moment of the breakthrough.» He had said it to himself the last half-dozen times, and he had been disappointed the last half-dozen times. But sooner or later luck would run his way-and the Project's, and England's.

Unless it ran out for him? That was possible. He was the only man in the Free World who had gone into Dimension X and returned alive and sane. And there were more times than he cared to remember when he had come closer than he liked to think to not coming back. The prime minister and J had both been sweating blood for the better part of two years on a project to find other men capable of going where Blade had gone. So far all they had was a mass of statistics and not a single man who could make the trip with any real prospect of coming back alive and sane. If they had turned up anyone else, Blade knew he would not be in the taxi on his way to the Tower and the thirteenth trip into Dimension X. Thirteenth? He couldn't help wondering if there would be any notable change in his luck this time.

The morning rush had faded away, and the taxi driver slipped quickly and neatly through London's traffic to the Tower. The handful of sightseers who had braved the weather paid no attention to Blade as he climbed out of the taxi and paid his fare. Nor did they pay any attention to the Special Branch men who stepped quietly up to Blade and took him in tow. The Special Branch men were trained to look inconspicuous. This time Blade found their expressionless faces, voices, and even suits getting on his nerves. He realized that he must be tenser than usual, if something so familiar could suddenly start bothering him.

The edginess vanished when the elevator door closed behind him and the elevator car began its two-hundred-foot plunge to the level of the complex. And it turned to cheerful calm when that door opened and he saw J standing in the corridor to greet him. The man's lined civil servant's face creased all over in the wide welcoming smile it always showed when Blade appeared. Who was that ancient Greek who went around in a barrel looking for ten honest men? Blade remembered very little of his classics. Diogenes-yes, that was the one. Well, if Diogenes showed up in England today, he could find at least one honest man in J. A bit surprising, perhaps, considering J's forty years as a spy and a spymaster. Those weren't the world's most honest professions. But it was always the man himself who counted.

And what about Lord Leighton? came an impish question from the back of Blade's mind. What would be the best word to describe the old scientist? Looking for the answer to that question kept Blade's mind busy all the way down the corridor from the elevator to Lord Leighton's office. He still hadn't found an answer when he and J entered the office.

Lord Leighton rose from behind his paper-heaped desk as they entered. His briskness gave no clue to his hunchback, to his polio-twisted legs that yet managed to get him around with surprising speed, nor to his eighty-odd years. His dark eyes threw a sharp, searching look at Blade. Blade felt, not for the first time, that Lord Leighton could probe a man's mind and body with one of those glances. He knew it was a ridiculous idea, but he could never quite get rid of it. He respected Lord Leighton-in fact, he was in awe of some of the man's achievements. But there was no denying the gnome like little scientist intimidated him as much as some of the monsters and human enemies he had encountered in Dimension X.

«Good morning, Richard,» said Leighton briskly. «I suppose J's given you the word on Number Nineteen?»

Blade nodded.

«Well, then.» Leighton jabbed a button set in his desk. «Pendleton, bring in the survival kit.» He turned back to Blade. «J's probably been telling you how he stormed and threatened and thundered at me to give Nineteen a Red One Priority. Nonsense. It's a damned good idea. After all, you're the only one we've got to send off into Dimension X. The only arrow in our quiver, you might say. Nobody else shows any signs of measuring up, at least not yet. So what else is there to do, but try equipping you a little better?» Blade and J exchanged half-amused glances. Lord Leighton had his little vanities, and one of them was his image as a hard, tough, unemotional pure scientist-which both Blade and J knew was nonsense.

At this point there was a knock on the door. «Come in,» shouted Leighton. The door opened and two of the laboratory technicians came in, lugging between them a large wooden crate. Blade noted the size of the box somewhat skeptically.

«What did you make for me? A suit of armor?»

Leighton grinned. «Not at all, my boy. Just a few basic necessities.»

Lord Leighton's idea of «a few basic necessities» turned out to resemble the equipment of a Himalayan climber. Boots, an insulated suit, three all-purpose knives, a sleeping bag, a hundred feet of light rope, a week's emergency rations, a canteen-the list went on and on. Looking at the growing pile on the floor, Blade was struck by two things. One was Lord Leighton's generous notions of what one man could carry. The other was that everything except the knives was made of natural materials.

The scientist frowned. «Do you think there's too much here?»

«For a hiking trip in rough country, no. I've handled a sixty-pound pack in the Alps with no trouble at all. But I wasn't trying to move fast there. And I certainly wasn't planning on doing any fighting.»

J nodded. «Richard's right. You'll have the poor chap loaded down like a World War I infantryman.» J, Blade recalled, had been just that, so the old man should know what he was talking about.

«Very well,» said Leighton with a smile that seemed almost sheepish. «We didn't have time to get a security clearance for a survival expert. So I read up on backpacking and made up the kit myself. I was largely — ah-guessing.» For Lord Leighton to admit to «guessing» was equivalent to most men's admitting they had robbed the Bank of England. Again J and Blade exchanged grins.

«As for the natural materials,» Leighton went on, «that's a little less a matter of guesswork. We looked for some common factor in all the items you've managed to bring back from Dimension X, and found it. All of them are very stable chemically, even under the extreme conditions of an inter-dimensional transfer. Natural materials tend to have that same quality, while some of the more common synthetics don't. That's why everything is natural except the knives, and we couldn't very well send you off with wooden knives, could we?»

Blade grinned and shook his head, then got down on his knees and began selecting items out of the pile on the floor. Eventually he picked out the clothing, the emergency rations and canteen, the knives-definitely the knives-the rope, and a light haversack to carry them all. Everything Lord Leighton had put in on the White Knight's principle of guarding against the bites of sharks was discarded. By the time he had finished, the load was down to less than thirty pounds, and Lord Leighton was beginning to fidget.

«Are you ready, Richard?»

«Any time you are, sir.»

«Good.» Leighton pressed the desk button again. «Initiate main sequence and prepare the transfer chamber.» Then he rose and led the way out into the corridor.

Nothing had changed in the main computer room. The computer consoles still loomed gigantic above the men passing among them. They seemed to crowd out against the walls and up against the roof of the underground chamber. Their sullen gray crackled finish was still as immaculate as ever. Leighton was an unashamed fanatic about cleanliness.

Finally they reached the innermost chamber. Here the rubber-padded chair stood in its glass booth. It was waiting for Blade to sit down in it and be hurled, hopefully equipment and all, into Dimension X.

This time, however, there was a change in the long-established routine of preparing Blade for his trip. He still went into the changing room, still stripped naked, still smeared himself all over with a black foul-smelling grease to prevent electrical burns. He still pulled on a loincloth. But when he stepped out of the changing room, Leighton was waiting for him with a complex harness of leather straps. It was somewhat like the webbing harness blade had used during his military service, and he had no trouble getting it on. When he had done so, Leighton attached the haversack to the chest strap and hooked the boots on the belt. Then he stepped back and surveyed his work.

«You see,» the scientist said to J, «we can't risk any irregularities in the electrical field that surrounds Richard as he transfers. So we have to make sure that he stays in the center of the field, and that his gear doesn't interfere with placing the electrodes. Otherwise we might wind up putting only part of him part way into Dimension X. I think that would be rather awkward.» J grimaced at the idea. That was one of the long-standing nightmares, shared by everybody who knew what the project was really about. There too luck had been running in their favor-so far. «Or we might not get his equipment through. And what's the good of that?»

Blade sat down in the chair. The weight of the sack on his chest was unfamiliar, and he felt it dragging him forward. But he managed to lean back and relax as Leighton went into the next part of the routine-attaching the cobra-headed electrodes all over Blade's body. The sack made no difference there. Leighton deftly inserted half a dozen electrodes in under it, and two in under each of the boots.

The process of attaching the electrodes seemed to take longer this time. Was Leighton trying to compensate for the extra matter to be sent through the computer by increasing the density of the electrodes? It was an interesting technical point, but not one that particularly interested Blade now. As the actual moment of the transfer approached, his mind as usual was entirely focused on that transfer and what might be waiting for him in Dimension X.

That unknown would never lose its power to excite him. Dimension X was the ultimate gift to a man of Blade's adventuresome disposition. It was never the same on two successive trips. There was a sub-project working to remedy that, and Blade had to admit it was a useful one. How could one properly explore or exploit Dimension X on a hit-or-miss basis? But there were times when he selfishly hoped that the sub-project would never succeed. The idea of a regular commuter run between Home Dimension and Dimension X didn't appeal to him.

While these thoughts were running through Blade's mind, Lord Leighton was scuttling about, making the final checks. At last he stationed himself at the main console, hand poised over the red master switch. He turned to Blade. He did not ask the question out loud this time, but it was plain on his wrinkled face.

Blade nodded. «Ready and waiting, sir.»

Leighton's gnarled hand seemed to drift down to the switch, then snap it down in a single sharp motion. As the switch came down, so did total darkness. Silent, chilling, stifling, it blotted out the computer room, Lord Leighton, and J in a single instant.

In the next instant the darkness lifted, and Blade was alone in the center of an enormous silver sphere. A translucent silver though-outside he could see flowing and swooping green and blue shapes. Only shapes-nothing he could recognize. Vaguely he felt that he did not want to get a closer look at them.

Then they faded slowly, as the sphere around him gradually became opaque. Not only was it becoming opaque but it was contracting in on him. And it was beginning to spin. The faster it spun, the faster it contracted. The curving surface rushed in on him from all sides, reached him, folded itself around the contours of his body, writhing and jerking as it did so. Its touch was sterile, cold, and dry. It began to tighten, and kept on tightening until Blade felt his vision dimming and his breath coming with difficulty. His vision faded still further, and the silver began to turn dark. Blue, gray, black. It was gone, everything around him was gone. Then a sudden chill, and air rushing past him. A smashing blow that seemed to split his head apart. Then a sudden plunge into a new blackness.