Liberator Of Jedd

«How about J?»

Lord L grimaced, hesitated, then with reluctance said, «Of course J. I suppose he must know. But no one else. Absolutely no one else. Now you wait here and watch it while I get a hypo and some drugs. I'll have to knock it out, I suppose. Keep it unconscious for a time. Have to. Otherwise it will only destroy itself or make us destroy it. That must not happen.» He scuttled for the door. «I won't be a second.»

Blade stared down at the thing on the floor. It was breathing heavily through large, flattened nostrils. There were flecks of foam around the mouth. It did not move.

Blade's hand and arm ached from the blow he had given it.

Blade sniffed at the burnt-out computer shell. He found that he could grin. The old boy had really fouled this one up. Six months of work gone up in smoke and the old man had conjured up some sort of a hairy demon from somewhere out there in limbo.

Blade shrugged. And laughed.

He touched the unconscious creature with his bare foot The body hair was long and coarse and clotted with dirt and sweat, and the smell from it was fast overpowering the acridity of the smoke.

Blade was still chuckling when Lord L came back with a tray on which was a hypodermic needle and several small bottles containing a clear liquid. His Lordship gave him a reproving glance as he filled the needle and injected the brute thing on the floor.

«This is a very serious matter,» said Lord L. «Not at all fu

«Yes, sir,» said Blade. «But now what, sir? Where do we go from here?»

Lord L glanced around as though he expected spies to leap from the shattered computer. «We shall have to be very careful and very cu

Blade pointed out that he could not have explained the matter to J even had he wished. You ca

Lord L ignored him. All he said was, «Go at once, please.»

«Is it all right if I dress first, Lord Leighton?»

His Lordship did not hear.

Chapter Four

The next month was as frenetic as any Blade had experienced in his thirty years. Lord Leighton, always a martinet and a slavedriver, reached into some hidden reserve of energy and summoned a demonic fury that sorely tried Blade and J, both younger men. All three became master liars. Lord L, as chief Ananias, was a good teacher and was expert in twisting the truth into odd shapes. His Lordship's great fear, his chief nightmare, was that the world would find out about Ogar — as they had come to call the creature, from the snarling sounds he made — and wrest his prize from him before he could complete his studies.

J, who had a plan of his own, had a blazing battle with Lord L about this. J insisted that the Prime Minister be let in on the secret. His Lordship said no. J insisted.

«He must know,» J said flatly. «For our protection and his. Else how do we explain the delay in Project DX? Be practical, Leighton! Our money is ru

J won that argument. It was the only one.

When the massive complex was excavated beneath the Tower someone had thought to include a single large cell, a modern dungeon, in the lowest sub-basement. It was to this cell that Blade carried the unconscious Ogar after Lord L summarily cleared the place of all perso

The Prime Minister came in the dead of night, spent half an hour viewing Ogar and listening to Lord L, and left in a state of shock, muttering to himself. His position, he told J later, was unique in every sense of the word. No politician had ever had to cope with a situation like this before.

The coming of Ogar did accomplish one other thing. For the time being, at least, it healed the growing breach between J and Lord Leighton. There was no more talk of brain surgery and, as they became less snappish, the two older men regained some of their former rapport. Even so, J, on the first day, could not refrain from jabbing the needle into Lord L.

With a malicious grin he quoted directly from the old man's computer speech at Reading University: «… we have at least succeeded in eliminating the danger of schizophrenia… when they are built, they function exactly as intended.»

He received a cold glare from the hooded yellow eyes. «May I point out,» said his Lordship, «that some of the greatest scientific discoveries have been made by accident. In any case I have already found the error and the computer will be rebuilt in a month or so. But that is not my chief concern at the moment. I have plans, great plans.»

Both J and Blade left their apartments and moved into quarters far below the Tower computer complex. Here they were self-sufficient, with no need to venture outside. There was no elevator — it stopped on the level above — and the only way out or in was by a narrow stairway. This was guarded by a massive steel door that was kept locked. Above them the lesser computers were humming again, all perso

The stone axe was shipped away, with elaborate security precautions, for an appraisal by experts. Within three days the report was back and his Lordship shared it with them.

HAFT — this wood is unknown to us. Suggest may be some species of iron-wood believed extinct since Lower Palaeolithic Age. Workmanship suggests culture unknown to us.

AXE — this macrolith also a puzzler. We have seen nothing like it before. Main component is undoubtedly quartz, but with a mixture of greenstone, quartzite and cherty. This is impossible according to present knowledge, yet repeated tests prove it to be so. Possible that meld might be a result of intense heat, in which case heat would have to approach that of i

At the bottom of the report was a scribble. Dear Leighton — what goes on here?

The scribble made Lord L most unhappy.

«They're bound to start nosing around sooner or later,» he told J and Blade.

«All the more reason to start cracking,» rejoined J, who had his plan and was keeping it to himself for the moment. J was in a very good form and biding his time. For the moment the Prime Minister was appeased, if slightly dazed, and matters were going smoothly enough. J kept a steady pressure on the old man to see that the computer was rebuilt as rapidly as possible. This was not easy, but J did it. Left to his own designs, Lord L would have spent every waking hour by the cot on which Ogar still lay drugged.

At the end of the first week Lord Leighton summoned them to the cell and, as they stood around the cot on which Ogar slept, gave his first full report. Blade and J were too impressed to interrupt. The cell by this time was full of the body smell of the hairy creature on the cot.

Lord L, using a ruler as a pointer, poked and prodded and explained. You would have thought, as J said later hi jest, that the old man had himself spawned the thing on the cot.

«Ogar,» said Lord L, «is from another dimension. A Dimension X. It is very important to remember that.»