Ice Dragon

Lord Leighton had met a man who was more stubborn-or at least as stubborn-as he was, and a professional bargainer to boot. However, the scientist was going to salvage something from the collision-another million pounds from the Special Fund, with a portion of it earmarked for preliminary feasibility studies of the Replicator. If it turned out there was a real possibility of being able to control the computer sufficiently to permit Blade (or his successor) to pick an X Dimension the way a traveler at Paddington Station picks where he'll get off the train, then the P.M. would be open to a request for the full amount necessary. In return, Lord Leighton would keep everything else co

Blade felt disappointed, but as his head cleared enough for him to think the matter over dispassionately, he had to confess that much of his wish for Lord Leighton to win out came from his own desire to get back and find out the answer to all the questions about the Menel that were tormenting him. It was a very personal desire, having nothing to do with the higher goals of the project, arising simply from his own doubts about whether or not he had bungled the job! It was also a completely unrealistic desire, considering that even Lord Leighton's most optimistic estimate for a working Replicator-assuming one could be built-was two years.

No, he would not be going back to the dimension of the Menel soon, and if he did not go back soon, it did not matter very much whether he went back at all, except to satisfy his curiosity. If the Menel survived (and his own guess was that their settlements, at least some of them, could have survived the blast), they would have established the pattern for their future relations with the humans on the world the two races shared long before Blade could return. Extermination? Possibly-if Blade were to return he might find nothing but the Menel and the ruins of the human cities and towns.

But suppose there were peace? Blade realized he had in a way been underestimating the abilities of his friends in that dimension. People like Stramod and Leyndt-yes, and Treduki like Nilando and Rena and the head of the Tengran council of elders-had all the intelligence, learning, and humanity needed to arrive at a peaceful settlement with the Menel, if one were possible. Anything that could be done, they would do. They wouldn't need him. He recalled what he himself had thought at the moment when the Ice Master had asked him to be his ally against the Menel-a man should do everything himself if possible. And the other side of that was that if it isn't possible, he should get the best help available. That he had done.

He reined his mind in sharply, with a rueful grin in the darkness. If he kept on woolgathering this way, he was going to develop a taste for philosophy. And while he knew he was a first-class adventurer, he also knew he would never make more than a fifteenth-rate philosopher.

He scraped the mud off his shoes with a stick and went back into the lodge.