The Golden Steed

Ten million pounds, almost every pe

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 gri

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 pla

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 gri

«Are you ready, Richard?»