«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.