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Blade 34: The Ruins of Kaldac

By Jeffrey Lord

Chapter 1
The sky was gray, and a chilly wind blew rain through empty windows, turning the dust on the floor into
mud. The tall man standing by the doorway looked out briefly at the foul weather, then shrugged and
walked back into the room.

The man was not only tall. He was also heavily built, with a broad chest and muscle-corded arms and
legs to match. He still moved with a light step which hinted at speed and coordination as well as sheer
muscle. His hair was black, and his skin was deeply tanned under the dirt. His skin also showed marks
and ridges which could only be the scars of painful wounds. He was naked except for a loinguard which
gleamed in the dim light with a silvery metallic sheen, but in spite of the breeze he was not shivering.

The man's name was Richard Blade. He was probably the only man in any world who'd traveled into
more than thirty different Dimensions, fought deadly battles in all of them, and always returned alive.

Richard Blade didn't worry anymore about whether each Dimension he visited could really be called a
complete "world." One Dimension certainly reached out many light-years to the stars, but that didn't
mean they all did. In some Dimensions he'd never seen more than an area smaller than his native England.
Neither made much difference to his chances of coming back alive. After a while he left the question of
the Dimension's size more and more to Lord Leighton, the scientist who'd opened the road to new
Dimensions. As long as he came back in one piece, Richard Blade, who was essentially a practical man,
was content. Before he started traveling among the Dimensions, he was a field operative for the secret
British intelligence agency MI6A.

Lord Leighton was quite a different proposition. Before he discovered the road to new Dimensions, he'd
already had a long career as one of Britain's most brilliant scientists. He was born a hunchback, and polio
twisted his legs when he was a child, but there was nothing wrong with his mind. Even his best friends
would admit that there was a great deal wrong with his manners, which were abominable, but even his
worst enemies would admit that his mind was a precision instrument of extraordinary brilliance.

Leighton had developed a theory that if the mind of a physically robust and highly intelligent man was
linked to a powerful computer, a new form of intelligence would emerge. He chose Richard Blade, linked
him to a computer of his own invention, and wound up sending Richard Blade off into an unknown world.

The discovery of what they called "Dimension X" was a complete accident, but that didn't make it any
less important. There had to be untapped natural resources and new scientific discoveries waiting out
there in Dimension X. If they could just be brought home to Britain, then put to use....

Several years and several million pounds later, Project Dimension X was only a little ahead of where it
started. Richard Blade was still the only man who could travel into Dimension X and return alive. He still
couldn't return to a particular Dimension except by accident. He still couldn't take much equipment with
him or bring back anything except by chance. Some of what he brought back was no more than exotic
junk. Some of it was jewels or precious metals which could at least be sold to raise money for the
Project. Some of it was knowledge or technology which would be priceless when and if it could be put
to practical use.
 However, things seemed to be looking up a trifle. Blade paced around the gloomy room and listened to
the rain, fingering the belt of his silvery loinguard. That was something based on Dimension X technology,