Hell's Gate

CHAPTER 6

As he came up out of velvet blackness, trying to push the curtain aside, he discovered one of the lizard-things was eating his head. He could feel its raspy tongue delicately licking his face, savouring his flavor preparatory to taking the first bite.

Victor shuddered, opened his eyes expecting a demon. Instead, Intrepid whuffed happily in his face as if he had no idea how bad his doggy halitosis was and flicked his tongue over his master's face. Salsbury shook his head to clear it, felt around with his hands to see if his body was still connected to that head by a neck. Everything seemed in place, though he had a headache that was chewing up his brain. He sat up, looked around, and realized that the shock transmitted up the crowbar had knocked him six feet away from the trunk. He got to his feet, swaying slightly, and walked to the door,

“You've won,” he told the computer.

The computer said nothing.

Remembering something Lynda had discarded in the attic while routing through her uncle's possessions, he went up the narrow stairs, turned on the bare bulb and looked for it. He found it in the second box: a.22 pistol and ammunition. It seemed to be in good repair, well kept, perhaps a small game hunting pistol. He took it and the ammunition into the living room, dragged a big easy chair into a corner so his back was not to any windows, and loaded the weapon. Intrepid sat at his side, both curious, playful and tense.

From where Victor sat he could see the entrance to the cellar. If a skinny, sucker-mouth man-lizard so much as stuck a head out of the cellar door, he could blow it to bits with one shot well placed. The creatures did not look particularly sturdy.

But time crawled by with no major events, and his muscles began to uncramp, his nerves to loosen. In half an hour, he realized he was hungry and made himself two sandwiches. He was about to open a beer when he remembered his body's exaggerated reaction to the last one he had drunk. Beer was out. He needed to stay clear and alert tonight. Eating his sandwiches, he began to think. He had been reacting on a gut level up to this point, charging about like a wild boar with a peptic ulcer. He thought some unpleasant things, like: what if the lizard-things on the other side of the portal were the ones who had programmed him to kill Harold Jacobi? Perhaps he was their tool.

Such a thought was almost unbearable. If only the 810-40.04 would come out of its funk, he might have an answer that would make all this seem rosy, though he doubted it.

Then he had a second bad thought. Suppose, in trying to open the computer, he had cracked a casing, a power shell? Suppose he had ruined the computer? Would a briefing ever come now? Or had he stupidly, in a moment of fear and excitement, destroyed his only link with understanding?

He thought about those things until eight in the morning, showing not the faintest interest in sleep. At eight, he took his gun up to the bathroom and took a shower. He first posted Intrepid outside the door, then locked the door behind him. He tilted the white clothes hamper against the inside knob, the lid wedged to keep the knob from turning or the door from opening in the event someone or something found a way to by-pass the lock. He did not draw the shower curtain, and he kept his eyes on the door for a sign of movement, his ears attuned to pick up the first snufflings and whinnyings from the dog.

At 9:15, he put his canine into the luggage shelf behind the front seat of his MGB-GT. Intrepid had just enough room to turn around in and three windows to look out of. He seemed content. Salsbury judged he would be in Harrisburg a little after ten. The first thing on the agenda was to see if the police would let him look at the body of Victor Salsbury… or whoever was dead.

The desk sergeant was a dour-faced, yellow-toothed creature who sat behind a scarred and littered desk, chewing a stub of a cigar that was not lit and shuffling papers back and forth to make himself look busy. He ran a heavy, thick-fingered hand through his thinning hair and reluctantly took the delicious cigar morsel from his mouth before he spoke. “Yeah?”

“My name's Victor Salsbury,” Salsbury said.

“So?” He blinked several times, put the cigar back in his mouth.

“I'm the one you people think is dead.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” He was immediately defensive. Salsbury realized he had made two mistakes, the first of which was not beginning the conversation logically. A mind like that of Sergeant Brower (that was the name on the plaque on his desk) required tangible, simple statements to work with; phrases that could be turned over in his mind again and again for examination. Secondly, he had not been servile enough with the good sergeant-especially when using the phrase “you people.”

He changed his tact. “I read in yesterday's Evening News, that the body taken from the river was identified as Victor Salsbury. But, you see, I am Victor Salsbury.”

“Wait a minute,” Brower said, paging an officer named Clinton from his desk intercom. Salsbury stood there, fiddling with his hands and trying not to look guilty. Iron Victor would have handled this well, without a nervous shiver of the smallest magnitude. But the unprogrammed Victor that was now in charge of his body could only think about having killed Harold Jacobi little more than two weeks ago and how those uniformed men would love to learn the facts on that one.

Detective Clinton approached the desk from the right, then stopped ten feet away from Salsbury as if he had been hit on the head with an eight-pound sledge. Recovering several long seconds later, he finished the walk to the desk. He was a tall, thin man with the features of a predatory bird. His eyes shifted from Brower to Salsbury; he paled again.

“This fellow's here about that unidentified stiff case you were on,” Brower said. Little things like mistaken identities for corpses or men coming back from the dead did not interest him. They were not logical thoughts; there was no use pursuing them. He turned back to his papers and began snuffling them assiduously.

“I'm Detective Clinton,” the hawk man said.

“Victor Salsbury,” Victor said, accepting the bony hand.

The detective's color drained completely, and he ceased trying to maintain his cool. “This way, please.” He led Salsbury back to his office, waited for him to enter, followed, and closed the door behind them. He directed Salsbury to a chair, sat in his own comfortable swivel model behind his desk. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

Victor could think of a dozen snappy rejoinders, but realized it was not the time or place for humor. “I read the paper last night… saw that piece about the body identified as me.”

He was quiet a moment, then smiled. “I'm sure there is a mistake, Mr. Salsbury. The names may be the same, but the body was identified correctly.”

“There are not likely to be two Victor L. Salsburys in a city this size-both artists. Besides, you recognized me out there.”

“There is a resemblance,” he said. “We found some pictures at the Salsbury residence. You match pretty well.”

“Did the corpse?”

“Somewhat. It was, you have to realize… decomposed.”

“Why did you link the corpse to the name Salsbury?”

“Your landlady-” He flushed. “His landlady, a Mrs.-”

“Pritchard,” Victor said, startling himself that he knew it.

Clinton was startled too. “Yes. She reported that you had gone out for an evening and had been gone ten days. You were four days overdue on your rent. She was afraid something had happened. She reported you missing.”

“Identification on the body?” Victor asked.

“None. Except a note pinned to its shirt. It was inside a plastic window from a wallet and didn't get too wet.”

“The note said-?”

“'I'm creative, but they won't let me be. V.'”

“Not even signed with a full name?”

“No. But it fits. Victor Salsbury was a commercial artist trying to work creatively but unable to build a reputation.”

“But I am Salsbury, and I left home for ten days with a batch of work which I sold in New York.”

Detective Clinton leaned forward in his chair. “But the dental charts matched,” he said. “There had never been a record of Salsbury's fingerprints, but he had had regular dental care.”

“Dr. Broderick,” Victor said.

Clinton looked even more unsettled. “We checked Broderick's records with x-rays of the corpse. Perfect match, almost.”

“Almost?”

“Dental records never tell everything. His childhood dentist was someone other than Broderick. In compiling his records of Salsbury's teeth, Broderick could easily have overlooked something which showed up in more thorough crime-lab x-rays.”

“I assure you I am Victor Salsbury.”

Clinton shook his head, determined. “It would be extremely coincidental to find two people whose dental records matched that closely. They are almost as distinctive as fingerprints. The corpse was Salsbury.”

Victor gathered courage, cleared his throat. “X-ray my teeth right now. Compare them with the others.”

Clinton was reluctant, but there was little else he could do. This Salsbury looked like the Salsbury, had the same memories (although strangely second-hand), the same abilities. He had probably just finished twenty-foot stacks of forms and reports closing out the case, but the case would not die yet.

They went to the labs where a gray-haired man named Maurie took the x-rays, compared them. This Victor Salsbury's dental charts were almost a duplicate of Dr. Broderick's files.

Upstairs, Clinton shook Victor's hand, looking very depressed at the prospect of re-opening the investigation, and said, “Sorry to cause you all this trouble, Mr. Sals-bury. But the resemblance was amazing in so many ways. I wonder who in the hell he'll turn out to be?”

Victor shook Clinton's hand and left the station. He could have told the detective who the corpse was, even though the man would never discover it on his own. The corpse, most definitely, was Victor Salsbury.

For a while, he sat in the car, wondering if his secret masters, whoever had hypno-programmed him to kill Harold Jacobi, had also killed the real Victor Salsbury to solidify his cover. But that seemed illogical, for there was the fact of the suicide note and the overdose of barbituates Salsbury had taken before throwing himself in the river in his melodramatic method of ending it all. Somehow, Victor's masters had known that would happen, had known the real Salsbury's death would be unclear enough to allow for the imposition of an imposter.

But how did they know? They must have known far in advance of the suicide, for they had fed the real Salsbury's past into him like applesauce on a spoon.

And why did he look like Victor Salsbury? Enormous coincidence? He thought not.

What did he think?

He didn't know. His mind was a caldron of doubt, boiling, spouting streamers of steam downwards into his body.

He went to the apartment Salsbury had rented in the upstairs of Marjorie Dill's house. It was a place of slanted ceilings and dark paneled walls. Mrs. Dill, a spry thread of a woman with hair the color and texture of steel wool, followed him everywhere, alternately shocked, frightened, apologetic, and scornful. Yes, she had sold his things. Yes, maybe she had moved a bit quickly. However, there was the back rent. And he was supposed to be dead. She was so sorry. But that was rude of him, leaving without word, making no arrangements about the rent.

He found three cartons of papers she had not thrown out, Mrs. Dill said they had a great many drawings which she thought she might have framed and sold. After all, he had no relatives. Parents dead. There had not been anyone to contact to claim the corpse. Of course she was sorry she had acted so swiftly. He didn't think she was being mercenary, did he?

He loaded the drawings in the car and cautioned Intrepid not to bother them. He had to move the dog in the front seat on the passengers side and pack the boxes in the luggage area. He drove off with Mrs. Dill looking after him, somewhat depressed that all those saleable drawings had slipped through her fingers, but happy that he had not thought to ask for the excess money she had obtained through the sale of his furniture and drafting equipment.

He had lunch in a cluttered, noisy restaurant that, despite its lack of decor and atmosphere, served an appetizing meal. Later, confronted with Intrepid's sad, drooping face, he bought a can of chicken meat dog food and fed him too.

At ten minutes of five, he called the advertising agency he-or the real Salsbury-had worked for, and talked to Mel Heimer, his boss. He listened to the ranting and raving about his ten-day disappearance, then informed them he did not want the job back. He listened to Heimer's face fall three inches, then hung up.

He felt no pleasure, particularly. It saddened him a little to know that telling Heimer off was probably the one thing the real Salsbury wanted to do more than anything else in the world.

There was one more errand he wished to make, and that required him to drive across the city to an art store his phony memory assured him he had visited many times before. As he drove, he listened to Intrepid appraise the passing cars. The little ones were usually worth a stare that turned him around in his seat. The good models drew an easy, low snuffle. When a Cadillac or Corvette went by, the hound bounced in his seat and whuffed at them. He was actually a pretty fair judge of quality; except that he saved his best reactions for beaten up pick-ups and little noisy motorbikes.

At the art store, Victor walked up and down the aisles for more than two hours, choosing things. Pastels, illustration board, oils, brushes, canvas, solvent, pencils. His fingers touched shelves, came away with what they wanted. He knew, subconsciously, exactly what was needed to start a studio from scratch. Each item gave him a sharp bitter-sweet feeling of déjŕ vu. He also bought a huge drafting table, attachable light, sketch filing cabinet, enlarger, portable photocopier, light tracer. He paid five hundred in cash, wrote a check for the rest. The clerk had looked so nervous (possibly wondering if this was a sadist who piled up a purchase to be delivered and then paid with a phony check, all for fun) Salsbury could not bear paying him by check only.

At a quarter until nine, he stopped and ate at a hamburger stand, two for him and two for Intrepid. He could not find a water fountain, so he bought the dog a Coke as large as his own. The mutt was so excited about the taste of it that he forgot his table manners and slopped the stuff all over the seat and himself. Salsbury took it away, wiped the spilled portion up, and explained the importance of reservation. When he let the dog drink again, he was much more careful.

By nine thirty, he was starting the hour drive back to Oak Grove.

He didn't know what kind of a night it was going to be.

It was going to be very bad.

A shower, tooth brushing, and flat tire saved his life. The combination of the three served to keep him up and awake much later than he intended.

The flat tire was first. When he settled the car along the curb, he took off his jacket and set about changing the tire, only to discover, when he brought the jack down after all his work, that the spare was also flat.

He remembered that a gas station was somewhere ahead, though he could not think how far. He took the spare off the car and set out rolling both of them, then hefted them, one arm through each. Fifteen minutes later, he felt as if he would die; he was not much surprised to discover the prospect delighted him. His arms ached, and his shoulders were bent like plastic left too long in the sun. He rested for a time, hoping a car would come along to give him a lift. None did, and he went on. The third time he stopped, he sat on the tires to catch his breath and fell asleep. He woke ten minutes later when a truck roared by, oblivious of his roadside presence. At last, he came to a station that was just closing, managed to persuade the owner (via a five dollar bill above and beyond the charges) to fix both tires and drive him back to his MG.

At home a good deal later, he staggered through the living room and upstairs with only a night light for a guide. The upstairs hall clock said it was ten minutes of one in the morning. He could not escape the bathroom, for the call of nature was too strong. While there, he took a quick, warm shower because he felt greasy, and stopped on his way out to brush teeth that looked de-pressingly yellow.

Without these three routines-the flat tire, the shower, and the tooth brushing-he would have been asleep long ago and perhaps dead long before his time.

He flopped into bed, moaned as the mattress seemed to rise up and engulf him like some ameoboid creature. The only thing in his awareness sphere was a tremendous pitch cloud settling down, down, mercifully down.

Then Intrepid was barking, snarling, making thick muttering sounds deep in his throat. Victor had left the bedroom door open, and the dog had gone into the hallway. Salsbury turned over, determined not to let a stupid hound interrupt his precious sleep, lovely… black sleep. But Intrepid kept it up. Finally, unable to pretend he did not hear it, he got out of bed and padded into the hall, thinking of all sorts of tortures that might be applicable to a dog.

Intrepid was standing at the head of the stairs, looking down and snarling bitterly. Salsbury politely asked him to be quiet. The hound looked at him with bared teeth, whined, turned to gaze back down the steps.

Victor went back into his room, closed the door, started toward the fluffy bed. When he finally got there, he lifted his cement legs onto the mattress, crawled forward on his steel knees, flopped onto his stomach, and slapped the pillow over his head, seeking silence. He brought it tight against his ears with both hands, sighed, and proceeded to summon that old, soft-hued dream land. But the barking was sharp enough to penetrate the chicken feathers. He tossed the pillow to the floor and sat up. Damn dog! Damn, damn mutt! What did he want from him? He had saved the mutt from falling off a cliff, hadn't he? What more could he want?

He shouted at Intrepid to shut up.

The dog merely barked louder.

Finally Salsbury decided, buddy or no buddy, the beast had to go outside for the night. He had proved himself such a gentle, quiet companion before. This outbreak was out of character but just as intolerable as if it had been common. Victor got up, went into the hall.

Intrepid was still at the head of the stairs, looking down, straining as if he would leap. Victor saw that the hairs on the back of his mutt's neck were standing up, but that did not register with him as it should, as it would have, had he not been so sleepy. He could think only of bed, soft and cool. He trudged up to the dog, bent to pick him up, and froze.

Even in his condition, half asleep and with every muscle longing for the touch of eiderdown, he could see what the dog was barking at. Indistinctly

In the shadows at the foot of the steps.

And it was coming up.

His mind was filled with visions of lizard-things with sucking mouths, eyes bright as hot coals. He was riveted to the spot, waiting for the long cold hands to touch him, for the sweet warm horror to envelope him.

Intrepid rubbed against his leg, seeking solace, wondering why his master seemed so unmasterful in this moment of crisis.

Then the thing below moved out of the shadows, shattering all of his preconceived notions of the nature of this nightmare. It was not a lizard-thing, but a man. Merely a man.

No. Not merely. There was something subtly wrong with this man. He was over six-feet tall, every bit as large as Victor. He was dressed in brown slacks, a short-sleeved white shirt, and loafers that seemed so corny Victor wondered if there were pennies in them. Yet he could not have passed for normal on the street, mingling with other people. His face was strangely like that of a manikin, smooth and waxy, flawless almost to a flaw. And his eyes… They were blue, just as the cigarette and cologne ads said a hero's eyes had to be, but they were oddly flat and lusterless, as if they were not eyes at all but painted glass marbles that had been popped into his sockets. His face was handsome but expressionless. He did not smile, frown, or in any way betray what was going on inside his mind.

Salsbury was certain the stranger was coming to kiil him.

“Stop right where you are,” Victor said.

But he didn't stop, of course.

Instead, the intruder doubled his speed, came up the stairs fast, faster than Victor had been anticipating. Salsbury moved back to the hall. He was the stranger's physical equal, but there was something about the looks of the other man that told him his muscles would do him not the least bit of good. Besides, he was bone weary from lack of sleep and from ceaselessly working over the mysteries of his existence, trying to come up with clues about himself. Any extended physical match would only prove that the intruder had more endurance than he did. He was almost to the bathroom at the end of the hall when he heard Intrepid's screech of sheer, unadulterated venom. He whirled to face the steps just in time to see the mutt leap onto the man's throat and sink bared fangs in to the hilt.

The stranger stopped, looked perplexed, though his broad features moved as if they were nothing more than interconnecting slabs of plastic, moving on springs and hinges and hydraulic arms. Then he reached up, pulled the dog off, and threw him into the master bedroom, pulling that door shut. A second later, Intrepid was still game enough to slam against the door from the other side, all but frothing in his fury. But for all his heroic determination, he was effectively out of the fight.

One thing bothered Salsbury. He could see the holes where his dog's teeth had sunk through the waxy flesh, but he could not see a single droplet of blood.

The stranger advanced as if nothing important had happened. Any normal man should be groveling on the carpet, mortally wounded, kicking like a trapped rat.

Salsbury realized too late that he had passed the door to his bedroom in his rush to get away from the head of the stairs, and his pistol was now out of reach. The stranger was advancing too fast for him to be able to run back to his room without being caught.

Behind him, there was a popping, blistering sound. He looked, saw the wall to his left was pocked deeply, blackened and smoking slightly. There were chips of plaster scattered across the floor and a fine pall of dust in the air, slowly settling toward the floor like fine snow. He turned back to the intruder, found that the man was still emotionless, a cigar store statue that could not possibly possess human feelings behind that wooden face, that chiseled rock expression of blandness.

He pointed the second finger of his right hand at Salsbury. It was capped with something that looked like bright, polished brass, though it was most certainly nothing so simple. While Salsbury was staring, the stranger flicked the finger, discharging a smooth flow of golden light, almost invisible, like hundreds of fine sequins catching the overhead light and reflecting it, refracting it. The beam missed him by inches, smashed another hole in the wall.

Salsbury turned, leaped three steps into the bathroom, slammed and locked the door before he realized a lock was not going to be of much value against his enemy's firepower. In the next instant, the golden light struck the outer side of the door. The entire portal screeched, rattled on its hinges to produce a sound like a sack of dry bones being shaken. The thick oak bulged inwards as if it were not wood at all but some sort of woodlike plastic. Then it splintered, though it did not break clear through. It would require another shot, maybe two, to achieve that Then the portal would be in shards around Salsbury's feet; he would have nowhere to hide from the sharp blade of pretty yet deadly luminescence. He wondered, grotesquely, what the light weapon would do to human flesh. Would it pock it as it had the plaster? Leave smoking, discolored craters in his stomach and chest? Or would it splinter his flesh as it was now doing to the door, shatter him into thousands of separate slivers?

Either way, it would kill him.

He shook his head, angry at himself for his terror over such a simple thing as a vibrabeam. Then he stopped, astounded, at the realization that he knew what sort of weapon this futuristic thing was. For a moment, he almost lost all touch with reality, trying to cope with this new aspect of his mind. But he found that the thought had come from iron Victor, all but gone from his psyche now. Iron Victor knew that was a vibrabeam, and it scared him almost as much as it did soft Victor.

Salsbury looked around, deciding on a course of action. He stood on the toilet seat, unhooked the single window on the outside wall, and pushed on it. It stuck, made a protesting whine, then swung outward without any screen to block it. He looked down, craning his neck to assess the bad news. Instead, it was good news. Relatively… He did not have to leap two floors to the ground, for the porch roof was only five feet away.

The second vibrabeam blast hit the door and blew the top of it to shreds, a howitzer striking a nightgown. Twenty feet beyond, the intruder stood in the corridor, his firing arm raised, brass-capped finger pointing at the bottom half of the door. His blue eyes reflected the chandelier light, but there was no depth to that reflection. Just two blue pennies.

Salsbury grabbed the shower rod with both hands, walked his feet up the wall, and went through the bathroom window feet first because he did not want to turn his back completely on his enemy. For a moment, he thought his hips were going to stick and deny him exit. He grunted, did a bump and grind, and was suddenly free. Next, his shoulders threatened more problems, though he worked them swiftly loose just as the bottom half of the bathroom door exploded in a shower of shavings and sticks which rattled like locusts against the tile.

The intruder with the magic finger was half a dozen feet beyond. He raised his weapon toward Salsbury's head. The brass gleamed. Then Victor was through the window, dropping onto the porch roof, slipping, falling, rolling painfully toward the edge.

He dug his fingers into the shingles, lost his hold when a fingernail ripped and sent wiry, burning pain stabbing through his hand. He had visions of falling fifteen feet to the ground, flat on his back on a raised stone in the flagstone walk, his spinal column snapping like a pretzel. He flailed wildly, tried to forget the aching fingernail, and managed to catch onto some of the ill-fitted shingles that offered support. He lay there a second, sucking in and blowing out the cool evening air, blessing the roofer who had not slipped shingle to shingle without a seam. A moment later, he came onto his knees, aware of the folly of staying within view of the bathroom window. He rose, crouched, and went back across the roof, against the wall of the house.

He listened, heard what was left of the door crash inward across the bathroom floor. Thankful that porches ran almost continually around all sides of this old place, he turned toward the rear of the house and ran lightly along the roof. He came to the end of the side porch, looked at the three-foot gap between this roof and the roof of the rear porch. He would not only have to leap, but leap around a corner. Hesitating, he looked back to the open bathroom window. The intruder's head was stuck out, and he was trying to aim his brass fingertip.

Salsbury leaped, landed on the next roof and stumbled across it as if he were leaning into a strong wind, waving his arms and trying to keep from falling.

His balance regained, he walked to the spouting at the edge of the shingles and looked onto the back lawn. It was only fifteen feet, and doubtless iron Victor would have thought nothing of it, but it seemed a mile now. He bit his lip and jumped.

He hit the dewy grass, rolled onto his side like a skier taking a fall, and came quickly into a crouch. He listened for the sound of the intruder's feet on the roof above, but heard only a curious leaden silence that made him think, for a moment, that all that had just happened was a nightmare. Then, distantly, Intrepid began barking again, still shut in the master bedroom. Poor, noble dog, locked out of the fight. But teeth and claws seemed useless against the stranger with the flat blue eyes. A sense of reality returned to Salsbury. He was on his own.

Now what?

If he couldn't fight on a man-to-man basis, the only thing left was to run. He moved slowly around the house, staying with the hedges, trying to be as much like a shadow as possible, which was a bit difficult considering that his feet were bare and gleamed whitely. His pajamas, too, were a dazzling yellow, not exactly the thing for stealthy activities. At the corner, just before he moved around the front of the building, he thought he heard a tiny scraping sound, a shallow, echoless click. He stood very still and alert, trying to pick up something else.

The night was suddenly cold.

He thought, suddenly, if he was pretending to be a shadow, maybe the intruder was involved in the same game.

But none of the other shadows moved-as far as he could tell.

Five minutes passed without any further disruption of the ethereal silence. Salsbury was reminded of the GT parked on the graveled drive, the spare set of keys taped under the hood where he had put them at the suggestion of the used car salesman. What he would do when he got away from the house, where he would go, when he would return-all of these were questions he did not particularly care about. All he knew was that a tall, blank-faced killer was stalking him, a man not the sort who gives in after an initial failure.

At last, unable to hold still any longer, he walked around into the shrubs at the front of the house. He looked up into the glassed porch, but saw nothing beyond the normal quota of sun furniture. The lawn was empty, rolling serenely down to the GT at the foot of the walk. He examined the arrangement of the car's hood latch in his mind so there would be no fumbling once he was exposed, out there where the killer could spot him at a casual glance. When he was satisfied he had thought of everything, he stood, half bent to make himself as small a target as possible, ran to the car, and got the keys from under the hood. He went around to the driver's door, his fingers shaking but generally pleased at the way things were going. He unlocked the door, started to open it- and happened to look inside.

The intruder was sitting in the passenger's seat, his brass-tipped finger pointed directly at Salsbury

In a surprisingly short time, he had come from near exhaustion and thick mental weariness where thoughts took forever to transverse his mind to full physical and mental alert. It was as if he had been trained to consciously draw upon his body's reserves of strength, as if he had been taught how to unlock the storeroom doors of his adrenalin supply. The moment he recognized the killer sitting in his car, the storeroom turned into a fountain, pumping adrenalin out his ears. His body seemed to move from one plane of activity to a higher one where he lived faster and more completely. He jerked upright to shield his face, heard the harsh, brittle shattering of glass and felt bright slivers sting through his pajama tops and into his chest. Then he fell and rolled to keep away from further blasts, came up against the hedges and onto his knees.

The killer was getting out of the car.

Salsbury did not know whether the stranger thought his little trick had worked or not, but he wasn't waiting around to find out. Staying by the hedges, praying fervently the shadows made it difficult for the killer to see him, he rounded the corner of the house and ran. He crossed the lawn, bare feet slipping now and again in the spring dew, went into the orchard, pulled to a stop under the first of the trees, and paused to catch his breath.

When he looked back the way he had come, he saw the killer standing behind the house, looking down the darkened landscape toward the trees and, it seemed, directly at Salsbury himself. Abruptly, Victor started to move again, for the last thing he saw was the killer starting after him at a brisk walk, almost a run.

He ran forward through the trees, no longer certain where he was going or what he would do when he got there. The ground underfoot was stonier than it had been, and he felt the sharper pieces cutting into him. The pain was a distant thing, however, something that nagged him like a forgotten errand or residual guilt. Much more immediate was his fear.

His breath came like liquid fire, burning his lungs, setting all his insides ablaze. His stomach was a glowing coal. There was a bellows in his head that kept providing a draft for the internal flames. Tiny red tongues burned in his feet, and the constant slap of them against the ground did not seem to help dampen the fire.

He burst through the end of the orchard almost as if a gossamer net had been strung as a barrier, stood at the bank that overlooked the winding creek, trying to think, desperately in search of some plan that would salvage what seemed to be beyond reclamation: his life.

He turned once, expecting the worst, expecting the killer to be looming over him, bringing up its brass finger for the last flash, but he could see nothing in the darkness of the apple trees. He held his breath so there would be no noise for the enemy to hear, picked up the crash of the other man's feet as he made his way through the brush. He found he had to breathe again and that, no matter how hard he tried, he could not draw breath quietly.

In desperation, he came up with a plan of sorts, the only thing that might work. He scrambled down the embankment and worked his way out on the ledge that led to the cave where he had found the three trunks and where he had slept for two weeks. Halfway along it, he stopped and looked overhead. There were rocks, roots, and branches of scrub brush to cling to. It didn't look like the easiest of plans, but it was all he had. He grabbed some protruding rocks and started climbing up.

Three minutes later, gasping, his hands raw from the climb, from skinning them on rocks, burning them on branches, he was perched eight feet above the ledge, only a foot from his head to the top of the embankment. If the killer did either of two things, Salsbury's plan might work. If he did neither, Victor knew his worries would be finished anyway, finished by a sharp, sparkling blade of yellow light

If the killer followed Salsbury's trail perfectly in some mysterious fashion, he would go down the rain cut and onto the ledge. In that case, Victor would drop on him from his higher perch, feet first. Hopefully, both feet ploughing into the stranger's head would weigh any subsequent fight in Victor's favor-and just might crush the man's skull straight away. If, instead, the killer came to the embankment and searched along it, standing near the edge, Victor could reach up with one hand, holding to the rocks with the other, grab an ankle, and attempt to topple his adversary into the creek thirty feet below. There were a lot of sharp, lovely rocks in that creek. And even if the fall did not kill him, it should sure as hell slow him down some.

Victor waited.

In a few moments, he heard the stranger coming out of the trees onto the smoother surface near the bank. He walked to the edge some ten feet to Victor's left and stood looking across the creek to the black wood beyond. Even in the darkness, here away from any light source but the thin moon, his eyes glowed dully.

Salsbury pressed himself flat against the cliff, hoped he looked like a rock. The killer began walking along the embankment, examining the far shore of the creek where several feet of mud would have left a trail of his escaping prey. He stopped a foot to the right of Salsbury's position, making it awkward for the man to reach up and grab his ankles. But he would move away, Salsbury realized, making contact even more difficult. Tensing, holding tightly to a branch with his left hand, Victor reached up quickly to grasp the killer's ankle.

For a moment, all seemed lost. His hand brushed the stranger's leg too lightly to gain a grip. The man jerked in reflex but moved closer instead of farther away. Salsbury grabbed again, yanked, felt the man's foot going out from under him. He risked a glance up, saw the killer flailing for balance. He pulled harder, almost lost his own hold, and sent the man crashing over the side into the water and rocks below.

Salsbury wasted no time in launching himself up, pulling over the cliff edge and kicking onto level land. He crawled back and looked into the creek. The killer was lying face down in the water, very still. Salsbury laughed; his throat was so dry that the laugh hurt, made] him cough. He sat up, watched the stranger for a few more moments, then started to get up with the idea of going down and examining him to see if he could learn anything. Then he saw the killer was starting to move

His face had been under the water long enough to ensure his death, but here he was kicking again. He rolled onto his back, his flat blue eyes staring up at Victor with malevolent intent.

Salsbury turned and ran back toward the house, his mind swelling like a balloon ready to burst. He wondered how long he could hold onto his sanity in this nightmarish scene where the pursuing monster could not be killed. His only chance now was the gun, still in his room, loaded.

The back door was locked. He screamed at it, rattled it, then knew that was no good.

He started around toward the front of the house, remembering that the intruder must have come out of the house that way to get in the car, then looked down toward the orchard.

The killer was coming.

Fast.

Salsbury had only seconds to spare.

The porch door was open, but the front door was locked.

He fancied he could hear the pounding feet of the killer closing on him.

Grabbing a patio chair, he smashed the window in the door, reached through, unlocked it, and went inside. He took the stairs two at a time, though his legs were ready to buckle. He glanced down once, saw his pajama top was a bright red and punctured with fragments of the car window. He had a moment of dizziness, stopped to hold the railing and shake away the vertigo that sought to claim him.

Then he heard the killer's feet on the front porch.

As he went by the master bedroom, Intrepid began barking again. Salsbury called out a word of encouragement, went into the other room and picked the pistol and shells up from the nightstand. When he came out into the corridor again, the stranger had just reached the top of the stairs.

He raised the pistol and fired twice. The boom of each discharge slammed against the walls and echoed through the big house as if all the doors were being slammed simultaneously. Two holes appeared in the stranger's chest, and he fell sideways against the railing. His face was still passive, as if he were watching a boring motion picture or contemplating the lint in his navel.

Slowly, he raised his firing arm.

Salsbury emptied the other four slugs into him in quick succession. The impact knocked the stranger backwards. He rolled over and over to the bottom of the steps, six chunks of lead in him.

Salsbury went and looked down on him.

Slowly but surely, the killer started to get up.

“Die, damn you!” Salsbury shouted hysterically.

The pistol clicked several times before he realized there were no more bullets. By then, the killer was starting back up the steps; he aimed his brass finger at Salsbury. A golden thread of light smashed the railing, threw a cloud of wooden chips into the air.

Salsbury retreated through the corridor to a point where he could not be seen until the killer topped the stairs again. He went down on one knee, fumbled shells out of the box and loaded the pistol again. When his target lumbered off the last riser, he placed six more chunks of metal in his chest.

With the same result as before: nothing.

No blood.

Just little black tunnels in his flesh.

The killer was bringing up his vibrabeam.

Salsbury rolled sideways, clutching gun and ammunition, through the open door of his bedroom, up against the three trunks there. He could hear the killer coming down the hall, lurching somewhat but advancing nonetheless. Frantically, he loaded the pistol, closed the chamber just as the man stumbled into the doorway. There was nowhere to go now. If these six did not bring him down, Salsbury was dead.

The killer opened his mouth, said: “Gnnhunhggggg.”

He put three shots in the killer's face. For a moment, he thought he had won, for the man stopped, was perfectly still, eyes hardly blue at all, but more of a gray. Then, painfully, the arm with the brass vibrabeam tube rose toward Salsbury.

A premature blast erupted from the end, struck the computer trunk, glanced off without damage.

Gritting his teeth, every cell screaming to every other cell in his body, Salsbury put the last three bullets in the killer, all in his chest again. When that was done, he threw the gun at the man, watched it bounce off the impassive face.

Inexorably, the firing arm continued to raise.

He was going to die. As surely as he had killed Harold Jacobi. But this time, there was an assassin who did not bleed, who was not human. And what would the thing do with him when he was dead? Stuff him in some hole it would dig in the orchard? Let him rot out there to help grow the trees? He had a picture in his mind of this thing, full of eighteen.22 slugs, face half destroyed, chest almost one gaping hole, dragging Victor Salsbury to the orchard and putting him in a grave.

Screaming, mad now with terror, Salsbury leaped, crashed onto the killer, bore him backwards. The other man's skull struck the bedpost, opened in two before he went on to the floor. His head, laid open, was mostly hollow, except for several sets of wires and transisters. While Salsbury pressed him down, the last false life leaked out of the robot and it was still at last.

Robot. No blood. Wires in its face. Salsbury struggled off the inanimate form, his head pumping up and down on his neck like a wooden horse on a brass merry-go-round pole. Up. Down. Up-Down. Pretty music. Up. Down. A computer in a trunk. And he had a dead man's past. Up. Down. Up. Lizard-things lurked in the walls of his cellar. Up. Down. Down. Up. Sucker mouths. Down. Up. Now a robot with intent to kill. Up. Down. Round, round

He found the master bedroom, opened the door, welcomed Intrepid who bounded against him. His dislike for this room had faded now that he had become a victim too-or intended victim. It put him in sympathy with Jacobi. All he wanted was to sleep now. He was so tired. If he could only make his head stop going up and down. He clamped his hands on it and bit his tongue. Vaguely, he was aware that he could hurt himself biting on his tongue, that the next step was to swallow it. But his head did not go up and down any longer. Just down and down and down, down, down