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.