Intrepid sensed it too. He bounced around, snarling, the first ugly mood Salsbury had seen him in. He threw himself against the blue spot, bounced off the wall a few times. When he was sure there was no way to reach the gray forms, he contented himself with crouching against Victor's leg, teeth bared and eyes gleaming, spitting insults at the intruders.
Abruptly, the blue glow grew lighter, the shadows more distinct. There was a click, a sharp snapping sound like a dry twig breaking underfoot. The ringing ceased and was replaced by ghostly silence. The blue light disappeared altogether, leaving the circle which gave as clear a view as any window.
But the window was not looking out on Earth. Not on any Earth Victor had ever known.
The machine on the other side-apparently the one that had been establishing contact with this world, the one projecting the blue light-was an intricate jumble of condensers, sensors, wires, transistors. There was a chair atop it where the alien sat. The second demon stood beside the machine, looking through the window.
They were both looking directly at Salsbury.
Their heads were hairless, and, indeed, hinted at a rough gray cross-hatching of scales. The bony ridge of their foreheads shelved off as if on sudden impulse, leaving their eyes sunk two inches back in their heads. Their eyes fire leaping, crimson flushing, rouge, cinnabar, scarlet
Victor pulled his gaze from those burning eyes, quickly examined the rest of the face. For a nose, there were five vertical slits arranged evenly above a sunken, pulsing hole that seemed to serve as a mouth. All of this was on a withered, leathery body whose muscles were drawn long and tight and lacquered over with a hundred coatings of varnish to make them look brittle.
Unconsciously, Victor backed against an old workbench. He wished iron Victor would surge up and take command. But iron Victor was gone. There was no trace at all of his alter ego. The programming had-perhaps temporarily-come to an end. He was on his own.
Intrepid cringed against his legs, trying to find some way of crawling up his pantlegs where he could not see the demons and would not be tempted to look.
Salsbury looked to the steps, realized belatedly that he would have to go right by the window where the demons waited. Just as he felt his spirits scrape the bottom of his splintered soul barrel, the shadow monster standing beside the machine, the one in clear view, raised a long, bony arm with six three-jointed fingers on the end and made as if to reach out and grasp him.
His horror did not motivate him to flight, but paralyzed him completely. His vital organs had turned to cast iron. Someone had even pinned open his eyelids so that he could not blink out the alien vision.
Then the lighted portal fluttered brighter, dimmer, and was suddenly gone as if some delicate electronic link between alien world and basement wall had been severed. He stared stupidly at the blank tile which had been a window into hell only moments ago. His feet grew lighter. His organs turned back into flesh. Someone removed the pins from his eyelids. Still, he was emotionally incapable of acting. He was gasping frantically for breath.
Intrepid recovered faster, leaped and slammed against the wall. He took a second running lunge, hit with his feet in a flying leap, fell away and looked at Victor with glistening eyes that demanded his master do something about the things in the walls.
Victor recovered his wits under that gaze. He shrugged his shoulders at the dog, then crossed to the steps, went up them two at a time. There was a tremendous thumping and scraping as Intrepid tried desperately to keep up with his master. Salsbury went to the second floor bedroom where he had stowed the three trunks. He opened the door a bit hard, sent it banging back against the wall where it shivered and quaked as if it were alive. He went to the computer trunk, gave it a solid kick. The stinging pain leaped up his leg, but he did not much care. He kicked it again. Intrepid had joined him by this time and he set to snuffling and whuffing, dancing around the computer trunk with a look of expectancy.
Let's have a briefing, Victor said to the 810-40.04.
It wasn't in the mood for conversation.
Come on, damnit!
Nothing.
He remembered the tool bench in the cellar and went back down. Intrepid followed to the head of the stairs and watched him descend, but did not follow. In the cellar, Victor found the tools racked on a pegboard wall. He chose a medium weight crowbar and took it back to the bedroom, moving like a caveman with his favorite stone axe.
He squared off before the computer trunk and brandished the weapon. A briefing now, or I pry you up good! There was a great deal of adrenalin pumping through his system, and all his nerves seemed to grate against each other, alive, aware and excited. There was something going on that he did not understand, something involving shrunken, leathery lizardmen with sucking eel mouths. It was definitely going to get dangerous, for those were dangerous looking customers, those scaly freaks. If he was expected to play a role in it, then he damn well better be informed.
But the 810-40.04 was unresponsive.
He stepped forward, swung the bar, smashed it against the top of the trunk. It bounced off, ringing his arm like a bell. His bones screamed at him to stop acting like an idiot, to have more respect for the fragile parts of him. He dropped the bar and massaged his arm until it started to fed like flesh again. Carefully examining the top of the trunk, he could not find the smallest dent or scratch where the bar might have struck. Thus ended round one.
I'm getting mad, he told the computer. And he truly was. He realized, not without a start, that this was the most heated emotional moment he had experienced since he had wakened in the orchard with iron Victor in command of his body. He felt more human than ever.
But the computer was inscrutable.
He picked up the crowbar again.
Intrepid snuffled and chortled like a mare in heat.
Victor knelt beside the trunk and examined the thin line where the lid met the body. Gently, he inserted the thin edge of the crowbar tip into the crack, worked it in a bit, then brought his weight down on it. For a moment, the increasing pressure seemed to have no effect whatsoever on the box. Then the bar slipped, popped out of the seam, and snapped a sharp blow alongside his head. He wobbled there on his knees, managed to keep from passing out. He nibbed his head where the bar had struck, felt an egg already beginning to rise. As soon as everything ceased spinning, he gritted his teeth and slipped the pry bar into the seam again, wedging it even farther back before rising and applying his weight. He bore down, grunting and sweating, putting every ounce of his strength into what he was doing. Just when he thought the metal must surely buckle, the frame most certainly give, just when he should have achieved success, there was a blinding flash of blue-green light, and a fist full of needles thumped him solidly across the head while a second fist grabbed a black curtain and pulled it down all around him.
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,