s. No, we'll look for water." "Or flea dip." She probably had a very good idea there. But her voice cracked; she held on by main force. "Can't stand here forever," I said. "Let's pop it." I cracked the seal. Surprise! A pair of larger than life pumpkins floated out. At least they weren't going to crawl around on our skin. They were up high enough that we ducked and managed to avoid being seen. They sailed past, looking for hoops and nets. The pumpkins saw the dead imps and floated over to investigate, providing us with the opportunity of darting through the doorway. Inside we found a single shotgun and a few shells. Arlene picked it up and tossed it to me. I was touched. We soldiered on. To the left we saw a rickety, wooden walkway over a pool of boiling, red stuff that seemed to be a cross between lava and the traditional green toxin. Annoying- ly, it was the only way to go. As we began to cross cautiously, the path started to give way. For some reason, neither of us was the least bit surprised. There was nowhere to go but forward before the pathetic bridge collapsed into the evil fluid below. We ran like hell. But at the end we were blocked by what appeared to be a solid stone wall. I threw myself at the wall, hoping to grab a handful, and Arlene could grab me. Instead, we ended up very much alive on the other side of the illusion. There was no wall. If we were startled by the turn of events, the imps we had landed on were downright stunned. The shotgun lost its virginity then and there. Arlene took care of a few stragglers with her 10mm. This time, when we lifted our eyes from the carnage of the moment we were in for a real surprise. Right in front of us was the figure of a human being wrapped in something sticky and suspended from the ceiling by his feet. We could tell by his clothing that he was a UAC civilian. We could tell from his groans that he was alive. He was tall, nearly two meters. He was overweight and suffering a lot more because of it, the stomach hanging at a painful angle, his belt about to come loose. Blood trickled down his wrists from where he had tried to free himself. "God, he's still kicking," Arlene said, focusing on the only important thing. I looked close; the man appeared to be wrapped up in spiderwebs; the web suspending him from the ceiling was thick and didn't look like we could easily break it. "Is there a knife anywhere?" We pulled UAC boxes over and rummaged through them; no knife, but a bottle would break to serve the purpose. Arlene sliced, and I cushioned his fall as he came down, grunting at the weight. Good thing there were some medical supplies in the UAC boxes; the man was in shock. Arlene pushed some D5W saline to pump up the volume; after a while his eyes opened. He stared at us without comprehension. I expected that. "Can you hear me?" I asked, and got nothing. "If you understand me, nod your head." That took a moment but he finally nodded. Arlene massaged his neck and I held a finger in front of him until he focused on it. "Are you all right?" Arlene asked him at last. "Unh," he grunted in a low, husky voice, carrying all the pain. "Who are you?" I asked. "Bill Ritch," he said, groggily. "How long were you up there?" Arlene asked. Further proof that life was coming back into him was the way he shuddered. "Long enough that I thought I'd died." "Who put you up?" I asked. "The--goblin," he answered. "Spidermind." Oh, great; a whole new nomenclature. That narrowed it down to any of the monsters. If we ever reported to Earth, We would need to settle on a common terminol- ogy. "Congratulations," said Arlene. "For what?" he asked, half turning to her, still dizzy. "Surviving." It was a big deal finding another human who could move and wasn't a damned zombie! We would have opened a bottle of champagne and celebrated if we'd had the time ... or the booze. As it was, Ritch was stunned to receive a mouthful of cold water, if still a bit confused. Following a corridor that looped around, we wound up back at the same damned central entrance. I would never enjoy an amusement park again. Peeking cautiously around the corner, I saw we had company, tired of inspecting the dead imps outside. Pumpkins in the air, pumpkins everywhere . . . They roared in frustration and shot their nasty little balls of electricity at each other. Important datum: pumpkins are immune to their own weapons. And I made a note to see how they responded to being baked in a pie. "Were those the goblins you meant?" Arlene whis- pered to Ritch. He shook his head, but his grim expres- sion left no doubt that he'd encountered pumpkins before. "They're so freaking stupid," said Arlene contemptu- ously. "You'd think something that was all head would have more brains," I added. The next step was obvious for those of us with brains. We dashed across the corridor to another closed door. I opened it a crack while Arlene kept watch, making sure the pumpkins didn't float back. Ritch obviously hadn't received military training, but he caught on fast. Consid- ering what he'd been through, he was a quick study. He kept pace, which was all we really needed from him at the moment. Through the door I saw two pumpkins on the inside as well, hanging with a bunch of imps. Taking a deep breath, I waited until a mob of spinys marched between the door and the nearest pumpkin. Then I stepped out and fired five or six unaimed rounds. These guys didn't merit any wasted shotgun shells. Having done my dam- age, I popped back and braced the door. Arlene and Ritch helped. One thing you can say about pumpkins: they don't let a little obstacle like imps stand between them and a target. And one thing you can say about imps: they don't like being shot by balls of electricity. We left them to each other's mercies. Over the sound of carnage, Ritch shouted at me. "How'd you get them fighting each other?" "We do it all the time," said Arlene, smiling. "It's the Iago tactic." "I'm impressed." I watched for the two in the hall; but they'd gotten tired of shooting each other and returned to shoot the imp carcasses. When the sounds behind the door died down, I slowly cracked it. I saw a lot of dead imps on the floor and the remains of one deflated pumpkin on top. I assumed the other one must be on the bottom of the pile. That's when I made a huge mistake. 29 Stepping inside, I didn't think to look behind the door, straight up, the logical place for a surviving pumpkin to be waiting in ambush. And that's exactly where the bastard was. "Fly!" Arlene shouted. She was paying attention. She never used that tone of voice except when it was life and death--and in this case, the issue was my life. I threw myself on the floor just as a lightning ball fried the tip of my scalp. A run of 10mm rounds got my attention. I flipped over to see Arlene blasting away, then scram- bled to my feet and pumped my shotgun at the floating head. She split left and I right, and we kept firing. When we were done, that was the deadest pumpkin I had ever seen still floating. It was almost like one of those old cartoons where the character hangs in space for several seconds before it remembers the law of gravity, then quickly plummets to the ground. All that was missing were the sound effects. "Incoming!" yelled Ritch, outside the door. We hadn't forgotten the other pumpkins. We'd hoped they might have forgotten us, though. "Get in!" Arlene yelled, pulling at Ritch's sleeve. He didn't need another hint. The moment he joined us, we slammed the door shut and jammed the latch with Arlene's pistol. The latch immediately rattled; God only knew what the pumpkins were using for hands. "Look," Ritch said, pointing. Protruding from under a dead imp were the pieces of a box of shotgun shells, along with shells. "They may be covering all kinds of supplies," I said. The prospect didn't appeal to me, but I thought I should set a good example. Getting on my knees, I pulled the corpse away from the box, and dozens of shells went rolling as Arlene and Ritch collected them. Then we all got busy moving the dead monsters and stacking them in one corner. We received our just reward. There was another functional shotgun, lots of ammo, even tools: hammers, nails, even a gas-powered chain saw. Maybe the zombies had been used to build condos for imps and pumpkins. We even found an antique revolver for Ritch; I wondered which one of us the civilian would accidentally shoot. We replaced the pistol in the latch with a handful of nails, then collected all the tools and put them in a neat pile for later use. Weapons and ammo in hand, we explored the room and found it led to a broader plaza area. Then we found a door leading into a narrow corridor. "I'll go first," I said. "Fine with me," said Arlene. Ritch was more than happy to bring up the rear. No good deed goes unpunished. I realized that the moment I heard the familiar pig-grunting noises, the ugly snuffling that always turned my stomach and might keep me from ever eating bacon again. They didn't make us wait very long. The demons came storming down the corridor, pale pink flesh with claws and lots and lots of teeth. Somehow, though, after the steam-demon, I couldn't take the pinkies seriously. The narrowness of the corridor meant I had taken point with a vengeance; no one could shoot past me. I loosed a shotgun blast. "Fall back!" I shouted, and heard Arlene and Ritch doing it. Taking steps backward, I never took my eyes off the enemy. I shot a second time, then a third and fourth time, before dropping the first demon. I didn't like the arithmetic. Despite our extra ammo, there were more demons than we could take down at this rate. My comrades had made it back through the door as I held the corridor. Back to the wall, I kept firing, when suddenly . . . "Hold fire!" It was Arlene's voice, and I couldn't imagine that she'd gone nuts. I risked turning my head. She stood in the doorway, holding the chain saw. Then with a chugga-mmmmmm, chuggga-mmmmmm, she pulled the cord. Third time was the charm, and it kicked to life with an honest roar to drown out all but a steam-demon's scream. Elbowing past me, she lifted the buzzing blade and let the teeth bite into the nearest demon. "Die, Pinkie, die!" she screamed. It sounded odd, but the results were great: red blood splashed us both, and she kept at it, screaming a war cry that just might scare a fallen angel. Arlene waded through them, working the saw, beads of sweat and drops of blood covering her face. A demon arm fell to the floor, blood exploding in a torrent. She slipped on the gore, but the movement carried her forward and the saw buried itself in the chest of the next demon, ripping a death gurgle from the creature. I tried to get to her to help, but the demon corpses were in the way. She worked the chain saw loose but fell backward, swinging it in a wide arc. A large demon swung its claw down hard and knocked the chain saw out of her hand. Before Arlene could get away, another claw ripped her open. She didn't scream but fell silently. The sight drove me mad. Somewhere in the back of my mind I'd accepted the likelihood of our being blown to bits; but I wouldn't have us die like animals! Picking up the saw, I revved it and finished the damned job, shoving the blade into the face of the one who had hurt her. I lost count of how many were left but I kept at it, swinging the chain saw back and forth, covering the walls with gore. Finally, there was nothing left to kill. The red haze lifted and I remembered Arlene. Turning back, I saw that Ritch was with her, trying to stanch the bleeding with improvised first-aid. My right sleeve was already in tatters, so it was a simple matter to rip off a strip of cloth and use it for bandages. We patched her up as best we could. Her face was pale and she was weak; but she was alive. "Can you move?" I asked. "Move or die," she wheezed, "so I'll move." We helped her stand up. I started to pick up her shotgun and pass it to Ritch, but she shook her head. "That's mine," she said, reclaiming it proudly. I wasn't about to argue. We left the heavy chain saw on the deck and staggered forward into a last chamber. There were disgusting things lying around, but as nothing was moving or alive, I gave it no further attention. In the center of the room was a teleport pad of rusted metal, designed in a heavy and cumbersome manner. It looked like an antique. "That doesn't look promising," I said. "We have no choice," Arlene answered through clenched teeth. We hadn't had a good choice in a long, long time. All three of us stepped aboard, arms linked. Ritch must have been religious. He said a prayer. Maybe because it was an old-fashioned teleporter, the experience was different from the others . . . like the special F/X were provided by a different company. I noticed sounds that were new, a wind tunnel combined with an avalanche; and there was the sensation of falling turning into floating. Then we arrived. "Wow!" Ritch said. He wasn't as used to this stuff as we were. The terminus was a rock garden. Although the light was dim, we could make out the twisted, curved, and warped rocks that made me think of a giant coral reef, except the color and texture of the formations was the same as desert camo. Met our old friends, the zombies. Arlene fired first. The opportunity to fight put life back in her again. Most of these zombies weren't armed--ex- UAC civvies--which was fine with me. Ritch got off a couple of shots as well; I don't know if he hit anything. Abruptly, I realized we had a more serious problem than the walking dead crew. I'd almost forgotten the real spooks--the ghost things I thought of as specters. One touched my face with all the coldness of space. I hit at the horror wildly but struck Ritch instead, knock- ing him to the ground. It was joined by some of its buddies, those flying metal skulls I hoped never to see again. They dive-bombed us like kamikaze pilots. Then Ritch found the back of a specter head by swinging his hands; he put his revolver against its skull and squeezed off a point-blank round. That got the critter's attention; it spun to deal with Ritch, turning its back on me; I blew its head apart with the riot gun. Somehow the idea of a ghost you can slice and dice appealed to me. I didn't think the nuns would approve. The damned specter went down screaming like a banshee and bleeding something that stank of ice-cold grave- yards. While I was auditioning for Ghost Busters, Arlene popped the flying skulls. They didn't require as much firepower as the pumpkins. Ritch took care of the remaining zombies. "Aim for the head, just like the movie," Arlene shouted. He was doing okay for a novice, and naturally gravi- tated to the easiest job; but he acquitted himself well. I was happy we had found him. Finally the wave of bad guys subsided and we could play beachcombers. There wasn't much worth grabbing this time, however--only a bit of ammo and a Sig-Cow for Ritch from the poorly equipped zombies. Now seemed a good moment to find out more about Bill. Arlene thought his "goblin" might be a hell-prince and described one, but he shook his head. "Not a minotaur; it was more like a giant spider," he said. "Oh, great," said Arlene, "a new one for the files." We found out Bill Ritch was a computer programmer. If we found any monsters with laptops, he would prove invaluable. To be fair, he'd done fine killing his quota of zombies. "How'd you get captured in the first place?" Arlene asked. Ritch sighed. "Classic case of 'this can't really be happening to us.' When we were--" He stopped, face turning red. When he started up again, I knew he had skipped something important. Later, I thought. "We were studying the Gates, and suddenly one of them on Deimos experienced a marked drop in temperature. It started glowing, too." "But I thought Deimos was deserted when all this started," I interrupted. "You were supposed to think that," he said. "When the UAC found alien electronics and started--then we all crowded in to see, and that's when they started coming through, the goblins. Aliens, I mean." "Which ones?" I asked. "Which ones came first?" "The first thing through was one of those things you call an imp. It looked at us and grinned, and we were all frozen in total shock. We didn't know what to say or do--our first contact with an alien race, and we were speechless! All those wonderful plans about what we were going to say and how we were going to react--" "Well, how did the imp react?" Arlene was always good at cutting through the plastic to get to the meat. Ritch shook his head sadly, remembering something painful. "It threw one of those wads of phosphorous mucoid and killed a senior scientist and two Air Force captains. I was in the back. . . thank God. A woman screamed; I think it was Dr. Tyya Graf. Then another one came through, and we panicked." "Mob scene?" "Like Soylent Green." Arlene mm-hmmed, but I was confused. Must have been another old movie reference. "If I hadn't been such a big guy, I would have been trampled. As it was, I was knocked down. I tried to get up, and they squirted some sort of webbing around me, a neurotoxin that paralyzed me. "I was out of it for some indeterminate time; when I came to, this spider thing was interrogating me and I was in a huge room, surrounded by hundreds of goblins of different types, and even some of those zombies. I recognized Dr. Graf, but I could tell right away she was dead and her body was just reanimated. And, well, that's the story." Speaking of which, Arlene interrupted with her own thoughts: "Fly, do you notice there's a lot more zombie bodies here than anything else?" "Sure." "So with all the noise we just made, why didn't a lot more come running?" "Curiosity may have killed the cat," I said, feeling flip, "but never a zombie. Or maybe this is all of them." "No brains," said Ritch, bending over one of them. Arlene shook her head. "I think it's because they never do anything they're not told," she said. "They must stay in constant communication with someone or something, and only go investigate when they receive a command. If they've been told to patrol, looking for humans, then they'll attack; otherwise, they might march right by us and not even see us." "That imp who talked to me made me wonder if imps give them orders," I said. "Maybe; but we've seen zombies where there are no imps. Maybe they get standing orders. I saw a bunch of imps come running to check out a situation once where all I'd done was get the zombies firing at each other. The imps couldn't control them." "Well, the pig-snuffling demons don't have any intelli- gence worth mentioning, either," I said. "If there's any more of them around, they wouldn't hear a battle over their own breathing." "The skulls don't even have ears," Arlene said. "Look, it's either hell-princes, the steam-demons, or that thing Bill described, the spider thing." "The spider creature that interrogated me," Ritch said, shuddering. "We'll keep that in mind." Time to move on. Hugging the right wall, we discovered a narrowing, "natural" corridor with more shotgun shells lying on the floor like popcorn. We scooped them up, but I was disappointed to discover that some were defective or spent. I was preoc- cupied with a handful of questionable-looking specimens when they spilled through my fingers and I dropped to my knees to recover them. That saved my life. A shotgun blast filled the space where my head had been a moment before. "Zombie!" Ritch called out anti-anticlimactically. No one ever shot at us with human weapons except former humans. Another shot missed high, but there was no third attempt on Yours Truly. Arlene turned to fire--and froze! "F-Fly . . ." she whispered hoarsely. I stared. Jesus; it was Arlene's worst nightmare come true. Wilhelm Dodd, or what was left of him, lurched toward our little group, shifting his twelve-gauge to get a better shot. 30 Arlene stared at him approaching, her mouth open, face pale as a ghost. I didn't want to do it, but she'd made me promise! Feeling sick, I raised my own weapon. I knew what would happen: I would blow the f'ing SOB away--and Arlene would hate me for the rest of her natural life . . . which might not be a very long time at that. Then a miracle happened. Just as my finger tightened on the trigger, Arlene's face suddenly hardened. The color returned. She closed her mouth. Then she pumped a shell into the receiver, shouldered her riot gun, and blew the zombie-Dodd's face off. Nobody said anything; Ritch took his cue from our awkward silence. I put my hand on Arlene's shoulder, and she spoke. Her voice croaked like a rusty can tied behind a very old car. "He was already gone, Fly. And I didn't want him to come between my buddy and me." There was that damned peculiar lump again. I blinked --dust in my eye, I guess--and squeezed her shoulder so hard she winced. But she didn't move to push my hand away. She knew what would happen if I were the one to kill the reworked Wilhelm Dodd . . . and she wouldn't allow that to happen. Evidently, our friendship was as important to her as it was to me. I'd forgotten that the zombies had ever been human; I made myself forget. But the staring face of Willy Dodd wouldn't let me get away with it any longer. He was a man, a Marine, and very important in my life. Now that he was gone--I didn't know what to think about Arlene and me. Best not to think at all, I advised me; it was good advice, and I took it. Arlene was taking it hard. Sitting on the floor, she put her head between her legs and took a series of long, deep breaths. I wanted to comfort her but felt helpless. "Arlene ..." I reached out to touch her. She shook her head and pulled away. Any other situation, I would have left her alone to mourn in private. But there was no privacy on Deimos except the solitude of the grave. Ritch understood what was going on and kept his mouth shut. I liked him more and more. I glanced at my wristwatch, a pointless act in this place, perhaps; but it helped somehow: a tiny act of useless normalcy. "Arlene," I said, gently as I could, "we've got to split. You need to pull it together." "Leave me alone!" she said, keeping her face turned away. "Don't look at me." This didn't seem like a good time to push the envelope. I'd never seen her this badly shaken; without another word, I sat down, back-to-back with her, and kept watch while she got it out of her system. Ritch stood a little farther up the hallway, gun out, eyes averted. Every so often her entire body shuddered; I pretended not to notice. When she finished, she wiped her eyes and stood up. "Let's move, Corporal," she said. She was a PFC and I outranked her, but it was all right. The fighting tone of voice was back. Ritch rejoined us and we pushed on. Up the defile was a rise where we could peek over the rock wall to our left. The architect from hell had been busy again. A huge garden stretched out before us in the shape of a right hand. We were in the thumb. "Can you believe this one?" Arlene asked. "Better than a swastika," I said. The hand covered a good piece of territory, with the "fingers" wide spread, each undoubtedly offering a wide selection of motion sensors and other surprises. The "ring" finger had a bizarre, wooden shack right where the ring would have been; I wondered if the "pinkie" finger would be full of Arlene's demons. We started with the thumb. "Bet the only prints we find are foot-prints," Ritch said. I've never liked stupid jokes, either, but Arlene laughed; anything to shake her out of her depression. I heard a familiar bubbling: the red "lava" liquid. The pool was in a raised, stone structure that could pass as the swimming pool from hell. I thought I saw a switch just below the lava line. "What's that?" Ritch asked. "Toxic yecch," Arlene answered. "Haven't you seen it before?" Ritch shook his head. "You've been lucky," she went on. "Fly and I have been through an ocean of the stuff." "Looks like lava," Ritch said, proving an old adage about great minds and small circles. "Is it hot?" "Not enough," I said, "but it can still kill you." The switch teased me, like a piece of plastic sticking up from a bowl of red oatmeal. "You know," I mused, "that switch is awfully tempting..." I found a rock and pitched it at the button, jumping back. I didn't want any of that spit splashing on me. I should have tried out for the majors when the twelve-year strike began. First try was the charm; we heard a loud click, and a door rotated open, revealing our latest take-home pay: another AB-10, and far more important, a pair of beautiful Medikits. I would have preferred another of those magical blue health spheres, but this would definitely do in a pinch. But my heart sunk when I picked up the first one and saw the telltale signs of imp. This was not a virgin find. Tooth marks explained why most of the drugs were missing. Apparently the imps liked the taste. A hurried investigation of the kits showed that barely enough drugs had survived for Arlene. Ritch helped me gather together what we needed. After cleansing her wounds, with special care for the bad gash in her chest, I gave her painkillers and put on fresh bandages. Ritch seemed embarrassed, swabbing at her amble, naked breasts; but titillation was the last thing on any of our minds. "How's that?" I asked. "Better," she said, but I could tell from her strained voice and pale face that she was far from perfect. Better would have to do. The dregs of the drugs proved a bonus for Ritch. He didn't look so hot, either. Coming down from the ceiling and snapping out of shock so quickly couldn't be good for anyone, and he'd been holding his own in combat instead of resting. I wish I could have offered him a needle of the stimulant I'd used back in the marble room, on Deimos; but stimulant seemed to have been what the imps were after--the vials were all empty. Leaving the thumb, we descended on the palm as if storming heaven and began a serious housecleaning, sliding from rock to rock, blasting anything in our way . . . and scooping up anything useful. The opposi- tion was feeble, hardly worth mentioning except to say that they died quickly. Arlene lucked into finding a rocket launcher of her very own. Then we helped her locate the little battery- sized rockets that were nearby. She collected seven of the little darlings, and I showed her where to stick them and taught her the forbidden lore of proximity fuses and firing rings. We were so happy about the find that we must have sent out a subverbal signal. Monsters don't like humans being happy. We were ambushed by six former comrades at arms and ex-UAC workers, four imps, three demons, two flying skulls, and a partridge in a pear tree. (I'm lying about the pear tree.) In the ensuing carnage, Arlene used up every rocket; but at least she could never again say she hadn't been checked out on the launcher. Arlene and I barely worked up a sweat. Ritch was getting good at the game; he was a good draft pick. He'd been doing some thinking that he was eager to share with us. Arlene still seemed numb from the discovery of Wilhelm, but I was ready to get to know this new Ritch better. So, as we surveyed our latest gaggle of ex's, I encour- aged him to speak his piece. He'd already told us that computers were his area, but he'd been overly modest. Evidently, he was a bona-fide computer genius kidnapped from Deimos by the aliens. "We had already decided that the Gates were hypermass transportation devices; if they really worked and weren't just some elaborate failed experiment from millenia past, it would blow every physics theory we had out the wash. "We discovered they responded to bursts of high- energy microwaves; their circuits responded for several seconds after each burst--not electronics, exactly, but something involving direct manipulations of particle streams." As Ritch held court, Arlene perked up and started paying attention. She was getting that expression she wore when a boyfriend betrayed her. Suddenly, her mouth dropped. "You mean you--activated the Gates yourselves? You turned them on? Jesus Christ, you brought those things here!" Arlene had a romantic side that tried to believe whatever nonsense officials put out as the truth du jour. I'd gotten over that sort of silliness long before I joined the Corps--it wasn't a long-term healthy attitude for a jarhead. "I... I think we brought these aliens through the Gate ourselves, in a way," Ritch admitted pathetically. "But it was an accident!" "Ah, an accident," I snorted. "Well, that certainly relieves everyone of any personal responsibility." Ritch continued, not noticing the irony. "I think, now, that whatever these creatures were, they were listening to the Gates. Maybe they were trying to fire it up from their end, and until we 'answered the phone,' they couldn't do it. But yeah, I guess we let them in. "Anyway, I don't believe these are the creatures that built the Gates." "That's what we figured," I said. "You got anything more substantial than a gut feeling?" "The UAC has . . . engravings that the Gate builders left behind. They are as old as the Gates, showing what the Gate builders looked like." He paused, trying to find the right words. "And?" we asked as one. "You're not going to believe this--" he started. "After what we've been through, we'll believe any- thing," I said, launching a preemptive strike. "Well, they look like something out of H. P. Lovecraft," he said. "I knew it," Arlene said. She still looked furious. "Am I the only person in the solar system who never read this guy?" I asked, irritated. "The first one of you to talk about anything 'eldritch' is going to get a rocket right between the eyes." Ritch looked at me like he thought I might be serious, but a big smile from Arlene put him at ease. He swal- lowed hard and said, "They have snakelike trunks with multilimbed upper torsos, no visible head; and they'd have to move like sidewinders." "How big?" Arlene wanted to know. "Up to ten meters long," he answered. They didn't say it but I just know they were both thinking, Oooh, eldritch! I agreed. "I'd bet my life we haven't met the real intelligence behind this." Arlene joined in: "Bet something of more value than that, Fly. What value do you think an insurance compa- ny would put on us?" "I don't gamble," Ritch said with a straight face, "and I have met the--what'd you call it? The mastermind. That spider thing . . . it's in charge, I'm positive." "Tell us more," I requested. He shuddered. I knew how he felt. Theory was one thing, close contact another. "So far as I can tell, the spider thing has real intelligence," he said. "It spoke in clear English." I wasn't about to doubt him after my experience with the imp back on Phobos. "What did it say?" asked Arlene. "Well, first it started asking me questions. It started with simple, yes-no, true-false; I tried to lie a few times, but it already knew a lot, and I got caught." "What was its response to a lie?" Ritch shrugged. "Didn't seem to care emotionally; but it punished me. Horrible stuff, but all hallucination. You know how you're having a dream, and you dream that you're absolutely terrified? The spidermind thing can do that: I can see why people who encountered one of those, maybe thousands of years ago, could think they'd died and gone to hell." He shuddered at the memory. "But the fears were all unreal. And after a while I realized I could take it. You just have to accept being afraid like you've never been afraid before; but if it can't break you with fear, it doesn't know what to do next." "What did it do to you?" "It started ordering me to reprogram all the Phobos and Deimos equipment. When I refused, it tortured me with more and more Fear Itself, which is what I started calling the hallucinations. When that didn't work, it hung me from the ceiling with its webbing, like it was saving me for later." "I got the impression it needed to find out more about humans so it could figure out how to crack us. Mean- while, I think it went looking for a more cooperative programmer. I'm sure it would have killed me when it found one." "To find out more about humans," I repeated, feeling a chill. "Arlene ... do you think all this crap that's been thrown against us ... ?" She glared at me, then glared at the deck. She knew what I meant; she knew it made sense. We had been the secondary information sources. Had we given the mastermind anything useful? Mater Dei, I hoped not. "Describe the monster," Arlene said. Ritch gritted his teeth. "It's like a huge, brainlike thing inside a mechanical, spiderlike body." "What about the weapons?" I asked. "Ringed with more weapons than you can imagine," Ritch said. I doubted that. I'd reached the point where I could imagine quite a lot. Actually I was glad to receive Ritch's news. A leader alien meant we had something to really fight. I was exhausted cutting off the inexhaustible limbs of this army. I was ready for a general. The new information cheered up Arlene as well, bringing color back to her cheeks. She and I didn't need to talk about it. We were on the same wavelength. We shared our theories with Ritch, especially the one about Deimos as a spaceship and what we had discovered about the hyperspace tunnel. He had already guessed a lot. Then we continued our journey up the ring finger, where we'd seen the shack. We ran into one specter, hardly a match for the three of us. I couldn't help contrasting our casualness now with my terror at seeing my first zombie. Nowadays, I was almost blase. We prowled our way up to the ancient, crumbly, wooded hut. Hell needed a facelift. "Check out the lock," Arlene said, grinning like a girl with a Christmas of accessories for her favorite doll. "I love these!" "Why?" I asked. "They take an old-fashioned key." "I'll help you look for it," Ritch said before I could. "Hell with that," she said. "I've already got one!" She dismantled one of the pistols; then she took the gas- expander stabilizer spline for a flexor and the fixed end of the magazine-advance spring for a tensor. It took her just five minutes to pick the lock. "Where'd you learn that?" Ritch asked. "I read a lot of comic books." "You need help putting that back together?" I asked with a straight face. I couldn't resist teasing her a little. She rolled her eyes and reassembled the piece in nothing Hat. She made us wait until she was good and ready to open the shack door. Inside was a switch. Surprise, surprise, surprise ... as our patron saint Gomer might say. Arlene did the honors, lowering the wall ahead, revealing a hidden platform containing a dozen dead, mangled, squashed imps and a teleport pad. "It's about that time," she said. "I want a new travel agent," I said. We teleported and stared, stunned into angry silence. We were right back where we'd started after crawling down the hyperspace tunnel! The only improvement was we still had our clothes and weapons--and Ritch, of course. 31 "Deja," said Arlene. "Vu," I said. "Dejah Thoris," Ritch said, and Arlene snorted. They were speaking some kind of secret code. I wasn't going to worry about it. Starting all over was something to worry about. As before, I inserted my arm up to the elbow in the membranal switch and opened the door. Inside, we found Weems and Yoshida in the same room, same position, still joined head-to-head . . . and still holding their pistols in exactly the same position as before. Clothed! We stared for a long time, and poor Bill Ritch had no idea why Arlene and I were so stunned; he started to examine the bodies, but Arlene gently pulled him back before he could see what they'd done to them. "This is worse than the monsters," I said. We passed by and crawled through the narrow tunnel, a very tight fit for Ritch. When we reached the end, we faced the same seven imps as before, only this time we used shotguns. At least that was an improvement. We popped the same door. Out came two pumpkins, just like last time. The pumpkins were pretty much the same except for varying sizes. Arlene used the AB-10, and I finished them off with a shotgun, our favorite tactic. Ritch made a comment that was new: "They'd look better with two burning candles for eyes instead of that headlight in the center." No one argued. We started to bypass the collapsing pier, going for the other door instead; but suddenly Arlene said, "Fly, I have a feeling we should duplicate our actions as precise- ly as we can." "Arlene, last time the demons creamed you in that narrow hallway," I reminded her. She nodded, a bit shaky at the thought. She wasn't in any condition to survive a bout like that again. I pursued the point: "We've already deviated by not taking Weems's and Yoshida's pistols and by killing the pumpkins outside." "I know," she said. "I don't have any good argument except for female intuition." I was about to make a crack about the unlikelihood of that particular attribute in Arlene Sanders, but I saw that she was deadly serious. She glared at me until I saw reason. We left Ritch in the corridor. He wasn't in shape for what we had in mind. Of course, after we cleared a path for him, he could stroll through in relative safety. We ran like bats out of Deimos down the pier, this time charging through the illusory wall of flame and blowing away the imps we knew to be on the other side. There was another reason I'd insisted we leave Ritch behind, one I kept to myself: I half thought we'd find a second Bill Ritch hanging from the ceiling here. We didn't. . . and I never brought the subject up to Arlene or Ritch. God only knows whether they thought of it themselves--probably, but they kept quiet as well. We slipped back by the secret corridor and used the same trick on the pumpkins and imps inside the room. It was a lot easier when we knew what to expect. This time I knew where the last pumpkin would be floating in ambush when I opened the door, and I enjoyed not being surprised. Pop goes the pumpkin. Crossing the patio, Arlene grabbed the chain saw and revved it up; but she made me promise to start shooting the moment she lost it this time. Except that this time, since she knew what to expect, she didn't slip and wasn't out of position where a demon could knock the chain saw out of her hand. She ducked. She weaved. She sawed all the demons to death. It was hard to believe she'd been seriously injured only a short time before; but having a chance to get it right the second t