“Ralph?” It was the drugged voice of a man just waking from his life’s soundest sleep. “Ralph Roberts? What are you doing here?”

“Oh, I was in the neighborhood and I thought I’d drop in,” Ralph said. “Drag up a rock, so to speak.” And with that, he closed his curled hand into a fist and tore the wires out of the box.

“No!” Ed shrieked. “Oh no, don’t, you’ll spoil everything!”

Yes indeed, Ralph thought, then reached over Ed’s lap to grab the Cherokee’s control-wheel. The Civic Center was now no more than twelve hundred feet below them, perhaps less. Ralph still didn’t know for sure what was in the box strapped to the copilot’s chair, but he had an idea it was probably the plastique stuff the terrorists always used in the martial arts movies starring Chuck Norris and Steven Seagal. It was supposed to be fairly stable-not like the nitro in Clouzot’s Wages of Fear, certainly-but this was hardly the time to put his trust in the Gospel of Movieland. And even a stable explosive might go off without a detonator when dropped from a height of almost two miles.

He jammed the control-wheel as far over to the left as he could.

Below them, the Civic Center began to wheel sickeningly around, as if it had been mounted on the spindle of a gigantic top.

“No, you bastard.” Ed yelled, and something that felt like the head of a small hammer struck Ralph in the side, almost paralyzing him with pain and making it all but impossible to breathe. His hand slid off the control-wheel as Ed hammered him again, this time in the armpit. Ed seized the wheel and yanked it savagely back over. The Civic Center, which had begun to slip toward the side of the windshield, began to rotate back toward dead center.

Ralph clawed at the wheel. Ed placed the heel of his hand on his forehead and shoved him backward. “Why couldn’t you stay out of it?”

he snarled. “Why’d you have to meddle?” His teeth were bared, his lips pulled back in a Jealous snarl. Ralph’s appearance in the cockpit should have incapacitated him with shock but hadn’t.

Of course not, he’s nuts, Ralph thought, and suddenly raised his interior voice in a panicked yell:

[“Clotho! Lachesiv For Christ’s sake, help me."’]

Nothing. It didn’t feel as if his shout were going anywhere. And why would it? He was back down on the Short-Time level, and that meant he was on his own.

The Civic Center was only eight or nine hundred feet below them now. Ralph could see every brick, every window, every person standing outside-he could almost even tell which ones were carrying signs. They were looking up, trying to figure out what this crazy plane was doing.

Ralph couldn’t see the fear on their faces, not yet, but in another three or four secondsHe launched himself at Ed again, ignoring the throb in his left side and driving his right fist forward, using his thumb to ride the prong of the earring out beyond his fingers as far as possible.

The old Earring Gag had worked on the Crimson King, but Ralph had been higher then, and he’d had the element of surprise more firmly in hand. He went for the eye this time, too, but Ed snapped his head away at the last moment. The prong drove into the side of his face just above the cheekbone. Ed swatted at it as if it were a gnat, holding on tightly to the control-wheel with his left hand as he did it.

Ralph went for the wheel again. Ed lashed out at him. His fist connected above Ralph’s left eye, driving him backward. A single loud tone, pure and silvery, filled Ralph’s ears. It was as if there were a large tuning fork somewhere in between them, and someone had struck it. The world went as gray and grainy as a newsprint photograph.

[“RALPH. HURRY!”] It was Lois, and now she was in terror. He knew why; time had all but run out. He had maybe ten seconds, twenty at most. He lunged forward again, this time not at Ed but at the picture of Helen and Nat that was taped above the altimeter. He snatched it, held it up… and then crumpled it between his fingers. He didn’t know exactly what reaction he’d hoped for, but the one he got exceeded his wildest hopes.

“GIVE THEN BACK!” Ed screamed. He forgot about the controlwheel and groped for the picture instead. As he did, Ralph again saw the man he had glimpsed on the day Ed had beaten Helen-a man who was desperately unhappy and afraid of the forces which had been set loose within him. There were tears not just in his eyes but running down his cheeks, and Ralph thought confusedly: Has he been crying all along?

“GIVE them BACK.I” he bawled again, but Ralph was no longer sure he was the subject of that cry; he thought his former neighbor might be addressing the being which had stepped into his life, looked around itself to make sure it would do, and then simply taken it over.

Lois’s earring glittered in Ed’s cheek like a barbaric funerary ornament. “GltE THEM BACK, THERE MINE!”

Ralph held the crumpled photograph just beyond the reach of Ed’s waving hands. Ed lunged, the seatbelt bit into his gut, and Ralph punched him in the throat as hard as he could, feeling an indescribable mixture of satisfaction and revulsion as the blow landed on the hard, gristly protuberance of Ed’s Adam’s apple. Ed fell back against the cockpit wall, eyes bulging with pain and dismay and bewilderment, hands going to his throat. A thick gagging noise came from somewhere deep inside him. It sounded like some heavy piece of machinery in the process of stripping its gears.

Ralph shoved himself forward over Ed’s lap and saw the Civic Center now leaping up toward the airplane. He turned the wheel all the way to the left again and below him-directly below him-the Civic Center again began to rotate toward the side of the Cherokee’s soon-to-be-defunct windshield… but it moved with agonizing slowness.

Ralph realized he could smell something in the cockpit-some faint aroma both sweet and familiar. Before he could think what it might be, he saw something that distracted him completely. It was the Hoodsie Ice Cream wagon that sometimes cruised along Harris Avenue, tinkling its cheery little bell.

My God, Ralph thought, more in awe than in fear. I think I’m going to wind up in the deep freeze along with the Creamsicles and Hoodsie Rockets.

That sweet smell was stronger, and as hands suddenly seized his shoulders, Ralph realized it was Lois Chasse’s perfume.

“Come up!” she screamed. “Ralph, you dummy, you have to-” He didn’t think about it; he just did it. The thing in his mind clenched, the blink happened, and he heard the rest of what she had to say in that eerie, penetrating way that was more thought than speech.

[”-come up! Push with your feet.” Too late, he thought, but he did as she said nevertheless, planting his feet against the base of the radically canted instrument panel and shoving as hard as he could. He felt Lois rising up through the column of existence with him as the Cherokee shot through the last hundred feet between it and the ground, and as they zoomed upward, he felt a sudden blast of Lois-power wrap itself around him and yank him backward like a bungee cord. There was a brief, nauseating sensation of flying in two directions at the same time.

Ralph caught a final glimpse of Ed Deepneau slumped against the sidewall of the cockpit, but in a very real sense he did not see him at all. The thunderstruck yellow-gray aura was gone. Ed was also gone, buried in a deathbag as black as midnight in hell.

Then he and Lois were falling as well as flying.