All the same, he would take as few risks as possible. He took a deep breath, held it, and told himself to count his steps: Three. You go in no more than three steps. Just in case. One good look around and then out. In one big hurry.

You hope.

Yes, I hope.

He took a final look along the path, saw nothing, turned back to the shed, and opened the door.

The green glow, brilliant even through the dark glasses, washed over him like corrupt sunlight.

At first he could see nothing at all. The light was too bright. He knew it had been brighter than this on other occasions, but he had never been so close to it before. Close? God, he was in it. Someone standing just outside the open door looking for him now would hardly be able to see him.

He slitted his eyes against that brilliant greenness and shuffled forward a step… then another step… then a third. His hands were held out in front of him like those of a groping blind man. Which he was; shit, he even had the dark glasses to prove it.

The noise was louder. Slissh-slissshh-slisshhh… off to the left. He turned in that direction but didn't go any further. He was afraid to go any further, afraid of what he might touch.

Now his eyes began to adjust. He saw dark shapes in the green. A bench but no Tommyknockers at it; it had simply been shoved back against the wall, out of the way. And…

My God, it is a washing machine! It really is!

It was, all right, one of the old-fashioned kind with wringer-roller at the top, but it wasn't making that weird noise. It had also been pushed back against the wall. It was in the process of being modified somehow; someone was working on it in the best Tommyknocker tradition, but it wasn't running now.

Next to it was an Electrolux vacuum cleaner… one of the old long ones that ran on wheels, low to the ground, like a mechanical dachshund. A chainsaw mounted on wheels. Stacks of smoke-detectors from Radio Shack, most still in their boxes. A number of kerosene drums, also on wheels, with hoses attached to them, and things like arms…

Arms, of course they are, they're robots, fucking robots in the making, and none of them looks exactly like the white dove of peace, does it, Gard? And

Slisshh-slisshh-slisshhh.

Further left. The source of the glow was here.

Gard heard a funny, hurt noise escape him. The breath he had been holding ran weakly out like air from a pricked balloon. The strength ran out of his legs in exactly the same way. He reached out blindly, his hand found the bench, and he did not sit but simply plopped down on it. He was unable to take his eyes from the left-rear corner of the shed, where Ev Hillman, Anne Anderson, and Bobbi's good old beagle Peter had somehow been hung up on posts in two old galvanized steel shower cabinets with their doors removed. They hung there like slabs of beef on meathooks. But they were alive, Gard saw… somehow, some way, still alive.

A thick black cord which looked like a high-voltage line or a very big coaxial cable ran out of the center of Anne Anderson's forehead. A similar cable ran out of the old man's right eye. And the entire top of the dog's skull had been peeled away; dozens of smaller cords ran out of Peter's exposed and pulsing brain.

Peter's eyes, free of cataracts, turned toward Gard. He whined.

Jesus… oh my Jesus… oh my Jesus Christ.

He tried to get up from the bench. He couldn't.

Portions of the old man's skull and Anne's skull had also been removed, he saw. The doors had been torn off the shower stalls but they were still full of some clear liquid-it was being contained in the same way that tiny sun was contained in Bobbi's water heater, he supposed. If he tried to get into one of those stalls, he would feel a tough springiness. Plenty of give… but no access.

Want to get in? I only want to get out!

Then his mind returned to its former scripture:

Jesus… dear Jesus… oh my Jesus look at them…

I don't want to look at them.

No. But he couldn't tear his eyes away.

The liquid was clear but emerald green. It was moving-making that low, thick sudsy sound. For all its clarity, Gardener thought that liquid must be very gluey indeed, perhaps the consistency of dish detergent.

How can they breathe in there? How can they be alive? Maybe they're not; maybe it's only the movement of the liquid that makes you think they are. Maybe it's just an illusion, please Jesus let it be an illusion.

Peter… you heard him whine

Nope. Part of the illusion. That's all. He's hanging on a hook in a shower stall filled with the interstellar equivalent of Joy dish detergent, he couldn't whine in that, it would come out all soap-bubbles, and you're just freaking out. That's what it is, just a little visit from King Freakout.

Except he wasn't just freaking, and he knew it. Just as he knew he hadn't heard Peter whine with his ears.

That hurt, helpless whining sound had come from the same place the radio music came from: the center of his brain.

Anne Anderson opened her eyes.

Get me out of here! she screamed. Get me out of here, I'll leave her ah only I can't feel anything except when they make it hurt make it hurt make it hurrrrtt…

Gardener tried again to get up. He was very faintly aware that he was making a sound. Just some old sound. The sound he was making was probably a lot like the sound a woodchuck run over in the road might make, he thought.

The greenish, moving liquid gave Sissy's face a gassy, ghastly corpse-hue. The blue of her eyes had bleached out. Her tongue floated like some fleshy undersea plant. Her fingers, wrinkled and pruney, drifted.

I can't feel anything except when they make it hurrrrrttttt! Anne wailed, and he couldn't shut her voice out, couldn't stick his fingers in his ears to make it go away, because that voice was coming from inside his head.

Slisshhh-slisshhh-slisshhh.

Copper tubing running into the tops of the shower stalls, making them look like a hilarious combination of Buck Rogers suspended animation chambers and L'il Abner moonshine stills.

Peter's fur had fallen out in patches. His hindquarters appeared to be collapsing in on themselves. His legs moved through the liquid in long lazy sweeps, as if in his dreams he was running away.

When they make it hurrrrrt!

The old man opened his one eye.

The boy.

This thought was utterly clear; unquestionable. Gardener found himself responding to it.

What boy?

The answer was immediate, startling for a moment, then unquestionable.

David. David Brown.

That one eye stared at him, a ceaseless sapphire with emerald tints.

Save the boy.

The boy. David. David Brown. Was he a part of this somehow, the boy they had hunted for so many exhausting hot days? Of course he was. Maybe not directly, but a part of it.

Where is he? Gardener thought at the old man who floated in his pale green solution.

Slisshhh-slisshhh-slisshhh.

Altair-4, the old man returned finally. David's on Altair-4. Save him… and then kill us. This is… it's bad. Real bad. Can't die. I've tried. We all have. Even

(bitchbitch)

her. This is being in hell. Use the transformer to save David. Then pull the plugs. Cut the wires. Burn the place. Do you hear?

For the third time Gardener tried to get up and fell bonelessly back onto the bench. He became aware that thick electrical cords were scattered all over the floor, and that brought back a ghostly memory of the band that had picked him up on the turnpike when he was coming back from New Hampshire. He puzzled at this, and then got the connection. The floor looked like a concert stage just before a rock group started to play. That, or a big-city TV studio. The cables snaked into a huge crate filled with circuit boards and a stack of VCRs. They were wired together. He looked for a DC current converter, saw none, and then thought: Of course not, idiot. Batteries are DC.