It looks like a mechanical dachshund, something out of one of those terminally cute Kelly Freas SF paintings. That's what it looks like, but it's not a robot, not really. It has no brain. Bobbi's its brain… and she wants me to know it.

And there had been a lot of those customized appliances in the shed, lined up against the wall. The one his mind kept trying to fix on was the washing machine with the boomerang antenna mounted on it.

The shed. That raised a hell of an interesting question. Gard opened his mouth to ask it… then closed it again, trying at the same time to thicken the shield over his thoughts as much as he could. He felt like a man who has nearly strolled over the lip of a chasm a thousand feet deep while looking at the pretty sunset.

No one back home-at least that I know of-and the shed's padlocked on the outside. So just how did Fido the Vacuum Cleaner get out?

He had really been only an instant from asking that question when he realized Bobbi hadn't mentioned where the Electrolux had come from. Gard could suddenly smell his own sweat, sour and evil.

He looked at Bobbi and saw Bobbi looking at him with that small, irritated smile that meant she knew Gardener was thinking… but not what.

“Where did that thing come from, anyway?” Gardener asked.

“Oh… it was around.” Bobbi waved her hand vaguely. “The important thing is that it works. So much for the unexpected delay. Want to get going?”

“Fine. I just hope that thing's batteries don't go flat while we're down there.”

“I'm its battery,” she said. “As long as I'm all right, you'll get up again, Gard. Okay?”

Your insurance policy. Yes, I think I get it.

“Okay,” he said.

They went to the trench. Bobbi rode the sling down first while the cable rising from the side of the Electrolux ran the buttons. The sling came back up and Gardener stepped into it, holding the rope as it began to go down again.

He took a final look at the battered old Electrolux and thought again: How the hell did it get out?

Then he was sliding into the dimness of the trench and the dank mineral smell of wet rocks, the smooth surface of the ship rising up and up on his left, like the side of a skyscraper without windows.

Gard stepped off the sling. He and Bobbi stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the circular groove of the hatch, which had the shape of a large porthole. Gardener found it almost impossible to take his eyes from the symbol etched upon it. He found himself remembering something from earliest childhood.

There had been an outbreak of diphtheria in the Portland suburb where he'd been raised. Two kids had died, and the public-health officials had imposed a quarantine. He remembered walking to the library, his hand safely caught up in his mother's, and passing houses where signs had been stapled to the front doors, the same word in heavy black letters heading each. He had asked his mother what the word was, and she told him. He asked her what it meant, and she said it meant there was sickness in the house. It was a good word, she said, because it warned people not to go in. If they did, she said, they might catch the disease and spread it.

“Are you ready?” Bobbi asked, breaking in on his thoughts.

“What does that mean?” He pointed at the symbol on the hatch.

“Burma-Shave.” Bobbi was unsmiling. “Are you?”

“No… but I guess I'm as close as I'll ever get.”

He looked at the tank clipped to his belt and wondered again if he was going to draw some poison that would explode his lungs at the first breath. He didn't think so. This was supposed to be his reward. One visit inside the Holy Temple before he was erased, once and for all, from the equation.

“All right,” Bobbi said. “I'm going to open it-”

“You're going to think it open,” Gardener said, looking at the plug in Bobbi's ear.

“Yes,” Bobbi replied dismissively, as if to say What else? “It's going to iris open. There'll be an explosive outrush of bad air… and when I say bad, I mean really bad. How are your hands?”

“What do you mean?”

“Cuts?”

“Nothing that isn't scabbed over.” He held his hands out like a little boy submitting to his mother's pre-dinner inspection.

“Okay.” Bobbi took a pair of cotton work-gloves from her back pocket and drew them on. To Gard's inquiring look she said, “Hangnails on two fingers. It might not be enough-but it might. When you see the hatch start to iris open, Gard, close your eyes. Breathe from the tank. If you whiff on what comes out of the ship, it's going to kill you as quick as a Dran-O cocktail.”

“I,” Gardener said, “am convinced.” He slipped the snorkel mouthpiece into his mouth and used the nose-plugs. Bobbi did the same. Gardener could hear/ feel his pulse in his temples, moving very fast, like someone tapping rapidly on a muffled drum with one finger.

This is it… this is finally it.

“Ready?” Bobbi asked one last time. Muffled by the mouthpiece, it came out sounding like Elmer Fudd: Weady?

Gardener nodded.

“Remember?” Wememboo?

Gardener nodded again.

for Christ's sake, Bobbi, let's go!

Bobbi nodded.

Okay. Be ready

Before he could ask her for what, that symbol suddenly broke apart in curves, and Gardener realized with a deep, almost sickening excitement that the hatch was opening. There was a high thin screaming sound, as if something rusted shut for a long time was now moving again… but with great reluctance.

He saw Bobbi turn the valve on the tank clipped to her belt. He did the same, then closed his eyes. A moment later, a soft wind pushed against his face, shoving his shaggy hair back from his brow. Gardener thought: Death. That's death. Death rushing past me, filling this trench like chlorine gas. Every microbe on my skin is dying right now.

His heart was pounding much too fast, and he had actually begun to wonder if the outrush of gas (like the rush of gas out of a coffin, his skittish mind chattered) wasn't killing him somehow after all when he realized he had been holding his breath.

He pulled a breath in through the mouthpiece. He waited to see if it would kill him. It didn't. It had a dry, stale taste, but it was perfectly breathable.

Forty, maybe fifty minutes of air.

Slow down, Gard. Take it slow. Make it last. No panting.

He slowed down.

Tried, at least.

Then that high, screaming noise quit. The outrush of air grew softer against his face, then stopped entirely. Then Gardener spent an eternity in the dark, facing the open hatch with his eyes shut. The only sounds were the muffled drum of his heart and the sigh of air through the tank's demand regulator. His mouth already tasted of rubber, and his teeth were locked much too hard on the rubber pins inside the snorkel mouthpiece. He forced himself to get cool and ease up.

At last, eternity ended. Bobbi's clear thought filled his mind:

Okay… should be okay… you can open those baby blues, Gard.

Like a kid at a surprise party, Jim Gardener did just that.

He was looking along a corridor.

It was perfectly round except for a flat ledge of walkway halfway up one side. The position looked all wrong. For a wild moment he visualized the Tommyknockers as grisly intelligent flies crawling along that walkway with sticky feet. Then logic reasserted itself. The walkway was canted, everything was canted, because the ship was at an angle.

Soft light glowed out of the round, featureless walls.

No dead batteries here, Gardener thought. These are really long-life jobbies. He looked into the corridor beyond the hatch with a deep and profound sense of wonder. It is alive. Even after all these years. Still alive.