have slipped so far to the back of his mind. The Möbius strip couldn't claim him, not yet, anyway, because 'he had a future. Hadn't he seen it for himself?
He could even witness it again if he wished, by simply finding a future-time door. Or perhaps this time it wouldn't be so simple. What if the Möbius continuum should claim him while he traversed time? That was an unbearable thought: to hurtle into the future forever! But no need to take the risk, for Harry could remember it well enough:
The scarlet life-line drifting closer, angling in towards his own and Harry junior's blue threads. Yulian Bodescu, surely?
And then the infant's life-thread abruptly veering away from his father's, racing off at a tangent. That must have been his escape from the vampire, the moment when he'd first used the Möbius continuum in his own right. After that - then there'd been that impossible collision:
That strange blue life-thread, dimming, crumbling, disintegrating, converging with Harry's own thread out of nowhere. The two had seemed to bend towards each other as by some mutual attraction, before slamming together in a neon blaze and speeding on as one thread. Briefly Harry had felt the presence - or the faint, fading echo - of another mind: but then it was gone, extinct, and his thread rushing on alone.
Yes, and he had recognised that dying echo of a mind! Now he knew for sure where he must go, who he must
seek out. And with something less than his usual dexterity, he found his way to INTESP HO in London.
The top floor - self-contained suites of offices, labs, private quarters and a communal recreation room - which comprised INTESP HO were in turmoil. Fifteen minutes ago something had occurred which, despite the nature of the HO and the various talents of its personnel, was completely beyond all previous experience. There had been no warning; the thing had not telegraphed itself to INTESP's telepaths, precogs or other psychic sensitives; it had simply 'happened', and left the espers running round in circles like ants in a disturbed nest.
'It' had been the arrival of Harry Keogh Jnr and his mother.
The first INTESP had known of it was when all the security alarms went off simultaneously. Indicators had shown that the intruder was in the top office, Alec Kyle's control room. No one but John Grieve had been in that room since Kyle flew to Italy, and the place was now secured. There couldn't possibly be anybody in there.
It could be a fault in the alarm system, of course, but and then had come the first real intimations of what was happening. All of INTESP's espers had felt it at the same time: a powerful presence, a mental giant in their midst, here at HO. Harry Keogh?
Finally they'd got the door to Kyle's office open - and found mother and child curled up together in the middle of the office carpet. Nothing physical had ever manifested itself in this way before; not here at INTESP, anyway. When Keogh himself had visited Kyle here, he had been incorporeal, without substance, a mere impression of the man Keogh had been. But these people were real, solid, alive and breathing. They had been teleported here.
The 'why' of it was obvious: to escape Bodescu. As for the 'how', that would have to wait. Mother and child - and therefore INTESP itself - were safe, and that was the main thing.
At first it had been thought that Brenda Keogh was simply asleep; but when Grieve carefully examined her he found the large soft lump at the back of her head and guessed she was concussed. As for the baby: he had looked around, alert and wide-eyed, appeared a little startled but not unduly afraid, lying in his mother's relaxed arms sucking his thumb! Not much wrong with him.
With the greatest care and attention to their task, the espers had then carried the pair to staff accommodation and put them to bed, and a doctor had been summoned. Then INTESP's buzzing members had concentrated themselves in the ops room to talk it over. Which was when Harry came on the scene.
While his coming was startling, if anything it was less of a shock and more of an anticlimax; the previous materialisation had prepared them for it. It might even be said that he was expected. John Grieve had just taken the ops room podium and turned the lights down a little when Harry appeared. He came in the