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.
The cassette recorders had been plugged into a mix of home computers - Ataris, Apple II's and III's, TRS-80s, Commodores. Blinking on and off on the one lit screen was the word
PROGRAM?
Behind the modified computers were more circuit boards - hundreds of them. The whole thing was uttering a low sleepy hum - a sound he associated with
(use the transformer)
big electrical equipment.
Light spilled out of the crate and the computers placed haphazardly next to it in a green flood - but the light was not quite steady. It was cycling. The pulse of the light and its relation to the sudsing sounds coming from the shower cabinets was very clear.
That's the center, he thought with an invalid's weak excitement. That's the annex to the ship. They come in the shed to use that. It's a transformer, and they draw their power from there.
Use the transformer to save David.
Might as well ask me to fly Air Force One. Ask me something easy, Pop. If I could bring him back from wherever he was by reciting Mark Twain - Poe, even -I'd take a shot. But that thing? It looks like an explosion in an electronics warehouse.
But - the boy.
How old? Four? Five?
And where in God's name had they put him? The sky was, literally, the limit.
Save the boy ... use the transformer.
There was, of course, not even any time to look closely at the damned mess. The others would be coming back. Still, he stared at the one lighted video terminal with hypnotic intensity.
PROGRAM ?
What if I typed Altair-4 on the keyboard? he wondered, and saw there was no keyboard; at the same second the letters on the screen changed.
ALTAIR-4
it now read.
No! his mind screamed, full of intruder's guilt. No, Jesus, no!
The letters rippled.
NO JESUS NO
Sweating, Gardener thought: Cancel! Cancel!
CANCEL CANCEL
These letters blinked on and off ... on and off. Gardener stared at them, horrified. Then:
PROGRAM ?
He made an effort to shield his thoughts and tried again to get