started the sling going down or up, the red one which stopped it. The end of the cable touched the black one - and suddenly went rigid. The black button popped neatly in. The motor behind the lean-to started up, and the sling started to slip into the trench.
The tension went out of the cable. It slipped down to the red stop button, stiffened, pushed it. When the motor had died - leaning over, Gardener could see the sling dangling against the side of the cut about twelve feet down - the cable rose and pushed the black button again. The motor started once more. The sling came back up. When it reached the top of the trench, the motor died automatically.
Bobbi turned to him. She was smiling, but her eyes were watchful. 'There,' she said. 'Works fine.'
'It's incredible,' Gardener said. His eyes had moved steadily back and forth between Bobbi and the Electrolux as the cable ran the buttons. Bobbi had not been gesturing with the radio, as Freeman Moss had with his walkie-talkie, but Gardener had seen the little frown of concentration, and the way her eyes had dropped just an instant before the coaxial cable slipped down from the black button to the red one.
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.
4
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