I waved as we left. “Bye. Thanks for the hospitality.” Of course there was no response. We went down the hill, skirted the killer angler, and swam back to the mainland.

  “Onward-to the glass forest,” I said, trying to be as cheerful as I could. “Coypu will have the machine analyzed by now and will quickly build one of his own. Which he will then use to track us down and rescue us. We’ll be settling down to a steak dinner before you know it.”

  After three more of the local days had gone by I wanted to eat those words-since there was nothing else to eat on this world of Glass. My wallet was just where I had left it, my glass arrow and message undisturbed. I ground the crystal fragments to smithereens, growling darkly.

  After that-it was just waiting. The crystal glade in the forest remained empty. No one came, nothing happened at all. We stayed there, making only the briefest of forays back to the ocean to drink. Time dragged by so sluggishly that we felt we were making about the same progress as the crystalline carnivore. It was catching up on its fleeing prey, but so slowly, slowly. Another night fell and was followed by another sunny day. And another. I took a second notch in my belt and tried to ignore the growing thinness of Angelina’s face. By the fifth day I began to worry.

  “There must be something else we can do,” I complained.

  “I don’t see what. You’re the one who told me that all we had to do was wait. You must be patient.”

  “I’m not!”

  “You never were. But you must make the effort or you will worry yourself into an ulcer.”

  “I would rather drink myself into an ulcer!” The thought of strong spirits and cold beer got my spittle flowing. I spat into the forest and watched a stem of grass dissolve. Good thing it never rained here.

  I awoke with the sun on the morning of our sixth day of waiting, watching its green-striped disk shining through the multicolored foliage. It was no longer exciting to look at, nor did I wonder anymore what made the stripes. Angelina was pale and drawn, moaning under her breath as she slept. I didn’t want to wake her; sleep was our only escape from hunger. And the endless waiting. I walked down the path a bit and looked out over the ocean. The waves surged turgidly against the cliffs; nothing else moved. Depression struggled onto the back of depression. I sighed mightily and went back to the clearing.

  When Angelina did wake up we talked a bit. I was thirsty but she wasn’t, so I walked down to the beach to drink. There was nothing that we could carry water in. Therefore we took turns drinking so that someone would always be in the clearing. Waiting.

  The walk was tiring-but it had to be done. I drank my fill, then a little more. Filling the stomach helped for awhile with the hunger. The walk back, uphill part of the way, was particularly exhausting. And I had to walk slowly or I would have an oxygen jag.

  “Home is the drinker, home from the sea!” I called out. A feeble attempt at humor. “Hello!”

  Maybe she was asleep again. I shut up but walked faster.

  Stopped. Frozen.

  The cleared area was empty.

  “Angelina!”

  This was the blackest of blackest moments that I had ever experienced. If Coypu had his machine working-he could have saved her. That had to be it. Coypu had done this, not Slakey. Could that be it? But Coypu was an unknown. If the marines had grabbed a machine, and if it were intact, and if Coypu had built a machine An awful lot of ifs. But Slakey had plenty of machines and knew that we were here. He could have returned and seized Angelina and left me here to starve quietly. Was it Slakey who got here first and grabbed her off this world?

  “Who did this? Where are you?”

  I shouted aloud, brimming over with frustration and anger. And fear. It must be Coypu. It had to be him.

  I hoped.

  But if it had been him why had he taken just Angelina and left me here? There should have been a message, at least a message. I frantically kicked about among the broken crystal. No note, no traces of anything.

  For a very, very long time nothing happened. I was giggling with fear. Too much oxygen. Slow down, Jim, take it easy. I sat in the cleared area where we slept and breathed more slowly. With one last snicker the laughter died. Depression took over.

  The days on Glass were short-but this was the longest one I had ever lived through. It was growing dark and I must have nodded off with my head slumped on my chest. Fear, worry, hunger, everything. Too much, far more than too much.

  “Dad-over here!” Bolivar said. I blinked my eyelids, still half asleep, dreaming.

  “Are you all right? We have to move fast.”

  No dream! I set a new record for the broken glass sprint. Slammed into him and almost knocked him from his feet. We were falling-backward into a brightly lit hotel room, onto a soft, carpeted floor. I just lay there, looking up at Professor Coypu seated before a great mass of bread boarded electronics.

  And Angelina smiling down on me.

  “I hope they gave you something nice to eat,” I said, inanely, still not believing that it was all over and she was all right. She knelt and took my hands in hers.

  “Sorry it took so long. The professor says that he has trouble aligning the machine.”

  “Calibration errors, cumulative, entropy slippage,” Coypu said. “Gets better each time though.”

  “Something to eat, Dad,” Bolivar said, helping me to my feet and handing me a giant roast meat sandwich. Saliva sported as I growled and tore off an immense bite, chewed; paradisical. I took the proffered beer bottle by the neck and drank and drank until the back of my nose hurt from the cold.

  “Here, sit at the table,” Angelina said, pulling out a chair.

  “And don’t eat so fast or you’ll make yourself sick-“

  “Warfle?” I said.

  “-and don’t talk with your mouth full. Eat slowly, that’s better, while I tell you what happened. It was Bolivar who came for me. No time to wait, he said. The alignment was difficult-just seconds. I held back but he grabbed me and that was that. It took so long to get through to you again, I knew what you were feeling. But it is all all right now. We are all together this time. The end of worrying.”

  “The beginning of a lot of big worrying for some of us,” Inskipp snarled in his friendly and ingratiating way as he walked into the room. He dropped into a chair and glared menacingly.

  “All right for you people to relax and cheer each other up with stories of your strange adventures. You forget that the rest of us are weighed down with responsibilities. Since this whole mess began we have been behind the eight ball, stuck in the mud, up the creek paddleless and getting nowhere as fast as a turgid turtle.”

  Instead of pointing out the tangled syntax of his mixed metaphor I reached for another sandwich. Priorities exist. He chuntered on.

  “We have been tottering from calamity to calamity, our hand forced at every turn. Not one of the Slakeys has been apprehended. As soon as we close in on one of them another pops up and whips him away. All of our efforts so far have been spent in getting you out of trouble, diGriz. And the costs keep growing. I imagine it was your smart idea to rent this entire hotel, the Vaska Hulja Holiday Heaven, as center of this operation. Do you know how many millions of credits it has cost so far?”

  “More than the gross annual income of a rich planet-I hope!” I belched rotundly. “Sorry. Ate too fast. Another beer? Thanks, James. And every credit well spent, Inskipp, you old skinflint. Rockets have roared, Space Marines have exercised furiously, news broadcasters have been working overtime, the galaxy is an exciting place and zillions of happy citizens have been entertained delightfully. You should bless me as a galactic asset instead of whining about your overdraft. Nothing but good has come Out of this operation.”

  He turned bright red and bulged his eyes, opened his mouth. But Angelina spoke first.

  “You are both right and wrong, Jim. It looks like Slakey has been put Out of business. The search is still on, but it has been a long time since the detectors found any trace of him—on any civilized planet that we have contacted. The search is now spreading to every recorded world, as our great leader, H. P. Inskipp, has kindly pointed out.”

  She smiled but Inskipp was immune to the kind word and the gentle touch. “I’m going to pull the plug and cut our losses,” he said. I was suddenly very angry.

  “No you are not, you monetarial moron! All of the civilized planets pay large sums to keep the Special Corps in business-and they never ask you for any kind of accounting. We are now faced with one of the biggest threats that mankind has ever faced-and you want to cut and run.”

  “What threat? What can one man do that can threaten a thousand worlds?”

  “Think!” I said, grabbing up another beer to hold down the sandwiches. “Professor Justin Slakey may have started out as a top scientist and a genius. But this popping back and forth between universes has not only addled his mutual brains but in some way has multiplied his numbers. Do you want these madmen to go on multiplying and causing more and more trouble? We know he has sent people to Hell to provide lunch for his insane personification there. At the very least Slakey is a mass murderer. Who will go on committing murder and who knows what other forms of insane evil until he is stopped. And more than that…”

  I really had their attention now. All eyes were on me. All mouths mute as I raised the bottle and drank in dramatic silence. Then raised a hortatory finger.

  “Much much more than that. Look at all the lengths he went to, all the churches and organizations he created. All the masses of money he has collected. And why did he do all this? For the money, that’s obvious. The sums involved are staggering. So ask yourself-what does he want the money for? What are his plans?

  “Anyone who thinks they are for the mutual benefit of mankind may leave the room. All who stay will have the pleasure of hearing how we can find Slakey and stop him.

  “Now-would you like to know how that can be done?”

  CHAPTER 14

  “OF COURSE WE WANT TO hear your plan, darling.” Angelina said, then leaned over and kissed my cheek. “My husband the genius.”

  Facetious or not it was heartwarming. Bolivar and James were giving me cheerful thumbs-up signs, Sybil did the same and even Coypu was nodding in reluctant agreement. The only glum one was Inskipp, still counting his mounting debts. I rapped on the table with my beer bottle.

  “I hereby declare this meeting of the Galactic Salvation League to be open. Who is taking the minutes?”

  “My recorder is running,” Sybil said, sitting down and putting it on the table before her. “Welcome home, Jim diGriz. You had us all very worried.”

  “I had myself very worried. What Slakey did to you and me in Hell-or to Angelina and me on Glass-is reason enough to pursue him to the edges of the galaxy and put him out of business. But we have more reason to go after all the hims other than simple vindictiveness.”

  Inskipp sneered lightly. “And just what is that?”

  “I never thought that you would ask. I notice that while I was away you managed to lose track of him completely. Is that correct?”

  “Loosely speaking, why possibly, yes.”

  “Speaking very tightly I would say that now is the time for a plan that cannot miss. Professor-how goes your universe machine?”

  “Very well, thank you. The little matter of calibration will soon be licked.”

  “I’m cheered to hear that. How-many universes do you have access to?”

  He clattered his fingernails against his teeth, forehead furrowed in thought. “Theoretically of course the number is infinite. Perhaps we even create these universes-when we enter them, as you suggested when you came back from Hell. But, as of this moment, we have investigated or entered a little over forty-one.”

  “Is one of them Heaven?”

  “No-but we are still looking. While the machine we captured has settings for different destinations I have no way of identifying them without activation and entry”

  “What about Hell?”

  “We very definitely can go to Hell. You will remember that your son James hypnotized a Slakey and made him send Bolivar there to find you.”

  “Well that’s, it, then.” I sat back and sighed with satisfaction. “I could do with just a bit more to eat, if the sandwiches aren’t all gone.”

  “Stop toying with us, Jim diGriz, or you’ll get more than a sandwich in your gob!” Angelina suggested.

  “Sorry, my love. I don’t mean to make light of the situation. But it has been pretty grim of late and I was indulging myself.”

  “You’re forgiven. What’s so important about Hell?”

  “Slakey is there. In his red, fat, insane, well-armed condition. Don’t you think that if the other Slakeys could get him out of there-that they would? But they don’t. Probably because it would certainly kill him, that’s what Slakey on Glass told me. So we launch a little expedition to find him. And talk to him. An expedition in force because what one Slakey knows they all know. They won’t kill him-that would be too much like committing suicide. But they will have no compunction about polishing the rest of us off when we try to talk to him. But if we get there fast, maybe use a bit of hypnotism on him, ask a question or two, right, James?”

  “A piece of cake, Dad.”

  “We will then ask him to answer two incredibly important questions. Where is I-leaven-and what is the overall plan? It is imperative that we find out what the snakey Slakeys want all the money for.”

  “Do it,” Inskipp said, a man who always makes his mind up quickly. “What are you going to need for this job?”

  It was a good plan, and a tight one. As soon as Slakey found out what we were up to he would react. Violently. And he was well ahead of us technically. Coypu still-had not found a means of getting any operable machines into another universe. But Slakey in Hell had a working gauss rifle. I just hoped that there wasn’t any more universally transportable weaponry in Slakey’s hands.

  Our advantage would have to be speed of attack. And numbers.

  But our primary hit team had to be small so it could move fast. I would go because the whole thing was my idea. Then James had to be with me since he had to hypnotize the old red devil. And Angelina of course, she would not let me go alone. And of course Bolivar, who naturally would not permit a family outing without being present himself. We would go in fast and hit hard.

  But our flank would be protected by two hundred very mean and obnoxious Combat Marines. They would be armed only with their hands and feet and combative know-how.

  Which should be enough. They would be guided by Sybil, who

  certainly knew her away around Hell. Also, I had caught a number of dark looks from Angelina whenever she saw me talking to the female agent. Which meant that life would be a lot smoother if Sybil led the troopers.

  My old companion, Marine Captain (3rissle, would be in charge of the troops and I received a message that he urgently wanted to see me. I sent for him.

  “No guns?” he asked as he stamped through the door. “A marine is not a marine without a weapon.”

  “Unarmed combat, they’re supposed to know all about that kind of thing.”

  “They do. But they would do better with a grenade or two.”

  “They would fuse into lumps and would not go off. I couldn’t even open the blades on my pocketknife in Glass.”

  “Bayonets?”

  “They will get stuck in their scabbards. And don’t say leave the scabbards behind. I do not relish the thought of two hundred marines popping through into Hell and falling all over each other with naked bayonets in their hands. But, yes, I have thought about it and think that something can be done. We will all be carrying weapons.”

  “What?”

  “I will work out the details and you will see just before we leave. Dismissed.”

  It took a few days to make all the preparations, which gave us a useful breathing period. Angelina had had a chance to put some weight back on, four good meals a day helped, and we were all raring to go. Coypu had been fiddling with his equations and his circuits and had built a superior model of his dimensional doorway.

  “Basically its just a matter of power,” he explained. “Slakey had to conceal his machines, keep them small and out of sight. We have no such restrictions.”

  The new machine was most impressive. At great expense he had tapped directly into the planetwide and international electrical grid. A large, red, insulated cable, over a meter in diameter, led into the main ballroom of the hotel, now converted into an electronic jungle. In the middle of the dance floor was a full sized garage door mounted in a frame. I admired it-from the front only of course. Since it had no back. That is if you walked around it you couldn’t see it or it wasn’t there or something. But it looked sound and solid from the front.

  “Take a peek and see what we have got,” Coypu said, making some adjustments on his operating console. I turned the garage-door handle and opened the door a crack-then slammed it when the air began to whistle through.

  “-All black-with stars. And lower pressure. That’s not Hell.”

  “But I’m very close, that’s the adjoining one. Try it now.”

  A red sun burned down from the red sky. I sneezed when a whiff of hydrogen sulfide drifted out. “That’s it,” I said closing the door again. “Shall I call in the troops?”

  “I’m ready when you are.”

  They were all waiting expectantly for the signal. Sybil and Angelina were the first to get there. Moments later the tramp of marching feet heralded the arrival of the marines. They stamped in, marched in position, faced front and thundered to a halt.

  “Great,” I said. “Stand them at ease and be prepared for issue of weapons.”

  “Weapons!” Captain Grissle’s great jaw cracked into a unaccustomed smile.

  “There!” I said as James and Bolivar drove in with the laden freight wagons. I opened one of the boxes and pulled out a bloated red form and waved it on high.