After a while I’d figured out a plan. Leaving the choir and disrobing, I turned wolf. The north corridor was again deserted, which was lucky for any Johnnies I might have encountered. Having doubtless posted a guard at every door, they were cooling their chase. It went on, but quietly, systematically, no longer disruptive of religious atmosphere. Lupine senses helped me avoid patrols while I looked for a window.

  On the lower levels, these were in rooms that were occupied or whose doors were locked. I had to go to the sixth floor—where the scent of wrongness was almost more than I could bear—before finding a window in the corridor wall. It took resolution, or desperation, to jump through. The pain as the glass broke and slashed me was as nothing to the pain when I hit the concrete beneath.

  But I was Lyco. My injuries were not fatal or permanently crippling. The red rag of me stirred, grew together, and became whole. Sufficient of my blood was smeared around, unrecoverable, that I felt a bit weak and dizzy; but a meal would fix that.

  The stars still glittered overhead. Vision was uncertain. And I doubted the outer gatekeepers had been told much, if anything. The hierarchy would be anxious to hush this trouble as far as might be. I stripped off what remained of my clothes with my teeth, leaving the wereflash fairly well covered by my ruff, and trotted off to the same place where I’d entered. “Why, hullo, pooch,” said my young friend. “Where’d you come from?” I submitted to having my ears rumpled before I left.

  In Siloam’s darkened downtown I committed a fresh crime, shoving through another window, this time in the rear of a grocery store. Besides the several pounds of hamburger I found and ate, I needed transportation; and after humanizing I was more than penniless, I was naked. I phoned Barney. “Come and get me,” I said. “I’ll be wolf at one of these spots.” I gave him half a dozen possibilities, in case the pursuit of me spilled beyond cathedral boundaries.

  “What happened to my broom?” he demanded.

  “I had to leave it parked,” I said. “You can claim it tomorrow.”

  “I’m eager to hear the story.”

  “Well, it was quite a night, I can tell you.”

  My detailed relation I gave to Ginny after sneaking back into our house. I was numb with exhaustion, but she insisted on hearing everything at once, whispered as we lay side by side. Her questions drew each last detail from me, including a lot that had slipped my mind or that I hadn’t especially noticed at the time. The sun was up before she fixed my breakfast and allowed me to rest. With a few pauses for nourishment and drowsy staring, I slept a full twenty-four hours.

  Ginny explained this to our FBI man as the result of nervous prostration, which wasn’t too mendacious. She also persuaded him and his immediate boss (Shining Knife had gone to Washington) that if they wanted to keep matters under wraps, they’d better not hold us incommunicado. Our neighbors already knew something was afoot. They could be stalled for but a short while, our close friends and business associates for a shorter while yet. If the latter got worried, they could bring more to bear in the way of sortileges than the average person.

  The upshot was that we kept our guest. When Mrs. Delacorte dropped around to borrow a gill of brimstone, we introduced him as my cousin Louis and mentioned that we’d sent Val on an out-of-town visit while our burglary was being investigated. It didn’t rate more than a paragraph on an inside page of the daily paper. I was allowed to work again, Ginny to go shopping. We were told what number to call if we received any demands. Nothing was said about the men who shadowed us. They were good; without our special skills, we’d never have known about them.

  On the third morning, therefore, I showed at Nornwell. Barney Sturlason was primed. He found a do-not-disturb job for me to do in my office—rather, to fake doing while I paced, chain-smoked my tongue to leather, drank coffee till it gurgled in my ears—until time for an after-lunch conference with some outside businessmen. I knew what that conference was really to be about. When the intercom asked me to go there, I damn near snapped my head off accelerating before I remembered to walk the distance and say hello to those I passed.

  The meeting room was upstairs. Its hex against industrial espionage operated equally well against official surveillance. Barney bulked at the end of the table, collar open, cigar fuming. The assembled team comprised eleven, to help assure we’d harbor no Judas. I knew Griswold, Hardy, Janice Wenzel, and, slightly, Dr. Nobu, a metaphysicist we had sometimes consulted. Another man turned out to be a retired admiral, Hugh Charles, who’d specialized in intelligence; another was a mathematician named Falkenberg; a third was Pastor Karlslund from Barney’s church. All of these looked weary. They’d worked like galley slaves, practically up to this minute. The last pair seemed fresh, and totally undistinguished except that one had a large sample case which he’d put on the table.

  Before he got to their names, Barney made a pass and spoke a phrase. “Okay,” he said, “the security field is back at full strength. Come on out and join the coven.”

  Their figures blurred, went smoky, and firmed again as the Seeming passed. Ginny’s hair gleamed copper in the sunlight from the windows. Dr. Ashman opened his case. Svartalf poured out, restored to health, big, black, and arrogant as ever. “Mee-owr-r-r,” he scolded us. The pastor offered the cat a soothing hand. I didn’t have time to warn him. Luckily, Ashman was in the habit of carrying Band-Aids. Svartalf sat down by Ginny and washed himself.

  “How’d you manage it?” the admiral asked with professional interest.

  Ginny shrugged. “Simple. Barney told the doctor on the QT what to do and when. He fetched Svartalf at the hospital. We’d already verified there was no tail on him.” Svartalf switched his in a smug fashion. “Meanwhile I’d gone downtown. They’re having a sale at Perlman’s. Easiest crowd in the world to disappear into, and who’ll notice a bit of sorcery? Having changed my looks, I rendezvoused with Dr. Ashman and altered him.” Svartalf threw the man a speculative look. “We proceeded here. Barney knew exactly when we’d arrive, and had the field low enough that it didn’t whiff our disguises.”

  She opened her purse, which hadn’t needed much work to resemble a briefcase, got out her vanity, and inspected her appearance. In demure makeup and demure little dress, she hardly suggested a top-flight witch, till you noticed what else she was packing along.

  “To business,” Barney said. “We informed this team at once of what you’d discovered, Steve. It was a scientific as well as religious and political jolt. I think that we better review that second aspect before we go on to discuss what can maybe be done about it.”

  “If the Johannine Church is indeed of diabolic origin—” Griswold grimaced. “I hate to believe that. Not that I agree with its tenets, but—well, are you sure, Mr. Matuchek, that the vision you had in the cell was not actually an illusion?”

  “If the Johnnies are legit,” my wife clipped, “why are they keeping quiet? They ought to have filed a complaint or something. But never a peep, not even when Barney’s man fetched back his broomstick. I say they can’t risk an investigation.”

  “They might be trying to get your daughter returned to you through their paranatural contacts,” Hardy suggested without conviction.

  Admiral Charles snorted. “Big chance! I don’t doubt the Adversary would like to cancel the whole episode. But how? He can return her with zero time-lapse in hell, you say, Mr. Matuchek—quite astounding, that. Nevertheless, I don’t imagine he can change the past: the days we’ve lived without her, the things we’ve learned as a consequence.”

  “Our silence could be her ransom,” Hardy said.

  “What man would feel bound by that kind of bargain?” the admiral replied.

  Karlslund added: “No contracts can be made with the Low Ones anyhow. Being incapable of probity, a devil is unable to believe humans won’t try to cheat him.”

  “So,” Charles said, “he’d gain nothing by releasing her, and lose whatever hostage value she has.”

  Ashman said painfully: “He’s already succeeded in dividing the forces of good. I get the impression this meeting is in defiance of the government, an actual conspiracy. Is that wise?”

  “Let me handle that question,” Barney said. “I’ve got connections in Washington, and Admiral Charles, who has more, confirms my guess as to what’s going on there. The facts of the kidnapping are being officially suppressed. The reason is mainly fear—-of the consequences; there are a lot of Johnny voters—though ordinary bureaucratic inertia enters in, too. If no further outrages take place, the government won’t move. And we know that’s to be the case. The kidnapping was a bad mistake by someone on the Adversary’s side.”

  He halted to rekindle his cigar. The room had become very still as we listened. Smoke filled the sunbeams with blue strata and our nostrils with staleness. Ginny and I exchanged a forlorn look across the table. Yesterday I’d gone into the basement to replace a blown fuse. She’d come along, because these days we stayed together when we could. Some things of Valeria’s stood on a shelf, lately outgrown and not yet discarded. The ever-filled bottle, the Ouroboros teething ring, the winged training spoon, the little pot with a rainbow at the end—We went upstairs and asked our guard to change the fuse.

  Her fists clenched before her. Svartalf rubbed his head on her arm, slowly, demanding no attention in return.

  “Therefore,” Barney said, “as of today, we, this bunch of us, have the right and duty to take what action we can.

  “You see, Doctor, we’ve done nothing technically illegal. Steve was not under arrest. He was free to go where he chose, in any manner he wished. At most he committed a civil tort, invading private sections of the cathedral. Let the hierarchy sue him for damages if it wants. It won’t; its monks committed a felonious assault on him!

  “Likewise, we aren’t contemplating any crime and thus we aren’t conspiring. I grant you, soon the National Defense Act is likely to be invoked against us. That’s one reason we have to move fast. But at present we are still legally free to do what we have in mind.”

  “Also,” said Falkenberg, “as I understand the situation, the, ah, enemy are off balance at present. Mr. Matuchek took them by surprise. Evidently the, ah, Adversary is debarred from giving them direct help, counsel, or information. Or else he considers it inadvisable, as it might provoke intervention by the Highest. The, ah, Johannine Magi can do extraordinary things, but they are not omniscient or omnipotent. They can’t be sure what we have learned and what we will attempt. Give them time, however, in this universe, and they will, ah, recover their equilibrium, quite possibly make some countermove.”

  Ginny said out of her Medusa mask: “Whatever the rest of you decide, Steve and I won’t sit waiting.”

  “Blazes, no!” exploded from me. Svartalf laid back his ears, fangs gleamed amidst his whiskers and the fur stood up on him.

  “This group is already resolved to help you,” Barney said.

  Eyes went from us to Ashman. He flushed and said: “I’m not going henhouse on you. Remember, all this has just been sprung on me without warning. I’m bound to raise the arguments that occur to me. I don’t believe that encouraging Valeria’s parents to commit suicide will do her any good.”

  “What do you mean?’ Barney asked.

  “Do I misunderstand? Isn’t your intention to send Steven and Virginia—my patients—into the hell universe?”

  That brought me up cold. I’d been ready and raging for action; but now the heart slammed in me. I stared at Ginny. She nodded.

  The whole group registered various degrees of dismay. I scarcely noticed the babble that lifted or Barney’s quelling of it. Finally we all sat in a taut-strung silence.

  “I must apologize to this committee,” Barney said. His tone was deep and measured as a vesper bell’s. “I set you onto various aspects of a study of the Low Continuum. You did magnificently, especially after you got Steve’s findings to work with. But you were too busy to think beyond the assignment, or to imagine that it was more than a long-range, rather hypothetical study: something that might eventually give us capabilities against further troubles of this nature.

  “I saw no alternative to handling it that way. But Ginny Matuchek reached me meanwhile, surreptitiously. I gave her the whole picture, we discussed it at length and evolved a plan of campaign.” He bowed slightly toward Ashman. “Congratulations on your astuteness, Doctor.”

  She knew, I thought in the shards of thinking, and yet no one could have told it on her, not even me.

  She raised her hand. “The case is this,” she said with the same military crispness as when first I’d met her. “A small, skilled team has a chance of success. A large, unskilled bunch has none. It’d doubtless suffer catastrophe.”

  “Death, insanity, or imprisonment in hell with everything that that implies—” Ashman whispered. “You assume Steven will go.”

  “I know better than to try stopping him,” she said.

  That gave me a measure of self-control again. I was not unconscious of admiring glances. But mainly I listened to her:

  “He and I and Svartalf are as good a squad as you’ll find. If anybody has a hope of pulling the stunt off, we do. The rest of you can help with preparations and with recovering us. If we don’t return, you’ll be the repositories of what has already been learned. Because these discoveries are vitally important in themselves—just like anything else we may find out.”

  Ashman hesitated before saying, with a kind of smile, “All right, I apologize. You must admit my reaction was natural and I’m still afraid for you. But you have my support. May I ask what your scheme is?”

  Barney relaxed a trifle. “You may,” he said. “Especially since we’ve got to explain it to some of the others.”

  He stubbed out his cigar and began on a fresh one. “Let me put the proposition in nickel words first,” he said, “then the experts can correct and amplify according to their specialties. Our universe has a straightforward space-time geometry. Hell doesn’t. Demons know how to move around through those wildly contorted and variable dimensions. Men don’t. They can get there, but then are practically helpless. Or were, until today.

  “You see, Steve’s information that we could reach any point in hell time opened a door or broke a logjam or something. Suddenly there was a definite basic fact to go on, a relationship between the Low Continuum and ours that could be mathematically described. Dr. Falkenberg set up the equations and started solving them for different conditions. Professor Griswold and Bill Hardy helped by suggesting how the laws of nature would be affected. Oh, we’ve barely begun, and our conclusions haven’t been subjected to experimental test. But at least they’ve enabled Dr. Nobu and me to design some spells. We completed them this morning. They should protect the expedition, give it some guardianship when it arrives, and haul it back fast. That’s more than anybody previous had going for them.”

  “Insufficient.” Charles was the new objector. “You can’t have a full description of the hell universe—why, we don’t have that even for this cosmos—and you absolutely can’t predict what crazy ways the metric there varies from point to point.”

  “True,” Barney said.

  “So protection which is adequate at one place will be useless elsewhere.”

  “Not if the space-time configuration can be described mathematically as one travels. Then the spells can be adjusted accordingly.”

  “What? But that’s an impossible job. No mortal man—”

  “Right,” Ginny said.

  We gaped at her.

  “A passing thing Steve heard, down in the crypts, was the clue,” Ginny said. “Same as your remark, actually, Admiral. No mortal man could do it. But the greatest geometers are dead.”

  A gasp went around the table.

  With appropriate Seemings laid on, and Svartalf indignantly back in the sample case, our community left the plant on a company carpet. It was now close to four. If my FBI shadow didn’t see me start home around five or six o’clock, he’d get suspicious. But there wasn’t a lot I could do about that.

  We landed first at St. Olaf’s while Pastor Karlslund went in to fetch some articles. Janice Wenzel, seated behind us, leaned forward and murmured: “I guess I’m ignorant, but isn’t this appealing to the saints a Catholic rather than a Lutheran thing?”

  The question hadn’t been raised at the conference. Karlslund was satisfied with making clear the distinction between a prayer—a petition to the Highest, with any spells we cast intended merely to ease a way for whoever might freely respond—and an illegitimate attempt at necromancy.

  “I doubt if the sect makes any difference,” Ginny said. “What is the soul? Nobody knows. The observations that prove it exists are valid, but scattered and not repeatable under controlled conditions. As tends to be the case for many paranatural phenomena.”

  “Which, however,” Dr. Nobu put in, “is the reason in turn why practical progress in goetics is so rapid once a correct insight is available. For example, three days after learning about the time variability of hell, we feel some confidence that our new spells will work. The numerical details just aren’t as important as in physics technology…But as for the soul, I incline towards the belief that its character is supernatural rather than paranatural.”

  “Not me,” Ginny said. “I’d call it an energy structure that’s formed by the body but outlives that matrix. Once free, it can easily move between universes. If it hangs around here for some reason, like remorse, isn’t that a ghost? If the Highest allows it to come nearer His presence, isn’t that Heaven? If the Lowest has more attraction for it, isn’t that damnation? If it enters a newly fertilized ovum, isn’t that reincarnation?”

  “Dear me,” Janice said. Ginny uttered a brittle laugh.