Dickson, Gordon - The Dragon and the George

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Chapter 1
At 10:30 a.m., sharp, James Eckert pulled up in front of Stoddard Hall on the
Riveroak College campus, where Grottwold Weinar Hansen had his lab. Angie
Farrell was not, however, ready and waiting at the curb. Of course.
It was a warm, bright September morning.
Jim sat in the car and tried to keep his temper un- der control. It would not
be Angie's fault. That idiot of a Grottwold undoubtedly had dreamed up some-
thing to keep her working overtime in spite of-or perhaps because of-the fact
he knew she and Jim were supposed to go home-hunting this morning. It was hard
not to lose his temper with someone like Grottwold, who was not only one of
the world's non- prizes but who had been very patently trying to take Angie
away from Jim and get her for himself.
One of the two big doors on the front of the Stoddard Hall opened and a figure
came out. But it was not Angie. It was a stocky young man with bushy reddish
hair and mustache, carrying an overstaffed briefcase. Seeing Jim in the car,
he came down the steps over to the car and leaned on the edge of the opened
win- dow on the curb side of the front seat.
"Waiting for Angie?" he asked.
"That's right, Danny," said Jim. "She was supposed to be out here to meet me,
but evidently Grottwold's still hanging on to her."
"That's his style." Danny Cerdak was a teaching assistant in the Physics
Department. He was the only other Class AA volleyball player on campus.
"You're going out to see Cheryl's trailer?"
"If Angie ever gets loose in time," said Jim. "Oh, she'll probably be along
any second now. Say, do the two of you want to drop over to my place after we
play tomorrow night? Nothing special, just pizza and beer and a few other
people from the team with their wives and so forth."
"Sounds fine," said Jim, glumly, "if I'm not stuck with some extra work for
Shorles. Thanks, in any case, though; and we'll certainly be there if we can
make it."
"Right." Danny straightened up. "See you tomor- row for the game, then."
He went off. Jim returned to his own thoughts. At the same time, he told
himself, maturity dictated that he should not lose his emotional control over
something like this-even though they only had two hours to get to the trailer
court and return and have lunch before getting Angie back to her part-time job
as Grottwold's lab assistant. He must remember that frustration was a part of
life. He had to learn to live with the whole business of selfish department
heads, inadequate salaries and an economy that was pinching Riveroak College
here, like all other educational institutions, to the point where it seemed
that about all you could do with a doctorate in medieval history was use the
diploma to shine your shoes, before going to apply for a job as a grain
shoveler-
Jim hauled himself up in his thoughts at this point, having noticed that, far
from calming him down, this rehearsing of things to be endured had his fists
white- knuckled and beginning to bend the ancient steering wheel of the Gorp.
Nothing about the Gorp was strong enough to ignore that kind of treatment. For
a ten- year-old Fiat, it was still a faithful little car, but no honest person
could call it in good shape. On the other hand, Jim himself-like many Class AA
volleyball players-was in shape with a vengeance. He stood a shade under six
feet, but even professional weight- guessers usually underestimated by twenty
or more his two hundred and ten pounds, which he carried mostly in bone and
hard muscle. Unfortunately, that
sort of physical engine, matched with an instinct for taking direct action
when challenged-which was use- ful on the volleyball courts with the caliber
of oppo- nents Jim had been facing in tournament play for some years now, but
not perhaps the best thing so- cially-gave Jim reason to consider that he had
cause for concern about himself.
Thank heaven for Angie. The beautiful thing about her was that she could get
results from people without becoming at all annoyed with them, in situations
when Jim would have sworn that the other persons were deliberately looking for
a fight. How she managed it, Jim had never been able to figure out. As far as
he could see, all she did was to explain matters in a level, friendly voice.
Whereupon, for some reason, the other people immediately stopped doing
whatever they had been doing that was antagonistic and became friendly and
helpful. Angie was really rather special; partic- ularly for someone hardly
bigger than a minute. Look at the way she handled Grottwold...
Jim woke to the fact that time had been sliding away as he had been sitting
here thinking. He looked at his watch and scowled. Nearly a quarter to eleven.
This was too much. If Grottwold didn't have the sense to let her go, Angie
herself ought to have broken away by this time.
He pushed open the car door on his side, and was just getting out, when one of
the two big front doors swung open again and Angie came running down the steps
to the car, pulling on her light beige topcoat as she ran. Her brown eyes were
bright and her cheeks pink with her hurry.
"Oh, there you are," said Jim, getting back in.
"I'm sorry." Angie got into the Gorp on her side and slammed the door behind
her. "Grottwold's all excited. He thinks he's right on the verge of proving
astral projection is possible-"
"Whichjection?"
Jim keyed the Gorp to life and pulled away from the curb.
"Astral projection. Setting the spirit free to wander
outside the body. What with the results he's been get- ting using advanced
input on biofeedback circuitry to duplicate certain forms of sleep states-"
"You aren't letting him experiment on you, are you? I thought we got that
settled."
"Don't get all worked up, now," Angie said. "I'm not letting him experiment on
me, I'm helping him with his experiments. Don't worry, he's not going to
hypnotize me, or anything like that."
"He tried it once."
Jim pulled the Gorp out of the college grounds onto West Street and turned
down on the ramp leading to Highway Five.
"He only tried. You were the one who hypnotized me, if you'll remember-after
Grottwold taught you how."
"Anyway, you're not to let anyone hypnotize you again. Me or Hansen, or
anybody."
"Of course," said Angie, softly.
There she went, doing it again-just what he had been thinking about, Jim told
himself. Now he was the one she'd just handled. All of a sudden there was no
more argument and he was wondering what he had gotten excited about in the
first place. He was also feeling half guilty for making a fuss over something
that probably had not been that important to begin with.
"Anyway," he said, heading out along Highway Five toward the trailer court
Danny Cerdak had told him about, "if this trailer for rent turns out to be the
deal Danny said it was, we can get married and maybe, living together, we can
get by cheaply enough so you won't have to work for Grottwold as well as
holding down your assistantship in English."
"Jim," said Angie, "you know better."
"We could."
"We could not. The only reason the co-op can get by charging us a hundred
twenty apiece per month for food and board is that it makes slop food in
quantity and beds us all down in double-decker bunks in dor- mitories. Any
place we find for ourselves is going to
put our living costs up, not down. I can't manage meals for us as cheaply as
the co-op can. No, I can't quit my work with Grottwold. But at least having a
place of our own will make it seem worth while to go on. We've got to have a
place of our own-but let's not
fool ourselves about the expense."
"We could sort of camp out in the new place, the
first few months."
"How could we? To cook and eat, we've got to have
utensils, and a table to eat on. We need another table so we can each have one
to correct tests on and so forth for our jobs at the college. And chairs. We
need at least a mattress to sleep on, and something like a dresser for the
clothes that can't be hung up-"
"All right. I'll get an extra job, then."
"No, you won't. I had to stop work on my thesis. You're going to stick with
writing papers for the aca- demic journals until you publish something. Then
see Shorles keep you out of that instructorship!"
"Oh, hell," said Jim. "I'll probably never get any- thing published anyway."
"You better not mean that!" For once Angie
sounded almost angry.
"Well, actually, no," Jim said, a little shame- facedly. "Actually, this last
paper was going pretty well this morning before I headed off for class."
Professor Thibault Shorles, head of the History De- partment, liked his
assistants to sit in on. all of his classes, in addition to doing the usual
work of correct- ing tests, reserving reference books for the students in the
course, and so forth. It was a neat little whim that added eight hours a week
to the time Jim other- wise required to put in to earn his hundred and
seventy-five dollars a month.
"How was he?" Angie asked. "Did you ask him
about the instructorship again?"
"He wasn't in the mood."
"He wasn't? Or you weren't?"
Jim winced internally. Shorles had interviewed Jim at the History Association
meeting last year in Chi- cago; and as good as promised him a recently created
instructorship just added to the history department Shorles headed at
Riveroak. With this prospect, An- gie had tried for, and to the happiness of
both of them, got, a teaching assistantship in the English Depart- ment. She
was still working for her doctorate in Eng- lish literature, Jim having been
three years ahead of her at Michigan State, where they met as graduate
students. With both of them set for jobs at the same academic institution, it
had looked as if they had the future taped. But then when they had gotten
here, Shorles broke the news that because of last-minute budget problems, Jim
could not be given his instructor- ship until the spring quarter at the
earliest. Meanwhile, Shorles had a teaching assistantship open...
It had taken Jim less than a month to find out the real nature of the "budget
problem." Like academic departments in many colleges and universities, the
staff teaching history at Riveroak College was riddled with internal politics.
Two established factions in the department opposed each other on almost every
point. Shorles, independent of both, had gotten by for years by playing them
against each other. But an additional instructor added at this time could
cause a reshuffling of allegiances and a resultant upset in the neat balance
of power. On the other hand, Professor Theodore N. Jellamine, the outspoken,
motorcycle-riding vice- chairman of the department, was thinking of retiring
this coming spring. His leaving would mean promo- tions for those under him;
and by controlling these, Shorles could then absorb a new instructor into a
fresh balance of power hand-tailored by himself.
"I'm sorry, Angie," said Jim, contritely. "I had to sit through that class for
a hour with nothing to do but look interested and think of what he's done to
us;
and by the time the bell rang, I didn't dare talk to him for fear I'd put one
in his teeth when he turned me down again."
There was a moment's stark silence in the car as they drove along; then Jim,
staring straight ahead out • the windshield, felt his arm squeezed gently.
"That's all right," Angie told him. "If you felt like
that, you did the right thing. You'll catch him some- time when you're able to
talk calmly about it."
They drove on for a little while longer without talk- ing.
"There it is," said Jim, nodding to the right, off the highway.
Chapter 2
The Bellevue Trailer Court had not been laid out with an eye to attractiveness
and none of its own- ers in the past twenty years had done anything to amend
the oversight. Its present proprietor, in his fif- ties, was as tall and heavy
as Jim Eckert, but his skin was now too large for his long face. The flesh had
fallen into folds and creases, and the Prussian blue shirt he wore ballooned
loosely about him. His faded maroon pants were drawn into deep puckers at his
waist by a thin black belt. His breath smelled as if he had just been snacking
on overripe cheese, and in the sun-hot interior of the empty mobile home he
showed Jim and Angie this aspect of him was hard to ignore.
"Well," he said, waving at the mobile home walls about them, "this is it. I'll
leave you to look it over. Just come back to the office when you're ready."
He took his breath outside, leaving the door open behind him. Jim looked at
Angie, but she was run- ning her fingers over the cracked varnish on one of
the cupboard doors above the sink.
"It's pretty bad, isn't it?" Jim remarked.
It was. Obviously the mobile home was in the last stages of its life. The
floor canted visibly behind Jim and as visibly canted toward the trailer's
other end,
where Angie now stood. The sink was stained and gritty, the dusty windows sat
loosely in their fram- ing, and the walls were too thin to give anything but
minimum insulation.
"It'd be like camping out in the snow when winter comes," Jim said.
He thought of the ice-hard January of a Minnesota winter, both of them twenty-
three miles from Riveroak College and the Gorp running on threadbare tires
plus a wom-out motor. He thought of summer sessions at the college and the
baking heat of a Minnesota July as they both sat in here with endless test
papers to correct. But Angie did not answer.
She was opening and shutting the door to the trail- er's shower-and-toilet
stall. Or, trying to shut it. The door did not seem to latch very well. Her
shoulders in the blue jacket were small and square. He thought of suggesting
they give up, go back and check the list- ings at the Student Housing Bureau
once more for an apartment around the college. But Angie would not admit
defeat that easily. He knew her. Besides, she knew he knew it was hopeless,
their trying to find any- thing the two of them could pay for close in.
Some of the dreary grittiness of the mobile home seemed to blow through his
soul on a bleak wind of despair. For a moment he felt a sort of desperate hun-
ger for the kind of life that had existed in the Euro- pean Middle Ages of his
medievalist studies. A time in which problems took the shapes of flesh-and-
blood opponents, instead of impalpable situations arising out of academic
cloak-and-dagger politics. A time when, if you ran across a Shorles, you could
deal with him with a sword, instead of with words. It was un- real that they
should be in this situation simply be- cause of an economic situation and
because Shorles did not want to disturb the political balance of his de-
partment.
"Come on, Angie," Jim said. "We can find some- thing better than this."
She wheeled around. Under her dark hair, her brown eyes were grim.
"You said you'd leave it up to me, this last week."
"I know..."
"For two months we hunted around the campus, the way you wanted. Staff
meetings for the fall se- mester start tomorrow. There isn't any more time."
"We could still look, nights."
"Not anymore. And I'm not going back to that co- op. We're going to have a
place of our own."
"But . . . look at this place, Angie!" he said. "And it's twenty-three miles
from the campus. The Gorp could throw a rod tomorrow!"
"If he does, we'll fix him.'And we'll fix up this place. You know we can do it
if we want to!"
He yielded. They went back to the trailer park of- fice and the manager.
"We'll take it," Angie told him.
"Thought you'd like it," said the manager, getting papers out of a drawer in
his littered desk. "How'd you happen to hear about it, anyway? I haven't even
advertised it yet."
"Your former tenant was the sister-in-law of a friend of mine," Jim answered,
"guy I play volley- ball with. When she had to move to Missouri, he told us
her mobile home was available."
The manager nodded.
"Well, you can count yourself lucky." He pushed the papers across to them. "I
think you told me you both teach at the college?"
"That's right," said Angie.
"Then, if you'll just fill in a few lines on these forms and sign them. You
married?"
"We're going to be," said Jim, "by the time we move m here."
"Well, if you aren't married yet, you've either got to both sign or one of you
has to be listed as sub- renting. It's easier if you both sign. Then that'll
be two months rent, the first and the last, as a deposit against damage. Two
hundred and eighty dollars."
Angie and Jim both stopped handling the papers.
"Two-eighty?" Angie asked. "Danny Cerdak's
sister-in-law was paying a hundred and ten a month. We happen to know."
"Right. I had to raise it."
"Thirty dollars more a month?" said Jim. "For that?"
"You don't like it," said the manager, straightening up, "you don't have to
rent it."
"Of course," Angie said, "we can understand you might have to raise the rent a
bit, the way prices are going up everywhere. But we just can't pay a hundred
and forty a month."
"That's too bad. Sorry. But that's what it costs now. I'm not the owner, you
know. I just follow orders."
Well, that was that. Back in the Gorp once more, they rolled down the windows
and Jim turned the key in the ignition. The Gorp gorped rustily to life. They
headed back down the highway toward the college.
They did not talk much on the way back in.
"It's all right, though," Angie said as Jim pulled into the parking lot next
to their co-op and they went in together to lunch. "We'll find something. This
chance opened up all of a sudden. Something else is bound to. We'll just keep
looking until it does."
"Uh-huh," said Jim.
They cheered up a little over lunch.
"In a way," Angie explained, "it was our own fault. We got to counting on that
mobile home too much, just because we'd been the first ones to hear about it
being vacant. From now on, I'm not going to count on anything until we've
moved into it."
"You and me both."
By the time they had eaten, little time was left. Jim drove back to Stoddard
Hall and let Angie out.
"You'll be through at three?" he asked. "You won't let him keep you overtime?"
"No," she said, closing the car door and talking to him through the open
window. Her voice softened. "Not today. I'll be out here when you pull up."
"Good," he said; and watched her go up the steps and vanish through one of the
big doors.
10
Putting the Gorp in gear, he pulled away and around to the other side of the
campus to park in his usual space behind the History Building. He had said
noth- ing to Angie, but over lunch a decision had crystalized inside him. He
was going to confront Shorles with the demand that he give him his
instructorship without any further delay-by the end of spring quarter and the
beginning of the first summer session at latest. He ran up the three nights of
the back set of stairs and came out into the long, marble floor corridor where
most of the top staff members in the department had their offices.
Shorles was one step above anyone else in the de- partment. He had a secretary
in his outer office, who doubled as secretary to the department itself. Jim
came through the door now and found her retyping something that looked
suspiciously like the manu- script of Shorles' latest paper on the Etruscan
roots of modem civilization.
"Hi, Marge," Jim said. "Is he in?"
Jim glanced toward the door leading to Shorles* separate office as he spoke,
and saw it closed. So he knew Marge's answer almost before she gave it.
"Not just now," said Marge, a tall, sandy-haired girl in her mid-thirties.
"Ted Jellamine's with him. They shouldn't be more than a little while, though.
Do you want to wait?"
"Yes."
He took one of the hard seats for visitors in the outer office; and, at her
desk. Marge resumed typing.
The minutes crawled slowly by. Another half-hour passed and another quarter-
hour on top of that. Sud- denly the door burst open and out came Shorles, car-
rying his ample belly energetically before him and closely followed by Ted
Jellamine in cowboy boots and a checkered houndstooth jacket. As they headed
for the outer door without pausing, Shorles spoke to his secretary.
"Marge, I won't be back this afternoon. We're headed for the Faculty Club. If
my wife calls, she can find me there."
11
Jim had got to his feet automatically as the door opened and taken half a step
in pursuit of the two men as they snailed through the room. Noticing him now,
Shories gave him a cheerful wave of a hand.
"Marvelous news, Jim!" he said. "Ted, here, is go- ing to stay on another
year!"
The door slammed behind both men. Jim stared at it, stunned, then turned to
Marge, who looked back at him with sympathy.
"He just wasn't thinking. That's why he broke the news to you that way," she
said.
"Ha!" said Jim. "He was gloating and you know it!"
"No," Marge shook her head. "No, really, you're wrong. He and Ted have been
close friends for years;
and Ted's been under pressure to retire early. But we're a private college
with no automatic cost-of-living increases in the pensions, and with this
inflation Ted wants to hang on to his job for the present if he still can. He
really was just happy for Ted, when it turned out Ted could stay on; and he
just didn't think of what that meant to you."
"Mmph!" said Jim, and staUked out.
He was all the way back to his parking spot before he calmed down long enough
to check his watch. It was almost two-thirty. He had to pick up Angie again in
half an hour. He had no time to do much of any- thing before then, either on
his essay, or in the way of his duties as assistant to Shories-not that he
felt over- whelmingly like doing work for Shories right now. He got into the
Gorp, slammed the door and drove off, hardly caring where he went as long as
it was away from the campus.
He turned left on High Street, turned left again on Wallace Drive, and emerged
a few minutes later on the Old River Road alongside the Baling River: two-
lane asphalt strip that had been the old route to the neighboring town of
Bixley, before Highway Five had been laid over the rolling farmland on a
parallel route.
The old road was normally free of traffic and today was no exception. It was
even relatively free from
12
houses and plowed fields, since most of the ground was low-lying and inclined
to be marshy. Jim drove along with no particular destination in sight or mind,
arid gradually the peace of the riverside area through which he was passing
began to bring him back to some coolness of mind.
Gradually he brought himself to consider that pos- sibly Marge had been right
and that Ted Jellamine might in his own way have been as concerned about his
future and his livelihood as Jim was himself. It was a relief to come around
to this point of view, be- cause Ted Jellamine was the one other member of the
History Department whom Jim liked personally. Like Jim, he was an
individualist.' It was only the factors of their situation that made them
competitors.
But, outside of this crumb of comfort, Jim gleaned little happiness out of
this new development. Perhaps it was not Ted who was to blame, but the tight
eco- nomic situation which squeezed them all. Nonetheless, once again Jim
caught himself wishing that life and the problems it produced were more
concrete and in a position to be attacked more directly.
He glanced at his watch. It was fifteen minutes till three. Time to head back
to Angie. He found a cross- road, turned the Gorp around and drove back toward
the campus. Luckily, he had been driving slowly along the river road and was
not that far from town. It would not do to have her standing and waiting for
him, after all his insistence that she not let Grottwold keep her overtime and
make him wait outside.
He pulled up in front of Stoddard Hall, actually with a couple of minutes to
spare. Turning off the mo- tor, he waited. As he sat, he put his mind to work
to decide on the best way of breaking the news of his latest blow to Angie. To
come up with news of this kind on the same day their hopes of renting the mo-
bile home had been dashed was the worst possible timing. For a short while he
played with the notion of simply not saying anything about it today at all.
But of course that would never work. She would want
13
to know why he had not told her immediately; and she would be quite right in
asking. They would get no- where if they fell into the habit of hiding bad
news from each other out of a mistaken idea of kindness.
Jim glanced at his watch and was startled to see that while he had been
sitting thinking, nearly ten min- utes had gone by. Angie was staying
overtime, after all.
Something popped inside Jim. Suddenly he was completely angry-cold angry.
Grottwold had pulled his delaying tactics once too often. Jim got out of the
Gorp, closed the door and headed up the front steps to the Hall. Inside the
big double doors was the main staircase, its shallow stair treads capped with
gray granite which had been worn into hollows by student's feet over a number
of years. Jim went up them two at a time.
Three stories up and thirty feet down the hall on the right was the frosted-
glass door to the laboratory section in which Grottwold had a ten-foot-square
cu- bicle. Jim went through, saw the door to the cubicle was closed and strode
in without knocking.
Grottwold was standing before what looked like some sort of control panel to
Jim's right; and he looked around stardedly as Jim burst in. Angie was seated
against the far wall in what looked like a dentist's chair, facing Jim, but
with her head and the upper part of her face completely covered by what looked
like the helmet of the hair dryer in a beauty shop.
"Angie!" Jim snapped.
She disappeared.
Jim stood for a timeless moment, staring at the empty chair and the empty
helmet. She could not be gone. She could not have just winked out like that!
What he had just seen was impossible. He stood there waiting for his eyes to
disavow what he had just seen and return him sight of Angie, still before him.
"Apportation!"
The strangled yell from Grottwold jarred Jim out of his half-stunned
condition. He swung about to face the tall, shock-haired psychology graduate,
who was
14
himself staring at the empty chair and helmet with a bloodless face. Life and
purpose came back to Jim.
"What is it? What happened?" he shouted at Grottwold. "Where's Angie?"
"She apported!" stammered Grottwold, still staring at the place where Angie
had been. "She really ap- ported! And I was just trying for astral projection-
"
"What?" Jim snarled, turning on him. "What were you trying?"
"Astral projection! Just astral projection, that's all!" Grottwold yelped.
"Just projecting her astral self out of her body. I wasn't even trying to get
her to experi- ence an actual projection. All I was hoping for was just enough
astral movement to register on the microammeters connected to the plant
ganglia I'm using as response indicator. But she apported instead. She-"
"Where is she?" roared Jim.
"I don't know! I don't, I swear I don't!" the tall young man's voice climbed
the scale. "There's no way I can tell-"
"You better know!"
"I don't! I know what the settings on my instruments are; but-"
Jim took three steps across the room, picked the taller man up by the lapels
of his lab jacket and slammed him back against the wall to the left of the
instrumenc panel.
"GET HER BACK!"
"I tell you I can't!" yelled Grottwold. "She wasn't supposed to do this; so I
wasn't prepared for it! To get her back I'd first have to spend days or even
weeks figuring out what happened. Then I'd have to figure out some way of
reversing the process. And even if I did, by that time it might turn out to be
too late be- cause she'd have moved out of the physical area she's apported
to!
Jim's head was whirling. It was unbelievable that he should be standing here
listening to this nonsense and shoving Grottwold against the wall-but far more
believable, at that, than that Angie should really
15
have disappeared. Even now, he could not really be- lieve what had happened.
But he had seen her disappear.
He increased his grip on Grottwold's lapels.
"All right, turkey!" he said. "You get her back here, or I'll start taking you
apart right now."
"I tell you I can't! Stop-" Grottwold cried as Jim pulled him forward from the
wall preparatory to slam- ming him back against it-or through it, if that was
possible. "Wait! I've got an idea."
Jim hesitated, but kept his grip.
"What is it?" he demanded.
"There's just a chance. A long chance," Grottwold babbled. "You'd have to
help. But it might work. Yes, it might just work."
"All right!" Jim snapped. "Talk fast. What is it?"
"I could send you after her-" Grottwold broke off at something that was almost
a shriek of terror. "Wait! I'm serious. I tell you this might work."
"You're frying to get rid of me, top," said Jim be- tween his teeth. "You want
to get rid of the only wit- ness that could testify against you!"
"No, no!" said Grottwold. "This will work. I know it will work. The more I
think about it, the more I know it'll work. And if it does, I'll be famous."
Some of the panic seemed to go out of him. He straightened up and made an
effort-an unsuccess- ful one-to push Jim away from him.
"Let me go!" he said. "I have to get my instruments, or I can't do Angie or
anyone else any good. What do you think I am, anyway?"
"A murderer!" said Jim, grimly.
"All right. Think what you want! I don't care what you think. But you know how
I felt about Angie. I don't want anything to happen to her, either. I want to
get her back safely here as much as you do!"
Cautiously, Jim let go of the other man but kept his hands ready to grab him
again.
"Go ahead, then," he said. "But move fast."
"I'm moving as fast as I can." Grottwold turned about to his control panel,
muttering to himself. "Yes,
16
that's the way I thought I set it. Yes ... Yes, there's no
other way..."
"What are you talking about?" Jim demanded.
Hansen looked back at him over one boney shoul- der.
"We can't do anything about getting her back until we know where she's gone,"
he said. "Now, all I know is I asked her to concentrate on anything she liked
and she said she'd concentrate on dragons."
"What dragons? Where?"
"I don't know where, I tell you! It could be dragons in a museum, or anyplace!
That's why we have to locate her; and why you've got to help or we can't do
it."
"Well, tell me what to do, then," said Jim.
"Just sit down in the chair there-" Grottwold broke off as Jim took a menacing
step toward him. "All right, then, don't do it! Take away our last chance to
bring her back!"
Jim hesitated. Then, slowly, reluctantly, he turned back to the empty
dentist's chair at which Grottwold had been pointing.
"You'd better be right about this," he said.
He walked over and seated himself gingerly.
"What are you going to do, anyway?" he asked.
"There's nothing to worry about!" said Grottwold. "I'm going to leave the
control settings just the way they were when she apported. But I'll lower the
volt- age. That must have been what made her apport in the first place. There
was just too much power behind her. I'll reduce the power and that way you'll
project, not apport."
"What does that mean?"
"It means you won't go anywhere. You'll stay right there in the chair. Only
your mind'll reach out and project in the same direction Angie went."
"You're sure about that?"
"Of course I'm sure. Your body will stay right in the chair. Just your astral
self will go to join Angie. That's the way it should have worked for her in
the
17
first place. Maybe she was concentrating too hard-"
"Don't try to blame it on her!"
"I'm not. I just- Anyway, don't you forget to con- centrate, too. Angie was
experienced in this sort of concentration. You aren't. So you'll have to make
an effort. Think of Angie. Concentrate on her. Concen- trate on her in some
place with dragons."
"All right," Jim growled. "Then what?"
"If you do it right, you'll end up wherever she ap- ported to. You won't
really be there, of course," said Grottwold. "It'll all be subjective. But
you'll feel as if you're there, and since Angie's on the same instrument
setting, she ought to be aware of your astral self being there, even if no one
else there is."
"All right, all right!" said Jim. "But how do I get her back?"
"You'll have to get her to concentrate on returning," Grottwold answered. "You
remembered how I taught you to hypnotize her-?"
"I remember, all right!"
"Well, try to hypnotize her again. She's got to be- come completely oblivious
to wherever her present sur- roundings are before she'll be able to apport
back here. Just put her under and keep telling her to con- centrate on the
lab, here. When she disappears, you'll know she's come back."
"And what," said Jim, "about me?"
"Oh, it's nothing for you," Grottwold said. "You just close your eyes and will
yourself back here. Since your body never left here to begin with, you'll
automatically return the minute you don't want to be someplace else."
"You're sure about that?"
"Of course I'm sure. Now, close your eyes- No, no, you've got to pull the hood
down over your head..."
Grottwold stepped over and pulled the hood down himself. Jim was suddenly in a
near-darkness faintly scented with the perfume of Angie's hair spray.
"Remember now," Grottwold's voice came distantly to him through the open
bottom of the helmet, "con-
centrate. Angie-dragons. Dragons-Angie. Close your eyes and keep thinking
those two things ..."
Jim closed his eyes and thought.
Nothing seemed to be happening. There was no sound from outside the helmet,
and with the thing over his head he could see nothing but darkness. The scent
of Angie's hair spray was overwhelming. Con- centrate on Angie, he told
himself. Concentrate on Angie ... and dragons ...
Nothing was happening, except that the hair-spray odor was making him dizzy.
His head swam. He felt huge and clumsy, sitting under the hair dryer with his
eyes closed this way. He experienced a thudding in his ears that was the sound
of his heart, beating along the veins and arteries of his body. A slow, heavy
thudding. His head began to swim in earnest. He felt as if he were sliding
sideways through nothingness and in the process expanding until he bulked like
a giant.
A sort of savagery stirred in him. He had a fleeting desire to get up from
where he was and tear something or someone apart. Preferably Grottwold. It
would be sheerly soul-satisfying to take hold of that turkey and rip him limb
from limb. Some large voice was boom- ing, calling to him, but he ignored it,
lost in his own thoughts. Just to sink his claws into that george-
Claws? George?
摘要：

Chapter1At10:30a.m.,sharp,JamesEckertpulledupinfrontofStoddardHallontheRiveroakCollegecampus,whereGrottwoldWeinarHansenhadhislab.AngieFarrellwasnot,however,readyandwaitingatthecurb.Ofcourse.Itwasawarm,brightSeptembermorning.Jimsatinthecarandtriedtokeephistemperun-dercontrol.ItwouldnotbeAngie'sfault....

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