Hell's Gate

CHAPTER 10

They woke a little before nine the next morning. They might not have risen that early, except that Intrepid, who had quite obviously been awake for some time, decided to crawl onto their covers and perform his imitation of a child's rubber ball for their entertainment. When the pandemonium died down, there was no sense in pretending they could go back to sleep. They took turns calling Intrepid names and laughing at his happy responses, then took turns in the shower. He offered to let her go first, wary about the length of time a woman would take, was happily surprised when she came into the bedroom fifteen minutes later, finished.

When he got downstairs, breakfast was ready.

?Will you marry me?? he asked.

She looked up from her eggs and toast, grinning. She ate like a she-wolf, the firm muscles of her tawny jaw tightening as she chewed. ?Is this a proposal.?

?Sounds like that to me.?

?Extremely romantic. In my excitement, I am liable to spew a mouthful of eggs all over the table.?

?Sorry I'm not the Gary Grant type.?

They exchanged banter of that sort throughout the morning, Doris-Day-movie-talk on the surface, but easy and fun as such conversation can be between two people who have no need to impress each other. In the backs of both their minds, however, was the terror and doubt about the cellar and the things that came out of it in the early hours of the morning. It was only their ability to fill in the waiting with banter that kept them from madness.

Victor did some heavy moving, taking the things out of a back guest room and storing them in the attic, then moving his art supplies upstairs, thankful that the heaviest pieces had come dismantled. It was odd to be engaged in domestic chores when his life might hang in the balance, when his future was totally unpredictable; but, there was nothing else to do. He had just finished putting together the heavy drafting table when Dr. West returned to check on his patient.

He was astounded at the degree of healing on Salsbury's chest. He was perturbed when Salsbury evaded his questions about the nature of the infliction of the wound. When he discovered the bandaged arm where the vibrabeam had struck the night before, Lynda explained that he had fallen and cut it. Victor, playfully, he hoped, refused to let West look at it, joking about the medical debts he had already incurred beyond his ability to pay. The doctor left unsatisfied and suspicious, but ignorant, which was all they cared about.

They ate a light dinner, agreed to go into town for supper and to pick up some of Lynda's clothes, a toothbrush, toiletries. It was impossible to persuade her to leave now, while the mystery had not yet been solved. Meanwhile, he brought sketching materials down to the front porch stoop and made ready to draw a realistic view of an elderly Dutch Elm at the corner of the drive. Lynda and Intrepid left to walk in the orchard. With his tools in his hands, he felt more at rest than ever before.

He did not know what would happen within the next half hour.

As he started drawing, he realized that, though he was not Victor Salsbury the artist, he was an artist in his own right. In moments, he had outlined a drawing, blocked it, gave it shape. Instead of filling in detail, he flipped to another sheet and did an impressionistic view of the same elm. It took longer, but it proved that he was not merely a renderer, but creative as well. Whoever had educated him for the role of Victor Salsbury had done a rather thorough job.

Shortly after two, as Victor was fleshing out the first sketch into a full landscape, Intrepid came through the front door to the closed porch door, barked to be let out. Victor called for Lynda, decided she must still be in the orchard. ?You want out?? he asked the dog, reluctant to stop sketching.

Intrepid barked again.

Salsbury did not stop to think that Intrepid only barked in situations of great strain. Other times, he snuffled. The dog came through the open door, watched Salsbury return to his work. After a moment, he shook his big head as if satisfied Salsbury was his master, padded along the side of the house. He looked into the orchard, then turned and faced the man with the pencils.

Out of the corner of his eye, Salsbury saw the dog running toward him, thought nothing of it. But as he got closer, Salsbury realized that the mutt's playfulness could ruin his drawing. He brought up an arm to ward him off and was bowled from his step onto the grass as the dog hit him, still running top speed.

The dog rolled past him, not making a sound, came onto his feet as Salsbury was shaking his head and reaching for his sketch pad. Before he realized what was happening, the dog charged again. This time, his teeth were bared. They were unnaturally, supernaturally long and sharp.

?Intrepid!? he shouted.

The dog leaped.

Salsbury whirled sideways, out of his path, felt claws scrabble weakly at him as the beast went by.

?Stop it!?

But the dog came again.

This time, the beast waited until the last moment to leap, then leapt to Salsbury's right so that the man whirled into him instead of out of his way. Salsbury felt teeth graze his shoulder. The dog's claws hooked in his shirt and the tops of his jeans, and it came around for another nip.

He avoided the vicious bite with no room to spare, saw another one coming. He grabbed the animal's front paws and pried them off, threw it, kicking, into the hedges. The dog lay for a moment, as if groggy, then bounded to his feet and came between Salsbury and the porch door-the only escape route.

?Intrepid!? he shouted again, trying to make the canine come to its senses.

Then he saw its eyes.

They were flat and blue.

The eyes of another robot, not the eyes of his noble mutt? A deadly imitation.

Sometimes, just as the worst is transpiring, you think of how monumentally stupid you have been, of all the warning signals you have ignored, of all the things you should have seen and interpreted as leading inexorably to the disaster now at hand. Standing there facing the mechanical killer, Salsbury thought of a number of things that should have put him on his guard. Firstly, there had been no place in the cellar for a man-sized robot to hide when they had investigated it last night; but a dog killer was considerably smaller. Secondly, if the first robot had been able to broadcast reports through the barrier to the lizard-things, it certainly would have reported Intrepid as a nuisance. Preparing a killer in a familiar form, therefore, would have been a logical next step. Thirdly, if this was Intrepid, how had he gotten into the house without Lynda to open the back door for him? Fourthly, Intrepid never barked except when extremely excited. This robot had made a mistake in that line, and Victor had obliged it by overlooking the error. Five: he had left his vibratube upstairs, thinking he would not need it until the portal opened again at one-thirty. But he had ignored all the signals, the flashing obviousnesses. And there it was? looking big? mean? and slighty mad.

Salsbury crouched a dozen feet from it, watching it carefully for the first indications of an impending attack. At the same time, his mind riffled through all that it contained; through what he seemed to know almost innately, looking for some piece of combatant's lore that would serve him now. How did you cripple a dog? This was not a dog, but a robot; still, it was dog-form and might be at least partially vulnerable to the same things a real dog would be vulnerable to. But those were few. A dog was compact and fast, vicious in a fight. Even if Salsbury had had a gun, it would have been almost useless against a trained killer dog-or a machine built to look and fight like one-for there would be no time to aim. There was only one moment when a dog was open to defeat: when it was in the air, after it had leaped. There might not be time to fire a well-placed shot, or pull a knife and sink it home, but there was time to do one thing.

He began thinking again of the data buried in his mind. Here was a plan for handling a killer dog, something only a commando ought to know. Another mystery. Who had programmed him to know this? Who had foreseen the dangers? He stopped thinking about that and concentrated on the dog machine.

When the beast was in the air, coming at him, it would be relatively defenseless. Its teeth would be out of range, its claws useless while in flight. Its front paws would be tucked weakly back and would not spring forward and unsheath their claws until the last second before contact. If Salsbury moved quickly enough, reaching forward to intercept it, he could grab one of those paws, twist it as he fell, and throw the machine over his head as hard as he could manage. Its own momentum would ensure that it would fall fairly far off and that it would hit the ground