Hell's Gate

Salsbury.
        Their heads were hairless, and, indeed, hinted at a rough gray cross-hatching of scales. The bony ridge of their foreheads shelved off as if on sudden impulse, leaving their eyes sunk two inches back in their heads. Their eyes… fire leaping, crimson flushing, rouge, cinnabar, scarlet…
        Victor pulled his gaze from those burning eyes, quickly examined the rest of the face. For a nose, there were five vertical slits arranged evenly above a sunken, pulsing hole that seemed to serve as a mouth. All of this was on a withered, leathery body whose muscles were drawn long and tight and lacquered over with a hundred coatings of varnish to make them look brittle.
        Unconsciously, Victor backed against an old workbench. He wished iron Victor would surge up and take command. But iron Victor was gone. There was no trace at all of his alter ego. The programming had-perhaps temporarily-come to an end. He was on his own.
        Intrepid cringed against his legs, trying to find some way of crawling up his pantlegs where he could not see the demons and would not be tempted to look.
        Salsbury looked to the steps, realized belatedly that he would have to go right by the window where the demons waited. Just as he felt his spirits scrape the bottom of his splintered soul barrel, the shadow monster standing beside the machine, the one in clear view, raised a long, bony arm with six three-jointed fingers on the end and made as if to reach out and grasp him.
        His horror did not motivate him to flight, but paralyzed him completely. His vital organs had turned to cast iron. Someone had even pinned open his eyelids so that he could not blink out the alien vision.
        Then the lighted portal fluttered brighter, dimmer, and was suddenly gone as if some delicate electronic link between alien world and basement wall had been severed. He stared stupidly at the blank tile which had been a window into hell only moments ago. His feet grew lighter. His organs turned back into flesh. Someone removed the pins from his eyelids. Still, he was emotionally incapable of acting. He was gasping frantically for breath.
        Intrepid recovered faster, leaped and slammed against the wall. He took a second running lunge, hit with his feet in a flying leap, fell away and looked at Victor with glistening eyes that demanded his master do something about the things in the walls.
        Victor recovered his wits under that gaze. He shrugged his shoulders at the dog, then crossed to the steps, went up them two at a time. There was a tremendous thumping and scraping as Intrepid tried desperately to keep up with his master. Salsbury went to the second floor bedroom where he had stowed the three trunks. He opened the door a bit hard, sent it banging back against the wall where it shivered and quaked as if it were alive. He went to the computer trunk, gave it a solid kick. The stinging pain leaped up his leg, but he did not much care. He kicked it again. Intrepid had joined him by this time and he set to snuffling and whuffing, dancing around the computer trunk with a look of expectancy.
        “Let's have a briefing,” Victor said to the 810-40.04.
        It wasn't in the mood for conversation.
        “Come on, damnit!”
        Nothing.
        He remembered the tool bench in the cellar and went back down. Intrepid followed to the head of the stairs and watched him descend, but did not follow. In the cellar, Victor found the tools racked on a pegboard wall. He chose a medium weight crowbar and took it back to the bedroom, moving like a caveman with his favorite stone axe.
        He squared off before the computer trunk and brandished the weapon. “A briefing now, or I pry you up good!” There was a great deal of adrenalin pumping through his system, and all his nerves seemed to grate against each other, alive, aware and excited. There was something going on that he did not understand, something involving shrunken, leathery lizardmen with sucking eel mouths. It was definitely going to get dangerous, for those were dangerous looking customers, those scaly freaks. If he was expected to play a role in it, then he damn well better be informed.
        But the 810-40.04 was unresponsive.
        He stepped forward, swung the bar, smashed it against the top of the trunk. It bounced off, ringing his arm like a bell. His bones screamed at him to stop acting like an idiot, to have more respect for the