Hell's Gate

fragile parts of him. He dropped the bar and massaged his arm until it started to fed like flesh again. Carefully examining the top of the trunk, he could not find the smallest dent or scratch where the bar might have struck. Thus ended round one.
        “I'm getting mad,” he told the computer. And he truly was. He realized, not without a start, that this was the most heated emotional moment he had experienced since he had wakened in the orchard with iron Victor in command of his body. He felt more human than ever.
        But the computer was inscrutable.
        He picked up the crowbar again.
        Intrepid snuffled and chortled like a mare in heat.
        Victor knelt beside the trunk and examined the thin line where the lid met the body. Gently, he inserted the thin edge of the crowbar tip into the crack, worked it in a bit, then brought his weight down on it. For a moment, the increasing pressure seemed to have no effect whatsoever on the box. Then the bar slipped, popped out of the seam, and snapped a sharp blow alongside his head. He wobbled there on his knees, managed to keep from passing out. He nibbed his head where the bar had struck, felt an egg already beginning to rise. As soon as everything ceased spinning, he gritted his teeth and slipped the pry bar into the seam again, wedging it even farther back before rising and applying his weight. He bore down, grunting and sweating, putting every ounce of his strength into what he was doing. Just when he thought the metal must surely buckle, the frame most certainly give, just when he should have achieved success, there was a blinding flash of blue-green light, and a fist full of needles thumped him solidly across the head while a second fist grabbed a black curtain and pulled it down all around him.

CHAPTER 6
        
        As he came up out of velvet blackness, trying to push the curtain aside, he discovered one of the lizard-things was eating his head. He could feel its raspy tongue delicately licking his face, savouring his flavor preparatory to taking the first bite.
        Victor shuddered, opened his eyes expecting a demon. Instead, Intrepid whuffed happily in his face as if he had no idea how bad his doggy halitosis was and flicked his tongue over his master's face. Salsbury shook his head to clear it, felt around with his hands to see if his body was still connected to that head by a neck. Everything seemed in place, though he had a headache that was chewing up his brain. He sat up, looked around, and realized that the shock transmitted up the crowbar had knocked him six feet away from the trunk. He got to his feet, swaying slightly, and walked to the door,
        “You've won,” he told the computer.
        The computer said nothing.
        Remembering something Lynda had discarded in the attic while routing through her uncle's possessions, he went up the narrow stairs, turned on the bare bulb and looked for it. He found it in the second box: a.22 pistol and ammunition. It seemed to be in good repair, well kept, perhaps a small game hunting pistol. He took it and the ammunition into the living room, dragged a big easy chair into a corner so his back was not to any windows, and loaded the weapon. Intrepid sat at his side, both curious, playful and tense.
        From where Victor sat he could see the entrance to the cellar. If a skinny, sucker-mouth man-lizard so much as stuck a head out of the cellar door, he could blow it to bits with one shot well placed. The creatures did not look particularly sturdy.
        But time crawled by with no major events, and his muscles began to uncramp, his nerves to loosen. In half an hour, he realized he was hungry and made himself two sandwiches. He was about to open a beer when he remembered his body's exaggerated reaction to the last one he had drunk. Beer was out. He needed to stay clear and alert tonight. Eating his sandwiches, he began to think. He had been reacting on a gut level up to this point, charging about like a wild boar with a peptic ulcer. He thought some unpleasant things, like: what if the lizard-things on the other side of the portal were the ones who had programmed him to kill Harold Jacobi? Perhaps he was their tool.
        Such a thought was almost unbearable. If only the 810-40.04 would come out of its funk, he might have an answer that would make all this seem rosy, though he doubted it.
        Then he had a second bad thought. Suppose, in trying to open the