Hell's Gate

door.
        “Wait.”
        “Huh?” She half turned, stunning in profile.
        “How did you find me? Who was that man poking at me? What-”
        “Later. Let the cook do her job first.” Then she was gone, trim legs flashing brown. He leaned into the pillow, smiling, and thought about her puttering around in his kitchen. He liked that thought very much. But there were other thoughts which he was not too fond of at all…
        He thought of the robot It had taken so long to kill simply because it was so loaded with backup circuits and secondary tubes to replace primaries when they were shattered by fragmenting slugs. He was also unsettled by the consideration that it was his almost superhuman reflex pattern that had saved him and that a normal man (like Harold Jacobi) would not have survived. So it seemed that the robot had come to kill Jacobi, not Salsbury. Is that what the computer meant when it said Jacobi would have died in a month anyway? But a month had not passed. Hardly a week, even. Oh, yes, two weeks of sleep in the cave. But that was still more than a week shy of a month.
        Was that why the 810-40.04 was maintaining silence? Did it think the target date was still over a week away? If so, Salsbury hoped, if there were more to this operation, the damn machine broke silence before any future encounters with the enemy.
        As there should most certainly be. Nasty encounters.
        The lizard-things were not the type to give up easily. He had no doubt at all that the robot had come through the portal in the cellar wall, through the blue circle of light, the window to another world.
        But why hadn't one of the lizard-things come to do the job itself? Fear? That seemed unlikely. The lizards, he thought, would show little fear in a battle situation. They had the look of a race that had come up too fast. Technology had boomed, had grown like a nuclear mushroom, while their cultural and social development had progressed slowly from the caveman stage. They looked like savages-keenly intelligent, clever savages. Savagery is only applicable in a social sense; they looked as if killing and other assorted uglinesses were a very recent part of their heritage.
        When would they send the next robot through the portal? Or make their first in-person visit? He thought a moment, realized all the nights of the singing noise and the arrival of the robot had been at approximately one-thirty in the morning. Whether that was the only time the portal could be opened or the time most preferred, he did not know. But by one-thirty tomorrow morning, he better be prepared.
        She came back into the room, carrying a tray which she slipped onto the night table. She sat on the edge of the bed. “Toast. Buttered, although the doctor said plain. Chicken soup with noodles, though the doctor said just broth.”
        “You get a kick out of disregarding doctor's orders?”
        She ignored him. “Also fruited jello, a glass of orange juice, cuts of bologna and cheese and tomato. Coffee. Broth is for sick little girls, not beefy gorilla types like you.”
        He tasted the soup, said it was delicious. After she smiled, he said, “Now how did you find me?”
        She hopped onto the bed, sitting in a yoga position, a delightful expanse of brown legs showing. She seemed unaware of her own attractiveness. “I was handling the rental of a Barberry Road cottage out this way. When I was done there, I decided to stop by since you were only five minutes out of my way. I called you last evening,” and here she blushed, “but you weren't home yet I thought I'd stop by this morning and see what you'd found about that dead man in Harrisburg.
        “I parked out front behind your car, saw its door open and the ceiling light on. I shut it, wondering why you'd forget something like that and let your battery run down. Then I saw the smashed window. I thought you'd had an accident, I came up and knocked on the porch door. You didn't answer, but I could see the front door was open. I went to the front door, shouted for you, and was greeted by Intrepid. He yipped like a mad dog. Scared me at first. He kept stumbling up the stairs, then falling down, then stumbling back up until I understood he wanted me to follow him, just like in Lassie movies. I found you lying here on the floor.”
        He finished the soup, started on the cold cuts and cheese. “The doctor. Who was he?”
        “Jake