Hell's Gate

against gray, scaled, sucker-mouthed things from somewhere a few million light-years and a few probability lines off.
        By ten o'clock they finished rigging the probe machine. It was a rather rickety looking bunch of lightweight, sectioned beams supporting panels of intricate mechanisms. There was a chair for the operator. To operate the thing, Salsbury knew, one only needed to sit in that chair, flick a single switch, grip the handles on the sides of what looked like a spotlight, and aim the projector. There were little screws on each handle to work with your thumbs to change (ever so slightly) the flow pattern of the beam so that a good lock could be achieved.
        They decided, with the computer's agreement, that things would move more quickly if Lynda were to operate the prober, lock beams, and open the probability doorway. Salsbury, meanwhile, could be standing next to where the portal would solidify, could leap through without having to first climb down from the prober.
        At Lynda's suggestion, they left the computer to grab a bite to eat. Salsbury could only choke down half a sandwich and a cup of coffee. At a quarter after eleven, they went back into the cellar to wait. It was a nervous time. Vic paced, and Lynda bit her nails. The 810-40.04 went over and over the instructions until they were all ready to scream. At last, it was one-thirty. Lynda took her place at the chair; he stood alongside the wall, next to where the portal would open.
        One-thirty came. And so did the vacii.
        The blue spot began to glow on the wall, slowly clearing.
        Lynda snapped on their own prober.
        The two beams met. The window began to clear.
        “Now!” the computer said.
        And Salsbury leaped sideways and through into the other probability line, into the room where the vacii operated their own prober.

CHAPTER 13
        
        The first thing he saw was the face of the vacii operator, its toothless, sucking mouth all drawn up, the thin gray lips writhing wildly as if someone were jabbing pins into them. The red eyes gleamed, eyes of a rat, of pigeons, eyes of bowery winos sleeping in doorways and greeting the sun crossly. When he had been in his basement, with the bubble separating him from the aliens, the eyes had seemed merely red. Here, close up, he could see the minute webbing of pulsing blood vessels that gave them their color. The operator started off his machine, his mouth suddenly wide as if to yell something. Salsbury brought up the new hand gun the computer had provided and fired it. The lizard-thing gasped; its face dissolved as it toppled from us perch on the heavy-duty model prober.
        “Vic!” Lynda shouted from beyond the portal, then followed the calling of his name with a shrill, piercing scream.
        He came around out of reflex, going down on one knee as he pivoted, hoping to avoid any blow that might have been aimed for his head. There was no one immediately behind him.
        He was screened by the bulk of the vacii prober, and it was entirely possible that no one else in the room knew he had come through. No one but the operator, and his head was too scrambled to imagine he could warn anyone else. Then why had Lynda screamed? He turned, looked back at her, saw that one man-form robot had gone through the portal, coming towards her where she sat on her prober chair. Another of the things was halfway through the port, one foot on either side.
        Victor raised his gun and shot the one halfway through, trying to bring him down and get a clear shot at the mechanical that posed a more immediate threat to Lynda. The back of its neck peeled open like an apple dropped out of a tree onto stones. It pitched forward, crashed down with a great deal of clatter. The thing closing on Lynda turned to search for the source of the uproar behind it and collected Salsbury's second shot square in the center of its stomach. Glass, steel, and plastic jell that had been posing as flesh erupted in all directions.
        The floor in front of Salsbury burst, showered up fragments, and smoked heavy blue clouds that had an acrid, rancid meat odor. He rolled sideways, against the base of the vacii projector, and swung his head around to see where the vibrashot had come from.
        The room behind was crawling with robots. On a quick sweep, he estimated there were twenty of them.
        Less than a second after he pulled his head back behind the