Plausible. But Nekrotzar is much older than our own planet. Indeed the sun of that world had gone out long before our precious Earth even condensed from Stardust. At least that's what Marvin Carnacki's book claimed. And who wrote that book? I don't have a clue. The Bureau is still examining it. Unlike every other book owned by the Carnacki Institute, that volume survived the terrific explosion that followed the ritual.

Whatever the biology of the matter, one thing remains clear: the rulers of Nekrotzar were complete loons. I'll skip over the more lurid accounts of what Kings Humper, Sepsis, and Nobbel got up to. Each was madder than his predecessor. The line ended with the maddest of all, King Sciron, who wanted a palace bigger than those his ancestors had ruled from. In fact he wanted the biggest palace in the history of creation.

Nekrotzar was a very old world and its core had cooled long ago, there was no liquid mantle under the crust, nothing but solid rock. King Sciron gave orders to start mining minerals, shaping blocks and piling those blocks higher and higher into walls.

Eventually he had the biggest palace of all time, the biggest possible palace. It didn't make him happy.

The Sciron killed by Theseus was clearly the same guy or else a mythical figure based on the real Sciron. But the question remains how the people on Earth who made up the myth, presumably the ancient Greeks, knew about Nekrotzar in the first place. I found this aspect of the case rather troubling. I thought about ordering a beer, maybe several, but I wasn't even in the mood to get drunk. Hellboy was ready to leave too.

"Time to get moving."

He held open the door of the coffee shop and I passed through and stood blinking in the sunlight. Then he lifted his stone hand to provide shade for both of us. Maybe he thought I needed a cooler head before I was ready to know the rest. If so, he was right.

King Sciron of Nekrotzar never gave the order to stop building. Blocks of stone were cut from the ground and added to other blocks continuously. The walls kept rising and rising. Towers were completed, turrets, domes, and chambers, only to serve as the foundations for more towers, turrets, domes, and chambers. The planet had no magma under its surface. The builders could dig it all up and shape it into blocks if necessary. That's what they did. Eventually the total mass of the planet was converted into the palace. One of the wonders of the universe!

A giant palace adrift in space. King Sciron had his personal chambers at the center. But he often liked to ascend the spiral staircase to the tallest turret. There was a balcony there without a rail that looked over the stars, comets, pulsars, other lost planets. Whenever he wanted to punish someone for an offense, he invited them onto the balcony of that turret and ordered them to kneel before him. Then he kicked them over the edge. The bodies are probably still falling, if they haven't already been burned up in younger suns.

Life is weird. I walk down the street with a big red demon and who's the one that attracts all the attention?

Yeah right. Car horns blared. A grinning fellow came up, tried to shake my hand and didn't look abashed when I refused. "Excuse me, but are you Foggy Dicks? Man, I love your flicks. Never seen anything like them before!"

Yeah, life is weird.

My minds a little disordered now. It's mostly the drugs, the painkillers they pumped into my veins after Hellboy knocked the crap out of me. I'm still flooded with that liquid junk. But I was strange before my beating. That's what the specialist doctors at the Bureau told me back in the days when they thought I might be team material.

Which reminded me: I still wanted to know where Liz and Abe were. Up north was too vague an answer to satisfy me. I can't say I ached to see them a" I don't ache much emotionally a" but they had been friends, to a small degree at least.

"Mount Snaefell," said Hellboy.

"Iceland? What are they doing there? It's weird: you mentioned Jules Verne in the coffee shop and I remember that he wrote a book about two explorers .. ,"

Hellboy just smiled.

"So what part do I play?" I wondered. "What does the Bureau want me to do? You know my talents. Fill me in properly, will you?"

"The book found by Marvin Carnacki outlined many rituals connected with Nekrotzar. Where did this book come from originally? We're still working on that. Marvin himself doesn't know. The rituals are all tantric."

"I'm not the only expert in that," I protested.

"This stuff is extremely advanced. Believe me, you're the only one who can do what's required. The Bureau never lost interest in you."

I was dubious. "Really?"

He rubbed his chin. "What do you think of Marvin Carnacki?"

"Nothing special. An old fuddy-duddy. A typical amateur investigator of the paranormal. Fusty, musty."

"Could you ever consider doing with him the sort of things you do in your films? To save the world ..."

"Is this a hypothetical question?"

He said nothing, twitched not a facial muscle, and I suddenly knew why the Bureau wanted me. To perform some esoteric tantric-sex ritual with that horrible old man. I was too shocked to utter any word of protest. I stopped in my tracks and closed my eyes and laughed sourly. Hellboy rested his stone hand on my shoulder in a sympathetic manner. Maybe he thought I needed some obvious sign of support before giving my considered reply.

And maybe I did. I said, "We all have to make sacrifices. I'll do what I can."

"Thanks. You're one of the heroes."

Smiling, I acknowledged the compliment, but I was furious with myself. Why had I agreed? Was I going soft?

But I've always been soft.

I'm the ectoplasm guy. Remember?

A special room in one of the least-visited parts of one of the Bureaus old auxiliary buildings had been prepared for the ritual. I wore a gray dressing gown. When Marvin Carnacki entered I wanted to laugh. He was dressed like a pasha from an obsolete Eastern empire. Green curly slippers, loose scarlet pantaloons, a billowing orange blouse, an elaborate turban of blue silk. His fingers glittered with silver rings.

"Let's get it over with," I snorted.

Marvin took offense. "No need to be so blunt. I'm swallowing my pride as well."

"Now you've raised the issue," I remarked, "I still don't understand why you came to the Bureau in the first place. Descendant of the famous ghost finder! The first Carnacki would disown you if he knew. Why can't you handle the crisis back at your own institute?"

"Can't you guess?" he sneered.

"You discovered the existence of Nekrotzar and diverted it onto a collision course with Earth. You knew that astronomers would detect it soon enough and warn the governments of the world. You gambled that the Bureau would get involved but be powerless to prevent the catastrophe. Then the Carnacki Institute would step in and put everything right, because only your group had the necessary rituals at their disposal. It was supposed to be a way of showing the Bureau you were a force to be reckoned with."

"The boy has some brains," sniffed Marvin.

"That's right, buddy," I said.

"Nothing turned out the way we planned. We performed the tantric ritual to divert the course of Nekrotzar but there were errors in the procedure."

I shook my head. "Sloppy work, my friend."

"How right you are! A few small mistakes with big side effects. There was a blast that destroyed the antique furniture and killed the membership of the institute, all except me ..."

"An explosion. Any other side effects?" I asked casually. I've always found that indulging in light conversation helps to reduce the embarrassment. Not by much, true, but we take what little we can get in this world. And in the next.

"Nothing major. One random dead person from Earth has possibly been resurrected on Nekrotzar."

I smiled mirthlessly at the irony of the situation. Diverting Nekrotzar onto a collision course with Earth had been the easy part, achievable from a distance, but diverting it a second time, away from our own world, was a far harder task. Somebody had to actually go there and physically steer it.

The book had mentioned a rudder in the throne room of King Sciron, unbelievable as that sounds. Hellboy was the only one capable of doing this. Marvin and I were just there to open up a doorway.

"There were twenty others involved in the first tantric ritual," pointed out Marvin. "You'll have to mimic the roles of them all. Can you do that?"

"Just watch this," I bellowed.

I prefer to leave out most of the details of what happened next. You'll have to use your imagination. I'll just say that Marvin held up a book during the ritual and began reciting in an unintelligible language. Then a mist thickened in the air and I knew it was time to extrude my ectoplasm. He ignored me and kept chanting.

I began to realize he was more perverse than anyone I had encountered before. Now I knew what Hellboy meant when he referred to the Carnacki family as decadent. The mist began congealing into blobs and falling to the floor. On the floor those blobs ran about like drops of mercury before flattening into discs. Then the discs slid together.

"The doorway to Nekrotzar!" somebody shouted.

"Get ready!" was the response.

"Another few minutes!" cried the first voice, and I was aware of the big face of Hellboy looming through the remaining mist. He had stepped from behind the screens. Time seemed to slow. Then a sudden thought made me shudder. If Hellboy managed to cross to Nekrotzar, how the hell would he get back?

He had to pass me on his way to the shimmering doorway and I thought about blocking his path and begging him not to go, even though it wasn't strictly my business what happened to him on the other side. Then Marvin distracted me.

"Listen carefully," he said. "I've got a proposal. How much are these Bureau creeps paying you? Well I can offer more. The Carnacki Institute has many bank accounts and now the other members are dead. So I'm extremely rich. You want half this money? It's yours if you perform one simple service."

"You think I'm so cheap?" I spluttered.

"Yes I do. The Carnacki family was big and influential. All I want is to rebuild some of my destroyed pride. That's not much to ask. My institute diverted Nekrotzar onto a new trajectory but couldn't put it back on its original course. I don't mind admitting I've lost face."

"State your terms," I growled, believing myself beyond temptation, but none of us are ever that.

"All you have to do is enroll as a member of my institute. I can formally welcome you aboard right now. There's nobody left to veto my decision. I am the Carnacki Institute."

"What good will that do either of us?"

"Cross over to Nekrotzar with Hellboy. He'll have to make the perilous trip through the palace to the throne room. The instant he arrives near the throne, you can jump forward and take hold of the rudder. The credit for saving the world will belong to the institute again! You agree? By the power invested in me I accept you as a full member!"

I arched my eyebrows. "How can I persuade Hellboy to let me accompany him on the mission? I'm not a field agent. I'm just here for this."

"Don't give him a choice. Hitch a ride all the way!"

And he whispered into my ear. His idea was so treacherous I still don't understand why I didn't break his evil jaw with my fist. Maybe it was the hypnotic quality of his eyes. Whatever the reason, I was infected with his madness. I howled. The mystic doorway was ready and Hellboy was striding toward it. I transformed myself entirely into ectoplasm, flapped across the surface of the floor, flung myself over Hellboy's shoulders like a cloak.

Not really like a cloak. Closer than that. Like a second skin. In fact the astral molecules of my ectoplasm meshed with the molecules of his real skin, bonding with the moisture in his cells. I'm no expert on the biology of demons and maybe that moisture wasn't water, but it served its purpose. He paused for a moment.

"What the hell are you doing? This isn't part of the ritual!"

"I've changed my allegiance," I hissed.

"You're making a mistake. I don't want to hurt you."

"Buddy, there's no way you can remove me now. Not without surgery. I've sold you out for money, same way I sold myself out, years ago."

In a few minutes the doorway would close. Hellboy had no time to reason with me. He had to cross over now, with me draped on his back. I planned to stay exactly where I was for as long as possible. I was drunk with a feeling of power, far more drunk than I had ever been on beer.

Haifa minute later I was totally punch drunk ...

We had underestimated the big red lunatic. No mortal man could reach around behind himself and pull off his own skin without even blinking! It should go without saying that Hellboy wasn't a man. First he shook me out like a sheet, then he rolled me up and snapped me like a whip against the floor, forcing me to change back into a man. I had betrayed the Bureau and had this coming to me ...

That should have been the end of it, but I was still infected with the madness Marvin Carnacki had induced in my soul. I flung myself at Hellboy again and again. He tried to brush me off lightly but I just wouldn't back off. So he was forced to get rough.

"Sorry, Foggy," he said, and the regret in his voice was genuine.

Witnesses to the incident later told me that the whole thing lasted thirty seconds. I believe it. But in that short period a mangling occurred that I surely will never forget. Having said that, I don't recall the actual beating. The bruises are my mementos. And the scars. Very rapidly I faded in and out of consciousness like a flickering lightbulb, then I distinctly remember hearing a shouted warning that the doorway was starting to vanish. Maybe my life was saved by that yell. Hellboy turned his attention to his mission.

As he passed through the door, he began to shimmer. Just before he was entirely gone, he glanced over his shoulder at Marvin Carnacki and jerked a thumb. "I'll be back for you."

Despite my condition I managed to laugh.

But Marvin only sneered. "How will you do that? Nekrotzar is located in outer space. If you succeed in diverting it from its present course you'll never see planet Earth again!"

It was a fair point, well made. Yes.

And that's how I ended up in the hospital. The surgeons worked hard to repair the damage. When I came to my senses I felt different, lighter, but in a way I couldn't identify. I realized I was in one of the Bureau's secret sickbays. The nurses were friendly but didn't engage too intimately in conversation. I asked for a newspaper. Many weeks had passed since the assault. A single paragraph on one of the back pages of one of the crankier tabloids reported that the actor Foggy Dicks had been injured by falling scenery on the set of his latest film. I smiled thinly at this. The Bureau can pull any strings it wants to.

I found myself growing obsessed about the progress of Hellboy's weird mission on an alien world. Nobody could give me any information. As for Marvin Carnacki, I didn't even ask about him, partly because I didn't care, partly because the merest thought gave me painful cramps inside. I know that sounds very mixed up, but I was very mixed up right then. As I recovered I tried simple exercises with my ectoplasm gland, attempting to shoot forth tendrils of gloop to lasso the jug of water on my bedside table. But nothing worked. My injuries were still serious. Frustrating.

So I have to relate the story of Hellboy's exploits on Nekrotzar secondhand, the same way I received it from the big red brute in question. Might as well get down to that task now. My pillow is comfortable enough. After he stepped through the doorway, our stump-browed hero emerged through an almost identical portal on the other side that vanished behind him like a broken cobweb. He was in a vast hall, the lobby of the palace, and the sight of his surroundings was impressive even to him, and he's seen a lot of odd sights in his career, believe me.

You don't have to take my word for that, or for anything else, of course, but your doubts aren't important to me. Anyway, Hellboy gazed at the horizons, then craned his head to look up at the distant ceiling. Stormclouds were gathering in one corner of the room, bumping back and forth between the place where the ceiling met a wall and a row of columns rising from the floor. When King Sciron had given his order to start work on the palace, he forgot the inconveniences of geography The landscapes of his home planet became enclosed in the edifice.

Mountain ranges, river valleys, deserts, steppes, icecaps, glaciers, even entire oceans a" these don't just disappear simply because you roof them over and enclose them between gigantic walls in absurdly immense rooms. The forests die, this is true, because of the lack of sunlight, but Nekrotzar's sun had gone out millennia before anyway. The only vegetation Hellboy found on his visit was various kinds of fungus, some toadstools as big as redwood trees and puffballs like the severed heads of bloated corpses. And all illumination was provided by the perpetual electric storms ...

Why didn't he arrive directly in the throne room? Why did he now have to travel all the way from the lobby to the center of the palace? Who knows for sure? The rulers of Nekrotzar had been devoted to games of mischief; it was in their nature to be capricious. Hellboy began walking over a moldy carpet as big as a savanna. He was aware of many pairs of eyes watching him from the shadows, some from above, but sensations like that were part of a day's work for him. Something flapped high above. A lump of pterodactyl crap hit his shoulder.

"So that's how its going to be?" he muttered.

He crested a rise, a warp in the carpet, and stood gazing down at a small inland sea. Mists obscured most of its expanse, but at the wide mouth of a lazy river was a wooden jetty with a golden boat moored to it. A man stood on the jetty and something made him look in Hellboy's direction. Fingering the pistol in its holster but not drawing it, Hellboy ambled down the incline to meet the man. They stood a few yards apart, squinting at each other, then both slowly nodded, as if reassured.

"I know you," said Hellboy.

"Yeah?" came the reply. "Well I ain't Anubis."

Hellboy moved closer. "You're Philip Jose Farmer, the writer. What are you doing on an alien world?"

The boatman shrugged. "For some reason I've been resurrected here. No explanation was ever offered by anyone. I thought at first that maybe every other human who had ever died would join me somewhere along the length of this mighty river, but it didn't turn out like that. I'm alone."

"You're a new Charon, an infernal ferryman?"

"Nah, I just rent out the boats. Been waiting for my first customer since my rebirth. You're the one."

"Honored," said Hellboy, "but I don't have time to work out this new mystery. I reckon it might not even be connected to my main quest. It could be just a fluke. I don't care because you have what I need, namely a boat. I have to ask the price first, I guess."

"Look buddy, I like you, don't know why. You can have the barge for free. Money's no use to me. Maybe I shouldn't tell you this, but there's an endearing quality about you and I want to help properly."

"Thanks for the observation."

"This river is exactly one million miles long and terminates in the throne room. If you use the boat to paddle there it'll take at least a century. But there's a shortcut. The river loops like a knotted piece of string. If you're strong enough, drag the boat overland to the next room and rejoin the river there. That way you'll bypass a long stretch, because first it flows into the lower levels and then around and up through most of the turrets before returning to this level."

"Thanks. You're one of the good guys."

"Smile when you call me that, stranger," said Philip Jose Farmer.