Trent looked at his watch and was horrified to see it was 3:31 . . . going on 3:32. And suppose his watch was slow?

'Get out!' he screamed at them, plunging down the hallway toward the stairs. 'Get out of this house!'

The third-floor hallway seemed to stretch out before him like taffy; the faster he ran, the farther it seemed to stretch ahead of him. Lew rained blows on the door and curses on the air; thunder boomed; and, from deep within the house came the ever-more-urgent sound of machines waking to life.

He reached the stairwell at last and hurried down, his upper body so far out in front of his legs that he almost fell. Then he was whirling around the newel post and hurtling down the flight of stairs between the second floor and the first, toward where his brother and two sisters waited, looking up at him.

'Out!' he screamed, grabbing them, shoving them toward the open door and the stormy blackness outside. 'Quick!'

'Trent, what's happening?' Brian asked. 'What's happening to the house? It's shaking!'

It was, too - a deep vibration that rose up through the floor and rattled Trent's eyeb.a.l.l.s in their sockets. Plaster-dust began to sift down into his hair.

'No time! Out! Fast! Laurie, help me!'

Trent swept Brian into his arms. Laurie grabbed Lissa under the arms of her dress and stumbled out the door with her.

Thunder bammed. Lightning twisted across the sky. The wind that had been gasping earlier now began to roar like a dragon.

Trent heard an earthquake building under the house. As he ran out through the door with Brian, he saw electric-blue light, so bright it left afterimages on his eyes for almost an hour (he reflected later he was lucky not to have been blinded), shoot out through the narrow cellar windows. It cut across the lawn in rays that looked almost solid. He heard the gla.s.s break. And, just as he pa.s.sed through the door, he felt the house rising under his feet.

He jumped down the front steps and grabbed Laurie's arm. They stumble-staggered down the walk to the street, which was now as black as night with the coming of the storm.

There they turned back and watched it happen.

The house on Maple Street seemed to gather itself. It no longer looked straight and solid; it seemed to jitter, like a comic-strip picture of a man on a pogo-stick. Huge cracks ran out from it, not only in the cement walk but in the earth surrounding it. The lawn pulled apart in huge pie-shaped turves of gra.s.s. Roots strained blackly upward below the green, and the whole front yard seemed to become bubble-shaped, as if it were straining to hold the house before which it had spread so long.

Trent cast his eyes up to the third floor, where the light in Lew's study still shone. Trent thought the sound of breaking gla.s.s had come - was still coming - from up there, then dismissed the idea as imagination - how could he hear anything in all that racket? It was only a year later that Laurie told him she was quite sure she had heard their stepfather screaming from up there.

The foundation of the house first crumbled, then cracked, and then sundered with a croak of exploding mortar. Brilliant cold blue fire lanced out. The children covered their eyes and staggered back. The engines screamed. The earth pulled up and up in a last agonized holding action . . . and then let go. Suddenly the house was a foot above the ground, resting on a pad of bright blue fire.

It was a perfect lift-off.

Atop the center roof peak, the weathervane spun madly.

The house rose slowly at first, then began to gather speed. It thundered upward on its flaring pad of blue fire, the front door clapping madly back and forth as it went.

'My toys!' Brian bleated, and Trent began to laugh wildly.

The house reached a height of thirty yards, seemed to poise itself for its great leap upward, then blasted into the rushing spate of night-black clouds.

It was gone.

Two shingles came floating down like large black leaves.

'Look out, Trent!' Laurie cried out a second or two later, and shoved him hard enough to knock him over. The rubber-backed welcome mat thwacked into the street where he had been standing.

Trent looked at Laurie. Laurie looked back.

'That would've smarted like big blue heck if it'd hit you on the head,' she told him, 'so you just better not call me Sprat anymore, Trent.'

He looked at her solemnly for several seconds, and then began to giggle. Laurie joined in. So did the little ones. Brian took one of Trent's hands; Lissa took the other. They helped pull him to his feet, and then the four of them stood together, looking at the smoking cellar-hole in the middle of the shattered lawn. People were coming out of their houses now, but the Bradbury children ignored them. Or perhaps it would be truer to say the Bradbury children didn't know they were there at all.

'Wow,' Brian said reverently. 'Our house took off, Trent.'

'Yeah,' Trent said.

'Maybe wherever it's going, there'll be people who want to know about the Normans and the s.e.xies,' Lissa said.

Trent and Laurie put their arms around each other and began to shriek with mingled laughter and horror . . . and that was when the rain began to pelt down.

Mr. Slattery from across the street joined them. He didn't have much hair, but what he did have was plastered to his gleaming skull in tight little bunches.

'What happened?' he screamed over the thunder, which was almost constant now. 'What happened here?'

Trent let go of his sister and looked at Mr. Slattery. 'True s.p.a.ce Adventures,' he said solemnly, and that set them all off again.

Mr. Slattery cast a doubtful, frightened look at the empty cellar-hole, decided discretion was the better part of valor, and retreated to his side of the street. Although it was still pouring buckets, In

did not invite the Bradbury children to join him. Nor did they care. They sat down on the curb, Trent and Laurie in the middle, Brian and Lissa on the sides.

Laurie leaned toward Trent and whispered in his ear: 'We're free.'

'It's better than that,' Trent said. 'She is.'

Then he put his arms around all of them - by stretching, he could just manage - and they sat on the curb in the pouring rain and waited for their mother to come home.

The Fifth Quarter.

I parked the heap around the corner from Keenan's house, sat in the dark for a moment, then turned off the key and got out. When I slammed the door, I could hear rust flaking off the rocker panels and dropping onto the street. It wasn't going to be like that much longer.

The gun was in a bandolier holster and lay against my ribcage like a fist. It was Barney's.45, and I was glad of that. It lent the whole crazy business a touch of irony. Maybe even a sense of justice.

Keenan's house was an architectural monstrosity spread over a quarter-acre of land, all slanting angles and steep-sloped roofs behind an iron fence. He'd left the gate unlocked, as I'd hoped. Earlier I'd seen him calling someone from the living room, and a hunch too strong to deny told me it had been either Jagger or the Sarge. Probably the Sarge. The waiting was over; this was my night.

I walked to the driveway, staying close to the shrubbery and listening for any strange sound over the cutting whine of the January wind. There wasn't any. It was Friday night, and Keenan's sleep-in maid would be out having a jolly time at somebody's Tupperware party. n.o.body home but that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Keenan. Waiting for the Sarge. Waiting - although he didn't know it yet - for me.

The carport was open and I slipped inside. The ebony shadow of Keenan's Impala loomed. I tried the back door. The car was also open. Keenan wasn't cut out to be a villain, I reflected; he was much too trusting. I got in the car, sat down, and waited.

Now I could hear the faint sound of jazz on the wind, very quiet, very good. Miles Davis, maybe. Keenan listening to Miles Davis and holding a gin fizz in one manicured hand. Nice for him.

It was a long wait. The hands on my watch crawled from eight-thirty to nine to ten. Time for a lot of thinking. I mostly thought about Barney, and that wasn't strictly a matter of choice. I thought about how he looked in that small boat when I found him, staring up at me and making meaningless cawing noises. He'd been adrift for two days and looked like a boiled lobster. There was black blood encrusted across his midsection where he'd been shot.

He'd steered toward the cottage as best he could, but still it had been mostly luck. Lucky he'd gotten there, lucky he could still talk for a little while. I'd had a fistful of sleeping pills ready if he couldn't talk. I didn't want him to suffer. Not unless there was a reason for it, anyway. As it turned out, there was. He had a story to tell, a real whopper, and he told me almost all of it.

When he was dead, I went back to the boat and got his.45. It was hidden aft in a small compartment, wrapped in a waterproof pouch. Then I towed his boat out into deep water and sank it. If I could have put an epitaph over his head, it would have been the one about how there's a sucker born every minute. Most of them are pretty nice guys, too, I bet - just like Barney. Instead, I started trying to find the men who capped him. It had taken six months to find Keenan and to ascertain that Sarge was, at least, somewhere close by, but I'm a persistent little pup, and here I was.

At ten-twenty, headlights splashed up the curving driveway and I lay on the floor of the Impala. The newcomer drove into the carport, snuggling up close to Keenan's car. It sounded like one of the old Volkswagens. The little engine died and I could hear Sarge grunting softly as he fought his way out of the little car. The porch light went on, and the sound of the door clicking open came to me.

Keenan: 'Sarge! You're late! Come on in and have a drink.'

Sarge: 'Scotch.'

I'd unrolled the window before. Now I stuck Barney's .45 through it, holding the stock with both hands. 'Stand still,' I said.

The Sarge was halfway up the porch steps. Keenan, the perfect host, had come out and was looking down at him, waiting for him to come up so he could after-you him into the house. They were both perfect silhouettes in the light spilling through from inside. I doubted if they could see much of me in the dark, but they could see the gun. It was a big gun.

'Who the h.e.l.l are you?' Keenan asked.

'Jerry Tarkanian,' I said. 'Move and I'll put a hole in you big enough to watch television through.'

'You sound like a punk,' Sarge said. He didn't move, though.

'Just don't move. That's all you've got to worry about.' I opened the Impala's back door and got out carefully. The Sarge was staring at me over his shoulder and I could see the glitter of his little eyes. One hand was creeping up the lapel of his 1943-model double-breasted suit.

'Oh, please,' I said. 'Get your f.u.c.king hands up, a.s.shole.'

The Sarge put his hands up. Keenan's already were.

'Come down to the foot of the steps. Both of you.'

They came down, and out of the direct glare of the light I could see their faces. Keenan looked scared, but the Sarge might have been listening to a lecture on Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. He was probably the one who had jobbed Barney.

'Face the wall and lean on it. Both of you.'

Keenan: 'If you're after money . . . '

I laughed. 'Well, I was going to start off by offering you a cut-rate deal on Tupperware, work my way up to the big stuff gradually, but you saw through me. Yeah, I'm after money. Four hundred and eighty thousand dollars, actually. Buried on a little island off Bar Harbor called Carmen's Folly.'

Keenan jerked as if he'd been shot, but the Sarge's dipped-in-concrete face never twitched. He turned around and put his hands on the wall, leaning his weight on them. Keenan reluctantly followed suit. I frisked him first and got a stupid little.32 with a three-inch barrel. A gun like that, you could put the muzzle against a guy's head and still miss when you pulled the trigger. I threw it over my shoulder and heard it bounce off one of the cars. Sarge was clean - and it was a relief to step away from him.

'We're going into the house. You first, Keenan, then Sarge, then me. Without incident, okay?'

We all trooped up the steps and into the kitchen. It was one of those germless chrome-and-tile jobs that looks like it was spit whole out of some ma.s.s-production womb in the Midwest somewhere, the work of hearty Methodist a.s.sholes who all look like Mr. Goodwrench and smell like Cherry Blend tobacco. I doubt if it ever needed anything so vulgar as cleaning; Keenan probably just closed the doors and turned on the hidden sprinklers once a week.

I paraded them through into the living room, another treat for the eyes. A pansy decorator who never got over his crush on Ernest Hemingway had apparently done it. There was a flagstone fireplace almost as big as an elevator car, a teak buffet table with a moosehead mounted above it, and a drinks cart stashed below a gunrack loaded with premium artillery. The stereo had turned itself off.

I waved the gun at the couch. 'One on each end.'

They sat, Keenan on the right, Sarge on the left. The Sarge looked even bigger sitting down. An ugly, dented scar twisted its way through his slightly overgrown crewcut. I put his weight at about two-thirty, and wondered why a man with the size and physical presence of Mike Tyson owned a Volkswagen.

I grabbed an easy chair and dragged it over Keenan's quicksand-colored rug until it was in front and between them. I sat down and let the.45 rest on my thigh. Keenan stared at it like a bird stares at a snake. The Sarge, on the other hand, was staring at me like he was the snake and I was the bird. 'Now what?' he asked.

'Let's talk about maps and money,' I said.

'I don't know what you're talking about,' Sarge said. 'All I know is that little boys shouldn't play with guns.'

'How's Cappy MacFarland these days?' I asked casually.

It didn't get jack s.h.i.t from the Sarge, but Keenan popped his cork. 'He knows. He knows!' The words shot out of him like bullets.

'Shut up!' the Sarge told him. 'Shut up your G.o.ddam trap!'

Keenan moaned a little. This was one part of the scenario he had never imagined. I smiled. 'He's right, Sarge.' I said. 'I know. Almost all of it.'

'Who are you?'

'No one you know. A friend of Barney's.'

'Barney who?' Sarge asked indifferently. 'Barney Google, with the goo-goo-googly eyes?''

'He wasn't dead, Sarge. Not quite dead.'

Sarge turned a slow and murderous look on Keenan. Keenan shuddered and opened his mouth. 'Don't talk,' Sarge said to him. 'Not one f.u.c.king word. I'll snap your neck like a chicken if you do.'

Keenan's mouth shut with a snap.

Sarge looked at me again. 'What does almost all of it mean?'

'Everything but the fine details. I know about the armored car. The island. Cappy MacFarland. How you and Keenan and some b.a.s.t.a.r.d named Jagger killed Barney. And the map. I know about that.'

'It wasn't the way he told you,' Sarge said. 'He was going to cross us.'

'He couldn't cross the street,' I said. 'He was just a patsy who could drive.'

He shrugged; it was like watching a minor earthquake. 'Okay. Be as dumb as you look.'

'I knew Barney had something on as early as last March. I just didn't know what. And then one night he had a gun. This gun. How did you connect with him, Sarge?'

'A mutual friend - someone who did time with him. We needed a driver who knew eastern Maine and the Bar Harbor area. Keenan and I went to see him and laid it out for him. He liked it.'

'I did time with him in the Shank,' I said. 'I liked him. You couldn't help but like him. He was dumb, but he was a good kid. He needed a keeper more than a partner.'

'George and Lennie,' Sarge sneered.

'Good to know you spent your own jail time improving what pa.s.ses for your mind, sweetheart,' I said. 'We were thinking about a bank in Lewiston. He couldn't wait for me to finish doping it out. So now he's underground.'