"You promised not to ask," Prime said.

"Yeah, but..."

"You know me. Books and toys and gimmicks," Prime had said with a shrug. "I used up all my ideas from my last trip between universes."

"It doesn't seem fair," John said.

"You did it with pinball."

It was true. John had stolen an idea from one universe and made a lot of cash off it in another. How could he fault Prime? They'd done the same things.

"Fine."

They'd built the gateway device on the site of the abandoned quarry pit in 7651. The result was that they were only a few hundred yards from the farm when they transferred through.

"You gonna be all right?" John asked. Prime was hyperventilating.

"I hate it," he said. "Every time."

"Do you want me to help get this over to the farm?" John said, nodding to the trunk.

"Naw." Prime pulled out his cell phone. "I got it taken care of. I missed a court date, but I think it's all going to work out."

"I can drop you anywhere," John said. "Any universe. Maybe even back where you came from. ..."

Prime seemed to think it over. Then he shook his head. "No, thanks. This is where I live now. Unless you want it back."

"No, not anymore," John said. "Up till a few weeks ago, I'd have taken it all back, but..."

"It's a big universe out there."

"Yeah."

Prime stepped away, dragging his trunk across the bare stone.

"Get back to your own Casey. I bet she's worried," Prime said.

"Yeah, I bet she is."

"Just do me a favor," Prime said. "Check in on me in a few months. I might need a ride out of this dump."

"You think?"

Prime shrugged. He reached out his hand, and John took it. They shook once solemnly.

"Good luck."

John had then used the portable device to transfer back to 7651, where Henry and Grace waited with the newly built transfer gate.

"Not too bad," Henry had said. They'd smoked the nearest transformer the first time they'd powered up the transfer gate in 7651. They'd lost a week while the electric company fixed it. "It was the range module, like we thought."

John glanced at Grace, sitting in the corner of the quarry office. They slept on cots in the same room with the transfer gate, so John knew she'd had nightmares since the death of Visgrath, since her torture. John had broached the subject just once.

"There's probably, uh, psychiatrists in this universe-"

Grace had shot him a hard look.

"-or, you know, drugs to help you sleep, at least," John said.

He thought she was going to bark at him or, worse, turn away in silence. Instead, she shook her head and said, "John, I just need time and distance."

He'd not asked again.

The only times she left Henry's side were to take a pistol into the shallow quarry and fire at a row of cans she lined up meticulously. John hoped getting her back to 7650 would solve her problems, but there was no telling what Charboric had done while they were gone.

"Ready?" John said.

Grace nodded, standing up. She was dressed in army fatigues they had bought, along with all the electronics, machine guns, dynamite, and bulletproof vests. She hefted a duffel bag full of munitions near the transfer gate.

Just like the gate that John had first built, the transfer gate in 7651 was a fixed structure that transferred anything within a few-meter radius between 7651 and any other universe. A cantilever hung above the transfer area, and duct-taped to it were the electronics that projected the spherical field below. The field was not as subtle as the one from the portable device; it seemed to wrap around whatever it was attached to. But the subtlety of those circuits had been sacrificed in the drive to finish the device in time. The spherical field required them to be careful that nothing was outside the radius of the field when it was activated.

John and Grace slid a wood platform into the field area. The platform-half in and half out of the field-would keep their feet firmly in the field radius. Anything outside the radius-arms, feet, legs-wouldn't be going along for the ride when they transferred to 7650.

"Let's go," Grace said.

"Do you really think we'll need all the ammo?" Henry asked again. "We'll just be able to call the police, right?"

"Do you want to take that chance?" Grace asked flatly.

John nodded, though he worried at Grace's willingness to kill. "Until we know for sure what has happened there..."

Henry started the timer-big LED numbers counted down from 30. They hunkered down on the platform with their gear. At 0, John heard a rising buzz that suddenly cut off. Bright daylight, and they dropped a foot as the platform-once a rectangle, now a circle-collapsed. John, ready for the drop, steadied Henry and Grace with a hand.

They stood on the stone cliff above the quarry in 7650. A warm wind blew through the gra.s.s that sprouted in clumps. There was no one there.

And when they trotted across the road to Bill and Janet's farmyard, Janet burst into tears of joy at their appearance.

"Where have you been?" she cried.

"Hiding," John said. "Have you heard from Casey Nicholson? Do you know if she's all right?"

"She was here," Bill said. "They let her out of the hospital a week after you disappeared."

"Can I use your phone?" John said.

John dialed her dorm room, but there was no answer. He glanced at the wall calendar. It was summer break, of course! He hung up and dialed her home number.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"Casey!"

"John! Where are you?"

"Are you all right?"

"The police have been looking for you. It's a kidnapping, they say. And that company that funded you, EmVis, it's been in the news all month."

"Are you all right?" John repeated again slowly.

"I'm fine, d.a.m.n it! But what about you?"

"We're all fine."

"Who? Grace and Henry?"

"Yeah, we're all fine. We had to run, and things got complicated, if you know what I mean."

"I knew it wasn't a kidnapping," Casey said. "I'm just glad that you made it back. Where are you?"

"At Bill and Janet's. I'll come see you in a while."

"Sure you will. Because if you don't get here by sundown, I will track you down and kill you," Casey said cheerfully.

"I know you will."

He hung up, everything suddenly okay in the world.

Henry called from the TV room: "John, you have got to read this."

"What?"

Henry was reading a copy of the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post. Sat.u.r.day Evening Post. Grace had a copy of Grace had a copy of CapNews CapNews.

"EmVis has imploded," Henry said. "All the management and owners have disappeared."

"They mention us in here," Grace said. "One line. We disappeared too."

"Disappeared?" John said. He glanced out the front window but couldn't see the old barn from there. "What's happened in the last six weeks around here?"

Janet shook her head and sighed. "What a mess it's been. With you missing, and someone breaking into the old barn..."

"Someone broke into the old barn?"

"We thought it was kids, but all your things that you'd spent so much time on look busted up," Bill said.

John, Henry, and Grace shared a look.

"I better go see."

John pushed open the door of the barn and hit the light switch. Nothing happened. He pulled the door all the way open, fishing for the flashlight in his duffel. He flicked it on.

His first transfer gate had been taken apart and removed. John knew by whom: Charboric and his cohorts.

They'd found out from Grace that John was building a device, and when Visgrath had died and John, Henry, Grace, and Prime had escaped to the next universe Charboric had been free to search until he'd found the device. John appearing with Prime had been proof that John had succeeded in building a gateway.

Once Charboric had found the gate, he'd moved it to one of EmVis' labs and used it to transfer his entire team back to where they needed to go.

They were gone.

John sighed. It was for the best for Grace and Henry. They were safe here now if Charboric and all of the EmVis b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were gone. Casey was safe now. John was safe to stay too.

But no, that wasn't a choice anymore.

The Visigoths had a gateway now. If they'd reversed engineered his device, they knew how to build more. John had released a menace on the universe, and he wasn't going to let that cancer linger.

He owned the technology now. It was time to make things right.

EPILOGUE.

Ted Carson was certain he was going insane.

His father was dead. He remembered the funeral. Yet here was Dad, big as life and not dead from a heart attack at forty-nine. Ted felt his stomach knot with fright whenever he stared him in the face.

"You all right, Ted? Have a beer."

"No, I'm not all right," he said.

He and the man who looked like his dad sat side by side in the living room Ted didn't remember, watching a TV he didn't recall, in a chair he'd never sat in before. His "dad" placed a meaty hand on Ted's thigh. He forced himself not to flinch.

"It's an effect of the amnesia, the doctors said. A fugue, they called it."

"Yeah, whatever, but you were dead," Ted said. "And I live somewhere else." That wasn't amnesia. He had memories that didn't actually seem to have happened. Amnesia was when you didn't didn't have memories. have memories.

He didn't want the beer, but his mom, ten kilograms lighter than he remembered, brought one in an iced mug anyway.

He sat back in the recliner and held the mug against his head.

None of this was right.

He'd been getting high in his bas.e.m.e.nt apartment on Winslow. There'd been a knock on the door and some guy was there with a taser. After that Ted didn't remember much, just the claustrophobia from being hog-tied in a coffin. He'd been certain it was those punk dealers who wanted their cash. If only they had given him a chance to pay, to explain! The next thing he remembered was being pulled out of the trunk by Casey Nicholson and led into the police station. Ted's pants had been wet. He'd vomited on the cops' floor. They'd taken him to the hospital, and the newspaperman showed up.