89

Ed Harkenbach's sport coat seemed to offer more compartments than a magician's wearable portmanteau, as he frantically searched his pockets and patted himself and worried aloud about having left the key to everything in another room.

Pounding footsteps on the stairs revealed that the policemen were boldly pursuing even as the siren of a backup cruiser rose in the distance, a different ululation from the bleat of the burglar alarm.

Jeffy considered dragging a highboy in front of the bedroom door, but a barricade was useless if Ed's key was on the study desk near the gun cabinet. His key was on the table in the kitchen of this house in another world. He'd kept it within reach while he'd eaten breakfast, so that he wouldn't need to fumble it out of a pocket in an emergency, but he hadn't counted on being gassed. He also hadn't counted on Ed being one of those forgetful guys who misplaced his keys.

One of the cops in the upstairs hall shouted, "Put down your weapons! Open the door and lie facedown in plain sight, your arms straight out from your sides!"

That seemed to be a wordy and impractical order, and it made Jeffy think they were dealing with a couple of cowboys who might take risks that made no sense.

He didn't want to die here, but he also didn't want to go to jail here for years and years, worlds away from Amity and Michelle, leaving them to fend for themselves, leaving them to die. Never ever would he shoot a cop, not a good and honest officer of the law. But he stepped to one side of the door, took a deep breath, imagined himself as Al Pacino in a gangster movie, and shouted above the shrilling alarm, "I'll fucking kill any shithead who comes in here. I'll blow your fucking brains out!"

Just then Ed said, "Ah, here it is. Why did I tuck it in a hip pocket? I never carry it in a hip pocket."

Jeffy went to him and clutched his arm. "For God's sake, Ed, let's go! They think I'm Dillinger."

"Get my shotgun."

Jeffy snatched it from the bed.

The physicist pressed a forefinger to the home circle on the key. Instead of subjecting them to a four-second wait, the device brightened at once. And there was no period of gray light. The three buttons appeared immediately: blue, red, green; HOME, SELECT, RETURN.

Jeffy said, "Why doesn't mine work this well?"

"Because it was designed by the Ed of your world, and I'm a smarter Ed than he is."

The smarter Ed pressed RETURN.