by Sheila Paulson

Originally published in Small Circle of Friends 6

Based on an episode of Stargate SG-1 (Rest assured it is not necessary to have seen Stargate SG-1 at all to read this story)

"Wow! Listen to this!"

Ray's eager shout startled Peter Venkman, who had just managed to drop off to sleep on the lab couch. He'd had a late night, and then he was dragged out of bed at first light by an amused Egon, who reminded him that they had an early bust. The ghost had been a tough one, too - lots of running up and down steps, blasting wildly. Peter knew he wasn't the only one who was tired afterwards. Ray, of course, was his usual energetic, excitable self.

After they had returned to Ghostbuster Central, Egon called one of his periodic "staff meetings" to go over the plans for his latest ghost detection gizmo. Peter didn't actually read the printouts Egon distributed prior to the actual meeting, but he managed to sneak in a quick scan under the guise of a long shower. He had to. Egon tended to work himself into a state of high dudgeon if people didn't pay attention, even if lesser minds than Einstein couldn't make heads nor tails of the physicist's notes. It was usually left for Ray to translate, although Peter generally absorbed enough to ask a clever question or two.

He'd been pretty sure that Egon wasn't fooled, but the physicist let it ride. Having designed a whatsis that would make detecting invisible ghosts much easier, he strutted his stuff with pride, ignoring Peter's suggestion that, if the ghosts were invisible, the odds were no one would call them in to bust it.

That argument was shot down with amazing ease. They frequently received calls based on mysterious sounds, or sensations of cold. Okay, so the gizmo would probably have its uses. It proved to be a special filtering device that boosted the Ecto-scopes.

Ray loved the 'scopes and tended to wear the special goggles more often than any of the others. He had instantly volunteered to test them on the next appropriate bust. Egon appeared gratified. Peter and Winston exchanged a quick grin, then Venkman clapped Egon on the shoulder and muttered, "One more step on the road to the Nobel Prize."

Egon did yearn after one, and Peter's response had pleased him so much that he hadn't found fault with Venkman when he curled up on the couch, prepared to enjoy a quick nap before lunch. But then Ray arrived, perky and excited. . .

Ray snatched up a journal he had acquired at an estate sale the previous week. It was an old-fashioned notebook with marbled cover and gold-edged pages that were ragged with age. Someone, long ago, had stuck tiny scraps of paper in here and there as bookmarks, and Ray had been checking those pages first.

Ray had actually returned home last week with an armload of musty old diaries, spell books, and various occult texts, dusty enough to make Peter sneeze. Ray had been tickled to death, and he'd been dipping into the texts ever since. It was about as harmless a diversion as Ray ever managed, so the rest of the team had tolerated it when he read obscure snippets aloud, or when he'd disappear on frantic research that the nebulous quotes drove him to.

Peter groaned silently, Ray must have found something he just had to share . . .

While Egon did something highly scientific with a calculator, and Winston turned on the computer and started entering figures from a log column Egon gave him, Ray continued to browse, flipping pages. Peter had learned long ago to sleep through all but the noisiest of Ray's outbursts, but this shout was too loud to ignore.

Lifting an eyelid and casting a baleful eye at the team's occult expert, Peter said pointedly, "Do you mind? Some of us are trying to sleep."

"But this is important, Peter. I think it explains what happened to Vincent Meadows."

"What?" blurted an astonished Egon, jerking up from the adjustments he'd been making on Ray's ecto-scopes. "Did you say Vincent Meadows?"

Winston scratched his head as he turned away from the computer screen. "All right, I'll bite. Who's Vincent Meadows?"

"He's an occult specialist from the 1940's," Ray answered before Egon could speak. "Remember how Houdini always said he could get an answer back to the rest of the world from beyond the grave? Well, Meadows claimed he could to go an alternate world and come back."

"More Looney Tunes," Peter offered sotto voce. And Egon didn't shoot him down. That probably meant Egon half-agreed with him, although he wouldn't want to say so in front of Ray, who had the gift of belief in almost anything.

"His reputation is not entirely solid," Egon reminded his younger teammate. "Credible scientists have long been inclined to disregard his theories of alternate dimensions."

"But, Egon, we know that alternate worlds are real," Ray countered, shaking his head. "We've been to the Netherworld, and your soul was sent over into that other dimension when the demon took over your body. We even went into the Bogeyman's domain through a closet. How can you deny that other dimensions exist after all that?"

"I can hardly do that, Ray," Egon defended himself. "But that doesn't mean that there are forty-seven of them on the other side of Meadows' fireplace."

Peter roused himself a little more, interested in spite of himself. "His fireplace?" he echoed. "What's this, a Narnia thing with a fireplace instead of a wardrobe?"

Egon, Ray and Winston all turned to stare at him.

"You read the Narnia books?" Egon asked, voicing the doubt they all felt.

Oops. Peter grinned, abashed. "Heck no. I saw it on TV. Wasn't there a miniseries or something?" Okay, so he'd loved the books when he was a kid, and he had imagined meeting Aslan, or having adventures in another world with a loyal band of companions. But that was the kind of thing he'd never dare to admit, not even to his buddies, although he now had adventures in this world with his own loyal band.

Egon's eyes were knowing - trust Spengler to read the most minute twitch of Peter's eyebrow - but he didn't embarrass the man. "As I recall," the physicist continued, ignoring the interruption, "Meadows had a bizarre theory about the constant heating and cooling of the stones making up his fireplace. He claimed it created a field where dimensional travel was possible, with a little extra effort. When he disappeared, the gullible conducted all sorts of semi-controlled experiments with the fireplace. However, they were never able to duplicate his process, which should prove that it was false. Anything that cannot be duplicated--"

Winston headed off the impending lecture on scientific methodology with an adeptness born of frequent experience. "So, this dude claimed he could walk through the back of his fireplace into another world the way the Bogeyman popped out of kids' closets, and when he vanished some folks thought he'd taken a vacation in one of them?"

Ray grinned. "Well, some did. Others thought he'd done a bunk. Some money was missing from his bank account and a suitcase was gone. I can understand the suitcase if he thought he'd stay over there for awhile, but they wouldn't have our money. Could he have converted it to gold or something?"

"If he wanted to walk around dragging gold," Peter objected with an amused grin. "Do you know how much gold weighs? Maybe he ran off with his girlfriend or something . . . set up all the fireplace talk so people wouldn't search for him very hard."

Ray shook his head. "He had a fiancée. She always insisted that he had an accident 'on the other side', and died. She said he'd have come back to her otherwise. And he left her his house in his will."

"Small consolation if he was off in Tahiti with his babe of choice," Peter muttered. "Anyway, you said it was the 1940s. Wasn't he in the war or anything?"

"I think it was after the war." Ray scrunched up his face, trying to remember. "I think he vanished in 1946. Gosh, wouldn't it be great to track him down?"

"After forty-five years?" Winston asked doubtfully. He paused to save the file he had been working on. "He'd be a bit on the decrepit side if he's still alive. So what does your book say, anyway, Ray?"

"It's one of Meadows' journals. I found in the collection of books I got at that estate sale. Not his estate or the fiancée's. Somebody must've 'acquired' it when he disappeared. It was a big media circus - well, in the newspapers and on the radio anyway. The police were sure foul play was involved, but the fiancée insisted he'd done what he'd claimed he'd do. I bet one of the people who was checking it out made off with the book, what do you guys think?"

Peter pushed himself up to a sitting position. "Well, if whoever it was just bought the big one, then he probably couldn't make anything out of the book over the past forty-five years. But you say it tells you where Meadows' went?"

"Not where, really, but sort of how. It's pretty rough, and I'm not sure we could do it just anywhere, but if we could get to the fireplace he used, maybe we could do something with our throwers set at a low level of energy, or even use the molecular phase amplifier to weaken the boundary between worlds - the way it pushed Egon through to the Netherworld when we tried to restabilize him that time. Because, gosh, if Meadows' really opened a dimensional gateway, then the walls will be weak between that world and ours. Wouldn't it be great?"

Peter pushed himself off the couch and corralled the occultist by the scruff of his neck. "Ray, Ray, Ray," he chided. "It would not be great. You say this Meadows guy has been gone since 1946. Even if he really walked through his fireplace - and I, for one, think it's probably a crock - once he crossed to the other side, he didn't know how to come back. If he needed a fireplace, the odds were, they didn't have a matching one on the other side. I don't want to spend the next forty-five years getting older with no gorgeous women to date and no TV. And you're not going to try it alone, either. Am I right, Egon? Winston?"

"It might behoove us to investigate the fireplace in question," Egon offered. "While I am inclined to be doubtful, it might prove an interesting analysis. And no, I am not advocating stepping through the back of the fireplace, not unless we could guarantee a return home."

"I hear that, homeboy." Winston shut down the computer. "I'm with Pete. I don't want to disappear. For all we know, stepping through killed him instantly. Or maybe there were vicious ghosts over there, or savage animals, or it opened into a pit of fire."

Peter grimaced. "Winston, good buddy, you have a nasty imagination. I think we should pass on this one." They stepped into danger every day of the week, but usually they were doing it to defend a client, or the city, or, once in a great while, the whole world. They weren't doing it on a whim because of some mumbo jumbo in a moldy old book.

"I think we should check it out," Ray insisted stubbornly. "If the fireplace is still connected to the other dimension, it could cause trouble for other people."

"Assuming the house is still standing," Egon said. "We have no way of knowing--"

"Yes, we do," Ray interrupted with a grin. "It's on the Upper East Side - somewhere in the East Seventies. I've seen it. I can find the address. For all we know, the fiancée still lives there."

"Unless she got married to somebody else and sold it," Peter added. He had a feeling that, any second now, they were going to be loading Ecto with the molecular phase amplifier and all the gadgets Egon had invented for his trans-dimensional portal. Of course that particular device only went to the Netherworld - at least as far as Peter knew - but that wouldn't stop Egon once he got a bee in his bonnet. Good thing the portal was too big to load into Ecto.

Egon frowned. "We don't know if the house is still standing today, Ray, even if you saw it once."

"Yes, it is. At least it was last year. I drove past on purpose, just to see. Vincent Meadows had some great theories. I've been reading about him since I was a kid. I thought it was keen. It didn't look like it had been broken up into apartments, either."

"No, but it might have been remodeled," Peter reminded him.

"You just don't want to do anything but take a nap," Ray accused him, grinning.

Peter smiled back. "If you guys go, I'll go. A real martyr to science, that's me. But I don't want you to get your hopes up. The mysterious fireplace might not be there anymore. Central heating's really big in the 90s."

"Lots of people still have fireplaces, Peter," Ray argued. "In case it's still there, there's a ton of information in here. Egon, see what you think. Can we create any of these devices?" He handed the book over.

Egon frowned, but he glanced at the page. Then he took a second look.

Peter heaved an inaudible sigh. Old Spengs was hooked; Peter could see it in the way Egon's glasses slid down his nose and in the abstracted "hmm" he muttered. Rolling his eyes at Winston, Peter forced himself to his feet. Okay, so he was a little curious about the famous fireplace himself, but that didn't mean he'd let the two science nuts drag him and Zeddemore into a dimension from which there was no return.

"Actually," Egon remarked, "I can adapt existing equipment to do what Meadows' device did in less than half an hour. It's simply a modification of the molecular phase amplifier that should be easily reversible after the fact. The only problem I can foresee is that Meadows would have had no means of triggering a return from the other side . . . Oh," he corrected when Ray pointed to the page. "The journal speaks of a portable device that he theoretically would have carried with him. Not nearly as efficient as our bracelet recall devices."

Peter, who liked the term "teleport bracelet" better, heaved a loud sigh. "That means little Petey Venkman has to get up and run around and carry heavy equipment, doesn't it?"

"Very perceptive, Peter," Egon remarked as he passed the notebook back to Ray and began to assemble the tools he would need from various locations on the lab table.

"I'll call out for pizza," Peter conceded. It was Egon's turn to prepare lunch, and that was probably a lost cause.

"I'll run out and pick it up," Winston volunteered.

"See, I told you it was still here," Ray proclaimed eagerly as Winston pulled up in front of the Meadows house, ignoring the no-parking sign. Cops rarely bothered to ticket the Ghostbusters. Ray jumped out of Ecto and raced around to the back to start unloading equipment.

Peter followed. "Ray, Ray, Ray," he chided, waving a finger under Stantz's nose. "Why don't we find out if anybody's home before we do all the lifting and hauling? I devote my life to time-saving practicality."

"Hmm. That is the first I've heard of such a claim," Egon replied dryly, waving his P.K.E. meter at the house. When the detection device didn't respond at all, the physicist muttered, "Nuts."

"Not like anybody said there were ghosts here, m' man," Winston reminded him, sharing an amused grin with Peter.

"No, but if there is a dimensional cross-rip present, even dormant, there should be some evidence of it; residual energies," Egon said.

"Not closed down, there wouldn't be." Peter propped his elbow on Egon's shoulder and leaned against him, forcing the physicist to brace his feet to maintain balance. "Now, let's go see if anybody's home, and if they're willing to let us track in dirt and mess with their fancy, rich-people house."

Venkman bounded up the stairs and pushed the doorbell. It chimed faintly inside. After a few moments, Peter heard someone coming. The door opened far enough for a face to peek out past the chain.

The woman was elderly, probably around seventy, with soft white hair and wide-set blue eyes in a face that had the kind of bone structure that would keep her beautiful her entire life. Peter, who had always been a sucker for sweet little old ladies, beamed at her.

"You're one of the Ghostbusters," she said in surprise. "But I didn't call you. I have no gh--" She gasped, staring past him at Ray, who had joined Peter, the journal in his hand. "But that looks like- It can't be Vincent's dimensional journal?" She closed the door, but only long enough to undo the chain, then flung it wide. "Is it?" she insisted.

Ray nodded eagerly. "You must be Mr. Meadows' fiancée. I'm Ray Stantz of the Ghostbusters, and these are Peter Venkman, Egon Spengler, and Winston Zeddemore." He waved the book at each of them in turn and they nodded greetings.

"Ma'am," Winston said politely.

Ray plunged on eagerly. "I bought this book at an estate sale and was reading it this morning. I found something about the fireplace. . ."

The woman stood, staring, her eyes wide and full of a forlorn hope that had never died. In her pastel blue pants suit, she didn't really look her age for she was slim and fit, but there were lines around her eyes that belied that hasty impression.

"The fireplace? After all this time? Oh, dear God." She pressed a hand against her mouth as she realized what he was saying. "My goodness, you had better come in. My name is Kate Longbridge. Vincent left me his house, and while I've made changes over the years, I never dared touch the fireplace. At first, even after he was declared legally dead, I was so sure he would return, but he never did. Come in," she repeated.

Ray gestured down at Ecto. "We have some equipment. . ."

"Then, by all means, bring it in. Over the years, I've done research in various paranormal studies, and even in physics, in case the answer was scientific rather than occult or metaphysical. The fireplace is just a fireplace."

Winston and Peter started down the stairs, the psychologist catching Egon's arm to get him to help. Ray, who had already put on his proton pack, hung back to speak to Kate. The others went down, Winston and Peter donning their packs, then they apportioned out the rest of the equipment. Egon carried the modified molecular phase amplifier and wore the atomic destabilizer instead of a normal proton pack and thrower. Peter doubted that it would open a gateway, although it might temporarily make the back wall of the fireplace insubstantial. The end result of that kind of game might trap them inside the wall, something Peter wasn't gung-ho to try. Still, with no idea what nasties might lurk on the other side, the destabilizer was a good addition to the other three proton packs. They might need it.

Ms. Longbridge led them into a huge parlor, probably decorated much the same way it had been in 1945, although the carpet was newer. It had a high-ceiling with a vast crystal chandelier that screamed "money". The parlor was definitely a male preserve, with comfortable old leather furniture. The walls were paneled in a dark wood about halfway to the ceiling, then wallpapered above in a striped cream, gray, and black. The fixtures were all antiques, old fashioned globe lamps with hand-painted glass shades. But the fireplace dominated the room.

Huge and set with giant stones, it was tall enough for a short man to walk into it standing upright. A fire was laid, but it was an electric one, mounted on a wrought iron stand that was hinged to swing to one side and recess into a cavity in the side wall. A grate that lay beneath where the original fire would have burned was so brightly polished that it was clear that no fire had burned there for years. Above the mantle hung a portrait of a young man and woman. Peter could see traces of the fair-haired, laughing girl in the elderly woman who now stood at his side. In the painting, she looked like one of the women he'd seen on old posters about buying war bonds, her long hair curled around one of those weird fashion gizmos from the period called a "rat." She wore trousers, which were much more rare for women back then - an unconventional girl, who was engaged to an even more unconventional man.

"That's Vincent Meadows," Ray said, pointing at the man in the picture.

Meadows hair was slicked down in an archaic style and he wore a hand knitted sweater. Wire-rimmed glasses as round as Egon's sat on his long, thin nose, and his eyes twinkled with amusement and intelligence. The painting crackled with energy.

"Yes, that's Vincent," Kate Longbridge admitted. "When he went, I never thought to marry. It wasn't that I became a nun, just that no other man measured up to Vincent. The only thing about Vincent that I hated was that he went away and left me behind. He was so fascinated by his studies, he became caught up in them. Oh, he'd listen to my theories, but back then, in the 40's, women stayed at home and raised children, they did not have careers alongside their men. It was a little different in the war. Rosie the Riveter and all that. Women had to take jobs because the men were off to war, but once the victory was won, most of those women went back to being wives and mothers.

"My father was a scientist, a paleontologist, and when I was a little girl he would take me with him when he traveled. He was great friends with Louis and Mary Leakey and we spent time with them in Africa. I know a great deal about paleontology, but of course I have no degree. And there was no women's liberation back then."

She caught herself. "I'm sorry, I'm babbling, but no one has expressed an interest in Vincent in so many years, other than a stubborn journalist nine or ten years ago, who wanted to write him up as a crackpot."

"Then you are firmly convinced he found a way to step through the fireplace into another realm?" Egon asked her.

"Yes, Dr. Spengler, I am. I went over his notes with him before he tried it. I confess I thought some of it was farfetched, but I could also see what he meant to do. In a way he wanted to warp the space and time continuum, not to travel in time - he thought it would be impossible to travel into the future, and he was never one to look back at the past - but to travel to other worlds. Not other planets. He was sure that sometime in this century man would reach the moon. He used to say, 'Jules Verne was right. Someday he'll be called a visionary.' And look at what we have today. Nuclear submarines, men on the moon. Vincent wanted to be a visionary, too. He wanted to tackle something others weren't attempting. He wanted to prove the theory that other worlds abutted our own, some of them quite similar, some of them vastly different."

Peter reached out and caught her hand. "You know what? He was right. We've seen a few weird dimensions ourselves. We do more than just bust ghosts. We're parapsychologists. Ray here knows all about the occult, and Egon's a physicist."

He liked Kate Longbridge. He couldn't promise they would find her Vincent for her, not after so long. He couldn't even guarantee that they could find the dimension he might have disappeared into. But what he could almost guarantee was that Vincent Meadows hadn't left Kate on purpose, not unless he was the biggest idiot in the world. She had been born too early, trapped in a world where it was harder for women to realize their potential. But she'd tried, and she'd never given up. No quitter himself, Peter respected that.

"Where did you find Vincent's book?" Kate asked. "When I realized he was missing - and that he'd cleaned out the fireplace - I believed he'd gone through. I thought he would come back, but he didn't. The hours turned into days, the days into weeks, and still he didn't come back. By the end of the first week, several colleagues came by, hunting for him, and we searched for Vincent's research, but we never found it."

"You know what I think?" Ray asked. "I think one of them did find it, and he decided to help himself. Would that have been possible? I bought the book at an estate sale. I go to them when known occultists and spiritualists die, because sometimes they have books that aren't safe for the general public - people who might think it's all a game and wind up casting a deadly spell. So I buy the books and we use some of them for research. Once in awhile we find books that are so dangerous that we put them in our containment unit. The man who owned this book was Charles Cinderford. He lived in Connecticut."

"Charlie?" Kate put her hand to her mouth. "Oh, not Charlie. He was Vincent's closest friend. I can't believe he'd do such a thing. But . . . maybe he was just too ambitious. I'm sure he never found a way to open the portal elsewhere, though. It would have been all over the newspapers if he had."

"Maybe he bought it later," Ray offered hastily in consolation. "We can't tell now. Anyway, we have it now, and we've been going over his notes. What we want to know is if it's okay with you for us to try to open the portal? That's really why we've come."

"To open it?" she gasped. "For forty-five years, I've wondered if Vincent might be alive over there on the other side. Maybe you can't open the portal, but if you can, I might be able to find out. After all this time, I'd really like to know."

Peter patted her shoulder gently. "It's been a long time. If he's still alive over there, he will have made a new life for himself after so long. Or he might have moved so far from the portal that we won't find him."

"Or he might be dead," she said quickly before any of the Ghostbusters could. "Even if it weren't dangerous, people younger than Vincent die natural deaths, and Vincent was four years older than me." Then she squared her shoulders and braced herself. "I want you to try, though. If I'd ever dreamed that you knew about other dimensions, I would have called you when you started your business."

"We didn't know about them in the beginning," Ray consoled her. "But we've learned. After I found the book and the information in it, we went over our equipment. We've been to the Netherworld, using bracelets to recall us, but that wouldn't work here. So Egon and I modified a gizmo that will return us from the other side. All we have to do is mark the exact spot once we step through."

"You mean that whatever Vincent did on this side had to be duplicated on the other?" she asked.

"That is our theory," Egon replied. "From his notes, it is apparent that he believed that opening the gate would keep it open on both sides for a period of nearly two hours. My research indicates that the time might be rather less, and that it might actually need the process duplicated from the other side to return. Something over there might have delayed him. Could he have become caught up in his findings and missed his own deadline?"

"He might, if the time was shorter than he thought it was," she conceded. "I've been over this in my head so many times, reliving the last time we talked. At first I was so angry that he'd gone without telling me, or without having me here as a precaution. He did leave a note to explain where he'd gone. That's when I telephoned Charlie Cinderford - he lived in Brooklyn then. We tried to duplicate Vincent's results, but without success. Of course we couldn't duplicate his device. Charlie eventually tried to soothe me and convince me that Vincent had . . . left me. But if that were so, why leave this house to me with the provision that I never sell it or remodel the fireplace?"

Ray's eyes widened excitedly. "Wow, that was one of the provisions of your inheritance? I think that proves he did succeed, don't you think so, guys?"

Peter realized that it could also be a means of preventing her from searching for him elsewhere. But it seemed an excessive method of covering his trail if he'd just decided to run off with another woman. No, this might just be what it appeared to be - Meadows couldn't get back. Now Egon and Ray wanted to try it, too.

"Egon, hey, Egon, if this actually works, is there any way to test it first?" Venkman asked. "Send a P.K.E. meter through on a rope or something and pull it back?"

"Naturally, Peter," Egon replied. "I had planned a meter test in any case. If it returns intact with readings, we'll at least know that it didn't incinerate instantly."

"But we won't know if there's a lethal atmosphere over there," Winston muttered. When Kate gasped, he added quickly, "Sorry, ma'am, but somebody has to rein in these two mad scientists. Would Vincent have taken any precautions?"

"He planned to wear a diving suit," she explained. "He had an oxygen tank so he could breathe if the air was bad. Perhaps he took too many risks, but he also took precautions. He was not suicidal."

"Then let's make sure we're not, either," Peter said. "What can we do? We didn't happen to bring any handy dandy environmental suits."

"No, but we can take meter readings first," Egon said. "I'll run two tests, one for standard P.K. energy and one for living biorhythms. If there are any, we can check to see if they match human readings. Then one of us can go through for ten seconds at the end of a rope."

"I'll go," Ray volunteered so eagerly that no one challenged him. "I can carry a meter and you can pull me back. The calculations we did indicated that the gate should stay open on both sides for at least half an hour."

Peter opened his mouth to object, then shut it again. This was stupid, but on the other hand, every alternate dimension they had encountered so far had breathable air. That didn't mean that this one did, but they'd be careful, and unless the atmosphere was wildly corrosive, ten seconds would be safe enough. He would have preferred to go himself, but Ray was just dying to go. Oops, not a good choice of words, he thought.

"Why not pick up a scuba tank just to be safe?" Winston offered. "I'll get it. There's a place not far from here where I can rent what we need. I know I'd feel better if Ray wore it. He take some air samples."

Peter relaxed. "Way to go, Winston. You do that while Egon and Ray set up. Remember, this might not even work."

Peter's hopes of avoiding a dimensional trip proved to be in vain. The modified molecular phase amplifier did its job with amazing efficiency. As the energy projected struck the back wall of the fireplace, it glimmered and blurred before their eyes, and when it sharpened again, the stones had changed. They weren't transparent, but insubstantial, like fog. Egon touched it cautiously and they all sucked in their breaths when his finger disappeared into the stone.

"Success, gentlemen," Egon stated with delight. He checked his finger, making sure the tip hadn't been lopped off. It was intact.

Kate closed her eyes, her hands clasped tightly just under her bosom. "Thank God, it works."

"Whoa!" blurted Peter. "That's just the way my finger went into your chest when your atoms were destabilized."

Kate eyed Venkman oddly, then turned to stare at Egon to see if he were actually solid.

"So, does it really open on another dimension, or is it just fuzzy for awhile?" Winston asked.

"That's easy enough to check." Egon set aside the modified molecular phase amplifier and took a P.K.E. reading. "Hmm . . . I'm reading a dimensional crossrip. Yes, we've done it; we've opened the gateway. I was right that the place where one opened before might more readily open a second time. We couldn't do this in the fireplace back at headquarters, at least not without considerably more preparation."

"Let's toss a meter through and see what kind of readings we get on the other side," Ray suggested excitedly. "Gee, this is neat!"

They tossed two meters through on separate ropes, one set conventionally, the other for living biorhythms. Both meters came back intact. No evidence of corrosion marked the casings. Ray barely held his excitement in check while they studied the meters.

There were vague and diffuse readings of a paranormal nature. "Not a conventional ghost or anything within our classification system," Egon murmured, fascinated. "I would say possibly physical entities; the valence has shaded into the negative. However, it's not very close, either. It could simply be the life forms over there."

"Terror dogs?" Winston hazarded, exchanging a worried glance with Peter.

Egon shook his head. "No, I've taken terror dog readings before and they are nothing like this."

"What of human readings?" Kate demanded, craning her neck to see the meter's screen.

Egon set aside the meter with the weird negative readings and picked up the other. "No, nothing. But that doesn't mean that he isn't over there," he added hastily when Kate sucked in a breath. "These devices were designed to read ghosts. We sometimes modify them to detect human biorhythms in a crisis, but they possess a very limited range for that. I modified this meter to record anything that was relatively close to the human signature, in other words, to include humanoid beings. We won't step through into a populous area."

"Then it should be safe for my test." Ray picked up the scuba tank and settled it onto his back, fitting the regulator into his mouth while Peter secured a rope around his waist.

"Bottom line, Tex," Venkman cautioned sternly, "you try anything risky, you don't have to worry about what happens to you over there because I'll brain you the minute you get back. If you even think of untying the rope, we'll incinerate all your Captain Steel comic books."

"I'm just going to take atmospheric readings, Peter," Ray assured him.

"Here, put this on, too," Peter urged, passing him the facemask that Winston had brought back. "In case there's something in the atmosphere that might hurt your eyes. Once you've finished those tests, you might not need it, but at least you'll know without frying your eyeballs."

"What a poetic turn of phrase," Egon muttered. "Ray, be careful."

"I will." He waited for Winston and Peter to take firm hold of the rope, then he stepped up to the wall. He'd watched the meters pass right through, but it took a few seconds of resolution-building to take that step himself. Half-expecting to bop himself on the head, he stuck out his hand and watched it vanish into the stones. Feeling like Slimer, who could drift through walls easily, he stepped through. At least he wouldn't leave a smear of ectoplasm behind like the team's ghostly mascot.

The transition was weird. At first, he moved through darkness. He could feel the wall surrounding him, but it wasn't solid; it was a sensation unlike anything he'd ever felt before, and he was reminded of the Star Trek creature, the Horta, who could tunnel through solid stone. Of course the Horta left a passage behind it, and Ray didn't think he was doing that. It was like moving through water, if the water was halfway turned to ice, only it wasn't cold. There was no sensation of temperature at all. He couldn't even hear the rasp of air from the tank he wore on his back.

Then he was through, emerging with a near-soundless pop. Gloomy light surrounded him under a sky full of ominous, churning clouds. Quickly he brought up the air quality indicator and studied it, relieved when it registered a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere almost identical to that of his own world. Pulling the regulator from his mouth he took a cautious breath. No problem, and the strongest scent was the salt tang of the sea.

Ray glanced around. He stood on a high promontory that overlooked a vast and churning ocean. At the highest edge of the cliff stood an ancient structure, a strange cross between medieval castle and towering ziggurat, made of weathered gray stone. It was partly in ruins. The path sloped up to it, but it was too far away for a meter to read a biorhythm if someone lived inside.

Ray glanced behind him and saw the rope vanish into a man-made wall of stone that was nearly seven feet high. The structure ran almost halfway across the jutting promontory, but beyond it and to his left the land sank down, unimpeded, to a distant valley. Beyond the valley rose towering mountains as stark and awesome as the Himalayas, most of them covered with snow. The air he was breathing was tart and crisp, and there was lingering remnants of old snowfalls in the shelter of the stone wall.

The rope around his waist tightened and he put up a hand to see if the wall would allow him through. It would. He vanished again into the thick, dark nothingness, popping out into Peter's arms.

Venkman steadied him, then held Ray at arm's length, looking him up and down for wounds, then he noticed the unused regulator. He snatched it up and waved it reprovingly before Ray's eyes. "Are you nuts?" he screeched.

Ray passed the air quality monitor to Egon. "We can breathe the air. We took a lot bigger chance when we went to the Netherworld after Egon."

"Yeah, but we had a lot bigger reason to risk it," Peter insisted. He caught Egon's eye. "So, we can breathe over there?"

Egon lifted his gaze from the monitor. "Yes, there are no problems that I can foresee. The percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere is a degree or two higher there, and there are no elements that should affect us adversely. What did you see, Ray?"

The occultist described the ancient building, the wall, the distant mountains, and the roar of the pounding surf. "It's eerie, like something out of a gothic novel. A little colder than here, but not bad enough to need coats. The ziggurat's too far away to take readings, so somebody could be living there."

"What's a ziggur-whatsis?" Peter asked.

"A Sumerian temple tower," Egon replied. "Each succeeding level was smaller that the one before, so it had a series of terraces, as one climbed higher."

Ray nodded. "This one was squarer, like a fortress, but it did have a few terraces. It wasn't summer over there, but I think someone had grown gardens on some of them. I didn't see anything alive, not even birds. And, boy, does it look like it's about to rain, or maybe even snow, though I don't think it's quite cold enough for that."

"Goodie," Peter said. "I love being rained on. It's my whole raison d'etre."

"Thought that was sleeping in, Pete," Winston teased.

Venkman made a face at him.

"We should go through now," Egon decided. "We can carry the trigger device with us. We must, of course, protect it with our lives. The recall bracelets won't work here due to the different principles involved in the transfer process."

Peter opened his mouth to demand who was paying them for this, but his gaze fell on Kate Longbridge and he bit back the words before he could speak them.

Ray shed the scuba tank and facemask and donned his proton pack. The other Ghostbusters were already wearing theirs.

"Very well," Egon said, as the four men crowded into the huge fireplace. He carried the portable version of the modified molecular phase amplifier that he and Ray had cobbled together out of various parts. He'd finished up the last connections in the car on their way over.

The four men walked through the back wall of the fireplace and into another world.

The cold breeze whipped Peter's hair as he stepped through into the "gothic world." Directly ahead of him stood the huge old tower. It leaped up into five separate stories, and he could see the gardens Ray had mentioned on a couple of the terraces. Behind him was the stone wall. He was still staring at it when a hand poked out of it, followed by the body of Kate Longbridge. Automatically, he caught her as she stumbled, supporting her until she caught her balance.

"What the heck are you doing here?" he cried, causing the others to turn and stare.

"It's my fireplace, young man. Do you imagine I'd miss the chance to be here if you find Vincent?"

"It isn't safe here, ma'am," Egon told her. "I think you should return immediately. The wall is still malleable." He poked it with his finger to prove it.

She faced him defiantly. "No. I'm not going back until I explore that building. Vincent might be in there, and even if he's not, I might find evidence of what happened to him." She started off with a long stride, buttoning up the jacket of her pants suit against the chill. She was wearing Nikes; Peter hadn't noticed that before.

Winston shrugged. "Unless we take her back by force, she's not going. And if we do she'd probably just wait a little while and come through on her own again. There's another twenty-five minutes or so before the portal closes. Maybe that'll be time for her to see if Vincent's in there."

Egon raised his P.K.E. meter and frowned. It beeped faintly, indicating either something small nearby, or something big far away. Peter ventured over and peered at the screen. Big. Far away. Probably somewhere in that distant valley. He hoped it stayed there, because if those readings were accurate, the entity was at least a Class 8, and physical rather than ectoplasmic. Not good. Not good at all.

"It's not coming in this direction," Egon assured. "But if it does, we'll need to return to the portal immediately." He tried to juggle the gizmo that opened the gate and adjust the meter at the same time. Ray jumped in and grabbed the portal device, leaving Egon free to study his readings.

As they approached the ziggurat, the meter reacted again, faintly this time. Egon snapped his fingers. "Biorhythms," he remarked, squinting at the meters' screen. "Human, or very near to human."

"Vincent?" Kate cried, starting to run.

Winston stopped her. "We don't know that, ma'am. It could be cannibals, or savages, or even nasty, bad-tempered humans who like to rob travelers. Let's take this slow and safe."

Egon balanced a meter in each hand. "One person is in there," he remarked. "We don't have a record of Vincent Meadows' biorhythms, so it's impossible to tell if we're detecting him." He lifted his gaze to the towering fortress that loomed before them. A drawbridge that spanned the gap over the distant sea below led the way inside, so old that the wood was worn. The stone building itself was perched on a spit of rock that had, long ago, separated from the rest of the promontory. Without the drawbridge, there would be no way inside. At least a hundred feet below the surf churned hungrily.

"Are we sure we want to go in there?" Peter asked, trying not to sound as unhappy as he felt. He had never been wild about heights.

"That is where the readings are coming from, Peter," Egon pointed out. He stepped onto the drawbridge and tested it. "It feels sturdy enough. We will test each step before we take it and, of course, avoid the holes."

"Egon, Egon," Peter complained, "what have I told you about speaking the obvious?"

"Gosh, this is great," breathed Ray, balancing the recall device carefully as he craned his neck to see through the vast double doors that stood ajar. It looked even darker inside than outside, but at least there appeared to be a roof. As the wind whipped a spray of rain at them, Peter decided a shelter might be an excellent idea. He took a cautious step onto the drawbridge, wishing like mad that it had railings.

Winston helped Kate across, his hand at her elbow, but she was naturally deft and moved as easily as a woman twenty years her junior.

Ray shifted the gizmo again. It looked heavy. "Isn't it great, Peter?" he exulted. "I can't wait to see what's in--"

"Look out!" Egon cried.

Peter jerked to a stop, tottering unsteadily not two feet from a hole in the bridge. "I saw it," he protested, a moment before he heard the explosion of sound from Egon's P.K.E. meter and realized the warning wasn't about the hole in the drawbridge. "That's not good, is it?"

"Run!" Egon cried as something huge and hairy and moving like a bullet train leaped the barrier wall as if it didn't exist and bore down on them. Its slavering mouth was open to reveal huge, jagged teeth.

Winston yanked Kate through the open doors to the shelter inside. Egon started for the doorway, and Ray jumped onto the drawbridge with a yelp of astonishment. The thing looked like a wolf. No, correction, a giant wolf . . . on steroids. The creature was probably eight feet high at the shoulder, big enough to grab one of the Ghostbusters in its cavernous mouth and gobble him down in two or three bites. And it wasn't natural or Egon's meter wouldn't be wailing like a demented banshee.

Glancing back over his shoulder at the approaching behemoth, Ray caught his foot on a rough edge of planking that jutted up into his path. With a choked-off cry, he tripped, the device that would take them home shooting from his fingers and flying through the air. As Peter watched in appalled disbelief, too far away to grab it, the device bounced across the drawbridge and went right over the side. Not even Egon's desperate grab was in time to stop it, although his fingers missed its strap by a fraction of an inch. Spengler gave a wild yell as he lost his balance. Both of his meters shot out over the drop and vanished.

Realizing that Egon had overshot his target, Peter flung himself at the physicist, grabbing a left ankle with both hands just in time to stop Egon from plunging down into the churning water. Peter landed hard on the drawbridge, the breath driven from his lungs, his head and shoulders over the drop, Egon's entire weight dangling from his hands. His shoulders felt like they were being wrenched out of their sockets, but he tightened his grip and tried to scream "Ray!" No sound emerged. He didn't even have the breath to reassure Egon, who was limp and still in his hold, not even shifting by so much as an inch. He must have known he didn't dare struggle. Able to vividly imagine how Egon must feel, Peter squeezed his eyes shut against the sight of the vast chasm, fighting to ignore the agony in his lungs. It took every ounce of strength he had to keep holding on, but he simply couldn't let go. He couldn't.

Egon was a dead weight, the destabilizer proton pack adding to the load that Peter tried to support. It was heavier than a normal pack, and Egon was not a small man. Tightening his grip on the blond's ankle, Peter concentrated with everything he had. His urgent need to breathe was secondary to maintaining his grip on his oldest friend, turning him into an automaton with one fixed purpose. I won't let go, Egon. I promise you, I won't let go.

Peter could hear Ray make a grab for his particle thrower, to fire at the approaching beast. "Winston!" he yelled urgently. "Hurry!"

The howling of the beast grew louder and louder; it was nearly here. Peter realized that time had played a peculiar trick and slowed down. It felt like he'd been holding Egon for an hour, but it couldn't have been more than a few seconds.

Winston charged out of the double doors, yelling. The sizzle of the thrower fired over Peter's head. The heat from the particle stream make it feel like he was far too close, even though Peter knew it had to be at least a few feet above his unprotected back. He forced his eyes open and watched, helpless to do more than maintain his grip on Egon, and desperately afraid he couldn't even do that.

The beast's huge, taloned paw shot out, clawing Ray across the chest. With a choked, pained cry, Ray slipped over the edge, causing Peter's heart to jump wildly from his chest, to his stomach and then stampede up his throat. God, not Ray, too!

But the occultist caught himself, clutching the edge of the bridge with white-knuckled hands. Winston bellowed Ray's name. As Peter watched, he saw Stantz fumble to maintain his grip. Eyes huge with fright, Ray stared as the creature padded back and forth, sniffing at him. There was a gleam of intelligence in its yellow eyes. It stretched out a paw to the dangling man. It was so close. It would knock Ray free and then it would come for Peter - and make him drop Egon.

Peter tightened his desperate hold on Egon, powerless to help Ray.

Before the giant wolf could attack Ray, or knock Peter's precarious grip free, Winston's proton stream hit it directly in the face. With an agonized wail that stabbed through Peter's ears like daggers, it jerked and twisted, then spun, breaking free of the particle beam without the slightest effort, and galloped away, baying horribly.

Winston leaped over Peter's sprawled body in a move that would have done Nijinsky proud, and grabbed Ray's wrists, yanking him up onto the bridge in one fierce pull powered by sheer adrenaline. Gasping, the occultist collapsed to his knees at the edge of the drop, and panted, "Gosh, thanks, Winston. Help Peter. I'm okay." He was shaking with reaction, but was pulling himself together.

Peter only dimly registered the bright streaks of blood on the front of Ray's jumpsuit. The man was alive and moving. He was safe for the moment. Be okay, Ray. He let out a breathless squawk that only a psychic could have translated as, "Help!"

Then Winston was flat beside him, helping. The black man's gaze quickly assessed Peter's hold, Egon's awkward position - arms trailing limply toward the drop, the leg that Peter wasn't holding stuck out at an angle. "Egon, it's Winston. I want you to listen to me very carefully." His voice was firm, commanding Egon in a stern, level voice to raise his other leg so he could grab it. "Move very slowly, Egon," he instructed. "Peter's got you, and I think it would take ten giant wolves to pry him loose, but let's not make it tough for him. Got it?"

Egon, who hadn't uttered a sound since he'd gone over the edge, gasped, "Yes," in a voice so faint that they scarcely heard it. Peter couldn't tell if it was stark panic or an effort not to disrupt his hold that made him sound like that. The physicist obeyed mechanically without uttering another sound.

Egon's weight shifted carefully and, for a heart-stopping moment, Peter felt his grip loosen. Then Winston grabbed the man's other ankle and Venkman discovered he could hold on after all. Together they pulled Egon up, conscious of Ray edging in behind them, grabbing their ankles to steady them. It only took moments before they had him over the edge and stretched out face down on the bridge. By then, Peter was able to breathe again, although it still hurt. With Egon safe, he risked a deeper breath and sputtered, coughing and gasping. Just the wind knocked out of him, then, not a broken rib poking into a lung.

Ray knelt beside Peter, a hand massaging his back. "It's okay, Peter," he soothed.

White-faced with shock, Egon rolled over onto his back, propped at an awkward angle because of his proton pack, and asked in a shaken voice, "Is it gone?" His gaze sought Peter, acknowledging the fact that he owed his life to the psychologist.

Peter stared back. Egon was alive. He wasn't splattered all over the rocks in the pounding surf so far below. He knew his hands were shaking.

"It didn't like the thrower, man. It took off," Winston explained hastily. He ran a practiced gaze over Egon, checking for obvious injuries and, finding none, turned his attention to Ray. "He cut you, man. How bad is it?"

That made Egon open his eyes and prop himself up on his elbows. "Ray? It attacked you?" he demanded hoarsely. "I couldn't see what was happening."

Still wheezing slightly, Peter gave Egon a hasty, relieved hug, trying to still the trembling that still lingered after the near miss. Egon sat up, leaned into it, and hugged him back. "Thank you, Peter," he said gravely. "I owe you my life."

"Any time, big guy. Only, next time, wait for the poolman to fill the pool before you practice your swan dive, okay?" He squeezed tight one last time, then let go. Both of them turned to Ray.

Winston already had Ray stretched out, leaning back, as Egon had, against his proton pack, his jumpsuit unzipped and his shirt pushed up out of the way to reveal four long streaks of blood that crossed his chest and stomach just above his proton pack strap. It didn't take an expert to see that they were no more than scratches. Three of the four had already stopped bleeding. The fourth and highest scratch was still oozing drops of blood, but not enough to require stitches.

"I'm okay," Ray insisted. "I jerked back and it just grazed me. Gee, it was huge, wasn't it? You scared me, Egon. I knew Peter wouldn't let go, but I was afraid both of you would--" At a warning poke from Winston, his voice chopped off, but Egon's face lost color at the thought. He had to be reliving it, comparing it to his fall from the World Trade Center. After this, Peter probably wouldn't be the only Ghostbuster with acrophobia.

"Come on, Ray, Peter wasn't about to let go," Winston insisted. "Never saw a more stubborn guy than Pete."

"I knew you couldn't pull me up," Egon said to Peter. "All I could do was remain absolutely still and not detach your grip . . . and hope that Winston and Ray would be able to help you. And I knew the entity was here and too powerful for the throwers."

"It sure didn't like them, though," Ray said hastily. "It took off when Winston hit it in the face. Then Winston pulled me up."

"You?" Egon stared at Ray in surprise. "You went over the edge, too?"

"You weren't the only one dangling off the edge of this bridge, Spengs," Peter said with careful lightness. "Ray decided he didn't want to get clawed a second time so he must have thought it would be more fun to hang around."

Ray groaned. "Hang around, Peter? Ouch!" His face scrunched up in a wince and he grimaced wryly at Winston.

"Have to disinfect it, Ray," Winston said by way of apology, dabbing at the cuts with an alcohol-saturated cotton pad from the first aid kit.

"Dear God, are you hurt?"

"Kate, get back inside," Winston cautioned the woman, who had come up behind them. "That thing could come back."

"I think we should all go inside," she corrected. "I couldn't do anything to help, but thank the Lord you're all right. That doesn't seem too bad, Ray."

"No, it's mostly just scratches. Winston'll stick some bandaids on them and I'll be fine. I--" He fell silent abruptly, his eyes rounding in dismay as he realized why Egon had nearly taken a header off the drawbridge. "Oh, no! I dropped the device over the edge, didn't I?" He leaned over, measuring the drop, noting the jagged rocks strewn in the savage surf. Peter didn't look again. He didn't need to. He'd seen it far to clearly while he was holding onto Egon.

Ray's shoulders sagged in dismay. "We'll never get home now."

"Not your fault, Ray," Peter said, hastily, clapping him on the shoulder. "Besides, we always figure out an answer. Between you and the great brain here--" He grinned at Spengler. "There's always a solution. I'm counting on it. Can't stay here. I've got a date tomorrow night."

"I tried to grab it," Egon offered. He glanced at his watch and frowned, his jaw tightening. "The time is up - it expired two minutes ago. The portal is closed now. We can't get back without the amplifier, unless we find an alternate solution."

"Any more trick moves like that and I'm getting you a leash," Peter chided. "I think Kate's right. Let's go inside where it isn't wet and cold and wolf-infested and make plans. Did anybody bring munchies?"

Winston taped a few gauze pads over the worst of Ray's scratches, then hauled him to his feet, only then pausing to reel in his thrower and holster it on his proton pack. "What's it like in there, Kate?" he asked as Ray zipped up his jumpsuit and fastened the strap of his proton pack over his stomach.

"Dark," she said. "And there's a huge, heavy doorway that leads inside, but I couldn't get it open."

Peter reached up and patted his proton rifle. "Don't worry, Kate. We can."

The doorway was made of this dimension's equivalent of solid oak, a good six inches thick and every bit as heavy. A few pulls and pushes proved that it was barred from the inside. Through the gap between the door and the wall, they saw a slice of the metal bar, thick, firm and unyielding.

The Ghostbusters and Kate Longbridge clustered inside the covered courtyard, the only light trickling in through the double doors that led to the drawbridge. Winston had investigated the bridge mechanism and discovered that its chain was rusted so solidly that they had no hope of raising the bridge. Maybe that was why any residents there felt it prudent to bar the door.

Peter drew his thrower and used its handle to rap on the door. "Rude of them not to welcome visitors, isn't it?" he asked.

"The particle stream should melt that metal bar, but I'd rather not do it that if there's another option," Egon replied. "If the wolf returns, I'd just as soon we were safe inside until we can determine how to open the portal and get home. This place might be abandoned."

"And they bolted the door from the inside before they took off," argued Winston. He didn't add what had occurred to all of them, that the ziggurat was so old, and in such a state of disrepair, that any tenants might have died. Their ghosts might inhabit the old structure, rather than any living natives.

Pointing at the door, Ray cried, "I see something!"

Light flickered around the edges, growing steadily brighter as something moved toward them. After a long pause, there was a screech of metal on metal as the bar was drawn back. The door swung open on squeaky hinges to reveal a man about Ray's height. He was a little stooped with age, a thick tuft of white hair trailing down to his shoulders, and bushy white eyebrows standing guard over deep-set eyes. He wore metal-framed glasses, although the left lens was missing. He had several days worth of beard and he was wearing the remnants of an old t-shirt under a moth-eaten robe of threadbare cloth. His shoes looked like they had served five or six street people before finding their way to him. Beside him on the wall hung a torch in a metal sconce. There were several more of them vanishing down the passage behind him that he must have lit as he approached. The faint glow of a steadier light came from around a corner.

"Humans?" he ventured doubtfully, his voice rusty from disuse. "From Earth?" And then before Peter realized what he meant to do, the old guy grabbed him around the neck and embraced him, sobbing.

Automatically, Peter patted him on the shoulder. A second later, the man let him go and grabbed Egon, who was next to Peter, hugging him, too. The disgruntled expression on Egon's face was priceless.

"There, there," the physicist said awkwardly.

The man turned to embrace Ray, then saw Kate, who had frozen at the sight of him. Her eyes wide and brimming with tears, she gasped, "Vincent?"

The old man backed away from Egon and stared at her as if she were a rare and priceless painting. For an instant, recognition flashed in his eyes, then he turned abruptly, snatching up the flaming torch and darting back the way he had come.

Kate jerked backward like she'd been slapped. "Well! After all these years and he disappears at the first sight of me. Vincent. Alive. I never dared quite hope. . ." A tear spilled over and made its way down her lined cheek.

Ray edged up beside her and took hold of her hand, patting it sympathetically.

"Come on, let's follow him," urged Winston.

They set off down the dusty hall in pursuit of the old man. Peter exchanged a doubtful glance with Egon. He wasn't sure Vincent Meadows was even sane. There had been a particular gleam in the man's faded eyes that made the psychologist very uneasy.

They caught up with Vincent in the room around the corner, a huge, vaulted chamber with torches burning here and there and a few lanterns on the ends of three vast trestle tables. More lanterns sat on stands spaced along the walls. In one corner, Vincent Meadows stood watching them like a wild creature at bay. On the walls all along that edge of the room were designs, or writing, in a language Peter didn't recognize. No, a series of languages.

Egon stiffened like a pointer at the sight of it and hurried over to stare at the ancient script in wide-eyed wonder.

"Kate?" ventured Meadows doubtfully. "Is that my Kate?"

"Your Kate? When you left me without a word?" she demanded. "How could you do that? How could you leave without telling me?" Her voice rang with anger.

Egon ignored her, tracing the carved symbols he'd found with his fingertips. "Incredible," he breathed.

Meadows wheeled to watch him. "You understand!" he exulted. "I hoped that if anyone ever came, they would know."

"The Rosetta Stone?" Egon ventured.

Meadows' face lit with triumph. "And more. Do you know any of those languages?"

"Sumerian," Egon remarked, pointing to a section of the wall.

It wasn't familiar to Peter, but then he always left the Sumerian to Egon so he could concentrate on more important things - like gorgeous women, or making sure there was enough pizza to go around, or watching Egon's back while he translated so no weird Mesopotamian deities would try to possess or devour the physicist in the process.

Spengler pointed to a second set of writing. "I believe this one might be proto-Canaanite, but the others. . ."

"Vincent!" Kate blurted in exasperation. "I haven't seen you for over forty-five years and all you can think of is ancient alphabets?"

"But we've been over this so often," Vincent said as if he was reminding her. "If this man is a linguist--"

"I'm a physicist," Egon replied. "But I have an interest in ancient languages."

"What do you mean, 'we've been over this'?" Kate demanded, folding her arms across her chest. "We haven't been over this. How could we?"

"When I showed you my discovery the first time," the old man said, "you listened to all my theories and helped me with my notes."

"No, I didn't," she replied tightly, her eyes filling with alarm. "This is the first time I've seen you since you stepped through that portal without even warning me that you meant to try. How could you have done that to me? I haven't been here . . . except in your mind."

"Proto-Canaanite is considered the first consonant alphabet," Egon remarked to anyone who might be listening. "This is utterly fascinating, Dr. Meadows. It does descend from the Sumerian cuneiform, but it also borrows from Egyptian hieroglyphics."

"Egon, that can wait," Peter cut in before he could expound further. "You're interfering with the great reunion and, anyway, getting home is a lot more important than ancient alphabets."

"But, Peter, translations of these other languages are unknown in our world. Yet I have seen untranslatable fragments- Hmm. . ." Excitement filled his expression. ". . . a number of untranslated scripts, fragments here and there that have remained untranslated, or only partially translated. It's possible this could be one of them. Imagine the triumph of offering a translation to the world." He drew a deep breath. "It is possible that this third language is proto-Elamite. This could be a language in use as far back as 3000 B.C."

"Wow!" gasped Ray, edging closer for a better look. "That's exciting!"

Peter and Winston exchanged glances and rolled their eyes.

"You were with me every step of the way," Vincent said to Kate, ignoring Egon and Peter. "I wrote down our conversations in my journals." He opened a drawer in one of the side tables and withdrew a stack of battered old notebooks that had the same marbled design on them as the one Ray had found at the estate sale. "I brought them with me to take notes. Everything I could imagine of the languages I found, all of it, everything we ever said--"

"Dr. Meadows?" Winston interrupted before Kate could utter a phrase polite ladies of her generation usually didn't say. "Who else lives here?"

Meadows stared at Winston, his eyes narrowing slightly. He gestured to encompass the ziggurat and beyond. "No one lives here," he said. "No one but me. No one has ever been here, other than Fenrir and his kin out there in the wilds."

"Fenrir!" Ray cried, whirling away from the wall. "You don't mean that giant wolf was actually Fenrir, do you?" His eyes danced with excitement.

"Who's Fenrir?" Peter muttered to Winston. He was sure he'd heard the name somewhere, but he couldn't quite remember where.

Winston shrugged.

"No, no, simply that he is large and dangerous and it seemed an appropriate name for a creature like that," Meadows replied, adding, "Fenrir was the giant wolf of Norse mythology, one of the offspring of Loki." He shoved at his glasses and squinted at them through the single lens.

"I thought Loki was a trickster," Winston said. He had a good head for trivia. "How could he have offspring who was a wolf?"

"I don't want to know," Peter decided. "Anyway, our werewolf buddy out there isn't much fun." He shook his head. "You mean you've been here all alone for forty-five years?" he asked the long-lost occultist.

"All alone except for Kate," Meadows replied, sneaking a surreptitious glance at the woman in the pale blue pantsuit.

She gave a faint snort of annoyance, but her eyes glittered brightly. "I wasn't here until now."

"You were always in my thoughts," he corrected. "All these years, alone, so alone, I had to have you with me or I would've gone mad." He paused, rubbing his forehead. "Perhaps I am a little mad. When I realized I could not go home, when I understood that this side of the door needed a key, too, and that my time had run out more quickly than I had anticipated, I moved in here, and here I have been ever since . . . well, out there to hunt for food, though there were stores here when I first arrived that were still good. They lasted for years. . ." His eyes glazed with memories of all those endless years, alone.

Peter's stomach knotted at the very thought. He couldn't imagine a better description of hell.

"You were unable to open the gate from this side?" Egon asked, turning reluctantly from the writings.

Meadows tore his gaze from Kate and faced Egon. "I was unable. I realized that there were several ways to open the gate. You must have discovered one of them. The device I used I carried with me, but it failed to work when I tried to return home."

"That was why we were unable to find it," Kate breathed. "Charlie and I thought maybe you opened the gate and then concealed your device. Then he insisted you hadn't used a device, that you had used a spell, instead. We think he stole your book, the one that explained your plans."

"Charlie? I had hoped he would be the one to rescue me." Meadows clenched his teeth, stung by the long-ago betrayal. "I thought you and he would come to rescue me together. It was so hard to let go of hope. And then you did come, and you were with me, all these years."

"No," said Kate succinctly, "I wasn't."

Peter winced. He was pretty sure that Vincent Meadows had created an "imaginary friend" for himself over his long imprisonment. Now, faced with the real Kate, who had aged over the years, he was finally realizing what he'd done. Peter still wasn't sure the man was sane, but he was functional. He had provided food for himself, found shelter, and he had used the intellectual puzzle of the languages on the walls to fill the endless, hollow hours of solitude. If Peter had been stranded here alone, would he have peopled his internment with an fancied Egon, Ray, and Winston? The very thought made him shudder.

Meadows closed his eyes very tightly, then he opened them and studied the authentic Kate, no doubt comparing her with the vivid girl of his memories. "You're different."

"I'm old, Vincent," she snapped. "And so are you. All these years, I kept faith - I preserved your fireplace on the off chance that you might come home."

"You didn't marry?" he ventured, his gaze tracing the lined contours of her face.

"Don't imagine that was because of you," she huffed. "I almost married, twice. That it didn't come to pass was not because of you."

Peter suspected it was, at least in part. She wouldn't be so shaken by a man who had, for all intents and purposes, walked out on her forty-five years ago if he hadn't made an incredible impact on her life. It was her pride that made her insist on those other chances.

"Are we going home now?" the old man asked wistfully.

"No," she replied sadly, "we are not."

Ray edged up to the old man, leaving Egon to his fascinating walls. "Dr. Meadows, I'm Ray Stantz. I'm a student of the occult and the paranormal, like you. My friends and I bust ghosts . . . uh, trap and incarcerate them. But we also deal with other aspects of the paranormal, like alternate dimensions and things like that. That's how we knew how to build the device that opened the portal in your fireplace. But your friend Fenrir attacked us, and our portable device fell over the edge of the drawbridge. We don't have a way home. Do you still have your device? Maybe Egon and I can fix it."

Peter crossed mental fingers. It had only begun to sink in that, unless Egon and Ray could dream up a replacement for the converted mini-amplifier, they were going to be stuck there a very long time. Egon was smart enough to build a computer out of stone knives and bearskins, but it would take time. At least in 1930s New York, there had been radio tubes and precision tools. This place was about as modern as the dark ages, and he was pretty sure Egon hadn't come with his pockets full of circuit boards. Maybe Ray had.

"Hey, that's right," Winston said, hope lighting his eyes. "We do have tools and some supplies with us. Not a lot, but if you still have your device, maybe we can modify it."

"Yes, it's here," Meadows replied. "I've tried, over and over, to repair it, but I believe that it simply needs parts that I'm unable to provide. This fortress is sturdy enough to withstand the attacks of Fenrir, but it doesn't have a supply of cathode tubes."

Ray grinned. "We've progressed quite a bit since those days," he said. "Maybe we have something that would work as a replacement. What do you think, Egon?"

"Hmm," Egon responded.

Uh-oh, he sounds like he's on another planet. "Egon!" Peter said sharply. "Pay attention here. We need to repair old Vince's dimensional can opener so we can go home."

"Not now, Peter, this is important. . ." Egon had heard Peter's comment only as distracting noise. "You have no idea what I have found here."

"I can bet good money it doesn't read, 'To open dimensional gate, press here,'" Peter countered. He caught Egon by the arm. "Come on, Spengs. I know it's interesting, but let's fix the doohickey first, okay?"

"Ray can do that," Egon responded. "Peter, I've realized what this fourth language must be. It's a mage's language, rare and obscure at home. Yet I have two separate journals that contain text in it. If I can translate it, I might find the answers to age-old questions that have perplexed mankind for centuries, questions about life and death and the afterlife."

"Can't you just take a couple of pictures of them with that Instamatic in your pocket and study them at home where it's comfortable?"

"That Instamatic is at the bottom of the cliff right now," Egon replied, shivering faintly.

Meadows started across the room toward a cabinet near the door they'd entered through. A vast, tearing explosion of sound rocked the entire ziggurat, shaking the stone floor beneath their feet. As Peter watched in disbelief, a section of the outer wall, to the left of Egon's "Rosetta Stone" crumbled away before their eyes and fell outward, leaving a gaping opening to the outside world. Lightning flashed in the hole and a second burst of thunder shook the building. Dust trickled down from the high stone ceiling and powdered their hair.

"They're firing on us," Winston blurted, yanking Egon back from the wall. "Incoming!"

"Wow!" cried Ray, almost on top of that instinctive reaction. "What a storm."

"Storm?" Winston blinked, returning in an instant from the Vietnam of his memories. "That was thunder?" He sounded like he wanted very badly to be convinced.

Egon detached himself from Winston's grip and cast a questioning glance at Meadows.

"We aren't under attack," confirmed the old scientist. "That really was only thunder. The storms come every year about this time." He ran a hand through his white thatch, sending dust flying. "The ground beneath the ziggurat erodes more and more with each storm. I have feared that this year might undermine the building beyond salvation. For the last two years I haven't risked going to the top gardens to tend the crops. The old ladders are eroding along with the shore beneath me. I've been working on an alternative shelter just down the coast."

Egon looked horrified. "But these writings, they are too valuable to allow them to be destroyed. They hold answers for all humanity." He whirled on Meadows and grabbed him by the shoulders. "Have you translated them?"

"Not yet. A word here, a word there. I knew some Sumerian, but I was never fluent. The last two languages were unfamiliar to me. The one you call proto-Canaanite I recognized, but I don't understand. The Sinaitic people randomly chose hieroglyphs to represent consonants, and while I have some knowledge of ancient Egyptian, and an awareness of the Acrophonic principle, I simply couldn't translate it all."

"Then I must," Egon replied, evidently understanding Meadows' gobbledegook without the slightest effort.

It was all Greek to Peter, who had never studied linguistics or ancient alphabets. He did know about the Rosetta Stone because Egon had dragged the whole team to see it when they'd been in London on a bust. To Peter it had just been a piece of incised stone, but Egon had gazed at it like he'd found the Holy Grail.

"If I can learn to read the proto-Elamite - and what a coup that would be - there is a whole body of work that could be opened up for translation. It is too vital to let it go."

"Egon, it might let itself go," Peter insisted, pausing while a rending crash of thunder that did sound like shelling echoed through the entire structure. Once more, the floor beneath his feet trembled. As the thunder faded Peter could hear the roar of distant surf, beating away below, eating at the promontory that held the castle. "I know it's nifty stuff, Spengs, but this building is the only thing protecting us from the storm and from old Wolfy out there. We have to repair Vince's gizmo so we can get out of here in one piece."

Meadows opened a primitive wooden cabinet and pulled out his broken gadget. It was about as big as a breadbox, slightly longer, and it resembled a device out of an old Flash Gordon serial with an old-fashioned circular antenna thingy on the top and a bunch of knobs like those on an old radio along its face. Ray and Egon were always cobbling together gadgets of their own, but this one could have been the grandfather of the ones they made - big, bulky and obsolete.

"Look at that!" gasped Ray as he went for the device, his eyes wide with delight. "That is so great." He plucked it from a startled Meadows and set it down on the trestle table furthest from the hole in the wall. "Let's get the casing off and see what we have." He grinned. "Your notes are right here." He pulled the notebook out of the pouch he wore attached to his belt. "We can check and see what's broken, then see if we can fix it . . . This is so cool. Me, working with Vincent Meadows!"

The old man stared at him in astonishment. "Am I famous back in my own world, then?" he asked, rubbing one bushy eyebrow.

"Well, I don't think the man in the street knows much about you," Ray said regretfully. "You're not as famous as somebody like Amelia Earhart, who disappeared in 1937, but in the occult community, everybody knows who you are. It's going to be so cool when we bring you home."

Vincent picked up the old notebook and opened it. He flipped through the pages, running a gnarled finger down the columns of text. "I never thought to see my book again," he breathed.

"I'm glad it pleases you more than I do," Kate snapped.

Meadows jumped and stared at her. As Ray fumbled open the gadget that might be their ticket home, the old man said, "Kate, I still can't quite believe you're real, that any of this is real. I've been alone so very long. Please, give me time to become used to you as you are."

Peter didn't know anything about ancient languages, and he didn't know how to rebuild old crystal sets, but he did know people. "Kate, he's right. I can't even imagine how horrible it would be to be alone for so long. After a week, I'd probably be a puddle of jelly. But Vincent's stayed alive and managed to survive here. This isn't a fairy tale reunion. It's real life, and that means it won't be a dream. But he's alive and you're alive, and you have a chance to capture what you lost. The only thing is, you need to be patient and take it one step at a time. Can you do that, do you think? Right now, he has to help Ray with his gizmo. Getting back home has to come first. I don't know about you, but I don't want to stay here. Do you know how long it would take to send out for pizza?"

Kate stared at him, probably about to ask what business was it of his, then she bowed her head. "I just expected more than . . . this."

"My poor Kate," soothed Vincent. "I never meant to hurt you. I wanted to present you - and the whole world - a magnificent fait accompli. I never expected to be trapped here." He ran his fingers through his tangled hair. "I had to bring you here with me. I know it was only in my mind, but it's been so long that you became real to me, forever young, forever loving."

"And now I'm an old lady and you don't want me any longer," she burst out.

No man would relish coming up with an answer to that. But Meadows did better than Peter expected. "Kate, Kate, Kate, don't you think that reality is so much better than a futile dream?" He gazed at her with longing that less to do with desire and love than with a simple craving for human companionship. "I never want to be alone again."

Her expression immediately softened into understanding and sympathy. She went to him and put her arms around him. Peter backed off to give them some privacy. He wasn't sure if they could build a life together, not after forty-five years, but anything was possible. He did know that if they did find a way home, Vincent would need her as he had never needed her before.

Peter edged over to Ray and Winston, who had the gizmo open to reveal innards that would have been more at home in a 30s movie serial. Trusting that weird device to get them home was like trusting Slimer to go out for pizza. Peter heaved a sigh.

"What do you think, Ray? Can it be fixed?"

"Gosh, it's neat, Peter." Ray looked up, intrigued. "I haven't seen anything like this since I was about ten years old and Old Man Farelli let me come in and take apart old machines at the junk shop and try to put them back together again. I'm pretty sure I understand what he had here - it's really fantastic. It does what the modified phase amplifier does, only not as well." He went off in a flood of technical explanations that mostly went over Peter's head.

Winston nodded through most of it, then his eyes went unfocused, too. He held up a hand to stop the flow. "Whoa, hold it, Ray. Bottom line, can you make it open the gate for us?"

"I think so. I know what to do. It's a question of adapting what we brought with us." He gestured to various small devices and even a small circuit board or two. "I think Egon has a few tools in his pockets. You want to get them, Peter? I've got a little welder here, too."

"Oh yeah, every guy carries a little welder wherever he goes," muttered Peter.

"Well, when we go off into other dimensions with a brand new device, it's only smart," Ray explained. "If I thought anything could have survived that fall, I'd climb down--"

Peter shook his head. The thought of attempting a climb on cliffs drenched with driving rain was a bad one even if the amplifier had landed in a giant box of feathers. "It's flatter than a pancake, Ray. You'll have to go with what you've got. I'd rather be stuck here than have you end up flat, too."

Ray's expression warmed, but his gaze kept straying back to the device. "I think I can make it work," he repeated. "I just need fine tools."

"I'll get what Egon has," Peter promised.

The physicist was lost in a dream. Peter had seen that obsessed expression on the man's face before - when he was dreaming up new ways to blow up the lab, or developing a new gadget. He didn't even notice Peter's presence any more than he noticed the storm raging outside. Even when gusts of wind threw rain in his direction, he merely turned his head to keep his glasses dry before resuming his study.

"Peter," Egon said when Venkman planted himself directly in his line of vision. "This is utterly fascinating. The ancient Sumerians actually had a way to come here."

"That's nice, Spengs, but does it say how they got home again?" Peter asked practically.

"It speaks of the intervention of the gods," Egon admitted. "I'm sure there's a more logical explanation, but I haven't come to it yet in the script."

"Then this is a good time for a break. Ray thinks he can fix Vince's dimension door opener, but he needs your tools, so hand 'em over."

Egon reached into his pocket and pulled out a small leather container that held his precision tools. He passed it to Peter, along with another small plastic case about the size of an old fashioned cigarette case that held small some components. "This might help, too."

"I think you might help even more," Peter said. "Come on, Egon, this place could fall down around our ears, and you're standing here reading ancient gibberish. We have to get home before this place collapses. It's gonna be tough to do repairs outside in a storm with El Lobo trying to take swipes at us. If you helped Ray, maybe it could be done a lot faster."

"Ray is the expert," Egon insisted. "He knows the principles involved and he's far more adept than I at modifications. His is a hands-on form of science. Besides, what I'm doing might prove vital, and I have limited time in which to do it. Winston can pass Ray his tools."

"So I should just let them try to handle it on their own?" Peter discovered he was angry. "Our lives are at stake here, Egon, in case you haven't noticed. We're trapped in another dimension. If there was an easy way back, old Vince wouldn't have hung out here all these years. He sure didn't stay for the view or the cuisine. Don't you think getting back - and taking Kate and Vincent back with us - is a little more important than all this gobbledegook?"

"You don't understand, Peter," Egon replied, an edge of impatience in his voice. "What I see here, what I can interpret, can tell us the secrets of the ancients. It's vital knowledge, knowledge that is about to be lost. This might be the best chance in the entire century to translate proto-Elamite. Who knows what this says? I must save as much of it as I possibly can." He sensed Peter's annoyance and added soothingly, "I know that Ray can repair Dr. Meadows' device. It's not fair to him to assume he needs my input to do what is essentially his own work. Please, Peter, time is of the essence. I must continue." He turned back to the wall.

Peter stared at Egon for a long moment, then walked over to join Ray and Winston.

Okay, so Ray probably did know what he was doing. He had Vincent's journal open beside him on the table, staring at sketches and diagrams. He paused to trace the similarities in the antique gizmo. Every now and then, he muttered, "Wow." He was in seventh heaven.

Another violent explosion of thunder rocked the building and more of the wall crumbled away, falling outward into the sea. Egon jumped, but he didn't stop his work, scribbling notes in a notebook that he shielded every time the wind whipped new spray at him. His face was intent with concentration, and his glasses kept sliding down his nose.

Peter glanced from Egon to Ray and back again. He knew Egon believed Ray could make the repairs on his own, but he still wasn't sure it wouldn't be done more quickly with Egon's input. The way the building quivered with the pounding of the surf so far below, it could decide to jump into the ocean at any second. Edging closer to the gaping hole in the wall, Peter stared out at the storm. It wasn't letting up at all. If anything, it was intensifying. Each burst of thunder sounded like artillery fire, as if the sky were being torn asunder, as if the roots of stone that anchored the castle were ready to break free.

The height made his stomach twist and he backed away. This wasn't good. In between the roar of the surf, the pounding of the thunder, and the babble of voices behind him, he thought he could hear the distant baying of the great wolf. It might be lurking on the other side of the drawbridge, blocking their way home. Had Vince said there were more than one of them? Egon's readings had proven it was very powerful. What if they couldn't fight it off to get to the wall where the portal was? What if they were trapped in a castle that was about to fall down?

Across the room, Kate sat on the bench beside the furthest trestle table, talking to Vincent, who was perched on the table itself, his feet on the bench beside her. They were conversing in fits and starts, one of them speaking eagerly then running down. Then the other one would try, only to hesitate. They wanted to communicate, but there might be too many years between them to allow it. Meadows had lived for years with the memory of the glowing girl in the painting, and Kate had lived with bitterness because of his secretive departure. Okay, so he'd been a scientist and it was his project, but he'd loved her. Could he turn his back on that without a word of warning? Obviously he could, because he had. For him, the lure of his science was greater than the love he felt for his fiancée.

Peter cast a glance over his shoulder at Egon, who stood before the inscribed wall, writing frantically. Oh yeah, he knew the scientific mindset, all right.

Another explosion of thunder made the whole building rock and quiver. With a fierce, rending sound, a chunk of the floor midway between Peter and Egon dropped away, leaving a huge gap between them and taking the middle table with them. It jerked up at an angle, then slid down endwise like the Titanic taking its final plunge to the bottom of the Atlantic. The bench beside it ricocheted off as it fell and flung itself at Ray and Winston. Peter screeched a warning, but Zeddemore had seen it, and he grabbed at Ray, pulling him to safety. Ray hung back long enough to snatch up the gizmo, tucking it under his arm and scrabbling frantically with his other hand to grab a handful of components. The movement delayed him long enough for the bench to graze his shoulder as it went by. Ray cried out, but he and Winston kept moving.

"Ray!" Peter bellowed.

"I'm okay, Peter," the occultist called, rubbing his shoulder. "I think it's just a bruise. Gosh, that was close."

He set the device on the table next to Vincent and dumped the components beside them. Winston caught his wrist and moved his arm slightly. Ray didn't wince - much. "It's just a little tender," he said. "What about the rest of the tools? Are they okay?"

Peter glanced at Egon, who was staring at them over the hole in the floor. Luckily he wasn't cut off from them. He could circle either way to reach them. "You're sure you're all right, Ray?" the blond asked.

"Yeah. Fine. I can work on the amplifier, see?" Ray wiggled his fingers.

Watching Stantz carefully, Peter couldn't see any major pain in his expression. He really was okay, even if he'd be stiff tomorrow. The claw marks hadn't troubled him either. Course Ray was the kind of guy who wouldn't show it, even if he was bleeding from a dozen wounds. He'd insist he was fine and carry on because that was the way he was made.

"What about you, Winston?" Peter asked, running his gaze over Zeddemore. "You didn't get hit, did you?"

Winston shook his head. "No, it missed me, man. But we've gotta get out of this place. The next one could open up right under us."

Peter shuddered. Not a lovely thought. The hole in the floor proved that the castle foundation was badly eroded. In between the wind's wail and the continual grumble of thunder, the pounding of the surf was louder now, hungrier, gobbling up the base of the cliff as fast as it could.

Satisfied that his colleagues were uninjured, Egon returned to his wall, scribbling frantically in his notebook.

Peter wasn't sure if the physicist was writing in Sumerian, or transcribing it into English. Something Peter had read about the translation process suggested that it would probably be smarter to copy as it stood, then go over the interpretation in detail later. What he should do, thought Peter, was to copy a chunk of each for comparison purposes. That was what the Rosetta Stone had done, wasn't it? Samples of three languages with at least one of them known. Egon had probably said as much once.

But Egon didn't have time for that. None of them did. There was Ray, working with an injured shoulder to repair the gizmo while Egon took the time to enjoy himself with ancient scripts. Okay, maybe they were important scripts, but their lives meant more than any translation that scholars hadn't interpreted for hundreds of years. Couldn't Egon see that?

Peter remembered how it had felt to lie on the drawbridge with Egon dangling from his fingertips. The only thing that had mattered then was saving the physicist's life. And now, here was Egon, caught up in something that wasn't nearly as important as getting out of this dimension.

Peter helped Winston retrieve the rest of the components and tools from the table; luckily the flying bench hadn't broken anything. When he brought his share over to Ray, he noticed that Vincent had joined Ray at the device, Kate sitting beside him. He had his arm around her shoulders, but his eyes were on the gadget, and he watched Ray work with utter fascination.

"What's that?" he asked, pointing to the circuit board Ray was about to weld into place.

"A circuit board. This little thing is more powerful than your whole gadget."

The old man snapped his fingers. "Miniaturization," he remarked. "I knew it was the wave of the future. They were just starting to investigate that at the end of the war. I think the Japs had an idea of it during the war, but they didn't have time to bring it to bear the way they could have done."

"And did later," Winston put in. "Transistor radios and stuff. There's a lot of things you won't recognize, Dr. Meadows. Little bitty radios you can hold in the palm of your hand, or wear in earphones. Small earphones, too, not like the big ones they wore in World War II. Computers, too. Don't suppose you know about computers?"

"I know the term. They talked of vast devices that would be able to perform amazing tasks. Are they tiny, too, now?"

"Well, anybody can own one," Winston said with a grin. "There are huge mainframes, but there are laptop computers that you can take along with you wherever. They fit in a briefcase."

"I shall be a dinosaur," Meadows muttered. "The world has changed remarkably, I can see that now."

Although he didn't stop his welding, Ray grinned. "Hey, yeah, and guess what, Dr. Meadows? The United States space program put a man on the moon. Neil Armstrong, in 1969. And a few others since then. Just think, man finally walked on the moon."

Meadows' eyes shone. "Incredible. I knew it would happen one day, but to have it happen in my own lifetime . . . I can't wait to learn it all. So many things are different. I'm old. I won't be able to get a job. But I would love to learn. . ." His voice trailed off. "How will I live? I'm surely declared dead."

"I never fully believed you were dead, Vincent," Kate said. "I inherited your house, and I also inherited your fortune. I put half of it into a trust fund, in case you should ever return home. You won't be indigent. In fact, you will be quite well off. As for the house - I don't know the legal ins and outs of it, but we'll resolve that. I'm not a [Removed hard return here] poor woman. I've had a wonderful investment counselor, and I've made some investments that have left me well set up."

They started talking again and Peter left them to it. He prowled out into the corridor that lead to the drawbridge, checking the crack between the door and the stone wall. He peered out into a dark, gloomy, storm-filled world. At least the drawbridge was still in place. If it fell, they didn't have any hope.

He couldn't see Fenrir lurking out there, but the huge wolf and his family might be hiding just out of sight. No unearthly howls competed with the storm. Maybe Lobo was a smart old wolf who had tucked himself away in a cozy cave to wait out the storm. It had taken him awhile to arrive before. They ought to have time to run up to the wall, activate the portal, and jump through before Fenrir reached them. He hoped.

When he returned to the great hall, nothing had changed. Egon was still scrawling symbols in his notebook, Vincent and Kate were still talking as they sifted through some of the old notebooks, and Ray was still buried in the amplifier device, Winston helping. The hole in the wall had grown slightly wider, but the one in the floor was the same size.

Giving it a wide berth, Peter edged up to Egon. "What're we going to do about Fenrir?" he asked.

"Perhaps it will shun the storm," Egon replied absently.

"And perhaps it won't. Egon, we've gotta get out of here. This place is about as solid as one of the card houses I build on my desk."

"I realize that." He glanced up from his notes. "I know I have a limited time here. Please, let me utilize it to the best of my abilities."

"Go away, Peter, don't bother me," Venkman paraphrased wryly. Egon didn't even notice. Okay, so he wasn't making an impression. He wandered over to Ray and Winston.

He couldn't interrupt Ray, not when he was doing everything he could to get them home, so Peter slouched up to Winston and propped his elbow on Zeddemore's shoulder. "How's it going?"

"I think he's nearly there, Pete. He's having the time of his life, anyway."

"So is Egon," Peter said pointedly.

"Come on, Pete, there's only room for one person to work on it, and Ray's the one who developed our amplifier thingy in the first place. What do you think Egon should be doing?"

"Helping," Peter replied succinctly. "We have to get out of here."

Winston grinned in sudden understanding. "We all know that, Pete. It's tough not to have anything to do, isn't it?"

Peter's smile flashed in return. "You called that one, Zed." Then he turned serious. "What if he won't come?" he asked in an undertone.

"Egon? When we're ready?" Winston's ready understanding only confirmed Peter's fears. "Then we grab him by the scruff of the neck and haul him out of here by brute force. I don't care if that stuff on the wall is the answer to life, the universe, and everything. We managed without it 'til now, and we'll survive when we get home. Let him work as long as he can. If it is important, he'll salvage at least part of it." He paused to pass Ray the needle-nosed pliers, then added in an even lower voice, "Why does it bug you so much?"

"Because our lives are at stake," Peter said without hesitation.

"And because you just saved his?"

The question made Peter uncomfortable. When Egon was dangling over the edge of the drawbridge, his focus had narrowed until only the physicist existed. It wasn't that he wanted Egon to fall at his feet or follow him around, doing his bidding.

Well, maybe doing the dishes for him, or doing his laundry, but Peter was pretty sure that would never happen.

They'd all saved each other's lives at one time or another during the course of the job. Maybe he just wanted to have more impact on Egon than a musty old wall did. And that was stupid. Just as Peter had nothing to do, the physicist couldn't really do more than supervise Ray's modifications.

Maybe the near miss had scared Egon so badly that he needed to focus on something else, something that demanded his total concentration, so he wouldn't have to remember hanging there with nothing more to guarantee his survival than the very shaky grip Peter had on his ankle. Okay, that made sense. But Peter didn't intend to let Egon's focus to grow so narrow that he wouldn't give it up when the time came to escape.

With a crash and a roar, another chunk dropped out of the floor. Peter whirled, yelling, "Egon!" but Spengler was safe. The physicist stood on a ledge a meter wide in front of the inscribed wall, cut off from the rest of them. In the torch-lit room, Peter could see that the blond's face was very pale.

"I'm fine, Peter," Egon said in the same unconvincing tones he'd used after his dive off the World Trade Center. Straightening his jumpsuit, he stared down at the drop. "That is a . . . considerable distance," he remarked.

Kate stood with both hands pressed against her mouth. "Dr. Spengler, you can't stay over there."

"It feels quite solid," Egon replied, pressing on the floor with one booted foot.

"For Pete's sake, Egon, don't do that!" Winston yelled. "Don't move at all. We'll come to you." He whirled around, seeking something to bridge the gap. He found nothing wide enough except the trestle tables. Checking the one that wasn't in use, he lifted at it, realizing that the top was not attached to the underpinnings. "Come on, Pete, we can do this. We'll shove it across."

Peter went to the other end and together they lifted it. It felt like it weighed more than Ecto-1. Depositing it on the edge of the drop, they tried to push it across. The end that stretched out over the drop sagged and caught at the far side, several inches below the level of the floor.

Tucking his notebook into the front of his jumpsuit, Egon reached down to lift it. It was too wide for him to grab both sides without endangering his balance, and he didn't have much leeway, but he tugged at it determinedly.

Peter suddenly had an idea. He jumped on the other end of the table, hoping his own weight would serve as a counterbalance. It worked. The end lifted just enough for Egon to manhandle it the rest of the way.

Once Egon lifted it high enough, Peter and Winston thrust it hard against the wall, giving Egon a narrow bridge to walk across to safety.

"Come over," Peter yelled, beckoning urgently.

"Not yet. I still have work to do. I have a way to leave when I'm finished."

"Are you nuts!" Peter screeched. "The rest of that could go any second. Your important stuff won't do any good if it's at the bottom of the sea with the little fishes."

"Just a few more minutes," Egon insisted. "Please, Peter. I'm almost to the end of this section."

The castle shook with a new blast of thunder, more dust trickling down from the ceiling. The table bounced up and down and Peter and Winston grabbed it hastily to keep it from being knocked free.

Ray jumped to his feet with an excited cry. "I got it, I got it!" he exulted. "It's done. Let me put the casing on and we can go home."

"You're sure it'll work?" Winston asked without letting go of the tabletop.

"You bet." Ray pushed a button and a brief spark of energy emerged from the device and hit the wall before him. It shimmered. "See! Isn't it great? Wow, Dr. Meadows, this is so amazing. When we get home, I want to study it."

"Okay, kiddies, let's pack it up here," Peter said. "Egon, we're going - now."

Meadows grabbed his stack of notebooks. "Can we bring these with us?" he asked hopefully.

"You bet. We need them," agreed Ray. "We can each stick a couple in our jumpsuits so our hands will be free, in case we have to use our throwers." He grabbed two, pulled his jumpsuit zipper down far enough to fit them inside, and zipped it up again. Winston grabbed a couple and passed two more to Peter, who slid them quickly into place.

"Egon, come on," Venkman called.

"Not yet. You go ahead. Five more minutes, ten at the most."

"Egon, we need you out there," Peter insisted, growing furious. "There are two civilians with us and they don't have throwers. If Fenrir shows up and decides we'd make good munchies, it's going to take all four of us to protect them, and Ray has to carry the device."

"The three of you can protect them, Peter. This is essential. The very meaning of life as we know it--"

Peter lost it. Ignoring his lifelong fear of heights, he raced across the tabletop without even noticing the drop and stopped right in Egon's face. "Damn it, Egon, you listen to me," he snarled. "You are coming right now and no argument, got it?"

"But, Peter, I must--"

"No. Egon, I saved your life out there when you did your Greg Louganis off the drawbridge, and that means I'm responsible for it. I'm not leaving you behind. We're all going - together."

"Ten minutes, Peter. Please." Egon's gazed was imploring.

Peter folded his arms across his chest and braced himself against the wall. "Egon, I'm not sending Ray and Winston out there alone to protect Kate and Vince, not with the werewolf from Hell waiting for a snack. And I'm not leaving you here to fall through the floor and take a swan dive onto the rocks. We're leaving - now - all of us. Together. I don't care if that's a foolproof formula for world peace, or stock market tips that will turn us into millionaires. I do care whether you live or die. Maybe you don't care if the rest of us do, but we can't suddenly stop just because you think that wall is more important than we are." He grabbed Egon's arm. "So forget about it because I'm not leaving you here alone. If you stay, I stay, and that puts our friends in jeopardy. We came here to rescue Vince, and we owe it to Kate to save her."

Egon expression was one Peter had never seen before and he didn't want to recognize. Okay, so maybe Egon wouldn't forgive him for dragging him away, but that was tough because Peter knew he'd never forgive himself if he left Egon here. "Move," he insisted, as unyielding as Gibralter. "We're going - now." He guided Egon onto the makeshift bridge.

"I'm going against my will, Peter," Egon said stiffly as he started across.

Maybe Egon knew he was wrong and he couldn't admit it. Or maybe he just thought Peter was pond scum for ignoring the greatest discovery in the history of the human race. Either way, Peter didn't care . . . as long as he went. He stepped onto the bridge after Egon and it rocked with the force of another blast of thunder.

Peter suddenly found himself trapped on the middle of the bridge while it bounced and shook. The drop on either side was endless. He couldn't look down; he couldn't move at all. Below him, the waves churned furiously, slamming against the stones like bursting bombs. The castle shook. Beneath his feet, Peter could feel the trestle boards shift. It was going to fall. It was going to pitch him through the drop and he couldn't move. He stood, frozen like an ice sculpture, helpless in the face of his greatest fear.

"Peter!"

Egon's shout was distant, remote, not a part of the horror that enclosed him. The bridge slipped a little more.

"Peter, move right this minute!" Egon cried, his voice full of fury. "Move this instant. Come toward my voice!"

"I . . . can't move." Venkman could scarcely open his mouth to speak, the words escaping between his clenched teeth.

"You made me move, now I'm making you move!"

Suddenly Egon was there, directly in Peter's field of vision, at the edge of the bridge. Behind him, Ray and Winston stood, ready to make a human chain to come out to him, to save him, but he knew the bridge would fall at the slightest additional weight.

"No!" he bellowed. "Don't come out here. It'll fall." He couldn't risk their lives. Although it took more will than Peter believed he possessed, he slid one foot forward without lifting it off the bridge. It didn't fall. Now, the other foot. He could feel the vibration as he moved, and didn't know if it was the bridge or the entire castle. All his attention was focused on his feet as he inched toward safety, his feet and the intensity in Egon's eyes. He couldn't break Egon's gaze or he would fall. He barely noticed the outstretched hand waiting to grab him.

Three feet . . . Two . . . One. Egon's fingers were inches away from his own when the boards beneath him slipped. Peter felt the bridge drop, but not far, a few inches at the far end behind him. It caught on a broken projection and held, but the jerk pitched Peter onto his stomach like on the drawbridge. This time he didn't fall hard enough to do more than jam one of the notebooks painfully into his side, reminding him of earlier bruises, but they were dim and distant compared to the way his stomach took up violent res