Archive of Our Own

When I moved back to New York after ten years in Iowa, my mother decided to throw a "Welcome back to Civilization" party for me. Although I had never grown very fond of life in the Midwest, I found that, for the sake of my late husband Greg, I resented the suggestion that I had been living in darkest America. I welcomed the overture from my mother, though, because she had always been cool and distant and not very interested in me. Funny, when I met her again I realized for the very first time that her cool control was simply the facade she presented the world and that, in her own way, she really did care after all.

Some six months earlier, I had encountered a man who was a past master at keeping his feelings at bay and, compared to him, my mother was a rank amateur. When she stretched out a formal hand to greet me and mimed a kiss in the vicinity of my left ear, I realized that, for her, it was the same as a warm embrace from a more outgoing person. After that, we got on much better, at least as well as any two people who are as different from each other as the sun and the moon.

She wanted me to bask contentedly in her reflected light, yet she was the cool one. Her emotions never ran away with her. Mine went up and down with every little mood change. Strange, when I'd probably started life much like her. When I first met Greg, I had been cool and practical and apt to scoff at idealists. But Greg was an idealist and Greg was my lodestone. I had never been able to fight the pull.

It was Avon, a man who came from the future, who had amazingly dropped into my back yard in an escape pod from a spaceship, who had shown me I could let Greg go. I still missed Greg, of course, sometimes agonizingly, but that part of my life was over. Returning to New York--part of my bargain with Avon--had sealed the past behind and I was ready to begin a new life.

Mother's welcome-home party glittered with celebrities and pitched me into an entirely different life than I'd expected because I met Peter Venkman there. Out in Iowa, I'd heard of the Ghostbusters, but I never dreamed I'd meet one. Actually, I had never given them a thought. The old farmhouse that had been in Greg's family for so many generations was said to be haunted, but I never saw the spirit. I heard footsteps sometimes and doors opened and closed without explanation. The house was settling, I told Greg, or it was the wind. He only smiled and told me it was Sara, his great great grandmother, who sometimes walked at night. He'd seen her when he was a child, he admitted. I didn't believe him.

Mother collected the rich and famous the way some people collect butterflies or salt and pepper shakers, and the Ghostbusters were certainly famous in an odd sort of way. Peter was the Ghostbuster who most liked being a celebrity, so he guested on talk shows and attended parties like the one Mother gave. We gravitated together.

I think I knew from the first that I wasn't going to be in love with Peter. He was as different from Greg as anyone could be, except that there was some of that same enjoyment of life there, a pessimistic optimism, if there could be such a thing. Peter was a born fast talker, who loved fame and money, and I didn't care about money at all--though he said I'd care fast enough if I lost it. But he was frivolous and laid-back and I needed someone like that. He wasn't in love with me, either, but we had fun together. Sometimes I wondered what Avon would have made of him. Avon held his feelings inside with a cold facade, Peter used humor and smart remarks to keep people at a distance, to keep from seeing the caring, intelligent man behind the somewhat mouthy exterior. Maybe everyone has their own particular facade. That was one of the first things I learned from him.

On our third date, Peter took me to Ghostbuster Central, the converted firehouse out of which the team operated, where I met his fellow spook chasers. Egon Spengler fascinated me in an entirely different way than he did their secretary, Janine Melnitz, who was in love with him. Egon was cool and brilliant and in some ways he reminded me of Avon, because he said what he thought without regard for the consequences. Lacking in conventional social graces, he was more at home with experiments than he was with people, although he had a buried, and wicked, sense of humor. But his loyalty to his friends was obvious and beyond question. Avon had fought tooth and nail to convince himself that no one mattered but himself.

Ray Stantz would have driven Avon crazy, but I fell hard for Ray and enjoyed his boundless enthusiasm and his childlike sense of wonder. Ray liked comic books and old movies and, once or twice, I watched old horror movies with him on TV at the fire station.

Winston Zeddemore was one of the nicest people I'd ever met. The down to earth one, he was like a big brother to the three scientific types and a breath of fresh air when they got into some of their weirder theories. I really liked Winston.

Then there was Slimer. Finally, I came face to face with a genuine ghost, not a sheet clad shape who moaned around and rattled chains but a lumpy little green figure who shed ectoplasm right and left and who, if he liked a person, displayed his affection with messy kisses and hugs. The first hug I got from Slimer was horrible, but I got used to him eventually. I could always bribe him away from sliming me with offers of food.

I discovered I knew Janine already. A long time ago, for one year, we'd been at school together. We'd been friends at age ten, before my father took me out of the Brooklyn public school and sent me off to boarding school, which I'd hated. It was fun to see Janine again and to watch her manage the four Ghostbusters, and Slimer, too, with acerbic good humor. She could handle them easily when she wanted to and they knew very well when not to cross her.

Peter was the one I knew the best, and it was to him that I told the story of Avon, since it was in there, burning to get out. I could certainly never tell my parents. I figured if he believed in ghosts and demons and werewolves and such, he wouldn't be skeptical of time travelers. So I described Avon, who had appeared in a downed escape pod last November in a flight from a political enemy, Servalan. She had pursued him, but not before I'd had some time to get to know Avon, who was reeling from the shock of being manipulated into shooting Blake, the only man that he could reluctantly call a friend. When Servalan arrived, she blithely informed him he'd shot a clone of Blake and when, hard on Servalan's heels, Avon's crew arrived to take him home, Avon had agreed to search for the real Blake. I suspected he couldn't help himself.

Life in their century had been hard and bitter, with the established totalitarian government against them, but Avon chose to go back. I was never really tempted to go with him--I had not fallen in love with him any more than I had Peter--but I urged him to look for Blake. He agreed but, in turn, exhorted me to come home to New York and start a new life. I had kept my part of the bargain. My main regret was that I would never know if Avon had succeeded in finding Blake or not.

"So nobody ever realized you'd had a spaceship in your back yard?" Peter asked. He cocked his head at me and grinned skeptically. Whether or not he believed me, he obviously enjoyed the story.

"Well, no. There was a giant blizzard and it took everybody's minds off the UFO sighting. By the time the roads were clear again, the others were long gone. Thank goodness. I never heard anything when I was selling the farm. They'll think all the broken branches were the result of bad weather."

Peter grinned. "Whatever you do, don't tell Egon about it. He'd have us out there looking for traces of it and taking about a zillion P.K.E. readings before you could say 'Slimer'."

Mention of his name caught the little ghost's attention and he drifted over to Peter expectantly. We turned to look at him and saw behind him Ray's eager and excited face.

"Wow. Time travel. That's so great." Ray gets excited like that at the drop of a hat. It's one of his most endearing traits.

"Down, Tex. It doesn't sound like there's going to be a repeat performance," Peter declared.

"But what about this vortex?" persisted Ray. "Is it still out there? Do you think anybody else will come through it? That nasty Servalan you mentioned? What if there's something she wants in our time?"

"I doubt it," I said. "It was dangerous. It required pinpoint accuracy in navigation. I don't know anything more about it than that. She wouldn't risk her neck on it, and anyway, the others had her prisoner."

"Well, you never know," said Ray cheerfully. "Maybe someday there'll be a knock on your door and your future friends will come back."

I forgot all about that conversation. I had long since accepted the fact that I wouldn't see Avon and the others again. It was just as well, although I'd become fond of my prickly guest.

Life went on. Nothing exciting happened for another two months. I was still dating Peter occasionally, although he had at least one other girlfriend that I knew about. Once or twice I'd gone with Ray to dinners and receptions where he'd been invited to speak and needed a date. Janine and I occasionally went shopping together. My mother thought it was strange of me to have made casual friends out of them, but the Ghostbusters were famous and she enjoyed that. "My daughter knows the Ghostbusters," she would say to the ladies who came to her teas. My father, when he emerged from his boardrooms and power lunches, would pat me on the head as if I were ten years old, ask if I was getting on all right, and when I said I was, he'd mutter absently, "Good, good," and go on his way. I doubted I'd ever be close to him. It made me wonder what he'd do if he ever encountered Peter's father, who was a genuine con man. I'd met Charlie Venkman once and thought he was a sweetie, even after he tried to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge.

The morning when everything began, it was Egon, not Peter, who telephoned me.

"Meredith? It's Egon Spengler. I wonder if you would come over to the firehall immediately."

My first thought was that something was wrong. "Is Peter all right?" I demanded anxiously.

"He's perfectly well. But there's a man here I want you to meet. You know that the police sometimes drop people off here who seem more geared to our situation than that of Belleview. The man they brought today is not giving off unusual P.K.E. readings although his biorhythms appear slightly out of balance, but when he said what he had to say, Peter was fascinated and insisted that you could help us."

"I could help you? I'm no scientist, Egon. You know that." This was starting to sound really weird but, ever since I'd first met Peter, weird was the normal state of affairs.

"At the moment, science is not the prime consideration." Egon had aroused my curiosity so I went out and flagged down a taxi. What could I offer the Ghostbusters? I could barely run a personal computer. Of course I had some money, but if it was a loan they wanted, Peter would have been the one to ask for it. He handled all the money stuff. I still wasn't convinced that Peter wasn't in danger and that perhaps Egon meant to break it to me gently. What could I do to help them with someone Belleview had dumped on them? I wasn't a shrink, either. Peter was a psychologist, so why wasn't he dealing with the Belleview reject?

When I reached Headquarters, Janine made the circle with her finger at the side of her head that indicates someone is crazy and sent me upstairs. She wouldn't have done that if Peter was hurt. "Better hurry. Peter's spinning a really weird tale about the guy they've got. If you ask me, he's finally lost it, but Egon's listening."

I found all four Ghostbusters intact in Egon's lab, gathered around a man I'd never seen before. He was tall and solidly built and his hair was a mass of curls. Egon had one of his esoteric monitoring devices on the man's head. To me it looked like an upside down colander with electrodes and circuits attached to it. A screen gave a reading in varying colors, a computer enhanced picture of his brain, apparently. As I came in, Egon lifted it off and set it aside, a frown on his face.

The stranger was oddly dressed in leather pants, a shirt with great, full sleeves like garb worn at a Renaissance Faire, and a leather vest. I wondered if he were an actor. All that leather would be uncomfortable in the heat of a warm September.

"Meredith?" Obviously hale and well, Peter bounced over to me and draped his arm around my shoulders. "You've got to hear this." He nodded to the man. "Tell her what you've told us," he urged.

Slimer hovered in the doorway behind me and the stranger's eyes scarcely left him long enough to register my presence. He didn't look like he'd ever seen a ghost before, or even considered the possibility of their existence.

"Slimer won't hurt you," Ray reassured him hastily. "He's friendly and definitely non-violent. This is Meredith Everett. Tell her who you are."

The man eyed me doubtfully and considered it, gnawing on his finger as he studied me. Then he shrugged. "My name is Roj Blake."

Of all the things I had expected, that was the last of them. I couldn't have been more surprised if he'd announced himself the reincarnation of Julius Caesar.

"Blake?" I echoed doubtfully. "You can't be! Not Avon's Blake?"

He had looked so cowed by his surroundings that I hadn't expected a strong reaction. But he moved with remarkable speed, and the next thing I knew he grasped my wrist so tightly that it hurt. I let out a squeak of protest even as all four of the Ghostbusters jumped to my rescue and pulled him away from me. My other hand went to my wrist and I rubbed it, dazed, while I stared into his appalled brown eyes.

"You can't know that!" he spat at me. "This is a trick. Servalan didn't exile me in the past after all. This is an elaborate setup, isn't it? Programming?"

"I hardly think any setup could be as elaborate as New York," Egon assured him. "The coincidence is remarkable, but perhaps there is something about Meredith which enables her to serve as a nexus for the past and future." He waved his P.K.E. meter at me hopefully but it didn't react.

"This really is your past," I assured Blake. "I know it seems impossible, but I've met Servalan so I can understand why you might be suspicious. She must have sent you through a vortex that functions as a time warp. That's how I met Avon. He escaped from her after Gauda Prime and his escape pod passed through that same vortex. She pursued him, but we captured her and Avon and his crew took her back with them. Do you know about Gauda Prime?"

He stared at me blankly. I remembered Avon's description of how Blake had looked at Gauda Prime, one eye pulled down by a nasty scar. This man didn't have the scar, but there was no reason why he should. That hadn't really been Blake but a clone programmed by Servalan to deceive and capture Avon.

The Ghostbusters watched in fascination as Blake hesitated. Then he said coolly, "Right after she captured me, Servalan showed me a viscast of Avon shooting 'me' or, rather, a man he believed was me."

"A man who said he'd set him up," I pointed out.

Blake must have been a fair man because he paused. "Perhaps. He sounded like me, he looked like me. Avon thought he was me--and he still killed him."

"Because he didn't act like you," I insisted. "He didn't give Avon a straight answer. Blake, listen to me. I'll tell you all about it, everything you need to know. But don't hate Avon. What he did there nearly destroyed him. He's not a man who cries, but he cried for you. When Servalan told him he'd shot a clone of you, I saw hope in his eyes."

"If they captured her, she must have gotten away. I only arrived here last night. How long ago did this happen?" He was wary, doubtful.

"It was ten months ago. She could have escaped or been traded in a prisoner exchange or something. She sounds tricky enough." What I didn't say was that she may have found a way to recapture them and they might be dead now. He didn't need to hear that. If that were true, then he had no hope.

"How do I know this isn't all a trick, that you aren't telling me what you think I want you to say?" Blake demanded.

"We have equipment that can prove some of it," Egon jumped in. He sounded fascinated. "This device has been set to read your biorhythms. When compared with those of us who live in 1990, yours has a variety of minute differences. I believe that living in another century, exposed to different bacteria, different diet, even traveling in space, can account for them. I suspect if I could go back into my own past, I would find minute chemical changes in the people there."

Peter propped his elbow on Egon's shoulder. He did that a lot, and Egon just planted his feet to take his weight. "That's nice and all, Spengs, but can we cut to the chase here. This Blake guy is from the future. If he can tell us who wins the 1990 World Series, I can get in some bets and clean up!"

Egon elbowed him in the side and Peter moved a step away. "That would be dishonest, Peter."

"And your point is?" Peter winked at me.

"I don't know what the World Series is," Blake intervened. "So it would be impossible to help you. Is there any way you can help me? I would like to go back to where I belong. The Federation continues to oppress the populace."

"And you're dying to rush back and save your rabble," I said, recalling Avon's terminology.

"You do know Avon!" Something in Blake's face crumpled. He gazed at me. "This is real isn't it?"

"It's definitely real, Mr. Blake," Ray chimed in. "Gosh, I bet it's scary, knowing you're stranded in your past. We went back in time once to 1837. We didn't know we were in the past at first. It was great. We got to save Christmas."

"Christmas?" asked Blake, perplexed.

Ray's face fell. "You mean you don't have Christmas in the future? Gee, that's terrible. Hey, Peter, for him Christmas is just another day."

Peter made a face. "Come on, Ray, I was never like that." He glanced at Blake with interest. "This guy's really from the future. Major culture shock time. But that's not the worst of it."

"What is?" Egon asked in the tones of someone who has already reached his own conclusion and knew the answer very well. He and Peter exchanged a grave and thoughtful look. Winston nodded as if he, too, understood.

"This Servalan character," Peter insisted. "She's got a two-way conduit here from her Big-Brother-is-Watching universe. We might have some orbital Star Wars stuff, but if she decides to bring a fleet back, we're screwed."

"Gosh, an attack from space," breathed Ray in horror but with fascination, too. "We've gotta stop it."

"Oh, yeah, right, Ray." Winston frowned. "We ring up George Bush and say, 'Hey, Mr. President, bad guys from the future are about to attack Earth.' Next thing we know, we'll be locked up in a rubber room. You think Blake can prove he's from the future. You think anybody's gonna listen to Meredith's story about the invasion of Iowa last winter? We need proof of all this stuff before we do anything. Meredith, can you be sure he's really Blake?"

"Why would anybody make up a story like that? How would he even know to do it. Peter's the only one I ever told about it." I turned to the future man who had listened to us without participating. He was probably still in shock. "Blake?" I ventured. He knew that Avon was supposed to have shot him. But he could have extrapolated that from what we'd already said. "Tell me who your crew was and the name of your ship, when you were first with Avon."

"I was first with Avon on the London," Blake replied, causing me to frown. Avon hadn't mentioned that to me, but then he hadn't been exactly forthcoming in telling his life story. "But then we got the Liberator. We found it drifting following a space battle. We had Jenna, Avon, myself, Vila, Gan, and Cally, and Zen, the ship's computer. Later we got Orac."

"The computer Avon mentioned," I reminded the Ghostbusters. "And then Gan..."

"Died on Earth," Blake replied with a bitter twist to his mouth. "A few months after that, we went to Star One, and wound up taking Liberator against aliens from Andromeda. The Liberator was so badly damaged we had to evacuate in life pods. I never got back to the ship, and that was the last I saw of Avon or any of the others." He grimaced. "Supposedly, I encountered him on a world called Gauda Prime, but I assure you, that was not me. She hadn't captured me yet, at that time. I was cloned once. Perhaps Avon shot a clone of me. I am told Servalan had several made. Actually they were not true clones but copies and none of them had my memories except what could be implanted."

"Hey, maybe I could get a copy made of me," Peter put in brightly. "I could have him clean my closet and wash Ecto, and get up early in the morning when it was my turn to cook."

"And sneak out and date your girlfriends?" Winston asked, amused.

Peter grimaced. "Well, now that I think of it, it's a bad idea. Very bad." He cast a glance at me. "You wouldn't go behind my back with my clone, would you, Mer?"

"Not even if I were really your girlfriend," I said, and added before he could proclaim devotion none of us believed, "But we have to do something about Blake. We have to get him home where he belongs, and reunited with Avon. How can we do that?" I turned to Egon with my question. Of all of them, he was the one who might possibly come up with an answer.

"Hmmm." I had intrigued him, all right. Even more so, I'd thrown him a challenge, and he had never been able to resist scientific challenges. Peter had told me once that he'd gotten Egon to do his chores one day by making a scientific problem out of it. Of course Egon had wised up to his scheme midway through and found retaliation later. "He's too creative when it comes to payback," Peter had admitted. "Once he put something in my shampoo that turned my hair green. Another, he developed a potion that he put in my cologne and it attracted ghosts like crazy. I have to watch him all the time."

If Egon could invent such things, maybe he could dream a way to punch a hole out through the vortex and send a message through. Computers here didn't have those cells Avon had talked about that Orac could read. Tarrel cells? Varial cells? Whatever. I wasn't even sure Avon and his friends had Orac now. Avon had said he knew where it was. He could have retrieved it by now. If I could get that across to Egon--or if Blake could--maybe he could find a way to send a signal. Would our satellites pick it up?

"Blake, tell him about those cell things in your computers that Orac can read," I urged.

"Tarial cells!" Blake erupted to his feet, the light of eagerness in his eyes. "You can work out a message that could be detected by Orac?"

Egon frowned. "Since I am completely unfamiliar with the scientific principles inherent in your Tarial cells, it would be difficult. Still, if you can give me the necessary information..."

"I've worked with Tarial cells but I've never created one. I'm an engineer, not a computer specialist," Blake admitted. Some of the hope slid out of his eyes.

"Are you?" Ray asked, excited. "So am I, and Egon's a physicist, and Winston's really good at putting things together. If you sit down with us and go over what Tarial cells are and what their function is, maybe we can cobble something together. We're good at that. It might not be as compact or pretty as the original, but I bet it could do the job. Gosh, this is exciting."

I edged over to a chair and left the guys to it. They usually only needed a slight push to go in the right direction and they worked so well as a team that I knew myself to be superfluous. My function would be to remember all the things Avon had told me when he had believed himself stranded in the Twentieth Century and to toss in a useful tidbit if the need arose.

"Down, Rover," Peter told Ray. "I've got an idea their computer stuff would make Bill Gates and Steve Jobs look like dodos." He cast a knowing glance at Egon and Ray. "'Course with Dr. Einstein and Rube Goldberg here and anything Blake can throw in, we just might come up with the answer. Then we can patent it and get rich."

"It's not about money, it's about the scientific challenge," Egon objected. "To work out a solution to this problem--"

"It's about Blake being stranded in his past," said Winston. "We're doing it to help him out, not because we want to be rich and win the Nobel Prize. Not to say those are bad things, but let's sort out our priorities. I've got an idea building whatever gizmo you dream up is gonna put us in the poorhouse, so first things first. Pete, how does the research budget look?"

Peter winced. He guarded that research budget with his life. For somebody who had strong impulses to spend money like it was water, he didn't usually do it, at least not with the business funds. He'd talked to me once about how much Egon's experiments cost and how he had to rein him in. He hated doing it because Egon was his friend and Egon loved his research. "But we gotta pay Con Ed first or the containment unit will go blooey," Peter had explained. "When we get low on money, we do a lot of busts that ordinarily we'd write off: no-problem Class 2's that don't do any harm, stuff like that, because we still get paid for it. We need Egon's research. Our lives are on the line out there if we don't have the tools we need. Besides, it'd break his heart if I shot him down all the time. Sometimes I have to and I hate it." Then he grinned wickedly. "Just think, a con man handling the books."

"You're not a con man," I had chastised him. "You just like to pretend you are."

That made him slap a hand across his forehead in dismay. "Busted. You don't pull your punches, do you, Meredith?"

"I never learned to," I said. "Greg never let me."

Now I looked at Peter as he frowned. "We can squeeze a little in, but you get your positronic parts wholesale or I'll hide all your P.K.E. meters where you'll never find them--and don't think I couldn't."

Egon pretended to stagger and pressed a hand to his chest just like Fred Sandford on TV. "You wouldn't." Ray chortled with glee and Winston shook his head with the kind of tolerant amusement he'd had to develop to get along with the three mad scientists.

Blake stared at them as if they were demented. Avon had made it clear that life in the Second Calendar wasn't exactly sweetness and light. Blake didn't buddy around with his Liberator crewmates. They rubbed together with a friction that held each other at arms' length. It wasn't that safe to trust people because anybody could turn you in. Blake had seen fellow rebels gunned down on two separate occasions, I vaguely remembered. Avon had never understood how Blake could trust anyone after that since he rarely trusted anyone himself, not even his friends. Maybe Peter, who wasn't quick to trust people, either, might understand that better than any of the other Ghostbusters would, but he wasn't looking at Blake and didn't see his surprise and a quick, wistful look of longing that came and went in his eyes so fast I would have missed it if I'd glanced away. Instead, Peter was watching Egon.

"We can swing something, Spengs," he said seriously. "Who knows what parts we already have?" He gestured around the lab.

Egon's eyes smiled. He has this way of doing that, a total deadpan expression that strangers take for Vulcan stoicism but, behind his glasses, his eyes will twinkle with amusement or friendship or quiet contentment. Peter was a past master at reading those expressions. Or evoking them.

Peter was also a sucker for people in need. Not people who panhandled or tried to work a deal, but people who were genuinely hurting. He put in volunteer time at a free clinic, counseling with kids who came from bad homes or who had run away, and I was sure he was good with them. He'd helped Mrs. Faversham, an elderly widow on a pension, for free, and adopted her as a kind of grandmother afterwards. No, the surface Peter Venkman shielded a much nicer guy than he wanted strangers to realize. Blake wouldn't know that yet. He'd probably just seen the mouth.

Blake watched him and Egon as they bantered about money to fund the research. I could tell he didn't believe that the Ghostbusters didn't have personal motives for helping him, but I didn't think they did. Returning a lost and lonely time traveler to the future was nowhere in their Ghostbusting brief, but they plunged into the challenge with great enthusiasm. Ray was so excited he was almost floating in midair.

Abruptly, he wheeled and went over to Blake, plunging into a discussion of what engineers did in the future. Surprised, Blake let the exuberant babble wash over him like a river before he collected himself and responded. I was glad Ray had done that. I was sure he genuinely wanted to know, but Ray was kind of heart and I was pretty sure he'd realized how lost and out of it poor Blake must feel. He'd just drawn him back in.

"You don't have anything on you with these Tarial cells in it, do you?" he concluded after a discussion that had quickly left Peter, then Winston, then Egon, and finally Ray, scratching his head in doubt. Technology had progressed a lot in Blake's time. I remembered Avon's contempt of my Apple computer. Yet he'd believed he could go in and revolutionize the system, had he been stranded for good. Blake was, I'm told, an intelligent man--though Avon admitted it warily--but Avon himself was a genius, though not, possibly, as well rounded a genius as Egon. Avon had a very narrow focus. Peter and the others didn't let Egon's focus narrow in.

"No, nothing, I..." Blake's voice trailed off. "Wait a minute. Servalan wouldn't have left anything with me. I usually carry tools in my pockets." He began to examine pockets in the leather trousers and vest, and he came up with nothing, not even nail clippers or a hankie. Maybe in the future there was a cure for the common cold and people used lasers to clip their nails. His shoulders slumped in disappointment, then he gave a sudden, startled cry and began to tug off one of his knee-high boots. It was a complicated process. In the olden days, they had gadgets called bootjacks to help with the process but the odds were nobody at Ghostbuster Central had ever heard of one. Their boots came to just above their ankles to provide support while busting.

Intrigued, Ray jumped in to help, and he tugged at the boot so hard that he fell backward on his bottom, clutching it. With a good-natured laugh, he passed it back. "Boy, I'd hate to have to dress like you if I were in a hurry."

"Yeah, it's not the new look for upwardly mobile young Ghostbusters," Peter confirmed, though I had an idea he liked the boots and would have worn them if he hadn't believed they might be a fashion disaster.

Blake muttered a thank you and reversed the boot, prodding at its inch-and-a-half heel. His fingers found the right place and the heel pivoted sideways. A shake of the boot produced a small round something that landed neatly in Blake's palm. It was probably no more than an inch in diameter, and, to my surprise, it seemed to hover a fraction of an inch above his hand. Blake closed his fingers around it with careful pressure and, when he opened them, the gizmo lay against his flesh.

"It's a transponder," he said. "A locator. I forgot I had it, and it was shielded to keep it from being found if I were captured. They must have missed it when they went over my clothes. There's a sequence to get the heel to move." He held it out to Egon. "It should have a Tarial cell. We can use it to make more." He tugged his boot on again.

"What does a locator do?" Ray asked. "Can't it send a signal on its own?"

"Not that far away, and not through the vortex," Blake replied. "If it had been on when I went through and if I'd keyed it to Orac, they might have tracked me to the vortex, but they don't know I'm alive. I switched it off before Servalan caught me." He frowned. "She only captured me a month ago. That must have been after she saw Avon."

Egon plucked the transponder from Blake's hand and squinted at it up close. His long fingers traced the fine lines incised on the surface, then he picked up his ubiquitous P.K.E. meter and held it up to the device. It gave a weird, faint beep. With a snort of frustration, Egon twiddled the dials. He played the meter like Itzak Perlman played a violin. This time, it did something different; the screen put up a weird pattern. Peter craned his neck to see over Egon's shoulder and arched a surprised eyebrow.

"So, is this little doohicky haunted, Spengs?"

"Of course not, Peter. What it does is produce a form of unfamiliar energy I have never seen. I adjusted the meter for negative valences, and that isn't quite the right setting to take readings of this device. Perhaps the magnetometer..." His eyes glazed with fascination.

"Well, he's off in the clouds," Peter said to the rest of us. "So, Blake, how did you actually wind up in the Twentieth Century?"

"The vortex--" Blake began, but Peter waved him down.

"No, I mean you must have come in a pod or something, like Meredith said Avon did. She said they were shielded so radar wouldn't have picked it up, but if you crashed somewhere in the city, couldn't there be parts in it that we could use? Or did the cops impound it?"

Blake's jaw dropped. He must have just seen Peter's smartass attitude and failed to realize there was a clever mind behind the facade. Not surprising. Peter worked hard to preserve his image, and Blake was flailing for balance in a world that was not his own. "I landed in an area near a river," he admitted. "There were warehouses and abandoned structures nearby. I didn't crash, although it was a near thing. I managed to land it inside an abandoned structure, where I concealed it behind a row of empty crates. Then I went out to explore, and that was where your security forces discovered me."

"Security forces?" Peter echoed.

"Police, Peter," Egon reminded him.

"Gotcha. So what were you doing suspicious, Blake?"

"I didn't intend to be suspicious. I quickly realized my clothing was unusual for the time period. I couldn't change that unless I found other clothing, and I had no credits to purchase different items nor any understanding of your specie. The groundcars had wheels; I knew then I was in a time or on a world more primitive than my own. Yet when I landed I saw the moon. I have gone outside the domes on Earth and I remember Earth's natural satellite. That was when I realized I was on Earth. But it was not my Earth. I speculated about alternate dimensions or time travel. Either seemed unlikely. I considered that I might be prisoner in a programmed dreamscape, a visual image structuralizer."

"Like the one they used on Avon at Terminal," I said in surprise.

The men stared at me. They had completely forgotten I was there. I explained what had been done, how Avon had been made to think he escaped and discovered Blake on that artificial planet, only to learn later that the encounter had never happened, that Servalan had planned the experience to get the Liberator. "Servalan told him you were dead, Blake," I explained. "He was devastated. He had risked everything, accidentally brought about the Liberator's destruction, to get to you. He pretended it was because the message supposedly from you offered great wealth, but that was just the way he covered up his need to find you for your own sake. His dreamscape probably lasted less than an hour. I doubt very much even Servalan could do all this." I gestured around. "Besides, we're all very real."

"You'd say that anyway," he protested.

"What to you know about the Twentieth Century?" Peter prompted. He was fascinated.

"Very little. President Sarkoff had a vehicle from the Twentieth Century. He called it a motorcar. But it was not as fast as the ones I saw here. It was open at the top and taller."

"Probably from earlier in the century," said Ray. "We've progressed since then. We just call them cars now. What else?"

"Music played on machines that spun a flat circular device with a small needle moving in the tracks."

"Phonograph records," Winston offered. "We're pretty much past those, too, but I've got some in the bedroom I can show you. We use cassettes and CDs now."

"Technology changes," agreed Blake. "Sarkoff was a historian and the Twentieth Century was his time period. I had little time to study his artifacts."

"Artifacts." Peter shivered involuntarily. "Oh, great, we're somebody's artifacts. I hate that."

"Not at this end of time, Peter," Egon replied. "It would behoove us to track down Blake's pod before it is discovered by someone else and exploited. There are bound to be more Tarial cells in it. Perhaps we can adapt it to boost our own signal device." He caught Peter's eye. "It would spare the budget."

Blake's eyes lit up. "That might work." Then his face fell. "I am not sure I could find it again."

"I assume the police who brought you here didn't just pick you up and deliver you at our door."

"No, they thought I was acting strangely and they took me to a medical facility first where doctors examined me and asked me questions. I was reluctant to speak freely, but I saw them exchanging knowing glances and shaking their heads when I theorized about coming from the future. Perhaps they thought I was demented."

"Yeah, but the cops don't usually bring us people with delusions," Peter said. "Okay, so they brought Louis Tully when he thought he was Vinz Clortho, but he could make his eyes glow and they thought he was possessed. What did you do, Blake? Growl at them and stand on your head?"

"No, but I said a lot of things that I shouldn't have said, that I controlled a ship that had the power to blast the whole planet, and when a man in a green shirt tried to grab me, I...used a...conduit from the pod that I had brought with me as a modified defense weapon to stun him. It vaporized on contact in a burst of light. I think they believed I could, er, 'zap' people. That was when they decided to bring me here."

"Zapping conduits. I like it," said Peter, brightly. "We have got to find your little space ship."

"They apparently thought he could cast fire like a demon, Peter," Egon explained patiently, although we had all figured that out. "Blake, could you guide us to your pod?"

"It was by a river," Blake admitted.

Winston squatted in front of him. "Blake, we're on an island. There's the Hudson on one side and the East River on another. Were you there when the sun came up? Did it rise over the water or over the buildings?"

"The water," Blake replied.

"Okay, the East River, then," Winston decided.

"Score a point for Sherlock Holmes," Peter crowed, clapping Winston on the back as he rose.

"Does that make you Watson, Peter?"

"Sherlock Holmes?" Blake stared at them in astonishment. "The Hound of the Baskervilles. A proscribed book, but I read it once."

"It's about a hundred years old in our time," explained Winston. "I like mysteries. Between Egon's meter that's keyed to Tarial cells and what we can work out, I bet we have your pod in hand before you can say Jack Robinson."

Blake shook his head, probably wondering why he would want to say 'Jack Robinson.' Egon grabbed up a couple of devices and they all started for the stairs.

I hesitated. Should I go with them? They knew what they needed now. But Peter snagged my arm. "Come on, Mer. You know more about Blake than the rest of us. We might need you."

"Where are you going?" Janine asked when we all trooped downstairs. She cast a suspicious glance at Blake.

"To look for Blake's escape pod, Janine, honey," Peter told her. "He's a little green man."

Blake looked down at himself in surprise, almost as if he was afraid he'd really changed colors. "Not so little," he objected, "And not green, either."

Janine grimaced and muttered, "Oh, brother," under her breath. "Meredith, don't let these guys buy into his delusion, okay?"

"It's not a delusion, just a weird coincidence," I assured her. "Egon's going to test me later to see if I might be some kind of nexus to the strange and futuristic."

"Oh yeah, he'll like that," she agreed, but the fondness in her eyes when she looked at Egon proved she would easily forgive him for falling prey to occasional delusions as long as he came home safely. "Egon, be careful."

"We will," Peter assured her pointedly. "Next time you warn only him, remember which one of us signs your paycheck."

She cast him a grimace and stuck out her tongue at him.

"Your face will freeze that way," he cautioned. "That's what my mom always said when I made faces."

"Egon, when are you going to transplant his brain into a cockroach?" she wailed.

"When business slows down." Egon gave her shoulder a pat. It was more a comradely one than a romantic one, but then Egon wasn't the type of guy to make romantic overtures in public. I suspected it would be hard to get him to make them in private, not because he was shy; he wasn't. He simply wouldn't think of them. If pressed, he would probably admit, although not in front of Peter, that Janine was his girlfriend, but it would never occur to him to send her flowers.

Janine was used to him by now and took the touch with delight. She waved us off with a warning not to let ourselves be transported up to the Enterprise.

We would have arrived faster if Blake hadn't been so stunned and fascinated by everything he saw. He broke into Winston's prodding questions about directions every few seconds to ask what something was, from an ambulance racing to a hospital with siren wailing to a street busker strumming away, guitar case open for donations beside him. He stared at an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi all in black, a very tall black man in saffron robes who might have come from the U.N., teenagers with boom boxes perched on their shoulders, a woman in a halter top and shorts. Of course Peter's eyes nearly fell out at the sight of her, too. I gave him a poke in the ribcage to recall his mind to the business at hand.

What with Winston's gently probing questions and Egon's meter, it took a mere half hour to locate the pod in a tumbledown warehouse between Pier 9 and the Downtown Manhattan Heliport. A sign out in front proclaimed that the abandoned structure was due to be demolished in early October so that a newer warehouse could be erected in its place by the C.C. Crane Company. Someone had broken the padlock on the sliding doors and wedged them open.

I recognized the pod the instant Blake threw off the tarpaulin he'd used to cover it. It was similar to the one Avon had crashed near my farmhouse back in Iowa, except that it had made a softer landing. Egon, Ray, and Winston fell on it like starving men would fall on a banquet, and Peter stood back and grinned at the sight of his friends' excitement. Of course he stood back with his particle thrower propped against his shoulder like a rifle, ready to take on any threats from Servalan down to a drug dealer or two. Abandoned buildings tended to attract the wrong kind of people, especially in a city the size of New York.

"Wow!" exulted Ray as he got his first look at it. "I wonder what they use to keep it from burning up in the atmosphere." He traced a fascinated finger along its surface. Avon's had been badly scorched, but Avon had been stunned in the vortex and lost control. I wonder if that was why he'd wound up out in Iowa and if Blake, conscious and functioning, had simply made for the largest city he could spot from the air.

Winston was delighted at the way the cockpit opened. "I've seen old car hoods open that way."

Egon could not wait to look at the interior components. He was in physicists' heaven, and his focus had narrowed down so fine that, should a band of Class 7 demons have arrived on the scene, he would have said, "Yes, that's nice, go away," without even lifting his head. Peter knew that. It was why he stood guard duty.

"We have to take it back with us," Ray burst out excitedly.

"I hate to break it to you, Junior, but it's never gonna fit in Ecto," Peter reminded him.

"So we go rent a pickup truck. I think it would fit in the back of one, don't you? Winston, will you go do it?"

Winston pulled out a tape measure and took measurements of the small pod, then he raced out to Ecto, pausing to grab my arm. "Meredith, come with me. You can drive Ecto back."

He must be excited or he wouldn't have considered letting me, a civilian, anywhere near his beloved converted hearse. I knew he couldn't pry Egon and Ray away to do it, though, and he had to leave Peter there to watch their backs. Blake certainly wouldn't be able to drive it. I remembered Avon behind the wheel of my car and figured Winston was smart not to even consider the possibility. So I nodded and came with him.

I beat Winston back, and found the situation virtually unchanged except that Egon and Ray had the casings open and they were asking Blake a slew of technical questions. Every so often, they had to pause to work out terminology, since Blake's technical jargon was so different from their own.

Blake appeared stunned just to be in the Twentieth Century. I think the realization of where he was and the possibility that he might be trapped here was crashing over him with the force of a tsunami. If it were me, I'd have a major panic attack, but this was Roj Blake, legendary rebel. He'd been through programming, mind-wiping, raids on Federation bases, and he'd stood up to Kerr Avon for two whole years. If he lost it, he'd lose it under tight control. Egon and Ray wouldn't even notice, they were so caught up in the pod, but Peter would. I cast an eye at him and nodded at Blake. He nodded knowingly back. Con man facade or not, Peter was a very clever psychologist.

"How are you progressing?" I asked, simply to let Egon and Ray know I was there. "Winston should be back in another ten minutes; he had to do some paperwork for the rental truck."

"Wow, it's great, Meredith," Ray said, but he said it absentmindedly. He was so thrilled he was answering by rote. Egon didn't respond at all. Typical.

"It's just an impact capsule," muttered Blake. To him, it was something he took for granted, the way we took for granted flagging down a taxi or hopping onto a subway car. We wouldn't spend thrilled hours over a car engine--well, Winston or Ray might but ordinary people didn't.

"It's new to them," Peter reminded him. "Just like things we use every day will be new to you. When we get back to the firehall, you can help fix lunch. That'll show you a few things that will surprise you."

"Fix lunch?" Blake echoed. "You push buttons and the food comes out a slot. Doesn't it?"

"Oh, no." Peter grinned. "Here, you get a lot more up close and personal with food preparation than that. This is going to be fun."

In the end, the Ghostbusters had to rent a fork lift to get the pod into the truck; it was too heavy for us to lift. With the help of the fork lift, we maneuvered the pod onto a wheeled scooter at Ghostbuster Central and rolled it back to the first floor lab behind Peter's office since there was no way to get it up the stairs. Components would go up there as Egon and Ray, with Blake's help, detached the useful portions. The capsule offered minimal life support and communications functions and was not designed to launch from a planet's surface, so it wasn't necessary to keep any part of it intact except the communications system, which Egon and Ray hoped to adapt into a transmitter that would punch through the vortex. Peter insisted on calling it the 'E.T. phone home' device.

"What does that mean?" Blake scratched his head.

"E.T. the Extraterrestrial," Ray said excitedly. "A great movie. I love it. E.T. was stranded on Earth and he cobbled together a gizmo to send a recall signal to his people. Just like what we're doing." His grin widened. "Peter's actually right--for once."

"For once," howled Peter. "I was right about getting the pod, wasn't I? I was right about calling Meredith." He folded his arms across his chest. "I'll leave you to do the heavy work. I'm going to teach Blake how to fry hamburgers. Come on, Blake. Driving a fork lift is hungry work."

"Like you drove it," kidded Winston, who had taken on that chore himself with much unnecessary coaching from Ray. Winston had driven fork lifts before when he had worked construction with his father.

"I'm a supervisor," Peter said haughtily.

"That means he stands around and offers superfluous advice," Egon teased him.

Hiding a grin, Peter grabbed Blake by the arm, signaled me with his eyes, and led the way out of the first floor lab. I nodded at Janine to come with us, and we trekked upstairs to the kitchen, where Peter contrived to 'supervise' again while Janine and I did most of the work and hurled 'chauvinist' insults at him. Blake stood in the middle of the room, displaced and confused, while we worked around him. The sight of ground beef in its natural, uncooked state revolted him. "It looks like mangled corpses," he muttered.

"Oh, thanks." Peter's mouth slewed crookedly. "You've done wonders for all our appetites.

"No more descriptions," Janine said firmly. "Here, Blake, you slice these onions. Do it under the faucet or it will make you cry."

Dubiously, Blake took the onion and the knife. "I feel not the slightest urge to cry."

"The fumes," I explained. "No, sideways. This is the top, see." I removed them from his hands and cut off the first slice, then passed it back. Blake's nose wrinkled. "You eat this?" he asked in horror.

Janine looked up from the making of beef patties long enough to smile. "It's good for you. You're eating all this cholesterol with the meat. The onions make it a little healthier. Meredith, grab one of those tomatoes."

Peter's contribution to the meal proved to be seasoning the burgers and--under dire threats from Janine and me--setting the table. Blake sliced the onions with no more than slightly swimming eyes, made worse when he tried to rub them without washing his hands first. Soap and water were not strange to him, but soap in a bar was. He expected his soap to come from a dispenser, and said that, in space, most cleaning was done with sonics. Alpha families rated water showers as a luxury and he had been born an Alpha.

"A class system?" Peter instantly jumped in with questions. From the answers he evoked, it sounded like only Egon and I would rate as Alphas in his time and he was iffy about that. "So the rest of us are second-class citizens?" He pretended to pout. "And you're into freeing the people?"

"Avon actually pointed out my prejudices on one occasion," Blake said, surprised after the fact. "He said that if I intended to save my 'rabble', I should realize that some of them were going to be Delta grades, and that I often ordered Vila about like a servant. I hadn't even realized I was doing it." He took the hamburger buns Janine passed him and went to lay them on the plates while she followed with the sliced tomatoes. When Blake returned, Peter had deigned to flip the burgers and looked smug about it.

"So, did you change your attitude toward Vila?" he asked.

Blake was silent a moment. "I tried after that. I'd made him stay with me on a planet with a solium device." He tried to explain that and finally got it across that it had been like a neutron bomb. "Avon was trying to defuse it, but we couldn't save everyone on the planet so I waited with them. I meant to teleport at the last moment if Avon failed. Avon said I had every right to sacrifice myself if I were such a fool, but I had no right to make that decision for Vila. He was correct, of course. I didn't like it. I was rather...high handed in those days."

"Sounds like your Alphas were snobs," said Peter, who hadn't a snobbish bone in his body. He might have other faults to make up for the lack of that one, but one of the things I'd always liked about Peter was that he showed no bigotry. He was suspicious of everybody equally. No, that wasn't right, but he didn't expect every stranger to be a new friend, the way Ray did. When he was suspicious of someone, it had nothing to do with any across-the-board prejudices.

"How did Vila take it?" he asked.

"He was mad at me after that for a time. Vila can hold a grudge. He can defend himself, too. It was awhile before he was comfortable around me after that. Maybe he never was again, I don't know. He'd been born a Delta, after all. I think he was conditioned, too. When I realized that, I had to do some thinking about my cause. Avon never treated Vila as a Delta. He treated him as inferior some of the time, but then he did that to all of us, and Vila did play into it. But they argued as equals. Jenna tended to regard him as a Delta, too, but I don't think Cally did. She sometimes regarded him as a fool, but Vila played the fool with great enthusiasm, so much so that the part often became reality."

"I've met Vila," I said. "And, believe me, Blake, he is no fool. But then, I didn't have your preconceived notions about the class system to override."

A delicious aroma from the hamburgers distracted Blake. "How could something that looked so terrible smell so good?"

"It tastes even better," Peter promised. "Janine, run and tell the guys that lunch is ready."

At least dining utensils weren't unfamiliar to Blake. Eating a burger with his hands surprised him. He'd expected to cut it up. As it had with Avon last year, the taste of milk didn't appeal. The Ghostbusters drank a lot of milk, but Blake grimaced and frowned.

"Cheer up, Blake," Peter kidded. "At least you didn't have to milk the cow."

"I've milked a lot of cows," Ray put in and explained the process to Blake, who stared at him in horror, half-suspicious that his leg was being pulled. "You actually handle an animal's teats?" he cried in revulsion.

"It's kind of nice," said Ray with a grin. "Of course most places have machines to do it, but I always liked hand milking best. You get a nice rhythm going and the milk just fills the pail. It's great."

Distracted from complex formulae, Egon regarded Ray in astonishment. "I tried once, a long time ago, to milk a cow," he said. "I got absolutely no milk and the cow kicked over the bucket."

"Astounding!" Peter shook his head. "There's actually something Dr. Einstein can't do."

"I don't imagine you ever milked a cow, Peter?"

"Not me. Are you kidding. I'm a city boy. The closest I ever was to a cow was at Ray's cousin Sam's Dairy Farm. It was enough to turn me against farming altogether. The dairy farm of the living dead." He gave a mock shudder.

"Come on, Pete, you're the one who figured out how to stop all those ghosts," Winston pointed out.

"Don't praise him. His ego is huge enough," objected Janine.

"Ghosts?" Blake stared around in horror, probably remembering Slimer. I wondered where the little ghost had gone. The one time I'd eaten a meal with the Ghostbusters before, Slimer had hung around making himself hideous in his pleas for table scraps--not to mention all the food on the table.

"That's what we do, Blake. Haven't you ever seen a ghost in the future?"

"No! I hope I never do." He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, and I could imagine the ghosts who would parade before his eyes. Gan, all the people in his freedom party he'd seen gunned down. Cally, although he had not been responsible for her death. Jenna. Was she dead? The false Blake had told Tarrant she was, but it could have been a lie. I wouldn't want those ghosts. My only ghost was Greg, but he had never appeared to me, and I would never have feared him if he had.

"Some of it is great." That was Ray, wildly enthusiastic. "Gosh, Blake, you can come with us on a bust. That would be something to tell them about when you go home."

"A bust?"

"It's what we do," explained Egon. "You know we're Ghostbusters. You know that's why you were brought here, because they thought you could cast fire."

"And ghosts can do this?"

"Well, demons can," Peter said. "We don't like demons much."

"Surely you're not serious."

"I'm rarely serious," Peter said with a big grin. "But demons are real, and they're nasty. And when they come to town, we're the main target for Demons 'R Us. After lunch, I'll let you have a look into the containment unit."

"What's that?"

"It's where we store the ghosts we capture. They can't be destroyed, although some can disperse peacefully. We've got some real sweethearts in there, too."

He glanced uneasily over his shoulder. "They can't get out?"

"Not without a disaster of biblical proportions," Egon remarked straight-faced, forking up a portion of baked beans.

"The skies falling," Peter intoned. "Volcanoes erupting. The seas boiling. Dogs and cats living together..."

"Or a major power failure," Ray cut him off. "We have a backup generator, just in case." He crossed his fingers ostentatiously. "Let's just hope we never have to use it."

"Are you sure they're not aliens?" Blake asked, drawing back from the hooded viewer. I had looked in there once and seen the multitude of milling ghosts and spirits. Once was entirely enough for me. The shock on Blake's face struck a responsive chord.

"Aliens? Gee." Ray replaced Blake at the viewer, then he straightened up and shook his head. "Well, there was an alien ghost once that we caught on the space station, but it was still a ghost. We can't trap physical beings very easily. We have to use a destabilizer to convert them to ectoplasm. Egon designed one. No, they're ghosts. We get readings on them. I think an alien would give off different readings. The Bogeyman was a physical entity but he wasn't an alien. Gosh, do you think any of those ghosts could be aliens, Egon?"

"Possible. We don't know what characteristics an alien species would possess. But we hardly have time to consider that option now. Building the device must be our top priority. We'll take busts, of course; we must. But, in between, we'll build Blake's communicator."

"E.T. phone home," muttered Peter.

"We'll need you, Blake, to interpret your time's science as best you can," Egon concluded. "Ray, I'll need you as well. I'm hopeful the language of engineering may ring bells for both of you. I know there are many forms of engineering and that the science may have altered in the future, but it will be impossible to build this on my own."

"Gosh, yeah, I'll help, Egon. This is going to be great."

"And afterwards, we can sell the rights to NASA for major bucks," Peter decided. When the others simply looked at him, he spread his hands. "At least it will pay for all the equipment you guys are going to buy. What can I say? I'm the voice of fiscal responsibility here."

The others shouted him down. Blake looked from one to the other of them, not quite able to understand their banter. I knew from watching the interaction between Avon and Vila that banter had had its place on the Liberator, but maybe it had lacked the Ghostbusters' friendly tone.

After the pertinent parts were stripped from the pod, we all went up to the third floor lab except for Janine who returned to her desk to take phone calls. I wondered if I should go home, because I had no idea how to design interstellar communications beacons and nothing in my background and training had prepared me for working with high-tech equipment, but when I suggested I should leave, Blake looked vastly disappointed. I wasn't from his time, but I had met his friends and I must provide him with a link to them. So I trekked upstairs, too, and took up a seat on the couch Peter had bought for the lab so he could 'supervise' from a supine position while the others worked. Blake was instantly drawn in with a series of questions from Ray that went so far over my head they may as well have been speaking Mandarin. Egon listened while he scribbled notes, ran calculations, and performed a visual inspection of the life support system of the pod. I could tell I wasn't going to understand any of this.

Blake was no help. He talked of things like TP crystals and hyperspace sub beams. The terminology didn't mean anything to Ray or Egon, either, but when he explained what they were, they were both fascinated. What I got of it was that a communication beam was converted into something called Zeta 3 particles which enabled coded messages to be sent. Egon fell on the idea with delight and plunged into a discussion that was so far above me it might have been on Jupiter. Blake knew a little about its function but nothing of the theory behind it. I wondered if Avon hadn't been the theory man of the team. Egon turned on the lab computer and produced a copy of the periodic table for Blake to study since no one here had an idea what a zeta particle was.

"The third letter of the Greek alphabet," put in Peter irrepressibly. He hadn't understood the jargon any more than I had. "I should know Greek. I was the guiding light of my college fraternity. Isn't 'zeta three' redundant?"

"Zeta is actually the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet," corrected Egon. "You don't understand what you're talking about, Peter."

"Hey. I never claimed I did. Just trying to be helpful. I'm not from the future."

"Is he always like that?" Blake asked me in an undertone.

I nodded vehemently. "Every single minute."

"And to think I've spent good money taking you out to dinner and dancing," Peter accused me reproachfully.

"And you the voice of fiscal responsibility," Winston reminded him. He reached out and tousled Peter's hair.

The others ignored Peter's wail of protest.

It was a very long afternoon. Blake took breaks from the interrogation sessions that Egon and Ray put him through, and came over to join Peter and me on the couch. He asked questions about the Twentieth Century and, occasionally, he got up and wandered over to the window to stare out at a world unlike anything he had ever known. I wanted to take him out sightseeing, but I knew that would have to wait. Maybe tomorrow, if Egon figured out how to approximate the hyperspace sub beam and how to aim it at the vortex. Sending it out into our own time would serve no function at all. I understood what they wanted to do, at least in the most general of terms. Peter understood it better than he let on, but all the years of working with Egon and Ray hadn't taught him how to design equipment that hadn't been conceptualized in our own time. To my surprise, the things he offered had a root in common sense, which I'd thought was Winston's prerogative. Winston could build anything he had the tools and equipment for, but he needed the design specs to do so. Peter's gizmos tended to explode, implode, or die spectacularly--usually right after doing what they had been designed to achieve. I figured Egon and Ray wouldn't let Peter touch this one. I was right.

"What gets me," Peter said as the afternoon wound down, "is how we're going to keep the government or NASA or whoever monitors these things from suspecting we're communicating with aliens or enemies of the United States."

"A good point, Peter, and one I have been considering," Egon replied. "I plan to shield the beam, and to explain that we are flushing excess power from the containment unit. When we had to do that to capture all the ghosts Buster invited to the firehall that time, we didn't hear from the government, did we?"

"We did, but only to ask what we'd been doing," Winston reminded them. "Somebody from the EPA called. He was a lot nicer than Walter Peck."

"Winston, anybody is a lot nicer than Walter Peck, except maybe this Servalan babe," Peter corrected. "I smoothed them down when they called. They were assessing for environmental damage, but there wasn't any. Ectoplasmic energy is not a pollutant. Some guys came over and took readings with their own little gizmos. They might do that this time, too."

"So what we do is vent the containment unit at the same time as we send the signal," Ray cried. "That way, they'll get the same readings, and it will probably mask the shielded beam. Gosh, Peter, that's a great thought."

Peter preened himself.

"You're risking security compromises for me?" Blake sounded rather humbled by the thought. "I can't understand why you're doing this in the first place."

Winston met his eyes. "Because you're stranded here," he pointed out.

"Yes, but you're spending a fortune in your currency and I can't repay it. I'll be gone, and you'll be here, facing repercussions."

"Gosh, Blake, helping people is what we do." Ray gazed at him earnestly. "That's why we bust ghosts, after all. We can do it, and nobody else can. Don't worry about it. We can probably sell some patents afterwards. If this one has communications applications, we can clean up on it. Information is power. But that's not why we're doing it. I hope that if I were stuck in your time, you and your friends would help me."

I wondered what Blake thought about that. Would the Liberator crew have helped a stranded time-traveler? Would Avon? He wasn't exactly benevolent by nature, and interest in the welfare of others had never been a prime concern of his. Blake had been interested in the rights of the rabble, but they had been a faceless ideal to him rather than individuals. The impression I had received from Avon was that it was far easier for Blake to care for people in the abstract than one on one. I hoped Ray wouldn't be too disappointed when he met the others.

The beam was not yet completed when I went home that evening. I left Egon still hunched over a pile of components he was beginning to assemble into a weird-looking contraption. He was in seventh heaven. Just to be doing it was satisfaction enough for him. He would like to reunite Blake with his friends, too, but, for him, that need became lost in the pure, scientific pleasure he got from research. Ray was almost as caught up in it as Egon was, but Ray was more directed to the goal. Egon would have happily worked for months to perfect the design, but Ray insisted that all they needed was a working prototype. "It doesn't have to be pretty. Later on, you can refine it if turns into something we can patent. What matters is getting it to work." Winston agreed with Ray.

As for Peter, he started talking to Blake, when the rebel wasn't needed for input on the device. Peter was shrewd enough to know that the minute Blake had time to sit and think instead of focusing on the communication signal device he would face a massive dose of culture shock. It was hard for me to compare Blake to Avon's stories, not that I didn't see the drive to return to his own time and continue his rebellion. That was there. But this Blake was such a fish out of water that he was diminished from the larger-than-life Blake Avon's words had created in my mind. He was more human, more approachable than he would probably be in his own time.

Once, he got me off to one side to ask about Avon. I told him frankly about the traumatized man I had first met, so devastated by life's blows and by killing a man he'd believed was Blake that it had shaken his foundations. "Don't say I told you so, but he cried for you, Blake."

Blake's eyes were huge with shock."I can't imagine Avon that vulnerable. He once said that he saw no need for anyone to ever prove he cared. That's not an exact quote but I wasn't there when he said it."

"You wear masks in your time," I reminded him. "You don't let down your guard at all." I gestured at the Ghostbusters, cheerfully teasing each other as they worked. "You don't have what they have. You're all conditioned to fear openness and trust. Avon had been through so much that he learned that lesson far too well. Haven't you learned to judge by his actions instead of his words? He saves your life and calls it an instinctive reaction. But the operative fact is that his instinct was to save your life. Think about it."

Peter edged closer to listen, but he didn't say anything. He only knew Avon from my words.

"The point," I continued, "is that you have to work with Avon and the others. Yes, you face danger every day. So do these four. You risk your lives. They sometimes risk their souls when they come up against evil entities. What do you think makes them strong?"

"We're a team," Peter said. "We can count on each other all the way. Trust, Blake. That's what it's about. These crazy guys are my family. They'd back me to the death and I know that so well I can take it for granted." Peter didn't get serious very often, but when he did, he could say the right thing every single time. I knew he didn't entirely take it for granted. I knew how glad he was of it. But when he faced a powerful ghost or demon, he didn't have to stop and worry about backup from his friends.

"I wish I could do that," Blake admitted. "You're right, Meredith. We're conditioned not to trust. I wish I could. It would make it so much easier to carry on my cause."

"I know you're driven, that your cause is all-important, but if you let it get more important than the people, then you're missing the whole point. Didn't you learn that at...Star One?" I hoped I had that name right. It was a long time since Avon and I had talked and he hadn't been completely forthcoming. A lot of what I knew I had assumed from reading between the lines. I was sure there was a lot he had never mentioned to me and never would, although I had been safe, someone who, he thought, would never meet anyone from his own time.

"I'm a leader and I sometimes have to send people into situations where they could die," he defended himself.

"It's easier to send people if they aren't your best buddies," Peter put in quickly. "Isn't it? I can dig that. Egon's so smart he's always coming up with plans, and some of them put him on the front lines. Ray, of course, rushes in without a thought of danger. I know what you mean. I have to keep going after them so I can rein them in all the time."

I was sure of that. I'd heard stories where Peter charged into the forefront. He claimed it was for the glory and the publicity, but I knew better. It was his way of protecting his friends. Every bust could mean an injury or death, but they had learned to face that possibility with humor. It was a means of keeping their sanity in the midst of crisis after crisis.

With that to think of, Blake grew silent and retreated to a corner, surprised when Janine arrived with coffee for everybody.

"Hey, Miss Janine, I'm finally getting you trained properly," Peter kidded her, but Blake brightened. He liked Twentieth Century coffee. Peter must have figured that Blake had enough to think about because he circled around Janine, who watched him, narrow-eyed, and drifted over to Egon to make sure he took a break. I chose that time to go home to my apartment to take my dog out for a walk and to think it all over. They made me promise to come back in the morning.

"You're in for the duration," Ray told me enthusiastically. "Gosh, I'm glad you met Avon. It makes this all easier."

I thought it did, too. When I left, Egon didn't even notice. I hoped he figured out a solution soon. He wouldn't get any sleep until he had things organized.

When I showed up around ten the next morning and was instructed by Janine to go on upstairs, Egon was sitting in the same position as he had been when I lseft. He hadn't shaved and he was still wearing the same shirt. Of course he may have had a whole slew of pink shirts, but this was crumpled enough to suggest he'd pulled an all-nighter. I had never before seen Egon when he wasn't meticulously groomed. Ray looked almost as bad. Peter and Winston were at least clean shaven. Peter muttered to me when I said, "Good morning," that 'good morning' was an oxymoron and yawned to prove it. He didn't even sneak a look at Egon to see if he were impressed with the big word because it was obvious that Egon wouldn't have heard him if Peter had said I'd arrived wearing only a coating of chocolate. Blake had shed the leather and full sleeves and seemed diminished to normalcy in a sweatshirt and jeans. I wasn't sure where the jeans had come from because Blake was broader than any of the Ghostbusters except possibly Ray, and he was taller than Ray. Maybe Winston and Peter had taken him shopping last night. They must have because the boots were gone, too, and the tennies Blake wore looked new.

He plunged to meet me with an eagerness I found touching. Odd that I would provide him with a link to home when I had never been to his time and found the idea of it appalling. "It's nearly ready," he admitted.

I caught Peter's eye. "I couldn't get Egon to do more than catch a catnap or two," Venkman said. "I've seen him like this before and I know better than to force him. Ray's almost as bad, but at least he got a few hours sleep."

"You got more, I bet."

"Peter has been up an hour," Egon said without looking up from a connection he was fastening with a device I'd never seen before. It could have been one of Doctor Who's sonic screwdrivers for all I knew.

"Yeah, because somebody threatened to pour ice water on me if I didn't get up," Peter objected with a pointed glance at the back of Egon's head. "Not sure why. It's not like I want to sit around and look at Egon in that state."

That flew right over the physiscist's head. Either he could react selectively or he had commented by rote before. Peter made a cheerful face at him. I suspected he'd gotten up to keep an eye on Blake. Slimer had returned and was displaying a considerable interest in the rebel leader, sniffing around him and hovering nearby. When he thought of it, Ray shooed Slimer away, but the little ghost kept creeping back. Blake may have stood up to Servalan and half of Space Command, but Slimer made him very uneasy. As well face an Avon armed with a para-handgun. At least then he'd then be on familiar ground.

"How long will it take?" I nodded at the blond and auburn heads bent over the gizmo.

Winston raised his eyes from the computer screen and grinned. "Egon thinks it will be finished by noon. Ray and I set up the containment unit for venting once he's ready. We'll do it in the daytime; it will be less obvious than at night."

"And then we wait," Blake said. "I've been thinking. We have no guarantees that Avon even has Orac. He evidently didn't when you met him. If Servalan is free, they could all be dead or prisoners. They might not have a ship. I've been listing the obstacles. Even if they get the message, it might take them weeks to get here, and the vortex is dangerous."

"But what the hey," Peter said. "While we wait, you can have the joys of the Twentieth Century. Pizza and days at the beach, and chasing after Class 3's with nasty purple slime."

Blake eyed him dubiously. "I must accept the fact that I may be stranded here forever."

At that, Ray's head came up. "Gosh, Blake, we're doing everything we can. There's no way we can build a spaceship." He beamed. "Wouldn't it be neat if we could?"

"Come on, Ray, that would bust our budget for the next fifty years," protested Peter. "Blake, if you get stuck, this isn't a bad place. You'll get used to it." His voice grew soothing and understanding. I knew Peter well enough to understand how appalling such a prospect would be to him. He thrived in the midst of his family of choice. Separated from them forever, he would shrivel up and the bright humor would drain out of him like water from a cracked pitcher. He would never be the same man and he knew it was the same for Blake. Egon hadn't thought of that yet; he had his problem to solve. Not that Egon was insensitive; he was just awfully focused. If it happened, Peter would sit him down and point out how Blake was taking it. And then all four Ghostbusters would help him settle into the 1990's.

"Anyway," said Winston, "Don't write these guys off. If anybody on Earth can do what you need doing without turning you over to the government, it's my teammates."

A shrill clangor rang through the firehall, making even Egon lift his head. Blake and I jumped a foot. "What's that?" I asked.

"It's a call!" Elated, Ray sprang to his feet. "Come on, Blake, it's your chance to see what we normally do. He raced for the nearest firepole, too eager to resort to the slower stairs."

"Guess he forgot his Prozac this morning," muttered Peter with a grin. He turned to Blake. "We'll use the stairs. I try never to use the firepole. It backfired on me once and sent me up again."

"That was a unique situation," Egon reminded him. "It had part of a ghost in it, as you recall." Blake and I exchanged doubtful glances and by tacit consent gave the firepole a wide berth.

Regretfully, the physicist turned off the communications gizmo and covered it with a drape. "Slimer, if you touch this even once, I shall know and I shall put you in the containment unit permanently with Samhaine and the Bogeyman," he said quite sternly. "I am utterly serious about this."

Slimer must have realized that. He turned transparent and shrank back from the device.

"He'll be good, won't you Slimer," Ray soothed.

The ghost's head bobbed up and down energetically, but he slunk off into the bedroom and consoled himself by curling up on Peter's pillow.

"If you slime my pillow, I'll help him," Peter called before he led the way down the spiral stairs.

It had never been my ambition to go on a bust. My casual friendship with the Ghostbusters had never warranted that, and I was glad of the fact. When Blake cast a wistful glance in my direction, I heaved an inaudible sigh, shrugged at Janine, and squeezed into the back seat of the antique converted hearse next to Peter. Winston climbed behind the wheel. Since I had ridden twice with Ray, I was glad Blake was spared his maniac style of driving.

We made it to the bust without incident, although Blake tended to cringe at the close proximity of taxis that wove in and out of traffic, and to flinch when, with siren wailing, we slid in front of a bus or ran a red light to the accompaniment of squealing brakes and profanity from other drivers. His eyes grew huge as he studied the pedestrians on the sidewalks and lifted his gaze to the towering buildings. He'd grown up living in a dome, I remembered. Open sky overhead must have been hard for him when he first encountered it.

The bust was in an apartment building just off Delancey Street. An elderly woman with a redoubtable expression and a fiercely determined chin met us in the corridor. "I'm Mrs. Price, the one who called you. You've got to get it out of here. It's horrible."

"Where is it?" Egon asked practically.

She pointed evocatively to the stairs and tried to repress a shudder. The line of her face suggested it took a lot to intimidate her, but the ghost was outside her realm of experience.

"No elevator," Peter muttered in dismay, but the guys all braced themselves for the climb.

Egon checked the P.K.E. meter he carried. It beeped and lights blinked on its antennae. Blake stared at it although he should be used to P.K.E. meters by now. "Class 3," Egon deciphered. "It shouldn't be a problem. Blake, you may come, but stay behind us and, whatever you do, don't get between one of us and the ghost."

"Should I wait in the car?" I offered hopefully.

Peter grinned at me. "Same rules apply to you, Mer."

"It's green," the woman said. "Its face is green. It looks like it decayed and nobody threw it out. You go bust it. Hurry."

My enthusiasm for the bust, low at best, disappeared entirely, and Blake's mouth twisted, but we trailed along in the team's wake. Ray's grin spread across his face. Evidently he loved green, decayed things. Not me. Bad enough when I found a dish of something black and fuzzy that had been hidden at the back of my refrigerator behind the butter tub. At least it hadn't gotten up and flown at me.

The ghost met us at the top of the stairs, and I wished I could emulate Slimer and shriek as I flew out through the wall. I had never imagined a zombie before as anything but a creature in a horror film, amusing because it was safe on the screen. But this thing looked like a rotting corpse. Chunks of it were missing, and there was a hollow all the way to the skull where one eye had been. Tattered clothing clung to it, as green as its rotting face, and it moaned and shed portions of itself that vanished in midair as they fell free.

Blake came to a dead stop on the stairs. "That's disgusting."

"You won't look any better when you're dead," the ghost countered, its teeth clicking together as it spoke. "Please, help me. I implore you, help me."

I hadn't expected it to talk. I jumped backward and nearly missed the stair step. Blake caught my arm and we hesitated there, on the verge of flight. Peter had started to fire but at the ghost's words, he pulled his shot, interested. He, Egon, and Winston kept their throwers leveled, ready to blast the ghost at the slightest motion from the spirit. Ray said hastily, "Wait, Peter."

"I'm gonna be a fashion statement even in the grave," Peter defended himself. "What's your beef, Jack? Why shouldn't we just blast you? What do you want us to do instead?"

The ghost looked surprised at the question. "You are the Ghostbusters. Maybe even you can't help me. I am doomed. Cursed. Cursed. Cursed."

Well, yes, I had to give him that.

Ray edged forward, eyes wide with fascination and the dawn of sympathy. "Really cursed? Voodoo?" Only Ray could be sympathetic to such a ghastly apparition. "Gosh, who did it? Maybe we can lift the curse and then you could disperse peacefully."

"That's not what they're paying us for," Winston reminded Ray.

"They're paying us to make it go away. It doesn't matter how we do it," Ray countered. "Maybe we can make it go without blasting." He turned back to the ghost. It hadn't even tried to attack us. It just drifted there trying to look hopeful. "Who cursed you?"

"Does he always make friends with them?" Blake asked me in a harsh whisper.

"No, sometimes he just blasts without stopping to think whether or not chandeliers or people's cats are in the way," Peter said. Ray gave him a dirty look. "Depends." Peter cocked his head at the ghost. "He's interested. Only Ray..." Fondness filled his voice.

"Cursed to roam until nothing is left of me," mourned the ghost in an eerie, hollow voice. One of the apartment doors opened and a little old man peeked out. When he spotted the ghost, he shrieked like a teakettle and slammed his door. We could all hear bolts being shot. I didn't blame the man, but I was pretty sure bolts wouldn't keep the zombie out.

"He wanted my woman," the ghost said mournfully. "She loved me. Me, not him. So he cursed me. Bound me. But I couldn't go anyway. Not and leave her in his hands. Help me, please, help me."

"And is it really voodoo?" Egon asked, taking reading after reading.

"No," the ghost admitted. "Although that's what made him think of turning me into a zombie. I'm not a real zombie, just a facsimile of one. He wasn't a bokor."

"What's a bokor?" Blake asked me. I shrugged. I didn't have a clue.

"Somebody who creates zombies?" I said doubtfully. "Maybe a voodoo priest or something." Peter nodded to confirm my words.

Blake opened his mouth, probably to ask what voodoo was or even what a priest was, but then he changed his mind and went back to staring.

The ghost ignored our brief conversation. "I wasn't drugged and brought back from a deathlike state. He cursed me out of a spell book, a grimoire. We all liked the occult, Saul and Jani and I. We played at it with a group of other like-minded people. Saul--went overboard."

"Yeah, I have to say I agree with that," Peter said with a judgmental gaze at the ghost. "Where's this Saul character? I think we need to have a little parlay with him."

Winston rolled his eyes. "And have him do the same thing to us?"

"Yeah, you've got a point, Zed. Ray, what's your idea?" Peter had once explained that the team tried to stop people who misused occult power whenever they could. That was why they had such a collection of occult books back at headquarters, partly to know what they were up against, but also to keep them from the hands of the dabblers who might get in over their heads. I wasn't sure I believed in spells and curses but my beliefs didn't matter. It was what the ghost had believed that did.

Ray scrunched up his face in an effort of concentration. "That's a tough one. I know about a lot of the grimoires. Sometimes the spells work because people buy into them. How did you die?" he asked the ghost.

"Hit by a car," the zombie replied. "I think it was an accident, but I'm not quite sure. I wasn't pushed, I know that."

"And you knew about the curse then?" Ray persisted.

A nod that made two of his teeth fall out. I shivered.

"Okay, then, you believe it would work. When you died by violence, you came back. That's why a lot of ghosts do; their lives are cut short. You were probably upset about your girlfriend and mad at Saul. So you believed the spell would work--and it did. Saul didn't hit you, did he? He wasn't driving?"

"No. But they never found out who did. I wondered if he'd arranged it. I'd been realizing for a long time that he was...dangerous. Unethical. I only stayed in the group to keep my eye on him--and to protect Jani."

"And he believes in these spells?" Ray asked. He was starting to sound eager.

Peter and Egon exchanged doubtful glances. They didn't know what to expect of Ray in this frame of mind. Or maybe the problem was that they did.

The ghost nodded. "He does believe. Fervently."

That made Ray's smile expand. "Great. Okay, here's what we'll do. We need you to get in the trap, then we'll go to his house. But first, I need to get something. We'll make a stop on the way."

"He lives here." The zombie gestured at the hall behind him that made a fingernail fall off. "That's why I came. But he is not home."

"Good, that gives us time. Come on, guys. We can do this. I think it's gonna be soooo cool."

"I shudder to think," Winston muttered.

"So do I." Egon threw out his ghost trap. "Trust Ray. He evidently knows what he's doing. Blake, don't look directly into the trap."

Blake and I averted our gaze from the worst of the blinding white glare that rose from the open trap. The zombie ghost jumped into it, looking at Ray with such a hopeful gaze that the green, decaying face held a surprising edge of humanity. We all trooped down the stairs, displaying the full trap, and Ray paused at the foot of the stairs to look at the names on the mailboxes.

"Here it is. Saul Zelinski. Apartment 3B. Perfect." He went over to the old woman, who had hovered in the doorway. "We got it. It's safe to go back to your apartment. Do you know if Mr. Zelinski is at work?"

"Him? He doesn't work. I saw him going to the market. Be back soon, I think." She offered a check. "Thank you for getting rid of him. We took up a collection to pay you to get rid of that terrible thing."

Peter took the check and pocketed it. "He won't trouble you again," he promised. "Will he, Ray?"

"No, I promise that. Come on." Ray plunged back to Ecto. Blake and I, completely at a loss, trailed behind.

We didn't go back to headquarters. Instead we made a stop at Wyrd, an occult bookstore that wasn't far away. Ray jumped out of Ecto and raced inside and, when he returned, he was carrying a book tucked under one arm that was half as big as he was. Lopsided from its weight, he trudged back to Ecto. "Okay, I got it."

"What is that?" Peter asked suspiciously.

"It's the Mellorian Grimoire. I've got it on loan and I have to treat it carefully and take it back afterward. Now we can go see Saul Zelinski."

"Do you have any idea what he's up to?" I asked Winston.

Zeddemore shrugged. "Never have, never will." He wasn't the least bit upset about it. He trusted Ray. They all did.

We marched up the stairs again to Zelinski's apartment. He answered the door on the second knock, a package of celery in one hand. A tall, slender man, elegant of body and fastidious of dress, he had hard eyes that narrowed when he saw the Ghostbusters in their jumpsuits. I didn't trust him. There was something grasping and malicious in the twisted smile that came to his mouth.

"I'm told you already busted the ghost here, gentlemen," he said. "I chipped in to pay for the removal. What brings you back?"

"We already have the check." Peter crowded him a little. "We have another errand here. Go for it, Ray."

The celery thudded down on the sofa and the man took a step backward, his eyes moving wildly around the room as if seeking either an escape or a defense. When Egon flung down the trap and the zombie popped out, Saul swore under his breath and made an abortive movement toward a shelf full of leather-bound books.

Ray opened the giant volume to the place he'd marked with his forefinger and began to read in Latin, the words hasty and ominous. Every few words, he lifted his eyes and pinned them on Saul. The zombie ghost hovered nearby, listening carefully, his decaying face full of satisfaction. Zelinski stared at him in horror, frozen just short of his bookshelf as if he had been cast in cement.

When Ray finished his reading, he added a few more words in Latin, then switched to English. "You understand me. If you curse another person, you will suffer from it. If you don't remove the curse from our friend here, and do it right now, I will complete the spell. Right now, you can live with what I've done to you. But if you don't remove the spell, it will rebound on you."

"I'll get you for this," snarled Zelinski.

"You can try. Just remember what I've done to you. There's no cure, either. Medication won't help you. I guarantee it. Remove the curse."

Saul's glance held pure hatred. If he could curse someone without speaking, Ray would be writhing on the ground losing parts in all directions. Blake and I watched, breathless. Peter leveled his thrower at Zelinski's chest, grim determination on his face. I had seen him twirl the dial and was pretty sure a blast at that setting wouldn't kill the man, but he didn't know that.

"Damn you," snarled Saul. He turned to the ghost. "You have strange allies, Nathan," he spat. "Don't come around here again and leave Jani alone or I'll risk it." He muttered half a dozen words in a language I didn't recognize.

Nathan transformed before our eyes. Suddenly he looked like a normal man--well, a normal transparent man, no longer rotting away. He closed his eyes in sheer bliss and grabbed Ray in an exuberant hug that didn't even spatter ectoplasm the way Slimer did. I had a feeling Ray would be the one to warn Jani about Saul, once this was over.

Nathan spoke seriously. "Thank you." While we watched, he grew even more transparent until he disappeared entirely.

"We can go now," Ray said and led the way out of the apartment. The door slammed viciously behind us.

"What did you do, Ray?" Peter asked when we were safe in Ecto.

Ray burst out laughing. "If he doesn't do any more spells, nothing at all. I would have rebounded the spell he did on poor Nathan if he hadn't taken it away. He believes in it so completely that all I had to do was say it--and let him see the cover of the grimoire--and he was hooked. His belief will do the rest. If he tries to cast a malicious spell or hurt anyone again, he'll get the worst case of hives he ever had--on his..." He glanced in my direction and blushed slightly. "His...genitals. And it won't go away."

Peter and Winston erupted into loud, delighted laughter and even Egon's lips twitched with restrained amusement. Blake arched an eyebrow at me, but I could see him wishing he could pull something like that on Servalan.

"He believed it," Ray continued. "I think he'll be embarrassed to go to a specialist to get the curse removed. Anyway, now that I know about him, I can put the word out in the occult community so he won't do any more harm. I know people who will keep an eye on him. And I'll find out who Jani is and warn her. I'll give her a call tonight and explain it."

"It doesn't do to piss off Super Stantz," Peter crowed, tousling Ray's hair.

At first, the afternoon was anticlimactic. Blake prowled around the lab, impatient. Egon and Ray, with a lot of help from Winston, put the finishing touches on a communication device that incorporated one of the Tarial cells the team had harvested from the life support capsule. Tying it into our own technology was a challenge all three of them relished. Blake, who knew his own century's technology, offered input on the linkage but the rest of it had to be up to the Ghostbusters. When it was done, it looked rather like a fat particle thrower with a conic tip that would aim toward the sky. A directional beacon built into it would apparently home in on the vortex. That was the tricky part. Since none of them, not even Blake, knew precisely what the vortex was, they had to do a lot of theoretical projection in a language so far beyond me that Einstein might not have understood it. I realized that there was no 100% guarantee that the beam would even pass through the vortex without so much disruption that it would no longer be readable but Egon had built in a shielding factor. In spite of his sheer brilliance, it might not even work and he knew it.

Egon didn't let that stop him. He simply added a few redundant supports to boost the signal. If Orac was as fantastic as Avon and Blake insisted it was, it would have to interpret a scrambled signal on their end. It turned out Blake had once arranged a code with Orac in case he became separated from the ship. I wasn't sure why he hadn't used it when that had finally happened. That code went into the recorded message in a binary pattern, whatever that was.

It was two p.m. when Egon lifted his head and produced one of those smug smiles he manages when he has triumphed against overwhelming odds. "There. It's done."

Peter looked at the device. "You'll never win the esthetics award for that one, Professor Einstein."

"Gee, Peter, looks don't count," Ray countered. He grinned wickedly. "If they did, you'd never have any dates."

Peter howled in outrage and Ray ducked behind Blake, who was bigger than he was. "You'll pay for that, Stantz," cried Peter, eyes alight. "Prepare to have your bed short-sheeted--every day for the rest of the century."

"If you please, gentlemen." Egon stepped between them. "Peter, you can bring the portable generator up to the roof. We'll send the signal as soon as Ray and Winston begin the venting of the containment unit." He gathered up the device as if it were made of Tiffany crystal and started for the roof.

With a grimace, Peter picked up the portable generator and pretended to stagger under its weight. Winston and Ray headed for the basement containment unit, and Blake and I fell in behind Peter.

Egon made the connections to the power unit and turned on the communications beacon. It hummed quietly, several lights blinking on, while Egon checked its readings with a hand-held device. Peter panted and gasped in an attempt to pretend he was winded from his strenuous exertion and flung himself into a lawn chair from a set the guys must have dragged up here to enjoy the warm September. He motioned me and Blake over. "Don't get too close to Egon. When we vent the unit, it's coming up right through there." He pointed to what looked like a narrow chimney stack. "It won't zap you, but it might make your hair stand on end."

"Not likely, Peter," Egon said without looking up. "But do move away."

There was a distant whooshing rumble that made Blake and me hurry to join Peter, then a fountain of light erupted from the opening and shot upward into the sky just like Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park. "We don't exactly have a lot of jets flying right over the firehouse," Peter explained. "Anyway, it wouldn't do more than surprise them." He propped his feet up on the parapet, prepared to enjoy the lightshow.

Egon wasn't prone to such frivolities. He pushed a button on the communications beacon and it shot out a pale beam in the same trajectory as the venting of energy, dimly outlined against the brighter psi energy. Well, maybe not quite the same trajectory, but close enough. Egon had explained that he had no way of knowing where the vortex was in comparison with Earth; it could be on the other side of the planet. He had designed components into it that should seek out the forces Blake had described. As the pale, thin light streaked skyward, I realized what a thin chance it had of actually summoning Avon. The physics involved was totally beyond me. I was afraid it was beyond even Egon. The only hope I had for success was that Avon might have set Orac to monitor anything that could be a message from Blake. Orac could interpret binary signals, Blake said. It was child's play to the incredible computer. After he'd said that, I could see the sheer envy in Egon's and Ray's eyes, not that our computers didn't read binary code, too. Peter didn't care. Computers were outside his field of expertise.

When the venting stopped, I realized the energy from the communications device wasn't really visible, at least not in daylight. Egon checked the readings on the device and on the generator, then he nodded. "We'll let it run until sundown," he decided. "And then we'll try again tomorrow. It will be visible by night."

"So what do we do now?" Peter asked lazily without opening his eyes.

"Simple," Egon replied. "We wait."

Waiting proved a tedious task. The first few days were spent in sightseeing trips for Blake. I didn't spend all my time with the Ghostbusters during that time, but I did go over for dinner the first few nights, and drove over after lunch on the third day to pick Blake up in a car borrowed from my mother. I drove him around Manhattan pointing out the sights. We went to the top of the Empire State Building and poked our heads into the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. I took him to Broadway and let him see the theaters on the Great White Way and showed him Times Square although that might be more spectacular at night. Later on, we went to see the Statue of Liberty. He loved the concept of the statue, and gazed at it wistfully while I quoted the Emma Lazarus poem. "Give us your tired, your poor..." The concept boggled his mind. I could see it in his eyes.

"You have this incredible freedom," he said to me. "It's so safe and easy for you that you take it completely for granted. That's frightening. Ignoring one's rights can lead to losing them. I've been reading your newspapers and studying history. Your country fought a war for freedom from Great Britain. And yet, you allow those freedoms to go beyond your control. People don't bother to vote."

I looked him right in the eye. "Blake, be honest. If you freed your rabble and offered them free elections, would they rush to the polls in vast numbers? I doubt it. They're used to allowing the government to ride roughshod over them. They'd let your new republic ride roughshod, too. If you ever do win, you have to find a way to change that. It's not enough to blow up a Federation base here and there. Think of it honestly. You've read about the problems we have with terrorism. I think it's only going to get worse here. Most people here feel safe and insulated by America. Terrorists won't ever hit here, they think. Yet last December, terrorists blew up a plane on its way to America and hundreds of people died. Horrible. A lot of your rabble, even the Alphas, probably think you're a terrorist. The people who blew up that plane probably believed in their cause, just like you do. That's not the way."

"It's the only way available to me."

"One ship and a few people can't win a rebellion," I pointed out, gazing up at Lady Liberty with her torch upthrust against the sky. "Can't you band rebel groups together? Isn't there a way to get public opinion on your side instead of against you?"

An obese, perspiring man draped with cameras and clad in a garish Hawaiian shirt pushed past us, snapping pictures, trailed by three whining kids. "I want a soda," yelled one of them. "Let's go to McDonalds. This is boring."

"But it's the Statue of Liberty," protested the harassed man.

"Buy a postcard," the oldest boy suggested. "Can't we go to the beach instead?"

Blake stared after the small group in horror.

"Our rabble," I said with a frown. "If nothing else, they have the freedom not to appreciate history."

He grimaced.

"Don't be discouraged, not by them. Maybe they haven't earned freedom, but they do value it."

"Perhaps." He stared after them, then turned to regard an elderly woman who stared up at the statue as if it were a miracle. I saw the blue numbers tattooed on her arm. "She appreciates it," I pointed out.

The woman spotted us and lifted an eyebrow. "That man and his children, they don't understand," she said in a faintly accented voice. "But you do, don't you? I saw you looking at this." She thrust out her arm at me.

"What is that?" Blake asked.

"Bergen-Belsen," she explained. "I survived a concentration camp and I came here. Every morning, when I wake up, I thank God that I am alive and free."

Blake opened his mouth to ask about concentration camps but I nudged him with my elbow. When she had gone, I told him about Hitler and the death of six million Jews in World War II. He stared after the woman, eyes full of horror.

"She knows," I said. "She would applaud what you're trying to do. Don't stop, Blake. Everyone won't appreciate it, but it's worth it. It's always worth it. Just find a way to make it work."

I arrived at Ghostbuster Central the following morning to learn that Ray had dragged Blake off to a tour of comic book stores and a movie. Peter grabbed me and hauled me into the firehall, up to the second floor, where Egon and Winston were watching television. They greeted me. "Meredith, you know this Avon character. Is he likely to come after Blake?" Winston asked.

"I think he will come if he can and if he gets the message," I said. "I know how he felt when he thought he'd killed Blake. Even if he's found ways to shut off the way it hurt, I think he'd come. We made a bargain, he and I, that I'd come back to New York and go on with my life, and that he would look for Blake. He told me that he always kept his word. He'll come--if he can." I glanced at Peter. "How do you think Blake is holding up?"

"Well, he freaks at a lot of the things we take for granted," Peter admitted. "I mean, the guy doesn't know a thing about junk food, if you can believe it. Sitting around munching popcorn while you watch a good western is all new to him. He still finds our food weird."

"He reads a lot," Winston explained. "I got him some history books, and he buries himself in them every evening. He's always got questions. Last night, it was all about concentration camps. When he found out there had been slaves, he was shocked, but he says there are slaves in his time, too. What he couldn't get was racial bigotry. I think he thought I was putting him on when I told him about a few experiences I've had. There's a lot of prejudice in his time, but it's class prejudice rather than race prejudice."

Peter flung himself down beside Egon and slumped comfortably. "Another thing he doesn't get is--us." He waved at the other two men and widened the gesture to include the absent Ray. "Poor guy, his buddies aren't even his buddies, not the way we are."

"Most people aren't buddies the way we are, Pete," Winston reminded him. "We're lucky, even for here."

"Most certainly," Egon agreed. "We have that bond that men in combat or police officers get, because we face death at each other's side."

"Come on, Spengs, it's even better than that," Peter said. "I mean you guys would go to the wall for me. I know that, and I count on it." He was getting serious again. "You're family." I knew he didn't talk like that all the time, but that didn't make it less true. Only lovers went around talking about how much they cared. The rest of us just lived it. "Blake knows his people will stand at his side if they're attacked by that crummy Federation of his, but he calls it self-preservation. If he's feeling down, he can't go to them for help or even just to hang out around the TV with them. He just ignores how he's feeling and hopes it will go away. It's a wonder the lot of them aren't loopy beyond repair."

"As usual, your use of precise psychological terminology leaves me in awe," Egon said, deadpan.

Peter ignored that with the ease of habit, although the corners of his mouth twitched appreciatively. "I mean it, though. The guy is a nervous breakdown waiting to happen. I bet all of them are."

I had seen the truth of that in Avon's eyes. "So, is he surviving this?" I asked.

"What gets me," Peter said thoughtfully, "is how he's going to survive when he goes home. I kinda like the guy. He's a little obsessed, but he means well. I think he's even got a sense of humor buried under all that angst. It's pretty deeply buried, sort of like the bottom level of the subway where all the mutants live." I never knew whether or not to take that kind of comment seriously. "The sun doesn't get down there very often. But give the guy half a chance and I think he'll make it. He was laughing with Ray last night--over the Three Stooges. He didn't understand it, but he thought it was funny."

I didn't get it myself; I'd never thought the Three Stooges were funny. Maybe it was a guy thing but it never did any good to say so.

Peter turned to me. "You know this Avon character. I've gotta say he doesn't sound like the kind of buddy I'd want, but Blake does want his friendship. Is Old Ave gonna make it worse?"

I tried to imagine Avon's reaction to being labeled 'old Ave' and found I couldn't quite picture the utter height of his affront. But there was something inside him that wouldn't let go of Blake in spite of Blake's 'desertion' after Star One, even after the debacle of shooting Blake's clone. He might manage it properly. Or he might simply do an Avon, the way he was good at and pretend none of it mattered. I remember reassuring Vila, one of Avon's crewmen, that Avon had actually tried to avoid sacrificing Vila to preserve his own life on a shuttle weighted down with neutron material in order to achieve escape velocity. The two men had appeared reconciled when they left my house, but it had taken intervention. I hoped I was here when Avon came. Or that Peter was.

If he came.

"We'll have to help," I told Peter.

I could see him mentally pushing up his sleeves for the task.

Blake returned with Ray from the movie and comic book excursion shortly after I returned to the firehouse after a planned lunch with my mother. She had asked what I'd been doing lately and I explained that I was helping the Ghostbusters with a project. Shocked, she threw up her hands.

"I don't know what good that connection does you, Meredith."

"It doesn't have to do me good. I like them." I chuckled. "Relax, Mother. I don't plan to marry any of them. They've got someone staying with them who is the friend of a friend of mine, and we've been trying to contact the friend to stage a grand reunion."

"Well," Mother said after a moment of quiet deliberation, "that seems harmless enough. But don't forget my party Saturday night. All the right people will be there."

I could never convince her that I didn't want to meet people simply because they were the 'right' people. The casual friendliness at Ghostbuster Central was more fun than one of mother's glittering celebrity romps. Sometimes I think she blamed Greg for the way I'd turned out, so unconscious of Society but I was grateful to him. I wasn't ready to marry again, especially not one of Mother's 'right' people. But I couldn't tell her that.

I escaped to Ghostbuster Central around 2:30 just in time to meet Blake and Ray, the latter armed with a stack of new comic books and magazines. We trekked up to join the other three and found them on the roof, monitoring the communications relay. Egon, Peter, and Winston all had their proton packs on. They'd taken to wearing them when they went up to monitor the device, on the off chance that the beacon would summon Servalan. Not that she could land on the roof--at least I didn't think she could. But Peter said they might as well be prepared. Ray grabbed his pack and shrugged his shoulders into the straps before we went up the final stairs. I'd put one of the packs on once and it weighed a ton. Yet the Ghostbusters ran all over Manhattan wearing them.

Every morning, Egon went up and turned the beacon on again, and then he turned it off before dark. He was beginning to look disappointed that no one had come yet. It didn't prove the device had failed--Avon and the crew may have been halfway across the galaxy when they got the signal, or they may never have retrieved Orac. But I think he had hoped for a speedy response. He tried altering the frequency or something like that a time or two, bemoaning the fact that there had been no way to program the device to receive as well as send.

"Not without another three weeks of work," he admitted.

"You can do it, Spengs baby," Peter coached from the sidelines.

"But I can't stay here forever," Blake protested. "You're expending funds on me. And I need to continue my work."

"Don't worry," Peter said wickedly. "You're working for us. You helped on that bust yesterday. Besides, I'm writing it all down. When your buddies get here, I'll give them a bill with salary deducted."

Somehow, that reassured Blake more than any soothing denials from Ray.

"They can pay us with spare electronics from their ship," continued Peter. "That would be all the thanks these three clowns need."

Egon looked up sharply, a gleam in his eyes. Peter had him pegged, all right. They had greatly cannibalized the escape pod in construction of the device as it was.

"What about you?" Blake asked. "You have no interest in such things."

Peter pasted a smug look upon his face and clapped a dramatic hand over his heart. "I'll have the eternal satisfaction of reuniting you with your friends."

His friends hooted him down, but I had a feeling Peter would get satisfaction from it. He could only admit it facetiously, but he genuinely cared about people. Helping Blake return to his friends would make him feel good, especially if he could help in any reconciliations.

"Somehow, that doesn't seem enough."

Peter draped a conman's arm around Blake's shoulders. "Okay then, here it is. We sell tickets to vortex trips. Rent out your ship for a nominal fee and charge admission like crazy. Your Tarrant whips them out into space and back again. I bet we could clear $10,000 a head. It would do wonders for the research budget."

Blake burst out laughing. He was starting to get used to Peter.

"Gosh," said Ray in heartfelt tones. "I wish we could go on the ship."

Peter deserted Blake instantly and charged over to Ray. "Down, boy," he commanded. "It's not safe up there."

"It's not safe facing a Class 7 demon," Blake said dryly behind him. He had done that early this morning before I arrived, a proton pack strapped on his back. I wished I'd been there to see it. No, scratch that. The last thing I wanted was to get up close and personal with a demon.

"You came out of it all right," Winston reminded him.

"But I didn't enjoy it."

"Just think, Blake, we can give you one in a trap, and next time you're face to face with Servalan, you can turn it loose on her."

Blake arched an eyebrow at Peter's suggestion. "Assuming I had means of control, so that it would attack her instead of myself..."

That was when I felt an unexpected sense of presence behind me. Peter was quicker. He had already whirled when the people suddenly emerged in white light and materialized on the rooftop beside the device. Egon jerked back in astonishment, whipping up his P.K.E. meter so fast I was afraid he'd dislocate something. Peter and Winston drew their throwers in split seconds but I jumped in front of them and stretched out my arms to stop them from firing. "It's all right," I said hastily although I had never seen the phenomenon before. "It's just a teleport."

"Wow," breathed Ray, eyes huge as he studied the four people who had materialized on the roof. There were two men and two women, Avon and Tarrant, and Dayna and Soolin. The latter was crouched in a gunfighter's stance that would have won her kudos in any spaghetti western but Dayna simply looked lethal with the laser gun in her hand as steady as a rock. Tarrant's eyebrows shot up at the sight of us, but Avon...

I didn't wait. I rushed to Avon and flung my arms around his neck before he could blast me. He said in astonishment, "Meredith," and actually started to return my hug. Then he saw who stood behind me. His body jerked as if he had been poleaxed and he said in a voice that was almost soundless, "Blake."

I let him go and backed away to give him a clear path to the rebel leader, but Avon didn't move. He just stood there, staring. Tarrant, at his side, goggled at Blake. They knew that Servalan had insisted the Gauda Prime Blake was a clone but, until now, they had been shown no proof of the possibility. Yet the message had summoned them. They must have expected him--or, from the way the guns had leveled at us, a trap.

"Is he the real Blake?" Dayna asked as Soolin straightened up. Neither woman lowered their guns.

"He is," I assured them. Avon's eyes held doubts, but I thought they were the doubts of a man who wasn't sure he could take the risk of accepting the reality.

"How do you do it?" Tarrant asked me. "First you help Avon and now you find Blake."

"We theorize something about Meredith may serve as a nexus for temporal energy," said Egon, on his knees beside the communications beacon. His eyes blazed with triumph; it had actually worked.

"Gosh, did you teleport down here?" Ray bounced up and down. "That's great! Just like the transporter on Star Trek."

Peter didn't say a word. His eyes evaluated Avon with interest and ogled Soolin and Dayna. He drew himself to his full height at the sight of Tarrant and struck a macho pose that made me fight to repress giggles. He'd rate the dashing, young pilot as competition.

"Hello, Avon." Blake's voice was hedged with doubt. "It's been a long time."

"Blake," said Avon again. He had a way of speaking that gave absolutely no clues. I remembered the way he had started to hug me and wondered if the knowledge that he hadn't killed Blake had helped him all along. Vila wasn't here, but maybe he had needed to stay on the ship and work the teleport system. If he had died since last November, Avon would surely look far colder.

I edged up to Tarrant. "Where's Vila?" I asked in an undertone.

"He likes to man the teleport," Tarrant replied with a flash of dazzling white teeth. "Far safer than going down to planets where he might run afoul of Federation troopers or hairy aliens." He raised his wrist and pushed a button on a thick bracelet. "Down and safe, Vila," he said into it.

"Is it him?" came Vila's filtered voice.

I leaned in. "It's him, Vila. Hello."

"Who's that?" Very suspicious.

"Meredith Everett. We met in the snow when you came to fetch Avon."

Vila's voice raised in wonder. "And now you've found Blake?"

"More later, Vila," Tarrant said and cut off the signal.

Blake took a step toward Avon. Avon didn't move, then, abruptly he strode over to Blake and looked him in the eye. "I see you have found new danger for yourself, Blake."

"But I also found a way to summon help," he said. He was going very carefully.

"In this primitive century?"

"We suspected a trap," said Tarrant. "Orac considered the signal it detected to be particularly elegant." At that, an expression of great satisfaction spread across Egon's face, and Peter gave him a nudge with his elbow. "It would not concede the possibility that the message actually arose in the Twentieth Century."

"It came from our buddy, Egon," Peter explained. "Course he's probably the smartest person in the Twentieth Century--certainly the smartest on this roof."

Avon looked down his nose at Peter and then spared a measuring glance at Egon before turning his attention back to Blake. The reunion brimmed with tension. I wasn't sure how it would turn out.

"Servalan has set traps with you as bait, Blake," Dayna explained. "She got away from us when we went home the last time; it's a long story. We thought this was another of her traps."

"It might still be one," Winston put in. He was eyeing Dayna with interest himself. "Servalan is the one who put Blake here. She told him he would never be rescued, but I couldn't help wondering if she meant to get a hint to you. You'd be vulnerable going into that vortex thingy or coming out of it."

Avon's eyes flashed briefly in Winston's direction. "We did consider that possibility," he pointed out.

"We hope you did," Peter countered. I could tell he was going to push Avon for all he was worth. "Meredith says you're supposed to be reasonably intelligent."

Avon's mouth thinned, but he didn't deign to respond to that. Ray said reproachfully, "Peter!"

I decided introductions were in order, so I jumped in and made them. "This is New York," I told Avon when I had rattled off everybody's name and a quick, pocket description. It also introduced Blake to Avon's crew. "I did what I promised you. I came here. Since you're here, I see you kept your word, too." His promise to me wouldn't have been the major reason why he had come, of course, but I wanted to remind him of the confidences that had passed between us in that farmhouse in the snowstorm.

Tarrant stuck out a hand to greet the Ghostbusters. He had a cocky way of posturing to show he considered himself superior, and Peter reacted to it as if they were two wolves competing to be Alpha male of the pack. Tarrant was probably of the Alpha class. He sounded posh enough. But Peter hadn't taken his full attention from Avon and Blake. Maybe he guessed Avon would not care for an audience, so he gestured Tarrant over to examine Egon's signaling beacon. The two women followed. Peter gave Egon a nod of encouragement, and the physicist began to explain how he had designed it and what considerations he'd taken in the construction. Tarrant was interested and started asking questions. Ray jumped in with a few answers of his own. Winston said something to Dayna in a low voice and she held out her gun to demonstrate it to him.

I watched Avon and Blake, and so did Peter.

"You aren't fit to be out without a keeper," Avon told Blake.

"So you have frequently pointed out to me." Blake was wary. I saw a flash of compassion at the back of his eyes. He could tell with a look that Avon had been through a rough time. But I also saw that he was uneasy. The Gauda Prime tape Servalan had shown him had to affect him. "I'm not sure you qualify to serve as one," he added. "I saw a viscast of what happened on Gauda Prime."

Avon opened his mouth to say something scathing, then he fell silent. "That wasn't you," he said almost helplessly.

"No, but you didn't know that. Has time changed you as much as that?"

"It had seemed to change you," Avon shot back. "If I had changed, should I have expected you to remain the same? You may have once said you always trusted me, from the very beginning, but I knew that was a lie when you said it. I never claimed to return such trust."

"It wasn't a lie, Avon. Never that."

"When you told Jenna at Horizon that I might run? Trust indeed. Blake, you are a prime manipulator. At Gauda Prime, I believed you had finally lost that ability." It was probably as close to an apology as he could get, but I wasn't sure it was enough.

"No you didn't," I said hotly. "Something was wrong, something was different, and you knew it. You heard what Servalan said, that the clone was the one at Terminal, that he believed you'd run out on him. He might have believed he was Blake, but he wasn't. He didn't know you. He didn't trust you from the very beginning. He did what Servalan manipulated him into doing, forced you to kill him. In one stroke, she could destroy you and destroy the only Blake she had. How better to quash the rebellion?"

Both men looked at me. So did Peter. Behind their backs, he licked one finger and drew a chalk mark in the air to grant me a point.

"She does make sense, Avon," Blake replied. "She's been telling me as much all along. I came here immediately after seeing that viscast, half afraid to try to escape and find you, although I wanted to get back--"

"To your cause," Avon said as if the last word were a curse. "To your rabble."

"And to my friends," Blake said smoothly. "Since I came here, I've had a prime lesson in teamwork. It's shown me the mistakes I've made. When they said they could reach you, when they brought in Meredith, who had actually met you, I allowed myself to hope that I could go home again."

Avon was wary. He might have wanted Blake back, but he didn't know what to do with the reality. It must be so hard not to be able to trust. He thought it safer, but it wasn't, not in the end.

"What do you expect of me, Blake?" he demanded coolly. "That we take you back as if nothing ever happened?" I thought the word 'we' was interesting, but maybe Avon thought there was safety in numbers.

"What did happen?" Tarrant put in. "It wasn't him at GP."

"Nor was it him at Obsidian nor Terminal nor any of the other places we searched for him," Avon reminded him. "He chose not to come back after Star One. Now he wants to return because we can take him back to our own time."

"Wrong," said Peter. "Sure that's part of it. Stay here in the dark ages? Not Blake. But you're a fool if you can't see more than that."

"You're the fool," Avon returned. "You know nothing of us."

"Well, I've known Blake for nearly a week," Peter said. "I'm the closest thing we have handy in the Twentieth Century to a puppeteer. Blake says they're not very nice people, but they do have to know human nature. If I'd been separated from Egon, Ray, or Winston, I'd grab any chance I had to reunite with them."

"I find it annoying to learn I have been discussed and evaluated behind my back," Avon returned, casting a frown in my direction.

"Oh, come on, Avon," Blake said with impatience. "She just let me talk and encouraged me. And she had to fill me in. I asked her. I've been staying with the Ghostbusters. Peter's not a puppeteer. He's a psychologist. I needed to talk, especially when I thought I would be here forever. You went though this last year. You thought you had to stay. I'm sure you didn't say one word to Meredith about your history."

Avon's lip twitched. Humor. That was new. Not that he'd been devoid of it, but it had been a black humor. This was a little better. He was probably afraid to let down his guard to this Blake, especially after the last one. If this wasn't real, if the real Blake let him down, it would be his last chance. He had never let anyone get close enough to him to have more than one chance before.

"She does have a way of making one talk," Avon admitted. "Blake, what do you expect of me?"

"A ride home. A chance to mend fences. You said once you thought our lives were linked. I never doubted that. I couldn't easily get back to you after Star One. My bracelet was destroyed in the crash of my life pod. I was badly injured. By the time I was well again, I couldn't track you. There were reports of the Liberator, that it had been destroyed. I made my way to Avalon's people and worked with them. We tried to get word to you, but failed every time. I know you said the Liberator was yours and that you would take me back to Earth. I didn't want to go back to Earth. I wanted to stay with you and the others on Liberator."

"You always did have the knack of saying what you assumed one wanted to hear, Blake. Either that or saying exactly what one didn't want to hear."

Dayna abandoned the weapons lesson she'd been giving Winston. "He's saying the right thing now. I think he means it. He's got contacts; Avalon and her people. Other rebel groups. We need him. You need him."

"I need no one," Avon said.

"Programmed response," put in Peter, sotto voce. Avon glared at him.

"Blast it, Avon, I am glad to see you," Blake burst out. He took a step forward, grabbed the tech by the shoulders, and shook him lightly. "I don't care if you are too stubborn to admit it, but you are glad to see me as well. We can work this out. I know it won't be easy, but I know it's worth it."

Peter chalked up a point for him.

"I see the Twentieth Century has made a sentimentalist of you," Avon told him. "Sentiment is weakness."

"I once thought that, too," Blake replied. "But it needn't be. It can be a strength." He gestured at the Ghostbusters. "I've seen these men fight ghosts at each other's side. It's every bit as dangerous as what we do. They don't hold each other at arms' length and bicker to maintain their distance. They trust each other. You should see their teamwork. We can have teamwork like that." He squeezed Avon's shoulders. "I'm willing to try. I still have my cause, my purpose, but I want it with you at my side. All of you," he added. "I'm glad Vila's still with you, Avon. He was always good for you."

"Well, now, I always thought he was good for nothing," Avon replied, but there was a note in his voice that augured a little-admitted fondness for the thief."

"I wish we could meet Vila," said Ray wistfully in the background.

Avon ignored that. "If you join us, Blake, we will have ground rules. And we will enforce them more strictly than we did when we sought out Central Control on Earth."

Blake flinched at a memory I wasn't sure about. Was that where Gan had died? "Mutually agreed ground rules," he said. "I'm sure Tarrant, Soolin and Dayna have their opinions, too."

Tarrant took a step closer to the two older men. "You could say that. We've survived without you for three years, Blake. You can't expect to take over as soon as you return."

"Meredith and the Ghostbusters have been lecturing me about the proper conduct of a rebellion," Blake put in. "I won't surrender my cause, but I am willing to talk." He let go of Avon's shoulders, watching him, waiting.

"I know you, Blake," Avon said coolly. "You talk about teamwork? If you don't mean it, I shall know. If we take you back, it will be a probationary period to determine if it will work."

"We will return you to our time," Dayna said quickly. "That's why we came, after all. We do have a spare cabin." She was not yet willing to trust Blake. I could see it in her face. He would have to prove himself to all of Avon's crew. I hoped that he could. I also hoped he had the wit to avoid pushing it too hard. If he just simply stayed and blended in gradually and the subject didn't come up, Avon wouldn't be the one to remind the others of it.

"We are well armed," Soolin said.

"And we know all about you," Tarrant added. "Vila tells a great many stories.

Blake turned to Avon again. "You have a loyal crew. I would have liked that on Liberator. Perhaps circumstances prohibited that. I want another chance." He gnawed on his finger, then he burst out, "Damn it, Avon, I missed you. I don't think I was ever as alive as I was on Liberator." Before Avon knew what he intended, Blake engulfed him in a bearhug. The sight of Avon's astonished resentment was priceless but, deep in his eyes, relief flashed. It was gone in an instant, but I thought Tarrant had seen it. And maybe Blake understood without words.

He let Avon go and stood back, the fire of challenge in his eyes.

"Yes, well..." Avon actually sounded disconcerted. "We should leave this place," he said abruptly when he noticed the Ghostbusters watching him and Blake with fascination.

"Before Slimer decides to see what we're doing up here, anyway," Blake put in, the corners of his mouth twitching.

Avon's hand crept toward his gun. "Slimer?"

"I assure you, Avon, you don't want to know."

Eyes a-sparkle with mischief, Peter raised his voice. "Yo, spud! Petey needs you."

"I wish you hadn't done that," said Blake, but the amusement in his voice kept Avon from drawing his gun.

A second later, Slimer popped up through the roof and hovered in front of Peter, dripping slime. Dayna had her gun on him in an instant. Soolin was just as fast. Tarrant, a twinkle in his eyes, didn't draw when he noticed the Ghostbusters didn't react except to grin. He merely turned expectant eyes to Avon, who looked ready to zap the little green ghost.

"He won't hurt you," soothed Ray, beckoning Slimer over. "Slimer, these are Blake's friends. They've come to take him home."

"Blake go away?" Slimer mourned. He went to Blake and embraced him fervently--and messily. Dayna and Soolin grimaced, but they did lower their weapons.

"Is that a ghost?" Tarrant asked. "You keep mentioning ghosts. What kind of place is this?"

Blake shoved Slimer away and wiped his hands on the top of the parapet. "You'd be surprised."

The ghost drifted over to Soolin and ogled her enthusiastically. "Pretty lady." Then he spotted Dayna, who was still holding her gun. He shrieked. "Other pretty lady. Big gun," and vanished through the rooftop, a pile of green ooze left behind to mark the place.

Avon turned to me. "I am not sure whether you have come up in the world or gone down."

"A little of both, I think." I tilted my head and regarded him. "You look better than you did in November." While Blake said something to Egon, I edged up close to him. "He really wants to come back. Don't hold him off just because you want it so much. Take a chance, for once. I think you'll be pleased with the result."

Up shot an eyebrow and he looked at me down his nose in the haughty way he has. He opted to ignore my suggestion and turned assessing eyes upon the Ghostbusters instead. Egon merited respect for constructing the device. Winston must have been a recognizable type to him because his gaze passed by without a particular response. He wasn't at all sure of Ray. I doubted he'd ever met anyone as enthusiastic. Look at Ray now, explaining eagerly to Soolin and Dayna how the team busted ghosts. "It's really great," he was saying. "Sometimes they're huge and mean and tough to trap, and I like those best." Soolin's mouth curled but Dayna looked fascinated.

"With that thing you wear on your back? I design weapons. What does that do?"

Peter won a frown from Avon. Maybe he thought Peter really was a puppeteer. He must know that, with Peter, he was busted, and he didn't like it. On the other hand, he held his own with Vila and Tarrant, who thought nothing of slanging him, so maybe he recognized the cocky edge Peter put on for him. Peter met his gaze levelly, eyes full of amusement.

"Time to go," Avon decided abruptly.

"So soon?" I had hoped for a longer visit.

Avon turned back to me. "We have the vortex ahead of us. Repeated experiences have not endeared it to us. There is also the chance that Servalan has monitored it, although the extra-range detectors picked up no ships in range. The longer we stay here, the more chance we take both of encountering her when we depart and making ourselves known to your world's, er, radar."

"You mean we can't come up and see the ship?" Ray mourned. "Gee, I was hoping we'd at least get a tour."

"Let them make a quick visit, Avon," Blake urged. "They did so much for me. They didn't have to take me in. And this is perhaps the one place where I could have found someone willing to construct a signal beacon without turning me over to their government. Five minutes on board ship will harm no one. Do you have spare bracelets?"

"We have a few," Tarrant replied. He measured the numbers. "Not enough for all. If Dayna and Soolin wait here until we return, or we could have Orac send Vila down with more."

"If we must invite all to tea, let it be done quickly," Avon said wryly. He took a bracelet from his pocket and fastened it around my wrist. In a much lower voice, he said to me, "Meredith...thank you."

There was a shuffling of bracelets. The Ghostbusters didn't even take the time to remove their proton packs, knowing that the indulgence of five minutes on the spaceship could endanger Blake and his friends.

"Vila," Tarrant said into his bracelet, "Eight to teleport."

"Eight?" Vila squawked. "Are you--are you sure?"

"Teleport now, Vila," Avon insisted at his most intense. If I were Vila, I would have obeyed the command instantly.

Vila didn't reply, but a second later, I felt a weird sensation. New York went away, and when I could see again, I was standing in what must be the teleport bay while a seated Vila cringed at the controls. It didn't look anything like the transporter on the Enterprise. Instead, it possessed all the cosy ambiance of a World War II destroyer. The cold, metal chamber was rendered even less charming by two stormtroopers in their masked helmets who leveled para-handguns at us. Maybe it would have been cosier without the bad guys, but I wouldn't count on it. The crew had been forced to make do with a ship. Unfortunately, our message had lured Avon and the others into a trap. I shivered as I stood there, a target. I'd once been forced to kill a Federation trooper and the shooting had given me nightmares for months. Maybe this was my payback.

"Vila, you fool," snarled Avon with icy outrage.

"I couldn't warn you. She would have killed me," Vila protested. "She had a gun leveled right at my head, didn't she?"

She? I looked past him as Servalan emerged from behind a bulkhead. As she had back in Iowa, she wore an elaborate black gown that both enhanced her femininity--and added to her deadliness. Her magnificent eyes were alight with triumph.

"So, Avon," she purred. "You have brought me Blake. That was well done of you. Did you think me such a fool as to leave him here unguarded when I knew he could lure you into my trap?"

"You were waiting on this side of the vortex," Tarrant exclaimed. His eyes glittered with annoyance that he hadn't considered such a possibility. I don't think any of them had.

She inclined her head at him, a hint of a predatory cat in her eyes and posture. Tarrant put up his chin--and cast a surreptitious, measuring glance around the chamber.

Beside me, I felt Peter tensing. I hoped he wouldn't try to pull his thrower. Before he could do that, he'd be gunned down. The troopers had a clear shot at him. "Don't," I said to him in an undertone.

"She's right," Servalan told Peter. "I see you are still here," she added to me. "Your nuisance value is becoming higher than I can tolerate. Perhaps I should simply blast you now as I should have done before."

Peter and Avon shifted sideways to stand between me and Servalan, then stared at each other in surprise. Peter planted his feet and didn't give ground.

"Gosh," breathed Ray in an undertone. "You must be Servalan. I didn't think they could be right about you--but they are."

She ran her eyes over Ray and dismissed him, just like that. I hoped he wouldn't be hurt by her contempt, but he wasn't. His shoulders firmed up, his bottom lip came out, and his muscles tensed in preparation for action. The other three Ghostbusters gave her the kind of glares that would have slain her if looks were lethal and Winston grabbed his arm. "No, Ray."

"Very wise," she purred. "My ship is docked with this one. You are now my prisoners. I shall interrogate Avon first."

"I shall tell you nothing." Avon's gaze wouldn't incinerate her, it would freeze her where she stood.

"Oh, but you shall tell me everything. I have a wonderful drug prepared that will make you reveal all you know. Rebel contacts, plans of attack. When you have finished, I shall make them believe you sold them on purpose. Some of them still believe the man you killed on Gauda Prime was Blake. I have the body stored cryogenically. If necessary, I can reveal it, along with the vistapes of the debacle. Even if I then set you free, you shall have nowhere to run."

"And when I appear and defend him?" Blake countered.

"You I shall kill now. Your body would convince even the most rigid tests. It would be easy for my men to duplicate the wounds the clone sustained at Gauda Prime." She gave Blake a little smile that was pure contempt and made a calm gesture at her stormtroopers.

Avon lunged at her. There had to be a bit of the man who had sat shivering on my couch and wept for dead Blake left in him. On the other hand, she wanted his information. Perhaps he gambled on that or on the attraction she felt toward him that I had noticed back in Iowa. Or it might have been one of his 'instinctive reactions' that Blake had mentioned. I gasped as the trooper shot him directly in the chest.

At his first movement, Tarrant and Peter moved. Peter's particle thrower cleared its holster before Avon began to fall. Dayna and Soolin, with their killer instincts, were still at the firehouse and Servalan hadn't seemed to notice their absence. Tarrant and Peter fired at the troopers in perfect unison, with Winston only a heartbeat behind. Ray and Egon yanked out their throwers, too, and Blake, unarmed, ducked sideways--right for Avon, to catch him as he fell.

I flung myself flat on the deck as particle energy and laser beams flashed above me, but I lifted my head in time to see a glowing beam impact on Peter's chest and send him pitching down, arms outflung. The thrower erupted from his hand. Egon, who didn't have a clear shot, yelled his name and jumped for him, his face dead white against the red of his glasses.

Tarrant blurted out a cry of pain and his gun spiraled across the chamber. Hand gripping his forearm, he wobbled backward and sagged against the wall, his mouth twisted in agony.

Peter had barely staggered when Ray leveled his thrower and blasted both troopers without a second's hesitation, his mouth tight, his eyes frantic. The two didn't disintegrate before my eyes. Instead they jerked with the twisted impetus of an electric shock and pitched back against the console where Vila cowered, then slid down it to the floor.

Servalan coolly brought up her gun and aimed it right at Ray.

I shuddered. I was too far away; I couldn't do anything. My wordless shout of warning was too late. He saw her and tried to duck but it wouldn't be in time.

And then Vila erupted from concealment and swung his fist. It caught the unsuspecting Servalan right on the point of her chin. Convulsively, her finger tightened on the trigger but the shot went wide and missed Ray by a good three inches. If he'd jumped the other way, it would have nailed him. Her eyes rolled up into her head and she slid down into a puddle next to Vila, who screeched and clutched his hand. "Avon?" he hollered.

"Their ship is docked," a wincing Tarrant said hastily. He glanced around the chamber and spoke with rapid command. "Orac, seal the hatch, detach the docking tube, and take us away from the other ship. Scramble their communications and block their weapons. Send a message to the ship's captain that we have Servalan hostage and will kill her if they take one action against us. Now, Orac."

"Confirmed." A pattern of lights blinked in a transparent box I hadn't even noticed on the panel next to Vila. That was the great Orac? It wasn't anything like I had expected.

But there was no time for Orac. I scrambled around to Egon, who cradled Peter against his shoulder while he fumbled for a pulse. There was a burned place on the front of Peter's jumpsuit that had fused the zipper. He sprawled against the physicist, his face colorless, his eyes half open, and he didn't appear to be breathing. He looked dead. Ray hit his knees next to them so hard he would have bruises, and gasped, "Oh, no, Peter!"

A sideways glance revealed Avon in a similar condition. Blake stared at him in shocked disbelief, an arm tight around his shoulders.

"What are their vitals?" Winston cut in abruptly. "Was that a stun weapon?"

"Let me see?" Tarrant dropped to his knees beside Blake and grabbed up Avon's wrist with his good hand. I didn't know what had passed between them over the ten months since I'd last seen them, but Tarrant looked as worried as Blake did.

Vila slid out from behind the console and knelt beside Servalan. "She's out." His eyes were wide and astonished at his action. He dug in a concealed drawer, brought out a pair of hand binders and fastened her arms behind her back. He was shaking now, reaction setting in, but he didn't hesitate.

"Peter, listen to me," Egon said in a low voice. "Wake up, Peter. You will open your eyes. Winston?"

"They set their weapons on heavy stun," put in Vila. He crept up next to Blake and put out a tentative hand to touch Avon's cheek. "I heard her tell them to. They were here before I could stop them."

Winston's fingers curled around Peter's wrist. I could see fear in his eyes. Egon and Ray were shocked into horror. "Oh, gosh," mourned Ray. "We wouldn't have come up here if I hadn't asked to. It's my fault."

"No, it isn't," Blake said tightly. "I advocated it."

"Damn it, who cares whose fault it is?" Winston muttered. "Egon, lay him flat. Get his pack off. Now."

They did it in such a short time it seemed as if they had magicked the pack away. I heard Ray explain to Tarrant that his particle stream was set in such a way that it would keep the troopers out for at least an hour but that he should stand guard just in case their uniform armor had absorbed some of the blast. Tarrant removed their weapons and bound the two fallen men as Vila had Servalan. I paid scant attention to his efficient movements. Instead I watched as Winston made the necessary preparations and began to give Peter mouth to mouth resuscitation. Was he dead? Dear god, was he dead?"

When he saw what Winston was doing, Blake and Vila positioned Avon and Blake did the same to him. The concept must be known in the future.

"What about external cardiac massage?" I asked faintly in the background.

"He has a heartbeat," Egon insisted as if his words made it so. "He's alive."

I crossed my fingers and sucked in a deep breath, in hopes that the very act of breathing was contagious. When the two downed men didn't respond, I dragged myself up and went over to Tarrant. "Maybe I better look at your arm. Do you have a first aid kit?"

"A medi-kit?" he asked. "Yes, we have one. This ship doesn't have a medical unit like the Liberator's. I miss the regenerators we had then. I've just got a slight burn."

I helped him pull away the sleeve to expose a reddened second-degree burn across his forearm, a blister the size of a dollar bill. Nasty. With an exhortation to sit down, I left him and dug in the supply box he pointed out. "Orac," I ventured doubtfully. "Can you scan Tarrant's wound."

"I can." The voice was huffy.

"Then do it and recommend treatment."

"Your voice is not in my memory banks."

"Tough," I spat. "I'm not asking you to give away state secrets. I'm asking you to help someone who is in your memory banks. Now be a good little computer and do it or I'll turn Egon loose on you. He designed the communication signal you liked so much. Or I'll turn Ray loose on you. He blasted those stormtroopers. I wouldn't like to think what a portable nuclear accelerator would do to your internal components, would you?"

In spite of the desperate situation, Tarrant's mouth curled faintly in amusement when Orac responded haughtily, "Very well," and began to assess Tarrant's condition visually. Or however. It gave me directions in a very persnickety voice. I wound up passing a hand-held device over it. I don't know what it did; some kind of sonic thing? The blister shrank in on itself very nicely, leaving a very sore-looking reddened place. After that, Orac directed me to apply something called synth-flesh over it. An advanced liquid bandage, I guessed. I'd seen enough Star Trek episodes to know that Twentieth Century medicine didn't have all the answers. The synth-flesh came from a can, vaguely like an aerosol spray; something that could be taken down to planets in the absence of treatment facilities. It dried transparent over the wound and must have had an analgesic in it because Tarrant's muscles uncramped. "Thank you."

I had never quite let my attention lapse from Peter and Avon, and Tarrant hadn't either. By mutual consent, we migrated back to the sprawled figures. Ray's eyes were huge and hollow as he moved over to make room for me. "Come on, Peter. Come on, Peter," he muttered under his breath.

Blake paused to draw a few deep breaths and bent again. A second later, Winston lifted his head. In that endless interval, we all strained to hear Peter breathe. Egon's fingers dug into his shoulder with a grip that would leave bruises. He gave Peter a faint shake. "Damn you, breathe!" he blurted. I had never heard such pain in his voice.

As if he had heard and responded to Egon's need, Peter gave a faint, sputtering gasp, then he coughed painfully and sucked in a long, shaky breath.

"Yes!" Winston's face blazed with triumph and shared a high five with Ray. My knees weak, I went down on them hard. Egon lifted his face with an exultant smile.

"I knew you could do it, Peter, I knew it, I knew it," Ray babbled.

A second later, Avon gasped, choked, and started breathing on his own, too.

We let out such a cheer we roused Servalan, who jerked once against her bonds then lay still, casting lethal glares at us. Aside from Tarrant, who moved over to guard her, the rest of us didn't care.

Peter's breathing steadied quickly and he opened his eyes to find Egon bending over him with Ray at his side. He blinked up at them in confusion. "I...I'm not dead," he decided. "Whoa, did that hurt."

"Peter, are you all right?" Ray fussed.

A hand fumbled up and touched his chest to explore the charred place on his jumpsuit. "Rats," he said faintly. "Ruined the zipper. Fried off all my chest hair."

"Since you never had chest hair to begin with..." Egon began sternly, but he could not maintain the tone. Instead he grabbed Peter up in a fierce, exultant hug. Peter went with it, his face lighting into a delighted smile that expanded when Ray wiggled in and engulfed him. When Winston joined in, the four of them sat in a little huddle, talking a relieved babble all at once before they let go. Tarrant passed over the med-kit, and I repeated what I had done for Tarrant's arm to Peter's chest. We had to slice his jumpsuit open beside the zipper to get at him. The blister was even bigger than Tarrant's. My hands hardly shook at all as I ran the sonic thingy over it.

"Wow, that's great stuff," breathed Ray, snagging the areosol spray to study when I finished with it before he handed it over to Vila. "Maybe it will grow you some chest hair, Peter."

Peter grimaced, carefully fingering the transparent stuff. He didn't seem to be in any pain. "Just so long as it doesn't leave a scar. I have to look great in my swim suit."

"Beautiful as ever," Winston teased him "And just as convinced of it." Egon sputtered with laughter.

All three of the other Ghostbusters helped Peter to sit up and then, when he didn't drop over in a faint or go into cardiac arrest, to stand up. He brushed himself off, glanced hastily around at the downed troopers and the seething Servalan, and said, "Looks like we won." He started fussing over his ruined jumpsuit.

"However, I shall need to refine my survival instincts," muttered Avon against Blake's shoulder. Pulled into a joint hug in imitation of the Ghostbusters' by Blake and Vila, he erupted from it, grimacing. "Yes, well, we'll have no more of that. You are learning bad habits from Meredith's friends." He didn't protest when Vila took the synth flesh from Ray and busied himself with the medical treatment.

Peter caught my eye and grinned reassuringly. "Your buddy wakes up nasty, Mer."

"A survival instinct," Avon pointed out, neck craned to watch Vila's progress. I could tell when the pain-killer kicked in. Some of the tension left his mouth.

"Yeah, probably as rusty as the other one." Peter grinned. "Come on, Ave, old buddy. You've gotta learn to milk the situation. Play it up. With luck, you can get them to wait on you hand and foot. Kick back, put your feet up, and get Dayna and Soolin to peel grapes for you and stroke your fevered brow."

Vila boggled at the concept. "I could get to love something like that," he said. "Avon, I think I broke my hand when I punched Servalan. Will you stroke my fevered brow?"

At Vila's claim, Avon lifted an eyebrow then he ran measuring eyes over the thief's head. "I fear I am unequal to the task, Vila," he murmured as he tugged his tunic into place. "There is so much of it to stroke." Unconcerned with Vila's howl of protest that his hair wasn't receding, that it was just natural for him to have a high forehead and that it was a sign of great intellect, Avon stood up carefully then went to gaze down at Servalan.

"You think that you have won," she purred. Her chin was starting to change color although her jaw didn't appear to be broken. "But you have lost again. My ship will never allow you to return through the vortex."

Tarrant flashed his teeth at the downed woman. "Considering that Orac has immobilized your ship's weapons, communications, and power system, I doubt they will attempt to block us."

"Especially when we have a hostage," crowed Vila. He wiggled his fingers exploringly. They didn't seem to be broken at all. He hadn't availed himself of the sonic whatsis although he had passed the synth-flesh spray to Ray, who clutched it possessively. I wondered how long Vila would milk his sham injury and doubted Avon would let him.

"You took me hostage last time and I escaped," Servalan reminded him. "I shall do so this time, as well."

"Assuming we allow you to live," Avon said in that icy, relentless voice that made me shiver and Peter stare at him as if rethinking his opinion of the man. "Convince us, Sleer. Perhaps I shall have Orac transmit your true identity to the entire Inner and Outer Worlds when we return."

Peter looked around the bare, metal chamber. "Okay, Ray, I've seen all I want to see of a spaceship. You might have thought it would be fun, but I've had fun before and this wasn't it. Can we go home now?"

"An excellent idea," Egon agreed. He peered down at Orac. "I might have enjoyed a chance to study Orac, but Blake and the others must leave here."

"You are Egon Spengler?" Orac ventured. "For a human who lives in a primitive time, you have an amazing intellect. I would be interested in studying you as well."

Avon stared at Orac in disbelief, then turned his eyes upon Egon. He was far less impressed than Orac was, but that was probably deliberate.

Blake turned to us. "I owe you more than I can say." He shook hands with each of the Ghostbusters in turn. "I'll remember the things you've said to me." He nodded to the spray can in Ray's hand. "Keep that. It might help you on your job." Ray's face lit up and he tucked it into his pocket.

Avon exchanged a grimace with Vila. I could see them thinking that Blake in this frame of mind might be dangerous. But I couldn't help hoping that Blake would remember the friendship he'd seen that existed between the Ghostbusters and try to recreate it among his crew. Avon's crew. I was certain that they would stick together. It might not be easy, but it would be worth it.

While Egon asked Orac hasty questions miles beyond my comprehension, I turned to Avon and grabbed his hand. I could feel his muscles twitch as he fought down the impulse to jerk it away. "I want a new promise from you."

"And your right to evoke it?"

I gave him a smile. "They say that if you save a man's life, you become responsible for it. You owe it to me because I can't go with you to make sure you stay alive."

"State your terms." He was wary, but not as wary as he would have been when I first met him last year.

"You have found Blake. He is alive and well, and I think that, at his side, you can achieve great things. The two of you are meant to be a team. All of you." I dimpled at him "We showed Blake the best of teamwork. Don't reject it. That's all I ask."

"The best of teamwork is being a family," said Ray with a big smile. He patted Blake on the shoulder. "You know that. Gosh, I bet you can do it. You did great in the Twentieth Century."

"The sentiment is getting rather thick here," Avon said scornfully. He detached his hand from mine and took a step backward.

I ignored that. It was just Avon sounding off. Proving that he didn't have to become emotional to prove he cared, or to prove it at all. Blake gave me a knowing wink and Vila saw it and practically glowed with delight. Tarrant rolled his eyes but I saw an almost-cheerful resignation in his face.

Peter turned to Servalan, who had tried to prop herself up against the control console. "You haven't got a prayer, babe," he said.

Winston nodded. "Pete's right. You might have fleets of ships, though I'm not sure you do. But they've got something better."

"I doubt that."

"I don't. Ever heard of the Ballad of East and West?"

None of them had. I bet a lot of literature from our time was banned there.

Winston spoke the words slowly and distinctly.

"'Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,

Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;

But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor, Breed, nor Birth

When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!'"

He smiled in satisfaction. "In our case, it's four strong men, and in yours you'll have two women, too. But the point is the unity. Remember that, Blake."

"It's worth remembering," Blake agreed.

Avon and Vila exchanged another grimace that expanded to include Tarrant, but none of them refuted Blake's words. Maybe they would make it after all.

I hugged Avon goodbye. Maybe it wasn't quite fair of me to do it in front of Vila, but I had hugged him in front of Vila once before. This time, he merely shook his head in resignation before he bent his head and kissed me full in front of his friends. "This is the last time we shall meet, Meredith," he said. "I won't offer to take you with us. It would be a poor repayment of all you have done with us. We will, however, remove Servalan. And perhaps we can protect your time still further. Orac, you will dedicate your researches to the possibility of destroying or distorting the vortex once we pass through it."

Orac made a huffing sound. "I am busy," it insisted and went back to talking to Egon.

"You will do it or I will, for once, follow Vila's suggestion and consider redesigning you as an empty space."

"Very well," said Orac tightly. For a computer, it appeared to have huffy moods. But then it was more than a computer. It was a pure artificial intelligence. Egon would probably try to design one if Peter didn't keep reminding him it had nothing to do with Ghostbusting.

Avon stepped back from me and Vila sidled up and took advantage of the moment to hug me, too. After that, Blake gathered me in, in a great bearhug. "I'll remember everything you've said, Meredith," he said in my ear. "And what I learned from the Ghostbusters."

"See that you do."

Egon stepped into the teleport protesting. He wanted to talk with Orac longer. But Peter fell into step with him and said in an undertone, "How about a hand for the wounded hero." His voice was so outrageous that Egon didn't buy it for a minute, but he did run his eyes over Peter's chest and then conceded the need to go home.

"Give your bracelets to Dayna and Soolin when you get down," Tarrant instructed as he replaced Vila at the console. The last thing I saw before the teleport took us was Blake, planting himself at Avon's side. Two strong men about to go far beyond the ends of the earth. I blinked hastily, determined not to cry. When we teleported, I felt Peter's arm come around my shoulders as if he understood.

We returned to the firehouse roof to a most unlikely spectacle. Janine Melnitz, proton pack on her back, particle thrower in hand, holding Dayna and Soolin at bay. She didn't look like a woman who could be crossed, and Dayna and Soolin knew it. They had their hands well away from their weapons. "You give Egon and the others back if you know what's good for you," Janine insisted hotly as we materialized.

"I am back, Janine," Egon assured her.

She whirled and ran her eyes up and down his frame to make sure he was in one piece and only then did she lower the weapon. "Well, what was I to think?" she asked by way of apology to the two women from the future. "You were up here and the guys were gone. Teleportation? Yeah, right."

"We did teleport, Janine, honey," Peter told her with a grin. He pulled off his bracelet and carried it over to fasten around Soolin's wrist. The blonde gunfighter allowed him to do it but she was pissed off at Janine in the worst way. "I even got zapped with a ray gun," he continued with a gesture at the ruined front of his jumpsuit.

"What happened?" Janine asked quickly. She looked as if she regretted putting down the thrower. Nobody but her was allowed to take potshots at Peter.

"Minor problem with Servalan," Peter explained to her. "She was waiting this side of the vortex and she got the drop on Vila. Gotta say, she's got great dress sense--along with a real gift for underestimating people."

"Vila!" Dayna muttered reproachfully. "He teleported all of you when she was there? Is everyone all right?"

"Yes, and Servalan's a prisoner," Ray explained. "Gosh, it was neat. Vila punched her out. Talk about a great move."

The two women boggled at him. Quickly Winston filled them in. Instantly Dayna pushed the button on her returned bracelet. "Bring us up," she said. Then she turned. "Thank you for the assist with Servalan." Her eyes flashed with hatred when she mentioned the enemy woman. Hadn't Avon said Servalan had killed her father. I wondered how long she'd survive once Dayna beamed up to the ship. Egon, Winston and Ray passed over their bracelets hastily.

Soolin and Dayna disappeared in a flash of white light and Janine blinked at the space where they just stood. "Were they ghosts?" she asked skeptically.

"No, Janine, just from the future," Egon reassured her. "They're gone and we're safe now."

At that, she flung herself into his arms and hugged him hard. Egon always seemed uncomfortable at such moments, but he did hug her back. Peter measured the embrace as if he intended to rate it the way one did an Olympic performance. Before he could open his mouth to say so, Egon freed Janine with an absent smile and came over to him. He fingered the charred spot on his jumpsuit

"You, Peter, need to go to the hospital."

"Huh? I'm fine." He realized the other three were staring at him expectantly. "Really, I'm fine, I--well, maybe it would be kinda nice to put my feet up for the rest of the afternoon. I bag the couch. Ray, would you bring me a soda?"

They didn't buy it. They'd been too badly scared to let it go.

"Maybe not the ER, Peter, but we could swing past Dr. Labraccio's office and let him check you out to make sure there are no side effects. He's used to us by now."

"It's not as if my heart stopped," he protested, then he caught himself when a nasty thought popped into his head. "It didn't, did it?" For a moment, he actually looked frightened.

"Gee, no, Peter, your heart didn't stop. We'd have called the paramedics already if that had happened. Come on," Ray wheedled. "Just let us make sure."

Peter frowned, then his expression changed and he gazed around wildly. "Guys, where's my proton pack?"

In unison, their jaws dropped. I could remember them removing the pack and setting it aside so Winston could give him mouth to mouth. They must have left it on the ship.

"And I didn't get a sample of their technology in exchange," Egon mourned. "Orac was fascinating. If only I'd had a chance to study it."

"I got the synth flesh," Ray started to say.

A burst of white announced a new teleport arrival, and Blake stood there clutching Peter's pack. "Avon wanted to keep it," he said as he passed it to Winston, who was closest. "But I wouldn't let him. I owe you too much and I know the value of the device." He paused then he held out his hand to Peter. "Thank you."

"Well, hey, just doing what a guy's gotta do," Peter said.

Blake passed him a small leather bag. For your expense," he offered. "Getting it out of Avon was rather like getting blood from a stone but the others overruled him."

Surprised at the bag's weight, Peter opened it, and then his face lit up. "Gold," he blurted, drawing out two small bars of gold. There was more in the bag, I could tell. That would pay for a lot, I thought.

Egon snatched one from him and studied it. From a pocket, he produced what looked like a jeweler's loupe and studied it up close. "Hmm, it would seem extremely pure. Thank you, Blake."

Peter snatched it back. "Ah, ah, ah. Leave it with your friendly neighborhood banker."

Blake turned to me and squeezed both my hands. "Thank you, Meredith," he said. "Both for what you did for Avon before and for helping to reunite me with him and Vila." He lifted his bracelet to his mouth. "Ready to come up."

He vanished before I could say anything in return. I stood looking up at the hazy New York sky. Not as satisfying as watching the ship lift off last winter, but much more final. I'd never see any of them again and I knew it.

Peter edged over and slung his arm around my shoulders. "Maybe they'll write," he said lightly. "Or send you e-mail."

I knew they wouldn't, but the look in Avon's eyes when he'd realized he had Blake back made up for it. I knew I didn't belong out there. I belonged here, at this end of time.

The guys led Peter down the stairs to the first floor, surrounding him in case he keeled over. I never saw anyone less likely to keel over, although I felt some of the same protective urges. Even Janine did, although she would be the last person to admit it.

"Call me and let me know what the doctor says," I urged as I prepared to depart. It would feel funny not to come to Ghostbuster Central every day, but to do so would be to break my promise to Avon to get on with my life.

"I will," Peter said. He didn't ask me out, but that was probably for the best. The shrilling of the telephone cut off anything else he might have said.

Janine went over to her desk to answer it as the guys loaded Peter carefully into Ecto-1. I hesitated when the secretary said with suspicion, "You what?" When she hung up, she waved to stop the guys before they could get in after him.

"That was the Environmental Protection Agency," she announced. Her high heels clicked on the concrete floor as she hurried over to join us. "They're sending a guy over to check the environmental impact of whatever it is we've been doing."

"Oh, great," moaned Winston. "I knew it. We better hide the communications beacon before they get here."

But when we all raced up to the roof to dismantle the device, it was gone without a trace.

"Sneaky, Avon," Peter muttered with a knowing glance at the sky. "Very sneaky." On the whole, he seemed to approve.

"To make up for being forced to return the proton pack, I bet," said Ray with a grin. "Never mind. I've got that liquid bandage stuff, and Blake's gold, and we've still got the pod, don't we?"

Another mad rush to the first floor lab. They had forgotten the pod. It sat in cannibalized splendor in the middle of the room.

The Ghostbusters shoved the pool table over it and stacked supplies in and around it to make it less obvious before the EPA man could arrive. Egon even took P.K.E. readings of it, but it didn't give off any that I could tell.

When the guys had driven away, I said goodbye to Janine and went out to flag down a taxi. Maybe someday Avon would send a signal to say that he had made it home safely, to say that Blake had won his rebellion. Better not hold my breath. Not that I doubted that he would win eventually. Winston had been right about the two strong men standing face to face. Somewhere out there in Ecto-1 there were four more of them.

I went home to walk my dog. I'd neglected poor John Adams shamelessly this past week and I had to make amends. He would have liked to see Avon again. He'd adored him.

There was always Saturday night to look forward to. I had met Peter at one of Mother's parties. That meant there could always be someone else worth knowing. Someone else unconventional.

I had faced too much in the past year to settle for someone ordinary.

You wouldn't know me, Greg, I thought to my late husband, he who had encouraged like mad the unconventional side of my nature. Or maybe he would know me. Maybe this part of me was what he'd always known was there.

I couldn't help wondering what Egon would create out of the parts of the escape pod. It was sure to be spectacular