"Cynthia, Harold, come here!"

'Professor' Maundersly's high, cracked voice echoed through the old house that nestled against the slope of MountTabor, on the east side of Portland. Cynthia, stretched out on the lumpy living room sofa, looked up from the textbook she was studying and raised one perfectlyformed eyebrow at her father, languidly brushing long blond hair back from her forehead.

"He's your father, you go see what he wants this time."

"He's your mother's father, not mine. Anyhow, he probably just wants me to move something heavy for him," Harold Fordham grumbled, but he put down the newspaper that was carefully folded open to the latest sports results. Cynthia watched her father as he reluctantly levered his bulky body out of the reclining chair in front of the largescreen TV, displacing a large yellow tomcat from his lap. The cat, named Cougar for his resemblance to his wild cousins, was never far from Harold when he was home from his job driving a delivery truck.

At the age of forty the massive muscles that had made her father a college football star had already turned to flab, the result of too little exercise and an unrestrained appetite for pizza and beer. Even though he'd washed out of the NFL, due to an innate inability to learn complicated football plays, he still followed the Seattle Sea Hawks with quasireligious fervor.

"Harold, Cynthia! Both of you, come on down here. I'm ready to try my Ley Detector."

"Lie detector?" Harold clumped heavily down the stairs. Cynthia followed at his heels, peering over his shoulder as he pushed open the heavy metal door that cut Professor Maundersly's laboratory off from the rest of the basement. "What's this about a lie detector?"

"Not lie detector, you moron. Ley detector, as in Ley lines!" The Professor combed his fingers through his straggly beard where dirty brown hairs mingled with equal amounts of gray and black to form a nondescript mat.

Harold turned to glance inquiringly at his daughter, but Cynthia only shrugged her shapely shoulders and followed him on into her grandfather's laboratory.

Because of the way the old house was set into the side of MountTabor its basement had an unusually high ceiling, and the clutter of unidentifiable equipment in the lab made the most of it. The Professor's latest addition to the jumble of electronics, wiring and miscellaneous machinery took up all of one end of the large room, including an eight by ten foot rectangular metal framework that was fastened to a side wall. Looking something like the accidental cross between a satellite receiving station and a demented metal spider, the machine hummed contentedly to itself as lights blinked and dials registered unknowable transients.

"Uh, yeah," Harold agreed, nodding as though he knew what his father-in-law was talking about. "So that's what it is. It sure looks like it would do the job, all right. Uh, Professor, what's a Lace line?"

"Ley line, you idiot. Ley line!" He turned back to his machine, fussing with the adjustment of several knobs and watching until he was satisfied with the resultant dial readings. "It's a line of psychic force that stretches between... Oh, what's the use of trying to explain it to a moron like you? I don't know why my daughter Moira ever married you."

"Hey, now. Just because you used to teach science classes at LincolnHigh School don't mean you've got a right to give me no bad time. I did go to college, you know." Harold stood with legs apart, fists on his hips. Cynthia pushed aside the thought that he reminded her of a certain school yard bully she'd known in second grade. This was her father, after all.

"Yes, for two years until they realized that even private tutors couldn't get you through even the remedial classes. They wouldn't have kept you that long if you hadn't been one of their varsity stars."

"Yeah, I sure was." Harold grinned contentedly as he rocked back on his heels, his eyes half closed as he remembered those glorious days when he'd been a real jock, and met and married Professor Maundersly's daughter Moira. "Anyhow, what's this gizmo of yours supposed to do?"

"What it's supposed to do, and what it will do, is to detect the lines of force that connect psychically active points here in Oregon. One of them should pass almost directly through this laboratory, since it's on a direct line between Mt.Hood and Mt.Tabor. I've proved that volcanoes are outlets for psychic energy, so it's lucky for me that Portland has a volcanic cone within its city limits. It connects with another line that runs from here at Mt.Tabor to Mt.St. Helens, then across to Mt.Adams and back to Mt.Hood. This forms a complete loop, making the flow of energy that much stronger." He adjusted a hand crank, shifting the framework of metal and wire that somewhat resembled a rectangular satellite dish until the readings on several dials met with his satisfaction. "Now, my machine is all warmed up and ready. I'll turn on the main power and you will see what I mean."

"Hey, now, are you sure..." Harold backed away nervously, nearly trampling Cynthia. Remembering a number of less than successful experiments in the past, she too edged toward the door, glancing up at the ceiling where numerous burns and scorch marks were poorly hidden under variously colored coats of paint.

The Professor closed a heavy knife switch, feeding additional power to his apparatus from a bank of heavy truck batteries. For a moment nothing seemed to be happening. Cynthia caught the faint glimmer of worry that crossed his bewhiskered features, but before he could do anything the three of them became aware of a deep throbbing vibration that seemed to rattle the windows of the old frame structure.

"There, you see? It's working!"

"Sure it is," Cynthia agreed cautiously, but she was careful not to come any nearer. "It's working, all right, but what's it doing?"

"Why, it's..." Professor Maundersly's voice choked off as he turned to look at his brainchild. The deep throbbing had become a high-pitched hum, fading into inaudibility as it passed the limits of human hearing. The wire netting that stretched across the metal framework at one side of the device became hidden behind a reddish glow, then that faded to reveal...

"What the Hell was that, Gramps?" Cynthia ducked out of the way as her father and grandfather backed away from the framework. It had suddenly acquired an illusion of depth, as though it was the opening into a rectangular tunnel several yards long. In it, or rather from well beyond it, a monstrous reptilian eye peered back at them. It blinked slowly, then moved lazily away, unveiling a bizarre landscape. Under a blazingly blue sky, a vast expanse of palm-like trees and swamp plants revealed itself, populated by occasional gigantic saurian creatures.

She realized that this was no picture, no image transmitted from a distant source. She could feel the gust of hot, moist air that swirled through the opening, could smell the mixed scents of swamp and vegetation, could even hear a faint symphony as of mournful fairy trumpets as long-necked creatures called to each other across the primordial landscape.

Cynthia breathed deeply of the richly scented air, moving closer as she felt a surge of energy. The sensation was of being immersed in the atmospheric equivalent of champagne. It felt as though bright bubbles were racing and exploding along her nerves, and suddenly everything about her was bright and clear. She hadn't felt anything like this since a frat party when she'd accidentally taken a puff on a marijuana cigarette heavily laced with PCP. She almost cried out in frustration as her grandfather wrenched open the switch that supplied power to his machine, but then she realized that the scene had begun to blur and fade even before the power was withdrawn.

"That sure wasn't no Lace line," Her father blurted, peering at the machine from around the door jamb. "Those things was dinosaurs. Real dinosaurs!"

"But it's supposed to be a Ley line detector," the Professor muttered plaintively. "Not a time machine!"

"It isn't," Cynthia mused, still savoring the rush of energy that had reached her along with the air from the tunnel's opening. "It's not a time machine."

Somehow, she knew that the scene they had watched hadn't come from the far past. She had read more than her share of science fiction and fantasy novels, but despite the claims of modern scientists that such a thing was possible the idea of a time machine had always brought to mind too many paradoxes. No, not a time machine, but something else. What it was she didn't know, but she was certainly going to find out.

"The window closed even before you turned the power off," she mused, moving forward until she could reach out and touch the machine's jumbled circuits. "You must not have hooked something up right."

"Hey, don't touch that!" Her grandfather tried to swat her hand away, but she evaded him with effortless ease. "You don't know what..."

"Here." She touched a blackened fragment of circuit board. "This burned out. It must have gotten caught by the flow of energy from that other space."

"Energy flow?" Her grandfather looked at her as though he doubted her sanity. "What energy flow?"

"You didn't feel it?" Cynthia took a deep breath, stretching her muscles as though awakening from a deep sleep. "There was energy in that other place, I could feel it... And it's a different place, not a different time. Anyway, you can see that this circuit caught the brunt of it. You'll have to replace it with something a bit more sturdy."

"And since when are you the expert on electronic circuits? Oh, well. Here, this circuit board from my old 486 PC should just about fit in that slot."

"No," she objected. "Not like that. It's almost right, but..."

With a surety somehow born of her grasp of the new energy, she picked at the circuit board with the tip of one sharp fingernail, breaking the connection between two components before she slipped it into place.

"There, that should do it." She sagged with sudden exhaustion as the remnants of the new energy drained away, and she gazed, puzzled, at what she had just accomplished. "What... why did I do that?"

"I've never had any idea why you do anything," her grandfather snapped, pulling at her arm. "Now, get away from there before you really wreck something."

He attacked his machine with an array of instruments, finally nodding his satisfaction when everything tested out all right.

"That should do it, all right," he told his granddaughter, "but how you knew just what to do..."

He was interrupted by the bong of the doorbell, and Harold charged heavyfooted up the basement stairs.

"That should be my pizza," he called back over his shoulder. "Moira, gimme some money for the pizza man!"

"You just had pizza yesterday," Cynthia heard her mother complain from the far reaches of the upstairs. "Oh, well. My purse is on the piano bench. Don't tip him more than a dollar."

The doorbell bonged again before Harold got there. It was raining, the kind of steady downpour that Portland was famous for. In the inadequate shelter of the front porch the delivery man clumsily juggled his precious burden, protecting it with a brightly striped umbrella.

"Here you are, sir. That will be fourteen dollars and ninetyfive cents."

"Just a minute," Harold told him. "I'll get you the money for it."

"Ted?" Cynthia pushed open the screen door. "I thought that sounded like you. What are you doing delivering pizza?"

"Hi, Cynthia. I thought that the name and address on the order sounded kind of familiar. Yeah, that's me. Ted Kingston, pizza delivery man extraordinary. My scholarship ran out last fall, but this job gives me enough money to pay my rent and I get all the pizza I can eat for free."

"Come on in out of the rain while my father's getting your money," she invited, ushering him into the living room. "I wondered why I hadn't seen you around the PSU campus much lately. Delivering pizzas must keep you pretty busy."

"Busy enough." He turned to take the money from Harold. "Thank you, sir."

"Daddy, this is Ted Kingston. He's in both of my Math and Science classes this term."

"Yeah, I could of guessed," Harold growled. "You don't look like much of an athlete."

"I'm afraid not. Just the bowling team, is all."

"Well that's something, I guess. Hey, Cynthia, why don't you show Ted your grandfather's new invention. Maybe he'd understand about those Lace lines, or whatever they are."

"Ley lines, Daddy. Would you like to see it, Ted? I've told you about Grandfather's inventions. Or do you have more pizzas to deliver?"

"No, this is my last delivery for today. I'll have to call in and tell my boss that I won't be getting back with the truck right away, is all."

That detail taken care of, the three of them made their way down the stairs to the Professor's laboratory. Harold was munching on a slice of pizza and Cougar lazily followed behind him, eyeing Harold's pizza slice hopefully.

"You do know what Ley lines are, don't you?" Professor Maundersly peered over the rims of his glasses at Ted.

"I've read about them," he answered cautiously. "But I never heard that they ran between volcanoes."

"No, that's my own discovery." The Professor smiled proudly. "It's just lucky that this house is on one of the lines, or I wouldn't have been able to build my machine. It uses the energy of Ley lines as a catalyst when it opens a tunnel between different realities."

"Hey, I thought you said it was a time machine," Harold objected.

"That's what I thought at first, but something Cynthia said made me change my mind. I tried a couple of experiments while you were upstairs getting your pizza, and she's right. My machine... I think that I'll call it a Hyperspatial Tunnel... Anyway, it connects two different realities, two completely different universes, in fact. Here, let me show you what I mean."

Before anyone could protest, he once again closed the switch that fed power to his machine from the bank of heavy truck batteries stacked against one wall of his laboratory. This time Cynthia was ready for it, and she decided that the sound effects connected with the opening of the tunnel were more mental than physical. The house wasn't really shaking, it just felt like everything should be vibrating.

Once more the spidery metal framework filmed over with reddish light before opening out into a different reality. The illusion of a rectangular tunnel with smoky redorange walls, floor and ceiling was perfect, looking as though a person could actually walk through it into another world.

This wasn't quite the same scene as before, she realized. The sun was a little lower in the sky, and the blazingly blue firmament was now speckled here and there with occasional puffy clouds. The scene moved and shifted as her grandfather made further adjustments to the controls of his machine until finally the far end of the tunnel was at ground level in this other world.

The sensation of tingling energy along her nerves was not as unexpected this time, but it was just as strong. Glancing around, she studied the others for any sign that they were feeling the same thing. Her grandfather certainly wasn't, and neither was her father, but she wasn't so sure about Ted. Even though his attention was riveted on what he could see through the tunnel, he was rubbing his arms as though he was indeed feeling something. From a safe hiding place behind her father's legs, Cougar divided his attention between the slice of pizza in his hand and the tunnel opening, eyes dilated and fur on end.

"What... What is that place?" Ted's voice started out as a harsh croak, becoming more normal as he got his vocal cords under control.

"As far as I can determine, it's a whole new universe," Professor Maundersly boasted. "The air there seems to be completely breathable, but I don't know whether the plants and animals are edible or not. It will take a great deal of testing before I determine just how safe it is... Hey! Cougar, come back here!"

Harold made a grab for the cat as it snatched the remains of the slice of pizza from his fingers and streaked past him toward the tunnel, but it was too fast for him. Before she could even blink, Cynthia could see Cougar dash through the tunnel and out into that other world! Her father dashed after it, dragging her grandfather with him as the older man grabbed his arm. She followed, moving before she could stop to think, and Ted followed close on her heels.

"Bad cat!" Harold held Cougar by the scruff of his neck, but didn't try to take the remains of the pizza slice from him. He's tried that before, more than once, and only gotten scratched for his efforts. "Hey, where's the end of the tunnel?"

Cynthia whirled to look behind her, but all she saw was the sheer blank face of a cliff. Then, looking closer, she could just barely make out wavering swirls of energy that outlined this end of the tunnel.

"Here it is," she told them, reaching tentatively to test the energy swirls. "You just have to know how to look."

"I don't see it," her grandfather complained, and the others muttered their agreement.

"Well, it's there whether you can see it or not. If you really can't see it, maybe we'd better pile a few rocks at each side of the opening so that we can find it again," she told them, suiting her actions to her words.

"Maybe we should go back..." Ted's voice was hesitant, torn between two alternatives even as he helped her pile up two sizable mounds of rocks.

She really supposed that would be the smart thing to do, but neither her father nor her grandfather paid any attention to Ted's suggestion and she was too fascinated by what lay before them to agree. Instead, she stood looking out over the alien landscape, breathing deeply of the clear air as she drank in the sparkling energy that seemed to fill the whole world.

"It would be a shame to go back before we find out anything about this world," she told herself, moving forward to pluck a leaf from a lowgrowing fern clump. Holding it to her nose, she reveled in its spicy scent. Cougar, now that he'd finished her father's pizza and nobody was chasing him, twined around her legs until a crashing from the brush surrounding them sent him dashing for safety up a nearby palm tree.

"Look out!" Harold led the mad dash for the safety of the tunnel, but it was too late. Lithe reptilian forms ringed the little party, cutting them off from any retreat. The creatures, about the size of wolves, ran on two legs as often as on four, but rows of fangs in their narrow jaws put any wolf's armament to shame. Cynthia shrank back against Ted, but their captors made no move to attack.

"Hey, get out of our way!" Harold steeped forward and waved an arm truculently at one of the creatures, only to leap back with a curse as a snap of its jaws ripped the sleeve from his shirt. The tattered cloth still snagged in its teeth, the creature pressed forward with a hissing roar. Its fellows moved with it, and the little party could do nothing but give way before them. They stumbled back, expecting any moment to feel the agony of fangs tearing their flesh, but instead they were herded away from the tunnel opening and out onto a broad meadow.

It was unlike any meadow they'd ever seen. Instead of grass, low growing clumps of ferns rose from a bed of moss that carpeted its expanse. Their captors herded them out into the center of the meadow, then stopped. One of them dashed away toward the trees that surrounded them, and the rest settled down as though waiting for something to happen.

"What do you think they're waiting for?" Cynthia kept her voice very soft, not wanting to attract the things' attention.

"I don't know," Ted answered, "but whatever it is, I don't think we're going to like it."

After what seemed like hours to Cynthia's overstrained nerves, but was probably only fifteen or twenty minutes, she became aware of a sound that troubled the air about her. Like the beating of a gigantic heart, it was a slow thudding that seemed to come as much from the ground beneath her feet as through the air. It grew louder and louder, until she could actually feel the ground quiver with its force, and then a monster from out of her worst nightmares stepped over the trunks of trees that had toppled before its might and strode out into the clearing.

"Godzilla?" her father breathed, his mouth falling open. "Somebody pinch me! Hey, not you!"

The creature that seemed to be the leader of their captors backed away as though disappointed, using one clawed front paw to dislodge another fragment of shirt from its teeth. Behind it, the monster approached at a steady pace, majestic in its might. The nearest thing Cynthia could compare it to was Tyrannosaurus Rex, sixty million years extinct. This was as though a close relative of a Tyrant Lizard had grown monstrously large, more massive than any fossil remains scientists had ever found.

For all of its bulk, it moved with a curious lightness, a ponderous grace that imbued it with a strange dignity as it approached. Stopping just outside the circle of their captors, it bent its head as though to study these strange intruders.

You are not from Mercota.

For just a moment, Cynthia feared for her sanity. This, this monster couldn't really be talking to them! Then she realized that she hadn't actually heard the words, that they had appeared inside of her head without accompanying sound.

"No, we are not," she answered when after a long moment it became obvious that none of the others were going to reply. "We are from far away. Not from this world at all."

From farther away than that.

The monster's thoughts were slow but clear, thundering inside her skull with implacable force.

We will talk more about your world and I will decide which of you are to be eaten first, but for now there are things I must do. Stay here. You will be guarded. I am Quadgop, and I have spoken.

With that, it lumbered on past the little party. The smaller creatures around them, their guards, backed away to a more comfortable distance.

"What were you doing?" Professor Maundersly grabbed her arm and swung her around to face him. "You sounded like you were actually talking to that thing."

"Just answering his questions," she replied, defensively.

"What do you mean, answering his questions? You make it sound like it actually talked to you, instead of just growling or whatever."

"Of course he was talking to me. Didn't you hear him?"

Her grandfather just looked at her like he suspected her sanity, as did her father. The only exception was Ted, who nodded doubtfully.

"I did think I heard something, but I couldn't make out any words. What did he have to say?"

"He just asked if we were from far away, and then he said that he was busy and would be back to talk to us later and that we would be guarded. He said that his name was Quadgop, and he called this place Mercota."

"Guarded as in protected, or guarded as in prisoners," Ted wondered. "A little of both, I would guess. At least our guards have backed off a little bit. I wonder of they're going to feed us?"

"Yeah," Harold agreed. "And what they're going to feed us to, besides themselves."