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else.”
    “Where?”
    “Wherever the thing that killed Julia came from.”
    “Can you open it?”
    “I am prepared to stand in front of it for as long as I have to,” I told her, “and try.”
    I returned to the other room and studied it once again.
    “Merlin,” she said, as I released her hand and raised mine before me, “don’t you think this is the point where you should get in touch with Random, tell him exactly what has been happening and perhaps have Gerard standing next to you if you succeed in opening that door?”
    “I probably should,” I agreed, “but I’m not going to.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because he might tell me not to.”
    “He might be right, too.”
    I lowered my hands and turned toward her.   “I have to admit you have a point,” I said.   “Random has to be told everything, and I’ve probably put it off too long already.   So here is what I would like you to do.   Go back to the car and wait.   Give me an hour.   If I’m not out by then, get in touch with Random, tell him everything I told you and tell him about this, too.”
    “I don’t know,” she said.   “If you don’t show, Random’s going to be mad at me.”
    “Just tell him I insisted and there was nothing you could do.   Which is actually the case, if you stop to think about it.”
    She pursed her lips.   “I don’t like leaving you-though I’m not anxious to stay either.   Care to take along a hand grenade?”
    She raised her purse and began to open it.   “No.   Thanks.   Why do you have it, anyway?”
    She smiled.   “I always carry them in this shadow.   They sometimes come in handy.   But okay, I’ll go wait.”
    She kissed me lightly on the cheek and turned away.
    “And try to get hold of Fiona,” I said, “if I don’t show.   Tell her the whole story, too.   She might have a different angle on this.”
    She nodded and departed.   I waited until I heard the door close, then focused my attention fully upon the bright rectangle.   Its outline seemed fairly uniform, with only a few slightly thicker, brighter areas and a few finer, dimmer ones.   I traced the lines slowly with the palm of my right hand at a height of about an inch above the wall’s surface.   I felt a small prickling, a heatlike sensation as I did this.   Predictably, it was greater above the brighter areas.   I took this as an indication that the seal was slightly less perfect in these spots.   Very well.   I would soon discover whether the thing could be forced, and these would be my points of attack.
    I twisted my hands deeper into the Logrus until I wore the limbs I desired as fine-fingered gauntlets, stronger than metals, more sensitive than tongues in the places of their power.   I moved my right hand to the point nearest it, on a level with my hip.   I felt the pulse of an old spell when I touched that spot of greater brightness.   I narrowed my extension as I pushed, making it finer and finer until it slipped through.   The pulsing then became a steady thing.   I repeated the exercise on a higher area to my left.
    I stood there, feeling the force that had sealed it, my fine filament extensions throbbing within its matrix.   I tried moving them, first upward, then down.   The right one slid a little farther than the left, in both directions, before a tightness and resistance halted it.   I summoned more force from the body of the Logrus, which swam specterlike within and before me, and I poured this energy into the gauntlets, the pattern of the Logrus changing form again as I did so.   When I tried once more to move it, the right one slid downward for perhaps a foot before the throbbing trapped it; when I pushed it upward it rose nearly to the top.   I tried again on the left.   It moved all the way to the top, but it only passed perhaps six inches below the starting point when I drew it downward.
    I breathed deeply and felt myself beginning to perspire.   I pumped more power into the gauntlets