ALICE’S FACE APPEARS ON THE telephone screen. Christ, how beautiful she is, Martin thinks, and his decrepit body quivers with lust. “There you are,” he says. “I’ve been trying to reach you for hours. I had such a strange dream that something awful had happened to Ted—and then your phone didn’t answer, and I began to think maybe the dream was a premonition of some kind, an omen, you know—” Alice looks puzzled. “I’m afraid you have the wrong number, sir,” she says sweetly, and hangs up.
SHE DRAWS THE LASER AND the naked man cowers back against the wall in bewilderment. “What the hell is this?” he asks, trembling. “Put that thing down, lady. You’ve got the wrong guy.” “No,” she says. “You’re the one I’m after. I hate to do this to you, Martin, but I’ve got no choice. You have to die.” “Why?” he demands. “Why?” “You wouldn’t understand it even if I told you,” she says. She moves her finger toward the discharge stud. Abruptly there is a frightening sound of cracking wood and collapsing plaster behind her, as though an earthquake has struck. She whirls and is appalled to see her husband breaking down the door of Martin’s apartment. “I’m just in time!” Ted exclaims. “Don’t move, Alice!” He reaches for her. In panic she fires without thinking. The dazzling beam catches Ted in the pit of the stomach and he goes down, gurgling in agony, clutching at his belly as he dies.
THE DOOR FALLS WITH A crash and this character in peculiar clothing materializes in a cloud of debris, looking crazier than Napoleon. It’s incredible, Martin thinks. First an unknown broad rings his bell and invites herself in and takes her clothes off, and then, just as he’s about to screw her, this happens. It’s pure Marx Brothers, only dirty. But Martin’s not going to take any crap. He pulls himself away from the panting, gasping girl on the bed, crosses the room in three quick strides, and seizes the newcomer. “Who the hell are you?” Martin demands, slamming him hard against the wall. The girl is dancing around behind him. “Don’t hurt him!” she wails. “Oh, please, don’t hurt him!”
TED CERTAINLY HADN’T EXPECTED TO find them in bed together. He understood why she might have wanted to go back in time to murder Martin, but simply to have an affair with him, no, it didn’t make sense. Of course, it was altogether likely that she had come here to kill and had paused for a little dalliance first. You never could tell about women, even your own wife. Alley cats, all of them. Well, a lucky thing for him that she had given him these few extra minutes to get here. “Okay,” he says. “Get your clothes on, Alice. You’re coming with me.” “Just a second, mister,” Martin growls. “You’ve got your goddamned nerve, busting in like this.” Ted tries to explain, but the words won’t come. It’s all too complicated. He gestures mutely at Alice, at himself, at Martin. The next moment Martin jumps him and they go tumbling together to the floor.
“WHO ARE YOU?” MARTIN YELLS, banging the intruder repeatedly against the wall. “You some kind of detective? You trying to work a badger game on me?” Slam. Slam. Slam. He feels the girl’s small fists pounding on his own back. “Stop it!” she screams. “Let him alone, will you? He’s my husband!” “Husband!” Martin cries. Astounded, he lets go of the stranger and swings around to face the girl. A moment later he realizes his mistake. Out of the corner of his eye he sees that the intruder has raised his fists high above his head like clubs. Martin tries to get out of the way, but no time, no time, and the fists descend with awful force against his skull.
ALICE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT TO do. They’re rolling around on the floor, fighting like wildcats, now Martin on top, now Ted. Martin is younger and bigger and stronger, but Ted seems possessed by the strength of the insane; he’s gone berserk. Both men are bloody-faced, and furniture is crashing over everywhere. Her first impulse is to get between them and stop this crazy fight somehow. But then she remembers that she has come here as a killer, not as a peacemaker. She gets the laser from her purse and aims it at Martin, but then the combatants do a flip-flop and it is Ted who is in the line of fire. She hesitates. It doesn’t matter which one she shoots, she realizes after a moment. They both have to die, one way or another. She takes aim. Maybe she can get them both with one bolt. But as her finger starts to tighten on the discharge stud, Martin suddenly gets Ted in a bear-hug and, half lifting him, throws him five feet across the room. The back of Ted’s neck hits the wall and there is a loud crack. Ted slumps and is still. Martin gets shakily to his feet. “I think I killed him,” he says. “Christ, who the hell was he?” “He was your grandson,” Alice says and begins to shriek hysterically.
TED STARES IN HORROR AT the crumpled body at his feet. His hands still tingle from the impact. The left side of Martin’s head looks as though a pile-driver has crushed it. “Good God in heaven,” Ted says thickly, “what have I done? I came here to protect him and I’ve killed him! I’ve killed my own grandfather!” Alice, wide-eyed, futilely trying to cover her nakedness by folding one arm across her breasts and spreading her other hand over her loins, says, “If he’s dead, why are you still here? Shouldn’t you have disappeared?” Ted shrugs. “Maybe I’m safe as long as I remain here in the past. But the moment I try to go back to 2006, I’ll vanish as though I’ve never been. I don’t know. I don’t understand any of this. What do you think?”
ALICE STEPS UNCERTAINLY FROM THE machine into the Temponautics showroom. There’s Friesling. There are the technicians. Friesling says, smiling, “I hope you had a very enjoyable journey, Mrs.—ah—uh.…” He falters. “I’m sorry,” he says, reddening, “but your name seems to have escaped me.” Alice says, “It’s, ah, Alice—uh—do you know, the second name escapes me too?”
THE WHOLE CLAN HAS GATHERED to celebrate Martin’s eighty-third birthday. He cuts the cake, and then one by one they go to him to kiss him. When it’s Alice’s turn, he deftly spins her around so that he screens her from the others and gives her rump a good hearty pinch. “Oh, if I were only fifty years younger!” he sighs.
IT’S A WARM SPRING-LIKE DAY. Everything has been lovely at the office—three new accounts all at once—and the trip home on the freeway was a breeze. Alice is waiting for him, dressed in her finest and most sexy outfit, all ready to go out. It’s a special day. Their eleventh anniversary. How beautiful she looks! He kisses her, she kisses him, he takes the tickets from his pocket with a grand flourish. “Surprise,” he says. “Two weeks in Hawaii, starting next Tuesday! Happy anniversary!” “Oh, Ted!” she cries. “How marvelous! I love you, Ted darling!” He pulls her close to him again. “I love you, Alice dear.”
HOMEFARING
I had always had a sneaking desire to write the definitive giant-lobster story. Earlier science fiction writers had preempted most of the other appealing monstrosities—including giant aunts (sic!), dealt with by Isaac Asimov in his classic story “Dreamworld,” which I have just ruined forever for you by giving away its punchline. But giant lobsters remained fair game. And when George Scithers, the new editor of the venerable science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, asked me in the autumn of 1982 to do a lengthy story for him, I decided that it was time at last for me to give lobsters their due.
The obvious giant-lobster story, in which horrendous pincer-wielding monsters twenty feet long come ashore at Malibu and set about the conquest of Los Angeles by terrorizing the surfers, might work well enough in a cheap Hollywood sci-fi epic, but it wouldn’t have stood much chance of delighting a sophisticated