Mr. Ainsworth looked surprised and faded back into Tanner. A powerful, cold-eyed Tanner who suddenly wrenched free and bent Stan under him. He reached for a water carafe from the table to bring it down to smash Stan's skull.
Stan jerked his head to one side and doubled his legs under him and lashed out with them, catching Tanner in the chest. Tanner staggered backwards towards the hoop, his foot unintentionally pressing the on switch. The circle of black started to build up.
The time pistol was only a few feet away. Stan snatched at it and turned it on the still reeling Tanner. It caught the creature flush at the same time as he toppled back through the black velvet circle.
Stan's last glimpse of The Enemy was of a suddenly very old and aging man—hair whitened and thinning, lines etched deeply in the face, clothes sagging limply from a suddenly shriveled frame—toppling backwards into the hoop.
And then the solid circle of black suddenly broke and faded into the frame again.
Stan turned on his side and got sick. The Bristol hoop had been tuned to Chicago. Only there was no more Chicago and no more hoop there. But Tanner had toppled through—to where?
The creature that had been Mr. Ainsworth and Tanner was lost in a space that had no beginning and no end.