Leo Baxter was only three paces into the stale air of the unused library when he screamed, clasping his hands to his chest and dropped. A peculiar grating, plucking sound came faintly before he thudded to the carpet.
I stopped hard in my tracks and wiped the sweat from my face while Leo Baxter twitched almost at my feet, his heart shredded and bubbling its last in his perforated chest.
The paper clips. The ones I had propelled into nothingness weeks ago.
Hat in hand I advanced slowly, waving it before me chest high. Then it caught suddenly, grated for a split second and passed on in its arc. Now there were several tiny holes in it. I backed away a foot and brought my hat down slowly on the same lethal spot of air. Chest-high it caught and hung suspended.
Leaving it there as a marker I took off my suitcoat, held it before me and inched forward toward the desk. Something plucked at the dangling garment, and a chill froze my spine. Had I been walking forward normally, the tiny speck of metal that barely caught the glint of light from the window, would have pierced my skin at just about the site of my appendix. I circled the spot continuing to feel forward with my coat. That was the paper clip Baxter had fired to demonstrate to me that first day.
At the phone I called headquarters and told the chief what to do.
"You're so right," he told me, his voice slurring strangely. "Only you're a little late. The order went out to confiscate the i-Guns. They think the damned toys might have something to do with the accidents. And I bought one of the first ones for my little Jerry!" His voice sounded hollow.
So they were figuring it out! The next question was, how to extract the deadly particles from the other dimension, or how to keep them from bleeding back slowly into ours.
I moved cautiously through the old house fanning every inch of air ahead of me with a phone book. When I got to Calvin Baxter's workshop I was especially careful, but I needn't have been. The only metal particles stuck into the thin air seemed to be over his work-bench where he had been experimenting with his device. All but one.
It was right where I expected to find it—better than six feet in the air, just forehead high for a man tall as Calvin Baxter. He had fired his proto-type of the i-Gun just once into the middle of the room.