good alibi for their faith when the tricks failed. If he could show them in advance that it didn't work, but hint that a good occultist might figure out the right rhythm, or whatever....

He read it through again, trying to memorize the whole thing. The gestures were—so—and the words—umm....

There was no flash of fire, no smell of sulphur, and no clap of thunder. There was simply a tall creature with yellowish skin and flashing yellow eyes standing in front of the television set. His head was completely hairless, and he was so tall that he had to duck slightly to keep from crashing into the ceiling. His features were too sharp for any human face. There were no scales, however; his gold cape and black tights were spangled, and he wore green shoes with turned up toes. But generally, he wasn't bad looking.

"Mind if I sit down?" the creature asked. He took Henry's assent for granted and dropped into Emma's chair, folding his cape over one arm and reaching for an apple on the side table. "Glad to see you're not superstitious enough to keep me locked up in one of those damned pentagrams. Drat it, I thought the last copy of that book was burned and I was free. Your signal caught me in the middle of dinner."

enry swallowed thickly, feeling the sweat trickle down his nose. The book had warned against summoning the demon without the protective devices! But the thing seemed peaceful enough for the moment. He cleared his voice. "You mean—you mean magic works?"

"Magic—shmagic!" the creature snorted. He jerked his thumb toward the television. "To old Ephriam—the crackpot who wrote the book before he went completely crazy—that set would have been more magic than I am. I thought this age knew about dimensions, planes of vibrations, and simultaneous universes. You humans always were a backward race, but you seemed to be learning the basic facts. Hell, I suppose that means you'll lay a geas on me, after I was hoping it was just an experimental summons!"

Henry puzzled it over, with some of the fright leaving him. The scientific sounding terms somehow took some of the magic off the appearance of the thing. "You mean those passes and words set up some sort of vibrational pattern...."

The hairless fellow snorted again, and began attacking the grapes. "Bunk, Henry! Oh, my name's Alféar, by the way. I mean I was a fool. I should have gone to my psychiatrist and taken the fifty year course, as he advised. But I thought the books were all burned and nobody knew the summons. So here I am, stuck with the habit. Because that's all it is—a conditioned reflex. Pure compulsory behavior. I'm sensitized to receive the summons, and when it comes, I teleport into your plane just the way you pull your hand off a hot stove. You read the whole book, I suppose? Yeah, just my luck. Then you know I'm stuck with any job you give me—practically your slave. I can't even get back without dismissal or finishing your task! That's what comes of saving money by not going to my psychiatrist."

He muttered unhappily, reaching for more grapes, while Henry began to decide nothing was going to happen to him, at least physically. Souls were things he wasn't quite sure of, but he couldn't see how just talking to Alféar could endanger his.

"Still," the creature said thoughtfully, "it could be worse. No pentagram. I never did get mixed up with some of the foul odors and messes some of my friends had to take. And I've developed quite a taste for sugar; tobacco, too." He reached out and plucked a cigarette out of Henry's pack, then a book of matches. He lighted it, inhaled, and rubbed the flame out on his other palm. "Kind of weak tobacco, but not bad. Any more questions while I smoke this? There's no free oxygen where I come from, so I can't smoke there."

"But if you demons answer such—such summons, why don't people