Notes: The following story is a crossover between The Real Ghostbusters and Hardcastle & McCormick with a little Riptide thrown in.

Comments can be sent to the author at: [email protected]

He awoke out of a sound sleep in the quiet darkness and lay there with a sense of urgency he could not explain. There had been nothing to disturb his sleep, no unnatural sound, no faint thump of stereo from the gatehouse, no quiet purr of the Coyote arriving home in the wee hours of the morning. Yet something had disturbed the judge's rest. Milton C. Hardcastle, California Superior Court, Retired, lay quietly, listening, but the only breathing he heard was his own and the house felt empty of unwelcome presences. There was nothing here that did not belong here. He was sure of that.

Slitting open the eye closest to the clock he saw the luminous dial proclaiming the time as four-fifteen a.m. Almost morning, and he was wide awake, though he wasn't sure why. Last night hadn't been a particularly early night. He could get up and go shoot baskets. It would drive McCormick nuts. But it wasn't the compulsion to shoot a few midnight hoops that had awakened him so early. Reluctantly, he opened his other eye and turned his head.

His wife was standing at the foot of the four poster bed gazing at him.

Hardcastle sat bolt upright, staring in shocked disbelief at the misty figure who watched him silently. It was definitely his wife, his Nancy, looking much as she had looked in life--but she had been dead a long time now, too many years, and the image of her that stood watching him was white, hazy and transparent. She looked like herself but for that, wearing a favorite dress, smiling at him lovingly. Haunting. He was being haunted. He, who had never believed in the supernatural, could hardly believe what he saw at the foot of his bed was really a ghost, the ghost of his late wife, yet what else could the misty figure be? Especially when she moved. He shivered, icy cold, his fingers numb as they tried to grip his covers as if they could protect him as they had protected him from childhood terrors. Even drawing them up to his chin didn't make her vanish.

She stretched out a hand to him, beckoning, her face full of urgency as she tried to draw him toward her. Pale lips shaped words but no sound emerged, making the incident even more frightening than if she had actually spoken. In the darkness, he couldn't read her lips; she was too insubstantial for the framing of words to make sense. But he could read her concern, her imperative gesture. She pointed toward the clock. He glanced sideways quickly. The LED display read four-seventeen a.m. One ghostly hand stabbed at the clock, the other gestured urgently toward the door.

"You want me to come with you?" he faltered. His voice quivered, but he threw aside his blanket and stood up. She might be a ghost, but he had loved her and he didn't think she meant him harm. Even in this form she wouldn't hurt him and he knew it. Dying could never change her that much. "Show me what you want me to know," he urged, his voice steadying and gentling as if to avoid driving her away.

Instead she pointed frantically behind her toward the doorway. He took two steps in that direction, then paused when she didn't follow. She drifted fractionally closer but hovered there as if bound. When he braced himself to collect his courage and moved toward her, she put up her hand, palm outward, to hold him at bay. She shook her head and pointed to the clock and then the doorway again.

"I don't understand you, Nancy," he said. "Can you speak?"

She moved her head from side to side again. One final gesture at the clock and the door and she melted away before his eyes.

He fumbled his way back to sit on the edge of his bed, hiding his face in shaking hands. He felt clammy cold; he had broken out in a cold sweat. Nancy. In all the years alone since he had lost her, she had never before come to him. There had been times, long, lonely nights alone, when he had wondered if she would ever appear to him like this, to the house that had been hers first, but she had never come. Now she had stood at the foot of his bed and tried to tell him something, her distress clearly etched upon her face, and he didn't understand it.

Torn in two directions, an urge to flee the room without a backward look warring with the desire to linger in case she came back, he finally shrugged himself up, pulled a robe over his shorts and went downstairs, switching on every light he passed, as if the brightness could keep the spirit world at bay. He blundered into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and took out a can of cold beer. Popping the top, he sat down at the table and took a long swallow, sighing as the cold liquid slid down his throat.

Nancy. He shivered. This was madness. It must have been a nightmare that had passed into waking. It had to be. Much as he longed to see her again, he didn't want it like this. He had been afraid to try touching her in case he felt cold, ectoplasmic nothingness as his hand passed through her transparent body. He gulped another swallow of beer. Nancy.

"Judge?"

At the unexpected question, he bolted out of his chair with a panicked, "Yaaa!" and the beer can went flying, spilling golden liquid in all directions. Even as he struggled to control his startled reaction he recognized the voice and he spun around to face the intruder, also wearing a bathrobe and slippers, his hair a wild tangle of curls. Mark McCormick, the ex-con the judge had arranged to be paroled into his custody, stood in the doorway, gaping at the older man in wide-eyed concern.

"Don't do that, McCormick," the judge snapped bad temperedly. "Don't you know it's wrong to sneak up on somebody? Haven't you ever heard of knocking?"

"I thought maybe you were sick," McCormick returned a little awkwardly as if reluctant to admit his concern, raking a hand through the drooping curls to get them out of his eyes. "I woke up and went to get a drink of water, and all the lights in the house started coming on one by one. I thought something was wrong, you were sick, or there was a burglar or something, but that was a stupid mistake. Hardcase always turns on every light in the place to have his four-thirty a.m. beer. Doesn't everybody?" He glanced at the spilled liquid. "I suppose you'll make me mop up?" he asked with resignation.

"You made me spill it, McCormick." The Judge gave him a pointed stare and waited, tapping his foot. McCormick had a sneaky way of figuring out when things were wrong, especially when the Judge didn't want to tell him about them, and the visitation from his wife's ghost was the last thing he wanted to share with McCormick--or anyone. Knowing Mark, he would fall into the 'spirit' of things with enthusiasm and start laying ghost traps around the estate so he could figure out what was going on. Look how crazy the kid had gotten when he had decided he could trap leprechauns on the estate. Hardcastle didn't want a repeat of that, and even less did he want to confess the combination of turbulent emotions surging through him, horror at the visitation which implied Nancy was resting uneasily, joy at seeing her again even in this state, confusion about her purpose. He didn't understand it. Maybe, like Scrooge had claimed, the ghost was simply the result of indigestion from that spicy chili McCormick had made last night. Though a part of him had enjoyed seeing Nancy again, even in this form, another part of him feared a second visitation. He said nothing and waited. He had a lot more patience than the kid did.

Heaving a much-put-upon sigh, McCormick went for the mop and cleaned up the spilled beer, muttering things under his breath about stubborn donkeys who turned on all the lights in the middle of the night, followed by a list of grievances about cleaning the pool, clipping the hedges, mowing the lawn, weeding the flower beds and any other chores the Judge had ever assigned him. For McCormick, that was pretty mild, and Hardcastle heaved a faint sigh. The younger man had smelled out a mystery and, knowing his stubbornness, he wouldn't rest until he got to the heart of it. The only way to deal with such a thing was to be as high handed as possible, and at that the Judge had plenty of practice.

So the minute the mopping up was done, the Judge pointed to the door. "That's enough for tonight, McCormick. Remember, tomorrow is your day to clip the hedges. I don't want you to complain halfway through that you're too tired to finish."

"I knew I'd be working again as soon as you had time to think about it. Just once I'd like some appreciation around here," McCormick snapped. "Clean the pool, clip the hedges, mow the lawn, fertilize the garden." Now that he was speaking his litany aloud, his voice rose. "The real reason you had me paroled to you was so you could have your own personal slave." But the complaint lacked its usual sting. McCormick was watching him closely, and the grimace he'd slapped on his face only thinly masked his worry. "You sure you're okay, Judge?" he asked in much gentler tones.

"Of course I'm okay," barked Hardcastle, steeling himself against McCormick's concern. "Or at least as okay as anyone would be who had terminal indigestion following last night's killer chili."

"Oh, riiiight," Mark pretended to agree, waving his skepticism like a flag. "Beer's the perfect cure for indigestion. It's a scientific fact. What's the matter, Judge. Bad dreams?"

"No, I did not have a bad dream," he said with the righteousness of perfect truth. "Go to bed, McCormick. Young guys like you need more rest than I do."

"You got that right. I'm not the one who shoots baskets every morning at three a.m." McCormick edged toward the door, hanging back as if he still hoped for true confessions. Hardcastle stabbed a finger in the direction of the gatehouse, and the young man went reluctantly, looking back over his shoulder, disappointment and worry warring for top billing in his expression.

It wasn't that Hardcastle wasn't warmed by Mark's concern for him; he was. It was simply that this was much too personal to share with anyone, even the kid who had, unexpectedly, become his best friend. He tossed the empty beer can in the trash and headed back upstairs, pausing at his bedroom door to peer into the room with cautious doubt. No Nancy. He eased over to the bed and lay down, pulling up the covers before he turned out the light. Then he lay there tense and rigid, waiting in the darkness for a return visitation. He didn't sleep until dawn.

After almost a week of waking in the night to a blaze of lights from every window of Gulls' Way, Mark McCormick decided enough was enough. With each passing day Hardcastle grew progressively more bad tempered, jumpy and tense, though there were times McCormick caught him with a strange little smile upon his face that would vanish in an instant if he noticed Mark watching. He would snap at McCormick without the slightest provocation and stood over him like a stern taskmaster while Mark did his daily chores as if he needed someone to complain about and yell at. Hardcastle did all these things anyway--it had turned into a game between them that both of them enjoyed yet never admitted--but he didn't do them in quite this way. The more time that passed the more Mark realized something was seriously wrong.

Because of the lights in the night, Mark reasoned a possible theory to explain it all. In spite of his fervent denials the judge must be having nightmares and the only way to get the old donkey to admit it was to get proof. If he could confront the judge with certain knowledge, maybe he could make Hardcase confess it and then maybe they could talk about it. Getting the old guy to open up was about as easy as cracking the safe at Fort Knox, but sometimes Mark could weasel his way past Hardcastle's tough armor. He only knew he had to try. Whatever the cause, the Judge was hurting. He only got this nasty when something was seriously wrong, and he was from the old school. He held it all in and didn't talk about it. It made Mark's job the harder, but he could be stubborn, too. He'd been taking lessons from Judge Hardcastle for a couple of years now.

So on the fourth night, Mark set his alarm clock for three a.m. and when it went off, he forced himself out of the warm nest of his covers and dressed in dark clothes so he would not be noticed. Then, flashlight in hand, he crept over to the main house and let himself in through a window he had deliberately unlocked during the evening bout of watching John Wayne movies and eating popcorn with the judge. Since Hardcastle would have had no reason to unlock that window during the day, Mark had hoped he wouldn't check it before retiring, and he hadn't.

Tiptoeing up the stairs, Mark settled himself just outside the Judge's door to wait and see what was going on. The judge seemed to awaken the same time each night, somewhere before four-thirty. Mark expected nightmares, even if they seemed to operate to a time schedule, and with any luck Hardcase would talk in his sleep and give Mark the clue he needed to help his friend.

For a long time, nothing happened, nothing, that is, except a rumble of snoring that Mark was surprised he had never heard in the gatehouse. The luminous dial of Mark's wristwatch revealed the hands of the clock creeping around past four a.m. He yawned widely, leaning his head back against the wall. He'd have to catch a nap this afternoon, if he could sneak away from old Hardcase, who probably had a ton of chores lined up for him since they were between cases. He struggled to keep his eyes open, but the harder he tried, the more his eyes wanted to close...
A crash from the bedroom woke him with a start and he jumped to his feet, blinking sleep from his eyes. That was when he heard the judge say, "Nancy, talk to me. Tell me what you want."

Nancy? The judge's wife? That must be a really bad nightmare, if he was dreaming about her. Mark tiptoed over to the door and edged it open just enough to peer through the crack. Then he froze, his mouth dropping open in shocked disbelief, his stomach twisting as he realized how bad this was for Hardcastle.

Hovering transparently at the foot of the Judge's bed was the ghostly shape of a woman. As Mark watched, she turned, stretched out a hand and pointed right at the eavesdropper. She could see him! He couldn't refrain from taking an uneasy step backward before concern for the judge stopped him in his tracks. The door swung open wider as he moved

"What do you want from me?" Hardcastle demanded again, his eyes never leaving the ghostly shape. Mark had seen photos of Mrs. Hardcastle and he could have sworn this ghost was a dead ringer for her. No wonder the judge was so upset. He was being haunted. Wow! Mark's eyes nearly stood out of his head as he gaped at the spirit. He had never seen a ghost before, and he could have sworn this hadn't happened to the judge before the other night, but the old donkey was so stubborn he'd never admit it if he were seeing ghosts every other night, especially this particular one.

Again the ghostly woman pointed toward the door, and this time the judge followed the gesture with his eyes. "I wish I knew what you were trying to tell--" he began, his voice breaking off as he saw Mark.

"McCormick!" he bellowed, sheer fury in his voice overwhelming the softer tone he'd used to the ghost, his face tightening into hard, unyielding lines. "Get out of here, McCormick, right now!"

"But, Judge, she's--she's haunting you," he stuttered with a nervous wave at the transparent shape. "She's trying to tell you something from beyond the grave."

"It's none of your business," the judge snapped coldly. As he spoke, the misty figure grew even more insubstantial until she vanished altogether. "Now see what you've done!" thundered Hardcastle, leaping out of bed and switching on the light.

"But, Judge--"

"Don't you 'judge' me, McCormick. Just get the hell out of here. This isn't anything to do with you. It's none of your business."

Yes it is, because it's getting to you, McCormick thought, but he knew better than to say it aloud. He hesitated, looking for one trace of softening on the Judge's suddenly granite face, but there was none. Heaving a near-inaudible sigh, Mark turned and headed down the stairs. He didn't know what to do but he knew he had to do something.

McCormick didn't sleep much the rest of the night. He stayed awake watching the main house from his window until the judge finally put out the lights and returned to bed, then he got back into his own bed and lay there trying to think of a solution. The judge had always been one of those old school types who didn't let their feelings out. When most people might get sentimental, he got huffy and stiff-necked, and once Mark had figured that out, he had begun to enjoy the experience, realizing the old donkey liked him in spite of loud-voiced protests to the contrary. But there was a downside to it, too, because Hardcastle didn't like anybody touching certain personal areas, which meant it was damned hard to offer him sympathy. He'd rarely really talked to Mark about his son Tommy who had died in Vietnam, and after the first attempt to learn something had been shot down without hesitation, Mark had been careful not to bring up the subject. Gradually the judge had unwound and talked to him a little about Tommy and even about his wife, but never about the pain of his loss. It was as if that had been sealed away in a place that could never be breached.

Tonight a 'ghost' had breached it.

The ghost had looked awfully real to Mark, but he remembered a program he'd seen on TV about a week earlier that had dealt with phony seances and the high tech equipment that had been used to fake them. It might be some kind of scam, taking in the judge because he would want to see his wife so badly that he might believe it. He was bound to have plenty of enemies after his years on the bench, and one of them might have gone out of his way to figure a plan to get even. Yet the ghost had looked real, believable. Mark frowned. A fake should look real or no one would believe it. What he needed was a way to tell the difference. A ghost might have a hidden agenda, but someone who would go to that much trouble to fake it could have a worse one. If Hardcastle wasn't thinking clearly about it, then it was up to Mark to reason it out before the judge got hurt--or at least hurt any worse than the sight of his late wife had hurt him.

He fell asleep still wondering how he'd be able to tell the difference.

Morning brought no easy answers, but he got up early in spite of his broken rest and headed up to the main house, where he sneaked in  and started cooking breakfast, all the high cholesterol things Hardcase downed with gusto that never seemed to damage his iron constitution. Coming downstairs to find coffee waiting and bacon and eggs frying in the pan, the judge might be mellower than he would be otherwise. Mark brought in the paper, arranged it next to the judge's plate, then sneaked it open to do a quick skim. No matter how carefully he always folded the paper afterwards, Hardcastle knew McCormick had read it each time. Mark figured this would give him something a little different to yell about--a good distraction.

That was when he turned a page and saw a possible solution to his midnight plans laid out before him. Just what the doctor ordered, and Mark would enjoy himself in the process, because it was always good to encounter an old friend. Mark started to grin as he took note of the time and location of the conference mentioned, jotting it down on a napkin and stuffing it in his pocket, just in time to fold the paper up again at the approach of Hardcastle, who stalked in warily clad in his New York Yankees baseball cap, a grungy old tee shirt and sweatpants.

The older man caught the gesture as Mark had hoped he would. "Reading my paper again, McCormick?" he asked stiffly as if he wanted to yell his head off but felt a little embarrassed over last night's display of temper. Not that Hardcastle could be embarrassed that easily, but there were times when he came down too hard on McCormick and tried to make up for it afterwards. Not with apologies. That wasn't the judge's style. But Mark always knew when he was forgiven.

This time he wasn't, quite, but the judge was a little awkward about last night. So Mark said quickly, "Yeah, and making your breakfast. Have some coffee. I think we both need it."

He left the reason unspoken, and Hardcastle's eyes narrowed, but he didn't comment. He only took the cup when Mark poured his coffee. When the younger man opened his mouth, he said firmly, "Last night is off limits, McCormick. I know you meant well, but I don't want to talk about it."

McCormick started to protest and caught himself. "I--okay, Judge. I just wondered--there's something I need to do today. Can I clean out the pool tomorrow?"

That sent suspicion flaring on the older man's face, but he must have come to the conclusion that if Mark wasn't here, he wouldn't be able to ask awkward questions. "First thing in the morning, McCormick," he said, still stiff and awkward. "It was the hedges, not the pool. And you better not be going to see Frank about last night."

"I wouldn't do that, Judge," Mark replied with righteous indignation. Talking to Frank Harper, their policeman friend, hadn't occurred to him, though it might be a good idea if his primary plan fell through. If this was a scam, the police needed to be involved, though Mark didn't want to take that step except as a last resort. "Word of honor."

"And I don't want you talking to any private detectives," the judge growled. "I know what you're thinking, it's a scam, but it's not."

"No detectives either, Judge. Actually I want to go to a New Age convention."

That startled Hardcastle, then he nodded as if it made sense to him. "I see a woman in this, McCormick. You're not the type to go in for all that New Age psychobabble otherwise. I'm right, aren't I? You've got a date?"

"Well, kinda," Mark replied. "But it's not like you think. I've got an old friend in town and he's gonna be there. I haven't seen him since I was about sixteen years old, and it'll be good to talk over the old days."

"He's not another ex-con, is he?" the judge demanded suspiciously.

"He's a scientist," Mark replied virtuously, though there was a time he never would have believed it. He hoped the judge didn't ask what kind of a scientist, because one answer would be completely unacceptable, and the other answer, that he was a psychologist, wouldn't go over big either. The judge would be sure Mark was getting too close and messing with his mind, and Mark wasn't, not really. He wasn't looking for a psychologist today. That might come, but right now it was the science he needed.

"Scientist, eh?" Hardcastle shook his head, looking slightly relieved that they weren't to have a breakfast confrontation. "Well, that's a change of pace, McCormick. You go visit your scientist friend, but first thing tomorrow, you do the hedges--and the pool."

McCormick grimaced extravagantly. "And then trim the hedges and then paint the gate and then...."

"Now you're cooking," the judge replied, and, for the moment, peace reigned between them, though it was a tenuous peace, with too many things left unspoken. Mark was pretty sure his planned intervention wouldn't go over well with Hardcastle, but he didn't believe he had a choice. Taking the situation at the best possible level, the judge's wife had come back to help him, to say goodbye one more time, or to warn him of trouble. Between that and a dangerous scam there were all kinds of options and none of them appealed to him.

McCormick set off thoughtfully, half afraid he was only going to make things worse.

Dr. Peter Venkman was not a happy camper. Sure this was California, land of sunshine and movie stars, but he should have known a California-based paranormal conference would include not only the genuine parapsychologists but the lunatic fringe. Every woman he'd met was either strange beyond belief (and interested in him), gorgeous and caught up in her work (and uninterested), or involved with someone already. Peter settled his thatch of brown hair, struck a pose and waited to be noticed. Nothing happened except for two teen aged boys who stopped by excitedly to ask for autographs. It wasn't every day they got to meet one of New York's famous Ghostbusters.

Egon Spengler was in heaven. He'd encountered twin sisters who were also physicists, drop-dead-gorgeous and fascinated by the blond Ghostbuster. They hadn't stopped talking since they met, and old Spengs looked a little dazed by their intrigued interest in him. Maybe there was hope for the physicist yet. Peter had even heard one of them rhapsodizing over Egon's decidedly peculiar hairstyle, and at that point Egon had stepped sideways and said in Peter's ear, "Well, we know they have good taste, anyway," ducking away before Peter could poke him in amused disgust, his blue eyes full of enthusiasm behind his red-rimmed glasses.

Ray Stantz, the Ghostbusters' occult specialist and youngest member of the team, was chatting busily and delightedly with a geeky guy in glasses repaired with adhesive tape and the pocket of his rather garish shirt full of pens in a plastic holder. He had 'computer nerd' spelled out all over him but he must be spinning a good yarn. Peter saw Ray nodding in eager excitement as the geek gestured expansively as he made his point, The Ghostbuster capped the man's story with one of his own, winning from the dark haired man a braying laugh that made Peter wince to hear it. Different strokes and all that. Ray was having fun anyway, and Peter was glad of that, though it wasn't his kind of fun.

Winston had happily greeted two beach bum types who had been with Ray's new friend, one blonde with a classic profile and slightly preppy appearance, the other dark haired and well muscled, both of them tan. They looked so normal in this gathering of the outre they seemed out of place amid the fortune tellers, firewalkers, channelers, and out and out frauds who wove their way amid the genuine paranormal experts like Dr. Loyd Auerbach, and Dr. Juliana Moorhouse, chairman of the Paranormal Studies Department at Georgetown Institute.

At the sight of Winston, though, the two 'straights' had fallen upon him with loud cries of delighted recognition, which led to a round of energetic backslapping and plenty of catching up. Peter heard the dark-haired one say, "...haven't seen you since that last evac mission..." before the trio vanished into the nearest bar with them to reminisce over old times. Buddies from Vietnam, evidently. Winston didn't talk much about the war, knowing the other three had not been over there and probably wouldn't understand. Peter was glad to see him run into some old friends from those days so he could remember the good and share the pain of the bad.

Peter looked around at the collection of the strange and bizarre all around him. Was that Edgar Benedek vanishing into one of the conference rooms with his stuffy Professor buddy, Jonathan MacKensie, one of Moorhouse's underlings? Peter would as soon avoid Benedek, who had written several scurrilous stories about the Ghostbusters, and he suspected MacKensie would as soon avoid the Ghostbusters altogether. A genuine skeptic, MacKensie, in spite of the decidedly odd experiences he let Benedek drag him into. He'd made it clear the one time Benny introduced them that he considered Ghostbusting nothing but a scam. Peter saw Benny duck out of sight as Dr. Moorhouse approached MacKensie, the journalist's eyes alight with amusement. Peter ducked in the other direction. He wasn't up to listening to Benedek's off-the-wall patter, though he might come back to that as a last resort.

An fortyish woman who looked like a fortune teller paused and studied Peter with blatant interest, huge green eyes growing even wider as if she had discovered mystical symbols carved upon his forehead. She was striking rather than beautiful with a braid thick as Peter's wrist curling over one shoulder and a pendant of the Eye of Horus on a silver chain around her neck, just above some truly impressive cleavage. Peter couldn't help enjoying the view, but he recognized the type, and he didn't want to get caught up in whatever scam she was running. As if suspecting he meant to bolt and run, she made an imperious gesture, beckoning him closer. Peter pointed to himself and lifted a questioning eyebrow, and she nodded.

There was something so compelling about the look in her emerald eyes he took a couple of involuntary steps in her direction, and she put out both hands and lay her palms against his temples as if it were here normal method of greeting total strangers. "Beware, Ghostbuster," she said. Well, the identification required no skill. Even if Peter hadn't considered himself famous and expected recognition wherever he went, he was wearing his uniform jumpsuit with the familiar logo on the left sleeve. Since Egon and Ray were scheduled for two panels, there had been a write-up on the Ghostbusters in the convention's program book, and Ray had insisted they wear their jumpsuits to speed the recognition factor. So far, Peter wasn't impressed by her powers as a seer, though her overall presence was more than impressive.

"Beware what?" he asked lightly, determined to not seem to fall for her scam.

"There will be a great fall," she said ominously. "You will search and not find, but do not despair. Everything comes to he who refuses to give up."

"If you say so," he replied. "And who puts Humpty Dumpty together again?" He gave her an engaging grin, though she appeared quite underwhelmed at the sight of Peter's charm.

"I can say no more." She paused to adjust the multicolored scarf she wore around her waist, smoothing its pointed edge down against her skirt with both hands. "Remember. The words will have meaning soon enough."

"Okay. I'll remember," he promised. She looked as if she were finished with him, her eyes scanning the crowd, so he edged away, mentally filing her message in the 'round file'. It didn't really mean anything, did it? Beware indeed. What kind of great fall. Well, Peter hated heights. He'd just stay away from any nasty places like that. He didn't feel the slightest premonition as he stared at her retreating figure. It was all hype anyway, just a game. Hadn't there been a sparkle of mischief in her eyes. He wondered if Ray had put her up to it. But Ray was still chatting to that character named Murray, and hadn't spared so much as a glance in Peter's direction during the encounter, and wasn't sneaking looks at him now to gauge how well his prank had gone over. No, it was just a chance encounter. Beware of heights, Peter, the brown-haired Ghostbuster told himself, and scanned the room with his eyes, hoping to find one of his buddies free and seeking out his company. Not a chance.

A little miffed at his friends' defection Peter stalked in the opposite direction from the fortune teller, looking for someone interesting to talk to. He was bored and frustrated. None of the other Ghostbusters had given a thought for Peter's ennui, and the longer he watched Egon talking ectoplasmic physics with the twins, the more frustrated he grew. He'd tried to score with them but when they had found out Physics was greek to him, they had sighed and turned back to Egon without a second's hesitation. This was not the way the famous Dr. Venkman liked to be treated.

He felt a little left out, if the truth were told. He shouldn't. He was a parapsychologist in his own right, and enjoyed his work. This whole conference should be right up his alley but somehow it wasn't working out. Egon had warned him he should have agreed to serve on a panel rather than using the whole conference as a chance to hunt for women, but Peter hadn't wanted to be tied down to panels when he could roam at leisure and follow his instincts. This was California, land of surf and sun, and he'd envisioned himself sneaking off to a beach with one of the lovely women who were sure to be at the conference, impressing them because he was a Ghostbuster. It hadn't turned out that way.

He glanced over at Ray, hoping he'd finished talking to the geek, but Ray was still going at it a mile a minute over something called 'ghost repellant'. Now that was a subject which held some promise. Peter hoped he could get a sample later and spray it on his pillow to keep Slimer away. The only good thing about this conference so far was that their little green ghost mascot was still back in New York, loosely supervised by their secretary, Janine Melnitz. Peter didn't have to fend off ectoplasmic noogies and worry about slime in his bed or his boots.

"Hey, Pete."

Recognition! At last! Peter turned, half expecting the eager voice was talking to someone else the way his luck was running, but he found himself face to face with a curly-haired man of much his own age who was grinning at him in sheer delight. "Bet you don't remember me," the newcomer said expectantly and waited for the memory to click in.

After the first startled moment, Peter did. "Geez. Mark McCormick. I lost track of you years ago. How long has it been we worked that carney together? I was seventeen; you must've been a year younger. Back in the dark ages. What are you doing in California?"

"I live here," McCormick replied with a smile. "I've been out here awhile. I work for a judge these days."

"A judge? That doesn't sound like the Mark McCormick I remember, the one who hated authority so much. Anybody told you what to do, you'd raise your hackles and dig in your heels. All you ever talked about was cars," he recalled, dredging up those long-ago days when the two of them compared notes on life, girls, future plans, and the rottenness of fate. "You ever get into racing?" Peter asked. He had nearly forgotten the way the young McCormick had handled the wheel of the battered old car he'd bought on a shoestring and kept running with blind luck and sheer determination for the whole summer before it bit the dust.

"Yeah, for awhile," McCormick replied, reminiscently. "I did pretty well on the Can/Am Circuit. Won my share of races, collected some good purses. But I'm not doing it now, though you'd love my car. It's a prototype, the Coyote. I'll show it to you in awhile. I'm working for a retired superior court judge, getting a few things together, and thinking about going to law school."

Peter cocked his head in surprise. Law school? Weird. He remembered Mark McCormick as a scrappy teenager who spent most of the summer trying to keep up with the older Peter, seeing who could outdo each other in getting into trouble, and managing to get into quite a lot of it. Early in the summer they'd discovered a bond. Mark's father had deserted him and his mother when his son was five, and Peter's father, while around fairly often, was not a father to be counted on. Peter hadn't learned the lesson as young as Mark had but by the time he'd been ten he'd been on his way to cultivating a world-weary cynicism to shelter himself from any misplaced pity. Mark had the technique down pat, and the two of them had reached a good understanding that went beyond their friendly rivalry. They didn't quite become good friends; both of them knew the summer would end and they'd go their separate ways, and neither of them was willing to allow someone close who was only going to go away again. But there had been a modicum of trust. Peter had liked the younger McCormick and was genuinely glad to see him now. Hard to imagine Mark going to law school though. But who would have ever thought that young Peter Venkman would turn out respectable, not to mention famous. Why not McCormick, too? "You in law school? You've changed."

McCormick looked a little embarrassed. "I haven't even told Hardcastle yet. I'm not sure I want him to know until I see if I can cut it, you know, get my first grades and see how I'm doing. He's done a lot for me. I kind of want to give something back. You can't see me as a legal eagle?"

"Well, it wouldn't be my first guess," replied Peter, grinning. "Standing up in court in a suit, no, but mouthing off, yeah, I guess I can picture that. You always were a fast talker."

"Look who's talking. Motormouth, some of the carney people called you. The last thing I ever expected of you was that you'd turn into a scientist," Mark replied, amusement on his face. "I thought you'd team up with your dad and run the best scams going. You two had it down to an art--I remember that woman from Baltimore and your dad trying to sell her a fake necklace that was supposed to be genuine rubies."

Peter grimaced. "Pop's lucky she didn't send every cop from Interpol to the Mounties after him with that one. Remember how he took off and didn't show up again for three weeks?" Peter had wondered if his father planned on coming back at all, but he'd bluffed it out as if it didn't matter. Team up with his dad? By then he knew it would never happen, though he tended to play along with those who thought him a chip off the old block. "I thought of it," Peter said, who had, for maybe ten minutes when he was a lot younger. He'd already known that summer that he meant to go to college, though he hadn't admitted it to his father yet, let alone any of the carney folks. "But I wanted to go to school. It worked out better than I thought. I ran into Egon and then Ray, and we teamed up; partners for years now. Things are going good, though this conference has its share of weirdos." He gestured around to make his point. "New Agers 'R Us."

Mark nodded understandingly, glancing around. "Yeah. I told the judge I was coming here and he was sure it was because I knew a girl who was going. But I just met a woman who told me she'd known me in a past life, and another said she could read my aura, and there was some guy outside who tried to get me into channelling. Said I was born for it." He grimaced. "It's all interesting, but they're a little over the top, you know what I mean?"

"You called that one. I haven't found any women here either, except the kind you've mentioned. Somebody just told me there'd be a great fall, and I said I wasn't Humpty Dumpty. I'll watch out for walls, though, in case she's right. So what about it? Anybody serious for you?"

Mark shook his head. "Not yet. I've got some things to get straight first. You?"

Peter shook his head. "Still playing the field. It wouldn't do to deprive the ladies of my shining presence one second too early. Hey, come on, let's find a place to sit down, catch up on old times."

"Yeah." Mark looked around. "How about the bar."

They got a booth, Peter waving at Winston who was still talking nineteen to the dozen with his buddies from Nam, and ordered beer, recalling the good old days and bringing each other up to date on their past histories. It wasn't until the drinks had come and they'd each had a swallow that Mark said in a quiet voice, "I found my dad."

Peter hadn't expected that, but he was wise enough in the ways of disappointing fathers to recognize the tone in Mark's voice. Mark was glad to have found him, but he could have been a lot gladder. It hadn't been the fairy tale solution McCormick had longed for all those years while his mom worked double jobs to keep them going. "Another gem like my old man?" He let his sympathy show but kept it understated, suspecting Mark would back off if Peter overplayed it.

"They probably know each other," Mark replied. "He's a lounge singer. Sort of shady." The tone of his voice didn't encourage questions at all.

"I know the type. So does my Pop. In fact, my Dad is kind of shady, too, so I know what it's like. Too bad."

Mark heaved a sigh. "We went out to Atlantic City and tracked him down. I'd been trying to find him and finally got a handle on it. He uses the name Sonny Daye." Peter grimaced sympathetically, and Mark continued, "The judge came along, stuck with me all through it. I thought my dad had gotten the judge to do something shady to help me out, but I found out later it was the other way around. My dad would probably have left me to sink or swim if Hardcase hadn't been there."

"Hardcase?"

"Yeah, Judge Hardcastle. I got paroled into his custody. I thought it was the final straw, 'cause he was the one who sentenced me in the first place. I got busted for stealing my own car." He said it flatly as if determined to get it over with and move on.

Peter's eyes widened. Mark had been wild that summer and, looking back, Peter could see a potential for trouble in him. But he could see it in his younger self as well, and it had been the luck of the draw and that strong determination of Peter's to head for college that had kept him away from anything crooked enough to send him up the river. "That sucks. How did it happen?"

"I put the car in my girlfriend's name for insurance reasons, but it was my car. When I tried to take it, she turned me in. The paperwork was in her favor." He looked down at the table top as if it were the most fascinating thing he had ever seen. "I did two years. San Quentin." He sounded like he had to get it said to give Peter a chance to take off if he meant to, but Peter could hear the sincerity in his voice. He wasn't lying about it.

"Lousy break," Peter sympathized. Though he wouldn't say the kid could never have gone wrong, he believed him about the car. "Good thing you weren't in longer. So is this judge one of the good guys after all? He sounds like it, if he stuck with you."

Mark grinned. "Yeah, he's one of the white hats. I thought he was crazy at first. He shoots baskets in the middle of the night, and I swear to god he keeps a Miranda card in his shorts in case he needs it. Once somebody broke into the gatehouse of his estate, where I stay, and he came down with a shotgun and started blasting everything in sight--in his shorts. He's a character."

Peter stared. The judge sounded bizarre, but Mark was clearly fond of him. "Weird guy."

Mark grinned. "Yeah, and once he inherited a midget race horse. I swear to god it was about this high." He gestured with one hand. "He's a genuine, certified character." The smile faded. "And he's the real reason I'm here today, though it's great to see you again. I want to hire you and your buddies."

"The judge has a ghost?" Peter asked, interested. Maybe it would get the guys out of this place and let them do something interesting, and besides, he was kind of curious about Hardcastle. "Not even being a rich legal eagle protects people from spooks? What kind of ghost is it? Big and nasty? Lots of teeth? Small and fast? Class eleven mega-specter?"

"I don't know what that is, but it isn't like that. It's his wife," McCormick replied seriously. "I knew something was bugging him, and I kept watch; every night all the lights would come on. I live in the gatehouse at Gulls' Way, and the judge is in the main house. Every night like clockwork all the lights would come on and he wouldn't talk about it, so I sneaked in to see what was going on. The judge isn't one for spilling his guts and I knew I'd never get him to open up about whatever was bothering him. I thought he was having bad dreams and if I hung around long enough I might get him to admit it, but I was wrong. It was his wife, all right, misty and transparent, standing at the foot of his bed. From the way he acted, it was a new thing; she hasn't been doing it for years. She doesn't seem to talk to him, just gestures. I saw her." He shivered. "Nasty. Not that she looks nasty or anything; it's just that the only other thing that could hit him as hard would be the ghost of his son, Tommy, who was killed in Vietnam."

"I wonder what made her start manifesting now," Peter said thoughtfully. He swirled the amber liquid around in his glass, speculating on what would make the judge's wife appear all of a sudden. "Is Hardcastle dating somebody? Thinking of getting hitched again?" That might be one thing that would bring the late wife onto the scene.

Mark shook his head, surprised at the question but recognizing it as a logical one. "No. He doesn't date very often and I haven't seen him fall really seriously since I've known him. I don't know what's causing it, or why she shows up every morning at four a.m. but it's driving Hardcase nuts. He's not exactly a laugh a minute on a good day, but now he glooms around and bites my head off and gives me a ton of extra chores to do. Not my idea of a good time."

Mark was obviously very worried about him in spite of his complaints. It stood out a mile. Peter grinned. He realized Mark was probably risking getting reamed for his attempt at help, but he was willing to take the flak out of friendship. It was a motive Venkman could understand. He'd do the same for the other three Ghostbusters and never stop to count the cost. That made him offer, "Why don't I come over with you and take a look? This place isn't my speed. Though it might be fun to tear Egon away from those gorgeous twin blondes."

"Twin blondes?" Mark asked, perking up and looking around in case he'd missed them.

"Forget it unless you can spout physics instead of normal small talk," responded Peter with a grimace. "I'll grab a P.K.E. meter and take some readings and we'll be able to tell if it's really a ghost or not. It isn't always. Sometimes it's imagination or something else--somebody rigging it to look like a ghost--but you've seen it too. You didn't know what to expect and you saw what he did. So either it's a scam--and what you saw is possible with a really high tech medium; we've run into a few in our time--or it's a genuine ghost."

"It was transparent--and it knew I was there. I don't think a computer-assisted recording would have been able to do that; turn and react to me," argued Mark. He took a swallow of his beer, clearly shaken by the memory. "The judge never believed in ghosts. I think I do, though I haven't really run into any until now. Do you think it could really be a fake?"

"There are ways to manage even that," Peter said thoughtfully, remembering the scam the phony psychic Dr. Bassingame had tried to perpetrate on Ray's aunt a year or so earlier. It hadn't been a very good one, either, but Aunt Lois had bought into it, mostly because she wanted to, which was, in general, why most scams worked. The judge might want to see his late wife so badly he'd believe it whether it was an obvious fake or not. McCormick was worried about the judge, but he was still a more impartial observer than his boss, since he'd evidently met Hardcastle after his wife's death. He hadn't been thinking of a ghost when he'd set up his midnight watch, so he'd come to the encounter with no preconceived notions which made him a decent witness. "Come on, let's find the guys. See if any of them want to come along."

Winston was closest, still talking with his old army buddies. He looked up and grinned at Peter. "Hey, Pete. I want you to meet Nick Ryder and Cody Allen. I knew them in Nam. This is Peter Venkman, guys."

Ryder and Allen gave him twin knowing looks, which made Peter wonder suspiciously just exactly what tall tales Winston had been telling them about him. They were both well tanned, beach bum types, so Peter was surprised when Winston said they were private detectives. They didn't look the part, really.

"And this is Mark McCormick, an old buddy of mine from working summers for the carney when we were both in high school," Peter introduced. "This place is turning into old home week. I ran into Benny out there, Winston."

"Where?" asked Zeddemore. "Not in here, I hope?"

Peter grinned and shook his head. "No, out there somewhere. He won't look for stories for the National Register in here. Never mind Benny, though. Mark wants to hire us, Winston. He might have a ghost."

"A dangerous one?" Winston asked in the tones of one who is comfortable and enjoying himself and doesn't really want to get up and run around in a proton pack. Nick and Cody looked intrigued but not altogether surprised, as if the idea of a ghost was not unreasonable to either of them. That was interesting. Or maybe they'd been listening to Winston long enough that nothing could surprise them about the Ghostbusters.

"No," said Mark slowly, considering it. "I don't think so. It hasn't done anything yet anyway, except wake up Judge Hardcastle. He's not happy about it, but he's not hurt anyway."

"Then why don't you take some preliminary readings, Pete, and if it looks bad, call," Winston urged. "I haven't seen these two clowns in more years than I like to think about and I don't want to miss this chance to play catch-up."

Peter nodded. "It sounds like a simple class four," he explained. "Maybe I can help it disperse peacefully."

"Go for it," Winston urged. As Peter steered Mark away he heard the conversation behind him shift to Ghostbusting, while Nick and Cody asked questions. Cody sounded fascinated but Nick was slightly less ready to buy what a lot of people still took as a scam. Peter would have to talk to the guy later and make him see how valid a business it really was.

He found Ray next, still talking to the geek. "Peter, this is Murray Bozinsky," Ray introduced in the tones of one who has captured a celebrity. "He's one of the top computer men in the whole country. Does security programs and he's written some great games, including that one you play all the time."

"Star Blaster?" Peter asked in astonishment.

"That's the one."

Bozinsky laughed. "One of many. I've done some research on your business, Dr. Venkman, and I've just been talking to Ray about designing a really top of the line Ghostbusters game. I know there's a couple of them out there, but they haven't been touched in years. The technology has gone beyond that and we could bring them up to date. I'm talking virtual reality here. It's the cutting edge. In a few years that's probably going to be everywhere."

"Wow, Peter," exulted Ray, bouncing up on his toes in delight at the idea.

"Fine, Ray, and I'm very excited about it," Peter said. "But right now we've got a job. This is my old buddy Mark McCormick, and he's got a job for us. A class four."

"Wow," repeated Ray. "It's a good thing we brought all our equipment out here with is. I didn't know we'd be lucky enough to get a job, but this is even better than those demos we gave last night. Where are Winston and Egon?"

"Winston's talking with a couple of buddies from Nam. He'll come if it turns bad enough--he said to call."

"Nick and Cody," Murray said knowingly, nodding. "They're my partners. What's a class four?" Partners? wondered Peter. Murray was part of a private detective agency? Peter had been sure he was living the high life at Silicon Valley rather than risking himself on divorce cases and corporate security, or whatever the guys who played Sherlock Holmes did these days.

Ray explained hastily. "It's the ghost of a real person, someone who's been identified, a ghost we know by name. We don't always trap that kind. Sometimes they just have something unfinished and we can help them. I love this kind of job. It's great when we can help them disperse to a higher plane without having to bust them."

"Where's Egon?" Peter asked. He hadn't seen old Spengs and his two acolytes since emerging from the bar.

"I think his panel's just started. Those blondes are on it with him," Ray replied, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the conference rooms. "Murray and I were going to go sit in, but Egon will understand if we miss it."

"So we'll take the ghost on our own. It doesn't sound too dangerous," Peter said, hoping he was right. He didn't really want to run around in his pack and blast things; it had been a long drive out from New York and he wanted to kick back and take it easy. Talking the ghost into going away would be much more to his liking than a lot of thrower and trap work.

"Can I come, Ray?" asked Murray excitedly with an eager laugh. "I've met a ghost myself once. That's why I developed that great ghost repellant spray, I was telling you about." Turning to Peter, he added, "I brought a sample with me." He pulled a spray bottle out of the inside pocket of his corduroy jacket and held it up for them to see. "It should keep ghosts away."

"Sure, you can come," Ray agreed before Peter or Mark could open their mouths. McCormick's face fell; serious Ghostbusters he might manage to justify, but computer experts with spray ghost repellent might be a little harder for the judge to swallow. He'd have to hope they could sneak in and take readings before Hardcastle realized what was going on. With luck the Judge might even be out. Peter halfway hoped he was. He had a feeling meeting Judge Hardcastle was not destined to be the highlight of his life.

"You did what, McCormick?" the judge bellowed at a decibel level nearly guaranteed to shatter eardrums. "Are you out of your mind?"

"But, Judge, I--"

Sneaking into Gulls' Way, Judge Hardcastle's Malibu estate, had not proven easy, especially since the judge himself was on the front lawn when Peter drove Ecto-1 up the driveway toward the house. He and the other three Ghostbusters had decided it might be useful to give a display of Ecto's armament, and so had driven across country, fascinating people who passed them or they passed on the freeways and interstates with the sight of Ecto-1, its roof armaments and no-ghost logo identifying it plainly for everyone who saw them.

Peter and Ray had simply fetched down two proton packs from their hotel rooms in case the ghost in question proved to be someone other than the Judge's late wife, and Ray got his P.K.E. meter and left a note for Egon and Winston. They didn't expect it would take very long. Mark rode with them in Ecto to give them directions, planning to pick up his own car later.

The journey to Malibu was 'enlivened' by Murray's constant chatter, speculating about what they would find and professing his eagerness to help bust a ghost. "I can't wait till I tell Nick and Cody what I've been doing this afternoon," he enthused. "They'll never believe it. This is going to be boss." Mark rolled his eyes at Peter and heaved a give-me-patience sigh.

Ray was just as enthusiastic as Murray, but Peter found Ray's eagerness a lot easier to take. He questioned Mark in great detail about the ghost sighting, picking up tiny details that seemed to surprise Peter's old friend, about her appearance, her clothing, even her hairstyle, which was had been a number of years out of date, startling Mark as he realized he'd noticed without even realizing it.

"People who set up fake ghosts with computers and stuff don't always think about that kind of thing," Ray said. "Of course it's easier for them to give the appearance of a ghost with hair flowing in the wind, which will disguise any style. It's hard to get the face to move just right, either, but there are ways to do it. I went to a house rigged by a high tech medium once, and everything moved, even the furniture, when certain key words were said. It was great. There were ghosts run by computers in adjoining rooms, and a microphone setup that disguised the voice to produce a spooky sound. They let us play with it once they showed us how things worked. That's how Egon and I knew what Bassingame was trying to pull when he tried to scam my Aunt Lois," Ray concluded. "We have to stay on top of things like that, because every now and then somebody thinks it would be great to try to fool us, and that would look bad if they got away with it."

"Yeah, but wouldn't Hardcastle have noticed if somebody was hauling high tech equipment into Gulls' Way?" Mark demanded skeptically. "I know I'd probably have noticed it. He stands over every repairman who comes near the place and tells them what they're doing wrong, and drives them crazy."

"They'd find a way to sneak it in when he wasn't home," Ray argued. "You don't realize what can be done by a skilled fake. It doesn't even take much equipment in the house, but I can check for that."

"Yeah, and they'd have to leave some of the equipment on site," Murray put in. "Because no matter how good a remote system they've got, they need something to latch onto right there in the room, a hidden projector of some kind. They make them really small nowadays and they're hard to find. I know because I've helped design some snooper equipment for a couple of major firms who wanted to monitor the premises at night to see if their employees were ripping them off with computer time and with equipment theft. They could park outside the grounds and trigger things. Short of that, they could run it on a timer, only that wouldn't explain the ghost turning to look at Mark."

"They'd have to use a timer if it's the same time every night," Peter said. "That's suspicious right there. Not all ghosts are that good at keeping to a schedule. Slimer sure isn't."

"Except he knows to be there right when it's time to eat. And Ghosts do keep to a schedule," Ray argued. "Fixed repeaters do." When Mark and Murray gave him questioning looks he explained. "They're the kind of apparitions that show up at the same time every night and walk down the same hallway. They aren't really aware of what's actually going on beyond the same pattern. They're trapped in a moment in time, playing it over and over again. But this isn't a fixed repeater, not if it noticed Mark. And if it's a scam, that indicates really good monitoring equipment right in the room and a live feed with the ghost being acted out on the spot. That's almost too complex, though it's not beyond current technology."

"Maybe they've got one of those heat scanners that can tell if there's another person around," Murray argued. "It would give a pattern to indicate where Mark was for whoever was faking it. They can do that from a satellite, let alone from across the street. They could be tied into a studio somewhere."

"Hold it," Peter objected. "Time out. Yeah, we know all that high tech stuff is possible, but it takes major bucks. Our equipment costs a fortune to run, so I'd bet running a phony seance with top of the line equipment wouldn't go for peanuts either. That means it's either legit, which we can tell with our P.K.E. meters or somebody with access to major bucks has it in for the judge. He have any rich enemies, Mark?"

"Possible, but why would they want to spend it all pulling this kind of a scam?" He had a good point there. People out for revenge didn't usually throw around big bucks to get it when it was so much easier to pull a gun and blow their enemy away or frame him with fake pictures. "I think it's real, Pete," the curly-haired man continued. "I don't know what's going on, but I think it's real."

They arrived at the house then and Peter eyed it with awe. He liked to visit the homes of the rich and famous whenever he got the chance. Maybe Hardcase even had a butler. The huge mansion was on a short cliff over the ocean and was reached by means of a long drive across a sloping lawn, and it spelled money. The drive culminated in a circle around a fountain with water sparkling and dancing in the sun. Palm trees and shrubbery decorated the spotless green lawns, probably maintained by McCormick. Peter looked up at the house with appropriate awe. Maybe it wasn't so unlikely that the judge had a wealthy enemy after all, somebody who wanted to get his hands on all this.

If there was a butler, he didn't get a chance to open the door for them because a man was crossing the front lawn as Ray pulled Ecto-1 to a stop in front of the house, a character in grubby clothes and a Yankees cap that Peter, at first glance, took for the yardman. He was white-haired but moved with the easy grace of a younger man. At the sight of the Ghostbusters' vehicle, his eyes narrowed and he strode forward with a look on his face that made Peter suspect he meant to pick it up bodily and throw it off the property, passengers and all. At the sight of McCormick emerging from the back seat and Peter and Ray in their uniform jumpsuits, his eyes narrowed and he demanded, "What the hell is this?" He wasn't the yardman, Peter realized. He was the judge. An eccentric judge to go by his present attire. One thing McCormick had been right about; the judge had a quick temper.

"I was worried about you, Judge," said Mark. "I know you're not sleeping, and this whole thing could be a big fake, so I looked up an old buddy of mine, Peter Venkman. He's one of the Ghostbusters and he's here in town for that convention I told you about." Mark spoke quickly as if he hoped he could get it all said before the judge exploded. He just barely managed it.

"You did what, McCormick!?" roared Hardcastle. "Are you out of your mind!?"

"But, Judge, I--"

Hardcastle opened his mouth for what looked like an earthsplitting roar of annoyance, only to have Ray cut in quickly before he could speak. "Judge Hardcastle, I'm Ray Stantz of the Ghostbusters. We haven't come to bust your wife. We wouldn't do that. We're here for two reasons."

"Whatever they are, you can turn around and go back the way you came," the judge said, his face closing up. Peter had a pretty good idea he'd never been able to talk about his late wife. A lot of men of his generation were closed up about emotions and tended to allow anger and annoyance to cover any more sentimental feelings, and Mark had said as much back at the hotel. The judge was about as sentimental as a New York cabbie in rush hour, but he was really hurting. Peter wasn't a psychologist for nothing. He could see it at the back of the older man's eyes. "This is none of your business. I didn't invite you here, and this is my property. If you don't go, I'll have you arrested for trespassing. That's final."

Ray's face fell. "Please, just listen," he said in his most sincere tones. If Peter's father had ever mastered that innocent look, he'd probably be counting his millions somewhere on the French Riviera right now. "It might be a trick played on you, and we can tell you that. But if it's really your wife, she's come here to tell you something important and maybe we can find out what it is. You want her to be able to rest, don't you?"

"Yeah, sometimes that's what it takes," Murray Bozinsky agreed earnestly. "We had a ghost on our boat once, and all he wanted was to get his book back. I didn't even know he was a ghost at first. But I'm really glad I got to meet him and talk to him, and I learned a lot from him. Wouldn't you like to know why your wife is back?" In spite of his geeky exterior, Murray sounded really sincere and convincing, and Peter hoped the judge would listen.

With Murray's description of his own case and with Ray's look of eager expectancy, the judge opened his mouth to speak then paused again. "I don't like any of you going behind my back," he said grumpily. Peter recognized the tone. He was interested, hooked in spite of himself, and he didn't want anyone to realize it. Mark did, of course, because he knew the judge so well, but he was smart enough not to say so.

"Well, you wouldn't listen to me," he argued, as if he knew the old guy would relish a good fight rather than anything else right now. It would help him blow off steam and once he got into a decent yelling pattern he wouldn't have to guard so much about his feelings because he could ride roughshod over the four younger men.

"I remember the times I've listened to you, kid," the Judge said darkly, shaking his head. "Hiding in the bushes looking for leprechauns? Get real."

"Well, that turned out okay, didn't it? I got my car fixed and you got the estate looking good," Mark defended himself. "Besides, we're getting a cut rate here."

"Cut rate? Cut rate? You bring these characters in here without my permission and you expect me to pay them?" He was in full cry now, but Peter thought he detected a glint of relief in the judge's eyes. He wondered how many times Mark had made the judge mad on purpose to give him an out.

"Well, you've only got two of us," Peter said quickly. "And Mark's an old buddy of mine. But we don't work free. The equipment costs just to run it, and we've gotta pay the hotel bills somehow."

"It's all coming out of your pay, McCormick," Hardcastle declared.

"That pittance? Give me a break, Hardcase."

While they talked, Ray had produced a P.K.E. meter and was busy adjusting it. Now he aimed it at the house and turned it on. It didn't exactly give a spectacular reaction, but it did react with faint beeping. The antennae stirred a little, too. "Hey, look, residuals," the occultist burst out. "It's not a scam. There's been a ghost here."

"That is really boss," Murray exploded, hanging over Ray's shoulder to read the screen. "I wish I had one of these to take on our cases."

"Cases?" demanded the judge suspiciously.

"I'm Murray Bozinsky. I work with the Riptide Detective Agency," admitted Murray.

"You didn't say anything about detectives, McCormick," thundered the judge. He spun on Peter. "And who are you supposed to be?" he demanded, overlooking Mark's earlier introduction. "The IRS?"

"Doctor Peter Venkman. I'm a Ghostbuster." Peter gestured at his uniform.

"Venkman? Venkman? I know that name."

Peter's heart sank. It would be the final straw if his father had ever appeared in Hardcastle's court for some crime or other. He said hastily, "Naturally. I'm famous after all. We all are. Our names are household words."

"No, that wasn't it. I'll think of it eventually. I never forget anything."

"He called that right," Mark put in. "Memory like an elephant. Come on, Judge. They're saying it's not a scam. Don't you think we should find out why your wife wants to talk to you all of a sudden?" he asked in a wheedling tone. "The guys can help her go to her rest. They won't bust her and put her in their containment unit."

"They'd better not," Hardcastle growled. "But I don't know what he's doing here." He pointed to Murray.

"He's a computer expert--one of the top guys in the country," Mark reported. "They brought him along to check for scams. But he knows about ghosts, too. He's had one on his boat, he said."

"Yeah, and I've done some good work with Kirlian photography," Murray added with a smile.

"You have?" enthused Ray. "That's great! I wish we had your equipment here, but I bet you could run some of the equipment, like the magnetometer, or even the ecto scopes."

"Those goggles you wear? I've seen you in them on TV. They're really boss. I know I could adapt them to help us on our jobs."

Hardcastle was still angry, but McCormick had relaxed. He must be used to the judge in this state of anger. "One thing, Venkman," the older man insisted. "This is strictly confidential. And that goes for you, too," he added with an impartial glare at Murray.

"My word of honor, Judge," the computer geek put in.

Peter nodded. "All our cases are strictly confidential. Sometimes the press follows us, but they didn't today, so no one will ever know about it except the other two members of our team. We have a standard contract which guarantees it." He slid one of out of his pocket, suspecting the old guy would prefer to see it for himself. It was a good contract. Peter had done most of it himself with the help of a lawyer buddy of his who had been in some of his classes at Columbia. "The damage clause won't take effect here because we won't be blasting anything."

"I wish I could get a damage clause for McCormick," the judge grumbled under his breath as he scanned the document, winning a delighted grin from his young employee. From Hardcastle, that must pass for affection. "All right, this guarantees confidentiality," Hardcastle said. "But you'd better mean it, Venkman. Venkman? There was a con man named that, up before my buddy Charlie Black a couple of times. Small claims court." He shook his head, but he scrawled his name on the contract, probably deciding it would protect him. He was used to working with the law.

"This guy remembers every crook that ever passed before him," Mark said with pride. "Mind like a steel trap."

"See that you remember it, McCormick," the judge growled. He scrawled his name on the document and pocketed it, gesturing them toward the house.

Peter liked the place. Though it spoke of old-money, it was also carefully arranged for the judge's comfort; it was lived in rather than simply a showplace. They passed the Judge's den, with a big desk complete with a Tiffany lamp, and a TV set opposite, and Peter glanced in, noticing the comfortable old furniture placed so the judge could watch in comfort. He was probably a John Wayne man. He had that look, not quite matching the old money air of the house. But the judge didn't allow them to dawdle. Peter knew he'd better hold the smart remarks to a minimum.

It was Murray who kept up a running commentary as they started up the stairs, a curving flight with a wrought-iron railing. He had a P.K.E. meter in one hand and a pair of ecto-scopes settled over his glasses--Ray had given him Egon's usual pair to wear. They hadn't brought packs. Peter had a good idea that at the first sign of a proton pack and ghost trap the judge would have ripped up the contract and ordered them off his property. Trap his beloved wife? No way. Peter didn't want to trap her anyway.

This was really an interesting case. From what Mark had said and from the judge's attitude it was pretty clear the lady hadn't appeared before, though she'd been dead for years. That kind of thing didn't happen very often. Spirits didn't hang around unseen for many years and then burst out into visibility, not unless there was a pretty good reason for it. Something had drawn her back here, and Peter had a knack for figuring out why things like this happened. Let Ray and Egon do all that hard science. Peter was a psychologist and this part of the job usually fell to him.

"So she appears at the same time every night?" he asked. "You could set clocks by her?"

The judge eyed him suspiciously, then gave a grudging nod. "At four-fifteen a.m. Every single time."

Peter hesitated. "Uh, I've gotta ask. Is that the time she died?"

"No." Quick and short, the judge's answer didn't allow for further questions in that area.

"Well, that would have been the simplest explanation, though not a very good one after so long," Peter said quickly in his most professional voice. "There's a reason for this to happen, Judge Hardcastle."

"Maybe she's coming back to tell you where a treasure is buried," volunteered Murray. Peter edged a step closer to the other man and kicked him on the ankle.

"I'll do the theories here," he muttered under his breath. "Buried treasure wouldn't cut it, not after all this time."

"Yeah, but ghosts do come because of treasure. I've read about it."

Ray nodded, adjusting the dial on his P.K.E. meter as they reached the top of the stairs. "They do. There are a lot of different reasons why ghosts can't rest, but there aren't so many for a ghost to come back after such a long time. Maybe she's trying to warn you of something."

"Hey, judge, maybe she knows the future," Mark burst out. "Maybe a burglar's supposed to break in then or maybe somebody you sent up is gonna get released and come after you."

"Wow, crooks!" enthused Murray. "Maybe I should call Nick and Cody, my partners at the detective agency, and have them come over. We could protect you. We do that kind of work sometimes."

"I can protect myself," the judge declared.

"Shotgun beside the bed," muttered Peter. When the judge favored him and Mark with equal dirty looks, he continued hastily, "Well, you look the type. But guns are no good against ghosts."

"You think a nasty ghost is going to haunt the judge?" Ray asked. "Hey, maybe. If you sent a lot of people to prison, some of them probably want revenge. If one of them died wanting revenge, he'd try to come back. That's a classic reason for a ghost, revenge. And it would sure explain how your wife knew. It would probably be common knowledge on the other side."

"The other side," scoffed the judge. He bestowed upon them all a very unfriendly look. "I thought you said your friends were scientists, McCormick, not crackpot artists. This whole thing is getting ridiculous."

Ray's face fell. "I didn't mean anything, Judge. But your wife came back. She had to be somewhere. We don't know what's beyond; everybody has different beliefs. 'The other side' is just one way to say it. I know scam artists and fake mediums call it that too, but we're not fakes. I give you my word we're real scientists. We had to design special equipment to read ghostly energy. Until we did that, no one could prove ghosts were real, though there were plenty of hints."

"Not to mention cultural proof," Peter said, striking an Egonlike pose and taking on the tones of a lecturer. "Most folk tales have some basis in reality. Throughout history there have been reported instances of ghosts. All cultures have them. Something has to be behind that. But what we really want to say," he added, easing into his father's smoother tones, "is that we won't harm your wife's ghost. We're not here to bust her, no way. We're here to help. That's our job, and you've got our word on it, not to mention a signed contract."

Hardcastle eyed him, suspicion clearly spelled out in his face. McCormick edged up to him. "Come on, Judge. Would I do anything to hurt you?" he asked, eyes wide with innocence. Whether the judge was used to that look and bought it or whether he simply had to know the truth about his wife's ghostly visitations, he gave an exasperated snort and gestured them toward one of the bedrooms.

"She comes there," he mumbled as if to admit anything would be to give credence to the ridiculous, pointing to the foot of the bed.

"Has she said anything?" Ray asked as the judge stalked into the room, glancing around uneasily. It was clearly the judge's bedroom, a big, masculine place where he could be comfortable, and Peter stopped just inside the doorway, letting Ray go first with the P.K.E. meter, adjusting it carefully. There was a four-poster bed on the wall opposite the door and there was a dormer window beyond that. "I'm only getting faint residuals," the occultist explained, when Mark and Murray, who were all but hanging over his shoulder, looked disappointed at its lack of reaction. "See, here." He pointed to the screen. "Indicates class 3 or 4, but it's fading. She hasn't been here, probably for eight or ten hours."

"McCormick could've told you when she came," Hardcastle pointed out. He brushed a long strand of hair into place, hair carefully combed to hide a very receding hairline, and Peter wondered, if he were so vain about it, why he didn't follow Charlie Venkman's method and get a toupee.

"He said she came in the night," Peter inserted smoothly. "He didn't say she was only here then. For all we know, she's around all the time and only makes herself visible then."

That was clearly a newCand unwelcomeCthought for the judge. "You mean she might be...watching me all the time?"

Ray shook his head. "No. From this she probably only is here when she's visible. She's kind of like what we call a fixed repeater, those ghosts who reappear at the same time each day for a specific purpose, stuck in the same pattern. Those ghosts don't have a consciousness in our world, but I think she does," he added even more hastily when the judge's face took on a look of horror at the thought. "She's come back for a reason, and that's why Mark brought us in, so we can find out what that is. After so long, it's probably more than just to say good-bye. Tell us what happens. What does she do?"

It would take a harder man than the judge to resist Ray in full cry, and the judge couldn't do it, but he did make an impatient hmmphing sound and favor them all impartially with a look of scorn. Peter was starting to get a handle on Hardcastle now. He didn't want to appear sentimental, and in truth he wasn't a sentimental man, but that was because he'd trained himself over the years to cover up anything that might be interpreted as sentiment. Part of that was simply his generation, and part was a protection device. Peter covered unhappiness and hurt with anger a lot of the time, but the judge used a grumpy, smartass fa�ade. McCormick had learned to see through it; he didn't object to the judge's bluster.

Ray genuinely didn't notice it. Whether Ray could see past it automatically without stopping to think about it or whether he simply assumed the judge was anxious to learn about his wife no matter what he might say or do to the contrary, he looked up earnestly at the judge and waited expectantly.

"Well, she appears," Hardcastle said gruffly. "Stands at the foot of my bed. She's wearing a dress I remember--the one we--we buried her in." He scowled fiercely at all of them and cleared his throat. A painful memory. McCormick looked startled; he hadn't heard that before.

"Gosh," said Ray, the one word offering sympathy. He added quickly, "Does she speak at all."

"She tries. Her mouth moves, but I can't hear anything." Hardcastle stomped over and pretended to look out the window, and when he turned back, he'd once again perfected his look of scorn. "She points to the clock," he added hastily, "and then to the door."

Murray had been listening in silence, fascinated but unwilling to risk irritating the judge. Now he said, "Does she always do it in the same order? Or are there changes from time to time?" It was a good question, and Peter gave the geeky little guy points for it. He pulled some kind of computer device out of his pocket and waved it around, checking the readings. "Hey, boss. This is showing me a kind of energy I don't usually read. Maybe it's from the gho--the judge's wife."

"What is that?" asked Ray, pouncing. He snatched the gizmo from Bozinsky and activated it. "Hey, Peter, this is really neat," he approved. "It doesn't exactly pick up P.K. energy, but it does pick up electrical disturbances in the atmosphere that are a kind of feedback of psi. You could adjust and develop something like this to detect certain types of ghosts, and I bet you could even get it to read when somebody's using psi; you know, psychokinesis, precognition, that kind of stuff. This would be a parapsychologist's dream."

"That's where I got the idea," Murray agreed. "I told you our boat was haunted once. That's when I figured out that ghost repellent spray I was telling you about back at the convention. It was really boss. I tried it once when we were hired to check out a haunted house one of our clients inherited." His face fell. "Turns out it wasn't ghosts, it was drug dealers, but if there were any ghosts, I just bet the spray kept them away."

"We've gotta go over this with you afterwards," Ray enthused. "Egon would love it. I'd love to see your specs for it. You know, with this, I bet we could trace patterns, see where the ghost was last, if it went to other places in the house." He looked around the room, waving Murray's gizmo, then went to the foot of the bed. "It was here last," he said. "Well, here and then it took a couple of steps to the door. This is great," he exulted.

"Wow, you mean you can follow the ghost around the house?" Murray asked. "I never thought of that."

"Well, it would work better with a stronger power source," Ray theorized. "Because if you try to trace it back, the energy fades rapidly. "We picked up residuals as soon as I came into the house. The ghost has moved around. This is interesting."

"But what's it mean except she likes to look the place over?" Peter asked. "Do you think there's a reason for it? Something that's gonna help us out, I mean?"

Ray and Murray tried to go out at the same time and jammed together in the doorway; apparently they'd meant to follow the ghost's path all around the place, but now Ray stopped and edged backwards again. "I don't know what it means," he said. "But it's one more proof we don't have a fixed repeater. Some ghosts come back because they're trying to get a message across. Let's see where she goes. That way, I think?" Ray said. Murray stepped out into the hall trailed by Ray, who edged past him still holding the device, then they stopped, Murray bumping into Ray.

"Yeah, but there's hardly any valence," objected Murray, taking back his gadget and studying it. "I bet I could do better if I had the Roboz here. I could hook this up and boost the gain like crazy. But with just this, we can't tell a whole lot. If she was out here, she wasn't very far, though."

Ray heaved a sigh and turned around. "Yeah, she stopped in the doorway."

"What's the 'Roboz'?" Peter asked Ray under his breath.

"It's a kind of robot computer Murray designed," Ray explained in return. "We're gonna stop off and see it before we go home. It sounds really great. I wish we had one at headquarters."

"Slimer would probably get slime in the mechanism," Peter muttered.

"Wait a minute," argued Mark, interrupting this scintillating scientific exchange. "She didn't come to the doorway while I was there. She just faded away and that was it, unless she materialized again after I'd left."

"Maybe she's bound to the room," offered Peter, pretending he hadn't been distracted by the mention of robots and computers. He was trying to sound like he knew what he was talking about. Actually, he did, pretty much. Class threes and fours were the ghosts he could understand best, since they'd been human beings. Ghosts like Slimer, nether entities, and beings from other dimensions didn't always have completely understandable human motivations, even skewed by ghosthood. "Don't blow your stack, Judge, but did you and the little lady get along?"

Hardcastle stomped down his temper at the question. "Yes," he said flatly. Peter could hear the still-active pain at her loss in the blunt syllable. "What's that got to do with anything?" he demanded suspiciously as if he still suspected the Ghostbusters and Murray of scamming him.

"A lot, really," Peter said quickly. "Just because she's a ghost doesn't mean she doesn't have reasons for what she does. If there had been something unresolved between you, it might be that, though it doesn't usually take so long for resolution."

"So she's here because she wants something, something that was left undone?" Peter could imagine the judge grilling a suspect in his courtroom in just that tone of voice.

"She might be," Ray said, undaunted by Hardcastle's bad temper. Ray would probably blame it on the memories this haunting had evoked and refuse to hold any slurs against the judge. "But I still don't think she's the usual fixed repeater. Because of the changes we were talking about."

"Changes?" Hardcastle echoed. "Besides, it was different this last time. She saw McCormick when he was snooping around, minding my business." He cast a dirty look at McCormick, who grinned in response, not remotely abashed. Hardcastle lifted his shoulders in an exasperated shrug.

"That's why I said she wasn't a fixed repeater," put in Ray, determined to make it clear. "She has awareness. She's here for a reason. She points at the clock. Is it always the same time when you look at it?"

"Four-fifteen," agreed the judge, glancing from the clock to Ray and back again.

"Yeah. The judge might like to shoot hoops in the middle of the night, but when he does that, he usually does it before four-fifteen," offered Mark. "More like three a.m. Used to drive me crazy!" From the tone of his voice, he now accepted it as one of the judge's foibles, and while it probably still irritated himCit would sure have irritated PeterChe was too fond of the judge to mind as much as he had once done, and he'd probably gotten used to it, the way Peter had accustomed himself to the sound of the guys snoring in the bunkhouse at home and even the disgusting slurpy sounds Slimer made while he drifted overhead in sleep.

"So maybe it's time I started up again, McCormick." That was clearly a challenge, one he enjoyed making.

It won a quick grin from the younger man. "Go ahead, Judge. I bought a pair of earplugs, just in case. I can live with it."

Peter moved to Ray's side and leaned his elbow against Ray's shoulder in a comfortable, companionable stance. "I know you've probably already figured out lots of things, kimo sabe, but I bet I know what you're gonna say next. I have to haul ass out of bed and be here at four-fifteen. A.M." he concluded, outraged. Never an early riser, Peter found the idea appalling, especially since it meant getting up much earlier than that to drive here from the convention hotel. Better if he didn't go to bed at all. Maybe those blonde twins would break down and party when the day's scheduled events were over.

"Well, yeah, Peter," Ray replied, his eyes twinkling with amusement. "We'll have to get up at three to be here in time. That's when we'll see her, and we'll be able to find out what she wants."

"We probably ought to hang out here instead," he volunteered. That would mean getting up at four, a whole hour later, and while it wasn't great, it was probably the best deal he could cut. "Besides, this place is more my style than that hotel with all those weirdos."

"They weren't weirdos," objected Murray. "I think it's a really boss convention. Nick and Cody aren't so sure, though. Do you think we ought to call them in?"

"No way," Peter said, not to disparage the detectives, but because he could almost see steam shooting out of the judge's ears at the very idea of a couple of private investigators joining the party. "There's really a ghost here. It's not a scam, after all. The four of us Ghostbusters can handle this job on our own."

Hardcastle threw up his hands in exasperation, as if he'd been swept along by the tide, and realized it was hopeless to object, but hated the whole thing anyway. "Great. Now I've gotta spend the night with Ghostbusters camping in my bedroom," he grumbled. "I'm gonna get you for this, McCormick."

"I know," McCormick said, pretending great upset. "I'm gonna have to trim every hedge around this place, and paint the pool house and work my way into an early grave."

"Now you're cookin'," said the judge, but from the look Mark gave him, it was plain he wasn't quite back to normal. He probably wouldn't be until this was over. Then he'd probably need a sympathetic ear, and Peter suspected McCormick would know how to give it to him. Even better, he'd know how to provoke the older man into blowing off steam. That would be for the best.

While Murray and Ray played with the computer tech's gadget, Peter went into his executive mode. "We'll come back here this evening after dinner with our equipment," he explained. "I don't know if she'll come if you're not actually in the bedroom, but Ray and Egon will have some theories about it. Just call 'em Theories 'R Us. When we see her, we'll be able to question her."

Ray left off his investigation of the gizmo's innards. "Yeah, then we can find out what she wants, and what's keeping her from dispersing peacefully."

That particular terminology didn't do anything to comfort Hardcastle. As they started down the stairs again, he turned to McCormick. "I don't know what you're getting me into, McCormick, but so help me--"

"It'll be okay, Judge," Mark replied, an angelic expression on his face. "You'll see." He turned to Peter. "Right?"

Peter nodded vehemently. "You got it, pal. Discount rates for an old friend and everything."

"Discount rates?" Hardcastle's eyebrows rose. "McCormick..." the latter came out in a low growl.

Peter speeded up his pace, shepherding Ray and Murray before him. He'd have to be sure they lost Bozinsky before they came back. The little computer geek's reaction to a ghost, even the ghost of Hardcastle's wife, was sure to be too enthusiastic for the judge to endure. Prepared to lecture Ray about the propriety of bringing amateurs along on a bust, he urged them both to the car before Hardcastle could change his mind and forbid them to come back.

"Of all the hare-brained stunts you ever pulled, McCormick, this one takes the gilt edged doily," Hardcastle ranted the minute the two Ghostbusters and their weird friend had gone. "I told you this was none of your business, and I meant it, and what do you do--you call in the Ghostbusters, for Pete's sake. Are you nuts, McCormick?"

McCormick just stood there and let the angry words wash over him. The judge had to hand it to him; he had the guts to stand his ground. True, Hardcastle had to know why Nancy had suddenly started appearing to him. He couldn't let it go on like this; even seeing her again after so long was a pain he could hardly endure, but neither could he share that pain, even with McCormick, who had somehow weaseled his way into the judge's affection. If McCormick had done this a couple of years ago, when he had first been paroled into the judge's company, Hardcastle would have found a way to return him to San Quentin, or at least shipped him off into another arrangement. That was out of the question now, of course. Somewhere along the line, the judge had started to like the kid, though he wouldn't turn McCormick's head by actually saying so. He was pretty sure Mark knew it already, knew just exactly how far he could push and was prepared to go just that far, or even a few inches past the limit, serene in the knowledge he could get away with it. Hardcastle would have to find a way to make up for any traces of softness he must have showed, but one side of him was touched that McCormick had dared his wrath to help him. Of course it would never do to let it show....

"I must be," McCormick snapped back, but instead of looking properly cowed, he was clearly enjoying himself. "To think that I should bother about a stubborn old donkey like you."

"Donkey?" Hardcastle echoed in hugely false affront. He stiffened his resolve before he gave away how much he enjoyed these verbal battles. "Well, if I'm a donkey, then you're a--"

"Loyal buddy," inserted Mark smoothly, grinning hugely. When the judge grimaced, he went on in a quieter tone, "I know you told me to stay out of it, but there's things I just can't stand back for, and the chance it might have been a hoax was one of them. Are you really mad at me, Judge?"

"Yes," said Hardcastle promptly.

McCormick relaxed. "I thought so. Look, Judge, I know you think they're weirdos, but they really do know their job. I've been following their cases, because I knew Peter when I was a kid. They're real scientists."

"Paranormal conventions, kid?" The judge shook his head.

"Well, yeah, there were some real space cadets there, but there were serious scientists, too. A lot of 'em have doctorates. Three of the Ghostbusters do. All of them have degrees in parapsychology and they've all got extra degrees. Peter's is in psychology, Ray's got an engineering degree, and one of the others has a degree in physics. Their fourth teammate was in Vietnam and he taught them a lot of military type strategy to make it easier for them to catch ghosts. I think he's working on a degree too, in his spare time. There are a lot of different ways to get into parapsychology, but they're smart guys, judge. They know what they're doing."

"A lot of crackpots have had higher degrees, kid. And springing a psychologist, of all things, on me..."

"I wasn't hiring a shrink, Judge. Just ghost experts. Word of honor." Mark gestured expansively. "And I got us the cut rate, didn't I?"

"Us, McCormick? This comes out of your pay."

McCormick grimaced. He had a fairly good idea what the guys' going rate was, and it meant poverty for at least another year. He sighed. "Whatever you say, Judge. At least we'll figure out what's going on here."

"We, McCormick?" The judge threw him another glare. "Bad enough when you said we had leprechauns. I'm not hiding in any bushes with you over this."

"The bedroom should do it," Mark replied smugly. "Why hang out in the weeds when I don't have to. Bad enough I have to develop an intimate acquaintance with them now." He heaved a melodramatic sigh. "Guess I'd better get busy on the hedges so I can earn that pay you're gonna withhold, huh, Judge?" He batted his eyes appealingly, as if to say, 'Take pity on a poor working stiff.'

Hardcastle gave a snort. "Go on, get outa here," he said, but he couldn't hold back a faint grin. McCormick stuck to his guns and he never gave up. Talk about stubborn donkeys....

"This is definitely interesting, Ray," Egon said as the three of them sat around the table after polishing off a decent dinner at the hotel restaurant. As they ate, Ray had regaled Egon and Winston with a description of their afternoon's adventures. Murray Bozinsky had been collected by his detective friends Nick and Cody and borne off to return to Kings' Harbor for the night. He'd left his gizmo for Ray to play with, offering to pick it up in the morning. Well, thought Ray with a smile, hinting broadly he could be useful that night.

Peter had put an end to that. "Sorry, pal," he'd said, "But I think the judge would have an apoplexy, whatever that is, if we brought you back, now he knows you're a detective."

"But I've got a lot more stuff," Murray had volunteered, disappointed.

Ray had come in on Peter's side. "This afternoon was okay, because Mark said the ghost always came at night and we were just checking. But we really shouldn't have people coming tonight who aren't experts. Besides, I don't think the judge wants us particularly, let alone detectives."

Murray had gone off, disappointed, to find his buddies, and Peter and Ray had cornered Egon and Winston to tell them about their afternoon. Now that the meal was winding down, it was time for business.

"What I can't understand," Egon continued, sliding his empty plate aside, "is why the judge's wife chose now to appear. She's been dead for years, you say, and has never manifested before. It hardly seems like something left unfinished."

"Maybe he just couldn't see her before," Peter volunteered. "He's the last guy to believe in ghosts. Mark says he's pretty stubborn. Maybe she's tried before and he just wouldn't see her. Hey, it happens. I know a guy who was there when we took on Gozer and he still insists it was a mass hallucination."

"It was on television," Egon said rather stiffly. A serious scientist, he hated being accused of fraud.

"Maybe she came back because the judge is in some kind of danger," suggested Winston.

"Yeah, but what kind?" Peter frowned. "If there's some kind of danger, we'll be walking right into it. What would it be, Spengs, you boy genius you? Somebody out to get him, somebody he sent to prison who just got out and wants revenge?"

"Hey, yeah," agreed Ray excitedly. "Maybe I should configure one of our packs the way we did when we were Crimebusters, so if some nasty ex-con sneaks in at four-fifteen, we could zap him."

"It might be counterproductive, Ray," Egon objected. "It's simply a theory. Another one is that the ghost isn't the judge's wife. Remember that study we did a few months ago about shapeshifter ghosts who let their forms be determined by those who see them. If he saw a ghost in his room, the first thing he'd think of might be his late wife, so the ghost would take the image from his mind and go with it."

"Yeah, and that would explain why the ghost would seem to be wearing the dress Hardcastle associated with her so strongly."

Peter frowned. "And are these particular ghosts...dangerous, Egon?" he asked, resting his elbows on the table and dropping his chin into his hands.

"Sometimes, Peter," Ray replied. "Except I don't really think that's what it was. I had class three readings. Those kind of ghosts would probably be nether entities instead, at least class five."

"Oh, good. I'd rather deal with the judge's wife. I thought we'd just pop on in and I'd charm Mrs. H into telling us why she was there. I kinda hoped it would be buried treasure she wanted to tell the judge about, and we could dig it up and get a commission or something."

"Peter." Egon waited until Venkman looked at him questioningly. "Have you ever encountered a ghost who wanted to lead the way to buried treasure?"

"Well, no, but they say it's one of the reasons ghosts hang around, after all. I just thought it would be great. I always wanted to dig up buried treasure."

"So what've we got here," Winston said, getting down to more serious business. "The judge is only now starting to buy into the idea of a ghost, so he can finally see her, or she's coming to warn him of something, or it's a bad ghost who can make itself appear to the judge as his wife. I'd say the warning is most likely, especially since she points to the clock. Whatever might happen is supposed to do it at four in the morning. Nice."

"Maybe a burglar tries to break into the estate," theorized Ray. "After all, the judge has got money. I don't know what kind of security he's got there, but I saw a bunch of things worth stealing. If he really keeps a shotgun by the bed, he might try to take on a burglar and wind up getting hurt or killed."

"He does keep a shotgun by the bed, Ray," Peter reminded him. "I saw it there, sitting over in the corner. Yeah, you might have a point. Mark seems to think the judge believes he's invincible, only Mark's not so sure." He grinned. "I never thought I'd run into McCormick again, and I sure never thought he'd be buddy-buddy with a judge. When I met him, he seemed determined to question any authority--even mine. And heck, I was a year older and knew what I was doing, and he was new, and only sixteen. He spent a lot of time wanting to know why I was telling him stuff." He grinned. "I've gotta say, if he thought it made sense, he'd usually go along, after he'd made his stand. He's mellowed out a lot."

"And right now, he's probably telling the judge exactly the same thing about you," said Egon with a grin. Peter reached out and poked him in the arm.

"I was always mellow."

"Yeah, right," returned Ray, smiling. "But what about the ghost? If it's really Nancy Hardcastle, we can't trap it. The judge would never let us, and I wouldn't want to anyway. He really loved her. You can tell, can't you, Peter?"

Venkman nodded. "Yeah. He's not your most sentimental of guys, but I could tell that right away. McCormick says he lost his son in Vietnam, too. So he doesn't have any family, well, not except Mark. And Mark--his dad took off when he was five years old. Mark says he ran into him last year, but I got the idea it wasn't a great meeting. Betcha he thinks of the judge as kind of a surrogate dad. That's why he took the chance to come to us. And why not? We're the best."

"Yeah, wait till you meet the judge," Ray told Egon and Winston. "He bellows and complains a lot, and Mark doesn't get fazed at all."

"So this dude is gonna bellow and complain about us?" Winston asked wryly. He passed his empty plate to a waitress who had materialized beside him. "Oh, man, this sounds like it's gonna be a fun night."

"The worst part will be making Peter haul himself out of bed at four a.m." Egon's smile was knowing. He handed the woman his plate as well. "It might be wise to stay up until then, checking and waiting, except then we wouldn't be fresh."

"And we've all seen Dr. Einstein here when he isn't fresh," Peter said irrepressibly. "It isn't a pretty picture." He smiled appealingly at the waitress, pretending he wasn't disappointed when she simply whisked away his plate without noticing him.

"Better than the unshaven countenance you present to the world mid-mornings when we don't have calls, Peter," Egon observed, his eyes twinkling wickedly. "We could use it to scare ghosts right into traps, now that I think of it."

"As long as it gets the job done," agreed Ray. He held out his plate to the woman. "What about dessert, guys?"

"Ice cream," suggested Peter enthusiastically, groaning when Egon picked up one of his many gadgets he'd brought with him. "And high tech for Dr. Spengs here."

"Ignore him," said Egon to the waitress. "We all do. Yes, ice cream all around, I should think."

Peter stuck out his tongue at him.

Gulls' Way was impressive, Winston had to give it that. When he saw the name on the arch over the driveway, he expected a classy house and he got one, set in the middle of a huge lawn, a vast and expensive place. There was even a fountain. Old money, they called it. Winston might not have ever hung out anyplace like this, but he knew the signs. He wouldn't expect someone who met the description Peter and Ray had given the guys to live here. Shooting hoops in the middle of the night might speak of eccentricity, but Winston wouldn't have set it at the upper crust's favorite pastime. What's more, he couldn't imagine a buddy of Peter's from those summers of working carneys palling around with the elite. Peter loved to mingle with the rich and famous and could do the polite with the best of them, but with Peter it was always show. While he adored being invited to Donald Trump's parties, it was more the thought of the glamor, the chance of meeting beautiful women, and of course the chance of being recognized and fawned over that appealed to him. In the long run, though Peter hadn't realized it yet, or at least admitted it, he was more comfortable with the simpler things in life, hanging out in front of the TV in his grubbies with a can of beer or soda, taking in a movie rather than spending a night at the opera. Egon tried to expose Peter to culture, but it rarely passed the exposure level. Peter could talk about that kind of stuff and seem to know his way, but nine tenths of it would probably be bullshit, all for appearances.

Egon now, he could do the cultural route, but then Egon came from old money, though not as much as Gulls' Way represented. Peter had spent his childhood going through periods of temporary affluence after one of Charlie Venkman's big scores, then spending months of barely making ends meet in between. Money represented security to Peter. With Egon, the respect of his peers and the opportunity to pursue his research was more important. He got huffy when someone implied he wasn't a serious scientist, though he rarely lost his cool. It took time and dedicated effort to do that, though Egon could lose it if someone insulted his idol, Einstein, or picked on someone helpless. He'd also defend his friends. Winston had heard him quite hotly arguing Peter's worth to a physicist buddy once who had implied the psychologist was a goof-off who didn't pull his own weight and that the team might benefit instead from another physicist. Winston had never heard Egon mention that particular old friend again after that conversation.

Ray never worried about stuff like their unfamiliarity with the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Out of place in a wealthy home, he wouldn't care. He'd simply do the job and enjoy any fringe benefits that came his way with innocent delight. Look at him now, craning his neck to see everything, even though he'd already been here once today. As they pulled up in front of the main entrance, Ray was the first one out of Ecto, heading around back to start collecting equipment. When an older man with white hair appeared in the doorway and eyed them all with something akin to dismay, Ray waved at him with all his natural friendliness and cried, "Hi, Judge Hardcastle."

The judge stared at Ecto-1, an expression of near-pain upon his face. "This is your car?" he asked without enthusiasm.

A younger man, contemporary of the Ghostbusters rather than the judge, stepped out. Winston had met McCormick briefly in the bar and when he'd ridden back with Peter and Ray to pick up his own car, the glamorous Coyote. He grinned now. "Yeah, isn't it great, Judge. A genuine 1959 Cadillac Hearse, converted to carry proton packs instead of coffins. Think of it, Judge. This car was in style back in your heyday."

"My heyday is still going, McCormick, and see you don't forget it," snapped the judge, but he came down the steps to look at Ecto-1 anyway. "Think of the maintenance," he said over his shoulder to McCormick, who grinned and followed him down.

"There's a lot of it, but I keep it in top shape, and we've won top prize in a few car shows," Winston volunteered. "Winston Zeddemore," he introduced himself. "Good to meet you, Judge."

Hardcastle shook hands, but his eyes were on the car. Realizing he was fascinated in spite of his disparaging comment, Winston popped the hood, and he and the judge spent a few minutes checking it out while the other three started unloading their proton packs and other equipment.

"So what kind of mileage does it get?"

Winston replied, and they talked cars enthusiastically until the others had finished, stacking their packs and traps on the front steps.

Their activities finally drew the judge away from his fascination with the old car. "Wait a minute, Venkman," he said sternly. "I said none of that stuff." He waved a hand at the proton packs with their attached ghost traps. "You're not trapping my wife, and that's final."

"We always wear our packs," Egon said reasonably. "To go without them would be like you going into court without your judge's robes."

McCormick chuckled. "Yeah, and he wears shorts and Hawaiian shirts under his robes. We sure wouldn't want him sitting at the bench without them. Not to mention Millie--that's his pearl-handled .45--in a shoulder holster every time he went into court. This character's ready for anything," he said fondly. "Judge, this is Egon Spengler. He's the brains of the group."

"How do you do," said Egon politely. "We bring our weapons in with us in the event of unexpected trouble. Where there is one ghost, it's possible there might be more. Besides, these can be configured to do other things than trap ghosts. If you, as our employer, choose us not to bust the ghost, that's your privilege."

"Just so you remember that," Hardcastle replied. "I suppose you might as well come in and take another look around. I love having my schedule disrupted."

"He means you interrupted his favorite John Wayne movie on cable, and he's afraid he'll have to share his popcorn with you," translated Mark sotto voce, grinning at the judge when he glared at the younger man.

"We don't need popcorn. We have work to do," Egon proclaimed, to Peter's evident disappointment. The younger man's face had brightened at the mention of popcorn only to descend into the gloom of a little boy who has been denied a promised treat. He caught himself at it and pasted on a bright grin.

"Right, Egon. Our dedication to duty is exceeded only by our skill and sheer brilliance," he proclaimed, striking a dramatic pose. Hardcastle grimaced. "But we work better when we've had popcorn," he added in an undertone.

"Come on in," Mark urged, taking the handful of supplies that Ray passed him. "I'll make some more when you're all set up."

"A man after my own heart," Peter muttered in an aside to Ray, who gave him a friendly poke in the ribcage.

Setting up was not a lengthy process, really. It began with running tests with the various detection devices from P.K.E. meter to magnetometer to heat and motion sensor devices, all designed by Egon and constructed by Ray with help from Egon. The two hard scientists set it up with help from Winston while Peter was the peanut gallery. The equipment was always a hit at conventions like the one they'd been attending. Genuine parapsychologists loved to pigeonhole one or more of the Ghostbusters and study the equipment. It fascinated Mark McCormick, who, while not an engineer by any means, knew his way around the internal combustion engine well enough that he could make a couple of fairly educated guesses about some of the stuff. He bounced around offering comments and theories, some of them close to the actual issue and some of them miles from the target, while Hardcastle grumped along in his wake as if he had to guard every picture and vase from breakage by a mishandled thrower.

It didn't take Winston long to realize that while the judge hated the whole process, his need to know was so great that he had forgiven Mark for bringing the Ghostbusters in on the case, though he wasn't ready to let McCormick realize it. A sidelong glance at the curly-haired man made it pretty obvious McCormick had realized it before the judge did, and that he was amused by the whole process. They were good friends, though more in a father-son way than a brotherly way like the Ghostbusters. McCormick had risked the judge's monumental capacity for wrath out of love and concern for the man who had taken him in and given his life a new direction. He'd believed himself right and gone with it, and that was what counted.

Egon was installing a device in the judge's bedroom when the doorbell sounded, and Mark, at the judge's direction, went galloping away down the stairs, muttering things about slavery and penal servitude under his breath, to answer it. He returned in a few minutes with a compactly built, dark haired man in a suit and tie.

"Frank's here," McCormick announced, gesturing at the newcomer. "This is Lt. Frank Harper, L.A.P.D. Frank, these are the Ghostbusters." He named them, pointing to each man as he spoke his name.

"Nice to meetcha," Harper replied. "Milt, I got that information you wanted."

"You checked them out!" McCormick burst out. He spun around to face the judge. "You thought they were scam artists and you had Frank check 'em out." He went toe to toe with Hardcastle. "You couldn't believe me they were on the up and up, could you?"

"It's perfectly all right," Egon assured McCormick. "It's been done before. We have nothing to hide, and our reputation speaks for itself." He drew himself up a little straighter, indicating annoyance in spite of his words.

"We encourage people to check us out," Peter inserted smoothly. "As Egon says, our reputation will defend itself easily. You didn't find anything bad, did you, Lieutenant? Course not. Because we're respectable professionals who know our jobs and do them well."

"I have to agree with that, Milt," the detective agreed. "They do have a good rep. The city of New York vouches for them, up to and including the Mayor's office. They're even documented by Columbia University where three of them obtained doctorates, and NASA, not to mention various famous New Yorkers who have called them without winding up in the newspapers over it. What's more, the Ghostbusters have actually saved the world a couple of times. They didn't claim big publicity for it either. Sometimes it happened but they're not really glory hounds."

"I've seen this one on television," Hardcastle disagreed, jabbing his thumb in Peter's direction. "If there ever was a glory hound, it's him."

"Peter's our PR man," explained Ray before Peter could even open his mouth. "We need to advertize like any business, and it's Peter who arranges it. But our work is confidential except with permission. Any case Peter talked about on TV was one where we had signed permission from the people involved. He's not going to go on the Carson show and talk about your wife's ghost."

"Wife's ghost?" Harper's eyebrows rose. "You didn't say anything about that, Milt."

"Come on, Frank, that's the last thing he'd say," Mark reminded the police officer. "You know this old donkey. I had to hire the Ghostbusters. He wasn't going to do it. They're in town for a big convention."

"New age," muttered the Judge under his breath. "Weirdos."

"You called that one right, Your Honor," Peter returned with a grin. "Just what I was thinking. I was glad to get out of there and come over here instead where I could be with normal folks." He quirked an eyebrow at Egon as if to suggest there hadn't been as many normal ones as he'd hoped, and to his delight saw a flicker of amusement dart through the judge's eyes before he repressed it sternly. So the old guy had a sense of humor after all.

"Never mind that now," Hardcastle said, all bluster as if he'd realized Peter had seen the humor in his expression. "What are you going to do with all these Rube Goldberg contraptions? What's that, for instance?" He pointed.

"This is a motion sensor," Egon replied. "It detects even the lightest breath of air in the room, and registers anyone passing. If it doesn't react, or reacts in a way we can explain and document, such as one of us or you moving around, then we can rule out human intervention here in the home. Since the ghost is not currently present--"

"Wait a minute," Mark burst in. "How do you know it's not just invisible, watching all of us?" He made spooky gestures with his fingers and hummed the start of the Twilight Zone Theme under his breath.

"This isn't a game, McCormick," snapped the judge. "These men are trying to explain things scientifically." He realized McCormick had pushed him into defending the Ghostbusters and turned to Egon, who must have impressed him as the most responsible member of the quartet. "How can you tell she isn't here right now?" he asked. This time, the look in the back of his eyes was one of pain.

"This is a P.K.E. meter," Egon explained, displaying his favorite tool. "See these little antennae? They react to the presence of psycho-kinetic energy which is produced by all ghosts. When a ghost is present, the antennae raise and can be used directionally. The screen reads the level of energy, indicating the type of ghost we have to face. We've developed a classification system that nearly every ghost seems to fit into, and we can tell by taking readings what we'll be up against. A class seven, for instance, is very powerful and dangerous and generally takes all four of us to stop. Right now, I'm picking up residual readings; faint but clear. They indicate a ghost has been present, and from the quality of the readings, more than once. Since you've identified it as your wife, it's considered a class four entity, a human who has been identified. Usually with this kind of spirit, there is a purpose for the visit, and in your case, when the appearances have only now begun after such a long period, we assume she has come for a very specific purpose, such as to warn you of impending danger."

"But the judge has been in danger lots of times," volunteered Mark. "Half the time we're out chasing bad guys. Hardcase got shot last year and nearly died." For a moment Mark's face was shadowed as he remembered, then he pushed that away. "She didn't come and warn him then," he said almost accusingly. "Or the time they tried to kill him in his home town in Arkansas when he went back for his class reunion."

"Did the shooting take place here?" Ray asked.

"No, it was in court," Hardcastle replied.

"Then maybe that's it. Maybe she's bound here, to the house. She can't go beyond it. Maybe this time there's something going to happen here, and she's trying to warn you about it, Judge."

"At four in the morning? A burglar, then?" asked Frank Harper. "You want I should send over a couple of uniforms, Milt, to keep an eye on you tonight?"

"Nah, don't send any cops over, Frank. If it's a burglar, I've been warned, I'll be ready."

"And you won't be in the room tonight either," Egon replied. "We'll want you outside, waiting. It's possible she won't come if you aren't in the room, but we don't know that. You'll stay in the hall. I want Peter in the room. If anyone can make sense of her, it's Peter."

Venkman grinned cockily, delighted at the praise. "Course I can, Egon. She's female, isn't she? Then nobody better."

Before Hardcastle could open his mouth to bellow a less than friendly comment at Peter, Egon said smoothly, "It was your training as a psychologist to which I was referring, Peter."

"Oh well, that too."

"This isn't a game, Venkman," the judge insisted.

"Heck no. This is my job. And you'll be right in the hall, so you can make sure I'm doing it right. We need you there in case she won't come unless you're present. We don't know when this four-fifteen crisis is supposed to happen. It might not even be tonight; she's been coming for how long now?"

"Tonight will be a week," Hardcastle admitted.

"Gee, then maybe it's the big night," Ray enthused. "Because it might mean something. I don't know what. I haven't seen a lot of delayed reaction ghosts like this. Once or twice we've had a ghost show up after a long time, and one time it was because the family was moving away and the ghost didn't want them to go. It had always been there, invisible. When the family realized, they had us bust the ghost and transport it to their new home, and apparently everybody's happy with it."

"There's no question of Milt moving," Harper reminded them, staring at all the gadgets with a fascinated eye. "So that's not it."

"I still think it's a warning," Peter said. "Personal burglar alarm, maybe." He turned to Harper. "Or else, is there somebody just out of prison his honor here sent up the river who might be out for his blood?"

"I've been thinking about that," Harper said. "And nobody recently that I know of. How about it, Milt? Can you think of anybody?"

"Not since Fenderman seven weeks ago, and he's apparently had a change of heart. His parole officer reports he's holding down a steady job and showing a good attitude. It could be part of a plan, but I don't think so. Fenderman never had a vindictive nature. He isn't one who threatened me when I sentenced him."

"It doesn't have to be somebody who got out," Mark said thoughtfully. "When I was in San Quentin, there were a few guys there, lifers, who had it in for Hardcastle. I sorta did myself back then and we used to talk about revenge. I never really meant it, but they did. Judge, they could arrange it from inside. It's been done before. Look at what Weed Randall set up, and he arranged it all when he was inside."

"Mark's got a good point," Harper agreed with the younger man.

"So what do you suggest?" Hardcastle demanded. "Build a twenty foot wall around the estate? Live in a bunker? Come on, Frank, you know any judge has to go up against that kind of thing, and most judges live to be old men. I can't go around with a bulletproof vest every day of my life just because somebody might have it in for me."

"Yeah, but this is different, Judge," Mark said earnestly. "Because there's really something going on, or your wife wouldn't be warning you. Sure you can go around ignoring the odds most of the time, but this time it's real. Maybe it's not somebody you sent up, but it could be. I think Frank's right. You need protection."

"I've got protection, McCormick," the judge said patiently, though his voice had softened a little. "I've got the Ghostbusters. If any ex-cons show up plotting to off me, I'll just have these four blast them with their ray guns."

"Proton rifles," Egon corrected. "Ray guns are science fiction."

"Well, that looks like science fiction to me," Hardcastle concluded, waving his hand at the proton pack on Egon's back. He gave an exasperated snort. "I'm going back to my movie. Come on down, Frank, and have some popcorn. We'll leave these glorified exterminators to finish their work. You stay with them, McCormick, and make sure they do it right." He urged Frank toward the door.

"But there could be bad guys," Ray insisted as soon as the judge was out of earshot. I think one thing's right, that Mrs. Hardcastle couldn't protect her husband from things happening in Arkansas or even in the courtroom. I think she's bound to the house. So that means something has to come here, and it comes in the early hours of the morning."

"Four-fifteen isn't morning," Ray," Peter objected instructively, grimacing. "There's no such morning hour, take my word for it. Four-fifteen is a perfectly respectable time to come home from a date, though."

"That being the case, Peter, no wonder morning is such a rude surprise to you," Egon observed.

"He hated to get up at the carney, too," Mark remembered, grinning. "His dad used to go in and haul him out. Though he didn't like mornings any better than Peter did."

"He just liked getting a head start on the marks," Peter agreed. "One of my dad's best gigs was selling the Brooklyn Bridge door to door." In a way he was proud of his father, who did what he did with flair, but he had a fairly good idea a judge wasn't likely to be impressed, and he was glad the subject hadn't come up before Hardcastle took off. On the other hand, Harper probably knew all about Venkman pere and was most likely regaling the judge with the stories of some of Charlie Venkman's more notable scams, like the time he loosed a demon on the city of New York. Peter didn't remember that incident with any fondness, and he knew Hardcastle would not take it as a positive reference.

"And look how good you turned out," put in Ray with one of his gentle, sincere smiles that a harder man than Hardcastle would have bought without a moment's hesitation. Peter would have to hire Ray to be his P.R. man if and when the judge started to get suspicious. "Of course we have to pry you out of bed in the morning, but nobody's perfect," completed Ray.

"Speak for yourself," Peter said with huge dignity.

"Yes, do," agreed Egon as if to imply that if anyone was perfect it was he, while McCormick grinned at the lot of them and shook his head.

"Uh huh," Winston muttered. "Before we start playing Duelling Egos, how about we finish setting everything up? I wouldn't mind some popcorn myself, guys and trying to get some sleep if we have to get up before dawn." Peter shuddered at the very idea.

"Actually, we are nearly finished," Egon replied. "The ghost is not present now, but has been here several times. Residuals fade, but if a ghost visits more than once, they tend to build up on each other," he informed Mccormick, gesturing at the P.K.E. meter he'd picked up when he finished making the last connection. "I've left this on to warn us if any spirits arrived on the scene unannounced, but the readings support your story and the judge's that there has been only one ghost," he finished.

"So what will you do when she shows up tonight?" asked Mark, interested. His eyes had never stopped roving over the various equipment, as thrilled as a child at the sight of all the various devices Egon and Ray had assembled. The thought of encountering ghosts didn't seem to daunt him at all.

"We'll try to find out why she's here," Peter explained smoothly. "Odds are, your judge buddy didn't handle it right. People don't if they're not used to waking up with ghosts hanging over them. If the ghost can't talk, the odds are it can nod or shake its head. You need to start with simple yes-or-no questions. I bet he did a lot of, 'tell me why you're here,' and all he'd get would be pointing at the clock like he said. We'll start out with things like, 'Is Judge Hardcastle in danger?' and go from there. In the meantime, the other three will be taking readings and seeing what they can figure out that way. We want to be sure it's really the judge's wife and not some ghost who can look like her to mess with his mind."

"Could a ghost do that?" Mark asked, wide-eyed with surprise. He sat on the edge of Hardcastle's bed, tucking his legs under him. "Why would it do that?"

"A lot of ghosts can shapeshift, even ghosts who used to be people. We caught the ghost of a dead gangster once who could make himself get huge with mean teeth, change his whole appearance to look big and scary," Ray replied. "Slimer--that's our tame ghost back at headquarters--can shapeshift for brief times, even change color though he never retains it long. A ghost might do it to the judge in order to psych him out, maybe the ghost of someone he sent to prison, who died still wanting revenge, because one of the things that makes a ghost is a need to get even. I don't think that's what's happening here, though," Ray went on reassuringly at the sight of Mark's rounded eyes and tensed posture. "I think it's probably really his wife, here to warn him of danger. Usually the easiest explanation is the real one."

"Yes, most likely, Ray," Egon agreed. He'd been walking around the room, checking the readings on the various devices. "Because shape-shifting would require more power, and the residuals should be stronger if that were happening." Ray nodded in agreement and joined Egon to study the results on the screens.

"So what do we do next?" asked Mark hopefully, as if he could sneak into the team without anyone noticing. Peter already knew there'd be no way to keep him away when the time came. Hardcastle was his friend and Mark assumed it was his natural right to be there.

"That should be obvious," Egon began, but Peter waved his hand to cut the physicist off before he could begin another long lecture on the subject.

"We go have popcorn," he said as if the answer should be perfectly obviously. "It smells great!"

Mark laughed. "Okay, come on. But I'm going to help out tonight. The judge is my buddy, and I want to be on hand."

They started for the stairs. "I hope there won't be too many of us," Winston said. "After all this preparation, I'd sure hate to scare her off."

"Four o'clock, Peter. Time to get up." Egon's voice was utterly ruthless, but ruthless out of necessity from long experience at dragging the psychologist out of bed for early morning calls, and he had the practice down pat. He grasped Peter's shoulder and shook him, then yanked away the pillow Peter had used to hide his face when the light had snapped on in the bedroom Hardcastle had assigned him. He slanted one green eye open a mere slit and glared balefully up at Egon who was not only up but shaved and dressed in his jumpsuit, looking more alert than any man had the right to at this ungodly hour. "Come along, Peter, we've left it as late as possible. If you don't get up now, you'll miss the ghost altogether."

"She comes every night," Peter mumbled wearily, drawing the sheets up to just below his nose. "C'mon, Egon. Tomorrow..."

"Will be too late." Egon dragged Peter into a sitting position by main force and held him there by a grip on both shoulders. "This is your chance to show off for the judge. He's rich, remember?"

That was a good point. "Coffee?" Peter pleaded, needing the caffeine to pry both eyes open.

"Here it is, Peter." Ray entered the room behind Egon bearing a steaming cup of coffee in his hand. Sometimes in the morning Ray and Egon would play 'good cop-bad cop' to get Peter out of bed, and Ray was obviously the 'good cop' today, armed with goodwill and fresh, hot coffee. The aroma made Peter straighten slightly and reach out toward it with a carefully pathetic look on his face in hopes of gaining Ray's sympathy. Egon could be the most sympathetic of men, but never at times like this. Peter sighed. He hated getting up when it was still dark outside. It wasn't fair. It would be so easy to sink down into the cool warmth of his bed and shut the world away again. But Egon took the cup from Ray and put it into Peter's hand, curling his fingers around it carefully. He was playing 'good cop' too. Peter was confused enough to open both eyes wide, and the brightness of the light stabbed at his remaining sleepiness.

"Drink that, Peter," the blond physicist instructed. Look at him. He even had his hair combed neatly in his own peculiar style, not a hair out of place. Peter rubbed his own tangled mop with his free hand. How did Egon do that?

More awake than he really wanted to admit--he was definitely curious about the judge's wife--Peter buried his face in the mug, then sighed in sheer delight. "Great coffee." He'd have to find out what brand the judge bought and stock up on it. On the other hand, maybe Mark or the judge had made it, not one of Peter's three teammates.

"Are you awake?" Egon peered into Peter's eyes as if seeking alertness--or duplicity. Seeing the former but not the latter, he smiled, satisfied. "Then come along, Peter. I've awakened the judge and checked the preliminary readings. Mark is already here trying to talk Winston into letting him wear a proton pack. I've picked up minuscule changes in the motion detectors I set up in Hardcastle's bedroom, yet no evidence of ectoplasm or PK energy to accompany it. It's fascinating. We may be onto something new and different here."

"Probably the judge turning over in bed," Peter said and took another big drink. Ahhh. Perfect. Feeling himself grow more and more awake, Peter offered an objection. "Wouldn't that register on the detectors, Spengs?"

"Of course, but as you'll remember, Judge Hardcastle slept in one of the spare rooms last night. So he couldn't have altered the detectors."

"Okay, so a fly buzzed through? Or the house settled. It's got its share of creaks and weird noises; all old houses do. They kept me awake for awhile, listening to them."

"More than the firehouse?" asked Ray in surprise.

"Different," admitted Peter. Sleeping in a haunted house didn't usually come with the job, and he'd reacted to the sounds he'd heard, the settling of the house, as if the spirit in question were sneaking up on his bed, though he didn't want to admit it.

"Hey, maybe, Egon," Ray replied as Peter passed him back the now-empty cup and dragged himself from the warmth of his bed. "Or maybe a heavy truck drove by. Hurry, Peter, we don't have a lot of time before the big production," Ray urged, gesturing him toward the bathroom. "You don't have to take time to shower or shave. We let you sleep as long as we could."

"A fact for which I'm grateful," Peter announced and headed for the door. Gulls' Way had impressed him by offering private baths with the bedrooms. Just the kind of style Peter would have loved to become accustomed to.

After a very sketchy wash and a quick shave with an electric razor, he emerged, zipping his jumpsuit, and grabbed his boots. Egon had gone on, but Ray was waiting impatiently, nearly dancing around in his anxiousness to return to the scene of the haunting, a pair of Ecto-scopes pushed up on his forehead in preparation for the arrival of the ghost. Peter grinned at his enthusiastic friend. "Okay, I'm ready, Ray. I can put my boots on while we're waiting for the main attraction. I take it Dr. Einstein went ahead so he could play mad scientist some more?"

"He wanted to check those motion detector readings again," explained Ray as they left the bedroom. "He said it was strange and didn't react like a normal reading and it bothers him because he hasn't figured it out yet. I think he's starting to wonder if there's more going on here than we thought there was."

"More? Oh, goodie. I just love the thought. What is it, Tex? Class eight elementals? A new demon?"

"Wouldn't it be great, Peter?" Ray's eyes gleamed at the very thought, and Peter shook his head fondly. Only Ray could get so excited at the prospect of that kind of danger.

They found Hardcastle, McCormick and Winston waiting at the doorway to the judge's bedroom. The older man was looking more nervous than Peter would have expected, moving back and forth in an almost aimless pattern, pausing to try to look into the room over Winston's shoulder, then turning away again and pacing back and forth down the hallway. Only one light was on, and that at the far end of the hall, on the theory that this ghost preferred darkness and might stay away at the sight of too much light. Winston had obviously been restraining the judge from entering the room, and Hardcastle looked impatient and a little angry at the prohibition, half ready to bull his way in anyway. He was wearing his trousers and a tee shirt with a picture of Lady Justice and a caption that read, 'Justice is blind but she sees better than you do', and his arms bulged with muscles better suited to a much younger man. Maybe he could actually shove his way in if his wife appeared. From the way Winston stood braced against the door jamb, his arms folded across his chest, he was prepared to prevent all but the fiercest of incursions.

McCormick was still sleep-ruffled, his curls tangled and poking in all directions, his eyelids drooping with fatigue, but he straightened up when Peter and Ray hurried down the hall toward them. He'd dressed hastily in jeans and a pullover shirt, and had slid his feet into shoes without bothering with socks. Now he hovered at the judge's side, following him up and down the hall in his pacing, trying without much success to conceal his solicitude while he hovered blatantly, offering the occasional quiet, reassuring word. The judge was impatient with it all, batting at McCormick's hand as he tried to grab the judge's arm.

"Let go of me, McCormick," he growled. "I'm not gonna do anything stupid."

"First time for everything," muttered the young ex-con under his breath, his eyes sparkling with suppressed amusement, though his facial expression held concern.

"What's that you said, McCormick?" demanded Hardcastle sharply. It was perfectly clear to Peter he'd heard every word, and would have, under better circumstances, enjoyed the banter, but right now his mind was on one thing alone, his wife, and he couldn't find the energy to respond to McCormick in his usual way.

"I said it's nearly time for her to show up," returned Mark mendaciously, unalarmed at the sight of the judge's ferocious scowl. He could evidently read the judge a lot better than Peter could. The psychologist had a pretty good idea Mark knew just when to do something to irritate the judge and distract him from his gloomy thoughts, and he hoped Mark would keep doing it.

"I've just taken readings," Egon remarked, emerging from the bedroom while he checked his wristwatch. He glanced around to make sure everyone was there. "It's four-twelve. We have three minutes before she should arrive. I'll be out before then. Set your throwers on low power. If it's really the judge's wife, we don't want to trap her. I don't think we'll need throwers if that's the case," he added hastily when the judge made an angry motion, "but in case it's not, then we'll have to be ready." The four Ghostbusters adjusted their proton rifles carefully, then put them back in the cradles. "One last check," Egon said.

Winston moved aside and Egon reentered the bedroom. Everyone crowded to the doorway to watch him as he went from one device to another, his P.K.E. meter in his hand. Peter could see the meter was activated, but it wasn't reacting, so Egon ignored it in favor of the other devices, the magnetometer, the plasmatometer, the spectroscope, the aurascope, while Ray stood in the doorway, holding what looked like the gadget Murray Bozinsky had played with yesterday afternoon.

"This is interesting, Raymond," Egon said in the tones of one who has become completely caught up in what he was doing and had probably forgotten the deadline. He would have sounded just the same if the expected ghost had been class ten rather than simply the judge's late wife. "I'm not getting any real plasmo-etheric activity yet, but I'm picking up motion." He fiddled with his P.K.E. meter. "Curious. I thought perhaps we were detecting human intervention, but I'm not reading any other biorhythms than can be accounted for by the six of us."

"What do you think is causing it?" called Ray from the doorway. They'd decided no more than one person would be allowed in the bedroom at any given time, in case the ghost wouldn't appear before a crowd. Some ghost wouldn't.

"It's those motion detectors again. They're showing a very slight motion again. In fact, they're registering it now."

"That's 'cause you're moving and talking, you boy genius you," Peter called from the doorway. "Or if you're just standing there, you're breathing, aren't you? Last I heard you had to breathe...."

"I've adjusted the machine to filter out human presences," Egon explained. "It compensates for the weight of my footsteps and when I'm standing still, it shouldn't even have to compensate for that. If it's reacting to anything in this room it's not reacting to me. Besides, the readings continue even when I'm silent and not walking."

"Wow!" cried Ray. "What would cause that, Egon? None of the other detectors are picking up a thing, especially if you're not getting anything on the P.K.E. meter. I think a ghost could trigger a motion detector, simply because of the energy levels when it moves, but if you're not reading plasmo-etheric energy or PK either, then what's causing it?"

"I don't know, but it's stopped again," Egon replied. "Most curious. When this is over, I'll get a printout. But what I'd like to do is take several of these devices around the house. Not now but after she appears. It's possible there may be something else here, something we don't usually detect."

"A new kind of ghost?" asked Ray, leaning against the doorframe as he peered around the bedroom with eager eyes. "That would be really something."

"Never mind your fun and games, what about my wife?" demanded the judge, pushing past Winston as if he weren't even there and crowding in beside Ray in the doorway.

"Stand right there, Judge. I want you close enough for her to sense you," Egon instructed. He moved away into the far corner of the room. "She should be coming soon. Ray, did you adjust that device you borrowed from Dr. Bozinsky?"

"I sure did, Egon," Ray replied, holding it up and proving Peter had identified it correctly. "I've got it set directional, and it's starting to react. I spent a lot of time modifying it before I went to bed. It picks up electromagnetic impulses in the air, and it didn't take much work to fine tune it to psycho-kinetic energy. It's directional. Maybe I should move a little away and see if I can get an early reading. How much time have we got?"

"One minute," Peter replied. He'd been checking his watch periodically to make sure the time didn't get away from them.

"Okay, then I'll go downstairs and see, and come right back up," Ray replied. "Maybe we can trace the path the ghost uses to get here. Winston, you want to come with me?"

"No, I need Winston here," Egon objected. Peter suspected he wanted Winston to keep the judge out of the bedroom if for no other reason.

Ray nodded easily. "Okay," he said with a grin and hurried down the hall to the stairs, slipping the goggles down over his eyes.

He hadn't been gone very long when Hardcastle drew a sudden, shaky breath and raised his hand to point, the gesture unconsciously melodramatic. "There she is," he breathed, his hands abruptly tightening up into fists. Peter could see him bracing himself for something that was as much pain as blessing and, as if he understood that, Mark slid in next to the judge, taking Ray's place and grabbed him around the wrist.

"It's gonna be okay, Judge," he said under his breath.

Hardcastle must have attuned himself to the ghost over the past few days because it began to firm up only after he had spoken, materializing at the foot of the bed, misty and transparent, with nothing of a phony projection about her. The Ghostbusters had been called out on their share of hoaxes in their time, and while a high tech medium could suck in the straights, the four paranormal eliminators had learned to be fairly sure their visual perceptions were accurate. This one looked real. Peter could see dim outlines of furniture through her. Across the room, Egon's P.K.E. meter reacted, and the physicist turned the sound down with a quick gesture but not quick enough to keep the spirit from reacting to it. She had been staring at the empty bed so neatly made, her hands automatically clapping the footboard, registering with obvious dismay the absence of Hardcastle where she had expected to find him, but the aborted beeping of the meter made her turn her head toward Egon. When she saw him, she drew back as if in affront, staring at him. She raised her hand and pointed at him the way the Ghost of Christmas Future had pointed at Ebenezer Scrooge when the Ghostbusters had gone back in time and encountered the three Christmas spirits.

"My name is Egon Spengler," the physicist said in a quietly reasonable voice. "We're here to help you."

"That's right," Peter said, sliding into the room past Mark and the judge, pausing just inside the door. Winston grabbed the jurist's upper arms and held him in place when he would have followed and muttered a quick reassurance in the judge's ear. Peter couldn't make out the words, just the tone. Ignoring that for the moment, he turned to the ghost. "Nancy? My name's Peter. You've been appearing here so you could help Milt, haven't you?" He projected his voice as sympathetically as possible. Ghosts could be skittish, disappearing at the sight of the unexpected, and Peter didn't want to drive her off before she explained what she was doing here. He felt a faint vibration through the soles of his still-bare feet and wondered if she were doing it out of annoyance at the presence of strangers in what must have once been the connubial bedchamber.

She stared at him and then at Egon, then she inclined her head once in response to his question. Peter couldn't see her face that clearly but he could see enough to tell she had been beautiful and that she had died before her time. No wonder her death had taken the judge so hard.
"Peter, the motion sensors are going again," Egon said under his breath. "And she isn't moving. This is most peculiar."

He waved his hand at Egon impatiently. They could deal with that later. "Is the judge in danger?" he queried. "Nod if I'm right, okay?"

She hesitated, her eyes moving to Hardcastle, who stood in the doorway, gazing at her, his face full of more gentle emotion than Peter had seen in him since he'd met the judge, and he gestured at her encouragingly and started forward, half pulling Winston with him. Abruptly she held out her hand to him, palm up, in the classic gesture to stay away. He took another half a step toward her, and she did it again, imperiously, shaking her head violently. Stay away. It was as clear as if she had spoken. Her face turned slightly, toward Peter, and she did the same thing.

He backed up a step, holding up both his hands to indicate compliance, aware of Hardcastle letting Winston pull him back into the doorway and McCormick asking a hasty question under his breath that the judge shushed impatiently.

"See, I'm going," Peter reassured her. "Is someone going to hurt the judge, Nancy? A burglar? Somebody he sentenced to prison?"

She shook her head, glancing toward the clock.

"Is he going to get sick? Have a heart attack?" Peter had carefully considered all the possibilities he could think of and had talked them over with the other three Ghostbusters and with McCormick. That question made Hardcastle look at him sharply for a moment before turning back to his wife's spirit. Evidently he hadn't considered that possibility. He was much more inclined to imagine an external danger: bloodthirsty ex-cons or crazed burglars.

She shook her head. A sudden illness wasn't the answer.

"Is the house going to catch on fire?" Peter persisted, rapidly running out of options. "Something blow up?"

Again a negative reaction, but this time she held up her hand to stop him. The floor quivered again faintly under Peter's toes. "Is it another ghost or some kind of spooky thing?" he asked, liking the implications of this less than the thought of escaped convicts. Something was going on here he didn't understand and no one else seemed to have noticed, except Egon, whose eyes were darting to the motion detectors and back again. Ray still hadn't returned. Peter put down the faint vibration to trucks on the highway outside. There, it had stopped again.

She again shook her head, discounting the presence of other ghosts.

"Is it a natural disaster?" inquired Egon, his face abruptly flaring with alarm as if something had just occurred to him.

The numbers in the clock beside the judge's bed flipped over to four-seventeen a.m.

Nancy nodded, gesturing wildly at the room, waving them all back as if she could drive them away with the motion alone.

"Peter, get back!" Egon shouted abruptly, starting toward them. He had taken only one step when the floor beneath Peter's bare feet jumped and bucked, making him reel sideways into the judge, who grabbed the doorframe in one hand as the rest of them struggled for balance, waiting for the floor to stabilize under their feet. It didn't. Instead the shaking, rumbling motion worsened.

"Earthquake!" Hardcastle bellowed. "It's an earthquake. That's what...."

Peter grabbed for the other side of the door. Wasn't a doorway supposed to be the safest place in a big quake? But the whole building was shaking and rocking as if the house had its own personal fault line running beneath it and Peter didn't believe even a doorway would hold up well under the pressure. It felt like the floor was moving in ripples like a funhouse ride. Around him came crashes as objects fell from shelves, breakables shattering; and he could hear heavier objects falling further away. Some of the equipment in the bedroom tipped over, and Egon grabbed for it helplessly, as if he could stop it.

Suddenly pitched forward on his hands and knees, Peter again grabbed for the doorframe, scrambling backwards automatically, conscious of Winston sprawled on his back behind him, Mark asking anxiously, "Judge? Are you okay, Judge?" But Peter's attention suddenly focused on the ghost. She had come here to warn the judge about the earthquake; that's what it had to be. He would have been asleep in his bed, and while the quake would have no doubt awakened him, he might not have had time to react to it. That meant his bedroom was dangerous.

"EGON!" Peter scrambled to his feet only to be flung down again. A picture on the wall behind him in the hallway slammed to the floor, missing Peter's feet by inches, then toppling sideways over them, its impetus fortunately spent by the initial crash. Unhurt, Peter kicked it away. Abandoning the idea of standing up as a bad one, he tried to crawl toward Egon, who had his arms full of expensive equipment. "Damn it, Egon, get the hell out of there," he shouted over the rumble and roar of the quake. "Forget all that stuff, we can replace it," he insisted, his voice vibrating in time to the quake. "We can't replace you!"

Egon took two unsteady steps toward the doorway, staggering under the unfamiliar motion, trying in vain to catch his balance. The floor surged under him, sending him reeling backward toward the far wall. He dropped several of his gizmos as he crashed against the wall, putting out both hands to stop himself from going to the floor. Equipment rained around his feet.

Peter made it halfway up again, using his hands for balance, going hand over hand up the door frame. He got one foot under him only to slide down again when the whole world seemed to go sideways. With a cry, Hardcastle landed hard on top of him. The judge was a big man, solidly built, and he hit hard enough to wind Peter, who struggled painfully to catch his breath, making feeble pushing movements to rid himself of the solid weight.

"Judge? Judge?" cried Mark, his voice full of alarm.

"Egon, get out of there, man," hollered Winston, his voice as worried as McCormick's. He and Mark tried to tug the Judge off Peter, but the continuing vibration of the floor made it hard, because they couldn't keep their balance and kept tipping sideways, reeling like drunks.

The dresser in the bedroom went over with a crash, and another picture sprang off the wall right into Egon's path, making him jump backward to avoid it with a startled cry of, "Yaaaa!" He edged sideways against the wall, trying to climb over the dresser to get across the room.

Peter opened his mouth to yell Egon's name, but he still couldn't catch his breath. He tried ineffectually to push at Hardcastle, to free himself, but every time he managed to get his balance he lost it again. It seemed as if the earthquake had been shaking the house for years and years though he doubted it had been even a minute.

He had forgotten the ghost. Reminded, he turned his head slightly from Egon, who had moved toward the wall beyond the foot of the bed and was trying to shelter himself in the open closet door. The ghost looked around, saw Hardcastle in the doorway as Winston and Mark finally dragged him off Peter, who tried with increasing desperation to draw air into his lungs, gasping painfully when he started to catch his breath. The judge propped himself up on hands and knees.

"I'm all right, Nancy."

The ghost smiled, but she held up her hands, palms out, toward the judge and the others in the doorway. Her meaning was clear; don't come in here. Danger!

"No way!" sputtered Peter, finally getting enough air to speak. "Egon! Damn it, Winston, let me go! Egon, get out of there! It's going to--"

The ghost spun wildly, saw Egon in his makeshift shelter of the open closet door, and for the first time made a sound, though it was not actual speech, just a faint protesting noise. Items slid out of the closet off the shelves at Egon, some of them heavy books; law books maybe. He fended them off with an upraised arm, wincing slightly but not hurt.

The ghost shifted, enlarged, grew into something three times her original size, dove at Egon in a sudden, concerted rush. He yelled in astonishment and surprise.

The ceiling of the room bulged abruptly, then came down with a roar, a rattle and clatter, and finally a crash, covering the floor and every other surface with a heavy layter of laths and plaster, burying the bed where the judge would have been sleeping if not for his wife's intervention. Peter felt the older man stiffen beside him as he realized it.

The light at the end of the hall went out as if the power had finally failed, and only the dim dawnlight cast any illumination over the dust-laden bedroom as small pieces of ceiling plaster tinkled down to bounce along the top of the rubble that filled the room. Dust billowed out in great clouds, obscuring vision still further, and the four of them in the doorway coughed and choked, trying in vain to bat it away with their hands. Mark gave a sudden yelp of pain as one last piece knocked him in the shoulder, sending him reeling sideways into the just-rising Winston, who fell against Peter. Once again they wound up in a heap on the floor, but this time Peter was able to breathe, at least as well as anyone could breathe in that laden atmosphere.

He wriggled out from under Winston with unexpected energy and hollered at the top of his lungs, "EGON!" Faint in his head came a memory, a fortune teller's voice only the previous day. 'There will be a great fall.' Peter struggled in vain to remember what else she had said. He should have listened. Not Humpty Dumpty after all, but Egon...

The floor pitched beneath him one final time, dropping him to his knees, then the violent movement of the earthquake stilled slowly to gentler rocking, to barely noticeable tremors that scarcely moved the floor beneath them at all. Finally, it stopped altogether and in the silence that followed, they heard the wail of distant sirens.

"Was that...the big one?" Winston asked, pushing himself up to his knees. "Oh, man. Egon, are you okay?"

"I've felt worse," Hardcastle said as if the question had been directed to  him. "No, that wasn't the big one. It didn't feel like it was much more than four point on the Richter scale. We've lost power, though. McCormick, go down and get that radio, the battery one I keep in the kitchen. Hurry. We're gonna need to see how widespread this thing is, how much damage it caused."

"EGON!" Peter called again. Nothing. No answer. No movement in the room that was only now emerging from its clouds of dust. He fumbled at his belt for the small pocket-flashlight he kept there, and switched it on. When he aimed it into the ruin of Hardcastle's bedroom, at first all he could see was dust. Then, as the billowing clouds began to settle, he was able to make out the ruin of the judge's bed, buried in rubble from the ceiling. Hardcastle's wife had come to warn him, all right. If she hadn't, he would have been fast asleep when all that came down and it would have killed him if he couldn't have moved fast enough and taken shelter in the doorway or under the bed.

Peter winced. Directing the beam of light toward the closet, he sought any trace of Egon. There were unusual lumps in the chunks of plaster and bits of wood from the ceiling that might well have concealed Egon, and none of them were moving. A quick dart of light at the ceiling proved that what remained was solid and likely to stay up there barring the actual 'big one' or California finally falling into the ocean. Judging from the firmness of the floor beneath his bare feet and the levelness of the hallway, Gulls' Way had been well constructed. There was damage, but the house seemed relatively intact.

Scrambling painfully to his feet (he felt as if he had been bruised from head to toe) Peter lunged at the ruins of the judge's bedroom, ignoring the stabs of chunks of plaster against the soles of his feet.

"Whoa! Hold it, Pete." Winston grabbed him around the chest and held him back by main force. "Let me."

"Damn it, Winston--"

"You haven't got any shoes on, Peter," Winston reminded him. "You'll cut your feet to ribbons and that won't help Egon, will it?" demanded the black Ghostbuster in carefully reasonable tones. "Find your boots and get into 'em quick. We're gonna need you."

"He's right," agreed the judge. He looked toward the stairs. "MCCORMICK, GET BACK UP HERE, AND BRING SOME TOOLS!" he roared at the top of his lungs.

Peter scrambled backward, searching for his boots and cursing himself for not taking thirty seconds to put them on when he got here, and for failing to realize the quiver he felt through his feet was probably the precursor to the earthquake, a faint, early tremor. The motion detectors had picked up on it. Peter should have been smart enough to do the same. He'd even been in an earthquake before, though it had been an artificial one, when Marduk, Babylonian god of the city had arrived in New York and popped up through the streets to try to make the place his own. It had felt much like this, only briefer with much less damage. But this was California. They had earthquakes here all the time. He should have thought of it.

Winston edged carefully into the debris-littered bedroom, using his own belt-flash to check for traces of Egon. He knew where the physicist had been before, and he headed that way, pausing to fling away pieces of board and lath that blocked him, searching for their missing teammate.

That was when Peter remembered Ray, and he jumped up clutching his left boot. "Winston! Ray..."

"Yeah, I thought of that," called Winston unhappily as he brushed a pile of plaster off the back of the dresser and climbed atop it to look on the other side, shining his flashlight down into that area.

When he didn't cry out or do anything to indicate he'd found Egon crushed there Peter spun around toward the stairs, cupped his hands around his mouth and screeched at the top of his lungs, "RAY! MARK!"

Neither of them answered, and that made the judge spin around from his contemplation of the ruined bedroom and take a few steps toward the stairs. "Damn it, kid," he ground out. "What trouble are you in now?"

"He's probably climbing over furniture," Peter said quickly, grabbing the judge's arm. "He was okay when he went downstairs and I haven't heard anything else fall. Help Winston find Egon."

Torn between his need to find both his buddies, Peter dragged on his left boot and laced it sketchily, fumbling around for his right one as the judge glanced once more at the stairs then plowed into his bedroom, his hair hanging wildly, no longer combed to cover his increasing baldness. He pushed it back automatically with one hand as he worked his way over to Winston with no conscious awareness of doing it. "Did you find him?"

Peter's fingers closed over the heel of his right boot and he grabbed it triumphantly, brushing plaster crumbs off the sole of his foot before shoving it into the boot.

"No, it's like he's not here, man," Winston replied, his voice perplexed and worried. "Look at the place. I've been through everything. There's a lot of crap down, yeah, and I've gotta say I think your wife saved your life, because that was so fast, I'm not sure you could have got out of there in time. But all this crap's spread thin. There's not enough of it to cover Egon. If he were here, I'd be able to find him."

"Under the bed?" suggested Hardcastle as Peter lunged to his feet and pushed his way into the room, kicking at the rubble to clear himself a path to Winston. He shone his flashlight around, trying to find anything that might be a buried blond physicist, but the lumps he found were simply the equipment, most of it broken, including Egon's beloved P.K.E. meter. Peter snatched it up in dismay, but couldn't get a response from it. He could have used it to check for Egon's biorhythms, but when he activated it nothing happened. Peter didn't have one with him, though there were bound to be a couple of them in the car and Ray had had one. Ray....

Winston aimed his flashlight into the closet, kicking at the pile of clothes and books that blocked his way. If Egon had dived in there... But then he turned and shook his head. "He's not here, Pete. He's just not here." He ran a dusty hand over his face, his eyes wide and shocked.

"But that's crazy!" objected the judge, turning away from the bed and shaking his head to indicate Egon hadn't dived beneath it either. "He has to be here! There's no other way out of this place." He looked from Peter to Winston and back and waited.

"I don't know," Winston replied. "Do you think, well, that Nancy could have done something?"

"He's gotta be here," Peter insisted, automatically denying that solution though he had a faint memory of the ghost enlarging and swooping down upon the hapless physicist just before the ceiling had come down. "He's gotta be."

"She did something," Winston reminded him. "Didn't you see it? She--changed shape..."

"She didn't do anything like that," Hardcastle barked, his face shaken. His denial wasn't very convincing. "Can ghosts..." he began helplessly, then shook his head. "Nancy wouldn't hurt a fly!"

"I don't think she would either, Judge," Winston reassured him. "Whatever she did, I think she did it to help Egon. But she couldn't have carried him through the wall, could she? Whenever Slimer tried to carry things through solid objects, they always stay on the same side."

"Who the hell is Slimer?" demanded the judge, but he didn't wait around for an explanation. "I gotta find McCormick," he muttered and started for the door, balancing awkwardly as he stumbled through the wreckage of the ceiling.

"Yeah, and Ray," agreed Winston. "He should've been back before this. He waved the flashlight around one more time, discovered a hump in the rubble and lunged at it, with Peter at his side. Frantically they dug through the clump only to find it was one of the pictures from the walls, propped over the spectrameter at an angle.

"EGON!" Peter yelled. This was crazy. The ghost couldn't have hauled him through a wall, and even if she did, he'd be on the other side, making his way back to them. "What's over there, Judge?" he called, pointing at the far wall."

"Outside," Hardcastle said impatiently, waving a hand at the dormer window further along the wall. It was broken, glass shattered.

Peter and Winston exchanged a stunned look, unable to believe they'd overlooked this obvious possibility. As one, they started for the window, crashing through the mess. They reached it together and stood in the recessed area looking out at the lawn, everything black and white in the faint pale light that comes before sunrise. There were shadows below them, bushes and hedges, and it wasn't possible to tell if Egon had fallen and now lay sprawled below them. There will be a great fall. You will search and not find but do not despair. The fortune teller's words rang in his head. Why hadn't he questioned her? Why hadn't he listened? Do not despair? Yeah, right, when Egon was--was missing. "Egon," cried Peter, sickened at the thought of that distance. He hadn't been near the window. Had Nancy thrown him out? "I've gotta get down there."

"We all do," agreed Winston. Hardcastle had already gone. In the distance they could hear him hollering, "MCCORMICK? Damn it, kid, answer me?" as he clumped down the stairs.

The light was coming faster now. Peter stood a moment more at the window in hopes of seeing something, but there were still too many shadows. He turned, eyes locking with Winston's a minute, then they both started for the door. Pausing to take one last look around the room, they ran flashlights here and there, then turned for the stairs.

Damage didn't seem to be as extensive in the rest of the house. There were pictures off the walls and lamps off tables, and some of the bigger and more unwieldy pieces of furniture had overturned. In the judge's den, law books had jumped from the shelves to lie in a heap, but the stairs had been solid beneath their hurrying feet.

As they passed a telephone, Peter screeched to a stop and picked it up, pressing the receiver to his ear. He had a dial tone. Unable to believe it, he punched in 911 and in a minute got an operator, giving her the address. She asked about fire first, and gas main leaks and then injured people. "We've got some missing," Peter said. "They might be trapped in the rubble."

"Is the house intact, sir?"

"Pretty much. At least one ceiling came down. And now we're missing three people."

She questioned him further, and Peter slipped in his own question about the quake. "It wasn't as severe as some," she replied hastily. "I don't know what it was on the Richter scale, probably three point five to four. They think the epicenter is somewhere in the Malibu Hills. Damage is heavier in some areas than others, but most places still have power and water."

"Power's out here," Peter explained, "but the phones still work."
She promised to send someone as quickly as possible.

Peter hung up. "Well, it's not the big one. I don't even think it's very bad, just that it hit hard in a few places around here. Maybe we're near the epicenter or something. Come on, let's go find Ray."

The judge met them as they entered the kitchen, holding his battery radio in one hand. He had it to a news station that was broadcasting earthquake information. As quakes go, it hadn't been that serious, 3.9 on the Richter Scale and there hadn't been major damage, it seemed. There was localized damage, some of it right here in Malibu, and the woman at 911 had been right about the epicenter, but there wasn't expected to be much loss of life. Most people were calmly going to work as if nothing had happened, and there didn't seem to be anything but minor freeway damage to impede them. Somehow, Peter found that annoying, as if it didn't seem right that a minor earthquake that didn't even disturb the locals that much might have taken his friends.

After listening for a minute or two, he said, "Did you find McCormick?"

The judge shook his head. "I don't know where that stupid kid could have got to. I just sent him for the radio. There weren't any pits for him to fall into on the way. I didn't have any trouble getting to the kitchen, even if most of my groceries are on the floor. When I find him..." he let the threat trail off, but Peter was pretty sure any yelling the judge did at Mark when he reappeared would only be an expression of relief to find the younger man intact.

"You didn't see Ray?" Winston asked, though it was clear he thought this a futile question.

Hardcastle shook his head. It was getting light enough now to read each other's expressions more clearly, and the judge couldn't hide the belief that something must have fallen on Ray in the quake. "We'll have to search the house," he said.

"And check outside," insisted Winston. "I'll run out and see..."

"I'll go," Peter said. He yanked the front door open by main force and ventured outside. Here, the damage seemed less apparent; no gaping holes in the ground, no uprooted trees. He registered that subconsciously as he raced around the house to the spot below Judge Hardcastle's bedroom window. There was enough light to see now, but even though he plunged into the shrubbery calling Egon's name, he didn't find the tall physicist sprawled broken on the ground. Egon wasn't here at all.

This was crazy. Nancy must have done something; taken him somewhere. Peter hurried to Ecto, momentarily registering that it was intact, and dug into the back, producing a P.K.E. meter, which he set out to adjust laboriously to pick up Egon's biorhythms, concentrating fiercely to get it right. It was usually Egon or Ray who did this kind of thing, though he and Winston knew how in case of emergency. There! He had it. Adjusting the meter for widest possible gain, Peter pointed it in the direction of the house, mentally crossing his fingers. The meter didn't stir.

"Where are you, Egon?" Peter demanded. He knew the meter wouldn't register Egon if he were...dead, not unless the device was right on top of the physicist, but he refused to believe Egon dead. If he were dead, he'd have been lying in the bedroom under all that rubble, or he'd have been stretched out, limp and broken, underneath the Judge'd bedroom window. So where was he? Peter exchanged a blank look with Winston, then he bent his head over the meter again and reset it, this time for Ray.

He halfway expected it to read blank again, but this time he got a reading and he and Winston exchanged a relieved glance. Ray was alive anyway. The meter was directional, and Peter set off at a run toward the house again, pausing in the doorway to check directions. It seemed he wanted a lower level. Ray was in the basement.

"JUDGE!" shouted Peter at the top of his lungs, adding in an aside to Winston, "Where's the basement? Ray's lower than we are."

There was a distant shout before Winston could answer, and Peter started in that direction without hesitation, finding himself in the kitchen. A door led to stairs to the lower level, and the judge was down there. "HERE!" he shouted. "This way."

Exchanging worried looks Peter and Winston followed the sound of his voice. The reading on the meter intensified, proving they were moving in the right direction. When they came out into the basement area, they found more clutter and debris, but most of it seemed to have come from old boxes and items that had been stored on metal shelves, which had pitched sideways, shedding their contents. Beyond them, the judge was pulling at a door that was partly blocked by a crate of old books and what looked like photo albums.

From the other side of the door came a faint yelling.

"Ray?" Peter vaulted over the nearest shelving unit with all the skill of an Olympic jumper and worked his way to the judge, aware of Winston, hard on his heels.

"McCormick's in there," Hardcastle said. "Your buddy came down here checking something out and got trapped in there."

"He's pinned under a set of shelves, Peter," McCormick called. He didn't sound quite normal; there was a thread of pain in his voice, and the judge must have heard it too, because he was trying to manhandle the last set of shelves out of his way so he could open the door. "I heard some things falling down here and came down to see if Ray was okay. Only when I got in here, something fell and blocked the doorway."

"Ray?" Peter repeated, louder this time. "Come on, Ray, it's not nice to scare uncle Peter like this." He caught his toe on something and pitched forward, crashing against the judge, who caught him without effort and righted him easily. Winston arrived without the midair fumble, and clapped Peter on the shoulder.

"We've gotta shift these shelves," urged the judge, tugging at them again.

"Right with you," agreed Winston, and the two of them struggled to right the sagging shelves. They must have weighed a ton, because they didn't want to yield.

Replacing Hardcastle at the edge of the door, Peter tried to peer through the three-inch opening. "RAY!"

"P-peter?"

The voice was faint and weak, but it was also conscious and alert, and Peter heaved a massive sigh of relief. "How are you, kiddo?" he asked quickly. "And what're you doing hiding out down here?"

"I--my foot's caught, Peter," Ray replied. "I couldn't get out, and my walkie talkie is broken."

"So's his ankle, I think, Peter," Mark inserted smoothly. "He's not bleeding or anything, at least not from anything more serious than a few scratches, and I don't think he's got any internal injuries. The judge had us taking first aid courses and I've been checking him out. He's pretty stable, but he was unconscious when I found him."

"I was only out a minute, Peter," Ray insisted. "And Mark's got a broken arm, so he's not much better than me, except he's not pinned down."

"McCormick, listen to me," said the judge in a voice that almost sounded angry. "You sit down and don't try moving. If you can immobilize your arm, do it. I don't want to have to go to the trouble of training a whole new partner, do you hear me?"

"Aw, judge, I didn't know you cared," McCormick said in a voice he carefully filled with every amount of sloppy sentiment he could manage.

Hardcastle's face relaxed, but just as carefully didn't soften. "Don't go all mushy on me, McCormick. We're gonna get you out of there in a minute or two."

"Yeah, if we can ever move this ten ton bookcase the judge put down here as an obstacle course," Winston grunted, tugging away. Seeing this, Peter abandoned his post at the door and joined the two men, helping them to lift the shelving unit. Winston was right; it did feel like ten tons. Straining his muscles to help, Peter grimaced expressively. "What's this thing...made of, Judge? Solid...gold?" he demanded, panting with exertion.

"Shut up and lift."

Peter made a face at the older man, but between the three of them they were able to lift the shelf and balance it on another one that had fallen beside it. It landed with a heavy crash, nearly taking three of Peter's fingers with it, and he yelped and jumped back. "Easy. Let's not amputate the magic fingers. Women everywhere would be devastated." But even as he spoke he was tearing open the door, which led to a small storage room.

McCormick sat cross-legged on the floor, supporting Ray's head on his knees and his broken arm across his chest, bound there with a length of clothesline as a sling. He looked paler than usual in the light of Peter's and Winston's flashlights. Ray's eyes were closed and there was a cut on his forehead that had bled down the side of his face. McCormick had covered it with his handkerchief and held it in place with his good hand. The bookshelf must have knocked Ray down and injured his ankle at the same time. Though the shelf didn't rest on his ankle, it lay at such an angle that they wouldn't be able to tug the injured Ghostbuster out without turning him sideways or they would catch his foot. Luckily a crate had taken the full weight of the unit and held it off Ray or he might have suffered a much worse fate, especially if this shelf was as heavy as the one outside. The top shelf hovered about six inches above his ribcage. If it had hit there with its full weight, it would have done a lot of damage. It might even have crushed him. Peter shuddered.

When the light from the two flashlights hit him, Ray opened his eyes, blinking in the brightness. "Hi, guys," he said in a small voice as if abashed to have gotten himself into such a predicament.

"'Hi, guys'?" Peter echoed, his voice full of outrage. "That's all you can say after scaring us silly. What are you doing down here anyway?" he demanded. "Nancy's ghost was upstairs, not down here."

"But there was something down here," Ray insisted. "Another ghost or something. The readings led right here. I followed them."

"The readings on Murray's cockeyed gizmo?" Peter said, outraged. He dropped to his knees at Ray's side and stared down at his friend with relief. "That thing isn't worth the metal it's made of." He grabbed Ray's hand and clutched it tightly, still battling his overwhelming relief. "You okay, buddy?"

Ray nodded earnestly. "I really was only out a minute, Peter. I was already waking up when Mark got here, and I think this thing tipped over at the last minute just before the quake stopped. Really. It tipped me over and I felt my ankle give and something flew off the shelf and whacked me on the head, and then I started to wake up and heard Mark calling my name."

"Just so you mean it, pal," Peter said, tightening his grip on the occultist's hand. Ray sounded alert, though Peter worried about the possibility of a second ghost, one who had led Ray into danger. When Ray's fingers squeezed firmly, Peter sat back on his heels, relieved.

"I mean it. I think my ankle's sprained, but I'm pretty sure it's not broken. I can wiggle my toes. Hurts, but I think it's just a sprain. I went sort of sideways."

Winston clambered over some of the rubble. "Hi, homeboy," he greeted Ray. "Look at me a minute, will you?"

Ray turned his eyes automatically to Winston. "You guys aren't hurt, are you?" he asked with sudden concern. "You look okay. But..." His voice trailed off as if he'd realized there was something wrong and his fingers clutched at Peter's.

"We're fine," insisted Winston quickly as if he didn't want to worry Ray with the mystery of Egon's whereabouts until they had him safely out. "We just want to make sure of you." He checked Ray's pulse, rested his hand on the occultist's forehead and studied his eyes. "His pupils are equal and reactive, Peter, and his pulse feels pretty good. I think he really was only out a minute. How's that foot feel, Ray?"

"Hurts, what do you think," Ray said promptly, shifting carefully. "I'm not pinned, only I can't quite turn sideways; if I do, I might knock everything over. Can you guys get this off of me?"

Hardcastle, who had joined them at McCormick's side and who had been fussing gruffly over the curly-haired man's injury now stood up. "Yeah, I don't trust that box to keep holding up the shelves for much longer. I'm surprised it held at all. It's cardboard."

"Cardboard?" echoed Peter in disbelief and growing alarm. "If these shelves weigh as much as the ones out there..."

"Yeah, and if it hadn't been there, I'd've been crushed," Ray said, not in the shocked tones of one who has just realized how close he had come to disaster but with simple, genuine relief. "And it would have hit Mark, too."

"What did hit Mark?" Peter asked, still gripping Ray's hand like a lifeline. He'd lost one friend today, though he didn't understand how, and he wasn't about to lose a second one. "He was in here when the door was blocked."

"It was the door," McCormick replied, grimacing, his face slightly abashed. "I came in here and found Ray and was going to come out and call for help, and I put out my hand to push the door open. It slammed on me." He sounded a little shaky with pain but he gave a crooked grin. "I ran into a door in the dark," he concluded. Peter hoped he wasn't going into shock, but when he reached over with his free hand to take McCormick's pulse, he saw the judge was already doing it.

"Next time, be more careful," Hardcastle reproved him as he finished, but as he pushed himself to his feet, his hand lightly ruffled Mark's hair, trying to look as if he'd done it accidentally. Peter grinned faintly. Getting Hardcastle to display emotion was about as easy as lifting one of these bookcases one-handed. Mark's face lit up like the sun but he carefully damped his smile when Hardcase looked down at him. "Time we did something about the lights," concluded the older man with a grimace, then flipped the light switch, and they all blinked in surprise when the lights came on.

"Hey, power's back," said Peter with relief, though it presented him with an all too clear of the lines of pain on Ray's face and the blood from the cut that had stained McCormick's makeshift bandage.

"No, I think the backup generator finally kicked in," responded the judge. "I noticed our power line was down. Well, what are you waiting for. Let's get this shelf moved. Carefully so we don't re-injure his foot. No, McCormick, you stay put. Well, maybe you could edge over that way a little."

"No, I'm comfortable here," McCormick said, patting Ray's shoulder with his good hand. "Besides, I can probably help Ray pull out when you lift that killer bookshelf. What do you store on it, anyway?" He gestured at the boxes that were strewn around the room. "I think one of those flying missiles probably knocked Ray out. If the shelves had hit him, he'd probably have a skull fracture."

"Never mind what I keep down here," Hardcastle replied so stiffly all four men stared at him in surprise. "Come on, Venkman, Zeddemore. Let's clear this stuff off him."

"Hang in there, Tex," Peter urged Ray, giving his hand a comforting squeeze before he stood up. "You'll be okay."

"Peter, where's Egon?" asked Ray. "He's not...hurt, is he? You know, in the earthquake?" His eyes had widened in startled realization. Peter realized he was more shaken by the blow to the head than they'd thought or he would have noticed instantly that Egon wasn't present. At least they'd found Ray intact. But Egon...

"No, he wasn't hurt in the earthquake," Winston said promptly. "Take it easy, Ray. We'll have you out of there in a few minutes."

The three men grabbed the metal shelves and lifted them up with an effort as fierce as the one outside. Ray gasped and wiggled free the minute his foot had clearance, sliding backward with so much ease it relieved the worst of Peter's tension over him, though the occultist's gasp of pain as he jarred the ankle didn't help. Ray shifted sideways next to Mark and pulled himself into a sitting position against the far wall while the three men balanced the shelf against the wall and tested it for solidity. It stayed where it belonged, too sturdy to have been damaged, now that the room had stopped shaking.

Mark's breath suddenly whistled out in shock. "Look at that!"

They turned to follow his pointing finger. The cardboard box that had supported the heavy shelving unit without effort seemed to collapse into itself, one corner sagging away.

"Wow!" breathed Ray and dug his P.K.E. meter out of his pocket. "Look at that. This is great." At once the meter reacted, though not with as much activity as if there had been an actual ghost present. Ray blinked and aimed the meter at the crumpled cardboard box. At once the readings strengthened slightly. "Gosh," he breathed. "There was a ghost here all the time. It was holding up the box." His eyes widened, gleaming with excitement. "I tracked it down here, and it saved my life."

Hardcastle pushed the crumpled box aside but not before Peter had seen the gleam of metal protruding from a corner. It looked like a figurine, some kind of trophy, but before he could get a better look, the judge had snatched the box away and stuck it on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. "For balance," he said.

"I never came in here before," McCormick remarked.

"And you won't again." Hardcastle had stiffened up. He began to gather together all the boxes that had fallen from the shelves as if it was important to put each one back in its place immediately.

McCormick looked a little hurt, but he didn't say so. Instead he pushed one of the boxes closer to the judge with his toe.

"Don't kick it, McCormick," snapped Hardcastle, snatching the box away as if it contained rare crystal, clutching it against his chest.

McCormick pulled his foot back fast enough to jar his broken arm. He groaned as if in excruciating pain and hunched forward over the injured limb, lowering his face. Peter wasn't sure what was going on here with the judge, and evidently neither was Mark, but McCormick hadn't expected that kind of reaction and wasn't about to give away how he felt about it. Peter wasn't sure if the pain were genuine or not, but the judge set aside the box and knelt awkwardly beside the young ex-con. "Aw, come on, McCormick, don't do this."

"I didn't do anything, judge, except break my arm. What is all this stuff anyway. You usually keep this place locked."

"You mean you tried to get in here?" demanded the judge.

"Yeah, one time when you had me down here cleaning out the basement. I thought you'd want this room cleaned too but it was locked. So sue me for trying to do something thoroughly. Last I heard, it wasn't a crime." He cradled his broken arm in his other hand and didn't lift his head.

The judge muttered under his breath, then he pushed away the nearest box and sat down beside McCormick. "Let me see that arm."

"Heck no, Judge. I wouldn't want to interfere with your cleaning everything away." Yet when the judge leaned forward insistently, Mark straightened up and allowed the judge to check him out.

Peter exchanged a perplexed glance with Winston while Ray, though conscious of the tension in the atmosphere, continued to take readings. "Class three," he muttered under his breath. "But not the same as upstairs. This is a different ghost."

That made the older man look at him sharply. "Oh, no. I'm not having any of that." He glanced around the room warily, uncertain, half afraid he'd see another spirit, failing to notice McCormick's head coming up. The younger man glanced at the boxes, fixing his eyes on the same one Peter had noticed, the one with the trophy in it, and his eyes widened in stunned realization.

"This is your son's stuff, isn't it?" he ventured warily, half afraid the judge would snap at him.

"This is none of your business, McCormick." But then he softened slightly and didn't move away from his examination of the broken arm. "Okay, yeah, so what if it is?"

"But that's great!" Ray cried. "It means your son probably saved my life." Peter looked up from his careful unlacing of Ray's boot and studied the judge with thoughtful eyes.

"That's it." Hardcastle backed away toward the door. "First Nancy and now Tommy. What is this? Why is this happening?" He looked around with a near-helpless expression as if ghosts were much harder to face than hardened criminals or earthquakes, particularly these ghosts. "Are--have they always been here?"

Ray shook his head hastily, wincing slightly as Peter tried to work the boot off carefully. It came away with less effort than Peter had expected, and while the ankle was obviously swollen, Peter wasn't sure it was badly sprained. It wasn't as serious as they'd thought though it had probably been a little aggravated by Ray's need to hold it carefully or risk jarring the bookshelf loose upon him.

"No. I don't think so," Stantz replied sympathetically. "You mean, have they been, well, watching over you?" He considered it. "Maybe a little. I think a lot of ghosts do, even when they can't manifest. Sometimes I think my folks know what I'm up to, know I'm a Ghostbuster, and they're proud of me." It wasn't a subject he ordinarily talked about, and Hardcastle must have guessed that because he didn't comment at all, simply waited to see what Ray meant to say next. "If you believe in any kind of an afterlife at all, then why wouldn't they be able to make sure you're okay once in awhile? But this is different. This is because you were in danger, right here in the house. I bet you know how to handle it if it's crooks or something because you've probably seen a lot of them in court, but nobody can handle an earthquake. Ow, Peter," he blurted out as Venkman carefully prodded his swollen ankle.

Peter muttered, "Sorry. This isn't too bad, Ray."

Ray nodded and went on talking to the judge. "I think your wife and son both came, only maybe he came here because this is where all his things are and they were a tie for him, a way to find his way home. And then, when I picked up on him and came down here, and the earthquake hit, he saved me, because that's the kind of person he was."

"That's great, Judge," McCormick ventured softly. "Don't you think it's great?"

Hardcastle's emotions were obviously mixed. It didn't take someone who knew him well to see that. While he could understand Ray's explanation, his very nature made him uncomfortable with it. "Is--is Tommy here right now?" he asked.

"No." Ray shook his head, holding up the P.K.E. meter to prove it. "All I'm getting are fading residuals. They'd be a lot stronger if there was a gh--if your son was here. I don't think it's as easy for him to come here as it is for your wife. She--well, she died here, and it was her family home, Mark said. But--"

"But Tommy was in Vietnam," the judge said under his breath. "It was hard for him to find his way home."

McCormick stretched out his good hand and rested it on the judge's shoulder. For once, Hardcastle didn't hunch his shoulders under the touch or attempt to reject it in any way. He said, "I can't--see him?"

Ray took another reading. "I don't think so. I wish you could."

Winston leaned past Peter to look at Ray's ankle, and then broke the tension. "What do you say we head upstairs. Somebody ought to be showing up here pretty soon and they can take care of Mark's arm and strap up that ankle. It's not too bad, Ray."

The judge relaxed under those practical tones, as Winston had probably meant him to, and helped McCormick to his feet. "Come on, kiddo, let's get you upstairs. "I should have known you'd find a way to get out of clipping all those hedges."

"Yeah, I thought I'd rather suffer major pain than do a little work," retorted McCormick, grimacing affectionately at the judge.

"But where's Egon?" Ray demanded as Peter and Winston helped him to his feet, taking his weight by making him drape an arm over their shoulders as they stood one on either side of him. "You said he wasn't hurt. Then why isn't he here?"

Peter had been trying to make sense out of Egon's bizarre disappearance all along, but now, forcibly reminded of it, he couldn't hold back his worry any longer. "I don't know where he is, Ray," he admitted. "We need your meter to try to figure it out. I can't get anything on his biorhythms anywhere. One minute he was there and the next he was just--gone."

Ray's eyes bulged with surprise and his mouth dropped open. Peter felt his body stiffening with tension. "Gosh, Peter," he breathed in dismay. "Are--are you sure it wasn't just--just the earthquake; something, well, opening up and then closing again afterwards?" He looked like he hated saying those words as much as Peter hated hearing them, and Peter hated it a lot.

"No, it wasn't anything like that," Winston said instantly with determined firmness,and the judge added:

"It sure didn't look that way to me. I thought we'd find him in the rubble, but he wasn't there, and he hadn't gone out the window either. We looked everywhere." He was still looking for something, his eyes never still as they examined every corner of the small storage room as if the unexpected miracle should happen and he would see his son as well as his wife. But Tommy didn't materialize, and from the fading reaction on Ray's still-activated P.K.E. meter, he was long gone and not likely to come back. Peter looked around the small room, the carefully boxed possessions, ties to the son he'd lost, things Hardcastle couldn't bear to look at but just as equally couldn't bear to be rid of, locked down here where McCormick couldn't get at them and the judge didn't have to be reminded of them on a daily basis. Even if it weren't for his compelling need to find Egon, Peter would have tried to get them out of this place. Abandoned shrines made him uneasy. Maybe now the judge would think about this place and do something with the stored items.

"Get me up there," Ray insisted, worry clouding his eyes. "I want to check..."

"Your ankle--" Peter began automatically.

"Never mind my ankle. Egon needs us. My ankle's fine." Which was typically Ray. He'd be insisting it was fine even if it was broken if one of his friends needed him.

"Yeah, and twice as big as normal," muttered Winston sourly. "This is what we'll do, Ray. We'll go back with the P.K.E. meters. Pete and I didn't have any up there. We got this one from Ecto and used it to track you down. We already called for help; turns out this earthquake is just small fry, except for right around here. So we should be hip deep in rescuers soon and we'll find Egon."

"But how could he just vanish?" Ray demanded, perplexed. "It doesn't make any sense."

"It was Nancy," said Mark unexpectedly. When Hardcastle glared at him in sudden annoyance, he shook his head as if to deny he'd intended to cause any pain with his suggestion and added, "Didn't you see it? She--changed, Judge. She went right for him. It was like she knew something was going to happen--well, she knew about the ceiling, after all; that's why she was here. But she hadn't planned on anybody being in there. When she realized Egon was trapped, she must've--protected him."

That was received with silence as they made their way up the basement steps, then Ray nodded eagerly. "It's gotta be. He's right, Peter. The ghost wouldn't have hurt him. She was here to save the judge, so she isn't the kind to do harm. She had to get Egon out of there fast and she did what she could do."

Peter could believe it. He'd seen the ghost do something, though he didn't understand what. That wasn't the point, though. "Come on, Ray," he insisted as they made it up to the ground floor. "Okay, she did something, but if she didn't mean any harm, then where's Egon?"

"He's somewhere," Ray insisted. "She didn't kill him. She's not capable of it."

"How do you know that?" Hardcastle asked very stiffly as if he would challenge the first words out of Ray's mouth.

Ray lifted his head and looked the judge right in the eye. "Because you loved her so much," he said as if the answer was obvious.

Before the judge could respond, the telephone rang.

Peter was nearest, so he scooped it up automatically. "Gulls' Way," he replied.

"Who's that?" demanded a suspicious voice. "Is Milt okay?"

Peter recognized the speaker as the police officer he'd met the previous day. "Harper, that you? This is Pete Venkman. The judge is fine, and Mark's mostly fine; he broke his arm but he's okay. Ray's got a turned ankle, and the judge's bedroom is a big mess. The ceiling came down. What time is it?"

"Almost five thirty," replied the police officer. "I just made it in to the office. We got called in because there are sure to be problems even though there have been worse quakes than this one. There's not much damage where I live but there's a little blockage on some of the streets. Do you need help?"

"We called in already and I think I hear a siren now."

"So what aren't you telling me, Venkman?"

The detective was quick if he could sense the anxiety in Peter's voice. It would take too long to explain the whole thing, so he just said shortly, "Egon's missing. We're going to look for him now. Here's the judge." He passed the phone to Hardcastle, then he and Winston guided Ray to a chair at the kitchen table.

"Stay here, Ray," urged Peter. "We'll head upstairs with the meters and see what we can figure out."

"I can make more sense out of the meters than either of you," said Ray, not in an attempt to brag but because it was true and might be important. "Come on, Peter. We've got to figure out what happened to Egon."

"Egon wasn't there before," Winston said in a voice that was reluctantly practical. "Let us at least strap up your ankle first, homeboy."

The judge, who was examining McCormick's arm with as much concern as a particularly fussy Jewish mother, while he talked to Frank Harper on the telephone lifted his head and nodded toward one of the cabinets. "There's a first aid kit in there. But I think help has arrived."

A minute later the front doorbell rang, and Peter hurried off to answer it. The sooner Ray was taken care of, the sooner they could try to figure out what had happened to Egon. He shuffled it away to a private corner of his mind. Nancy had moved Egon so he wouldn't be hurt when the ceiling fell. Nancy was a good ghost. She would bring him back. He repeated it over and over in his head like a mantra as he raced for the door.

It was paramedics, two men, one dark and slender with high cheekbones and a lock of black hair that fell over his forehead and one fair with thinning hair and a rather round, good humored face, their vehicle, with the number 51 on it, parked in front of the steps. Peter grabbed them with relief. "We're glad to see you, come on," and hauled them back to the kitchen, where Hardcastle waved them at McCormick, who had the more serious injury, stepping aside so they could work.

The two paramedics, who called each other Roy and Johnny, had Mark's arm immobilized in minutes and started to talk about transporting as Johnny, the tall, dark haired one, put a professional looking bandage on Ray's ankle.

"You don't need to go to the hospital for this, not when there are going to be more serious injuries," the dark haired man said. "But watch it. You've got a lot of swelling there. I don't think it's broken, but sometimes an ankle will fool you. Stay off it as much as you can and I'd recommend crutches. You might want to come in tomorrow and get it x-rayed just to be sure. You don't have any signs of a concussion and you say you were only out a minute, but it wouldn't hurt to remind the doctor of it when you go in." His eyes had taken in the jumpsuits the three had been wearing. "You guys aren't really the Ghostbusters, are you?" he asked with thinly masked excitement as he cleaned the small cut on Ray's forehead and put a neat dressing over it.

Ray nodded. "We came out here for a paranormal conference. We didn't know we'd get an earthquake."

"I thought there were four of you," said Johnny.

"There are," Peter said. "Egon's missing."

"Missing?" Roy jumped up, looking around in concern. "Why didn't you say so? Where did you see him? He's not trapped?"

"We don't know. We looked," said Winston seriously. "We think the ghost moved him out of the way of the quake; because he was standing right where a ceiling fell only moments earlier. When both paramedics looked as if they meant to rush there immediately, the black Ghostbusters agreed to it, and they trooped upstairs again. It was full daylight now and the mess in Hardcastle's bedroom was plain to see.

"He was standing right in the closet doorway," Peter explained, gazing unhappily at the huge, jagged chunk of plaster that reposed there now, sharp-edged and heavy. If that had hit Egon... He refused to let himself think about it.

Ray, who had insisted on being helped up the stairs to run his tests, braced himself in the doorway, holding it for balance with his left hand while his right gripped the activated P.K.E. meter. Johnny had lingered a second, staring at it with intrigued eyes then followed Roy into the room.

They made a much more professional search than the shaken Peter and Winston had made earlier, but they didn't find Egon either. "Are you sure that's where he was?" Roy demanded. "There's not a secret passageway out of here or a hidden room or anything? Some of these older houses have them."

"There's a crawlspace in the ceiling of the closet," the judge admitted. "Nancy, my wife, used to hide her jewelry there. But there wouldn't have been time for Egon to get there, even assuming he knew about it."

As a concealment for jewels, it was, thought Peter, a little obvious, a clearly delineated trapdoor. Johnny, the skinniest one of them, was boosted up to investigate by Roy and Winston, and lowered himself to report that there was nothing in the hollow but dust, and no evidence anyone had been there in many years. Wiping cobwebs from his nose, he went over to the broken window, stepping cautiously amid the chunks of fallen plaster, and opened it so as not to lean against broken glass. Leaning out, he surveyed the ground below him.

"I thought maybe--"

"We checked that already," Peter said quickly. "Unless he suddenly grew wings and flew off, he didn't go that way."

"People don't just disappear," objected Ray. "It had to be the ghost. I'm reading a higher level of residual energy than I'd expect after such a long time and maybe that's because the ghost did something. Like picked him up and flew away with him."

"Right through the wall?" asked Winston skeptically, shaking his head. "When Slimer tries that, he drops whatever he's holding because it won't go through the wall. Could she have, well, opened up a dimensional gateway and dragged him through. Is there enough energy for that, Ray?"

The occultist pored over the data on the meter's screen. "I wouldn't think so, but then she's a class four. She shouldn't be able to open gateways big enough to take people through. Ghosts can go into other dimensions, but if they want to take material objects with them, they need real gateways. I don't get it. Egon--uh, Egon might have had some better ideas."

Hardcastle joined them then, holding out a pair of crutches. "These'll probably be a little too long for you," he explained, offering them to Ray. "I used them once when I broke my ankle shooting baskets, and I just remembered I had them. Did you find anything?"

The two paramedics shook their heads, wearing twin expressions of perplexity. Peter wasn't sure they bought into the idea of the ghost in the first place, though Johnny looked fascinated at the idea as if he would have loved to ask a steady stream of questions but didn't think he should in the face of the team's worry.

"Maybe she carried him outside," he volunteered, rubbing his forehead in thought. "And dropped him in a bush. He might have been confused and wandered off. He might be somewhere on the grounds."

It was such a logical explanation Peter wondered why he hadn't considered it himself. He pushed his way to the window and stuck his head out, bellowing, "EGON!" at the top of his lungs. Winston crowded in behind him.

"Do you think that could have happened, Ray?" asked Peter, turning to find the occultist passing the meter to a reluctant Judge Hardcastle as he adjusted the crutches, shortening them slightly while he leaned against the doorframe. Roy helped balance him.

"Gee, Peter, it's possible," Ray opined, his eyes wide in speculation. "If he got hit by any of the debris, he might have been a little groggy or confused and it's possible he wandered off."

"If he got yanked through that broken window he might be injured," Johnny said, falling silent abruptly when Peter turned to stare at him. "So we'll go and look," he volunteered. "It was still pretty dark when you looked before, I bet. There might be footprints or bloodstains or--" He fell silent again. "If he's able to walk away he can't be hurt that bad, can he, Roy?"

The blond paramedic lifted his shoulders in a shrug as he passed the second crutch to Ray, who promptly put it into place.

"Don't come in here, Ray, you'll only trip over something," Peter cautioned. "We'll go out and look for Egon, but you stay here. We'll get you downstairs. First, though, there's no trace of Egon here at all?"

Ray balanced himself on the crutches and took back the P.K.E. meter. "No, he's not here, Peter. Biorhythms aren't like PK energy. There usually isn't a residue, at least not one strong enough to last this long. I can't even tell he's been here from this and I know he has. The ghost has left a strong residue but you guys said she changed."

"She got bigger and went for Egon," Winston remembered. "Then everything fell. If she got him out the window, she sure didn't drop him once she was out there."

"Then let's go look," said Johnny. "Judge Hardcastle, you know the grounds. Will you come with us?"

Hardcastle agreed. They returned downstairs where Mark was still sitting at the kitchen table. He must have been able to read from their expressions that they hadn't found anything because he looked disappointed. Peter didn't stay to exchange any time-wasting conversation. He headed out the door and around the house at a dead run, aware of Winston hard on his heels and the two paramedics thudding after them with the judge.

It wasn't easy to tell if anyone had landed in the bushes or not. They did find some broken glass from the window above and a piece of wood from the frame, but there wasn't any blood on the glass or in the bushes, and if Egon had left footprints, they had been covered by Peter's and Winston's from their earlier search. "It looks like a herd of maddened elephants tramped through here," remarked Peter, standing hands on hips and surveying the sloping grounds. "EGON!" he called again. "Damn it, Spengs, where are you!"

No one answered.

"This is getting crazy," Hardcastle remarked. He wasn't breathing fast from the run, but then anybody who got up to shoot baskets at three a.m. was probably in fairly decent shape. "Nancy wouldn't have hurt him, and I don't know what that dimension crap the Stantz kid was spouting but that sounds like more spooky garbage."

"You don't believe in ghosts even now?" Peter demanded. "I'm crushed. Come on, Judge baby. You saw her. You know who she is and why she was here. She came to save you, and she sure wouldn't have hurt Egon in the process. I can't remember if it was you or Mark talking, something about her coming to the house because it used to be hers and she was drawn here; she hadn't helped you when you were shot that time in the courtroom or in Arkansas because she had no ties to those places. So think. Where else did she have ties to, someplace she might have taken Egon? You know, like her favorite dress shop or her old school building or something?" That had to be right. Egon was somewhere. He had to be. He couldn't be off in another dimension where they'd never find him, and he sure wasn't going to wait until four-fifteen tomorrow morning if Nancy came back, so he could question her. Egon might be hurt and need his friends right this minute.

Winston snapped his fingers in approval, and Ray, approaching more slowly on crutches nodded with a grin. "That's great, Peter. I bet that's exactly what happened. Come on, Judge. Is there somewhere she'd feel comfortable, somewhere she'd take Egon? Because her just showing up here kind of proves she's a focused repeater, not free floating. She came back to the same place rather than appearing just anywhere," he clarified for the others.

"We've got to roll," Roy said. "And we're going to take your friend in to Rampart Hospital to get his arm set. But if you think there's somewhere on the grounds she might have taken him, then tell us and we'll check there first."

The judge frowned. "I don't know. This estate belonged to her family, not mine. We were sharecroppers back in Arkansas, and I was a cop when she married me. She always lived here; there wasn't anywhere else. She went to school in Switzerland for a time--"

"Oh, great, and Egon can't even yodel," lamented Peter. "Come on, Hardcase, there's got to be somewhere closer at hand. Because she'd have to know we couldn't go too far, and she'd probably pick somewhere you'd know about."

"Well, if we're on the right track," Winston said.

"Did you find him?"

They turned to find McCormick coming toward them, a little unsteady on his feet, his arm in the sling the paramedics had fashioned. His face was lined with pain but there was determination in his eyes.

"Ah, kid, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Hardcastle chided him. "Don't you have the sense you were born with, wandering around with a broken arm? Come to think of it, I'm not sure you were born with any sense."

"It's nice to hear you care, Judge," said Mark wearily. "What about Egon, Peter? Any trace of him?"

"Peter's got a great idea," cried Ray enthusiastically. "He thinks Nancy could only come to places she was bound to. She came to the house because it used to be hers and its where she and the judge were happy. But it wasn't safe so she couldn't leave Egon there. We think she took him somewhere else, another place where she has ties."

"Can ghosts do that?" Mark asked, his eyes wide with fascination. Sometimes there was almost as much of the kid in him as there was in Ray.

"One thing we've learned is that there are rules," Winston said. "Ghosts have certain powers, and depending on the class they are, they have more or less. Some ghosts are no more than an image, playing back a moment in time. Some can only come to certain places. Some can go everywhere. Some don't appear but are present anyway. Egon could explain all this better than I could. But I think what Pete says makes sense. She had to get Egon out of there, but she was fixed on certain places. Just like the other ghost showed up where his things were, in the basement."

Hardcastle winced at this reminder of his son, and Mark edged up beside him. He didn't say anything about Tommy, as if he knew how hard the whole ghost experience had been on a hardheaded realist like Hardcastle, but he just stood there, offering quiet understanding, and after a minute, the judge reached out and caught hold of his arm.

"I don't want you falling over in the bushes," he grumbled. "They're in bad enough shape as it is." McCormick grinned at him with outright affection which made the judge grimace, though Peter caught a quick glimpse of the fondness he felt for the young ex-con in his eyes when he turned away to survey the grounds of his property.

"Judge?" Peter prodded. "We haven't heard from Egon yet. I suppose some phone lines are down but yours aren't, so either he's someplace where there isn't a telephone or he's hurt and needs us right now. So how about putting on your thinking cap--I bet that would look cute with your judge's robes. Any romantic getaways you and Nancy used to go to? A cozy little love nest? The old soda shop? Your favorite seat in the balcony at the movies?" He was talking fast, hoping to jog the judge's memory, to recall a place Nancy would expect him to remember. As a ghost, her powers were fairly limited; she couldn't talk to them; even if she came back tomorrow morning she couldn't tell them flat out where Egon had been taken. It was all up to Judge Hardcastle now and the clock was running down. The longer they went without hearing from Egon the greater chance he was hurt, and these two paramedics could only hang around here so long. Other people might be trapped or buried, even though it hadn't been a major quake.

"I'll go call in and report we've got a missing person," volunteered Roy. "But we have to roll soon."

"I know," agreed Ray. "You can't stay here on the off chance Egon's around here somewhere. Even if he is, he might not be hurt." When the blond paramedic hurried off, Ray balanced his crutches again and adjusted the P.K.E. meter once more. "I'm not getting Nancy's readings anywhere in the vicinity. We're too far from the bedroom to get more than faint residuals even at max gain, so we can't really track her that way. I'm adjusting now for Egon's biorhythms. I can punch up the meter given a little time and double the gain on it, but biorhythms don't give a very powerful field. We tracked Janine, our secretary, that way once when she was missing, and we had to drive right past the building where she was being held before we picked up on her. So if Egon's around, we'll have to get closer to track him down."

Roy started around the house, and Peter, who was increasingly frustrated, angry at fate, and worried, yelled, "EGON!" again. There was still no response.

A hand touched his arm, and he jerked around to see Ray watching him with eyes that shared his concern. "We'll find him, Peter," the younger man said reassuringly. "I know we will. I know he's okay. I can just feel it."

"Then you'd better hope your ESP, or whatever it is, is on the money, Ray," Peter returned. He patted Ray's wrist in the closest thing he could come to reassurance. Egon was endlessly inventive. Wherever he was, he'd be sure to find a way to let them know where he was. He was positive of it.

Egon Spengler might have appreciated Peter's confidence in him, but at the moment, he was not entirely certain he shared it. So far, he had not been able to take any appropriate steps to notify his friends of his predicament.

Egon remembered the earthquake very well, the swaying floor, the noise, the pictures leaping from the walls, the items crashing off closet shelves at him. He had even heard the ominous creak as the ceiling overhead bowed in preparation for falling, and had known his flimsy shelter of the closet door would not entirely shield him from the collapse. But before he could retreat deeper into the Judge's closet the ghost had acted, swooping at him and changing shape as if to swallow him up. For the first second, Egon had gasped, "Yaaa!" and tried to duck, then he felt himself lifted, virtually surrounded by the cold of ectoplasm, though this ghost wasn't sticky and nasty like Slimer, their resident ghost, simply cold, the sort of iciness that sucks warmth from the bones and leaves the victim enervated. He felt himself go limp in the chilling grip even as he was swooped aloft, half-shielded from the ceiling's fall by the ghostly form that bore him across the room and through the window. Since the window was intact and the ghost was not solid, Egon felt that much more clearly than anything else, though the impact was cushioned by the spirit. It wasn't enough to save him from the pain of impact, though, and for a few moments consciousness fled as his whole body smashed through the glass.

The ghost must have realized it because when next Egon became aware, he was even more tightly wrapped in cold, and darkness had come around him, thinly illuminated by grey slits that might have been gaps in a wall. The ghost backed away from him, depositing his aching body on a floor that felt dusty like bare earth. Only the faintly luminescent glow of her transparent form brightened the darkness. She hovered before him, stretched out a hand. He couldn't help pulling free of it, and that stopped her. She made a quick gesture around his near-invisible surroundings as if to reassure him he was safe, bent over him to study him as if to make certain he was not bleeding from fatal wounds, then she popped out as if a light had been switched off.

Egon sagged back against the earthen floor, his fingers discovering its texture as his body went limp. He didn't quite pass out again, though the thudding in his aching head almost made him wish he would. Instead, he flexed fingers and toes carefully, testing his body's reaction, and when that worked, he moved arms and legs. Though he felt soreness, it was the kind that results from bruises rather than fractures, and he didn't believe he was seriously injured. He'd evidently only been unconscious for a few moments, but the ground beneath his fingers was not rocking and pitching. Either the quake was over or the ghost had brought him far away from it.

But that was not quite right. Earlier they had decided the ghost was bound to the house. If so, was this a part of the house, a nearby shed, an unfinished portion of the cellar? Was the darkness that of night or simply of enclosure?

Egon closed his eyes both to try to ease his aching head and to aid concentration. The dirt beneath his fingers was damp, almost muddy. He didn't think a cellar would be that way, nor would there be narrow slats of light. Yet why would the ghost be bound to a shed? He knew he wasn't thinking as clearly as he could be because it was hard to ignore his various aches and pains.

It might be better not to ignore them. Egon straightened up and felt to check his equipment. His P.K.E. meter was gone, but his proton pack and thrower were still with him and evidently intact. Feeling along his belt to check for attachments, he discovered his belt light and pushed the switch to activate it. A thin, anemic beam of light shot out and he played it around the room.

The small structure had eight sides and a domed ceiling, and a built-in ledge-type seat ran along every other wall. What kind of place was this? It looked more like a boarded up gazebo than anything else, and it wasn't very big.

Finding the soggy ground unpleasant, he levered himself up to his feet with an effort and sat down on one of the benches. He used the light to check himself out for traces of bleeding, though he was sure he wouldn't have remained so alert with a major blood loss. He had some scrapes on his hands, and a shallow cut on his right cheekbone, probably from going through the glass, but he was very lucky. He could have been badly cut, and failing that, injured by the falling ceiling.

His friends had been outside the room. He hoped it was only the bedroom ceiling that had fallen. The ghost of Nancy Hardcastle had come to save her husband from exactly that disaster, which fascinated Egon. Precognitive ghosts were not totally rare, but the Ghostbusters hadn't encountered that many of them. Nancy had pointed at the clock, to indicate the time of the earthquake and at the doorway, to guide the judge to safety. Surely Egon's friends, outside the bedroom in the hall, had been out of range of the falling ceiling.

There was nothing he could do about that now. Instead he had to get himself out of this place and find a way to reassure them of his survival. He hoped they had seen the ghost bear down on him and take him away and hadn't spent anguished time digging through the rubble in the judge's bedroom. Shoving aside the image of that particular imagined incident, he went to one of the boarded up walls--the ones that didn't have benches along them--and pushed. It was like pushing concrete. Someone had sealed this place up quite thoroughly, and not recently. When he ran his flashlight beam over the surface, he could see that the wood had weathered and swelled in the elements, and what he could see of the nails showed them to be rusty. A long time ago this place had been abandoned. No one had pried it open ever since to sneak inside. Did that mean it was in a remote, seldom-visited location? Or was it on private property where no one ever came?

And even more complicated, how had he gotten inside here without disturbing the walls? He'd felt that window as they'd swept out. Rubbing one elbow that felt as if it had hit the window first and was very tender as a result, he considered that contradiction because his brain didn't want to focus yet. Maybe the ghost had meant to engulf him and move him directly through the room without breaking it. Once Slimer 'ate' something, he could take it through a wall if he chose, though he could spit it out again afterwards. He'd done so once with Peter's keys, and Venkman had complained for days about the slimy feel of them even when Ray had taken pity on him and cleaned them and Egon had tested them with his meter to make sure they weren't going to dissolve. If Nancy had meant to envelop Egon to move him through the window, she might not have entirely finished the process when they hit. But when they arrived here, she might have controlled it. Either that or, holding him, she had simply transferred here instantly. Egon couldn't remember an actual transition. He only remembered the pain of impact followed instantly by blackness and his memory was vague and fuzzy. He was surprised he was making even this much sense.

Now the physicist went to each of the four boarded-over openings. It was growing lighter outside. He watched the greyish light that edged between the boards grow brighter and brighter while he tested the seals on the gazebo. The place had been thoroughly closed away as if to keep out the most determined of trespassers. Whoever did it had not realized he would be keeping someone in.

The effort to break out made his head ache and he sat down again, massaging his temples, eyes closed. If only he could think properly. When he considered it, he didn't believe he had a concussion. He had none of the symptoms, no double vision, dizziness, nausea. He simply had a headache bad enough to keep him from operating at peak efficiency.

Turning sideways on the bench, he drew up his feet from the squishy mud of the floor--it hadn't been so wet before, had it?--and leaned back against one of the boarded up walls. He would rest his eyes for a few minutes while he tried to understand where he was and how to get out of here. If only he could think....

He was distracted by the trickle of running water. Opening his eyes again, he was surprised to see the ground was now more than mud. It was slowly being covered with water. Wondering if the earthquake had diverted a stream, he looked down at it in the pale morning light that filtered into his prison. Surely the place couldn't fill with water, could it? Not with so many openings? But then, if it were a low-lying gazebo, perhaps on the shore of a lake, the water might simply rise above it. Not quite realizing it was a sign of how shocked he'd been he stared at the water for some little time, watching it gradually rise to the depth of nearly a foot. After that, the speed of it seemed to slow, as the water leaked out between the boards, but it still rose.

Egon raised the flashlight again, noticing with strange detachment how his hand shook. It wasn't fear that did it; he was more fascinated than afraid, at least at this point. Suddenly he realized he might have received a form of ectoplasmic shock from the ghost when she grabbed him. She had increased her size and tried to engulf him in order to move him safely through the window, and eventually to put him here without opening a door or smashing the boards. He'd already reasoned that but he hadn't taken it the necessary step further. Sometimes too-abrupt or too-intense contact with ghosts created a type of psi backlash. It generally wore off fairly quickly but it was mildly disabling while it lasted, creating a fugue state not unlike his present blurred condition. Even the act of thinking as he was now could help it wear off.

Egon could have monitored it if only he'd had his P.K.E. meter but he must have dropped it in the bedroom. Instead he merely sat there holding the flashlight, watching the waters rise and waiting out the psychic shock.

It was only as the water continued to rise in spite of the holes in the walls that Egon became seriously worried, and the adrenalin that rose with the concern helped clear his fuzzy brain, allowing him to think normally once more. "Egon, you are an idiot," he snorted impatiently to himself then he pulled his thrower, aimed it at the nearest boarded up wall and fired. Boards glowed with the heat of the protonic energy, then exploded outward in a satisfying burst, allowing him access to the outside and some of the trapped water to flow out, though not too fast, because there was water outside, surrounding the gazebo. Egon jumped to his feet, even as the ground quivered beneath them in an aftershock. This one lasted no more than three seconds and wasn't strong, but Egon braced himself with a hand against the edges of his makeshift door, shin-deep in the rushing water until it passed.

After the ground had stilled, the water came faster than before.

Egon waded free of the gazebo and looked out at a world that was mostly water. He seemed to be in a small valley or dell, the gazebo at the lower end. Circling around the small structure he stared uphill and saw something that made him very uneasy. It looked like he was positioned below a small dam, an old one made with earthenworks. He didn't think it enclosed a very big lake, and he wasn't sure where he was to identify it properly, but he must still be in the general area of the original earthquake. The first quake had weakened the structure of the dam allowing water to leak through with growing speed, washing away huge chunks of the earthenworks as he watched. This was not good. If the whole thing gave way, he would be washed away or drowned.

On either side of him, steep hills sloped up. He wasn't sure where he was but there were hilly regions around the L.A. area and this could be any of them. He stood there trying for a moment to get his bearings, then, deciding it was useless without further information, he moved quickly for the nearest hillside and began to climb, just as a huge chunk of earth washed out of the dam and unleashed a wall of water that raced toward him with the speed of an express train. "Hurry, Egon," he muttered to himself and scrambled up the slope as fast as he could.

As the water reached him, he wrapped his arms around a tree trunk and held on for all he was worth.

"So think already, Judge," Peter urged. He, Winston and Judge Hardcastle were sitting in the hospital waiting room while Ray had his ankle X-rayed and got checked out to make sure he didn't have any trace of a concussion. Unable to detect Egon anywhere on the Gulls' Way estate, they had followed Mark to the hospital, the judge because it was clearly where he wanted to be, and the Ghostbusters partly to get Ray's X-rays and partly because it was the judge who would lead them to Egon. If anyone could reason where Nancy might have taken him, it should be her husband. Peter was fairly sure that was what had happened, that the ghost of Hardcastle's wife could only go to places where she was bound. It was much better than believing she had zapped Egon into the Netherworld, since the guys couldn't get there from here, not without all the equipment back at Headquarters in New York. Since the Netherworld was the size of the known universe, even getting there didn't guarantee finding him. Peter wasn't prepared to wait until tomorrow morning on the off chance Nancy would bring Egon back safe and sound. Now Hardcastle had escaped death in the earthquake, there was nothing to draw her back.

"Cast your mind back to all those romantic interludes," urged Peter, pasting on a credible smirk, one sure to annoy the judge. Peter suspected he would be a lot more likely to let down his guard if he were annoyed than if he were sitting here in perfect control. It wasn't, the psychologist knew, that he wanted to conceal Egon's possible whereabouts. It was simply that he'd blocked off a lot of the memories of his wife to spare himself the pain of them. "Come on, your judgeship. Where would she go? Where would she take Egon?"

"Romantic interludes," scoffed Hardcastle. He glanced up and down the hall as if he could produce Mark's doctor with the strength of his baleful glare. "What is taking them so long? It shouldn't take this long to set a broken arm. I've had one; I should know. Trust the kid to cause trouble. He's probably in there flirting with a nurse."

"You really like him, don't you?" Winston asked with a grin, properly identifying the motivation for the judge's grousing.

Hardcastle didn't dignify that with an answer. Instead he turned to Peter. "Quit that grinning, Venkman. What do you want me to say anyway?"

"I only want you to find Egon for us," Peter said, reverting to seriousness. "I want you to take a little travelogue through your past and come up with the one perfect place so we don't wander halfway around the known world."

"You don't even know that's what happened to your friend," the judge said impatiently with a curt gesture. "And I'm not gonna trot out all those old memories just--"

"Just to save our buddy's life," Peter said earnestly. "We don't know where he is, and he might be hurt. Besides, I felt an aftershock a few minutes ago. If he's someplace not very safe..."

"Maybe Nancy will bring him back tonight," offered the judge. "Maybe she can only come at that time of day."

"And maybe she won't come at all. The whole reason she came in the first place was to save your life. She's done that. The need is gone. I'm sorry about that, but what the hell is wrong with you?" His worry for Egon's safety pushed him a little too hard and his voice rose. "Our buddy's life might be in danger and you don't want to help us because you can't handle the memories? What if it was Mark who was missing?"

"I'm not stonewalling you," Hardcastle snapped back, ready to go toe to toe with Peter. "I just haven't thought of any of that for a long time. It's not as easy as you think."

Peter heaved an inaudible sigh. He had a pretty good idea where the judge was coming from. He wasn't a sentimental man; he'd never let himself be. He'd taken some hard losses in his life, both his wife and his son, and evidently there hadn't been anyone around to help him through it, so he'd closed it all away and chopped off at the socks anyone who dared touch on the hallowed memories. McCormick knew how to handle him, but McCormick had been here nearly three years. He'd had time to learn the judge's quirks. Peter didn't have that luxury, simply because Egon didn't. And anyone who stood in the way of helping one of Peter's friends deserved a good reaming if not worse. Yet Peter had seen enough of the judge to know the older man would give as good as he got. So Peter tried another tactic.

"She must have really loved you, to come back like she did to save your life," he said much more softly.

"You don't know anything about it," the judge responded predictably. He folded his arms across his chest and glared at the opposite wall as if it were his life's greatest enemy.

"I know enough to know she doesn't deserve to be forgotten," Peter reminded him.

"SHE'S NOT FORGOTTEN," the judge bellowed, causing two nurses and an orderly to stop what they were doing and stare at him and one woman who'd been sitting on the other side of the waiting room to get up and slink away down the hall. Peter could understand that. The judge in full cry was pretty impressive.

"No but she might as well be. You've got her all sealed away in some kind of inner shrine when she deserves so much more. You ever talk about her with your friends, remember all those good times? No, because it hurt so much at first you couldn't do it, so you made yourself lock it all away. Time really does heal things, Judge. Yeah, it's gonna hurt to remember, but it's better than not remembering at all. She deserves to have you remember, even if it hurts, because otherwise you block away all the good stuff too." When the judge opened his mouth, probably to demand what Peter knew about it, the brown-haired man held up a hand to shut him up. "You're not the first person who ever lost anybody and you won't be the last. I'm not asking you to hang giant posters of her around the house, but at least take out the memory and dust it every now and then before you find yourself forgetting something that you can't get back." He added more softly, "I bet you can still remember the sound of her laugh."

The judge's face softened and his eyes blurred with the memory. Peter held his tongue and made a sideways motion at Winston to keep him from moving or speaking. It must have worked. The judge sounded as if he were speaking to himself. "She had a great laugh, warm and alive, and her eyes would twinkle like stars. We used to laugh together." He cleared his throat, turning his face away, but not before Peter had seen an unfamiliar brightness in his eyes.

Carefully pretending not to notice, he went on, "And I bet you had your special place; where you went and nobody else did?"

"We had a lot of them." Hardcastle's voice was soft and faint as if he were a million miles away. "There was the lake; her family owned property up there  in the Malibu Hills, and we'd go out in a rowboat in the moonlight."

Peter hoped that wasn't where Nancy had taken Egon; he wasn't sure how long the physicist could tread water in a proton pack especially since it might be near the epicenter of the quake where there might be more damage. "Sounds romantic," he said in a neutral tone to encourage the flow. "I've taken girls out in boats, too."

"Where haven't you taken girls?" Winston muttered under his breath.

That made Hardcastle give a snort of dry laughter. "Why doesn't that surprise me. What did you and Mark do when you were kids together, spend your whole time chasing girls?"

"That and cars," Peter replied with a grin. "He wanted to race 'em, and I wanted 'em for dates. Girls never went out with guys without cars, and Peter Venkman had to have wheels. The lake sounds nice. Is it far from here?"

"Up in the hills," Hardcastle replied, gesturing vaguely in an easterly direction. "I remember, there was a little gazebo down below the dam. We used to go there when we weren't out on the water. One night it rained like crazy and we were too far from the house; we ran there soaking wet and I built a fire in the middle of the floor to dry us off..." His voice trailed away as if the memory had evoked a score of similar ones. "It wasn't cold and the fire was just right." His mouth curled in a little smile. "Those were great days."

Peter didn't point out the obvious, that remembering them now wouldn't hold the old bitter sadness. Yes, there was an element of melancholy in them, but he could remember them with an old fondness, as if he were recapturing a portion of those times. "Do you think she might have taken Egon there?" he prompted.

Recalled to the present, Hardcastle considered it seriously. "If there's anything to your cockeyed theory she might. Because I still own the old place. I never go up there; well, I haven't been up there for almost ten years. We went up there fishing, some friends and I, but I went up a day early and boarded up the gazebo. I didn't want any of them wandering around inside there, messing with our place." He sounded gruff now, but Peter was coming to know him well enough to understand it.

You boarded yourself up right along with it, thought Peter, though he knew better than to say so. Before he could comment, they heard the thump of crutches and turned to find Ray coming toward them, managing the crutches like a pro, a new dressing on his forehead. Peter and Winston hurried to meet him.

"Here he is, the four-footed Stantz," Peter greeted him with a grin. "It walks, it hops, it swings like a pendulum. It sometimes falls on its butt," he added, grinning, as Ray's balance wavered for a minute, but he helped steady the younger man until he righted himself.

Ray stuck out his tongue at him. "I'd like to see you try these things, Pete," he defended his newfound talent. "It's not as easy as it looks."

"So how's the foot, homeboy?" asked Winston, giving Ray's hair a friendly rumple.

"It's not broken," responded Ray with a grin. "They put on a new bandage and say I shouldn't put much weight on it for a few days but it's not a bad sprain and I'll be able to walk on it pretty soon. And they say my head's fine. It's just a cut, and they only put in one stitch. No concussion but I was pretty sure of that. Mark's about ready too. I heard them say he'd be out in a few minutes." He looked around the room. There had been other people waiting, kin of others who had been injured in the quake, but it had been apparent on their way to the hospital that damage had been slight. The residents of L.A. had gotten off lightly this time, and most of the damage was very localized. They'd noticed an odd broken window, a few bricks in the street, once a broken fireplug shooting water up at the sky, but for the most part, they'd had no hold-ups in their journey here.

"I hope he hurries," Peter replied, "because the judge thinks he's figured out where Nancy could have taken Egon." He crossed his fingers. If it was remote without a telephone, it would explain why Egon hadn't called them and why there had been no word of him. Of course if he was hurt... Quickly Peter squelched that idea. Nancy wouldn't have abandoned him there if he was hurt, would she? Course not. You better be all right, Egon, or you'll have me to reckon with, he thought, mentally crossing his fingers.

"Here I am," McCormick spoke up behind Ray. He had his arm in a cast, supported by a sling, but he looked a lot better than he had earlier. Hardcastle jumped up to greet him and guided him fussily into a chair, the action making Mark grin widely.

"Simple fracture, but gee, Judge, I guess those hedges and that pool are going to have to wait awhile, since I'm on the injured list. I'm going to kick back, put my feet up, and let you wait on me for a change." He spared the Ghostbusters an outrageous wink.

"That's all well and good, McCormick, but we've got to get moving now," the judge said with some impatience, though it was largely feigned. "Are you discharged?"

McCormick nodded and bounced up again as if he weren't even injured, though Peter was pretty sure his arm was aching a lot. "Where are we going?"

"Up in the hills," the judge replied. "I've got an old place there, and it's a real mess. When the cast is off, I think we're going to put it into shape again."

"He means me, not we," Mark whispered in an obvious aside to Peter. Whenever there's dirty work to be done, then it's, 'McCormick, front and center.' So what are we doing heading up into the hills for? Is that where Egon is?"

"We hope so," replied Winston. "The judge and Nancy had a special place up there, and we're going to check it out. Only other option's waiting until tomorrow at four a.m. and I don't think Peter's prepared to wait as long as that."

"Me either," agreed Ray quickly. "Gee, she might have felt a tie to a special place like that. I bet that's it, Judge. Let's hurry?"

"Yeah, move it, Judge," urged McCormick with a wicked grin. "I have to see the place I'm probably going to spend the next three months putting in shape."

"Now you're cookin'," replied the judge with smirk at McCormick. "Come on, people. We've got an errand to run."

They stopped back at the house to make sure Egon hadn't appeared there or that he hadn't telephoned in. There was no sign of him, no evidence he'd been there, and the only messages on the phone were from friends of the judge and Mark wanting to make sure they were all right and one from Murray Bozinsky, asking about the quake and whether the ghost had showed up. "It sounds like she predicted the earthquake. It hit right at the time you said she appeared," he exclaimed eagerly. "This is really boss. Ghosts predicting earthquakes. Think of the possibilities."

The judge groaned and switched off the answering machine. "I'm glad you didn't bring that guy back with you," he said. "It was bad enough as it was."

"I think he was neat," Ray said cheerfully. "He's really smart, one of the smartest guys around, and he knows more about computers than anybody I know."

"Ray, will computers find Egon?" demanded Peter with growing impatience. "No? Then forget about him." He went to the door and yelled for Egon again. "Spengs, if you're out there and not answering me, I'm not going to send you a Christmas card ever again, and I'm gonna cook all those smelly old mushrooms you have in the lab--and eat them!" Nothing.

"So okay, we'll head for the Judge's summer place," said Winston practically. "I like the idea of that. It was someplace special to her, so she might have been drawn back there. Aw, yeah, I can see it all right."

Ray limped over to Peter, balancing himself on his crutches as they started outside again. "I know Egon's okay, Peter, I just know it," he insisted. He was worried too but he really believed it. Ray held out hope until there was no more chance of it, while Peter was inclined to doubt until something positive happened. He had a lot less unpleasant surprises than Ray but he wouldn't have changed the occultist, not for all the money in the world.

"I hope you're right, kiddo," he said, patting Ray on the shoulder. "I sure hope you're right."

The way out of town wasn't difficult and they were only held up once or twice because of earthquake-related damages. They went in Ecto-1, partly because it was the biggest vehicle and partly so they could haul along their equipment and check for Egon all along the way. Ray spent the time sitting in the back seat with his crutches stowed behind him with the proton packs, busily adjusting the P.K.E. meter. He had the casing off and was making small corrections inside it. Mark, who was sitting beside him, watched, fascinated.

"So what are you doing?" he demanded.

"I'm changing the polarity," Ray replied. "Right now this mainly picks up on PK energy, but we can adjust it on the short term to detect biorhythms. We've used it before to find one or another of us when somebody got left behind or snatched by a ghost. I thought if I went into the internal housing and modified it, it could direct all its energy to finding Egon and we could boost it a whole lot higher."

Peter, on Ray's other side, nodded approvingly. "Way to go, Tex. Just what we need." He didn't want to think about what would happen if they didn't find Egon at Nancy's summer place. It sounded like a place she might be bonded to, but there were always less pleasant possibilities, that she'd yanked Egon out of danger into the Netherworld, though Ray's readings didn't support that. For all they knew, she'd crashed Egon through the window and he was lying out there injured. Leaving him when he was hurt didn't sound like Nancy's style, but she had limitations, and maybe that was one of them. Peter leaned forward and prodded Winston's shoulder. "Come on, Winston, run the siren."

"Hate to do it in a genuine emergency like this, Pete," Winston replied. "We don't have any authority in L.A. after all."

"So anybody stops us, we've got throwers, don't we?" Peter returned. "Come on, Judge, you're official. We can run the siren, can't we?"

Hardcastle came out of his thoughts with a jerk. He had been fathoms deep in them. "What? Siren? Sure, why not?" and retreated into that realm again. Mark stared at him then turned to Peter, shrugging his shoulders. "I don't know," he mouthed, raising his voice. "Hey, Hardcase, don't doze off on us. You're the one who knows the way."

"Don't bug me, McCormick," the judge replied a little more sharply than Peter had expected. Sure the old guy was probably thinking about seeing the place where he and Nancy had shared some great times, but he sounded worse than Peter had expected. In the hospital, he hadn't seemed so upset about it all.

"You okay, Judge?" Peter asked.

"I've had enough from you, Venkman," was the answer. Whoa! Way out of line. Peter lifted an eyebrow and nudged Ray in the side. Ray could get to anybody if he tried.

Fielding Peter's gesture, Ray lay down his screwdriver and looked  at the judge. "This has all been horrible for you, hasn't it? Seeing your wife like that, and having to go out here and me finding the other readings in the basement and--"

Hardcastle tensed, and Mark's face lit with realization. "It's Tommy, isn't it? You got to see your wife, but he never showed up."

"Tommy isn't your business, McCormick."

Mark's spoke quickly. "I'm sorry, Judge. I'm sure he wanted to help you but he couldn't. Still, he came, even if none of us could see him. He must have loved you a lot."

"Nancy appeared," the judge said in a near growl. "Why not Tommy, too?"

"Ghosts don't always come, I mean people don't always turn into ghosts," Ray replied. "When my folks died, I remember thinking it would be neat if they'd appear to me so I could tell them how much I loved them. I felt bad because I hadn't said it right when they went away. I was eleven and I halfway thought they'd died because I hadn't said it, though my Aunt Lois found out and made me realize that wasn't it. It was just what happened. My folks never did appear to me, but I always wondered if they might if I were in trouble. Maybe they've been watching me when I didn't know it, like a guardian angel." He smiled a little at the idea. "I think with Tommy, it'd be like that. He can't appear, and if he tried to come back, he wound up there because that's where his things were."

"So he fixed on the things," snapped the judge. Peter could hear the added, 'and not on me,' that the judge didn't say.

"It was a start," persisted Ray. "For him to try at all shows how much he cared. And he knows you cared, no matter how you parted, good or bad. You were lucky, Judge. You had two people who really cared what happens to you. Some people never even get one. And it's not as if you were alone now, is it?"

Hardcastle didn't speak at first. Maybe he knew Ray was right and didn't want to admit it. Instead he turned and bestowed a stern look on McCormick. "Yeah, I've got a pain in the ass who eats me out of house and home and gets out of the chores by breaking his arm." Only someone completely insensitive would have taken the words at face value. Mark knew better.

"Yeah, Judge, I love you too," he said flippantly.

"Gaaa," muttered Hardcastle, but his mouth curled up in a smile when he thought no one was looking.

They turned eventually onto a dirt road that led to a private driveway curving around between two hills. When they came around the second hill, the judge cried, "What the--" and stared openmouthed at the scene before them as Winston slammed on the brakes on the top of a rise. A rustic cabin stood on the hill to one side of them but beyond that was a small, near-empty lakebed and the remains of an earthworks dam that had worn away to let the water run freely down the hillside and engulf the valley below. "Looks like the dam gave way," the judge said unnecessarily, pointing. "Must've been the quake; otherwise it's too much of a coincidence. This is closer to the epicenter of the quake." Then his eyes widened as he considered a potential problem. "I hope she didn't take him to the gazebo. It's down there." He pointed to the valley below them, where the lake waters had burst free, and Winston edged Ecto closer to the slope, guiding the wheel carefully, his mouth drawn in a tense line. Peter braced himself in preparation for the vehicle to stop. He had a very bad feeling about this and he could tell from the sudden silence in the car that the others shared it. When Winston shut off the ignition they all jumped out and stared down into the valley below, lined up in a row, unable to believe the sight that revealed itself to them.

The water from the lake had run through the place in a wild fury, cutting a wide swathe. Small trees had uprooted along the path of the churning water, some of them cast aside or hung up on surviving trees, a small new stream cut a channel along the valley floor, and, at the far end just before the mouth of the valley curved around out of their line of sight, pieces of wood protruded from the water in an octagonal shape, missing its roof and most of its sides. It was jagged and empty, its interior a bowl of muddy brown water.

"I hope that wasn't the gazebo," Winston said under his breath in the tones of one who knows the answer already and doesn't like it one little bit.

Peter felt as if he'd been hit by a board. He stared at the flooded valley, his eyes locking on the distant ruin, his heart trying to drum its way out of his chest as he realized this particular crisis might not have a happy ending. This was a recent break; he could tell from the glistening wetness of the grass where the water had receded to its present shallow stream. It had happened within hours of their arrival. Earthquake damage; he'd bet money on it. Nancy wouldn't have left Egon in a ruined and flooded gazebo, no matter how much she was bound to this place. So it must have been intact when she arrived, if she had come here at all. The judge said he'd boarded it up on that long ago fishing trip. If Egon had been trapped inside when the force of the water hit...

But that was crazy. He made a protesting gesture. She'd crashed Egon through the window, not brought him smoothly through with ghostly powers. But that was urgent; she'd had no choice. She wouldn't have crashed him through the boards over the openings. And even if she'd managed to get him in there somehow by engulfing him with ghostly energy, Egon had his thrower. He could have blasted his way out.

"Was Egon down there, Peter?" asked Ray at his side. His voice was small and unhappy, and he leaned there on his crutches as if they were the only thing holding him upright, his face full of alarm.

"I don't know. I don't see him.... EGON!" Peter screeched at the top of his lungs. "Damn it, Egon, where are you!" His voice bounced back at him from the further hills, "are you, are you, are you..."

"I see something," Ray cried suddenly, his body stiffening like a pointer who's scented a pheasant in the underbrush. He straightened up, using one of the crutches for balance and pointing with the tip of the other one. "Look, down there. See?"

It was a small black object that Peter would have thought at first glace was a rock, but rocks didn't bob up and down in the edge of the stream. It wasn't Egon; but it was something and it might be a clue to what had happened here.

"I'll check it out. Wait here, guys," offered Winston and slid down the slope on the sides of his feet in a controlled fall. He fetched it out, his body stiffening as if he'd been shot when he realized what he had. Brandishing it aloft, he cried, "It's one of Egon's boots!"

Peter stiffened as he recognized the familiar shape, horror pumping through his veins. They had been right after all; this was where Nancy had brought Egon, brought him into danger. He scanned the terrain, eyes wide with shocked anticipation. If the water had been strong enough to tug away one of Egon's boots, it could well have carried Egon away with it, and they might not find him until it was too late, somewhere downstream. The new river might have joined a real waterway that ran into the Pacific, and they might never find him. The water went rushing past, blurring before Peter's eyes as he tried to convince himself his imaginings were too wild to be real. "EGON!" he shouted again. "Winston, do you see him? Check around down there."

Winston looked around, grabbing hold of a narrow tree to steady him as he ran his hand through the water near where he'd found the boot. "He's not down here," he said. "I can't see him anywhere." He waded into the stream; at its deepest point, it came just above his knees, and walking was difficult. Once he stepped on something that rolled under his boot and nearly upended him into the stream. Waving his arms wildly he managed to regain his balance without dropping Egon's boot, then he bent and groped in the water. "Just a rock," he shouted, cupping a hand around his mouth to make the sound carry. "But the water was a lot higher than this. You can see the water line. It would've been over my head when it hit, but it would've gone down fast."

"Egon could have held out if it went down that fast," Ray insisted.

"Yeah, there's enough trees still standing to give him a good grip," agreed McCormick, gesturing at them. "All he had to do was hang on."

"Assuming he wasn't inside the gazebo," returned the judge.

"Why would he have to be inside," Peter snapped desperately. "If she came here and found it boarded up, she might have left him outside it. He could have been miles away when the water..." Remembering the boot Winston held his voice trailed off.

"Where is he?" asked Ray, his eyes never ceasing in their search of the lower end of the valley.

"He's gotta be here!" insisted Peter, staring wildly downstream, looking for a familiar blue-clad form, searching the still-turbulent water as it receded. If Egon were nearby he wasn't in plain sight. "Damn it, Egon, where are you!"

Everybody pitched in, yelling Egon's name, spreading out along the bank, then Ray cursed suddenly and violently. It was so much against his nature that Peter stared at him in shock. Ray's crutches fell with a thud as he pulled out the P.K.E. meter. balancing himself carefully, he activated the device, twisting dials urgently to get the best reception. "I'm an idiot," he reproached himself. "This'll tell us where Egon is. I saw that water and I just forgot..." He activated it.

The meter beeped. Peter skidded back to Ray's side as if pulled by a magnet and looked over the occultist's shoulder. The antennae had risen, lights blinking and the screen gave a familiar pattern. It was Egon all right.

"He's here," Ray cried exultantly. "And alive! He's alive, Peter. The readings wouldn't be so strong if--if he'd drowned." He met Peter's look, brown eyes alight with relief.

"Way to go," returned Peter, slapping Stantz on the back. "I knew you could do it. Where is he?"

Turning slowly, Ray checked the directional readings, then nodded. "There!" Flinging out his finger, he pointed at the house, the gesture nearly upsetting him. Peter caught him by the shoulders and steadied him, then bent and grabbed his crutches.

"Hold onto these, kiddo. You're not quite ready for the Olympics yet." His spirits were returning. If Ray said Egon was in the house, then there he was, and if his boot was in the river, that meant the physicist had gotten there under his own steam. Peter felt the grin start, spreading across his face.

Ray passed him the meter and slid the crutches into place as Mark yelled for Winston to come back and Hardcastle started toward the summer house.

Peter waited until Ray was balanced, then he set off running for the house, conscious of Winston chugging up the slope behind him, Mark sprinting at his side and Hardcastle pumping along, while Ray made the best time he could with the crutches. Peter reached the cabin door and saw a beautiful sight. The lock had been burned open, just as if someone had used a thrower on it, and the only thrower that had been here before their arrival was Egon's. "He blasted his way in," he called to the others. "He's here."

"My lock," the judge complained, but he didn't sound upset about it. He was smiling at the realization that Egon must have survived.

"EGON!" Peter lunged at the door, just as it slid open from the inside and Egon stepped into the doorway. He was barefoot, clad in a ratty old bathrobe, his wet hair straggling down into his eyes, the towel he'd been drying it with clutched in one hand. Bruises were starting to form on one cheekbone, where a slight scratch testified to his rush through the Judge's bedroom window, and he was moving a little stiffly as if he ached all over, but her was alive and on his feet, moving under his own steam and, grungy bathrobe and all, he was the greatest sight Peter had ever seen.

Without hesitation he threw himself at Egon and hugged him hard around the neck. "Don't you ever scare us like that again, Spengs," he insisted in Egon's ear. "Vanishing without a trace. Taking shelter in places that get flooded! That's not how I taught you to behave." The solid warmth of Egon's body was the only real reassurance he could accept right now and he hung on as if he'd never let go.

Egon returned the hug. "I'm fine, Peter," he said. "I'm not hurt, other than a couple of bruises. Really." He squeezed back then freed himself, smiling at Peter, who clasped his upper arms and simply smiled at him. "I see you found me," he said. "I should have known it wouldn't take you guys very long."

"Found you! Why didn't you call, you nutcase? We've been going crazy trying to figure out where you were."

"First of all, the phone here doesn't work. Secondly, even if it had, I didn't know where I was. Then I was nearly carried away in the water when the dam broke, and I knew I would need to clean up before I could hike out of here. But I lost my boot when the water hit me; it was like a solid wall, but it passed before I could run out of air. I was soaking wet when I climbed up here. The house was empty and locked up tight. I used my thrower for a lockpick, the way I've seen you do, Peter."

"Learned it from him, did you?" asked the judge behind him. "Why doesn't that surprise me?"

"Hey. I'm a genius. I know more uses for a particle thrower than even Egon realizes," Peter returned, so 'up' he was nearly bouncing around in sheer delight.

"Or wants to," retorted Egon. Peter made a face at him. "So I had a shower," continued Egon. "The water does work after a fashion--and was just getting cleaned up when I heard you yelling."

"Here's your boot, homeboy," Winston announced, holding it out. "Man, oh man, is it good to see you. We thought we lost you this time around." He gave Egon a happy slap on the back and tugged at the drooping tail of hair that straggled down the physicist's neck.

"EGON!" Ray was nearly running on the crutches, clearly forgetting his doctor's instructions to take it easy as he finally reached them. "Wow! Egon! You're okay! I knew you were. I was sure of it." The crutches dropped again and he nearly fell against Egon, who wrapped his arms around the occultist to help him keep his balance and patted him reassuringly on the back.

"Yes, Ray, I'm fine. Well, bruised and sore, but quite well apart from that. I seem to have survived better than you did, he concluded, backing off to stare at the fallen crutches that Peter was picking up yet again then he touched the dressing on Ray's forehead. "You don't seem entirely intact yourself. What's this and what have you done to your foot?"

"Sprained my ankle and that's just a little cut," Ray explained, leaning in and giving Egon one more squeeze for good measure before letting him go. "Gosh, Egon, we're glad to see you. We theorized Nancy could only come to places where she was bound; remember she could only come to the house, not those other places where the judge had been in danger, and he finally figured out this place. We got here as fast as we could."

"With a side trip to the hospital for Ray and me," Mark replied, indicating his cast. "Ray and I had fun and games in the basement while you were missing." He eyed the charred place that had once been a lock on the door. "You broke into Hardcastle's house. I love it!"

"Breaking and entering is a serious offense, McCormick," the judge told him sternly, though his mouth kept quirking up at the corners in spite of his effort to look judicial. "But in an emergency, it's different. I'll overlook it this time. However, there's one thing I want to point out."

"What's that, sir?" Egon asked, a look of amusement in his eyes as if he expected a joke.

"That's my bathrobe," shouted the judge.

"Gee," said Peter irrepressibly, "I thought you had better taste than that. I certainly thought Egon did. You'll never make the cover of GQ for 'Best Dressed Ghostbuster' in that, Spengs baby. It looks like something I'd use to clean my proton pack with."

Hardcastle turned on Peter with mock rage, and everyone else burst out laughing.

"Gosh, I can't believe it's all over," said Ray with tremendous satisfaction that evening. The four Ghostbusters had returned to Gulls' Way, where they had been served a delicious dinner jointly prepared by Mark and the judge. Mark had muttered in an aside that he'd probably have been expected to do it all but he was benched for the game. "The judge signed my cast," he'd added delightedly, pointing to a scrawling signature as they all sat down at the table.

"Yeah, it wasn't all fun," Peter said. The moment when they found Egon's boot stood out in his memory as one of life's more horrible moments, but Egon's return to the living so soon afterward hadn't given him time to dwell on it. He scooped a heaping serving of mashed potatoes onto his plate and passed the bowl to Egon, who took it and served himself, though less extensively than Peter.

"No lie," returned Winston. "Busting ghosts is one thing, but earthquakes are another. I think I'll be happy to get back to New York, where the worst thing that can happen is getting mugged."

"Or being attacked by a class eleven mega-specter," put in Egon with a mischievous smile.

"You had to mention that," muttered Peter. "Well, Judge, did we do right by you?"

"If that's a way of asking for a fat paycheck..." Hardcastle began.

Peter shook his head immediately. "Of course not. I never mention money--at dinner. Besides, we'll send you a bill when we get back to New York."

"For what?" challenged the jurist. "You didn't do anything."

"Didn't do anything?" echoed Peter in rampant disbelief. "I kind of thought we'd saved your life."

Hardcastle considered it. "Okay, then, you were interpreters for Nancy. What do interpreters get paid?"

"A thousand bucks an hour," returned Peter wickedly. "All the skill and daring, risking our own lives, and Ray got hurt, not to mention Egon's black and blue from being dragged out your window, and nearly drowned because you had a defective dam on your property..."

"You know, Venkman, you do remind me of that con man I mentioned--I'm sure his name was Venkman, too. I never had him up before me, but when I was a cop, I ran into him a few times, and even busted him once. Charlie Venkman, I think his name was. Any kin of yours?"

Peter grimaced. "Sure, he's my old man. Only the best. Did he try to sell you the Brooklyn bridge, Judge?"

"No, as I remember, it was Catalina Island he had deeds for."

Peter crowed with laughter. That was a new one. He'd have to add it to the catalog he kept mentally on his father's scams, so he could throw them in the old reprobate's face when he needed to win an argument. "My dad's a class act," he said, partly because he loved the old con man in spite of himself and partly because he knew it would drive the judge crazy.

"He's a crook," objected Hardcastle, sitting tall, a pillar of rectitude.

"So is my dad," Mark reminded him. "But he had me. Just goes to show, doesn't it? Class will out."

The judge looked carefully from Mark to Peter and back again then he heaved a put-upon sigh. "Am I going to have any more ghostly visitors?" he asked.

Ray thought it over. "I don't know, Judge. Maybe. The house isn't haunted, not really. I checked it all over when we came back and the meters didn't even beep. I think they can only come to you when you have real need, and even then they'll warn you."

"They? I never saw Tommy," the judge reminded them as if it were somehow their fault. Mark looked surprised, as if he hadn't expected the judge to mention his son at all."

"No, but he saved Ray," Peter reminded him. "If he hadn't kept that box from collapsing, we'd have one squished Stantz instead of the more rounded version. Sounds like a great kid."

"I bet he was a lot like you, Judge," put in Ray. "When I was trapped down there, before Mark came, I sort of knew he was there. If you have ghosts, it's best to have that kind, the helpful kind. We don't like to bust ghosts like that, only the nasty ones."

The judge smiled, a faraway look in his eyes. "Tommy was--well, he was a great kid. Sort of halfway between Venkman and McCormick; got in a lot of trouble, but he never meant it wrong. He got caught up in other people's causes. I just wish..."

"You could have seen him?" Peter finished. "I don't think he's that kind of a ghost, Judge. But that doesn't mean he won't help you if you need him."

"What about Nancy?" asked Mark. "Will she ever come back?"

"Maybe for the next earthquake," predicted Peter. "She's not the type to just hang around, Judge. It's gotta be something important. Ray's right. You don't really have a haunted house."

"No, you've got something better. Your own personal bodyguards," Ray finished. "I think it's kind of neat."

Hardcastle's expression didn't reveal whether he thought it was 'kind of neat' or not. He merely nodded and turned to look at his young friend. "So what are you staring at, McCormick? If I hear you setting ghost traps around here or trying to take pictures of them...."

"Word of honor, Judge, I wouldn't do that. Besides," he added to Peter in an undertone, "I don't know how."

Hardcastle snorted in exasperation. "When do you Ghostbusters return to New York?" he asked.

"That's too obvious, Judge," Peter protested. "We're your guests. You should be asking how long we'll stay."

"How long will you stay?" the judge asked through gritted teeth, but his eyes were sparkling with humor. He seemed to have accepted the situation, and McCormick was on hand to help if it was needed.

"I kind of like it here, and I haven't even had a chance to see the beach yet," Peter returned.

"Actually, Judge, we return tomorrow," Egon replied. "The paranormal conference finishes up tomorrow noon and we catch an afternoon flight back."

"The earthquake didn't stop the conference?" asked Mark, grinning in remembrance of the people he'd seen at the hotel.

"Heck no," said Peter. "All the psychics were saying they'd predicted the quake all along. Most of 'em didn't, but there was one who might have. Yesterday morning she told me, 'There will be a great fall. You will search and not find, but do not despair. Everything comes to the one who doesn't give up.'" He repeated the words portentously, waving his arms to emphasize the point.

"Really, Peter?" enthused Ray, freezing with his fork aloft as he stared at Peter. "You didn't tell us about that."

"Cause I didn't buy it until the ceiling came tumbling down and Egon disappeared," Peter defended himself. "Then I realized what she meant and by then it was too late." He grinned sideways at Egon. "Only we got lucky."

"You mean you didn't give up," Egon replied. "And while it's true I was in some danger, I managed to extricate myself, even if I was marooned there."

Peter muttered, 'extricate', under his breath, an expression of scorn upon his face.

"It means--"

"I know what it means, Egon. It means you read too many dictionaries when you were a kid. So, Judge, are you ready to believe in ghosts?"

Hardcastle's face grew serious. "I'm not so sure about those weird looking things you characters chase back east. But ghosts like Nancy?" His face softened at the memory. "Yeah, what choice do I have. She came to help me and she did."

"With a little help from Mark," Ray added. "If he hadn't come and tracked us down you might not have realized what she was trying to say. So it's a good thing he was worried. We're all okay, really, even if Mark's having a tough time cutting his steak."

Mark made a face at him, then turned to Hardcastle, "Please, daddy, cut my meat for me," he teased in a childlike voice.

"Grow up, McCormick," returned the judge, but he grabbed the plate and started to do it for him.

The doorbell rang as they were finishing up their desert, and Mark jumped up and went to answer it. He returned in a few moments with none other than Murray Bozinsky, who was smiling broadly.

"Hi, everybody. Sorry to come at dinner time, but I wanted to get Ray and the others to come back to the hotel," he explained. "There's going to be a seance and the moderators want the Ghostbusters to take part. We're going to raise a spirit," he concluded excitedly. "What do you think of that, your honor?"

Hardcastle eyed the young detective with disfavor. "I'd say you're too late," he said. "We already did that."

"Really? Gosh, I want to hear all about it. But you're gonna come, aren't you?"

"What, and leave me alone with this stubborn old donkey?" Mark asked.

"Come too," Peter urged. "You haven't lived until you've sat through a phony seance."

"But it's going to be a real seance," Murray insisted.

"That's what they all say," Egon returned. "But we'll go. It's part of our schedule after all. Wait until dinner's over and we'll ride back with you."

"Well, I'll ride in with you; the guys dropped me off," Murray replied. "You should come, too, Judge Hardcastle. It'll really be boss."

"That," said the judge, "is all I could hope for. Take McCormick. I plan to pop a bucket of popcorn and sit down with the Duke tonight."

"When you could be watching a seance?" asked Murray in disbelief. "It's that TV guy, Dr. Bassingame."

"WHAT?" cried Ray. "That phony! He trashed my aunt's place with one of his fake light shows. I'm gonna get him. I'm gonna pulverize him...."

"Down, boy," urged Peter. "Sure you don't want to come, Judge? This is gonna be fun."

Hardcastle shook his head. "I've had my quota of fun today already," he replied. "You go ahead."

"Quick," urged Mark, "Before he makes me do the dishes." Laughing, they headed for the front door, Ray explaining to anyone who would listen how he meant to expose Bassingame for the fraud that he was. Peter couldn't help grinning. He turned back and looked at Hardcastle, waving a friendly hand in farewell.

The judge smiled after them. "Now you're cookin'."

Built by Text2Html