That day which seemed so long ago, he’d had a free afternoon. He’d started drinking in a tavern in Watts. After picking up a good-looking if loudmouthed woman, he’d driven her to his apartment in Hollywood. They’d gone to bed almost at once, after which he fell asleep. The telephone woke him up. It was Callister, excited, obviously in some kind of trouble. Emergency, though he didn’t say what it was. McKay was to come to him at once. He was to bring his .45 automatic with him.
That helped to sober him up. Mr. Callister must really be in trouble if he would say openly, over a phone that could be tapped, that he was to be armed. Then the first of the troubles started. The woman was gone, and with her his wallet-five hundred dollars and his credit cards-and his car keys.
When he looked out the window into the parking space behind the building, he saw that the car was gone, too. If it hadn’t been that he was needed so quickly, he would have laughed. Ripped off by a hooker! A dumb one at that, since he would be tracking her down. He’d get his wallet back and its contents, if they were still around. And his car, too. He wouldn’t kill the woman, but he would rough her up a bit to teach her a lesson. He was a professional, and professionals didn’t kill except for money or in self-defense.
So he’d put on his bike clothes and wheeled out on it, speeding along in the night, ready to outrun the pigs if they saw him. Callister was waiting for him. The other bodyguards weren’t around. He didn’t ask Callister where they were, since the boss didn’t like questions. But Callister volunteered, anyway. The others were in a car which had been wrecked while chasing a man and a woman. They were not dead, but they were too injured to be of any use.
Callister then had described the couple he was after, but he didn’t say why he wanted them.
Callister had stood for a moment, biting his lip. He was a big handsome honky, his curly hair yellow, his eyes a strange bright green, his face something like the movie actor’s, Paul Newman.
Abruptly, he went to a cabinet, pulled a little box about the size of a sugar cube from his pocket, held it over the lock, and the door swung open.
Callister removed a strange-looking device from the cabinet. McKay had never seen anything like it before, but he knew it was a weapon. It had a gunstock to which was affixed a short thick barrel, like a sawed-off shotgun.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Callister said. “Use this, leave your .45 here. We may be where we won’t want anybody to hear gunfire. Here, I’ll show you how to use it.”
McKay, watching him demonstrate, began to feel a little numb. It was the first step into a series of events which made him feel as if he’d been magically transformed into an actor in a science-fiction movie. If he’d had any sense, he would have taken off then. But there wasn’t one man on Earth that could have foreseen that five minutes later he wouldn’t even be on Earth.
He was still goggle-eyed when, demonstrating the “beamer”, Callister had cut a chair in half. He was handed a metal vest. At least, it looked and felt like steel. But it was flexible.
Callister put one on, too, and then he said something in a foreign language. A large circular area on the wall began glowing, then the glow disappeared, and he was staring into another world.
“Step through the gate,” Callister said. He was holding a hand weapon disguised as a revolver. It wasn’t pointed at McKay, but McKay felt that it would be if he refused.
Callister followed him in. McKay guessed that Callister was using him as a shield, but he didn’t protest. If he did, he might be sliced in half. They went through another “gate” and were in still another world or dimension or whatever. And then things really began to happen. While Callister was sneaking up on their quarry, McKay circled around through the trees. All of a sudden, hell broke loose. There was this big red-haired guy with, believe it or not, a bow and arrows.