The Universe Twister by Keith Laumer, edited by Eric Flint Page B

dying in their sleep of heart failure. A hard story to check, but that was one experiment he couldn't afford to try. There was no help for it; he'd have to wake up.
    Sitting against the wall, he relaxed, closed his eyes. Mrs. MacGlint's house , he thought, picturing the front porch in the gray predawn light; the dark hall, the creaky stairs, the warped, black-varnished door to his room with its chipped brown-enameled steel knob; and the room itself, the odor of stale cookery and ancient woodwork and dust . . .
    He opened an eye. The candle flame across the cell guttered, making shadows bob on the stone wall. Nothing had changed. O'Leary felt uneasiness rising like water in a leaky hold.
    He tried again, picturing the cracked sidewalk in front of the boarding house, the dusty leaves of the trees that overhung it, the mailbox at the corner, the down-at-the-heels shops along the main street, the tarnished red brick of the Post Office . . .
    That was real, not the ridiculous dream about princesses and dragons. He was Lafayette O'Leary, aged twenty-six, with a steady if not inspiring job at which he was due in a very few hours. Old Man Biteworse would be hopping mad if he showed up late, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep. There was no time to waste, idling in a fantasy world, while his real-life job waited, with its deadlines and eyestrain and competition for the next two-dollar raise.
    O'Leary felt a faint jar. A breath of warmth touched his face. His eyes snapped open. He was staring into a bright mist that swirled and eddied. The air was hot, moist. Abruptly, he was aware of dampness soaking into the seat of his trousers. He scrambled up, saw vague pale shapes moving in the fog. Out of the steam, figures appeared—the pink bodies of young girls with wet hair, wearing damp towels, carelessly draped. Lafayette gaped. He had made his escape—not back to Mrs. MacGlint's, it appeared, but to a sort of Arabian paradise, complete with teen-age houris.
    There were sudden startled yelps; the nearest girls fled, squealing. Others bobbed into view, saw O'Leary, hastily hitched up towels and dashed away, adding to the outcry.
    "Oh, no," Lafayette muttered. "Not again . . ." He moved off quickly to his left, encountered a corner and the sound of running water. He tried the other direction, spotted the darker rectangle of a doorless arch, made for it—and collided with a vast bulk in bundlesome tweeds hurtling through from the room beyond. There was a bleat like the cry of an outraged cow hippo defending her young; a rolled umbrella whistled past O'Leary's ear. He ducked; the shadowy giantess charged again, emitting piercing shrieks against the background of lesser yelps. Lafayette backed away, warding off a rain of blows from the flailing implement.
    "Madam, you don't understand!" he shouted over the din. "I just wandered in by mistake, and—" his foot slipped. He had a momentary impression of a square red face like a worn-out typist's cushion closing in, the mouth gaping, tiny eyes glaring. Then a bomb exploded and sent him hurtling into a bottomless darkness.
     
    "The way I see it, chief," a meaty voice was saying, "this character hides out over on the men's side last night, see? Then after the joint's locked up, he goes up a rope, out the skylight, across the roof, in the other skylight, down another rope, and hides out in the shower room until Mrs. Prudlock's early-morning modern dance class gets there—"
    "Yeah?" a voice like soft mud came back. "So what'd he do with them ropes? Eat 'em?"
    "Huh? How could a guy eat forty feet o' rope, chief?"
    "The same way he done all that other stuff you said, lamebrain!"
    "Huh?"
    "Look, I think I got it, chief," an eager voice announced. "He dresses up like a janitor—"
    "Only one janitor at the Y. Ninety years old. Checks out clean. Turned in a complaint last year he seen a nood dame. Then : You boys sure you checked that side door?"
    "She was locked up tighter'n a card-sharp's money