(Okay, I know I'm a doctor, but I really don't want to cut up this dead body.)

Someone Up There must have been listening for once, because Sam Beckett--and his stomach--were relieved to feel the autopsy room begin to fade in a rush of light. Ziggy and Al were right; Quincy was going to be much happier as an LAPD coroner than as a doctor in private practice, no matter how much money he made. They had helped Quincy make the right career move, but now it was time to leap into another life that needed fixing.

Where would he end up now? As always, Sam entered the leap with the foreboding of a child entering the dentist's office. Would he be on stage in the middle of a speech he hadn't rehearsed? Working in a nuclear power plant, with plenty of opportunities to make an innocent mistake and destroy the world? Nothing would surprise him, after the many different lives he'd already lived by proxy.

As the halo of light encircling him faded, and Dr. Sam Beckett felt his lips pressing against something warm and soft, he blinked. A tongue slid between his lips and gently probed his mouth as he twisted his head and squinted, trying to get a glimpse of his partner. He seemed to be clutching a very bosomy woman, and he could just make out long, curly, champagne-colored hair. She had both hands clenched in his hair, and he couldn't pull away, even if he wanted to end the embrace. It seemed that, as Al would undoubtedly advise him, the only thing to do was relax and enjoy--

A wave of frigid water washed over him.

They jumped apart, the woman squealing, both dripping wet. Picking ice cubes out of his collar, he realized it couldn't have been a tidal wave. Sam looked up into the grimly pleased face of an experienced older woman standing high above him, on the deck of some sort of boat. Through the haze of ice water, it was hard to make out the smeared name on its side. CONTEST? CONTESSA?

"That oughta cool ya off, Allen," the woman rasped. "Tell the rest of the boys on the RIPTIDE to keep their hands off my girls. Mona, head on over to Straightaways and get us some more ice."

"Okay, Mama Jo." The blonde, scantily clad in a scarlet bikini, tossed back her wet hair and smiled apologetically at Sam. "Sorry, Cody. See ya."

Quite uncomfortable, Sam squished damply across the dock under the watchful eye of Mama Jo. His leap had been true to form, beginning with the usual embarrassment. Some things never changed.

At least he had found out who he was without waiting for Al, the Project observer, to fill him in on the computer's data search. He was a definitely heterosexual male named Cody, who lived with other guys on the RIPTIDE, whatever that was.

Shaking a stray ice cube down his pants leg, Sam squinted against the harsh summer sunlight in order to scan the hull of the next boat down the pier. It was white with orange trim, and with the word RIPTIDE emblazoned in black letters across the side.

So far, so good. Somewhat hesitantly, he climbed aboard the boat, feeling like a trespasser, as he always did. When a whirring sound broke out behind him, he spasmed nervously, but it was too soft to be a burglar alarm. Spinning around, Sam confronted a short metal object, an orange-red, barrel-shaped machine with a black-banded middle and silver arms. A computer screen on its chest was lit with flickering green strings of mathematical symbols. The body was topped with an ant-like head, with horizontal metal spikes sticking out where ears would be on humans. Its dark, tennis-ball eyes focused on Sam, then dismissed him. The little robot trundled past him toward the rear of the boat.

"I think I could like it here," Sam mused, and followed it.

The first thing to do was find out more about Cody, before he had to interact socially with the other `boys.' There appeared to be several cabins. Choosing one, he stepped inside a little room almost militarily neat, and masculine in aura. He paused by a dresser, lifting a photograph of a group of soldiers in combat fatigues grouped around a pink Sikorsky helicopter painted with a screaming blue face.

"Cavalry Division Air Mobile Unit," a voice observed over his right shoulder. "That should help Ziggy track down who you are this time, Sam."

Despite the fact that Al Calavicci had been catfooting up behind unsuspecting people for many years even before becoming a holographic illusion trailing Sam into the past, Sam still twitched. He always did. Grimacing, he cast a glance over his shoulder as his partner stepped through the glowing blue-lit `doorway' into the Imaging Chamber back home.

"Am I one of these men?"

"Have you looked in a mirror yet?" Al countered.

Good idea. Sam picked up a hand mirror lying on the dresser beside a hairbrush, and met blue eyes, dark blond-brown hair, and a Robert Redford mustache. The tanned, trim body was wearing a blue-and-white striped jersey with the sleeves pushed up and gabardine pants. There was a similar-looking man in the group before the chopper, about fifteen years younger.

"My name's Cody, and this boat is the RIPTIDE," he threw over his shoulder, watching the stranger's lips move in sync with his voice.

"Good work, Sam." Al scowled in concentration as he punched buttons on his computer hand-link. In this austere cabin, he seemed especially out of place in his skin-tight brown corduroy slacks, orange-striped velvet shirt, and orange goldfish-shaped tie. The white fishing hat cocked over one eye sported an orange velvet band to match the rest of the outfit. "Bingo. Ziggy says you're a private." Al made a face and hit the hand-link with the palm of his hand. It moaned in a melodic falsetto. "Private investigator with Riptide Investigations at King Harbor. Your partners are Nick Ryder and Murray Bozinsky."

"The Boz? That's great! I worked with him on Ziggy's design, remember?"

"Skinny kid who got the hiccoughs when he hadda speak to the Senate committee? How could I forget? Just remember, he thinks you're Cody Allen, not Sam Beckett."

"What am I here for?"

"Ziggy's accessing records now."

Murray's involvement explained the little orange robot he had met on the deck. What had he called it? The Roboz? Vaguely, Sam remembered it pinching Tina on the buttocks and making her hurl a freshly-collated report all over the lab; he'd always suspected Al programmed it to do that.

Seeing Murray again would be great; he was an unusual mix of naivete, enthusiasm, and incredible technical genius. If Murray hadn't been determined to avoid government work of any kind, he'd have been Sam's first choice for Ziggy's chief programmer. Speaking of which. . . .

"I know I programmed Ziggy to be faster than this. Didn't I?"

"Well, yeah, but you gotta remember you also programmed him with an obnoxious personality."

"I thought you said I gave Ziggy my personality?"

Al cleared his throat, then waggled the hand-link. "Do you mind? I'm trying to speed Ziggy up here."

"Fine. You do that. Meanwhile, I'm going to find Murray."

Al followed him out of the cabin and into another. This one was totally different; instead of almost-military neatness, it was wallpapered with computer print-outs, and every available space was covered with delicate tools and scattered bits of motherboards or electrical equipment. In the heart of this technological maze sat two men, absorbed in technobabble. One was Murray, looking just as he had--or rather, would--during their work on Project Quantum Leap: his short spiky brown hair standing on end because he had been running one hand through it, his thick black-rimmed glasses mended with gobs of masking tape, his rumpled plaid shirt pocket stuffed with pens, pencils, and a slide rule. Sitting beside him was a slender, Nordic blond man with a long face dominated by a hawk nose. He was clutching some kind of machine sprouting wires and gauges like a dandelion gone to seed.

"--should stabilize the magno-flux indicator in such a way that the problem won't recur," he was saying in a phlegmatic bass voice, painstakingly adjusting a knob on the box's surface.

A Christmas tree of lights flashed on and off all over the box, and a slim black arm somewhat like a microphone burst from one side and pointed at Sam and Al.

"That's odd," the stranger said flatly. "It should not be registering such an unusual reading. You haven't had any psychic experiences lately, have you? Any ghostly phenomena?"

Murray's eyes saucered. "Ghosts? You think there's a ghost on the RIPTIDE? Again?"

"Maybe it's an interruption in the magnetic lines," Sam suggested uneasily. Could that octagonal box tell that he was a quantum leaper? "Or an ionic disturbance. Since we're on water, the ionic flow would be different, unless you've adjusted for the variance."

Now both men were staring at him. Al cleared his throat.

"Uh, Sam, you barely scraped by in basic science courses at the Ventura County high school. Murray is the scientific genius in this team; you specialize in charm."

Over the continual beeping and murmuring of the machine, Murray said, "Cody, I didn't know you knew anything about paranormal studies."

Sam dredged up a smile, hoping Cody's charm would carry him through. "I guess I've been hanging around the Boz so long that some of his ideas rubbed off on me. Hi. I'm Cody Allen, Murray's partner."

He held out one hand, but the blond stranger was frowning at the box and didn't notice. "Why does it keep registering two abnormal presences? There isn't anyone behind you, is there?"

Sam glanced back at Al, who shrugged elaborately.

"No, there's nobody here but us."

Murray bounced in his worn swivel chair. "Maybe we really are haunted! I mean, after all, I did hear some pretty strange noises last night when I was watching the late, late show rerun of Lady in White."

"You don't believe in ghosts, do you, Murray?"

He cocked his head to one side. "How can you even ask that, Cody? Surely you haven't forgotten Martin."

"Who? I mean, no, of course not."

Oblivious, the other man pressed a button, and the black arm retracted. With a faint hum, the beeping and lights switched off. He pushed his glasses up the hawk nose. "Maybe a flux in the etheric fabric...?"

"Where are my manners? Cody, this is Egon Spengler. Isn't that--isn't it absolutely bodacious? One of the actual Ghostbusters, right here on the RIPTIDE! You see, they're here on vacation, and we've been corresponding for a year--ever since Ray Stantz ran into a problem with the schematics for his destabilizer rectifier unit--so Egon dropped by to visit."

"Egon Spengler? That's great! Dr. Spengler has revolutionized modern physics, particularly with his papers on multi-dimensional--"

"Sam!" Al barked.

"That is, I heard something like that once on Geraldo Rivera's show, didn't I?"

Egon winced, actually looking up from his machine. "I assure you, what happened on that show was totally accidental. We had no idea that a Class 4 arcane entity would escape from Peter's containment unit and slime Mr. Rivera on camera that way."

"Seemed sorta appropriate to me," Al muttered. Sam ignored him.

"Yeah, I sort of figured that myself. It did get you guys a lot of publicity, though."

"Not the kind of publicity we prefer to receive," Spengler murmured, and returned to fiddling with knobs and levers and dials, scowling again.

Al's hand-link to the computer back at the lab beeped, and he squinted at the tiny screen. "Here it is, Sam. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to rescue your partner, Nick Ryder, who's reserved. No, that's not right." He shook the hand-link vigorously, making it emit a stifled, mournful hoot. "He's in the Reserves, and this weekend his chopper--a real junk-heap called the Screaming Mimi--crashed on the way back from weekend duty. According to the newspaper, nobody knew about it until he didn't show up here late Sunday night, and by the time they found him, he'd died of exposure and blood loss."

"Gee, it's too bad our partner's not here. I bet Nick'd love to meet an actual Ghostbuster."

Murray cupped his chin in one hand. "You think so? I don't know, Cody. I didn't think Nick really cared that much for scientists. When I had that High-Q party here last month, he seemed positively uneasy to me, and the High-Q people are a real happening bunch."

"Why don't we just call Nick and ask?"

"There wouldn't be any point, Cody. The guys are going back to New York on Sunday morning, and Nick won't be back from duty until long after they're gone."

"He won't be back at all. He got off early," Al explained. "That's why nobody looked for him until it was too late."

"Look, it's worth a try, Murray. Maybe he can get off early or something."

Murray was unconvinced. "I don't think it's a good idea. After you called him to ask for Brandi's phone number, and I called to ask if he'd seen where I left my Feinberger--do you remember where I put my Feinberger, Cody? I can't find it--anyway, he said if we bothered him anymore, he'd get in really big trouble, and we don't want that, do we?"

"No, we certainly don't."

Al sighed. "I'll get the right numbers from Ziggy, and you can try calling the base from one of the cabins."

Sam shrugged. "Whatever you say. Listen, it was nice meeting you, Dr. Spengler."

Spengler touched the button again. The arm zipped out, pointing at Sam, and positively quivered as he leaned toward it, squeaking an alarm. With an uneasy smile, Sam backed away, right through Al.

"Hey, watch it! Good thing I can't feel that," the hologram muttered, and followed him out. "Gee, that was close, Sam. That ghost-busting thingamajig must've picked up your readings. Or maybe mine. Anyway, it's a good thing Spengler doesn't know what it means."

"He's a brilliant physicist, Al, no matter what conventional scientists say. He might be able to figure it out." Inspired, Sam stopped short. "Why don't we just tell them both the truth?"

"No way, Sam."

"Why not? Murray's got top security clearance, just like us--he helped me create Ziggy in the first place! What difference does it make?"

"Plenty! The Pentagon'd toss both our butts in the brig and throw away the key, just for starters. You know the rules as well as I do; you can't tell anybody about the Project." Al punched the keyboard as if it were a boxer's outstretched chin. "Don't make this any more complicated than it has to be, 'cuz so far this looks like a real easy leap. I'll have Ziggy give us the number for Ryder's unit, and you find us a phone, and we can leap right outta here, okay?" He cast an anxious look back toward Murray's cabin. "Those ghost-buster guys make me nervous. What if they, like, attract spooks?" Al shuddered. "You know I hate ghosts and dead bodies and stuff like that. So let's hurry up, okay?"

"This probably has more to do with a hot date you've set up than ghosts."

"Sa-am!" Al put his hand on his heart, his eyes wide. "I take my work very seriously. I would never try to speed up this date, just because Miss June from last year's Playboy offered to show me her cute pair of--"

"Al!"

"--puppies. Soft, roly-poly puppies that I'd just love to pet. So let's go make that call and get this over with. It's not nice to keep ladies waiting."

As his partner left the cabin, Murray said, more to himself than to Egon, "Something's just not right."

Egon looked up. "Do you suspect--as do I--that the problem does not lie with my equipment?"

"Huh? Oh. I don't know, Egon. Cody just doesn't seem like himself."

"And you did hear unusual noises aboard this vessel. Judging from the readings I picked up, something distinctly supernatural is going on here." Egon rose, clutching the box to his chest. "With your permission, Murray, I'll get my partners. Ray and Winston were strolling down the pier, and Peter was trying to pick up a bar-girl at Straightaways. If the problem is paranormal, we'll deal with it. If it's psychological in nature...if your partner is somewhat disturbed...well, Peter is a psychologist."

After a moment, gnawing on his lip, Murray nodded.

By the time they reached Nick Ryder's cabin, Al was already triumphantly announcing the right telephone number.

"--555-1769, and ask for Colonel Mick Groomes. That's the head honcho. If you tell him there's a family emergency, he'll probably send a chopper after Ryder when he doesn't answer radio calls. Piece of cake." He shuddered briefly. "Just as well. I really hate ghosts. The sooner we get this leap over with, the better."

"Relax. Just because a Ghostbuster is visiting Murray doesn't mean a ghost is involved."

"Just make the call, Sam, okay? Usually your leaps aren't this easy to handle, and I don't wanna jinx it. I promised to take Denise to this intimate little cafe tonight."

"I thought you were meeting Miss June," Sam protested. He had always suspected Al made up ninety percent of his wild stories, and this sounded like the proof.

"Well, not until tomorrow, and it's sort of a tentative date, because I can't go to Santa Fe until I'm sure you've leaped out, but even in the middle of a leap, I gotta eat dinner, right?"

"With Denise. Does Tina know about this?"

"Hey! This is business. We're gonna discuss the book she's writing about me. How does the title Reach for the Stars grab you?"

"I think you've grabbed more starlets than stars, myself."

"Very funny, Sam." Al reached out and picked up a lit cigar from what appeared to be thin air; things in the Imaging Chamber but not actually touching Al were always invisible to Sam. "Just make the call, okay?"

Sam picked up the telephone. "Relax, Al. Even if this doesn't work, we can always call the Coast Guard or someone with an anonymous tip about seeing a crash, right?"

Al's eyes narrowed. "Uh-oh."

"What?" Sam glanced at his partner's taut, suddenly immobile face, then followed Al's gaze to the doorway. "Oh. Uh, hi, Murray. Is there something I can do for you?"

Murray's skinny body was as tense Al's, his expression just as blank. "Who were you talking to, Cody?"

"Talking. Oh. Right." He held up the receiver. "The phone."

"The phone? Were you calling Nick?"

"Well, yeah. Sort of. Murray, I have a really bad feeling about this. Bad vibes, you know? I just think there's something wrong with Nick, and I want to check it out."

Bozinsky frowned, his dark eyes concerned, and for a moment Sam was thrown into the future, remembering a night when he and Murray were up until dawn, debating whether or not working on Project Quantum Leap would be giving the military a new, uniquely dangerous weapon to misuse. Murray seemed to swallow a hiccough. He shook his head slowly, as if trying to deny something. "Cody, this isn't like you."

"We've known each other for a long time, Murray. Can't you just humor me on this? We could rent a helicopter or something and fly over a spot--um--"

"--thirty-five miles southeast of King Harbor, hidden in some trees. Ziggy has the exact location on file."

"--near here, and if nothing's wrong, we'll come back to the RIPTIDE. Nick'll never even know we were there. What do you say?"

Murray stared at him a moment longer, then turned away. "We could take the EBBTIDE."

"She's their motorboat, Sam."

"That's fine. Thanks, Murray."

Not looking back, Bozinsky raised and lowered one shoulder, but didn't speak. Sam followed him into the fading late-afternoon sunlight, and shaded his eyes against the glare until the four shadows on the ship's deck solidified into four men in uniforms, laden with high-tech equipment.

"Oh, Murray, no," he sighed.

The computer scientist twitched. "Cody, it's for your own good. You--you're acting really weird, saying things you've never said before, and you were talking to thin air a minute ago. You called it Al." He swallowed hard. "Are you talking to a ghost?"

"There's definitely a paranormal reading here," exclaimed the shortest Ghostbuster. His pudgy baby-face was glowing with excitement. "Egon, have you ever seen anything like this before?"

"No, Ray. Of course, all PKE forms have constant ionization rates, but what I'm registering doesn't even match anything in Tobin's Spirit Guide."

One of the other Ghostbusters snickered. "How about trying Overstreet's Comic Book Price Guide?"

Al stuck the cigar in his mouth and bristled. "Sam, Gooshie says you better do something fast. Ziggy's going crazy trying to predict what that goofy machinery might do to you, but the records are mostly classified. After all the bad publicity they got, the Ghostbusters got kinda gunshy."

"Well? Is it a ghost, or isn't it?" Murray demanded.

"It's not a ghost," Stantz assured him. "But the readings are skewed, almost as if we're dealing with two entities, not one." He pursed his lips. "Maybe even two-and-a-half."

"Maybe the dude's a schizo," the third Ghostbuster suggested, looking bored. "Sort of a male Sybil, which was a great movie, by the way. Are the movie rights to this case signed up yet? As your consulting psychologist, I definitely think I should get a cut--"

"Possession?" Egon asked Ray, ignoring the interruptions.

Sam snapped, "I'm not possessed! This whole thing is a mistake. If you'll just give me a chance, I can explain everything."

"Don't you dare!" Al snatched out his cigar and pointed it at Sam like a torpedo-launcher. The black Ghostbuster slowly pivoted, his arcane rifle pointing toward Al. He raised one eyebrow. "Aw, you're bluffing. You can't see me, and I won't show up on that doohickey. I'm a hologram, linked to Sam's brain-waves, not a ghost." To prove his point, he walked a few feet to the left.

The wire-studded rifle barrel followed him.

"Uh-oh. Sam--"

"I know. Listen, guys, this has gone far enough--"

With a nervous glance at Cody/Sam, Murray said loudly, "Whatever you do, don't hurt Cody!"

"Oh, we won't hurt him, Dr. Bozinsky. The proton pack and particle thrower fire ionized proton bolts that can separate a body's atoms, but we always set them so they'll only affect supernatural entities, not ordinary human beings."

"You're not an ordinary human being, Sam! Get out of here! I'll distract these weasels." Al ran back, skidded to a halt in front of Spengler, stuck his thumbs in his ears, wiggled his fingers, and yelled, "BOO!"

"Whatever it is, I think it's attacking!" the smart-mouth yelped.

"Jump, Sam!"

Al ducked behind the Roboz as a crackling radiance surrounded him. The stubby robot seemed unaffected, but Al threw up his arms with a startled cry.

"No!"

Sam tackled the black Ghostbuster, knocking his particle thrower aside, but the smart alec kicked a box down the deck, attached to a long cord. As he stamped on a trigger device, the box yawned open, emitting a blinding light.

"JUMP!" Al bellowed.

"Trap's open!"

Al was engulfed by the light. Desperately, Sam wrenched free, ran to the railing, and dived into the harbor far below.

The light behind him snapped off.

One minute, Albert Calavicci was standing on the deck of the RIPTIDE, staring at the open trap; the next minute, it swallowed him.

After rocketing into space, marrying five times, and leaping into the past to link with Sam--adjusting to the surreal experience of being simultaneously in the Disneyland-sized Imaging Chamber and strolling through city streets decades in his past--he'd thought nothing could surprise him again...except possibly Tina's suggestion for the peanut butter last night. Now he wasn't so sure.

Where the hell was he, anyway? Was he standing up? Sitting down? Was he even right side up?

He seemed to be floating in a sort of hallucinogenic haze, a cosmic white cloud the color of the middle of an Oreo cookie. When he cautiously reached out, he felt nothing, not even the walls or floor of the Imaging Chamber.

"Hello?"

His voice echoed hollowly, as if tossed back by the creamy haze.

"I feel like an egg yolk," he muttered, but there was nobody there to laugh. "Gooshie? Hey, Gooshie, center me on Sam!"

Nothing happened. The hand-link was dead, all lights and colors erased. When he tapped on the keys, it didn't even burp. Wherever he was, he'd lost communication with the Project.

What happened back there on the RIPTIDE? Did those nozzles catch Sam, too, or did he get away?

"Sam? SAM!"

This was getting him nowhere. Al thrust the useless hand-link into his pocket, and stuck the stogie in his mouth at a jaunty angle. Maybe if he started walking, he'd find some kind of exit, or at least a wall. The problem was, all he could see was mist, and he couldn't get his balance. Even when he lifted his foot and put it down a few inches away, he didn't feel anything firm. It was as if he were walking on a cloud, not knowing if he was going to keep on an even keel or just sink right through it, like a cartoon character suddenly realizing it was no longer on solid ground.

Al swallowed. Dammit, he hadn't been seasick since he was a cadet, and he wasn't going to lose his stomach now.

"Just think of it as taking a walk in space," he told himself sternly. "You loved that, didn't you? So now you're in outer space on a cloudy day."

An eerie chuckle reverberated somewhere near his right ear, and Al spun around. There was no one there, just the impenetrable vanilla mist.

"It wasn't that funny," he muttered, biting down on his cigar.

This time the chuckle came from behind him. Trying to ignore it, he kept on walking, even though he didn't seem to be getting anywhere. He could feel the hairs on his arms standing on end. Someone was watching him; he could feel that, too.

Those Ghostbuster nozzles caught ghosts in this trap.

How often did they clean them out?

Fetid breath hissed against the back of his neck. He turned quickly, yelling, "Chi va la?" He didn't get an answer. Maybe whatever thing was following him didn't speak Italian. "Hey, who's out there?"

Maybe it didn't speak English, either.

"Oh, God, I hate this," he whispered, and started slogging through the mist again.

Like the hand-link, his Rolex no longer worked, and with no landmarks to gauge by, he couldn't tell how long he'd been walking, or if he was even getting anywhere. It was chilly here, kind of like being stuck inside an ice cream cone, but this didn't smell sweet; in fact, it smelled sort of...dead. Like rotting meat, and mold, and swamp gas.

Something snarled in the distance, and he twitched a little, but kept walking.

"The important thing is getting back to Sam," he told himself calmly. "I know he's out there somewhere looking for me."

Off to the left, a pair of elongated, red-tinged eyes appeared, about neck-high, staring at him, the pupils dilated. Al stopped short and stared back, then closed his eyes, like he was back in the orphanage and trying to make the Bad Things disappear. This time it worked. The eyes closed, too, and the haze was again creamy smooth, unmarked.

Through clenched teeth, he told the giant egg all around him, "I've been on the streets and in the orphanage. I was spit on and beat up at Selma. I spent six years in a tiger cage in 'Nam, and I've been married five times. What can you do to me to equal that?" Something hissed in the clouds. The veins swelling in his neck, he hollered, "I ain't afraid of no ghosts!"

"Is there someone there? Oh, please, help me!"

Ahead of him, the whipped cream sagged, and he dimly made out a woman running toward him, a small woman wearing a white nurse's uniform, her face framed with short dark hair. He felt his jaw practically hit his shoes. In a weak voice that he didn't recognize at all, Al said, "Beth...?"

The instant that he hit the water, Sam sucked in a lungful of air and ducked underneath the boat. It was lucky that the body he was using was in such good shape, for he had to swim underneath both the RIPTIDE and the CONTESSA before he felt safe coming up for air. Tossing wet hair out of his eyes, he treaded water and gazed back at the RIPTIDE. The uncanny light was extinguished, and he could see men running around the deck, peering over the railings at the water. He couldn't see Al anywhere.

Laboriously, Sam climbed up the nearest post and wriggled onto the pier, despite the soaked clothing weighing him down. Now what?

He couldn't blame Murray for being worried about his friend; he knew how he would feel if Al began acting unbalanced and giving off strange medical readings--although with Al it might be hard to tell.

A breeze whipped against him, and Sam shivered. There was no point in going back to the RIPTIDE, outnumbered and unarmed, but he ached at the thought of abandoning Al. No matter what catastrophe he had gotten himself into, in leaps or with government funding, the one certainty he could always count on was that Al would be there for him: patiently teaching him how to deal with the military, exhorting him to try harder, digging vital facts out of Ziggy or out of his own exotic past--doing whatever it took to help.

(I'm not abandoning Al,) he told himself. (I'll get to a phone and call Murray. I'll make him understand that I'm a physicist he's going to work with in a few years, who leaped into the past and took over Cody Allen to save Nick Ryder from death, and Al is a neurologically-linked hologram, not a ghost.) He paused. It really didn't sound very believable, did it?

The sun was setting, and his teeth were beginning to chatter. If he went to the CONTESSA, Mona would surely agree to help Cody...but Mama Jo would delight in getting him in trouble. But he had to do something. The Ghostbusters would be swarming along the pier after him any minute now.

Grimly, Sam squeezed as much water out of his pants and jersey as he could, emptied his Nikes, and checked his wallet. Cody Allen had the usual credit cards, and $95.00 in cash. Making up his mind, he strode up the pier toward the city, looking for a cab to make a quick getaway.

It really ate at him that Al was in trouble. From the night that he first walked into Project Star-Bright's lab and found a drunken, raging Italian smashing a vending machine with a hammer, he'd worried about Al Calavicci. A man so bright, so unusual, so full of a zest for life, should be encouraged and protected, not slapped down with rules and rejections. Despite the advice he got to help dump Calavicci and work with someone more conventional or even take over the project himself, he persevered. With Dr. Verbena Beeks' help, he weaned Al from the bottle. They became a team...and then, on Project Quantum Leap, everything got reversed. It was Sam who kept stumbling into disaster, and Al who worried about him, begging him not to get raped or shot or run over or beaten up. As a hologram, in quantum leaps Al was safe.

Flagging down a cab, Sam frowned. That wasn't quite true.

It was four--no, five--leaps back. He was trying to retrieve two antiques, to save the life of a man named Jack Marshak, and Al tangled with a demonically-cursed hologram of a monster from a comic book. Luckily, he didn't see what happened--Mary Jo Liese was vacuuming out his blood with a cursed transfusion unit at the time--but he remembered seeing Al afterwards, his arm soaked in blood, his throat swollen and burned. Even after the week-long gap between that leap and the next, Al had appeared in the next leap coated with Technicolor burns and bruises.

Were those shouts behind him? Sam closed the cab door and leaned forward. "Um, excuse me. Could you tell me today's date?"

"September 4th."

"What year?"

"You're kiddin', right?" The cabby met his eyes in the rearview mirror. "You're not kiddin'. It's still 1990, buddy, just like it was yesterday and like it's gonna be tomorrow."

"Take me downtown, okay? Some place where there's a phone."

"There's a phone right here on the corner."

"I want one farther away. In fact, by a library."

For some reason, the cabby seemed dubious. "You got any money, mister?"

Sam held up Allen's wad of soaked bills. Apparently satisfied, the cabby pulled away from the curb. The angry cries of four frustrated Ghostbusters arriving at the street seconds too late didn't even rate a backwards glance from him.

In the linear time Jack Marshak and his partners had lived, it had only been three months since Sam Beckett and Al Calavicci saved his life. He wouldn't have forgotten. And Al couldn't complain about Sam giving away Pentagon secrets if he got them involved, since when Marshak's psychic friend Rashid saw Al and demanded an explanation, they'd told him about Project Quantum Leap.

If anyone could defeat the Ghostbusters and their paranormal control systems, it would be the crew at CURIOUS GOODS, who claimed to have faced the Devil and won.

(Hang in there, Al, wherever you are. Help is just a phone call away.)

Even before the weeping woman leaped into his arms, he knew she wasn't Beth, and his heart started beating again. If there was one thing Albert Calavicci knew, it was women, and this one didn't move like Beth, didn't smell like Beth. When he gently pushed her away, he could see that the "nurse's uniform" was just a white sheath dress, somewhat tattered and stained, and her face was rounder than Beth's. His wife had been slender, not all curves and bounces, and she never wore that much make-up.

"Take it easy," he said soothingly, feeling the woman tremble in his hands. "I'm not gonna hurt you. It's okay."

"I'm sorry. I'm just so scared! It's--it's so awful here!"

"You got that right, lady. What's a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this? And how do we get out?"

"There is no way out. This is the Netherworld. Only it's just a little corner of the Netherworld, because the G-G-Ghostbusters fenced it off somehow." She drew in a deep, shuddering breath. "My name is Mary. I was on my way to these auditions--"

"Acting?"

"Ecdysiast, actually." Giving him a tremulous smile, she pulled her dress down tighter, accentuating the curves. They were curves he really wouldn't mind traveling. "I really, really wanted to go there, but I got in this car accident. Now, it wasn't my fault--I'm a very careful driver, you know. Fra--everybody says so. Anyway, I still kept trying to audition, only they wouldn't let me, and then--then those awful Ghostbusters came and sucked me up in their trap!"

"Wait a minute." There was this sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach, like the Titanic going under, the same sort of feeling he got every time he stepped into divorce court. "You're telling me you're dead?"

In a very small voice, digging one foot into the cloud beneath them, she said, "I guess maybe that's why they wouldn't let me audition...."

"Geez Louise!" He pushed her away and jumped back, shaking. "Geez Louise, you're a ghost!"

"But it's not my fault!" she wailed.

Somehow he found the strength to flap his hands at her. "Shoo. Go away. Get lost."

"I already am lost, and there's nowhere to go." Tears wobbled down her Revlon-enhanced cheeks. "Please don't make me leave, they'll get me!"

"Aw, no. Don't cry. I hate it when ladies cry. Even dead ladies."

She sniveled, "Th-There are monsters in here!"

Now not only was he shaking, his whole body was covered with goosebumps. "Monsters? What kind of monsters?"

She pointed behind him. "Like that!"

Even though a hundred tinny voices inside his head were screaming DON'T TURN AROUND, Al turned around.

At first it was just a shadow, a dirty stain in the fluffy cotton balls around them, but it was moving toward them and the shadow began to take on form. It had a vaguely canine appearance, but this had to be the Andre the Giant of the dog world, at least five feet high at the shoulders. Instead of fur, it was coated with scales the color of old scabs, and two sharp horns glinted high on its forehead. It was snarling, a leprous yellow foam dripping from butcher knife-sized fangs. When its flaming red eyes focused on him and dilated, Al felt like a deer caught in the headlights.

"For cryin' out loud, what is that thing?"

"It's a D-D-Devil Dog." Mary's voice started climbing like a ship's whistle going off. "If it catches you, it eats you alive, piece by piece, forever, and you're in agony but you can't die because you're already dead--"

"I'm not dead," Al gritted, and backed away from the approaching horror. "Yet, anyway. Come on, let's get out of here!"

He was scared of the pretty ghost, and he flinched when she grabbed his arm, but the Devil Dog was a thousand times more terrifying. In fact, one insane howl from it was enough to drive him into beating the Olympic sprinting record, even though running had never been one of his sports.

It was a race through a nightmare, almost like running in place, because the scenery never changed. There was no place to hide, no winning line to cross. All he could do was run until his lungs felt like half-smoked cigars, until his legs were leaden anchors that could hardly be lifted.

Yet still the Devil Dog growled behind him. He knew he shouldn't look back--it would slow him down--but he couldn't help turning his head. You wouldn't think a human heart could beat any faster, but the eerie sight of that gigantic hound closing in, making long cat-like bounces that brought it almost to his heels, practically triggered a coronary.

Oceans of sweat were blinding him, stinging his eyes; he blinked fiercely and ran on. There was a stitch in his side that was killing him, but better that than ending up as a doggie treat. He yanked Mary forward, wondering how the hell a ghost could weigh you down so much, and kept running.

This was worse than a nightmare. Okay, in a nightmare you ran and ran and never got anywhere, just like this, but at least in a nightmare you finally woke up, and the pain wasn't real, and everything was okay.

(Right now Gooshie is going crazy trying to pull me back. If he doesn't do it, Sam'll get me out for sure. All I have to do is hold on!)

Somehow Mary's legs got entangled with his, and he sprawled flat on his face, losing his cigar. Since there wasn't any solid ground in this nuthouse, it didn't hurt, but he couldn't seem to catch his breath. He fumbled for his cigar.

"Al, look out!" the ghost shrieked.

Dazed, Al rolled over just as the Devil Dog, barking wildly, pounced.

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