"Blast! I've got to go to the head." Adrian Stewart pushed his chair back from the table. "Take over my characters for me, will you, Sheila?" He gestured at a small group of metal figurines on the table surrounded by the multi-sided dice, squared paper and other paraphernalia of a fantasy wargame. One of the other players, a plump, fair-haired girl, nodded. Adrian rose, left the room and tramped upstairs. It was when he was on his way back down that the thing started.

Adrian's field of vision suddenly darkened round the edges and golden sparks coruscated across it. For a moment he thought he was having an attack of some kind, then the sparks began to swirl in a vortex and he felt himself sucked relentlessly down it. There was a moment of spinning chaos, then he was falling through a dimly-lit void. He landed in icy water, felt something cold and slimy coil round his waist. For a moment he yelled and floundered, then a tawny-bearded face framed by a conical helmet swam into his field of vision. A sword whistled past his eyes, clenched in a brawny fist, and the constriction round his waist eased. He felt brawny arms clamp round him and haul him from the water then dump him none too gently on hard stone.

He blinked water from his eyes, looked round. He lay in a windowless room of gray stone beside a circular pool; there was a white, eyeless thing in the water that flopped and thrashed in its death-throes. Then a soft cough reached his ears and he looked up to see two men standing over him. One was a bearded, heavily-muscled man in a helmet, byrnie, fur cloak and green leather leggings, the other a forkbearded man in a crimson velvet robe who held a long Staff with a glowing tip.

Forkbeard said something in a language strange to Adrian, then on getting no reply frowned and narrowed his eyes in concentration. Adrian was aware of a groping, fumbling sensation on his mind, then a wrenching agony which passed before he could cry out.

"Now we can talk," said Forkbeard. He was a sallow, hooknosed Latin type with black hair and eyes. He was still speaking the odd language but Adrian could understand him now. "First, have you any skill in the arts mechanic of your world?"

"I'm, er, I'm a trainee Computer Programmer, but – "

"What in Thor's name is a Computer Programmer?", interrupted the man in armor. "And where did ye snatch him from?"

"A world called Earth, in one of the alternate universes. Sorcery is absent there and they do use arts mechanic, what they call science, instead. To them a simple metal-bending spell is matter of great wonder and amaze, yet in the building of engines, the properties of minerals and such lore their very schoolchildren do put our profoundest philosophers to shame.

"As for a Computer Programmer, I have come across the phrase in grimoires. It denotes one who serves a Golem of iron and crystal with lightning in its veins instead of blood. It gives oracles in a language none save  initiates can understand, and when the great merchants of the land come to seek redes the programmer doth interpret for them."

"And what help is that?" grunted the warrior. He cast a contemptuous glance at Adrain's scrawny frame, unflatteringly revealed by damp jeans and T-shirt. "There were six Stalwart Warriors with us when we came into these dismal catacombs and all save us are perished. So how can yonder slack-gutted coalbiter do better than they?"

" ‘Tis but a desperate outside chance that he can aid US at all, Hrothgar," said Forkbeard. "It is known that the Pipes of Panic are no ordinary sorcery. I therefore teleported a man from one of the non-magical universes, in the hope that his alien skills may succeed wh'ere normal magic has failed".

"Just a minute," interrupted Adrian, who was beginning to get back his cool. ‘Where is this? And how the hell did I get here? And why?"

"You are in the Catacombs of Vorth, in what for you is an alternate universe. I was able to bring you here because the game you were playing created a mental linkage with our own universe. As to why, we are engaged in a quest to destroy the Undead sorcerer Typhonides. Disciple of the dread Cyaxares, and need your aid."

"Of all the arrogant, high-handed. . . .!" spluttered Adrian. "Dragging me here to fight your battles for you! Suppose I tell you to go play with yourselves?"

"Why, you are perfectly free to do so," purred Forkbeard. "Just as we are free to abandon you alone and unarmed in these monster-haunted caverns. I do not think you will live long."

"Er. . . .well. . .If you put it like that I'll do my best to help. But you've got to return me to Earth after-wards."

"Of course. By the way I am the Magister Celsius, graduate in arts nigromantic from the Scholomance, and my companion is Hrothgar Bloodeagle, a Varangian Mercenary."

"And I'm Adrian Stewart."

"Must we stand and jabber with this nithing all day?" growled Hrothgar. ‘We've the Pipes of Panic to pass yet and time grows short."

"Very well." Celsius turned and strode to a great oaken door, the other two following. When they reached it Hrothgar suddenly stopped short.

"If we've got to take this fellow, Sorcerer, we'd best arm him. It'll have to be one of your witch-weapons, for he scarce looks like a swordsman."

 ‘Well thought on." The sorcerer fished a weirdly-wrought silver wand from his robes, handed it to Adrian. "This is a Flame Wand. Use it after the fashion of your own world's fire-weapons, - the catch here is the trigger –but have a care. There are only two bolts left."

Adrian took the weapon and stuck it a trifle gingerly in his pocket, then they turned back to the door. Celsius swung it open, revealing a vast room like the nave of a cathedral. A double row of columns carven in the shape of gigantic cacodaemons supported the roof, and lamps in the form of Bronze Dragons gave light. The three adventurers strode inside. As they did the door slammed shut and a thunderous chord of music crashed against their ears.

Adrian whirled. High on the wall to their left was a stone gallery, and on it an immense organ. The black-robed organist turned slowly to face them and the Earthman choked back a scream. For the creature that sat at the keyboard had the death-white skin and protruding fangs of a Vampire. Then the organist turned back to his console and the insane music pealed forth in soaring chords.

"The Pipes of Panic!" Celsius screamed above the din. "First they drive men mad with fear, then they destroy the flesh!" He began to chant a spell then broke off and ran back to the door, pounding at it with his fists and screeching. Hrothgar stood firm but his skin was white and beaded with sweat, his hand clenched in a death-grip on the hilt of his futile sword. Adrian felt a visceral animal panic rising within him but fought it down. He raised the Fire Wand, aimed it at the organist and pressed the catch. A bolt of red flame leaped from the tip but struck an invisible barrier and vanished inches from the Undead.

The panic struck again with doubled force but somehow Adrian fought it down. Desperately he ransacked his mind for some way out, while the terrible music beat at his sanity. Then he raised the wand and fired again, this time at the organ's longest pipes.

At once the animal panic stopped. The music went on for a chord or two, but it was no longer frightening. The organist ceased his playing and screamed a curse at them, then ran from the gallery.

"How was that done?" Celsius returned from the door, breathing heavily but otherwise calm. "My own counterspell failed."

"Because the Pipes didn't use magic at all," said Adrian. "They used infrasound, a noise too deep to hear that causes terror, even death at sufficient intensity. There's been talk in my own world of using it as a weapon, which is how I knew. So, I smashed the pipes that radiated the infrasound frequencies."

"That was well done, however, ye did it," said Hrothgar. There was grudging respect in his eyes. "But now, to the tomb of Typhonides! Time presses." He strode to the far end of the room, the others following.

There was a great door of bronze there, its panels wrought in morbid bas-reliefs; Hrothgar heaved it open, revealing a crypt dominated by a stone Sarcophagus. Gold ornaments were piled everywhere in confusion, but Adrian scarcely noticed them. He was gazing at the figure which lay in the coffin. It was a tall man in a robe of black silk figured in gold, with a golden deathmask on his face.

"The Undead sorcerer Typhonides," whispered Celsius. "He may be slain in one way only. At the slack of the tide an aspen stake be driven through his heart by the seventh son of a seventh son."

"Which, thanks to those lecherous rams my sire and grandsire, I am," grinned Hrothgar. He produced a stake from under his cloak and walked over to the coffin.

"I suppose I get sent back to Earth now?" asked Adrian.

"Why return to thay gray world when you can be rich and honored here?" The Sorcerer's eyes glittered with calculation. "I have seen the value of your outland skills. Were you to place them at my service, I would reward you well."

"Thanks but no thanks. Earth may have inflation but it doesn't have Vampires."

"Very well, return there!" The Sorcerer's eyes gleamed with mockery. "Why do you not go? I do not bar your way." He folded his arms across his chest. "But you must find your way back without my help."

"Return him to his own world, Wizard." This from Hrothgar. "Otherwise I'll not drive home the stake."

"Fool!" screeched Celsius. "In another minute it will be too late and Typhonides will walk. Do you know what he will do to us?"

A man dies when the Norns will it," replied the warrior imperturbably. "I'll not have it said of me that I betrayed a man who saved my life."

"Very well ," said Celsius peevishly. He began to chant, and again Adrian saw the golden sparks. In another minute he was back on the stairs on Earth. He walked down to the room and went in; the other players raised their heads.

"Whatever took you so long?" asked Sheila.

 "You'd never believe me."

"Well, we're trapped in a dead end by twelve Hobgoblins," she said. "What do we do now?" "Have the Magic Maker create a Magic Mouth," Adrian answered. "And make it generate infrasound."

The Judge shook his head. "No infrasound. You don't get that sort of technology in a sword and sorcery universe."

Adrian began to laugh. He couldn't help himself.