by Kitty Woldow

Ecto-2 tilted sharply to one side and shot upward twenty feet. "Peter!" Egon's irritated tones sounded over the headset. "If you don't keep the attitude level I can't get reliable readings."

"If you want attitude, I can provide it, Spengs," Venkman muttered from the pilot's seat. Louder, he yelled over his shoulder to make sure his point got across, "I think we should go in, Egon. The weather's getting rougher and we can't fight these updrafts much longer." After a week of constant bad weather this had been the first promising day for the effort, but it was quickly becoming apparent the weather forecast had been overly optimistic.

Since starting out they had completed two passes along the meridians Egon had plotted on the map but it had taken far longer than he had initially estimated because they were forced to fly only a hundred feet above the treetops in order to get the proper strength readings. The lower altitude made flying exhausting, constant work rather than an easy cruise well above the surface. Coming out to fly the difficult course demanded by the experimental plan would be another whole day's work, not something Egon felt confident of convincing the others was totally necessary. "I only need a few more minutes to finish the third lateral leg," the physicist called back over the sound of the laboring engine.

"If we don't quit soon, it may finish us," Peter grumbled, but he pulled the gyrocopter onto the right heading by main force and continued the planned course over the steeply sloping, heavily wooded terrain. He hadn't been thrilled with his scheduled part in this latest scientific brainfart the twin Mad Scientists had, but given the choice between flying Egon around for the aerial ambient ectoplasm readings or driving Ray over every bumpy, twisting, uncharted road in the state doing the surface correlations, he had chosen to stay in the air. When they first discovered how low the altitude would have to be kept and how laborious piloting was as a result, Peter had complained mightily about how the challenge of following every swell and dip of the ground so closely was a whole lot more like work than he had been warned his part in this little excursion would be. After the first encounter with a treacherous thermal the mental image of Ray doing the flying instead had occurred to him, replete with visions of the young engineer's enthusiastic disregard for danger in the face of such a pure adrenaline rush as could be provided by a thousand-foot-per-minute updraft. The truth was, Peter himself found it pretty exhilarating and was glad he'd allowed himself to be talked into flying instead of getting stuck with the more boring driving. His opinion was changing again, however, as the weather shifted and an afternoon thunderstorm moved across the ridge forming part of the traverse bringing ever more ferocious wind changes and unpredictable air currents. At the moment, grinding along a rocky, rutted road until his bones rattled sounded like a pretty good alternative.

A second later Peter had too much to worry about to even have time to wish he was elsewhere. Lightning flared down barely twenty feet away, the blast of light and sound ripping across the small craft like the shock wave from an explosion. Secondary arcs sparkled around the wiring, driven into existence by the sheer amount of power coursing through the air, and Ecto-2's entire electrical system shorted out in one massive burst. The engine faltered and died, the long blades over their heads windmilling without providing lift, and they began an instantaneous, steep descent toward the trackless forest below.

Fighting gamely with the controls, the best he could manage was to keep them level and upright. Aware of how lethal the crash would be if their vehicle began to tumble uncontrollably, he spared no attention to where they were headed, knowing only that landing on the suspension would beat landing on their heads and was the only variable he had the power to affect.

Striking the top of the forest canopy, Ecto-2 spilled sideways with such force the harnesses holding both passengers snapped and they fell through the tree toward the ground. Following them, the gyrocopter fell only halfway through the huge oak before becoming lodged precariously in the heavy limbs branching out from the central trunk. Mangled almost beyond recognition, it remained thirty feet above the ground, swaying slightly as the tree creaked and groaned in protest.

Peter was aware of the fall only as a chaos of leaves and branches catching at him until he landed against a large limb, hitting its broad, curved surface with his left side. The blow drove all the breath from him, nearly snapping his spine with sudden deceleration. Rolling headfirst off it, he continued to tumble downward, semi-conscious. When he hit the ground the helmet he still wore protected his head from injury but he hit with his left arm underneath him at an awkward angle. No bones shattered but his shoulder was pulled out of joint by the pressure of his weight coming down hard on it.

Through pure luck, Egon missed all of the larger branches, his descent slowed steadily by a constant series of impacts with smaller branches which broke under his weight, cushioning him until he left the lowest tier and fell the rest of the way unhindered. There his luck ran out and he landed with most of his weight on his right hip. A flare of red-hot pain radiated from the point of impact, blanking his mind with such intensity he didn't feel the rest of his body hitting the soft, damp ground.

When the haze of agony began to clear from his vision, Egon remained still, lying on his back and shuddering with the aftereffect of the fall. They had come down so fast he hadn't had time to register more than a flash of fear but the experience called forth other memories of falling, and fear was all he could feel now. He remembered his cry of alarm mingling with Peter's as they crashed into the tree, and tried with sudden exigency to sit up and look for his partner. At the movement his hip blazed with white pain, overloading his nervous system and driving him back down with a moan. "Peter?" he called weakly, turning his head from side to side but unable to see Venkman within his line of sight. "Peter?" No reply answered him and a new fear joined the receding one, claiming all his attention. "Peter! Answer me!"

Pulling the helmet from his head, he strained to hear even the slightest response, holding his breath. Above him the tree creaked and groaned under its unwelcome burden, broken branches scratching against the intruding, suspended form of Ecto-2. In cooling the engine ticked slowly and the twisted pieces of the vehicle's fuselage added their own metallic creaks and mutterings. The quiet patter of rain starting to fall made the forest around them rustle, but the only sound he could distinguish which didn't fit with the others was an almost soundless gasping.

Risking violent reminder of his own injury he cranked his head upright by slow degrees, pushing the envelope of attainable motion until he was looking down along the length of his body. Obscured by the underbrush, some thirty feet away he thought he could see Peter lying on his side. Although they had both been thrown from the same initial point, falling through the tree like a pair of pachinko balls had caused them to reach the ground in quite different areas. Cursing the intervening plants but grateful his glasses had remained with him through the accident, he squinted and shifted, trying to get a better view. It was impossible to tell for sure but from what he could make out, it looked like Peter was desperately wheezing for air. That could explain the lack of answer to Egon's calls; it was reasonable to assume the wind had been knocked from him so thoroughly he had no breath or attention to spare for any other occupation than trying frantically to renew his oxygen supply.

Reassured at least that Peter was alive, Egon let his head fall back to the ground. Thick with layers of decaying leaves from decades past, the surface under him was yielding and released a dark, spicy fragrance as he shifted. Cautiously, he tested the boundaries of his own injury, already knowing he couldn't stand or hope to walk. Virtually any movement on his right side pulled at the flesh over his hip and renewed its agony, but he could, at considerable cost, tense the muscles of his lower leg and move his foot. Having banished the specter of a broken or dislocated pelvic joint, he relegated worry to the back of his mind about the depth of the bruise he had sustained and concentrated on reaching Peter.

Rolling first to his left side, then to his stomach and raising his upper body as if doing a push-up, the effort left him white-faced and trembling, sweat chilling his entire body. It was a very long crawl from where he had landed to Peter's side but he made it. The hardest part was turning the hundred and eighty degrees necessary to get going in the right direction, there being no way to make the change in direction without putting tension or pressure on his bruised side. Dragging himself on his elbows and using his left leg as much as possible to push himself forward, he had to stop several times to rest and force back the dizziness and nausea which threatened to overwhelm him with every foot of distance he made. Bulldozing his way over the small shrubs and weeds in the way he crawled doggedly forward, ignoring the few raindrops which dripped through the canopy overhead and spangled the lenses of his glasses.

By the time he reached Peter, the brown-haired man had regained his breath and was lying quietly, still in the same awkward, face-down position in which he had landed. In the struggle to breathe again, he had clawed off his helmet one-handed and thrown it to the side, leaving his hair wildly ruffled. Eyes shut, laying mostly on his left shoulder with his head turned to the right, he could have been sleeping but for the tense, pained set of his face.

"Are you all right?" Egon asked, having drawn himself level with Peter on the side the psychologist was facing.

"I've never felt better," Peter grated through his teeth without opening his eyes. "And as soon as I can move again, I'm going to smack you for asking such a stupid question."

"You're in luck, I won't be able to run away from you."

Blinking his eyes open, Peter regarded him without moving otherwise. "How bad?" he asked seriously.

"Bruised my hip landing on it," he explained dismissively. "You?"

"Can't tell for sure," Venkman admitted. "My left side hurts like hell and I'm pretty sure I don't want to move yet or I'll find out just how bad my shoulder is. But I can feel everything else and I don't think I'm bleeding anywhere."

Egon glanced upward, his eyes widening slightly at the sight of Ecto-2 hanging directly overhead, swaying slightly in the middle limbs of the tree. "I think you might want to move soon," he suggested. When Peter merely grunted an interrogative noise rather than trying to see for himself what the problem was, Egon added, "You're directly under Ecto-2."

"Oh, perfect," Peter moaned. "And it's dangling by a thread, right?"

"Not quite, but I have some serious reservations about the structural integrity of the branches supporting it."

"I happen to have some serious reservations about the structural integrity of large portions of my own body," Peter pointed out rather testily.

"Quite valid concerns," Spengler agreed readily. "However, I am also absolutely certain your condition will not be improved by the addition of our vehicle's wreckage." He paused as if in deep thought, then added, "In fact, I'm positive the experience would prove detrimental to your general outlook."

"Not to mention my future prospects," Peter grumbled, accepting the verdict without needing to confirm Egon's assessment of the situation. "So, what are you going to do about it?"

"Move you out of the way."

His eyes opened wide at that, regarding the blond with alarm. "Say what?"

"I can't climb the tree and secure Ecto-2 in place, and even if I could move well enough to build a shelter there aren't any materials available which would adequately protect you from a falling weight of that magnitude. Therefore, you have to be moved out from under the danger," Egon explained patiently.

"And just who were you going to have help you with this little project?" Peter demanded, his eyebrows descending toward the bridge of his nose. "You can barely drag yourself around."

"I was hoping you hadn't noticed that."

"Fat chance," Peter snorted, then closed his eyes, breathing shallowly. The only warning Egon had was the bunching of muscles in Peter's upper arm, then with a sudden shove Venkman rolled himself off his left shoulder and onto his back. A sharp scream escaped him, quickly cut off to a whistling hiss which in turn gave way to rapid panting.

"That was very foolish," Egon said, the tremor he couldn't keep from his voice betraying how shaken he was.

"But... nece... ssary," Peter whispered between breaths. Once he was face up, he found himself staring directly at the precariously hanging mass of Ecto-2 overhead. Although the pain of moving had been excruciating and he knew there was more to come, now that he could see what danger he was in he agreed wholeheartedly with Egon's decision to move away from the immediate area.

Giving Peter the time he needed to recover, Egon contemplated the next phase they had to accomplish. Considering the limitations of both their conditions, any traveling would be slow, completely earthbound, and horribly painful for Peter. The shortest distance to safety was fifteen feet in the direction they were already pointing, which would take them out from under Ecto-2 and into the shelter of another huge oak. Since Peter had demonstrated he had no spinal injury requiring immobilization, Egon determined the best course of action available to be dragging Peter alongside him. It would have been easiest if they could have stood up and walked, but from what he'd just seen it was clear Peter wasn't that mobile and Egon knew even if he could get himself hoisted upright there was no way he could lift Peter as well. A wave of weary despair crested over his mind at the thought of how little progress they could make by crawling for the huge expenditure of energy and suffering it would take from them both.

"You aren't thinking of leaving me here to be squished like a bug, are you?" Peter whispered, able to put more than a couple syllables together in one breath at last. His voice was sibilant with the effort of control and in the gray-green shadow of rain-laden leaves his eyes glittered in almost feverish brightness. As he held his left arm immobile with his right, it was easy to see even through the heavy fabric of his uniform how the injured shoulder was deformed forward at the joint.

"No." Egon raised himself back up with an effort, fighting to throw off the chill creeping through his body and sapping his will to move. "This will not be pleasant," he warned, inching himself closer to the other prone man until he lay along the length of Peter's body. Carefully he fitted his left arm across Peter's chest, trying to avoid putting any pressure on the dislocated arm and finding it impossible to get close enough without pressing against it to some degree. With his hand curled underneath Peter's good shoulder, he gathered the brown uniform with his fist and held as tightly as he could. Bracing his own uninjured side to provide thrust, he shoved himself forward a few inches, hauling the dead weight of Peter's body with him. A sharp, indrawn hiss of breath was all the protest Peter made, letting it out again in the staggered, controlled pattern pregnant women are taught but which helps contain any extreme pain. Only fourteen feet and nine inches to go, Egon thought grimly.

They progressed some three feet before Egon could not force himself to move again. Under Peter's good shoulder, his knuckles were already raw from the small rocks and bushes he had pulled them both over. Letting himself lay flat on the cool, damp ground, he felt his muscles turning liquid with weakness. Tears had repeatedly started in his eyes as they had moved and dried unshed, leaving a stinging salt behind, but he was too tired to lift his free hand far enough to rub away the irritation. Swallowing back hot bile, he rested, already shaking with exhaustion and their journey not even a quarter completed.

Beside him, Peter also rested silently for many minutes, his panting gradually diminishing but not quite disappearing, before offering, "It might not land on me now." His voice was a faint husk of its usual smoothness, as strained as if he had been screaming instead of quietly venting his agony. "Why don't you go on to the next tree and I'll just stay here and keep an eye on things." Too light and breathy, he sounded as if he was on the verge of passing out.

More minutes passed before Egon gathered the energy to turn his head and look upward. From where they were now the hazard loomed as imminently as it had before, Ecto-2's shape appearing more ominously like a swooping bird of prey from the slightly different angle. The storm which had downed them was already clearing, no more than a swiftly passing squall, and the tree was still dripping sporadically as the rain it had caught filtered downward. Not dignifying Peter's remark with an answer, Egon continued to lay still, gathering his mental and physical resources for another few feet of arduous headway.

It was well over an hour later when they reached their goal. Utterly spent with the effort it had taken to bring them both so far, Egon lay flat with his cheek pressed to the earth, chin resting just above Peter's shoulder. For a long time he was unable to do anything at all but shiver, his ragged breathing stirring Peter's hair, the damp ground adding to the chill he already couldn't keep at bay.

Cradled in his hold, Peter lay motionless but for the blinking of his eyes as the tears he had given up trying to stop coursed down his temples. He hurt, as much as he could remember ever being in pain before, but no word of complaint had passed his lips. There was nothing Egon could do for him but what was already being done and even through his own distress Peter was aware of the toll their pitifully short trip had taken on the physicist. A tiny shiver raced down his length, stirring the dragon of pain in his side and drawing a low hiss from between his clenched teeth.

"You're getting shocky," Egon's raw voice broke the stillness.

"Yeah," Peter acknowledged, his tone dipping to indicate he was waiting to hear what Egon's point was. He knew there was more damage than a couple cracked ribs in his own side and it was equally clear Egon was also gradually slipping into shock from the strain of moving them both on top of the debilitating injury he had sustained.

"You have to be kept warm." Egon slowly inched away to the side, disengaging his hand from underneath Peter's shoulder and pulling himself horizontally. Moving with glacial deliberation he hauled himself around the tree they had reached.

At first Peter was able to follow his progress by the sounds of rustling undergrowth and hoarse, pain-loaded breathing. Feeling slightly faint and dizzy, he began to have trouble remembering why he was listening to those sounds, focusing on them with increasing confusion. A heavy, deep blue fog encroached around the edges of his vision as a viscous silence blotted out the noises he had been hearing and he called dazedly, "Egon?"

"Sshhh, calm down." A gentle hand descended on Peter's forehead, smoothing the anxious creases away and giving him an anchor to the world outside himself. The blue haze retreated and the leaden quiet lifted, making the fluttering, green-tinted light filtering through the trees sparkle with brightness. Above him, the sound of wind stirring leaves returned.

"Where'd you go?" Peter asked, the lingering trace of confusion leaving him unsure why he had been alone. The hand lifted from his forehead and he turned his face to the right, seeing Egon laboriously maneuvering himself closer until he could lay along Peter's uninjured side, weight resting on his own sound hip.

"Nowhere. Just lay still."

The command sounded like pretty good advice and Venkman was happy to take it, concentrating on the tiny trickle of warmth which reached him through the contact with Egon. Worming his left arm under Peter's head, Egon provided a pillow of sorts for him, and helped brace his dislocated shoulder with the other arm. Wrapped in the half-cocoon of his friend's embrace, Peter was not so close to passing out as he was to dozing off.

Sensing Peter's tenuous hold on consciousness, Egon asked, "Do you remember how you were hurt?"

"I fell out of a flying deathtrap," Peter said with strained patience, struggling back to alertness. "That makes two smacks you're gonna get for asking stupid questions."

A sigh of relief mingled with exasperation gusted from Egon's lips and he elaborated, "Precisely what occurred during that fall to cause the specific injuries you have?"

"Hit a branch on the way down, a big one on my side," he recalled vaguely. "Landed on my arm and messed it up, knocked the wind out of me." Which was about the least one ought to expect for falling a couple hundred feet, he decided in retrospect.

"Broken ribs?"

"Can't tell for sure." He took a cautious, slow, deep breath, not getting much air into his lungs before giving up the attempt because the aching fire in his side swelled inexorably with the shifting of his diaphragm. "Might be."

"I would have to examine your abdomen to assess the damage more accurately. May I?" Egon asked, his hand hesitating over the zipper of Peter's uniform.

"Yeah, just don't poke too hard, it's pretty sore." An understatement of Egon-esque proportions, Peter decided as the first light probing touch speared him with hot agony. "Augh," he gasped, nearly convulsing. Tensing his muscles hurt unbearably and his breathing resumed the highly stressed, pain-controlling rhythm of before. "Not... so... hard," he panted accusingly.

"Sorry," Egon murmured, continuing his exploration as gently as possible, though his efforts to be kind weren't sparing Peter. When he had checked Peter's torso thoroughly, he withdrew his hand, re-zipped the brown uniform, and wrapped his arm around Peter again without saying what he had found.

"How bad is it?" Peter asked fuzzily, but received no answer. "What?" he demanded more firmly, worry making him bark the question.

Egon sighed and told him, "None of your ribs are broken but a couple of them may have cracked when you hit that branch. I can't tell for sure, but I'd guess either your liver or spleen was also damaged. The developing rigidity and intense sensitivity on your left side indicates at least one of them is bruised." His first aid and EMT classes hadn't qualified him to diagnose any further than the basics, but what he could determine about Peter's condition worried him a great deal.

"Just bruised?" Somewhat aggrieved, it was clear Venkman didn't quite believe a mere bruise ought to hurt so much.

"You were lucky. If either of them had burst you'd be dead of internal bleeding by now," Egon pointed out. That same criteria was also what told him his own hip was only deeply bruised rather than fractured, though like Peter he was similarly of the opinion it couldn't have hurt much more even if the injury had been more serious.

"Instead of just feeling like I wish I was?"

"Yes, actually." Trying to mollify Peter, he added, "It won't hurt so much now, you don't have to move any more." As if to emphasize his point he tightened his hold to a secure lock around the psychologist, though there was no question of Peter trying to leave.

"I don't think we had to move at all," Peter muttered testily, but his head tilted to the side until his temple rested against Egon's chin.

"You would have preferred being squashed when Ecto-2 falls?" Egon asked with some asperity.

"It's not going to come down at all," Peter insisted. "We could'a stayed right where we were and been perfectly all right."

"Ridiculous," Egon muttered back. "That tree cannot support Ecto-2's weight more than another 1.3 hours. If we had stayed there you would have been flattened before dark."

Staring upward at Ecto-2, Peter rolled his head slightly from side to side. "Nope. Not gonna fall. Nope, nope, nope."

"It will too," Egon contended.

"Will not."

"Will too."

"Not."

"Will."

"Not."

"Oh, look, this isn't an argument," Egon protested, and the two of them broke into weak giggles which, with any more energy, might have had a slight touch of hysteria.

For a while they rested, drawing what comfort they could from the meager share of body heat between them. The native inhabitants of the woods who had been disturbed by the loud, abrupt entrance of Ecto-2 resumed their lives around the unmoving pair, going about whatever insectile or mammalian business normally occupied them in the hour of dusk. Lying quietly, listening to the furtive rustlings and omnidirectional calls all around them, the two ghostbusters drifted in their own twilight state.

A tearing snap of wood stressed beyond endurance broke the silence, followed by a quickly escalating series of sharp cracks as Ecto-2 plunged through the tree toward the ground. It struck the spot Peter had first landed in with a dull whump that had enough force to quake the ground where they lay.

"Would'a squished me, all right," Peter sighed unsteadily, all the valiant levity driven out of him.

"The radio," Egon said hoarsely, beginning to disengage himself from Peter with slow, shaking movements.

Venkman let go of his own arm and caught at Spengler's hand as it was pulled across, holding him in place. "Fried. Whole electrical system shorted." His grip weakened and slipped from Egon's hand. "Couldn't even get a mayday out."

Slumping back to the ground, Egon sighed, then forced himself to say, "Ray and Winston knew our flight plan. They'll find us before long."

"Yeah," Peter agreed without heart. He knew from spending the morning flying over this very area that the canopy of treetops kept everything underneath secret from aerial search; there was no way they could hope an organized flyover would find the tiny hole Ecto-2 had put in the massive oak's leafy cover. With no emergency landing transponder to lead searchers to them and unable to walk out on their own, they had no choice but to wait for Ray and Winston to find a way to get to them on the ground. Not so despondent he feared they wouldn't be found at all, Peter was nevertheless quite well aware rescue wouldn't be immediate either. The question uppermost in his mind was whether help would arrive soon enough to find them still capable of appreciating it.

The sun had sunk nearly all the way behind the ridge and long, cool shadows were rapidly filling the forest, nightfall hastened by the mountains to the west of their position. Another shiver racked Egon's lean frame and he roused again. "First aid kit?" he mumbled but this time he didn't try moving.

"Naahh," Peter vetoed the idea of going for the small box of medical supplies the craft had carried. The aspirin and bandages in it were woefully inadequate to treat the injuries they had sustained and neither of them was in good enough shape to make use of the matches in starting and caring for a fire. Nothing else on Ecto-2 would do them any good either; the gyrocopter had not been designed or supplied for long flights nor intended to ever be far from the other half of the team in the better-equipped Ecto-1.

Darkness began to descend in earnest and the air temperature dropped rapidly at first. The season was late summer so they did not have to fear killingly low temperatures during the night, but the onset of shock in them both made even a warm mountain night dangerously cool. Feeling woozy, Peter shivered, biting back a groan as the motion brought a renewed blaze of pain into his shoulder and deep inside under his ribs. "I really hate this," he grated.

There was no answer to that and drawing attention to the large, brown spider slowly making its way up the top of Peter's leg would only have caused the situation to deteriorate further. Instead, Egon tried vainly to drape more of his lean frame over Peter's body, hoping that with himself as a blanket against the night's chill there would be a chance they would both stay alive long enough for rescue to arrive. When the spider reached Peter's waist, Egon reached down casually and flicked it off into the grass.

"Don't tell me. I don't want to know what that was." Peter tensed slightly, close to shifting restlessly but he aborted the movement before it would have caused him further pain.

"I'm sure there'll be more, in case you get curious later," Egon offered helpfully.

"I didn't want to hear that either." Lapsing back into silence, Venkman's breathing became more shallow as he slipped closer to unconsciousness.

Lifting his hand again, Egon placed his palm against Peter's cheek. It didn't feel any cooler or damper than his own skin, but he knew all that meant was they had achieved equal degrees of shock. Under his touch, Peter stirred and sighed, giving no indication of trying to stay awake. The quiet was oppressive and lonely, making Egon yearn for the heartening inanity of their earlier argument. With false cheer, he asked, "Is there anything else you don't want to hear that I could tell you about?"

Without opening his eyes, Peter said, "Tell me why we're out here."

"We're here because billions and billions of years ago..."

"Egon!"

"Yes, Peter?" he asked with a perfect semblance of innocent surprise at the irate interruption.

"What was so important about this experiment of yours that it was worth this kind of trouble to get the data?" the psychologist asked, enunciating each word with deliberate clarity.

The pause stretched so long that Peter turned his head all the way to the right and pried his eyes open to see if Egon was still awake with him. Spengler was still conscious, his gaze solemn and sad on Peter's features from only inches away. "Nothing," Egon finally said. "Nothing I want to know is worth this."

"Oh, come now," Peter protested weakly, not liking the fatalistic, regretful tone he heard. "There must be something you've always wanted to know that would be worth anything to you to find out." He was trying to jolly Egon into a discourse about some esoteric mystery of the universe but his own voice was so thin and reedy the question sounded not at all like a joke.

"There are some things I am willing to pay a high price to know for sure," the physicist admitted. "The central unified theory equations, whether the universe is steady-state or cyclic, the key to Linear B, and how Ray manages to make coffee taste so bad. All these things I want to know." Sliding his hand upward Egon cupped Peter's cheek in his palm, noting the increased coolness of the damp skin, fingertips curling under the line of Venkman's jaw to register the pulse racing too fast there. All the humor left his demeanor and his hand trembled with his indrawn breath. "But your life isn't the price I'm willing to give for any of them."

Only the barest hint of sensation warmed his cheek where Egon's hand rested lightly and Peter squinted in the darkness, trying to bring his friend's features into sharper focus as a sudden suspicion grew in his mind. "What aren't you telling me?"

The question threw Egon for a moment. "What wouldn't I tell you?" he asked in puzzlement.

"That this is good-bye, Spengs," Peter said very softly.

Egon shook his head reflexively, but his gaze slid away from Peter's eyes to scan the limited view around them. "Why would it be good-bye?"

"Three smacks," Peter said sharply, then caught his lower lip between his teeth with a short gasp. Forcibly calming himself, he turned his look away from Egon's face to the leafy canopy disappearing in the night's gloom overhead. "Am I dying?"

"No. You're not," Egon replied firmly. His hand fell away from Peter's cheek, then shifted upward to the unruly mass of dark brown hair, trying to cap some of the heat loss from that vulnerable area.

"You wouldn't lie to me about this, would you?" Peter insisted, but his nervous tension had relaxed and he sounded more like he was arguing for the fun of keeping the conversation going than out of any real worry he was being lied to. It was impossible to tell whether he was genuinely reassured or if he had decided it no longer mattered.

"I wouldn't lie to you about anything. You know that," Egon told him, glad of the change in tone and deliberately sounding as pompous as he could.

"Anything?"

"Anything."

"Not even about what you're getting me for Christmas?" Venkman wheedled.

"You don't expect me to tell you the truth about that, do you?" he asked in real surprise.

"Well, no. That would spoil half the fun, wouldn't it?"

"Absolutely," Spengler said righteously. "Lying about Christmas presents isn't merely allowable, it's required."

"So what are you getting me this year?"

"A Ferrari, of course. Isn't that what you asked for?" It was, in fact, what Peter always asked for, among many other impossibly expensive items. Since Egon's list always included a super-collider of his very own and Ray annually requested the most advanced model Cray computer being made, Peter's wish for a sports car was actually fairly modest.

"Poop," the psychologist mourned. "Now I know that's not what I'll get."

Egon suppressed a smile. He really had gotten Peter a Ferrari as one of his presents this year, a six-inch chocolate model he'd found in a small, family-run candy store on one of their road trips. A second later the urge to smile vanished, shattered by the realization he might never get to give that gift or any other to Peter for Christmas again. The holiday was only four and a half months away but that time was dwarfed to insignificance by the one very long night in the forest they had to live through first. "I could be telling the truth knowing you'd assume anything I said was a lie," he pointed out, wanting to recapture the silly mood they had been building.

"But you could be lying knowing I might assume you would tell the truth thinking you thought I would assume you would be lying."

"Uuummmmmmm...."

"Gotcha," Peter sighed complacently, a seraphic smile wreathing his face but almost invisible in the darkness except for the gleam of his teeth.

Yes, you have me. Not wanting to quash the mood, Egon didn't speak his rejoinder aloud, but the gentling of his hold on Peter conveyed it for him as words could not have.

Peter's head tipped toward him again, the triumphant smile fading to a faraway echo of itself. A cold, numb heaviness had settled over him until only the slow, burning ache in his side and the faint pulse of air that touched his face with Egon's breathing separated him from the cold ground underneath their bodies. "Am I dying now, Egon?"

"You're not dying, Peter." A strained pitch in his voice made Egon's denial sound more desperate than genuinely assured.

"Good. Don' wanna die," Peter mumbled, hearing only the words or else refusing to recognize the disquietude in them. "Wanna stay with you."

"Then stay," Egon urged him softly, fingers tangling in Peter's hair to emphasize his wish. "Stay with me, Peter, I need you here."

"Need me?" he asked plaintively, as if seeking an anchor.

For a moment Egon was silent, only his hand moving as he smoothed Peter's tangled hair. Driven to the surface by hours of concern and pain, his own feelings were clear enough to him as was the worry he was facing his last opportunity to make those emotions clear to the man whose friendship he valued above all others. At the same time he was afraid he might be saying good-bye to Peter, he didn't want to say so much of what was in his heart that he would frighten Peter into believing every hope was lost and only their final farewells remained to be exchanged. Tenacity born of belief in rescue was the only thing left keeping them both alive and he could not threaten the one advantage they had which might make surviving possible, however much he might have a foreboding that final farewells would soon be all too appropriate.

"I need you to keep me warm," he finally said, and he continued to gently caress Peter's hair, speaking to the rhythm of his touch. "I need you to sweep the dullness of idle moments aside with your presence, to remind me to laugh when the only other choice is to scream, and to keep telling me it's OK to be a little irrational now and then." His hand strayed farther and the back of his knuckles brushed Peter's temple. "I need you to stay and be my best friend because life without one is too lonely."

A small sigh escaped Peter and there was a sweet ghost of a smile on his lips. "Always be your best friend," he muttered, snuggling his face deeper into the hollow of Egon's shoulder. "Always need you too." With another shallow, contented-sounding sigh, he slipped closer to unconsciousness, only the dimmest awareness left to him but all of it focused on clinging to the warmth of Egon's throat pressed in a protective arch against his forehead and the love he had heard in that deep, roughened voice.

His chin locked over the top of Peter's head, Egon closed his eyes tightly against the oncoming tears he could no longer hold in abeyance. His chest heaved unevenly with the effort of repressing his sobs despite his efforts to convince himself they were far from finished. This isn't over. We're still alive and we will be when they find us, he told himself fiercely. The hot stinging in his eyes peaked and receded as he regained control, the struggle leaving him feeling empty and more tired than he could bear. Despite his determination to remain alert -- or at least awake -- until rescue arrived, he began to slide back into the hazy, welcoming non-existence of exhausted torpor.

The rocky, twisting road was barely navigable by the heavy, old car, but Ecto-1 muscled its way steadily along as if imbued with the grim determination of its driver.

"Anything yet?" Winston asked, both hands occupied with wrestling the steering wheel as the road fought to take the car's direction from him.

"No," Ray answered shortly, his own attention locked on the radio. "Ecto-1 to Ecto-2, Peter, do you read? Come in. Egon, can you hear me? Please answer." Letting go of the transmit button, he held the unit to his ear, concentrating on trying to hear a voice through the static their equipment was creating as background. For several minutes he waited, listening, while the car ground forward another few hundred yards, everything inside rattling and shifting as if being tossed around in a pitching ship. "Something's wrong," he finally said, putting the radio down decisively. "It's been too long since we raised a signal from them, it can't be just because they're on the other side of the hill."

Another large rock lifted the right side of the car suddenly and Ray grabbed for the radio as it accelerated off the seat. Catching the walkie-talkie, he anchored it between his legs for the moment and tried to unfold the big sectional map that had been tucked over the visor. The oversized page flapped and tangled, resisting his attempts to spread it out, until he finally said plaintively to Winston, "Could you pull over for a minute?"

"Gladly." Ecto-1 rocked to a halt and Zeddemore sighed, stretching and flexing his arms. "Are we getting close to anything resembling a real road?"

"Mmmm... Ahh!" Pinning a spot on the map with one finger, Ray craned his neck forward and peered out the windshield, searching for a landmark up ahead. It wasn't until then he realized how the weather had deteriorated, and he let out an aggrieved, "Hey!"

"That had better have been, 'Hey, I know exactly where we are', not 'Hey, we're totally lost'," Winston said, the barest hint of threat in his tone. Leaning forward, he peered up and through the windshield too, and got a look at how dark the clouds were. "Hey!"

"I'm pretty sure we're about here." Ray moved the map over to rest on the dashboard between them and pointed at a spot on a small, half-tone gray line that meandered through the dappled green coloring most of the page. "Peter and Egon were starting this leg when we talked to them last." He indicated one of the parallel horizontal lines making up part of a grid drawn over the map in blue felt-tip. "We should have heard from them when they finished that pass, and it shouldn't have taken this long." He double-checked his watch, then shook his head. "They'd be done by now and waiting for us to reach the starting point for the fourth lateral."

"I still don't see anything resembling a real road near here," Winston groused, peering closer at the map and tracing the gray line with one finger. A sudden peal of thunder startled them both, and rain began to patter down on the car. He glanced up and out again, frowning. "If it gets too wet, we're going to bog down in a soft spot. They'd know that and would have contacted us by now. Entirely aside from Pete just wanting to bend our ears about how miserable he was flying an open cockpit in the rain." His worried expression mirrored Ray's. "You're right, something's wrong."

"They've crashed," Ray said with utter certainty.

"Landed," Winston corrected him. "We don't know they crashed. Maybe they just set down to wait out the storm front."

"Then why can't we reach them on the radio?"

"OK, so they may have landed pretty hard. The batteries maybe fell out and they haven't noticed yet. Doesn't mean they're in real trouble."

For a minute the two of them studied the map, the only sound inside Ecto-1 the faint rustle of paper and the slightly metallic splatting of raindrops against the roof making a tenor counterpoint to the deep rumble of the idling engine. Then both of them said in unison, "They're in trouble."

"OK, what do we do about it?" Winston asked, settling back into the driver's side and staring at the road ahead. Trees overhung it on both sides as far ahead as he could see and in the rear view mirror they formed a gloomy green tunnel behind. "An air search won't be able to see anything as small as Ecto-2 if they've gone down in the forest. They weren't carrying flares."

Ray's brow creased as he measured distances on the map. "We know roughly what area to look in." Pulling a pencil from his breast pocket, he sketched a box on the map bracketing the line Peter was to have been following from the air. "Find a place to turn around and go back the way we came, that's shorter than going all the way around." As Winston shifted the car back into gear and pulled forward, Ray folded the map back up and stuffed it into place over the visor. The anxious line between his brows seemed to have become a permanent fixture.

Watching for a wide enough spot in which he could maneuver a turn, Winston observed, "It's still going to take us a couple hours to get back to any place a helicopter could meet us, and it'll be dark by then."

As if ignoring the unspoken question, Ray bent over forward, narrowing missing getting his head whacked on the dash when the car heaved itself across another rock. From the floorboard he retrieved the modified PKE meter he'd been using all day to take the specialized readings for Egon's project, dragging the heavy case up and onto his lap.

"What're you doing?" Winston asked, sparing no more than a quick glance to the side from his task of pushing Ecto-1 as fast as the road would permit.

"This is a duplicate of the one Peter and Egon were carrying," Ray grunted, struggling to unhinge the back panel and pull out the batteries powering it. "If I reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, it'll broadcast instead of receiving and cause a heterodyne effect in the other unit if we get close enough. It'll serve as a sort of proximity detector, so all we need to do is get the search helicopter to fly a low grid over the area they were in and we should find them fast."

Winston nodded in appreciation, then slowed the car abruptly. "Hang on, here's a wide spot. You get out and watch for me so I don't end up in the ditch, I'll try a sixteen-point turn."

"I'm on it." Virtually flinging himself from the car into the rain, Ray ran back and forth from end to end of the long car, flagging Winston's movements so the tires went as far each time as possible without sliding the extra inch that would have mired them in the gullies lining the roadsides. When Ecto was finally pointing back down the way they had just come, he dashed for the front passenger door and dove in, slamming it behind him. "Punch it, Chewie!" At the raised eyebrow the order earned him, he shrugged, a faint flush stealing into his cheeks. "I always wanted to say that," he muttered.

"I'm hip." Winston smiled, and punched it.

An icy cold, prickling sensation stole over Egon, awakening him from his dozing semi-consciousness. Rising slowly along his nerves, it took him a while to identify what uneasiness had brought him back to the world, but when he pinpointed the feeling he realized it had been steadily growing at the edge of his awareness for some time. His protective grip around Peter had fallen away as he dozed and his left arm had gone to sleep so long ago there was no feeling in it at all any longer. Raising his right hand with what felt like an extreme effort, Egon checked Peter's pulse, wrenching fear overtaking him when at first his chilled fingers couldn't feel the faint beating of blood under the corner of Peter's jaw. When he found it at last, he let go the breath he hadn't realized he was holding and let his hand fall back down to Peter's collarbone.

A sense of movement caught out the corner of his eye reminded him of the chill, pervasive feeling they were not alone and he lifted his head, turning it slowly to the right, scanning the area he could see between the trees. The pale moonlight silvering the top layer of leaves didn't penetrate to the ground, leaving the space around him nearly as pitch dark as if they were underground, but as his eyes swept across the undefined abyss of open space he saw an area shimmer less black than the surrounding air. As he concentrated on it the half-sensed lightness wavered and dispersed like fog burning away in the morning sun, but the feeling of being watched did not go away. If anything it intensified, raising goose bumps and growing more acute until the hair on his nape lifted in reaction. In his arms Peter stirred uneasily and sighed a whimpered exhalation that sounded like Egon's name.

Scanning the clearing again, he caught the ghostly luminescence forming in a different spot, not so much a solid as a sense of moonlight being caught in a web of smoke. When he stared it faded again, but the ominous feeling of presence remained, along with the sickening knowledge that if the entity had the power or malevolence to attack them there was absolutely nothing he could do to protect himself or Peter. Useless as the gesture was, he tightened his hold on Peter and glared defiantly at where the specter had been, more than willing to use whatever strength he had left to shield his friend from further harm even if the spirit haunting the wood was Death itself.

A small breeze rustled the leaves all around them, making the dark forest mutter with distant, hissing voices. Above his head, Egon heard the dry rattling of a dead branch and tilted his gaze sharply upward. Woven through the tree like a parasitic vine, the silvery phantasm had no definite shape, its many glowing tendrils shifting and then blurring back into the night only to reappear wrapped around another branch. Withstanding his stare, it squirmed and coiled through the tree like a nest of snakes and the oppressive, ominous feeling which accompanied it grew.

Assaulted by the terror it projected, Egon closed his eyes against the sight of it and pressed his forehead to Peter's hair, silently vowing the thing would have to go through him before it touched Venkman. Without even the ability to stand up, much less get back to Ecto-2 and its ion cannon, his resolve was really no more than longing that if the thing chose to attack them it would kill him first and be satisfied with one life. A wave of heat passed over his skin, as if the door to a furnace had opened, then it was gone as suddenly as it had come and he was unsure whether the feeling had even been real. Gone with it was the sensation of being watched and stalked and he cautiously glanced overhead, looking for any sign of the thing he had seen. The night's peaceful darkness surrounded them and arched unbroken overhead in the quiet ceiling of trees, giving no indication the forest had ever been disturbed by unearthly visitation.

Egon's relief the apparition was gone was followed almost immediately by an awful fear it had taken Peter's life with it. "Peter?" he questioned, all his attention on the still form laying within his embrace. There was no response to his call, but under his arm he felt Peter's chest move slightly with each breath the psychologist took, dispelling the idea his spirit had fled with the mysterious being. There was little comfort for Egon in that knowledge for the last grain of hope left to the physicist was extinguished as he realized how close to death Peter had become over the time since they had talked. In what he was sure couldn't have been more than an hour, Peter had gone deep into shock and was hovering on the right side of the border between the worlds of the living and the dead by only the narrowest of margins.

Unconscious, lying slack on the ground without the least animation beyond his shallow breathing, Peter could no longer hear the things Egon had refrained from saying earlier. In despair, Egon knew he and Peter had come to the end of their time together without ever exchanging an acknowledgment of how valuable that time had been to them both. "Now you're dying," he whispered brokenly, beyond the ability to deny the truth to himself or his friend any longer. From the inside the pain of loss already ate at him with a slow fire which, if he lived out the night, would leave him like a burned out ember, a powdery shell able to hold its former shape only until the slightest touch blew it to a small pile of ash. With infinite tenderness he lifted his hand to let his fingertips graze Peter's cold cheek, all his affection bared in his eyes.

At the contact a wave of weakness swept through Egon, what little vitality he had suddenly gone. He half-fainted at the drain of energy, but Peter stirred with a quiet, subvocal sound as if coming close to awakening. The low, grumbling sound brought Egon around as nothing else could have, and as he rallied he dragged his hand upward against the pull of lassitude induced by the disorienting, forceful depletion and touched Peter's face again. The second time the shock of contact was much less, not drawing so heavily on his failing reserves, and the diminished impact allowed him to discern the strange emotional overlay that filled his mind when his skin touched Peter's.

Feelings like his own, yet distinctly separate from his own, flooded through him bringing an insight so intimate it was more than simple understanding, it was the actual experience of being another person. There was fear, and the regret he had known himself, but though the emotions were the same the flavor of them was different, the tone shifted so he recognized the origin as Peter. The precise quality identifying Peter was impossible to name in a word but the impression was unmistakable, the gestalt pure Venkman. No conscious thoughts or visual images were involved, only the wash of feelings wrapped around a touchstone center of love, different not in depth or intensity from his own feeling for Peter but in its object. That focus was on him, pure and lambent in its strength, surprising him into humility with its unabashed power.

Without conscious decision Egon responded, his heart swelling with profound tenderness. When that fondness was reflected back to him again, magnified and lit with the essence of Peter's personality, he understood the connection was a two-way one and his own feelings were laid as open to Peter as those of the psychologist were to him. The realization wasn't frightening, it was exhilarating and Egon poured all the respect, admiration, and affection he had for his friend into the contact, broadcasting everything he could not find words for or had held back from saying aloud for fear of being misunderstood. For every iota of love he sent out he got the same measure back, refined and redirected back upon himself.

The heady exchange renewed his determination not only to live but to ensure Peter survived with him. With his whole will he concentrated on that resolution, infusing hope and confidence into his outlook and feeling them slowly build in Peter's response. Regret and despair faded out of the mix to be replaced with a quietly positive intent binding them both to life, a promise between them no less powerful for not having been spoken.

Peter's eyes never opened but his breathing grew stronger and deeper, and though Egon's steadily increasing fatigue continually tempted him to sleep he was able to remain conscious with an effort. Neither tried to speak aloud, engrossed in the nuances and reassurance of their direct communication they were barely marginally aware of anything outside their minds. The cold which had gripped them so tightly receded from their bones; but it didn't go far, waiting only for Egon's last reserve of energy to wane before moving back in to claim both men.

The deathly, expectant quiet of the night around them changed pitch slightly, the trees rustling to a new wind from above. Sparkles of light danced through the top layers of leaves as a sweeping beam pierced them, then moved on. Returning seconds later and shining down through the tree, the glaring white light was so brilliant it woke Egon from his trancelike resting state, and his eyes watered when he tried to look directly up at the source. Long accustomed to the darkness, his eyes were dazzled, outlines of the tree's limbs burned onto his retinas by the intensity of the light. In his dazed state, he wasn't entirely certain whether what he was seeing was the landing of a UFO or the display attendant on the second coming of Christ. It took over a minute for the sound of helicopter blades chopping the air to register as part of the manifestation and identify for him the source of the lights.

Nearly crying with relief, he felt his joy being echoed by Peter, intermingled with a gratitude that caressed his worn nerves. Soon Ray's voice called to them from the ground and the swinging illumination of approaching lights and footsteps crunching through the underbrush toward them confirmed they had been found. With the surety that when he awoke everything would be all right, Egon finally let himself drop into the welcome relief of unconsciousness, too exhausted to stay awake long enough to ask how they had been located.

Egon leaned back from the drafting table, shifting to stretch the cramped tightness out of his back. In the week since the crash he had been limited in how much he could walk around or go up and down stairs, but had found his near exile to the third floor lab actually helpful. So far he had a nearly complete EMI shielding design worked out for rebuilding the gyrocopter which would not only protect it against any recurrence of the lightning-induced burn-out but would also allow the ion cannon mounted on board to fire at a significantly higher power and recharge rate. Rotating his shoulders, he frowned unhappily at the stiffness stealing across his whole upper back. When he'd started the section he hadn't intended to work straight through the afternoon on it, but he'd gotten so involved in the circuitry design he hadn't noticed time passing.

"Working too hard again?" Peter's voice broke his reverie and he glanced over his shoulder toward the door. "You ought to take it easy, big guy, we're still recuperating, remember? I think it's your turn for a nap, I just had mine." Walking slowly but with an even stride, Peter crossed the width of the large room to stand behind Egon, looking over the intricate drawing and its complex tracery of notations and equations. "Beefing up the shielding?"

Nodding, Egon gestured at the upper right corner of the large schematic. "I've also built in an independently powered transponder beacon which will be activated by a motion sensor calibrated to trip at decelerations exceeding 1.5G." The sweep of his arm was shortened by the soreness in his back and he shifted slightly to drop his shoulder lower, trying to get the muscles in his neck to unkink at the same time.

"Considering the way Ray lands on a regular basis, isn't this beacon going to be going off every time we let him fly?" Peter asked, his hands going automatically to the center of Egon's back and rubbing with practiced ability at the area he knew would be bothering the physicist most.

"That is entirely possible," Egon agreed, letting his chin drift toward his chest and relaxing under the massage. "However, I consider the inconvenience of resetting the switch minimal compared to the danger of repeating our recent experience. Hmmm, yes, a little to the left."

Peter complied, letting his mind drift for a moment over some of the more peculiar memories he had from that experience. "It wasn't all bad," he said finally, his fingers expertly chasing tenseness from the area around Egon's shoulder blades. "I mean, I don't know as I want to get my spleen bruised again but..." He hadn't tried talking to Egon about some of the things he thought he remembered from that night, convinced after reflection that most of it had been shock-induced delusions. Of what he was fairly certain had actually occurred he also hadn't spoken, still treasuring the warmth and sense of security those recalled images carried with them. "Have I gotten around to thanking you yet for saving my life?"

"No," Egon murmured, his head tipped so far forward his voice sounded muffled. "But thanks aren't necessary, either, so your oversight hadn't bothered me."

For that, Peter tweaked the nerve cluster under Spengler's shoulderblade a bit harder than required, teasing, "Not too much, anyway?" at the involuntary twitch the probe elicited. A fond smile tugging at his lips, he resumed the soothing pressure of his ministrations, gradually moving higher on Egon's back, working his thumbs along either side of the ridge of Egon's spine toward the neck. When his fingers crossed above the collar of Egon's shirt and contacted bare skin, the oddest sensation assailed him, a feeling of vertigo that passed before he could lose his balance.

At the same moment, Egon swayed on the drafting stool as his tiredness fled under an influx of energy. Bright and sparkling, a sense of mischief laced with compassion raced through his awareness as if he all he had ever loved in Peter had reached out and touched his soul. It was more than an echo of the feelings he had been so immersed in that night and had come to believe had been manufactured by his own fear. It was a real, intimate knowledge of the man behind the smile and he turned his head to look at Peter, his eyes misting with a sudden surge of unspoken affection.

"Whoa. What the hell was that?" Peter asked, sounding slightly dazed, his hands stilled on the back of Egon's neck. His expression softened and his eyes drifted half-shut.

The emotions returning to Egon shifted like the beautiful images in a kaleidoscope, responding to his reaction and colored with love. "You feel it too?" Spengler asked hoarsely.

"Then it's real? I thought..." Pressing his palm to the pulse point on Egon's neck Peter let the sensation of direct contact with deep, intelligent, abiding affection wash through him like a warm, calm tide. "I thought I dreamed it," he sighed.

"Dreamed what?" Egon asked intently, and he gently lifted Peter's hand away, deliberately breaking the contact to allow them both to think more clearly.

For a moment Venkman pondered the question, as if searching his memory for a solid enough impression to describe with some precision. With an uncharacteristic, almost embarrassed hesitation, he began, "After Ecto-2 fell I remember you were holding me, trying to keep me warm, but after we talked I passed out. It was so cold and dark, but then I thought..." He shrugged helplessly, then raised shining, green eyes, plunging ahead, "I thought I knew you from inside, what you were feeling, like just now. For that time I felt warm again, and stronger."

"Do you remember knowing when rescue had arrived?" Egon asked in fascination.

He nodded. "Afterward I thought the feelings had to have been a dream, the empathy couldn't have been real. You didn't say anything so I figured the whole experience had been in my own head."

"What could I have said?" the physicist asked mildly. "I thought it was only shock that made me feel what I wished to at the time. Once we were rescued I didn't seriously believe we'd become touch empaths, and there wasn't any reason to ask if you'd had the same delusions I did." Standing to stretch, he found his tiredness had vanished along with the knots in his back, and threw a sudden, keen look at Peter. "Did you feel anything at first besides the emotional effect when you touched me a minute ago?" he demanded with unintentional fervor.

Raising one hand, Peter rubbed lightly at his temple. "Well, yeah, a sort of weakness that made me slightly dizzy, but it's gone now. Why?"

The triumphant glow in Egon's eyes was the same one he always got when the key to an interesting problem had turned and the answers began to fall into place. "In the hospital I was told the doctors were amazed you were still alive. From the amount of time you'd been in shock after the crash you ought to have been dead." He didn't elaborate on the other conclusion his physician had come to: that there had been no good reason Egon had been doing so badly or taken so long to recover his strength. It had seemed, the doctor had said in bafflement, as if Peter had somehow had twice the energy of a normal man while Egon had only half what his physical condition should have supplied. His inexplicably low stamina hadn't kept Egon from surviving, but the extra measure Peter had possessed made the difference between life and death for him. "The transfer isn't just feelings, it's energy, and it appears to act like osmosis to equalize two uneven levels when contact is initiated," he concluded, excitement vibrating in his voice.

Peter pursed his lips briefly, thinking back to the influx of vitality he had felt that night and comparing it against the slight dip in his bounciness a few minutes ago. Finding the theory matched his own recollections, he nodded in agreement. "So what happened to us? Any ideas, Brilliant One?"

Egon quirked an eyebrow at the literal translation of his name and replied thoughtfully, "After you passed out that night there was something in the forest; I saw a paranormal entity settle in the tree above us. When it disappeared I felt a flash of heat and it was after that I touched you and the impressions started. Obviously the first thing to do is run a thorough set of tests on both of us to assess any lingering PKE contamination."

"And then a complete series of psychometry evaluations," Venkman added, reaching for a legal pad on the bench to start his own list of data needs and experimental criteria. "More than energy and emotion may be able to travel across the link, and we need to find out if the effect works primarily through broadcast or reception." Not normally prone to fits of scientific curiosity, Peter was scribbling madly on the paper and muttering to himself. Suddenly he looked up from his notes. "Will it wear off?" he asked, a wistful tone indicating he had some hopes it wouldn't.

"We won't know that until we figure out what it is, and there's no point in speculating further without data on which to base a hypothesis," Egon replied reasonably. "You'd better plan on wearing electrodes for a while."

"Nothing in my wardrobe matches your electrodes."

"Sit down, shut up, and paste these to your forehead." Rolling his eyes in exaggerated patience, the physicist handed a bundle of wires to Peter.

"That's what I love about you, Egon, that compassionate interest you always take in your friends." The brush of their hands as the electrodes were accepted sparked the contact and conveyed the core of truth behind his sarcasm.

"The same to you," Egon replied, his smile dazzling.