cigarette
out of Henry's pack, then a book of matches. He lighted it, inhaled,
and rubbed the flame out on his other palm. "Kind of weak tobacco, but
not bad. Any more questions while I smoke this? There's no free oxygen
where I come from, so I can't smoke there."

"But if you demons answer such--such summons, why don't people know
about it now?" Henry asked. "I'd think more and more people would be
going in for this sort of thing. If the wizards were right all
along...."

"They weren't, and we're not demons. It didn't get started until your
Middle Ages. And if it hadn't been for old Apalon...." Alfear lighted
another cigarette off the butt, which he proceeded to extinguish on
the tip of his sharp tongue. He scratched his head thoughtfully, and
then went on.

"Apalon was studying your worship. You see, we've been studying your
race the way you study white rats, using lower races to explain our
own behavior. Anyhow, he got curious and figured out a way to
mentalize himself into your plane. He was sort of a practical joker,
you might say. So he picked a time when some half-crazy witch was
trying to call up the being you worship as Satan to make some kind of
a deal. Just as she finished, he popped up in front of her, spitting
out a bunch of phosphorus to make a nice smoke and fire effect, and
agreed with all her mumbo-jumbo about having to do what she wanted.
She wanted her heart fixed up then, so he showed her how to use
belladonna and went back, figuring it was a fine joke.

"Only he made a mistake. There's something about moving between planes
that lowers the resistance to conditioning. Some of our people can
take five or six trips, but Apalon was one of those who was so
conditioning-prone that he had the habit fixed after the first trip.
The next time she did the rigamarole, back he popped. He had to dig up
gold for her, hypnotize a local baron into marrying her, and generally
keep on the constant _qui vive_, until she got sloppy and forgot the
pentagram she thought protected her and which he was conditioned to.
But after he disintegrated her, he found she'd passed on the word to a
couple of other witches. And he knew somebody at the Institute was
bound to find what a fool he'd made of himself.

"So he began taking members aside and telling them about the trick of
getting into your world. Excellent chance for study. Have to humor the
humans by sticking to their superstitions, of course. One by one,
they went ov