Ghostbusters (9 page)

“You all right?”

Venkman spat again, his face screwed into an expression of extreme disgust. Stantz had never seen him look so angry. “I’m going to get that little grub if it’s the last thing I do. Nobody slimes Dr. Peter Venkman! Nobody!”

“Where’d it go?”

“That way.”

They hurried back toward the elevators and found Spengler peering through the doorway of a banquet room. A sign announced:
RECEPTION WELCOMIN THE TOKYO TRADE COUNCIL
: 8:00
P.M.
He slammed the door and put his back to it.

“It’s in there. What happened to you?”

“He got slimed. Did you bring the trap?”

Spengler indicated a metal box the size of a toaster fixed to his belt and connected to a long coaxial cable. “We ready for this?”

“I am,” Venkman growled. “Let’s get it.”

“Right,” Ray agreed. “Visors down, full stream. Geronimo.”

They tumbled into the room, closing the door behind them. It was an ornate formal banquet hall, high-ceilinged and ostentatious, hewn beams converging in the center at an immense crystal chandelier. A long line of buffet tables fronted one wall, piled high with food and a carved ice punch bowl. There was a fully stocked bar. Stantz looked at his watch. Seven forty-five. Only fifteen minutes to do the job before the room fills up with Japanese businessmen. “Do you see it?”

“The food,” Venkman said grimly. “It’ll head for the food. Spread out.”

The liquid in the punch bowl boiled and erupted a stream of yellow gas. The vapor surfaced, glaring at them.

“Fire.”

The searing energy bolts smashed the table, blowing food and broken bottles across the room, sending the vapor tumbling behind the bar. Stantz swung and fired.

“No, not the mirror!” Spengler screamed, throwing himself flat as the energy stream diffracted into a thousand tiny fragments, speckling the walls like shrapnel. One of them tore away Venkman’s tool belt, making him dive under a table.

“Ray!”

“Sorry. Where’d it go?” They scanned the room, trying to ignore the burning buffet tables. In war there were casualties. Venkman heard a muffled pounding on the door.

“Battle area, go away,” he shouted. Spengler touched his shoulder.

“Peter, there’s something I—”

“There, on the ceiling!” Stantz pointed toward the chandelier where the vapor was circling, using the glass and metal fixture for cover. He dropped to one knee and fired, tracking on the ghost, setting fire to the supporting beams. The sprinkler system kicked in. Venkman tried to cut off the thing’s escape but succeeded only in blowing half the chandelier to fragments. Stantz fired again and completed the job, the great lighting fixture plummeting down, breaking the back of a large dinner table. Silverware flew through the air.

“My fault,” Stantz called. “I’ll pay for it.”

“It’s probably insured. Where’d it go?”

As if it had heard, the vapor peeked out from between the great support structure. Venkman raised his induction gun.

“Wait, wait!” Spengler cried out urgently. “There’s something I forgot to tell you.”

“What?”

“
Don’t cross the streams!”

“Why not?” Venkman asked suspiciously.

“Trust me. It would be bad.”

Venkman pushed back his visor and rubbed the ectoplasmic residue off his face. “Egon, I’m not your kind of scientist. Precisely what do you mean by
bad
?”

“It’s hard to explain. Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and finding yourself confined forever in another dimension.”

“That’s bad,” Stantz agreed, his eyes still on the lurking vapor.

“No,” Venkman replied, “that’s it. I’m taking charge. You guys are dangerous.” They nodded sheepishly. “Now, nobody does anything unless I say ‘Got it.’ ”

“Got it.”

“Let’s do it. It’s not going to hang around all day waiting for us. Ray, take the right. I’ll take the left. Now!”

The energy streams shot out, penning the vapor between them. It moved to slip between but Venkman and Stantz brought the streams closer together and it retreated. As long as they kept them tight, it couldn’t get by.

“Good, good,” Venkman called. “Nice and wide . . . move with it . . . steady . . .”

Spengler watched, fascinated, as the two streams slowly came together, the vapor caught between them.

“Now, very slowly, Ray, let’s tighten it up. Hold it there, I’ll come down. Egon . . .”

“Right here.”

“Get ready to cap it.”

Egon kicked in his accelerator. “Okay, but shorten your stream. I don’t want my face burned off. And don’t cross them . . .”

The vapor began to whirl, darting at the stream, and suddenly Stantz was out of control. A cascade of energy began to leap from his stream to Venkman’s. “Back off!” Venkman screamed.

“I’m losing it! I’m losing it!”

The vapor slipped free and streaked for the back wall.

“It’s heading for the vent. Cut it off!” Large sections of the rear wall exploded, flaming rubble showering down, turning to mush as the sprinklers hit it. Egon’s stream raked across the air vent, driving the ghost back. The pounding on the outer door was beginning to grow violent and Venkman considered blowing the doors off. Let the turkeys see what
we’re
up against. No, they’d just take it wrong if I fried the manager by mistake. He fired, driving the ghost back toward the ceiling as Stantz’s beam went wide, exploding the liquor cabinet.

“Ray, on the ball. You gotta catch it.”

This time Stantz’s markmanship was accurate and they held it where the chandelier had been, tightly boxed in a grid of flowing energy. “Make it quick,” Stantz cried. “Almost out of charge on these packs.”

“Ready, Egon?”

Spengler hit his belt release and the trap fell to the floor. “Alternately shorten your streams. Force it down.”

As they edged the vapor toward the waiting trap, it seemed to realize what was happening and erupted forth with a startling array of belches and gas, each worse than the last. The men recoiled in disgust but held their ground as clouds of the gas contacted the streams and erupted into flares of burning color, Egon poised his foot over the pedal control. “Lock it in, now!”

The streams suddenly separated and shortened, forming a cap over the vapor. Stantz was yelling hysterically, like a kid on a roller coaster. Venkman was not so sure. His charge indicator warning light was winking. “Better get it, Egon. I’m outta juice here.”

Egon stamped down on the pedal, opening the trapdoors on the top. An inverted pyramid of glowing charged particles leapt toward the ceiling, cold light that streamed back toward itself even as it exploded outward, pulling the vapor down and in with a thunderous roar like a thousand locomotives. The spring-loaded doors snapped shut and everything was silent, excepting the last poots of energy on Ray’s pack as the charge gave out. He switched it off and they stared in awe at the trap, sitting silently in the middle of the floor, a curl of smoke rising from it. Egon tiptoed forward and checked the valence indicator.

“It’s in there,” he confirmed reverently. “My God, we did it. We trapped a ghost.”

Venkman picked up a severely damaged champagne bottle. “That calls for a drink,” he said, pouring the remaining bubbly over his head. He looked around at the ballroom, wondering if the hotel’s insurance company would consider it an act of God. Come to think of it, the very basis of insurance coverage would probably be changed by what they had done tonight.

“Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Stantz said happily, pulling off his visor. Venkman turned on him.

“Are you kidding? Look at this mess. We almost got killed. It was about as easy as trying to push smoke into a bottle with a baseball bat, but—”

He looked at Stantz, then at Spengler. They were staring at him, waiting for his next word, his instructions, and he realized that, like it or not, he was in charge. For better or worse, he now commanded the Ghostbusters. He looked about him, watching the water puddling on the floor from the sprinklers, the burning tables, the ectoplasm-smeared chandelier imbedded in the oak flooring. Venkman’s Wrecking Crew. Well, it
was
their first time and they
did
catch the ghost.

“This was a bit rough, and we had a few technical surprises,” he said, with a sharp look at Egon, who blanched and shrugged, “but it’ll get easier. We just have to work out our tactics. Wanna grab that trap, Ray?”

The manager, the assistant manager, the maintainance man, the locksmith, and a flock of Japanese tourists fell back in panic as Venkman pushed open the doors. He raised his hands and announced, “We came, we saw, we kicked its butt!”

Shupp tore his eyes away from the destroyed banquet hall. “What was it? What did you do?”

“We got it,” Stantz called proudly, holding up the smoking trap. The vapor, in irritation, threw itself against the walls of its polarized prison, sending little displays of static lightning over the surface of the box. The tourists backed off, cameras clicking wildly.

“What was it? Will there be any more of them?”

“Sir, what you had there was what we refer to as a focused, nonterminal, repeating phantasm, or a class-five full-roaming vapor . . . a real nasty one too.”

Venkman tore the customer copy of the bill from his clipboard and handed it to the manager. “That’ll be four thousand for the entrapment, plus one thousand for proton recharge and storage.”

Shupp seemed more terrified of the bill than he had been of the original ghost. “Five thousand dollars! I had no idea it would be so much. I won’t pay it.”

Venkman shrugged. “Fine. We’ll let it go again. Ray . . .”

“No, no. All right. Anything, just leave.”

Well, Venkman thought. Gratitude, so to speak.

On the street there was a new surprise. Someone had tipped off New York’s tireless press corps and a horde of people had converged on the scene. Uniformed police were struggling to keep them back from the Ectomobile. As the Ghostbusters emerged, covered in strange clothing, weapons, ectoplasm, and soot, the crowd broke into applause. Spengler nudged Venkman. “You’re in charge. You deal with them.”

“Okay, Egon, but watch how I do this because we’re all gonna have to know how.” The reporters surged forward.

“Nate Cohen, with the
Post.
What happened in there?”

“Dave McNary,
INS.
Did you really see a ghost?”

“Did you catch it?”

“Beverly Rose,
Omni.
Is this some sort of publicity stunt?”

Before Venkman could answer, Stantz pushed his way through and held up the smoking trap. Weak static charges played over the surface. The vapor was tiring out.

“We got one,” Stantz cried jubilantly. Flashbulbs and strobes went off, and a minicam crew fought its way forward.

“Can we see it?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

Venkman leaned forward and raised his hands, and a brace of microphones was shoved into his face. “This is not a sideshow. We are serious scientists.”

“What proof do you have that what you saw was real?” the woman from
Omni
called.

“Proof? Well, the manager of the Sedgewick just paid us five big ones to get
something
out of there.” He wiggled the trap. “Is that proof enough for you?”

“Are you saying that ghosts really exist?”

“Not only do they exist,” Venkman replied, “but they’re all over the place! And that’s why we’re offering this vitally important service to people in the entire tristate area. We’re available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. We have the tools and we have the talent. No job is too small, no fee too big. We’re ready for anything . . .”

Spengler, confused by all the noise, had slipped away and was hanging back at the edge, eating a Baby Ruth he had shagged off the hotel newsstand. Let Venkman handle the reporters. I’ve got to figure out a way to safety-interlock that problem of stream length before someone gets hurt.

“Mister. Hey, Mister! Come here, over here, Mister!”

Spengler peered into the darkness. Hanging over a police sawhorse was a young man dressed in a black canvas jumpsuit and chains, a red bandana tying back his chartreuse hair.

“Me?”

“That’s right. Come here.”

Spengler had never seen anything quite like him. and wandered over to study the apparition. “Who are you?”

“They call me Mister Dave, man. You a Ghostbuster? Wha’s your name?”

Egon pointed to his name, embroidered large on his chest, unaware that part of it had been obscured by flying ectoplasm.

“Okay, Spen’le. Lemme see that gun, man.”

“They’re not guns. They’re charged particle throwers.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mister Dave whispered. “I know. I just wanna see ’em.”

“I couldn’t do that. You might hurt someone.”

Spengler turned to go, but the youth lunged across the barricade and caught his sleeve. “Wait, wait! Let me ask you something. If you like shot Superman with one of those guns, would he feel it or what?”

Spengler considered. “On Earth, no—but on Krypton we could slice him up like Oscar Mayer bologna.”

“Wow! Hey, thanks, Spen’le. You okay.”

“Egon, get back here.”

Spengler wandered back to where Stantz and Venkman had just finished singing the theme song from their commercial. The reporters were eating it up. “Get over here, Egon, they want a group picture.”

Spengler stepped between the two; they closed ranks tightly around him, and the flashguns went off. We did it, he thought as his vision faded into a white blur. We got one.

Put a rogue in the limelight and he will act like an honest man.

—Napoleon I

The pictures hit the morning editions of every paper in New York, and by evening had spread halfway around the world. The three of them standing proudly in front of the Sedgewick, captioned “GHOSTBUSTERS!” or “GHOSTBUSTERS?” depending on the editorial slant. Ray Stantz holding the smoking trap aloft. “WE GOT ONE!” The Ectomobile. GHOSTBUSTERS!! screamed the Rupert Murdoch papers. BOFFO BIZ FOR SPOOK KOOKS, cried
Variety.
A STRANGE OCCURRENCE IN THE GARMENT DISTRICT, indicated a cautious
Wall Street Journal,
but
The Village Voice
kicked out the jams and ran a Feiffer caricature on the front page. Within six hours no one was talking about anything else.