There’s an image on the computer monitor now. The 640 x 200 display was not meant for high-resolution pictures. It looks like something built of blocks, constructed bit by bit.

It’s a dot-matrix rendering of Dr. Sax’s smiling face.

“Oh, Danny,” the computer says. “Don’t tell me you’re trapped. You’ve gotten out of much worse than this before.”

Little Waldo gives up trying to reach him and settles for tossing whatever it can find on the shelves in his direction. A jar of screws flies past his head, fastball-quick, then shatters against the wall.

Danny dives to one side to avoid it and there is a buzz saw waiting for him, screaming as it spins in place, dangling from a cord on the wall. He cannot move any farther, not if he doesn’t want to be chewed up by the whirling blade.

Big Waldo races toward him on the ceiling track. It will be right on top of him in a moment.

He’s just where they want him. It was a feint, a trick, a trap. (The term anthropomorphic fallacy flits through his head: to attribute human form or personality to things not human.)

It will be game over in less than a second if he doesn’t think faster.

“Then again,” Sax’s voice says, “you’re not as young as you used to be, are you?”

It’s only a recording, Danny tells himself. A distraction. Don’t lose focus.

Danny thinks. He splits his mind into different processes, running simultaneous calculations and models. He measures the angles. Figures out the timing.

And dives, just as Big Waldo reaches for him.

The robot arm crashes into the metal roll-up door, and breaks loose from the ceiling track. It clatters heavily to the floor, still grasping for him, making a horrible metallic screeching. Like something dying. (Anthropomorphic fallacy.)

Little Waldo reaches for the next container on the nearby shelf. Danny speed-reads the label. His eyes go wide and he’s up and running for the safety cabinet as Little Waldo pitches it like a fastball through the air.

Hydrofluoric acid. Used to etch metals, clean auto parts, and make computer chips.

Danny knows what is going to happen next. He yanks open the cabinet door.

The container hits the garage door behind him, and cracks open. The acid splashes far enough to reach him, burning holes instantly through his shirt, and then his skin. But the real danger is the hydrogen fluorine gas that fills the air as the acid combines with oxygen.

The ventilator mask inside the cabinet is old. Danny puts it on anyway.

“Nasty stuff, Danny,” Sax’s voice says. “You know the CDC guidelines say that hydrofluoric acid can cause severe burns, pulmonary edema, skin ulcers, and, of course, death.”

Yeah, no shit, Danny thinks. The mask will keep his lungs from burning out, but if enough of the gas touches his skin, he’s dead anyway.