Assignment abacus

A security leak in the multimillion-dollar Saturn Industries sends Boyd Maskell, a prospering junior executive and financial wizard, to an isolated house on the Scottish moors for a top-secret meeting designed to uncover the source.

But when Maskell is transported to the site, he soon discovers himself a majority of one, and a strange series of visions and voices begins to make this cool young businessman doubt his own grasp on reality.

Slowly, Maskell begins to realize that a means of escape lies in a secret code he carries in his packet of orders. His one hope is to crack the puzzle before his mind snaps. . . .

A menacing tale of business chicanery and personal terror set against the lonely wilds of the Scottish lowlands.

Shapes moved ghostlike across an arena of which he was the center, twisting, turning, gyrating, now huge and monstrous, now shrinking almost to nothing. Light came greyly. A new shadow came growing up from out of the grey emptiness, spreading tall and wide, becoming a man wearing a long black cloak, his feet in the depths, his bare head, with its peculiar plastered curls, towering to touch the sky.

Arms out flung, cloak sweeping, the shape spun towards him, enveloped him, passed by. And behind came the scent of perfume and curves and smoothness and silkiness and long-nylon legs and rounded thighs and swelling breasts that rose from the black frills of a scarlet bodice. Warm sweet breath on his face, and soft delicacy touching, tantalizing and drifting lightly across his forehead and cheeks. And warm sweet breath on his mouth, and the rich softness of lips in a moment’s touch that lasted an eternity, and then the warmth and softness were snatched away and the blackness was sweeping him along a tunnel towards a distant speck of light. And then that last faint far-off glimmer faded, and he was alone in a night which had no sunset, no dawn, which went on forever and forever. . .