The Big Time by Fritz Leiber

first time, I had noticed that the Ghostgirl envelopes looked flat. Ectoplasm doesn’t take up much space when it’s folded, but I had opened one anyway, then another, and then called for help.
    Every last envelope was empty. We had lost over a thousand Ghostgirls, Sid’s whole stock.
    Well, at least it proved what none of us had ever seen or heard of being demonstrated:
    that there is a spooky link—a sort of Change Wind contact— between a Ghost and its lifeline;
    and when that umbilicus, I’ve heard it called, is cut, the part away from the lifeline dies.
    Interesting, but what had bothered me was whether we Demons were going to evaporate too, because we are as much Doublegangers as the Ghosts and our apron strings had been cut just as surely. We’re more solid, of course, but that would only mean we’d take a little longer. Very logical.
    I remember I had looked up at Lili and Maud—us girls had been checking the envelopes; it’s one of the proprieties we frequently maintain and anyway, if men check them, they’re apt to trot out that old wheeze about “instant women” which I’m sick to death of hearing, thank you.
    Anyway, I had looked up and said, “It’s been nice knowing you,” and Lili had said, “Twentythree, skiddoo,” and Maud had said, “Here goes nothing,” and we had shook hands all around.
    We figured that Phryne and the Countess had faded at the same time as the other
    Ghostgirls, but an idea had been nibbling at me and I said, “Siddy, do you suppose it’s just barely possible that, while we were all looking at Bruce, those two Ghostgirls would have been able to work the Maintainer and get a Door and lam out of here with the thing?”
    “Thou speakst my thoughts, sweetling. All weighs against it: Imprimis, ‘tis well known that Ghosts cannot lay plots or act on them. Secundo, the time forbade getting a Door.
    Tercio—and here’s the real meat of it—the Place folds without the Maintainer. Quadro, ‘twere folly to depend on not one of—how many of us? ten, elf—not looking around in all the time it would have taken them—”
    “I looked around once, Siddy. They were drinking and they had got to the control divan under their own power. Now when was that? Oh, yes, when Bruce was talking about
    Zombies.”
    “Yes, sweetling. And as I was about to cap my arguement with quinquo when you
    ‘gan prattle, I could have sworne none could touch the Maintainer, much less work it and purloin it, without my certain knowledge. Yet…”
    “Eftsoons yet,” I seconded him.
    Somebody must have got a door and walked out with the thing. It certainly wasn’t in the Place. The iunt had been a lulu. Something the size of a portable typewriter is not easy to hide and we had been inside everything from Beau’s piano to the reaewer link of the
    Refresher.
    We had even fluoroscoped everybody, though it had made Illy writhe like a box of worms, as he’d warned us; he said it tickled terribly and I insisted on smoothing his fur for five minutes afterward, although he was a little standoffish toward me.
    Some areas, like the bar, kitchen and Stores, took a long while, but we were thorough.
    Kaby helped Doc check Surgery: since she last made the Place, she has been stationed in a
    Field Hospital (it turns out the Spiders actually are mounting operations from them) and learned a few nice new wrinkles.
    However, Doc put in some honest work on his own, though, of course, every check was Observed by at least three people, not including Bruce or Lili. When the Maintainer vanished, Doc had pulled out of his glassy-eyed drunk in a way that would have surprised me if I hadn’t seen it happen to him before, but when we finished Surgery and got on to the Art
    Gallery, he had started to putter and I noticed him hold out his coat and duck his head and whip out a flask and take a swig and by now he was well on his way toward another peak.
    The Art Gallery had taken time too, because there’s such a jumble of