in the middle of a small clearing, like a butterfly pinned to a board. He felt something moving across his chest.
Footsteps.
A tiny figure moved across his chest and stood silhouetted against the sunlight, looking down at him. Then two more little figures came up to stand beside the first one. He could not make out their features. All he could see were three shadowy figures, no more than six inches tall, standing on his chest.
Two of them were aiming miniature laser rifles at him.
'Who are you?' one of them said, raising his small voice so that Finn could hear him clearly.
'Who the hell are you?' countered Finn.
The tiny man crouched down on Finn's chest and a second later, Finn yelped with pain. The Lilliputian had taken a fistful of his chest hair and yanked it out.
'You little son of a-'
One of the other Lilliputians whacked him in the chin with the butt of his tiny rifle, then brought it up to his shoulder and aimed right between Finn's eyes.
'Now you just lie very, very still, answer my questions and speak softly,' said the first Lilliputian, crouching on one knee on Finn's chest, 'or my men will start shaving off pieces of your anatomy with their lasers. You understand?'
Finn grunted.
'I'll take that as a yes,' the Lilliputian said.
Finn strained to raise his head a little against the restraining ropes, so that he could see his tiny interrogators better. The little man doing all the talking had long, black, wavy hair that fell down to his shoulders like a lion's mane and was held in place by a cloth headband. He was bearded and shirtless, wearing a black shoulder harness resembling crossed bandoleers. It held a miniature laser pistol on one side and several power magazines in loops on the other. He was dressed in loose camouflage trousers bloused over tiny jungle boots. His small physique was lean and heavily muscled, ripped to the bone. His two companions looked about the same, like jungle commandos who had been out in the bush too long.
'One more time,' the Lilliputian said, 'who are you? 'Capt. Finn Delaney, Temporal Intelligence. You want my serial number, too?'
'That won't be necessary,' said the Lilliputian, with a smile. 'I believe you.
However, if I stop believing you, my men will start causing you considerable pain.
Now then, Captain Delaney, what are you doing here?”
'I came looking for you, you.-little pipsqueak-Aahhh!'
One of the other Lilliputians had fired his laser, barely grazing Finn's left ear. Finn strained hard against the ropes and the little commandos on his chest danced a jig to keep their balance. Almost immediately, Finn heard a multitude of rapid little tapping sounds on either side of him. With his peripheral vision, he could see other Lilliputians on the ground, using tiny sledgehammers to pound in the stakes he had loosened with his movements. The one who seemed to be the leader let go of Finn's chest hair, which he had seized with both hands to keep his balance when Finn had started to strain against the ropes.
'Please don't do that again, Captain,' the Lilliputian said. 'I don't really want to kill you, but I will if you leave me no choice.'
Delaney couldn't believe it. He was being threatened by a man who was smaller than his shoe size.
'How did you find us?' the Lilliputians said. 'How did you locate the confluence?'. 'Gulliver gave me the position of the island,' Finn said.
'Gulliver? Impossible. He didn't know anything about the confluence. '
'Of course, he had no way of knowing about the confluence,' said Finn. 'He must have simply sailed right through it without realising he was crossing over from one universe into another. He took a sextant reading when he escaped from here. He must have done it the moment he came through the confluence. The thing I can't figure out is which timeline he came from in the first place. I don't suppose you'd happen to know?'
'No, Captain, I wouldn't. And at the moment, I don't really care. My main concern right now is deciding what to do with you. What, precisely, were your orders?'
''What orders?'
'Come on, don't play stupid. You're an advance scout for an invasion force. How many others were sent out with you? How long before you're overdue?'
'I came here alone.'
'You expect me to believe that?'
'I don't really give a damn what you believe,' Delaney said. 'If the Temporal Army was going to invade this island, they'd have been on you like a fox on a duck by now. And if you really believed there was going to be an invasion, you wouldn't still be here. You'd have killed me and gotten the hell out.'
'You're probably right, Captain,' said the Lilliput lieutenant. 'Getting off this island would have been smartest thing for us to do. Unfortunately, my men and I had no means of getting off this island, so if an invasion force is coming in hard on your heels, we're simply going to have to fight. Unless, of course, your people are planning to wipe out this entire island with a warp grenade, in which case I guess we're shit out of luck. And so are you.'
'Wait a minute,' Finn said. 'If you have no way of getting off this island, then how the hell did you get to the 27th century to make that assault on HQ?' Delaney said.
'That wasn't us,' the Lilliput lieutenant said.
'Oh, yeah, I guess it was some other bunch of Lilliputian’s,'
Finn said, sarcastically.
One of the other Lilliputians quickly raised his rifle and aimed at Finn's other ear, but the lieutenant raised his hand, holding him off. 'That wasn't us, “ he repeated.
'We're stuck here. Or at least we were til you showed up with your floater pak and warp disc.'
'No offence, but I don't think they'd fit you. “
'No, but they fit you and we could easily fit inside your clothing. All we have to do is kill you, program your disc, get inside your pockets and your shirt, down inside your' sleeves and trouser legs, hit the button and we're out of here.'
Delaney licked his lips nervously. 'Yeah, I guess that ought to work. So what's stopping you?'
'Unfortunately, none of us knows how to program a warp disc,' said the Lilliputian.
'I see, “ Delaney said. 'So that's why I'm still alive.'
'As one soldier to another, Captain, I'm sure you can appreciate that my first responsibility is the safety of my men,' the tiny commando said. 'If killing you would ensure their welfare, I wouldn't hesitate to do it. However, I hope that won't be necessary.'
'Yeah, I hope so, too,' said Finn.
'Then perhaps we can reach an understanding,' the Lilliputian said. 'If you transport us off this island, somewhere safe, we'll let you go and you'll never see or hear from us again. Otherwise, we'll have no choice but to kill you and use your body to transport us, taking a chance on trying to program your warp disc without really knowing what we're doing.'
'That could land you in one hell of a lot of trouble,' Finn said.
'We're already in a hell of a lot of trouble,' the lieutenant said. 'We've been abandoned here. We're too small to build and sail a seaworthy boat or even a raft.
Stuck here on this island, we're sitting ducks. There's no place we can run. We'll just have to take our chances.'
'If I agreed to help you, how do you know I wouldn't turn on you the moment you set me free?' said Finn.
'Before-we cut your ropes, most of us would get inside your clothing, along with our weapons, of course. That would make things very uncomfortable for you if you tried to cross us.'
'Yes, I'm sure it would,' said Finn, visualising dozens of tiny lasers going off inside his clothes. He shuddered and the Lilliputians swayed to keep their balance on his chest.
'I see I've made my point,' the lieutenant said.
'Yes. indeed you have,' said Finn. 'But what guarantee do you have that I wouldn't come after you with reinforcements? After all, if I transported you somewhere, then I'd know where you were, wouldn't I?'
''True, but that wouldn't help you find us. On a deserted island like this, we're vulnerable. But in a crowded
