The reality was not much better than the nightmare. He was strapped firmly in a chair, his hands tied together with some plastic-covered wire that ensured they would remain together, a hasty handcuffing but an effective one. Behind him and to either side were vacii guards with their guns drawn. In front, another vacii paced. When it saw the flutter of Salsbury's eyelashes and realized he was awake, it slipped into the chair opposite him and stared with those mad crimson eyes.
?How did you get in,? it asked, the voice a thin, hissed guttural whisper.
When he refused to answer, the guards shifted uneasily. He tested the wire and found it was as tight as it had seemed at first, much too tight. He thought, still, if he saw the worst coming, he might just be able to break it. It would require all his strength and some of that adrenalin chemical from the interior of his liver. What the wire would do to his wrist while he strained to break it would not be pleasant, but it would be preferable to death. And death might be exactly what the vacii had in mind. He thought about what he had done to their fellows since he had arrived in this probability line, and he wondered how strong their revenge motivations were. Then he remembered the 810-40.04 had said vacii were nearly emotionless; he felt just the slightest bit better.
?Pleasse make it eassier on yoursself,? the vacii said.
?I broke in,? he said. They did not seem to know of the violation of the prober chamber, and he was not about to tell them.
?How?? the inquisitor asked.
?Through the front door. When the guard wasn't looking, I-?
The inquisitor dispensed with such lies simply by refusing to listen to them. He stood and paced in front of Salsbury, sucker mouth working, puckering, then going flaccid and loose like the pendulously lipped mouths of drunkards, then puckering again. There was a faint, unpleasant odor to the alien that Salsbury had noticed on other vacii, and which had been stronger in the ventilation shafts. It was the odor of fish, of slimy things that laid in mud flats and sunned themselves. ?There iss no guard on the door. There iss no way you could have gotten in except by palm-printing the lock. And your printsss would surely not be on file!?
Salsbury said nothing.
The inquisitor pointed to the weapons next, the gas pellet gun and the micro-bombs in the rucksack which they had opened and gone through. It wanted to know where he had obtained such things.
?They aren't mine,? Salsbury said.
The bony hand slapped him hard. The question was repeated,
?I found them here,? he said.
He was slapped again. His head trembled, as if his neck had turned to jelly. There was a ringing in his ears; colored lights did sloppily choreographed dances behind his eyes. ?I made them,? he said next.
?How?? Even filtered through the alien voice box and the sucker mouth, there was scorn in the words.
?With my tools. In my basement.?
?You are very foolissh. We haven't the devicess to make you talk here. But on One Line, there are such thingss.?
He turned to the other vacii guards and instructed them. The straps were yanked loose, and Salsbury was hustled to his feet without any ceremony. The guards took him into the corridor, down to the end of it where another alien lounged against the wall, chewing on a bright orange stick, his eyes heavily lidded. The tallest of Salsbury's two guards slapped its hand, knocked the orange stick away and said something in sharp native vacii The new alien shrugged and led them into the room.
It was a high-ceilinged place full of machinery dotted with lights that bunked and scopes that pulsed, complex and at once interesting. In the center of the floor there was a platform upon which a sled stood, a six foot long slab of glistening metal with four seats bolted to it.
One of the guards prodded Salsbury in the back with a pistol barrel ?Get on cart.? It sounded as if it would take any excuse possible to break Salsbury up a little. He stepped onto the platform as directed, then turned abruptly, three feet above the guard now, and smashed a foot into the vacii's face. The thing toppled backwards, gurgling, the gun out of its hands.
?Halt!?
The second guard, the taller of the two, swung the barrel of his needle weapon around. Salsbury launched himself from the platform, came down on the alien before he could fire. He knocked the wind from the creature, managed to grind a knee into its stomach before he got up. Then, when success seemed so close at hand, the heavy-lidded clown who had been chewing on the drug stick brought a chair down on his back, slamming him forward into the cart platform and unconsciousness.
When he came to this time, he was strapped into one of the chairs on the cart, and the cart was moving. Yet it wasn't moving. It seemed, instead, that things moved around the cart while the vehicle itself remained stationary. There were flickerings of light and darkness, of color, of different shades of white walls. Salsbury snorted, cleared his head, and blinked his eyes until they were no longer watery. When he could see well, it was plain that it
He realized, quite suddenly, what was happening. They were teleporting him from one probability line to another, from one bubble to another, heading back toward what the inquisitor had termed One Line. That would be the world where the vacii had invaded from out of the skies, the line from which they had spread to conquer counter-Earths.
Even as these thoughts pounded through him, he began to think once again of escape. The scenery about them abruptly stopped moving. They were in a gray, metal-walled chamber on another platform. The guards stood, unstrapped him, ushered him down onto a cold metal floor.
They had arrived.
In One Line.
In the vacii starship.
And if he was going to make one more try for freedom, he did not have long in which to work.
He was ushered into a steel corridor, farther along to a room apparently used as sleeping quarters, judging from the vast rows of vacii type beds. The guards placed him in a hammock, produced more wire and tied his ankles together, his hands were already bound. They left, then, closing the door. He could hear them talking in their hooting language. Moments later, there was the sound of one pair of broad feet slapping down the corridor. The other guard, it seemed, had been left behind to watch over their human charge.
Salsbury tensed, strained his hands away from each other, testing the wire yet again. It made deep grooves in his skin, made his fingers swell fat and red. He relaxed, collected his strength, and tried again; this time with everything he had, tapping the super strength and the adrenalin. The wire bit into his wrists and hands, gouging the flesh. Blood welled up and ran down his hands, dripped from his fingertips. For a moment, he was ready to give up, call it quits and spend the rest of his time nursing his wounds. Then he remembered Lynda back in the basement. Very soon, the vacii would use some brain-washing techniques on him and make him reveal how he had gotten into the installation. Then they would go for Lynda. He bit his lower lip and strained even harder against his bonds. There was a wrenching, a snap, and the wire broke in two places.
Though he wanted to moan and gibber at the pain in his wrists, he tried to keep from making any noise that would draw the attention of the guard beyond the thick door. With blood-slicked fingers, he removed the remainder of the wire and freed his ankles. He stood, swaying, and walked quietly about the room until he was confident he had full use of his blood-starved feet again. His hands would be weakened due to the slashes that bubbled blood, but there was nothing to be done for that at the moment.
When he had full control of his limbs and felt the dizziness in his head reach a low ebb, he turned his concentration to getting out of there. This was no easy task. There were no windows, no doors except that through which they had come and beyond which the vacii guard waited.
The first guard would return with a superior, or with orders to take the human elsewhere for interrogation. He had to act while there was still only a single vacii to contend with.
He found a chair in the far corner, one that was magnetized to the deck. He pulled it loose, hefted it, tried a few practice swings. It made his wounded wrists ache, but there was no lighter and effective weapon to be had. When he was certain he knew what he wanted to do, he went beside the door and, puffing his lungs full of vacii-
