leaves, stacked that in the entrance and lit it. The ensuing smoke almost smothered Salsbury. It roiled by in blue- white clouds, thick as London fog. It clogged his nostrils, burned the back of his throat, and made his eyes water helplessly.
He was almost prepared to crawl forward and admit defeat when various little facts connected in the depths of his brain to mean something important. One: the smoke was being drawn toward the back of the cave, swirling past him. This meant his cave had to have an outlet of some sort to cause the draft. Two: even if the outlet was not large enough to crawl out of, it would provide, perhaps, a pocket of air to breath that was less smoky than that here. Instead of going forward to Keeper and Chief and the others, he turned around once more and worked with the smoke, seeking the outlet it had already found.
For long moments, he crawled with closed eyes to avoid getting them more inflamed than they already were.
His mouth tasted like the bottom of an ashtray.
It was a bad journey. At places, the walls of the narrow tunnel grew even tighter, pressed in more insistently. And, invariably, at these places, the walls were more jagged so that flesh was gouged out of his shoulders, hips and arms. The walls and floor became damp, and he crept through cold water that made him shiver uncontrollably. And there was always the smoke, just thick enough to keep him gasping and choking, but not so thick as to smother him altogether. His eyes were swollen, and tears were streaming down his face.
He came to what he thought was a dead end.
He felt around to all sides.
It
He beat his hands against the stone in front of him, cursing like a madman half crazed with heat prostration. Then he ceased acting like an imbecile long enough to let his skin pick up a hint of a draft. He felt around overhead, discovered that the tunnel went straight up for four feet, then broke to the left with a horizontal floor again. He squirmed up and through the bend, flopped onto the floor above and tried to catch his breath.
All he caught was a hefty lungful of smoke. He gagged, forced himself to crawl on. Slowly, the air began to improve. At last, he could take deeper breaths without coughing, and his chest had stopped its painful throbbing. Ahead, there was a dim circle of light. He made for it at a rapid crawl, pushed himself through, and fell full length onto a half-man who was waiting for him, a wide grin on its twisted face.
CHAPTER 17
There was no sense in struggling. They were even more sharp-witted than he had anticipated in his wildest moments. They had been aware that his tunnel might have an outlet somewhere, and they had dispatched sentries into the corridors of their maze to check for smoke. If one of them sported any, he was to wait there under the assumption Salsbury would follow the vapors. And Salsbury had. He was carried back into the main room where the half-men had eaten their porridge, where Keeper's friend had been killed by the gas pellet gun in the chief's hand.
They returned him to the shelf where he had been, depositing him rudely, slamming him down harshly on the cold stone. They left two guards to watch over him and gathered in the center of the floor to debate on what should be done with him. There seemed to be various factions strongly in favor of their method of punishment. Salsbury knew none of them were arguing for leniency, just for a crude and colorful form of death they preferred to administer.
In the end, they tied his hands behind his back with a length of thin but tough fibrous vine, looping and looping the stuff as insurance against a weak spot in its length. Next, they ran a heavier vine around his waist, knotted it, looped it under both his arms. A second heavy rope had been tied high above the floor, one end to a smooth projection of rock on the left, the other to an equally placed projection on the right. The rope that had been tied around his waist and looped under his armpits like a harness was thrown over the ceiling rope, and he was hoisted to his feet, then higher until his shoes dangled three feet off the floor. The pain as the vine drew tight around his waist and cinched his arms together was grueling. He gritted his teeth and spat at his tormentors. That only seemed to encourage them.
He hung there for another five minutes, wondering if they merely planned to let him hang until his arms were ripped off by the constant drag of his body. But they had more specific plans, ones that would give them some entertainment as well as revenge. A half-man came up to Salsbury, grasped him by the legs, drew him back as far as it could manage and shoved him forward. He began to swing like a pendulum, the vine cruelly chaffing his waist and arms. To make certain he did not lose momentum, the half-men formed groups at both ends of his swing and batted him back and forth. At the peak of each arc, he was slammed by a hard paw, sent back the other way. They took turns so as not to tire. He soon lost track of how many times he had been struck.
In time, after countless blows and countless arcs, he felt a sharp sting on his side, sensed the wet flow of blood. On the other peak of his arc, he understood what had happened. They had decided to use their rather blunt but, nonetheless, wicked claws. The second slice was deeper than the first and sent hot waves of pain coursing through him, even though he thought that by this time he should have been beyond feeling anything.
Back? And forth? Slash? And slice
He thought about coming from the future
There was a red haze creeping over his vision, and bells ringing out a symphony in his head. He was about to slip into darkness, utter and complete when a new, shriller tone of gorilla talk split the air from the entrance to the chamber. The half-men playing with Salsbury missed a few swipes, and his momentum dropped. The shrill voice called again, louder and more insistent. Then, in good English, a husky gravel-toned voice said, ?Hold on. We'll get you down as fast as possible.?
CHAPTER 18
Victor Salsbury fought against darkness and dizziness that grappled with him, and he won. He was conscious when they cut him down. He dropped into a puddle on the floor, more anxious about the condition of his mortal shell than about who had stepped in to save his life like a saint in a storybook miracle. He was aching all over from the pounding he had received. Both his hips were bleeding thick crimson fluid that seeped through his tattered jeans. When he was finished accounting for every wound, he decided that, despite how he might feel, he would survive. His accelerating healing processes would stop the bleeding at any moment and would begin to knit the torn skin. He hated to think what he would have looked like, how far beyond the scope of his healing powers he would have been if he had not been cut down when he was. A few more pendulum swings, and he would have slipped into an unconsciousness where the last dregs of his life forces would have been drained quietly away.
The worst of his worries about his body assuaged, he thought of his rescuer.
He looked up, somehow expecting to see either the vacii or a detachment of marines. Instead, there was another gorilla-like man standing over him. He was different from the other things, though. The amount of facial hair obscuring his features was considerably less, exposing tough, brown skin creased heavily like ancient, weathered leather. His scalp itself was still liberally furred and pointed up his relationship to the savages. The features of his face were not as harsh as those of the other half-men, the forehead jutted out only half an inch instead of two inches. His nose was more completely formed with heavier cartilage deposits that gave it a roughly human quality. The mouth was smaller, more evenly lipped, and the teeth were well-cared for, as if they had been regularly brushed.
?You are from another probability?? the newcomer asked, trying to look as pleasant as he could. Despite his gorilla resemblance, he was a welcome sight compared to the heavy, vicious masks of Salsbury's tormentors.
