passed out.
He left the room and walked to the prober chamber, hesitated at the door, wondering what he would find inside. It was still the same night as when he had entered this worldline, though several hours had passed. It would be getting near dawn. The vacii might very well have discovered the mess in the projection room, might already have invaded his worldline. Lynda might be dead.
?
He whirled. At the far end of the hall, four vacii stood, one with a pistol. It raised the weapon, fired. The vibrabeam connected with the back of Salsbury's right calve. He dropped to his knees in pain, then realized he had no time to worry about something so unimportant as agony.
The vacii were closing at a run.
Shaking, he gained his feet, shucked the rucksack with its bombs, and went into the prober chamber. The mess had not been discovered. Lynda still sat at the beam projector beyond the wall. The same number of bodies littered the floor, all but one of them robots. He weaved across the room, favoring his wounded leg, and stumbled through the portal into his own basement.
?Detonate!? he shouted to the 810-40.04 as it floated toward him.
?As soon as-?
?Quickly!?
Beyond, in the other worldline, the vacii slid open the door to the projection room.
?Now, dammit!? Salsbury roared.
The vacii started across the room.
The computer detonated the micro-bombs and, in nearly the same instant, swung on the beam projector and destroyed its lens with a bolt of orange light. The bubble closed in time to prevent the force of the explosions in the other worldline from carrying through into this one.
The spot on the wall was gone.
?You succeeded,? the computer said.
He had been going on adrenalin and nothing else for more than five hours. Now that pressure lessened and the flow of magic juice was cut off, he felt as if a million tons had been lowered onto his shoulders. He tried to speak, to say something witty to mark the occasion. He dropped over onto the basement floor.
