Being a trained man, I went a little wild. I tried to throw him, to stab my fingers into his eyes and nostrils, but he didn’t let go. He did a lot of hissing, but he didn’t let go.
“McGill…” he said. “You permed Armel, didn’t you? Was that your plan? To perm me as well? You are a foul assassin.”
“No, Raash. I didn’t want to harm you. Really, you should let me go. Otherwise, things are going to go badly for you in about three seconds.”
Raash did some of that hissing-laughing thing he did sometimes. “Piss yourself in fear, human. I have no fear of death. No pain or discomfort affects me. Only embarrassment can harm the mind of a saurian.”
“Is that so?”
We were grappling, and I was losing. He was trying to pin my other wrist, and I knew I couldn’t let him.
Worse, on the table behind him, I saw the second saurian guard struggling to stand. Soon, it would be two against one.
With no choice left, I reached into my jacket and pressed a button, activating the teleport harness.
-10-
The way home was awful. When you port with someone else, and they’re outside the protective field, it always goes one of two ways.
Sometimes, the trip is a short one. In that case, the person clinging to you as you fall through interdimensional space kind of spazzes and clutches at your body—but that’s it. A few seconds later you arrive, and all is well.
This wasn’t one of those times. This was one of the bad times—when the trip was long and dangerous.
In such cases, the hitchhiker is like a drowning man, grappling with you, hanging on for dear life. But they normally can’t survive. Outside the field, there is radiation, and mind-bending horrors. All the stuff you might imagine if you were to travel through space at speeds exceeding the possible.
Once, I’d given a squid a ride like this. When we’d reached our final destination, he was less than fried calamari—he was ash. Dust, burned away to curling soot stains.
But that was at the end of the trip—the inevitable finish. In the meantime, I had something like five hundred seconds of fun to endure.
Raash was confused at first. I couldn’t see him, or hear him, or sense him in any way other than vague touch—but that was enough to get some idea of what he was going through.
There was a tightening of his grip to start off with. He’d encircled me with those powerful arms. I could tell he was freaked out and maybe afraid—a wise emotion.
As the trip went on and on, surprise and confusion soon gave way to total panic. He tore at me ineffectually, as he was already weakening.
It was weird when people fought in hyperspace, or whatever you called this zone in between one place and the next. You were kind of ghostly, without the same physical properties. That was a good thing, because I figured old Raash might have torn my throat out with his teeth if he’d been able to. Fortunately, he couldn’t do that much, he couldn’t exert that much force. Instead, he felt kind of gauzy, kind of like he was wearing a foam rubber suit as he beat on me and tore at me weakly with his claws.
In the meantime, of course, we were both enjoying the usual unpleasant sensations of this kind of travel. You felt like you had to breathe, but you couldn’t, and it was torture. Raash became wild with fury and desperation.
After a while, his grip weakened, but I didn’t let him go. I clung to him until the last, feeling him die. I was thinking that maybe if his corpse made it to Central in fair condition, he might catch himself a stealthy revive.
It was not to be. When we arrived in the basement, I startled two bored hogs. They stood, drawing their weapons and cursing up a blue-streak.
“What’s the trouble, boys?” I said, looking at them for a moment.
Then, I chanced to look down. Their horrified expressions suddenly made sense.
Raash was a crispy mass of black ash and running grease. He’d kind of melted along with dying in agony.
“Oh…” I said, letting go of the body.
That was harder to do than it sounded. The corpse was wrapped around me, and I had to pry off the rubbery body and clingy fingers. There were still some bones in there, somewhere.
“Who are you, and what the hell is that?” the duty chief demanded.
I explained vaguely, identified myself, and was eventually released. I took the opportunity to snap off one of the best preserved finger-claw-things. I stuffed it in my pocket, and the hogs looked at me in disgust.
“Just a souvenir,” I explained with a jaunty smile.
“You Varus types are ghouls.”
I didn’t bother to respond. Instead, I exited the security station and headed up to the lobby. They’d ejected me in that direction, insisting that I get further clearances to go anywhere else inside Earth’s military headquarters.
Reaching the street level, I gazed around wistfully. It was a nice looking day… too nice.
Checking the date on my tapper, I cursed out loud. “It’s May? I’ve been dead and gone nearly two weeks… shit.”
Heaving a deep breath, I headed for the doors. Hell, I’d been gone for weeks, so one more day wasn’t going to hurt. There were a number of decent places with good grub and better beer waiting just outside in town.
I didn’t even make it down the front marble steps outside Central, however, when my tapper began buzzing. I’d forgotten to wrap it up or anything.
Taking a glance down,
