Part 2

It was, Liddell told himself for the tenth time, the only thing he could have done. Trap Short. Trap Linda with him, yes, but at least he could go after them. At least he knew exactly where they were. In sub-space. At the exact point he had plotted on the control board. Waiting. Waiting forever if somehow he missed them when he sent himself through. Waiting in timeless, spaceless, airless, temperature-less sub-space. Waiting. They would not miss oxygen. All their bodily functions were suspended. Waiting--possibly to drift forever until their minds were shattered in the awful blank immensity.

* * * * *

A chill possessed Liddell as the automatic machinery suddenly made him shimmer. From his viewpoint within the screen, it looked as if the room and the controls and the screen were themselves shimmering.

He blinked. And opened his eyes.

And stared out on a featureless gray infinity.

On sub-space.

"Linda!" he called. He hadn't meant to shout. He knew there was no air, no medium to carry his voice.

But he heard it--loud, clear.

"Linda!" he shouted again. It was his own voice booming out across the gray void. It was not his imagination. Then was science somehow wrong about sub-space? He didn't think so. But it couldn't possibly be an audible projection of his voice. It had to be something else. Telepathy? It was something like that, he decided. An audible telepathy in a world which didn't obey the natural laws which governed our own universe.

"We're over here, Lidd!" Linda's voice came to him. It was followed at once by a scream and Short's shout:

"Shut your trap if you know what's good for you."

Liddell swam. The motion came to him unbidden but he felt himself moving through the gray nothingness. He could see nothing except his own arms as he made the swimming motions and moved. Swimming through nothingness? But there was no medium to push against. Another physical law, a law of our universe, Liddell knew which went by the boards in sub-pace.

"I'm coming, Linda."

"He's got your blaster. He's ... I can see you now, Lidd."

There was a roar and a flash up ahead. Something streaked at Liddell through the gray void. Instinctively, he moved aside. It was a beam of raw energy from the blaster and he wondered what would have happened if it had struck him.

He gasped in surprise.

The blaster beam did not fade. It hovered near him. Wondering, he touched it. It was a jagged bolt ten feet long and felt solid as a shaft of steel. Another natural law, Liddell thought. Snafu here. Because the energy beam of the blaster had been transformed instantly into matter. Shrugging, Liddell grasped the beam--which although it seemed as solid as steel had utterly no weight. With it he swam through the changeless gray murk.

All at once he could see them up ahead, Short and Linda, floating there, two tiny figures a few hundred yards in front of him. Short's blaster roared again--and the roaring was still another violation of natural law. Another beam streaked out and flashed by Liddell. Again it solidified. Ignoring it, Liddell swam forward with the first beam. He began to feel like Zeus wielding a thunderbolt.

He waited until he was quite close to Short and Linda, until Short fired the blaster once more. Then he hurled his thunderbolt.

Short howled with rage and darted away, triggering the blaster again. But this time Liddell was on him before he could take careful aim. Dimly, Liddell was aware of Linda hovering near, touching the thunderbolt gingerly.

Then all his attention was centered on Jason Short. They were fighting for their lives, fighting tooth and nail, where fighting or any physical activity should have been impossible. But what did the edicts of science matter when Short slammed a hard left hook against Liddell's jaw, staggering him spilling him backward through the gray murk?

Short followed up his advantage and lunged after Liddell, straddling him weightlessly as they floated off, finding his throat with strong fingers, applying pressure.

* * * * *

He drove Short off him with two left jabs, snapping the bigger man's head back. Short was like a bulldog, though.

Slowly, the fingers around Liddell's throat released their pressure. In a world with no air and where no air was necessary, the choking pressure hadn't damaged Liddell, but his throat ached from constriction alone. He drove Short off him now with lefts and rights to the head. They were weightless, but they hurt. He couldn't explain it, no more than he could explain the sudden trans-mutation of the blaster's energy beam to solid matter. It was one of the unknown natural laws of sub-space, that was all.

Presently, he was aware that Short no longer fought but hung there in sub-space with his arms slack. He drove a few more left hooks and right crosses into the face floating so near his own, then swam back and clear.

Short hung there, suspended.

"But how," Linda gasped, "how did you ever--"

"Automatic control. I came after you."

"How will we ever get back?"

Liddell looked at his wrist-chrono. "In fifteen minutes, the automatic control picks us up and brings us back. Are you all right?"

"He didn't hurt me. He didn't have time."

They waited there in sub-space in each other's arms. When, fifteen minutes later, they began to shimmer, Liddell grabbed the unconscious Short's hand and the three of them shimmered together into normal space.

Liddell went to the arsenal and secured Short with arm and leg irons. By the time he called through to Luna outbound with his explanatory message, the escaped killer had regained consciousness but maintained a grim silence.

"You know," Liddell told his wife, "one thing good's going to come of this. I mean, besides recapturing Short."

"Such as what?"

"Such as science always regarded sub-space only as a medium of transfer. But with some of its unusual properties, I'll bet a few first-rate resorts can be built out there."

"You--you're crazy," Linda said, but smiled.

"And what's more--"

"Let me finish for you, darling. What's more, if they're going to build any resorts out there, you're the man to build them. Right?"

"Right," said Liddell, before he kissed her.