By ten o'clock they finished rigging the probe machine. It was a rather rickety looking bunch of lightweight, sectioned beams supporting panels of intricate mechanisms. There was a chair for the operator. To operate the thing, Salsbury knew, one only needed to sit in that chair, flick a single switch, grip the handles on the sides of what looked like a spotlight, and aim the projector. There were little screws on each handle to work with your thumbs to change (ever so slightly) the flow pattern of the beam so that a good lock could be achieved.
They decided, with the computer's agreement, that things would move more quickly if Lynda were to operate the prober, lock beams, and open the probability doorway. Salsbury, meanwhile, could be standing next to where the portal would solidify, could leap through without having to first climb down from the prober.
At Lynda's suggestion, they left the computer to grab a bite to eat. Salsbury could only choke down half a sandwich and a cup of coffee. At a quarter after eleven, they went back into the cellar to wait. It was a nervous time. Vic paced, and Lynda bit her nails. The 810-40.04 went over and over the instructions until they were all ready to scream. At last, it was one-thirty. Lynda took her place at the chair; he stood alongside the wall, next to where the portal would open.
One-thirty came. And so did the vacii.
The blue spot began to glow on the wall, slowly clearing.
Lynda snapped on their own prober.
The two beams met. The window began to clear.
Now! the computer said.
And Salsbury leaped sideways and through into the other probability line, into the room where the vacii operated their own prober.
CHAPTER 13
The first thing he saw was the face of the vacii operator, its toothless, sucking mouth all drawn up, the thin gray lips writhing wildly as if someone were jabbing pins into them. The red eyes gleamed, eyes of a rat, of pigeons, eyes of bowery winos sleeping in doorways and greeting the sun crossly. When he had been in his basement, with the bubble separating him from the aliens, the eyes had seemed merely red. Here, close up, he could see the minute webbing of pulsing blood vessels that gave them their color. The operator started off his machine, his mouth suddenly wide as if to yell something. Salsbury brought up the new hand gun the computer had provided and fired it. The lizard-thing gasped; its face dissolved as it toppled from us perch on the heavy-duty model prober.
Vic! Lynda shouted from beyond the portal, then followed the calling of his name with a shrill, piercing scream.
He came around out of reflex, going down on one knee as he pivoted, hoping to avoid any blow that might have been aimed for his head. There was no one immediately behind him.
He was screened by the bulk of the vacii prober, and it was entirely possible that no one else in the room knew he had come through. No one but the operator, and his head was too scrambled to imagine he could warn anyone else. Then why had Lynda screamed? He turned, looked back at her, saw that one man-form robot had gone through the portal, coming towards her where she sat on her prober chair. Another of the things was halfway through the port, one foot on either side.
Victor raised his gun and shot the one halfway through, trying to bring him down and get a clear shot at the mechanical that posed a more immediate threat to Lynda. The back of its neck peeled open like an apple dropped out of a tree onto stones. It pitched forward, crashed down with a great deal of clatter. The thing closing on Lynda turned to search for the source of the uproar behind it and collected Salsbury's second shot square in the center of its stomach. Glass, steel, and plastic jell that had been posing as flesh erupted in all directions.
The floor in front of Salsbury burst, showered up fragments, and smoked heavy blue clouds that had an acrid, rancid meat odor. He rolled sideways, against the base of the vacii projector, and swung his head around to see where the vibrashot had come from.
The room behind was crawling with robots. On a quick sweep, he estimated there were twenty of them.
Less than a second after he pulled his head back behind the bulk of the prober, another beam sizzled into the metal work where his face had been, made little rivulets of molten steel dribble down and harden on the concrete floor. For a moment, he had a nauseatingly crystal picture of his head pocked with holes, each hole dribbling molten flesh. But flesh didn't melt, it burned. He squinted to keep the smoke out of his eyes and concentrated on getting out of there alive. While making sure none of the robot man-forms of the vacii inside enjoyed the same privilege.
One of the man-forms, without concern for itself, rushed across the floor, trying to get behind the machine for a try at Salsbury. He got the thing just as it moved over him. The impact of the gun's discharge knocked it backwards ten feet where it lay in pieces, humming slightly.
He thumbed the proper stud on the gun to convert it into a machine pistol a thousand times as deadly as it had been. He got off his knees, crouched, then darted into the room. The robots were clumped relatively close together, for they had been planning on marching single file into Salsbury's probability. He fanned the barrel of the heavy weapon, holding down on the trigger, and watched the gray gas pellets sink silently into them, expand from the friction, and explode from within.
The effect was not as dramatic on robots as it had been on the living tissue of the vacii, but it was adequate. If one pellet met too tough an area to penetrate far enough, another in that heavy barrage he was putting down, would surely turn the trick. Inside of thirty frantic seconds, the floor was littered with the parts of robot man-forms, some of the tubes still lit
Then there was quiet. Except for a strange, heavy noise like sandpaper on sandpaper. He looked around, trying to locate the source of the noise, wondering whether it was friendly or hostile. His heart began beating faster when he realized the sound was coming from some place quite close. Then he realized it was the sound of his own breath that he had begun to fear. It came raggedly, heavily into his lungs, burning them.
Victor, the computer said from beyond the portal, from the safety of the basement.
He walked across the man-form strewn chamber and peered through to where the trunk floated beside Lynda. Yeah?
The pack.
Lynda held out the rucksack that bulged with the things he would require. He took it, startled by the lines in her face, the deep etchings of tension and terror. He could almost summon a hate for those men of the future who had sent him back, had put him and Lynda through all this. Yet, without those same men to create him, he would never have existed to meet the girl. Be careful, she said.
He nodded.
Remember, the 810-40.04 said, with both beams locked we can keep the portal open forever if we want. But if a vacii technician happens to come into that room over there and sees what has happened, they'll overwhelm us in seconds.
I'll try to handle it as quickly as possible, he said, feeling as if he were trapped in some fantasy.
I have instructed Lynda on the dismantling of a robot and the securing of its vibratube weapon. She will take care of that when you leave and arm herself.
It was Salsbury's turn to say, Be careful.
Don't worry, she said.
He slipped the rucksack on, shifted it until it rested easily between his shoulders. It wasn't bad. It only weighed eighteen-thousand pounds. All he had to do was tap some of that marvelous adrenalin-like juice that his special little liver-encased mechanism produced, and he could tote that pack around without a single twitch of a muscle.