Hell's Gate

swaying, and walked quietly about the room until he was confident he had full use of his blood-starved feet again. His hands would be weakened due to the slashes that bubbled blood, but there was nothing to be done for that at the moment.
        When he had full control of his limbs and felt the dizziness in his head reach a low ebb, he turned his concentration to getting out of there. This was no easy task. There were no windows, no doors except that through which they had come and beyond which the vacii guard waited.
         Think, think! he told himself. You have damnably little time!
        The first guard would return with a superior, or with orders to take the human elsewhere for interrogation. He had to act while there was still only a single vacii to contend with.
        He found a chair in the far corner, one that was magnetized to the deck. He pulled it loose, hefted it, tried a few practice swings. It made his wounded wrists ache, but there was no lighter and effective weapon to be had. When he was certain he knew what he wanted to do, he went beside the door and, puffing his lungs full of vacii-scented air, bellowed a chilling, spine-cracking scream.
        The portal slid open, and the alien rushed in, waving its pistol. It saw Saisbury too late. The chair connected with its scaly scalp; it crumpled under the blow like a paper cup under the heel of a young boy trying to make it pop.
        Salsbury put the chair down, took his own gas pellet pistol from the vacii, and went out into the starship without a single damned idea about what he was going to do next
        The ship was a maze of passageways and rooms. He crept through alcoves and empty chambers, leaving the corridors whenever the sound of approaching vacii feet grew too loud for comfort. Ten minutes after he left the room where he had been imprisoned, there was a soft moaning noise through the ship communications network. It sounded very much like a siren. Then a vacii announcer began hissing, screeching.
        Ahead, doors began to open in the hallway. It was a search alert.
        They had discovered he was missing.
        He pressed into a recession in the wall where a window-a circular port, really-gave view to the Earth of One Line. He saw white, irregular humps of buildings. He had never seen the exterior of a vacii construction, but there was no doubt in his mind that that was exactly what these shapes were. This meant the starship was the center of a sprawling complex; even if he did manage to get outside, there was going to be a great deal more ground to cover before he was safe.
        Leave the ship…
        He was startled by what he was thinking. His only chance of returning to his own probability line, to Lynda, was to remain in the ship and find that room with the teleportation cart. Yet even as he considered that, he realized how impossible it was. With a full-fledged search now begun, he had no chance whatsoever of reaching the teleportation chamber, of crossing the probability lines. He had no choice but to get out of there.
        Quickly…
        A vacii charged by, wide feet pounding the deck, skidded as it caught sight of Salsbury from the corner of its eye. Salsbury brought up the needle pistol which he had also secured from the guard, filled the alien full of narcotics. It went down, rolling over and over until it came to rest against the wall twenty feet farther along.
        Behind, there was shouting, excited keening. They knew exactly where he was.
        He looked at the window, trying to decide if he could get through it. But it was much too small. Then he became aware that the port was actually set into a pressure door; the seam split the metal, a thin, darker crack against the uniform gray. He searched for a handle and found a set of three studs. The first made nothing visible happen. The second started a humming sound and made the deck tremble underfoot. The third stopped the humming and swung the door outward, noiselessly.
        A spray of needles clattered against the wall next to him, making angry bee noises. One ricocheted into his hand. He plucked it out before much of the yellow fluid could seep into him, threw it away, fired a few shots down the corridor to force the vacii to take cover. Then, turning, he leaped out of the starship onto bare ground, ran for the shadows between two humped white buildings. A city of the things towered on all sides.
        He slid against