Universe Twister - Keith Laumer [77]
O'Leary moved clear of the opening door, took in the dial-covered walls, the console installation like an all-electric kitchen—and at one side, Adoranne, bound hand and foot and gagged with a silken scarf and tied to a gold-brocaded easy chair. She tugged frantically at her bonds a she saw O'Leary, her blue eyes wide. She was wearing a pale blue nightgown, he saw, an imaginative garment as substantial as a spiderweb. O'Leary smiled encouragingly at the girl and motioned with the gun at Goruble.
"After you, your borrowed Majesty," he said. Goruble quickly stepped through the door, went to Adoranne's chair, skipped behind it and faced O'Leary.
"There are a few other matters I must mention to you," he said, looking unaccountably smug. "First—"
"Never mind that. Untie her."
Goruble held up a plump hand. "Patience, if you please. I hardly think you'd dare fire the shatter-gun in such intimate juxtaposition to the object of your anxieties . . . He put a palm familiarly on the bare, rounded shoulder of the princess. "And if you should feel impelled to some more animalistic assault, let me point out that the controls are within my easy reach." He nodded to a variety of levers set in the wall to his left. "True, you might manage to halt me—but the danger of ricochets . . ." he smirked. "I'd suggest you exercise caution."
O'Leary looked from Adoranne to the monarch, noting the close-set walls, the nearness to hand of the levers . . .
"All right," he said between his teeth, "spit it out."
"The Traveler here—as perhaps you're aware—is a standard utility model. It can place its cargo at predetermined triordinates and return to base setting, requiring a controller at the console, of course. But what you don't know is that I have made certain special arrangements, to fit my, ah, specialized needs here."
The king nodded to a point between himself and O'Leary just outside the half-open door. "If you'd take a step forward so that I can point out the modifications—ah, that's close enough," he said sharply as O'Leary reached the threshold. "I found it convenient to so arrange matters that I could dispatch useful loads to random locations without the necessity for my accompanying them."
He pointed to a number of heavy braided copper cables dangling across the panel. "My modifications were crude, perhaps, but effective. I was able to bring the entire area of the corridor there, to a distance of some fifteen feet, well within effective range." He smiled contentedly, reached for a lever. O'Leary jerked the gun up, had a quick mental image of the explosive pellets smacking into Adoranne's soft flesh; he tossed the gun aside, leaped—
—and landed on his face. He was lying in a drift of powdery snow packed against a rocky wall that rose from a gale-swept ledge of glittering ice. He gasped as a blast of arctic wind ripped at him; through a blur of tears he saw a small purple sun low in the black sky, a ragged line of ice peaks. His lungs caught at the thin air—like breathing razor blades.
He tried to scramble to his feet; the wind knocked him down. He stayed low then, rolled, reached the inadequate shelter of a drifted cranny. He wouldn't last long here. There had to be some place to get in out of the cold . . . He picked a spot ten feet distant, where the rock wall angled sharply. Just out of sight around that outcropping, he thought desperately, there's a door set in the stone. All I have to do is reach it. He pictured it, built the image, then . . . There!
Had he felt the familiar faint thump in the orderly flow of entropy?