And Liddell was the only one who could stop him.
Savagely, Liddell threw home the controls. For a split second, nothing happened. Then, slowly, Linda and Jason Short began to shimmer. Watching them like that, it was eerie. Liddell knew the theory well enough, but this was the first actual transfer he had ever attempted. And Linda was part of it—
The two figures in the screen above him—the woman he loved and the man who had come abruptly to shatter their lives—became no more tenuous than smoke. They seemed to swirl and shift like smoke, to grow thinner, as if a wind had come following blowing....
Short's voice echoed strangely from the now almost shapeless fog in the transfer screen. "Deneb," his voice wailed ghostlike. "Deneb, here we come!"
Then the screen was empty. Liddell released the controls and stared for a moment at the blank whiteness. He got up and went to the communications board, where he tapped a code message to central sub-space station. The message said:
This is Liddell at sub-space B-11. Received your message and your John Smith. Trouble. Station suspended until further notice. Send no one through as there will be no one to receive them.
The message sent, Liddell replotted the transfer unit, double-checking his previous findings. He then set the controls on automatic and climbed the steps to the screen. He did not bother going to the arsenal for a weapon. Where he was going weapons would be useless, he thought. Where he was going, no man had ever gone before.
Well, two people had—but two only. And he had sent them.
He was going after Linda and Jason Short.
He took one more look at the mistake he had purposely plotted into the transfer pattern. The mistake which meant that Linda and her captor would never arrive on Deneb Twelve.