"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.