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. Or anywhere.... The mistake which left Jason Short and Liddell's wife stranded in sub-space, in the nothingness continuum somewhere between the normal space-time of station B-11 and Deneb Twelve. It was, Liddell told himself for the tenth time, the only thing he could have done. Trap Short. Trap Linda with him, yes, but at least he could go after them. At least he knew exactly where they were. In sub-space. At the exact point he had plotted on the control board. Waiting. Waiting forever if somehow he missed them when he sent himself through. Waiting in timeless, spaceless, airless, temperature-less sub-space. Waiting. They would not miss oxygen. All their bodily functions were suspended. Waiting--possibly to drift forever until their minds were shattered in the awful blank immensity. * * * * * A chill possessed Liddell as the automatic machinery suddenly made him shimmer. From his viewpoint within the screen, it looked as if the room and the controls and the screen were themselves shimmering. He blinked. And opened his eyes. And stared out on a featureless gray infinity. On sub-space. "Linda!" he called. He hadn't meant to shout. He knew there was no air, no medium to carry his voice. But he heard it--loud, clear. "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."