Chapter 2: Escape!

Half waking from his exhausted slumber, Chad was disturbed by the changing sound of the truck's wheels as they left the smooth surface of the freeway. The shrill, hissing whine of tires on wet pavement slowed to a deep pitched rumble, echoing between rows of buildings. He came a little farther awake, the boxes around him swaying precariously as the truck swung around sharp corners and eased to a stop. Somewhere, two men were talking, a low murmur of voices. They were too far away and he was too groggy to make out more than a few words of what they said.

"A bigger share... Too risky," the higher pitched of the two voices protested nervously.

"Nothing to it... When we get back... Be rich!" The deeper voice rumbled soothingly. The first voice spoke in a more subdued tone, too softly for him to make out the words.

The truck door slammed, followed by the clang and clatter of an electrically opened door. There was a hiss of releasing brakes as trucks moved forward one by one, their turbines whining faintly in the silence. Chad's truck lurched after them, and he could hear the big door starting to close behind it.

They were falling! He bit back a startled yell, grabbing wildly at the crates around him until he realized that the truck was still rolling forward. He felt light, almost like when he dreamed of flying, and the truck was jouncing up and down on its springs as it rolled across rough ground. A few dozen yards further, and it eased to a stop. Chad could hear doors slamming and hinges squealing as the other trucks were unloaded. Finally light and fresh air spilled in as the rear door of the truck was flung open and men swarmed in to unload its cargo.

"Hey! Where'd you come from?" Harsh sunlight struck painfully into his squinted eyes as rough hands pulled Chad upright, and through the truck's doors he could see trees outlined against the sky. "C'mon, outside with you."

"I'm coming, damn it! I'm coming! Go easy on that arm for Chrissakes, will ya?"

"He's only a kid. Hey, Stan, c'mere a minute. We caught us a stowaway!"

Chad stood unsteadily by the back of the truck, blinking against the bright sunshine. He couldn't help staring at the man who turned impatiently away from where other men were unloading something bulky from a truck. Well over six and a half feet tall, with bushy orangered hair, he was so skinny that he couldn't have weighed more than one hundred and sixty pounds wringing wet.

"Okay, you guys, I'll take care of this. Keep on working. We ain't got all night." His deep voice spurred them to greater efforts. "Now, what you got here, Murphy? A spy?"

"I don't think so, Mr. Barton." The man who had Chad's wrist clamped in one meaty fist was somewhere in his middle thirties, older than most of the other men who had paused in their work to watch. "Looks like he's been in one whale of a scrap. Must of crawled into the truck looking for a place to hide."

"What's your name, son?" Stan Barton bent down to peer into his face.

"Chad." He mustered enough angry pride to look the older man straight in the eye.

"Chad what?"

"Just Chad." He clamped his jaw, trying to hide his weakness, but swayed as beads of sweat broke out on his forehead from the strain of staying on his feet.

"All right, 'Just Chad'. We'll let that go, for now. What I want to know is, what'll we do with you now that we've got you?"

"You... You could just let me go," he ventured hopefully, trying to look innocent.

"Yeah, let him go!" A coarse voice guffawed from one of the men.

"You shut your yap, Gilson, and get back to work unloadin' that truck! We're runnin' late enough as it is. Now, suppose I did turn you loose. What would you do?"

"Head for the nearest town, an' get me sumpin' to eat, I guess. Hey, what part of the country is this?"

"You really don't know where you're at, do you?" Stan smiled down sardonically at him.

He took a close look around for the first time. He'd been aware that the air felt warmer, fresher than it had any right to be in the middle of a Chicago winter. How far could they have driven? How long had he been asleep in the back of that truck? Now that he was really looking, he realized that the sky had a funny greenish tinge to it, and the sun was a shade too yellow. The trees were odd, fuzzylooking, and unless his feet were lying to him, he was a good many pounds lighter than he should be. With a twinge of panic, he swung back to face Barton.

"Hey, man! What's shaking?" For a moment he slipped back into Wolf slang. "What kinda place is this?"

"Mike, you clue him in while you take him along to see Doc Parkins." Stan swung away to check on some crates that were being slid out of another truck. "Ito, Sanchez! Easy with them crates, dammitall! You want to blow this whole place skyhigh?"

Mike Murphy smiled a bit sourly down at Chad, whose lower jaw was still sagging in amazement. "You're thinking you ain't nowhere near Chicago? Well, you're right. You've been shipped through a transdimensional portal to, like they say in the Mannies' TV ads, 'A land of wealth and high adventure!' At least, that was the pitch what Stan gave us. Of course, none of us was able right then to look too close at what was bein' offered."

"You ain't kidding?" Chad's expression lightened despite his pain. "We really are on another world?"

"'Another world, of another sun, of another galaxy, of another dimensional universe'," Mike quoted again, a wry smile twisting his lips. "Yep, we sure are. You must of noticed you all of a sudden felt lighter when we came through the portal."

"Is that what it was? I was about shredded, but I thought we'd gone off a cliff or something!"

"Yeah, stuff here only weighs about two thirds of what it does back home, so watch your step for a while. You'll get used to it after a while, at least that's what they keep telling me." He stopped, pushing open the flap of a tent that had been erected off to one side of the clearing. "Hey, Doc! Look alive, here's your first patient."

"Drag him in." The doctor stood up from a folding chair and took a bleary look at his patient. "What did he do, fall over his own feet?"

"Naw, he ain't one of the regular crew. He stowed away in one of our trucks before we pulled out of Chicago last night. Looks like he's been in one Helluva fight."

Faced with a real problem, the old doctor's quivering hands steadied. He took a quick reading from his battered old diagnostic computer, then deftly cut away the makeshift bandage around Chad's arm. Keeping up a steady stream of chatter and comment, he busied himself with alcohol and cotton. He soon had the slash's raw edges neatly clipped together and bandaged, and Chad's other cuts and bruises tended to.

"Wash these pills down with this." He handed Chad a beaker of murky green liquid that tasted vaguely of citrus. "It'll replace some of the fluids your body lost. Let me look at that arm again in a few days, sooner if it bothers you, and use this sling until then. Why in the world did you pick this outfit to hitch a ride with?"

"Just my usual luck, I guess." Chad grinned back, a bit feebly. Long forgotten habits of correct speech began to stir at the old doctor's precise use of the English language. "I ran into the back of that truck about when I couldn't go no farther. It was all I could do to climb in and hide before I passed out."

"You had better sit down outside for a while. Those pills I gave you will keep you going for a few hours, but it'll hit you like a hammer when they wear off. Don't let this light gravity fool you. You're going to need to take it easy for at least the next two or three days. You're mostly just suffering from shock. You lost a whole lot of blood, according to the readings on the diagnostat, and your system will need time to build it back."

Chad looked around him as he sat leaning against a tree trunk and soaking up the golden sunshine. The trucks were being unloaded in the middle of what seemed to be a natural clearing at the top of a low, steepsided hill where two ridges crossed. The trees on all sides were large, with thick trunks, and their flexible branches were covered with what looked like flowing clumps of greenishblond hair.

A few brilliantly colored birds flitted about like tiny animated jewels, or scratched for bugs in what he at first took to be grass. Then he looked closer, realizing that the ground was covered by a mat of slender vines. What he'd taken for grass was really more of the same furry leaves that grew on the trees.