“None of us have been prepared,” Doc replied. ‘ ‘I sure as hell was not prepared when I was sucked up into your little science project.”
Doc had hoped Chan wouldn’t push it to the limit, but knew now he had no choice but to pull the Clock pistol from where he’d hidden it behind his back in the waistband of his trousers under the white sec-man cloak. He shakily raised the weapon and pointed it. While he was familiar with handguns, the more destructive and powerful guns of this future age left him a bit breathless, especially since this was the first time he’d actually threatened a fellow human being with such a weapon.
“Please, Chan. I beg of you. Let me be. This is my risk and my risk alone.”
“I can’t, Doc. You know I can’t,” the man replied. “Just like I know you can’t use that gun. You’re not a killer, and the sound of the shot will bring everybody running.”
“Logic, Chan?” Doc asked.
“And emotion,” Chan replied. “An unbeatable combination.”
“This gun could be silenced,” Doc pointed out, seeing Chan’s face fall for a millisecond as the possibility ran through the man’s mind.
“Why?”
“Why indeed?”
“Put it down, Doc. This attempt, it’s suicide.”
“Well, I had to try,” Doc replied mildly, letting his shoulders slump and assuming the air of a beaten man before coiling every muscle and springing forward, plowing bodily into Chan and crushing him against the wall before grabbing the technician’s clothing and pulling him in a sprawl to the lab floor. Having abandoned using the gun, Doc managed to maneuver himself on top of the younger man and he pressed his advantage as best he could, covering his struggling adversary’s nose and mouth with one hand while trying to maintain his balance with the other.
“Ow-damnation, boy!” Doc bellowed as Chan bit down on the fleshy inside of his unprotected hand. Doc pulled away the injured limb, slinging drops of blood from the bite. His mouth and nose free, Chan sucked in a needed gasp of ah- before lunging up and confronting Doc once more. Bending upright as best he could at the waist with Doc’s weight on top of him, Chan looked him in the face.
“You tried to kill me!” the Asian accused.
“No, I did not!” Doc protested. “I just tried to render you unconscious. If I wanted you dead, you would be shot, you idiot! Get it through your mind, son! I am a desperate man!”
Chan lowered himself back on his elbows, sighed, and then sprang up a second time, managing to lean forward even farther and whack his foe bluntly in the nose with his forehead. He was rewarded with a cracking noise as Doc cried out in pain a second time. Taken by surprise at Chan’s ferocity, Doc slid sideways, staggered by the head butt.
Chan wasn’t in much better physical shape than Doc, but he was more of a natural brawler. The advantage Doc held over the technician was his desperation. He knew if he didn’t succeed in this second attempt to go back home, undoubtedly it would be his last time unaccompanied into a mat-trans chamber.
Doc swung a punch with his right fist and caught Chan full in the jaw, causing both of them to cry out in agony from the pain of the blow.
“Shit, Doc!” the smaller man hissed, a trickle of blood pouring from his mouth where the older man’s desperate blow had loosened two of his teeth.
“I do believe I have broken one of my fingers,” Doc replied mildly, flexing his hand even as he prepared to swing another punch with his left.
The second blow caught Chan in the upper part of the face, above the nose and around the forehead. He fell and landed flat on his back on the floor. Finally, to Doc’s relief, the man was unconscious. Doc’s hands were singing a duet of pain as he sat at the computer, activating the operating software that was linked with the time-trawl hardware. The only sounds in the room beyond his own two-fingered typing were the usual ambient noise of the computers and a raspy breathing from Chan.