Free Conquerors' Pride by Timothy Zahn Page B

tell them only that he was smart enough to be suspicious. But with luck maybe he could use it to plant a few false assumptions. Stuffing the empty water tube awkwardly into the top of his jumpsuit, he mentally crossed his fingers and stepped to the door.

The one time he'd seen them use it, the door had swung open on its own at the touch of a button on a milky-white plate set into the cell wall near the door's edge. It wasn't nearly so easy to push open by hand, but it was also not nearly as hard as Pheylan tried to make it look. Whatever method he used to eventually break out of this place would almost certainly include simple raw strength, and the more the aliens underestimated human muscle power, the better chance he'd have.

So he pushed hard against the door, clenching his teeth as he strained to inch it open, hoping that those who were watching couldn't see that his shoulder was simultaneously pushing against the wall itself. He shifted to a two-handed grip on door and jamb as soon as it was far enough open, grimacing all the more dramatically as he forced tired muscles to strain isometrically against each other and against the skintight material of the jumpsuit. He got it open just far enough and squeezed out.

The three aliens were watching him now, all right. But there was no mad scramble for the door or for hidden weapons. Sacrificial goats, for sure, there to draw the tiger in for the attack.

An attack Pheylan had no intention of making. He'd demonstrated his physical weakness with the door; now it was time to demonstrate his innate innocence and lack of aggression. Stepping up to the nearest alien, he pulled the water tube out of his tunic and held it out. "Do you suppose," he said, "that I could have some more of this?"

They led him back to his cell, one of them going off to one of the consoles to refill the water tube. This time the door was closed properly behind him.

Apparently, that part of the test was over. Pheylan wondered whether he'd passed or failed.

He drank half the water, then lay down on his side on the cot. Propping his head up with the pillow, resting one hand against the smooth coolness of the cell wall, he gazed out at the aliens as they resumed their work.

Or at least he hoped it looked as if he were watching them. At the moment he was far more interested in the wall of his cell.

His first reaction on seeing it had been to identify it as glass. Later, before succumbing to his illness, he'd changed his mind and decided it was probably a plastic. Now, running his fingertips and nails across the material, he decided he'd been right the first time. An incredibly tough glass, undoubtedly, and a good five centimeters thick on top of it, but a glass nonetheless.

He turned over to lie on his back, trying to think. Glass was a noncrystalline substance, often but not always silicon based. Generally acid resistant, though there were one or two acids that he vaguely remembered would attack it. An old memory drifted up from the past: the time he, Aric, and Melinda had been playing drag ball and he'd driven the ball squarely into the window of his mother's study. The glass itself had survived, but the impact had cracked the framing and popped the pane neatly out onto the desk, knocking over a cup of tea his mother had left there and creating a major mess.

At the corner of his eye, something moved. Pheylan turned to look; but there was nothing there. Just the wall of his cell and the usual flickering of lights from the consoles on that side.

"Cavv'ana."

Pheylan sat up and looked the other way. Standing just outside his cell were three of the aliens. From the design of their jumpsuits, he tentatively identified them as the three who'd accosted him on the ground outside the ship. "Hello," he said, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and sitting up. "And how are you today?"

The alien in the center regarded him for a moment, the tip of his tongue flicking in and out of his beak. "I well," he said