Circle Thrice

Circle Thrice

Circle Thrice

32 in the Deathlands series James Axler

Prologue

The companions’ sojourn into the remnants of old Japan had drawn to its inevitable, horrific conclusion. Ryan and his friends retreated to the house that hid the gateway, intent on making a hasty jump back to Deathlands.

Ryan led the way toward the airlock door, through and along to the elevator.

“Where are we going to put the grens?” J. B. Dix, the Armorer, asked.

“They’ve only got 20-second timers, haven’t they? Not all that long.”

The Armorer nodded. “Right. We don’t really know how long it takes for a jump to be properly initiated. Feels like thirty seconds or so before we become unconscious. Might be a deal more than that before we actually get to jump out of there.”

“Grens could go off while we’re in midjump,” Mildred Wyeth cautioned. “That what you’re saying, John?”

“Right, love. Could put them in the elevator shaft when we’re down there. Seal it off tight and also bring the house down on top of everything.”

“That would bury us snugger than a pharaoh in his sarcophagus, would it not?” Doc Tanner asked.

“Sure would,” Ryan replied.

“And if something malfunctioned with the mechanism? What then? Then it will be a long goodbye and a big sleep for us all. As Mr. Chandler would have said.”

Ryan didn’t know who this Chandler guy was, but Doc had a point.

It could be rather like sawing off a branch that you were sitting on.

“Mashashige won’t be invading Deathlands,” he said. “Nor will any of his men. Nor his brother.”

“But there’ll always be someone else who’ll find the house and the gateway,” Krysty Wroth protested.

Ryan sighed. It was tempting to take the grens with them back to Deathlands, where they could always find a use. But Krysty was right. Everything that they’d seen in what remained of Japan pointed toward lethal problems over the next few years. And if the gateway should still function

There was an obvious risk to themselves, but a greater risk for the future if they didn’t act now.

“Use them in the house,” he decided. “Last burner and an implode. Last pair of implodes can go up in the elevator at the final moment before we go to make the jump. We can check that everything seems all right in the gateway first.”

Nobody argued against the plan.

When they stood in front of the elevator, Ryan pushed in the code six, two, eight, three, four and one.

The door slid open and he stepped in, pressing the button to hold it open. “J.B., use your burner and the implode. Jak, keep yours for the last minute. Set them for the full twenty and then get in quick.”

The Armorer set the timer on the scarlet-and-blue implode and lobbed it out through the internal door into the hallway, following it immediately with the burner. Then he closed the doors and stepped smartly into the elevator.

Ryan pushed the Down arrow and the cage began to drop.

“Quake now and we’re deep in the ordure,” Mildred commented.

Ryan was looking at his chron, counting down the seconds. It was on eleven when they reached the bottom of the shaft and the door hissed smoothly open.

As they were entering the mat-trans control area, the tiny digits flickered to twenty.

There was a faint vibration from above them, and a few flakes of plaster fell from the cracked ceiling. Ryan noticed even at a cursory glance that the control area had suffered from the recent quakes, with some consoles dark and several ceiling lights off.

One thing that had been worrying him was how they would actually jump to Deathlands, whether the ordinary Return code would do the trick.

But he noticed something they’d missed on the way out. There was a piece of cardboard taped to the door by the control panel that listed several American regions.

“Want me to do the last grens?” Jak asked.

“Sure.” The earth trembled and another light went off. “Do it now. Krysty, we could copy this list, take it with us and see if it operates from other gateways. Give us control over where we want to jump to.”