“Hot pipe! Let’s get going!” Dean cried, stumbling for the hallway door. “Dad told me this place has the biggest armory of any redoubt! We can make a couple of trips with the LD button and get all the ammo and food we need! Clothes, missiles, grens. We could load a wag and drive into the chamber!”
“Don’t bother running,” Krysty said, slumping against the cool wall. “This base is useless to us.”
Already partially out the door, Dean turned with a stern expression. “What do you mean?” he demanded anxiously. “It’s got everything we need!”
“And more,” Krysty agreed sadly. “It’s also the biggest redoubt we ever encountered. Miles and miles wide. I remember it taking us an hour to walk to the main intersection of corridors, and then it was even farther to the armory.”
Dean glanced at his chron. Seventeen minutes to go. “Aw, shit.” He frowned, then started for the door again. “We can at least take a fast recce. Mebbe something got dropped.”
Her red hair coiling nervously, Krysty rose and followed the boy into the control room. Panels of consoles blinked in silent rhythms as the great machine conferred with other comps, testing circuits. There was some spent brass on the floor, and an empty cigar box on a console, the plastic smeared with brown stains that vaguely resembled old blood.
Resting the Kalashnikov on a shoulder, Krysty tried to recall if anybody had been wounded on their last jump here. Finn had been shot, somebody else also. Was it Henn, or Okie? They had also gotten a new member of the crew, Lori Quint. She had been with Doc for quite a while before Krysty shook her head to dispel the dark thoughts. Too many dead. It was difficult to keep track.
“Nothing,” Dean announced, returning from the hallway. “Might as well leave.” Petulantly, he kicked over a chair and stomped back to the mat-trans chamber.
“Mebbe in the next redoubt,” Krysty said hopefully. “We find a lot of bases with a few supplies remaining. Only need one of those.”
“We’ll find blasters,” the boy agreed confidently. “Just a matter of how soon.”
Climbing inside the chamber, they hit the LD button and let the swirling mists and twinkling lights cast them into nothingness, and beyond.
AS THE NOISE of the chamber faded, the door to the hallway swung open and a stooped graybeard in furs walked into the control room. The old Russian scanned the room, certain that strangers had invaded the redoubt.
“Could have sworn I heard voices,” he muttered, glancing around. Then he placed a hand on the control console and felt the heat rising off the comps.
“Yes, visitors,” he hissed. “I will have to do something about that.”
Then he began to randomly press buttons and flip switches, smiling as lines of data began to scroll up the banks of comp screens and a distant hum increased in volume.
“They won’t come back!” The man laughed. “Gone forever.”
FALLING THROUGH infinity, Krysty and Dean hurtled through the electronic void when they felt a jarring lurch and knew that something was terribly wrong. A dimly seen floor materialized beneath them, and both were seized by bitter cold. Somehow, the air felt slow and it was difficult to breath. As the mists vanished, their clothes became instantly soaked and each realized they were underwater.
Skeletons of rotting bodies drifted past the choking pair, the rusted remains of blasters laying on the slimy armaglass floor. Dimly seen through the cloudy water, the chamber door was marked with discolorations and deep scores. The other prisoners had died trying to get free before drowning.
Frantically, Krysty reached out for the LD button, but Dean was already there. As the button was depressed, the mists began to build once more, and they fought to keep from trying to draw in a breath of air. Hearts pounding, each thought their aching lungs were about to burst when they dropped once more into the artificial abyss of nothingness, but this time unsure of where they were going, or if they would get there alive
THE SHALLOW WATERS of the Pennsylvania wetlands gradually became dry land, and Alpha team’s LAV increased speed as it moved effortlessly across the fields of stubby grass.