Exile to Hell

Kane closed his eyes, and eternity hit him in the face.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The universe exploded in a blaze of unidentifiable colors and images. Kane had the sensation of falling forever into a bottomless abyss. A nightmare vision of distorted space, of tangled geometrical shapes so crazed and complex, it was impossible for his mind to absorb them.

A never-ending stream of brilliant spheres passed by him. He retained a measure of consciousness, and for some reason he knew each sphere was a separate universe, a separate reality. Universes upon universes, realities upon realities bobbing in the cosmic quantum stream like bubbles. He hurtled between them, following a complicated, twisting, curving course, yet at the same time it seemed as if he were flying in a straight line.

He had felt frightened and trapped before, but never had he felt so crushed and helpless and impotent as now, and his mind recoiled from the effort to comprehend this welter of insanity, this streaming rush of extradimensional space. He knew he was hurtling headlong into a cluster of madness. One of the bright spheres loomed up ahead of him, and he tried to swerve away from it, around it

Kane opened his eyes.

He struggled against dizziness and nausea, and his vision was clouded. A pain throbbed in his temples, like his hangover after his wine binge. His stomach quivered. Slowly his vision cleared, and he found himself slumped in a half-prone position against a wall. Below and above him, the glow faded from the hexagonal metal disks. He heard a moan.

Kane pushed himself up, looking around, seeing his companions stirring dazedly on the floor. Next to him, Brigid raked her hair out of her eyes, staring around unfocusedly. He asked, “You feel all right?”

She opened her mouth as if to answer, then bowed her head and dry-heaved violently for a moment. Nothing was ejected except a few strings of bile-laced saliva. Kane would have felt more sympathy for her if he himself felt better and if, at the moment, he didn’t hold her irrationally responsible for his physical condition. Then, dragging in a harsh breath, she said, “I feel awful.”

Grant said a little hoarsely, “Didn’t work, did it? Still in the same place.”

Domi knuckled her eyes, climbing to her knees. “No. Color is different. See?”

Kane hoisted himself unsteadily to his feet, putting a hand on the armaglass wall. It was tinted brown, not the silvery smoky hue of the walls in Mesa Verde. “Good God,” he muttered. “We made it. We’re someplace else.”

Awe fell upon the people, mingled with incredulity. There was a spell of silence that Grant broke.

“You mean we’ve been transportedto where?” His tone was hushed.

Brigid got to her feet. It was obvious she was struggling against her own feeling of unreality. “Montana was the destination lock. Redoubt Bravo. We traveled through fourth-dimensional space on a carrier wave, shortcutting the other three.”

Kane consulted his chron. It still worked, but showed that barely a minute had elapsed since he had last checked it. That didn’t seem reasonable, but he didn’t feel up to arguing about temporal anomalies. He moved to the door handle. “Let’s see where we are.”

The handle moved up easily, and the solenoid clicked open. Blaster in hand, he toed the door open and slowly eased out into an small anteroom. It was bare and unfurnished, holding only a polished table. On the other side of the table was a door. As his companions joined him, Kane examined the gateway chamber. It was a duplicate of the one they had entered, except for the color of the armaglass. The only other difference was a notice imprinted on the chamber wall, right above the keypad panel. In faded, maroon lettering, it read Entry Absolutely Forbidden To All But B12 Cleared Personnel. Mat-Trans.

Grant, Domi and Brigid followed Kane through the anteroom to the door. It was unlocked and he turned the knob, stepping through it into a room that stopped him in his tracks. It made the Intel section of the Magistrate Division look like a part-time hobbyist’s cellar.

The room was long, with high, vaulted ceilings. Consoles of dials, switches, buttons and lights flickering red, green and amber ran the length of the walls. Circuits hummed, needles twitched and monitor screens displayed changing columns of numbers.

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