He heard movement and glanced around, seeing Jak moving toward him. The albino crouched, giving a thumbs-up signal. J.B. was at his shoulder, showing Ryan the two-minute warning for the grens.
When the explosion came it was surprisingly muted, but it still blew out windows and doors all through that section of the research wing.
Ryan could smell the fire from the burners, seeing thick black chemical smoke already starting to billow out into the rest of the complex.
“Let’s go, people!” he shouted.
THEY ESCAPED through the damaged window near the cells, out into a cold, gray day. The snow lay packed and deep, but it had a frozen crust and walking wasn’t difficult.
It took them less than twenty unchallenged minutes to make their way around the outside of the institute and up toward the guarded sec barrier on the hillside at the neck of the valley. Ryan had anticipated trouble there, but the five or six sec men came out, hands high, weaponless.
“We saw what happened down there,” said the oldest of them, pointing to the pall of smoke that hung over the white-walled building. Flames were already glowing through the roof, and a number of figures could be seen filing out of the destruction. “We got no quarrel no more with you.”
“That’s good,” Ryan said. “You best go and join the others.”
As soon as the sec men were on their way, he led the friends down the far side of the steep blacktop, on their way toward the redoubt.
DOC HAD BEEN in high spirits as they picked their path through the wintry landscape toward the redoubt, singing snatches from old half-remembered Christmas carols. Now that they were about to make the next jump, his good nature had abandoned him once more.
“I wish that we could simply make our way around this blighted country as God intended. We have seen in the last few days the sorry results of man setting himself over Nature. By the three Kennedys, but I would be a happier man if these matter transmitters had never been invented and Overproject Whisper had died along with the malignant brains that invented it.”
“Come on, Doc,” Krysty said. “Think of the excitement of never knowing where you’re going to end up.”
He patted her on the shoulder. “Better to travel hopefully, than to arrive, my dearest lady? We shall see.”
They all eventually walked through the control room and into the gateway chamber itself, with its dark gray armaglass walls. Krysty shuddered as she sat between Dean and Mildred, leaving a space beside her for Ryan to occupy, after he’d closed the outer door and triggered the jump mechanism.
“Hope we don’t all end up getting cloned,” she said.
Mildred laughed, easing the tension. “I’m with you on that. Even one Doc Tanner’s one too many.”
Before the old man could reply, Ryan was with them, the door firmly shut.
He sat, feeling the familiar swirling in his brain, like feathery, exploring fingers. The disks in floor and ceiling began to glow, and the white mist appeared in the chamber.
He reached and clasped Krysty’s hand in his, feeling the warmth and reassurance of her touch.
Ryan closed his eye and entered the darkness.