Doc hefted his sword stick toward the sniggering little gunner. “There’s no call for that, Abraham.”
“Just a small joke, Doc,” he protested.
“Very small and not much of a joke, either. Rather like yourself.” He glowered at Abe. “I would have thought that an apology to the lady might be in order.”
“Let it be, Doc,” Sukie said.
Abe shook his head. “No. I’m sorry, Sukie. Stupe of me. Guess I’m strung up and wound over for the jump.”
One by one they filed into the six-sided chamber, all sitting in a circle, backs against the cool walls of silver armaglass. Here, in the heart of the mat-trans unit, there was ample lighting to see what was happening, powered by the original nuke gen that still worked diligently away somewhere in the bowels of the ancient redoubt.
Ryan waited outside, until everyone was comfortable, guns stashed safely. J.B. had taken off his glasses and folded them into one of his pockets, placing his fedora on the floor at his side. Then he locked his fingers with those of Mildred, sitting next to him. He winked up at Ryan.
Dean and Krysty had left a gap between them for when he’d closed the door and triggered the mechanism. Ryan noticed that Krysty’s sentient hair was now curled defensively and tightly at her nape, its bright flaming color dimmed by anticipation of the jump to come.
Nobody liked jumping.
Trader had entered as though he half expected to see a panther lying curled in one corner of the chamber. He sat, stretching his legs, settling the Armalite on his lap, his finger ready inside the trigger guard. He looked around him in what Ryan knew, from long memory, as being something as close to nerves as the old man would ever show.
Abe perched happily beside him, next in the circle to Mildred, with Doc on his other side.
He waited until Sukie had sat, tucking her booted feet beneath her, nervously brushing her fingers over the divided skirt. Doc reached for one of her hands and pressed his lips to it in a gentle honorable gesture.
“I promise and vow that no harm shall come to you, my dear lady, as long as I live to be your champion,” he said gallantry, receiving a watery smile in return. He sat, his knee joints cracking like firecrackers, and leaned back, closing his eyes.
Jak had entered the chamber like a cat, sitting in one corner, between Sukie and Krysty. He ran his long, pale fingers once through the mane of stark white hair and also closed his eyes and relaxed.
Ryan glanced behind him, from long habit, seeing that he was now quite alone, except for the banks of desks and tiny multicolored lights.
“Everyone ready?” he asked. No one answered. “Well, nobody not ready.” He stepped inside the glittering chamber, pausing for a last second, hand on the edge of the heavy door, ready to pull it tightly shut.
At the frozen fraction of a second when the lock clicked firmly shut, and he moved to sit down, Ryan’s eye caught the look on Sukie Smith’s face.
He couldn’t remember seeing such deep, superstitious terror on a human visage before. It was as though she had been dragged to the brink of the fieriest pit in hell and forced to stare into it.
At that moment Ryan knew that something was going to happen, and that he was the only one who could do anything to try to prevent it.
But Dean grabbed his one hand, Krysty clasping the other, and the moment had gone.
The metal disks above and below him started to glow brightly, and the lights outside seemed to have become much dimmer. There was a distant humming sound that somehow came from both inside and outside the chamber.
“No,” Sukie said very clearly and distinctly, as if she were rejecting an obscene suggestion from a drunk in a back alley of a frontier pesthole.
“What?” Doc blinked his eyes open, struggling to focus, his brain fighting for understanding.
The gray-white mist appeared at the top of the silver-walled chamber, writhing lower.
Ryan battled hard to keep his one eye open. He wrenched his hand free from his son, who mumbled something in protest. But Krysty had a grip like steel, and he could do nothing to free himself from her. He saw J.B. reacting, but it was all much to little and an eternity too late.
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