Krysty laughed. “You can go and piss in complete safety. J.B. checked it out and reported back that it’s a completely spider-free zone.”
“Explored any farther?”
“No. J.B.’s taken charge. He and Trader” She hesitated. “Well, they had a kind of frank and free discussion. J.B. won it. They finally agreed not to go recce any farther until everyone felt up to it. Bad jump for all of us.”
“Second one always is.”
Doc sniffed and wiped his nose with his sleeve. “Oddly, I can recommend making a jump while already deeply unconscious. I feel better than I normally do after a matter transfer.”
“What sort of condition is the redoubt in?” Ryan tried to sit up, moaning at the stab of pain across his temples.
“Lie down, lover.”
“Felt like someone pushing my eye out of its socket from inside,” he commented.
“Just rest. Mildred reckons it’s a good idea for us all to take a break after the two jumps so close together, before we explore and then think about leaving the complex.”
“Makes sense. Can’t say I feel like naked mud wrestling with a stickie just yet.”
Doc sat up. “Mud wrestling! I wonder whether I ever mentioned the occasion that I was in Montana, not a hundred miles from the Little Big Horn, and there were two ladies of the nightsoiled dovesin a huge bath of mud and neither of them”
Ryan held up a hand. “Some other time, Doc. Right now, I’d like an hour’s sleep.”
“Of course, of course, dear friend. May choirs of angels sing thee to thy rest.”
But Ryan’s good left eye was already closed and he was snoring gently.
WHEN HE AWAKENED everyone was sitting or lying on adjacent beds in the dormitory. The room was smaller than the one in the previous redoubt, and the air smelted notably fresher and cleaner.
Mildred saw him wake and came to check his pulse. “Back to around normal. You got the healthiest constitution of anyone I ever knew, Ryan.”
“It’s eating lots of greens and going to bed with the sun,” he replied.
“Sure.”
Trader had stood, shuffling his feet restlessly. “Can we get moving?”
J.B. also stood. “We’ve checked out the wall plans here, Ryan. One of the biggest redoubts we’ve come across. All the signs are that it was well evacuated. There’s writing on the map shows nuke damage to the southern flank, but that’s a good long way away from us. Seems the Ruskies’ rockets took out the motor pool and missile stores. Also the armory. But the way it looks, it was a double-clean stripping. So there probably wouldn’t have been much left to interest us.”
It was one of the longest speeches that Ryan had ever heard J.B. make.
“How about the main entrance?”
“Seems clear from what the map shows. The passages, as far as we carried out a recce, haven’t been sealed at all, so, when everyone’s ready, we can go take a look.”
Ryan swung his legs over the side of the bed. There was another jagged flare of pain behind his eye, but it subsided quickly. “Far as I’m concerned, let’s get to it.”
THEY STARTED MOVING in a skirmish line through the silent, long-abandoned corridors.
Progress was uneventful.
The Armorer’s description had been as concise and precise as Ryan expected. The whole place had been swept clean before being evacuated.
The plan of the redoubt showed where someone had scrawled in faded crimson paint across an entire section, writing the simple message Nuked.
The way to the main entrance led them up several levels, through intersections and past dining and medical areas. Mildred had been interested in the latter, but they all accepted that this wasn’t going to be one of the complexes where they’d come across some long-buried treasure.
Finally they passed through a number of raised sec barriers, and along the sides of some armored and fortified MG emplacements into the vaulted hall that lay just within the main doors.
“Fucking ginormous!” Trader exclaimed. “I have never seen sec doors of that size.”
They were sixty feet high and painted dark green. To Ryan’s relief, he saw that there was the usual basic entry and exit code control at the side.