“Indubitably, my dear.” Doc quietly took his leave, holstering the Le Mat long enough to draw one of the extra torches from the backpack he carried.
Racks of books filled the built-in shelves behind the desk. Glancing at the titles, Krysty was surprised that most of them had to do with physics and biology. She’d expected them to be military manuals.
She looked at the withered skeleton. Flame light reflected from the brass name badge pinned above the right pocket of the blouse.
“Okay, mister,” Krysty said, sheathing her blaster and removing the name badge, “who were you?” She had to blow sand out of the letters to read them.
Colonel Henry Walker.
The torchlight illuminated scars on the laminated wood desktop. Krysty’s trained eye told her they were gouges from bullets. She moved the torch, seeking a new angle, then pulled aside the dead man’s uniform blouse.
Cracked ribs showed where the bullets had gone through, perhaps a dozen of them. At least one of them had severed the spinal cord, paralyzing the man at once while his killers finished the job.
Doc stepped back into the room with his torch blazing. He looked down at the dead man. “It appears this poor soul died alone and friendless.”
“Friendless, at any rate.” Krysty pointed toward the empty holster at his side. “Someone stuck around long enough to relieve him of his side arm.” She straightened and glanced at the computer setup on the desk.
A slight flicker flared to brief life in the lower right corner.
“Computer’s up,” she said, leaning forward. She tapped the keys experimentally.
Something hummed inside the monitor casing, then popped. A soft glow emanated from the screen as the computer came online. A selection of programs delineated as small rectangles with words under them came into view against the light blue field.
“It works,” Doc said softly.
“Mebbe.” Krysty looked at the menu offered, but none of it made any sense. “Could be you’ll understand more of this than I do, Doc.”
“Then allow me, my dear.”
The screen changed as Doc sorted through the various menus. “Take a look around, dear lady, and see if you can find anything that might pass as a code book. Being of the regimented class, I believe that dead fellow could have left a journal of sorts that might provide a clue as to what procedures to use to look at the sort of files inaccessible to the casual observer.”
“Sure.” Krysty took a step back and turned her attention to the bookshelves while Doc sorted through the desk drawers.
“If nothing turns up,” Doc added, “we can always have Mildred take a go at this. I daresay she is more versed in these infernal contraptions than I.”
That was because Mildred Wyeth had been in the twentieth century longer than Doc Tanner.
Krysty shifted her torch and peered through the smoky haze at the books on the shelves. Upon closer inspection, she noticed that stray bullets had ripped the spines off some of the books. One of them sparked with a metallic intensity.
A bullet had smashed flush against the leather spine, ripping away a chunk the size of a quarter. Metal and circuitry was twisted inside. Krysty touched the book. Thick and hard, with edges that remained squared and true, it was heavier than she would have guessed.
She moved toward the shelves to get a better grip, then pulled hard. On the other side of the wall behind the bookshelf, machinery clanked and whirred. A feeling of wrongness and danger ghosted through Krysty’s mind.
The floor spun before she could act. She lost the torch as she grabbed the shelves to keep her balance and reached for her blaster. She had the barest impression of Doc turning toward her in shock, her name on his lips, then light and sight were eclipsed by the closing of the hidden door.
Working hard to keep her head, Krysty pulled on the book again. But nothing happened. She cursed beneath her breath, not wanting to interfere with her hearing as she turned to survey her new surroundings with both hands wrapped around her blaster, the hammer back.
Only Stygian darkness greeted her.