He landed awkwardly on his knees, yelling out in shock and pain, hearing Ryan’s voice from behind him as he called out an urgent warning.
“Rather too little and rather too late, my dear old companion,” he tried to say. But something seemed to have happened to his normally rich, deep voice, forcing it up a couple of squeaking octaves so he sounded like a rather irritable bat. So Doc contented himself with lying still on the concrete until his senses returned.
He could hear the others, shouting to him and to one another in a hubbub of confused noise, until Ryan’s voice rose above the others, calling for silence.
“Doc?”
“Yes.” He cleared his throat and tried again. “Yes, Ryan, my dear fellow. I am here.”
“Stay dead still, Doc. Don’t try and move at all until we know what the fuck’s happened.”
“I believe that John Barrymore’s supposition has come true. I touched a wire and then, as I dived for safety, something swung by above my head.”
“What?”
“I have no idea, my dear friend. But it felt like the pendulum in Mr. Poe’s enchanting Gothic tale. Missed me by somewhat less than a whisker.” He put his hand up and touched a loose hank of hair and a warm wetness that had to be blood. “Indeed, it actually has scratched me but I am well enough.” Still he felt very much like rolling on his hands and knees to be sick. His breath fluttered in his chest, and he could feel himself trembling from shock.
“Just stay still. I’ve got a self-light. I’ll come slow and easy to try and find out what happened.”
“Be careful,” Doc whispered.
He heard Krysty’s voice, echoing his own warning to her lover.
“Be fine,” Ryan said reassuringly. “Rest of you stay back here.”
Doc found that his eyes were quickly becoming accustomed to the dark around him and he could see Ryan and the others silhouetted against the overhead lights farther back down the corridor.
He turned his head and stared directly above him, toward the invisible ceiling. He screwed up his eyes, calling to Ryan. “I believe I can see the trap. My jest about the pendulum now seems less droll. There is some sort of ax suspended from wires that I triggered as I walked by.”
“Think I can see it, Doc. Wait a There, that’s better.” He heard a scratching sound and saw the flare of gold from a self-light held in the one-eyed man’s right hand.
“By the Three Kennedys!” The tiny match gave enough light for Doc to be able to see clearly what hung above him, still swinging silently to and fro.
It was a large ax-blade, with a half-dozen needle-sharp bayonets strapped to it for extra weight and malice, strung onto a narrow leather strap that was fixed to a ringbolt in the ceiling. A thin length of wire glittered down the wall to where Doc had broken it as he walked past.
“I see it, Doc. Reckon it’s safe enough for you to get up. Keep clear of the edge.”
“A very sword of Damocles,” Doc said, standing and steadying himself for a moment with a hand on the rough concrete wall. He stooped again to pick up his fallen swordstick, feeling oddly wobbly and dizzy.
“You all right, Doc? Got a little blood coming down the side of your head, above your left ear.”
“A mere nick, Ryan.” The self-light went out, and they were in darkness again. “A nick in time saved nine, as my dear old mother used to say.”
THERE DIDN’T SEEM to be any further malevolent booby traps left behind by the fleeing occupants of the redoubt, but everyone moved more slowly and with more care.
The sec door into the section for living accommodations stood open.
“That bit with label for ART is close to us,” Jak said. “Could go find out what is.”
“Alternate Reality Technology,” Mildred guessed.
“Hey, that sounds possible.” Krysty glanced at Ryan. “What do you reckon, lover?”
“I think we put first things into first place. Let’s sort out what we’ve got here.”
It was a typical layout that they’d come across several times before, only on a slightly larger scale than usual.