James Axler – Cold Asylum

At his elbow one of the blue screens began to flash a messageInstant Mat-Trans Return To Previous Location Destablized. Error Deprocessing In Ninety Seconds From Now.

In the corner a clock was already counting down.

“Seventy-five seconds. Ah, but my poor old brain is more addled than usual. It says the return facility isn’t working. Now, that means I lose any hope of rejoining my loyal and trusty companions. Sixty-two seconds and”

The beeping had stopped suddenly as its control circuit burned out.

Simultaneously the screen went blank.

Doc started to run, his huge Le Mat blaster flapping clumsily at his hip, ignoring the dozens of roaches that perished under his ancient boots.

“Thirty seconds,” he panted, pausing. “Perhaps it could be more like forty seconds. Then again, I suppose that a timing as low as twenty seconds is not impossible. Time is, after all, subjective, is it not?”

A digital repeater clock set above the door of the gateway showed nine seconds remaining. Doc noticed it through the bug-infested anteroom, and broke again into a frantic gallop for his very life.

But the combination of pulped insects and the damp lichen had made the floor treacherous and he stumbled and slipped, banging his shoulder against the frame of the door. Falling over, he saw the clock tick inexorably to zero.

“No.” He sighed.

“Reset after twelve-second malfunction,” said a disembodied comp voice. And the clock started to run down once again, starting from twelve.

Eleven.

Ten.

Doc was on his knees, roaches cluttering up his sleeve, but he ignored them, looking across the small room to the gray walls of the unit.

“Seven, six,” he said.

Powering himself forward in a racing dive, he skidded on his stomach into the gateway, turning with an alien skill and speed born of utter desperation and snatching at the door. He managed to claw it shut just as the digital repeater clock reached the single, ultimate figure “one.”

Doc was about to assume his usual doubled-over position on the floor, when he realized that he was still lying in the middle of a seething mass of coppery roaches.

“By the Three”

He pulled himself upright, wiping sweat from his forehead. He knew that it was extremely risky to start a jump while vertical, but he was unable to face the prospect of lying unconscious in the midst of that carpet of churning horror.

The mist gathered around his head, and the disks in the ceiling began to glow, those on the floor mainly obscured by the cockroaches. Doc Tanner felt his head beginning to swim, nausea gripping his intestines, and knew that, for better or worse, he was on his way again.

Chapter Five

It was closing on midnight, and the frontier gaudy was beginning to quiet down. Most of the raddled whores had gone off to finally get themselves some well-earned sleep after a busy night.

The thaw, carried on a warm westerly from the nearby Cific Ocean, had brought in the local trappers and a few miners and hunters. Many, like Abe, had been stuck in isolated camps or cabins during the recent severe blizzards, and had headed for the dubious delights of the nearest ville of Andromeda, a community of forty or fifty ramshackle houses, three stables, nine gaudies and a burned-down church. All were under the benevolent rule of the local baron, Big Rodge Peyton.

The bar of the largest gaudy, called the Hammer of War, was almost deserted. A scar-faced half-breed solemnly wiped up the puddles of spilled beer and gut-rot brew. In most establishments like the Hammer of War you’d expect to find a number of dealers, sharp-eyed and twitching, doing a good trade in jolt, the lethal cocktail of heroin, cocaine and mescaline that was the fatal bane of its users.

The Trader used to say that jolt made you feel like a new man and the new man always wanted more jolt.

But Abe had heard that Rodge was opposed to the drug, proud of running a clean ville, and had a short way of dealing with the dealers. A row of half a dozen severed hands, nailed above the bar in varying stages of mummification, proclaimed his policy better than any written sign could.