The sec lock clicked as J.B. turned the dull steel handle of the door. He hesitated for a moment as he considered the value of the Uzi and the scattergun, going in the end for the machine pistol, sliding the catch onto full-auto.
“For what we are about to receive,” he muttered blasphemously, as he pushed the door open and stepped through.
“BY THE THREE KENNEDYS!”
Doc Tanner knew from bitter previous experience of jumps that the single worst moment was when you peeled back your eyelids to the harsh light of the new chamber.
The longer that could be postponed, the less vile it was likely to be.
His skin itched but he tried to ignore it, assuming that it was simply a new and unpleasant manifestation of the consequences of going from place to place via a mat-trans Unit.
“Damn and blast Project Chronos and Project Cerberus to Hades and back,” he whispered. During his brief and difficult stay in 2000, Doc, a brilliant scientist, had been used on both of these highly secret operations, involving sec clearances of at least B19 or above. Cerberus had been matter transfer, and Chronos had been time trawling. The former had been amazingly successful and the latter had been almost completely disastrous.
They had both been a part of what was known as Overproject Whisper, which, in its turn, had been a sector of the wide-ranging Totality Concept.
Doc had inched his left eye open, finding that the back of his right hand was close to his face. The skin was mottled with pale brown patches and covered in fine white hair.
“Silver threads among the gold, darling, I am growing old,” he sang, in his fine, melodious voice.
The words echoed around the chamber as though it were a vaulted marble tomb.
“A doleful thought,” he muttered. “This grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think” He opened both eyes, and looking around, the rest of his words faltered and faded away into a deep stillness.
He had been lying down, knees drawn up to his chin. Very slowly the old man straightened, his ancient boots creaking, joints cracking. As he sat up, Doc noticed that the walls of the unit were a smooth gray, speckled with tiny spots of green. It was an unusual combination, and he reached up and rubbed his hand over the armaglass, peering at the emerald stain on his fingers.
“Moss. Some sort of subterranean sphagnum, probably of the genus of” He stopped. “Come now, Theo, my dear fellow. Not the time for scientific theorizing. I think that it is time to set your pathetic and appallingly aged brain to work on the fascinating proposition that you have completed this jump alone and that Master Cawdor and the other good, good companions have ended upfinished up where?”
He was aware of more bothersome itching, around his midriff. For the first time since recovering, Doc looked down at his feet.
Without any conscious effort from any of his muscles, he suddenly found himself standing upright, hands held level with his shoulders, as though he were about to surrender to some unseen enemy. He was also attempting the shamanistic trick of removing both feet from the ground at the same moment.
The consequence was that he staggered around, banging into the smooth walls, getting smudges of green lichen on the shoulders of his black frock coat.
At the same time he was shouting out in shock and disgust, an incoherent stream of revulsion.
“Coleoptera in excelsis Oh, the horror, the horror Ortheopterous vileness”
Beneath his dancing, clattering boots, the floor seemed to be composed of innumerable tiny pieces of a shimmering mosaic, opalescent and glittering, with a dark coppery turquoise the dominant color.
A mosaic that was moving.
It was rustling with a ceaseless susurration, as though invisible hands were turning the countless pages of arcane grimoires with their invocations for devils and the spirits of the dead.
“Cockroaches!” Doc yelled, crushing dozens of the scuttling insects under his feet.
His unstable mind was tipped into underdrive by the horror that flooded the gateway, seeping through a narrow gap beneath the entrance. Without pausing for a moment to consider the possible repercussions of his action, Doc grabbed the handle and threw himself out through the door.