Ryan had stood everyone down from double red, and they had all holstered their weapons. There seemed to be little doubt that the complex was now totally uninhabited, and there was no threat from anything living.
He sniffed. “Smells more like an underground cave than a redoubt.”
“Decay. Rotting.” Mildred pulled a face. “Sort of stink that lies on your belly and makes you want to puke. If it gets much worse, we could have problems.”
“How?” J.B. asked.
“Poisonous gases, John. Workmen who are involved in digging deep shafts and tunnels sometimes get overcome by some very nasty substances. And they die. Often get this smell, but it covers up the danger lying below.”
“You get any warning?” Ryan sniffed again, trying to decide whether he was beginning to feel a little lightheaded, unable to be sure.
“No. Safest here is for us all to string out into a line and take it slow and easy. Then, if the guy out front goes down, the others get a warning and they can probably take deep breaths and drag him out to safety. The pockets of gas are likely to be very localized.”
It was obviously sensible advice and Ryan implemented it, taking point himself.
Now that he was aware of a potentially lethal threat, Ryan moved much more cautiously, constantly stopping to check his own reactions.
But the air seemed breathable, though foul, and he eventually found himself in the passage that led downhill to the locked sec door of the gateway.
“FOUND THE WATER,” he said, his voice drifting back to the others.
“Much?” Krysty called, walking second in line about fifty paces behind him. “Enough. Plenty.”
“Safe to join you?” Mildred shouted, her voice sounding flat, reaching him from a dark section of corridor.
“Yeah, feel alright. Bit sick. Air’s not that great.” They joined Ryan, staring at the motionless expanse of black water that filled the corridor in front of them. “How much farther gateway?” Jak asked. “Close. I’m certain it’s around the next bend. I remember that locked door we just passed.” Ryan tested it with his foot. “Starts shallow, but it’ll get deeper as the floor drops.”
“The sixty-four-thousand question is whether it has penetrated into the actual mat-trans chamber.” Doc whistled softly. “If it has, then goodbye will be all she wrote.” Ryan considered options.
“If it’s flooded we can’t jump. Climb back. Find the armawag, if nobody’s gotten to it first. And move on until we can find a gateway we’ve used before.”
J.B. rubbed at his chin. “If it isn’t flooded already and the sec door’s holding it back, then we open the door and it pours in. That could be unpleasant if the electrics start shorting out white we’re knee-deep in Old Muddy.”
“All the consoles and the main controls are at least waist high, are they not?” Doc closed his eyes, trying to work out the problem. “All to do with liquid flow dynamics and cubic Say there’s about sixty feet. Pythagoras says that means a volume of approximatelytwo hundred million gallons. No, that surely can’t be right. Oh, I see where my fuddled brain made” Finally Doc opened his eyes again.
“Well?” Ryan said.
Doc looked at him. “My guess is that opening the sec door will certainly produce a flood of some dimension. Important to slide it up gently so that it doesn’t come tearing in with a heated rush. My calculations indicate that the level might not reach the key controls on the gateway.”
“Might!” Mildred exploded. “What the! What does ‘might’ mean, Doc?”
The old man smiled and patted her on the shoulder. “It means that the game is afoot and we shall try to prove the case, my dear Doctor. I believe that no great harm is particularly likely to come to us.”
“Still some water,” Jak said, pointing at the sheen on the wall, where the flow still trickled down, joining the other uncounted gallons.
“Means we could get trapped, Doc,” Ryan said.
“I think not.”
Ryan bit his lip, sighing. “Let’s try for it,” he said.
THE WATER WASN’T AS COLD as he’d expected, only a little below blood heat. But it quickly grew deeper, reaching his waist as Ryan led them around the corner, in sight of the sec door to the mat-trans unit.