Krysty pulled a disgusted face. “Do you have to, Doc? It’s up to the elderly to show a good example to the young. Not teach them bad manners.”
“I stand reproached, ma’am,” Doc said. “Or, to be more accurate, I sit reproached.”
Krysty was next to him, leaving a space for Ryan to join her once he’d safely locked the door.
“Make sure you do it properly this time, lover. Don’t fancy another jump like the last one. I’m sure a good part of my brain cells are floating around somewhere in the deep black heart of cold space.”
Jak sat next to J.B., completing the circle. His white face was set like stone, and he kept his ruby eyes downward, staring at the floor.
“You all right?” Mildred asked.
“Been better. Thinking of Emma. Never had chance. Mutie power like that can only chill you.”
“Guess that’s right,” Krysty agreed. “Might be she’s better off, resting easy now.”
Doc laid his hand on his chest, a sure sign he was about to declaim. “It is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I ever known.” He smiled gravely. “The excellent Mr. Dickens said that.”
“Nice,” Jak said.
Ryan looked around, handing the Steyr rifle to Krysty to put on the floor. “We all ready? Good. Then here we go.”
He closed the door, making sure that the lock had clicked securely into place, triggering the mat-trans system, beginning the jump.
After sitting quickly next to Krysty, he stretched out his legs and leaned back against the wall, reaching his right hand to take her left hand tightly in it.
There was the usual faint humming noise, and the disks in the floor and ceiling started to glow brightly.
Ryan felt his brains beginning to blur and his vision grew dim. The familiar mist gathered high above him.
He closed his eye.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The sick darkness was passing.
Ryan steadied his breathing, conscious that the jump had been one of the easiest that he could remember. There had been none of the hideous gibbering dreams that sometimes swam out of the black horror of a bad jump.
He felt slightly sick, there was a throbbing pressure behind his eye and his stomach felt as though it had gone ten rounds with a rabid mule.
“Fireblast,” he whispered to himself, still not risking opening his eye.
Ryan was conscious that his hand was still being gripped by Krysty. That in itself was a sign that the mat-trans unit had functioned well.
All he needed to know now was whether everyone was all right, and where the jump had taken them.
He breathed in slowly, aware that the air felt very hot and moist.
And green.
Ryan opened his eye.
The End