“Yeah, he’s gone,” Krysty replied.
Inside the shining blue of the tinted armaglass chamber, the unique heavy vapor created during and after a jump was dissipating and only a few sparks of electrical energy were zipping about, lightning blasts among the dunning clouds. Even through the thick armaglass, Ryan could see the gateway was empty. Running over, he pulled open the door anyway, lifting up the latch and pushing it inward. The unholy arid smell of burned ozone mixed with wet cloth that was always left behind after a jump assaulted his nostrils.
Ryan felt his teeth grind in frustration as he realized another odor was mixed with the gateway’s stench-the bitter smell of defeat. Jamaisvous was gone, long gone, the empty floor tiles creaking, mocking Ryan, as they cooled.
“Go after bastard,” Jak spit, stepping up the steps into the chamber behind Ryan. “Use button: Last Destination. Follow him.”
“Not a good idea,” Mildred called from outside the gateway interior. She was standing next to a flashing comp monitor screen on the lower floor where the control readouts were downloading.
“Worked before,” Jak insisted as he left the chamber.
“Won’t work. Not this time.” The stocky woman was leaning over one of the flat tables and staring at a monitor. Despite the uncertainty of the situation, J.B. shot her an approving look. Since she was still wearing the antique clothing provided by Jamaisvous, Mildred was displaying a generous sampling of cleavage in the low-cut dress.
Mildred didn’t notice. Perhaps if she had, the whitecoat’s words on dressing to attract your man would have come back to her.
Symbols and numerals flickered on the comp’s monitor screen, creating row upon row of single-spaced coded information. “I think Jamaisvous expected us to try and track his moves. If we go after him, there’s no telling where we might end up.”
“Or when,” Doc added disdainfully. He was now standing, leaning on Dean and on his swordstick, which Krysty had retrieved from where it had been thrown across the room.
“Exactly, or when. I’ll have to try and shut down the system, reboot and keep my fingers crossed everything comes back on-line. Otherwise, we’re either going to have to go native and share the island with the chupacabras, or else find a boat and sail back to Deathlands.”
“Doubt there’s many of the chupacabras left,” Krysty said. “We found the nest. They were coming out of the redoubt in El Yunque.”
Mildred pointed a finger at a block of blinking numbers in the upper right corner of the monitor. The numbers were in a constant state of motion, the numerals flickering as they changed back and forth. “He’s using some sort of randomizer here. I don’t know all the redoubt codes and destinations, but even if I did, we’d be rolling the dice with little chance of following him.”
A beeping sound caught the woman’s attention and she crossed over to the fallen CPU and monitor that Doc had broken. The screen was still functioning despite the large crack running down the face.
“What happened here?” she asked, kneeling as best she could, trying to avoid cutting her bare knees on the broken plastic and glass. “Doc?”
“Pulled it down…trying to get back to my feet.”
“I think you might have done more than knock over a computer,” she said,, tilting her head for a better look at the comp. “This one was acting as the guidance system for Jamaisvous’s destination. He didn’t enter a code manually at the gateway. He was operating it from a preset in here. You took it offline at the same time he jumped out of here and it switched over to the back-up system, the same one running the randomizer.”
“Meaning what, Millie?” J.B. asked.
“Meaning Jamaisvous is going to make his chron jump, but when or where I have no idea. I’d say wherever he ends up, it won’t be where he thought he was going.”
“What about us?” Dean asked. “We stuck here?”
“No. Like I said, I’ll have to try and shut all this down. Doc, you can help me. Once we reboot and bring it all back on-line, any presets should be erased.”