“I know all that, Dad, don’t I?”
Ryan smiled grimly at his son. “I hope you do. No point in waiting until there’s been serious grief for all of us to find out you’d forgotten something important.”
“Sure, Dad. Sorry.”
“Never apologize,” J.B. began, starting to quote one of the Trader’s favorite sayings.
“It’s a sign of weakness,” everyone else chorused, including Dean himself.
“There appears to be something written on the wall, just here,” Doc observed.
“Graffiti?”
“I think so, my dear Krysty. But it is carved small and my sight is not, frankly, quite as good as once it was.”
The woman moved across to look at the spidering scratches in the cream-painted concrete. Everyone else waited, Dean with his hand already gripping the lever.
” ‘ Un lobo no muerte a otro,'” Krysty read slowly. “Is that some sort of Mex?”
“Read it again,” Doc said. “I believe that it might be Spanish.”
” Un lobo … That’s a wolf, isn’t it? No muerte a otro. Muerte is death.”
Doc put his head on one side as he considered the graffiti. “A wolf will not kill one of will not kill another wolf,” he said finally.
“Funny seeing a foreign saying.” Mildred looked around at the others. “Any of you ever seen anything like that before in any other redoubt?”
Ryan answered for all of them. “Not like that. I guess it means that you don’t turn on your own kind. Man doesn’t chill his own brother.”
“Yeah.” Krysty stared at it. “Must’ve been done in the last days before skydark.”
“Last hours,” the Armorer suggested.
“Least no sign of Japanese killers.”
Ryan looked at Jak. “True. Won’t have to watch out for an ambush with sword or arrow from those What was the name you said they had, Doc?”
” Samurai . Professional warriors with a strong code of honor. I remember their names. Takei Yashimoto had his bow broken by Dr. Wyeth here. And I think I wounded him in the face with the Le Mat. The one that trusty Ryan slew was called Tokimasha Yashimoto, brother to the first named.”
“This might be a part of Deathlands that they haven’t reached,” Ryan said, “though we’ve been hearing rumors of these Oriental bandit gangs all over the store.”
It was only on their recent jump to Washington Hole that they had seen clear proof that the rumors were true. The companions also had an overwhelming suspicion that the murderous samurai were also using the gateway network.
The graffiti was forgotten.
“Ready, Dad?”
Ryan crouched, holding the cocked SIG-Sauer in his right hand.
“Take it away,” he said.
The lever moved upward. “Quite stiff,” Dean hissed. “Doesn’t seem to Yeah, it’s going.”
They all heard the familiar sound of gears beginning to operate, perhaps for the first time in nearly a century, working in their sealed unit, using hydraulics to lift the enormous weight of the sec door.
“It’s so massive,” Mildred whispered as the first tiny crack of daylight appeared.
“Take a low-yield, high-penetration nuke missile to blow it open,” the Armorer replied. “Nothing less than that would have any effect on it.”
“Stop,” Ryan ordered. “Hold it there, Dean.” The movement ceased immediately, leaving a gap of about six inches between the bottom of the sec door and the concrete floor.
“What do you see, lover?” called Krysty, crouched behind one of the rows of control consoles.
“I see green.”
“Green?”
“Yeah. Just like that was the very first thing I noticed when I came around from the jump. That smell in the air was warm, wet and green.”
“You mean green paint? Or green plants and stuff?” J.B. called.
“Plants and stuff. But” Ryan flattened his face against the gritty floor, pressing his good right eye to the gap. “I don’t see any corridor out there. No sign at all of any walls or even a ceiling.”
“Must be covered with lichen,” Mildred suggested.
Now, even through the narrow crack at the bottom of the door, they could all taste the strong flavor of humidity and green vegetation.
“It is damnably reminiscent of the tropical hothouse,” Doc said, breathing deeply. “Perhaps we have found ourselves in a redoubt that had its own green conservatory. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility.”