Keepers of the Sun
Keepers of the Sun
31 in the Deathlands series James Axler
Chapter One
The gateway chamber, a few miles north of Glenwood Springs in old Colorado, was flooded to knee height.
Ryan stood in the pink-walled armaglass hexagonal chamber, holding hands with Krysty Wroth. Doc Tanner was next to her, close to Jak Lauren. The albino teenager was leaning back, soaking wet from a fall into the water. Next to him stood J. B. Dix, folding his glasses and putting them into a pocket of his coat, preparing for the expected matter-transfer jump that would take them to an unknown and uncontrollable destination. The last of the six friends, Mildred Wyeth, was trembling with the cold, the beads in her plaited hair whispering against one another.
The door was firmly closed, which should have triggered the jump mechanism, but it seemed as if the flooding had done serious damage to the electrics.
They waited for the disks in the floor and ceiling to start glowingthe former just visible under the waterand for the mist to gather about their heads.
“Has anyone considered that if we fall unconscious, we might drown during the jump?” Doc asked.
But nothing happened.
Ryan opened and closed the door again.
A flash of silver light blazed from the control room, and every one of the lamps went out. In the silent dark, the water was still rising.
“We trapped?” Jak’s voice sounded hollow and flat, muffled by the water in the chamber.
“No. Door opens,” Ryan said. “Worst is we can still get out and climb back to the surface. Move on from there. Be a real pain in the ass.”
“Try it again,” J.B. suggested.
“Think the power’s all down,” Ryan said. But he remembered the words of the Trader, his old commander on the war wags Keep on trying until something better happens on by .
He picked his way across the floor, water lapping at his groin, and fumbled for the handle. He pushed it open a little way, conscious of the resistance from the flood, and pulled it shut as hard as he could.
At the third try, Ryan thought that he heard a more positive click from the lock, but he couldn’t be sure because of the noise of the water sloshing around inside the chamber.
“Quiet,” he said. “Think it might be working.”
Doc coughed. “Has anyone considered what I said a few moments ago?”
J.B. looked down at the water, almost invisible in the darkness. “Comes up past my knees,” he said. “Two feet. Two and a half feet. Plenty to drown in.”
“It’s starting,” Krysty warned. “Jump’s beginning. Feel it like a feather behind my eyes.”
“Everyone sit down, backs against the wall!” Ryan raised his voice, aware of the ceiling disks beginning to glow brightly, the ones below the water showing more dimly. “Arms around each other for support.”
Mildred exclaimed as she sat down, “Water’s colder by the second,” her voice already beginning to sound slurred and distant. “Comes up to my chin.”
“Hang on tight, friends.” Ryan sat and clutched at Krysty, his arm around her, pressing his back to the armaglass wall. The chill struck halfway up his chest. There was no longer any point in trying to save the blasters from the water.
A mist formed at the top of the hexagonal chamber, filtering down over them.
The usual feeling of having his brains curdled and whipped into oatmeal mush started to overcome Ryan as the mat-trans unit began to swing into grudging, reluctant life.
His last thought was to wonder if the flooding was going to affect the mysterious mechanics of the jump, take them to some other place or time.
Or take them nowhere, so that their molecules were sprinkled through the universe.
Ryan closed his eyes.
Chapter Two
Ryan opened his eye.
His first conscious thought was that the floodwater had disappeared. Secondly he saw that the color of the armaglass walls had changed from the pale salmon pink of the Colorado redoubt to a fiery orange that glowed like the rising sun.
He took several long, deep breaths, amazed at how well he felt. Normally a jump left everyone sick and prostrate, and sometimes generated hideous nightmares. This time he had no sense of time passing. His eye had closed, and there had been a kind of period of blackness. Then he opened his eye again, and the jump appeared to have been successfully completed.