James Axler – Keepers of the Sun

“Sure would,” Ryan replied.

“And if something malfunctioned with the mechanism? What then? Then it will a long goodbye and a big sleep for us all. As Mr. Chandler would have said.”

Ryan didn’t know who this Chandler guy was, but Doc had a point.

It could be rather like sawing off a branch that you were sitting on.

“Mashashige won’t be invading Deathlands,” he said. “Nor will any of his men. Nor his brother.”

“But there’ll always be someone else who’ll find the house and the gateway,” Krysty protested.

Ryan sighed. It was tempting to take the grens with them back to Deathlands, where they could always find a use. But, Krysty was right. Everything that they’d seen in what remained of Japan pointed toward lethal problems over the next few years. And if the gateway should still function

There was an obvious risk to themselves, but a greater risk for the future if they didn’t act now.

“Use them in the house,” he decided. “Last burner and an implode. Last pair of implodes can go up in the elevator at the final moment before we go to make the jump. We can check that everything seems all right in the gateway first.”

Nobody argued against the plan.

When they stood in front of the elevator, Ryan almost expected Dean to appear and eagerly ask whether he could press the controls, as he always used to. During the exciting time in Japan, Ryan had put his son to the back of his mind. Now they were heading home again, he wondered how the boy was getting on up in his Colorado school.

But he set that aside and pushed in the code himselfsix, two, eight, three, four and one.

The door slid open and he stepped in, pressing the button to hold it open. “J.B., use your burner and the implode. Jak, keep yours for the last minute. Set them for the full twenty and then get in quick.”

The Armorer set the timer on the scarlet-and-blue implode and lobbed it out through the interior door into the hallway, following it immediately with the burner. He closed the doors and stepped smartly into the elevator.

Ryan pushed the Down button, and the cage began to drop.

“Quake now and we’re deep in the ordure,” Mildred commented.

Ryan was looking at his chron, counting down the seconds. It was on eleven when they reached the bottom of the shaft and the door hissed smoothly open.

As they were entering the mat-trans control area, the tiny digits flickered around to twenty.

There was a faint vibration from above them, and a few flakes of plaster fell from the cracked ceiling. Ryan noticed even at a cursory glance that the control area had suffered from the recent quakes with some consoles dark and several ceiling lights off.

One thing that had been worrying him was how they would actually jump to Deathlands, whether the ordinary last-destination button code would do the trick.

But he noticed something they’d missed on the way out. There was a sheet of paper taped to the door by the control panel, with a list of American regions on it.

“Want me to do the last grens?” Jak asked.

“Sure.” The earth trembled and another light went off. “Do it now. Krysty, we could copy this list, take it with us, and see if it operates from other gateways. Give us control over where we want to jump to.”

Doc shook his head. “I fear, my dear friend, that it would be fruitless. The codes differ from redoubt to redoubt. I remember that from my time with the white-coats. Just pick a place and enter it.”

Jak came running back. “Sent them up in elevator,” he said. “Got about fifteen. Closed outer door. Give protection. But should go quick.”

“Right.” Ryan scanned the list. “How about Tennessee? Haven’t been there for a while.”

“Do it, lover,” Krysty said nervously. “Got a bad feeling that something’s going wrong.”

Like an echo to her words, they all felt a rumble that made the floor shake.

“Grens,” Mildred said hopefully.

Jak sniffed, counting to himself. “Not time. Coming up Now.”

They all heard the distinctive noise of the pair of implode grens, far above them, though it was muffled by the sec doors into the gateway.