James Axler – Keepers of the Sun

“Right. Places, everyone. Ready on the green lever, Doc.” Ryan lay flat on the concrete floor, pressing his face against the bottom of the sec door.

Mildred and J.B. went to the left of the door, Krysty and Jak to the right.

“Now,” Ryan said quietly.

Doc slowly and carefully inched up the green lever, biting his lip with concentration, listening for the clicking of the operating mechanism. Ryan actually felt the slight tremble through the floor as the vanadium-steel sec door began its slow upward progress.

Doc had moved the lever only enough to start the door moving very slowly, and he now placed one hand elegantly on his hip, posing like a Regency dandy.

“Watch it, Doc,” Ryan warned, trying to see through the tiny gap as it increased with infinitesimal slowness. “Don’t let it go too high.”

But Doc was off in a world of his own, waving one hand dreamily in the air as though conducting an invisible string quartet, the other hand leaning negligently on the green lever, his whole body swaying to and fro.

The door was moving up a little faster, already three or four inches from the floor. Ryan hadn’t yet been able to see anything under it and he looked away, calling out another warning to Doc.” Stop it now!”

The sudden shout, echoing flatly through the mat-trans unit, made Doc jump. He grabbed down at the lever, off-balance, and his boots slipped, throwing him to the floor.

Out of his control, the sec door began to rise inexorably and more rapidly into the air, leaving Ryan sprawled helplessly beneath it.

Chapter Four

Most people would have lost their nerve and tried to roll back inside the control room to a specious safety. But once Ryan saw that the sec door was rising out of control, he immediately rolled outside into the passage, blaster ready, head turning both ways to face the danger.

The corridor wasn’t like most of the others he’d seen. It was much more narrow, with a lower ceiling, and the lights were of a different design.

More importantly there was nobody there.

Behind him, Ryan could hear Doc’s voice, high and plaintive. “I’m most frightfully sorry, my dear friend. My foot slipped, and then my hand lost contact with the piece of apparatus that controls the door and”

“Quiet, Doc. Doesn’t matter. No harm done.”

“Nobody there?” J.B. said, who’d moved quickly beneath the ascending door, ready to back up Ryan in any firefight.

“No. Krysty, you feel anyone?”

“Yeah. Close by. Not on top of us but” She hesitated. “Moving slowly away.”

The others had joined Ryan.

“Different sort of setup here,” Mildred commented. “Those overhead lights aren’t the same as in the other redoubts we’ve jumped to.”

“Smaller,” Jak said, stooping to look at the floor. “Been used a lot. Got sort of reddish dust.” He straightened and sniffed. “Air’s different, too.”

Ryan had already noticed that. He stood and dusted himself down. “No air-conditioning working down here,” he said. “Could be that the redoubt machinery has partly malfunctioned. Though all the consoles were operating properly.”

To the left, the corridor ended in a blank wall, which was a feature of almost every mat-trans unit that they’d encountered. The passage itself was no more than eight feet wide and about the same height with a slightly curved roof.

There was a number of scratches and deeper gouges in the rough stone of the walls.

“It doesn’t feel right,” Krysty said. “Not usual.”

“That just because of the size or the air or what?” Ryan looked at her. “You feel something else?”

Krysty nodded slowly. “Can’t quite put my finger on it, lover. Nearest I felt was that dacha in the woods outside Moscow. Not a redoubt.”

J.B. licked his lips. “That would tie in with the possibility that we’ve somehow jumped to Japan.”

Doc coughed. “Did I offer my apologies for muddling the opening of the security portal, Ryan? If not, then please accept my heartfelt”

Ryan shook his head brusquely. “Let it lie where it fell, Doc. Past’s past. Next time be more careful. Learn from the mistake. You can’t do more than that.”

“I do have some thoughts in the chances of this being old Japan.”