The high-ceilinged room beyond the sec door wasn’t a redoubt. It was cramped, barely twelve by fifteen. A master control console ran the length of the east wall. Liquid-crystal displays and glass-covered readouts blinked and flashed purposefully. Everything still functioned, all the circuitry still drawing on the nearly eternal power provided by nuclear engines.
The far wall was dominated by the familiar arrangement of armaglass slabs enclosing the mat-trans chamber. The semitranslucent armaglass was tinted a white yellow, the hue of old cream. For a reason he could never fathom, the original engineers of the gateways had decided that color-coding the armaglass enclosures was the simplest method of differentiating the various chambers around the globe. Ryan checked the door to the chamber, pulling up on the handle. The counterbalanced weight clicked, and the door swung outward.
The mat-trans unit, like most of the others they had seen, was a six-sided chamber. The floor consisted of an interlocking pattern of raised metal disks, and the same pattern was duplicated on the ceiling. Though both Doc and Mildred had speculated on the fundamental operating principles behind the units, it still seemed like magic to Ryan, Jak, J.B., Dean and Krysty.
Ryan understood, in theory, that the mat-trans units required a dizzying number of maddeningly intricate electronic procedures, all occurring within milliseconds of one another, to minimize the margins for error. The actual conversion process was automated for this reason, sequenced by an array of computers and microprocessors. Though he accepted at face value that the machines worked, he had never grown accustomed to the concept that minds that created such stupendously complicated devices couldn’t have found a way to prevent the nukecaust.
The gateway’s destination and coordinate lock codes had long ago vanished. Though a control keypad was affixed to the chamber door, it responded only to the LD—Last Destination—button. This key would, if pressed within thirty minutes of a successful jump, reactivate the gateway and return them to their original transmission point.
Ryan eased the heavy door to the chamber all the way open, allowing the rest of his party to enter. Once inside, everyone knew what to do, sitting on the floor disks in their usual positions. No matter how many times they had done it, the seconds before a gateway jump were always anxious. They seldom knew where—or into what situation—they would materialize.
As was his habit, J.B. took off his fedora and carefully stowed his glasses in an inner pocket of his coat. Mildred took his hand. Doc sat beside her, laying the ebony swordstick at his side. Jak sat cross-legged against the wall with Dean next to him.
After everyone was ready, Ryan pulled the door shut and triggered the jump mechanism. He sat next to Krysty, putting an arm around her.
The disks in the floor and ceiling exuded a glow, and a low, almost subsonic hum began, quickly rising in pitch to a whine. The noise changed, sounding like the distant howling of gale-force winds.
The glow brightened, and a mist, shot through with flashing sparks, formed below the ceiling disks and rose from the floor, thickening to a fog and swirling all about them.
Ryan closed his eye.
Chapter Three
Ryan! Help me! Ryan!
Ryan opened his eye, galvanized by the terror in Krysty’s voice, her words echoing within the walls of his skull. Bounding to his feet, he reached for the door to the gateway chamber. Jerking up the handle, he shouldered it open, realizing distantly that the heavy armaglass weighed no more than a thin layer of cloth.
The door opened directly into a long, broad hall that ran away until it grew indistinct in the murky distance. He raced along the corridor, not allowing himself a moment to clear the confusion in his thoughts. The corridor walls were lined by flickering torches in metal sconces. The floor, walls and ceiling were of stone, cut into huge square blocks. The walls on either side of him were covered with brightly colored friezes, portraying olive-skinned men and women. They wore filmy robes, fantastic headpieces and many jeweled ornaments and were depicted mostly in positions of lovemaking.
The images flickered and changed whenever Ryan tried to focus his eye on them. As he ran past, it almost seemed that the women in the friezes bore Krysty’s face or hair or eyes. The women smiled as their bodies were fondled by various male partners, some of them with handsome, finely chiseled features and others that looked more like dogs or reptiles.