“Looks like the Sahara,” Mildred commented.
“Or the Gobi,” Doc put in.
Both places were possibilities. The scientists of the Totality Concept had evidently been determined to link every continent with gateway units. So far, their mat-trans journeys had taken them to Russia, Britain, Japan and Amazonia. As for America, it seemed that the entire country was honeycombed with the hidden installations.
Eyeing the sky, J.B. said, “Too overcast to make an accurate sextant reading. Mebbe we should wait until dawn.”
Doc hunched his shoulders in an exaggerated shudder. “I, for one, do not fancy a sleepover in an environment that may be percolating with every germ, virus and plague known to man. Or unknown to man.”
“We’re infected already,” Mildred said crossly. “That is, if we’re fated to be infected. Besides, our provisions are running low, and this looks to be the only grocery store for miles around.”
Gesturing to Dean, Ryan stepped out into the corridor. The lad moved the lever, and the huge door rumbled down. “Let’s see what we’ve got here,” Ryan said.
Chapter Four
As it turned out, there wasn’t much. What they had already seen of the installation was basically all there was to it.
In a kitchen, Jak found a few sealed ration packs in a cabinet. The freeze-dried food was tasteless, but it was nutritious. Their biggest worry was water, but when they tried the faucets, the liquid that flowed out smelled and tasted fresh and untainted. Even the hot-water taps worked, so the heating system was still functional.
Though smaller by far than almost every other redoubt they had visited, the place appeared to be in better condition. When Krysty commented on its comparative cleanliness, Mildred asked wryly, “What did you expect from doctors?”
“It’s not just that,” Krysty replied, a faint line of worry appearing between her eyes. “It almost looks like somebody has been taking care of this place. Fairly recently, too.”
A total of eighteen beds were divided between the three bunk rooms. The bathroom had five toilet stalls and three urinals. Though three shower heads projected from the tiled wall inside an enclosure, there was a six-and-a-half-foot-tall, bullet-shaped cylinder in one corner. Though everyone else was mystified by its purpose and function, Ryan was familiar with it.
“I saw one like it in the Anthill,” he explained. “The freezies called it a Medisterile unit.”
“What’s it for?” J.B. asked.
“A bug chaser,” Mildred said. “A decontamination chamber in case any of the personnel here were directly exposed to something toxic or infectious.”
Ryan nodded. “Yeah, the freezies stuck me in one. Guess they thought I had cooties.”
He didn’t elaborate further. The memories of his experiences inside Mount Rushmore still gave him occasional nightmares. Almost every predark evil had survived there, nurtured and coaxed by the deranged, cybernetically altered refugees from the days of the nukecaust. Only Mildred had penetrated the vast installation with him and witnessed its horrors firsthand.
They searched all the rooms. One thing they expected to find, but didn’t, were the skeletonized remains of the installation’s personnel.
“The folks here must’ve jumped out a long time ago,” J.B. said. “Doubt they went overland.”
In an office suite, they found six partition-enclosed desks, all of them equipped with comp terminals. Two gray steel file cabinets stood in a corner. Tacked on the wall, faded and yellowed with age, was a sign reading Geneticists Do Everyone Better.
Doc read the copy aloud and added in a monotone, “Ha. Inside humor.”
Mildred’s dark eyes scanned the walls.
“What are you looking for?” Dean asked.
“The standard slogan of predark offices,” she replied. “A sign that says You Don’t Have To Be Crazy To Work Here, But It Sure Helps.”
Ryan tugged on a drawer handle of one of the file cabinets. It slid open with surprising ease, though it was jammed with paper and notebooks. He pulled out one at random and read the label aloud. “Overproject Excalibur. Mission Invictus.”
Both Doc and Mildred glanced toward him with interest. “Invictus,” Doc intoned. “Latin for ‘invincible.'”
Opening the notebook, Ryan saw only columns of closely set type and mathematical formulas. Most of the words were long and difficult to pronounce, such as “adenosine triphosphate,” “deoxyribonucleic acid” and “haploid karyotypal.” Illegible handwritten notations were scrawled all around the columns. As he thumbed through the notebook, Ryan found a double-page spread containing the graphic of a twisting, ladderlike helix.