“O’Brien made no reference to any infectious organisms,” Mildred assured him. “I think we’re safe. Besides, we’ve got the medicines, right?”
“Right,” he replied, but his tone was dubious.
Inside the mat-trans unit, the seven people found places on the interlocking pattern of raised floor disks. Ryan stood by the door, waiting for his friends to position themselves before he pulled it shut to initiate the automatic jump mechanism.
“Ready?”
His party responded in affirmatives, and Ryan swung the door to. He quickly crossed the chamber and sat down between Dean and Krysty. He waited for the subsonic hum to begin, for the hexagonal disks to exude their familiar glow. He waited. And waited. And nothing happened.
Everyone’s eyes darted back and forth, first in puzzlement, then in a growing fear. Ryan returned to the armaglass door, opened it and pulled it firmly shut. Nothing happened—no whine, no glow, no spark-shot mist.
He pushed open the door again, carefully inspecting the circuitry actuator on the lock, making certain full contact was achieved. He slammed it closed and stood silently in baffled anger.
With a sigh, Mildred pushed herself to her feet. “I think we get the idea. We can’t leave this place by the gateway.”
“Thing worked before,” J.B. grunted, moving to the door and shouldering it open. He examined the circuitry carefully, running his fingers over it. “Damned if I can find anything wrong.”
“Hell Eyes,” Krysty said, a strange calm in her voice. “He’s interfering with the machinery.”
Ryan turned toward her. Despite her tone of placid acceptance, her eyes were green pools of dread. He felt that dread, too, and the vision of a crimson-eyed skull flashed into his mind. He fought it back.
“Hell Eyes, my ass,” he rasped fiercely. “However the bastard was made, he’s just another mutie.”
Swinging the door wide, Ryan stamped out of the chamber. “It’s probably daylight by now. Let’s take a look-see outside.”
He stalked through the anteroom, the control room, past the hatches and down the corridor in a fast, angry stride. Reaching the sec door before the others, he threw up the lever, his emotions making him reckless.
The door creaked and squeaked upward. Ryan fisted his SIG-Sauer, ready to trigger it at anything with legs, no matter how few or how many. A flood of brilliant sunlight all but blinded him.
Shielding his eye from the sun’s assault, he stepped cautiously out of the recessed doorway. As his vision adjusted to the glare, he saw a dead land stretching away in drifting dunes of ocher and saffron. Judging by the position of the sun, he figured it was only a few hours after dawn. The air was already parched and hot.
The heat was deceptive, almost comfortable at first. Then Ryan began to sweat profusely, globes of perspiration springing to his brow and body. Within moments, he felt like a walking swamp.
His companions joined him, blinking and grimacing at the high temperature. Ryan turned around to study the exterior of the redoubt. It was a gray half dome, nearly buried on all sides by sand drifts.
“Where is this place?” Krysty asked.
J.B. took the compact sextant from the pocket of his coat. Pushing back the brim of his hat, he squinted into the eyepiece and took the necessary sighting. Then, from another pocket, he withdrew a crumpled chart and consulted it.
“Near as I can figure,” he said, “we’re in California, near Guadalupe, a town a good ways inland and about 150 miles north of what used to be Los Angeles.”
“I thought California sank into the sea,” Dean said.
“Most of it did,” Ryan said. “At least, a lot of it to the south of the San Andreas Fault took a permanent dip. What was left became the Western Islands, remember?”
Dean nodded. “Yeah. Place stunk of sulfur, like rotten eggs. Place where we last saw Trader.”
J.B. stowed the sextant and chart back into his coat. “If it’s any consolation, we’re not on one of those bastard islands. Best as I recollect, folks call this region the Barrens. Nothing and nobody around for a hundred square miles.” He checked his lapel rad counter. “Midrange yellow. Tolerable.”