“Say what?” His tone, like his expression, was stony. He used the heel of one gloved hand to wipe away the lipstick on his faceplate and succeeded in only smearing it.
“You know, what you always say before we make a jump.”
“It’s a bad habit I’ve been trying to break. Besides, I’m used to it now.”
The familiar yet still slightly unnerving hum arose, muted due to the helmets. The hum climbed in pitch to a whine, then to a cyclonic howl. The hexagonal floor and ceiling plates shimmered silver. A fine, faint mist gathered at their feet and drifted down from the ceiling. Thready static discharges, like tiny lightning bolts, arced through the vapor.
The mist thickened, blotting out everything. Shadows seemed to creep into Kane’s vision from all corners. The sound of breathing faded, ebbing away into silence. Right before Kane’s hearing shut down altogether, Grant’s strained, faraway whisper reached him. “I hate these fucking things.”
Chapter 14
Stepping into a mat-trans chamber, losing consciousness, then awakening in another always seemed like dying and being born again.
From the hyperdimensional nonspace through which they had been traveling, they seemed to fall through vertiginous abysses. There was a microinstant of non-existence, then a shock and their senses returned.
Kane stared up at the pattern of silver disks on the ceiling and realized sluggishly that something was wrong with them. A moment later, his stumbling thoughts amended that observation. Not wrong, just different. They were smaller, diamond shaped rather than the familiar hexagonal configuration.
Trying to focus through the last of the mist wisping over his faceplate, Kane became aware of the rasp of labored respiration in his ears. Nausea churned and rolled in his stomach, and he fought it down, almost panicky at the notion of vomiting inside his helmet.
In a strained, hoarse whisper, Brigid asked, “Is everybody all right?”
Kane turned his head, squeezing his eyes shut against the momentary wave of vertigo that blurred his vision. When he opened them, he saw Grant and Brigid carefully hiking themselves up to sitting positions. The floor-plate pattern duplicated that of the ceiling. The jump chamber was small, about half the standard size.
The dark blue color of the armaglass walls allowed only the dimmest light to penetrate.
Grant got to his feet first. To Kane’s eyes, it looked like he kicked himself up from a crouch, as if he were performing a broad jump. He lunged the width of the chamber, slamming a shoulder hard into a wall. Catching himself on the palms of his hands, he pushed himself backward and stumbled, crashing into the back wall.
He snarled in bewilderment. “What the fuck is going on?”
Kane gingerly rose to a knee, realizing his body felt oddly light, as if it weighed half of what it should.
Brigid said, “We’re dealing with maybe half a G here. Be careful.”
Both she and Kane took care as they stood up. Kane rocked experimentally on the balls of his feet. “I don’t feel as hot,” he remarked.
“The suits’ thermal controls must’ve adjusted to the external temperature,” replied Brigid. “It’s probably about twenty or twenty-five degrees colder here than in Cerberus.”
“What about the air?” Grant asked.
She opened the kit slung from a shoulder and removed a small air sampler. She waved the sensor stem around, gauging the reading on the glass-covered face. “Thin,” she announced. “It’s recycled, but breathable. It’d take some getting used to. There’s a trifle more carbon dioxide in it, so we’d have headaches for a while.”
Grant consulted the motion detector around his left wrist. “No movement. It’s safe to leave.”
Kane walked the short distance to the door, planting his feet firmly on the floor plates. He heaved up on the staple-shaped handle and used his shoulder to push it open. Even with its counterbalanced hinges, he was surprised by how little effort it required.
A single overhead light, sunk in a ceiling socket, illuminated the familiar anteroom with its prerequisite table. The far door was up, and Kane saw the flickering lights of computer consoles.
Kane, Brigid and Grant moved out in single file, not speaking. Except for the small size of the gateway unit itself, the rest of the layout conformed to the standard dimensions. Most of the computer screens were dark, and the few that glowed displayed only shifting columns of numbers.