“I need more power!” he shouted at the technicians.
“But, Dr. Huth,” one of them protested, “if we try to energize the gate again, we’ll blow every grid on the planet.”
Huth was in no mood for trifles. He leveled the tribarrel at the tech and squeezed the trigger. The man jerked backward, arms flying up as a bolt of green pierced his chest; behind him, a second before he crashed into it, a computer monitor exploded in a shower of sparks. The body rolled off the front of the workstation and dropped to the floor.
Someone pounded on the other side of the bulkhead door. Huth turned and saw a black helmet peering at him through the glass. A gauntleted hand waved for him to unlock the door.
“More power!” Huth repeated.
The technicians worked frantically to make it so.
An angry voice boomed from the intercom speaker set in the wall. “Dr. Huth,” it said, “this is FIVE security. Open the door and stand down the procedure. You have not been authorized to draw power.”
The lights dimmed to nothing.
As they came back up, the amplified voice said, “This is your final warning! Open the door!”
Huth had no intention of doing that. The glittering tornado had appeared on the pad. He dropped the pulse rifle and started to run for it. Behind him there was a whomp as the security team blew open the bulkhead door.
“Stop where you are!” a voice shouted. “Stop or we’ll fire!”
Sprinting, Huth had fifteen feet to go. He dived for the spiraling column of air, but had the sickening realization that it was too far away, that he’d never make it. He hit the concrete on his belly, and in anticipation of being burned, he covered the back of his head with his hands. As he did so, something rolled out of his lab coat pocket and clattered onto the pad. He clutched for it without thinking.
Huth stared at the glass tube in his hand. In it was an intensely blue eye. At this moment of his final defeat, Ryan Cawdor stared back, mocking him.
Then the room rocked, as the lips of reality split, then gaped. Chunks of the ceiling rained around him and over his head, the tip of a white cone, six feet across, appeared out of nowhere. With a terrible roar the huge missile unrolled above him.
There was fear, pain, then blistering, yellow-white oblivion.
Epilogue
Sitting on a chair he’d rescued from under one of the fallen porches along Moonboy’s main street, Ryan watched Mildred throw more scraps of wood on her cook fire. She’d already fed everybody once, and was starting in on seconds for those who could handle them.
There was nothing quite like fresh mesquite-grilled rattlesnake, he thought, raising the jug to his lips and taking a long swallow of air-temp beer. Especially when the steaks were as big as a man’s head and three inches thick. Get that crispy charred crust on the outside and inside everything stays nice and moist. Kind of like chicken, with the texture of fish. He burped softly and set down the jug.
Jak had taken Hylander and Ockerman over the ridge to collect their morning meat. Hunting in the cool light just after daybreak was the ticket when someone was after reptiles, no matter how big. Once the desert started to heat up, snakes and their like got up a full head of steam.
The men from the other Earth hadn’t taken their pulse rifles along on the hunt. Ryan had been pleased when they took up the weapons dropped by the dead cannies instead. They’d abandoned the tribarrels, along with the battlesuits, in a pile in the middle of the street. There was no need for either in Deathlands, nor for jump mines, which the colonel had promptly decommissioned.
While Mildred cooked seconds of snake, the companions and the visitors sat together around the fire, drinking up the remaining stores of Moonboy’s green beer.
They’d started out talking amiably enough, like two groups of travelers who’d met on the same stretch of road and decided to share a meal. Gradually, the colonel and his crew had drawn back from the conversation. Now, when they spoke, it was to one another. Ryan figured it was starting to hit home to them what they’d done, and that what they’d left was gone forever.