At the last moment he wriggled sideways, but his own impetus took him into the open door, slamming it shut.
Chapter Three
With everyone falling over everyone else, it was a few startling heartbeats before anyone realized what had actually happened.
Abe was the first, raising his voice above the general chaos and confusion. “Door’s closed itself!” he shouted. “The kid’s inside.”
Ryan had heard the yell, but he didn’t immediately take in the dreadful significance of it. Krysty heard it and was quicker to react, pushing Trader to one side, elbowing Doc out of the way as she fought to get to the armaglass chamber.
“Dark night! Boy’s jumping!” J.B. called, trying to reach the sec lock.
Then Ryan realized what was going on. He could just see the gateway over everyone’s heads, see the closed door and just make out, very dimly, the shape of his son inside, through the speckled glass. Dean was up on his feet, pounding with his bare fists on the armored door.
“Everyone out the way!” Ryan roared, heading across the cramped little room toward the trapped boy.
Jak and J.B. had gotten to the door first, and both were pulling on the release mechanism. “No,” the Armorer panted. “Sec lock’s activated. Take a missile to break it open.”
Ryan stopped by them. “Thing’s started.” he said. “See the mist through the glass. Look at the ceiling disks starting to glow.”
“Quiet,” Mildred called. “Dean’s shouting.”
“Dad, please Dadhelpme”
“He’s going,” Trader warned.
“Shut up,” Ryan snapped. He pressed his mouth close to the ice-cold, brown-and-white armaglass, shouting as loudly as he possibly could. “Dean! Lie down flat for the jump. Now! I’ll come after you. Hear me? Stay where you end up, and I’ll come after you.” He drew a breath and tried again. “Dean! Wait and I’ll come.” Krysty touched him gently on the shoulder, but he shrugged her off. “Wait and”
“He’s gone, lover.”
“Gone?”
“I regret that it is true, old friend.” Doc patted him on the arm.
Ryan took a step away, trying to keep himself together. The sudden disappearance of his son had been truly devastating. It was as though he’d been walking through a summer meadow and found himself flat on his back, looking up at the sun with a bullet in his spine. No warning.
Gradually all of his fighting skills and senses came seeping back to him. “Right,” he said, glancing at his wrist chron. “It’s inside the half hour, so he should simply have jumped directly back to Maine. I’ll use the LD control and try to follow him. Long as he hasn’t wandered away from the gateway, then we can both jump back here.”
“You’ll feel like death,” Trader cautioned.
“Sure. But we’ll still be alive, and we’ll all be together again.”
Krysty touched him on the arm. “What if you don’t get back here within thirty minutes, lover?”
“Then I’ll come and find Fireblast! ‘Course. We don’t know where we are right now.”
“Set a meeting place,” J.B. suggested. “We’ll wait here in the redoubt for for let’s say twelve hours from now.” Both men checked their chrons. “You and Dean haven’t shown, then we’ll go out and find where we are.”
Mildred had been thinking deeply about the logistics of it. “If we’re right, you’ll be in Maine. Don’t yet know where we are. So, we should set a meeting place and time that we can all likely get to.”
Krysty looked again at the chron. “Time’s speeding by,” he said worriedly.
“Maui bridge over the Sippi at Memphis,” Trader suggested. “Four weeks from today at noon.”
“Agreed. Four weeks from today, noon at the big bridge at Memphis.”
Krysty put her arms around Ryan, holding him tightly. She kissed him on the cheek, whispering in his ear. “Come back safe, lover. I don’t have anything if I don’t have you.”
He kissed her on the lips, returning the hug. “Same for me, lover.”
Ryan shook everyone’s hand, looked at his chron. “Twenty-seven minutes since our jump. Four minutes since Dean went.”
“What if the lad didn’t hear your warning, comes around back in Maine and has the intuitive sense to simply press the Last Destination code on the door? That would bring him back here anytime in the next half hour.”