He gratefully gulped a deep breath as he slid back into a seated position. “What happened? And what’s wrong with the air in here? It’s as hot as a triple-stoked blast furnace.”
“You ended up facedown when we jumped in, Dad,” Dean said, a faint smear of blood under one nostril the only evidence of any discomfort the boy had endured during the jump. “This gateway was half-full of water. You were almost gone when Krysty came out of it and rolled you over.”
Listening while Dean spoke, Ryan had observed he was sitting upright in the familiar surroundings of a mat-trans chamber, his back against one of the armaglass walls. He was also sitting in approximately six inches of filthy water littered with brackish slime and a thin film of green algae. The next thing he realized was how awful the chamber smelled, and the hellish temperature that surrounded him like a soggy blanket.
The very air felt wet. Bile welled up involuntarily from his churning stomach, and he turned and vomited what appeared to be a quart of the murky water.
“Ryan, dear fellow. It warms my heart that once again you are with us!” Ryan knew he had been out of it for a while if Doc Tanner was up and about.
Usually Doc suffered the worst after a jump, lapsing into inane babble, as well as experiencing physical ailments such as the nosebleed Dean had suffered, or self-induced bruises and cuts from thrashing about in the chamber after the jump was completed.
Doc could take the punishment to his body. What hurt him more was the psychic damage to his mind. Visions of his long-dead wife, Emily, and his two young children, Rachel and Jolyon, always haunted him after a jump, and it was during the sluggish period as everyone came back to consciousness inside the gateway chamber that Doc looked truly old, his entire gaunt frame always sunken down inside his faded black academic frock coat.
The man was beyond age, a reluctant time traveler plucked from the year 1896 by scientists and drawn forward to the end of the twentieth century as part of a secret government project known as Operation Chronos. Chronos was only one of the many projects under the banner of the Totality Concept, which utilized the secret matter-trans technology now being used by Ryan and his friends.
Doc proved to be such a difficult subject that the whitecoats thrust the old man one hundred years into the dark future of the postholocaust United States—a world that had become bitterly known as Deathlands.
Ironically enough, they had shuttled him away right before the entire world blew out in a final conflict of nuclear fire.
Between the juxtaposition of past, present and future, Doc had managed to hang on to his sanity, but only by his jagged fingernails. However, Ryan thought he looked good for a change, spry, almost.
Ryan coughed and spit out another mouthful of the vile-tasting water. “Thanks, Doc. Only I’d feel a damned sight better if I could stop puking my guts out.”
“A joyous noise is a joyous noise,” Doc said, “regardless of where the sound comes from.”
“Only Doc could find joy in vomiting,” Dean said, grinning in spite of his earlier worry about his father’s welfare. “I’d hate to see how happy he got if you took a shit.”
“That’s probably next, and watch your language,” Ryan muttered, feeling his stomach gurgle ominously. Still, he was already feeling better after ridding his guts of what he had swallowed. His left knee still felt like a strand of wet string, but sensation was quickly returning to the limb. “I had one vicious nightmare while I was out. Head feels like someone was playing a rowdy game of Blood Stamper with it.”
“I must say I’ve never played that sport,” Doc noted. “Sounds painful.”
Ryan eyeballed Doc’s lean frame. “Yeah, you don’t have the build for it, although you’d probably last longer than I would right now. How come you’re looking so good, Doc?”
“No visions of demon fate, my friend. Other than awakening with my trousers sodden from the water on the chamber floor, my journey was unencumbered by dreams.”