might be hours before they got any sense out of him. By Ryan’s reckoning it
would take the Indians about thirty minutes to track them down.
Ryan opened the far door, hand on the butt of his pistol. And faced yet another
door, made of what looked like smoked glass. There was a neat panel by the side
of the door with a variety of numbered and lettered buttons, some glowing
brightly. Above it was a notice in angular maroon lettering.
Entry Absolutely Forbidden to All but B12 Cleared Personnel. Mat-trans.
“Matter transmitter,” said J.B. wonderingly, taking off his glasses and wiping
them. “Damnedest thing. I’d heard they had somethin’ like this.”
“How does it work?” asked Krysty, running her fingers over the smooth glass of
the door.
“Who knows? Chance is it doesn’t work at all. When the long chill came, they was
workin’ on a lot of clever things like this. I read they were close to…”
Doc pushed past them all, sweeping open the door and bowing low. “Here be
dragons, lords and ladies. Enter and leave.”
It was a chamber, six sided, all the walls of the same brown tinted glass. The
floor was patterned with metallic disks, raised very slightly. The pattern was
repeated in the ceiling. The opening of the door triggered some sort of
mechanism and a few of the disks began to glow faintly in a seemingly random
form. A faint mist appeared in the room, swirling and darting. Ryan drew a slow,
deep breath, remembering the fog outside. Was this the same? Some deadly trap by
long-dead hands—
Doc stepped in, beckoning them to follow. “Around and around the little wheel
goes, and where it stops… Come in.”
Nothing more happened. The mist coiled about the cracked boots, rising no
farther than the knees. More of the disks were gleaming with a silvery light,
and Ryan could hear the faintest of humming sounds.
“Hell, why not?” he said, and stepped in, followed by all the others.
With a cackle of manic glee Doc immediately leaped and slammed the door shut so
hard that the room vibrated.
“Off we go!” he yelped, voice rising to a banshee wail.
The hum rose to a whine. The lights flashed a pattern that dazzled and forced
the intruders to close their eyes. Ryan was aware that the fog had thickened,
climbing all about them, filling their lungs. He coughed, unable to breathe.
There was a dreadful pressure in his ears. For a moment it felt as if a huge
fist was reaching inside his head and squeezing his brain like a sponge.
His body grew light, and he knew that he was passing out.
Ryan’s last thought as he fought his way into unconsciousness was that he should
have killed Doc days ago.
Even that was swallowed by an impenetrable blackness.
Chapter Seventeen
RYAN OPENED his eye.
There was a mild pain across his temples, like after a night of drinking home
brew. His pulse was up and so was his breathing. He lay still, aware of a
tingling sensation at the tips of toes and fingers. He lifted his hands and
touched his face, feeling a faint numbness. And his black, curly hair bristled
with static electricity. He closed his eye and opened it again, blinking up at a
ceiling of patterned metal disks that glowed. A glow that was fading even as he
looked up at it.
He tried to work out just how he felt. His stomach swirled as if he’d been
riding War Wag One over the bumpiest road in all Deathlands. And his brain
relayed the curious sensation of having been sucked into itself and then dragged
through a vacuum before being rammed back into his skull.
But he lived.
Whatever that bastard machine was supposed to have done, it had failed. The trap
had not been properly sprung. Maybe over the decades the gas or poison or
whatever had lost its power. He thought again that he ought to kill Doc. Now,
without any further hesitation.
“Ryan? You all… Mother, my head aches.”
Ryan sat up, looking around, seeing all his comrades either slumped unconscious
or showing the first signs of recovering. Krysty blinked and sighed.