“How d’you feel?” he said.
She licked her lips, brushing a hand through the tumbling hair. “I’ve felt
better. What was it? Death trap went wrong?”
“Don’t know. Doc knew about it, the old…”
“Where are we, Mr. Cawdor?”
Ryan drew the LAPA, finger on the trigger. “We’re still in the Redoubt and we’re
all alive. Trick didn’t work, Doc.”
“Trick? Upon my soul, but it is no trick. And it did work.”
“What? Knocked us on our asses, that’s all.”
Doc was up, tottering, steadying himself with a hand on the streaked glass of
the wall. Everyone was now back to some degree of awareness.
“What color were the walls of the gateway in the Redoubt, Mr. Cawdor?”
“Brown and…” Ryan’s jaw sagged a little. “Fireheat! These are green. They’ve
changed.”
“No. We’ve changed. The gateway worked. We are no longer within the Redoubt in
the Darks.”
That was enough to bring them all to their feet. J.B. doubled over and retched
as though he was about to throw up, but nothing came.
“Not in the Darks no more?” he gasped, wiping a gloved hand over his mouth.
“Where, then?”
“Ah…” The triumphant smile had vanished. “That is one of the many problems with
the gateways. Not always reliable. Depends on destination setting.”
Whatever had happened while they were all out cold, Doc’s madness had deserted
him and he spoke clearly and intelligently.
“They started here about a hundred years back, trying to transmit matter. They
began with a pair of small metal balls. Light gray metal balls. They got them to
travel a few centimeters. And they went on from there.”
While he listened, Ryan moved around the room. The walls were certainly a
changed color and the air tasted different. Not flat and dead as in the Redoubt.
Was all this possible? Had the fog been a luci-gas? Was this all some chem
dream?
“They wanted to use it for military purposes. But the big war stopped that good.
By then they’d set up a network of these Redoubts, each with gates. Send and
receive, and some big mistakes. Horrible things did happen.”
He stopped as though his mind was lodging on unbearable memories. Ryan reached
to open the door, but Doc waved a hand to stop him.
“Not yet. Nearly done. Gates can be set as this one was. But all codes are now
lost, lost forever. So it’s a gamble where and when you get out.”
“But… some of these gates must have been destroyed in the fighting,” said Ryan.
“What would have happened if the controls had been set for one of those? Then
what?”
“Most in the wilderness areas were destroyed. As to your question, I suppose
that possibility represents the final frontier!”
And he laughed.
“You crazy bastard,” spat Hun, moving toward him with her fist clenched.
“Leave him be,” ordered Ryan, stopping her.
“Let’s go see where we are.”
“I am obliged, Mr. Cawdor,” Doc said, relapsing once more into the archaic way
of speaking. “Most of all I would dislike having to strike a lady. Next I would
dislike being struck by one.”
The door opened easily.
Opened onto a room of the same scale as the one back at the Redoubt. Any of
Ryan’s doubts were dispelled when he saw a table knocked over on its side and
two of the shelves slipping lopsidedly. A long crack ran down the wall, deep
enough to insert a hand.
In the next room, the consoles whirred and lights danced, but there was an
undertone of grinding and Ryan could smell a frail scent of smoldering. Of a
fire that slumbered somewhere within the machinery that surrounded them. He
could see all eight of his group reflected in the smeared metal of the door that
he knew would open on a blank passage. To the right of it there was a green
lever in the down position, with the word Closed printed beneath it.
Ryan grasped the lever and pushed it up to the Open position. It moved easily,
as though it swam in a greased slot. For a moment nothing happened, then the
grinding of gears, and then the door began to slide back.