Everyone yelled at once.
The moment that the thin sheet of filthy water came gushing through the widening
crack at the edge of the door, the shouting began. Water immediately flowed
about their feet, carrying innumerable wriggling creatures with scaly skins and
ferocious rows of tiny teeth.
“Shut it!” shouted J.B., but Ryan had already thrown the lever down again.
It seemed to take forever, but the door finally hissed shut, and the water
stopped.
“It’s fuckin’ hot, Ryan,” said Henn, kicking with his boots at one of the
reptiles that had fastened onto the sole of his boot.
“It came all the way from top to bottom.” Krysty’s shocked voice said it all.
The Redoubt where they had finished up was under water. Maybe under shallow
water, maybe under whole fathoms.
“There is a thirty-minute automatic reset on the gates,” said Doc. “If we make
haste we should… should be back in the Redoubt in the Darks.”
They splashed through the filth of mud and water, crushing the seething life as
they moved. There was a step into the actual trans-mat chamber and the slime had
not penetrated it. They all stepped in, and J.B. reached to close the door.
“Hold on. If we’re goin’ to pass out,” said Ryan, “I guess it’s better if we sit
down first.”
They sat in a ring, Krysty opposite Ryan. Their eyes met and he winked at her.
He enjoyed the hint of a smile on her full lips. And she was a mutie!
The door closed and once again darkness clawed its way over Ryan’s mind,
blanking it out.
The moment of wakening was less painful, the headache gone, but the feeling of
disorientation was still as strong. It was as if every atom in his body had been
juggled around and clumsily reassembled.
Ryan opened his eye.
The walls were brown glass. By the texture it looked armored. It was not
possible to guess its thickness.
“Come on, people,” Ryan said. “Doc? You know how to reset this machine?”
“Yes, indeed, Mr. Cawdor. But I must repeat that it is a random element. All
instructions and codes are gone these many, many years. I can alter the setting
and then it will be in the laps of what gods we worship.”
“I worship this,” said Okie, holding up her M-16.
As he checked that everyone had recovered, Ryan wondered yet again about Doc’s
range of knowledge. Lots of it could have come from some hoard of old books or
vids. There was no other sensible explanation. But he knew so much. Spoke as if
he’d been here before. Been here a hundred years ago!
They were back in the clean, antiseptic anteroom. Ryan tugged the door open,
hearing the faint whisper of sound that told him that it was air locked.
He pulled harder and it swung open.
The master control room now held a dozen or more of the squat, muscular Indians.
Okie reacted fastest, and Ryan winced at the stream of bullets that burst past
him, knocking down five or six of the attackers in a welter of blood.
“Don’t’ fire!” screamed Doc’s voice. “Damage anything and we’ll never jump
again!”
Ryan reached for his heavy panga, drawing it from its stitched leather sheath,
thrusting at the face of the nearest of the Indians. It cleaved through the open
mouth, splintering teeth as it did so, and lodged itself in the cervical
vertebrae at the back of the man’s neck. Biood gushed, hot and salt, into Ryan’s
face, nearly blinding him. But the man was down and done, screams bubbling
through the choking flood of scarlet.
Around him the most desperate battle raged. Okie used her gun like a club,
smashing one man across the side of the head, kicking him hard in the groin as
his hands went to grab her.
Henn and Finnegan had both drawn their knives, automatically fighting back to
back, the steel of their blades making a deadly web that snared any of the Sioux
who tried to get within it.
J.B. had his delicate knives, one in each hand, the thin blades opening up
hideous gashes like lips in the stomach of the man attacking him. As the man