Pausing to shake his head to try to clear it, Doc began his recce of the pipes. Treading softly, and with his eyes darting glances to each side, he moved slowly along the middle of the narrow dirt path that had been formed between the pipes, presumably for the purposes of maintenance access. The pipes ran in stories of two or three, and were supported by large metal brackets that held them together. Between the pipes there was a little space with which to see on either side. They twisted and turned rather than running straight. Doc could only presume that this was to give them a greater overall running distance and so allow whatever processes were taking place in the refinery to settle in the precious liquid before it reached the storage tanks.
Right now, all it did was make life harder for Doc. There were a few blind bends on the way, and he slowed as he came to them, straining his eyes and ears for the slightest sign of movement. But there was nothing. In some ways, he would gladly have welcomed some action: it would have been a relief to nerves stretched almost to the breaking point.
The heat and the unending vista of dull and dust-encrusted metal began to get oppressive, and Doc found himself getting unaccountably angry. Why was he doing this? Why were they in thrall to an idiot cowboy who wanted to rebuild a technology that had taken him from his home and placed him in two futures that had prematurely aged him and taken his sanity? Why—?
Doc stopped suddenly, frozen to an almost uncanny stillness by a sound. It was getting nearer… Soft footsteps, but in a familiar rhythm. Very familiar…
Doc looked up instead of around. The towers of the storage tanks stood almost before him. He allowed himself a small smile. The footsteps were those of Krysty.
Like Doc, the woman had found the heat within the reflective surfaces of the pipes to be oppressive. Her hair coiled close to her neck with a combination of sweat and mutie sense—not exactly danger, but more an acute awareness that she was not at her best in this kind of atmosphere, so she had to exercise more caution.
Which she did, her flashing green eyes rapidly scanning the area around, taking in as Doc had the gaps between the brackets and stories of pipes. She moved fastidiously, her silver-tipped boots making little noise on the densely packed, dry earth, throwing up little clouds of dust around her ankles. She held her Smith & Wesson Model 640 blaster, its .38-caliber shells capable of blowing away anyone who would try to jump her. But she was unwilling to use it in such a confined area, and would rather rely on her strength and suppleness in hand-to-hand combat if it came to it—which it might, she reflected, as the enclosed space would make it hard for any attacker to use a blaster without endangering themselves.
She just wished it weren’t so claustrophobic, an impression increased by the heat that seemed to beat off the metal pipes in waves and hit her around the head, making her eyes swim with a shimmering haze that she couldn’t be sure wasn’t external rather than just in her head.
And that tapping and shuffling… Was it for real or was it her imagination?
It was real. Krysty snapped from the fuzzy haze of her head into a hyper-real consciousness where pure instinct took over. She was still moving forward, but now everything was clearer than it had ever been, her instincts switched on to alert her to the slightest move. Looking ahead, she could see that she had almost arrived at the end of the pipe maze and was now within sight of the giant storage tanks. Her heightened senses also identified the only sounds other than her own: Doc. She relaxed slightly as she realized that they had both arrived at their destination simultaneously. There was a point ahead where they would both emerge into view: a point where the pipes finally began to feed into the tanks.
She slowed, and noticed that Doc’s pace had also slowed.