“Big words for say we use faster than made,” Jak commented with an amused look at the old man. Doc merely shrugged.
“So how long you reckon we got?” J.B. asked Mildred.
She shook her head, the ends of her plaits moving rhythmically as though caught by a much needed draft of air. “Couldn’t say for sure, John. It’s like being at a high altitude. I don’t think we’d suffocate for a few days, but the more rarefied it gets, the more it might affect us. Hallucinations, maybe.”
“Great. Like jolt only not so good,” Jak muttered in a dour tone.
“Think we can risk a night?” Ryan asked Mildred. “I’d like us to get some rest before tackling whatever may be out there or risk another jump.”
“I’d say we could do that,” Mildred replied after some thought.
“Good. Now let’s try and find the shower stalls, mebbe some clean clothes. That’d make me feel better for a start,” Krysty added.
“Right. Stink like mutie polecat on heat,” Jak grunted.
It didn’t take long to find the shower stalls and washing facilities. Like most redoubts, this one was laid out to a specification that had been generally used. There had been exceptions, but for the most part it could be assumed that if a person had explored one redoubt, he or she had a fair chance of navigating every other one he or she came across.
The showers were still working. As with several of the redoubts they had encountered so far, the lighting in this one was erratic. But the water was still on, and the heaters still worked. The first streams of water were lukewarm, flecked with some decay and foreign matter from the pipes, but after a minute or so by Ryan’s wrist chron the water was clear, flowing freely and of an even temperature.
They took turns to shower, keeping a guard at all times. It seemed that the redoubt was deserted apart from their presence, but they could never be too sure. The friends had been taken unawares on a previous occasion.
It was a simple matter to find clean clothing. The store rooms for all redoubts were situated in the same place, and in this redoubt they were lucky enough to find underclothes and thermally insulated outerwear that had lain unused for over a century. They took the opportunity to change clothes and would later launder what they usually wore.
One strange thing, thought—the clothes weren’t the usual regulation khaki and olive-green, or white. Some of the clothes were in colors that seemed, under the dim lighting, to be black or a dark blue. Some of it, under the better lighting of the corridor, even revealed itself to be purple, a color rarely if ever seen in predark sec conditions. And the lighter colors were yellows and sky-blues. It was a small but significant difference.
“These make a change,” Dean remarked as he dressed, “but it doesn’t seem right to me.”
“You’re right,” Krysty agreed. “The armies from before skydark would never have used this.” She held up a purple T-shirt that seemed, in the light, to have streaks of a faded pattern running across it. “This is no ordinary military redoubt.”
“Built on the same lines, though,” Ryan said thoughtfully. “Odd. Most of the nonmilitary redoubts we’ve jumped to have been different. But this…”
“I know,” Mildred said. “It’s uncanny, and maybe just a bit creepy. It’s a military base, but with so many nonmilitary touches. If only it wasn’t so damned dark…I’d swear that these rooms are just a bit smaller than the usual size. It’s like someone got the military blueprints but had to downscale just a bit.” Mildred shivered. “It just gives the place a screwy atmosphere, like looking into a distorting mirror.”
Jak looked at her, puzzled. “Not feel danger here,” he said simply. “Old sec weird. Seen plenty weirder.”
Doc, who had so far been silent, leaned thoughtfully on his swordstick, hands clasped over the silver lion’s head. “I wonder…” he mused, then lapsed into silence.
“Wonder what, Doc?” Ryan asked gently, knowing that when the old man was straining to recall, it was best to keep patience and coax it from him.