"Feel anything, lover?" Ryan asked Krysty. "No muties around?"
"Can't tell. Don't think so. Sure smells inside, though."
As Ryan pushed through the entrance he saw inside what was causing the appalling stench. A manta ray had been sucked into the gap in the doors by the tugging current and not been able to angle its way out again. Its rotting carcass lay in eighteen inches of salt water near the bottom of the flight of stairs that had earlier saved their lives.
"Best not hang around," Ryan told them. "If there's a problem near the gateway we want to get out of here before the next tide comes sweeping in. Let's go. Fast and careful."
The corridors were streaked with patches of seaweed, small colonies of shellfish already taking over corners, building one upon another. The lights still glowed in the ceiling, though the intruding ocean had put some out of commission. Ryan guessed that it wouldn't be long — days rather than weeks — before all of the lighting in that section of the redoubt failed.
It took them some time to find their way through the maze of passages and corridors, all of them scarred by the ocean.
In the hollows and dips there were deeper pools of water, many containing small fishes or scuttling crabs.
They finally reached the stretch of the corridor that led to the gateways. It curved around to the left and sloped a little. Ryan, out in front, licked his lips nervously at the expectation of what they might see. If the doors were open, then they were in deep trouble. If they were closed, then they should be safe enough. They were closed.
The lights were blinding. After the dimness of the tunnels, the array of comp-panels and whirring and spinning disks was dazzling.
Ahead of the six companions were the odd double doorways of the mat-trans chambers — one with the security coding of twelve, the other carrying the higher rating of nineteen.
"Which one, Doc?" Ryan asked.
"I'm sorry, my dear fellow. I fear that my thoughts were on too many mornings and a thousand miles behind. I was wondering how our lofty Apache shaman would cope in the world of Claggartville. What think you?"
J.B. answered the question. "Donfil had a real skill. Best you'll ever see. Skill like that costs, and costs plenty. He'll be loaded with jack and die a rich baron."
"Ah, I do hope so," the old man said. "I do so much hope so. Now, there was a question from you, my dear Ryan, was there not? Something about which doorway we should use? The one to the gold or the one to the dragon?"
"Yeah. The one we came in through? Or the other one?"
"Other one?" Doc sounded puzzled. "I fear I don't quite recall about the other one. Could you... could you possibly?.."
"Space suits in it, Doc," Ryan said briefly, irritated by Doc's lapses of memory. "The one that someone had just been using."
"Ah, it returns to me. Space. The final... What was it? A mission that would boldly go where..." His voice drifted away. "Sorry, my friends. It's quite gone. Yes. Overproject Whisper. Part of the Totality Concept. A self-sufficient station in space, hidden behind the far side of the moon. All the latest in regenerating food and... Those were the rumors that I heard. Can we try that gateway?"
Doc Tanner shook his head. "I think not, Ryan. They would have a separate system of coded sec locks and all manner of deep comp-traps. I doubt it would be just a matter of shutting the door to send us speeding to the Lord knows where."
"Could try it one day," Ryan persisted, fascinated by the hidden possibilities of this mysterious second chamber with its entrancing silver glass walls and door.
"Yeah," Krysty agreed. "One day, lover. But this day... let's go."
Oddly nobody seemed to want to make the jump. Each of them knew how physically draining it would be — a sucking unconsciousness with driving nausea. They wandered around the control room, no one making a move toward the main gateway that had brought them to New England.
Doc found himself a neat, dark green seat with chromed castors and rolled himself around the panels, peering at the infinite array of knobs, levers and dials.
"Wonderful," he said. "State of the art equipment here, the likes of which I've never seen. Must be for that second gateway. If only I had more time, I'm certain I could unravel its arcane mysteries and transport us... spaceward."
"How much time would you need, Doc?" J.B. asked.
"Not long. Two... perhaps three..."
"Days?"
Doc laughed, showing his peculiarly strong, white teeth. "By the three Kennedys! No. Months, my dear fellow. Two to three months."
Ryan checked the silver-walled room very carefully, looking for signs that it had been used in the days since they were last there. But even his keen tracking eye found no trace of recent visitors. The self-contained suits with their bubble helmets still hung neatly in a row.
"Bastard hungry," Jak complained. "We going or staying? Could go get self-heats from outside rooms. Yeah?"
"No." Ryan checked his wrist chron. "Tide'll be coming up again. Open the door here and it's goodbye to the gateway. But you're right, Jak. Come on. Let's move out."
The walls of the primary gateway were a rich turquoise color, reminding Ryan of the fine jewelry they'd seen in the baking deserts of the southwest, which brought back a fleeting thought of Donfil More. But the Apache was now a part of the past.
Ryan had always been a man more interested in tomorrow than yesterday.
The six companions ranged themselves around the six-sided room, Ryan waiting by the heavy, armored door, ready to trigger the starting mechanism that would send them, molecules scattered, to some other part of the Deathlands.
As always, there was the doubt and fear that the uncontrolable machine, its instructions long vanished, might select a redoubt for them that was now buried in the heart of an active volcano. Or crushed beneath a mountain of rubble.
Jak sat down directly across from the door, his head lowered onto his knees, his fine veil of white hair tumbling over his legs.
J.B. copied the pose, knowing from experience that this was the most comfortable position to adopt for a jump. The Armorer looked up at Ryan and winked. "Here we go again."
Doc and Lori huddled close against each other, her young blond head resting on the old man's skinny shoulder.
Krysty folded herself easily into a variation of the lotus position, laying her hands, palms up, on her thighs. She closed her eyes and let her head droop to her chest. Looking down at her, Ryan felt a sudden, overwhelming rush of love.
"Ready?" he asked. "Let's go."
The door swung easily on its hinges, shutting with a positive clicking sound. The locking mechanism triggered the mat-trans unit. Ryan stepped quickly across and sat down next to Krysty, touching her softly on the arm, receiving a half smile from under the fringe of her vermilion hair.
They experienced the usual flashing lights, and the first tattered shards of white mist appeared. The metal floor plates began to glow, and Ryan heard the rising hum that always accompanied a jump.
He closed his eye, seeing the patterns of pressure building inside the retina. His ears started to hurt, and he swallowed hard to clear them. The sound was like the waves rushing beneath the stem of the Salvationas she bucked through the rolling swell of the Lantic Ocean.
Ryan pushed the back of his hand against his eye, trying to ease the speckled color of the deepening pressure.
His last thought before the swirling darkness enveloped his brain was to realize that the dancing patterns looked amazingly like flowers. Blood-red roses.