"And laser-optic sight," J.B. said with a note of reverential awe in his voice. "It's one of the MP-7 SD-8s. Only made a few, according to what I've seen. Supposed to be a good gun for anything up to thirty yards."
"Going to change that old Uzi of yours, J.B.?" Ryan asked, not really expecting Dix to agree with the suggestion.
"Why not?"
"Hey, I was only..."
J.B. picked up the blaster and cradled it, feeling for the button to activate the laser sight, aiming it across the room. Everyone watched the tiny ruby dot of light. "Yeah. Like the feel."
"You fire it from the shoulder?" Krysty was puzzled by the strange double sight on top of the short muzzle.
"No. Not at all. Close quarters you press the trigger and spray. Aimed shots you can use the laser spot. Then hold it braced against the hip and let go. No need to aim from the shoulder. Not with a baby like this."
Without a sign of regret the Armorer laid down the battered mini-Uzi that he'd carried for so long over so many miles, walked away and began to rummage through the box that contained equaloy 9 mm ammo, emptying his pockets of the old bullets.
Jak picked up one of the guns and hefted it, shrugging and putting it back again. "No. Slow down close fights. No."
"Saw some grens racked up over that side," Ryan said.
"Yeah. And some plas-ex. Be right there with you, I when I got enough ammunition."
Jak and Krysty followed Ryan across to the far side of the weapons wing of the redoubt, with Doc and Lori trailing behind them.
"Here. Look colors!" the albino teenager exclaimed, standing, jaw gaping, at the serried rows of different kinds of hand grenades.
They were much smaller than the type used in the conventional wars of the twentieth century, only half the size of a baseball, but relatively heavy. Some had two-step button firing pins and some had flip-top detonator releases. All were silver or black, with bright strips of different paints. Labels told what each one was.
"Scarlet and blue is imploder. Met one of those before," Jak said, remembering a close call on the Mohawk River. "How they work?"
"Like an explosion, only it works on a kind of antimatter principle. Sucks things in as it goes off," Ryan explained.
Krysty ran a long finger down the row of printed labels. "Stunners. Burners. Frags. Lights. High-alts. Shrap. Nerve. Smokers. Grounders. Low-ex. Delays, various. Remotes."
"Take an implode, stun, burn and frag each. Others are too specialized for us. Basically we'll just want to stop or chill. Nothing else."
They all stashed away four grens. Ryan pocketed a couple of extra implodes for good measure. Lori complained that they were too heavy for her.
"What's the pointing for?" she asked. "Got blasters and they do any job."
Doc shook his head. "I fear that when in Rome... I mean, when in Deathlands, one must look first for survival. Anything above and beyond that is somewhat of a bonus, my dear child."
Lori pouted and swung away, the bells on her spurs tinkling with their usual thin, bright sound. As she stalked off she tripped over some loose ammo, cursed and nearly fell.
"She'll break her rad-blasted ankle with those heels one of these days," J.B. stated.
Ryan nodded. "Could be." He looked around. "We all got what we want? Enough to chill a mutie army, I guess."
"After the chill, we can go and look at the freezing," Doc said, smiling broadly. "Get it? That was a joke, was it not?"
"Very nearly, Doc." Krysty sighed. "Very nearly."
Chapter Six
"This is it."
The six had walked briskly through the sweeping corridors of the redoubt. One of the surprises had been that they still hadn't the least idea where in all of Deathlands they were.
The light blue locator strips had brought them to the northern limits of the fortress, which was one of the largest that Ryan had ever encountered. They saw no further signs of life and no more evidence of any seismic damage to the structure.
The nearer they came to the auxiliary exits at the northern flank, the less they saw of any hasty withdrawal. There were few rooms opening off, and all of them had been stripped bare and left utterly deserted.
"Anything else you can tell us about these cryo places, Doc?" Ryan asked, walking alongside the old scientist.
"When I was first trawled, none of us would have dreamed it would become possible to put a human being into a sort of suspended state of animation and then hope to revitalize them. It would have been like the books of Jules Verne."
Ryan had actually heard the name before. "But what about when you were around Project Cerberus in the late nineties?"
"No." A vigorous shake of the head. "You must be aware, my friend, that science had become ever more specialized. I saw and heard... perhaps more than they wished."
"How'd they do it?" J.B. asked, joining them at the front of the party.
"The freezing?"
"Yeah. Ice or what?"
Doc sniffed. "Not ice. Some gas, I believe. Let us see how well my memory can recall..." For a hundred paces or more he didn't speak, forehead furrowed with the effort of trying to remember. "Yes," he said finally. "It depends on the temperature at which the gas liquifies. Carbon dioxide was discarded because it doesn't liquify, just freezes solid at minus seventy-eight Celsius. No good. Nitrous oxide, a scant ten degrees more chill, not cold enough. Then I think liquid nitrogen."
"Colder?" Ryan asked.
"Much. My memory toys with a figure of minus one hundred and ninety-six degrees."
The Armorer whistled. "Dark night, Doc! That's some kind of cold."
"Indeed it is. I have seen experiments. A flower becomes as solid, and as fragile, as spun crystal. Place an apple into liquid nitrogen for a few moments and then take it out and strike it with a hammer. It will shatter into a thousand splinters. But I cannot imagine what human flesh becomes."
They walked on in silence for several minutes, each of them locked into imagining that situation. If an apple became like stone, then how would flesh react to being frozen?
Krysty tugged at Ryan's sleeve, breaking into his thoughts. "Figure we'll find us some freezies, lover?"
"Not likely. Not impossible. If they evacuated the redoubt in a hurry, they might not have been able to take any with 'em. But from what Doc says about it, there might not have been any in the first place. It was all kind of experimental."
"Soon know," she said, pointing to the sign on the wall ahead: Cryo. Medical Clearance 10 or B Equivalent Only Permitted.
"TVs watching us." Jak pointed up at the diminutive cameras that ranged ceaselessly backward and forward.
"Nobody watching them," Ryan said, pushing at the control lever for the single sec door that blocked off the passageway.
"Hear something," Krysty warned, stopping and putting her head to one side, listening intently.
"What?"
"Quiet, lover."
Ryan strained his hearing, thinking he might have caught the faint sound or imagined that he'd heard or... "Can't hear anything unusual, Krysty."
"Hissing. Like steam. Far off." Her body relaxed, the tension easing. "Yeah. Thought at first it could have been an armored door opening. That kind of a sound. But it's not. Too steady. Constant pitch to it."
A little farther, around a wide bend, they came across a different kind of a door.
"Airlock," Doc observed. "Guess that makes sense if it's some sort of medical base."
The notice beside the armaglass-topped door ran to about fifty lines, covering all manner of rules and regulations about who could go through and when and with whose permission, as well as details about what kind of protective clothing had to be worn.
"You sure this isn't full of some kind of germy gas or nervers, Doc?" J.B. asked, looking strangely reluctant to proceed any farther.
"No. I imagine it will be quite the reverse, my dear Mr. Dix. Free of all manner of germs or infection. The clothing will be to stop us bringing sickness in, not to prevent us catching it from anyone or anything in there."