"Try that other way. Where the lights had gone out," suggested Hunaker.
Doc waved a careless hand. "Waste of time, my emerald-locked elfling. That corridor curls all the way around the Redoubt complex and returns behind that rockfall. There is nothing there."
"Just how d'you know all this, Doc?" asked J.B. "Maybe this is the place and time to tell us."
Doc's cunning eyes turned to J.B. "This is a place and a time, sir. But not thetime or theplace. When that might be, I do not know. It is beyond my control."
"You knew about the main door to the Redoubt. How about this one?" asked Ryan. Casually he allowed the barrel of his gun to move toward the old man.
Doc noted the gesture. "Ah, Mr. Cawdor... a threat. Over the years I have become overly familiar with threats."
"The door?"
"It is the last door before the gate."
Ryan closed his only eye, fighting for control. There were times when a great scarlet mist drenched his senses and an entirely insensate rage possessed him. There was the temptation to take this doddering imbecile with his antique clothes and rich baritone voice, take him and rip the seamed old face from the skull. Things were tough on Ryan now. The realization that Krysty Wroth was probably a mutie had already shaken him. He'd fallen in love with a mutie! Once this was over he would need to clear his mind on that one. But for now...
"Can you open the door, Doc?" in a voice calm as buttermilk.
"If I were within, then it would be a matter of the utmost simplicity."
"Within what?" asked Finnegan.
"Inside the door, stupe," hissed Henn.
"It cannot be opened from out here."
Ryan looked at J.B. Suddenly both of them chorused, "Over, under or around."
It had been one of the Trader's pet sayings when confronted with a problem that could not be solved directly.
"Over's impossible. Under, as well, without digging gear."
"Go back and radio the war wag for help?" suggested Hunaker.
"What about goin' in the side?" Ryan asked. "In that room there. Maybe the walls aren't as thick. Worth a try."
The room was a bare office with only a grease mark on one wall showing where someone had sat and leaned back against it.
The first high-ex bomb broke the outer layer of the walls, exposing hollow cavities of concrete and rusting iron rods. The room was perfect to contain and compound an explosion. More grenades opened up a great hole in the far wall, clean through to the other side.
The smoke and bitter fumes took some time to clear in that underground expanse of still air. Ryan and J.B. went first, checking that the main structure was not about to topple in on top of them.
"Looks good?"
"Yeah. I'll call the... What was that?" Ryan's acute hearing had caught the faint rumble of a distant explosion, hollow and metallic.
J.B. had heard it, too. "Main door?"
"Could be. If it is, we'd best find a good ambush spot. We'll need it. Else those bastards can starve us out."
The others joined them. "Hear that?" asked Krysty. "They've managed to blow the main door."
"We'll stand and fight," ordered Ryan. "Only choice we got."
Doc coughed. "If the gate is still functioning, then there is that option. The makers said it would last a thousand years. But others have made such a boast and been proven wrong."
"What is this nukeshittin' gate? Where is it?"
"It is the alternative way out of the Redoubt. And it lies through that hole."
They all scrambled through successfully, though Finnegan managed to tear his sleeve on one of the jagged pieces of twisted metal. Inside, the rad counter on Ryan's coat began to cheep and mutter to itself a little louder, indicating a marginally higher count of radiation. But it was not enough to worry them, and Ryan switched the device off.
It was like nothing any of them had ever seen. Great banks of dials and flickering lights, red, green and amber, with thousands of white switches. Circuits hummed and crackled, and loops of tape moved erratically in a row of machines. Occasionally they had found Stockpiles that held ranks of electrical machines that none of them could figure out. But this was something else.
"Through there," said Doc, pointing with a bony forefinger past the consoles to a doorway.
Again Ryan led them through, into an anteroom. It had a polished table on one side and four empty shelves on the other. Beyond it was another door.
"The gate is there. In that next room. Are we ready for it? It is the gate of gates. From this point the hills will become more and more shallow, but the valleys will become more and more deep."
"We lost him again," said Hun. Once Doc's mind began to wander like this, it might be hours before they got any sense out of him. By Ryan's reckoning it would take the Indians about thirty minutes to track them down.
Ryan opened the far door, hand on the butt of his pistol. And faced yet another door, made of what looked like smoked glass. There was a neat panel by the side of the door with a variety of numbered and lettered buttons, some glowing brightly. Above it was a notice in angular maroon lettering.
Entry Absolutely Forbidden to All but B12 Cleared Personnel. Mat-trans.
"Matter transmitter," said J.B. wonderingly, taking off his glasses and wiping them. "Damnedest thing. I'd heard they had somethin' like this."
"How does it work?" asked Krysty, running her fingers over the smooth glass of the door.
"Who knows? Chance is it doesn't work at all. When the long chill came, they was workin' on a lot of clever things like this. I read they were close to..."
Doc pushed past them all, sweeping open the door and bowing low. "Here be dragons, lords and ladies. Enter and leave."
It was a chamber, six sided, all the walls of the same brown tinted glass. The floor was patterned with metallic disks, raised very slightly. The pattern was repeated in the ceiling. The opening of the door triggered some sort of mechanism and a few of the disks began to glow faintly in a seemingly random form. A faint mist appeared in the room, swirling and darting. Ryan drew a slow, deep breath, remembering the fog outside. Was this the same? Some deadly trap by long-dead hands...
Doc stepped in, beckoning them to follow. "Around and around the little wheel goes, and where it stops... Come in."
Nothing more happened. The mist coiled about the cracked boots, rising no farther than the knees. More of the disks were gleaming with a silvery light, and Ryan could hear the faintest of humming sounds.
"Hell, why not?" he said, and stepped in, followed by all the others.
With a cackle of manic glee Doc immediately leaped and slammed the door shut so hard that the room vibrated.
"Off we go!" he yelped, voice rising to a banshee wail.
The hum rose to a whine. The lights flashed a pattern that dazzled and forced the intruders to close their eyes. Ryan was aware that the fog had thickened, climbing all about them, filling their lungs. He coughed, unable to breathe. There was a dreadful pressure in his ears. For a moment it felt as if a huge fist was reaching inside his head and squeezing his brain like a sponge.
His body grew light, and he knew that he was passing out.
Ryan's last thought as he fought his way into unconsciousness was that he should have killed Doc days ago.
Even that was swallowed by an impenetrable blackness.
Chapter Seventeen
Ryan opened his eye.
There was a mild pain across his temples, like after a night of drinking home brew. His pulse was up and so was his breathing. He lay still, aware of a tingling sensation at the tips of toes and fingers. He lifted his hands and touched his face, feeling a faint numbness. And his black, curly hair bristled with static electricity. He closed his eye and opened it again, blinking up at a ceiling of patterned metal disks that glowed. A glow that was fading even as he looked up at it.