Tall and thin, he appeared to be sixty years old, or even more, but his bright eyes sparkled with intelligence.
“Indeed, you are quite correct, John Barrymore,” Doc Tanner intoned in his deep stentorian voice. “Something must be wrong with the life support system.”
“I hope not,” Krysty stated, holstering her blaster. “That’s all there is between us and suffocating to death.”
“Quite so, madam,” Doc whispered hoarsely. “Quite so.” The jumps through the mat-trans units always hit Doc and Jak Lauren the hardest. For Doc, it was probably because of the horrible experiments performed by Operation Chronos.
Fumbling to locate his ebony swordstick on the floor, Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner wrapped both hands around the silver lion’s-head crest and levered himself erect. Dressed as if he were from the nineteenth century, the scholar wore a gentleman’s frilled shirt and a long frock coat that had seen better days. But there was also a huge LeMat .44 pistol at his side, the grip of the massive double-barrel revolver worn from constant use.
“You okay, Jak?” Mildred Wyeth asked, swinging her med kit around to her front for easy access. Short and stocky, the black woman had once been a twentieth-century physician. During a relatively simple operation, something had gone wrong, and Mildred had been cryogenically frozen, only to be revived a hundred years later by Ryan and the companions. She had been traveling with them ever since.
In the savage wastelands of the early twenty-second century, her skills as a trained physician were beyond price, even though Mildred had virtually no instruments or medicine. The med kit hanging over her shoulder was merely a patched canvas bag salvaged from a U.S. Army M*A*S*H unit. The bag was filled with strips of boiled cloth to be used as bandages, a small plastic bottle of homemade liquor called “shine” for disinfectant, a pack of razor blades found in a bombed-out supermarket for her scalpels, and similar crude items. She sometimes felt like a photographer without a camera. Dr. Mildred Wyeth had the skill to save lives, but the tools of her craft were only items of legend in these dark days.
“F-feel fine.” Jak Lauren spit, using the back of a hand to wipe the drool from his mouth.
Turning away from the wall where he had just been sick, Jak stood carefully, as if afraid his thin body might break from the effort. He was trying to keep it hidden from the others, but their travels through the mat-trans had been hitting the teenager hard lately, and it was taking longer and longer for him to get back on his feet after each jump. It was a strange condition for the albino teen, because he was normally as strong as a horse.
As he checked over his .357 Magnum Colt Python revolver, Jak privately wondered if maybe the effects of the hundreds of jumps they had made were wearing him down. That would be bad news if true. The mat-trans units in the redoubts were the only safe way to traverse the burning deserts and rad-blasted hellzones of the Deathlands. It would be a triple-damn shame if he had to abandon using that method of transportation. Worse—he’d have to quit traveling with his companions.
“By the Three Kennedys!” Doc roared, pulling at the lion head of his cane to extract a shining steel rapier from the ebony shaft. “Dean! Where is Dean!”
The rest of the companions paused at that, and exchanged sad glances.
“Sharona took him. He’s no longer with us,” Ryan said quietly. “Remember, Doc?”
The time traveler arched both eyebrows in indignation, then slowly his features softened as he recalled the events of the past.
“Ah, yes, my condolences, my dear Ryan,” Doc muttered in embarrassment, sheathing the blade once more and locking it tight with a twist of the handle. “I had forgotten. The jump, you know….”
“Hey, anybody see my hat?” J.B. asked, running stiff fingers through his sparse hair.
Ryan kicked the battered fedora across the chilly floor and J.B. scooped it up and tucked it back in place in a single move.
“I could use one of those myself,” Mildred said, buttoning the collar of her denim shirt. “Damn, it really is cold in here.”
“Mebbe everybody died leaving the air conditioner on,” Ryan said in a touch of rare humor as he went to the wall and placed a hand on the vent.
“No, it’s working,” he reported, thoughtfully straightening the patch covering the ruin of his left eye. “And it’s warm, too.”
“Warm?” Jak said, frowning as he tucked away the Colt Python. “Colder than doomie’s tit in here.” Shivering slightly, the teenager zipped up the front of his jacket. The garment was covered with bits of metal and mirrors, as well as razor blades. Razor blades also lined the collar. If anybody was foolish enough to try to grab the teen around the throat, the person might lose a few fingers.
His combat instincts instantly alert, Ryan pulled out his SiG-Sauer and racked the slide to chamber a round.
“J.B., check the door,” he ordered brusquely. “Everybody else, back into the mat-trans unit!”
Quickly the others did as ordered.
Gingerly touching the door, J.B. hissed with shock and pulled his hand back to suck on his fingertips.
“Dark night! The bastard thing is freezing!” he mumbled around the fingers.
Rotating the cylinder of her Czech ZKR .38 revolver as a prelude to possible battle, Mildred snapped her head around at that comment. “Impossible,” she said, starting forward. “The reactors in the basement of a redoubt should keep the base warm even if it was at the North Pole! And the only thing colder than that would be…” Her eyes went wide. “Ryan, check for a draft!”
Frowning darkly, Ryan paused, then holstered his blaster. Walking over to join his friend, he pulled out a candle, and very carefully lit the wick with a predark butane lighter. Manufactured by the millions before skydark destroyed the world, the lighters were now worth more than a man’s life in trade. The only thing more valuable was a loaded blaster. The friends had found several in the past.
As Ryan moved the candle along the frame of the oval doorway, J.B. reached into the munitions bag at his side and unearthed a bit of a candle and a butane lighter from the array of homemade explosives and predark grens.
Slowly, the two men moved the flickering flames along the edge of the jam of the burnished steel door. The flames stayed steady until nearing the concealed hinges of the portal, then both wavered and went out.
“Fireblast, there are holes in the seal,” Ryan said, tucking the spent candle away. “Some sort of draft sucking out all the warm air.”
Doing the same with his candle, J.B. glowered at the door as if it were a ticking mine. “Gotta be one hell of vacuum on the other side,” he said, pushing back his hat. “Think we’re in space again?”
“Mebbe,” Ryan returned. The companions had once found themselves in a “redoubt” that was orbiting the moon. They had been forced to leave almost immediately, but that redoubt had been safe and warm. If this one was in orbit and leaking air, then their wisest move would be to leave.
“Let’s go,” Ryan stated, turning for the mat-trans unit. “No way we’re going to chance opening the door.”
Hunching his shoulders, Jak muttered a curse. Another jump so soon wasn’t something any of them wanted
