'Seen a pic of one. Colt M2-0-7,40 mm gren launcher. Twelve different grenades. Laser sight and high-low propulsion system. I might come back for it once we've scouted around.'
Ryan had taken a gun from its box, wiping the grease off on the sleeve of his long, fur-trimmed coat. 'Nice. Close assault blaster, Heckler & Koch 12-gauge scattergun. Night scope and image intensifier. Be good 'gainst stickies in the dark.' Reluctantly he laid it back in its box. 'Yeah, might take some of these babies on the way out. If we get out.'
Krysty appeared cat-footed at his side, her hair reflecting the fiery brightness of the sky behind her. 'Not gettin' out that way. Land slip's taken off the edge of the whole mountain. Clean as a knife. Drops clean down to the gorge, and that's a long way. Not a hope.'
They turned away from the small Stockpile and rejoined the others in the corridor. Ryan told them briefly what they'd found and that there was no way out.
'I believe I had already mentioned that probability, Mr. Cawdor,' Doc said with a grin.
Ryan ignored him. 'Let's go.'
They retraced their steps, and Henn moaned about carrying the radio.
'If we ain't usin' it, then why in blazing shit am I humpin' it on?'
Finnegan patted the tall black man on the backside. 'Ice your asshole, Hennings. You got the radio and I got my big gut to carry.'
The other branch of the corridor went a couple of hundred paces, then forked like a sidewinder's tongue. The lights had failed in the one end but burned brightly from the roof along to the right. 'That way,' said Ryan, leading the others.
As they went, they checked off all the rooms, on the chance that one of them might contain some clue, some indication of what had happened in this place.
Hun picked up a torn piece of card tucked in behind one of the plastic doors. Holding it up to the light, she read the faint pencil lettering.
'Forty-Niners over the Dolphins, twenty-four to twenty-one,' she read. 'Now what the scorch was that? Some kind of firefight casualties?'
She tucked the scrap of paper in a pocket of her overalls.
The corridor ended abruptly. A door of vanadium-type steel ran ceiling to floor, its surface polished and gleaming, throwing back their own reflections as if it mocked them. There was no sign of any lock or control, just smooth walls on either side.
'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
'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
