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.