"Don't get easier, do they, lover?" she asked quietly.

"No. Just wish we could learn how to control where we go on these jumps. I worry that one day we're gonna end up in a gateway that doesn't exist, with half a mountain on top of us."

"Reminds me of the time back in Harmony Ville, when I was a girl. Fat guy named Johannus fell clean out the top of a two-hundred-foot ponderosa. Folks heard him all the way down yelling out 'So far, so good. So far, so good.' Know what I mean?"

Ryan had heard the story before, but it still amused him. Each time Krysty told it there was a different location and a different person doing the falling. But it remained a good tale.

Now everyone was coming out of it. Lori rolled on her side, her face a pale yellow, holding her stomach. "I feel sick," she moaned. She raised a hand to investigate her hair. "Oh, blood! Who bleeds? Doc? All going in my buggered hair!" She managed to get to her hands and knees before beginning to retch. It had been some time since their last meal, and there was nothing in her stomach but threads of golden bile.

The noise woke Doc. "By the three Kennedys! What's amiss here? Small nasal hemorrhage, I do believe."

Jak Lauren tried to stand up, steadying himself against the shimmering gray wall. "Head fucked," he muttered. "Hate jumps. Head feels bad."

"Take it easy," Ryan warned.

Lori had stopped retching and had also stood up, picking at the matted blood in her hair. As she moved, the tiny silver spurs on her high red boots tinkled with a thin, clear sound.

Ryan sighed and slowly uncoiled, picking up the Heckler & Koch G-12 automatic rifle from the floor, then checked that his SIG-Sauer 9 mm pistol was safely holstered at his belt. He reached down to help Krysty to her feet, getting a smile of appreciation in return.

J.B. stood up in his neat, effortless way, brushing dust off his clothes. "Don't think I'll ever enjoy these jumps."

Doc was last to his feet, dabbing at his bloodied nose with a blue swallow's-eye kerchief. He leaned on his ornate ebony swordstick, gripping it by the silver lion's-head top. "Upon my soul but I have made a dreadful mess on the floor. Considerable tapping of the claret."

"And on my head, you stupe crazy," Lori moaned. "Got it on my boots." The sound of the leather sole peeling from the metal disks was unpleasantly sticky.

"Sorry, my dearest dove." Doc moved to put his arm around her, but the tall blonde moved away, shrugging pettishly.

"Everyone ready?" Ryan asked. He didn't need to check that both his blasters had rounds under the hammer. They always did.

"Wonder where are now?" Jak said, licking his lips. "Can't smell or taste nothing."

"Know when we get outside." J.B. glanced across at Ryan. "Now?"

Ryan nodded. "Yeah. Blasters ready, people. Krysty, you open the chamber door."

The trigger of the caseless G-12 felt good with Ryan's index finger wrapped around it. True, they'd never yet encountered a gateway where the main control room had been infiltrated, but there had to be a first time for everything.

Krysty brushed the tumbling hair away from her face, gripped the handle and pushed the armored door open.

Chapter Two

"Safe," she said.

As was usual in the gateways, the main mat-trans chamber opened into a small anteroom, which was only about twelve feet square and contained no furniture. A row of shelves lined one wall, and a dark green plastic beaker stood alone on the middle shelf. Generally the redoubts that Ryan had seen throughout the wastes of the Deathlands had been surprisingly clean. They were all run by efficient nuke plants and comp-controlled to regulate light, heat, humidity and antistat dust maintenance.

This small room was no exception. Very faintly, far off, felt rather than heard, came the whispering vibration of the main power plant — self-maintaining, ticking away dutifully for a hundred years, still doing the job that its long-dead creators had programmed it to perform.

J.B. followed Krysty, with Ryan eventually bringing up the rear. With six of them in the room it was a little crowded. Jak picked up the beaker and looked inside it. He shook his head and replaced the container on the shelf. "Dry as neutron bones."

From several previous experiences, Ryan knew that beyond the closed door would be the main control room for the gateway. Its condition would probably give them a valuable clue as to the state of the rest of the redoubt. Some had been totally evacuated during the megadeath panic in the last weeks of the year 2000. Some had shown signs of having been left in a tearing hurry in the second week of January, 2001.

"Ready?" Krysty asked.

The heavy door was vanadium steel, with a hydraulic power switch. There was the hissing sound of the motor operating, and the door slid open. The six had traveled together long enough to know how they should operate in a potentially dangerous situation. Krysty and J.B. slithered out quickly, flattening themselves against the walls on either side of the entrance. Jak and Doc, with Lori dragging at their heels, darted toward the nearest cover, which was a line of workbenches. Ryan stayed behind for a moment in the anteroom, ready to provide supporting fire if it proved necessary.

But the room was empty.

The huge double doors that would link it to the remainder of the fortress were solidly closed. Ryan stepped out, easing the door shut behind him. He took his finger off the trigger of the G-12 and let the rifle dangle from its shoulder strap. Everyone else relaxed.

"Lori!"

"What, Ryan?"

The tall, broad-shouldered man strode across to where the girl had draped herself across a padded chair. She glanced up, seeing the flare of anger in his eye, and winced as if Ryan had already struck her across the face.

"Get up, girl," he ordered.

Krysty moved a half step forward to try to intercede.

"Keep out of it, lover," Ryan said, quiet, not even turning.

Lori, eyes glued to his face, rose slowly to her feet. In her heels she came close to his six foot and two inches height. Nervously she lifted a hand to flick away an errant curl from her forehead.

"Don't ever do that again, Lori," Ryan warned.

"Do what?"

"Come out of an unknown door like you were strolling into a high-fash clothes store in a fancy ville."

"I don't know what..." she began, ducking and recoiling as he actually lifted a clenched fist toward her.

Like a wolf checking its leap in midair, Ryan succeeded in holding back the intended blow.

"Fireblast, you triple-stupe bitch! You think this is some kind of game? Bang and you're dead and then we all sit around and share a self-heat? Any team's as good as its weakest member."

"And that's you, Lori," Krysty pointed out.

"Just kept your fucking mouth shutting, Krysty," the younger girl snapped.

"We all have to pull together, my dear," Doc said, trying to placate his teenage mistress.

"You pull yourself, you old..."

Ryan reached out and grabbed Lori by the collar, hefting her so that her toes barely scraped the floor of the control room. "Keep buttoned, girl! You screw up and we all get screwed up. Stay alert when you're supposed to."

"What if I don't?" she sneered, recovering her nerve now she saw he wasn't actually going to hit her.

"If you don't stop playing around with all of our lives? Easy, Lori. We dump you. Just walk away and leave you behind. I figure you might live a couple of days on your own."

"You'd chill me?" She looked around at the faces of the other four, seeking some sign that they disputed what Ryan was saying.

Krysty met her gaze, nodding slightly. J.B. simply stared straight back at the blond teenager. Jak turned his fingers into a gun and pointed at her, drilling her between the eyes. Doc shuffled his feet and looked down at the floor.