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.

He tried to work out just how he felt. His stomach swirled as if he'd been riding War Wag One over the bumpiest road in all Deathlands. And his brain relayed the curious sensation of having been sucked into itself and then dragged through a vacuum before being rammed back into his skull.

But he lived.

Whatever that bastard machine was supposed to have done, it had failed. The trap had not been properly sprung. Maybe over the decades the gas or poison or whatever had lost its power. He thought again that he ought to kill Doc. Now, without any further hesitation.

"Ryan? You all... Mother, my head aches."

Ryan sat up, looking around, seeing all his comrades either slumped unconscious or showing the first signs of recovering. Krysty blinked and sighed.

"How d'you feel?" he said.

She licked her lips, brushing a hand through the tumbling hair. "I've felt better. What was it? Death trap went wrong?"

"Don't know. Doc knew about it, the old..."

"Where are we, Mr. Cawdor?"

Ryan drew the LAPA, finger on the trigger. "We're still in the Redoubt and we're all alive. Trick didn't work, Doc."

"Trick? Upon my soul, but it is no trick. And it didwork."

"What? Knocked us on our asses, that's all."

Doc was up, tottering, steadying himself with a hand on the streaked glass of the wall. Everyone was now back to some degree of awareness.

"What color were the walls of the gateway in the Redoubt, Mr. Cawdor?"

"Brown and..." Ryan's jaw sagged a little. "Fireheat! These are green. They've changed."

"No. We've changed. The gateway worked. We are no longer within the Redoubt in the Darks."

That was enough to bring them all to their feet. J.B. doubled over and retched as though he was about to throw up, but nothing came.

"Not in the Darks no more?" he gasped, wiping a gloved hand over his mouth. "Where, then?"

"Ah..." The triumphant smile had vanished. "That is one of the many problems with the gateways. Not always reliable. Depends on destination setting."

Whatever had happened while they were all out cold, Doc's madness had deserted him and he spoke clearly and intelligently.

"They started here about a hundred years back, trying to transmit matter. They began with a pair of small metal balls. Light gray metal balls. They got them to travel a few centimeters. And they went on from there."

While he listened, Ryan moved around the room. The walls were certainly a changed color and the air tasted different. Not flat and dead as in the Redoubt. Was all this possible? Had the fog been a luci-gas? Was this all some chem dream?

"They wanted to use it for military purposes. But the big war stopped that good. By then they'd set up a network of these Redoubts, each with gates. Send and receive, and some big mistakes. Horrible things did happen."

He stopped as though his mind was lodging on unbearable memories. Ryan reached to open the door, but Doc waved a hand to stop him.

"Not yet. Nearly done. Gates can be set as this one was. But all codes are now lost, lost forever. So it's a gamble whereand whenyou get out."

"But... some of these gates must have been destroyed in the fighting," said Ryan. "What would have happened if the controls had been set for one of those? Then what?"

"Most in the wilderness areas were destroyed. As to your question, I suppose that possibility represents the final frontier!"

And he laughed.

"You crazy bastard," spat Hun, moving toward him with her fist clenched.

"Leave him be," ordered Ryan, stopping her.

"Let's go see where we are."

"I am obliged, Mr. Cawdor," Doc said, relapsing once more into the archaic way of speaking. "Most of all I would dislike having to strike a lady. Next I would dislike being struck by one."

The door opened easily.

Opened onto a room of the same scale as the one back at the Redoubt. Any of Ryan's doubts were dispelled when he saw a table knocked over on its side and two of the shelves slipping lopsidedly. A long crack ran down the wall, deep enough to insert a hand.

In the next room, the consoles whirred and lights danced, but there was an undertone of grinding and Ryan could smell a frail scent of smoldering. Of a fire that slumbered somewhere within the machinery that surrounded them. He could see all eight of his group reflected in the smeared metal of the door that he knew would open on a blank passage. To the right of it there was a green lever in the down position, with the word Closed printed beneath it.

Ryan grasped the lever and pushed it up to the Open position. It moved easily, as though it swam in a greased slot. For a moment nothing happened, then the grinding of gears, and then the door began to slide back.

Everyone yelled at once.

The moment that the thin sheet of filthy water came gushing through the widening crack at the edge of the door, the shouting began. Water immediately flowed about their feet, carrying innumerable wriggling creatures with scaly skins and ferocious rows of tiny teeth.

"Shut it!" shouted J.B., but Ryan had already thrown the lever down again.

It seemed to take forever, but the door finally hissed shut, and the water stopped.

"It's fuckin' hot, Ryan," said Henn, kicking with his boots at one of the reptiles that had fastened onto the sole of his boot.

"It came all the way from top to bottom." Krysty's shocked voice said it all. The Redoubt where they had finished up was under water. Maybe under shallow water, maybe under whole fathoms.

"There is a thirty-minute automatic reset on the gates," said Doc. "If we make haste we should... should be back in the Redoubt in the Darks."

They splashed through the filth of mud and water, crushing the seething life as they moved. There was a step into the actual trans-mat chamber and the slime had not penetrated it. They all stepped in, and J.B. reached to close the door.

"Hold on. If we're goin' to pass out," said Ryan, "I guess it's better if we sit down first."

They sat in a ring, Krysty opposite Ryan. Their eyes met and he winked at her. He enjoyed the hint of a smile on her full lips. And she was a mutie!

The door closed and once again darkness clawed its way over Ryan's mind, blanking it out.

The moment of wakening was less painful, the headache gone, but the feeling of disorientation was still as strong. It was as if every atom in his body had been juggled around and clumsily reassembled.

Ryan opened his eye.

The walls were brown glass. By the texture it looked armored. It was not possible to guess its thickness.

"Come on, people," Ryan said. "Doc? You know how to reset this machine?"

"Yes, indeed, Mr. Cawdor. But I must repeat that it is a random element. All instructions and codes are gone these many, many years. I can alter the setting and then it will be in the laps of what gods we worship."

"I worship this," said Okie, holding up her M-16.

As he checked that everyone had recovered, Ryan wondered yet again about Doc's range of knowledge. Lots of it could have come from some hoard of old books or vids. There was no other sensible explanation. But he knew so much. Spoke as if he'd been here before. Been here a hundred years ago!