Dectra Chain

by James Axler

  Now here was clear, undeniable evidence that this secondary gateway had been used as a link, not only with other gateways across the land, but also outward.

  Everyone wanted to talk about it, but Ryan stopped the excited chatter. "Come on, friends! Nothing more here to see." He took the space suit and threw it back into the locker. "Let's go find us some food and somewhere to rest up after that jump."

  "But, my dear Ryan, do you not realize what this discovery means?"

  "Sure, Doc. Means someone, apart from us seven, knows how to use a Gateway. Mebbe they know better than us how they work. But we just missed 'em by the width of a knife blade. They've gone—" he waved an arm in the vague direction of the brightly lit ceiling —somewhere out there. We keep moving long enough and far enough, we'll likely come across 'em one day."

  DONFIL SLUNG his Sharps .50 across his shoulders by its braided strap, gripping his new Smith & Wesson blaster in his long fingers. Ryan shook his head as he glanced at the immensely tall Apache, thinking what a raggle-taggle band they were.

  "Smell like swamps," Jak said, pausing suddenly, sniffing at the cool, recirculated air like a pointing hound.

  Ryan also took in several deep breaths through his nose, as did the others.

  Only Krysty noticed anything. "Sort of rotting plants and salty and… Can't place the smell, but Jak's right. There's something around."

  The door out of the main control section of the redoubt opened on a simple manual switch. In the corridor beyond, Ryan immediately noticed that there were prepared firing points for defense, with side walls cutting out at angles to give cover to riflemen. That was something new as well, strengthening the feeling that this place was, somehow, real special.

  "Smell's stronger," Ryan said. "I can taste it now."

  The passageway forked after a hundred paces. To the right was a flight of stairs going upward, with a door at its top. To the left was a massively solid pair of titanium-steel doors, surrounded by thick black rubber sealing strips.

  "Stop a battalion of war wags, doors like that," J.B. said.

  Lori shivered and Doc hastily put his arm around her shoulder. "Feel colder and wet." She screwed up her face to show her discomfort.

  "Yes. There's the sensation of a long-closed tomb down here, Ryan," Doc commented. "Best we try to go upward, I think."

  Ryan shook his head. "Those look like outer doors to the redoubt. Best thing is to find out what kind of place we've landed up in. J.B. can use his sextant, and we'll have some idea, mebbe, of what to expect. There's the main control lock to the right of the entrance."

  It was a chromed steel wheel, which was obviously linked to some system of gears that would swing open the huge doors. At a nod from Ryan, the Armorer went to lay a hand on the wheel. "Real cold," he said.

  "Everyone back and ready for trouble," Ryan warned. "Could be… Just take real good care."

  They all heard the faint hiss of hydraulics engaging—the whirring of long-static motors grumbling into reluctant life. Above the sounds Ryan detected the noise of cogs not quite meshing, metal grinding ominously.

  "Not good, J.B.!" he called.

  But the face beneath the shadowing fedora hat didn't turn toward him, and he realized that the Armorer wasn't able to hear him.

  The polished wheel started to revolve slowly, J.B.'s knuckles white with the effort of moving it around.

  "It's real hard and… No, it's going now. Yeah, there she…"

  The words were drowned out by the great green-white gusher of water that jetted between the opening doors, bursting among the group with the power of a fire hose and knocking them off their feet.

  Ryan opened his mouth to yell for them to make for the stairs, but he was nearly choked by the rush of freezing salt water that filled his throat.

  He rolled over and over, fighting to get to his feet, clawing his way up the wall until he could find his balance. The wave was already three feet deep, swirling around the tops of his thighs. He'd automatically hung on to his weapons as the sea tumbled him down. To his enormous relief, Ryan saw that the inrush had hit him harder than the rest, since he'd been standing near the center of the passageway.

  Doc had Lori by the arm and was already leading her up the stairs toward the high set of doors. The girl was barely able to walk, her long blond hair hanging limply across her shoulders.

  Jak was on the second step, scarcely knee-deep, brushing back his mane of snow-white hair, peering down for the others. J.B. was clinging to the chrome wheel, braced against the wall, hat tugged immovably down over his forehead. He shook his head as he turned to face Ryan. Above the thunder of the deepening water, Ryan couldn't hear him, but the shape of his mouth and the movement of the head made it clear that the control was jammed. Nothing could stop the sea from continuing to pour into the redoubt.

  Krysty came bursting up from underwater, hair like a spurt of fire around her face. She managed to stand alongside her man, putting her lips close to his ears to shout "You all right, lover? Make for the stairs? Only way."

  "Yeah!" he bellowed, wondering how deep below the sea the doors of the redoubt lay, and if the other exit from the corridor, some thirty feet above them, would be open.

  Out of the corner of his eye he spotted Donfil, brandishing his new blaster, the incoming waves hardly reaching to his knees as he picked his way toward the staircase with the ungainly delicacy of a feeding stork.

  Ryan clutched Krysty by the hand and they battled together across the corridor, joined by J.B. just before they reached the line of steps. The sea had already reached their waists.

  "Jammed solid!" J.B. yelled. "Couldn't shift it an inch."

  "Best hope we can open those doors at the top. Or we're in the deepest shit."

  "Unless the waters stop rising."

  The doors proved immovably locked. As the seven huddled wetly together on the narrow landing, all they could do was watch the dull gray waters rise inexorably higher toward them.

  Higher and higher.

  Chapter Four

  DESPITE THEIR IMMEDIATE DANGER, Ryan kept trying to remember whether he'd closed the doors that led through to the main gateway control room. If he hadn't, then there wasn't a scintilla of doubt that the whole place was now at least ten feet underwater, for the corridor had been fairly level. All the electrical equipment would be fused into a barren silence, and they would have no hope of ever using the mat-trans again.

  But as the sea kept insistently and steadily rising, he became more occupied with the threat of the dreadful death that confronted them.

  The gap in the doors didn't just allow a ceaseless torrent to flood into the passage—it also allowed life to come in from the deep waters beyond the buried entrance.

  Jak had been sitting on one of the steps near the top with his booted feet dabbling in the bubbling water when something like a snake, whip-thin, darted from the darkness and attached itself to his arm. It wound itself around, tiny head with needled teeth striking blindly toward the boy's face. Before anyone else could make a move, the teenager drew one of his concealed throwing knives, slashing with the honed edge, and cut the creature's head from its flailing body. Its grip weakened immediately, and it fell back into the seething torrent. Its light green corpse sank slowly until it vanished into the murk.

  "Best keep clear," Ryan advised.

  "Long as we can," Donfil replied, standing on the top step, looking doubtfully down as the water lapped at his bare feet. His head was bowed to avoid touching the oppressive metal ceiling with its fan of strip lights.

  "How long?" Jak asked J.B., who'd been obviously taking a count of the speed of the rising waters with his chron.

  "One step in thirty-eight seconds. Step, near as I can figure it, is 7 1/2 inches. That's one inch every 5.06 recurring seconds."

  "How many inches to gone before we get sinked?" Lori asked, still clutching Doc around his waist.

  "I vanish at around another seventy inches. You make it another four inches. Means you g
et nearly a half minute over me. Donfil, there, could last clear until the water reaches the ceiling."

  "Bastard way to go," Jak said. "Like rat in trap."

  Ryan leaned against the unbudgeable doors, feeling the seawater rising over his ankles. The kid was right about that. If he could have picked the manner of his passing, then Ryan would have gone down in a firefight, taking as many to hell with him. Not like this.

  Doc cleared his throat. The landing was relatively quiet, the noise of the rushing water drowned by its own depth. The surface rose calmly and inexorably toward them. "A man could choose a good deal worse company in which to greet his Maker," he said.

  "If only I'd kept some ex-plas. A high-ex gren. Least we could have had an ace on the line. This way, we got nothing."

  The water was above Ryan's knees.

  He was conscious of the increased air pressure, squeezing at his ears, as the space became ever more constricted.

  "Wouldn't mind it if you gave me a last kiss, lover," Krysty said quietly. "Sorry we gotta end like this."

  "Me too," He hugged her tightly.

  The water was touching his belt. One hand around the girl, he automatically held his G-12 above the sea with his other hand.

  "Ears hurt," Lori moaned.

  "Of course!" Doc shouted, his voice sounding peculiarly dead and flat in the waterbound space.

  "What?" Ryan asked, hoping there weren't any more of the venomous sea snakes seething around his submerged groin.

  "Her ears hurt because of the air pressure. We've got a chance, friends. Chance of time, at least. Unless we're way, way deep, hundreds of feet, this air'll save us. These doors here are sealed tighter than a nun's… Pardon me. But the air can't get out. So it holds the water off. Hurts our ears. Keep swallowing hard, chickadee. But the water'll soon stop rising here."

  "Better be quick," Jak panted, nearly six inches shorter than even J.B.

  "You can ride my shoulders, Eyes of Wolf," the shaman offered.

  "Shouldn't be necessary," the old man said, clapping his gnarled hands together.

  "But it won't get us out, Doc," Ryan said, suddenly aware that the rise of the sea had definitely slowed.

  "It'll give us time to think of a way."

  The water stopped rising just above Ryan's waist. As an experiment he dipped his head below the surface, straining his hearing to try to catch the sound of the sea gushing through the gap, twenty feet or so below them. But there was silence, which was broken only by the surging noise of his own blood pumping through his head.

  Doc kept mumbling to himself, trying to work out some hideously complex sum in his head, linking the pressure of the air around them with how deep the sea might be outside.

  "Hundred and forty-six miles," he concluded. "Damnation and perdition! That can't be right. No. Can't be too much deeper outside than in. If this is high tide, then we do have some small hope of escape when it falls again. Particularly if we are anywhere near the northeast coast. The tides there are exceedingly large. The Bay of Fundy…born on Monday, christened on Tuesday and… What was I saying?"

  The old man's voice faded away.

  The coldness was chilling, cutting through to the bone. Ryan made everyone keep moving, stamping their feet and slapping hands, fighting off the insidious enemy.

  Once he felt something move close by his legs, swirling past him, grazing his pants. Something that felt a whole lot too large for his peace of mind. At his warning, everyone who carried a knife drew it, and they moved even closer together on the cramped, narrow landing. It was a sign that the doors of the redoubt must have opened wider than he'd thought.

  The creature didn't come back.

  "IT'S GOING DOWN," Donfil said.

  Ryan hadn't noticed any sign of the water level dropping, but he didn't propose to argue with the seven-foot-tall Apache.

  "Yes," Krysty agreed after a couple of minutes. "He's right."

  Three hours passed before the water dropped enough for them to be able to see the gap in the jammed doors. From above, it looked to be about fifteen inches wide—just enough for them all to be able to squeeze through. But they still had no idea what was on the other side. The sea was out there; that was all they knew.

  The redoubt could be on some uninhabited island, miles from land. The doors might open at the foot of unscalable cliffs. Ryan knew that their chances of getting out of this mess alive weren't much better than even.

  "Light's fading out there," Jak Lauren observed some time later, his red eyes being more sensitive than anyone else's to such changes. "Must be night starting."

  The water at the foot of the stairs was barely a foot deep. Ryan was conscious of the risk that they might miss the turning of the tide and leave it too late to make their move. But he still hesitated at leading his six companions out into the unknown and threatening darkness.

  "Gaia!" Krysty shivered. "My bones are turning into pack ice, lover. Doc and Lori won't make it through another tide. Maybe I won't. We'll die if we stay here."

  He nodded, feeling the stiffness and deadly numbness sapping his energy. "Sure. Let's move out."

  Ryan led the way, wading to the doors. The gap was festooned with long tendrils of leprous-pale weed, and he was aware of sand beneath the soles of his combat boots. It was impossible, with the dazzling lights of the redoubt at his shoulder, to see anything at all outside, beyond the gleam of water on rock a couple of paces beyond the entrance.

  J.B. went to the control wheel and threw his weight against it. He shook his head grimly. "Locked for ever an' a day."

  "I'll go first," Jak said. "Follow tight."

  The young albino had excellent night vision, and Ryan was happy for him to take the lead, moving easily between the rubber-sealed doors. J.B. went second, with the rest of the group close behind. Ryan brought up the rear, glancing back down the bright corridor, wondering whether they might have done better by going back and trying the gateway. But the water seemed to be rising once more, and if they got trapped again, the cold and wet would surely take its toll among them.

  "Nobody ever gets anywhere going backward," he said quietly to himself. He pushed past the fronds of seaweed and walked out into the cool night breeze.

  They stood on the crumbling remnants of an old jetty, with huge, rusting iron mooring rings set in the weathered concrete. The turning tide was already a foot or more over the surface, and Ryan guessed that the vicious nuking of the last of wars must have caused a local earth shift. When it was first built, the quay would have been a good many feet proud of the high-tide level.

  The night was piercingly black, with only scudding white clouds staining the oppressive darkness of the sky. Ryan found it difficult to see through the blown spume off the ocean, but he had the impression of a vast distance out beyond the edge of the jetty, and of monstrously high cliffs scraping upward behind them.

  "Stairs. Iron. Up there." Jak pointed up by the side of the pair of doors. "Not safe. All rotted down."

  "Just what I needed," Ryan said, baring his teeth in a mirthless grin. "Always loved climbing up a crumbling ladder in pitch-dark over rocks and sea. Nothing fucking nicer in the world."

  THE RUNGS AND side supports of the ladder had been worn down until many of them were thinner than a child's finger. Despite the bitter chill and the rising wind, Ryan found himself sodden with sweat, which was running down the small of his back and was making his hands even more slippery.

  He lost track of how long and how high they'd been climbing. For the first few minutes he'd been able to peer down between his boots and see white water breaking over the quay's rough edges. The next time he looked down, all that had vanished. There was nothing to be seen above him and nothing below.

  Every now and again Ryan felt Krysty, climbing second, touch his foot, but for most of the spidering ascent he felt utterly alone, suspended in the yawning chasm between Earth and Heaven. Once a rung broke under his foot, and he swung for a heart-stopping second by his hands, conscious only of t
he frailty of the metal and the appalling distance he would fall.

  The wind was rising, tugging at his clothes, trying to jerk the G-12 off his shoulders. His hair blew about his face.

  A large gull burst shrieking from a cleft in the rock, nearly dislodging his grip and sending him spinning into the void. But he held on and kept climbing remorselessly upward.

  The ladder could only possibly have been built there for emergency purposes. There was no human way of making the climb, except in the direst of needs.

  The wind had become almost a full-blown gale, howling like a cemetery banshee, deafening him to every other sound. It blanked out all of his senses except the ones that gripped the rusting iron and hauled him painfully upward, a trembling step at a time.

  Ryan paused and blinked the spray from his eye, staring up. He was able to see only a few feet, but seeing… thinking he was seeing… the sharp edge of concrete only a half dozen rungs above his head. It had to be the top of the climb.

  The sides of the ladder rose up and over in a semicircle of freezing, pitted metal. Ryan, drained by the struggle of leading the others into unknown blackness, clambered clumsily over the rim and collapsed on hands and knees on smoother stone. Krysty joined him a moment later, her breathing surging harshly.

  "I've done easier things, lover," she panted. "Hope the others can make it."

  "Only one way. Can't go down," he said, feeling strength already seeping back into his body.

  It seemed an eternity before the next head loomed into sight, mirrored glasses making it appear like a bizarrely mutated stick insect.

  "Doc's… close behind. Near falling. Lori tied herself to him with belt. Told him if he let go he'd… take her with… with him. Been pulling from above. I would not do that again for immortal life."

  With a great effort the three of them managed to heave the old man and the girl over the brink onto the flat platform. Doc collapsed, totally exhausted, and Lori fell behind him, retching on hands and knees, threads of vomit dangling from her sagging mouth.