"Rad count's getting higher," J.B. stated. "Into the orange."

If they landed and found that the region of orange radiation extended very far, they would have no choice

but to return to their raft and either try a little farther up or down the coast, or cut their losses and return to the hidden redoubt to make yet another jump.

"See the bottom," Dean called.

"Rocks, shingle or sand?"

"Sort of shingle and sand, Dad. I can see a crab, as well."

"What?"

Everyone dropped their paddles and snatched for their blasters.

"Only about half as big as my hand." Dean sniggered. "Sorry if I scared anyone."

"You little bastard," Abe moaned. "I nearly shit myself all over again."

THEY MADE a perfect soft touchdown.

There was still only the lightest breeze, bringing in tiny breakers that hissed on the gleaming pebbles. With a little effort they managed to heave the raft up the beach, hauling it above the high-water mark. Immersion in the ocean had tightened some of the knots in the rope, but the whole structure was much looser, and it was clumsy and difficult to handle.

"Might have to do some work on it before we go back to the island," Trader said, kicking at the timbers.

Ryan nodded. "Unless we can find us some alternative transport."

Mildred looked at the raft. "Think it's safe there? How about if the tide comes in?"

"Should be up far enough," Abe said. "The piles of weed there show high water." He looked up at the deep blue bowl of the sky, unsullied by a single cloud. "And there's no sign of any sort of storm."

Dean coughed, hawking and spitting. "The smell gets on your chest," he said, pulling a face. "And it makes your eyes sting, as well."

J.B. was busily wiping salt spray off his spectacles. "It looks clear farther inland," he said. "Depends on how far we have to go to get clear of the fumes."

"And the rad hot spot," Ryan reminded.

"Yeah, and the hot spots."

THEIR FIRST STROKE of luck came when they reached the building. As they drew nearer they could see that there was a rough concrete slipway running from it, toward the sea. The double doors were badly weathered, bleached by the onshore wind. A plain bolt and hasp held them shut.

Inside the dark hut were a clinker-built boat, about fifteen feet long, with an unstepped mast and a set of oars in each. A hole marred the hull.

"Sails," Jak said, pointing to some shrouded bundles on a shelf running along one wall of the window-less shack. "Lover?"

"Yeah, Krysty?"

"Is this God telling us that we should fix that hole, cast off this ruined place and go north or south?"

Doc laughed, a harsh, booming sound in the muffled stillness of the boathouse. "I confess that I have always been puzzled by that aspect of the omnipotence of the Almighty."

"How, Doc?" Mildred asked.

"When people say that God is trying to give them a sign or a warning. If our Divine Creator is truly all-powerful and all-knowing and all-seeing, then why does he have to resort to such clumsy methodology to pass on his messages? Why not a neat little card pressed into your hand by invisible fingers?" He put on an even deeper voice. " 'To Krysty Wroth and friendsIt is my wish that you sail north of here and I have provided a craft for your journey, though it needs a slight repair.' Why not be up front about it?"

Most of the party laughed. But Krysty wasn't to be deterred. "Doesn't answer my question, Doc. If there's bad nuke radiation here, mebbe we should simply take the boat and move away from it."

Ryan bit his lip, balancing the options. "Orange isn't too serious, providing we don't stay for days. I don't like the idea of moving away without exploring at all. I've never been here to this part of the western islands. None of us has."

"Do we need to see some stinking hot springs when we can smell them?"

"You got a bad feeling about it?" Ryan asked her. "That why you want to move on?"

Krysty stepped into the early-morning sunshine, the brightness accentuating the living flames of her brilliant hair. She looked out to sea before replying. "No. Can't say that there's a bad feeling. Not like danger from anyone. But this seems such a foul place."

Ryan joined her, laying his hand on her arm. "Tell you what. We know about this boat if we need it. We'll see what it's like for a mile or so inland. If we can't get through, then we'll come back and fix it up. All right?"

She nodded, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. "All right."

Chapter Twelve.

Doc tried to lift flagging spirits by recounting an anecdote of the time that he and his wife had visited Yellowstone in March of 1892, when it had been open as a national park for precisely twenty years.

But the oppressive nature of the region through which they were walking lay heavy on the old man. He started to become confused, repeating himself, frequently losing the point of the tale, which seemed to center on an extremely plump mother and unmarried daughter, a hungry brown bear cub, two tubs of pecan ice cream and Old Faithful.

Finally he fell silent.

Ryan was relieved when the old man eventually gave up on his pointless and muddled tale.

He had never seen such a depressing and alien terrain. Not anywhere through all his thirty-odd years in

Deathlands. Here was only a bleak, crazed despair, as though the malevolent and psychotic Lords of

Chaos had given vent to all of their most profoundly horrid imaginings.

The path from the coast snaked through a region where not a living thing existed. No birds flew through the tainted, misty sky. No animals walked between the twisted columns of flowering sulfur. No fish could hope to survive in the steaming, bad-water pools that fringed the trail.

Not a flower bloomed therenot even the ubiquitous Deathlands daisy. A few fossilized stumps of ancient trees stood stark, here and there, among the bubbling lakes of yellow mud, blasted by the impossible climate and the stinking fumes that drove away any hint of clean air.

There weren't even any flies humming through the fetid, humid air, or iridescent beetles to crawl around

in the soft, sticky mud that seemed to lie everywhere.

The group of friends trudged along in single file, Ryan out at point, J.B. bringing up the rear. The path snaked in a generally easterly direction, inland, gently upward. Despite that, all of them were finding it arduous going, panting and sweating.

The rad counters were still showing orange, though it seemed that they were sliding a little way down the scale, closer to the yellow section.

"Can we stop for a sip or two of water?" Doc asked. "I still have a drop left in my canteen."

"Best keep," Jak said, rubbing his fingers through his long white hair, staring in disgust at the bright yellow stains on them.

"You kept yours?" Trader asked.

"See."

The teenager took his canteen from his belt and tossed it hard at Trader, who caught it easily, shaking it in

disbelief. "Fucking full!"

"Not quite. Taken some small drinks. Most left."

"Not all of us are supermen, my dear magnesium-maned chum," Doc said.

Ryan interrupted the conversation. "Best we hold what water we've got. This is all undrinkable. Probably

poisonous. Just keep going."

"LIKE GOLDEN FLOWERS of stone, aren't they?" Krysty had paused to look at a strange rock formation just to the left of the pathway. The rounded boulders were covered in crystalline sulfur, in delicate stalactites, with water dripping from them into a large steaming pool.

Somewhere out of the wreathing fog ahead of them there was a great roaring sound that stopped everyone in their tracks. It was a venomous noise, hissing, gurgling and bubbling, like the biggest mutie snake in the world.

"What the" Trader said, automatically bringing the Armalite to his shoulder.

Doc laughed. "Need more than bullets to try to stop that, my friend. Perhaps a particularly enormous cork driven into the vent of the geyser might do the trick."

"Geyser! You mean one of those pissing jets of hot water? That all it was?"

Ryan licked his lips. "Yeah. You can actually taste the warm spray."

THERE WAS A BRIEF PASSAGE, when they were walking along the rim of what looked like a missile crater, that the rad counters went soaring into the high orange, verging on the lethally dangerous crimson.

But a hundred yards farther they had eased back down again into the low orange, and another quarter mile saw them showing yellow.

"Thought it was clearing up a bit," Krysty said, as they followed the narrow, winding trail down into a patch of much thicker fog.

Ryan stopped before answering, not wanting to take the risk of carrying on walking while looking behind him. The path was less than a yard wide in places, sometimes covered in scattered stones and sometimes slippery with thick ocher mud. To his right was a layer of crystallized rock salts that he suspected might only be a couple of inches thick and covered over a lake of water that was close to boiling point.

On the left was a steaming swamp of foul-smelling mud that bubbled and plopped. It ran as far as the eye could see, into the mist.

To stumble and fall on either side would mean, at the best, horrific scalding. At the worst it would mean a hideous way to buy the farm.

Everyone had stopped.

There was no wind at all in the sheltered region, and the fog seemed to be a permanent feature, settled down over them like a large and noisome animal.

"When we passed across that higher part, by the old tree stumps, I thought I spotted clearer ground a half mile ahead," Trader said.

"Can't go on forever," J.B. agreed, taking off his glasses for the fiftieth time since the raft had landed, trying to clean away the sticky condensation.

"My chest hurts," Dean complained, squatting on his heels and coughing, retching as if he were trying to remove phlegm from his throat.

"Sooner we move on, sooner we find some clean air and green grass," Ryan said, helping his son to his feet. He echoed the Armorer. "Can't go on much longer."

MILDRED SAT BESIDE Doc at a point where the track was wider. They'd stopped in a natural amphitheater, with a small pool of water at its center. The fog had diminished until it was only a light mist.

Dean had walked down from the others and was sitting on a smooth rock, picking up pebbles and lobbing them into the steaming water. The boy seemed vastly better, once they were away from the choking fumes of the fog.

"Amazing to think that all of this was once California," she said.

"The judgment of God on a truly biblical scale," he replied. "Even in my day the place was too wealthy. Too smug and sure of itself. By the time that the Armageddon plunged from the skies, it can only have been a thousand times worse. It considered itself the chosen land, did it not?"