MILDRED STRAIGHTENED, smiling at the anxious faces around her in the control room of the mat-trans unit.

"They're both coming around now," she said. "Father and son recovering together."

Krysty sighed. "Good." She shook her head. "One thing I don't understand is why they both smell of smoke and why they're both soaking wet."

Chapter Five.

Recovering consciousness was only a part of getting to feel better.

The triple jump had taken a grave toll of both Ryan and his son, weakening them both physically and mentally.

As soon as they'd appeared together in the gateway, almost exactly a half hour after Ryan had made his jump, Mildred had gotten to them, throwing open the door before the disks had ceased glowing. She wrinkled her nose at the stink of burned plastic that hung in the chamber and was puzzled at the water that dripped from their clothes.

She helped Trader, J.B., Abe, Krysty and Jak to haul them out and lay them on the floor of the control area.

"They chilled?" Abe had asked, staring down at the two unconscious figures.

"They'll be fine." Mildred had turned them both onto their sides, probing with her finger to make sure neither swallowed his tongue. "Pulse and respiration are about what you'd expect after what they've been through."

Twelve worrying minutes passed without much sign of returning life. Then they had both come around together.

"FEELING BETTER?" Krysty asked, sitting on the floor beside Ryan.

"Some. How long since we finished that last jump? Guess I must've dozed off again."

She checked his chron. "Closing in toward two hours."

He sniffed. "What I need is a hot bath, some food and then sleep for a couple of days."

"That's all, lover?" She touched him on the thigh.

Ryan managed a smile. "Nice try, Krysty. Thanks, but no thanks. Not just yet."

"Can't blame me for trying."

"I don't, lover."

"How's Dean?"

"Better than his old man, if you want the truth. Resilience of youth, and all that."

"He ready to go out and explore the redoubt?"

Krysty thought about that for a few moments, then nodded. "Guess so. How about you?"

Ryan pressed his hand to his temple. "Can't remember feeling so wrung-out. Times that I curse those

predark whitecoats for not making jumps easier to take."

Doc had wandered over to join them. "There are few waking hours in my life when I don't curse the whitecoats for what they've done. But credit where it's due. The work on matter-transfer systems had been

going on in ultrasecret for some time. One of the scientists told me that it was triggered back in the 1950s by a horror film called The Fly . There was matter-transfer jumping in that."

"Did it work, or did the hero finish up with a real bad headache?" Ryan queried.

"My recollection, dear friend, is that the hero ended up with a real bad flys head, when the actual jump

went more than a little awry. The inevitable cinematic consequence of trying to tamper with the works of

the Almighty."

Dean's face, the stark planes like polished ivory, peered over Doc's shoulder at his father. His voice sounded hoarse. "How's it going, Dad?"

"Better by the minute, son. You ready to go and start a look around this redoubt?"

"Sure. Just as long as we don't have to go anywhere near a gateway for for at least another hundred years."

Ryan grinned at the boy. "You and me both, Dean. Yeah, you and me both."

THE PONDEROUS SEC DOOR rose smoothly into the air as J.B. threw the green lever up. He stopped it when it was only a scant few inches off the concrete floor, so that Jak could flatten himself and peer beneath it with his shrewd ruby eyes.

"Nothing."

The door continued its upward progress, almost silently.

Ryan leaned his hand against the wall while he waited, aware of his own weakness. Krysty saw the

movement and moved closer. "Want a shoulder to lean on, lover?" she asked.

"All the time," he replied, then lifted a hand. "No. I can make my way. Tell you what, though."

"What?"

"Wouldn't mind if you took the Steyr for a while."

"Sure." Ryan unslung the rifle, taking care not to knock the Starlite night scope and laser image enhancer

against the wall. He handed it to Krysty, who took it and put the strap across her own back.

Trader glanced around him. "Ready to go?"

"Sure. J.B. take point, and you cover our asses, Trader. I'll just sort of stumble along somewhere in the

middle."

There was a biting, nagging headache at the back of his skull, but Ryan pushed it away and joined in the skirmish line with the others, Dean walking at his side.

"SMELL," Jak said.

Everyone stopped, sniffing the air.

"I fear that I have my usual snuffling cold," Doc announced after a few moments.

"Sulfur," Mildred said.

They'd gone only a few dozen paces along a typical redoubt corridor. To the left of the gateway entrance had been a blank wall of concrete. The corridor to the right was about twenty-five feet wide, with walls that sloped slightly until they became the arched roof. Strip neon lighting kept it well illuminated, though some of the tubes had, not surprisingly, burned out over the past century. Miniature vid sec cameras placed near the tops of the walls kept their ceaseless vigil, tiny red lights showing when they were actually functioning.

Ryan could smell it now, faint, at the back of consciousnessthe smell of rotten eggs.

"Hot springs?" Trader suggested. "Could mean we're near that place north of the Shoshone Forest. Damn, but my memory gets worse every damn day!"

"Yellowstone?" Abe suggested cautiously, knowing that Trader got even more angry if an attempt to prompt turned out to be inaccurate.

"Yeah!" Trader slapped Abe on the back. "Ace on the fucking line, buddy. Yellowstone. All those bubbling pools and steam and shit."

"Could be." Ryan sniffed again. "But there's another smell, as well. Kind of salt. I reckon we might be out in the western islands. Hot springs and volcanoes and every kind of wrong thing you can think of."

"What're the western islands?" Mildred asked. "I don't think I've heard that name before."

Ryan answered her. "Probably because we've never jumped out that way since you've been with us. Which, in its turn, is probably because it was worst hit during the nukecaust and I doubt that many redoubts survived."

"Not close to the coast, anyway," J.B. agreed. "What was California in your day, Mildred."

"Oh, right. I know you told me some of the changes in the old U.S. of A. during the last war. You said that the West Coast was particularly badly hit by the missiles."

"Nearly wiped clean away," Trader said. "Couldn't find a speck of beach for a thousand miles."

Doc coughed. "My belief is that the San Andreas and all the other associated tectonic fault lines were struck and opened up. All of their energy was released, and the consequent quakes stretched out far beyond the coast. Is that not the correct scenario, John Barrymore?"

J.B. nodded. "Apart from the long words, it sounds right to me, Doc. The Cific just poured inland for hundreds of miles in some places."

"Tsunamismonster tidal waves," Doc said. "I would speculate that the loss of life along the entire California coast was total. A flat one hundred percent."

"So, what's there now?" Mildred asked, looking at J.B. "Islands?"

"We never went there very often," he replied, glancing, in turn, to Trader.

"Hot spots and the worst muties in Deathlands. Human and fucking animals." He lifted his Armalite to his

shoulder and mimed opening up with it. "Best if the whole place was chilled." "Well," said Ryan, "that's my guess."

"Must be open if smell outside air," Jak stated. "Could be anyone in here." "Or anything," Trader suggested.

THE END OF THE CORRIDOR came more quickly than any of them expected, less than fifty yards around a slight curve, beyond where Jak had caught the whiff of sulfur.

"Not another elevator!" Krysty said. "I really hate the trapped-in feeling."

"Look on the bright side." Dean grinned. "Might not be working, and we can all go back and make another jump. Wouldn't that be a hot pipe?"

"No," his father said angrily, "it wouldn't."

They hadn't passed any other corners or doors, so this single elevator represented the only way out. It was larger than usual, wide enough to take a small arma-wag.

"Not coded," J.B. observed. "Just the standard arrows for up and down."