In the 1990s, scientists working on Overproject Whisper were researching the possibility of time travel... "chron-jumps" as they were known. The gateways hidden within max-sec redoubts were part of Project Cerberus, and the scientists working in that area of the project were developing matter-transmission.

Several experiments were carried out in "trawling" someone from the past. The failures were indescribably horrific. There was, as far as was known, only one successful trawl — Doctor Theophilus Tanner, a young married scientist from 1896.

But Doc proved to be a damnably difficult and uncooperative guinea pig. After several attempts to chron-jump himself back to his wife and family, the men and women working on Overproject Whisper finally jumped him forward, only weeks before sky-dark. Nearly a century into the future, he arrived in the ville of Mocsin, up in the Darks, where Ryan Cawdor had helped to rescue him. Two chron-jumps and two hundred years of disorientation had physically aged the man and reduced his brain to a mixture of oatmeal and pearls. When Ryan had first met him, there hadn't been that many pearls.

And now?

Rick was taking deep breaths, swaying on his feet. "Bastard things, these jumps. They always bad as this?"

Doc gave a croaking laugh. "Upon my soul, Master Ginsberg! Mostly they are much worse than this!"

The freezie shook his head. "I'm not sure I can live with this kind of traveling. I'm so shook up it feels like my guts are in tomorrow and my brain's in yesterday. Or the day before."

"Where are we?" Jak asked. "Room's smaller than most."

Ryan hadn't noticed it, but the teenager was right. The chamber was slightly smaller than any of the others they'd jumped from. Not by a lot, maybe three-quarters the size.

J.B. nodded. "Yeah, and the air's not that good, either. Stale. Like the conditioners not working properly."

Krysty licked her lips, tasting. "It's like old air. And the light's weaker than in the other redoubts we've been in."

"How about it, Rick? You're the gateway expert in the group."

"Don't know, Ryan. I can give you the batting stats for the Yankees back to the Second World War and the rushing stats for the Giants for the same period. But I don't know squat about where all the gateways were or if any of them deviated from the standard norm."

"One way find out," Jak said, moving to the heavy door of the chamber. The albino began to heave at the control handle.

Nothing happened.

"Fucker's jammed!"

Everyone had tried it, pushing, heaving and lifting. Even Rick had leaned against the armored door, ear pressed to the lock, fumbling at the handle while everyone else kept silent and waited to see what happened.

"Nothing," he pronounced.

It was only then that the grim reality of their position struck Ryan Cawdor.

The controls of a gateway were triggered in one simple way. After the numerals and letter coordinates had been set on the coded panel in the outer room, the closing of the door initiated the technical process of the jump. If you couldn't open the door, you couldn't start a jump.

"We're trapped here," J.B. said quietly, reaching the same conclusion as Ryan.

"Looks that way."

Rick sat on the floor with a sigh. "This is all my fault, isn't it?"

"How d'you figure that?" Krysty asked.

"I worked on these goddamned gateways, didn't I? I knew about how they functioned."

"But you never knew all the transmit codes, did you?" Doc asked.

"No, but I knew the codes to make sure you didn't hit a damaged gateway, and the thirty-minute automatic recall code." Rick shook his head, lips trembling, on the edge of tears. "And now I forgot them. All that bullshit I put up with for years about sec clearance. If I could've remembered that, we'd be on our way out of here real soon. But I can't... can't remember it. I think it started with a... No, I can't recall any of it."

"No point talking," Ryan said. "Wastes breath. Wastes time. Mebbe you'll remember it one day. Mebbe not. Either way, it doesn't help us any stuck in here now."

"Blasters?" Jak asked.

"Ricochet," J.B. replied.

It was true. The armaglass walls of the chamber would bounce back bullets from their blasters with lethal effect.

"Got some plas-ex," suggested J.B, the armorer of the group, just as he'd been the armorer to the Trader during the years that he and Ryan had ridden the war wags together.

Ryan shook his head. "Last resort time. Same as bullets. Any kind of explosion in here and we'd be picking bits of wall out of our bellies. Gotta be a better way."

"Over, under or around," Krysty said. "Isn't that what Trader used to say when there was a real serious problem?"

"Yeah. Trouble is, lover, we got the same kinda stuff all around us. And over and under, too. It's the door or it's nothing."

"I could use the Earth Mother's force," she said after a long pause.

Nobody said anything. Rick looked up at her. "Earth Mother? What's that, Krysty? Sounds like something out of San Francisco in the good old flowery sixties."

"You know what it does to you," Ryan warned, ignoring the freezie's question.

"Got a better idea, lover?" she replied, smiling at him. "I'll be all right. Just need a rest after I've done it."

"Take no notice of Richard Ginsberg. Pretend he's not there. Bloody invisible man, that's what I am," Rick complained.

"Sorry. From when I was a skinny sprat, back in the ville of Harmony, I was being trained. Taught certain... well, powers, I guess. My mother, Sonja, always told me to strive for life. Now, if I go inside myself, I can sometimes... get the power. I can't describe it any other way, Rick."

"Let me try the door one more time," Ryan suggested. He'd only seen Krysty use the mysterious power on a few occasions, but he'd seen how his woman was devastated by the aftereffects.

The handle moved an inch or so, then it stopped solid. The doorframe looked as if it had been twisted and warped, probably the result of the earth-shifts caused by the massive nuking.

"No," he said, "not going to move."

"I'll try it. Might as well sit down a while. It takes a little time."

Ryan hunkered down next to Rick, while the other three ranged themselves around the six-sided gateway. Doc managed a half smile in Ryan's direction, then folded his arms on his bony knees and lowered his head onto them.

Krysty turned away and leaned against the cool glass wall, closing her eyes, relaxing her whole body. Her arms hung loosely at her sides and her lips moved as she began to psych herself into the mystic depths of her arcane power.

"Gaia, aid me! Send me the blessed strength of your power. Draw it from the earth, and the sea. From the mountain and the valley. From the sky, the sun and the moon. From the cold stars. From the desert and the lake. From the chem storm and from the tumbling wind."

Her voice was becoming dulled and flat. She swayed back and forth, fists clenching. Ryan watched her closely, seeing the trickle of crimson blood from her hands, where her own nails were gouging half-moons from her skin. Krysty moved a few steps to her left, until she was pressed against the door. Her flaming mane of hair shifted uneasily, coiling at the nape of her slender neck.

"Gaia! Gaia, help me. For Mother Sonja and all her wisdom. For nail and skin. For eye and tooth. And for the blessing of the blood. Gaia, help me for the blessing of blood!"

She was trembling as though a fever possessed her. Through the thin material of her shirt, Ryan could see that her nipples had hardened. She was breathing faster, the words coming more harshly. The climax was close.

"Gaia! Oh, Gaia, help me! Give me the power, the power, the power! Now!"