Chapter One

      Ryan Cawdor let out a gasp and cracked open his eye.

      “Everything all right, lover?” Krysty Wroth, Ryan’s titian-haired lover looked concerned.

      Memories of a jump nightmare swirled around his head.

      Even though the jump had been tough on him, Ryan was in top physical condition, and his ability to recover from the mat-trans jumps was better than most in his small band of travelers. He’d experienced a bad jump dream, nothing more than that.

      “Been better, but I’m okay,” he said. “You?”

      “I’ve been worse,” Krysty answered.

      Ryan believed that to be true. Her gorgeous mane of bright red hair, which usually lay flat against her head and shoulders after a jump, was full and thick, and cascaded over her shoulders like a waterfall.

      She gestured to her right with a nod. “Doc didn’t do so well, though.”

      Ryan looked at Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner, a tall and skinny man dressed in an old and worn frock coat. To the casual observer, he appeared to be in his sixties, but it could be argued that the man was actually hundreds of years old. Ryan knelt next to Doc and put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “You with us, Doc?”

      “‘Is this a dagger I see before me—’” Doc muttered.

      “Can you hear me, Doc?”

      “‘—the handle toward my hand?’”

      J. B. Dix, the group’s armorer and weapons expert, removed his spectacles and rubbed his head. “What’s Doc talking about now?”

      “It’s Shakespeare,” Dr. Mildred Wyeth replied. “Macbeth.”

      “Sounds…interesting,” Krysty commented.

      “Sounds crazy,” Jak Lauren said.

      The teenaged albino usually fared the worst of all the members in the group after a jump, but this time he looked as if he came through unscathed.

      It was Doc who’d had the hardest ride.

      He’d be out of it for a while, his thoughts rambling and erratic, but he’d be all right in time.

      Ryan shook one of the old man’s shoulders. “Are you all right?”

      “What?” Doc said, shaking his head as if the brain inside were shrouded in cobwebs.

      When he saw the one-eyed man standing over him, Doc gave Ryan an angry scowl. “I say, my dear Ryan, if you’d like my attention I suggest you use the nomenclature provided for me upon my birth, meaning you can call me Theophilus, or Theo, if you like, or you can simply use the more vernacular terms Doc or Doc Tanner. There is no need to wrench my shoulder from my body!”

      Ryan grinned. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

      Doc massaged his aching shoulder.

      “Where this place?” Jak asked, turning slowly to study the walls.

      Ryan looked around the chamber as well, but didn’t recognize the purple-blue tint of the armaglass walls. The colors were similar to several chambers they’d been in before, but none had had this exact pattern or shading.

      “Only one way to find out for sure,” Ryan said. “Triple red.”

      He put his left hand on the handle that would open the door to the chamber.

      For a moment the inside of the chamber was filled with the sound of the friends’ blasters being unholstered and cocked.

      Then, silence.

      Ryan turned the handle and pushed against the door. Slowly, the door swung open.

      And then it stopped with a loud creak.

      At the same time, the stench of death wafted into the chamber, causing several of the friends to cough.

      “Is it blocked?” J.B. asked.

      “Can’t tell,” Ryan answered.

      He pushed against the door and felt resistance. He stopped a moment, reset his feet and tried it again. This time, with the help of J.B. and Jak, he was able to force open the door.

      Mildred, Krysty and Doc’s blasters swept across the open doorway, but found no one outside the chamber waiting for them.

      Ryan and the others pushed the door all the way open. It came to an abrupt stop with a grinding halt, metal against metal, and it was obvious to them why the door had been so hard to open. The steel had been bashed and scarred on the outside and several of the hinges were gone, either torn away from the door or just smashed beyond recognition.

      “Blasterfire?” Jak asked, putting the tip of his index finger into a large pit in the outside of the door.

      “Yeah, and mebbe some grens,” J.B. added. “Recent, too.”

      “And