Description: Ryan struggled in mat-trans-induced unconsciousness, muscles twitching, jaws clenching and unclenching. In the dream he was buried alive deep underground, trapped in a narrow grave and dying by inches, starting at the tips of his extremities. The burning pain in his fingers and toes was so intense it made his legs and arms tremble. When the blowtorch flame spread to his ears, nose and lips, he jolted wideawake, only to discover he was blinded. Try as he might, he could not open his good right eye. Years ago he'd lost the left to a knife slash from his brother Harvey; the emptied socket was covered by a black patch. Shivering violently from the cold, he couldn't force his numbed fingers to move. He brushed his eyelid back and forth with the bare heel of his hand. The lashes had frozen together; he kept rubbing until he managed to separate them. Groaning, he pushed up to a sitting position, breath gusting out in thick clouds of steam. The walls of the mat-trans chamber spun around him and he thought he was going to be sick, then the moment passed. The only light spilled through the porthole window in the door. He could see frozen rivulets of ice on the glass. The porthole was something new. Frost coated the clothing and hair of the six bodies curled up beside him. They had been sleeping in the cold for a long time. Maybe too long. The risk of mat-trans jumping to their deaths was a given because the destination was always random--they never knew what they were jumping into. That his companions would all die while he lived on was a possibility he hadn't considered. "Wake up, wake up," he said, with an effort nudging each of them with the toe of his boot. Groggily, his companions began to stir. He was relieved to see that no one had died of exposure. J.B. raised his head from the floor plates and brushed milky icicles ofjump puke from his chin. The Armorer's fedora was tilted way back on his head. He reached a shaky hand into his shirt pocket, retrieved his spectacles and put them on. From between chattering teeth he said, "N-n-n-nukin' h-h-h-hell." As Krysty, Mildred, Doc, Jak and Ricky struggled to sit upright, Ryan caught a shadow of movement on the far side of the porthole. "Triple red, quick!" Ryan said. He reached for his Scout longblaster, which lay beside him, but the stock had frozen to the floor plates and it wouldn't budge. With a clank and a whoosh the door swung open. Ryan grabbed for the SIG Sauer handblaster holstered at his waist, but couldn't make his fingers close on the grip. Human-looking figures in tightly hooded orange jumpsuits poured into the chamber with raised long-blasters. Their faces were hidden behind glass masks and black respirators. He couldn't tell if they were norm or mutie. "Do not touch your weapons," the one in front said, the voice distorted, muffled by the breathing filter. "Do not resist. We will help you out of here." Resistance was not only futile, it was impossible. Ryan's body would not obey his commands. He watched in fury as one of the creatures in orange bent over Krysty. Edged with frost, her red mutie hair had drawn up into tight ringlets of alarm. Though she tried to defend herself, she could not. The creature quickly peeled back the lapels of her shaggy black coat and yanked her Glock 18C handblaster from its holster and sent it skidding across the chamber floor. Two of them then grabbed Krysty under the arms and dragged her through the doorway. One by one, the companions were disarmed, weapons discarded, then jerked to their feet and hauled out of sight. They grabbed Ryan last, tossing his panga and SIG Sauer onto the heap of Krysty's Glock, Doc's ebony swordstick and his .44 caliber replica LeMat, Mildred's .38 caliber Czech-made target pistol, J.B.'s Uzi and shotgun, Jak's .357 Colt, Ricky's Web-ley blaster and DeLisle carbine, and assorted blade weapons. When they hoisted Ryan to his feet, his legs barely supported his weight. By the time he reached the threshold, he was able to step over it under his own power. Outside the mat-trans unit and in the control room, he saw his companions lined up with black cloth hoods pulled over their heads. Behind them, the colored lights of the mat-trans's control panels blinked erratically. A layer of frost coated one side of the room. The concrete walls were cracked in places, floor to ceiling. Thick tendrils of ice had seeped through the gaps; they looked like pale blue tree roots. Then a hood came down over his head from behind and he couldn't see anything. "Your clothes and boots are contaminated," the leader said. "Stand still while we remove them. We will dress you in clean coveralls and boots. If you fight us, you will go naked." "Don't resist," Ryan said through the hood. He let them pull off his clothes and help him into a baggy jumpsuit and a pair of too-loose, slip-on boots. As his arms were drawn behind his back and his wrists handcuffed, Mildred let out a shrill yelp followed by a string of curses. "Mildred, are you all right?" Ryan asked. A hand gripped his right biceps and he was forced to move forward. He could hear the crunch of footsteps ahead of him on the frozen floor. They marched in a straight line, down what he presumed was a long hallway, then turned and began climbing down flights of stairs. Sustained movement returned feeling to his hands and feet, and the shivering stopped. As they continued to descend, Ryan kept count of the number of landings they passed. When they reached the twentieth, his boots splashed through standing water. It was definitely warming up. The grip on his arm squeezed tighter, making him stop. "Lift your foot," a muffled voice said in his ear. Ryan stepped over the unseen obstacle, then felt the rush of air as behind him a heavy door slammed shut. The hand on his arm pushed him onward and down another long passageway. It was much warmer now, and he could feel and hear a steady grinding sound somewhere below. They came to more stairs, but these were narrow and spiraled tightly downward without landings. Ryan counted the steps as they descended. It was getting harder and harder for him to maintain his bearings and keep track of the details of the route back to the mat-trans. At the bottom of the staircase was another straightaway. They traveled a short distance along it before he was steered to the right. Strong hands slammed Ryan's shoulder into a wall and behind his back, chained the manacles to what felt like a metal ring set at waist height. Footsteps moved away and then a door banged shut. "Is everyone here?" he asked from under the hood. "Check in." "I'm here," Mildred said. "Might have a case of frostbite, though, I can't tell without looking." "Not hurt," Jak said. "Bastards took blades. No weps left." "A bit rumpled, but unharmed," Doc said. "I'm here and okay," Ricky reported. As Ryan waited and waited for Krysty to answer, his pulse began to pound. "Krysty, are you still with us, are you okay?" After a pause, a familiar voice spoke up. "Sure thing, lover, I was just messing with you. Wanted to know if you missed me." Though Ryan was irked, he had to admit it was kind of funny and the joke broke the tension of their predicament. "Don't say anything more for the time being," he told them. "For all we know the orange bastards could still be in the room. Or they could be listening. Just try to warm up and relax." But Ryan wasn't relaxing. His mind raced, trying to put together what little he had seen and heard. Who were their captors? He didn't have a clue, except that they seemed to speak accentless English. From the temperature and all the ice, the redoubt where they found themselves was either somewhere at high altitude, far north, or mebbe close to one of the poles. Ryan didn't think they had made a big jump in elevation, say to a mountaintop glacier; he was experiencing no light-headedness, none of the usual, all-over prickling of the skin. The orange suits looked like specialized protective gear, which told him that these people had used white-coat technology to adapt to life in the cold. He'd only had the briefest glimpse, but the suits looked repaired, rips and tears patched with less faded fabric--they could have been originally manufactured predark, like the M-16 longblasters they carried. Ryan turned his head at the sound of the door opening and the shuffle and scrape of shoe soles on concrete. Without preamble, the hood was ripped off his head and he stared into the face of man about his height, but ten years older, with short-cropped silver hair and hard brown eyes. He wore no orange suit, nor did any of the others. Male and female, they were all dressed like scientists, and they all had black respirators strapped over their noses and mouths. "Bastard whitecoats," J.B. said in disgust. The silver-haired man turned from Ryan and appeared to stare down the line of captives in canary-yellow coveralls--from the tall, shapely redhead to the male albino, from the black woman with beaded plaits to the short man in glasses and squashed down hat, from the scarecrow senior citizen to the strapping young Latino. "My, my," he said, "haven't we netted ourselves a motley

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