Even here, time grows short, Nathan said. At least, I feel it's so. Anyway, I know well enough where my future is leading me. Back to Sunside/Starside.
Trask made no answer. Suddenly dumbstruck by the beauty (and not least by the knowledge) of what he was seeing, he'd become aware of a sound: an almost angelic chorus, an orchestrated, interminable Ahhhhhhhh! It could only be in his mind, for he guessed that time must be as silent as the Mobius Continuum itself. Of course, for if the sound of all the future were present, that would be an unbearable tumult.
And all of those blue life-threads weaving away into tomorrow and tomorrow, sighing in Trask's mind; and some of the threads growing dim and blinking out as men died, while others burst from nothing into brilliant neon-blue life as their owners were born. Trask felt he could stand here watching for all time. He was standing here for all time - all future time, at least.
But there's the past, too, Nathan told him, guiding him to a past-time-door. Except that beyond this new threshold, instead of multiplying, spreading out and away forever as the human race expanded, the neon life-threads narrowed down, condensed, fell back into a well of nebulous light at the dawn of Man's ascendancy. And now the mystical Ahhhhhhhh sound seemed reversed, fading into the history of humanity .. .
In a little while - or maybe after a long time - Nathan said, And now, Perchorsk.
Before Trask could protest, he found himself mobile again, and experienced what felt like a split-second of intense acceleration as his guide and companion simply went to Perchorsk in the Urals. They were there in a moment, coming to an instantaneous, effortless halt.
Nathan conjured a Mobius door . ..
.. . Which warped and fluttered like the flame of a candle in a draft!
And suddenly Trask remembered. Too close/' he shouted at the top of his voice, a crushing, deafening, devastating avalanche of sound in the Mobius Continuum! 'We're too close to the Gate!'
Numb from the vibratory effect, Nathan hugged Trask close. I know, he said. Everything is wrong here, even the
flux of the numbers vortex. But please, Ben, don't shout. Don't even think. I have to get the co-ordinates right, that's all. Then, letting the door collapse in upon itself, he backed off a little and conjured another. This one was less unstable, but not entirely so. Volatile and slowly consuming itself, it seemed to smoke, drifting a little as Nathan fought to hold it in place. Finally it firmed up; Nathan immediately stepped through and took Trask with him ...
Into Perchorsk. Into the complex under the Urals. Into the mighty cavern sphere known as the core!
III
The Gates: Perchorsk and Raduj'evac
Trask and Nathan had been here before and knew this nightmare place only too well: this alien cavern, eaten out of the solid rock of a mountain when the Gate was formed in the awesome vacuum of a nuclear implosion, this subterranean terminal or subway station to a parallel world called Sunside/Starside.