Larry Niven - The Barsoom Project

Francis Hebert triggered a flashlight. The luminescence lit them an eerie yellow in their tomb of ice. The overhang was all that had saved them.

For a long time, no one spoke. There was the sound of their constricted breathing, and the low, bass rumble of a distant tremor. Then even that died away.

Snow Goose broke the silence. “I guess the Gods were listening,” she said calmly, and lit another cigarette.

She exhaled in a long, long stream… in fact, she didn’t stop exhaling, even after a solid thirty seconds of feathery breath. The smoke formed a glowing cocoon around her. It lit the interior of their makeshift snow cave so brightly that Hebert switched off his flashlight.

Without another word she turned, and walked directly at the wall of snow. It melted before her, the water flowing and fusing into the crystal ice walls of a snow tunnel.

She almost floated as she walked, yesterday’s college-girl persona completely submerged. She seemed to be a different person entirely, one not wholly of this world. All they could do was follow her. Max looked to Orson for advice or comment, and Orson shook his head.

The snow tunnel twisted and wound, angling steeply into the very heart of the mountain. Max stretched out a hand to touch the walls. They were hard and cold, although the air in the tunnel was pleasant.

Ahead of them walked the glowing Snow Goose, carrying herself as might a great lady, a princess, the mistress of all dark secrets. She had stopped puffing on the cigarette, but a steady stream of vapor poured from her mouth, her nose-Jesus! Her eyes and ears, continually re-forming that glowing cocoon that melted snow and rock ahead of her, building a way for the rest of them.

She stopped, canting her head as if to hear phantom music. Snow Goose shuffled a few more steps, then halted again.

At the low end of the audible, Max heard the rumble, and felt it in his bones. Sudden claustrophobia raged at him. Were they going to be trapped underground? Were they…?

No. The screaming had a personality. It was the roar of something alive, something huge.

They were approaching the gates of Hell. Didn’t he expect the Inuit equivalent of Cerberus?

Orson gripped his spear. “Snow Goose. Can I have one of those cigarettes?”

She nodded, and a twitch at the corners of her lips told Max that his brother, as usual, had been dead on the money. There was a swift babble of requests as the rest of them followed suit, and then swift multiple fires as the sacred cylinders were lit all around.

Max braced himself for the worst, and sucked smoke. He was surprised. For unfiltered, hand-rolled cigarettes, these were, mild, almost like smoking air. But luminous smoke poured from his mouth and nose as he exhaled, and his harpoon began to glow.

Ahead of him, Snow Goose stopped, exhaling smoke against an unyielding wall.

Hebert joined her, blew hard against it, then slapped at it with the pink palm of his hand. “What’s the matter?”

“The ice’s been protected against magic.” She said it in one of those matter-of-fact voices that made you ashamed to have asked such a stupid question.

“How do we get through it?”

“We can’t stop here. The way to Sedna lies beyond the underworld.” Snow Goose frowned. “Where magic fails, perhaps muscle…”

The face of the ice sheet measured eight feet across. Behind it, something flickered dimly, a vague, sluggish movement. Max had the impression of something monstrously tall that moved with unnatural vitality. It seemed to be balancing on one leg.

Then the shadow was gone, and the skin on the back of his neck ceased to creep.

“ Karate Kid,” Kevin said. “Part Seventeen.”

Exactly,” Snow Goose said softly. “Let’s put our backs to it.”

Max set his cheek against the ice. Orson and Trianna joined him; both flinched from the cold. “Go,” said Orson, and they heaved. The ice might have moved a tenth of an inch.

Charlene moved between Orson and Max. Heave. Nothing.

She and Orson shared a ragged smile. “What’s a nice boy like you doing in a place like this?” she gasped.

“My brother said, ‘Let’s go for a walk.”

“Heave,” Max said, and they heaved. The ice wall might have shifted, or not. “Rest. Let it settle. Heave!”

Kevin consulted his pocket computer, then politely moved Charlene and Orson aside. “I’ve got soot!” he chirped. “And Max has an owl claw. That makes us the strongest ones here!” He leaned against the ice and strained mightily.

There was no more conversation, just the sound of fevered breathing in a confined space, as the largest and smallest of the Gamers bent their backs against eight feet of ice.

With a long brittle note, the first fissure appeared in the wall. As it deepened, a vast network of tiny cracks turned the entire sheet milky.

Max stepped back. He heaved for breath and said, “Hulk smash!” and ran at the wall.

The thud must have been audible in Gaming A. There was a moment in which nothing happened, and then the entire barrier shattered, almost in slow motion. Max lurched through a couple of steps, skidding on shards, before he could stop.

Kevin flexed his arm and made a tiny biceps, face positively luminous.

The air was gray with a dense mist that flowed like an angry ocean, churned in the cavernous opening like cold smoke. Every sound they made, every footstep or whisper, reverberated like a sneeze in a tomb. The mist chilled Max to the bone. It was a sticky cold. The furs and thermal-reflective lining of his jacket seemed helpless against it.

His mind noted, trying to make sensible shapes out of that roiling fog. It formed and re-formed itself into grotesque illusions, shadows cast by impossible shapes: a suggestion of tremendous jaws, a sudden glimpse of a hundred pairs of eyes, the bones of a hand brushing across his face. As the other Adventurers pushed through behind him, he felt their unease as an extension of his own.

“Welcome to Hell,” he said quietly, helping Trianna past a stack of ice chips. She looked pained.

Without any stated intention, the group formed a circle, standing close enough to touch shoulders. One could not see the size of it, but the moving rivers of fog, the echoes, all told of a cavern as big as the world.

Max felt the urge to scream, to do something to fill the horrid emptiness around him. He felt utterly cowed.

“It must be your decision to go ahead,” Snow Goose said. “I don’t know how much protection I can offer you.”

Yarnall peered out into the mist. Somewhere on the other side of that shifting veil, a vibration sounded. It might have been something natural-the sound of the earth shifting, perhaps, or the cry of an animal. If it was an animal, it was a maddened one, and the hair on Max’s arms stood up and tingled. “We’ve gotta go,” the National Guardsman said. “Listen. There’s something out there. We can’t go back-the sun is dying, and so will we. We can’t stay where we are. The Cabal will just send something to get us.”

Frankish Oliver’s club raised in agreement. “Let’s meet it head-on.”

Snow Goose nodded approvingly. “We will sing songs for the spirits of those who die.”

Unless we all buy it,” Orson reminded her.

“A rainbow of light and happiness, you are.”

The fog swallowed them. Snow Goose seemed sure of her directions. There was rarely a choice. They followed ridges and smooth rock, the path of least resistance. Where the path forked, Max glimpsed smoke drifting from Snow Goose’s mouth.

Now they were crossing a land bridge so high up that the floor vanished into the mist, and only giant stalagmites rising up like mountains through the clouds told them there was any floor at all. They trooped single file, and Max found himself behind Charlene. She was limping. A glimpse of her profile showed excitement and anticipation and a certain sadness.