Andre Norton - Time Traders

Once more Ross was unmanacled, the fur stripped from him. His questioner carefully studied the suit he wore under it. “Now you will tell us exactly what we wish to hear.”

There was a confidence in that statement which chilled Ross; Major Kelgarries had displayed its like. Ashe had it in another degree, and certainly it had been present in Baldy. There was no doubt that the speaker meant exactly what he said. He had at his command methods that would wring from his captive the full sum of what he wanted. And there would be no consideration for that captive during the process.

His implied threat struck as cold as the glacial air, and Ross tried to meet it with an outward show of uncracked defenses. He decided to pick and choose from his information, feeding them scraps to stave off the inevitable. Hope dies very hard, and Ross having been pushed into corners long before his work at the project, had had considerable training in verbal fencing with hostile authority. He would volunteer nothing . . . Let it be pulled from him reluctant word by word! He would spin it out as long as he could and hope that time might fight for him.

“You are an agent . . .”

Ross accepted this statement as one he could neither affirm nor deny.

“You came to spy under the cover of a barbarian trader,” smoothly, without pause, the man changed language in mid-sentence, slipping from the Beaker speech into English.

But long experience in meeting danger with an expression of incomprehension was Ross’s weapon now. He stared somewhat stupidly at his interrogator with that bewildered, boyish look he had so long cultivated to bemuse enemies in his past.

Whether he could have held out long against the other’s skill—for Ross possessed no illusions concerning the type of examiner he now faced—he was never to know. What happened next saved for Ross a measure of self-esteem.

A distant boom thundered. Underneath and around them the floor, walls, and ceiling of the room moved as if they had been pried from their setting of ice and were being rolled about by the exploring thumb and forefinger of some impatient giant.

Ross swayed against a guard, was shoved back, and bounced against the wall as the man shouted words Ross could not understand. A determined roar from the leader brought a semblance of order, but it was plain that they had not been expecting this. Ross was hustled out of the room back to his cell. His guards were opening the cell door when a second shock was felt and he was thrust into safekeeping with no ceremony.

He half crouched against the questionable security of the wall, waiting through two more twisting earth waves, both of which were accompanied or preceded by dull sounds. Bombing! That last wrench was really bad. Ross found himself lying on the floor, feeling tremors rippling along the earth. His stomach knotted convulsively with a fear unlike any he had known before. It was as if the world had been jerked from under him.

But that last explosion—if it was an explosion—appeared to be the end. Ross sat up gingerly after several long moments during which no more shocks moved the floor and walls. A line of light marked the door, showing cracks where none had previously existed. Ross, not yet ready to try standing erect, was crawling toward it on his hands and knees when a sharp noise behind him brought him to a halt.

Darkness disoriented him, but he was certain that the scrape of metal against metal sounded from the far side of the wall. He crawled back and put his ear to the surface. Now he heard not only that scraping, but an undercurrent of clicks, chippings . . .

Under his exploring hands the surface remained as smooth as ever, however. Then suddenly, about a foot from his head, there sounded a rip of metal. The wall was being holed from the other side! Ross caught a weak flicker of light, and moving in it was the point of a tool pushing at the smooth surface of the wall. It broke away with a brittle sound, and a hand holding a light reached through the aperture.

Ross wondered if he should catch that wrist, but the hope that the digger might just possibly be an ally kept him motionless. After the hand with the light whipped back beyond the wall, a wide section gave away and a hunched figure crawled through, followed by a second. In the limited glow he saw the first tunneler clearly enough.

“Assha!”

Ross was unprepared for what followed his cry. The lean brown man moved with a panther’s striking speed, and Ross was forced back. A hand like a steel ring on his throat choked the breath away from his bursting lungs. The other’s muscular body held him flat in spite of his struggles. The light of a small flash glowed inches beyond his eyes as he fought to fill his lungs. Then the hand on his throat was gone and he gasped, a little dizzy.

“Murdock! What are you doing—?” Ashe’s clipped voice was muffled by another sudden explosion. This time the earth tremors not only hurled them from their feet, but seemed to run along the walls and across the ceiling. Ross, burying his face in the crook of his arm, could not rid himself of the fear that the building was being slowly twisted into scrap. When the shock was over he raised his head.

“What’s going on?” he heard McNeil ask.

“Attack.” That was Ashe. “But why, and by whom—don’t ask me! You are a prisoner, I suppose, Murdock?”

“Yes, sir.” Ross was glad that his voice sounded normal enough.

He heard someone sigh and guessed it was McNeil. “Another digging party.” There was tired disgust in that.

“I don’t understand,” Ross appealed to that section of the dark where Ashe had been. “Have you been here all the time? Are you trying to dig your way out? I don’t see how you can cut out of this glacier that we’re parked under—”

“Glacier!” Ashe’s exclamation was as explosive as the tremors. “So we’re inside a glacier! That explains it. Yes, we’ve been here—”

“On ice!” McNeil commented and then laughed. “Glacier—ice—that’s right, isn’t it?”

“We’re collaborating,” Ashe continued. “Supplying our dear friends with a lot of information they already have and some flights of fancy they never dreamed about. However, they didn’t know we had a few surprise packets of our own strewn about. It’s amazing what the boys back at the project can pack away in a belt, or between layers of hide in a boot. So we’ve been engaged in some research of our own—”

“But I didn’t have any escape gadgets.” Ross was struck by the unfairness of that.

“No,” Ashe agreed, his voice even and cold, “they are not entrusted to first-run men. You might slip up and use them at the wrong moment. However, you appear to have done fairly well . . .”

The heat of Ross’s rising anger was chilled by the noise which cracked over their heads, ground to them through the walls, flattened and threatened them. He had thought those first shocks were the end of this ice burrow and the world; he knew that this one was.

And the silence that followed was as threatening in its way as the clamor had been. Then there was a shout, a shriek. The space of light near the cell door was widening as that barrier, broken from its lock, swung open slowly. The fear of being trapped sent the men in that direction.

“Out!”

Before Ross could respond, they were stopped by the crackling sound of automatic weapons firing. Somewhere in this warren a fight was in progress.

Ross, remembering the arrogant face of the bald ship’s officer, wondered if this was not an attack in force—the aliens against the looting Russians. If so, would the ship people distinguish between those found here. He feared not.

The room outside was clear, but not for long. As they lay watching, two men backed in, then whirled to stare at each other. A voice roared from beyond as if ordering them back to some post. One of them took a step forward in reluctant obedience, but the other grabbed his arm and pulled him away. They turned to run, and an automatic cracked.