“The alpha-locus is programmed to pass through each region of the ice structure once in every two hours,” came the throaty voice in my ear as I stood up with a dead weight in my arms. It is now at the far end of the island and dropping to the lowest level. That means it will be back here at the well in less than five minutes, bringing the Taker with it. It will pass very close to this point, and the Taker will have emerged more fully by then, so it will appear to be much larger. We must reach Level Five or higher within the next four minutes.” The engineering analysis of our situation made use of Sharly’s knowledge, but there was a clinical quality in the phrasing which told me it was Sharly-Plus who was speaking. And she was informing me that I had to move quickly or die.
Guided by the sound of the pump, I lurched in that direction with my burden. The surface underfoot was hidden in a slurry of mud, oil and water, and was made more treacherous by the presence of industrial detritus – pieces of cable, submerged metal bars and slimed sections of timber. I kept falling to my knees and each time that happened it was harder to stand up again. Only numbness and shock kept me from realizing the extent of the punishment I had taken during the hurtling descent from Level Three. By the time I located the ladder which slanted up to the first gallery I had serious doubts about my ability to climb it, but the thing I was carrying gave assistance, reaching for higher rungs with eager hands and pulling upwards with unnatural strength. There was no mistaking the urgency which galvanized those limbs and fingers. Sharly-Plus and I had one thing in common – we were both deathly afraid of the Taker and wanted to get as far away from it as was possible in the time available.
I had no check on how quickly our time was running out, but it seemed to me that four minutes had passed when I reached the elevator and found that the passenger cage was somewhere high above, lost in the alternating circles of light and dark. There was a dead silence after I thumbed the call button. For a panicky moment I thought the power was off, then the steel lattice enclosing the elevator shaft began to thrum. I instinctively glanced at Sharly, got my first good look at her face in adequate lighting and turned away with my eyes closed.
Standing there in the self-imposed darkness I could almost sense the alpha-locus racing back through the length of the island and carrying with it the night-black antithesis of life I had glimpsed earlier, still trapped and squirming, but grown much bigger now, more capable of destroying me without even being aware of my existence. A Taker, from what I had learned, was less of a malevolent being than an unconscious agent of entropy. It seemed to be a kind of materialized force which reacted blindly against organization in matter or energy, but the outcome was just the same as if it were a hate-crazed animal which had scented my blood and was coming to claw me apart. Every nerve in my body was telling me that I ought to be running for my life, and all I could do was stand there on the first gallery and pray for the elevator to arrive. It seemed to me that the air was growing noticeably colder.
When the cage finally clanged to a halt in front of me I grabbed for the sliding door, but Sharly was already dragging it open. The air was colder now, filled with a premonitory chill. Sick with fear, I stumbled into the cage and pressed the button for Level Ten. There was another silence, the machinery playing cruel pranks again, then the cage began its painfully slow climb. I counted the numbers painted at each level. Two. Three. Four.
It was when the cage was passing Level Five that the Taker went by not far beneath us. I didn’t see anything this time, but a convulsion went through the upper part of Sharly’s body and I felt the temperature in the cage momentarily dip to sub-Arctic levels. For a few seconds I was unable to breathe. I stood perfectly still and wished miserably that I could be somewhere warm and safe and very far away from Icewell 37.
“The alpha-locus is programmed to describe an ascending helix around the well shaft,” Sharly husked. “Multiple passes may be required in some areas – I can’t say without the hourly report on wave and tide action – but the entire operation is unlikely to take more than thirty minutes. When it is completed the locus will make a scan-pattern return on the surface of the island, terminating at Field Control. We must get there well ahead of it. Do you understand?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Field Control was actually a converted trawler housing all the essential telecongruency warp generating and control equipment. Two years earlier, working by satnav, it had taken up station near the drilling site and had built around itself a rectangular island of ice. The well and the embedded ship were at opposite ends of the artificial island, and I would have to travel the length of it with Sharly. That in itself wasn’t much of a problem, because there were Moke transports for communal use both on the surface and in the Level Nine connecting tunnel. My main worry was about what would happen at the far end. There was no way, especially in the time available, of explaining the facts to a man like Lieutenant Oliver, yet I couldn’t see how I was going to get Sharly-Plus into the warp control room unobserved.
I was still trying to think constructively about the matter when the cage reached Level Ten and jolted to a halt. We were in a small machinery house situated on the topmost gallery of the well. When I opened the door I was very conscious of being on the surface. A strong, ocean-tanged breeze hustled noisily through the various superstructures, and the clustered lights of Field Control were visible at the far end of the island. The air was clear in comparison to the chilly mists that drifted far down in the icewell, and the moon was riding high overhead, looking serene and remote. Everything was deceptively normal.
“We must hurry,” Sharly said in her rattling whisper. ’There is very little time.”
Trying to avoid looking directly at her, I turned my head and saw there were three open-sided Mokes parked only a few paces away. I went to the nearest and placed the undead body in the rear seat, wincing at the pain which needled through my side as I bent forward. With a considerable effort of will, I tucked one of the shattered legs inside the line of the vehicle and made to climb into the driving seat.
“Where are you going, Hillman?” a man’s voice called. ’What do you think you’re doing?”
Lieutenant Oliver came striding towards me from the shadow of a crane shed, a borrowed carbine in hand. His oval face was pink with anger and exposure, and the overlong sandy moustache he had grown to make himself look more mature was bending this way and that in the wind. The winter-weight coat he had put on seemed several sizes too large, giving him something of the appearance of an extra in a low-budget movie, but I’d had run-ins with him before and knew him to be an ambitious man who jealously guarded his career prospects.
“I’ve got to get down to Field Control right away,” I said. “There’s no time to explain now.”
“Sergeant! Am I hearing you right?”
“You’d better,” I replied heavily, ‘because I’m only going to say it once. Dresch and all the others who were on duty tonight are dead, torn apart. The thing that did the killing is still down there, around the lower levels, and there’s only one way to get rid of it.”