Snook examined the flimsy structure with growing doubt. “Is that where you’re expecting Felleth to materialise?”
“That’s the place.”
“But will he have to stay in there? How do you know he breathes hydrogen?”
“The hydrogen isn’t for breathing, Gil. It’s to provide the physical environment Felleth specified for his arrival, or part of it anyway. His knowledge is way beyond mine, but I think it’s to provide a convenient supply of prqtons which he’ll use to…”
“Doctor Ambrose,” bellowed an amplified voice from the encircling blackness. “This is Colonel Freeborn, Head of Barandian Internal Security. Can you hear me?”
Snook moved towards the ladder, but Ambrose gripped his arm with surprising strength. “I can hear you, Colonel.”
“This afternoon President Ogilvie sent instructions that you were to stop working here. Did you receive the message?”
“I received it.”
“Then why are you disobeying?”
Ambrose hesitated. Tm not disobeying, Colonel. One of these machines has a miniature nuclear reactor inside it, and the controls aren’t working properly. We’ve spent the last six hours trying to close it down.”
“That sounds like a very convenient story, Doctor Ambrose.”
“If you’d like to come up here I’ll show you what I mean.”
“I’m prepared to let it pass for the time being,” Freeborn’s voice boomed. “I see that you have Snook with you.”
“Yes—Mister Snook is here.”
“I have come to place him under arrest for the murder of two members of the Barandian Armed Forces.”
“For what ?” Ambrose’s voice was hoarse with the effort of shouting.
“I think you heard me, Doctor.”
“Yes, but it was so unexpected that I…We did hear some shooting, but I had no idea what was happening. This is terrible.” Ambrose released Snook’s arm and backed away from him.
“The reason I’m keeping my distance is that Snook is armed. It will not prevent his arrest, of course, but I would prefer that he be taken without any shooting. I have no wish for the innocent members of your party to be hurt, and that can be avoided if Snook will give himself up.”
“Thank you, Colonel.” Ambrose’s shadowed face was unreadable as he stared at Snook. “You’ll appreciate that this has come as a great shock to me and the other members of my party who, as you say, are innocent and had no idea of what was going on. May we have a little time to talk things over?”
“Fifteen minutes—no more.”
A lengthy silence ensued, showing that Freeborn considered the dialogue to have ended.
“Nice work, Boyce,” Snook said, keeping his voice low in case remote listening devices were trained on him. He recognised that Ambrose had acted with superb common sense in dissociating himself and the others, but the knowledge did not ease his irrational sense of betrayal. He nodded to Prudence and the three other men, and turned to leave.
“Gil,” Ambrose whispered fiercely, “where in hell do you think you’re going?”
“In hell? Any old place will do.”
“Stay right there. I’m going to get you out of this.”
Snook gave a humourless laugh. “There’s no way out. Besides, the little diversion could give you enough time to complete the experiment. That’s the main item on the agenda, isn’t it?”
Ambrose shook his head. “We agreed earlier tonight that I’m a self-centred bastard, but I have to draw the line somewhere. I don’t mind admitting I was hoping to be left alone long enough to go ahead as planned, but now the situation has changed.”
“Look…” Snook tapped himself on the chest. “I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but I’m as good as dead already. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
“I know you’re as good as dead, Gil,” Ambrose said, his voice resonant. “Otherwise I wouldn’t risk offering you the one escape that’s available.”
“Escape?” Snook felt the same old chill of premonition as he glanced at the cubical machine. “Where to?”
“There’s nowhere else for you to go,” Ambrose replied. “Nowhere except…Avernus.”
Snook took an involuntary step backwards, then looked around the rest of the group standing close by. Their faces were solemn and wide-eyed, like those of children, attention directed towards Ambrose.
“There’s a risk involved,” Ambrose said. “I can only do this with your consent and cooperation, and I wouldn’t try it at all if you had any other hope of getting out of here.”
Snook swallowed painfully. “What would you do?”
“There just isn’t time to give you a course in nuclear physics, Gil. Basically it involves reversing Felleth’s processes, making you neutron-rich—but you’ll just have to trust me. Are you willing?”
“I’m willing,” Snook said. He glimpsed in his mind’s eye the elongated diamond-shapes of Avernian islands. “But it isn’t what you came here to do.”
“That doesn’t matter. In this situation I couldn’t risk transferring Felleth, or any other Avernian, into our universe—somebody would probably shoot him.” Ambrose paused to light a cigarette, his gaze locked on Snook’s face. “But we can still prove the principle of operation, for Felleth’s benefit.”
“All right.” Snook discovered he was more afraid than he had been at the prospect of merely being killed. “What do you want me to do?”
“Well, the first thing you have to do is get in touch with Felleth and tell him about the change of plan.”
“Boyce, you make it sound…Have you got his phone number?”
“He’ll need reaction time, Gil. He has a lot of expertise, but even so he’ll need some warning so that he can make ready to receive you.” Ambrose’s face was impassive, but Snook sensed that his brain was racing, evaluating probabilities like a world-class card player.
“Do you think he can do it in time?” Snook knew the question demanded resources of knowledge which did not exist on Earth, but was unable to hold it back.
“Felleth is way ahead of us in this field, and the energy relationships favour a transfer from this universe into his. I think that with him doing a lot of pulling, and us doing a bit of pushing, it should work out all right.”
Snook suddenly realised he had lost all human contact with Ambrose—it was impossible to tell whether he was giving reassurance as a friend, or taking the appropriate action to protect his experiment. It made no practical difference either way—his own choice was between the certainty of death on Earth and the possibility of life on Avernus. He turned towards Prudence, but she looked away from him immediately, and he knew at once that she was afraid. A fresh worry appeared in his mind.
“Boyce, supposing everything works out right and I sort of…disappear,” he said, “what’s going to happen here afterwards? Freeborn isn’t going to like it very much.”
Ambrose was unperturbed. “That problem will take care of itself—but you’re not even going to have a chance to transfer unless you do something about contacting Felleth right now.” He examined his watch, clicking its display buttons. “He’ll be coming up through the station we marked on Level Two in just over four minutes.”
“I’ll go,” Snook said quietly, aware that the time for talking had passed.
They went down the ladder and assembled in a tight group beneath the platform, giving cover for Snook as he slipped away towards the mine head. He ran as quickly as possible, depending on the blue lenses of his Amplites to keep him from falling over obstacles, and praying that Freeborn had not taken the precaution of saturating the area with his men. It came to him that Freeborn had been strangely gentle in his handling of the situation, but there was not time for analysis of his motives.