For two hours more they flew north surrounded by the pack. Pnarr sat in the pilot's seat, hands rock-steady on the controls, face set like a rock also. In his pale face with the faint glaze of perspiration, Blade could however read no indication of fear.
Leyndt's face was also set and sweating, but her eyes were continually roving from the escorts to Blade and back again. She said very little, and that in a voice even more carefully controlled than usual. Once she said:
«Obviously a method of controlling gravity for both lateral and vertical motion. Also probably some form of repulsor field. They keep a constant distance from each other with remarkably few adjustments.»
— and another time she said:
«No signs of weapons. But against our flier, perhaps they would attack by ramming. Anything capable of those accelerations and decelerations would be strong enough for that.»
Apart from that she was mostly silent, but occasionally her hand would creep out and into Blade's, seeking the reassurance he could give her by squeezing it gently.
Blade's initial apprehension was gone, replaced by the every-sense-at-peak-efficiency reaction that usually came to him in the midst of a crisis, one that had saved his life more than a few times in both Home and X Dimensions. What had bothered him at first was not so much fear of losing his life, but of losing it before finding out anything about the aliens. Now that he could reasonably assume they were not simply going to destroy him on the spot, he could settle down to observing them as closely as possible. What chance he had of getting his observations out to the Union camp many thousands of miles to the south was another question entirely.
The endless flight over the endless ice attacked his sense of time to the point where he could not have told exactly how long it was before the five hounds began sliding downward, carefully matching their angle of descent to the flier's capabilities. They dropped steadily downward, toward a line of black fang-cragged peaks that jutted even above the miles-thick ice, slowing as they did so. They swept low above the peaks-and then Blade saw it.
A square of ice half a mile or more on a side had been planed flat as a table top and burnished to a dazzling blue-white sheen. In the center rose a low black rectangular structure, featureless at this height and distance; around the edges of the square rose alternating green and red cones. The whole square seemed to be covered with a fine grid of intersecting lines, like strings of beads laid across a mirror. The flier swept in toward the edge of the square, its guardians still holding formation around it, while Pnarr wondered out loud how in the name of all the seventy-nine spirits of the air he was supposed to land there.
As they passed over the edge of the square, the question was answered for them. It felt as though the flier had suddenly plunged nose first into a miles-deep bowl of oatmeal. It rocked and shuddered as whatever force was reaching up from the ice below dragged it to a dead stop, from five hundred miles an hour to zero in seconds. Blade gaped at the realization of what was involved in doing this, and doing it while acting equally on every molecule of matter caught within the field, so that the occupants of the flier did not hurl forward and pulp themselves against the cockpit windows. These beings could play games with gravity the way a child played with a chemistry set!
He was so caught up in marveling at the science represented by the field that for a moment he was not aware that it was now lowering the flier gently toward the ice. Blade looked out the window at the black building, found it as featureless close up as it had been from a distance, turned to look at the cones bordering the grid. The green ones, he noted, had four small yellow antennas sticking out of their points in an X-pattern, while the red ones ended in a translucent oval lens. He also noticed that at each corner of the grid a circular disc had flipped open, revealing a yawning black hole. Into these the five escorts were now dropping, each one flipping neatly up on end like a man making a precision dive and sliding vertically down out of sight. As the last one vanished, the flier itself touched down with a gentle bump, rocked for a moment as the field went off, then settled in place.
Blade found Leyndt holding onto both his arms. He could hardly blame her. He felt some need to hold onto a piece of reality himself, to fight off the massed fantasy that was pressing in on him from outside. After a moment, though, he gently disengaged her fingers and said, «Let's get on our clothes and go outside.» He grinned. «These people seem to have been rather polite so far. I'm sure they won't forget to send up a reception committee to greet us at the door.» She feebly imitated his own grin and turned away to the clothes locker.
Blade turned to Pnarr. The pilot was unbuckling himself and standing up, without taking his eyes off the scene outside. He looked tense but controlled and alert; he had never seemed to Blade the type to panic. Blade turned away and began pulling on the insulated trousers and parka that Leyndt handed him.
In a few minutes all three of them were suited up; each also carried a pack filled with emergency rations, ice-climbing gear, recording equipment, and spare charge packs for their beamers. Blade did not expect to need any of this, but was determined to be ready for exploration if the proprietors of their establishment allowed them the chance for any.
The cabin turned misty with condensation as the freezing air from outside poured in through the open hatch. Blade lowered himself down to the ice, tested his footing, then helped Leyndt down. Pnarr came last, locking the hatch behind him and giving the fuselage a furtive pat as he jumped down. They turned toward the black building, still as featureless as ever, but now sprawling squat and grim. Blade guessed it was at least five hundred feet by four hundred; its jet-black sides reflected not a glimmer of light. There seemed nothing better to do for the moment than to walk toward it.
They were only about a hundred feet from it when a door slid open at its base and the Ice Master stepped out to meet them.
Chapter 13
Were the aliens humanoid? Blade asked himself for a moment. The figure stepping toward them as calmly as though it were a host greeting guests arriving at a party was nearly as tall as Blade, in its insulated clothing even wider, and carried-Blade had to look twice before he could believe it-a sword slung at its belt. The face that looked out of the parka hood seemed completely human as far as Blade could tell. A huge hooked nose jutted, wide-set brown eyes gleamed over a bushy pepper-and-salt beard.
Blade's staring at the man was interrupted by a cry of pain from Pnarr. He spun around to see the pilot fling his beamer away, smoke pouring from the charge housing. A moment later, Blade saw that his own beamer was smoking also, and both he and Leyndt did the same. And a moment after that, all three beamers exploded with sharp cracks and sprays of sparks, leaving small blackened half-melted patches on the ice.
The Ice Master stood looking at the spectacle, his eyes seeming to show amusement, while behind him eight more men filed out onto the ice and took up positions on either side of him. They were wearing orange parkas trimmed with black fur, black boots and wide black belts. Each of them carried a seven-foot spear, with a sword slung on one side of his belt and a long heavy club like a policeman's truncheon on the other. They did not look very intelligent, but they carried themselves like men who at least knew what to do with the weapons they carried. Then the Ice Master took another step forward, spread out his hands in a gesture doubtless meant to be welcoming, and spoke.