That was as much as he was able to see and file away in his mind before the Ice Master called him back and they returned to the upper levels of the stronghold. The Ice Master showed him those with the same selective thoroughness as before, going on until by the time the tour was over Blade was almost too tired to appreciate and question the Girl who came to his chamber that night.
But there was even more to come, and Blade absorbed it all, keeping his eagerness veiled behind a mask of disinterest, watching the Ice Master working industriously to bring the day of his own destruction rapidly closer. The Ice Master explained the conditioning he used on the guards and slaves, the memory-erasure of the Girls, the training of the Dragon Masters (who were not allowed in the stronghold). He showed Blade the enormous culture vats where the Ice Dragons were cloned, the workshops where the Dragon Masters' suits and control wands and catcher-webs were made. He did not show Blade where any of the key systems of the stronghold-power, light, water, air circulation-were controlled, but Blade had not expected that, and in the course of the tours saw enough to permit him to draw his own conclusions. And also to be staggered by the technological treasure-trove here. If he had not been limited in what he could bring back to Home Dimension to what he could carry in his hands (or happened to be carrying in his hands) when the computer snatched him back, he could have brought back enough advanced knowledge to push England a century forward at a single leap.
But that was an opportunity unlikely to arise. He could at least bring back the knowledge that gravity control and the like were possible, which might encourage Home Dimension research enough to cut decades off the time of developing it. And the monumental knowledge that somewhere in some universe there existed another intelligent race! Meanwhile, he had plenty of problems to face here as he sought ways and means of dealing with the Ice Master and the Menel.
The Ice Master himself provided Blade with what might be a satisfactory solution to a problem that had been occupying a good part of Blade's attention ever since he began thinking out ways of destroying the stronghold. What was he to do about the slaves and Girls? They were innocent bystanders, at least five hundred strong, and to destroy or cripple the stronghold meant dooming them to a death perhaps swift, perhaps slow, but in any case certain. Blade knew he would not hold back even if the deaths of these people were the price for freeing this world of the Ice Master and meeting the threat of the Menel, but he did not like the prospect. But from the day the Ice Master took him up to the surface and showed him the huge fliers used to carry the Ice Dragons to their bases in the south and the prisoners north, Blade knew that these might be a solution to his problem. The machines were enormous, larger than any Home Dimension transport plane he had ever seen, easily capable of carrying five hundred or more people. He never came closer to letting his elation show as when the Ice Master showed him how to operate the huge machines. He found out that day that they could rise ten miles into the air and race along with a full load at twice or three times the speed of a Graduk Flier. One of them could easily carry away all the slaves and Girls-or bring in the force Blade knew he would need to take the stronghold.
That was the key to the problem now. As long as the Pi-field was on, the guards dominated the situation. There were nearly three hundred of them at Blade's most conservative estimate, too many for him to cope with singlehanded. Even if he penetrated to the Heart, he had nothing available with which to damage it. So he had to bring in a fighting force, preferably with some of those small bombs he had used on the fliers. With surprise on their side, reasonable luck, very fast action, and his guidance as to the vital spots of the stronghold, he guessed that a hundred or so good fighting men could clean the place out. That would chop off the Ice Master's threat at the roots; without the support from the stronghold the Dragon lair would wither on the vine.
Obviously this would not take care of the Menel entirely, but certainly it would create enough of an uproar that they would notice something was going on. Some of them would undoubtedly come up that shaft from their nearest settlement to find out what. From the Ice Master's vague descriptions they apparently were not so physically formidable that it was impossible to kill or capture them-preferably capture. And then? It was going to be difficult to communicate with them without the Ice Master, but on the other hand it was going to be next to impossible to destroy all their settlements, even if that were the right thing to do. Certainly the immediate threat to the Treduki would be gone when the Ice Master was defeated; possibly after that some way could be found for human and Menel to share this world.
Meanwhile, how to bring in the fighting force to deal with the Ice Master? Granted, the man was so eager for an ally against the Menel that he was giving Blade an amount of help and freedom that would have been preposterous under other circumstances. But he was still holding Leyndt somewhere in the stronghold, and would certainly kill or torture her if Blade simply went up to the surface and dashed off in one of the fliers. Scratch that idea. And Blade could hardly imagine the Ice Master letting him take one of the fliers and head south. That would be the act of a fool, and the Ice Master, mad, egotistical, and cruel though he was, showed no signs of being that kind of fool.
Very well. The Ice Master would not let Blade go unless the situation was desperate. So-how to create a desperate situation for the Ice Master? His strength and his prospects depended on the good will of the Menel. The thing he would most fear would be losing the support of the Menel, and having them turn against him would be several times worse.
So-how to turn the Menel against the Ice Master? Many of the guards definitely received additional conditioning at the hands of the Menel themselves. The Menel were not such fools as to put so much of their knowledge and power into the hands of a human without taking some care to watch, control, and limit him. (One way in which they had limited him was prohibiting him from cloning human guards in the same way he cloned the Ice Dragons. Such guards would have been entirely under the Ice Master's control and entirely immune from that of the Menel. Obviously this was intolerable-and just as obviously the prohibition was one of the Ice Master's main grievances against the Menel.)
But all the guards would not be so conditioned. Suppose some of them turned against the Menel-or seemed to be turning against the Menel, which would be just as effective? The Menel would unleash their conditioned guards against the other ones, and the Ice Master's forces would be divided. The stronghold would be a shambles of fighting men, clambering up and down its scores of levels and slaughtering one another. The Ice Master would be tearing his beard out by the bloody roots!
And then, if Blade came to him in the middle of the shambles and promised that if allowed to fly to the south he would bring back a hundred or more fighting men, loyal to him, that could be thrown into the battle against the Menel's guards? At that point Blade would become not merely a useful ally but an indispensable one for survival, and he could head south with reasonable certainty that Leyndt would be safe. Unless she was killed in the fighting, of course, but he could reasonably expect the Ice Master to see to her safety.
And after he returned? Simply getting a hundred fighters would not solve the problem. For one thing, most of them would have to be Treduki, for the Graduki were largely untrained in handling the primitive weapons that would be needed. But the Treduki themselves were also primitive, and faced with the wonders of the stronghold, would they be too terrified to fight? Not many of them could be expected to be as level-headed as Nilando. Stramod might be able to help there.