"Hey, Captain!" a pilot yelled back. "This must be Kloten Airport. There's more (bleeped) airplanes down there than I ever seen before in one place!"
Stabb's feet settled back. He had simply been lifted up and forward by deceleration and was holding himself with my straps.
He was on his own feet again. He looked ahead, peering at the screen.
I was able to speak. "Be careful," I said. "Kloten is the busiest airport in Switzerland, if this is Switzerland. Don't land me in a runway and get me knocked down by a superjet."
"Turn up the magnification," yelled Stabb into the comparative silence of the hovering line-jumper. I tried to rise so I could see the screen. Were we really over Zurich's main airport or some crevasse? Stabb pushed me back. "Shift the scanner around," he yelled. "Let's see if we can read some of those signs!"
Glaciers seldom had signs. I was reassured.
Stabb said, "Devils, I can't read a single word of that gobbledegook."
"Put me off a runway and close to their customs shed," I begged.
"It's a bad scanner," said Stabb. "We'll have to improve it. I can't make out if they are letters or snow splashes, even if I could read their alphabet. Awful definition for only a hundred thousand feet."
I tried to get up again. Stabb pushed me back. "We'll handle it," he said. He yelled to the pilot, "Some of those buildings are hangars, so eliminate them. One is the main terminal, so eliminate that. Choose a shed that looks like it could be defended and put us down." He turned to me. "We can't hover here all night trying to read languages, even if we could read them."
"Hold on!" yelled the pilot.
Stabb gripped my shoulder safety straps again.
SWOOSH!
His feet came off the floor and my stomach stayed at a hundred thousand feet.
We went down twenty miles like a rocket in reverse.
CRUNCH!
Stabb used my body for a cushion to land on.
I didn't know how he kept his breath. I didn't. "Fast now. Out you go!"
I grabbed the FIE shotgun. Stabb unsnapped the seat and shoulder belts. I was propelled down the ladder.
The engineers were already out. They were standing on the platform, casting off the safety lines.
My feet connected with the boxes of the fake bars. I tried to get my balance.
The engineers swarmed up the ladder. I stared up. Stabb's pointed head was silhouetted against the green glow of the engine room as he peered down through the hatch at me.
"Don't leave a single man alive!" he yelled.
The hatch clanged shut.
The line-jumper leaped into the air.
It was swallowed instantly in glowing white mist.
I had arrived.
I was amazed to still be in the world of living things!
I had arrived. But where?
The only real clue I had that it was Zurich was the fog. They have a trick wind. It is called the fцhn. It comes into these cold confines from the south and, being a warm wind, creates fog which lasts for weeks on end. The airport lights were making it glow so that one felt he was packed in cotton batting.
That's why I didn't see the snowbank at first. I moved to the edge of the platform and there it was: a wall of snow! It went up much higher than my head!
Not too concerned at first, I walked all around the platform.
They had landed me in the middle of a deep, deep snowdrift!
I was totally hemmed in!
Either it had been snowing before thefцhn started, or this was the residue of snowplows clearing runways. But the cold was not the problem. The fact that I was a prisoner gripped me with icy fingers.
How was I going to get out?
I wondered if the airport came equipped with St. Bernard dogs, the kind with the kegs under their chins. Then I remembered reading that the Coca-Cola civilization had wiped them out. The Coca-Cola Company would not hear of the dogs carrying anything but Coca-Cola and the dogs, with a final pathetic hiccup, had died out. So there was no hope there.
Even if I started to dig, I did not know which way. It was one time I could have used Heller's built-in compass brain, but that was no solution either. The last person I wanted to see at this time and place was Heller.
But one thing was certain. I was not going to sit here and perish in the snow, even if it was the Swiss custom. There is a limit to the courtesy one must display in emulating primitive ethnological fixations.
Cunning came to my rescue. I could locate the runway nearest to me by listening to the planes. Gods, they were loud enough as they landed and took off. They must be being landed and sent away by the controllers in the tower. No wonder nobody had time to notice a new arrival.
Despite rebounding echoes from the walls of the drift, I did make out what I hoped was the landing strips. That direction I did not want. Combing superjets out of one's clothing is almost as bad as freezing in the snow.
Nothing for it. I would have to risk a Code break and hope nobody reported it.
I chose my direction. I got out a blastick. I took off its safety. I levelled it. I closed my eyes and pressed the trigger.
BLOWIE! SWOOSH!
It sounded like a cannon shot.
I opened my eyes. There was no snow in a path twenty feet wide and about thirty yards long. Only water!
I was quite certain guards and everybody else would come tearing out. It must have made a flash visible for miles even in the fog.
I waited.
Nothing happened.
More jets landed and took off.
I was very, very unwilling to leave this platform. I could not be sure that those pirates would not have second thoughts and come back and grab it.
The FIE shotgun would not make much impression on that super-blastproof hull!
But at length, when I saw no patrols and no line-jumper responding to the blast, I took the only action I could. I stepped off the platform into the water which still ran and walked along the new pathway to its end.
I could see nothing and hear nothing.
I didn't want to use another blastick. I might knock a building down if one was on the other side of the remaining snow barrier. I decided on caution. I fished in my pockets and got out the Domestic Police slash gun. My hands clumsy with their ski gloves, I managed to set it on lowest intensity.
I pointed it. I depressed the trigger. I steadied the tendency of my arm to recoil and began to slice away at the remaining wall of snow.
For a few moments it stood there in very neat blocks. Then it suddenly, under the latent influence of the slash-ray heat, disintegrated into slushy water.
VICTORY!
A building wall.
I had only burned it a little bit.
Looking backwards, I saw that my precious platform was still there, a murky darkness in the swirling fog.
I looked back at the building wall. I did an "eeny-meeny" and chose the left direction. Using the slash gun, I carved a passage down the wall.
A big door with a little door in it.
I put the slash gun away. I took a grip on my shotgun. I opened the smaller door.
It was a sort of office. Several counters. Some men in caps shuffling packages around.
One looked up incuriously. A beefy, phlegmatic sort of man, very red of face.
"Ja?" he said.
"Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" Isaid.
"Ja," he said.
Well, I didn't, so that was no help. "Parla Italiano?" I said hopefully.
"Nein," he said.
"(Bleep)!" I said. "How am I going to talk to you people?"
"Well," he said, thinking it over, "you could talk English like you just did."
Thank Gods! He spoke English!"Is this the customs freight shed?" I said hopefully.
"Bulk freight only," he said. "If you've come in here to clear those weapons, the passenger terminal customs..."