Solo said, “It sounds feasible. But in these conditions finding it is going to be quite a trick. It had to be well camouflaged at the best of times. Now we might as well be looking for a grain of icing sugar in a ton of cotton wool.”
“True—but at least from the ridge we can keep better observation in case our friend is on his way.”
“And freeze to death sooner,” Illya said gloomily. He gave an exaggerated shudder, hunching his shoulders to bring the collar of his jacket higher around his ears. “Well, if we must, let’s get started. It will be dark in less than an hour.”
“We’ll split forces,” Solo decided. “Viggo, you and Illya work up the left. I’ll try to the right. We’ll rendezvous at the top and quarter the ground. It’s a poor chance, but it’s the only one we’ve got.”
They moved off.
The going was even tougher than they had expected. Their feet sank deep in the light, soft snow, often without finding firm hold beneath. They slithered, slipped, and sometimes fell full-length. A loose boulder on which Solo unwarily put his weight sent him skittering ten feet downward, clutching wildly at the yielding drifts.
Then the first shots came, cutting through the snow and sending a shower of rock splinters into his face. There was no cover. All he could do was lie still, fumbling with half-frozen fingers for the gun in his right-hand pocket.
Keeping his head low, he began to wriggle deeper into the snow, like a crab seeking shelter by burying himself in the sand.
Illya called anxiously, “Napoleon! Are you all right?”
“Ecstatic!” he shouted back. “I do this all the time.” Another burst of shots came from above, landing perilously close. Even in the rapidly failing light the hidden marksman was finding the range.
There was answering fire from Viggo’s Mauser.
“Can you see him?” Solo called.
“Not a chance. He’s tucked away neatly. Viggo was potting at the muzzle flashes.”
Solo raised his head cautiously. The gun on the ridge chattered again. A slug tore through his jacket sleeve and pain seared his right arm. He flattened hurriedly.
Viggo shouted, “He’s got a Tommy gun up there.”
“So I noticed,” Solo said. “How’s your cover?”
“Not too bad. If we kick up a fuss, can you make it over here?”
He had little option. If he stayed where he was, he would either freeze to death or, sooner or later, collect a bullet in the skull. But a quick dash might get him safely to the hollow where Illya and Viggo were sheltering. He called, “Okay! Start kicking!”
The Luger and Mauser opened up together. Solo got to his feet and scrambled toward the sound. Despite the cold, he was sweating by the time he reached the hollow and dropped down beside Illya. The inside of his sleeve was sticky with blood. He said, “What a lovely way to spend an evening.”
“Well, we can’t stay here all night,” Illya said. “The neighbors would talk. I think it’s time we tried a little bluff.”
He made a trumpet of his hands and called, “Garbridge! Give up! You don’t have a chance.”
High above them a thin, stabbing tongue of red flame cut the darkness. Slugs whined and ricocheted unpleasantly. There was no other answer.
“This,” Illya observed, “would appear to be what is meant by stalemate. We can’t go up, and he can’t come down. The question is which of us is going to freeze first.”
“He must run out of ammunition soon,” Solo said.
“You want to bet?”
“Wait! Something’s moving up there.” Viggo was staring intently out over the snow, his countryman’s eyes better attuned to the darkness than those of his companions. He raised his pistol, aimed deliberately, and fired twice.
This time there was no answering burst.
Viggo said contentedly, “I got him.”
They waited, then after a few minutes left the hollow and began to climb. In awhile they could see ahead a black, still figure sprawled spread-eagled in the snow.
“That,” said Illya, “seems to wrap everything up. What now?”
“We’d better go on and bring him in,” Solo said. “He may only be wounded.”
Viggo said, “Not a chance. When they fall like that, they’re dead. Leave him. He’ll be there in the morning. Meanwhile, my friend, the sooner we attend to your own wound, the better.”
“Maybe you’re right.” Solo turned, and they began the descent.
Then suddenly it happened.
The whole hillside shuddered as if with an earthquake, throwing them off balance so that they had to grab each other to keep from falling. Intense white light, brighter than the sun, momentarily blinded them. A wave of heat seared their faces and melted the thick snow around their feet as if it had never been. Clouds of steam rose from the crest of the hill like the plume of an active volcano.
Solo gasped, “Look!”
Silently, incredibly swiftly, the great disc of the flying saucer soared from the hilltop into the black night sky. For a second it hovered, luminously silver, above them; then it canted and made off seaward.
Before a man could have counted five the monstrous machine had diminished in size to no more than a dime seen edgewise. Then, as the three men watched, its course became erratic. It seemed to dance like a crazy firefly.
Illya said, “It’s out of control.”
The dime edge became a red glow that widened into a brilliant sunburst, making the night like day. A stark pillar of iridescent light and smoke built like magic into a titanic mushroom.
Viggo said quietly, “Garbridge, farvel!”
Wordless, they watched the sinister cloud drift, swirling and curling, out over the Kattegat, its ghastly light slowly dimming.
Then Illya said, “If Garbridge was really piloting that thing, who was the man with the Tommy gun?”
“The morning will tell us,” Viggo responded. He led the way back to the road.
Dawn was breaking when they climbed into Viggo’s car to make their last journey to the chalk mine. A thin mist softened the outlines of the leafless trees standing stark against the whiteness of the snow blanket. The big farmer said, as he got behind the wheel, “My friends, I think it will be a fine day.”
They halted the car beside the shattered ruin of the blockhouse. A crust of ice crackled under their feet as they tramped across the space where the cranes and trucks stood idle.
“Now, I hope, the place is out of business for good,” Viggo said. “It has already cost too many lives.”
Solo said, “Don’t worry. We’ll send along a demolition squad. This time they’ll plant the charges inside the workshop.”
Heavy walking sticks made their climb to the crest easier. In little more than ten minutes they were staring at the body of the man sprawled face downward in the snow. A sub-machine gun lay near his frozen right hand.
He was wearing a long, padded blue nylon coat and his head was covered by a fur cap. The back of the coat was stained darkly red and punctured by two black holes.
“That explains the bloodstains in the Mercedes,” Solo said. “He must have been driving the car.”
“But who is he?” Illya asked. “He’s too small and too slight to be Garbridge.”
“We’ll soon know,” Viggo said. “Give me a hand here.” With some difficulty they rolled the stiff body onto its back.
Illya said softly, “Well, I’m damned!”
They were looking into the face of the maternity home’s general factotum.
“When he skipped out, he must have gone straight to the underground garage,” Illya said. “He probably had the car warmed up by the time the major did his disappearing act.”
Viggo shook his head wonderingly. “Poor little man! Who would have thought he had so much guts?”