Eight more days went by before Ricia led the way up the sloping, jointed tunnel to the surface and we stood together in purple twilight on the frozen slush surface twenty feet above the buried house. I was dressed in a blue-black shimmery suit like her green one; it was as light and comfortable as cotton, and kept out the bitter cold like a brick house. Ricia had supplied me with boots that seemed to be made of a sort of tough felt; inside them my feet were still a little tender, but warm enough. I had gloves and a cowl that fitted over my head like a hood of a parka. As a sample of Gonwodon science the outfit was impressive. I took Ricia's hands between mine.
"I won't get hurt, kid. Just a fast, sneaky look around, and then out; just long enough to pick up something more convincing than a few bruises to prove I ever met these boys."
"It will be dark soon. Time to start," she said woodenly.
"Yeah, just show me the sled and I'll be on my way."
She went past me, used a small pick on an ice-crusted mound. I helped her; in five minutes the sled was clear. It was flat, about the size of an air mattress, with a hooded panel at one end. It did not look like much. Ricia knelt by it, twiddled things; it made a singing noise and lifted itself six inches from the ice. There did not seem to be any airstream coming from under it.
"How do you make it go?" I came to Ricia's side. She swung onto the sled.
"Get on," she said in a dull voice. I climbed on behind her. She leaned forward over the controls.
"I can't see a thing from here," I said. "Better let me get up there."
"It is not necessary," she called back to me. "I am going with you." She had learned a lot of English in the past week. Maybe I should start competing with Berlitz when the world calmed down again.
"Not a chance, girl. You're going back down in that nice snug burrow of yours and sit tight until I get back."
She swung around to face me. "I am not afraid for me—only for you."
"My God, Ricia, this isn't a chicken contest! I'm going in there because I have to!"
"I have to also."
"You're not going."
"Mal"—she leaned against me—"I will operate the sled, and help you dig; it will not be easy to uncover the shaft. And inside—how will you know the way, if I am not there? This is my city; I know its streets."
"Its streets are solid ice now; I don't need a guide. I'll play it by ear, and—"
"No." She was smiling at me, looking impish. I wondered how I could ever have thought she was anything but beautiful. "We will play it by my ear."
"What's that supposed to mean? I'll have enough on my mind without looking out for you too."
She pointed to a button set behind her ear like a hearing aid. "This is linked to the house library. It will speak wisdom in my ear."
I was in no mood to be impressed. The closer I got to bearding the quiet men in their Hidden Place, the less I liked the sensations it engendered under my ribs. I wanted to get it over with in a hurry now.
"Sure, your wise men were clever as hell. But we aren't trying to break the bank on a quiz show. Now just slide off of here like a good girl."
"You do not understand. This"—she touched the button—"is an instrument of the most fine. . . ." Her English still slipped a little under pressure, and she still had an exotic way with her words sometimes.
" . . . . will detect sounds, sight, hidden things; all these it will relay to the library, and the library will advise us."
"Swell, the voice of conscience in your ear, ready with an oracular saying for every emergency."
"Even now it tells me things." She had a faraway look in her eyes, as though she were listening to a distant drummer beating out a rhythm I would never hear. "It says men are abroad even now; ten. . . . sarads away, there—" She pointed out across the dark ice.
"All right, let me have it then." I was humoring her. "Maybe it will direct me to the civic booze supply; I'll probably be needing a drink."
"No, only I can use it." She looked triumphant. "It speaks in my language, not your English."
"Go below, Ricia!" I took her arm, tried to ease her over the side. She resisted; she was strong. I got my leg under me to lift her and her eyes met mine.
"You would have me wait alone again, Malcome?" she asked softly.
I was holding her by both shoulders. I looked at her and thought about her waiting down there, if I did not come back, and the days going by and lengthening into years.
I let my breath out in a long sigh. "All right, kid. Let's get going. I want to finish this caper before the sun comes up."
Ricia held the sled six feet above the ice, raked it along at a speed that made bob-sledding seem sedentary. It was a good forty-mile run, I estimated; we made it in under an hour, the last few miles at a fast crawl.
We came up over a slight rise, down across an open stretch that showed up pale in the light of a few stars that had found a crack in the cloud layer. It took us half an hour, while Ricia pored over instrument faces, to find a pit scooped out in the ice like a crater dug by an air burst. Ricia maneuvered up to it, settled in and cut the switch.
"This looks like the spot," I told her. "It's just as the sailor described it."
"Grand Tower of the Sun is here, Mal." She jumped off the sled, pointed to the ground at her feet. "The master steerer of the sled is centered here."
"Was that the tall building I saw in the picture?"
"Yes." She paused, listening. "Library tells me they are here," she said in a low, tense voice. "This is their Hidden Place—my city of Ulmoc!"
"Well, it's not hidden any longer. Let's see what we can do about clearing the shaft." My feet crunched loose ice in the hollow. I used the pick on it; it was a solid mass, thawed and frozen again. Ricia came up with a metal tube like a flashlight, aimed it at the ice. Water bubbled, boiled away from the cavity that appeared.
"You're full of surprises," I said. "And I was going to try it with hairpins and chewing gum."
"I do not know those tools. Are they better than my heat gun?"
"They're pretty versatile, but for a job like this you can't beat specialization. You're doing fine."
"Mal, you use too many words you have not taught me."
"I use too many words, period. I get gabby when I'm nervous." I watched while she cut a deep slot across the ice, then another beside it. I picked at it, broke a fifty-pound chunk loose, tossed it aside, and Ricia went to work widening the hole.
An hour later, six feet down in a slushy pit of porous ice, there was a sudden hollow crunch and a slab dropped from under us. I grabbed Ricia with one hand, the edge of the pit with the other. There was a hole in the floor of the excavation now; through it, the corner of a metal cage showed.
"This is it; that's the car the sailor was caught in." Ricia kicked more ice away, cleared the top of the car. There was an access door, frozen shut. I used a pick to lever it open. We dropped down inside the six-foot square cage. It was half full of ice forced in through the half-open door. I used Ricia's light, set now for a pencil-thin beam. It showed me an unbroken drop into a blue-black well that dwindled away to darkness far below. The cables suspended from the bottom of the car fell away in lazy loops.
"This is the end of the line for you, kid," I said. "There's only one way down, and that's via the cables. You wait up on top, by the sled."
"I will go down."
"Listen, girl, sliding down is easy—maybe. Coming back up is another thing. I can't climb a rope and carry you."
"I climb very well. Now we must go down, or go back together."
"You're not easy to discourage. Maybe I'm glad, at that." I squeezed through the door, dropped down until I was holding on to the door sill, swung my legs out and tangled them in the cables, lowered myself a few yards hand over hand. The ropes were a nine-gauge synthetic fiber, no bigger than my little finger and slippery with ice. They quivered as Ricia swung out above me.
"Stay close," I called up to her. "If you slip, I'll stop you."
"I will not slip," she said coolly. I grunted, got a loop of rope around my leg as a brake, and started down.
I tried to keep track of distance but gave it up after the first hundred feet. At any moment I expected to slam against a blockage in the tube or come to the end of the cable. My arms got tired and then numb, then ached again. I called to Ricia and she answered, sounding calm and a lot less winded than I was. Then my feet hit a sloping surface of loose ice. A moment later Ricia was standing beside me in what felt like a small cave hollowed out of the ice. She flashed the light around on glassy black walls—and stopped on a surface of gray stone with a tall narrow niche fronting on a tiny balcony railed with twisted iron.
"Mal, it is"—her voice broke—"the Grand Tower. . . ."
I put an arm around her shoulders, stared at the ancient wall. "Skyscrapers under the ice," I said. "I don't think I really believed it—until now."
She went to the niche, stepped over the railing, disappeared into darkness. I followed. The light showed us a tiny room with a narrow bed with carved head- and footboards, a squat table with an open drawer, rotted scraps of rug, a doorless opening in the opposite wall. There was an odor of suppressed corruption, like a cold-storage vault.
"This is where he found the coin." My voice was as hoarse as a sideshow barker's. Ricia was already at the doorway, flashing the light on a wall with blotchy painted murals.
"The ramp is this way." She led me along the hall, past doors closed on secrets preserved in deep freeze for an unknown number of millennia. A part of my mind told me that I was walking through a greater treasurehouse than archaeology had ever dreamed of, but the other part kept my hackles raised and my muscles tensed for a fast jump—in either direction.
We reached the ramp. It was wide, like a grand staircase, and wound down in a sweep around a central well. There was no guard rail. I took the lead, hugging the wall.
Five floors down, I saw the first sign of recent occupancy—a cast-off carton marked U.S. Navy—One Ration, Type Y-2. For a moment it gave me an almost comforting sense of human companionship. Then I saw the fellow who had been eating it.
He was lying on his face, ten yards along the corridor. I turned him over carefully; it was like handling a dummy in a store window. He was in good shape—a little dark and withdrawn-looking, his eyelids sunken, his cheeks drawn in—but the bitter cold was an excellent preservative. He was wearing a heavy parka and thick boots laced to the knee. The can of potted meat was still in one hand.
"He didn't die of starvation," I said. My voice seemed to echo like a shout.
Ricia pointed. There was a tiny black spot, almost hidden in the fold of the parka.
"Burn gun," she said. "They did it."
"What's a burn gun?"
She held the light out. "Like this, but more strong. It kills."
I unstrapped the forty-five from the dead sailor's waist, buckled it on. "So does this. Let's go."
Two levels lower we found two more men. One was a Navy rating lying curled on his side with his face frozen into an expression of agony like a tortured pharaoh and six burns that I could see without moving him. The other was a soft-looking fellow of perhaps fifty, with a round, oriental-looking face. He was dressed in a quilted suit and felt boots. There was a large bullet hole in his chest. "Pay dirt," I said. "This is one of them. He's got the look." I went through his pockets, found nothing. There was no gun on the sailor's body.
"How many floors are there in this building?" I asked Ricia.
"Eight tens. . . . and three," she calculated.
"Where would they be most likely to hole up?"
"They would take the rooms nearest the kitchens, would they not?"
"Unless they're living on concentrates. They didn't strike me as lads who cared a lot about creature comforts—except for the fat one they called the Primary."
"I think they could be anywhere. There are many apartments here. Only on the lowest floors are there rooms not suitable for sleeping—storage rooms and offices and spaces for the heat engines and other things."
"All right, we'll push on."
At the next floor, Ricia touched my arm. "There is warmth coming from there. . . ." She pointed along a dark corridor.
"I don't feel it."
"The library tells me." Her voice was a tense whisper.
"Let's take a look." I unholstered the gun. Ricia adjusted the light to cast a barely visible pink glow over the floor ahead. I eased off, breathing with my mouth open. Ricia walked beside me, silent as a shadow. We passed open doorways beyond which I caught fleeting glimpses of dark furnishings of strange proportions.
"Close, now," Ricia breathed at my ear.
"Better douse the light."
"Wait." The light dimmed to a sultry glow, went out. Something touched my hand.
"Fit this over your eyes," she whispered. It was a sort of visor, feeling like smooth plastic. I clamped it over my head without asking questions. Now I could see a bright puddle of radiance on the floor ahead from Ricia's light.
"Infrared," I told myself. "That's some bag of tricks you've got there, girl."
We moved on. Two doorways down, Ricia touched my hand. "In there."
I moved up beside the arched opening, listening hard, heard nothing but the blood beating in my ear.
"I think your library's got an overactive imagination," I whispered. "Why would—"
Ricia put a hand over my mouth—too late. Something stirred in the darkness—a sharp, sudden movement. I jumped back, pushed Ricia behind me. A heavy body slammed the wall where we had stood an instant before. The gun was ready in my hand, but I didn't want to use it. I stepped in, swung and connected with something as bristly as a bear. It grunted and clawed at me and I kicked it away, just as Ricia's light found it. I froze, staring at a tall, rangy man, bundled in grimy gray cloth and matted fur, his face pale and hollow-eyed in a snarl of beard. Blood was running down the side of his jaw, and he was showing his teeth in a snarl that could have been either pain or rage.
"Hold it—" I started. He did not wait to hear the rest. He swung wildly, missed, then kicked me hard enough to chip bone. I rushed him, slammed him back against the wall. "I said hold it, damn you!" I got out between my teeth. "We're on your side!"
He went rigid, blinking almost at my face. He was breathing hard between his teeth.
"Give us some light, Ricia," I snapped. The eerie glow of infrared brightened to an honest pink. The man I was holding squinted his eyes, stared into my face. Then he relaxed, let out a long, shuddering breath.
"Thank God," he croaked. "Addison got through. . . ."
The room he had fixed up for himself smelled like a Hudson's Bay store just before the fur ship arrives. There was a rough pallet of rotted cloth and odds and ends of clothing in one corner, a pile of Navy ration cartons beside it. He was sitting against the wall, limp as a scarecrow now that the excitement was over.
"I've gotten careless lately," he nodded toward his meager effects. "I used to keep it all hidden, but they never come up here any more. They think I'm dead; I was content to keep it that way. A waiting game, that was all, until you got here." Even talking was an effort for him. I wondered how he had gotten the strength for his attack on me.
"How many men have you?" He glanced at Ricia, looked puzzled as he had each time he noticed her, then fixed his eyes on me. "I hope COMSPAC is patrolling the entire perimeter of the continent. I didn't have time to say much to Addison, but I think he understood. . . ." He faded off as I shook my head.
"Sorry, COMSPAC couldn't patrol Catalina Island today. There's no task force here. Just me—and. . . ." I caught Ricia's eye. "This is Ricia. She led me here."
He straightened himself, made a move to get to his feet. Ricia knelt quickly beside him. His face looked worn and old; his beard was iron gray, shot with white.
"We will help you," she said softly. "We will take you with us to a place where you will be safe."
"Am I. . . . am I dreaming this?" He touched Ricia's hand. "No, I see I'm not. You're as real as. . . . life." He ducked his head in a caricature of a stately bow. "I am Rome Hayle, my dear."
"Admiral Hayle!" I looked at the gaunt face in vain for a likeness to the dapper officer I had met once in Guam. "Are you the only one. . . . left?"
He nodded. "But"—he looked from me to Ricia—"who are you? How did you find me? How is it up above now?"
"Hold it, Admiral," I said. "I'll tell you the whole story—as much as I know of it."
" . . . . Ricia's bet paid off," I finished. "I woke up inside, damaged but alive. That was a couple of weeks ago."
"But in Heaven's name, why did you come here? You knew this damnable place is infested with them."
"For information. We don't know anything—nothing we can prove."
"You'll never get out alive. You should have gone back with what you had. Now there are three of us in the trap."
"Why didn't they kill you?"
"They tried hard enough. But I found a hidey-hole—up there." He pointed to the ceiling. "There's a narrow crawl space above; I can enter it through the wardrobe ceilings—a trapdoor arrangement. Access space for heating ducts."
"What happened to your men?"
"Most of them were cut down at their posts before we knew we were under attack."
"They hit you from inside?"
"They came up from below, intercepted us at about the seventieth floor, down from the top of the tower. About a dozen of us survived their first attack. They came at us in absolute silence, firing. I shot one; managed to find cover. Got the remnant of my boys together and tried to pull back, but they pressed us from both sides.
"Four of us got clear, to the upper levels. They picked Hieneman and Drake and Ludcrow off over the next week. I fooled them. Rigged Ludcrow's body up, propped in a doorway. When they fired, he fell. They thought they'd gotten me. They went away, and I haven't seen them since—up here."
"Up here?" Ricia queried him.
"I've been down a few times. The first month I was quite active scouting them out, spying. Then I began to get a little weak. Lack of sunshine, and the damned cold, I suppose. Always shivering. Plenty of food, though. . . ." His attention seemed to wander from his disjointed story, and he brought it back with an effort.
"They're not human, you know," he said, and I could hear the strain in his voice. I said nothing, waited.
"They call themselves. . . . Womboids. They prey on us. They need men to live—I don't know how, but they need them. The way ticks need cattle."
"What else did you learn about them, Admiral?" I had the feeling he was close to some unseen edge, and that the wrong word would send him over.
"They don't care whether they live or die," Hayle said hoarsely. "As long as something they call their Primary is safe. All they want is food and a place to breed. That last is very important to them. The ones that haven't bred are in a sort of special, protected category, as well as I could gather. They're. . . . tested. . . . in some way. Those that don't pass are killed as casually as you'd swat a fly."
"How did you learn all this?"
"I listened. There's a big room where they gather to eat." He described it. Ricia nodded. "The feasting hall; there is food stored there—enough for the whole city for a year or more. It was gathered there when the Long Winter began."
"They bring captives here, I think. They spoke of the need for women. Not the way a man would speak of women—don't misunderstand me. The way a butcher would speak of a new supply of beef!"
"They don't eat human flesh?"
"It's not that either. I hate to think of it, but I believe they use them in some unnatural way to breed more of their own obscene kind."
"When you say they're not human, Admiral, you're speaking—"
"I'm speaking fact, man! They're no more human than a scorpion! Yes, they look human—they may even walk around in human flesh, but the spirit that moves them is as alien as a boa constrictor."
"He is right," Ricia said, and shuddered as with a chill. "I felt it, too."
"I agree they're a clammy lot, but to jump from that to Aliens Among Us is quite a leap. The fact is, we don't know enough about them." I looked at Ricia. "Is there a back way into this Feast Hall? Something they might not know about?"
"There are service routes leading to the kitchens. It is possible that they have not discovered them."
"You'll need a gun. I guess we can borrow one from the Admiral."
"Wait a minute," Hayle barked. "You're not going to try an attack on them? There must be hundreds of them!"
"Nothing so dramatic. I want information, proof that these Womboids exist—that they're a threat."
"Don't be a damned fool! You have to get clear, now, before they discover you! I'll write a letter for COMSPAC; they'll send a force in here big enough to take this place lock, stock, and barrel! We can't let one of them escape, now that we've found their nest."
"Sorry, I'm not leaving until I've got something concrete. Tell COMSPAC they're a threat, you say. What kind of threat? Maybe they're a harmless secret society."
"Harmless! They killed my men!"
"Your men intruded on them, Admiral. I guess you could say the same of me. They don't seem to go out looking for trouble."
"Are you siding with these devils!" Hayle glared at me with red eyes.
"I'm trying to point out the futility of arousing any official interest in them without something more than a strange feeling to go on. You know this is something big; I know it. I can feel the threat in the air as thick as the smog over Naples. But we need proof."
"My letter—"
"They'll file it along with the UFO reports. I'm going down. Ricia, you stay here with the Admiral. If I'm not back in twenty-four hours—"
"Mal, do not speak foolishly. I am with you."
"You two are going down there, beard these vipers in their den? When you could get away clean, now?"
"You'll be all right here for another day, Admiral. Then we'll leave together."
Hayle stared at me. Then he got to his feet, painfully. "I've been without light, without the sound of a human voice for three months," he said heavily. "I'll not be without them again, as long as I can crawl."
I thought about it. "All right, Admiral," I said. "Buckle on a gun and let's get moving."
The route that Ricia showed us was a narrow, sharply spiraling ramp, almost lost at the far end of the corridor. We followed it down past arched openings at each floor, emerged into an echoing vault as big as the nave of a middlesized cathedral. Heavy equipment was ranged in dark rows along the center of the room. It looked like an abandoned factory.
"This is the upper kitchen," Ricia whispered. "Here the carcasses of Holgotha were prepared, and the hearts cut from the Riffa tree, and the great fishes. . . ." She stared, caught in a dream of barbaric banquets served long ago.
"They're not here," Hayle was sniffing the air. "I could smell them if they were. We haven't descended far enough."
"There is another kitchen below," Ricia said. "But they have been here—and they are near. The library senses their warmth."
"What's this 'library'?" Hayle asked sharply. I explained the miniature pickup and relay system. Hayle grunted. "Handy," he said. "Some day I'll want to know a great deal more about you, young lady, and about the people who built this fantastic pile."
Back on the ramp, we moved stealthily, pausing to listen every few yards. The walls were warmer here; I could sense it through my gloves. I sniffed, caught the taint of fresh decay. Beside me, Ricia put out a hand, touched my arm.
"Just ahead," she breathed.
"Give me the light."
She handed it to me. "Be careful." I nodded, waved her back. Hayle started forward.
"Stay here," I mouthed. He glared at me. I made a peremptory motion and turned away. He was a good officer; he took the order in silence.
Six feet farther, half around the next turn of the ramp, an arch opened on the right. The warmth and odor were stronger here. I poked my head out, looked into a long room much like the one above. If there was anyone in it, they were standing very still.
"I'm going in," I whispered. "If the coast is clear, you follow." I did not wait for the arguments; I started down the aisle between the giant cauldrons.
It was a hundred-yard walk to the small, square door in the opposite wall. I moved along, heel and toe, with my gun in my hand and my ears out on stalks. It was as silent as a deaf-mute's tomb.
At the door, I flattened myself against the wall and listened. There may have been a few faint sounds from beyond it—or maybe it was just imagination frisking in the dark. The door was a double one, hinged at both sides. I touched the nearest panel; it swung in, letting in light and a whiff of foul air like an opened coffin.
Tables were ranged in rows across a wide room with tall shuttered windows. Twenty or thirty men sat at the tables, dwarfed by the scale of the high, vaulted ceiling. At that moment, one of them looked my way.
I froze, holding the door as it was, half an inch open; the movement of closing it would catch his eye more surely than the displacement. He stared across for a long moment. Then he turned back; I thought he spoke to someone across the table, but I was not sure. He was at least fifty yards from me, and the light was a dim flicker from a crude flambeau on a stand in the space between tables. No one moved from his seat. I decided the man had not seen me.
Another man entered the room, went to a serving counter, scooped up food, took a seat alone at a table. Another man rose, went out the way the other had entered. Minutes ticked past, while nothing happened, I let the door close gently, turned to cross back to the ramp where Ricia and Hayle waited, and a yellow light bloomed, a heat-lightning flash; sound racketed and roared from the walls. I dropped, rolled behind a leg-mounted rectangle of cold iron with an odor of grease and mold as a second shot thundered, and a third. There were sounds of scuffling feet, of fists hitting flesh, the clatter of a dropped gun. Hayle snarled something that was cut off in the middle by a blow. Then silence.