The Chinese knelt down, scooped up sonic dust in his hand, stuck his nose in the palm and sniffed mightily. 'Ah-choo!' – which is a Chinese sneeze in any language.
I lowered my hands from in front of my face. 'Is it out?' I asked.
'Not yet.' He sniffed again, sneezed again, and made a wild dive to catch the flying capsule before it could hit the floor. I was flat on my belly before I realized he'd made the catch.
'Gezundheit!' I said fervently, getting to my feet. 'What next?'
'We wait until the guards open the door to bring us a meal.'
'Why wait? Why don't we just blow the door open ourselves right now?'
'I can't be sure the charge will be powerful enough to do that. It is, after all, only a very small amount. But if we time it right, it should blast the guards off their feet and we'll be able to overcome them before they recover their wits.'
'And what then? Suppose we do get out of here? Suppose we even succeed in getting above ground? If they don't catch us, we'll only freeze to death out there, anyway.'
'Don't be so negative,' he told me. 'We'll just have to try to steal a sled and supplies and make it back to civilization. Unless you have a better idea.'
I had to admit I didn't. But it still seemed like suicide to me to attempt to brave the Arctic on our own. We hadn't the knowho'w to survive in such an environment. I guessed that he didn't have it from the fact that the three men with him when he'd disembarked from the ship must have perished in the storm. He was right, though. There was nothing else to do but try it.
It was about an hour before the guards arrived. There were two of them. One entered carrying a tray of food. The other stood beside him, leveling a sub-machine gun at us.
But before he had a chance to use it, the Chinese lobbed the capsule of nitro to the floor at their feet. The blast knocked them both backwards on their keisters. The Chinese and I dived on top of them. I came up with the sub- machine gun. The Chinese took the pistol from the holster worn by the other guard. They were still dazed, and he saw to it that they stayed that way. He clubbed each of them over the head with the gun butt, and then motioned for me to follow him down the passage.
The first guard we hit was when we reached the entrance to Highman's office. We hit him hard – or rather, the Chinese did. He shot him through the heart before the man could even raise the rifle he was holding.
The Chinese was as curious about Highman's office as I was. We rifled it together. He was looking for information, but he didn't find any. I was looking for something else, and I did. I found the jewelled phallus and hefted it under one arm. If I got out of this alive, I didn't see any reason why I shouldn't return it to Singh Huy-eva. I owed him a favor.
The Chinese raised his eyebrows and made a crack about 'materialistic Americans.' I let it pass. This was no time for dialectics. We still had to make it to the elevator.
There was another guard waiting when we reached it. He never saw us. The Chinese shot him in the back. A few moments later we got off the lift, on the surface once again.
There was a large stack of crates piled up beside the entrance to the elevator shaft. Each of them bore the same warning: DYNAMITE-CAUTION! The Chinese looked at them, and then around at the circle of igloos. He stopped his slow turning and pointed.
I looked beyond the fringe of igloos to where he was pointing. There was a small, single-engined cabin plane sitting on the flat ice-field there. 'I don't know how to fly a plane,' I told the Chinese.
'I do,' he assured me. 'But first let us take care of S.M.U.T.'
I followed his lead, and we loaded up the elevator platform with the dynamite. Then he attached a long fuse and lit it. We lowered the elevator and sprinted for the plane. Just as we reached it, the explosion went off.
I tossed the phallus in the plane and turned around for a moment to see the results of the blast. Icicles were still flying around, and the area where the S.M.U.T. underground HQ had been was thick with smoke. The igloos around the perimeter seemed to be caving in, melting before my very eyes. And the ice in the center of the circle was splitting and shifting downward, caving in on what was left of the underground complex. The Eskimos had bolted from their igloos and were putting distance between themselves and the site of the blast.
The Chinese was already in the pilot's seat, revving up the engine of the plane. I started to climb aboard, and found myself looking into the barrel of his pistol. There was a nasty smile on his face. He motioned me to pass him the sub-machine gun I'd slung over my shoulder, and I did. Then he waved his gun at me to back off. I backed off. I saw his finger start to tighten on the trigger, and I dived under the plane. He'd only been waiting until I was clear of it to shoot.
But he didn't waste time chasing me. I guess he figured it was just as good to leave me there to freeze to death. So he gunned the motor and skimmed down the field for a take-off.
The plane had skis in place of wheels for landing gear. What the Chinese didn't know was that I was balancing on one of those skis as he took to the air. I began climbing up the strut supporting it as he leveled off.
It was touch and go, but I managed to pull myself to the top of the fuselage. I inched along it until I was just over the cabin. I grabbed the wing with both hands and swung sideways into the cabin, feet first, breaking the window and slamming into the face of the Chinese with the heels of my boots.
He was fast. I'll say that for him. He rolled with the kick, let go of the controls, and came up with the sub- machine gun from the seat beside him. I slammed the barrel with my arm just as he fired. He blew off the top of his own head. It splattered messily over the ceiling of the cabin.
Now I was in a fine mess. I was umpteen thousand feet up in mid-air and I had no more idea of how to fly a plane than the man in the moon. I hadn't meant for the Chinese to die. I'd just wanted to get the drop on him and force him to fly me to something approximating civilization. But he was dead now, and there was no sense crying over spilled won-ton soup.
I pushed his body out of the plane and sat down in the pilot's seat. The controls meant nothing to me. So far the plane seemed to be flying itself. Seemed to be? It
Then I spotted the radio. I may not know anything about planes, but I do know how to work a radio. When I was a kid, I had a ham set. Me and Barry Goldwater. Except that he knows how to fly a plane.
I turned the radio on for an all-stations alert. I picked up the hand mike and cleared my throat. 'May Day!' I hollered. 'May Day! May Day!' I wasn't sure what it meant, but it was what they always yelled when they were in trouble in all those old war movies I'd seen on the Late Show. 'May Day! May Day!' I caught a sudden reflection of myself in the glass covering the instrument panel. It was a surprise to see my face and not Jimmy Cagney's. 'May Day! May Day!' Oh, Pat O'Brien, do you read me? I thought irrelevantly. I switched over and a voice sounded in my earphones.
'This is the United States Weather Station in Greenland,' it said. 'Identify yourself. Identify yourself.'
'Steve Victor,' I told him.
'Identify your craft.'
'It's an airplane.'
'Identify your craft,' the voice repeated.
'That's all I know about it,' I told him. 'This is an emergency.'
'What is the nature of the emergency? What is the nature of the emergency? What is the nature of the emergency?'
Just my luck to get a redundant radio operator at a time like this. Or maybe he just stuttered. 'The nature of the emergency is that I don't know how to fly a plane,' I told him.
'Are you in the air? Are you in the air?'
'Yes. Yes.'
'How did you get there if you can't fly? How did you-'
'It's a long story,' I interrupted. 'The fact is that I'm here and I don't know how to fly this thing.'
There was a long pause. Then – 'We have advised Air Traffic Control of your predicament,' the voice said. 'We are cutting you in on their frequency. We are turning you over to Air Traffic Control now.'
'Hello,' a new voice said. 'This is Air Traffic Control. We have been advised of your May Day. What is your altitude?'
I looked at the instrument panel. 'Two-fifty,' I told them.
'That is your speed. Look at the dial on your extreme left. What is your altimeter reading?'
'Thirty gallons.'
