'You can go back to him.'
'More than anything else,' she said, 'I would like that.
But what of you, Var?'
'The Master has sworn to kill me. I must go on.'
'If Sol travels with the Weaponless, he must agree with him. They must both want to kill you now.'
Var nodded miserably.
'I love my father more than anything,' she said slowly. 'But I would not have him kill you, Var. You are my friend. You gave me warmth on the mesa, you saved me from illness and snow.'
He had not realized that she attached such importance to such things. 'You helped me, too,' he said gruffly.
'Let me travel with you a while longer. Maybe I'll find a way to talk to my father, and maybe then he can make the Nameless One stop chasing you.'
Var was immensely gratified by this decision of hers, but he could not analyse his feeling. Perhaps it was this glimmer of a promise of some mode of reconciliation with his mentor, the Master. Perhaps it was merely that he no longer felt inclined to. travel alone. But mostly, it could be the loyalty she showed for him-that filled an obscure but powerful need that had made him miserable since the Master's turn about to have a friend that was the most important thing there was.
The sea came north and fenced them in. with its salty expanse. The pursuit closed in behind. The unfriendly natives informed them with cynical satisfaction that they were trapped: the ocean was west and south, the perpetual snows north, and two determined warriors east.
'Except,' one surly storekeeper murmured smugly, 'the tunnel.'
'Tunnel?' Var remembered the subway tunnel near the mountain. He might hide in such a tube. 'Radiation?'
'Who knows? No one ever leaves it.'
'But where does it go?' Soil demanded.
'Across to China, maybe' And that was all he would tell them, and probably all he knew.
'There's another Helicon in China,' Soli said later.
'That's not its name, but that's what it is. Sometimes we exchanged messages with them. By radio.'
'But we are fighting the mountain!'
'The Nameless One is fighting it. Or was. Sol isn't. We aren't. And this is a different one. It might help us at least enough so I could talk to Sol If we can find it. I don't know where it is in China.'
Var remained uncertain, but had no better alternative. If there was any way to escape the Master, he had to try it.
The entrance to the tunnel was huge-big enough to accommodate the largest crazy tractor, or even several abreast. The ceiling was arched, the walls gently bowed whether from design or incipient collapse. Var was uncertain at first, but closer inspection revealed its complete sturdiness. There was solid dirt on the floor, but no metal rails. It was a dark hole.
'Just like the underworld,' Soli said, undismayed. 'There's an old subway beyond the back storage room. With rats in it. I used to play there, but Sosa said there might be radiation.'
'There was,' Var said.
'How do you know?'
He summarized his foray to Helicon, before the first battle. 'But the Master said she would tell them, so it would be booby trapped. So we didn't use it.'
'She never did. Bob knew it was there, but he said the geigers proved it was impassable, so he didn't worry about it. I guess the radiation was down when you came but Sosa didn't say a word.'
So they could have invaded that way! Why
