"You will never be in a position to act on the information, Mr. Victor. Rest assured of that. As to why I'm telling you – Well, a man has to be able to talk to someone about his accomplishments. There's no one else here capable of understanding, even if I weren't kept from telling them by the need for secrecy. As for those above me – well, they only want to know the results, not the methods I labor so hard to devise in order to produce those results. We are enemies, Mr. Victor, but you are the only one with whom it is possible to enjoy a rapport concerning my work. I trust that rapport will continue after I return from my journey to New York."
"If I live that long."
"Oh, you shall. And much longer if you will only cooperate with S.M.U.T. All you have to do is tell us the extent of your government's knowledge about our operation."
"Suppose I don't know."
"Come now, Mr. Victor. You couldn't have been as effective as you were if you didn't have such knowledge."
"And if I refuse to betray my government?"
"Then eventually you will die. But I feel sure you will change your mind before accepting such a drastic fate. Just a taste of the sound that kills, a taste that will fall short of actually killing you, should insure that." Highman nodded as if he was trying to be reassuring. "But now," he added, looking at his watch, "I must be off. The plane is waiting for me." He turned to the Eskimo guards and said something to them in their native tongue. They led me away.
A few moments later I was pushed into a sparsely furnished room which evidently served as a cell. The door was locked behind me. But I wasn't alone. The Chinese was already imprisoned there.
"Welcome," he greeted me.
I didn't return the greeting. I just glared at him. I couldn't forget that he'd killed Olga. I hated his guts.
He knew it, but he wasn't going to let it deter him. "Our only chance of escape, Mr. Victor, is if we cooperate with each other. Regardless of how you feel about me, it would be foolhardy not to cooperate. That would doom you as well as me."
"It's almost worth it," I told him. But I had to admit he was right. Whatever slender chance we had depended on us acting together. "All right. I'll cooperate," I agreed reluctantly. "What's your plan?"
"First I have to sneeze."
"Go ahead."
"It's not that simple," he said. "I don't feel like sneezing."
"Then don't sneeze. What the hell's this all about, anyway? I thought we were going to plan an escape."
"We are. You see, in my right sinus cavity there is a small capsule which may make escape possible. But the only way to get it out is to sneeze."
"What's in the capsule?"
"Nitroglycerine."
"Then don't sneeze too hard," I advised. "As a matter of fact, if I were you, I wouldn't even sniffle. And," I added, "in my opinion, that's a pretty drastic cold cure even for a Chinese Red."
"It's not a cold cure. It's to enable me to commit suicide if I'm tortured. You see, the idea of a capsule of poison concealed in a tooth is too widely known to be effective any more. So my superiors devised this variation. Under pressure all I have to do is slap my forehead where the sinus passage is and my head will be blown apart. With luck, I might even take my inquisitor with me."
"But suppose you sneezed inadvertently?"
"It wouldn't necessarily set it off. Of course, it might, but when I do have to sneeze, I've trained myself to do it gently. I don't suffer from sinus trouble, so the passages are never so clogged as to present a very great hazard. However, right now the only way of extracting the capsule is if I can induce a series of sneezes."
"Sneeze away," I told him. I backed away to the far corner of the room. Why take a chance on germs? I figured. Or on nitro?
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.