The Avenger 11 - River of Ice Read Online Free PDF Page A

take an expedition back to the caves that girl described, and to which she has promised to lead us?”
    Conroy nodded eagerly. “There’s no man on earth we’d trust more, Mr. Benson,” he said. “And we’ll pay you anything in reason—or out of reason!”
    Benson shook his head. “Sorry, gentlemen. I have other things to do. Any good man can perform this task for you.” He went back into the other room, leaving disappointment on four faces.
    Lini Waller was not there. In Benson’s short absence, she had gone. In her taxicab, leaving the Kembridge Building, Lini continued to frown. But this time at herself. Perhaps she had made a mistake in not finding out a little more about this Mr. Benson. Perhaps she had been too swift and suspicious in turning down his offer to guard her. After all, the Wittwar Foundation directors, all important men, had treated the young man with the white hair and the pale eyes very respectfully. She shrugged and put it out of her mind. After all, since no one knew of her reason for being here—save the four in the Kembridge Building—what possible danger could she be in?
    Lini had taken a small suite at an obscure but excellent hotel. Her brother, Brent, had made an adequate salary since leaving college; so the two of them could afford good things. Like the radio receiving-transmitting set which Lini had set up in the corner of the living room. The set, operating on batteries or plug-in, was a twin to one which Brent had in his far-away cave under the river of ice. On it, she had talked to him nightly, save for a few days when the static was so bad that even a superfine commercial set couldn’t bridge the distance intelligibly. She switched on the set now to tell him that they had won, and were millionaires.

    Brent Waller had reached the stage where he was beginning to talk to himself. As day followed day, he grew more and more lonely, down in his hole that had originated with an ancient and forgotten race, thousands of years ago. And there was plenty to give him the jitters. “I’ll swear those damn sentries move every now and then,” he said aloud.
    He had a small fire going in the large cave, off which the seven other caverns were situated. He had the seven doors carefully closed; the slight heat of his fire might injure hides and flesh, hitherto preserved only by glacial cold. He coughed. It was pretty smoky in the cave. There was no opening in the top for the smoke to get out. Remembering an old trick, he had built his fire against the rear wall. The smoke hugged the wall as it rose, flowed sluggishly along under the roof, and eventually found its way out the opening under the glacier’s foot. A nice trick; only it didn’t work very well. There was enough smoke hazing the lower air to make him feel like a herring.
    But you can’t eat meat and fish raw. He had to have a few embers to cook on. “I’ll only have a few more days of this,” Brent promised himself. His spoken words echoed eerily in the cavern. “Last night Lini said she was sure our proposition would be accepted today. When she comes back with him, it will certainly be by airplane. A boat can get here later to take this stuff away. Only a few more days.” Then Brent said some words that would have led anyone overhearing him to be sure he had gone insane in the solitude. “I’ll be all right—if the mastodon doesn’t get me!”
    Brent’s meal was done. He took up the frying pan and went to the first door on the right. He entered the cave behind this door to eat his meal in more comfort, away from the smoke in the outer cave. The first door on the right was the seventh door. And in the cave behind that—the seventh cave, as Lini and Brent had counted it from the first—was the gigantic ancestor of the modern elephant.
    Brent ate his solitary meal with his eyes on the tremendous animal that towered in perfect preservation to the rock roof. Perfect preservation? Well, not quite. Now, with a bit of the