The Early Pohl Read Online Free PDF Page A

feet, he realized.
    But where was Beatta? Had she been here?
    There simply was no way of telling.
    Holding to the cable for support, he peered into the ice-tunnel. The borer was out of sight,—of course. He had thought he might see a light from a handflash there below. But there was nothing.
    Was it his imagination? Or was there a faint, thin fog of vapor rising from the tunnel?
    The cable, he suddenly saw, was taut. It had been paid out as far as it would go, and there was dead weight swinging on the end of it.
    The Bubble!
    It was horribly clear to him now. Beatta, and possibly Christine with her, had followed the borer down. It had retraced its previous route—but this time gone all the way! It had broken through the last thin crust of ice and fallen into the deep Antarctic Ocean, wisps of fog from which were rising to the surface.
    And Beatta? . . .
    Kye flipped over the winch-control. Though it was dead now, if the power should come on while he was down there, he might have warning enough to grab the borer as it was drawn to the surface.
    And even if he didn't—if Beatta were down there, Kye would find a way to bring her back to the surface. If not, if he found that she had been drowned, he himself would never return.
    As had the two before him, he swung himself easily into the tunnel.
     
    His feet kicking wildly against the slick icy walls on the tunnel, Kye swung himself painfully on down, down. He had long ago lost count of the distance he had descended; all he could know now was the recurrent agony in his torn hands; the stubborn weariness of his muscles. There was no way to stop and rest. If he relaxed his grip for even a second, he would fall. And he could not know how far such a drop might be.
    Hand over hand, hand over hand. After what was long hours to Kye, there came a time when a separate effort of will for each muscle in his hands and arms was required to make them obey. Though he couldn't see, and his hands were too numb to feel, he could tell by the warm drops that trickled down his arm that his hands were fiercely cut and bleeding. Beatta and Christine had been equipped for the descent; they had had tough, thick gloves, and lights. Kye's gloves were paper-thin, and he had no light.
    In the end, it was Kye's inability to see that caused him the most trouble. For his swinging toe caught in a little niche in the wall of ice: frantic for rest, he wedged his foot into it and leaned back across the tunnel, bracing his back against the opposite wall. His tortured hands he pressed to his mouth; he began to feel the pain, now.
    But Kye's body temperature was of the order of more than a hundred degrees. Ice could not long resist that; his foothold melted a little and he slipped; clutched for the cable— and missed .
    The drop was not great; thirty feet at most. And what he struck seemed to give under him; he found himself sliding down the slanting tunnel the borer had made just before it was stopped the first time.
    And then he plunged into water, frightfully cold even to him. He went down ten feet or more, came struggling to the surface.
    Water. Beatta was drowned!
    His despondency closed in on him again like a thick black shroud. There was no object in life; only the commands of his subconscious made him continue to flail the water.
    And then the light returned to the world. He was swimming in fresh water. He tasted it again; it was—not salt, not the ocean.
    His reason told him that Beatta could drown in fresh water as easily as salt, but he disregarded it. His theory was wrong; the borer hadn't broken through. Therefore all of his theory must be wrong, and Beatta still alive.
    But where was the borer?
    He fumbled for the cable. It wasn't there.
    There was one inescapable conclusion, and it brought joy to his heart. They had made a side tunnel, somewhere up above. They were there now, waiting for him to rescue them.
    He had to get to them.
    Disregarding the pain of his hands, he pressed one of them against