e time transport. How the plate
operated he did not know, but he had been transferred here from the
Beaker age and if he could return to that time, escape might be
possible. He had only to reach the river and follow it down to the sea
where the sub was to make rendezvous at intervals. The odds were
overwhelmingly against him, and Ross knew it. But there was no reason,
he decided, to lie down and roll over dead to please the Reds.

As they approached the post Ross realized how much skill had gone into
its construction. It looked as if they were merely coming up to the
outer edge of a glacier tongue. Had it not been for the track in the
snow, there would have been no reason to suspect that the ice covered
anything but a thick core of its own substance. Ross was shoved through
the white-walled tunnel to the building beyond.

He was hurried through the chain of rooms to a door and thrust through,
his hands still fastened. It was dark in the cubby and colder than it
had been outside. Ross stood still, waiting for his eyes to adjust to
the gloom. It was several moments after the door had slammed shut that
he caught a faint thud, a dull and hollow sound.

"Who is here?" he used the Beaker speech, determining to keep to the
rags of his cover, which probably was a cover no longer. There was no
reply, but after a pause that distant beat began again. Ross stepped
cautiously forward, and by the simple method of running fullface into
the walls, discovered that he was in a bare cell. He also discovered
that the noise lay behind the left-hand wall, and he stood with his ear
flat against it, listening. The sound did not have the regular rhythm of
a machine in use--there were odd pauses between some blows, others came
in a quick rain. It was as if someone were digging!

Were the Reds engaged in enlarging their icebound headquarters? Having
listened for a considerable time, Ross doubted that, for the sound was
too irregular. It seemed almost as if the longer pauses were used to
check up on the result of labor--was it the extent of the excavation or
the continued preservation of secrecy?

Ross slipped down along the wall, his shoulders still resting against
it, and rested with his head twisted so he could hear the tapping.
Meanwhile he flexed his wrists inside the hoops which confined them, and
folding his hands as small as possible, tried to slip them through the
rings. The only result was that he chafed his skin raw to no advantage.