nge of
direction, rubbing abstractedly at the reddened tip of his prominent
nose. "Of course it is winter. Ice, there must be ice at the higher
lakes in the mountain, they are always frozen at this time of the
year. But what do you want ice for?"

"You get it and I'll show you. Have it cut in nice flat blocks that I
can stack. I'm not going to lift the hood--I'm going to drop the
engine out from underneath it!"

By the time the slaves had brought the ice down from the distant lakes
Jason had rigged a strong wooden frame flat on the ground around the
engine and pushed sharpened metal wedges under the hood, then had
secured the wedges to the frame. Now, if the engine was lowered into
the pit, the hood would stay above supported by the wedges. The ice
would take care of this. Jason built a foundation of ice under the
engine then slipped out the supporting bars. Now as the ice slowly
melted the engine would be gently lowered into the pit.

The weather remained cold and the ice refused to melt until Jason had
the pit ringed with smoking oil stoves. Water began to run down into
the pit and Mikah went to work bailing it out, while the gap between
the hood and the baseplate widened. The melting continued for the rest
of the day and almost all of the night. Red-eyed and exhausted Jason
and Mikah supervised the soggy sinking and when the D'zertanoj
returned at dawn the engine rested safely in a pool of mud on the
bottom of the pit: the hood was off.

"They're tricky devils over there in Appsala, but Jason dinAlt wasn't
born yesterday," he exulted. "Do you see that crock sitting there on
top of the engine," he pointed to a sealed container of thick glass
the size of a small barrel, filled with an oily greenish liquid; it
was clamped down tightly with padded supports. "That's the booby trap.
The nuts I took off were on the threaded ends of two bars that held
the hood on, but instead of being fastened directly to the hood they
were connected by a crossbar that rested on top of that jug. If either
nut was tightened instead of being loosened, the bar would have bent
and broken the glass. I'll give you exactly one guess as to what would
have happened then."

"The poison liquid!"

"None other. And the double-walled hood is filled with it, too. I
suggest that as soon as we have dug a deep hole in the desert the hood
and container be buried and forgotten about. I doubt if the engine has
many other surprises in store, but I'll be c