Ice Dragon

He rode the nose like the figurehead of a sailing ship, oddly aware that no cold or wind seared at him. Then he became aware that, preposterously, the sky ahead seemed to be getting closer. It was getting closer. There was a pattern on it becoming visible, a pattern of lines etched as if on glass. They were going to hit!

They did hit it. The sky fell apart along the etched lines and one huge fragment swept down and sliced him clear of the flier. He clung to it, finding it cold but in spite of its total smoothness easy to cling to, as it spiraled downward, twisting and sliding like a falling leaf, down, down, down, until he suddenly fell off and kept on going down by himself into a blackness that yawned below, down into a blackness that now rose up about him like a fog. Sensation faded. Sensation vanished.

Chapter 20

The four men sitting around a table in the study of the Prime Minister's shooting lodge were all feeling rather short-tempered. For three of them it was an inconvenient place to be at an inconvenient time-but the P.M. was notably disinclined to interrupt a good grouse season for anything short of the Last Judgment. So Lord Leighton, J, and Richard Blade had trundled out to meet him. For two of them there was an additional strain in that Lord Leighton was being even more maddeningly stubborn than usual when he had started some particularly fascinating bare, and both J and the Prime Minister were doing their best to grab the scientist by the coattails and keep him from disappearing over the horizon with the whole Dimension X Project. And for Richard Blade, there were some personal pains, which Lord Leighton had touched on but for once had the tact not to pursue. Had he done his best to preserve the Menel?

At this moment, however, the Prime Minister was holding the floor, holding it so stubbornly that not even Lord Leighton's willingness to interrupt anybody for any reason was stopping him from getting his thoughts out. «Now damn it all, Leighton, this time you're asking for the moon. Not just the moon, but the moon in a bloody giftwrap as well! You've got to sit down and look at it from the point of view of keeping the Project going over the long term.»

«Yes,» put in J, «and from the point of view of keeping Richard alive and sane, which is also a trifle important for the project in the long run. It's simply preposterous to talk about canceling the search for other candidates in favor of this new whatever-you-call-it.»

«A Replication Module,» said Leighton shortly. «Obviously-«

«Obviously we have to consider all sides of the problem,» said the P.M., accomplishing simultaneously the considerable feat of getting his irritation under control and the positively prodigious one of successfully interrupting Lord Leighton. «Let's go through Leighton's request from the begi

«What you want, if I understand it correctly, is that the main effort of the project now be turned in the direction of first, determining the exact relationship between X Dimension and Home Dimension, and then modifying both the programming and the hardware of the computer so that we can send Blade to any given X Dimension in a controlled fashion, rather than simply firing him off into the blue the way we've been doing. Is that right so far?»

Leighton nodded but said nothing, apparently not recovered from the shock of being successfully interrupted. Oh well, thought Blade, there's a first time for everything, and a politician like the P.M. has had enough practice interrupting nonstop talkers to be able to cope with almost anybody if he wants to.

«Particularly, you want to send Blade back to the world he just came back from, to find out whether the-the Menel, I think you called them? — survived the destruction of the Ice Master's stronghold, and if they did, to help with the efforts of the local people to make contact with them. And then what?»

«That depends entirely on the attitude of the Menel,» said Leighton rather shortly. «Obviously there's no need to approach them hat in hand. But they are our superiors in technology by any number of centuries, and I can't imagine that either the Ice Master or Blade's attack left them with a terribly good impression of the human race in any dimension.»

Lord Leighton had once again put his finger squarely on the problem that had been churning in Blade's mind in the weeks since his return from the dimension of the Ice Dragons. Had he given the Menel the notion that human beings were dangerous, in spite of all his efforts to limit damage to them? In particular, had the destruction of the stronghold also involved the destruction of the Menel settlements? All of them, some of them, one of them? And if the destruction had been less than total, what would be the Menel's reaction? Would they consider the human race a menace, and resort to more direct means of clearing off the world they wanted to make their home-in short, had he signed the death warrant of both Graduki and Treduki by his destruction of the Ice Master, rather than saving them? Or possibly would they realize that this world was inhabited by other intelligent beings in great numbers, and that it would be both more civilized and more expedient to negotiate with these beings? He was so absorbed in questioning himself that he missed a good part of the Prime Minister's continuing explanation.

«-and on top of canceling all the other supporting projects such as the search for new candidates, you still say that the Replicator Project will require another million pounds for new perso

«But-«began Lord Leighton.

The P.M. held up a hand. «Definitely no. The Special Fund will barely come up with the extra million, and for anything beyond that I'll have to go for an addition to the research budget. And Parliament isn't terribly likely to sit still for three million pounds without asking some pointed questions-and the Official Secrets Act is like a red rag to a bull with some of the back-benchers. They'll demand to be shown at least privately what the money is going to do. And what can we show them?»

«We can hardly show them the Menel,» Leighton said calmly. «That would risk a global panic if the word got out.»

«Precisely,» said the P.M., beaming. «And what else can we show them that's as earth-shaking-or even really important? We're still trying to duplicate most of the things Blade has brought back-things like the teksin from Tharna and that electronic key he brought back from this one. We could step up the appropriations for that research effort-but again, more money! Apart from the things we can't show or which haven't produced any results yet, what else is there from the project? Blade deserves the Victoria Cross for each and every mission, and no doubt Parliament would petition the Sovereign to award it if they knew what he'd done-but I much doubt they'll be willing to underwrite the project further if Blade's V.C. is all it looks like producing.

«Besides,» he went on, «some damned fool would be bound to blab in the wrong place at the wrong time, and there's the project's security gone for a Burton! At the very least, we'd have the Americans demanding an arm and a leg and three toes off the remaining foot for sharing in the project. And we'd very probably have half the espionage people in the world camping on what they think is our doorstep. Including some from countries we'd like to stay on good terms with.»

He shook his head. «No, I don't think I can say yes to what you're asking. Not all of it. But I agree the discovery of the Menel is important enough that we should-«and he was off into outlining a compromise solution. Blade listened long enough to get the general outlines of it, and watch Lord Leighton's downcast expression-something prodigiously rare in itself-start to change to a more cheerful one, then excused himself and stepped out into the courtyard. The room was stiflingly hot from the fire, and he needed the damp chill air of the night to clear his head and lungs.