ugh now, Commander,
and--"

"Tell that imitation Apollo to hop it over here fast!" said Quill
sharply. "I'll give him a lesson in tyranny."

There was a click as the intercom shut off.

Nariaki looked at Mike the Angel and shook his head slowly. "Either
you're working your way toward a court-martial or else you know where
Black Bart has the body buried."

"I should," said Mike cryptically. "I helped him bury it. How do I get
to His Despotic Majesty's realm?"

Nariaki considered. "It'll take you five or six minutes. Take the
tubeway to Stage Twelve. Go up the stairway to the surface and take the
first corridor to the left. That'll take you to the loading dock for
that stage. It's an open foyer like the one at the landing field, so
you'll have to put your parka back on. Go down the stairs on the other
side, and you'll be in Area K. One of the guards will tell you where to
go from there. Of course, you could go by tube, but it would take longer
because of the by-pass."

"Good enough. I'll take the short cut. See you. And thanks."

8

The underground tubeway shot Mike the Angel across five miles of track
at high speed. Mike left the car at Stage Twelve and headed up the
stairway and down the corridor to a heavy double door marked _freight
loading_.

He put on his parka and went through the door. The foyer was empty, and,
like the one at the rocket landing, protected from the Antarctic blast
only by a curtain of hot air. Outside that curtain, the light seemed to
lose itself in the darkness of the bleak, snow-filled Wastelands. Mike
ignored the snowscape and headed across the empty foyer to the door
marked _entrance_.

"With a small _e_," Mike muttered to himself. "I wonder if the sign
painter ran out of full caps."

He was five feet from the door when he heard the yell.

"_Help!_"

That was all. Just the one word.

Mike the Angel came to a dead halt and spun around.

The foyer was a large room, about fifty by fifty feet in area and nearly
twenty feet high. And it was quite obviously empty. On the open side,
the sheet of hissing hot air was doing its best to shield the room from
the sixty-below-zero blizzard outside. Opposite the air curtain was a
huge sliding door, closed at the moment, which probably led to a freight
elevator. There were only two other doors leading from the foyer, and
both of them were closed. And Mike knew that no voice could come through
those insulated doors.

"_Help!_"