"Andre Norton - Time Traders" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

that he had come prepared to run at the first possible opportunity, and if Kurt had everything planned,
so much the better. Of course, it was possible that Kurt was a stool pigeon, leading him on as a test.
But that was a chance Ross would have to take.
“Look here, Murdock, maybe you think it’s easy to break out of here. Do you know where we are,
boy? We’re near enough to the North Pole as makes no difference! Are you going to leg it back some
hundreds of miles through thick ice and snow? A nice jaunt if you make it. I do not think that you
can—not without plans and a partner who knows what he is about.”
“And how do we go? Steal one of those planes? I’m not a pilot—are you?”
“They have other things besides planes here. This place is strictly hush-hush. Even the aircraft do
not set down too often for fear they will be tracked. Where have you been, boy? Don’t you know the
Russians are circling around up here? These fellows watch for Russian activity, and the Russians
watch them. They play it under the table on both sides. We get our supplies overland by cats—”
“Cats?”
“Snow sleds, like tractors,” the other answered impatiently. “Our stuff is dumped miles to the
south, and the cats go down once a month to bring it back. There’s no trick to driving a cat, and they
tear off the miles—”
“How many miles to the south?” asked Ross skeptically. Granted Kurt was speaking the truth,
travel over an arctic wilderness in a stolen machine was risky, to say the least. Ross had only a very
vague idea of the polar regions, but he was sure that they could easily swallow up the unwary forever.
“Maybe only a hundred or so, boy. But I have more than one plan, and I’m willing to risk my neck.
Do you think I intend to start out blind?”
There was that, of course. Ross had early sized up his visitor as one who was first of all interested
in his own welfare. He wouldn’t risk his neck without a definite plan in mind.
“Well, what do you say, Murdock? Are you with me or not?”
“I’ll take some time to chew it over—”
“Time is what you do not have, boy. Tomorrow they will tape you. Then—no over the wall for
you.”
“Suppose you tell me your trick for fooling the tape,” Ross countered.
“That I cannot do, seeing as how it lies in the way my brain is put together. Do you think I can
break open my skull and hand you a piece of what is inside? No, you jump with me tonight or else I
must wait to grab the next one who lands here.”
Kurt stood up. His last words were spoken matter-of-factly, and Ross believed he meant exactly
what he said. But Ross hesitated. He wanted to try for freedom, a desire fed by his suspicions of what
was going on here. He neither liked nor trusted Kurt. But he thought he understood him—better than
he understood Ashe or the others. Also, with Kurt he was sure he could hold his own; it would be the
kind of struggle he had experienced before.
“Tonight . . .” he repeated slowly.
“Yes, tonight!” There was new eagerness in Kurt’s voice, for he sensed that the other was
wavering. “I have been preparing for a long time, but there must be two of us. We have to take turns
driving the cat. There can be no rest until we are far to the south. I tell you it will be easy. There are
food caches arranged along the route for emergencies. I have a map marked to show where they are.
Are you coming?”
When Ross did not answer at once the other moved closer to him.
“Remember Hardy? He was not the first, and he will not be the last. They use us up fast here. That
is why they brought you so quickly. I tell you, it is better to take your chance with me than on a run.”
“And what is a run?”
“So they have not briefed you? Well, a run is a little jaunt back into history—not nice comfortable
history such as you learned out of a book when you were a little kid. No, you are dropped back into
some savage time before history—”
“That’s impossible!”