"You could start your own firm," Mike had said levelly. "I"ll back you, Serge; you know that."

Serge Paulvitch had looked astonished. "Me? You think I"m crazy? Right now, I"m a second-cla.s.s genius working for a first-cla.s.s outfit. You think I want to be a second-cla.s.s genius working for a second-cla.s.s outfit? Not on your life!"

Paulvitch could easily handle the firm for a few weeks.

Helen"s face came on the phone. "There"s a Captain Sir Henry Quill on the phone, Mr. Gabriel. Do you wish to speak to him?"

"Black Bart?" said Mike. "I wonder what he wants."

"Bart?" She looked puzzled. "He said his name was Henry."

Mike grinned. "He always signs his name: _Captain Sir Henry Quill, Bart._ And since he"s the toughest old martinet this side of the Pleiades, the "Black" part just comes naturally. I served under him seven years ago. Put him on."

In half a second the grim face of Captain Quill was on the screen.

He was as bald as an egg. What little hair he did have left was meticulously shaved off every morning. He more than made up for his lack of cranial growth, however, by his great, s.h.a.ggy, bristly brows, black as jet and firmly anch.o.r.ed to jutting supraorbital ridges. Any other man would have been proud to wear them as mustaches.

"What can I do for you, Captain?" Mike asked, using the proper tone of voice prescribed for the genial businessman.

"You can go out and buy yourself a new uniform," Quill growled. "Your old one isn"t regulation any more."

Well, not exactly growled. If he"d had the voice for it, it would have been a growl, but the closest he could come to a growl was an Irish tenor rumble with undertones of gravel. He stood five-eight, and his red and gold s.p.a.ce Service uniform gleamed with spit-and-polish l.u.s.ter. With his cap off, his bald head looked as though it, too, had been polished.

Mike looked at him thoughtfully. "I see. So you"re commanding the mystery tub, eh?" he said at last.

"That"s right," said the captain. "And don"t go asking me a bunch of blasted questions. I"ve got no more idea of what the b.l.o.o.d.y thing"s about than you--maybe not as much. I understand you designed her power plant...?"

He let it hang. If not exactly a leading question, it was certainly a hinting statement.

Mike shook his head. "I don"t know anything, Captain. Honestly I don"t."

If s.p.a.ce Service regulations had allowed it, Captain Sir Henry Quill, Bart., would have worn a walrus mustache. And if he"d had such a mustache, he would have whuffled it then. As it was, he just blew out air, and nothing whuffled.

"You and I are the only ones in the dark, then," he said. "The rest of the crew is being picked from Chilblains Base. Pete Jeffers is First Officer, in case you"re wondering."

"Oh, great," Mike the Angel said with a moan. "That means we"ll be going in cold on an untried ship."

Like Birnam Wood advancing on Dunsinane, Quill"s eyebrows moved upward.

"Don"t you trust your own designing?"

"As much as you do," said Mike the Angel. "Probably more."

Quill nodded. "We"ll have to make the best of it. We"ll muddle through somehow. Are you all ready to go?"

"No," Mike admitted, "but I don"t see that I can do a d.a.m.n thing about that."

"Nor do I," said Captain Quill. "Be at Chilblains Base in twenty-four hours. Arrangements will be made at the Long Island Base for your transportation to Antarctica. And"--he paused and his scowl became deeper--"you"d best get used to calling me "sir" again."

"Yessir, Sir Henry, sir."

"_Thank_ you, Mister Gabriel," snapped Quill, cutting the circuit.

"Selah," said Mike the Angel.

Chilblains Base, Antarctica, was directly over the South Magnetic Pole--at least, as closely as that often elusive spot could be pinpointed for any length of time. It is cheaper in the long run if an interstellar vessel moves parallel with, not perpendicular to, the magnetic "lines of force" of a planet"s gravitational field. Taking off "across the grain" _can_ be done, but the power consumption is much greater. Taking off "with the grain" is expensive enough.

An ion rocket doesn"t much care where it lifts or sets down, since its method of propulsion isn"t trying to work against the fabric of s.p.a.ce itself. For that reason, an interstellar vessel is normally built in s.p.a.ce and stays there, using ion rockets for loading and unloading its pa.s.sengers. It"s cheaper by far.

The Computer Corporation of Earth had also been thinking of expenses when it built its Number One Research Station near Chilblains Base, although the corporation was not aware at the time just how much money it was eventually going to save them.

The original reason had simply been lower power costs. A cryotron unit has to be immersed at all times in a bath of liquid helium at a temperature of four-point-two degrees absolute. It is obviously much easier--and much cheaper--to keep several thousand gallons of helium at that temperature if the surrounding temperature is at two hundred thirty-three absolute than if it is up around two hundred ninety or three hundred. That may not seem like much percentagewise, but it comes out to a substantial saving in the long run.

But, power consumption or no, when C.C. of E. found that Snook.u.ms either had to be moved or destroyed, it was mightily pleased that it had built Prime Station near Chilblains Base. Since a great deal of expense also, of necessity, devolved upon Earth Government, the government was, to say it modestly, equally pleased. There was enough expense as it was.

The scenery at Chilblains Base--so named by a wiseacre American navy man back in the twentieth century--was nothing to brag about. Thousands of square miles of powdered ice that has had nothing to do but blow around for twenty million years is not at all inspiring after the first few minutes unless one is obsessed by the morbid beauty of cold death.

Mike the Angel was not so obsessed. To him, the area surrounding Chilblains Base was just so much white h.e.l.l, and his a.n.a.lysis was perfectly correct. Mike wished that it had been January, midsummer in the Antarctic, so there would have been at least a little dim sunshine.

Mike the Angel did not particularly relish having to visit the South Pole in midwinter.

The rocket that had lifted Mike the Angel from Long Island Base settled itself into the snow-covered landing stage of Chilblains Base, dissipating the crystalline whiteness into steam as it did so. The steam, blown away by the chill winds, moved all of thirty yards before it became ice again.

Mike the Angel was not in the best of moods. Having to dump all of his business into Serge Paulvitch"s hands on twenty-four hours" notice was irritating. He knew Paulvitch could handle the job, but it wasn"t fair to him to make him take over so suddenly.

In addition, Mike did not like the way the whole _Branch.e.l.l_ business was being handled. It seemed slipshod and hurried, and, worse, it was entirely too mysterious and melodramatic.

"Of all the times to have to come to Antarctica," he grumped as the door of the rocket opened, "why did I have to get July?"

The pilot, a young man in his early twenties, said smugly: "July is bad, but January isn"t good--just not so worse."

Mike the Angel glowered. "Sonny, I was a cadet here when you were learning arithmetic. It hasn"t changed since, summer or winter."

"Sorry, sir," said the pilot stiffly.

"So am I," said Mike the Angel cryptically. "Thanks for the ride."

He pushed open the outer door, pulled his electroparka closer around him, and stalked off across the walk, through the lashing of the sleety wind.

He didn"t have far to walk--a hundred yards or so--but it was a good thing that the walk was protected and well within the boundary of Chilblains Base instead of being out on the Wastelands. Here there were lights, and the Hotbed equipment of the walk warmed the swirling ice particles into a sleety rain. On the Wastelands, the utter blackness and the wind-driven snow would have swallowed him permanently within ten paces.

He stepped across a curtain of hot air that blew up from a narrow slit in the deck and found himself in the main foyer of Chilblains Base.

The entrance looked like the entrance to a theater--a big metal and plastic opening, like a huge room open on one side, with only that sheet of hot air to protect it from the storm raging outside. The lights and the small doors leading into the building added to the impression that this was a theater, not a military base.

But the man who was standing near one of the doors was not by a long shot dressed as an usher. He wore a sergeant"s stripes on his regulation s.p.a.ce Service parka, which m.u.f.fled him to the nose, and he came over to Mike the Angel and said: "Commander Gabriel?"

Mike the Angel nodded as he shook icy drops from his gloved hands, then fished in his belt pocket for his newly printed ID card.