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!_"
Mike the Angel swung toward the air curtain. This time there was no doubt. Someone was out in that howling ice-cloud, screaming for help!
Mike saw the figure--dimly, fleetingly, obscured most of the time by the driving whiteness. Whoever it was looked as if he were buried to the waist in snow.
Mike made a quick estimate. It was dark out there, but he could see the figure; therefore he would be able to see the foyer lights. He wouldn"t get lost. Snapping down the faceplate of his parka hood, he ran through the protective updraft of the air curtain and charged into the deadly chill of the Antarctic blizzard.
In spite of the electroparka he was wearing, the going was difficult.
The snow tended to plaster itself against his faceplate, and the wind kept trying to take him off his feet. He wiped a gloved hand across the faceplate. Ahead, he could still see the figure waving its arms. Mike slogged on.
At sixty below, frozen H_{2}O isn"t slushy, by any means; it isn"t even slippery. It"s more like fine sand than anything else. Mike the Angel figured he had about thirty feet to go, but after he"d taken eight steps, the arm-waving figure looked as far off as when he"d started.
Mike stopped and flipped up his faceplate. It felt as though someone had thrown a handful of razor blades into his face. He winced and yelled, "What"s the trouble?" Then he snapped the plate back into position.
"I"m cold!" came the clear, contralto voice through the howling wind.
A _woman_! thought Mike. "I"m coming!" he bellowed, pushing on. Ten more steps.
He stopped again. He couldn"t see anyone or anything.
He flipped up his faceplate. "Hey!"
No answer.
"Hey!" he called again.
And still there was no answer.
Around Mike the Angel, there was nothing but the swirling, blinding snow, the screaming, tearing wind, and the blackness of the Antarctic night.
There was something d.a.m.ned odd going on here. Carefully putting the toe of his right foot to the rear of the heel of his left, he executed a one-hundred-eighty-degree military about-face.
And breathed a sigh of relief.
He could still see the lights of the foyer. He had half suspected that someone was trying to trap him out here, and they might have turned off the lights.
He swiveled his head around for one last look. He still couldn"t see a sign of anyone. There was nothing he could do but head back and report the incident. He started slogging back through the gritty snow.
He stepped through the hot-air curtain and flipped up his faceplate.
"Why did you go out in the blizzard?" said a clear, contralto voice directly behind him.
Mike swung around angrily. "Look, lady, I--"
He stopped.
The lady was no lady.
A few feet away stood a machine. Vaguely humanoid in shape from the waist up, it was built more like a miniature military tank from the waist down. It had a pair of black sockets in its head, which Mike took to be TV cameras of some kind. It had grillwork on either side of its head, which probably covered microphones, and another grillwork where the mouth should be. There was no nose.
"What the h.e.l.l?" asked Mike the Angel of no one in particular.
"I"m Snook.u.ms," said the robot.
"Sure you are," said Mike the Angel, backing uneasily toward the door.
"You"re Snook.u.ms. I couldn"t fail not to disagree with you less."
Mike the Angel didn"t particularly like being frightened, but he had never found it a disabling emotion, so he could put up with it if he had to. But, given his choice, he would have much preferred to be afraid of something a little less unpredictable, something he knew a little more about. Something comfortable, like, say, a Bengal tiger or a Kodiak bear.
"But I really _am_ Snook.u.ms," reiterated the clear voice.
Mike"s brain was functioning in high gear with overdrive added and the accelerator floor-boarded. He"d been lured out onto the Wastelands by this machine--it most definitely could be dangerous.
The robot was obviously a remote-control device. The arms and hands were of the waldo type used to handle radioactive materials in a hot lab--four jointed fingers and an opposed thumb, metal duplicates of the human hand.
But who was on the other end? Who was driving the machine? Who was saying those inane things over the speaker that served the robot as a mouth? It was certainly a woman"s voice.
Mike was still moving backward, toward the door. The machine that called itself Snook.u.ms wasn"t moving toward him, which was some consolation, but not much. The thing could obviously move faster on those treads than Mike could on his feet. Especially since Mike was moving backward.
"Would you mind explaining what this is all about, miss?" asked Mike the Angel. He didn"t expect an explanation; he was stalling for time.
"I am not a "miss,"" said the robot. "I am Snook.u.ms."
"Whatever you are, then," said Mike, "would you mind explaining?"
"No," said Snook.u.ms, "I wouldn"t mind."
Mike"s fingers, groping behind him, touched the door handle. But before he could grasp it, it turned, and the door opened behind him. It hit him full in the back, and he stumbled forward a couple of steps before regaining his balance.
A clear contralto voice said: "Oh! I"m _so_ sorry!"
It was the same voice as the robot"s!