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hundred years; and that's about all we know about the Pyramids. Right?"
"Right."
Haendl stood up. "Tropile, that's what all of this is all about!' He gestured
around him.
"Guns, tanks, airplanes we want to know more! We're going to find out more,
and then we're going to fight."
There was a jarring note, and Tropile caught at it, sniffing the air.
Somehow perhaps it was his sub-adrenals that told him this very positive, very
self-willed man was just the slightest bit unsure of himself. But Haendl swept
on and Tropile for a moment forgot to be alert.
"We had a party up Mount Everest five years ago," he was saying. "We didn't
find out a thing. Five years before that, and five years before that
every time there's a new sun, while it is still warm enough to give a party a
chance to climb up the sides, we send a team up there. It's a rough job. We
give it to the new boys, Tropile. Like you."
There it was. He was being invited to attack a Pyramid.
Tropile hesitated, delicately balanced, trying to get the feel of this
negotiation. This was
Wolf against Wolf; it was hard. There had to be an advantage
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"There is an advantage," Haendl said aloud.
Tropile jumped, but then he remembered: Wolf against Wolf. Haendl went on:
"What you get out of it is your life, in the first place. You understand you
can't get out now. We don't want Sheep meddling around. And in the second
place, there's a considerable hope of gain." He stared at Tropile with a
dreamer's eyes. "We don't send parties up there for nothing, you know. We want
to get something out of it. What we want is the earth."
"The earth?" It reeked of madness; but this man wasn't mad.
"Some day, Tropile, it's going to be us against them. Never mind the Sheep,
they don't count. It's going to be Pyramids and Wolves, and the Pyramids won't
win. And then "
It was enough to curdle the blood. This man was proposing to fight, and
against the invulnerable, the almost godlike Pyramids, at that!
But he was glowing, and the fever was contagious. Tropile felt his own blood
begin to pound. Haendl hadn't finished his "and then ", but he didn't have to.
The "and then" was obvious: And then the world takes up again from the day the
wandering planet first came into view. And then we, somehow, learn how to
drive this old planet right back to its own solar system. And then we put an
end to the five-year cycle of frost and hunger. And then
And then the world would be worth living in again, and it would be Wolves who
would rule it.
"By God, Haendl," cried Glenn Tropile, "I believe it can happen!"
Haendl merely smiled and nodded.
"I'll do it!" Tropile amplified. He raced on, "Let's see, every new expedition
to Mount
Everest tries some new weapon against the Pyramid, right? Okay. What's left?
We know nukes won't work. I suppose if that's true then no chemical explosion
could do any damage to it. What about acids? Subsonic vibrations? What about,
I don't know, some kind of germ warfare? I can see that I'll want to talk to
the people who have been on the previous expeditions right away "
He stopped in midflight. The smile on Haendl's face had taken on a
disturbingly lacquered appearance, as though the man were trying to preserve
it. The voice was overhearty, too:
"I'll get you all the transcripts of their radio reports, Tropile."
Tropile studied him carefully for a moment. When he spoke his voice was quite
calm.
"Which means, I guess," he said, "that none of those people got back alive to
talk to, right?
But you said you'd actually seen the Pyramid if* "
yourself.
"Well, I did!" said Haendl, and then added lamely, "Through a telescope, from
the five-
thousand-foot base camp."
"I see," said Tropile mildly.
Then he laughed.
What difference did it make, anyway? If this whole enterprise was really all
very silly, it was also, at least, a new kind of thing to think about. Its
promises might be false. But they also might not be or it might be possible to
find something real amid all the dreamy hopes and self-deceptions. Glenn
Tropile was Wolf. He would do his best to find a way of
getting an advantage in any circumstances. If one thing failed he would try
another, and this was something new to try.
Besides, it was the only game in town.
Tropile grinned at Haendl. "You can put away the gun, friend. You've signed me
up."
_______7_______
The year began again, a year that ran for one thousand, eight hundred and
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twenty-five days on the calendar, for forty-three thousand and eight hundred
hours on the clock. First came some thirty days of spring, during which the
renewed sunlet poured heat into the ice and oceans and rocks, which greedily
absorbed it. Ice melted, oceans warmed, and rocks at last were no longer
frozen to the touch but gently warm.
Ten million citizens stirred to spring; once more they had survived. Farmers
scratched the ground again, charcoal burners ritually sealed their kilns and
put their hands to carpentry or roadmending for a while, and fifteen hundred
devotees of the Ice Cult started their pilgrimages from all over North America
to see the breakup at Niagara.
Then after thirty days it was summer, long and sweltering. Plants burst forth
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