supply ship was ten minutes away.The smile stayed on his face as he prepared for further action.
The first two minutes were conscientiously spent in inhaling oxygen. Evenunder the best cataleptic conditions, the body tended to slow down toomuch. He had to get himself prepared for violent movement.
Eight minutes left. He climbed out of the little grotto where he hadconcealed himself and moved toward the spot where he knew the air lock tothe caverns underneath the planetoid's surface was hidden. Then again, heconcealed himself and waited, while he continued to breathe deeply of thehighly oxygenated air in his suit. Five minutes before the ship landed, heswallowed eight ounces of the nutrient solution from the tank in the backof his helmet. The solution of amino acids, vitamins, and honey sugar alsocontained a small amount of stimulant of the dexedrine type and one percent ethanol. Then he unholstered his gun.
It wasn't a big ship. He had known it wouldn't be. It was only a littlelarger than the one he had used to come here. It dropped down to thesurface of the small planetoid only ten meters from the hidden trapdoorthat led to the air lock beneath the surface.
He could suddenly hear voices in the earphones of his helmet.
_Lasser?_
_It's me, Fritz. I got your supplies and good news._
The air lock trapdoor opened, and a spacesuited figure came out. _Howabout the deal?_
_That's the good news,_ said the second suited figure as it came from theair lock of the grounded spaceboat. _Another five million._
The man who was hidden behind the nearby crag of rock listened and watchedfor a minute or so more while the two men began unloading cases offoodstuffs from the spaceboat. Then, satisfied that it was perfectly safe,he aimed his gun and shot twice in rapid succession. The range was almostpoint-blank, and there was, of course, no need to take either gravity orair resistance into account.
The pellets of the shotgun-like charge that blasted out from the gun weresmall, needle-shaped, and heavy. They were oriented point-forward by themagnetic field along the barrel of the weapon. Of the hundreds in eachcharge fired, only a few penetrated the spacesuits of the targets, butthose few were enough. The powerful drug in the needle-pointed head ofeach went into the bloodstream of the target.
Each man felt an itching sensation. He had less than two seconds to thinkabout it before unconsciousness overtook him and he slumped nervelessly.
The man with the gun ran across the intervening space quickly, his bodyonly a few degrees from the horizontal, and his toes paddling rapidly topropel him over the rough rock.
He braked himself to a halt and slapped air patches over the area wherehis charges had struck the men's suits, sealing the tiny air leaks, and,at the same time, driving more of the tiny needles into their skins. Theywould be out for a long time.
Neither of them had yet fallen to the ground; that would take severalminutes under this low gravity. He left them to drop and headed toward theopen air lock.
This was what he had been waiting for all those nineteen days incataleptic hypnosis. He couldn't have cut his way in from the outside; hehad had to wait until it was opened, and that time would come only whenthe supply ship came.
Once in the air lock, he touched the control stud that would close theouter door, pump air into the waiting room, and open the inner door. Herewas his greatest point of danger--greater, even, than the danger of comingto the planetoid, or the danger of waiting nineteen days for the coming ofthe supply ship. If the ones who remained within suspectedanything--anything at all!--then his chances of coming out of this alivewere practically nil.
But there was no reason why they should suspect. They should think thatthe man coming in was one of their own. The radio contact between the menoutside had been limited to a few millimicrowatts of power--necessarily,since radio waves of very small wattage can be decoded at tremendousdistances in open space. The men inside the planetoid certainly should nothave been able to pick up any more than the beginning of the conversation,before it had been cut off by solid rock.
It was a high-speed air lock. Unlike the soundless discharge of hisspecial gun in the outer airlessness, the blast of air that came into thewaiting chamber was like a hurricane in noise and force, as the roomfilled in a few seconds.
He held onto the handholds tightly while the brief but violent windsbuffeted him. He turned as the inner door opened.
His eyes took in the picture in a fraction of a second. In an even smallerfraction, his mind assimilated the picture.
The woman was dark-haired, dark-eyed, and muscular. Her mouth was wide andthick-lipped beneath a large nose.
The man was leaner and lighter, bony-faced and beady-eyed.
The woman said: "Fritz, what--"
And then he shot them both with gun number two.
No needle charges this time; such shots would have blown them both in two,unprotected as they were by spacesuits. The small handgun merely jangledtheir nerves with a high-powered blast of accurately beamed supersonics.While they were still twitching, he went over and jabbed them with a drugneedle.
Then he went on into the hideout.
He had to knock out one more man, whom he found sound asleep in a room offthe short corridor.
It took a gas bomb to get the two women who were guarding the kid.
He made sure that the BenChaim boy was all right, then he went to thelittle communications room and called for help.
IX
Colonel Walther Mannheim tapped the map that glowed on the wall beforehim. "He's right there, where those tunnels come together."
Bart Stanton looked at the map of Manhattan Island and at the gleamingcolored traceries that threaded their various ways across it. "Just whatwas the purpose of those tunnels?" he asked curiously.
"They were for rail transportation," said the colonel. "The island was hitby a sun bomb during the Holocaust, and almost completely leveled andslagged down. When the city was rebuilt, there was naturally no need forsuch things, so they were simply sealed off and forgotten."
"Right under Government City," Stanton said. "Incredible."
"It used to be one of the largest seaports in the world," Colonel Mannheimsaid, "and it probably still would be if the inertia drive hadn't made airtravel cheaper and easier than seagoing."
"How did he find out about the tunnels?" Stanton asked.
The colonel pointed at the north end of the island. "After the Holocaust,the first returnees to the island were wild animals which crossed from themainland from the north. The Harlem River isn't very wide at this point.Also, because of the rocky hills at this end of the island, there wereplaces which were spared the direct effects of the bomb, and grasses andtrees began growing there. That's why it was decided to leave that sectionas a game preserve when the Government built the capital on the southernpart of the island." His finger moved down the map. "The upper three milesof the island, down to here, where it begins to widen, are all gamepreserve. There's a high wall here which separates it from the city, andthe ruins of the bridges which connected with the mainland have beenremoved, so the animals can't get back across any more.
"Two years after he arrived, the Nipe was almost caught. He had managed,somehow--we're not sure yet exactly how--to get here from Asia. Accordingto the psychologists who have been studying him, he apparently does notbelieve that human beings are any more than trained animals; he waslooking then--as he is apparently still looking--for the 'real' rulers ofEarth. He expected to find them, of course, in Government City. Needlessto say," said the colonel with a touch of irony, "he failed."
"But he was seen?" asked Stanton.
"He was seen. And pursued. But he got away easily, heading north. Theisland was searched, and the police were ready to start an inch-by-inchgoing over of the island two days later. But the Nipe hit and robbed achemical supply house in northern Pennsylvania, killing two men, so thesearch was called off.
"It wasn't until two years later, after exhaustive analysis of the patternof his raids had given us something to work with, that
we decided that hemust have found an opening into one of the tunnels up here in the gamepreserve." He gestured again at the map. "It wouldn't take him long to seethat no human being had been down there in a long time. It was a perfectplace for his base."
"How does he move in and out?" Stanton asked.
"This way." The colonel traced a finger down one of the red lines on themap, southward, until he came to a spot only a little over two miles fromthe southernmost tip of the island. The line turned abruptly toward thewestern edge of the island, where it stopped. "This tunnel goes underneaththe Hudson River at this point, and emerges on the other side. It's onlyone of several that do so. They're all flooded now; the sun bomb cavedthem in when the primary shock wave hit the surface of the river.
"In spite of his high rate of metabolism, the Nipe can store a tremendousamount of oxygen in