Logan Trilogy by William F Nolan, George Clayton Johnson Page A
Authors: William F Nolan, George Clayton Johnson
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smash at the walls.
The Pacific leaned its weight against the chamber; water dripped continually, increasing in volume.
Logan was chest deep in the cold tide. It rose toward his chin; he clamped his mouth shut. The chamber groaned under immense pressures.
Then abruptly the hatch opened. The water receded. Jess was there.
"Quick," she said. "There's not much time."
In subsector 8, section T, level zero, now completely submerged, a tiny crustacean burrowed a hundredth of an inch further into a conduit, since it was the creature's nature to burrow. The tiny crawler blazed into blue-white heat.
In callbox 192978-E a micro terminal rose seven and a half degrees, shorting out a relay. A wire-cluster fused, and a new circuit was born.
"Sanctuary," they had said to the mazecar.
But it did not take them to Sanctuary.
Instead, it took them to Hell.
Chapter 7
He examines the data.
Fact: Doyle 10 had a sister, Jessica 6.
Fact: His interrogation of the little girl, Mary-Mary 2, has revealed that Logan is with Jessica.
He watches the board. It is silent, dark. No lights glow. No needles quiver.
The maze scanners are silent, dark.
The Gun tracer is silent, dark.
The Follower is silent, dark.
Impossible.
His quarry has vanished.
LATE NIGHT…
Hell: named after the ancient religious concept of eternal punishment. Over a thousand miles of dead glare-ice wilderness between Baffin Bay and the Bering Sea. A sharded tumble of floes and bergs and nightmare crevasses, of daggered ice cliffs and howling glacial frost winds. A crippling, killing, freezing, forsaken world of white on white on white.
Hell: fourteen burrows in an irregular semicircle on the lee side of a storm-carved berg. Each cramped ice cell clawed from the iron surface by dying, lonely men and women working in subzero cold. Near the entrance to one hide-hole was a rich red stain on the ice glass, where an unknown convict had lung-hemorrhaged under the refrigerated glare of the midnight sun.
The maelstrom of cold had shaped a ledge into a stubby pedestal, and topping the pedestal was a hand-hewn ice block. Within the transparent mass a dark shape swam in frozen silence.
There were no guards. Nor were they needed.
No man ever walked out of Hell.
When Logan and Jess arrived, an alarm sounded. The platform itself dealt with them. They were needle-stunned, packaged and conveyed through a force field labyrinth and dumped on the ice.
The platform had disappeared. There was no way back.
Warden came to meet them. A man hunched against driving wind, a fur-shrouded scarecrow. His feet were rag-wrapped, his face old leather and iodine; his eyes burned under a filth-stiffened parka.
He bent over their cocooned figures and his mittened hands clumsily stripped away the con-webbing.
Wadding the precious material, he thrust it into his parka.
Cold clubbed them.
Logan stumbled up, pulling Jess with him. In the severe cold the effects of the needle drug were rapidly dissipated.
"Wh—where's the key?" he asked Warden. This man must be their contact.
"When you come to Hell they throw away the keys."
Logan felt the brass taste of fear in his mouth. They were in the escape-proof prison city at the North Pole.
"Come learn the rules" said Warden. He turned his back and paced off across the glare sheet.
They struggled after him. The wind died to a low snarl as they reached the partial shelter of the great iceberg which loomed over the burrows.
"Your neighbors," said Warden.
Fur-swaddled figures surrounded them, emerging in clots of twos and threes from the ink-mouthed holes. Logan scanned the emaciated, skull-haunted faces that hedged him in a wolf circle.
"Rule one," said Warden. "A new convict can pick his antagonist. Two: the antagonist can use any weapon he has to defend himself and his goods. Three: the new man fights barehanded. This all the rules we got—except winner gets first cut."
"And if I don't fight?" asked Logan.
"Then ya die on the ice,"
The Pacific leaned its weight against the chamber; water dripped continually, increasing in volume.
Logan was chest deep in the cold tide. It rose toward his chin; he clamped his mouth shut. The chamber groaned under immense pressures.
Then abruptly the hatch opened. The water receded. Jess was there.
"Quick," she said. "There's not much time."
In subsector 8, section T, level zero, now completely submerged, a tiny crustacean burrowed a hundredth of an inch further into a conduit, since it was the creature's nature to burrow. The tiny crawler blazed into blue-white heat.
In callbox 192978-E a micro terminal rose seven and a half degrees, shorting out a relay. A wire-cluster fused, and a new circuit was born.
"Sanctuary," they had said to the mazecar.
But it did not take them to Sanctuary.
Instead, it took them to Hell.
Chapter 7
He examines the data.
Fact: Doyle 10 had a sister, Jessica 6.
Fact: His interrogation of the little girl, Mary-Mary 2, has revealed that Logan is with Jessica.
He watches the board. It is silent, dark. No lights glow. No needles quiver.
The maze scanners are silent, dark.
The Gun tracer is silent, dark.
The Follower is silent, dark.
Impossible.
His quarry has vanished.
LATE NIGHT…
Hell: named after the ancient religious concept of eternal punishment. Over a thousand miles of dead glare-ice wilderness between Baffin Bay and the Bering Sea. A sharded tumble of floes and bergs and nightmare crevasses, of daggered ice cliffs and howling glacial frost winds. A crippling, killing, freezing, forsaken world of white on white on white.
Hell: fourteen burrows in an irregular semicircle on the lee side of a storm-carved berg. Each cramped ice cell clawed from the iron surface by dying, lonely men and women working in subzero cold. Near the entrance to one hide-hole was a rich red stain on the ice glass, where an unknown convict had lung-hemorrhaged under the refrigerated glare of the midnight sun.
The maelstrom of cold had shaped a ledge into a stubby pedestal, and topping the pedestal was a hand-hewn ice block. Within the transparent mass a dark shape swam in frozen silence.
There were no guards. Nor were they needed.
No man ever walked out of Hell.
When Logan and Jess arrived, an alarm sounded. The platform itself dealt with them. They were needle-stunned, packaged and conveyed through a force field labyrinth and dumped on the ice.
The platform had disappeared. There was no way back.
Warden came to meet them. A man hunched against driving wind, a fur-shrouded scarecrow. His feet were rag-wrapped, his face old leather and iodine; his eyes burned under a filth-stiffened parka.
He bent over their cocooned figures and his mittened hands clumsily stripped away the con-webbing.
Wadding the precious material, he thrust it into his parka.
Cold clubbed them.
Logan stumbled up, pulling Jess with him. In the severe cold the effects of the needle drug were rapidly dissipated.
"Wh—where's the key?" he asked Warden. This man must be their contact.
"When you come to Hell they throw away the keys."
Logan felt the brass taste of fear in his mouth. They were in the escape-proof prison city at the North Pole.
"Come learn the rules" said Warden. He turned his back and paced off across the glare sheet.
They struggled after him. The wind died to a low snarl as they reached the partial shelter of the great iceberg which loomed over the burrows.
"Your neighbors," said Warden.
Fur-swaddled figures surrounded them, emerging in clots of twos and threes from the ink-mouthed holes. Logan scanned the emaciated, skull-haunted faces that hedged him in a wolf circle.
"Rule one," said Warden. "A new convict can pick his antagonist. Two: the antagonist can use any weapon he has to defend himself and his goods. Three: the new man fights barehanded. This all the rules we got—except winner gets first cut."
"And if I don't fight?" asked Logan.
"Then ya die on the ice,"
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