Chapter II

The Interlevel Limited left the lower warmth and streaked up the great winding tunnel through the neat residential suburbs, through the squalid upper levels, through the ice-locked roots of ancient Manhattan. But Steel barely noticed when the windows in his compartment frosted over. He was studying his glacier maps.

The comet crater was located near the frozen ruins of what was once a surface city named Jersey. He'd been on a snow-deer hunt up there once; an old guide had told him about the ice-bear cubs.

Steel plotted his course from the Surface Terminal to the Ruins, then checked his equipment list--electrosuit, oxygen helmet, volt rifle, rations. He'd charter a little ski plane at the Terminal.

When he finished, he leaned back in his seat and glanced at his watch. Almost there. Had he forgotten anything? Fitted into the oxygen helmet was a little radio unit so he could keep in touch with Stahl. He'd set up a receiver in a vacant room in the Vita-Heat Building and arranged for one of Stahl's guards to be there at all times. He'd also arranged for Stahl to send a copy of their contract--reward or insurance--to Commissioner Brandt. Not that he didn't trust Stahl.... Well, it looked as if he was all set. He'd buy a hunting license to put on the ski plane--for all anybody'd know he was out for snow-deer. He'd spend the night at the Terminal Hotel, leave first thing in the morning....

When the Limited's whirring ceased, he put away the maps and picked up his bag. As the outer door slid open, he stepped out into the vast Terminal and headed for the viewway that would take him to the hotel.

The Terminal was a heavily insulated cavern in the ice crust. The landing and departure stalls encircled the huge room where the motley thousands of hurrying travelers bought tickets, waved goodbyes or greetings, or waited sleepily around Dr. Albert Harmon's chrome statue. As Steel passed the statue of the shaggy-haired bespectacled old man, he eyed it thoughtfully. Dr. Harmon's experiments with household and jet propulsion heat had done a lot of good but it looked as if his green-eyed daughter wasn't good for anything but a cocktail party.... Then he was on the viewway. His spine tingled at the sight outside.

Standing on the crowded belt as it slid past the Terminal's long window, he had a perfect view of the glacier. Glistening in the starlight, the great ice waste stretched to the horizon like a sheet of silver. Tiny varicolored lights swept across the jet backdrop of outer space--freight planes bound for Earth's other buried city-states, for the frozen mines of Neptune, Venus, Mars, or for the nebulous worlds of other suns. Those other suns, pinpoints of light in infinity--when the Solar System had cooled, they had been a beckoning hope. Then their planets had been found even less inhabitable than Earth. Poisoned atmospheres, molten lands, boiling seas--habitation was impossible. It was undoubtedly mankind's greatest tragedy, Steel thought, that it was doomed to call a frozen Earth home forever.

"Look! A liner's coming in!"

A group of tourists ahead of Steel stepped off the belt to the walkway alongside and stared through the plexiglass window at a fish-like space ship that was drifting down to a landing stall nearby. Steel also stepped off to watch.

"It's all automatic," one of the tourists explained to his wife. "A radio beam brings 'em here and lands 'em. The pilots don't have much to do."

Steel watched the great ship settle to the stall's roof, the roof slid open, the ship sank in out of sight, the roof slide closed again.

"Let's go down and watch 'em unload." The tourists moved to a belt nearby that led to the landing stall. And, because he had nothing better to do till morning--Steel followed them.

The moment he got there he knew something was wrong.

"Get back!" A Terminal guard stepped in front of the group of onlookers. "Nobody's allowed near the ship!"

Beyond the quickly formed line of guards, Steel saw an excited group of Terminal executives gathered at the ship's open door. What was up? The ship appeared to be okay. It had come in all right.

"What's the trouble?" somebody asked.

The guard was staring anxiously at the ship himself. "Don't know," he said. "When that ship came in, _there wasn't nobody on it_...."

Steel shouldered his way to the front of the crowd to stare across at the ship's open door. Around him, the crowd buzzed with the news. A woman who had been waiting to meet somebody on the ship started screaming. The ship had come in on the radar beam, on time, but with pilots, stewardesses, twenty passengers, and cargo--missing!

"Pirates!" The word swept through the crowd. The ship had come from Venus. And not five minutes ago the pilot had reported he was arriving on schedule, the trip uneventful. Then the crowd quickly discovered what had happened. A Terminal cop appeared at the ship's door. A hush went over the crowd. In the cop's hand was an ice-bear's claw.

There was a hush, then one whisper in a thousand throats. "_The Bear!_"

Steel turned to a man beside him. "What was the cargo?"

"That--that's what's so awful," the fellow said. "It was carrying a load of Venusian tungsoid. And there ain't but two things you can make with tungsoid--electrotubes or _suffo-gas_!"

Suffo-gas! A deadly vapor, its production had been banned on Earth ever since mankind moved underground. One whiff of suffo-gas in New York's ventilation pipes.... Steel turned back through the crowd.

He didn't take the belt to the hotel. He walked, big hands deep in his pockets, thinking, thinking things he hardly dared think of.

That ship had been pirated close by. Its route in from Venus was from the south-east. That cargo of tungsoid had been pirated over the Jersey Ruins. He was on the right track and it was a hurry-up job. There was little reason to believe The Bear had gotten interested in electrotubes....

* * * * *

Next morning when the first yellow rays of the sun's dying ember slanted across the ice, Steel's ski plane circled up from the Terminal and headed south-east.

Crossing the sub-zero ice crevices on foot would have taken months but it was just a short hop by plane. It was a hop, however, that few planes took. Freight and liner traffic from the Terminal immediately headed for the stratosphere. Near the surface, the glacier's fangs probed every cloud and blizzards of liquid air roamed the uncharted chasms. Only an occasional prospector or hunter attempted low-altitude flying here and often these never returned.

This morning, however, Steel was lucky. The weather was clear and ceiling unusually high, the peaks rearing from the shadow-filled valleys like glittering icicles in the pale yellow light. When he checked his instruments by the chart and headed the plane down over the ice field that choked the Jersey Ruins, he grinned silently behind the control lever. Now, if the blizzard would only hold off for an hour or so....

The crumbling ruins of ancient buildings jutted up from the snow, monuments of a long-departed civilization. Although never actually explored, the Ruins were thought to extend for miles south of the comet crater. More was known about the crater itself since it was only a few centuries old. Its gigantic explosion had knifed a deep valley in the ice mountains that was still relatively warm. Lichen grew on the snow here, bats hung in the caves, and ice-bears had a shorter hibernation. And _The_ Bear? Any crevice, any ruined building here might be his lair.

Scanning the drifts below through his windows, Steel looked for tracks, melting snow or rocket stains. As he looked, he kept an eye on his auto-sextant. As it clicked off the changing coordinates of his location, he marked his position on the chart. Vanish he might like those other five cops who'd gone after The Bear, Steel thought, but not without a trace--not as long as the little microphone in his helmet was ready for an instant S.O.S. He'd tested it at the Terminal; Stahl's man was on the job.

On a little plateau below, he saw a herd of bluish white snow-deer. They looked up and then stampeded in all directions as he passed over. Odd he hadn't seen any bears yet.

He was banking low over the half-buried top of a building, squinting down at the white drifts, when he saw the ball.

"Now how the hell did that happen...."

He circled lower. It was a ball of solid ice. He could see all the way through it. It was about six feet in diameter, smooth as glass. It was perfectly round, like a huge green bubble. It lay there on the snow, sparkling in the dull light. "Funny ice formation--"

Then the ball _moved_.

Watching, Steel almost rammed a building. He pulled up, staring at the thing. The ball rose slowly, ten feet above the snow. Suspended by nothing. Then it drifted slowly over the wastes, aimlessly, like a bubble in the breeze.

Steel followed it, amazed. A strong air current? But it wasn't affecting the plane. Besides, that chunk of ice probably weighed half a ton!

The thing finally came to rest against an ice crag near one of the wrecked buildings. Steel went in close and hovered, examining it with bewildered eyes. And it was just a ball of ice. That's all it _was_.

Well, lots of queer things happened on the glacier.... Shaking his head, he started to zoom away.

Then it happened.

More of the ice balls! Hundreds of them! Curving down upon him from above!

Colorless, unseen until they were upon him, they blocked the plane on every side.

"What in the--!" Steel banked, twisted the plane into every contortion. But at every turn the glistening spheres stood before him, closing in like a net, relentlessly forcing him down.

Fifty feet above the snow, he realized he'd have to ram them. The plane was strong--maybe he could crash through.

Then, as if anticipating this very thought, the spheres moved in suddenly against the plane, pressed upon it from above, forced it down. It was pressed quickly down to the snow.

As it settled into the snow level with the cabin windows, the spheres slowly melted together to form a rough-hewn roof and walls. The plane was enclosed completely.

Steel's heart hammered. His breath fogged his helmet. He stared at the encircling wall, jerked the control lever helplessly. It was only then he remembered his microphone.

"Six-foot balls of ice!" he cried hoarsely. "Some kind of remote control! X-26.9-18.7!" He started giving the coordinates of his location.

"_That's hardly worth while now...._"

Steel shivered even in the electrosuit's warmth. Slowly, he turned around.

The walls and roof that imprisoned him joined, behind him, the side of one of the ruined buildings, a crumbling structure of weathered concrete. The ruin had a door. In the door, an oxygen helmet topping a snow-white electrosuit, stood a tall thin man. One gloved hand rested lightly upon the butt of a volt pistol holstered at his hip.

"_Our little Trojan Horse--those balls of ice_," the man continued, "_have several interesting properties. They're also a very effective barrier against radio transmission._" His voice was coming into the plane on the same radio frequency Steel had been trying to send on.

Behind his helmet, the man's face was lean, thin-lipped, deeply tanned--a tan that wasn't of Earth. That tan had come through a space ship's viewplate, close in the heat of some foreign sun. He strode over to the plane and took out his pistol to rap impatiently on the cabin window.

"_Get out of there! That hunting license on your ship doesn't fool me. A few minutes ago you passed over a herd of snow-deer without firing a shot. The Bear will be mighty interested in why you're up here snooping around...._"

* * * * *

The Bear--the word hit Steel like an electric shock. He'd thought he was on the right track, he'd hoped, but now that it was proved it was something to think about. He'd found The Bear's hideout and what could he do about it?

He didn't move at first. He sat there looking at the man through the window, his mind running hot trying to figure out what to do. In the middle of the glacier, a six-foot-thick wall in front of him, the man with the gun outside. _And_ his radio useless--his ace card trumped with the game just started. It looked like that insurance policy hadn't been a bad idea....

The fellow banged on the plane with his pistol again. "_Come on! Open up!_"

Steel opened up. At a wave of the pistol, he stepped out to the frozen snow. At another wave, he raised his hands. The man stepped around him, jabbed the gun in his spine and went over him expertly. He found Steel's pistol and dropped it in the snow. "_Now start walking ahead of me. And no foolishness._" The pistol shoved Steel ahead through the ruin's door.

Inside it was just like ten million other surface ruins. You walked into what had been about the thirtieth floor above the street and found only drifted snow, shattered walls, a bleached skeleton perhaps. Now, however, Steel had time for only a glance at the familiar scene when the pistol moved him on through another door, then another, and this one, he saw, only faked its weathered appearance. As he went through, a metal panel slid silently shut behind them and he had his first look at the tremendous organization he'd been fool enough to tackle single-handed.

A bright warming glow drifted down from the luminous ceiling. Vent slits in the floor whispered softly, oxygen pouring in. At the other end of the room, a split traveling walk slid noiselessly up and down a shaft past hundreds of offices, workshops, barracks. The place was as big as the Terminal, as lavishly furnished as Stahl's Vita-Heat Building. This place explained why The Bear had stolen as much equipment as money.

He was given little time to marvel here however.

"_Take off your helmet_," the radioed voice behind him ordered. Steel took it off. When he turned, facing the man and the gun, the man had removed his own helmet. He was smiling, a thin tight-lipped smile with no humor in his eyes. "You seem surprised," he said. "You really didn't expect a bear's den, did you?"

"This is your show," Steel said quietly. "What comes next?" The man held his helmet in one hand, his pistol in the other--both hands full. Steel thought of his own helmet, a mighty handy weapon. If he got a chance--Then suddenly he noticed something else, something that gave him a chance cops dreamed about. The guy's pistol--the safety was _on_!

"Okay," the man said, "if this deer hunting trip of yours turns out to be faked, you'll soon learn what's next." A quick motion of the pistol ordered Steel around on the belt that led down the shaft.

Steel went. As he went, he shot quick glances into the rooms they passed, waiting for the right moment to whirl around and knock that pistol away.

The rooms they passed were filled with workers. There were drafting stalls where scores of men--and women--bent over blueprint tables and charts. There were plastic workshops where people operated compression molds and lathes. Where did The Bear get all these workers! They all couldn't have come from the upper levels! There were glittering laboratories where white-aproned technicians huddled around distillation vats and rows of test tubes. Steel thought of that stolen cargo of tungsoid. Suffo-gas...?

A few yards ahead, on the left, he saw they were approaching an empty room. On the right, a deserted tunnel branched off into whatever labyrinth the place possessed. Okay, this was as good as anywhere else! Wherever he was being taken, they'd be there shortly. Then it might be too late.

Steel crouched slightly, ready to whirl on the fellow behind him.

Then--

"Step off!"

Behind him, the man's hand suddenly grabbed his shoulder and shoved him off the belt into the tunnel.

Steel clenched his teeth. He glanced up the empty, tapestry-walled tunnel ahead. All right then, this was an even better place for it.

But again the man behind him had other plans. "Stop here."

Steel halted, puzzled this time. The tunnel curved on off ahead but here there was only the red tapestry walls. He felt the pistol again on his backbone. Then he saw the man's hand reaching out beside him, lifting the corner of one of the tapestries.

The cloth had covered a window. It looked down into a tremendous auditorium where hundreds of teen-age boys and girls sat in curved rows of seats facing a wide curtained stage.

The scene might have been that of any world-wide juvenile delinquency court. Steel frowned. Dressed in rags, their pinched faces unwashed, the crowd was a cross-section of undernourished kids from the slum levels of every underground city on Earth. They were all sizes and colors and there was excitement in every eye. Steel could hardly believe it. A prep school for crime.... Steel felt hot rage creeping over him.

Then on the auditorium's stage, the curtain went up and what he saw there hit him like a bucket of ice water.

Ten feet high, its shaggy white hair stark against the stage's black backdrop, Earth's most terrifying creature stood there--an _ice-bear_.

The man behind him dropped the tapestry.

"New recruits." Steel heard him, dazedly. "The Bear's busy now. I hope you don't mind waiting." The fellow laughed. "Okay, get moving."

* * * * *

Steel turned from the covered window as if waking from a nightmare. He retraced his steps back through the tunnel to the belt as the man behind him directed. He got on the belt again, the man behind him.

But it didn't make sense! It couldn't be! There was some trick to it! But, the proof of his own eyes argued, it must have been an ice-bear. It had been the whole works--red eyes, saber fangs, razor claws. Rearing up on its hind legs....

Steel shook his head. He couldn't figure this out any more than he'd been able to figure out the balls of ice that captured him. Then, suddenly, he remembered something he had been about to do.

He looked ahead down the belt. Nobody there. They had just passed the last of the rooms alongside. Do it now! If he could get back to that auditorium--get within gunshot of that bear--

Suddenly he shifted one foot to the belt beside them that was traveling in the opposite direction. Touching it, his foot stopped him like a brake and whirled him around rapidly.

The fellow didn't even have time to be surprised. Steel's helmet caught him in the face. He went down without a sound.

Quickly, Steel snatched up his pistol. Crouching over the man, he glanced back up the belt. Still nobody in sight. In the other direction, he saw the belt was carrying them down into some dim-lit place, a dungeon, perhaps, where the fellow had been taking him. Nobody in sight there, either. Steel grabbed the man's collar and dragged him--unconscious or corpse, he neither knew nor cared which--down the belt into the shadows.

The floor was level here, undoubtedly the very bottom of The Bear's vast retreat. In the dim light, he saw packing cases stacked along the wall, a heavy freight belt creaking laboriously down the middle of the floor. He dragged his ex-guard behind a packing case and then stepped on the belt that slid back up the shaft. His hand closed fondly upon the pistol in his pocket. He snapped the safety _off_.

Now, if he could get to that auditorium, get to The Bear....

He didn't run. He forced himself to stand on the belt and let it carry him up past the crowded workshops and laboratories. He didn't turn his head. He only glanced into the rooms out of the corner of his eye as he passed. It was the worst ordeal he could remember in ten years of detective work. Standing there. Alone. Thousands all around him. His hand grew sweaty on the pistol in his pocket. Then he was at the tunnel and nobody had noticed him.

He stepped in with a gasp of relief. The tunnel was also still deserted. He jumped to the tapestry.

For a moment, he couldn't find the one that hid the window. Then he found it, lifted it with nervous fingers, and stared once more down into the auditorium. The kids were just leaving the auditorium, filing out a door at the rear. The Bear was just leaving the stage.

How was he to get down there? He eyed the wall encircling the auditorium. It curved, just as the tunnel curved. The tunnel seemed to be a closed balcony surrounding the place. Somewhere ahead there must be an exit leading down to the stage. Steel dropped the tapestry and went down the tunnel, running now.

Sure it was quick! Much quicker than he'd ever hoped! Three hours since he'd left the Terminal and he'd found The Bear! His fingers curled around the pistol like a caress.

When he judged he'd half-circled the hall, he slowed down, moving swiftly but cautiously. Then he came to a belt that cut down to the left. It must lead to the stage. He stepped on it.

It did. It carried him swiftly to the wings and peering out across the stage, he saw it standing there in the opposite wings. Still reared ten feet high on its hind legs, eyes like red-filmed lights. And with The Bear now was a bull-necked giant whom Steel remembered from police photographs, a boxer of "fixed match" notoriety--Mike Doyle.

The kids were still straggling from the hall. Steel waited behind the curtain till the last one left. Then he stepped out and strode quickly across the stage.

"Don't move, Mike," he ordered the boxer.

The big fellow whirled. The Bear turned.

Steel stopped six feet from them, pistol leveled. "I don't know whether you're real or not," he said, eyeing the huge animal, "but there's a good way to find out. If that's just some kind of trick get-up, whoever's in it better get out fast. I'm going to blast a hole through it."

"It's Johnny Steel!" The fighter's battered face sagged in astonishment. "It's the cops!"

The Bear's neon eyes blazed down at Steel, its huge chest rising and falling slowly, breath hissing in its black nostrils. It was a sight that few people lived long enough to see close up. An ice-bear could take a man's head off with one claw. If this one was a fake, Steel thought, it was a whopping good one. Its dark lips curled back from a jagged row of yellowed six-inch fangs. From each hairy paw, a rake of white claws slowly unsheathed. Then something happened that almost made Steel drop his gun.

"_Yes, I know Mr. Steel_," The Bear said.

It was a terrifying sound, guttural, deep in the great animal's throat--but it proved something to Steel after its first shock. He'd heard sound-blending devices before. That was a human voice set in the growl of a bear. The disguise was perfect but it _was a_ disguise.

This however did nothing to answer the two big questions. How did The Bear know him? And who was in that disguise? Well, he wasn't going to be long finding out. "Whoever _you_ are," Steel said, "I'm giving you five seconds to get out of there." He raised the pistol a fraction of an inch, years of police training, perfect aim from the hip.

Then suddenly--insanely--the powerful Mike Doyle was diving toward him.

Two thoughts flashed in Steel's head as he saw him coming--Mike had picked up a mighty strange loyalty lately to risk his life for his boss--and, Steel knew he couldn't shoot. It would bring the whole gang here instantly.

He jumped aside. He smashed Mike across the head with his pistol. Mike sprawled and slid across the stage, to lay still.

Steel whirled back to The Bear. "Are you getting out of there or not?"

There was no answer for a moment. Then The Bear's voice was a deep whisper. "When I do, Mr. Steel, you're going to be in for a mighty big surprise...."

"Get out of there!" Steel was in no mood for games.

Deep in the matted hair of The Bear's chest, a small door started opening, slowly, mechanically. The whole thing was mechanical, arms, legs, head, everything operated electrically. The door--

The door was the last thing Steel remembered.

A slamming blow. The back of his head. Then blackness....