"I hope we won't have to exhaust it in a fight before we get out," Senator Mane said anxiously. "It would be a splendid weapon if we encounter a hostile environment Outside."
"The Gate is guarded," Mich'l said practically, "but we expect to surprise them. No use worrying."
The lift came to a stop at an air-lock. The great elevator shafts were closed by airlocks every 2,000 feet. The reason is obvious. If the air of the great, spheroid subterranean nation were allowed to freely obey the laws of gravity, it would be oppressively dense in the lower levels, and excessively rarified in the upper ones. While the airlocks were operating Mich'l stepped to a telucid and gave the agreed-on signal.
In another half hour they were at 37X. The great, dusty, and little-used storeroom was only poorly lighted; it was dank, and had an uncomfortable chill. Technies and their families were coming in from all sides, and it was not long before some five hundred persons, men, women and children, were assembled. Many of them were pale and frightened looking, for they were staking everything on an ideal, a theory. There would be no coming back. The statute books of Subterranea decreed only one penalty--death--for even the merest tampering with the Frozen Gate. It was not like this that they had visioned the opening of the Gate. Under properly controlled conditions, it would have been possible to open the gate for preliminary explorations. But not now. They were outside the law.
Nida, standing beside Mich'l, shivered and pulled her over-robe closer around her. There was sadness in her voice as she said:
"These children.... They remind me of the thousands of children we must abandon with our people. If I could, I'd steal a few to take with us."
"And be damned as a kidnapper of a particularly horrible sort, as long as Subterranea lasts!"
"I know. I know. But what will happen to them all when the automatic machinery fails?"
"They may learn to run it, if they have to. Or if we succeed in establishing ourselves in the outer world we can tunnel back to them around the Gate in a year or so. Don't worry about them too much. We're taking the big risk, not they."
Gobet Hanlon, accompanied by Flos Entine and Mila Mane, approached. He was loaded down with a huge case of concentrated food.