He should have looked ridiculous but he didn’t, and Brigid wasn’t sure why. Perhaps the confidence, the self-assurance he exuded as he walked across the room had something to do with it. Her eyes fixed on the small metal cylinder in his left hand, with the transparent respiration mask attached to it.
The man stopped at the outside rim of the disk and made a short stamping motion with one foot. Brigid heard a click, then an immediate cessation of the electronic hum beneath her.
The little man handed her up the cylinder and mask. “Put that over your nose and mouth, turn the valve and breathe normally.”
She did as he instructed, inhaling the cool stream of oxygen into her straining lungs. Within moments, the fiery pressure in her chest abated and the pounding in her temples ebbed away.
The little man watched her curiously, a friendly smile playing over his lips. Brigid considered using the air tank as a club, but decided that such an action could not only bring about unpleasant repercussions, but it would also be exceptionally bad manners. She noticed his foot hadn’t strayed far from the control he had manipulated to turn off the disk’s electromagnetic screen. Presumably he could reactivate it quickly if he thought the circumstances warranted it.
Brigid removed the mask long enough to say, “Thank you.”
The little man nodded. “My pleasure. I’ll keep the sterilizing field down if you promise to govern yourself as a guest, not as an invader.”
“I promise. Sterilizing field, you say?”
“Originally this device was designed to sterilize nonterrestrial materials, kill possible alien bacteria and microbes, that sort of thing. I simply altered the voltage capacitors and voila, I had a small holding cell, with no bars or doors.”
She smiled wryly. “Am I your first prisoner?”
He shook his head, returning her smile. “Lamentably no. I’ve had to place a few of my own people in it when they became…” His eyebrows knit as he searched for an appropriate word. “Overeager is the best way I can describe it.”
Brigid took another deep breath, removed the mask and asked, “Who are you? Who are your people?”
The man pressed a narrow, long-fingered hand over his heart and bowed slightly. “My apologies for my breach in manners. I should have introduced myself at once. The name I have taken is Sindri.”
“Sindri?”
The little man lifted his cane and rapidly traced letters in the air, as if he were writing them on an invisible chalkboard. “S-I-N-D-R-I. It’s spelled the way it’s pronounced. Does it mean something to you?”
Brigid flipped through the index file of her eidetic memory. “Only in the classical sense. In Norse mythology, Sindri was the weapon smith of the gods, corresponding roughly to Hephaestus in the Greek pantheon. Sindri fashioned Odin’s armring, Frey’s golden boar and Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir. He was a”
She bit off the final word, not wanting to utter it.
Sindri smiled mildly. “A troll, Miss Brigid. My namesake was a troll, but an extraordinarily gifted one. As am I.”
He extended his left hand toward her. Tentatively she took it and stepped down off the disk. The crown of his head barely topped her hip.
“As for my people,” he said, “I suppose they meet, perhaps even exceed the standard definition of trolls.”
Brigid did not respond, pretending to inhale deeply in the respiration mask.
“However,” he continued, “it would be far more accurate to call them Martians.”
Grant and Kane awoke more or less simultaneously and both felt like they were falling, plummeting a hundred feet, a thousand feet, ten thousand, a mile
They kicked and flailed frantically, tumbling through the darkness. Their stomachs lurched; their heads swam. Kane opened his mouth to cry out, but he realized he felt no rush of wind buffeting his speeding body. The air was calm, but very cold. His sinus membranes felt dried out, and the tender tissues of his throat burned. His chest and head ached.
Grant coughed and muttered something. Kane’s eyes adjusted to the dim, vinegar-colored light. He stiffened, went rigid with shock.
He and Grant were suspended, floating in the gloom, the lack of gravity providing the illusion of falling when they returned to consciousness. They bobbed gently in an ovular cell with no apparent door or windows. Kane felt as much as heard a steady whine, so high in pitch it was nearly beyond his range of hearing.