A hand prodded his rump from below, so he obligingly heaved himself up and out of the shaft. He stood beneath the head, giving it an appraising once-over. It didn’t look quite as gigantic as his first impression. Now that he had it in perspective, he realized it was about twenty feet long by fifteen wide.
He detected a raised outline of a headpiece or stylized hair running across the breadth of the massive brow and framing the face on both sides. The eye sockets were deeply, darkly sunk, the nose only an undetailed lump with a straight slash of a lipless mouth beneath it. The mouth was slightly open, as if it were about to utter pronouncements of doom. He noted a suggestion of sculpted teeth between the lips.
Despite its lack of a clearly defined expression, the face exuded an ineffable emotion, either a soul-deep sadness or a profound resignation to ruthless destiny.
A pleasant voice carried to him over the cavernous room. “No need for caution, Mr. Grant. He won’t bite.”
Kane cast a quick glance backward, expecting to see Grant climbing out of the hatch. Instead, he saw a troll pulling himself up.
The voice spoke again. “My apologies for addressing you incorrectly, Mr. Kane. To Lilliputians, all of you giants tend to look alike, despite insignificant differences in skin pigmentation.”
Hearing the rhythmic clacking of boot heels on the hard floor on the other side of the massive head, Kane shifted position so it didn’t block his view. A very small man approached him, walking hand in hand with a very tall woman. Brigid gave him a jittery smile, her jade eyes acknowledging her relief at seeing him safe and apparently sound. She looked taller than she actually was because of her hip-to-head proximity with the little man.
His crystal-clear blue eyes stared at Kane boldly, gesturing around him with a black cane. “I trust you’re feeling a little more comfortable. I managed to restore optimum oxygen circulation to the warehouse, and since it is located on the far outer ring of the station, the gravity is closer to what you’re used to.”
Kane didn’t answer, but inhaled gratefully. The hatch disgorged another troll, then Grant’s head and shoulders. He swept the stone head with a penetrating stare, glanced over at Brigid and the little man, then climbed out.
“Let us get the introductions out of the way,” the man said incisively. “According to Miss Brigid, your names are Kane and Grant. She doesn’t know your given names, a deficiency to which I can relate, al-though my lack of one is due to personal choice. I am called Sindri. S-I-N-D-R-I. It’s pronounced the way it’s spelled. Follow me, please.”
He and Brigid started off across the vast room. Grant and Kane exchanged questioning glances. The stunted woman carrying the harp climbed out of the shaft. She gave the two men a sharp, beady-eyed stare. Grant shrugged, falling into step behind Sindri and Brigid.
Now that he had the air for it, Kane vented a deep sigh and followed his companions. He didn’t know if the three of them were prisoners, but drawing on their experiences of the past few months, he assumed they were. Like that of Sverdlovosk in Russia and Strong-bow in Britain, Sindri’s hospitality was probably a facade.
Sunlight flowed down from a round skylight in the high, arched roof, glinting from stacked metal crates and long trestle tables. Elevated boom arms stretched out over the floor, cables and winches dangling from them.
Symbols and lettering were visible on some of crates through the cargo netting draped over them. Kane walked casually on an oblique course that brought him close enough to read them. Some of the cases bore the acronym NASA; others had strings of indecipherable letters that seemed like a deliberate jumbling-of the alphabet. Several read Parallax RedCydonia Compound.
The symbols differed, too, ranging from stylized eagles gripping olive branches and arrows in their talons, to hammers and sickles. He saw an insignia he immediately recognized, and his belly fluttered in a cold reaction, but not really shock. It was more of a grim I-should-have-known.
The symbol looked like a thick-walled pyramid, en*-closing and partially bisected by three elongated but reversed triangles. Small disks topped each one, lending them a resemblance to round-hilted daggers.
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