37.
to him. North Wind was saying,
"Do you know what it is you're asking? If we're caught, we could both be executed! It's absolutely forbidden for anyone to be given any information about The Academy until he enters. You're taking an awful risk for the little head start I'll be able to give you."
"I know," answered North, "but I need that head start. I can learn, but I'm slow. Anything extra, anything I know already will give me time to learn things I don't. Once you're in The Academy, every hour counts. Now, I'm so far ahead, I have two or three extra hours a night I won't have then."
"All right," said North Wind, "I owe you this for your father, and I admire your courage. Give me a week. I have alot of personal information, but I need some time to get the technical stuff."
The visit to Blue Stone proved just as prifitable. What North wanted was two things...a list of names of the squad that had handled his father, and for Blue Stone to let him know if he heard anything about a rebellion movement among the young people at his communications center.
"So, you're in on it!" the older man said. "My son can't keep a secret from me if he tried." He unlocked a drawer in his desk and thumbed through some papers, then, handed a folded sheet to North. It was a list of eight names, the one at the top being The Trumpet Of God. North put the paper in his pocket.
"I hope," he told the man, "you're the only one that your son has told!"
"I haven't heard another word," Blue Stone replied, "but go easy. This leader of yours sounds pretty radical. Smart, but radical!"
North smiled as he got up to leave. "That he is," he said, "That he is." He left with an invitation for his mother and himself to come for supper, which he gladly accepted. It was the first of many such visits. The nighttime meetings in the abandoned mines grew in number, but North never allowed more than twenty of his people to meet in one place at a time. It was after one of these meetings that a guard left out at the entrance, stopped North and Grey Mountain as they were leaving.
"I saw something funny," he reported, "not Guard, but a bunch of Hashons slipped into a tunnel down there about five or six minutes ago, and then someone else followed them."
"All right," North told him, "take off. We'll have a look."
So it was, that Northern Star and Grey Mountain slipped into the tunnel and carefully made their way down the shaft. Ahead of them they could see dim light and hear the Hashon's hissing voices.
"It sounds like they're singing," Grey Mountain whispered. "Some kind of ceremony."
Finally they came to a large, open pit in the tunnel at the