The Sword and the Net

8 SAN FRANCISCO

And so Nils Jorgensen, resident and registered alien and hero of the Vulcania sinking and protégé of Carolyn Van Teller and subject of the best-to-date of the Kosmo Personality articles, was found a job by his influential benefactress and went forthwith to work in the office of Alvin Gray, millionaire builder and housing expert.

Alvin Gray’s headquarters were at Welham Park in the State of New Jersey, and there Nils Jorgensen joined the staff and rapidly showed marked aptitude for his work and became without effort a favourite with his colleagues and with Gray himself and also with numerous young and middle-aged residents of the pleasant little town, particularly the family with whom he lodged.

He was there for nearly a month before anything happened—and although Nils seemed always his quiet and simple and charming and industrious self, Otto was possessed by a seething fury of impatience. So much so, indeed, that at times he was hard pressed to keep the tension from showing in the face and behaviour of Nils: he bethought himself of Carolyn Van Teller’s advice about protective colouring and began upon comprehensive study of Democracy’s so-called viewpoint: he took distorted satisfaction, since his duty made him a liar, in being a really intensive-one. Since duty forbade his being violent against the foes of his country, he found fierce, ever-growing pleasure in being violent for them. It became a byword in the office—and even at the tennis-club, where he was regarded rightly as the choicest piece of luck they had had for many seasons—that one had to be careful what one said about the War in front of him. He flayed Isolationists with a rush of words, was rabid on the subject of the fifth column, stated flatly that defence workers who struck should be shot, and once went so far as to throw a house guest of Mrs. Vincent Perry’s into the lake for expressing admiration of Colonel Lindbergh.

And, by the end of the second week of this self-imposed training course in enemy viewpoint, he could quote—and frequently did—whole passages of Roosevelt, Churchill and De Gaulle in bitter arguments with any critic, however well-intentioned, of the Allied Cause or its defenders.

His orders came at the end of his fourth week in Welham Park—and within three days he was beginning a journey by road across the continent. He drove his own car, a gift from Mrs. Van Teller in appreciation of his appearance at the Greek Relief entertainment. It was a good American car, neither too large nor too small, and in the back of it were a trunk and suitcase filled with good American clothes. He was, as he drove through the spring-green eastern countryside, a sight and fact to bring pleasure to honest American eyes and warmth to kindly American hearts—a young man who had been born a foreigner but was now on the way to American citizenship; a young man who had proved himself, in a brief moment of glory, to be a true defender of Democracy and who now was prospering through hard American work on high American wages; a young man whose foreign background was romantic and honest and true and who now was rapidly collecting an American history equally unimpeachable; a young man of good looks and brains and brawn, an athlete and a worker, steady but far from priggish, vastly attractive to women yet highly popular with men; a young man, it seemed, with only one fault and that almost a virtue—a violent, all-absorbing hatred of the Nazi-Fascist ideals and way of life.

He arrived in San Francisco six days and some odd hours after leaving Welham Park. He had vastly enjoyed the journey, principally, he thought, because it was a prelude to the adventure of active service but also because of the personal vision it had given him of this vast, incredible country of America. Before, even while he was in New York and Welham Park, the bigness and variety of America had been things which he knew only academically, as figures and graphs of distance and contour and industry—but now he had felt America himself with his own eyes and senses and the body which he had transported from one end of America to the other. He had, in some three and a half thousand miles of driving and one hundred and fifty hours of time, passed through every conceivable kind of country and weather and city. He had driven through sunshine and snowstorm, flood and drought, dusty plains and cloud-tipped mountains, ever-changing forests and never-changing fields of wheat; through fog so thick that he could not see ten feet ahead of him and through sunshine so strong that he could only see through narrowed eyes. He had traversed cities where the pall of smoke hung so thick and low that he could not see the sky, and over hills where there was nothing but sky to see. He had eaten in hotels and tourist camps and farmhouses and by a prospector’s fire and in halts for lorry-drivers. He had slept under one blanket on desert sand and shivered in a bed under five. He had seen and spoken with business men and cowboys, shop-girls and soldiers, miners and farmers and lumbermen and college boys, housewives and salesmen, saleswomen and priests and hobos and waitresses; with two stranded airmen and a small-town policeman—even with one Revivalist whose eyes flared insanely and a circus attendant looking for a mislaid leopard. He had swum in five rivers and one ocean and spent three hours in the stuffy jail of a Midwestern town, charged with driving at forty miles an hour in a twenty-five-mile zone and condemned to await the local judge’s return from a belated luncheon. He had crossed America.

It was mid-afternoon when he arrived in San Francisco. He drove in over the Bay Bridge after stopping in Oakland for two hours at a small hotel where he bathed and changed his clothes and, like the methodical tactician that he was, charted upon a big-scale map of the city his course to the San Francisco offices of R. Altinger and Horwood Incorporated—Production Homes.

They were on June Street, a difficult place to find even for a San Franciscan—and as he drove carefully along the narrow, congested stream of Market Street, and up and down the sudden, steeply looming hills so improbably clothed in pavement and buildings, he had cause to bless the map and his patient study of it.

But June Street was where it should be, and he turned into it, weaving between the street-cars and a lorry. There was no parking-space at either curb, but he found a garage and left his car there and walked back to the Jackson Building. He went straight to the lift and said: “Four, please,” as they did in New York, and was carried swiftly up. Outside the ground-glass doorway marked ‘407’ and ‘Altinger and Horwood Inc.—INQUIRIES,’ he halted for a moment and probed into his breast-pocket and brought out the letter addressed to ‘Mr. Rudolph Altinger—Personal’ and then knocked upon the door and opened it.

He knew what was in the letter—nothing that the most searching eye could not read with safety. It was from that close friend and associate of Mr. Altinger, Mr. Alvin Gray, who had apparently been approached by Mr. Altinger (and Mrs. Carolyn Van Teller) in regard to transferring to Mr. Altinger the person and services of Mr. Nils Jorgensen, that very promising young man who should surely fill Mr. Altinger’s requirements for a confidential assistant supremely well.

There was a boy behind a long counter in the room. He took the letter which Mr. Jorgensen handed to him and vanished with it and was back almost immediately.

“This way, please,” he said. “Mr. Altinger’ll see you right away.” He sounded faintly surprised.

Rudolph Altinger was forty-eight years old. He was a little over medium height but seemed to be under it because of great shoulder-spread and depth of chest. He was grey-haired and blunt-faced and clean-shaven, with features which would have conveyed an impression of obstinate stupidity but for the extraordinary brightness and intelligence of his eyes. He dressed extremely well and kept himself in extremely good condition. He neither smoked nor touched alcohol, but was a bachelor with a violent and permanent leaning towards young and pretty and preferably brainless members of the other sex. He was a brilliant inventor, a sound engineer, an excellent if imitative architect and the shrewdest of business men. He was also—as Otto had been told and soon substantiated—a brilliant and daring guerrilla general. He was both egocentric and intensely egotistical—and Otto conceived a sort of unwilling admiration for him.

He drove Otto hard but himself harder. He kept an entirely legitimate business operating all over the country and made it succeed and worked upon it for an average of seven hours a day. He slept for another seven and thus had ten more which, after allowing a minimum for other personal activities, he dedicated to his labours for the Reich. Because it was his nature to be intensely secretive, he was at first as uncommunicative as possible with Otto, but as the weeks slipped by and time pressed upon him and he found that never, under any circumstances, would Otto, either in regard to the business of the firm or the business of the Fuehrer, let him down, he began increasingly to admit his lieutenant to fuller confidence. Once started on this path, he seemed to gather speed with every day, taking a sort of pleasure in keeping nothing back—so that by mid-June Otto was in possession of so much knowledge that he could have carried on the work of the ‘unit’ without a break. He knew the names and persons of the three hundred and fifty men who made up the permanent body, and the names of other key men who could be called upon for help when necessary, each of them able to provide other men for certain work at certain times. He knew the details of every ‘attack’ to come in the chain of which he had been told, and the approximate dates of each one. He knew even the names and addresses and signs of every other unit commander in the country and the names, all illustrious, of the four men who, with Carolyn Van Teller, formed the Staff Council for America. He knew all these things and a mass of further detail.

He was asked for his first report on Altinger exactly a month after he arrived in San Francisco, when he was well on the way to all the knowledge. He had a letter from his benefactress, a friendly, kindly inquiring note which wondered how her protégé was coming along and incidentally mentioned that her good friend (and incidentally a countryman of Nils’), Mr. Gunnar Bjornstrom, would be at the Mark Hopkins’ for a week or so: would Nils, like a dear boy, call upon old Mr. Bjornstrom and ask whether there was anything he could do for him?

Nils saw Mr. Bjornstrom—a withered, kindly, cheerful old gentleman. Mr. Bjornstrom gave him a drink and borrowed a pencil from him and asked him the time and was very courteous and entirely satisfactory. Otto reported to Mr. Bjornstrom.

“Altinger,” said Otto, “is a brilliant man. His work is good, and will get better. He is telling me everything by pieces and I will know it all soon. But—yet—I do not know what he thinks about himself when . . . after victory. It is too soon for me to know. He is an egoistical man. Very. But I do not know yet to what extent this carries him. I think that I can find out—but not yet.”

Mr. Bjornstrom seemed satisfied. He gave Otto another drink and they went to the theatre together.

Miss Irving, who was Altinger’s San Francisco secretary, brought the morning mail in to Otto.

“Good morning, Mr. Jorgensen!” Miss Irving was forty and determinedly bright and once had been pretty and thought Mr. Altinger was very difficult but ever so much better since Mr. Jorgensen had taken so much of the work off his shoulders. She also thought that Mr. Jorgensen was ever so good-looking and so nice. She would, quite honestly, have deemed anyone insane who suggested that either Mr. Altinger or Mr. Jorgensen were anything more than the industrious businessmen they seemed.

She put the pile of opened letters at Otto’s elbow and laid directly before him a bulky envelope, still sealed. She said:

“It’s another one from that pesky old Mr. Blum! But I didn’t quite like to open it because he’s marked it ‘Personal’ and underlined it!”

Otto laughed, for Mr. Blum was an office joke—an elderly fuss-budget who wanted one of the Altinger houses but could never make up his mind where to put it. He said:

“Probably he wants a trailer now—to put the house on,” and Miss Irving laughed trillingly and thought that was such a funny idea.

She went, and Otto, after a decent interval, wandered into Altinger’s room, which, as a confidential assistant, he used freely when its owner wasn’t there. It was a pleasant room—sunny and comfortably furnished. And it was sound-proof, because Mr. Altinger could not bear to work with any outside distraction.

Otto opened the letter from the pesky Mr. Blum and found the usual four-page diatribe and quickly decoded it. For convenience, he scribbled the inner message upon a sheet from Altinger’s desk-pad. He then memorized it and burnt the sheet and dropped the ashes into Altinger’s waste-paper basket and picked up an outside telephone.

He found Altinger at the third number he dialled.

“Sorry to trouble,” he said. “But I wished confirmation on the Seattle Number Four contract.”

“It’s okay,” said Altinger’s harsh voice. “Go ahead. Anything else?”

“Nothing,” Otto said. “Except another letter from Blum—he now wishes to find a site some place halfway between here and the Oregon border.”

“Old fool!” said Altinger. “Well—I’ll phone him when I get to the office. I’ll be there anyway in about half an hour.”

But he was there in eleven minutes.

“I don’t quite understand,” Otto said when they were alone. “But you will perhaps. The decoding says: ‘Tipping and Coley Seattle bound Thursday. Nine-thirty p.m. leave San. F. Make utmost endeavour.’”

Altinger swore roundly. He said:

“I knew it! What an infernal nuisance! But there’s nothing for it—it’s order, and there you are!” He looked at Otto with a wolfish grin, “You’ll have to handle part of it.”

“What is it?” said Otto patiently. “Who are Tipping and Coley? And what is there to do?”

Altinger threw himself into his swivel chair and cocked his feet on the desk. He said:

“It’s a nasty job, young Jorgensen. And there isn’t time to plan it properly. Hit-or-miss sort of thing—only we’d better not miss!” He brought his feet down with a slam and leaned on the desk and pointed to the chair facing him.

“Siddown,” he said. “And get a load of it. Tipping and Coley are both Senators. Tipping’s a Democrat, Coley’s a Republican—but they’re both Interventionists—violent. There’s been a scheme cooked up in the White House to give ’em an Investigation Committee: like Dies’ but a whole hell of a lot tougher—and quieter. The Staff Council think they’re very important; that if they really get going they’ll get wise to a lot of things.” His lip curled. “That’s what the Council thinks—so we obey orders. And the orders are to wreck the train. Nine-thirty to-morrow night—ummmm!”

He leaned back in his chair and put his feet on the desk again, looking up at the ceiling in his usual attitude of thought with head on one side and one eye closed.

There was a long silence which Otto broke at last. He said:

“To wreck a train is not to make sure of killing any two particular people on that train.”

Altinger brought his gaze down from the ceiling. “You said it! But you’ve heard of orders, haven’t you? And if we choose the right place and make a right job, it’s thirty to one we get ’em. Shut up while I think.”

He cocked his head and stared one-eyed at the ceiling again—but this time it was not long before he spoke. He said:

“Get this. We’ll use the Palitos Viaduct. It’s under three hours’ drive if you’re fast. It’s in lonely country, and there’s a hell of a drop into the Arroyo Diablo. If she goes off there, there’ll be nothing left of Tipping or Coley—or anything! We’ll use Jannings, Derkel, Beckstein, Carson and four mechanics. Carson’ll take the station wagon and three of the mechanics. Beckstein takes the Matson truck and some stuff he’ll pick up from the warehouse. The others take their own cars. I’ll meet them out there to-night and get the work started: I’m looking for a country site for Blum. I’ll lay out the scheme and get as much work done as I can—but to-morrow you’ll have to be in charge: I’ve a meeting with Rossin—and I can’t take a chance on messing up the schedule for Plan Five. Now let’s work out some details. . . .

He went on, smoothly and decisively, for five minutes. There had been nothing—and now there was a dove-tailed, workable scheme.

But, as Altinger had said, it was perforce a hurried, hit-or-miss job, with no time for the usual Altinger precision in minutiæ: so hurried that a mistake of such dimensions was made as to bring Otto first to the edge of death and then to a complete change in his whole way of life.

On the Wednesday night, when Altinger chose the exact location and oversaw the initial work and covered up all trace of it, and then again on the night of Thursday, when Otto was in charge, it was bright moonlight, with a great yellowish moon which lit up every detail of the landscape and made the task doubly dangerous and necessitated the posting of warning guards. The pale-gold light poured relentlessly down over the mountain-side and the deep, naked canyon at its foot with the black shallow water rolling sluggishly along its bottom; over the white, graceful span of the viaduct which carried the shining tracks over the canyon from the tunnel-mouth in the side of the mountain, to the sharply curving, gleaming causeway along the top of the rolling foothills; over the serried tops of the trees which covered both flanks of the foothills with a dark, lovely cloak and left the causeway and the bright riband of the tracks it carried naked and utilitarian and yet with a harsh strength of its own which redeemed it from sheer ugliness.

The train was to pass at about one-thirty. Otto and his men should have finished their work and been dispersed and away, miles from here, by midnight. But at some minutes after eleven came an unexpected and dawdling freight train; at twelve a small railworkers’ trolley. And both times, warned by the look-outs, they had not only to scurry down three hundred yards to the cover of the trees and lie in hiding while the danger passed, but also first to cover all traces of their work, which meant more wasted time in the uncovering when they could safely start again.

Altinger had planted the charge under the ties on the viaduct, towards the far or mountain side. He knew how long the train would be and this should ensure that at least the greater part of its component coaches and cars crashed through the low wall of the viaduct and hurtled to the muddy bed of the arroyo, a hundred and eighty feet below. As the engine passed over a certain tie at the beginning or foothill side of the viaduct, it would release a contact to explode the tremendously powerful charge of explosive when this was crossed at the far end—all this necessarily controlled by the setting of a switch concealed at the edge of the causeway, well upon the foothill side of the viaduct.

It was one-twenty-six. The work was over and in less than five minutes the train would be roaring by towards the viaduct and destruction, and Otto and his men must get smoothly and quietly, swiftly and separately, away from here. They were in the safe shelter of the trees on the westward foothills, and everyone had reported his presence to Otto and checked his tools and started towards his particular car, with his route and emergency story well memorized.

Otto stood and watched their receding backs. He was just inside the shade of the trees and behind him the grassy slope stretched up to the causeway. He looked at his watch. It said twenty-eight minutes past the hour—and already he could hear a far-off rumbling which must be the train.

He closed his eyes and ran over in his mind all the orders which Altinger had given him—and the most pressing of these had been: “See they leave nothing behind. Not even the tag off a shoe lace! This can’t be camouflaged—and the F.B.I.’ll be around like ants. Don’t forget that—anything—anything might give those s.o.b.’s a clue!” . . .

Well, he had checked all the men and all the took and . . . His thought broke off as, his eyes opened, he stared through the moon-dappled shadow, at the departing backs.

The nearest of these was perhaps twenty yards away—and belonged to the most able of the four mechanics. He stared idly after the men—and a danger signal rang suddenly in his head.

The man was in shirt sleeves—and the man had originally climbed up from the trees to his work in a coat.

The roaring rumble of the train was closer now. There was no time to shout and bring the man back—and shouting was dangerous. There was no time to do anything—except, as he did, dart back to the outermost edge of the trees and search with his gaze the moonlit stretch of upward sloping grass.

Despite the distance, he saw the coat almost at once. It lay, right at the junction of the slope and the causeway, a black blot upon the scene and his duty.

He broke out from the trees and, doubled up, began to climb the two hundred yards of grass-covered hill. Behind him he could hear the car engines of his men and above their sound, drowning it to anyone who did not expect it to be there, the roaring of the nearing train and a high-pitched, nerve-tearing whistle as she began upon the wide, ever-sharpening curve towards the viaduct.

He ran and slipped on the rough, dry grasses and fell and picked himself up again and clambered up. He doubled himself up as much as he dared without sacrificing speed but he felt naked and alone and startlingly visible in the flooding moonlight. The rattling roar of the train was close and swelling closer and out of the corner of his eye he was aware of its black bulk onrushing.

He was flat on his belly now, at the top of the rise and the edge of the causeway. He flung out an arm and just missed touching the coat. The train roared above him with a whirling, shattering maelstrom of a noise, the lights from its myriad windows flashing over him darker and brighter gold than the moonlight. He gripped the grass and dragged himself upwards another foot and reached for the coat again and found it with his fingers. The train was not past him yet, and it was travelling fast. It must be longer than they had reckoned.

He pulled the coat towards him and let himself slide down the steepest part of the rise. When he came to a halt, he raised a cautious head and saw the engine curving around on to the viaduct. He was bound there, where he lay. He could not move. All of him was in watching eyes and waiting ears.

And then, came the sight and sound which told him Altinger had succeeded again. The sight was unreal and fantastic and like a bad piece of miniature effect in a cheap cinematograph film—and the sound was even more different from his subconscious anticipation. It went on so long. It was made up of so many different, intermingling sounds—and they went on and on and on. First the dull and tremendous and stomach-thumping roar of the explosion and then a tortured screaming of steel as pieces of the engine and first car—great monolithic inanimate chunks—separated ridiculously in air and hurtled through the stone parapet and plunged downwards out of his sight with a roaring, whistling sound which merged into the crashing and crumbling of stone and an incredible, squeaking bellow which followed as the next cars, whole and unbroken, lurched and rocked sideways and left the tracks and ploughed through more sections of the parapet and fell, shockingly twisting end over end, into the blackness.

And it all seemed to go on so long—and the minor sounds which made thin background for the major were so many and so acidly distinct—the crackle of rending wood, the shivering of glass, the wrenching, barking sound as rails and ties were torn from the earth to fly through air, the hideous rattle of fragments—even the thin, high screaming of human voices.

It all went on so long—for split seconds which were transmuted in his mind to hours; for split seconds which held him motionless as the three cars which had been added this night were torn from their predecessors before they had swung on to the viaduct. The tail of the hindmost was only a few yards away from him, to his right and above him. All three swayed drunkenly and lurched upon their outer wheels and could not right themselves and toppled and hit the edge of the causeway with their right flanks and bounced like toys and turned over with their whirring, whizzing wheels in air and pitched down the grassy slope in wild titanic disorder. And the sound of their falling drowned in his ears the other interminable sounds from the arroyo and the bridge.

He saw what was happening before it happened. He had no time to get to his feet—and he threw himself sideways, driving his coiled body in a tremendous lateral spring, as far away as he might from the rearmost car. But he was not far enough: the main bulk of the car was far from him as it came to an end of its drunken rolling, but the surrounding air was filled with flying debris from its wrenched and shattered frame. A great bruising weight struck him behind the shoulders. It drove all the air from his lungs and he rolled convulsively upon his back, fighting for power to breathe. Another weight, heavy and crushing and violent, fell across both legs, below the knees, and he felt the crunching of smashed bones and a searing, enveloping pain which flashed up his spine and into his head and exploded there and left him in unknowing darkness.

He struggled up out of the dark cone of insensibility. The noises had ended and there was no sound now except inside his head. His vision seemed blurred but his mind was clear. He knew everything, and his right hand still gripped the rough cloth of the coat which he must destroy. He tried to move and a flaming tongue of pain lashed up his legs and he felt the weight still upon them.

He rested, and a cold film of sweat ran into his eyes and stung them. With infinite care, he raised his body until he was sitting upright. With every movement the pain flamed in his legs but he gauged the flashes so that never would they get into his head again and deprive him of consciousness.

He laid the coat aside and got one hand to the thing upon his legs and felt it and tried its weight. It was jagged and irregular and metallic. And it was very heavy.

But he had to go away from here. And his shoulders and arms and back were inordinately strong. He braced himself upon the ground with his left hand—and with his right pulled up the metal mass and rolled from beneath it.

A wave of agony slid over him—but he ground his teeth and clenched his hands and rested, his lungs heaving. After a while breathing became easy—and he grew conscious that the monotonous, incessant noise, so lonely in the surrounding silence, was not inside his head. It was a low-pitched, human voice, repeating something over and over again, at absolutely regular intervals. He thought the sounds were words, but could not be sure.

He tied the coat around his neck, by its sleeves. The main bulk of the hindmost car, upturned and sprawling and surrounded by disordered heaps of its own wreckage, was to his left and further down the hill. The nearest pile was blazing with a happy, crackling flame—and the sight of it showed him what he must do. He must first destroy the coat in the fire and then try to drag himself away.

He began to move, pulling himself along by his hands. The droning, rhythmic voice grew louder, but he still could not distinguish words. He reached the little pile of burning timber and pulled the coat from his neck as he lay and thrust it into the flame. It was dry and the cloth was old and it caught at once and flared smokily while he watched.

He began to move again, dragging himself downhill towards the trees. The trend of the slope was carrying him through the wreckage but he did not care: this way was the easiest. He made agonized but fairly rapid progress until his right leg scraped against a piece of steel debris. The pain was so intense that he was forced to halt progress and struggle to master it.

The voice was close now, and me words it was making stamped themselves into his mind. It was a woman’s voice, and it was saying:

“I’m all right, Bob: are you all right, darling? . . . Come and help me, Bob: are you all right, darling? . . .”

It went on saying that, at exactly the same intervals. It never varied the spacing or the tone.

Otto lifted his head. He thrust his arms out before him and clutched at the glass and began to drag himself forward again.

“I’m all right, Bob,” said the voice. “Are you all right, darling? . . . Come and help me, Bob: are you all right, darling?”

He writhed on his slow and tortuous way. He traversed another yard or two, now close to the weird, tangled shapes of the wreckage, before he saw the two children.

They loomed right in his path, so that he would have to make a detour to get around them. They were quite small children, a boy and a girl. The boy seemed to be asleep. He was lying on his side, his cheek pillowed on his hand, but where his legs in their gaily striped pyjama trousers should have been was a viscous, semi-liquid pool. The little girl, her plump thighs rigid, seemed to be trying to stand upon her head—only, as became instantly plain to Otto’s wide and staring gaze, she had no head.

“Lieber Gott!” said Otto, and dragged himself around until his eyes could not see.

“I’m all right, Bob.” The voice was quite close to him now: it came from beneath a twisted, tent-like cluster of debris. “Are you all right, darling? . . . Come and help me, Bob: are you all right, darling?”

Otto stopped suddenly in his downward course. He slewed his body around and dragged it, uphill now, close to the voice, and saw that the tent-like cluster was made of interlocking struts of steel. He peered into their shadow and saw the body of a woman pinned beneath them. The voice was coming from her mouth. He felt around with both hands and found that only one of the struts was pinning her. He tried to speak to her, to tell her what he was doing, but her words did not change.

“Come and help me, Bob,” she said. “Are you all right, darling?”

Otto dragged himself around until he could seize the strut which held her. He did not seem to be conscious now of the pain in his legs. He could not move them nor use their force—but their existence did not seem to hamper him so much.

He wrapped an arm about the strut and heaved. It moved—and, his teeth sunk in his lower lip until the blood ran down his chin, he raised it from the ground and held it there. He racked his body and stretched in the free arm beneath the steel tangle and caught the woman’s shoulder and the stuff of her gown and began to pull her body free. Her voice ceased.

Unbelievably, he dragged her inch by inch from the web—and then, as he pulled her body clear, heard a little rattling sound from throat and knew that she was dead. He tried to ease down the strut he had held above the ground, and the whole structure collapsed.

Something struck him on the back of the head and the world went away from him.