The Wind From Nowhere

8 The Tower of Hardoon

As he woke his head was swinging like a piston from side to side.

A dozen arteries pounded angrily inside his skull, rivers of thudding pain. He opened his eyes and focussed them with an effort. A powerfully-built guard in a black plastic uniform, a large white triangle on his helmet, was leaning over him, slapping his face with a broad open hand.

When he saw Maitland's eyes were open, he gave him a final vicious backhand cut, then snapped at the two guards holding Maitland in his chair. They jerked him forward into a sitting position, then let go of his hands.

Gasping for air, Maitland tried to control himself, spread his legs apart and pressed his shoulders against the stiff backrest of the chair. Above, fluorescent lighting shone across a low bare ceiling. In a few seconds his face had stopped stinging, and he lowered his eyes slowly.

Directly in front of him, across a wide crocodile-skin desk, sat a squat, broad-shouldered man in a dark suit. His head was huge and bull-like; below a high domed forehead were two small eyes, a short stump of nose, a mouth like a scar, and a jutting chin. The expression was somber and menacing.

He surveyed Maitland coldly, ignoring the red-flecked saliva Maitland was wiping away from his bruised lips. Dimly, Maitland recognized a face he had seen in a few rare magazine photographs. This, he realized, was Hardoon. Wondering how long had elapsed since their arrival, Maitland began to glance around the room. He was aware of Hardoon sitting forward and tapping his knuckles on the desk.

"Are you completely with us again, Doctor?" he asked, his voice soft yet callous. He waited for Maitland to murmur, then nodded to the guards, who took up their positions against the rear wall.

"Good. While you were resting your companions have been telling me about your exploit. I'm sorry that your little outing has ended here. I must apologize for the stupidity of my traffic police. They should never have allowed you in. Unfortunately, Kroll-" he indicated the tall guard with the single helmet triangle, lounging against the wall beside the desk "-was somewhat delayed on his return, or you would have been able to continue your journey to Portsmouth unmolested."

He examined Maitland for a moment, taking a cigar from a silver ashtray on the pedestal behind the desk.

Puzzled why Hardoon was bothering to interrogate him, Maitland massaged his face, peering around the room.

He was in a large oak-paneled office, the heavy walls of which appeared to be completely solid, flatly absorbing the sounds of their voices. Behind him, where the guards stood, were high bookshelves, divided by a doorway. There were no windows, but on the far side of Hardoon's desk was a shoulder-high alcove sealed by high shutters.

Hardoon drew reflectively on his cigar. "I gather that once again I am personna non grata with the authorities," he went on in his slow leisurely voice. "It was foolish of Kroll to allow Marshall to broadcast our whereabouts to all and sundry. However, that is another matter."

Maitland sat forward, aware of the guards poised on their toes behind him, the huge figure of Kroll stiffening slightly. "What happened to Halliday?" he asked, tongue tripping inside his bruised mouth. "He was shot as we arrived."

Hardoon's face was blank, his eyes narrowing as he considered the interruption. "A tragic misunderstanding. Believe me, Doctor, I abhor violence as much as you. My traffic police assumed that you were Kroll. Your vehicles are of the same type, with identical markings. When they discovered their mistake they were naturally rather excited. These accidents happen."

His tone was matter-of-fact, but even though his eyes were fixed coldly on Maitland's face the latter had the distinct impression that most of Hardoon's attention was elsewhere. His voice seemed to be an agent that was automatically carrying out instructions given to it previously, like the guards standing behind Maitland.

"Where are the others?" Maitland asked. "The two Americans and the girl?"

Hardoon gestured with his cigar. "In the-" he searched for a suitable phrase "-visitors' quarters. They are perfectly comfortable. Mr. Symington was slightly injured en route, and is now resting in the sick bay. A useful man; let us hope he is soon recovered."

Maitland studied Hardoon's face. The millionaire was about fifty-five, still physically powerful, but with curious lusterless eyes. Despite its hard edge, his voice almost droned.

"Now, Doctor, to come to the point. The arrival here of you and your three companions presents me with an opportunity I have decided to make the most of." As Maitland frowned, Hardoon smiled deprecatingly. "No, I am not in need of medical attention; far from it. We have an ample number of doctors and nurses here. In fact, you will find this one of the most efficiently organized bastions against the wind in existence, if not the most efficient, my traffic police notwithstanding."

He pressed a button set into a small control panel on the desk in front of him, and then turned slightly in his chair to face the shutters, gesturing Maitland to do the same. The shutters began to retract. Behind Maitland the ceiling lights dimmed, and as the shutters slid into their housings they revealed an enormous block of plate glass, three feet deep and twice as wide, apparently set into the face of the pyramid.

Sloping away below was the east wall of the pyramid. At its base were the causeways and entrance passage they had taken to the elevator. Beyond, obscured by the storm, was the wide approach road. The wind stream swept directly toward them, the thousands of fragments carried past at incredible speeds, vaulting out of the lowering storm cloud on a thousand trajectories.

At the same time Hardoon had pressed another tab on the desk, and a loudspeaker on the wall above the window crackled into life. Muted at first, and then rising to full volume, was the bare, unalloyed voice of the wind stream, the roaring Niagara of sound that had pursued Maitland in his nightmares for the past month.

Hardoon sat back, watching the wind through the window, listening to it on the speaker. He seemed to sink into some private reverie, his cigar half raised to his lips, its smoke curling away toward a ventilator in the ceiling. An automatic rheostat must have been mounted to the speaker, for the volume rose steadily, until the noise of the storm wind filled the office, a blast of rushing airlike the sounds of an experimental wind tunnel at maximum velocity.

Suddenly Hardoon woke out of his trance and stabbed the two buttons. The sound abruptly fell away, and the shutters glided back and locked across the window.

For a moment Hardoon stared at the darkened panels. "Its force is incredible," he commented to Maitland. "Nature herself in revolt, in her purest, most elemental form. And where is Man, her prime enemy? For the most part vanquished, utterly defeated, hiding below ground like a terror-stricken mole, or wandering about blindly down dark tunnels."

He looked at Maitland rhetorically, then added: "I admire you, Doctor, and your companions. You still do battle with the wind, to some extent retain your initiative. You move about the surface of the globe undeterred. I'm sorry that Captain Halliday should have been killed."

Maitland nodded. His head had finally cleared, the warmth of the office reviving him. He decided to take the initiative in their conversation, and sat forward. "When did you start building this pyramid?" he asked.

Hardoon shrugged. "Years ago. The bunkers were originally designed as my personal shelter in the event of World War III, but the pyramid was completed only this month."

Maitland pressed on. "What are you hoping to gain? Supreme political control when the wind subsides?"

Hardoon turned and stared at Maitland, an expression of incredulity on his face.

"Is that what occurs to you, Doctor? You can think of no other motive?"

Maitland shrugged, somewhat taken aback by Hardoon's reaction. "Your own immediate survival, of course. With the backing of a large, well-run organization."

Hardoon smiled bleakly. "It's astonishing, how the weak always judge the strong by their own limited standards. It's precisely for this reason that you're here." Before Maitland could ask him to expand upon this he said: "Surely the unusual design of this shelter indicates my real motives. In fact, up to now I assumed this was the case. It must be obvious that if survival and the maintenance of a powerful and well-equipped private army were my object I would certainly not choose to house myself in an exposed pyramid."

"It is a vantage point," Maitland pointed out. "As you've just demonstrated, it makes an excellent observation post."

"To observe what? That window is only sixty feet above ground. What could I hope to see?"

"Nothing, I suppose. Except the wind."

Hardoon bowed his head slightly. "Doctor, you are entirely correct. The wind is, indeed, all I wish to see from here. And at the same time I intend it to see me." He paused, then went on. "As the wind has risen so everyone on the globe has built downward, trying to escape it; has burrowed further and deeper into the shelter of the earth's mantle. With one exception-myself. I alone have built upward, have dared to challenge the wind, asserting Man's courage and determination to master nature. If I were to claim political power-which, most absolutely, I will not-I would do so simply on the basis of my own moral superiority. Only I, in the face of the greatest holocaust ever to strike the earth, have had the moral courage to attempt to outstare nature. That is my sole reason for building this tower. Here on the surface of the globe I meet nature on her own terms, in the arena of her choice. If I fail, Man has no right to assert his innate superiority over the unreason of the natural world."

Maitland nodded, watching Hardoon closely. The millionaire had spoken in a quiet clipped voice, using neither gesture nor emphasis. He realized that Hardoon was almost certainly sincere, and wondered to himself whether this made him less or more dangerous. How much was he prepared to sacrifice to put his philosophy to the test?

"Well, if what you say is true, it's a spectacular gesture. But surely there are equal challenges to one's moral courage in everyday life?"

"For you, perhaps. But my talents and position force me to play my role on a larger stage. You probably think me an insane megalomaniac. How else, though, can I demonstrate my moral courage? As an industrialist, moral courage is less important than judgment and experience. What should I do? Found a university, endow a thousand scholarships, give away my money to the poor? But a single signature on a check will do these for me, and I know that with my talents I will never be destitute. Fly to the moon? I'm too old. Face bravely the prospect of my own death? But my health is still sound. There is nothing, no other way in which I can prove myself."

Maitland found himself smiling. "In that case, I can only wish you luck. As you've said, this is a private duel between yourself and the wind. So you'll have no objections to our collecting Symington and going on our way."

Hardoon raised a hand. "Unfortunately, I do, Doctor. Why do you think I've brought you up here? Now, I think, you understand my real motives, but did you even five minutes ago? I doubt it. In fact, you thought I was avid for political power and taking advantage of my industrial interests to seize a defenseless world. And so will everybody else. Not that it matters particularly, but I would like my stand here to serve as an example to others faced with similar challenges in the future. I claim no credit for any courage I show, and any due to me I gladly pass on to homo sapiens, my brotherat-large." Hardoon gestured with his cigar. "Now, by a stroke of fortune two of your companions are newspaper reporters, both highly placed members of their profession. Given the right frame of mind, the right perspective, they might well prepare an accurate record of what is taking place here."

"Have you asked them?"

"Of course, but like all journalists they are interested, not in the truth, but in news. They were frankly mystified; they probably thought I was trying to pull their legs."

"You want me to change their perspectives?"

"Exactly. Do you think you can?"

"Possibly." Maitland pointed to the walls around them. "Are you sure this pyramid can stand up to the wind indefinitely?"

"Absolutely!" Hardoon scoffed. "The walls are thirty feet thick; they'll carry the impact of a dozen hydrogen bombs. Five hundred miles an hour is a trivial speed. The paper-thin plating of aircraft fuselages withstand it comfortably."

When Maitland seemed doubtful, Hardoon added: "Believe me, Doctor, you need have no fears. This pyramid is completely separate from the old air-raid shelters. That is the whole point. The entire pyramid is above ground; there are no foundation members whatever. The shelters where you and the other personnel stay are two hundred yards away. This pyramid will withstand ten-thousand-mile-an-hour gales, a hundred thousand, if you can imagine such a speed. I am not joking. With the exception of this apartment the pyramid is a solid block of reinforced concrete weighing nearly twenty-five thousand tons, completely immovable, like the deep bunkers in Berlin which even high explosives could not destroy and which have remained where they were to this day."

Hardoon waved to the guards waiting by the door.

"Kroll, Dr. Maitland is ready to be shown to his quarters." As the big guard ambled over to the desk, Hardoon looked up at Maitland. "I think you understand me, Doctor. You are a man of science, accustomed to weighing evidence objectively. I put my case in your hands."

"How long will we have to stay here?" Maitland asked.

"Until the wind subsides. A few weeks perhaps. Is it so important? You will find nowhere safer. Remember, Doctor, a footnote to history is being made here. Think in other categories, in a wider context."

As he walked out with one of the guards, Maitland noticed that the shutters were retracting. Hardoon sat at his chair before the window, staring out as the thousand fragments of a disintegrating world soared past in a ceaseless bombardment. Just before the door closed behind Maitland the sounds of the wind rose up tumultuously.

From Hardoon's suite in the apex they took a small elevator down through the matrix of the pyramid to the communicating tunnel which ran to the bunker system 200 yards away. Maitland walked along the damp concrete uneasily, aware of the massive weight of the structure overhead, counting the dim lights strung along the tunnel.

He wondered whether there was any point in trying to argue with Hardoon. But, as Hardoon had said, for the time being, the issue of personal freedom aside, there would be little point in trying to leave. Besides, Hardoon was probably ruthless. Not only did the behavior of his armed guards indicate this, but unless he compelled their absolute loyalty the entire organization would have long since collapsed.

As they neared the midpoint of the tunnel the floor swayed slightly under their feet. Caught off balance, Maitland stumbled against the wall. The guard steadied him with one hand. Thanking him, Maitland noticed the expression on his face, a faint but nonetheless detectable hint of alarm.

"What's the matter?" Maitland asked him.

The guard, a tall, slim-faced boy with a light stubble under his helmet strap, scowled uneasily. "What do you mean?"

Maitland paused. "You looked worried."

The guard eyed him balefully, watching for any suspicious move, then muttered obscurely. They walked on. The floor underfoot was an inch deep in water. Unmistakably, Maitland noticed, the tunnel walls were shifting.

"How deep down are we?" he asked.

"Fifty feet. Maybe less now."

"You mean the subsoil's going? Good God, the wind will soon be stripping these bunkers down to their roofs." The guard grunted at this. "What's the subsoil here-clay?"

"No idea," the guard said. "Gravel, or something like that."

"Gravel?" Maitland stopped.

"What's the matter with gravel?" the guard asked, his mouth fretting.

"Nothing in particular, except that it's pretty mobile." Maitland pointed to the tunnel walls-they were now midway-and asked: "Why's the tunnel leaking? The walls are shifting around. They must be cracked somewhere."

The guard shrugged. "Wait till you see the bunkers. They're like a ship's bilge."

"But the walls aren't actually moving, surely?" Maitland examined one of the hairline cracks high up on the ceiling. It widened as it neared the floor. Below their feet it was at least six inches broad, the opposing lips only held together by the net of reinforcing bars. Water seeped through steadily, fanning out across the cement.

"A couple of engineers from Construction were down here yesterday," the guard confided. "They were talking about the underground stream loosening the ground or something."

"You'd better warn the old boy," Maitland said. "He's liable to be cut off if this tunnel fills up."

"He'll be O.K. He's got everything he needs up there. Refrigerators full 0f food and water, his own generator."

The guard looked uneasily along the tunnel. As they stepped through the tunnel and waited for Kroll to join them, Maitland glanced back and saw that the tunnel dipped sharply in the center. The two sections inclined upward at an angle of two or three degrees.

With Kroll leading, occasionally stopping to shoulder Maitland ahead of him, they walked along a maze of corridors, stairways, and dimly lit ramps traversed by huge ventilator shafts and power cables. Generators charged continually, providing an unvarying background to the sounds of steel boots ringing on metal steps, voices bellowing orders. Now and then, through an open doorway, Maitland could see men in shirt sleeves slumped on trestle beds, crammed together among their gear in the minute cubicles.

They moved down a stairway toward the lowest level of the bunker system. Maitland estimated that at least 400 men were accommodated in the network of shelters, along with enough supplies to maintain them for six months. The corridors were lined with steel and wooden crates similar to the ones he had seen in Marshall 's warehouse, overflowing from the big store chambers he had glimpsed on arrival.

Finally they emerged into the lowest level and entered a damp narrow cul de sac, at the end of which a couple of guards idled under a single light. They pulled themselves to attention as Kroll appeared and saluted him quickly, then unlocked a small door in the right-hand wall.

Kroll jerked his thumb at Maitland, bundled him brusquely through the doorway and slammed it behind him.

Maitland found the others inside, sitting on the beds around the wall, in the dull red gloom of a single storm bulb mounted over the door. Lanyon let out a low cheer when he saw Maitland, and helped him off with his jacket. Patricia Olsen lit him a cigarette, and Maitland stretched out gratefully on one of the hard horsehair mattresses.

"You've seen him, have you, Doctor?" Lanyon asked when Maitland had rested. "He told you all about his moral stand against the hurricane?"

Maitland nodded, his eyes half closed with fatigue. "The whole thing. He even showed me the wind tapping at his magic window. He's obviously out of his mind."

"I'm not so sure," Bill Waring, the other reporter, chipped in. He sat on his bed, pensively smoking a cigarette. "In fact, his instinct of self-preservation may be stronger than we think. This is the most organized set-up I've come across. Three or four hundred trained men, half a dozen big vehicles, a radio station, agents all over the country-it's a really well-run military unit. The moral stand is probably just the sauce. I figure we ought to look ahead to the next stage, when the wind dies down and he finds he really can run the whole show if he wants to."

Patricia Olsen, resting on another of the beds, nodded in agreement. "He'll discover some other moral drive then, of course." She shuddered, only half playfully. "Can you just see friend Kroll as executive vice-president?"

Lanyon smiled at her. "Relax. As long as Hardoon wants an attractive newswriter around you'll be safe." He turned to Maitland, lowering his voice and glancing back at the door. "Seriously, I've been trying to think up some way of getting us out of here."

"I'm with you," Maitland said. "But how?"

"Well, I was just explaining to Pat and Bill that probably the quickest method is for them to play along with Hardoon, produce a highly colored extravaganza about this lone hero outstaring the wind and so on. If he's sure we're sincere we can probably sell him on the idea that the story should be given a worldwide spread immediately."

"To encourage everyone," Bill Waring concluded. "Help us keep our chins up. I agree, it's the best bet."

Pat Olsen nodded. "We could easily do it. If he's got a cine camera around here we could even take some shots of him at his peephole." She shook her head ruefully. "My, oh my, but he really is a gone one."

"Where are the radio operator and the driver?" Maitland asked.

"They joined the local forces," Lanyon said. With a smile he added: "Don't look so shocked; it's an established military tradition. Kroll even offered to make me corporal."

For five days they remained sealed within the bunker. The doors into the corridor remained locked. Food was brought to them twice a day by two guards, but apart from an occasional routine check they were left virtually alone. The guards were curt and uncommunicative, and conveyed that some sort of activity was taking place on the upper levels which occupied most of the personnel for much of the day and night.

Their bunker was on the lowest level of the system, some 200 feet below ground. The corridor led past a small washroom to a spiral staircase which carried upward to the next level, and Maitland's impression was that a large number of similar annexes had been built out off the main group of shelters.

The air, carried to them by a small ventilator, was damp and acrid, often mixed with the fumes of diesel engines, constantly varying in pressure from a powerful blast that chilled the room, spattering everything with an oily dust, to a low drift of warm air that made them sluggish and uncomfortable.

Maitland traced this to carbon-monoxide contamination, and asked one of the guards if he could check the inlet pipe, presumably mounted in the transport bays. But the man was unhelpful.

While Pat Olsen and Waring began to concoct their story of Hardoon's stand against the wind, Lanyon and Maitland did what they could to plan an escape. Maitland made several requests for an interview with Hardoon; nothing, however, came of this. Nor could he gain any news of Andrew Symington.

One thing they were spared-the monotonous drone of the wind. Deep in the bunker, they could hear nothing except the tap leaking in the washroom, the sounds of metal shoes slamming on the staircase above. Their energy dulled by the news that there was no sign of the wind's abatement-in fact, the speed had risen steeply now to 550 mph-they slumped about on the beds, half asleep, drugged by the carbon-monoxide fumes.

Waking some time after midnight, Maitland stirred, trying to return to sleep, then lay on his back in the thin red gloom of the storm bulb, listening to the sounds of his companions asleep. His bed was beside the door, with Lanyon at his feet, Waring and Pat Olsen along the far wall below the ventilator.

Outside in the corridor a few night sounds shifted through the darkness-steam pipes chuntering, orders being shouted, freight loaded or unloaded in one of the storerooms on the next level.

Sometime later he woke again and found himself sweating uneasily. Everything around him was strangely quiet, the breathing of his companions obviously labored.

Then he realized that the ventilator had stopped, its steady bellowslike action no longer overlaying the other noises in the bunker.

One sound alone stood out-the regular ping, ping, ping of a dripping tap, falling into a basin of water only a few feet away from him.

Inclining his head, Maitland suddenly saw the drip move through the air, the minute sparkle of light reflected in the red storm lamp.

Involuntarily, he sat up on one elbow, pushing away the tarpaulin square which served him as a blanket.

The drip was coming from the ventilator! The drops followed each other at half-second intervals, their rate of fall increasing as he listened.

Swinging his legs off the bed, he put his feet on the floor, then looked down in astonishment to see a wide pool of water almost reaching to his ankles.

"Lanyon! Waring!" he shouted. He leaped up as the others dragged themselves out of sleep, and pulled on his leather boots. Waring peered into the silent ventilator shaft, from which a steady trickle of water now emerged, pouring forward into the center of the floor.

"There's no air coming through!" Waring shouted at the others. Must be a break somewhere up above.

Lanyon and Maitland splashed over to the door and began to pound on the panels, shouting at the tops of their voices. Overhead, somewhere along the stairway, they could hear confused shouting, the sounds of feet running in all directions and of bulkheads being slammed.

Black, oil-stained water was pushing in a steady stream below the door, reaching up the walls. Pat Olsen jumped up on Maitland's bed and crouched on the rail. Outside in the corridor the water appeared to be three or four inches deep, and was splashing noisily down the stairway. As Maitland and Lanyon heaved their shoulders against the steel door panels, the jet from the ventilator suddenly increased, throwing up a fountain that splashed across their backs.

Lanyon pulled Maitland away, pointed to one of the beds. "Help me dismantle it! Maybe we can use the crossbars as jimmies."

Quickly they pulled the mattress off the bed, ripped out the trestle and unlocked the two supporting bars, the heavy bolts ripping at their fingers. Freeing the angle irons, they forced the sharp ends into the narrow aperture between the door and the concrete wall, slowly levered the top half of the steel plate out of its louvers. As soon as it had sprung back a few inches, Lanyon reached up, seized the lip, and pulled it downward to provide a narrow, footdeep opening.

Outside, in the corridor, only the red storm light was showing. As Lanyon began to scramble through the opening the light in their room went out, plunging them into a thin red gloom, the diffused rays from the bulb glimmering in the dark surface of the water.

It reached to Lanyon's knees in the corridor, pouring in a strong torrent down the stairway. Lanyon steadied himself, then helped Patricia Olsen through after him, followed by Waring and Maltland. As they left the room the water had reached the level of the beds, and two of the mattresses were sailing slowly around.

Quickly they waded down the corridor to the stairway, Lanyon leading. Water cascaded around their waists, and as they reached the first turning Maitland, who was last in line, looked back to see the surface only two feet from the ceiling.

Reaching the next level, they paused in a recess between two corridors at right angles to each other. The influx of water was coursing down the right-hand section, pouring out through the shattered doorways of a series of high store chambers.

Lanyon pointed to their left, where half a dozen guards were piling sandbags across the corridor preparatory to sealing it with a heavy bulkhead.

"Hold on!" he shouted at them. "Don't close up yet!"

He started to run toward them, but the guards ignored him. As Lanyon reached the bulkhead they slammed in the crossbars, leaving the American pounding helplessly on the massive gray plates.

Maitland straddled the sandbags, filled with a quick-setting cement which was already locking the breastwork to the floor and walls as the water swilled against it down the corridor. He held Lanyon's shoulder. "Come on, let's make for the surface. No point in being trapped down here with these rats. There must have been a major cave-in somewhere. Once we get above it we'll be safe."

Pulling themselves up the stairway, they made their way past the next two levels. Gradually the flow of water pouring past them diminished, and by the time they reached the top of the shaft it had stopped altogether. At each of the four levels the retreating occupants of the bunker system had sealed bulkheads across the corridors, blocking off the central redoubt on the left from the stairway and the flooded store chambers on its right.

Waring and Patricia Olsen sat down against the wall opposite the stairway, trying to squeeze the water out of their clothes, but Lanyon shouted at them: "Come on, we can't stay here! If another of these walls goes the whole place will flood out. Our only chance is to get through into Hardoon's pyramid."

One by one they entered the communicating tunnel, now in total darkness, guiding themselves along the walls. These were tilting, as if the tunnel were being twisted longitudinally. Water accumulated along the left-hand side, more than three inches deep. Tremendous faults had opened in the surrounding gravel bed, as the underground spring carried away enormous quantities of earth, leaving the massive bunkers suspended without support.

They reached the far end of the tunnel, made their way up a short stairway to the elevator shaft serving Hardoon's suite.

Lanyon turned to Waring. "Bill, you stay down here with Pat, while Maitland and I see if we can reach Hardoon."

He pulled back the cage of the elevator, made room inside for Maitland. He wiped his face with his sleeve, spitting out an oily phlegm that choked his sinuses, then pressed the tab marked "Roof."

Halfway up to the top the elevator suddenly swung back, lodged momentarily in its housings, banging against the rear wall of the shaft.

Lanyon stabbed the roof button again. "Dammit, felt as if the whole place was moving," he commented to Maitland.

"Impossible," Maitland said. "A five-hundred-mile-an-hour gale would never shift this weight of concrete. Must have been some air driving up the shaft."

The elevator creaked upward and finally stopped. Maitland pulled back the grille, found that the upper doors were open. They stepped out into the deserted hallway, where a light still shone over the reception desk in the corner.

As they neared the doors of Hardoon's office they heard the sound of the wind battering against the panels, and for a moment Maitland wondered whether the observation window in Hardoon's suite had been breached. Then he realized that the wooden doors in front of them would have been ripped off their hinges in a fraction of a second.

Lanyon nodded to him and they plunged through.

Inside the room the noise of the wind roared insanely in their ears, louder than they had ever heard it. Unbroken and apparently at the heart of the maelstrom itself, it reverberated off the walls and ceiling like the wave front of some gigantic explosion. The force of the blast stunned the two men, and they stood uncertainly on the threshold, peering around for its source.

The room was in darkness, the sole illumination streaming in from the observation window. Standing in front of it, his face only a foot from the glass, was Hardoon, the flickering field of light playing across his granitic features like the flames of some cosmic hell. So completely involved was he with the wind that Maitland hesitated before stepping forward, as much held back by the intangible power of Hardoon's presence as by the sounds of the hurricane battering at the window.

Suddenly a second taller figure detached itself quickly from the darkness behind Hardoon, bent across the desk and pressed a button on the control panel.

Immediately the sounds dimmed and fell away, and the ceiling lights came on overhead. Hardoon looked over his shoulder in surprise. He pulled himself out of his reverie, and gestured impatiently at Kroll, who was covering Maitland and Lanyon with his.45.

Maitland called out: "Hardoon! Listen, for God's sake! The bunkers are flooding, the foundations are caving in!"

Hardoon stared at him sightlessly, apparently unaware of Maitland's identity. His eyes focussed uncertainly on the wall behind Maitland's head. Then he motioned again to Kroll with a snap of his fingers and turned back to the window.

"Hardoon!" Maitland shouted. He and Lanyon began to move forward, but Kroll leaped quickly around the desk, the large automatic holding them off.

"Turn around, both of you!" he snapped, pushing Maitland back with a heavy fist. They sidestepped out into the hall, and Kroll closed the doors behind him. Flicking the barrel of the gun, he steered them into the elevator, then stood two yards away from them, left hand on the control switch, ready to close the doors, his right leveling the gun, first at Lanyon and then at Maitland.

"Kroll!" Maitland shouted. "The shelters are collapsing! Four hundred men are trapped in there. You've got to get them across here.

Kroll nodded coldly, his mouth tight, his eyes like black chisels under the visor of his helmet. He raised the barrel at Maitland's head, his jaw muscles tensing, bunching the skin into hard knots.

As his finger squeezed the trigger, Maitland dropped quickly to his knees, trying to avoid the bullet. He looked up, saw Kroll grunt and train the gun on him again. Lanyon had backed up against the side of the car, stabbed frantically at the control buttons.

Waiting for the bullet to crash into his skull, Maitland lowered his head.

Suddenly, without warning, the floor tipped sharply, knocking him against the side of the elevator. As he straightened himself he heard the roar out, felt the bullet slam past his head into the leather padding, ripping a three-inch slash across it. Flung off his feet, Kroll lost his balance and tripped across the small table by the reception desk.

As he picked himself up, swearing in a low snarl, Maitland dived forward at the automatic held loosely in his hand. Above their heads the lights swung eerily, and the floor remained tilted at a slight angle.

"Lanyon!" Maitland shouted. "Get his gun!"

Behind him, Lanyon dived out of the elevator and hurled himself onto Kroll.

As they staggered across the sloping floor, Lanyon slammed a heavy punch into Kroll's neck, pounding the big man with the full force of his weight. Kroll rolled with the blow, holding off Maitland with his left arm, trying to free the automatic Maitland had seized with both hands.

For a moment they struggled tensely. Butting with his head, Kroll drove the heavy helmet up into Maitland's face. Maitland gasped for breath and sat down on the floor, grabbing Kroll's jacket with one hand and pulling the big man on top of him. Kroll pulled himself up onto his knees, sitting astride Maitland, and knocked Maitland's hands away with a heavy left swing. As he rammed his forefinger into the trigger guard and leveled the automatic at Maitland's chest, Lanyon picked a massive glass ashtray off the reception desk beside them and brought the edge down across the narrow strip of exposed neck below Kroll's helmet.

The big man began to slump and Lanyon reached down and turned him by the shoulder and then slashed him again across the face with the ashtray, knocking his head backward onto the top of the desk, his face like an inflamed skull's.

"You've got him," Maitland gasped. He stood up and staggered back against the wall and Kroll sank loosely onto his knees and then collapsed across the floor, blood running from a deep wound behind his ear onto the carpet. Maitland picked up the automatic, held the butt in both hands. "God, that was close!"

Lanyon tried to find his balance on the angling floor. "What the hell's happening here? The whole pyramid seems to be tipping over!"

The down light flashed in the indicator panel over the elevator.

"Warning!" Lanyon said. "Come on, let's get out of here."

"Wait a minute," Maitland told him. Gripping the automatic carefully, he ran up the incline toward Hardoon's office.

The room was in darkness, the only light coming from the observation window. Books had spilled from the high shelves and lay across the floor, chairs and tables had careened over to the far wall. Hardoon had been thrown heavily off balance, was pushing himself back to the window along the edge of the desk.

Maitland had started to move toward him when the floor tilted again, dropping an inch below his feet like a jerking elevator. He stumbled, saw Hardoon pitch sideways across the desk. Books cascaded from the shelves like toppling dominoes. Hardoon regained his footing, seized the window ledge with both hands and pulled himself back.

Maitland crossed to the desk, stepped around it and touched Hardoon on the shoulder. The millionaire looked back at him blindly, the flickering light outside illuminating his storm-riven features.

"Hardoon!" Maitland shouted. "Get away from here!"

Hardoon shook him off, turned to the window. For a few seconds Maitland stared out at the scene below. The storm wind swept by at colossal speed, the dark clouds now and then breaking to reveal the dim outlines of the fortified shelters. The two long buttress walls had disappeared. In their place an enormous ravine, at least 100 feet deep, had opened in the ground, and a swift torrent of water emerged from the mouth of a huge rift and ran straight below the left-hand corner of the pyramid, carrying with it an everincreasing load of debris swept from the exposed sides. On the extreme left, protruding out through the wall of the ravine, Maitland could see the sharp rectangular outlines of part of the main bunker system, the communications tunnel straddling the ravine like a bridge. Once fifty feet below ground, it was now completely exposed for almost a third of its length. Behind it were the square ledges and walls of other portions of the bunker, their unsupported weight wrenching huge cracks in their surface.

The floor tilted again, throwing the two men against each other. Maitland steadied himself, helped Hardoon back onto his feet. The older man clung forward at the window, holding it desperately.

"Hardoon!" Maitland shouted again. "The entire pyramid is toppling! For God's sake get out while you can! Look down there and see for yourself, the foundations are being carried away."

Hardoon ignored him. Eyes glazed, he stared obsessively into the night, watching the whirlwind of black air.

Maitland hesitated, then left him. As he crossed the room the floor sank abruptly and one of the bookshelves fell forward and crashed down across a chair. Maitland ducked past it, pausing at the door to look back for the last time at Hardoon. By now the angle of the floor was almost ten degrees, and the millionaire was staring upward into the sky like some Wagnerian super-hero in a besieged Valhalla.

"Maitland!" Lanyon shouted urgently. He was standing by the elevator shaft, gesturing. On the floor beside him Kroll stirred slowly, drawing his long legs together.

Maitland stepped quickly into the lift. "We'll leave him here," he said to Lanyon. "Perhaps he can save Hardoon." He stabbed the ground button, and the elevator slipped and then sank slowly down the shaft.

Waring and Patricia Olsen were crouching by the tunnel entrance as they stepped out, glancing up anxiously at the tilting ceiling.

"There's every chance that the whole pyramid will keel over," Maitland said. "Our best hope is to get back into the bunkers. Once the channel forces its way past the pyramid the shelters should drain again. Already they're well above the floor of the ravine."

As they stepped back into the tunnel the pyramid jerked heavily, throwing them against the wall. Deep fissures had appeared in the cement. They ran along it, Maitland and Lanyon helping Patricia Olsen. Halfway down the tunnel they felt a second tremendous wrench that threw them onto their knees. Looking back, they saw a short section of the corridor buckle, its walls twisted like cardboard. At the same time, once again they heard the sound of the wind hammering past.

They reached the doorway at the far end. Inside, as Maitland had anticipated, the corridors had drained but the bulkheads were still sealed behind the breastwork.

As he looked back for the last time down the tunnel, Maitland saw the section 20 yards away abruptly rise up into the air like the limb of a drawbridge. For a moment there was a cascade of masonry and ruptured steelwork, and then the entire tunnel fell back to reveal a blinding sweep of daylight. Sucked out of the still intact section of tunnel attached to the bunker, air swept past Maitland under pressure, and he was dragged forward a dozen feet before he held himself against a step in one of the walls.

Through the open aperture he looked out into the huge ravine below, like the hundred-yard-wide trench working of a six-lane underpass. Dust and exploding gravel obscured its sides, bursting through the narrowing venturi, but he could see the great bulk of the pyramid towering overhead. The ravine led directly below it, but at least two-thirds of its base still rested on solid earth, the overhanging portion revealing the L-piece of the communicating tunnel jutting below. The pyramid had tilted by a full ten degrees, snapping the tunnel in half like a straw.

Peering up, Maitland tried to identify the observation window in the apex, but it was hidden behind the dark clouds of detonating grit.

"Maitland!" he heard someone shout behind him, but he felt unable to tear his eyes from the spectacle before him. Like some enormous wounded mastodon, the pyramid reared up into the storm wind, the precarious shelf of ground on which it rested being cut away yard by yard as Maitland watched. The ravine deepened as the channel grew wider, now that the obstruction of the bunker system had been passed. For a few seconds the pyramid poised precariously, tipping slowly, apparently held by the adhesive forces of the ground below the small portion of its base still fastened to the supporting shelf.

Then, with a sudden final lurch, it toppled over the edge, and in a blinding explosion of dust and flying rock it fell sideways into the ravine. For a few moments its massive bulk rose over the clouds of debris, its apex pointed obliquely downward, resting on its lef thand face. Then the wind began to cover it, burying it completely beneath vast drifts of dust.

Stunned, Maitland gazed out at the scene of this cataclysmic convulsion. At his shoulder he found Lanyon, his arm around Patricia Olsen, with Waring behind them. Together they stared down into the ravine, watching the dust clouds pour past at incredible speed. Then numbly the little group withdrew along the short stump of tunnel and made its way into the corridor.

Waring and Patricia Olsen sat down on the top step of the stairway. Lanyon leaned against the wall, while Maitland squatted on the floor.

"I guess you've got your story, all right, Pat," Lanyon said to the girl.

She nodded, pulling the hood of her jacket closer around her cold face. "Yes, and maybe I can even believe it now. Just about the end to everything."

"What do we do now, Commander?" Waring asked. "We're not really much better off, are we? It's only a matter of hours before this place starts breaking up like a derelict wreck."

Lanyon pulled himself together. On either side heavy bulkheads sealed the two corridors branching off from the stairway, huge cement-filled sandbags blocking their approach. He and Maitland examined the cracks appearing in the ceiling. Forced by their own weight, no longer supported by the surrounding earth, the bunkers were breaking apart. As Waring had said, soon the staircase and the segments of corridor would detach themselves and fall onto the floor of the ravine 6o feet below.

"I'll try the stairway," Lanyon told the others. "There's a chance we may be safer down below."

Stepping past Pat Olsen, he began to make his way around, peering through the thin light. He had almost completed one circle when his foot plunged through the surface of a pool of water. Reaching down with his hands, he found that the stairwell was full. The three levels below had been completely flooded.

He rejoined the others. They had moved into the left-hand corridor, were pressed against the collapsing breastwork of sandbags. Maitland gestured Lanyon over quickly. Looking up, he saw that one of the cracks across the roof of the stairway was now two feet wide, a deep fissure in the thick concrete now widened perceptibly, moving in rigid jerks as the reinforcing bars snapped one by one like the teeth of a giant zip.

Suddenly, before he expected it, the entire corner section of the bunker containing the stairway and the recess between the corridors twisted and slid away into the ravine, sending up a tremendous cloud of white dust. A narrow projection of ceiling separated them from the open air stream, but above this was another toppling piece of masonry, a huge section of the original wall pivoting on its stem of reinforcing bars. Most of these had snapped, and the giant slab, a block weighing 15 or 20 tons, was slowly tilting down over them.

Seeing it, Patricia Olsen began to scream helplessly, but Lanyon managed to steady her for a moment, looking around desperately for some way of escape. Their only chance seemed to be to slide down into the ravine, then hope they would find some narrow crevice where they could shelter from the monster poised above them.

Quickly he seized Patricia's arm, began to pull her toward the edge. She dug her heels in desperately, still clinging to the temporary safety of the ledge.

"No, Steve! Please, I can't!"

"Darling, you've got to!" Lanyon bellowed at her above the roar of the wind. He twisted her arm roughly, dragging her with him, holding the ragged ledge with his free hand before pushing her over.

"Lanyon! Wait!" Maitland grabbed his shoulder, then pulled Patricia back before she could fall. "Look! Up there!"

They craned upward. Miraculously, the great wall section towering above them was slowly keeling backward away from them into the wind. Showers of stones and flying pieces of rubble cascaded across its exposed surface, but by some extraordinary reversal of the laws of nature, it was no longer yielding to the greater force of the wind.

Amazed, they looked up at this incredible defiance, intervening like some act of God to save them.

Suddenly Maitland shouted out into the air, began to pound insanely on the wall of the ledge. For a moment he raged away hysterically, and then Lanyon and Waring held his arms and tried to calm him.

"Hold it, Doctor," Lanyon roared into his face. "Don't be a fool. Control yourself!"

Maitland shook himself free. "Look, Lanyon, up there! Don't you realize what's happened, why that wall fell away from us, _into_ the wind? Don't you see?" When they frowned at him in bewilderment he shouted, "_The wind's dropping!_ It's finally spent itself!"

Sure enough, the great fragment of wall was moving slowly forward into the face of the wind. Maitland pointed at the sky around them. "The air's lighter already! The wind's dying down, you can hear it. It's finally subsiding!"

Together they looked out across the ravine. As Maitland had said, visibility had now increased to over 6oo yards. They could see plainly across the black fields beyond the estate, even trace the remains of a road winding along the periphery. The sky itself had lightened, was now an overcast gray, the sweeping pathways across it inclined slightly downward.

Like a cosmic carousel nearing the end of its run, the storm wind was slowly losing speed.