‘Lieutenant! Lieutenant Schaffer! I’m up here.’
Schaffer turned and lifted his head in an almost grotesque slow motion and this time the whole universe of brightly dancing stars was reduced to the odd constellation or two. He recognised the voice from the distant past now, it was that of Mary Ellison, he even thought he recognised the pale strained face looking down from above, but he couldn’t be sure, his eyes weren’t focusing as they should. He wondered dizzily what the hell she was doing up there staring down at him through what appeared to be the bars of a shattered sky-light: his mind, he dimly realised, was operating with all the speed and subtle fluency of a man swimming upstream against a river of black molasses.
‘Are you — are you all right?’ Mary asked.
Schaffer considered this ridiculous question carefully. ‘I expect I shall be,’ he said with great restraint. ‘What happened?’
‘They hit you with your own gun.’
‘That’s right.’ Schaffer nodded and immediately wished he hadn’t. He gingerly fingered a bruise on the back, of his head. ‘In the face. I must have struck my head as — ‘ He broke off and turned slowly to face the door. ‘What was that?’
‘A dog. It sounded like a dog barking.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ His voice slurred and indistinct, he staggered drunkenly across to the lower iron door and put his ear to it. ‘Dogs,’ he said. ‘Lots of dogs. And lots and lots of hammering. Sledge-hammers, like enough.’ He left the door and walked back to the centre of the floor, still staggering slightly. “They’re on to us and they’re coming for us. Where’s the Major?’
‘He went after them.’ The voice was empty of all feeling. ‘He jumped on to the top of the cable-car.’
‘He did, eh?’ Schaffer received the news as if Smith’s action had been the most natural and inevitable thing in the world. ‘How did he make out?’
‘How did he make — ù’ There was life back in her voice now, a shocked anger at Schaffer’s apparent callousness. She checked herself and said: ‘There was a fight and I think someone fell off the roof. I don’t know who it was.’
‘It was one of them,’ Schaffer said positively.
‘One of — -how can you say that?’
“The Major Smiths of this world don’t drive over the edge of a cliff. Quotation from the future Mrs. Schaffer. The Major Smiths of this world don’t fall off the roofs of cable-cars. Quotation from the future Mrs. Schaffer’s future husband.’
‘You’re recovering,’ Mary said coldly. ‘But I think you’re right. There’s still someone sitting on top of the cable-car and it wouldn’t be one of them, would it?’
‘How do you know there’s someone sitting–‘
‘Because I can see him,’ she said impatiently. ‘It’s bright moonlight. Look for yourself.’
Schaffer looked for himself, then rubbed a weary forearm across aching eyes. ‘I have news for you, love/ he said. ‘I can’t even see the damn’ cable-car.”
The cable-car was ten yards away from the central pylon. Smith, upright now, stooped, tore off the two friction fuses, straightened and, holding the cable in his left hand, took up position just on the inner side of the car roof. At the last moment he released his grip on the cable and stretched both arms out before him to break the impact of his body against the suspension arm. The ascending car on the other cable was now almost as close to the central pylon as his own. It didn’t seem possible that he could make it in time.
The impact of the horizontal suspension arm drove the thought from his mind and all the breath from his body; had it not been for the buffering effect of his outstretched arms, Smith was sure, some of his ribs must have gone. As it was, he was almost completely winded but he forced himself to ignore the pain and his heaving lungs’ demand for oxygen, swung his feet up till they rested on the lower cross-girder, hooked his hands round the upper girder and made his way quickly across to the other side. At least, his hands and his feet moved quickly, but the steel was so thickly coated in clear smooth ice that his scrabbling feet could find almost no purchase whatsoever on the lower girder. He had reached no farther than the middle when the ascending car began to pass under its suspension arm. For the first time that night Smith blessed the brightness of the moon. He took two more slipping, sliding steps and launched himself towards the ice-coated cable that glittered so brightly in the pale moonlight.
His left hand caught the cable, his right arm hooked over it and the cable itself caught him high up on the chest. He had made no mistake about the location of his hand and arm, but his sliding take-off had caused his body to fall short and the cable slid up under his chin with a jerk that threatened to decapitate him. His legs swung out far beneath him, swung back and touched the roof as he lowered himself to the full extent of his left arm. He released his grip on the cable, dropped on all fours and reached out blindly but successfully for one of the arms of the suspension bracket. For long seconds he knelt there, retching uncontrollably as he was flooded by the nausea and pain from his throat and still winded lungs: then, by and by, the worst of it passed and he lay face down on the floor as the cable-car began to increase its pendulum swing with the increasing distance from the central pylon. He would not have believed that a man could be so totally exhausted and yet still have sufficient residual strength and sufficient self-preservation instinct to hang on to that treacherous and precarious hand-hold on that ice-coated roof.
Long seconds passed and some little measure of strength began to return to his limbs and body. Wearily, he hauled himself up into a sitting position, twisted round and gazed back down the valley.
The cable-car he had so recently abandoned was now hardly more than fifty yards from the lowermost pylon. Thomas and Christiansen sat huddled in the middle, the latter wrapping a makeshift bandage round his injured hand. Both fore and aft doors were still open as they were when the abortive attack on Smith had been made. That neither of the two men had ventured near the extremities of the car to try to close either of the doors was proof enough of the respect, if not fear, in which Smith was now held.
From the roof of the cable-car came a brilliant flash of light, magnesium-blinding in its white intensity: simultaneously there came the sound of two sharp explosions, so close together as to be indistinguishable in time. The two rear supports of the suspension bracket broke and the car, suspended now by only the two front supports, tilted violently, the front going up, the rear down.
Inside, the angle of the floor of the car changed in an instant from the horizontal to at least thirty degrees. Christiansen was flung back towards the still open rear door. He grabbed despairingly at the side — but he grabbed with his wounded hand. Soundlessly, he vanished through the open doorway and as soundlessly fell to the depths of the valley below.
Thomas, with two sound hands and faster reactions, had succeeded in saving himself — for the moment. He glanced up and saw where the roof was beginning to buckle and break as the forward two suspension arm support brackets, now subjected to a wrenching lateral pressure they had never been designed to withstand, began to tear their retaining bolts free. Thomas struggled up the steeply inclined floor till he stood in the front doorway: because of the tilt of the car, now almost 45§ as the front supports worked loose, the leading edge of the roof was almost touching the car. Thomas reached up, grabbed the cable with both hands, and had just cleared his legs from the doorway when the two front supports tore free fram the roof in a rending screech of metal. The cable-car fell away, slowly turning end over end.
Despite the cable’s violent buffeting caused by the sudden release of the weight of the car, Thomas had managed to hang on. He twisted round and saw the suspension arm of the lowest pylon only feet away. The sudden numbing of all physical and mental faculties was accurately and shockingly reflected in the frozen fear of his face, the lips drawn back in a snarling rictus of terror. The knuckles of the hands gleamed like burnished ivory. And then, suddenly, there were no hands there, just the suspension arm and the empty wire and a long fading scream in the night.
As his -cable-car approached the header station, Smith edged well forward to clear the lip of the roof. From where he crouched it was impossible to see the east wing of the Schloss Adler but if the columns of dense smoke now drifting across the valley were anything to go by, the fire seemed to have an unshakable hold. Clouds were again moving across the moon and this could be both a good thing and a bad thing: a good thing in that it would afford them cover and help obscure those dense clouds of smoke, a bad thing in that it was bound to high-light the flames from the burning castle. It could only be a matter of time, Smith reflected, before the attention of someone in the village or the barracks beyond was caught by the fire or the smoke. Or, he thought grimly, by the increasing number of muffled explosions coming from the castle itself. He wondered what might be the cause of them: Schaffer hadn’t had the time to lay all those distractions.