The Wind From Nowhere

5 The Scavengers

"Pat."

The girl stirred, murmured something as she lay half asleep in his arms on the old mattress against the wall, then nestled closer to him.

With his free hand Lanyon stroked her blonde hair, sweeping it back gently over her small neat ears, then kissed her carefully on the forehead, trying to keep his four-day stubble away from her skin. Pressed against him, she felt warm and comfortable, wearing his leather jacket around her shoulders while her own coat covered their legs, buttoned up around them.

Lanyon looked down and watched her face, her eyelids moving occasionally as she reached toward the surface of consciousness, her full lips slightly parted in a relaxed smile, wide smooth cheekbones still unblemished by the duststorms. She breathed steadily, then slowly raised her head and slipped his left arm from beneath it.

"Steve?" She stirred, opened her eyes sleepily as he disengaged his legs from the coat.

He bent down and kissed her mouth gently. "It's O.K., darling. You sleep. I'm just going to smell the air."

He covered her carefully, then stood up and stepped across her to the other end of the pillbox, head stooped to avoid the roof. Outside, the air whistled past interminably, the turbulence around the hill face making it difficult to assess its velocity.

Lanyon searched his pockets, found a packet of Caporals he had discovered in a cupboard at the airfield, lit one carefully and went over to the gun slit. They had blocked it with a heap of bricks and stones. Pulling a few of them away, Lanyon carefully dislodged a brick in the center of the pile and slowly slid it back.

From his watch he noted it was 7:35 A.M. Outside, through the narrow gun slit, he could see across the ruined dam down the valley to Genoa and the sea. Clouds of dust and vapor lowered the ceiling to little more than two or three hundred yards, and visibility to half a mile.

The pillbox had been built into the mouth of one of the caves in the cliff face overlooking the east side of the dam. Shielded by the 300-foot bluff above and recessed ten feet back into the cave mouth, it provided an excellent vantage point from which to survey the valley below. Lanyon noticed that the dam had almost completely vanished by now, a thin ragged rim of concrete four or five feet high all that remained of the original 1 oo-foot wall. The reservoir behind it had been drained, the bed eaten smooth by the air passing overhead, strewn now with countless boulders and rock fragments blown in from the hills.

Lanyon wondered if most of the world's great rivers had been similarly drained. Was the Amazon a dry mile-wide ribbon of sand, the Mississippi a 2,000-mile-long inland beach?

Three miles away the coastline and the sea were a blur, but the port of Genoa appeared to be sealed by a ring of wrecks. Almost certainly the _Terrapin_ would still be at its berth in the sub-pen, unless he had been abandoned and the ship recruited for some other special mission, in which case it was probably lying on the bottom of the ocean. The chances of reaching the sub-pens seemed slim, but over the past days they had managed to get from the airfield to their present retreat, and with luck they would keep moving.

Lanyon pulled on the cigarette, watching a large wooden shed sail through the air 50 feet off the ground about half a mile away. It was still intact, rotating slowly, apparently just dislodged from some protected site. Suddenly it struck the shoulder of one of the hills leaning into the valley, and immediately disintegrated like a bursting shell into a momentary cloud of pieces each no bigger than a matchbox.

He replaced the brick and packed the window slit carefully. Patricia was still asleep, apparently exhausted. They had arrived at the pillbox two days ago, after a frantic 90-mile-an-hour ride in a renovated staff car. Here they had enough food for a few more days-two or three cans of salt pork they had found in the basement, a basket of rotting peaches and half a dozen bottles of coarse wine.

Lanyon slipped out through the doorway into the rear of the cave. Ten yards from the pilibox the floor dipped downward and expanded into a wide gallery which had been used as a mess room by the troops guarding the dam. Tiers of bunks lined the walls, and two long rough tables were in the center, strewn with unwashed cutlery and bits of bread. Water dripped from a score of cracks in the ceiling, forming in pools on the floor or running away into the other caves leading off from the gallery.

Lanyon picked up a clean jerrican, scooped up some of the water and then put it on the table. Treading through the debris of sodden magazines and cigarette packets, he made his way to the rear of the gallery, took one of the lower passageways that had been fitted with a simple railing. It curved downward slightly, and appeared to be the emergency exit out into the ravine behind the cliff. A side road had led into the ravine, but Lanyon had been unable to steer the car into it when they arrived, and they had been carried into the lee of the cliff and left to crawl out of the wreck and climb up the face to the pillbox 50 feet above.

At several points the cave broke through the side of the cliff and through the apertures Lanyon could see across to the sheer brownstone face twenty yards away. Air gusted into the ravine, but small firs and thornbushes still clung to rocky ledges. He and Patricia would probably be able to use the route if it led in the right direction.

He stepped out of the mouth at the bottom and looked around him. The cliffs on either side went up 300 feet and a continuous cascade of stones and rocks fell from their tops, spitting at the ground around Lanyon's feet. Bracing himself against the wall of the ravine, he slid along through the downdraught of air, trying to see where the narrow corridor led. Overhanging shelves of rock shielded him occasionally from the hail. The high gulleys ran away at oblique angles into the hills, and the whole system appeared to move southwest, in the direction of Genoa and the sea.

One hundred yards out, he turned back and re-entered the cave.

Patricia was sitting up when he reached the pillbox, combing her hair in the mirror of her compact. She had lost her handbag and make-up but her lips were full and red, her skin a honey cream, and she looked fresh and vital, even though she had been through the last five days with little to eat and a minimum of rest.

"Hello, Steve." She smiled up at him. "Anything happening?"

"Still blowing hard," he told her. "Looks as if it's nearing the twohundred-mile-an-hour mark. How do you feel?"

"Wonderful. This is the life that really does a girl good." She reached out to take his hand, the lapels of the windbreaker swinging back.

"Whoops," she said. She pulled Lanyon down to her. "Anyone else around?" she asked.

Lanyon shook his head, grinned affectionately at her.

"No. Go ahead, though, I'm watching."

Patricia put her finger on his nose, pushed him back. "Now, now, Commander, just put away that naughty periscope. And you haven't shaved."

Lanyon took her in his arms and they wrestled playfully on the mattress. He kissed her hard on the mouth, then sat up and looked at his watch. "Pat, I hate to break up a party, but if we're going to get out of here we'd better start moving soon. Do you feel strong enough?"

Lying back, she nodded and put her hand on his arm.

"Just about. What do we have to do?"

"There's a ravine that leads off toward the city. With luck we may be able to reach the outskirts, then pick up some military transport." He looked at his watch. "I'm frightened that if we don't get back soon Matheson may accidentally scuttle the ship. Or else that it'll be detailed off on some other wild-goose chase."

He stood up and pulled a can out of the Italian army haversack hung below the gun slit. Clipping open the lid, he carried it and the jerrican across to Patricia.

"It's probably worth trying to eat some more of this stuff, even though it doesn't look it. Anyway, if it's any consolation it's not much worse than the chow aboard the _Terrapin_."

Forking some of the pork into her mouth, Patricia pulled a face. "Crumbs, I don't know whether I'll come with you after all." She paused, her face worried. "Steve, do you really think they'll let me on? I know you're the captain and all that, but after the admirals' wives have made themselves comfortable there just may not be enough room for a working gal from NBC."

Lanyon smiled at her. "Relax. There aren't any admirals' wives in the neighborhood, let alone any admirals. You'll be on board even if I have to marry you."

"_Even?_" Patricia said in a playful tone. "Well, thanks."

A vortex of air whirling down the face of the cliff pulled at the pillbox, shifting the stones heaped into the window slit, spitting dust over their heads. Lanyon took her hand and steadied her, then lifted her to her feet. His hands felt her shoulders under the windbreaker, her ash-blonde hair billowing across his face as her head tipped back under the pressure of his mouth on her lips.

Entering the ravine, they moved cautiously along the east wall, sheltering under the overhanging shelves while showers of stones drove down from the roof, darting forward during the clear periods. Air swirled around them, exploding with vicious snaps as vortices span off the lips of the ravine and burst against the floor 300 feet below. Higher up, just under the roof, they could see a few forlorn firs clinging to their footholds in the sides of the rock face, their outlines blurring as they quivered in the duststorm.

They reached the point to which Lanyon had explored previously, where the ravine divided, the larger space, on the northern side, gradually opening out into a wide-walled valley, across which the air stream moved like a huge wave front over a rockpool, sucking away every loose fragment of rock, every vestige of vegetation. Lanyon realized that if they ventured into the valley the negativepressure field would probably suck them straight up into the air and whirl them away toward the hills in the west.

The southern division was little more than a narrow fissure in the rock face, shelving away toward the southeast at a gradually tilting angle. Once a small stream had splashed down it, and the stones were smooth and polished, still damp in the sandy bed.

They climbed along it, a narrow ribbon of daylight winding somewhere above them to the left. Lanyon held Patricia's hand, steered her over heavy boulders and spurs, pulling her across smooth polished slabs that fell across their pathway like eroded tombstones.

For half an hour they made steady progress eastward, moving, Lanyon estimated, at least a mile nearer the city, almost in sight of the farthest suburbs. The ravine opened into a narrow flat-bottomed canyon, the sheer face on its eastern side sheltering the treecovered slopes stretching away from them.

Patricia pulled Lanyon's arm.

"Steve, look. Over there. Is that a farmhouse?"

Lanyon followed her pointing finger, saw the low ragged outline of what had once been a castellated wall curving away along a road which crossed the end of the canyon.

"May be part of an old castle or chateau," Lanyon commented. "With luck we'll find someone else there. Come on."

On their right the ground shelved steeply to the crest of the cliff 150 feet above them. Built onto the supporting shoulders was what bad once been a monastery, a long two-storied complex of massive stone walls and buttresses five or six hundred years old. The top story and roof had been stripped away but the lower section, just under the crest, was still intact, rooted into the sloping rock face below.

The ruined wall enclosed what was left of the garden and vineyards. Halfway along, an arched doorway let into a yard between low outbuildings. Lanyon took Patricia's arm, and they bent down and moved slowly along the wall toward the entrance. They paused in one of the doorways, and Lanyon pounded on the heavy wooden shutters.

"No one here!" he yelled to Patricia. "Let's see if we can get inside." They moved around the yard, trying the windows and shutters. All the entrances had been carefully sealed, the doors into the main building braced with padlocked crossbars. Lanyon pointed to the circular stone lid of the grain chute recessed into the cobbles.

"There's a good chance we'll be able to get in through here." He pulled out his jack knife, snapped the blade open and pried it in under the lip of the lid, tearing his nails as he wrestled the heavy disc out of its socket. Finally he freed it, dragged it to one side and peered down into the chute. Fifteen feet below the polished metal slide angled down into one of the storage silos, wooden stalls half filled with grain. Lanyon took Patricia's hands, watched her disappear down into the dim half light.

He followed her quickly, trying to brace himself but ending up to his waist in the soft rustling grain. They shook their clothes free, Patricia leaning on Lanyon's shoulder, and thoved below the arched ceiling toward a low flight of steps that led into another storeroom. Here and there light filtered in through narrow grilles, revealing the dim outlines of corridors winding between massive pillars and vaulted ceilings.

The next storeroom was empty. They crossed it, walked down a short flight of ancient steps into the basement of the monastery itself.

"Looks as if this monastery's been disused for some while," Lanyon commented to Patricia. "The local farmers probably work the land and store their grain here."

They reached heavy wooden doors at the end of the corridor. Lanyon turned the circular hasp in the lock and peered through into total darkness. Taking out his flashlight, he flashed it on, then whistled sharply.

"Wait a minute, Pat. I think I'm wrong."

They were looking into a large storeroom about 30 yards long, floor and far wall cut into the cliff itself, roof carried by massive buttresses. Stacked in lines down the full length of the room were hundreds of huge crates and cartons, their contents glinting in the torch beam.

"The monks must have stored everything away here before they left," Lanyon muttered. They moved forward down one of the aisles. He brushed against a square waist-high object that gonged metallically, then shone the torch on a large white washing machine.

He tapped it to attract Patricia's attention. "Up to date, aren't they?" Moving the torch, he then saw that there were half a dozen other machines next to it, all of them taped with the manufacturer's protective wrappers.

Pausing, he started to examine the stacks of cases more carefully.

"These haven't even been used," Patricia commented.

Lanyon nodded. "I know. Something curious about all this. Look at those." He swung the flashlight against the wall, where the blank eyes of 20 or 30 TV receivers stared back at them, like a display in a darkened shop window. Next to the TV sets were two big red-and-yellow plastic-fronted jukeboxes, and beyond these a pile of radios, vacuum cleaners and electric stoves, heaped with smaller cartons containing irons, hair driers and other domestic appliances.

Flashing the torch, Lanyon walked slowly down the aisle. On the left, down the center of the storeroom, was a solid wall of what appeared to be machine tools-lathes, circular saws, jig-cutting equipment-the steel bearings and drives pasted over with brown tape.

"One of the stores must be using this place as its warehouse," Patricia remarked. "Strange selection of items, though."

Lanyon nodded. "How did they get all this stuff up here?" They bad reached the far end of the room, and he turned the handle of the double oak doors. "Looks to me-"

As he opened the door, lights moved at the far end of the corridor beyond, and he had a brief impression of four or five men shifting some bulky object on a small trolley. He pushed the door to and snapped off the torch, just as a shout of recognition went up.

"Steve, they've seen us!" Lanyon held Patricia's arm.

"Listen, Pat, I'm not sure who these people are. They look like looters to me. We'd better get out of here."

He switched on the torch again and they ran quickly down the aisle past the stacks of radios and washing machines. As they reached the doorway Lanyon saw a large black-garbed figure moving silently below the vaulted arches of the adjacent storeroom. The man noticed the beam of Lanyon's torch and immediately slid back into the darkness behind one of the pillars.

Lanyon pulled Patricia back into an alcove between the door and the stack of TV sets. He slipped his.45 automatic out of its holster, eased up the safety catch.

"Wait here, Pat," he whispered. "Try not to move. Someone came in after us through the grain store. I'll see if I can get behind him." He felt her hand hold his tightly, her face tense. He dived through the doorway and crouched down behind one of the pillars, just as the doors on the far side of the storeroom swung back and torches flared across the piles of merchandise.

Lanyon began to edge forward to a central pillar that fanned out in the middle of the chamber. Ahead of him he could hear someone moving along the stonework.

He was halfway across when lights flooded on in the storeroom behind him, a string of bulbs around the walls filling the chamber with hard white light. Voices shouted out again, feet hammered across the stone floor.

Spinning around, he ran back to the storeroom, reached the door just as Patricia, hiding in the alcove a few feet from him, screamed.

Dazzled for a moment by the light, Lanyon's eyes raced around the room. He caught a fleeting glimpse of two swarthy-faced men in black trousers and windbreakers swarming between the crates, then saw a third moving nimbly halfway down the aisle, a heavy Mauser in one hand, the long barrel pointed at Patricia.

The shot roared out into the confined air, slamming against the tiers of metal cabinets, the flame flashing off the TV screens. One next to Patricia shattered in a burst of glass. The man with the Mauser stopped, feet placed wide apart, then raised the gun again.

Dropping to one knee, Lanyon straightened his arm, steadied his elbow with his left hand, then fired quickly. The power of the.45 stunned the air for a moment, and the two men on the far side of the room ducked down. The gunman with the Mauser had been kicked back onto the floor by the heavy bullet passing through his chest, and lay inertly on his face, blood leaking slowly across the cobbles.

Lanyon knelt down to see if Patricia was all right, but out of the side of his eye was aware of someone bending over him. He managed to duck just as the blow caught his ear, rode onto thefloor with it. As he started to get up the man kicked him viciously in the chest and Lanyon staggered back, ribs tearing with pain, trying to level his automatic.

Then the other two men were on him, wrestling him down onto the floor again, their fists slamming at his face. A heavy boot stamped onto his hand, knocking the gun away, and then he was pulled back on his feet and propped up against one of the packing cases. He had a confused image of Patricia down on her knees; then a big man with a red vicious face clubbed him savagely across the forehead with the barrel of the.45. Lanyon sagged over and smashed on the floor. The big man snapped the gun butt into his hand and leveled it at Lanyon, his eyes narrowing like an insane pig's.

The two other men stood waiting expectantly, one of them with his knee in the small of Patricia's back, holding her down on the floor. Lanyon rolled wearily against the case, trying to clear his eyes of the blood running from the wound across his temple, barely aware of the gun barrel a few inches from his head.

Suddenly the big man paused, lowered the gun, then stepped forward and ripped open Lanyon's windbreaker, grabbing the lapels of his drill jacket, fingering the gold USN tabs. He stuffed the automatic into his belt and cuffed Lanyon's head back, running his strong thick fingers over Lanyon's bruised cheeks.

He tapped Lanyon's face softly, and a grim smile broke across his huge features. He took Lanyon by the shoulders, shook him twice in his strong arms.

"Eh, Capitano!" he called out. "You O.K., boy?"

When Lanyon steadied himself and looked at him, he stepped back and gestured to his men to help Patricia to her feet. Then he grinned at Lanyon, pulled one of the men over to him by the shoulder, and spoke to him rapidly in Italian, jerking his thumb at Lanyon.

The man nodded, then spoke to Lanyon.

"You help Luigi at Viamillia," he told Lanyon matter-of-factly. "He ask how you feeling?"

Lanyon looked across at Luigi, massaging his painful neck with one hand. Dimly he remembered the huge distraught Italian in the damaged church, hurling the debris off the pews like a maddened bull.

Patricia stumbled across to him and he put his arm around her, pressed her head into his shoulder.

"Steve, are you all right?" she gasped. "Who are they? What are they going to do with us?"

Lanyon pulled himself together, managed to smile back at Luigi. He spoke to the interpreter, a small thin-faced man with a striped shirt.

"Sure, I remember him. Tell him I'm just about in one piece, but I could use some water." While the thin-faced man interpreted, Lanyon patted Patricia's shoulder. "We ran into him in a small town on the way out of Genoa. His family were trapped in a church. We helped get them out."

Luigi nodded to the interpreter, gestured them all across the storeroom to the door. Slowly they made their way out, avoiding the body of the gunman lying on the floor in a widening pool of blood. Luigi picked up the Mauser, rammed it into his belt next to Lanyon's.45. They entered the corridor, then turned off through a small doorway into a narrow low-ceilinged room where a single light burned low over a bare wooden table. Inset into the Walls were four bunks, the bedding rumpled and filthy.

One of the men snapped off the corridor lights and closed the door behind them, but Lanyon noticed a small printing press on the trolley outside.

Luigi pulled up a chair by the table and Lanyon lowered himself siowiy into it, Patricia sitting down on the edge of the bed behind him. Luigi barked at the two men; one slipped outside and returned a moment later with a jug full of water, and the little interpreter rooted along the shelf over the fireplace and produced a grimy glass. Luigi took it, pulled the cork out of a bottle of chianti, poured some into the glass and passed it across to Patricia, then pushed the bottle over to Lanyon.

Lanyon swabbed down his face and neck, then tore one pocket off his shirt and pasted it over the wound on his forehead. Slightly refreshed, he sat back and put his hand reassuringly on Patricia's knee, squeezed her thigh.

First tipping the neck of the bottle toward Luigi, he filled his mouth with the harsh bitter wine, then passed it back across the table.

Luigi pulled up a chair and sat down. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Ship? You?" He spoke to the interpreter, who was clearing the jug of water.

"Luigi asks if you go back for your ship?"

Lanyon nodded. "Trying to. How can we get there-the submarine base? You know any covered roads?"

The interpreter translated this for Luigi, and the two men looked at each other silently for a moment. Then Luigi frowned and muttered something.

"Very strong wind," the interpreter explained. "Can't move on the streets now. Big hotels, houses-" he snapped his fingers "-all going bang!

Lanyon glanced at his watch. It was 2:35. Soon it would be dark; movement would be impossible until the next morning.

"What about everything in the storeroom?" he asked curtly. "How did you get it up here? You were carrying something big in just now."

There was a lengthy consultation, during which the interpreter shrugged repeatedly and Luigi appeared to be trying to make up his mind.

Lanyon spoke to Patricia over his shoulder. "They must be looting the warehouses and stores around here. Presumably looting is now punishable by death. I suppose he's afraid we'll report him to the military governor."

The other man, older, with a dry wizened face and a cropped skull, joined in the conversation, throwing sharp reminders across the table at Luigi, who was fingering his gun belt uneasily. Finally he appeared to come to a decision. He rapped something out and they all fell silent.

Luigi smiled slowly at Lanyon, relaxing perceptibly, then leaned forward and pulled a crumpled bundle of paper out of his hip pocket. Carefully his big workman's fingers pried the pages open, and he spread out a battered map of the city, streets ringed crudely with penciled circles, marked into a series of zones.

The interpreter pulled up a chair and pointed to the map. "We take you," he said to Lanyon after he and Luigi had muttered softly to each other. "But, er, you know-" he made a gesture around the eyes, placing the tips of his fingers together over the bridge of his nose.

"Blindfold?" Lanyon suggested.

"Si, blindfold." The interpreter smiled, then elaborated slowly. "And blindfold afterward, you understand? All blindfold."

Lanyon nodded. Luigi was watching narrowly, sizing him up.

"Looks as if they're happy," Lanyon said to Patricia.

"How can they take us, though?" she asked.

Lanyon shrugged. "Cellars, basements, underground tunnels. An old city like Genoa must be honeycombed with secret passageways. I suppose this monastery had one down to the city for the benefit of the monks on Saturday night in the bad old days. They've been moving some pretty big stuff in so I should think we're in luck. The only problem is how to get into the base itself once we reach the downtown section of the city. We'll just have to pray we'll be able to pick up transport somewhere. There isn't a hope of our covering even five yards out in the open on our own."

He watched the big Italian tracing a route on the map, then spoke to the interpreter.

"Tell me, is his wife O.K.? She was in the church."

When the interpreter nodded, he added: "Tell Luigi I'm sorry about the shooting in here."

The interpreter grinned, began to chuckle to himself.

"That's O.K.," he said. "More for us, eh?"

Single file, Luigi leading with the interpreter, followed by Lanyon and Patricia, the third man in the rear, they entered the passageway running down from the monastery.

This had been cut straight through the soft chalk of the cliff, and ran for about a mile, linking together three churches with the monastery. Six feet high and about a yard across, it was just wide enough for the trolley, but the effort of moving it uphill must have been enormous. How far below the surface they were Lanyon found it difficult to estimate. They emerged into the crypt of the nearest church and for the first time could hear the wind drumming past overhead, its deep all-pervading whine singing through the angles in the shattered ruins. Then the tunnel sank belowground again and the sounds were lost.

Gradually Lanyon noticed that the air had begun to come to life in the passageway. Odd shifts of wind edged past, periodically sudden gusts of grit billowed into their faces, and Luigi would stop and switch off his torch. However, it was obvious he was more afraid of the military authorities than of the wind.

"What speed is it now?" Lanyon asked the interpreter as they crouched down during one of the pauses, waiting for Luigi to return from reconnoitering ahead.

"Three hundred kilometers," the man replied. "Maybe more."

Lanyon jerked a finger upward. "What about Genoa? People all right?"

The interpreter laughed shortly. He spread his hands out sideways in a quick movement. "All phht," he said. "Gone with the wind. Everything blown down. Luigi save things-radios, jukeboxes, you know, TV's. All for tomorrow."

Lanyon smiled to himself at the man's naïveté and superoptimism in assuming that when the wind subsided their stock of TV sets and washing machines would make easily negotiable currency. About the only thing that would be of any immediate use was the printing press. After this holocaust the reassembling bureaucracies of the world would have their presses working night and day churning out paper to fill the vacuum left by the wind.

The second church had collapsed into its crypt and a detour supported by small girders had been driven through the piles of masonry. Now the wind filled the tunnel, blowing straight through at a steady 10 or 15 miles per hour. They had reached the midtown section of the city and the passageway took advantage of the old city wall, running along beside it for half a mile as it curved down into the center of modern Genoa toward the harbor. The floor was slick with moisture and twice he and Patricia slipped onto their hands.

The passageway opened out into the middle of a maze of tomblike vaults, abandoned wine cellars somewhere off the main square. Ancient stairways, deep dips worn down their centers, spiraled away to upper galleries. Luigi pulled out his map and he and the interpreter began to confer, pointing in various directions around them.

Lanyon went over to them. He indicated the vaulted ceiling, and said: "Why don't we get up to the street, see if we can spot a military transport?"

Luigi shook his head siowly with a grim smile, and spoke to the interpreter, who took Lanyon's arm and led him up a ramp to the gallery above. They climbed a further staircase, leaving Patricia and two men in a small circle of light far below, then moved along a ledge across the massive blocks of the city wall. Ahead of them was a foot-wide arrow slit. The interpreter gestured Lanyon over to it and he craned up and saw that a thick piece of perspex had been fitted into the hole, affording a view over the entire city.

Directly below were the ragged remains of some building which had collapsed, exposing this section of the city wail. The rectangular outlines of the foundations suggested that it had been a multistoried office block, but almost nothing of it was left.

Beyond it Genoa stretched toward the sea a mile away.

To Lanyon it appeared to be undergoing a massive artillery bombardment. On all sides the remains of houses and shops were collapsing, exploding in clouds of debris and rubble that vanished in a few seconds, swept out toward the sea on the endless conveyor of the air stream. The scene reminded Lanyon of World War II Berlin, a vast desert of gutted ruins, isolated walls that ran up five or six stories, buildings stripped to their steel superstructures, streets that had vanished under the piles of masonry, leaving a dead land as shapeless and amorphous as a slag heap.

To the southwest, half a mile away, an enormous blur of spray hung over the port area, for once obscuring the ceiling of red-brown dust that had covered them for the last week. Lanyon could just make out the square roofs of the naval base, revealed now that the intervening buildings had come down, but the pens themselves were too low to be visible.

The interpreter called to him, and left the window and made his way down to the others below. Suddenly Lanyon began to doubt whether they could possibly reach the pens. It was plain that no surface transport was moving around, and the tunnels would never extend as far as the dock area, let alone below the boundary of the base.

Patricia was watching him anxiously and he gave her an encouraging smile. Together they moved after Luigi as he climbed down a narrow spiral stairway that led off one of the side tunnels. Here the stonework was of more recent origin. The steps were less worn, and a hand rail of extruded piping had been fitted. Lanyon was wondering where the stairway led when Luigi reached a door at the bottom and wrenched it back.

Immediately a gust of foul air drove up into their faces.

They had entered the sewers. Hands shielding their mouths, they stepped out of the stairway into a narrow stone landing that overlooked the sewer, a long cavern 15 feet in diameter that wound away from them. It had almost run dry, but a narrow stream of fluid a few inches deep trickled along the bottom of the course, its surface rippled by the air driving across it.

Flashing his torch, Luigi examined the roof and the arching semicircle of damp brickwork, dented here and there by the impact of the buildings collapsing above. They began to move along the ledge. A hundred yards ahead they crossed a small bridge that took them through a narrow archway into a parallel sewer, which divided and curved westward toward the harbor. Smaller branch sewers joined it, but most of the way they were able to stay on the ledge, only twice having to get down into the course itself to surmount an obstruction.

The sewer was widening almost the size of a subway tunnel. Trying to guess where they were being led, Lanyon suddenly noticed a second odor, sharp and tangy, overlaying that of the sewer. Brine! They were nearing the sea. Then he remembered that, as he berthed the _Terrapin_, he had seen the vents of half a dozen sewer pipes just below the harbor wall some two hundred yards from the sub-pens. A long concrete breakwater, topped with double wave barriers and guard towers, had reached out into the harbor, separating the pens from the rest of the basin. He racked his brains wondering how they could surmount it.

"Steve! Look out!"

He stopped and glanced back at Patricia, who was pointing into the tunnel ahead. Luigi and the others had halted, watching a powerful torrent of water sweep through the tunnel, sluicing in from the sea outside. It swilled past, ten feet deep, only a few inches from the ledge on which they were standing, and then slowly slacked off and was sucked out again.

"Looks as if something just caved in and let the sea back for a moment," Lanyon told Patricia. "These sewers are slightly below water level, but with luck the wind will have lowered the surface enough for us to get out."

The speed of the air moving past them increased sharply. They rounded a bend and suddenly saw daylight 50 yards ahead, the ragged end of the sewer mouth. Beyond, the sea rose up like a range of massive gray mountains, flecked with huge whitecaps, driving offshore into the distant blur of spray.

Cautiously they edged toward the sewer's mouth, Luigi waving them on. Ten yards or so of brickwork had collapsed, recessing the mouth below the overhanging ledge of the jetty above. The heavy caissons of the concrete pier rooted down through the now exposed mud flats. Luigi pointed to the right toward the sub-pens, and Lanyon saw that the breakwater had been smashed and lay on its side in huge battered sections a hundred yards out in the harbor.

"We leave you here," the interpreter told him. "To the right, one hundred meters, you get into the dock. Then O.K."

Lanyon nodded, took Patricia's arm. Leaning over the edge of the sewer, where the last of the seawater was dripping out, he lowered her down to the mud flat ten feet below, letting her drop when she was a few feet off the ground. She sank to her knees in the slimy ooze, paddled slowly through the mud toward the firmer ground under the sewer, supporting herself against the concrete pillars.

Lanyon turned to Luigi, held his square hand firmly and patted his shoulder.

The big man smiled back then pulled the.45 out of his belt and passed it to Lanyon.

Lanyon turned to the interpreter. "Tell him I'll vote for him if he'll run as next mayor of Genoa."

Luigi roared, slapped Lanyon on the shoulder and helped him down over the edge of the sewer.

Lanyon dropped up to his thighs in the soft black mud, waved to the figures above for the last time and waded siowly between the pillars to where Patricia was sheltering on a narrow flat against the rear wall of the pier. He took her arm and they edged along the wall, straddling the tangle of twisted girders that were all that remained of the breakwater. Inside the submarine base they were still sheltered by the overhang of the pier, but the air roaring past sucked at them like a giant vacuum.

They clung to the tangled seaweed fronds and barnacles encrusted to the pillars, and Lanyon pointed out the jutting roof of the first sub-pen 50 yards away. With a jolt of fear he realized that the receding sea had exposed the floor of the pen, and that although this would enable them to get into the pens it meant that there might be insufficient water to float out the _Terrapin_. Fortunately the sub was berthed in the farthest of the semicircle of pens, and the wind would be driving the sea across it.

They reached the first pen and pulled themselves around the lip into the gateway, their feet gripping the concrete floor. Ahead of them the steel shutters towered up to the roof. They ran over to the grille, and through the slits Lanyon could see the stranded hull of one of the K-class subs, lying on its side in the dim gray light.

The vanes of the grille were open, leaving two-foot gaps. Lanyon lifted Patricia up onto the lowest gap, and she clambered through into the great hall of the pen. Lanyon followed her and they ran under the towering underbelly of the stranded submarine, its moorings snapped and hanging loose, conning tower tilted at a 450 angle.

They reached the stairway to the cargo pier, climbed up past the submarine, and then turned into the corridor that led to the control deck at the far end of the pen.

"Well, Pat, we've got this far," Lanyon said, as they paused in the corridor to regain their breath. He pulled the torch from his jacket, switched it on.

"Doesn't look as if there's anyone around, Steve. Do you think the _Terrapin_ will still be here?"

"God knows. If not, we'll come back and sit the storm out in the big K-boat."

They reached the control deck, peered into the abandoned offices. The heavy concrete walls of the base were still holding without any difficulty, but somewhere a ventilator had collapsed and air poured through the vents, blowing the papers off the desks and shelves. Litter lay everywhere, drawers pulled out, water dispensers smashed, broken suitcases strewn about the floor.

"Left in a hurry," Lanyon commented. "Seems to me that this is a pretty good place to sit tight. Where the hell have they all gone?"

They hurried along the dark communications corridor, crossing the control decks of the next three pens. As they passed the fifth the floor suddenly shifted slightly, and Lanyon tripped and collided with the wall.

"Good God, don't tell me it can move even this place! The sea must be breaking over the entrance to the pen, driving the whole unit back into the shore."

"Come on, Steve, let's hurry," Patricia said. She held onto his arm as they ran down the corridor. They stumbled into the last control deck, dived down the stairway into the cargo depot. As they reached the bottom the door out into the jetty opened, lights flooded on and two sailors peered round. They gaped at Lanyon and Patricia, clothes ripped to shreds, covered with thick mud up to their waists, Lanyon's bruised face barely recognizable under his beard. Their hands moved to the revolvers in their holsters, and then one of them jumped to attention and snapped out a salute.

He swung his head through the doorway, shouted out:

"Attention there! Commander Lanyon to come aboard!"

Lanyon put a hand out and squeezed the man's shoulder gratefully, then stepped through onto the narrow pier.

Deep water boiled and swirled into the sub-pen through the open gates, surging down to the far wall 200 yards away.

Riding high on it, deckwork trim, periscopes aligned, was the _Terrapin!_

Paul Matheson waited while Lanyon toweled himself down after the shower and climbed into a clean uniform.

"We're all set to move off, Steve. We've had a last check around the base; there's no one here."

Lanyon nodded. "Fine, Paul. By the way, how's the girl who came aboard with me?"

"Miss Olsen? She's O.K., a little shocked but she'll come to. Looks as if you had quite a job getting back here. She's sharing a cabin with the three WAC nurses. Tight squeeze. We've got about sixty extra passengers."

"Sorry to bring another, Paul. Still, she can have Van Damm's vacancy. If it's any consolation, she's with NBC; she's probably taking all this down in cinemascope. Remember, it's not enough to make history-you've got to arrange for someone to record it for you."

Lanyon buttoned his shirt up, glancing at the movement signal from Tunis lying on the table.

" Portsmouth, England, eh? Do you think they've got any more corpses for us to collect?"

Matheson shook his head. "No, I gather they're top air force and embassy VIP's. May even be the ambassador and his family. Where we'll put them I don't know."

He laughed easily, and Lanyon noticed that Matheson seemed to have filled out considerably over the past few days. There was an air of authority and confidence about him that suggested he had been through his own private ordeal.

Lanyon fingered the movement order. "Paul, this came through three days ago. Strictly speaking, you should have got under way immediately."

Matheson shrugged. "Well, I couldn't leave the skipper behind, could I, Steve?" He hesitated. "As a matter of fact, two more orders came through when we didn't clear back, followed up by a couple of troubleshooters from the Provost Marshal's unit here. Slight problem there. They could see we were all ready to blow, so I had to, er, use a little bit of old-fashioned persuasion."

He grinned at Lanyon, and tapped the butt of the.45 stuck in his belt.

Lanyon nodded. "I wondered what that was for. Thought perhaps you were trying to impress the WAC's. Pretty good, Paul. Well, let's go topside and get this rig under way."

They climbed up into the conning tower, crouched down under the awning stretched across to keep out the spray thrown up off the sides of the pen. At the far end Lanyon could see heavy seas smashing against the open doors, hear the deafening unrelenting roar of the wind screaming past like a dozen express trains.

The entire pen was shifting sideways under the impact of the seas breaking across it, and large cracks split the roof and walls. The _Terrapin_ was moored well back in the pen, double lines of truck tires lashed to her hull to protect her from the pier.

The last lines were cast off, and they began to edge ahead under the big diesels, churning a boiling wake of foam and black water behind the twin screws.

They swung out into the center of the pen, 50 yards from the entrance, bows breaking out of the water as swells rode in from the sea, lifting the sub almost to the roof.

Lanyon was checking the forward elevator trim when Matheson suddenly punched him on the shoulder. He looked up quickly as the helmsman shouted and pointed forward to the entrance.

A huge section of the roof, the full width of the pen and 40 feet across, was tipping slowly downward crushing the two steel gates like chicken wire. Through the wide crack mountainous seas burst like floodwater through a collapsing dam, splashing across the bows of the _Terrapin_.

"Full astern! Full astern!" Lanyon roared into the mouth tube, hanging onto the edge of the well as the diesels reversed and wrenched the sub back into its wake. They moved 50 yards, and then Lanyon held the _Terrapin_ and watched as the collapsing roof section anchored itself in the jaws of the entrance, hanging vertically from the reinforcing roof girders, wedged firmly by the driving seas.

Matheson pounded on the edge of the well, frustration and anger overriding his hysteria. "We're trapped, Steve, for God's sake! We'll never move it!"

Lanyon ignored him, picked up the mouth tube. "Starboard torpedo station! Alert! Charge No. 2 tube with main HE heads."

Waiting for the ready signal, he turned to Matheson. "We'll blast our way out, Paul. That roof section is at least fifteen feet thick, must weigh about five hundred tons. It's our only chance."

At the ready signal he backed the _Terrapin_ astern right up against the rear wall, so that 150 yards of clear water separated them from the entrance. Then, lining the bows carefully on target, he rapped into the tube, "Compressors sealed. Discharge vent open." He paused as the bows swerved slightly, then realigned on the target. "Fire!"

The torpedo burst from its vent in a rush of bubbles, burrowed rapidly through the water three feet below the surface, moving like an enormous shark. Lanyon watched it until it was 20 yards from the blocked entrance, then crouched down, shouting to the others.

They hit the floor, and he seized the mouth tube and yelled, "Full ahead! Full ahead!"

As the screws thrashed and bit in, kicking the _Terrapin_ forward, the torpedo exploded against its target. There was a vivid white flash that filled the pen, followed by a colossal eruption of exploding concrete and water which burst out of its mouth like a cork from a champagne bottle. Simultaneously a 15-foot-high wave swept down the length of the pen, a massive breaker that carried with it a foaming jetsam of concrete and metal. Full ahead, the _Terrapin_ was moving at 15 knots as they met halfway down the pen. It slowed briefly under the impact of the wave, its conning tower glancing off the walls and carrying away a section of the pier. Then it surged forward again, heading smoothly through the gaping mouth of the entrance into the harbor. For a moment its bow rose up steeply under the writhing swells, then sank cleanly into the deep basin, its tower and stern quickly vanishing in a roar of escaping air.

____________________

At last the pyramid was complete.

Sliding painfully down its smooth slopes, the few remaining workers dismantled the battered forms, letting their equipment lie where it fell at the foot of the pyramid. One by one, peering up briefly at the gray apex shining above them into the black reeling air, they made their way over to a single trap door sunk into a shaft between the two ramparts. Quickly they disappeared from view, until only a single figure remained, in the shadow of the buckling windshields. For a moment he stood in the shower of dust carried over the shields a hundred feet above, his body swaying in the air exploding around him. Then he too turned and stepped through the trap door, sealing it behind him.

The wind mounted. Raging into the shields, it tore at the plates, snapping the hawsers one by one, cracking the concrete pylons at their bases, driving through the great rents.

Suddenly the pressure became too great. With a gargantuan paroxysm the shattered screen exploded and the splitting plates careened away into the air, bouncing off the sides of the pyramid, dragging with them the frayed remnants of the tangled hawsers, the roots of the pylons and buttresses. No longer protected, the lines of vehicles parked in the lee of the screens dragged' and crashed into each other, and finally broke loose, rolling end over end across the lower slopes of the pyramid, rapidly picking up speed, and then spinning away into the darkness with the flying sky.

Now only the pyramid remained.