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.