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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
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where.txt 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
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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
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