Read The House of Doors - 01 Online
Authors: Brian Lumley
The House of Doors - 01 (22 page)
G
ill’s reaction—the way his voice had filled with horror and disbelief as he said the word “werewolves”—wasn’t merely a shot in the dark; for he had seen with his own eyes the first of many transformations. So had the others. The first of the naked men (the leader of the pack?) where he stepped down from the slope, had fallen into a crouch, then gone to all fours; and in place of a man, there had hunched a great grey wolf! The metamorphosis had been instantaneous: man to beast in less time than it took to think about. And snarling, the flame-eyed creature slinkingly advanced.
ill’s reaction—the way his voice had filled with horror and disbelief as he said the word “werewolves”—wasn’t merely a shot in the dark; for he had seen with his own eyes the first of many transformations. So had the others. The first of the naked men (the leader of the pack?) where he stepped down from the slope, had fallen into a crouch, then gone to all fours; and in place of a man, there had hunched a great grey wolf! The metamorphosis had been instantaneous: man to beast in less time than it took to think about. And snarling, the flame-eyed creature slinkingly advanced.
“Gill! Turnbull!” Anderson cried, all pretence of leadership utterly flown.
The leading werewolf paused; others, changing from men to beasts, took up their places on his left and right flanks; the shadows of cliffs and slopes all around were alive with their bright three-cornered eyes.
“Gill?” Turnbull echoed Anderson.
“Back off,” said Gill. “But slowly. Towards the House of Doors. Can you get Bannerman?”
Turnbull said, “Jon, try to relax. We have something of a problem here. It will be easier if I carry you.” He grunted as he hoisted the other man onto his back in a fireman’s lift.
Varre’s deeply ingrained scepticism and sarcasm were quickly evaporating. Reality had all but disappeared here, and the Frenchman felt himself vanishing with it. “Those corpse-fires,” he babbled, and paused to utter a brief, breathless prayer in his own tongue, “they’re coming up the mountain!”
“But what are they?” Angela clung to Gill, backed with him towards the great crystal.
“Clayborne’s powers of evil,” Gill answered. “Ghosts, malevolencies, evil spirits.”
“There are no such things!”
“He believed there were.”
“We have to use the door!” Anderson shrieked. He turned and headed straight for door number 222. “Follow me!”
The werewolves edged closer; their fangs were yellow as their eyes, dripping saliva; the ruffs of fur along their backs were ridged, erect, threatening.
Then one of them barked
!
Then one of them barked
!
It wasn’t a howl but a bark. A smaller animal was tobogganing down the scree slope, bringing an avalanche of dust and pebbles with it.
Gill backed up to Anderson at door number 222. “What are you waiting for?” he said. But Anderson could only stand there and gurgle inarticulately. Gill risked taking his eyes off the closing circle of werewolves, glanced at Anderson—then at door number 222.
It was 222, then 333, then 444, 555, and so on! The numbers were flashing and changing like strobe lights, transferring themselves from door to door, circling the great crystal’s perimeter facets and speeding up with every passing second. Then 222 came flashing onto the door again, and Anderson lifted a trembling hand to the knocker—but already the number had changed. 333, 444, 555, 666 …
It was like a crazy carousel. Gill shoved Anderson out of the way. Faster and faster the circling numbers winked on and off, until they began to blur. “Take a chance!” someone, Turnbull, yelled in Gill’s ear.
Do it!
Gill told himself.
Take a chance—while there’s still a chance to take
!
Gill told himself.
Take a chance—while there’s still a chance to take
!
Cries of horror reached him as he grasped and lifted the great gargoyle knocker. He held it, turned his head and looked back. Beyond the sloping field of scree where it fell into shadows and darkness, a curtain of fluorescent blue and green light like aurora borealis sprang up from the desert’s floor. It lit up the entire shelf of scree in an eerie, flickering weave of pastel patterns. And in the shifting, dancing folds of the curtain, vast faces were forming themselves of its energies: faces with eyes that leered, and gaping mouths and nostrils black as pits. Human faces, and yet inhuman faces, and upon their foreheads—horns!
Again there came the barking; something scampered, yelped, came bounding high over the circling wolves; it crashed into the group of humans where they cowered at the door. Gill felt himself jostled. The numbers were a blur before his eyes. He let the knocker fall.
Upon the instant, the numbers stopped revolving—at 555. Gill’s door, according to Angela—which in the next moment cracked open like giant jaws to snatch them all inside … .
Gill had hit his head against something. Not hard enough to cause him serious or lasting damage, but sufficient to raise a lump like an overripe plum about to split its skin on the left side of his forehead at the hairline. Angela was sobbing, cradling him in her arms. He lay in a pile of sharp, hard, angular debris and gritty, flaky stuff. Opening one eye where his upper torso lay across Angela’s thighs, head lolling, he saw that the flaky stuff was reddish brown and knew that it was … rust?
Varre was screaming.
“Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!
For the love of God, get it
off
me!”
“Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!
For the love of God, get it
off
me!”
Anderson was answering him, “Keep still, Jean-Pierre. Give us a chance.”
“The pain!” the Frenchman howled. “My leg, my leg!”
“Listen, Frog!” Turnbull’s voice growled. “You have a choice: keep still and we’ll get this bloody thing off you, or keep leaping about and wear it for the rest of your fucking life!”
Bannerman was quieter, almost plaintive, saying, “Where are we? What happened? Are we safe? Won’t someone please tell me what that was all about?”
Gill moved, tried to sit up and see what was going on; and Angela cried: “Spencer?
Spencer!”
She hugged him to her and sobbed all the harder. “I thought you were seriously hurt. Tell me you’re not.” She kissed his neck, his ear, the bump on his forehead.
Spencer!”
She hugged him to her and sobbed all the harder. “I thought you were seriously hurt. Tell me you’re not.” She kissed his neck, his ear, the bump on his forehead.
“I’m not,” he croaked, hoarsely, and paused to spit more of the rust out of his mouth. Then: “Hey!” he said. “I thought I was supposed to be the sexy one?”
As Gill’s head stopped spinning he looked about, tried to take in something of their surroundings. At first he thought they’d emerged in some sort of cave. In fact they had, but no kind of cave Gill or any of the others might ever have imagined. Light, a sort of hazy, dusty daylight, entered the place through a gaping oval hole in one wall, also in smoking beams through holes in the ceiling.
A cave
? Gill wondered.
Or a nuclear shelter that took a direct hit from a big one?
A cave
? Gill wondered.
Or a nuclear shelter that took a direct hit from a big one?
There were pipes and cables, and broken plastic and metal conduits hanging everywhere, like twentieth-century stalactites, and the floor was littered with rusting levers, nuts and bolts, pistons and jacks and metallic scrap of every and all descriptions.
A junkyard
?
A junkyard
?
“A junkyard!” This time he shouted it out loud, tried to struggle to his feet.
But Angela kept a tight hold on him. “Take it easy, Spencer,” she pleaded with him.
“But don’t you see?” he said. “This place is a junkyard! I mean, this is the debris of civilization. Can you imagine all this on an alien world? This
has
to be Earth!”
has
to be Earth!”
She shook her head, carefully got up and helped him to his feet. “No,” she said. “No it doesn’t. And it isn’t. I thought so, too—until I looked out there.” She nodded towards the great oval gash of an opening in a wall of piled mechanical bits and pieces.
Gill would have gone to the opening at once, but now he’d seen Bannerman propped in one corner, trembling and asking his blind, pitiful questions where he leaned against what looked like a great engine block. And he’d also seen what Anderson and Turnbull were doing—or trying to do—to Varre. They’d torn away his trouser leg from his right thigh. Fastened
through
the fleshy part of his leg, a great wolf’s muzzle was clamped there in death. The creature’s head, shoulders and forelegs were intact, but beyond that it had been guillotined clean through its trunk. Its blood slopped everywhere.
through
the fleshy part of his leg, a great wolf’s muzzle was clamped there in death. The creature’s head, shoulders and forelegs were intact, but beyond that it had been guillotined clean through its trunk. Its blood slopped everywhere.
Turnbull looked up as Gill stumbled over. “Are you okay?” he asked, and Gill nodded. Anderson was sitting on Varre, trying to hold him down where he writhed in his agony. Turnbull’s fingers were bloody, locked in the jaws of the wolf, straining to force them open.
Gill guessed what had happened: this creature had attacked the Frenchman as he came through the door—which had then closed on it, cutting it in half. Now … sweat rivered Varre’s agonized features; his teeth were grinding behind lips drawn back in a rictus of pain. Gill grimaced and took out the thorn hypodermic from his pocket.
But at that moment Turnbull hissed his horror and jerked up and away from Varre. Anderson too. The Frenchman gave a scream of sheer terror. The wolf’s head where its teeth were locked on his thigh … was now a man’s head! A man’s bust, with arms intact, that flopped obscenely as it crashed down where Varre tossed it. “Jesus! Jesus!” he cried shrilly, his fingers fluttering over his lacerated thigh.
Gill and the others stared wide-eyed at the inhuman remains, at the grinning death mask of a face, shoulders and trailing arms—which at once dissolved away, turning to dust and smoke in a moment.
“What … ?” Anderson and Turnbull mouthed the word almost in unison.
“It had no place here,” Gill hazarded a guess. “It was something spawned in Clayborne’s world, a thing of his imagination. This place is … somewhere else, where creatures like that don’t exist.”
As if to defy his logic, something came bounding in through the oval gash in the wall. Gill gave a massive start and drew air in a gasp—but Turnbull grabbed his arm and steadied him. “A dog,” the big man told him. “Only a dog.”
“Eh?” Gill still wasn’t sure. Then he remembered the barking, scampering creature in Clayborne’s world. “A dog? It came through with us from there?” The other nodded.
In a frenzy of joy, the animal jumped and frolicked around Angela’s legs. It barked excitedly, wagged its stump of a tail madly, then left the girl and came snaking for Gill. He stooped to give it a tentative pat on the head and it got up on its hind legs, licking his face with a wet, feverish tongue. Then it got down again and backed off. Between bouts of barking it whined, skittered nervously, sidled this way and that. “He’s finding us just as unbelievable as we find him!” said Gill.
He sat down on a pile of junk and fondled the dog’s ears, and it at once curled itself into his lap, whining for all it was worth. Angela said, “He has a collar.”
She was right; there was an identity tag, too. “Barney,” said Gill wonderingly. And the black and white mongrel barked and wagged his stump that much harder. “He lived in Lawers … .” Gill frowned. “That rings a bell.”
“So it should.” Anderson nodded. “The first man to report the presence of the Castle on Ben Lawers was one Hamish Grieve. He complained that the Castle had ‘taken’ his dog, called Barney!”
“And he’s been here ever since?” Angela’s voice was full of compassion. “In … in this place? Here, Barney,” she called. “Here boy!”
“What about me?” Varre cried out. The junkyard cave was weighing on him and his claustrophobia was surfacing again. “Damn it, that’s only a dog!” Turnbull had fixed the Frenchman’s leg with a bandage torn from his shirt. He growled low in his throat as he tied the final knot, jerking it tight. “Ow!” the Frenchman protested.
“I’m really going off you, pal,” said Turnbull warningly. “Only a dog? But he’s stayed alive a couple of years longer than we’re likely to last. We might be able to learn things from this dog—which means he’s worth a sight more than you! Anyway, he’s an Earth dog. Where I’m concerned that makes him next to human.”
“Idiot!” Varre muttered.
“Can you walk?” Turnbull asked him sharply.
“I’m not sure.”
“Well get sure, because I’m not going to carry you and Bannerman both!” Turnbull was coming to the end of his tether.
Gill said, “Easy, Jack. We’ll take turns with Bannerman. And we’re all in the same boat, remember?”
Turnbull looked at him and the harsh lines in his face grew a little softer. “Yes, we are,” he finally agreed, nodding. “But we’re not all trying to sink the fucking thing!” Angela looked away and Turnbull rubbed his chin, shrugged. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Polite conversation was never my forte, anyway … .”
Varre had got to his feet. He limped a little but seemed mobile enough. And he was eager to be out of this enclosed space. “Very well,” he said to the others, “let’s get out of here and see where we’ve landed … .”
“W
here they had landed” was possibly the strangest of all worlds, and Gill knew what Angela had meant when she’d said—the
way
she’d said—that this wasn’t Earth. A junkyard is one thing, but a planet-sized junkyard is quite another. Standing on the rusting iron rim of the broken wall and looking out on a skyline which would have been quite impossible and therefore totally unbelievable just a few days ago, still he knew exactly what he was looking at and felt the wrenching effect of several terrors combined. Later he might find himself compelled to acknowledge them, but for now:
here they had landed” was possibly the strangest of all worlds, and Gill knew what Angela had meant when she’d said—the
way
she’d said—that this wasn’t Earth. A junkyard is one thing, but a planet-sized junkyard is quite another. Standing on the rusting iron rim of the broken wall and looking out on a skyline which would have been quite impossible and therefore totally unbelievable just a few days ago, still he knew exactly what he was looking at and felt the wrenching effect of several terrors combined. Later he might find himself compelled to acknowledge them, but for now:
“Well?” Angela said, breaking the silence of Gill’s awe and astonishment, drawing his mind back from the precipitous brink of fear.
And in a little while he nodded, but his voice was still shaking when he answered, “I’m still not sure about your numerology thing, but you were certainly right the first time.”
“The first time?” She failed to understand.
“What are you talking about, Spencer?” Anderson was still trying to be king of the castle—or Castle?
“She said maybe the last place was shaped by Clayborne because he was first through the door.” Gill answered without turning his head, continuing to study the skyline. “It seems to me she was right. This time I was first through.”
“What is it, Gill?” said Bannerman tremulously. “What can you see?”
It’s more what I can feel,
Gill thought; but out loud he answered, “I can see a machine world, most of it falling into decay. A world crammed full of machines, with nothing of grass or trees or anything so healthy as stone; no mountains except mountains of machine junk, and no streets except giant iron catwalks, and skyscraper gantries spanning everything like bridges to the end of the world. We’re up high and the horizon’s a long way off, but as far as I can see there’s only metal and some plastic and dead machinery, and—” He paused for a moment for breath, focused his eyes on part of a nearby skyline, and in a quieter voice continued, “And some machinery that isn’t dead!”
Gill thought; but out loud he answered, “I can see a machine world, most of it falling into decay. A world crammed full of machines, with nothing of grass or trees or anything so healthy as stone; no mountains except mountains of machine junk, and no streets except giant iron catwalks, and skyscraper gantries spanning everything like bridges to the end of the world. We’re up high and the horizon’s a long way off, but as far as I can see there’s only metal and some plastic and dead machinery, and—” He paused for a moment for breath, focused his eyes on part of a nearby skyline, and in a quieter voice continued, “And some machinery that isn’t dead!”
The others traced his line of sight and he felt Angela’s fingers tighten on his arm. “Spencer,” she whispered, “what is that … thing?” It might be a crane on tracks, or a steam shovel, or a giant mechanical woodpecker—but Gill didn’t answer because that was a part of the terror: the fact that he didn’t know. It was his worst nightmare come true, to be surrounded by machines or machine parts and not understand the workings or principles or purpose of a single one of them—including
that
nodding monstrosity! That was part of it. And the rest of it was that this was—
that
nodding monstrosity! That was part of it. And the rest of it was that this was—
“Your world, Spencer,” said Turnbull, sighing, picking the thought right out of his head. “You were first through, and this place was shaped by your mind.”
“By my fears,” Gill corrected him.
“Your fears?” Varre was quick on the uptake. “There are things here to be afraid of? What are you saying, Gill? What do we need to be afraid of?”
“You?” Gill looked at him. “Nothing much, I suppose. No, you’re lucky. This place is my nightmare, not yours. And I’m not like Clayborne, if that’s what’s bothering you.”
“Your world! Clayborne’s world!” Anderson threw up his hands. His voice was full of barely controlled anger, seething frustration, and more than a little fear. He looked back into the iron cave and licked his lips. “But where does it go when we come through? I mean, there was a crystal whose facets were doors. We came through one of them, but now the crystal’s not there anymore. So … where is it?”
“One-way doors,” Gill answered. “Like one-way mirrors: now you see ’em, now you don’t.”
“No”—Tumbull shook his head—“more like a quagmire. With quicksand there really is only one way to pass through. And you don’t stop till your feet touch bottom … .”
Angela frowned at him and said, “That’s morbid—and unscientific. We’re agreed that none of this is supernatural, not even on Clayborne’s world. It’s in the mind, or it has come out of the mind. And it’s all controlled by the House of Doors. The crystal was just another projection of it, another cross section through the same basic structure. It didn’t disappear just because we came through. It’s still there on Ben Lawers, and in the world of the escarpment it’s the mansion, and in Clayborne’s world it’s an evil crystal. Here … it’s out there somewhere.” She stood beside Gill and gazed out upon a desolation of metal run wild, but mercifully run to a standstill. Most of it …
Gill felt the horror of the place, which the others were incapable of feeling. They felt only its strangeness, but to Gill it was undiluted horror. His brain collided with each new machine or piece of machinery and was unable to grasp it. It was the Castle all over again, but magnified a million times. The only mercy was that he had a safety valve, he could shut it off. He did so now: squeezed his eyes tightly shut and shook his head, and denied it.
No, he told himself.
No, it’s not going to get me. I didn’t build it—it’s just an enlargement of my innermost fears. It’s someone’s deliberate ploy to drive me crazy: to put me in a world where my machine mind is surrounded by the unknown and completely unknowable! Except … it could be that same someone’s big mistake.
Gill clung tight to that idea: that this could be his best chance yet to come to terms with and understand an alien science. Because if he could only get inside—get his mind inside—these weird machines, then maybe—just maybe—he could begin to make them work for him.
No, it’s not going to get me. I didn’t build it—it’s just an enlargement of my innermost fears. It’s someone’s deliberate ploy to drive me crazy: to put me in a world where my machine mind is surrounded by the unknown and completely unknowable! Except … it could be that same someone’s big mistake.
Gill clung tight to that idea: that this could be his best chance yet to come to terms with and understand an alien science. Because if he could only get inside—get his mind inside—these weird machines, then maybe—just maybe—he could begin to make them work for him.
“Spencer? Are you all right?” It was Angela.
Gill opened his eyes, nodded. “Yes, I’ll be all right. But … what did you say just then? A cross section through the same basic structure? A projection?”
“I was talking about the House of Doors,” she answered. “It’s like a beam switched off the moment we use it, and redirected somewhere else. The lamp is still there, but pointing in another direction.” She blinked, shook her pretty head, said, “Ignore me. I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”
“You make sense to me,” Turnbull grunted. He was very bitter, sharing Anderson’s and everyone else’s frustration. “It’s a false lighthouse built by wreckers, and like doomed ships we fall for it every time—and go crashing on the rocks.”
“We’re like rats in a maze,” said Varre, “who smell food on the other side. But when we get there they change the maze around and put the food somewhere else.”
Gill’s patience was used up. Not only must he keep a tight rein on his own terrors but pacify these people as well. He was starting to feel smothered. “So what do you want to do?” He rounded on them. “Quit? So go ahead, quit!”
“We
can’t
quit!” Anderson clenched a fist, shook it at nothing. “How do we quit, anyway? Lie down and die? You can’t even die in a place where you don’t need to eat! I can’t see how this is happening to us—I don’t even believe it’s happening!”
can’t
quit!” Anderson clenched a fist, shook it at nothing. “How do we quit, anyway? Lie down and die? You can’t even die in a place where you don’t need to eat! I can’t see how this is happening to us—I don’t even believe it’s happening!”
“Oh, it’s happening, all right,” Gill told him. “Clayborne died, remember? And probably Haggie, too. You want to know how to do it? Just throw yourself down there. That will do it.”
They looked down through a tangle of girders to a wide iron catwalk far, far below. Anderson drew back at once. “It’s just …” he started to say, “just that …”
“It’s just a bastard.” Turnbull finished it for him. “Like someone wanted to kill us, but didn’t want to do it himself. As if he wants us to do it for him …”
They all thought about that—until Bannerman said, “Can someone please guide me? From Gill’s description of this place I could very easily hurt myself. I’ll be burden enough without that.” For the moment his misery took their minds off their own.
More than that, it successfully steered them away from a potentially dangerous line of enquiry … .
They climbed down towards the nearest “roadway,” a giant catwalk ninety feet wide and … how long? It stretched away in both directions, out of sight. The climb wasn’t difficult; without Bannerman it would have been the simplest thing. There were great metal ladders, dangling cables, pipes and pylons everywhere. It was as if at the core of this world (
was
it a world? Or was it like this all the way through?) a giant robot factory had gone wild, churning out machines and machine parts until it had buried itself, and that it was still down there, its production lines unceasingly manufacturing meaningless machinery.
was
it a world? Or was it like this all the way through?) a giant robot factory had gone wild, churning out machines and machine parts until it had buried itself, and that it was still down there, its production lines unceasingly manufacturing meaningless machinery.
The spaces between great engines as big as city blocks were bridged by gantries; huge metal spiders with round, square and triangular “wheels” at the ends of their jointed legs abounded, all stiff and immobile; TVs the size of cinema screens were protected by metal grids, not all of which were dead. When Turnbull, in a mood of destructive defiance, picked up a huge iron bolt and hurled it at the centre of one such screen, there came a bright flash of electrical energy and the bolt was shattered and deflected. Blobs of metal splashed down and sizzled on iron surfaces, skittering like solder. After that they avoided all such grids.
Barney had already left them. As the climb had become steeper, the dog had gone off on his own along a safer, horizontal route. When he’d looked back, wagged his stump anxiously and barked for their attention, Angela had offered her opinion that: “He wants us to follow him.”
Impatiently Varre had snapped, “Of course he does! He desires our companionship. Dogs are not good climbers. He knows he can’t follow us and so wishes us to follow him.” It was the last anyone would see of Barney for some considerable time.
Almost down to catwalk level, they found one of the giant screens that was still working—in a fashion. It showed a slow whirl of muddy colours, like dull paints stirred in a giant’s caldron, interspersed with flashes of white light. And Anderson asked, “Who is it for?”
Gill looked at him. “What?”
“The picture, the screen, the information—if there was information and not just that sickening … static? Who would it be for? I don’t feel that there are people here—”
“There aren’t,” said Gill, with certainty.
“—so who needs TV screens?”
“But that’s the whole point,” said Gill. “From what I’ve seen, I’d say that there’s no rhyme or reason to any of this. It’s my biggest nightmare come true: a million mad machines, an entire worldful of them, and not one of them serving any recognisable purpose. They don’t
have
a purpose—unless it’s to drive me crazy—which is why I’m trying to ignore every damned one of them!”
have
a purpose—unless it’s to drive me crazy—which is why I’m trying to ignore every damned one of them!”
“Listen!” said Angela.
They had climbed down through a vast tangle of partly collapsed scaffolding to rest for a while on a sheet-iron platform some forty or fifty feet over the road. A nervous silence fell as they followed Angela’s instructions and listened. But after a little while Anderson shook his head impatiently and said, “I hear nothing.”
“Try feeling it, then,” said Gill. “It’s in the metal, coming up through the platform, the soles of your feet.”
And now indeed they could feel it: a dull, distant, metallic thumping, like the beat of some unseen mechanical heart; and in another moment they began to hear it. “It’s coming from the road,” said Turnbull. “Like the sound of a train transmitted along a track.”
“Look down there,” said Gill, pointing at the tremendous catwalk below. “There are tracks—two sets of them. So now it appears that there are things in this bloody place I can understand after all! But now I have to ask myself, what runs on tracks like those?”
Twin, parallel sets of steel rails each a foot wide, with a gage of at least forty feet, were bolted to massive iron sleepers along the full length of the road. Bright, fat metal ribbons, they narrowed into the distance in both directions and disappeared down canyons of colossal, corroded components. Turnbull observed, “Everything else down there except the tracks is covered in rust, swarf or oil. So whatever it is, something does run on those tracks.”
“And … and here it comes!” said Varre. Gaunt-faced, he pointed at the mouth of the nearer canyon.
Gill strained his eyes, shook his head in bewilderment, finally said, “It’s like … like nothing I ever saw before. Just a huge metal box on wheels, not going anywhere very fast and making a hell of a lot of noise about it.”
“A
spiky
iron box on wheels,” Turnbull corrected him. “It has bits of junk sticking out all over it. Arms, hooks, grapples.” He, too, shook his head. “What the hell is the thing?”
spiky
iron box on wheels,” Turnbull corrected him. “It has bits of junk sticking out all over it. Arms, hooks, grapples.” He, too, shook his head. “What the hell is the thing?”
“Listen,” said Gill resignedly. “Get used to one thing: it’s no good asking me what anything is. For the last time, they don’t have any real purpose. I don’t see how they could have, seeing as they’re my bloody fantasy!”
“That’s as may be,” said Varre, “but your ‘fantasy’ is on our side of the tracks. It will pass directly beneath us.”
“Hadn’t we better get down from here?” Anderson was hopping from one foot to the other again, scared for his life. His breath came in explosive gasps. “Even at this distance that thing is … huge! The noise it’s making is hellish. Why, we could be shaken right off this platform!”
Gill and Turnbull got down on their stomachs and looked over the platform’s edge. The structure was supported by a square iron stem at one corner. It might just be possible to climb or slide down it, but even if there was time Angela was going to find it very difficult and Bannerman simply wasn’t going to make it. “We’ll have to climb back up a ways,” said Turnbull. “A little way, anyway—until we spot an alternative route down.”
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