the cable-car. “If you want to know, I'm sea-sick. I don't go much on this form of travel.”
Smith tapped the roof. “You want to try travelling steerage on one of those,” he said feelingly. “You'd never complain about first-class travel again. Ah! Pylon number two coming up. Almost half-way.”
“Only half-way.” A pause. “What happens if they break through that door up there?”
“Reverse the gear lever and up we go.”
“Like it or not?”
“Like it or not.”
Carnaby-Jones struggled slowly to a sitting position, gazed uncomprehendingly around him until he realised where he was, rubbed his jaw tenderly and said to Smith: “That was a dirty trick.”
“It was all of that,” Smith acknowledged. “I'm sorry.”
“I'm not.” Jones smiled shakily. “Somehow, I don't really think I'm cut out to be a hero.”
“Neither am I, brother, neither am I,” Schaffer said mournfully. He lifted his head from his hands and looked slowly around. His eyes were still glassy and only partially focusing but a little colour was returning to his right cheek, the one that wasn't masked in blood. “Our three friends. What became of our three friends?”
“Dead.”
“Dead?” Schaffer groaned and shook his head. “Tell me about it sometime. But not now.”
“He doesn't know what he's missing,” Smith said un-sympathetically. “The drama of it all escapes him, which is perhaps just as well. Is the door up above there still standing or are the hinges or padlocks going? Is someone rushing towards the winch controls—Is there—”
“Stop it!” Mary's voice was sharp, high-pitched and carried overtones-of hysteria. “Stop talking like that!”
“Sorry,” Smith said contritely. He reached out and touched her shoulder. “Just whistling in the dark, that's all. Here comes the last pylon. Another minute or so and we're home and dry.”
“Home and dry,” Schaffer said bitterly. “Wait till I have that Savoy Grill menu in my hand. Then I'll be home and dry.”
“Some people are always thinking of their stomachs,” Smith observed. At that moment he was thinking of his own and it didn't feel any too good. No stomach does when it feels as if it has a solid lead ball, a chilled lead ball lodged in it with an icy hand squeezing from the outside. His heart was thumping slowly, heavily, painfully in his chest and he was having difficulty in speaking for all the saliva seemed to have evaporated from his mouth. He became suddenly aware that he was unconsciously leaning backward, bracing himself for the moment when the cable-car jerked to a stand-still then started climbing back up to the Schloss Adler again. I'll count to ten, he said to himself, then if we get that far without being checked, I'll count to nine, and then—And then he caught sight of Mary's face, a dead-white, scared and almost haggard face that made her look fifteen years older than she was, and felt suddenly ashamed of himself. He sat on the bench, and squeezed her shoulder. “We'll be all right,” he said confidently. All of a sudden he found it easy to speak again. “Uncle John has just said so, hasn't he? You wait and see.”
She looked up at him, trying to smile. “Is Uncle John always right?”
“Always,” Smith said firmly.
Twenty seconds passed. Smith rose to his feet, walked to the front of the cable-car and peered down. Though the moon was obscured he could just dimly discern the shape of the lower station. He turned to look at the others. They were all looking at him.
“Not much more than a hundred feet to go,” Smith said. “I'm going to open that door in a minute. Well, a few seconds. By that time we won't be much more than fifteen feet above the ground. Twenty, at the most. If the car stops, we jump. There's two or three feet of snow down there. Should cushion our fall enough to give an even chance of not breaking anything.”
Schaffer parted his lips to make some suitable remark, thought better of it and returned head to hands in weary silence. Smith opened the leading door, did his best to ignore the icy blast of wind that gusted in through the opening, and looked vertically downwards, realising that he had been over-optimistic in his assessment of the distance between cable-car and ground. The distance was at least fifty feet, a distance sufficient to arouse in even the most optimistic mind dismaying thoughts of fractured femurs and tibias. And then he dismissed the thought, for an even more dismaying factor had now to be taken into consideration: in the far distance could be heard the sound of sirens, in the far distance could be seen the wavering beams of approaching headlamps. Schaffer lifted his head. The muzziness had now left him, even if his sore head had not.
“Enter, left, reinforcements,” he announced. “This wasn't on the schedule, boss. Radio gone, telephone gone, helicopter gone—”
“Just old-fashioned.” Smith pointed towards the rear window. “They're using smoke signals.”
“Jeez!” Schaffer stared out the rear windows, his voice awe struck. “For stone, it sure burns good!”
Schaffer was in no way exaggerating. For stone, it burnt magnificently. The Schloss Adler was well and truly alight, a conflagration in which smoke had suddenly become an inconsiderable and, indeed, a very minor element. It was wreathed in flames, almost lost to sight in flames, towering flames that now reached up almost to the top of the great round tower to the north-east. Perched on its volcanic plug half-way up the mountain-side against the dimly seen backdrop of the unseen heights of the Weissspitze, the blazing castle, its effulgence now beginning to light up the entire valley and quite drowning out the pale light of a moon again showing through, was an incredibly fantastic sight from some equally incredible and fantastic fairy tale.
“One trusts that they are well insured,” Schaffer said. He was on his feet now, peering down towards the lower station. “How far, boss? And how far down?”
“Thirty feet. Maybe twenty-five. And fifteen feet down.” The lights of the leading cars were passing the still smouldering embers of the station. “We have it made, Lieutenant Schaffer.”
“We have it made.” Schaffer cursed and staggered as the car jerked to a violent and abrupt stop. “Almost, that is.”
“All out!” Smith shouted. “All out!”
“There speaks the eternal shop steward,” Schaffer said. “Stand back, I've got two good hands.” He brushed by Smith, clutched the door jamb with his left hand, pulled Mary towards him, transferred his grip from waist to wrist and dropped her out through the leading door, lowering her as far as the stretch of his left arm would permit. When he let her go, she had less than three feet to fall. Within three seconds he had done the same with Carnaby- Jones. The cable-car jerked and started to move back up the valley. Schaffer practically bundled Smith out of the car, wincing in pain as he momentarily took all of Smith's two hundred pound weight, then slid out of the doorway himself, hung momentarily from the doorway at the full stretch of his arms, then dropped six feet into the soft yielding snow. He staggered, but maintained balance.
Smith was beside him. He had fished out a plastic explosive from the bag on his back and torn off the friction fuse. He handed the package to Schaffer and said: “You have a good right arm.”
“I have a good right arm. Horses, no. Baseball, yes.” Schaffer took aim and lobbed the explosive neatly through the doorway of the disappearing cable-car. “Like that?”
“Like that. Come on.” Smith, turned and, catching Mary by the arm while Schaffer hustled Carnaby-Jones along, ran down the side of the lower station and into the shelter of the nearest house bare seconds before a command car, followed by several trucks crammed with soldiers, slid to a skidding halt below the lower station. Soldiers piled out of the trucks, following an officer, clearly identifiable as Colonel Weissner, up the steps into the lower station.
The castle burned more fiercely than ever, a fire obviously totally out of control. Suddenly, there was the sharp crack of an explosion and the ascending cable-car burst into flames. The car, half-way up to the first pylon, swung in great arcs across the valley, its flames fanned by the wind, and climbed steadily upwards into the sky until its flame was lost in the greater flame of the Schloss Adler.
Crouched in the shelter of the house, Schaffer touched Smith's arm. “Sure you wouldn't like to go and burn down the station as well?”
“Come on,” Smith said. “The garage.”
Colonel Wyatt-Turner leaned over in the co-pilot's seat, pressed his face against the side-screen and stared down unhappily at the ground. The Mosquito bomber, all engines and plywood, was, he was well aware, the fastest warplane in the world: even so, he hadn't been prepared for anything quite so fast as this.
Normal flying, of course, imparts no sensation of speed, but then, Wing Commander Carpenter wasn't
