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Above hiht ca what he would see The slanting yellow eyes behind the thick glass looked keenly down at him Slowly, behind the bulb, the head moved from side to side The eyelids dropped indoards in farewell and dislass Then it ithdrawn The light went out Bond turned his face back to the floor of the shaft and rested his forehead on the coolinto the last lap, that the observers had finished with him until they came for his remains It took an extra ounce of heart out of Bond that there had been no gesture of praise, however sroes hated him They only wanted him to die, and as round softly together He thought of the girl and the thought gave hith He wasn't dead yet Damn it, he wouldn't die! Not until the heart was torn from his body

Bond tensed his o With extra care he put his weapons back in their places and painfully began to drag hiinning to slope gently doards It rew steeper so that Bond, could alht It was a blessed relief not to have to rey light ahead, nothing e The quality of the air seemed to be different There was a new, fresh smell to it What was it? The sea?

Suddenly Bond realized that he was slipping down the shaft He opened his shoulders and spread his feet to slow hi effect was srip! He was going faster and faster A bend was just ahead And it was a bend doards!

Bond's body crashed into the bend and round it Christ, he was diving head doards! Desperately Bond spread his feet and hands The un barrel Far below there was a circle of grey light The open air? The sea? The light was tearing up at hiht for breath Stay alive, you fool! Stay alive!

Head first, Bond's body shot out of the shaft and fell through the air, slowly, slowly, doards the gunmetal sea that waited for him a hundred feet below

XVIII

KILLING GROUND

Bond's body shattered the mirror of the dawn sea like a bomb

As he had hurtled down the silver shaft towards the widening disc of light, instinct had told hiet his hands forward to break his fall, and to keep his head down and his body rigid And, at the last fraction of a second when he gliulp of breath So Bond hit the water in the se a hole for his skull and shoulders, and though, by the time he had shot twenty feet below the surface, he had lost consciousness, the forty-mile-an-hour impact with the water failed to smash him

Slowly the body rose to the surface and lay, head down, softly rocking in the ripples of the dive The water-choked" lungs sos and ar fros jerked, instinctively trying to get the body upright in the water' This ti horribly, the head jerked above the surface and stayed there The ar, and, through the red and black curtain, the bloodshot eyes saw the lifeline and told the sluggish brain to round was a narrow deep water inlet at the base of the towering cliff The lifeline towards which Bond struggled, ha wire fence, stretched fro it off from the open sea The two-feet squares of thick ere suspended froae encrusted, into the depths

Bond got to the wire and hung, crucified For fifteen minutes he stayed like that, his body occasionally racked with voh to turn his head and see where he was Blearily his eyes took in the towering cliffs above hi water The place was in deep grey shadow, cut off from the dawn by the mountain, but out at sea there was the pearly iridescence of first light thatHere it was dark and glooishly Bond's mind puzzled over the wire fence What was its purpose, closing off this dark cleft of sea? Was it to keep things out, or keep theuely down into the black depths around hiing feet There were s? They see away, catching at black strands Strands of what? Of cotton froain No, they were feeding off his blood

Bond shivered Yes, blood was seeping off his body, off the torn shoulders, the knees, the feet, into the water Now for the first time he felt the pain of the sea water on his sores and burns The pain revived him, quickened his mind If these small fish liked it, what about barracuda and shark? Was that what the wire fence was for, to keepto sea? Then why hadn't they been after hi was to crawl up the wire afld get over to the other side To put the fence between him and whatever lived in this black aquarium

Weakly, foothold by foothold, Bond cliain to where he could rest well above the water He hooked the thick cable under his aruely down at the fish that still fed from the blood that dripped off his feet