There was a dark, oblong break in the long glowing wall of the upper corridor! The door—it was the door of the apartment where he had left Naomi! He leaped down the hall, shouting. The portal hung open, shattered: the rooms were stark, staring empty. Allan reeled out again. There were the marks of footprints, of many footprints, in the green scum of the hall floor, their own among them, that had led the marauders straight to the girl!
Fool that he had been! He had thought she would be safer behind a bolted door! Allan berated himself. He had thought not to worry her. There had been only four bodies in the wreckage of the black plane—but how had the rest gotten here so soon?
There was a humming whine from above. Dane hurtled toward the roof stairs. He burst from the upper landing, fists clenched, face a furious mask. A helicopter was just rising. Allan jumped for it, his fingers caught and clung to the undercarriage. But the down-swing of his body broke his hold, and Dane crashed to the roof.
He watched the plane, saw it zoom up, turn east, saw it sink and land a half mile away, atop the building where he had found her. In the moonlight he marked the direction of the place, its distance. Then he was descending stairs, innumerable stairs. He could not hope to reach it in time to save Naomi. But—his eyes grew stony—he could avenge her.
Afterwards that nightmare journey through the murdered city was a detailless blur to Allan. He clambered over heaped rubble, forced himself through windrows of piled bones that crumbled to dust at his touch. Vines, and whipping creepers of triumphant vegetation everywhere halted him; he tore them away with bleeding hands and stumbled on. He fell, and scrambled up again, and plodded on the interminable path till he had reached his goal.
Here, at last, some modicum of reason penetrated into the numbed blankness of his brain. The dark arch of the entrance-way was somehow familiar. Still legible under the verdigris of the bronze plate on the lintel he read, "Transportation Substation—District L2ZX." Now he understood why he had not seen the black flier till it had leaped in pursuit: how it was that Naomi's captors had so quickly found another 'copter. A broad well penetrated the center of this building—its opening must be covered by the luxuriant vines so that he had not noted it—and dropped down to the midsection that was a hangar for local and private planes. His own little Zenith had been stored here on occasion. There must be other helicopters there, and a stock of fuel. A dim plan began to form at the back of his head.
But first he must find where they were, and what had happened to Naomi.
Allan removed his sandals, and began the endless climb. He made no sound on the steps, cushioned as they were with mold, but at each landing he paused for a moment, listening. The cold fire that burned within him left no room for fatigue, for pain.
A murmuring, then a laugh, cut through the deathlike stillness. Allan was nearly to the top. Down the corridor into which he crept, snakelike on his belly, red light flickered from an open door.