His hands almost touched that weird, flowing surf as they clasped Ward's boot. Throwing all his strength into the lift, he hurled Ward backward.
Ward screamed once and disappeared under the blue fire. Gray clawed the rope from his neck. And then, suddenly, the world began to sway under him. He knew he was falling.
Some one's hand caught him, held him up. Fighting down his vertigo as his breath came back, he saw that it was Jill.
"Why?" he gasped, but her answer was lost in a titanic roar of thunder. Lightning blasted down. Dio's voice [p. 69] reached him, thin and distant through the clamor.
"We'll be killed! These damn things will attract the bolts!"
It was true. All his work had been for nothing. Looking up into that low, angry sky, Gray knew he was going to die.
Quite irrelevantly, Jill's words in the tunnel came back to him. "You're a fool ... lost truth ... not true to lie!"
Now, in this moment, she couldn't lie to him. He caught her shoulders cruelly, trying to read her eyes.
Very faintly through the uproar, he heard her. "I'm sorry for you, Gray. Good man, gone to waste."
Dio stifled a scream. Thunder crashed between the sounding boards of the cliffs. Gray looked up.