Lanyon smiled at her. "Relax. There aren't any admirals' wives in the neighborhood, let alone any admirals. You'll be on board even if I have to marry you."
"_Even?_" Patricia said in a playful tone. "Well, thanks."
A vortex of air whirling down the face of the cliff pulled at the pillbox, shifting the stones heaped into the window slit, spitting dust over their heads. Lanyon took her hand and steadied her, then lifted her to her feet. His hands felt her shoulders under the windbreaker, her ash-blonde hair billowing across his face as her head tipped back under the pressure of his mouth on her lips.
Entering the ravine, they moved cautiously along the east wall, sheltering under the overhanging shelves while showers of stones drove down from the roof, darting forward during the clear periods. Air swirled around them, exploding with vicious snaps as vortices span off the lips of the ravine and burst against the floor 300 feet below. Higher up, just under the roof, they could see a few forlorn firs clinging to their footholds in the sides of the rock face, their outlines blurring as they quivered in the duststorm.
They reached the point to which Lanyon had explored previously, where the ravine divided, the larger space, on the northern side, gradually opening out into a wide-walled valley, across which the air stream moved like a huge wave front over a rockpool, sucking away every loose fragment of rock, every vestige of vegetation. Lanyon realized that if they ventured into the valley the negativepressure field would probably suck them straight up into the air and whirl them away toward the hills in the west.
The southern division was little more than a narrow fissure in the rock face, shelving away toward the southeast at a gradually tilting angle. Once a small stream had splashed down it, and the stones were smooth and polished, still damp in the sandy bed.
They climbed along it, a narrow ribbon of daylight winding somewhere above them to the left. Lanyon held Patricia's hand, steered her over heavy boulders and spurs, pulling her across smooth polished slabs that fell across their pathway like eroded tombstones.
For half an hour they made steady progress eastward, moving, Lanyon estimated, at least a mile nearer the city, almost in sight of the farthest suburbs. The ravine opened into a narrow flat-bottomed canyon, the sheer face on its eastern side sheltering the treecovered slopes stretching away from them.
Patricia pulled Lanyon's arm.
"Steve, look. Over there. Is that a farmhouse?"
Lanyon followed her pointing finger, saw the low ragged outline of what had once been a castellated wall curving away along a road which crossed the end of the canyon.
"May be part of an old castle or chateau," Lanyon commented. "With luck we'll find someone else there. Come on."
On their right the ground shelved steeply to the crest of the cliff 150 feet above them. Built onto the supporting shoulders was what bad once been a monastery, a long two-storied complex of massive stone walls and buttresses five or six hundred years old. The top story and roof had been stripped away but the lower section, just under the crest, was still intact, rooted into the sloping rock face below.
The ruined wall enclosed what was left of the garden and vineyards. Halfway along, an arched doorway let into a yard between low outbuildings. Lanyon took Patricia's arm, and they bent down and moved slowly along the wall toward the entrance. They paused in one of the doorways, and Lanyon pounded on the heavy wooden shutters.
"No one here!" he yelled to Patricia. "Let's see if we can get inside." They moved around the yard, trying the windows and shutters. All the entrances had been carefully sealed, the doors into the main building braced with padlocked crossbars. Lanyon pointed to the circular stone lid of the grain chute recessed into the cobbles.
"There's a good chance we'll be able to get in through here." He pulled out his jack knife, snapped the blade open and pried it in under the lip of the lid, tearing his nails as he wrestled the heavy disc out of its socket. Finally he freed it, dragged it to one side and peered down into the chute. Fifteen feet below the polished metal slide angled down into one of the storage silos, wooden stalls half filled with grain. Lanyon took Patricia's hands, watched her disappear down into the dim half light.
He followed her quickly, trying to brace himself but ending up to his waist in the soft rustling grain. They shook their clothes free, Patricia leaning on Lanyon's shoulder, and thoved below the arched ceiling toward a low flight of steps that led into another storeroom. Here and there light filtered in through narrow grilles, revealing the dim outlines of corridors winding between massive pillars and vaulted ceilings.
The next storeroom was empty. They crossed it, walked down a short flight of ancient steps into the basement of the monastery itself.
"Looks as if this monastery's been disused for some while," Lanyon commented to Patricia. "The local farmers probably work the land and store their grain here."
They reached heavy wooden doors at the end of the corridor. Lanyon turned the circular hasp in the lock and peered through into total darkness. Taking out his flashlight, he flashed it on, then whistled sharply.
"Wait a minute, Pat. I think I'm wrong."
They were looking into a large storeroom about 30 yards long, floor and far wall cut into the cliff itself, roof carried by massive buttresses. Stacked in lines down the full length of the room were hundreds of huge crates and cartons, their contents glinting in the torch beam.
"The monks must have stored everything away here before they left," Lanyon muttered. They moved forward down one of the aisles. He brushed against a square waist-high object that gonged metallically, then shone the torch on a large white washing machine.
He tapped it to attract Patricia's attention. "Up to date, aren't they?" Moving the torch, he then saw that there were half a dozen other machines next to it, all of them taped with the manufacturer's protective wrappers.
Pausing, he started to examine the stacks of cases more carefully.
"These haven't even been used," Patricia commented.
Lanyon nodded. "I know. Something curious about all this. Look at those." He swung the flashlight against the wall, where the blank eyes of 20 or 30 TV receivers stared back at them, like a display in a darkened shop window. Next to the TV sets were two big red-and-yellow plastic-fronted jukeboxes, and beyond these a pile of radios, vacuum cleaners and electric stoves, heaped with smaller cartons containing irons, hair driers and other domestic appliances.
Flashing the torch, Lanyon walked slowly down the aisle. On the left, down the center of the storeroom, was a solid wall of what appeared to be machine tools-lathes, circular saws, jig-cutting equipment-the steel bearings and drives pasted over with brown tape.
"One of the stores must be using this place as its warehouse," Patricia remarked. "Strange selection of items, though."
Lanyon nodded. "How did they get all this stuff up here?" They bad reached the far end of the room, and he turned the handle of the double oak doors. "Looks to me-"
As he opened the door, lights moved at the far end of the corridor beyond, and he had a brief impression of four or five men shifting some bulky object on a small trolley. He pushed the door to and snapped off the torch, just as a shout of recognition went up.
"Steve, they've seen us!" Lanyon held Patricia's arm.
"Listen, Pat, I'm not sure who these people are. They look like looters to me. We'd better get out of here."
He switched on the torch again and they ran quickly down the aisle past the stacks of radios and washing machines. As they reached the doorway Lanyon saw a large black-garbed figure moving silently below the vaulted arches of the adjacent storeroom. The man noticed the beam of Lanyon's torch and immediately slid back into the darkness behind one of the pillars.