Leopard Hunts in Darkness - Smith Wilbur (книга бесплатный формат .TXT) 📗

While he struggled to free it, Sarah began to weaken, her movements became spasmodic and uncoordinated. She was drowning.

Craig got both his hands on the hose, and a foothold on the rock of the wall. He pulled with all the strength of his arms and his body and the hose ripped out of the oxygen bag. The gas escaped through the rent in a roar of silver bubbles, but Sarah was free.

He pulled her out of the hole and started pedalling upwards, his one leg only just pushing them against the weight of the purged oxygen set and the drag of the canvas food-bags at his waist.

Craig's struggles to subdue Sarah had burned up his own oxygen reserves. His lungs were on fire, and his chest spasmed violently. He kept on pedalling. Sarah was quiescent in his arms, and he felt that despite all his efforts they were no longer moving, that they were hanging in the black depths, both of them drowning slowly. Gradually the urge to breathe passed, and it all ceased to be worth further effort. It was much easier just to relax and let it happen.

Slowly he became aware of a mild pain. Through his indifference he wondered vaguely about that, but it was only when his head broke surface that he realized that someone had him by the hair.

Even in his half-drowned state, he realized that Sally Anne must have seen the lamp glow below the surface and recognized their predicament. She had dived down to them, seized Craig by the hair and dragged him up to the surface.

As he struggled for breath, he realized also that he still had his grip on Sarah's arm. The black girl was floating face-down on the surface beside him.

"Help mePhe choked on his own breath. "Get her out! Between them, they stripped the damaged oxygen set off her and lifted the unconscious girl onto the first rung of the ladder work above the water, where Sally-Anne cradled her face-down over her lap. Sarah hung there likea drowned black kitten.

Craig put his finger into her mouth, making sure that her tongue was clear, and then pressed the finger down into her throat to trigger the retching reflex. Sarah spewed up a mixture of water and vomit, and began to make small uncoordinated twitching movements.

Hanging in the water beside her, Craig splashed the vomit off her lips and then covered her mouth with his own, forcing his breath down into her lungs while Sally Anne cradled the limp body as best she could on the awkward perch.

"She's breathing again." Craig lifted his mouth off Sarah's. He felt sick and dizzy and weak from his own near-drowning.

"The diving set is buggered," he whispered, "the hose is torn out." He groped or6bnd for it, but it had sunk into the shaft.

(Sam," he whispered. "I've got to go back for Sam." enough. You'll kill "Darling, you can't you've done e yourself."

"Sam," he repeated. "Got to get Sam." Clumsily he untied the straps of the canvas food-bags and hung them beside his leg on the ladder. He clung to the ladder, breathing as deeply as his aching lungs would allow. Sarah was coughing and wheezing, but trying to sit up. Sally-Anne lifted her and held her on her lap likea child.

"Craig, darling, come back safely," she pleaded.

"Too right," he agreed, allowing himself the indulgence Of another half-dozen breaths of air, before he pushed himself off the ladder and the cold waters closed around his head again.

The underwater section of the grand gallery, even down as deep as the mouth of the shaft, was lit by the phosphorus flares, and as Craig ascended, so the intensity of the light increased to a crackling electric blue like the glare of brute arc-lamps.

As he broke through the surface of the pool, he found that the upper gallery was filled with the swirling smoke of the burning flares.

He gasped for air and immediately pain shot down his throat into his chest and his eyes burned and smarted so that he could barely see.

"Tear gas," he realized. The Shana were gassing the cavern.

Craig saw Tungata was in the water, crouched waistdeep behind the slab of rock. He had torn a strip from his shirt, wet it and bound it over his mouth and nose, but his eyes were red and running with tears.

"The whole cavern is swarming with troopers," he told Craig, his voice muffled by the wet cloth, and he stopped as a stentorian disembodied voice echoed down the gallery, its English distorted by an electronic megaphone.

"If you surrender immediately, you will not be harmed." As if to punctuate this announcement, there was the "Pock" of a grenade-launcher and another tear-gas canister came flying down the gallery, bouncing off the limestone floor likea football, belching out white clouds of the irritant gas.

"They are down the staircase already, I couldn't stop them." Tungata bobbed up from behind the edge of the slab and fired a short burst up the gallery. His bullets cracked and whined from the rock, and then the AK went silent and he ducked down.

"The last magazine," he grunted and dropped the empty rifle into the water. He groped for the pistol on his belt.

"Come on, Sam," Craig gasped. "There is a way through beyond this pool."

"I can't swim." Tungata was checking the pistol, slapping the magazine into the butt and jerking back the slide to load.

"I got Sarah through." Craig was trying to breathe through the searing clouds of gas. "I'll get you through." Tungata looked up at him.

"Trust me, Sam."

"Sarah is safe?"

"I promise you, she is." Tungata hesitated, fighting his fear of the waters.