Stormbreaker

down his neck.
    His shoes and socks were sodden. When he moved forward his feet squelched and he had to take off his shoes and shake them out before he could go on. Ian Rider’s map was still folded in his pocket, but he no longer had any need of it. All he had to do was follow the light.
    He went straight forward to another intersection, then turned right. The light was so bright now that he could actually make out the color of the rock-dark brown and gray. The throbbing was also getting louder, and Alex could feel a rush of cool air streaming down toward him. He moved forward cautiously, wondering what he was about to come to. He turned a corner and suddenly the rock on both sides gave way to new brick with metal grills set at intervals just above the level of the floor. The old mine shaft had been converted. It was being used as the outlet for some sort of air-conditioning system. The light that had guided Alex here was coming out of the grills.
    He knelt beside the first of these and looked through into a large white-tiled room, a laboratory with complicated glass and steel equipment laid out over work surfaces. The room was empty. Tentatively, Alex took hold of the grill, but it was firmly secured, bolted into the rock face. The second grill belonged to the same room. It was also screwed in tight. Alex continued up the tunnel to a third grill. This one looked into a storage room filled with the silver boxes that Alex had seen being delivered by the submarine the night before.
    He took the grill in both hands and pulled. It came away from the wall easily, and looking closer, he understood why. Once again, Ian Rider had been here ahead of him. He had cut through the bolts holding it in place. Alex set the grill down silently, glad that he had found the strength to go forward.
    Carefully, he squeezed through the rectangular hole in the wall and into the room. At the last minute, lying on his stomach with his feet dangling below, he reached for the grill and set it back in place. Provided nobody looked too closely, they wouldn’t see anything wrong. The ground was a long way away, at least twice his own height, but that wasn’t going to stop him now. He dropped down and landed, catlike, on the balls of his feet. The throbbing was louder, coming from somewhere outside. It would cover any noise he made. He went over to the nearest of the silver boxes and examined it. He found two catches on the lid and pressed. The box clicked open in his hands, but when he looked inside, it was empty. Whatever had been delivered was already in use.
    He checked for cameras, found none, then crossed to the door. It was unlocked. He opened it, one inch at a time, and peered out. The door led onto a wide corridor with an automatic sliding door at each end and a silver rail running its full length.
    “Nineteen hundred hours. Red shift to assembly line. Blue shift to decontamination.”
    The voice rang out over a loudspeaker system, neither male nor female; emotionless, inhuman. Alex glanced at his watch. It was already seven o’clock in the evening. It had taken him longer than he had thought to get through the mine. He stole forward. It wasn’t exactly a passage that he had found. It was more an observation platform. He reached the rail and looked down.
    Alex hadn’t had any idea what he would find behind the metal door, but what he was seeing now was far beyond anything he could have imagined. It was a huge chamber, the walls—half naked rock, half polished steel—lined with computer equipment, electronic meters, machines that blinked and flickered with a life of their own. It was staffed by forty or fifty people, some in white coats, others in overalls, all wearing armbands of different colors: red, yellow, blue, and green. Arc lights beamed down from above. Armed guards stood at each doorway, watching the work with blank faces.
    For this was where the Stormbreakers were being assembled. The computers were being slowly carried in a long, continuous line along a conveyor belt, past the various scientists and technicians. The strange thing was that they already looked finished … and of course they had to be. Sayle had told him. They were actually being shipped out during the course of the afternoon and night. So what last-minute adjustment was being made here in this secret factory? And why was so much of the production line hidden away?
    What Alex had seen as he crept around Sayle Enterprises had only been the tip of the