Where Eagles Dare

Schaffer was feeling even more vague and woolly than Smith, if for different reasons. He was waking, slowly and painfully, from a very bad dream and in this dream he could taste salt in his mouth and hear a soft urgent feminine voice calling his name, calling it over and over again. In normal times Schaffer would have been all for soft feminine voices, urgent or not, but he wished that this one would stop for it was all part of the bad dream and in this bad dream someone had split his head in half and he knew the pain wouldn't go until he woke up. He moaned, put the palms of his hands on the floor and tried to prop himself up. It took a long time, it took an eternity, for someone had laid one of the girders from the Forth bridge across his back, but at last he managed to straighten both his arms, his head hanging down between them. His head didn't feel right, it didn't even feel like his head, for, apart from the fact that there seemed to be a butcher's cleaver stuck in it, it seemed to be stuffed with cotton wool, grey and fuzzy round the edges. He shook his head to clear it and this was a mistake for the top of his head fell off. Or so it felt to Schaffer as the blinding coruscation of multi-coloured lights before his eyes arranged themselves into oddly kaleidoscopic patterns. He opened his eyes and the patterns dimmed and the lights began to fade: gradually, beneath his eyes the pattern of floorboards began to resolve themselves, and, on the board, the outlines of hands. His own hands.

He was awake, but this was one of those bad dreams which stayed with you even when you were awake. He could still taste salt—the salt of blood—his head still felt as if one incautious shake would have it rolling across the floor and that soft and urgent voice was still calling.

“Lieutenant Schaffer! Lieutenant Schaffer! Wake up, Lieutenant, wake up! Can you hear me?”

He'd heard that voice before, Schaffer decided, but he couldn't place it. It must have been a long time ago. He twisted his head to locate the source of the voice—it seemed to come from above—and the kaleidoscopic whirligig of colours were back in position again, revolving more quickly than ever. Head-shaking and head-twisting, Schaffer decided, were contra-indicated. He returned his head slowly to its original position, managed to get his knees under him, crawled forward in the direction of some dimly-seen piece of machinery and hauled himself shakily to his feet.

“Lieutenant! Lieutenant Schaffer! I'm up here.”

Schaffer turned and lifted his head in an almost grotesque slow motion and this time the whole universe of brightly dancing stars was reduced to the odd constellation or two. He recognised the voice from the distant past now, it was that of Mary Ellison, he even thought he recognised the pale strained face looking down from above, but he couldn't be sure, his eyes weren't focusing as they should. He wondered dizzily what the hell she was doing up there staring down at him through what appeared to be the bars of a shattered sky-light: his mind, he dimly realised, was operating with all the speed and subtle fluency of a man swimming upstream against a river of black molasses.

“Are you—are you all right?” Mary asked.

Schaffer considered this ridiculous question carefully. “I expect I shall be,” he said with great restraint. “What happened?”

“They hit you with your own gun.”

“That's right.” Schaffer nodded and immediately wished he hadn't. He gingerly fingered a bruise on the back, of his head. “In the face. I must have struck my head as—” He broke off and turned slowly to face the door. “What was that?”

“A dog. It sounded like a dog barking.”

“That's what I thought.” His voice slurred and indistinct, he staggered drunkenly across to the lower iron door and put his ear to it. “Dogs,” he said. “Lots of dogs. And lots and lots of hammering. Sledge-hammers, like enough.” He left the door and walked back to the centre of the floor, still staggering slightly. “They're on to us and they're coming for us. Where's the Major?”

“He went after them.” The voice was empty of all feeling. “He jumped on to the top of the cable-car.”

“He did, eh?” Schaffer received the news as if Smith's action had been the most natural and inevitable thing in the world. “How did he make out?”

“How did he make—” There was life back in her voice now, a shocked anger at Schaffer's apparent callousness. She checked herself and said: “There was a fight and I think someone fell off the roof. I don't know who it was.”

“It was one of them,” Schaffer said positively.

“One of—how can you say that?”

“The Major Smiths of this world don't drive over the edge of a cliff. Quotation from the future Mrs. Schaffer. The Major Smiths of this world don't fall off the roofs of cable-cars. Quotation from the future Mrs. Schaffer's future husband.”

“You're recovering,” Mary said coldly. “But I think you're right. There's still someone sitting on top of the cable-car and it wouldn't be one of them, would it?”