Giordino immediately understood and pulled out his P-10 automatic. "Damn, you're heavy," he grunted.

"Give me your hand and I'll pull you up," Pitt said quietly, as he gripped the old .45 Colt in his right hand. Remaining inside the elevator, they stood on opposite sides of the doors and pressed themselves into the corners.

The doors opened, and three guards, wearing identical coveralls, black with matching stocking caps on their heads, rushed inside, handguns drawn, eves staring up at the open maintenance door in the ceiling. Pitt stuck out his leg and tripped the third man, who fell against the first two, sending them all sprawling in a tangled heap on the floor. Then he punched the door-close button, waited until they descended several feet, and pressed the red emergency stop button, freezing the elevator between floors.

Giordino had expertly clubbed two of the guards on the head with the butt of his automatic before they could recover, then held the muzzle against the forehead of the third and snarled in Spanish, "Drop your gun or go brain-dead."

The guard was as tough and coldly efficient as the mercenaries they had encountered in the Pandora Mine. Pitt tensed, sensing the guard might attempt a lightning move to get in the first shot. But the man detected the cold look of composure in Pitt's eyes and recognized a deadly threat. Knowing the slightest flick of his eyes would bring a bullet smashing into his head, he wisely dropped his gun onto the elevator floor, the same model Para-Ordnance that Giordino was pressing between his eyes.

"You clowns are going nowhere!" the guard spat in English.

"Well, well," said Pitt. "What have we here? Another mercenary hit man like we met in Colorado. Karl Wolf must pay you guys handsome wages to murder and die for him."

"Give up, pal. You're the one who's going to die."

"You people have a nasty habit of repeating the same old song." Pitt pointed his old Colt an inch from the guard's left eye until it was lined up to fire across his face. "Dr. O'Connell and her daughter. Where are they held?" Pitt wasn't trying to imitate the rattle of a diamondback, but he gave a pretty good impression of it. "Talk or I pull the trigger. You'll probably live, but you won't have any eyeballs to see with. Now, then, where are they?"

Pitt was tough, but he wasn't sadistic. The look on his twisted face and the malice in his eyes was enough to fool the guard into thinking a madman was about to blow his eyes out. "They're confined on one of the great ships."

"Which ship?" demanded Pitt. "There are four of them."

"I don't know, I swear I don't know."

"He's lying," said Giordino, his tone cold enough to freeze oil.

"The truth," Pitt said menacingly, "or I'll blast both your eyeballs into the far wall." He pulled back the hammer of the Colt and pressed the muzzle against the edge of the guard's right eye in line with the left.

The guard's face did not transform from defiance to pure fright, but still, staring from eyes filled with loathing, he gasped, "The Ulrich Wolf' They're being held on the Ulrich Wolf."

"Which ship is that?"

"The ship-city that will carry the people of the Fourth Empire to sea after the cataclysm."

"It would take two years to search a ship that size," Pitt pressured. "Give a more exact location or go blind. Quickly!"

"Level Six, K Section. I don't know which residence."

"He's still lying," said Giordino coarsely. "Pull the trigger, but wait till I look away. I can't stand to see blood spray all over the furniture."

"Then kill me and get it over with," the guard growled.

"Where do the Wolfs find murdering scum like you?"

"Why would you care?"

"You're American. He didn't hire you off the street, so you must have come out of the military, an elite force, unless I miss my guess. Your loyalty to the Wolf family goes far beyond rationality. Why?"

"Giving my life for the Fourth Empire is an honor. I'm repaid by knowing, as we all are, that my wife and sons will be safely onboard the Ulrich Wolf when the rest of the world is devastated."

"So that's your insurance policy."

"He has a human family?" Giordino said in amazement. "I'd have sworn he curls up and lays eggs."

"What good is a bank account with a billion dollars when the world's population is about to perish?"

"I hate a pessimist," said Giordino, as he swung the barrel of his automatic against the nape of the mercenary's neck, dropping him unconscious onto the inert bodies of his comrades. In almost the same instant a series of alarms began to sound throughout the building "That tears it. We'll have to shoot our way out of town."

"Style and sophistication," Pitt said, seemingly unconcerned. "Always style and sophistication."

Six minutes later, the elevator stopped at the lobby level and the door opened. On the floor of the lobby, nearly two dozen men, with automatic weapons raised and aimed into the elevator, stood and knelt in the firing position.

Two men in the black coverall uniforms of security guards, with stocking caps pulled down almost to their eyes, raised their hands and shouted with lowered heads in both English and Spanish. "Do not shoot. We have killed two of the intruders!" Then they dragged two bodies dressed in orange coveralls by the feet out onto the lobby's marble floor and unceremoniously dumped them. "There are others who were working from the inside," Giordino said excitedly. "They've barricaded themselves on the tenth floor."

"Where is Max?" inquired a guard who acted as if he was in command.

Pitt, his arm over his face as if wiping away perspiration, turned and pointed upward. Giordino said, "We had to leave him. He was wounded in the fight. Hurry, send for a doctor."

The well-trained security force rapidly broke down into two units, one heading into the elevator, the other rushing up the emergency fire stairs. Pitt and Giordino knelt over the two unconscious guards they had pulled from the elevator and made a show of examining them, until they saw an opportunity to walk quietly from the lobby through the front doors.

"I can't believe we pulled it off," said Giordino, as they commandeered a cart and sped off toward the dock where the Ulrich Wolf was moored.

"Luckily, they were all too focused on apprehending the evil intruders to take a good look at our faces and recognize us as strangers."

"My security uniform is too long and too tight. How about yours?"

"Too short and too loose, but we don't have time to stop off at a tailor," Pitt muttered, as he steered the cart back toward the first dock while dodging around a soaring crane that was moving ponderously over its rail track. He kept his foot flat on the pedal, but the cart had a top speed of only about twelve miles an hour and the pace seemed agonizingly slow.

They traveled alongside the stupendous floating city, avoiding the busy loading activities. The dock was packed with a milling horde of workers, many moving about in electric carts, others on bicycles, with quite a few darting in and around all obstacles on rollerblades. Pitt had to frequently ram his foot onto the brake to keep from colliding with workers who moved carelessly into his path, absorbed in their jobs. Huge forklifts also ignored their approach and crossed in front of them to deliver their loads, moving up ramps and into the cavernous cargo holds. There were any number of raised fists and angry shouts as Pitt careened around all obstacles, humans or solid objects.