Temple

It stretched away from him, out over the mine. It was so monstrously long—a feature which was accentuated by its narrowness. While it was only wide enough for one person to travel down at a time, it was easily as long as four football fields stretched end on end.

Oh God, Race thought.

'Professor, are you ready?' Renee's voice said suddenly in his earpiece. It had been so long since he'd used his radio gear, Race had almost forgotten he was wearing it.

'As I'll ever be,' he said.

'Then let's go.'

Race stepped out onto the rope bridge.

He saw the white box-shaped cabin at the far end of it, suspended high above the floor of the mine saw the door sunk into its wall at the point where the bridge met it. At the moment, that door was closed.

There was no movement inside the control booth's long rectangular windows, either.

No. The booth just sat there—silent—hovering perfectly in the air, seven hundred feet above the world.

Race moved down the bridge.

At that very same moment, Renee was moving quickly down the northern cable bridge.

She moved with her eyes locked on the closed door at the end of her bridge—watched it with tense anticipation, wait ing for it to burst open at any moment.

But the door remained resolutely closed.

Odilo Ehrhardt peered out from behind one of the windows of the control booth, saw Renee coming down the northern bridge.

Out the opposite window, he saw Race mirroring her movement, coming down the southern cable bridge.

Now Ehrhardt had to make a choice.

He chose Race.

The tiny figures of Race and Renee made their way down the two swooping suspension bridges, converging on the control booth.

Renee was moving a little faster than Race, running quickly, her gun up. When she was about halfway down her walkway, however, the door at the end of it burst open and

Odilo Ehrhardt stepped out onto the bridge.

Renee stopped dead in her tracks, froze.

Ehrhardt was holding the tiny figure of Dr Fritz Weber in front of him, shielding himself with the little scientist's struggling body. Ehrhardt had one pudgy arm wrapped around Weber's throat. In his other hand, he held a Glock- 20 semi-automatic pistol levelled at the scientist's head.

Don't do it, Renee's mind pleaded, willing Ehrhardt not to kill the only man who knew the code to disarm the Supernova.

She obviously wasn't wishing hard enough. For at that moment—that singular, chilling moment—Odilo Ehrhardt gave Renee a final sinister smile and pulled the trigger.

The gun in Ehrhardt's hand went off - loud and hard, echoing throughout the crater.

It sent a geyser of blood exploding out the side of Weber's head, sent his brains spraying out over the handrail and down into the crater.

Weber's body went completely limp as Ehrhardt tipped it over the railing and Renee could do nothing but stare in stunned horror as the corpse dropped—dropped and dropped and dropped—seven hundred horrible feet before it hit the bottom of the mine with a muted distant thud.

Race heard the gunshot too, and a second later, he caught sight of Weber's body as it went sailing down into the crater.

'Good God…'

He started moving more quickly toward the control booth, started running…

Back on the northern side of the control booth, Odilo Ehrhardt wasn't finished.

Having tossed Weber's body off the bridge, he now hur riedly began uncoupling the pressure hoses that connected the cable bridge to the control booth.

“No!” Renee yelled, gripping the handrail on either side of her.

With a sharp snap-hiss! one of the pressure couplings came free, and the handrail to Renee's left just dropped away.

Renee did the calculations in her head. There was no way she could get to the control booth before Ehrhardt released the other three couplings.

She turned around and ran, ran for all she was worth, back up the cable bridge.

Snap-hiss!

Another coupling broke free, and the other handrail dropped away.

Two couplings to go.

Renee was running hard—now on a rail-less bridge— seven hundred feet above the ground.

A few seconds later, the third coupling went and the boards beneath her started to sag to the left.

Then, with a final grin of satisfaction, Ehrhardt snapped open the last coupling and the massive suspension bridge— connected to the northern rim of the crater, but now no longer connected to the cabin in its centre—fell into the abyss, with Renee Becker on it.

Renee was only about fifty feet from the rim when the bridge dropped away beneath her. As soon as she felt it give way, she dived forward, clutching onto the steel floorboards with her fingers, holding onto them for dear life.

The cable bridge fell flat against the slanted wall of the crater. Renee slammed into the mine's earthen wall, bounced off it, but—somehow—managed to hold on.

Race reached the door at the end of his cable bridge just as Renee's voice came blasting in over his headset.

'Professor, this is Rende. My bridge is down. I'm out of the equation. It's up to you now.'

Great, Race thought wryly. Just what I needed to hear.