James Bond and Moonraker (17 page)

For an hour he brushed through reed beds that were so thick as to be almost impenetrable, and then the waterscape opened up and clumps of feather-topped cane became islands in a water garden of lilies and flowering tubers. These in turn gave way to stretches of open water bordered by reed and jungle and containing flocks of cranes and geese that rose into the air as he approached. To see some birdlife and be free of the stifling reed beds lifted Bond’s spirits, and he opened the throttle slightly to let the Q-craft skim towards what looked like the beginnings of a large lake. The boat emerged from the last clumps of reed and was indeed riding across a wide expanse of water. The surface was smooth and clear and Bond saw rings that showed where fish were rising. But there were no birds. After the teeming backwaters that he had come through, Bond wondered why. What could there be here to frighten them away? The answer came in the form of a large spout of water that rose just forward of the bow. Bond thought momentarily of some giant fish or crocodile — before he heard the tell-tale screech. He had come under fire. A second shell exploded astern and he swung the rudder over to head for the shelter of the reed beds. Moving directly towards him with its bow out of the water and cannon blazing was a high-powered speedboat. Bond threw the wheel over again, only to see two more boats converging on him. The water round the Q-craft was boiling with shell fire. There remained one direction to take. Across the lake. Bond opened the throttle wide and headed for a gap in the trees on the far shore.

Behind him the three speedboats gave chase, one in advance of the others. Bond studied the control panel of the Q-craft and quickly ran through the instructions he had been given. Poor Q. He produced equipment for every contingency and yet was furious whenever one arose. Bond jabbed a button and there was a
clunk
from the stern which told him that two release chambers had opened. More pressure on the button and two cylindrical objects like deptrcharges were tossed out to float on the surface twenty yards apart. As the first pursuing boat thudded across the water it steered between them, the helmsman imagining they were mines that would explode on impact. He was right — but not entirely. The mines were also magnetic. As the speedboat passed between them they leapt from the water like flying fish and slapped against the hull. After a moment’s pause there was a violent explosion which sent a column of orange and yellow flame roaring heavenwards. Wreckage spattered the water and the blasted hull of the launch sank immediately.

Bond’s tight-lipped expression eased momentarily. One down and two to go. As he tried to coax some more speed out of his craft, he saw a notch cut out of the jungle ahead where the lake must feed a river. He had an impression of white water. Cannon fire still hammered around his ears and another shell exploded dangerously close. Bond glanced at the controls again. The small lever on the left. That might be the answer. He pulled it down and turned his head to see a thin cigar-shaped torpedo drop into the wake behind the Q-craft. Almost instantly it broke free and veered towards one of the pursuing speedboats like a water snake, the nose just breaking the surface. The helmsman saw the danger and was swift to take evasive action. He steered towards his companion boat and the torpedo swept past the bow. A shout of triumph rose in the air and was quickly stifled. The torpedo made a one-hundred-andeighty degree turn and homed in on its prey. Like a dog about to sit down the launch spun round on itself, but the torpedo was not thrown off. Remorselessly it closed the gap and the magnetic head smashed into the stern. A second column of flame, smoke and fragments burst into the air, and the stricken boat began to settle fast.

Now Bond was in the white water at the beginning of the river. Small angry waves thumped against the bottom of the boat and spray broke over the shuddering bows. Bond looked ahead and saw the water becoming more turbulent. He must be entering some rapids. In principle this should not be too serious. With its high-powered engine and shallow draught the Q-craft was built for this kind of work. Bond now saw and heard something that froze his heart. Round a bend in the river was a cloud of spray about a quarter of a mile wide and rising at its highest to at least sixty feet. There was also a deep, throbbing roar like nothing he had heard before. It could only be a waterfall. A waterfall of such dimensions as to dash to pieces anything that was swept over it. Bond swung the rudder and felt the boat in danger of broaching. A fresh hail of bullets creased the air above his head and shattered the cabin glass. There was no turning back, no steering for the bank. The river was now a boiling flood, the roar even louder. Spray began to drench the boat. Bond squared his jaw and steered straight for the point where it rose highest. Behind him the last pursuing boat was in difficulties. Horribly aware of what lay ahead, the helmsman had tried to turn back, and the boat had broached. Lying across the stream, it was drifting helplessly at the pace of the water and threatening to capsize at any moment. All attempts at wiping out Bond had been abandoned in the interests of self-preservation; a sentiment that had expressed itself too late. Bond glanced back to see the boat turn on its side and fill with water. It disappeared into the spray.

Bond’s heart pumped like a steam hammer as he fought to stay in control of his senses and hold the Q-craft head-on to the racing water. The spray stung his face like hail and the roar of the falls threatened to burst his eardrums. Ahead the frothing white water was giving way to an apron of smooth cream as the river stretched itself over the lip of the precipice. What lay below was swathed in a heavy pall of mist. Bond’s numb fingers reached up and grasped the metal rod that ran beneath the awning of the Q-craft. To the left and right were two levers, sculpted close to the shape of the rod. Bond waited and felt the hull of the boat rasp against rock. He was now inside a cloud of spray, and below him was a sudden unnerving glimpse of what lay beyond the falls. It seemed like a great hole in the middle of the earth down which water from every side was disappearing. A hole so deep as to have no bottom. Bond pulled down the levers and immediately felt the awning come free and the wind attempt to tear it from his grasp. He clung tightly to the rod and as the Q-craft tilted over the edge of the falls what was now apparent as the wings-like structure of a hang glider swept him up over the terrifying drop.

Blinded by spray, Bond felt that he was as good as dead. The enormous flow of water going over the falls set up air currents which acted like an undertow on a swimmer. His frozen hands clung to the bar and he dangled, terrified lest any attempt to throw his feet backwards should destroy his already precarious balance. An up-draught carried him away from the lowering cloud of spray and he saw that what had seemed like a bottomless pit was in fact a deep gorge which sucked in water from three of its sides. Ahead of him, beneath a suspension bridge of misty rainbow, the reformed river escaped as a cataract between towering cliffs. Bond’s heart fell fractionally faster than the hang glider. A down-draught was carrying him below the lip of the falls. He struggled to find a current of air, but knew that it was hopeless. He could never reach the surrounding jungle. He would have to follow the river down the gorge and hope that some landing space would appear before he ran out of supporting air. One look at the raging torrent, and his chances of survival seemed remote. The sides of the gorge were sheer save for occasional patches of vegetation, and the river raced through a shattered honeycomb of snag-toothed rocks. As the distance to them narrowed, he saw the battered shell of one of the launches breaking apart like a bundle of kindling. That was the fate that awaited him. It was like a nightmare in which with a jolt one is suddenly suspended in mid-air, drifting down, down, down towards a hostile landscape, twisting and turning but unable to arrest the descent. Bond felt a coldness which did not only come from fear. Beneath the level of the cliffs the atmosphere was glacial. The rocks glistened with spray and a bird rose upwards sharply, as if terrified by this strange intruder in its turbulent kingdom.

Now the bottom of the gorge was fifty feet away and all the air seemed to belong to the rushing water. There was nothing Bond could do to stay up. Only prolong the agony for as long as possible. A sheer rock face loomed up before him and he veered away at the last moment, dropping a heart-stopping ten feet with the suddenness of the turn. Angry spurts of water snapped at his heels and the gorge closed in above his head. The torrent jinked to the left and another wall of rock threw itself in his path. Bond forced his right arm up and pulled with his left. As the water rose high to whip against the cliff, he saw a scatter of jagged rocks and stones on the other side of the stream. An untidy mane of creepers strained against the current. Bond veered left away from the full force of the water and braced himself for impact. He came in close enough for the tip of wing to scrape against the cliff and fell clumsily into a frothing mill-race of water.

The first impact drove his knees against his chest and the freezing water cut him to the bone. The battered framework of the glider was torn from his grasp and bounced away like a broken rainbow. Bond narrowly avoided being disembowelled on a submerged rock, and snatched at a cluster of creepers. His hands started to slip down the slimy tendrils, stopping at a joint to which he clung with desperation born of the threat of imminent death. The current swung him to the side so that he was within reach of a narrow beach of water-washed shale. Feeling the current relax its hold, he kicked sideways with his feet and threw out an arm to grab at a twist of root which projected from the rock face. His fingers brushed against it and then gripped. A last muscle-wrenching effort, and with both hands clinging to the root, he pulled himself from the maelstrom of pounding water. He lay on the wet stones and sucked in mouthfuls of air, thankful and surprised to be alive.

The roar of the water around Bond was still terrifying. Tucked on a ledge of shingle, he seemed almost to be beneath it. As he looked back upstream, the full might of the falls was hidden by the bend in the river, but a thick cloud of spray and mist hung in the air, grey and foreboding against the black mass of rock. The water only needed to rise a few inches to sweep him away again. As if prompted by the terror behind the thought, it began to rain. Bond knew what this could mean. A sudden storm upstream and the mighty weight of water being swept over the falls would rise by feet in seconds. He began to look around him desperately. The rock swelled out above his head and before him was an untidy jumble of glistening stones, the residue of a cliff fall. As Bond’s eyes reached up, they narrowed incredulously. It was scarcely possible to believe what he could see through the fine net of spray and the falling rain. Revealed through a fading rainbow was a beautiful girl standing on a promontory of rock. She wore a long green robe split to the waist and a head-dress like a cap with streamers before and behind the ears. She looked not at Bond but upstream towards the falls. Bond turned away as the water surged against his foot alarmingly and when he looked back the girl had gone. Had she really been there? Had the journey and this terrible gorge begun to play tricks with his imagination? The roar of the water dinned into his ears and the cold pinched his limbs. If he could not find his way to higher ground within seconds he would be dead. The rain was now falling heavily, driving in under the rock. Bond edged along the thin shelf of glistening stones with the cliff face scraping his back. He could not see what lay directly above him, but his view of the opposite side of the gorge was depressing. A sheer cliff face loomed out like the bow of a ship, pitted only by horizontal contours of erosion. To climb it in his present condition would have been impossible.

Bond reached the end of the shale and launched himself clumsily at the lowest of the boulders. The shifting stones made an indifferent springboard and he was hard-pressed to get a handhold and haul himself up. A glance behind showed him that he had acted only just in time. The small beach had disappeared and the trailing tentacles of creeper that had saved his life were invisible beneath an angry white froth of wild water. Bond continued to climb, wondering how far the swollen stream could pursue him. Every surface was wet and covered with a green slime that felt like the skin of an eel. The cliffs towered above him like the walls of a deep tomb. He hauled himself up to the spot where he had seen the girl and rested, shivering uncontrollably.

At first he thought that he must have been dreaming. He stood precariously on an uneven surface of slippery, rain-lashed rock with a mass of glistening creeper trailing down the cliff. Then he saw that there was a dark shadow behind the creeper. He tugged the foliage aside and found that he was looking into the mouth of a cave. He pulled out his pencil torch and moved forward. The cave was small but the torch showed an opening and a flight of rough-hewn steps leading upwards. Bond’s heartbeat quickened in excitement. He forgot about the cold and moved swiftly and silently up the steps. He climbed for a long time, his breath visible in the faint light of the torch, until he eventually emerged in a wide tunnel which sloped gently upwards. He followed it stealthily, and rounded a bend to see a glow of light far ahead. Silhouetted in its centre was the outline of the girl. As Bond extinguished his torch and shrank against the wall, she disappeared again.

Bond quickened his stride and began to feel the numbing cold losing its grip. The circle of light grew larger and glowed green with sunlight. It was like approaching another world after the watery tomb of the gorge. A few more paces and he was actually able to stand at the mouth of a cave and feel the hot sun playing on his limbs. Above him was an escarpment and before him the jungle crowding in again with a profusion of giant cedars weighed down with flowering creepers. Of the girl there was no sign.

Bond stirred himself and pressed forward down a narrow, overgrown path that was obviously rarely used. Where did the girl in the strange costume come from? Bond racked his brains to remember -where he had seen something like that costume before. The track opened into a narrow clearing and Bond found himself face to face with a mass of creeper-covered stones that had clearly once been a building. He looked about him and saw other piles of stones almost obliterated by the jungle. He had arrived at the ruins of an ancient city. There was a long wall that might have belonged to a public building; there a well choked by fallen masonry; a row of truncated pillars snapped off like broken teeth. And everything covered by a trelliswork of creepers that lay across it like a camouflage net. Bond picked his way between the buildings with difficulty, looking about him for the girl. There was no indication that the place was inhabited. He came out in another overgrown clearing and looked up to the tree line. Poking above the tangle of creepers were the uppermost stones of a building. Bond moved forward warily, brushing through some predatory thorn bushes. to find himself before a squat stone pyramid that soared a hundred feet into the air and was topped by a small temple. A flight of steps led up the face of the pyramid, and poised in the middle of theM was the girl. She did not look at Bond but there was something about the way she stood, half turned towards him, that suggested she was waiting for him.