Skyprobe (19 page)

A few moments later Rencke came after them and called out to the escort to stop.

They did so.

Rencke came up and put a hand on Ingrid’s arm, sliding his fingers gloatingly along the bare skin. Throatily he said, “So far we have had too little chance to talk over old times, my dear. Soon there will be plenty of time to do that, and more also, perhaps?”

His eyes undressed her.

Ingrid’s face had gone white when she had felt the man’s touch on her flesh. Now she backed away from him, her breath coming jerkily. Rencke gave a high laugh as she backed right into the guns of the escort. “Come, come, dear girl,” he murmured. “It is not going to do you any good—to behave like this! From now on, you must do precisely as I want, mustn’t you? You are mine now, dearest Ingrid . . . mine for ever!” His voice hardened. “Do not make things difficult for me or for yourself by being too obviously unwilling. You do not forget, I hope, what happened to your sister?”

Ingrid flinched; then her body went rigid and her eyes stared scornfully into Rencke’s face. She said, “You are a scum, Rencke. A scum and a murderer . . . I cannot, I suppose, prevent what you do to me, but I want you to know that I despise and loathe you, for you are not a man, Rencke.”

Rencke’s open hand struck like a snake across the girl’s face. An angry red mark appeared on the white skin of her cheek. Shaw took a pace forward and snapped, “Pack that in, you bastard—”

Rencke’s fist shot out and slammed its way past Shaw’s ear. Shaw had been a shade too quick, had expected the reaction and had seen the red glint in the man’s eye. He jabbed a left hard into Rencke’s stomach and the Swiss doubled, catching his breath. But a gun dug into Shaw’s back and in front of him a hand began squeezing a trigger. Rencke, recovering, snapped an order. The gun in Shaw’s spine was removed and his arms were twisted up painfully behind his back. After that he took some of the same treatment as the girl. Rencke opened his palms and took Shaw hard across the face, right and left, then right and left again, some of the blows being backhanders. The Swiss was wearing a heavy jewelled ring that cut into Shaw’s skin. His head rang like a bell. Breathing heavily now, his pasty face a deep beetroot red, Rencke snarled, “Perhaps that will teach you to keep your filthy mouth shut! Like all Englishmen, you interfere too much with what is not your business.” He made a visible effort to calm down. “But your day is finished, Commander Shaw, and so, soon, will be that of all the West. I can afford to wait a little longer . . . but for you, my dear,” he added, turning again towards Ingrid, “I shall not wait so long. You will be taken now to see your quarters, and then soon I shall send for you.”

Without another glance at Shaw Rencke turned away and went back towards Kalitzkin’s office. The procession of prisoners and escort along the gallery was resumed. Some way farther along there was a shouted order from one of the Chinese guards and they were halted outside a door, thicker and heavier than the others they had passed. One of the men pushed past and unlocked this door and Shaw and Ingrid, accompanied by two Chinese only, were ordered into a short, brightly-lit passage, concrete floored like the rest of this place. On either side were heavy steel bars from floor to ceiling, backed by double-glazing and dividing the space into two small cage-like cells, one on either side of the gangway.

The guard who had opened the outer door, which was now covered from the outside by the two remaining Chinese, put a key into a lock and swung open a narrow gate in the steel bars. Then, putting a hand on Ingrid’s buttocks, he pushed her bodily into the cage. The other man unlocked a similar gate on the other side and Shaw was ordered in.

Speaking in broken English the first guard said, “You will strip now. Both strip.” He swung his gun in an arc, covering the two prisoners. “All clothes are to be taken off. Hand removed clothes into gangway. At once, please.”

Resistance or refusal at this stage wasn’t going to do anyone any good at all. . . Shaw asked, “Why? What’s the idea?”

Blank-faced, the guard stared back at him. “Do as told, please.”

Shaw shrugged; this man wasn’t going to open up and in point of fact the reason for the strip act was obvious enough: any man or woman was at an immediate psychological disadvantage when being questioned, or coerced, in the nude by an interrogator who was fully dressed. Slowly Shaw began to strip. It was warm enough inside the base; they wouldn’t freeze. He saw Ingrid following his lead. He saw her curves, saw the lightly-tanned flesh, and the whiter parts where she had worn a bikini in warmer areas of the world than the Kuriles. She had a beautiful body; he could well understand Rencke’s urges.

The Chinese pointed upwards at something set high in an angle of the ceiling in Shaw’s cage, a long way out of his reach even if he were to climb the bars, for the ceilings in this space were high. “Television camera,” the man said informatively. “He watch all-time, you and the girl. When prisoners here, camera in each cell watch all day, all night—all-time. Also ground above silo. Monitor watched all-time too.” The guard paused then made a pass with his gun. “Hurry, please.”

Closed-circuit television, Shaw thought . . . another psychological gimmick! Tight-lipped, he began to throw his clothing into the gangway. When both piles were complete the guard slammed and locked the doors of the cages. The two men then gathered up the clothing and, after a lingering look at Ingrid, left. Once the cage door had been shut the double-glazing deadened all sound; Shaw and Ingrid were in virtually sound-proofed boxes, able to see each other clearly but not to communicate.

Shaw looked up at the television camera. His mind revolted at the thought of Ingrid also being watched; he wondered if Rencke would be standing by the monitor with his gloating, lecherous eyes and decided he would be. He looked across at the girl sitting hunched in a corner now with her head down on her knees, around which her hands were linked. He looked away, tried to concentrate, to focus his mind on the problems ahead. Once again the television camera drew him. He looked at its eavesdropping eye, spotlighting his every movement. He could almost feel it could penetrate his mind, read his thoughts and transcribe them for the benefit of Rencke and Kalitzkin. The monitor would most likely be in the main control room—the place where, presumably, he would be taken for his message to the West. The control room would be the inviolable, sacred spot, the very heart and soul of the diversion operation. Maybe his chance would come during the next morning’s test. If he could smash some vital equipment, that would put a stop to Kalitzkin’s plan . . . and make the phoney message into a true one after all!

He laughed, shortly. They would be watching for that pretty carefully!

Hours passed and the total silence and inactivity began to rip at his nerve-endings.

Kalitzkin had said there were American forces in the vicinity . . . but he hadn’t been in the least worried that this base would be found. And it was useless, Shaw knew, to think along those lines. Even if the searching forces did penetrate the Sea of Okhotsk as time ran out, the base was utterly and completely hidden, totally invisible, totally unsuspected . . . he stopped the drift of his thoughts by an effort of will. Negative thinking was never any good. However hopeless the prospect of any help reaching him, and whether or not the men at Kennedy managed to launch Skyprobe V, his job remained the same—to stop the diversion procedure going into effect.

He would do better to concentrate on that—even though that also looked pretty hopeless.

They came down at last to the cages—the four guards, Rudolf Rencke and Dr. Kalitzkin. Rencke, who must have been heavily engaged elsewhere or he would presumably by this time have carried out his threat to send for Ingrid, was dressed in a belted, skin-tight suit of black leather that made his heavy face and bald head look whiter than ever. He was let into Ingrid’s cage and as he turned to enter Shaw saw that he was carrying a gun in a holster at his hip and there was a short, thin whip hitched to a hook on his belt.

Klaber’s voice was cracking with excitement as he came on the air to Skyprobe IV. “Greg, we’ve done it! I’d given up even hoping we ever could, in the time!” He paused and wiped his forehead; his hand was shaking like a leaf. “Greg . . . I don’t know if you’re hearing me or not, but we’ve done it. Skyprobe V is ready now, almost, on the pad. She’ll take you all off. Can you hear me, Greg?” The last words were almost in the nature of a prayer torn from Klaber’s heart and soul. The long silence from space had worn him down badly. “We weren’t going to alert you positively till we were dead sure and now we are. The countdown will be starting very soon now if we don’t get any snags.”

He waited, listening out for some response from the capsule. His heart was pumping rapidly and his face streamed sweat. Everyone in mission control was watching him, waiting, as he was, for the men in space to answer. Three times more Klaber called the capsule—and then, miraculously as it seemed to the tense men at Kennedy, the response came through. Gregory Schuster’s voice said, “Okay, Mr. Klaber, I can now communicate. I have been receiving your messages loud and clear.”

Klaber gave a shout of sheer relief. “It’s good to hear you, Greg! What has been the trouble? Over.”

In the hurtling capsule Schuster met Morris’s eye, then looked over his shoulder at Danvers-Marshall. The scientist, alarmed now and wanting more information, had authorized him to reply to mission control but was censoring the transmission. Schuster said, “Why, I guess it was just a technical fault, that’s all. It’s okay now.” He sounded elaborately casual; Klaber wasn’t intended to be fooled, and he wasn’t.

Klaber said, “Well, good, that’s fine, Greg.” He asked the question all the world wanted to hear answered. “How are your retro-rockets, Greg?”

Schuster said, “The retro-system’ll be okay when the time comes.”

“Sure, Greg?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“All right, then, Greg. I’m going off the air now. I’ll call you up again before blast-off.”

Klaber let go the switch and went over to the mission control chief. Together they watched the technicians, intent on their banks of dials and buttons and flashing lights as they approached countdown. On the pad Skyprobe V waited, pointing like a giant finger into the heavens. Despite the tremendous risks attendant on the possible reaction of Danvers-Marshall, Klaber was looking happier than he’d done for many days past. At last they were actually achieving something positive. Nevertheless his face, still haggard and drawn from lack of sleep, showed the enormous strain he had been, and still was, under. At times, as the negative reports had been fed through from Washington, he had felt on the verge of total collapse. The signals from the fleet in the Far East, the messages from the searching land-based aircraft, had all reported complete lack of success and there had seemed to be no possible hope left. Shaw, known to be working from Hong Kong, hadn’t been heard of for the last forty-eight hours and the British were obviously extremely worried beneath the laconic phrasing of their messages. Washington, the CIA man had told Klaber, believed Shaw had most probably been flushed by the other side and was very likely dead.

By now Klaber, working on the hope that the rendezvous would be effected and Danvers-Marshall dealt with safely, had mentally written off the capsule itself; so long as the men could be got off that had to be good enough. The capsule would just have to go on orbiting the globe until it reached the natural limit of its life, and the resultant blow to American prestige, the loss of her position in the space race, would have to be accepted. Meantime the world situation was deteriorating fast, indeed with terrifying rapidity, and war was known to be close. The thing was on a knife-edge. If Skyprobe V failed to dock and Skyprobe IV ditched in a hostile area, war was ipso facto inevitable. The administration, whether or not they wanted to—and the mood in Washington was not exactly concilatory—would never hold the American people. Defensive measures had in fact already been put into effect by the Pentagon, and the nation was virtually in a state of emergency, ready for anything that might develop, though on the surface life proceeded normally.

Klaber mopped again at his face. The responsibility resting on him now was enormous.

* * *

Skyprobe IV continued on its time-and-again journey through space, passing over the helpless heads of the tracking stations dotted around the world, waiting now, interminably it seemed, for blast-off and the final docking orders from Kennedy. Danvers-Marshall’s hand was keeping the automatic pointed at Schuster and Morris, as, with his free hand, he reached once again into his spacesuit for the pills that would keep him awake for as long as necessary. Danvers-Marshall was showing signs of nerves now; his face was deathly white and drawn from lack of sleep, his eyes were sunken, red-rimmed pits. Until Klaber had come up with his promise of success, Danvers-Marshall hadn’t taken the likelihood of a second launch seriously. Now he had to. Schuster, risking the gun, had refused to call up mission control to say he would not need the second capsule. And Danvers-Marshall knew that when Skyprobe V tried to dock, he would have to kill Schuster and Morris if he couldn’t persuade them not to assist the docking. Then he would have to try to take over himself. He wasn’t a practical astronaut but he just might be able to pull it off. If he didn’t, then he would die too and he knew that as well. But he would have to go through with it; as he had told Schuster earlier, no-one was going to take him back to America to stand trial. . . .

Schuster and Morris were thinking about their families, wondering how they were taking all this, wondering—for they knew they hadn’t been told in full—just what the Press was making out of it all and what the effect of that would be on their wives as they waited helplessly for the pay-off. They knew quite well that the docking procedure was going to be touch-and-go and that the only real hope lay in Danvers-Marshall losing his nerve at the last moment and deciding that a treason charge was preferable to a fry-up, a cremation in space as the result of any shooting.