Skyprobe (22 page)

Nevertheless, a strong suspicion about the Kuriles had been worrying the fleet Admiral in the Pacific and as Skyprobe IV raced on a signal was already on its way to Washington announcing a positive intention to investigate the islands more closely. Aboard his flagship, an aircraft-carrier, that admiral had already watched the Phantoms preparing for take-off under war conditions. The Phantom III F6C’s—ninety of them—were making ready to be shot off the four-and-a-half acre angled flight-deck at their 20-second intervals and zoom into the blue at speeds of up to 1,700 m.p.h., carrying their deadly loads of napalm bombs which, exhausting with their intense heat all the oxygen in the area of fall as the low-grade jet fuel and gelignite burned, killed by suffocation or roasting in a 200-foot orange flame and billowing smoke. The Phantoms also carried the “Willy Peters,” white phosphorous bombs that burned for almost forty minutes, even under water; and infra-red heat-seeker rockets that could home on a cigarette end from upwards of a thousand feet. Mechanics were preparing the Vulcan gatlings, known as Puff-the-magic-dragons . . . guns whose six revolving barrels fired a hundred rounds a second. When the admiral’s signal reached the Pentagon and the White House it found the US high command in no mood to send out a negative despite the risks; instead, certain detailed orders went out to the ICBM sites and the early-warning stations in Alaska and the eastern states, while the combat operations center of the joint US-Canadian North American Air Defence Command, deep in its concrete ‘city’ below the 9,565-foot Cheyenne Mountain in the Rockies, received orders putting it, in effect, on an immediate war footing.

* * *

That night, as the minutes ticked away to splashdown and certain world catastrophe, Shaw lay awake hour after hour, thinking, planning until he forced himself to relax and clear his mind with sleep. When he woke, he formulated something that just might work out.

At 0830 hours, with only half an hour left to go, the outer door was opened up and the four armed men marched again into the gangway between the cages and one of them unlocked the doors into each. Shaw and Ingrid were ordered out, under cover of the guns. When they were in the narrow gangway Shaw started to say something to the girl but was ordered brusquely to be silent.

“All right, you—” Shaw broke off with a grimace, and then gave a grunt of apparent pain and lifted one foot off the ground, his face contorting.

The man who seemed to be in charge of the party demanded irritably in English, “What is wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Shaw snapped. “I’m not a doctor. All I know is, it’s damn painful!”

The guard made a noise of anger and impatience. “It is no matter. Pain is to be accepted. Must walk. Must not now waste time.”

“Must be damned. I can’t put it on the ground. Someone’ll have to help me, that’s all. . . if you really want me to move. Personally, I’m quite willing to stay right here.” He was watching the man closely now; there was just one thing he could be sure of, and that was that whatever happened, whatever he did, these men weren’t high up enough in the hierarchy to take the risk of killing him or Ingrid. Neither Kaltizkin nor Rencke would be very pleased if they did that.

The guard glared, stamped his foot, seemed about to give Shaw a push along the alleyway, then thought better of it. If the Englishman’s pain became worse he might not function as required in the control room . . . the Comrades wouldn’t like that either. The man nodded at one of his subordinates. He spoke in his own language, then moved aside as the other man came along towards Shaw. The second man took Shaw’s left arm in a tight grip, right up beneath the armpit. He started to drag Shaw forward.

Shaw let his body go limp and then very suddenly he struck. He moved his right arm fast, got a grip on the man’s neck and, using all his strength, forced him across his body, freeing the grip on his upper arm. In the same instant as he grabbed the gun he felt the man’s neck crack.

He let the body drop and jumped backwards, the gun weaving to cover all the remaining men. “Keep very quiet!” he snapped. “Move inwards from the door or you’re all dead.” As he spoke a tremor, as at the rehearsal, ran through the silo, shaking the cell alleyway. The tremor increased and there was a high whine of electrically-driven machinery. The attractor-plate was rising, moving out on its stalk into the open air, making ready for the final act.

The guards were dead scared now, fearing the reactions of Rencke and Kalitzkin as much as the physical threat from their former prisoners. Their eyes flickered warily as they watched for their chance.

Shaw said, “Take their guns, Ingrid.”

The girl came forward and removed the sub-machine-guns from the three men.

“Keep one yourself and be ready to use it if I say. Put the other two down by my feet.”

Ingrid did as she was told. Shaw ran his eye over the disarmed guards. “Now strip,” he told them. “All of you. At once.” The men shifted their feet but didn’t obey. Shaw jabbed his gun forward, ramming it hard into the belly of the nearest guard. “I said strip. I’ll give you all just five seconds to start, and if you don’t, I’ll blow this man’s guts right through his backbone. And after him, you two others.” He added, “Don’t let the television cameras give you a false sense of security. They can’t see into the gangway . . . maybe any shooting would be heard, but that’s not going to save you.”

Shaw’s eyes were like ice.

There was a silence and then the man under the closest threat decided his stomach was of more immediate importance to him than loyalty to Kalitzkin. He began to take off his clothing. The others followed his example. When they were all stripped right down Shaw said, “Ingrid, take them over from me and keep them covered. Don’t hesitate to shoot if you have to.” He laid down his own gun and then sorted out the clothing of the tallest of the three men and dressed himself quickly in it; the clothes fitted him adequately enough for his purpose. When he was fully dressed he took over the men again from Ingrid. “Now,” he told her, “get into one of those sets of clothing as fast as you can. Stuff your hair up tight under the cap . . . pull down the ear-flaps, and you may pass.”

She grimaced. “Always provided anyone we meet is blind, Smith!”

He said with a grin, “True the figure’s a bit different, but it’s the best we can do.” Quickly Ingrid pulled on a set of the Chinese clothing. When she was ready Shaw said, “Fine! It’s rough enough, but it gives us something of a chance.” He touched a strand of her hair. “Tuck it in a bit more. That’s better.”

“What are we going to do, Smith?” she asked.

“We’re going to kill this place by attacking its heart and soul,” he told her. “The Masurov Beam won’t survive a power cut!” He jabbed the gun once again into the stomach of the nearest of the guards. “You’ll know where the power room is, friend. I want you to lead us right to it—and fast!” The man swallowed and glanced nervously at his comrades. “I not know,” he said, his eyes darting, looking everywhere but at Shaw.

The gun went in harder. He squirmed. Shaw snapped, “Try again, and this time do better. You can’t have been around this place for long without finding your way to the parts that matter. Your two friends will stay here, but you’re going to take the lady and myself to the power room, so you’d better get used to the idea. Granted I can’t make you look English, but you’re going to do your best to look like what I was supposed to be—a prisoner under escort. Got that?”

The man nodded.

“Good! Remember, if you try anything funny on the way, or if you take us to the wrong place, you’ll die on the spot—like your friend with the broken neck behind me.” He glanced at Ingrid. “Take over again for a moment,” he said. While the girl covered the man who was to guide them, Shaw lined up the remaining two with their backs to the bars. Then, stepping aside, he gave each of them a blow to the jaw that rocked their teeth loose. The men slid to the floor, one after the other, without a sound. Bending, Shaw unfastened a bunch of keys from the Number One guard’s discarded belt, locked the doors of the cages containing the television cameras, then ordered the naked man out into the main corridor, with his own gun and Ingrid’s urging him on from behind. There was no-one in sight. Shaw locked the outer door of the cell alleyway behind him. “Lead the way,” he told the Chinese, “and keep remembering what I told you. I never make empty threats. If anyone interferes, the shooting starts right away—with you as number one target. From then on, I play it by ear—only you won’t be around to listen.”

They went fast along the passage, following the naked guard round in a circle to their right, and then down a flight of concrete steps leading off a small lobby connecting with the main passage. They saw no-one; presumably all personnel would by this time be at their allotted stations for the action that was now so imminent. Very soon, once the empty cages had been noted on the television screens in the control room and Shaw and Ingrid had still not appeared as ordered, the hunt would be on. For now, they had it all their own way.

In this lower passage the hum of dynamos and machinery had increased until it seemed to reverberate throughout the silo; the whole place was vibrant, shaking gently to the power harnessed to the giant stalk and its attractor-plate.

Ahead, a little farther along, they saw the red-painted door marked in Russian and Chinese characters: POWER ROOM.

* * *

Klaber had come on the air a while earlier for the start of the last act. He’d said, “Greg, you’ll ditch on the next orbit. Report as soon as you’re ready . . . and good luck to you both, Greg.”

Schuster said, “Thanks, Mr. Klaber,” flipped off his communication and turned around to give the necessary orders for going into ditching procedure.

Danvers-Marshall’s face was tight with strain now and the eyes were staring at Schuster, again with that look of incipient insanity. When Schuster passed the orders Danvers-Marshall nodded and said, “Right, but we’re going into retro-sequence sooner than you think, Greg.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Schuster asked harshly.

“We don’t ditch in the Caribbean. We re-enter over the Pacific, over the Phoenix Islands.”

“We do?” Schuster stared at him. “What’s the idea?”

Danvers-Marshall said, “Don’t worry what the idea is. Just do as I tell you. Start getting ready now, you and Wayne, and I’ll give the order for firing the retro-rockets. No need to call mission control, either. They’ll know soon enough.”

His face set, Schuster turned away and started to go through the routine. This time, everything was working perfectly. On the next and final orbit, as the capsule hurtled on through space, closing the point where now it would so unexpectedly re-enter the earth’s atmosphere, Gregory Schuster, under Danvers-Marshall’s direction, reached out for the button to send off the retro-rockets. The early pressing of that button was going to send mission control to panic stations, all right.

The astronauts sweated.

A few moments later, Schuster pressed the button. As he did so, Danvers-Marshall once again operated his minute metal cylinder, though not this time so as to interfere with the retro-system. The cylinder acted to cut out other controls, also the radio, while at the same time Danvers-Marshall reached back to move two levers on a panel in rear of him; there was no subsequent response on the banks of instrument dials ahead of the two intent astronauts. Though Schuster knew the retro-system was going to be att right this time it was still with a sense of profound relief that he felt the rockets fire at their five-second intervals. As each one went off there was a feeling of being pressed relentlessly backwards; as the deceleration increased, so did the G forces. The eyeballs of the three men seemed to leave their sockets as the forces acted upon them, then suddenly, as the capsule began to enter the heat passage, this feeling eased.

In the Caribbean the vessels of the US recovery fleet waited to pick up the capsule on their radar and visually in the binoculars of the human lookouts as, so anxiously now, the sailors scanned the skies, each man searching for the drogue parachute that would open as the spacemen headed for splashdown. But, even as they watched, the messages were coming in, telling the fleet that Skyprobe IV had in fact fired off her retro-rockets at a point well in advance of that required to bring her down in the Caribbean.

When those messages were received the men of the recovery ships knew in their bones that within the next couple of hours they would be on a war footing.

* * *

The guard, with Shaw and Ingrid behind him., reached the door of the power room.

Shaw ordered him to halt.

He was about to give the man the same treatment as he’d given the other guards back in the cage alleyway when there was a sudden, vicious stutter of automatic gunfire. Bullets bounced off the concrete walls. Ingrid, giving a sharp cry, dropped the gun she was carrying. She clutched at her arm.

Shaw whirled around.

Rencke was coming for him in the middle of a posse of armed Chinese and as these men approached, the naked guard pushed Ingrid’s gun into Shaw’s back. Rencke ran up close, his heavy body sweating like a pig’s, the coarse face sneering into Shaw’s eyes. “The gun, if you please!” he snapped furiously. “Drop it on the floor at once!”

“If you want it,” Shaw answered calmly, “get it.”

“Do as I say or I shall order the men to fire.”

Shaw grinned. “You won’t kill me, Rencke! Not yet.”

“Perhaps not, but the girl is expendable, Commander, if necessary—”

“You need her just as much as you need me—don’t you, Rencke? Don’t you need her to make me talk?”

Rencke said, “You are very clever at talk, Commander, but if you do not drop the gun I shall order the men to shoot off your hands. You will scarcely need your hands for making the broadcast.”

Rencke marched them back along the lower passage and up the two levels to the control room.

In the control room all the technicians were closed up at their stations, ready for the diversion that would shatter the space-prestige of the West. Their whole attention was concentrated, at this late stage, on their instruments. The main television screen showed the huge round plate, probing the skies, seeking, searching out the capsule. There was a pervading air of the tensest excitement, and there was a tremendous, heady expectancy in the whole compartment. Lights flickered on and off, dials grew bright and then dimmed again, others came alive in their places. There was an overall background noise of Morse and of reports being fed through the tannoy. Kalitzkin, watching his central control unit and manipulating the directional handwheel, intent like all the others, was trembling with excitement and anticipation and his face was streaked with sweat. That face, Shaw noted, held a look that approached exaltation, as if the Russian were seeing himself as the Deity, some self-made god whose knowledge would soon enable him to control the universe.