Founder Member

by John Gardner

  Mostyn nodded and leaned back against the wall, his rifle muzzle swinging in a lazy arc, covering the remaining staff of the launch control blockhouse. Soon the NATO force would push their way in, but the unnatural warble still continued from the controller’s console.

  *

  Two pairs of briefs, one blue and one black, floated, almost waltzed, in the air above the leather couch. Boysie watched them, fascinated. His concentration broken by a low warble which gradually built up inside the capsule. Not at first understanding, Boysie’s gaze fell upon the control panel. The ORBIT NUMBER sign still read two. Then, as the warble became more intense, a red sign started to flash on and off. GROUND CONTROL CEASED the sign read.

  ‘Christ,’ said Boysie, a definite shake in his voice. ‘What does that mean?’

  Sonya shifted uncomfortably. ‘Something’s gone wrong at the launch control. It means we’re on our own.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Boysie felt he had lived it all before, but this time the business was lifted to nightmare proportions. They were alone, cut off from control. ‘What do we do?’ he asked, lost.

  ‘I suppose we activate the re-entry system by hand. The control is up there. It gives us ninety minutes to establish ourselves in Sext. Once Sext is clear I suppose you fly and let down at the first airfield we come on

  ‘I had an idea this might happen,’ said Boysie. ‘And I’ve got news for you. I can’t fly.’

  ‘That’s great,’ said Sonya. ‘That I really like. Well, you’ll have to try won’t you?’

  Boysie nodded and reached out for the re-entry control system. Humperdinck had gone through the drill many times and it was second nature for Boysie to turn the system on.

  Now they began the long, difficult, and involved process of dressing themselves in a weightless atmosphere.

  They managed to drag on their coveralls and get back into their weighted boots after a half-hour’s struggle. Ten minutes later, in helmets, they began the climb back into Sext, neat and snug in the neck of the capsule.

  After one hour they had managed to harness themselves into the cockpit. One hour ten minutes saw them closing the canopy once more.

  Boysie struggled to remember the order of actions to be carried out within Sext before the re-entry phase.

  Rocket motor throttle fully opened, turbojet throttles half open. Gear up and locked. All they could do now was to wait. Soon their great push would come and they would be truly on their own.

  *

  Mostyn stood with the commander of the AFNORTH force. Below, on the beach, troops had begun to escort their prisoners to the waiting boats which in turn, would ferry them to the four destroyers which lay at anchor off Wizard.

  ‘That’s all we can do,’ said the commander, a gaunt, pock-marked Brigadier. ‘I’ve ordered all NATO commands to pass the message to all airfields, radar stations and civil airlines. They will be prepared for a fast, semi-controlled lifting body. I only wish we could pin-point the re-entry area.’

  ‘Perhaps one of the observatories will lock on to them,’ Mostyn knew he was being optimistic.

  ‘They might,’ replied the Brigadier. ‘They just might.’

  Deep down, Mostyn knew that there was little hope, even if somebody locked on to the craft. Boysie could not possibly get the thing down in one piece.

  *

  It was like being thumped in the small of the back by a giant wielding a massive plank. The sensation winded Boysie. They seemed to be thrown about inside the cockpit of Sext. Then from the subdued light inside the capsule’s neck, they were shot out into the atmosphere, into clear bright light which almost burned through the protective visors of their helmets.

  Boysie thought for a second, that this must be the same sensation felt by a circus human cannonball. They had a sense of speed, as though they were ripping the air, rending it apart.

  Then, the roar of the rocket motor died, to be replaced by the steady drumming of the turbojets.

  Boysie’s hands fell on to the control yoke and his feet nestled on to the rudder pedals.

  Easing back the yoke Boysie found that the craft’s nose lifted. He gently tested the yaw that could be produced by moving the rudder pedestal which divided his side of the cockpit from Sonya. Easing back on the throttles he found he could reduce the engine speed.

  For ten minutes, Boysie concentrated on the controls, keeping the aircraft in a shallow dive and watching the long vertical altimeter which showed they were still flying at the impossible height of 300,000 feet, or fifty miles high. Below lay an immensely beautiful sight, clear fine atmosphere right down to the curve of the earth overhung by clouds.

  ‘Wish to hell I knew where to point this thing,’ said Boysie.

  ‘Don’t worry about which way to point her, just keep her level.’ Sonya sounded quite calm.

  Boysie was, in fact, surprised that he was not disturbed. The immensity of the situation reduced any terror to an absurdity. Perhaps, he thought, this is the real moment of truth. The moment when one is faced by the majesty of creation beside which a human was as a tiny expendable ant.

  Sext continued its slow descent. As they got lower, so they began to feel the speed. Fifty thousand feet slid past. Twenty-five thousand and they were dropping fast into cloud.

  *

  Jodrell Bank picked up the craft before anyone else. If it proceeded on its present trajectory, they warned, it would be dangerously low on the outskirts of London.

  *

  BOAC Super VC10 flight Alpha Lima, inbound from New York, was nosing into the cloud at the first stage of her let-down over the Irish Sea. Captain Hennesy and his first officer were carrying out their routine procedure with care.

  Then the blip suddenly appeared on the radar scope. Large, fast and travelling from behind them on exactly the same course.

  Captain Hennesy was a steady man who in many thousands of flying hours, had never experienced anything like this. He dipped the VC10’s nose sharply, steepening his angle of descent. With an ear-splitting whoosh the thing passed over them. A silver comet flying on a lance of flame.

  ‘Kee-rist,’ ejaculated Captain Hennesy. ‘It’s the end of the world.’

  The VC10 flight Alpha Lima reported immediately to London Radar Controller. Almost at the same moment the blip came up on the radar scopes in the normally quiet unpanicable Heathrow Control Tower.

  *

  ‘Green fields,’ shouted Boysie. ‘Could be England.’ He was getting a lot of static in his earphones now. They dropped lower and lower and he could make out roads, rivers, woods, the whole panoply of colour.

  ‘Shout if you see an airfield.’ He looked towards Sonya who nodded.

  Throttling back, Boysie scanned the closing horizon for some open space. Instead of space there was a vast growing area of houses. Houses and roads everywhere he looked and they were getting nearer all the time.

  *

  The London Radar Director flashed a diversion warning to all aircraft in the holding patterns. Calmly the Boeings and VC10s were being shuttled out of the way.

  In Sext, Boysie narrowed his eyes. The roof tops were coming up fast.

  ‘Christ,’ he shouted. ‘That’s the bloody House of Commons ahead. We’re going to clobber Big Ben. Hope they’re sitting, we can get rid of this bloody government once and for all.’

  He lifted Sext’s nose and opened the throttles slightly, sensing, as he did so, that he was beginning to lose power. Big Ben, he thought. If that’s Big Ben then Heathrow can’t be far behind.

  Almost as he thought it, Boysie saw the flat area, the buildings and the two long runways of twenty-eight left and twenty-eight right, which was London Airport.

  Suddenly the throbbing of engines tailed off. Boysie lifted the nose and felt the machine sink under him. They were at about two thousand feet now and a good mile from the edge of twenty-eight left at which Boysie was aiming the craft’s nose.

  Sext sank slowly and out of control: At the last minute, Boysie made a final attempt. He put d
own the undercarriage and prayed as never before.

  A row of red slated roofs came up to his left. He was almost level with them. People were running on the road below. Cars and buses. Hideously close. Then, as if by a miracle, the threshold slid past and Boysie was looking at the wonderful sight of an empty, almost eternal runway ahead.

  He closed the throttles, held the control yoke steady and felt the strange craft gently transfer its weight from the little stub wings to the undercarriage.

  They were still moving and the runway would almost certainly run out before they came to a standstill, but Boysie was unconcerned.

  It was only later, after they had climbed from the cabin, and dropped from Sext, now nose down in a ditch two hundred yards from the end of the runway, that Boysie began to react. His hands and legs shook as they had never shaken before.

  An ambulance drew up. They found the girl, Sonya, at ease and co-operative. But the pilot was coughing his heart up between bouts of nervous vomiting.

  The ambulance man thought he heard the pilot muttering obscenities connected with the name Mostyn.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SEQUEL

  ‘It seems,’ said Mostyn, ‘that in the eyes of the Pentagon you are a hero.’

  ‘Don’t see what all the fuss is about,’ Boysie cast his eyes down modestly.

  They were gathered, Mostyn, Boysie, Griffin and Chicory — the last two having finally made it back to London — in Mostyn’s favourite restaurant, an Italian eating house hard by Marble Arch.

  It was early evening. During the day, Mostyn and Boysie had both been summoned to give evidence against Sir Bruce Gravestone whose sentence for high treason, together with four cronies, looked like being a stiff one.

  The following week, Boysie and Mostyn were again scheduled to give evidence. This time before a Grand Jury in Washington where Ellerman von Humperdinck was to be arraigned on similar charges.

  ‘Personally, I do not see what the fuss is about, either,’ said Mostyn. ‘But they want you to receive, with the lovely Sonya, some insignia which will mark you both as founder members of the Hundred Miles Up Club.’

  ‘So that yer’ll both be in the club,’ mused Griffin with a revolting leer.

  ‘Is she …?’ began Chicory looking open mouthed at Boysie, anger spreading on her face.

  ‘No,’ said Boysie quietly. ‘No, she isn’t. To tell you the truth, the old Sorcerer, Seducer and Silversmith mucked things up. What with the weightlessness and all, it’s not really possible.’

  ‘What a shame,’ smiled Mostyn. ‘Do you mean that we’re not going to be blessed with Son of Boysie Oakes?’

  ‘Neither son nor daughter.’ Boysie turned towards Chicory. ‘We have some unfinished business, I believe.’ The waiters hovered like vultures.

  ‘Your treat, I think.’ Boysie grinned at Mostyn and took Chicory by the arm.

  ‘One day,’ said Mostyn grimly, ‘one day, Oakes, I’ll have you. On toast I’ll have you.’

  If you enjoyed Founder Member you might be interested in The Secret Generations by John Gardner, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from The Secret Generations by John Gardner

  Prologue

  All the nurse could see was the fine old head against the white pillow. Her intuition and experience told her the man was very close to death. Had she been blessed with some odd form of second sight, enabling her to read the thoughts and see the images in the dimming brain, she would probably not have understood them…

  He felt a terrible weight on his chest, and pains down the left leg, but could not at first tell where he was. Then the roaring noise bore down on him – the dust choking his throat. Hoof beats receding, and the sound of cannon. Now he knew.

  He had been hit. Badly. Try to get breath. Gently. There. All would be well; they would take him back to the neat rows of white tents and hutments at Balaclava Harbour. For a second he could see the rocky inlet, cliffs rising around the deep water: a natural harbour for the myriad ships which had brought the soldiers to this place.

  But something had gone very wrong after they trotted out, as ordered, then turned – at the sound of the ‘Gallop’ – making straight for the Russian guns. Madness. Had he called out? Madness; particularly as, only the day before, he had gone, with a corporal and three troopers, to reconnoitre. The maps he had made, and brought back, showed the exact position of the Russian guns, and the way in which they were digging in the Turkish cannon, so that the main Russian batteries were protected on both flanks.

  The Colonel, Lord George Paget, seemed impressed by the maps, and said he would send them straight to Lord Raglan.

  Had nobody heeded his maps? Certainly that seemed to be the case; why else would they have gone straight into the trap once the ‘Charge’ was sounded? Why else would he be lying here in dust and blood?

  The weight on him? Of course, it was his poor horse; his beautiful grey. For the life of him, Cornet Railton could not remember his horse’s name.

  The nurse, looking at the silent sleeping old man, could never know that his mind had wandered back, vividly, over half a century, in this, his last coma, near to death.

  The old man stirred, then opened his eyes. The nurse knew he could not see her, but his voice was clear as he said, ‘Patience’.

  So he died. General Sir William Arthur Railton VC KCB DSO, of Redhill Manor, Haversage, in the county of Berkshire, with nobody to know that he had slipped away imagining his near death, so long before, on the battlefield of Balaclava: the day after he had spied out the land for Lord George Paget.

  It was the early evening of 1 January 1910, and the whole family had gathered within two days of the death.

  Giles Railton, the General’s younger brother, widowed but surrounded by his own kin – his sons, Andrew and Malcolm, with their wives; his daughter Marie, and her French husband; and some of his grandchildren.

  The General’s own sons came to the Manor house – John, the MP, and his young second wife, Sara, together with James, the son of his first marriage; then Charles, wastrel of the family, with his wife and daughter.

  Later, Giles was to consider that of all those present for the funeral, his deepest love was for his daughter Marie, and his young nephew James; while his contempt remained reserved for Charles. He wondered, now that the General had gone, what lay in store for the Railtons; and what he could do personally to shape their future. It preyed on his mind, causing anxiety, then a sense of resolution, with the iron entering his soul.

  By rights, Giles, the eldest member of this great old family, should now take the place of his dead and revered brother. But, by natural lineage, it was John, the politician, who took over the bequeathed lands, the Manor, and most of the money. This was yet another worry for Giles. Having spent a lifetime among plots and counterplots, intrigue and secrets, he saw the family as a microcosm of his own country. His concern for the family was even greater than that for England, and, while all at present appeared set fair, stable and calm, he knew of the political and military storms which could appear so suddenly on a sunny horizon.

  He hoped for a future blessed as an era of tranquillity, but knew the truth in the adage, ‘in time of peace prepare for war’. His own duties to his country were thus slanted, so he considered that he must look to his family and take precautions now.

  Like a Grand Master at the game of chess, Giles planned his moves – to protect the honour and possessions of his clan; to see that those he loved remained safe; to use the weak to save the strong.

  With the death of the old General, the Railton family was entering a new and vital stage in its long history. Giles would play a crucial part in the navigation of the family through the next decade; which is but part of a wider, more complex tale, the fuse of which had already been, unknowingly, lit almost a year before, in a bar near the German Naval Dockyard at Kiel.

  Chapter One

  When he walked into the place and found it was the roughest, sleaziest, most whore-ridden,
drunk-filled and dangerous bar on the Kiel waterfront, Gustav Steinhauer thought he had possibly made a mistake; when the big petty officer started the fight, he knew it.

  Steinhauer believed his vocational world to be full of idiots and amateurs, so he held to the axiom that the professional, such as himself, must take heed and never stand out like an extra bridegroom on a honeymoon. Now he had broken this solemn rule.

  The petty officer, name of Hans-Helmut Ulhurt, was possibly his last hope, and he had travelled from Berlin to see him. Steinhauer was dressed like any other civil servant, and carried a pigskin document case. The officer of the watch told him that Ulhurt – one of the skeleton crew in the almost-completed dreadnought Nassau – was ashore. Herr Steinhauer would probably find him in the Buffel. It was Petty Officer Ulhurt’s favourite drinking place.

  Steinhauer should have known better; should have gone away and returned in the morning, but, to be fair, he was getting desperate and the Kaiser expected results. So he went to the Buffel, where he tried to look inconspicuous, sitting in a corner and peering through the gloom and smoke, trying to size up the petty officer, whom he immediately recognized from the photographs and descriptions already obtained.

  From time to time, a whore would come along and offer herself. Steinhauer tried to turn them away with tact, but that made matters worse. The whores were loud and abusive when rejected, and several rather effeminate sailors looked hopefully in the direction of this oddity who had come amongst them, in his grey coat, gloves, high fur collar and neat cravat. You did not often see a toff like this in the Buffel, but, thank God, Ulhurt was holding court – telling raucous stories and hurling the cheap fiery schnapps down his throat as though he would never get another drink after tonight – which, as it happened, was almost the case.

  The petty officer was a big man, but well-proportioned, with shoulders and arms that looked as if they were built by a sculptor, and fashioned out of granite.