by Fred Hoyle
‘Yes, it was bigger than I expected.’
‘How did you intend to get back to Achilles?’
‘I could 'have left Fawsett at any moment until the rocket quitted my planet. After that, of course, it was far too dangerous. It was also a risk to leave Fawsett and come inside me.’ She grinned.
‘But you want to go back, it wouldn’t be natural if you didn’t.’
‘1 knew from Fawsett, right at the beginning, that §. reserve rocket 'had been made. There is one, isn’t there? It’s up in orbit moving around the Earth now, isn’t it?’ She looked up at the sky as she spoke.
‘Yes, there is one in orbit, they haven’t decided what to do with it.’
She looked at him and said, gently, ‘You don’t like the thought of me taking your wife, do you ?’
He looked down quickly. ‘No,’ he said simply.
‘There is no other way, you know. Even if I took the risk of trying to leave in some other way your wife would be hunted down. Even if she was not she would still grow old and come to nothing at all. She will not be thrown away when I get home.’
‘How can I be sure that she’s willing to go?’
‘Because if she were not the whole of this body would be very sick. You see she knows that we would value her animal qualities, perhaps we don’t have enough of them ourselves. Here she is just a beautiful, silly woman who will soon be old and stupid and no longer beautiful. You must see how unhappy that would make her.’
Conway sat for a long time. There were tears in his eyes. He saw that this was the best way and he took Cathy’s hand and said, ‘You will look after her?’
It may have been absurd but that didn’t occur to Conway. There were tears in Cathy’s eyes and that didn’t seem absurd either.
He tried to be practical. ‘If you can get out to the ship it won’t be so bad. There’ll be fairly complete manuals about
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the engineering and you’ll be able to find your way through
the gravitational fields better than we could. There’s enough of a computer in the ship I’m sure. All the controls are really very simple. They’re mostly servo systems so you don’t really need to do anything much yourself. They always make it out to be more complicated than it is, space-men’s mystique and all that sort of stuff.’
He looked at her again, they hadn’t much longer together. Helios was already past its point of nearest approach and was receding.
‘How do you think you’1'1 reach the ship?’
‘I had no particular plan. I thought I might force people to put me on it.’
‘I don’t think the authorities could make a deal; they’ve taken a hell of a beating. They’ll stop at nothing to be able to display your hide.’
Cathy looked at her shoulder and winced.
‘I think you’re right. I can manage a few people near me, but the only thing I can do to a lot of people is the sort of thing I did the other day. I’m sure it wouldn’t be as easy a second time. They discharged themselves well and truly and there hasn’t been time to build it up again.’
‘They’ll do their best after you’ve gone,’ said Conway. ‘I think if we could get into parking orbit we could force the crew of the orbit transfer vehicle to take us to the ship. I could show you the controls and that would be it.’ He turned away quickly and looked out of the window, unhappy and uncertain.
They started to make their plans. Cathy’s arm was healing well and she could travel now. The dark girl hired a large car for them, big enough for Cathy to sleep in at a pinch and also to carry a fair stock of food. Conway had plans, he was feeling less uncertain. The following day they left the little apartment and the girl who had done so much for them so willingly.
‘What did you think of her?’ Conway said as they drove away.
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‘She was kind. Did you sleep with ha- while I was ill ?’
‘No. I did spend a night with her, if you must know, about two years ago. Dig around in your memory storage and you’ll find you were having an affair with a man called Fawsett. It was while you were staying in London with him.
I got drunk and had a fight in a pub, and she got me out of it, luckily.5
‘Don’t get confused, you know it wasn’t me who was with Fawsett.’
Conway grinned as 'he drove along, the two Cathys were in agreement on that one. The first Oathy had got herself a marvellous alibi.
Beyond Regent’s Park they hit the main motorway north. It was now just after io a.m., and he estimated that they would reach Scotland comfortably by lunch-time. The road curved away ahead of them into the distance. Now he could let out the engine and begin to eat up the miles. Only in the unlikely event of the car packing up would they run into trouble on this early part of the journey. Petrol he could always get at the automatic pumps, so there was no reason why anybody should see them. Without coming entirely into the open the authorities couldn’t be making widespread checks throughout the country. The police were obviously alerted, and millions were on the look-out for him, but they couldn’t be subjecting the whole population to a series of major stoppages on the road. And Cathy could easily deal with an odd patrol car or two.
As it turned out it took them longer to get their first fill of petrol that Conway had expected, so they ate their lunch at about half past one on the moors above Rothbury in Northumberland. By four o’clock they were in the Highlands, north of Callander. He hoped the midges wouldn’t be too bad if 'he had to sleep out of doors.
Their destination was the small launching-field in eastern Sutherland, just to the north of Kinbrace. Launchings were few and far between, perhaps once every ten days, for a few passengers on international business. when that business
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should happen to take them up to the orbital transit vehicles. It seemed much better to wait quietly and unseen until a rocket was primed and ready in this remote place, rather than risk the major troubles they’d be sure to run into at the big continental sites. The devil was that they’d have to wait. They might have to wait a week or more. It was probable that Cathy could force them into a launching, timed to their own convenience, but only at the expense of declaring their hand at an early stage in the game. There was no point at all in standing around waiting for the blow to fall while a rocket was being serviced. Best to let them get it all nicely ready and then just step in at the end. In that way they might get two or three hours’ start.
Conway made no attempt to drive as far as the rocket base. He pulled off the road about thirty miles south. It was about three hours after dark, so they did not prepare any food, but were content with sandwiches and a hot drink which they had brought with them. Conway fixed Cathy up for the night. He set up a cot for himself outside and slept inside a sleeping-bag with a strong waterproof outer cover. He was glad of this during the night when the rain started. It lasted until about an hour after dawn, with the mist rolling over the hills ahead of them, and it seemed an inauspicious start to the whole business.
When Cathy was awake they set about moving to a better spot. They were able to drive down a short incline which took them just out of sight of the road. The plan was a very simple one. They would simply watch the road. This was safer than actually watching the launching base itself, and it was just as good for their purposes, for there would be plenty of added traffic going by in the hours before any launching should take place. An unruly stream brawled past them less than thirty yards away. After a bad start the weather became progressively more fine, and Cathy spent more and more of her time outside, happy in more natural surroundings. About twice a day other vehicles stopped quite close by. The first time a couple of men walked to
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wards the stream Conway felt himself begin to tremble, but the men passed on, seeing nothing.
It was eight days before
there was the beginning of the activity they were looking for. Conway watched the lorries pass by, wondering why they didn’t keep all their supplies on the base. God, he thought, what a dump! Now he was watching the road through all the hours of daylight. Eventually they came, the cars bringing the rocket personnel. He could see at a glance that it was an American-sponsored takeoff. He began to count in his mind which of the orbital transit vehicles the shuttle would go out to. Still, what did it matter, he didn’t know where the real ship was at this particular moment. And he wouldn’t be able to find out until they got themselves sky-borne. He went back to Cathy, ‘It’s time we were moving. It can’t be long now.’
They waited until another lorry came past and pulled out behind it. There would of course be a barrier check-up, and on this occasion he wouldn’t be equipped with the right papers, in fact he wouldn’t be equipped at all. He’d have to leave that to Cathy.
What they did was very simple. They waited until the guards had finished with the lorry, and had waved it on, then they simply drove through the barrier in the wake of the vehicle ahead. It was as easy as that. They just weren’t noticed. Conway kept his eye on the mirror. The one danger was that another lorry might come up behind and give them the most god-almighty crunch.
They parked. ‘You realize what it means? If we can get away without pulling this place inside out they won’t start sending military rockets after us for maybe a couple of hours after take-off. We’ll need all that time if we’re to find out where the ship is orbiting at the moment. And we’ll need time to get transferred over to it.’
‘How shall we go about it?’
‘Well, the less fuss the better. They’d let us go up if we
had a brief-case full of the right official passes. If only you could make them see a whole cartload full of passes, then
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we’d be fine. But I don’t suppose you know what they look like.’
‘It isn’t necessary. All that is necessary is to unlock their own memories of what the passes look like.’
Conway picked out a good-sized bag that had once contained dehydrated lobster thermidor. That was the best he’d been able to do for Cathy. ‘Now remember, when they see this they’ve got to see a brief-case. Got it?’ Then he started to collect up all the bits of paper, the instructions, the manufacturers’ own appraisal of their own products; one of them read yum-yum it’s halibut’s dehydrated kippers. That evidently came straight from the joke department.
‘O.K., we’re set,’ he said.
Conway remembered being up there once before. He had a general idea of where the take-off squad would be housed. He got within a couple of hundred yards of it, then asked one of the ground staff, and was directed towards a waiting- room, from which a large noise in general was emerging. With Cathy on his arm he pushed open the door. The place was quite well furnished. It was equipped with a bar at which three junior officers were drinking. A space had been cleared for dancing, and a couple were treading slowly backwards and forwards across it. The man was also an officer, and his companion was a girl with very blonde hair indeed. At first he thought it was a Juke Box playing, but incredibly it was a hi-fi from which the treble had been completely tuned out. He ordered a couple of Scotches, and he and Cathy took them to a table as far away from the source of the noise as they could find. It had one big advantage, nobody could talk to them very easily. He noticed that the men at the bar were shouting at each other.
They drank four more Scotches in as many hours and then there was some incomprehensible mumbling on the speaker system. The men looked around at each other, and Conway heard one of them say, ‘Well, this is it.’
It was more 'than two hours since the couple had quit the
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room. Now the man returned without the girl. Apparently he had made his fond farewell. Conway was only too keenly aware that he and Cathy would be making their farewell very soon now. They followed behind the four men as they walked first across a compound, then through a series of sheds, and at last along a corridor to a moderate-sized room laid out like a lecture room. This was clearly where crews had their final briefing. The four now looked very curiously at them. Conway selected a couple of seats about four rows back from the front. ‘Don’t do anything yet,’ he whispered. The men started chattering away to themselves, the conversation being more or less a cover for their curiosity.
‘You in on this trip, sir?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And the lady too ?’
‘That’s right, it’s getting popular now.’
. Another of the men turned and nodded appreciatively at Cathy. ‘You’re a welcome recruit, lady.’
A few minutes later a major and a colonel came in. They halted peremptorily as soon as they saw Cathy. ‘What does this mean ?’ asked the Colonel.
‘It means we’re on this trip, of course. It’s a special assignment. Here are our papers.’
Conway had never in his life done anything more ridiculous, and in some ways more difficult, than he did now. Thinking that Cathy had better be awfully good, he took up the lobster thermidor bag. Like a salesman he handed the Colonel a fistful of leaflets - porky’s sausages swell
TWENTY-FIVE TIMES THEIR STARTING SIZE. To his
astonishment the Colonel turned not a hair. He examined each leaflet with the utmost care, then stamped them, adding three to a wad of papers that he was already carrying, a wad fastened together by a huge spring-clip. The rest he handed back to Conway, who quite solemnly returned them to the lobster thermidor bag. The Colonel and the Major murmured for a moment, and then 'the Colonel said, ‘You really should have had a special pass for the lady, an Outer
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Echelon Pass from the Special Activities Commandant.
Without a trace of a smile Conway replied, ‘Oh, I thought I’d given you it.’ He knew what had happened was that the man 'had simply forgotten to think about it until after he’d handed back the papers. He’d think about it now, Cathy would see to that. Conway dug back again into his bag and came up with a paper relating to halibut’s dehydrated kippers. Feeling that he was going to burst, he handed it to the man, who looked it over very gravely, returned it, and said, very gravely, ‘You sure go high, friend.’
Conway exploded and became very red in the face. It needed a good deal of patting on his hack by the Major before he could recover his breath. When they had gone Cathy whispered, ‘You’re hopeless.’
The rocket took off shortly after dawn. Luckily it was a f airly low acceleration job, and although he didn’t like the way he felt it wasn’t too bad. He looked anxiously at Cathy’s shoulder for he had been worried that the wound might open up again. If it had it wasn’t bleeding seriously. This was Conway’s first trip into space, and he vowed to himself that it would be his last. He thought about the lobster thermidor bag and didn’t feel too good. It seemed to take an unconscionable time manoeuvring this way and that with the small jets before they were alongside one of the main transit vehicles. The clamps were put into operation. The seals were tested. And then a narrow window connecting their vehicle with the transit vehicle was opened up. Each of them scrambled in turn through it into the larger space of the bigger ship. As Cathy came through the gap the score or so of men who operated the transit ship stared at her in blank amazement.
The first stage was now complete. From here onwards their tactics would have to change. They would have to tell the Captain of the transit to pick up the big Achilles ship in ■his radar scanners, and to manoeuvre them alongside. They’d have to make no bones about it. 'It was one thing to
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make a man see a piece of paper that he was expecting to see, the Colonel had had memories of the correct passes stored away in his brain, and all that Cathy had done was to pull them out of storage for him, but the crew here h
ad no special ideas about the Achilles ship, they would have to be ordered and the gloves would have to come off. But Cathy had reckoned on this and it was up to her. He’d used his wits to postpone the crisis as long as possible. Now the fat would be in the fire. And it wouldn’t be long before they’d be sending up reconnaissance rockets, and armed rockets, to see what was going on. Sooner or later the Colonel was going to discover just what papers Conway had given to him, and the ad. for porky’s sausages wasn’t going to please him.
Cathy wasted no time. ‘You’d better tell them what to do,’ she began.
He told them in quick measured terms what they had to do, and he told them to get on with it.
‘Now what is this, a stick-up?’ said the captain with a grin. The others began to laugh, but the laughs were frozen. It was a case of the man at the airport again. The captain’s face went blank, then he was clawing at the main outlet hatch, trying desperately to burst the whole ship open. One of his crew stopped him at last with a blow under the jaw. Conway turned to a young lieutenant whom he took to be the second in command. ‘It’s your turn now. Don’t think it can’t happen to you because it can.’
Two of the men tried to close in on him, but before they reached him they seemed to trip and fall. When he looked down at them he saw they were unconscious. After that the lieutenant began to do what Conway demanded of him. There were tables showing the whereabouts of the Achilles ship. They were unfortunately not in the right orbit, and it would take a while before they could get across to the proper position for making contact. Conway spent several minutes ait the radio receiver. There was an attempt to collar him from behind, but the men ended on the ground with their
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throats constricted, gasping for breath. It was only then that the half who were unharmed realized that the danger came from Cathy. This seemed to knock the heart out of them altogether, but Conway now knew the situation to be desperate for there was ample evidence from the radio that their escape had been discovered and that preparations were being made to send up a reconnaissance force. His only hope was that it might still take some time. He’d no doubt of what would happen if they were discovered, quite a small missile would be sufficient to burst their vehicle open and scatter them helter-skelter into space. It would be hard to imagine any place more vulnerable than the transit in which they were now entombed.
