She nodded. ‘I had an idea that it was something of that kind; and, of course, it must belong to Harsbach.’
‘Yes. I’ve often wondered how he managed to expose poor old Estévan to radium rays while we were making those warheads—that is, for long enough to cause death, and without Estévan or anyone else seeing what he was up to. The answer is that he didn’t. This is the thing with which he killed Estévan. He must have trained it on him while we were all asleep, probably for several nights in succession.’
They were silent for a moment, then Carmen asked, ‘Is it still dangerous?’
‘I don’t know enough about radium to say,’ he replied. ‘After all these weeks it may have lost its potency; on the other hand—’
‘No, Kem!’ she exclaimed, guessing from his eyes the thought that had come into his mind. ‘Whatever their intentions towards us, to use it on either of them would be to commit a horrible form of murder. I won’t let you!’
He gave a cynical little smile, and handed the strange weapon back to her. ‘All right, then. Get rid of it down the lavatory chute. You had also better get rid at the same time of anything that it was lying near, and may have affected, in your dressing-case. But, anyway, it wouldn’t enable us to get the better of those two devils on the upper deck. We could use it only on one of them at a time, and as that one began to show the symptoms of radium poisoning they would guess what we had been up to. The survivor would make short work of us. Besides if we could think of a way of getting rid of both of them, I should still be up against the fact that I haven’t the faintest idea how to control the Saucer.’
After further thought Kem realised that the latter fence might be got over far more easily than the former. If he could only get a free hand at the controls, there seemed no real reason why he should not find out how to manipulate them as successfully as Harsbach had done. It would mean another period of violent somersaults and swervings, and there was the risk that he might knock himself out while experimenting; but short of such a calamity, it was not unreasonable to believe that he would succeed in getting the hang of them before being faced with the tricky business of bringing the Saucer down to Earth.
The real problem lay in getting that free hand at the controls. To do so he must either kill, take prisoner or impose his will on both Harsbach and Anna. During the whole of the month that followed he tormented his brain endlessly with plots and plans, all of which he was forced to abandon in turn as either being based on wishful thinking or being so desperate as practically to amount to suicide. By the end of the month he was no nearer to devising a way to overcome his enemies than he had been at its beginning.
He was still a weak invalid, walking with a chronic stoop. They were fit, strong, agile and armed with automatics. The opportunities for surprising and overcoming them in sleep were nil, as they took turns at keeping an eye on the controls, and never since leaving Mars had they been known to abandon their routine of keeping watch and watch about. Carmen, Kem knew, would brave any risk to aid him in an attempt to overcome them, but it was unthinkable to expose her unless he could conceive a plan that had a reasonable prospect of success, and, cudgel his wits as he would, in that all-important matter they remained utterly barren.
Nevertheless, from habit and conviction he acted as if he had no cause to despair of their situation. While they were on Mars Harsbach had never given him the chance to examine either of the great bombs closely, but now he had ample opportunity to study the one that remained. It was about thirty feet in length and three feet in diameter at its broadest part. The material of which it was made was similar to that used in the manufacture of the Saucers, so both were very light in weight and very strong. The central section of the bomb was hollow, to allow for the ten-foot fall of a plunger during its drop that, by a calculated adjustment, had the effect of exploding it at the desired height above its target. Sections of its sides could be opened on the same principles as those of a motor-car bonnet, but automatically clamped back into place much more tightly, thus rendering it airtight. For many days in succession Kem opened up these sections one by one, unscrewed various parts of the mechanism until he became fully conversant with the principles on which they worked, and, on the last sheets of Carmen’s notepaper, made careful drawings of them.
It was on the ninety-first day since their leaving Mars that on going to the lavatory and looking down its pipe, he realised that the crisis would soon be upon them. There was old Mother Earth, framed in the circle made by the bottom of the chute, now appearing as large as a cricket ball.
Next morning the globe overlapped the circle. It looked very different from Mars seen under the same conditions. It was much whiter. The sun, shining on its great areas of clouds, made them look like vast snow-fields, and it was difficult to determine where they merged into the real snow-fields of its much larger Polar caps.
Carmen came down the control tower with their rations while he was still staring through the pipe. In a swift whisper she warned him to put on his eye bandage and get back to his bunk, as Harsbach might at any moment be coming down to take a look at the planet. From that time on Kem had to adopt his role of a blind man in earnest, and sit about with his hands folded in his lap, apparently incapable of doing anything, for either Harsbach or Anna were constantly in the vicinity of the lower deck, watching the Saucer’s swift approach to Earth.
That evening they began to feel the pull of gravity, and Harsbach cautiously altered the Saucer’s direction in order to enter on the first of the braking ellipses, which he hoped would reduce its tremendous speed. Twelve hours later they entered the cone of shadow thrown by the Earth as their approach caused its bulk to hide the sun from them. For the first time in three months they went to sleep in true night.
When they woke the Saucer was completing the second of its braking ellipses. A few hours afterwards they entered the outer fringe of the Earth’s atmosphere and were rapidly gaining weight. When Kem next stole a quick look down the pipe it was midday. He was able to identify the great sweep of Hudson Bay, so knew that they were over northern Canada. They were still travelling fast, many miles up and heading eastward with the world spin.
During an afternoon greatly foreshortened by the fact that they were rushing away from the sinking sun, they crossed the tip of Greenland; then twilight fell. All day Harsbach had been paying periodic visits to the closet to observe the Saucer’s progress, and after one made about ten o’clock he informed Carmen that the groups of lights below them were those of the villages in Iceland.
For a time the darkness remained blank; then the Moon came up and Carmen told Kem that ahead of them she could see it glinting on a great chain of mountains. He said they must be the coast of Norway, and Anna, coming down shortly afterwards, confirmed that they were. At about one o’clock in the morning Kem decided to snatch another look himself. By then he expected the Saucer to be passing over either Sweden or the northern Baltic. To his amazement he found that without his noticing it they had changed direction. He was peering down at the unmistakable outline of northern Scotland, and the Saucer was travelling south.
Hastily adjusting his bandage over his eyes, he hurried back to Carmen, and said: ‘I can’t make out what Harsbach is up to. We should be approaching Soviet territory by now, but during the past hour he has altered the Saucer’s course. He has brought us hundreds of miles south of the line we were travelling on and at the moment we are heading for Edinburgh. Please go up: tell him you’ve been looking down the chute, and see if you can find out his intentions.’
Carmen was away for about five minutes. When she rejoined him her eyes were staring and her lips trembling.
‘Kem!’ she gasped. ‘This is terrible! Unbelievable! But he has gone mad. He must have, or he would never have told me about the frightful thing he means to do. He was frothing at the mouth, gibbering with unholy glee. Before flying on to Russia, he is going to drop the Atom bomb on London.’
* * * *
Kem drew in a sharp brea
th. ‘I think I guessed it while you were up there. It is his insane hatred of the British. He means to revenge himself for his ruined life; for his disfigurement; for the deaths of his father, wife and daughter; and for the way we smashed Hitler—all by this one diabolical stroke.’
‘We can’t let it happen,’ she whispered, aghast.
‘We’ll have to work fast,’ he muttered. ‘I wonder how long we’ve got.’
‘Anna told me a little time ago that we had slowed down to about four hundred miles an hour.’
‘Then we have an hour, or perhaps a little over.’
‘What are you going to do? Sabotage the bomb?’
‘That’s no good. One of them will come down presently to adjust the plunger mechanism for detonation height. They may not look at the warhead, but if they do they would discover what we had done, shoot us, and put it right.’ He paused, swallowed hard, then went on quickly, ‘I’m afraid this means curtains for us, darling; but the only certain way of fooling them is to use the bomb to blow the Saucer up.’
She smiled at him. ‘Go ahead, Kem. What do the two of us matter compared with all those helpless millions?’
‘Bless you, my sweet. Go over and sit in the bottom of the control tower while I get to work. Cough if you hear either of them coming down.’
Kem’s task was by no means an easy one, as lack of gravity no longer enabled him to move about freely. Moreover the light was far from good, although the bright moonlight outside penetrated the Saucer’s surface just enough for him to see by it.
By using the hand-holds in the ceiling of the deck, he swung himself from his bunk to the other bomb-aimer’s box, in which Carmen kept her things. From her dressing-case he took a piece of string, her manicure-set and the few other small implements he had used when examining the interior of the warhead; then he lowered himself cautiously on to the bomb, and crawled along it until he reached its nose. Opening the bonnet that covered it, he began to work with sure swift fingers. Had he not made a prolonged study of the bomb’s mechanism it would have been quite impossible for him to carry out his intent; but knowing every part of it intimately enabled him to convert the warhead into a booby trap. The nuclear charge itself was no larger than a cricket ball, and by adjusting the leads to it ensured that anyone opening the bonnet would set it off.
The job took him nearly half an hour, but he suffered no interruption, and when he had finished he told Carmen what he had done. Then he added: ‘Of course, Anna may not open the bonnet. If she doesn’t, we shall have to set the bomb off ourselves.’
Swinging himself over to Carmen, he stood looking at her for a moment, then he said, ‘What an appalling thought it is that this maniac should make necessary the obliteration of anything so indescribably lovely as you.’
She smiled at him. ‘Dearest Kem. It is sweet to hear you say that, but what is beauty anyway? The scars on your face are disappearing now, but I loved you just as much while your eyes were made hideous by them. It is what is in our hearts that counts.’
He took her in his arms and their mouths met in a long, sweet kiss. Then, as they drew apart, they heard the sounds of scrambling feet above them. Carmen remained where she was, but Kem swiftly adjusted his bandage, and swung himself back to his bunk.
A moment later Anna appeared beside Carmen. Her smooth silvery-gold hair and fresh complexion made her look as much like an empty-headed good-time girl as ever; but her china-blue eyes were hard as agates, and in her hand she held Zadovitch’s automatic. Pointing it at Carmen, she said:
‘I shall be acting as bomb-aimer. Go over and move your things from the bomb-aimer’s box to Kem’s bunk.’
Carmen did as she was told. Then Anna spoke again. ‘Now get into Kem’s bunk with him. And don’t move. If either of you lifts a finger I shall shoot.’
With Kem and the cases in such a confined space it was a tight fit, but Carmen managed to squeeze herself in. Anna then stuck her pistol inside her short fur coat, and swung herself along the ceiling until she could get down on to the rear end of the bomb. Opening the casing there she began to adjust the plunger mechanism.
After a moment Kem asked her, ‘At what height are you going to set it?’
‘For impact,’ she replied.
‘Really!’ he exclaimed in surprise. ‘But won’t that lessen its effect?’
‘No. The Herr Doktor intends it to explode in water. The atomised particles will then spread far and wide in great radium-charged clouds, and kill an infinitely greater number of the accursed British capitalists.’
‘What about the wretched workers?’
‘They deserve no consideration as long as they continue to select their bourgeois imperialist masters. Only when they become politico-party-conscious will they have earned the right to the protection of their comrade-workers in the free Soviet Socialist World State.’
‘You couldn’t possibly hope to hit a river, as narrow as the Thames is near London, from a safe height,’ Kem said after a second.
‘Oh, yes, we shall!’ she retorted. ‘Now the Herr Doktor knows how to control the Saucer he has worked it all out. The bomb is so light that its dropping speed will be comparatively slow, whereas the Saucer can be shot up at a terrific rate. We can afford to come right down to 2,000 feet, and there will still be time for us to rise to 10,000 before it hits the water. The Herr Doktor has described to me the Tower of London. At 2,000 feet I should be able to land the bomb in the river below Tower Bridge without the least difficulty.’
As she finished speaking she closed down the casing, then she cautiously began to crawl forward along the bomb. Kem and Carmen lay tightly locked in one another’s arms. They believed that she now intended to open the bonnet over the nose, to make certain that everything was as it should be inside the warhead. They could feel one another’s hearts pounding. Both were convinced that their last moments had come. The second Anna lifted the bonnet there would be a blinding flash—then eternity.
But when she reached the middle of the bomb she stood up, gripped the hand-holds above her and began to swing herself towards the opening to the control tower.
Carmen was trembling with excitement. She could not have said if she was pleased or not to be given this short reprieve. It meant that she would have a few more precious minutes with Kem; but there was the ghastly thought that they would now have to explode the bomb themselves.
‘How I wish I had my sight back, so that I could look down the chute and see what happens when the bomb explodes.’
Anna turned and glanced towards him. ‘Well, you can’t, so you will have to imagine it.’
‘Carmen could,’ he replied quickly. ‘And she could describe it to me. Have you any objection to our getting out of this bunk now and occupying the closet? We shouldn’t be in your way there, or be able to interfere with you when you come down to launch the bomb.’
She shrugged. ‘No. You can do that if you like. But keep the door shut. I don’t mean to take any chances of your throwing something at me at the last moment.’
‘All right,’ he agreed. ‘How long will it be before we are over London?’
‘About twenty minutes.’
As Anna turned away and disappeared up the tower, he gripped Carmen fiercely and whispered: ‘Darling! What she said just now means we’ve still got a chance. It’s only one in a million, but pray for us now, my sweet, as you have never prayed before.’
Pulling the bandage from his eyes he got out Estévan’s watch and said: ‘We shall need this and your suitcase. Quick, help me to empty it.’
* * * *
When Anna came down to the lower deck twenty minutes later it was empty. The silent Saucer stopped revolving. Running lightly across its under-surface she got a grip on the bomb and kicked until the bomb port came under its nose. Then she climbed up into the bomb-aimer’s box and lay down there. Below her now she could see the lights of London and the silver ribbon of the Thames lit by the moon. With a smile of hatred she adjusted the bomb-sights until they were
directed on the Pool below Tower Bridge. She pressed the trigger. The bomb port opened. The great missile slid smoothly forward.
Faintly her yell to Harsbach reached Kem and Carmen, ‘Bomb’s away!’
* * * *
TOP SECRET
Personal from Director-General M.I.-X. to Prime Minister.
Sir,
Further to my telephone call this morning, reporting that a large cylinder had been retrieved from the Thames below Tower Bridge some hours after the unexplained aerial explosion a few miles short of the Belgian coast. The cylinder is made from an extremely strong but light, almost feather-weight, substance. That, no doubt, is the reason for its not having either broken in pieces on hitting the water, or embedding itself in the mud of the Thames bottom. On being opened up it was found to contain the bodies of a man and a woman.
The man has now been identified as Kempton Lincoln, one of my agents, of whom we have lost all trace since his disappearance while on a mission in the Argentine eight months ago. From a Sacred Heart locket worn by the woman, she is believed to be Señora Carmen Escobar, the wife of Colonel Estévan Escobar; both of whom disappeared at the same time as Lincoln.
With the bodies in the cylinder a number of papers have been found. They contained in a red brief-case, formally the property of Colonel Escobar, who is said to have been General Peron’s chief atomic expert. At first sight our own experts have expressed the opinion that these papers appear to contain information of exceptional value. They consist of:
(a) A series of sketches of the mechanism of a type of fission bomb so far unknown to us.
(b) A number of documents in Spanish, giving particulars of an improved type of long-range rocket.
(c) Pencil notes made in Lincoln’s hand, on the blank spaces in the above, from which it may prove possible to secure the clue to a new and faster method of producing nuclear energy from crude uranium.
Our present theory is that Lincoln was a prisoner in some form of aerial craft, the crew of which intended to test a new type of fission bomb by dropping it on London; but that he and Madame Escobar succeeded in removing the atomic nucleus from the bomb’s warhead and attaching it to some form of time fuse; so that it later blew up the aircraft, after they had concealed themselves in the hollow shell of the bomb and allowed themselves to be launched into space.
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