Drax moved away from the giant telescope and dusted his fingers together. It was a gesture he indulged in when savouring moments of satisfaction. To see a master plan approaching its execution produced a series of such moments.
‘Sir—’
Drax turned to the technician who was speaking from one of the consoles. ‘What is it?’
‘The Russian satellite, sir. It appears to have changed course.’
‘So?’
‘If my calculations are correct, it is now on course to intercept us.’
The red of Drax’s scar tissue flushed to crimson. ‘That is not possible.’ He corrected this complacency with his next order. ‘Check the state of the radar jamming system.’
A second technician manipulated the switches of his console and then spoke in a puzzled voice. ‘Jamming power supply and back-up are out, sir. We can be observed.’
Drax gritted his uneven teeth. ‘Make a personal investigation of the situation immediately and report back to me. And bring the operatives.’ The last four words were spoken in a voice of fire and brimstone. The technician left with two guards, and a monitor voice spoke from the roof of the chamber. ‘We are on schedule for secondary launch position in T minus thirty seconds.’
Drax nodded vigorously as if anxious to convince himself that all was still well. ‘Launch second nerve-gas globe as scheduled.’
He moved to the window and looked out at the tubular spout like the thorax of a giant insect. After a few seconds a globe detached itself and drifted away like an egg laid in space. The last of the three spheres moved forward into the launch position. Drax turned away. ‘Prime next batch of nerve-gas spheres and load re-entry tube.’
The elevator hissed open and Bond and Holly emerged, dwarfed by the figure of Jaws. Drax looked upon them coldly. His lip curled.
‘James Bond. You appear with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season.’
Bond’s glance was no less unloving. ‘I didn’t think there were any seasons in space.’
Drax smiled a thin, cruel smile. ‘As far as you are concerned, only winter.’ He turned to Holly. ‘And the treacherous Dr Goodhead. The word “welcome” freezes on my lips. How happy I am that despite all your plodding efforts my finely wrought dream approaches its fulfilment.’
‘I very much doubt it,’ said Bond. ‘Your dream, whatever kind of twisted nightmare it is, doesn’t have a chance of becoming a reality. You’re not invisible any more. You’re soon going to have a lot of very inquisitive visitors.’
‘I will show you how we deal with uninvited guests, Mr Bond.’ Drax bit off the words and turned to the technician who had given warning that the Kalinin was changing course. ‘What news of the Russian satellite?’
‘On course to intercept us. Range two hundred miles. Three minutes to interception.’
Drax’s face set like a death mask. ‘Activate laser and destroy it.’
‘It’s not going to make any difference,’ said Bond. ‘You can’t hold out for ever.’
‘On the contrary,’ said Drax without emotion. ‘Time is on my side. Soon there will be no one left on Earth to defy me.’
A disembodied voice came from the monitor. ‘Target coordinates matched. Ready to fire.’
‘Fire!’ Drax did not hesitate.
The moment he spoke, a ruled line of green light became visible streaking from a position corresponding with a turret on top of the centre globe of the space station. At an indefinable distance in space a brilliant splash of flame burst across the star field before disappearing as suddenly as it had appeared.
Drax turned to Bond with a smile of understated triumph. ‘You see, Mr Bond, we are well able to take care of ourselves. Something which only a liar or a deranged optimist could say about you in your present situation.’
Again the monitored voice spoke from the roof. ‘On schedule for tertiary launch position in T minus thirty seconds.’
‘Proceed with launch.’ Drax spoke calmly and moved to Bond’s side. ‘Perhaps you would like to watch, Mr Bond. Not every man has the opportunity to be present at the creation of a new world.’
‘It’s a refrain I’ve heard before,’ said Bond.
‘But never played on such a finely tuned instrument.’ Drax waved his arms about him. ‘Come, Mr Bond. Do not grudge me your admiration. Surely, even with English understatement, you would describe me as a genius?’
‘With English understatement I would describe you as a blackguard,’ said Bond. He advanced to the long window and looked down upon the spout of the launch tube loaded with the final sphere of the first batch of nerve-gas. As he watched, it was discharged into space and quickly drifted away, to disappear against a glowing pin cushion of stars.
Drax’s voice purred out of the shadows. ‘No doubt you have already divined the splendour of my conception. First, a necklace of death around Earth. Each of those spheres is capable of killing one hundred million people. I am releasing fifty of them at pre-programmed intervals. The human race, as we have had the misfortune to know it, will cease to exist. Then will come a renaissance, a rebirth, a new world.’
‘Why?’ asked Bond. ‘Forgive me asking, but the question does spring to mind.’
Drax’s brow contracted into an unforgiving frown. ‘The reason is one that any man of normal intelligence and powers of observation should be able to grasp in seconds. It concerns population, Mr Bond. You are no doubt aware that the population of the world has increased from a figure beneath 2,300 millions in 1940 to over 4,000 millions at the present time. Have you any idea what the demographers prognosticate for the year 2070? A world population of 25,000 million! Does that figure not horrify you? A world crawling like a barrel of maggots and its population dying like flies. Pestilence, starvation, war. How can we hope to feed all those people, Mr Bond? By that time we shall have irrevocably poisoned our last remaining unexploited source of food, the oceans. There will be nothing left. Only one tried method exists for man to control his numbers: war. And what happens when there is war? Destruction. Not only of human life but of the one thing that still makes man’s existence worthwhile: art. Books, paintings, buildings, the finest legacies of countless civilizations, all that can enrich the human spirit, will be lost as man’s capacity for self-destruction exceeds his ability to control it. I revere this artistic heritage too much to allow it to be destroyed. I could turn my back and form my own civilization in space, but I believe that this would be to renege upon my responsibilities. I will not abandon Earth, I will save it! Our current civilization, if I can use such an implicitly laudatory term for it, will surely destroy itself. By accelerating the process I can protect those priceless monuments of history that it would demolish at the same time. I can give the Earth time to replenish its plundered resources, the sea will become pure, the air breathable again. I do not exaggerate, Mr Bond. Our own scientists have told us that within twenty years the trashy waste materials with which we pollute the atmosphere will have depleted the ozone layer around Earth dangerously. Skin cancer will increase alarmingly and the weather become more unpredictable. Droughts, floods, typhoons, holocausts. The precursors of the inevitable end. The slow, maimed, painful, purposeless end. Can you not see the irrefutable wisdom of what I am in the process of doing, Mr Bond? Without any racial discrimination I have selected the finest specimens, combining both mental and physical excellence. It is they and their offspring who will colonize the new Earth when the nerve gas has done its work and time has been left for nature to take her course. A new civilization can be built upon the framework of all that was best in several million years of human existence.’
‘And the knowledge that it was born from the greatest act of mass murder in history.’ Bond’s tone was cold and contemptuous.
Drax shook his head sadly. ‘It is always a mistake to bandy words with fools. I will not repeat it.’
He was turning towards Jaws when the observer spoke urgently from his console. ‘Unidentified craft closing distance fast. Recognition
signals indicate U.S. space shuttle.’
‘Laser it!’ Drax spat out the words and turned back to Bond and Holly. His face was blotchy and glistening. A maverick tick invaded his misshapen eye. ‘It occurs to me that your view of the demise of our last visitor was limited. I think you should be nearer to the next spectacle.’ He smiled obscenely. ‘Much nearer.’
Now the pinpoints of red in the mad eyes were growing larger. Bond followed Drax’s gaze to the circular door set in the outer wall of the globe. With a new surge of fear he realized what was in Drax’s mad, bad mind.
‘Jaws... the airlock chamber.’ Drax turned back to Bond and Holly. ‘Observe, Mr Bond, your route from this world to the next. At least you will not be travelling alone. It appears that you will have some American companions. Doubly pleasing for you, Dr Goodhead. Your compatriots will be able to see you achieve your ambition to be America’s first woman in space.’
Jaws moved forward with grim relish and depressed the metal lever on the door. It opened with a hiss to reveal a small compartment in which two men might stand crouched. What was clearly the outer hatch to space had a transparent window which was a twin of that in the first door.
Drax addressed his guards. ‘Take them!’
Two men stepped forward, their laser torches trained on Bond and Holly. Bond shrugged and started to move across the platform. Within a few paces of the airlock chamber was an unmanned console. Prominent across its top were the words ‘Rotation Thrusters — Artificial Gravity’. Bond’s pulse quickened as he remembered Holly’s words when they had been docking: ‘We’d all be floating around like balloons if we went outside. Once the rotation thrusters are turned on, the station will start to rotate and we’ll have artificial gravity.’ And if counter-rotation thrusters were turned off? Bond glanced again and saw a handle recessed behind a transparent cover. On the cover were printed the words ‘Emergency Stop. Do not use unless station secured’. If he could just get to that handle there might still be a chance. Even as he thought, the hard knob of the laser torch jabbed him forward.
‘Enemy craft in range. Am matching co-ordinates.’ The cold, impassive voice of the laser gunner echoed down from the empty air. It was all happening at once. Bond’s destruction was as imminent as that of the investigating American shuttle. At any -second the next batch of nerve gas spheres would start rolling out into space. Already three hundred million victims waited unknowingly for the death that would be their fate when the spheres entered the Earth’s atmosphere and dispensed their deadly poison. Bond knew that he must do something — but what? The laser torch was still thrust into his back. He would die instantly if he made a dive for the rotation thrusters. Jaws showed his teeth in an uninviting grin. Behind him stood one of the astronauts Bond could remember being trained in California. Slim, handsome, an expression of detached superiority on his face. He looked like a monitor in an English public school watching a fourth former being led out for a thrashing. Bond looked back to Jaws. The lumpen features, the misshapen body, the totality that was so obviously an accident of nature. He turned and fixed Drag with his eye. ‘Are Dr Goodhead and myself the only people being ejected into space?’
Drax’s eyes narrowed. ‘Of course, Mr Bond. Why do you ask such a facile question?’
‘I was trying to some to terms with the rules of eligibility for this flying stud farm. You wouldn’t disagree that only those who conform to your own physical and mental standards will survive?’ Bond stared pointedly at Jaws.
Drax saw the look and hesitated before replying. ‘You are attempting to raise emotive questions which are irrelevant. Jaws — expel them.’
Jaws’s hand left the handle of the door to the airlock chamber. He took a step towards Bond. The guards closed in.
‘Co-ordinates matched. Count-down to fire T minus sixty seconds.’ The laser gunner’s voice spurred the words from Bond’s throat. He looked deep into Jaws’s eyes. ‘The questions aren’t irrelevant to you are they, Jaws? How long do you think you’re going to be allowed to survive us? Have you looked about you, Jaws? You don’t conform, and that’s fatal in this society.’ Jaws hesitated and looked towards Drax. His face wore the expression that it had when he looked into the zero-gravity globe.
‘Expel them!’ Drax shouted the words and there was an edge of panic in his voice. It revealed itself in the sudden emergence of the Prussian accent. Bond gestured towards the open maw of the vacuum chamber. ‘Come on, Jaws. There’s room for all of us if we squeeze.’
‘Expel them!’ Drax took a step forward as the guards closed in. The laser gunner started his final count-down. Bond braced himself as Jaws’s hands slowly rose. Then they clamped down on the two guards and crashed their heads together. Bond snatched up a laser torch and dived for the rotation thrusters. To a background of screams and shouts he tore open the transparent cover and hauled at the handle marked ‘Emergency Stop’.
17
TAKE THE WEIGHT OFF YOUR FEET
Immediately Bond felt as if he was in a vehicle that had crashed into a brick wall. The handle tore itself from his grasp and he smashed against an unidentifiable object with a force that threatened to break both shoulder and collar bone. He slid across the floor and arrived against the wall of the globe. Around him was every article of furniture that had not been anchored to the floor, and most of the people in the chamber. The lights flickered madly and the air was full of the screams of men crying out in pain and terror. Bond tried to struggle to his feet and felt himself at the mercy of total weightlessness. Something bumped into him and he pushed it away to feel a sticky substance on his hand. It was blood. Blood from one of the Drax guards that Jaws had dealt with. The side of his head was smashed in like an empty eggshell. Bond shook free of the dead embrace and looked out of a window into space.
Keeping pace with the space station, a hundred feet from it, was a U.S. shuttle, the white star plainly visible on the fuselage. From an open hatch a stream of space marines poured out as if making an inverted parachute drop. Bond’s heart exalted as he saw the white space suits, helmets and back-packs with built-in oxygen supplies and hand-operated propulsion units. Like a skein of geese the marines converged on the space station.
Bond turned away from the window as a streak of bright laser light passed above his shoulder. There was no sight of Drax, and Holly had also disappeared. The main action:oncentrated around Jaws who was manoeuvring an uninchored console like a battering ram. As Bond watched, he took advantage of the zero-gravity to force three Draxites back against the outer wall and press the life out of them as if they were the last half inch of a tube of toothpaste. Bond clawed his way with difficulty to a position near the lift column and aimed his laser torch at a Draxite who was drawing a bead on Jaws. The light snaked across the room and a thin spurt of flame sprouted from the man’s neck. His arms spread out and he hung in space as if taking part in a levitation experiment. Bond twisted his head and looked out of the nearest observation slot.
Like fierce rain against a window pane, the rays of confronting laser guns criss-crossed the void. A stream of Draxites had emerged to give battle in space, and as Bond watched a space marine was hit in the chest. His suit momentarily swelled and then, as if fired from a catapult, he shot backwards, accelerating into infinity. Bond shuddered. What a death. For those who were disabled and drifted away the end was even more horrible. They would travel through space until their oxygen ran out and they slowly died. Without enough oxygen a man would suffocate and his space suit would become a tomb perpetually orbiting Earth. Burial in the sky. How many tin cans were there in space rattling with skeletons?
A bright light flared momentarily and Bond saw that one of the moored Moonrakers had been attacked and was aligned at the side of its satellite. Some of the Draxites were operating one-man globular space carts with laser guns mounted in the nose gun. They seemed to possess a defensive shield that made them less vulnerable to attack. Despite the opposition, the space marines were pressing in against the side of the
space. station like swarming bees. Bond knew that he had to help them get in; also to stop any more spheres of nerve gas being released. Picking his way through the floating debris he made for the exit tunnel which he estimated would lead him to the interior of the globe-launching tube. The other side of the chamber Jaws was still fighting for survival. And still winning. A Draxite who had strayed within reach of his great hands sailed across the chamber to fold against the elevator shaft like a rag doll that had lost most of its stuffing.
Bond pulled himself along a lopsided corridor, using the guard rail, and came face to face with a door marked ‘Nerve Gas Launch Assembly’. The door was of steel, and Bond hesitated. Supposing some of the nerve gas phials had been thrown across the room and had smashed when he pulled the Emergency Stop handle? To open the door would be to step into certain death. So was he going to turn his back and crawl away? Bond took what he knew might be his last deep breath and turned the handle of the door. He pressed and waited, his nerves jangling. No deadly gas rushed to his lungs. Neither did the door open easily. The reason was soon apparent. A body was wedged against the other side, beneath a collapsed row of metal shelves. Bond squeezed inside the door and found that he was alone with a corpse and two badly wounded men in light green tunics. They had obviously been hurled against the side of the space station when it went into zero-gravity. Three nerve gas spheres were lined up in a metal cradle that led out to the launch tube. The launch tube was empty. This must be the second batch of spheres ready for launching. It was not conceivable that another batch had been released after the handle had been pulled.
Wielding his laser torch with extreme care, Bond directed the beam on the machinery that operated the launch mechanism. Within seconds it was knotting into molten worm casts. If Drax wanted to launch any more spheres he would have to manhandle them to the nearest airlock chamber. Bond finished destroying the launching apparatus and looked round the wrecked room. A conveyor belt of globes ran round the walls and disappeared through a hole to what was presumably another chamber where they were stored. Bond hesitated and then decided against tampering with the globes. The risk of accidentally releasing the gas was too great. The moment to sacrifice his own life might not be too far off, but it had not yet arrived with certainty.
James Bond and Moonraker Page 18
