The Silent Vulcan

by James Follett

  Lennie wet his finger and picked up the few grains of the potassium nitrate that he had spilled. He tasted them and decided that it was going to be an incredibly salty pig.

  Chapter 19.

  MIKE MALONE JOGGED INTO Temple Farm's farmyard and stopped beside Brenda, breathing easily despite the sweat streaming from his saturated headband. David Weir and Charlie Crittenden were too pre-occupied with the huge dynamo they were positioning on the traction engine's boiler to notice his arrival.

  "Good morning, Charlie, David," Malone called out.

  David was pleased to see the police officer. "Can you manage for a few minutes, Charlie?" he asked the traveller.

  "No problem, Mr Weir." Charlie nodded a greeting to Malone.

  David Weir climbed down from the traction engine. The two men sat at a table in the shade of a barn where there was a small keg of cider waiting.

  Malone tugged off his sweatshirt and downed half the contents of the tankard that his host placed before him. He looked quizzically at the traction engine. Little attempt had been made to make the ancient machine look pretty. It was the same mass of dappled blotches of red primer as when he had last seen it. "I'm surprised you've got time to mess about with that rust bucket, David."

  "Charlie and his boys have rewound the dynamo," said David defensively. "Amazing what those guys can do. Bob Harding wants it over at the power station he's setting up in Baldock's Field near the methane well. Standby power for the Centrax jennie."

  "What use is direct current?" Malone queried.

  "It'll be fine for ordinary lighting. We've rewound the dynamo and faffed about with the regulator to punch out mains voltage."

  Malone helped himself to more cider.

  "Anne Taylor told me she'd been to see you," said David.

  Malone nodded. "Naturally she's worried about Vikki. I didn't tell her anything. Is that why you wanted to see me?"

  "Ellen, Vikki and Claire have been in the cave for nearly four weeks now. They must be down to the last of their water and food."

  Malone gazed hard at the farmer. "You haven't made contact with them, have you?"

  The question annoyed David. "Of course not. We agreed that that would always be a joint decision."

  "Just as well," said Malone. "Roscoe's still got some of his pus stains trying to keep tabs on me."

  David grinned. "They must be getting fit."

  "How about you?"

  "They've been hanging about. One was careless with his binoculars the other day. Look, Mike -- we've got to resupply the girls within the next few days."

  "Or, better still, let them out," Malone replied.

  David stared. "How? You've always maintained that they have to stay in the cave until you're a hundred per cent certain of their safety."

  "There's one way of being thousand per cent sure," Malone replied enigmatically.

  David was silent for some moments as Malone's words sank in. "And how does that equate with your lofty principals about the rule of law and order?" he inquired.

  "Stauffenberg's dilemma," said Malone.

  "What?" "Count von Stauffenberg. A member of Hitler's staff. In July 1944 he placed a bomb under a conference table that Hitler was using. His dilemma was whether or not a lesser evil was justified to end a greater evil."

  David said nothing, wondering if he would ever understand Malone.

  "The analogy is alarmingly close," the police officer continued. "Although Adrian Roscoe is not a head of state and although his influence is such that he could probably persuade the more unhinged of his followers to commit murder, I think his crusading zeal is such that he'd see it as a commission from God demanding his personal action. If anyone makes any move against Ellen and Vikki, he'll be the one to make it."

  "How about Faraday?"

  "Nelson Faraday doesn't share in Roscoe's fanaticism. Faraday's fanatical interests centre on girls -- the younger the better, the livelier the better."

  "And Roscoe prefers older women?" David suggested.

  Malone nodded. "It seems likely."

  "Such as Ellen Duncan?"

  "From what she told me of his behaviour -- yes."

  "Which means that you and Roscoe have something in common," said David.

  Malone was too experienced as a police officer to show a reaction to anything that caught him unawares. The remark took him by surprise and he wondered how much David knew about an hour he had spent one afternoon with Ellen in the little flat above her shop. "I have a weakness for dark, strong, mature beer and dark, strong, mature women," he admitted.

  "You'd be better off with strong, mature blondes," said David. "Anne Taylor told me how much she likes you. Lousy judgement, but a lovely woman."

  Malone laughed but wondered if David's remark was an oblique warning off regarding Ellen. "What concerns me is that if the Wall continues as now seems likely, Ellen and Vikki will never be more than ten kilometres from Roscoe at anytime. That frightens me."

  "So what's your Stauffenberg plan?"

  Malone had a natural reticence about discussing half-formulated ideas but David Weir had already shown that he was capable of the sort of thinking that Malone approved of, and it was important to keep the farmer's confidence. He quickly outlined his thoughts.

  David Weir was quiet for a moment when Malone had finished. "Your mind moves in strange ways, Malone. The idea has the advantage of being so utterly bizarre that it's certain to catch Roscoe wrong-footed. Everyone will be wrong-footed if it comes to that. Whether or not it's sufficiently bizarre to push Roscoe into preemptory action and into making a serious mistake is another matter."

  "I'm taking a calculated risk that Roscoe's hatred will cloud his judgement. Also my rough plan has the advantage of keeping the initiative with us," said Malone. "We write the menu; we determine events and not Roscoe."

  "You realise what will be on that menu?"

  "Only too well."

  "Could you do it? Pull a trigger on a man? Shoot to kill?"

  "I've been trained." Malone knew it was a feeble, evasive answer. "I know you can shoot straight," David replied. "But how many live human targets did they provide on your training? If it comes to that, how much were you taught about what the SAS call `over penetration'? Unlike them, you don't have much choice of a weapon. You're thinking of that gun you took off Faraday?"

  Malone nodded. "A Smith and Wesson .45."

  "Which is little more than a hand-held cannon. You might not just kill Roscoe. Have you thought about that?"

  Rather than answer the question, Malone finished his drink and stood. "Duty calls, David. Great cider. Thanks."

  David Weir remained deep in thought for a few moments after Malone had left.

  Count Klaus von Stauffenberg's plan had failed -- a failure that had unleashed a bloodbath of reprisals that had ended all opposition to Hitler, and Stauffenberg and his fellow conspirators had ended up dangling on meat hooks.

  Chapter 20.

  THE SWIMMING POOL FILTER HOUSING stood in a clear area of Selby Engineering's plant that was normally used for stripping Pentworth's hundreds of unwanted vehicles for scrap and usable spares.

  The barrel-shaped housing was moulded in bright yellow glass fibre. It had been intended for a new swimming pool at Seaford College. It rested upright on wooden blocks and stood three metres high and a metre diameter at the broadest part of its girth. It resembled a giant barrel.

  Harding stood on a stepladder and held the steel tape against the top of the housing for Tony Selby who was entering its measurements into a notebook. The engineer did a mental calculation and looked quizzically up at the scientist. "Its displacement is nearly two metric tonnes, Mr Chairman."

  "I hate being called that," said Harding, climbing off the stepladder.

  Selby grinned. "To make this thing sink, Bob, is going to mean hanging some two thousand kilos of weights on it." The engineer mounted the stepladder and put his hand through the large opening at the top of the filter that would normally be us
ed for filling it with sand when it was installed. He jumped down. "About twelve mill wall thickness. Quite strong. It's designed to take an internal pressure of three Bar. Being round, it can probably take an external pressure equivalent to a depth of sixty metres. Say six atmospheres."

  "The Pentworth Lake anomaly's at twice that depth," said Harding.

  "I did say probably. Once we've cut the hatch opening and can get inside, we can build up the wall thickness to about twenty mill. We've got plenty of chopped strand matting and resin." The engineer hesitated. "I doubt if pressure is going to be the problem, Bob. It's going to be the question of strong enough fixing points so that it'll take two tonnes of bags of rocks as ballast on the outside."

  "Need there be as much as that? Afterall, it's three metres high. I'm tall but not that tall -- all I'd need is a ledge to sit on. How about putting in some sort of floor with car batteries underneath for the lights? I'm going to need plenty of external light. At least 1000 watts or more. A cluster of sealed beam car headlights on some sort of rack would be ideal."

  Selby made some notes. "That's not a bad idea, Bob. Taking the batteries with you would avoid the problem of voltage drop down a cable, and ten or so car batteries on board would certainly cut down on the amount of external ballast needed."

  "And how about a net-type harness made of cable to go around the thing to take its weight?"

  Selby considered and nodded. "Good thinking." He made another note.

  Harding was pleased. The problems of getting himself down to the Silent Vulcan were disappearing.

  "But we'll still need some external ballast and some sort of quick release mechanism operated from inside so that you can dump the ballast in an emergency if we can't winch you up for some reason."

  "It would shoot up like a bloody cork!"

  "Better that than being stuck on the bottom." "My original model was for a free roaming submersible," said Harding ruefully.

  "It's just not practical, and certainly not possible on the budget the council voted you," Selby declared. "We'd have to make water and pressure proof pods as motor housings. Rudders and hydroplanes, controls and God knows what else. The bathyscaphe approach in which you're winched up and down from a raft like a conker on a string is going to give us enough headaches as it is, yet it's a much simpler design proposition, and a damn sight cheaper in terms of man hours than turning this thing into a submarine."

  "How long will it take you?"

  "Top priority?"

  "Top priority," Harding affirmed.

  "Everything we do is top priority."

  "You were at the council meeting," Harding reminded the engineer.

  Selby considered. "About two days to do the structural work." He rapped the side of the housing. "Fit the hatch-cum-porthole about here -- luckily you're a bit of a beanpole. Another two days for the electrics -- rigging the lights and so. Put in a telephone. Then at least a day for testing. The only way of doing that would be send the thing down empty for a couple of hours."

  "Can you foresee any difficulties?" asked Harding.

  Selby laughed. "Nothing but difficulties all the way. The biggest problem is going to be fixing you up with some sort of air supply and a CO2 scrubber. Then we're going to need a pontoon for winching you up and down. Something big and stable."

  "How about oil drums lashed together with scaffold poles?" Harding suggested.

  "Great minds think alike," Selby replied. He hesitated. "One thing that comes to mind. Assuming you do find the Silent Vulcan or whatever it is, how are you going to communicate with it or them?"

  "I'm working on that," said Harding stiffly.

  "Meaning, you don't know?"

  "Meaning, I haven't a fucking clue," Harding admitted.

  Chapter 21.

  LIKE ALL SUCCESSFUL OCEAN-GOING yachtsmen, Roger Dayton was resourceful, good with his hands, and a good organizer. All these talents were needed for this final stage in the manufacture of his homemade depth-charge: producing the hydrostatic fuse -- the device that would detonate the depth-charge when it reached the right depth.

  A visit to the library in the town had enabled him to glean all he could about the manufacture of black powder -- one of the simplest explosives of all to make. It consisted of sulphur, saltpetre and charcoal mixed together in equal quantities. The sulphur had presented a problem until he decided to risk persuading some market gardening friends and acquaintances to part with enough of the stuff, saying that he needed to fumigate his greenhouses. The saltpetre was the result of Lennie's light-fingered lunchtime exercises at the supplies depot. Charcoal was the least problem -- it was plentiful and merely required grinding the requisite amount to a coarse dust. What required careful organization was his use of his little four-stroke 1000-watt Honda generator. As far as Dayton was concerned, it was part of his yacht's fittings and therefore he had seen no reason for declaring it or the ten litres of petrol in its tank. It produced just enough power to run his lathe provided he didn't try to cut too much. Biggest risk was the 1000 euro fine if he was caught running an internal combustion engine without a permit, plus confiscation of the generator.

  With the puttering of the Honda hardly audible under its layers of yacht mattresses, he used his workshop lathe to bore a large hole right through the firkin's threaded aluminium bung. It was a stepped hole to provide the seating for the spring and diaphragm that formed the hydrostatic valve. There was little chance of his wife interrupting him. She knew that the DON'T DISTURB -- THIS MEANS YOU sign on the workshop door meant her in particular. Anything that kept her moody husband out of the house was fine by her.

  He screwed the spring and pressure diaphragm into place in the bung and added a short length of copper tube to house the switch and plunger. The device was crude but simple. Water pressure acting on the diaphragm would act against the spring, gradually pushing it in as the depth charge fell to the bottom of Pentworth Lake. He had already calculated the spring rate needed to for the spring to operate the micro-switch at a depth of 120 metres. The micro-switch would trigger the percussion hammer plunger and so fire the Very pistol distress flare cartridge into the black powder.

  The crucial percussion hammer was a model of simplicity -- it was the coil and plunger from his battery-operated front door chimes. In normal use, pressing the button energised a coil causing the plunger, which formed the core of the coil, to fly out and strike a chiming plate, and recoil onto a second plate, giving out the characteristic ding-dong note of door chimes. In Dayton's depth charge, he had machined a point on the plunger which would strike the percussion cap of a distress cartridge. The marine rockets and flares which he had handed over to Malone some weeks before had all been out of date and due for replacement. He had kept quiet about his stock of current cartridges. He assembled the detonator and tested it using a live Very cartridge from which the charge had been removed. Pressure applied to the diaphragm set into the bung with the aid of a bottle screw triggered the fuse and caused the hammer to hit the Very cartridge's percussion cap. It emitted a satisfying crack as the tiny mercury-fulminate charge exploded.

  Five more tests with the hammer striking the defunct cartridge case convinced him that everything was working perfectly. The entire detonator, complete with battery, switch, coil and a new Very pistol cartridge, all neatly housed in the length of tube, was ready.

  He hefted the empty firkin aluminium keg onto the bench and spent five minutes pouring the black powder into the keg until it was nearly full, shaking the keg occasionally to ensure that the powder settled properly. He had already carried out tests in a large water butt and had mixed the right weight of black powder needed for the keg to sink at half a metre per second. Next the detonator tube mounted on the bung was inserted and screwed home onto a fibre washer. The angle of the bung meant that the live cartridge was aimed right into the centre of the charge.

  Perfect.

  A final tighten with a "C" spanner so that the bung was flush with the outside of the keg and the job was d
one.

  He sat back and contemplated the homemade depth-charge. Other than there was now a hardly noticeable hydrostatic diaphragm set into the bung, it looked just like an ordinary aluminium beer keg.

  30 kilos of black powder, with a generous air space to aid oxidising when the stuff was ignited ought to make one hell of a bang when the casing burst. If the Silent Vulcan lying at the bottom of Pentworth Lake was already severely damaged, as some theorists had suggested, it certainly would be by the time he'd finished with it. Hopefully, the aliens and their Silent Vulcan, together with the mechanism that maintained their accursed Wall would be destroyed.

  Chapter 22.

  DAVID WEIR'S BRENDA MOVING through Pentworth was a major event. The huge showman's engine, with steam and smoke belching from its smoke stack and steam hissing from its stuffing boxes, had attracted a retinue of excited children and parents by the time Charlie Crittenden was cranking the steering wheel to turn the ponderous engine into Baldock's Field where the methane well head was sited.

  Among the small crowd following the showman's engine was Nelson Faraday. His right arm was in a sling, obliging him to use his left hand to operate the camcorder which he used to keep Adrian Roscoe posted on events in and around the town.

  A hard standing consisting of a raft of felled pines had already been prepared for Brenda. When Charlie had surveyed the site he had vetoed the plan by Selby Engineering's power station team to park the engine on the soft ground of the field near the big Centrax mobile generator so that it could share its methane piped supply. Charlie had declared that the traction engine would probably sink up to its axles, so rather than build a road, it was decided that the showman's engine station would have to be sited near the entrance to the field, at the top of the rise overlooking the well-head, and supplied with its own piped methane. Workmen were already filling in the slit trench that had been cut for Brenda's pipeline.