The Silent Vulcan

by James Follett

  A minute later the porthole appeared and it was immediately obvious what had gone wrong. Water was gouting out of the shattered acrylic window. It had imploded under the ten atmosphere pressure at 100 metres.

  Five minutes later the planks were slid under the drained bathyscaphe and it was secure. The wingnuts that held the window in place were removed. Harding examined a piece of the once clear plastic porthole, now milky and crazed along the fracture line. It was as thick as his forefinger. "Fifteen mill Perspex," said Selby bitterly, examining the inside of the porthole's frame with the aid of a torch. "We put twice the 120 metre pressure load on it in the workshop, too."

  "Trouble is that it's such a large, flat area," said Harding. "Have you got any thicker Perspex in stock?"

  "Some twenty-five mill."

  "That's sure to be more than thick enough," said Harding. "Why didn't you use that in the first place?"

  The question annoyed the engineer. "Because, Mr Chairman, we're trying to do this on a fixed price, and 15 mill ought to have been more thick enough."

  "You're quite right to be angry, Tony," said Harding. "It's not your fault. Your work has been excellent. I approved the design so the fault and the cost is down to me. I apologise most sincerely."

  Selby accepted the apology with a dismissive wave. "A thicker window means we're going to have to bond in longer threaded studs around the porthole. We can do that here, today."

  "So we could test dive tomorrow? Friday?" Harding queried.

  "If we get started right away. The resin needs to be left overnight to cure. Yes -- we should ready for a test dive by midday tomorrow."

  "And the manned dive in the evening?"

  Selby was doubtful. "I don't think we'll have enough time. I'd want to do a visual over every square centimetre of the filter body before your manned dive -- which would be better in the morning so we've got a whole day in front of us in case we have problems. Listen, Bob, what we're doing is fucking dangerous enough as it is. Let's not cut any corners."

  "The Market Square do on Saturday evening isn't the usual youngsters' disco, but the August carnival," said Harding thoughtfully. "I said I'd open it. A manned dive on the Saturday morning is cutting it a bit fine."

  "And there's the street lighting switch-on," Selby reminded him. "My staff have still got a fair bit of line work to get through. Let's say that we do what we can here, make the new window today and bond in new studs -- that won't take too long. We carry out a test dive early tomorrow morning and your manned dive in the afternoon only if all goes well, otherwise on Saturday morning. How does that sound?"

  Harding grinned. "Excellent. Tomorrow it is."

  Selby gave a broad grin. "If you do manage to talk to the Visitors, maybe you'll have something to announce on Saturday night?"

  Both men laughed at the prospect.

  Chapter 39.

  David Weir found Malone sitting under a parasol at his favourite table outside the Crown. The policeman was studying some papers, his PMR radio and a beer in front of him. A loudspeaker provided by the owner of the Crown was relaying Radio Pentworth's interminable MOR afternoon music interspersed with a reports on the setback to the bathyscaphe operation at the lake. Around Market Square teams were rigging sound equipment for Saturday evening's carnival. Electricians were checking the street lights in readiness for the switch-on.

  "Dunno why you don't move your office here," said David, flopping onto the bench opposite Malone. He looked tired because he had been up since first light looking for the missing women.

  "I might just do that," Malone replied, not looking up. "Trouble is I get to meet a worse class of people here."

  "I've just come from the Wall," said David. "Quite a crowd of smoke-watchers down there now."

  "So I heard on the radio," Malone replied phlegmatically. "All looking for holes in the Wall. They won't find any."

  "What makes you so sure? If a cat can get through--"

  He was interrupted by the squelch opening on Malone's PMR set. The policeman answered the call.

  "Unit 6 at position Sierra Mike," said a voice. "Alpha Romeo's arrived."

  Malone acknowledged and told the two man morris police unit to continue monitoring the situation. Nothing else.

  "Let me guess," said David. "Alpha Romeo is the code for Adrian Roscoe. Hardly an unbreakable code." He caught the waiter's eye and ordered a beer.

  Malone said indifferently, "I want that little pus stain to know that I know. I want him to know that I'm watching his every move." He smiled thinly. "Seems he's decided to take a look at the mystery smoke for himself. Not that it's such a mystery. And there won't be a hole."

  "What makes you so sure, Mike?"

  "While you're chasing around looking for Ellen and Co, I'm sitting here doing my being a detective bit -- deducing things. The most obvious deduction being that nothing can pass through the Wall unless the Visitors decide it can pass through."

  "I see. So if there are people Farside, they've taken to breeding siamese cats some 30,000 years before the cat was domesticated?"

  The waiter brought David his drink.

  "Let's look at a few facts," said Malone. "We know from Vikki's new hand and the account of your visit to the cave, that she's important to the Visitors. I know Vikki. I'm certain she's telling the truth about her ability to communicate with them. Once I'd satisfied myself that the three girls hadn't been found by Roscoe, and made a bit of a prat of myself into the bargain, I reasoned that the only people other than you and I who know where they were hidden was the Visitors and Trinder."

  "How would the Visitors know?"

  "Simple. Their spyder followed Vikki back to the cave when she went to the lake on the night of the coup. It's damned good at moving about at night, as I can testify. It's hard to see unless it's moving, and it can fly if it has to." Malone took a long pull from his drink. "In view of their interest in Vikki, they've kept the cave under some sort of surveillance. They saw the foxhounds sniffing around yesterday evening, panicked like we did, and decided to move them to a safer place. Where could be safer from Roscoe than Farside? They got to them before we did."

  David sipped his drink and shook his head. "It all seems too improbable."

  Malone sorted through his papers and pointed to a location on a map of Pentworth that he marked with a cross. "An irate nurseryman called the nick just as I came back on duty. He had discovered that trespassers had trampled across a field that he had just prepared for a late sowing of peas. I went out to the field and took a look. Three sets of footprints. All trainers. All the right sizes to be the girls' footprints. Also some odd marks left by what could only be the spyder. Partially obliterated by the trainer prints which meant that the spyder was leading the way." Malone smiled quizzically at David. "Draw a line from the cave to that field and keep going."

  David found the cave and moved his finger across the map. It reached the cross and continued, ending at the field adjoining Sister Mary Joseph's cottage. He looked up at Malone and was at loss for a moment. "That's where the smoke has been seen."

  Malone nodded. "It all fits, doesn't it? We can't see down the rise where the smoke is coming from but the chances are that it's some sort of secure accommodation that the Visitors had to get ready for the girls in a hurry."

  "And the cat?"

  "Sister Mary says it's Vikki's siamese. Her home is about two kilometres away. Outside the territorial range of a cat I would've thought, but I suppose that depends on the cat. It saw Vikki and decided to join the party. My parents used to have a siamese. It'd go for walks with you like a dog."

  David was silent as he drank his beer. He set the glass down carefully and said, "You're a clever sod, Malone."

  "So I've been told."

  "Now be ultra clever and tell me why Ellen didn't leave a note?"

  "Try an educated guess," Malone invited.

  "Because the spyder wouldn't let her or it destroyed the note?"

  "Great minds think alike. We don't kn
ow what persuasive powers the Visitors have given their spyder. Somehow I can't see them ordering Ellen about but we don't know. The trouble is that with the girls gone, the Visitors are now calling the shots."

  David watched an electrician working on a floodlight. "Despite being scientifically advanced, I get the impression that the Visitors are incredibly naive in some respects. How sure can we be sure that the girls are safe Farside? If your theory is correct, that the girls have had to light a fire suggests that the Visitors have not thought everything through. A fire isn't exactly on par with the technology that built the Wall."

  Malone was annoyed with himself for not thinking of that. "Well -- everything is down to the Visitors now," he said. He added with a determined note, "It's their move and they seem to make their moves only at night. This time I don't intend for them to make any move without my knowing about it."

  Chapter 40.

  THERE WAS SOMETHING outside the hut.

  Ellen opened her eyes. The interior of the hut was lit by the soft glow of the fire. Her first thought was that the spyder had returned but her heartbeat started racing when she heard wheezy breathing not a metre from her head on the other side of the hut's hide covering. Without disturbing Himmler, her hand reached from under the furs and groped around the side of the raised bed for the tool roll. Her fingers fumbled at the knot and felt for the largest of the flint knives. The blade was a good length, was incredibly sharp and had a dangerous point. Although terrified, she intended to give a good account of herself if whatever it was outside decided to enter the hut.

  She sat up slowly and listened intently. The only sound was the soft breathing from Vikki's and Claire's gloom-shrouded end of the hut. And then she heard a licking sound near the entrance. Whatever the creature was, she guessed that it had found the flat stone that she had used that day to cut the carp into slivers for drying and smoking. There were no scraps -- Himmler had seen to that, and Ellen had encouraged him, not wanting to leave anything around outside that might attract night time scavengers. That the creature was resorting to licking stones suggested that it was hungry, and that frightened Ellen even more.

  She glanced at the strings of dried fish hanging like bunting from lines she had rigged across the hut. Her curing experiments had not been too successful. Some of the pieces of fish were starting to reek. They could probably be smelt for miles. They had worried her at the time. That simple things such as plastic containers with airtight lids were something that one took for granted without thinking had brought home to her the problems that early man had with food storage.

  Her grip on the knife tightened when she heard the creature move to the front of the hut. The flap had been well secured. She reasoned that if whatever it was decided to try breaking in, it wouldn't be able to burst through the hide that quickly and that she'd be able to get in some stabs. She felt for another knife with her free hand and crouched on the bed, ready to spring into action, absolutely determined with every gramme of her being to put up a determined fight if she had to.

  Get a grip, she told herself. It's probably a fox.

  But the wheezy breathing suggested it was something much larger than a fox. Eventually it moved away and then there was a silence. The minutes slipped by without any further sounds but Ellen waited for at least five minutes to be sure, poised for action, before she dared move. She picked up the torch and cautiously opened the flap a little, just enough to flash the light around outside. The big pug marks near the entrance where she had smoked the carp were unmistakable. They were the same as those she had seen that morning by the river.

  She secured the flap and returned to her bed. Ellen was a practical women, not given to harbouring irrational fears despite the justification of last few minutes. From what her rural upbringing and her abiding interest in paleontology had taught her, she knew that wildlife tended to avoid human habitation unless driven by hunger. Whatever the creature was, the chances were that it had been just as scared as she had been. Perhaps that was how the first animals had been domesticated? By some kind-hearted soul leaving food out for a wounded or sick animal and so winning its trust?

  Pondering her favourite subject was a reassuring exercise and she eventually drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter: 41.

  MALONE USED THE APARTMENT on the top floor of the police station to catch up on his sleep. At nightfall he entered the operations room, alert and ready for anything that might happen over the next few hours.

  He had nearly 50 officers on duty for what he had code-named Operation Scorpio. Every available PMR and CB radio had been brought into service, batteries fully charged and tested. All the officers had been issued with compasses. Even mundane matters such as overtime payments had been squared with Government House by Carol Sandiman.

  The wall map that she and an assistant were working at was covered in marker flags, one for each of the morris police officers that were distributed at vantage points in the town and around the surrounding countryside. Each flag bore a boldly marked two letter callsign that not only identified the officer but, more importantly, his or her location. The callsigns had been assigned for this particular operation only; anyone listening in to the police and CB frequencies would not know what was going on because Malone's briefing had included strict instructions that no one was to give their location away or pass messages likely to indicate the purpose of the operation. Also no police officer was to move from their assigned location or use their radio unnecessarily.

  "This is a watch and learn operation only," Malone had told them during the briefing. "Any response needed will be by me." For that purpose he had Asquith Prescott's armoured Range Rover outside, ready and waiting.

  Malone tilted his swivel chair back and studied the map. The highest concentration of flags were for the six officers he had located around Pentworth Lake. Those were the key men that had been issued with binoculars. There were four in the vicinity of Ellen's cave although they did not know of its existence, of course. There were five more grouped close to Sister Mary's cottage. These were the locations where Malone expected some sort of activity. The rest of his force were scattered thinly around the countryside. He even had five officers distributed in the grounds of the Pentworth estate. That they had not reported meant that they had managed to conceal themselves without incident. So that nothing would appear to be out of the ordinary he had several regular morris police officers around the town following their normal beat, and a few country patrols doing the rounds. They didn't have radios and were therefore unlikely to interfere in the operation.

  There was nothing to do in the operations room except read. Malone made a start on Soren Kierkegaad's analysis of human freedom and personal responsibility. So far he had studiously avoided the 19th-Century Danish philosopher. After two hours reading he was on the point of continuing to avoid him when the wall speaker came to life.

  "Lima X-Ray. Activity in centre of target area."

  Carol bent the base microphone's gooseneck stalk closer to her mouth. Her answer was a cryptic, "Received."

  Malone glanced at the wall map. The officer with the callsign LX was in a prime position up a tree overlooking Pentworth Lake. Confirmations of his report came in from the other watchers dotted around the lake. "Lima X-Ray. It's the objective right enough." A pause then the police officer added, slightly disbelievingly. "It's climbing onto the structure in the middle of the target area. Seems to be taking a look around."

  The operations room assistant pinned a yellow flag marked spyder on the map. Malone smiled to himself as he pictured the spyder climbing onto the pontoon. He wondered what the Visitors made of the strange platform that was moored directly above their Silent Vulcan.

  "Lima X-Ray. Objective now Alpha 50 and increasing."

  Alpha 50 and increasing meant altitude 50 metres and climbing. The spyder had decided to go flying.

  "Lima X-Ray. Objective now Alpha 100 approx. Bravo Three-Two-Zero."

  Bearing 320 degrees? North-West? Malone ha
dn't expected that. He crossed to the map where the assistant had moved the marker for the spyder.

  A new voice came on. "Papa Tango. Objective estimated Alpha 200. Bravo 320."

  "Definitely heading North-West, sir," said the assistant, moving the marker to the new position.

  Two more reports came in that confirmed the spyder's flight pattern. Malone traced its likely destination. It was heading towards Pentworth House.

  Five minutes passed without a report. Malone cursed inwardly. He hadn't expected the spyder to take this route and had less observers around the town.

  And then another new voice reported, "Papa Golf. Objective audible. Alpha and Bravo unknown."

  The assistant moved the spyder's marker again. Malone checked the operation's notes; Papa Golf's position was fifty metres from the hunt's kennels. He felt uneasy. Something wasn't right and he had an uncomfortable idea what and why.

  "Papa Golf. Objective Alpha 100 and steady. Correction -- slow decrease of Alpha. Bravo seems to be static."

  "The bloody thing's hovering," Malone muttered.

  Papa Golf came back but this time his transmission was distorted. Malone caught the odd word here and there. The strange fluctuations in the transmission were like no interference that Malone had ever heard before. It sounded as though Papa Golf's voice was being alternately squeezed and stretched by an electronic harmonizer. He moved to Carol's side, alarms bells sounding off in his mind.

  "Go again, Papa Golf," said Carol. "You're breaking up."

  This time the interference completely obliterated Papa Golf's transmission.

  Jesus Christ! The kennels!

  Malone snatched up the base microphone. "Papa Golf! Leave your target zone now! ASAP! Get clear now. Run! Go! Go! Go!" He repeated the message twice, having to make a conscious effort not to shout and cause distortion. "Jesus Christ -- let's hope he heard that," he said, putting the microphone back on the desk.

  Carol and the assistant were staring at him. Carol was the first to speak. "What's the matter, sir?"