THE CAMBRIDGE ANNEX: THE TRILOGY

by Peter Damon

  Robert took up the topic. “We’re continuing to write articles, and continue to promote them among the media groups, fighting for space among such headlines as ‘ARC developing new microbes to sterilise earth’ and ‘United Nations Space Authority; Lame Duck’. Frankly, we’re not having much luck, but the luck we are having is more than we anticipated.”

  “That’s the way I read it too. Keep plugging away at it, and while you’re at it, begin asking where the three professors have gone to,” Michael told them.

  Oliver cocked his head to one side. “I thought one of them dead,” he mentioned.

  Michael shook his head. “I believe it was a ploy to hide the fact that they’ve lost their prized particle physicist, their one hope of piecing together a locally made HYPORT.”

  “Lost him? How did you find this out?” Oliver asked.

  “Not me. Something Stanley let slip as I was saying goodbye to him,” Michael explained. “He could really be dead, but was it really a heart attack, and where are the other two? It is a strange coincidence; something happening to them to take them out of their universities,” he noted.

  “So, what line do we take?” Oliver asked, pen at the ready.

  “Point the finger at a large corporate, one that straddles nations, one that has too much to lose should petrochemicals go down the drain,” he suggested. “You may want to enquire as to what led South Korea to give up their long association with us. Was it for gain, or for appeasement?” he wondered.

  Oliver grinned and wrote.

  “Paul, Gail; anything you want to share with us?” Michael asked.

  “Well, now things have grown quiet, we thought we might go ahead with some of the things we wanted to help the spacemen with,” Paul told him.

  “Such as?” Michael asked.

  “Communication facilities embedded under the skin,” he answered.

  Michael looked towards Frankie, who silently nodded. “The first unit will be installed in Madeleine Hill, a temporary insertion to gauge its effectiveness. Once satisfied, we’ll complete the installation and then monitor for an appropriate time, before offering the application to others,” Gail explained.

  “It’s all quite safe,” Paul added.

  “And practically all of us want it,” Frankie agreed. “External communication while we’re out in space is a real problem. We need the ability to talk to each other more easily,” he explained.

  “As long as you’re happy,” Michael agreed. “How’s the rest coming along?” he asked of the weasel-faced man.

  “There are twenty of us left, so we’re busy. Freedom One needed to be converted to the new turbines that the twins have developed, and that meant tearing out the large oil tanks and the electricity generators, and creating a new hydroponic farm that will provide our food during our long trip into outer-space.

  “Our cousins are helping us acquire components for more turbines; smaller ones we can put into the SUVs to speed them up, and remove their reliance on batteries. They fill a crate with equipment, put it onto a North Sea trawler, and we pick it up while it’s out at sea and the weather is rough.”

  “How are we transferring plants to the new hydroponic farm on Freedom One, Juliet?” Michael asked.

  “We’ve stripped all the seating from one of the coaches. We can fit 12 tables into the coach at a time, so it will take us a few trips, but we’ll get there. The plants will survive the short space of time they’ll be without feeds or lighting,” she explained.

  “So we’ll have some vegetables, and the rest of our diet will be supplements and freeze dried products?” Michael queried.

  “For most of us, our menus will be largely from the hydroponics. A very few, injured people for example, and your baby when it’s born, will have supplements,” Juliet told him while Gail nodded in the background.

  “By the way, there is also a gym on Freedom One, and the same rules that apply on the ARC, apply to you all on Freedom One. You must do your daily set of activities,” Gail reminded them all, and smiled at the groans that came up from around the table.

  “How are things on board ship, Samuel?” Michael asked.

  “We’ve closed off large sections to avoid having to maintain them. The rest is doing well and should see us transferring across to Freedom One without a problem,” Samuel told them.

  “Maintenance of the SUVs and the Range Rover has already been transferred to Freedom One as we continue to transfer the stores from one ship to the other. There’s huge amounts of stock we’re not going to be taking with us though; a terrible waste,” Samuel pointed out.

  “If the opportunity presents itself, we’ll see what we can do to drop it down to earth,” Michael agreed, doubting that the opportunity would present itself.

  “How is the auction for the asteroid proceeding?”

  “Our web site is getting record number of hits since the asteroid moved close enough to be seen with binoculars,” Gary told them. “We’ve been fielding questions from large corporations as well as state run conglomerates. There aren’t many companies that can meet the expected value at auction, but we’ve seen a number of partnerships being created too, all of whom need their legal statuses checked out before we allow them to register for the auction.”

  “There are several pressure groups who have tried to outlaw the auction, on the basis that we have no ownership of any space bodies. They either argue that the auction can’t take place, or that if it does, the revenue should go to the United Nations and be used for the benefit of mankind,” Cheryl said.

  “Are they going to cause us a problem?” Michael asked.

  Oliver also shook his head as Cheryl and Gary shook theirs. “There appears to be too much interest in the raw material to even consider the risk of us just turning it around and flinging it back out into space,” Gary explained.

  “We’ve also seen various attempts to bring our internet site down using Low-rate Denial-of-Service attacks. One out of the Philippines, one from USA, another from Europe. None of those were very successful. We also saw a new and different type of attack stemming from Russian networks. A sort of distributed Peer-to-Peer attack.”

  “I didn’t understand any of that,” Michael admitted. “Were we affected?” he asked.

  “Slightly. I doubt if anyone noticed,” Gary shrugged.

  “Are they likely to try again?” Michael asked.

  “In each case, when they had finished trying to bring us down, we sent our own little app down the line, following it back to their masters. I think our bag of tricks will keep them busy for a while. Our apps also act like a beacon, so for anyone on earth who wants to jump in and try bringing down state-owned systems, this is too good an opportunity to be missed,” Allan chuckled.

  “Very good,” Michael grinned. “Now, what about the ice cutting?”

  “Slightly ahead of itself at the moment, touch wood,” Allan told them, patting his shaven skull. “Again though, it’s early days and any number of things can still go wrong.”

  “Such as? No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know,” Michael told them, getting a rare laugh from the group.

  “We’re going to be under renewed pressure as we come nearer to closure. Earth groups will lobby us, cajole, threaten and tease. They’ll do it to us as a group, as individuals, and may even try creating smaller groups of us, such as travellers, students and ‘profiteering individuals’,” he told them and smiled again. “We need to ignore all the noise and stay focused on the real aim; to keep the Howards safe, and HYPORT a secret.

  “Take care, because when no other peaceful solution presents itself, then the earth may turn to less pleasant alternatives, like destroying the ARC in order to come up and salvage chunks of it, knowing that somewhere on board there are large quantities of the chemical.

  “We need to be on our guard,” Michael warned them.

  “We have five satellites left in orbit; the two at the poles supporting our communication, and a further three we’re using to monitor laun
ch sites from the major players,” Allan told the meeting.

  “Tony and I have updated the software on all five so that if any object moves towards them, they move outward at double that velocity,” he explained.

  “Yes, it’s very likely that there’ll be a well organised military move against us with multiple targets as they attempt to stretch our resources or just plain overwhelm us. Be ready!” Michael warned.

  “Aren’t they worried we might just drop the asteroid on top of them in retaliation?” Matt asked.

  “They probably are,” Michael agreed. “But when you’re playing for such high stakes, you take high risks,” he answered.

  +++++++++++++

  Viktor Usov sat huddled within his large woollen overcoat, his round head half obscured by the large collar, his skin deathly pale.

  His eyes were studious and his thick lips thinned with tension as he waited, the hand in one pocket playing with his cigarettes, the hand in the other with his lighter.

  His men stood around, glancing out of the far window overlooking the small country lane, then looking towards the woman still unconscious on the high and narrow hospital cot incongruously positioned in the middle of the bare and dilapidated room.

  The room was dark but for the tungsten lights that lit her and the bare floor around the cot. Plastic sheeting hung from tall supports, hiding her from most of the room. An air-purifier hummed in the background, loud enough to drown the sound of the occasional car as it passed by on the distant country lane.

  The woman mumbled as she rose from her unconsciousness and her eyes blinked, her head turning as she came to her senses and wondered where she was. She tried moving, and quickly found that she had been bound to the bed, not only by her wrists, but around her neck, knees and ankles too, completely immobilising her.

  Viktor moved forward so she would see him, and their doctor moved forward from the other side of the bed, the few tools he would need held on just the one small wheeled tray that he pushed to her side.

  “Hello Emily,” Viktor smiled. He had introduced himself as a colleague of Vasyl Pushnoy’s, someone who might be interested in paying her for information. They had spoken on the phone, and then met. They had dined together, and he had drugged her.

  “Wait outside,” he told his men as the doctor injected her with scopolamine, a drug preferred by the Americans. Viktor hoped that the British would know this, and jump to conclusions.

  “Now then,” he told her mildly, smiling pleasantly while the doctor stepped back, into the darkness. “Tell me what you know about Paddy Miller and the spacemen?” he asked gently.

  “I don’t know anything,” she told him, her nervousness visibly dropping away as the drug eased her tensions and made her slightly euphoric.

  Viktor smiled and eased his long and slender fingers into the surgical gloves the doctor had provided, flexing his fingers before picking up the long bladed scissors from the small tray of surgical tools.

  “Come now. I’m sure you know many things,” he told her softly, smiling down at her as, gently and carefully, he began to cut away her clothes, one item at a time. He would stop whenever she said something of interest, and start again when she repeated herself, or failed to tell him anything of note. When there were no clothes left, he used pain instead to obtain answers.

  November 20th.

  Freedom One lay close to the starboard side of the ARC, the side furthest from the earth and hidden from the planet below. The passage of goods and vehicles between the two craft had slowed now that most items had been transferred. All that remained were the odd few items that couldn’t be moved until the ARC had been deserted and turned towards the sun.

  Out at the asteroid, work continued on removing the ice. The bedstead structure had undergone some changes as the frame had begun to bend under the continual effort of launching balls of ice out into space. Now, extra girders decorated the underside, with small teams of spacemen continually watching over it as they strove to keep to the schedule that would see the asteroid stripped of ice by the end of the month.

  Robert had programmed a monitor in his room to take a feed from one of the small satellites maintaining a low orbit about the asteroid, and watched, enthralled, as the ice-scraper moved along the surface, the ball of ice growing ever larger upon its back until, having achieved the right mass, it was thrown off to begin its long and slow path towards the Asteroid Belt.

  The whole process was oddly absorbing, and a short analysis revealed that some 5 million other people on earth were also fascinated, watching for up to 30 minutes at a time and returning frequently in the hope of seeing a major change.

  Not that he had a lot of time to sit and idly watch the scraper at work. He, like Ricky Williams and Joyce Davers, the two university students who had dropped out to remain aboard the old ferry, would not be remaining in outer-space, but returning to earth, and so he needed a job.

  His problem was not that he had to troll the job-markets in search or something suitable. His problem was dealing with the 35 media groups that had approached him to offer him lucrative positions within their organisations. Many, he knew, did not care whether he was a good journalist or not. His attraction for them was that he had spent time on board the ARC, not as a student, cocooned within the university annex, but as one of the management team, privy to nearly all the issues that the ARC had had to face during its short time in outer-space. For a short time at least, this experience would give him a lucrative position and a high salary. He would be in great demand for a while. For how long would depend upon his skills.

  He had to smile, thinking back to the boy he’d once been and his aspiration to write one single incredible story that would have the media at his feet, clamouring for him to join them. Life had led him a merry dance, and he could never, in his wildest dreams, have imagined himself sitting where he was. Strange as it seemed, he was sad rather than glad. So he turned his attention away from the image of the scraper and concentrated on the offers he had received, beginning to itemise the benefits they promised, trying to find something that would still interest him after his sojourn in space.

  Those who were to accompany the twins on their trip to the Asteroid Belt were completing their transition to the ferry. Each of them had emptied their rooms on the ARC with some degree of sadness, recalling moments while on board, achievements, friendships made and lost.

  Matt cradled the last box of his belongings and stood in the doorway to look back at the empty room. The walls were still the bright colours he and Jake had painted them, but the large table was strangely bare, and all the monitors were switched off, remaining in place, unwanted on Freedom One. The room was once again barren, and somehow less than it had been, even when pristine, when Jake and he had burst in to look and marvel at what was to be theirs.

  There was no going back, Matt told himself. Yet it was a wrench to pull himself away and walk down the corridor towards the aft of the large ship. He felt as if he were leaving a part of himself behind.

  Heather and Michael had already moved across to the ferry and had begun to settle into the new suite of rooms. They were smaller than those on the ARC, but he was no longer Dean of a university of 130 students and professors. He was, he reminded himself, little more than a passenger, once they moved away from earth and the relationship between earth and ARC no longer needed managing.

  He looked towards Heather who was walking back into the lounge from the bedroom, rubbing the small mound that was their baby, her expression telling him the child was kicking again, and he smiled. Her professional role too had very nearly come to an end. There would be no need for a policeman on a ship with a captain.

  “Haven’t you got something to do?” she chided him.

  He did and kissed her gently before moving away to go find the others he needed to talk to.

  He used the tablet to locate them, and to ask them to meet with him in the ferry’s smaller meeting room.

  He had already finished making his own cup o
f tea when the twins arrived, followed almost immediately by Frank Hill, the tall and slender man frowning in his usual manner.

  “The four of us ‘own’ this undertaking,” Michael pointed out as they sat down and got comfortable. “Thomas and David have the controlling share, while Frankie and I share equally in the remaining shares,” he reminded them.

  The twins looked towards one another while Frankie sipped his tea and waited patiently for Michael to make his point.

  “We’re about to embark on a new project, one as different from the last, as our lives are different to what they were. I think the challenges ahead need a new man at the helm, and someone without a financial stake in the enterprise. I suggest we recruit a Captain to run the ship on our behalf,” he told them.

  “I thought the role was yours,” Frankie told him, but Michael shook his head.

  “I’ve not got the skills, knowledge or experience to manage this craft. I think we need someone whose been more involved in its development and purpose, as well as being someone who is not in this room,” Michael suggested.

  Frankie dragged his mouth down while considering who might fit the bill while Thomas and David looked towards one another again, neither of them speaking.

  “Did you have someone in mind?” Frankie asked.

  Michael did and nodded. “Allan Blake,” he told them.

  Frankie thought on it and nodded. The twins smiled. “We think he’d be perfect,” they told him.

  “Let’s call him and tell him.”

  +++++++++++++

  “Michael,” Oliver called, his face pinched with worry.

  Michael frowned and walked up to Oliver’s desk to peer at the article he’d been reading. It was a short piece, barely four lines in the Chelmsford Gazette. Emily Trotter had been found dead after what looked like a brutal sexual assault. Police were carrying out enquiries and were interested in anyone who had been in the vicinity of Galleywood on the evening of the 18th that might be able to help them with their enquiries.