James Bond and Moonraker (21 page)

There was a silence and then everything was plunged into darkness. Only the ghostly luminescence of space and its myriads of stars were visible like shining dust through the long windows. Seconds passed and a globe appeared to glow with light and slowly start revolving as if it had arrived from space. The familiar shape of Earth could be recognized, the continents black against the glowing white of the oceans. Almost imperceptibly at first, the dark shape of the continents began to melt into the sea. The surface of the globe became smooth as if a slate had been wiped clean. Then in a blaze of light the land masses appeared, dazzling with an ethereal brilliance, whilst the oceans became dark. The impression of rebirth was dynamically conveyed. There was a gasp of awe which spoke its effectiveness.

Bond drew Holly to him and whispered in her ear. ‘It’s more vital than ever that we get to that radar jamming system and kill it. The idea of Drax as God terrifies me.’

Holly squeezed his hand. ‘Me too. I guess it must be on another floor or in one of the satellites. We’d better take the elevator.’

The lights came on and the globe stopped spinning. Drax had disappeared. As if leaving an auditorium after a moving performance, the astronauts began to disperse slowly, their faces.drawn and preoccupied. Bond saw one girl wiping away tears. Poor fools. They had been brainwashed for victory like a college football team buoyed up for the big game. But Hugo Drax was much more sinister than any football coach. The side he was planning to destroy had over four thousand million people in it.

Mingling with astronauts and technicians, Bond and Holly followed one of the corridor tunnels to the elevator shaft. With a hiss the door slid open and Bond quickly turned to face Holly. Filling the elevator as if packed in it was Jaws. Bond pretended to be preoccupied by some detail on Holly’s uniform and waited until her wary eyes returned to his. ‘He’s gone.’

Bond saw the broad back retreating down the corridor and led the way into the lift. There were five buttons and he pressed the middle one. The elevator moved slowly along its shaft and came to a stop. ‘You must be careful—’ began Holly.

‘I know that,’ said Bond. Sometimes he wished with Messrs Lerner and Loewe that women could be a little more like men. One did not always need to be reminded to take care. The door hissed open and Bond moved forward. He immediately found himself falling on his face.

Holly grabbed him. ‘When I said you must be careful, I was referring to the fact that we have now arrived in a zero-gravity area.’ Her tone was gracious.

‘I’ll listen next time,’ said Bond apologetically.

‘Do that.’ Holly looked left and right along the gallery. ‘Move slowly and press your feet well down. There’s Velcro on your soles and on the floor.’

‘So we’re right in the centre of the space station?’

‘Correct. Hence the zero-gravity. The nearer you get to the —’

Holly broke off her lecture as two guards appeared, moving purposefully around the gallery. At the waist of their dark green combat uniforms hung silver cylinders a foot in length and three inches in diameter. The heads of the tubes swelled priapically. Bond guessed that they must be laser torches. The guards appeared to be fully absorbed by what was happening inside the viewing panels of the globe-like structure that the gallery enclosed. They hardly glanced at Bond and Holly.

Bond waited until the guards had moved on and then looked inside the sphere himself. At first he thought he was looking beneath the surface of a swimming pool. Half a dozen young men and women appeared to be gliding through water. Then he realized that they were drifting weightlessly in zero-gravity; that the sphere was being used as a kind of space gymnasium. Before him a beautiful girl in a leotard hung suspended as if frozen in the middle of a swallow dive. Her arms were flung wide, her back curved, her unsupported breasts melding gracefully into the forward sweep of her body. The girl turned her head and her eyes met Bond’s. She smiled. For a few seconds Bond forgot that he was a man who smoked and drank too much and lived on borrowed time.

Then Holly’s hand drew him away like a child from a sweet shop window. ‘Look at this.’ She led him to another porthole. Bond looked inside and saw a smaller sphere containing two familiar figures: the astronauts he had seen embracing in the personnel hold of Moonraker Six. Now they were naked and drifting in zero-gravity as if performing a sensuous mating ballet. A soft pink light throbbed at the speed of a heartbeat and fingers stretched out to touch, stroke and caress. Slowly, the light dimmed and the two bodies began to join into one.

Bond turned away from the window. ‘Somebody’s taking Drax’s advice to heart.’

‘It’s incredible.’ Holly took a deep breath and shook her head. ‘I just can’t adjust to what’s going on up here. It’s like some kind of dream.’

‘Or nightmare,’ said Bond grimly. He started to move forward and nearly fell again. The image of the nightmare returned forcibly. To find one’s limbs locked in perpetual slow motion whilst evil ran with the speed of a greyhound — that was a recurring horror of bad dreams.

‘James, look!’ Holly pointed to a sign above one of the tubular corridors that connected with the gallery: ‘Satellite Two. Electronic Camouflage Unit’. ‘This must be it.’

Bond glanced down the corridor and then back along the gallery. What he saw made him take Holly’s arm firmly and steer her as fast as he could along the perimeter of the globe. Moving towards them awkwardly was Jaws. Fortunately he was staring at his feet like a debutant skier or he would certainly have recognized Bond. One glance at Bond’s face told Holly that something was wrong, but she said nothing until they came to another corridor marked ‘Galley’.

‘Down here.’ She nudged him with her shoulder and Bond found himself approaching a brightly lit room laid out with parallel refectory tables that abutted one of the walls. The room was half full of astronauts and technicians. Holly led the way to the table that was farthest from the door and occupied by only one other man. Bond rubbed an eyebrow ruminatively so that he would not be recognized. They sat down with their backs to the assembly and Bond glanced over his shoulder. Jaws had come in and was sitting by the entrance. It would be foolish to try and leave before he did. He cursed himself for not having continued round the gallery. Now more time was going to be lost before they could get near the radar jamming system.

Bond looked around again and turned to Holly. ‘Where do we have to go for food?’

‘We don’t.’ She indicated a list of dishes printed beside each place setting. Next to each choice was a recessed button. ‘Choose what you want and press the appropriate button.’ She pointed towards one of the walls. ‘That’s today’s special.’

Bond looked through a glass panel and saw a large joint of roast beef revolving on a spit. A row of plates was positioned on a narrow conveyor belt beneath it. As Bond watched, a thin beam of light moved vertically down the beef and a slice dropped on the plate. The process was repeated and Bond realized that the joint was being carved with an automatically controlled laser beam. He thought of the laser torches being carried by the guards and winced. ‘I think I can resist the beef,’ he said. He made a quick choice of dishes and pressed the relevant buttons, adding as an afterthought one marked ‘Red wine’. Two minutes passed, in which he kept a wary eye on Jaws’s reflection in the outside glass, and then a hatch slid open at the end of the table. Two trays emerged and glided slowly down a shallow trough in the middle of the table. When they arrived in front of Bond and Holly they stopped. There was a click and the two trays were nudged off the feed line to arrive before the diners. Bond nodded approvingly at Holly. ‘Impressive.’ He picked up a small bottle of wine and examined the label. ‘Kubrick 2001. Excellent year.’

Holly shook her head. ‘You’re incorrigible, James.’

‘Worried, too. I don’t like the look of those spheres we saw poking out of the side of the big globe. As soon as we’ve done something about the radar jamming system, we’ll take a look.’

Holly put down her coffee cup and looked at Bond coolly. ‘Is that an order, Commander Bond? If it is, I’m bound to disobey it. My rank is equivalent to that of colonel. I outrank you, James.’

‘You chose an excellent moment to remind me,’ said Bond. ‘All right. Will you accept a respectful submission that we should take steps to check whether those spheres are full of nerve gas and ready to be launched?’

‘I will,’ said Holly graciously. She glanced round. ‘And now I think we can be on our way. Jaws doesn’t appear to be a heavy eater.’

‘It depends who the heavy is,’ said Bond. He pressed a button marked ‘disposal’ and a flap in the centre gully opened as the tray and its contents tilted to slide into it. The table was now ready to receive more diners.

Bond rose and followed Holly to the door. With the movement towards the centre of the station the sensation of weightlessness became more marked. They turned down the gallery and were approaching the corridor to Satellite Two when Jaws appeared again. He was leaning forward and gazing moodily into the zero-gravity sphere that had contained the gymnasts. The expression on his face was almost wistful. He was positioned opposite the ‘Electronic Camouflage Unit’ sign.

Bond cursed to himself and led the way up a steel spiral staircase which gave on to another circular corridor with doorless rooms leading off it. He looked inside one and saw that it was a dormitory with beds arranged in twos, separated by curved partitions like the petals of a flower. A couple of astronauts were sleeping in one of the cubicles, their hands stretching out towards each other across the intersection, fingertips touching as they rested on the floor.

Bond looked round warily. ‘We might as well hang on here until the coast is clear.’ He entered the room and lay down on one of the beds. Holly followed more gingerly. ‘It brings back memories, doesn’t it?’ said Bond. Holly smiled. She turned her back and drew up her knees in a foetal position. There were no bedclothes, only a firm pillow. Bond rested his head on it and concentrated on staying awake. With his burns causing pain, this was not difficult.

Hardly had he stretched out when another couple came into the dormitory and entered the cubicle opposite with predatory eagerness. They kissed passionately and broke apart to scramble on to their individual beds. At once, the man stretched out his arm and lifted up the small table between the beds. As this hinged back against the wall the two beds moved together and the sides of the partition curved up from the floor to meet and form a screen that hid from prying eyes what was happening on the double bed. Bond could only see two forms interlocking behind the opaque material.

He was turning towards Holly for a reaction when Jaws appeared in the doorway. Bond quickly lifted his table and a startled Holly suddenly found his hand over her mouth as the partition panels closed above them. ‘Jaws!’ Bond whispered the word and Holly’s sharp nails withdrew from the flesh on the back of his hand. She lay still, looking with Bond towards the end of the beds. A huge dark outline showed that Jaws was standing in the middle of the dormitory. For seconds he did not move and then, as there was a gasp of pleasure from the beds opposite, the shadow withdrew. Bond waited a few more moments and then kissed Holly tenderly behind the ear before lowering the table. Noiselessly, the partitions slid back to their original position. There was no sign of Jaws. Bond swung his feet off the bed and made for the corridor. It was empty. Holly appeared beside him and they made their way back down the spiral staircase and along the gallery. There were few people about at this level, and they entered the tunnel leading to Satellite Two without passing anyone. Bond approached the door marked ‘Electric Camouflage Unit’ and peered through a glass panel. In the centre of a circular room was a bank of electrical circuits looking like a telephone exchange. Two technicians in white tunics were visible, seated before consoles at the far side of the room. They were watching monitors on which horizontal zig-zag lines chased each other from left to right. Bond turned to Holly and tapped his clenched fist against his palm. She nodded.

The tap on the door was so light that the first technician did not hear it above the noise of the equipment. His companion nudged him and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. Again, there was a discreet tap. The first technician sighed and stood up. Then he sighed again. Why should he always be the one to answer doors? He looked at his colleague and wondered whether to make an issue of it. Still, he was standing up now and it was hardly worth the trouble. Next time, Wilson could answer the door. He crossed the room and looked through the porthole. A handsome girl in a pilot’s uniform was standing outside. Her face looked vaguely familiar. The technician pressed the unlocking device and a buzzer sounded. Immediately the door swung open fast and the girl rushed past and headed for the consoles. The first technician turned to follow her. At that instant he heard another sound. He turned backs but too late. Bond’s fist caught him flush on the side of the jaw and he staggered backwards, his knees buckling. Another blow found the same target and he crashed against the centre stack, unconscious before he hit the ground.

The second technician turned as Holly burst into the room. He started to rise to his feet and reached beside him for his laser torch. Holly swung her arm and a vicious karate chop sank into his stretched neck muscles. Crying out in pain and surprise, he swung a right hook. Holly swayed outside it and struck again with the side of her hand. This time there was no sound save that of the man collapsing at her feet.

Bond looked down at the inert form with admiration. ‘Where did you learn to fight like that? NASA?’

‘No. Vassar.’ Holly moved swiftly to the centre stack and began pulling out banks of wires. Bond dropped to his knees and started trussing up the technicians. Holly took the laser torch and directed it at the circuit system. The thin ray of murderous green light played on the metal and smoke quickly rose into the air. The radar jamming system was melting into a foul-smelling glutinous mass. ‘Switched off?’ said Bond.