Skyprobe (9 page)

“All fast,” she reported.

“Okay, Beatty,” Horn said. “Now, mac. You’re going down till your feet are around six feet clear of the bottom.

You stay right there till you decide you’re going to sing. When you’ve reached that decision, you just yell out. That’s all you have to do—yell. We’ll hear you. There’ll be someone on watch up here from now on out and when you yell, you’ll be hoisted back up.” He paused, breathing hard in Shaw’s ear. “If you don’t sing then, mac, you go back in and you get dropped right down to the bottom for good an’ all.”

Shaw felt the men close in. He was hoisted helplessly over the lip of the shaft and Beatty took the turns off the cleat on the gallows, while Horn and Moss took Shaw’s weight. Then, with one turn still left on as a check, the girl lowered Shaw swiftly down and he slid into the shaft, into an almost tangible darkness and the sick, fetid smell of drains and decay.

Faintly above him he heard Beatty laugh at some remark of Horn’s and then the last of the electric fight vanished as the heavy manhole cover was slotted into place over the shaft.

A telephone rang on Klaber’s desk at the NASA base. All rings sounded urgent now, and they exacerbated frayed nerves. Klaber’s PA took the call, then passed the telephone across the desk to his chief.

He said, “It’s the President, Mr. Klaber. In person.”

A vein began pumping in Klaber’s temple. He moistened his Ups with the tip of his tongue and said into the mouthpiece, “Klaber speaking . . . Yes, Mr. President. Yes, sir.” He listened, eyes staring into space, a hand nervously tapping a ball-point pen on a note pad. After a while his mouth thinned and he said sharply, “Why, Mr. President, I don’t agree at all, but. . . He stopped, his eyes angry now as the voice continued in his ear; then he said, “Very well,

if you give me the order, Mr. President. . . . Very good, sir. Yes, sir, that’s very fully understood. Yes, indeed. . . . About six hours as of now.”

He replaced the handset; his fingers shook. Again he moistened his lips. Then, with a visible effort to keep his voice level, he said, “The President has personally ordered the splashdown, Harry. The project is to be abandoned . . . for the time being, he says. For the time being . . . we all know what
that
means!” His fists clenched. “God damn it, Harry, we’re giving in as I said earlier . . . letting the Communists have a clear field to keep all our space projects grounded for the future—
for all time!
” He got to his feet and began pacing up and down the room. After a while he came back to his desk and said heavily, “The men up there are to be ordered to go into procedure for splashdown as soon as the recovery fleet signals it’s in position for the pick-up. That should be in around six hours as of now.”

Lutz asked, “Does this mean something new has come through from Britain, Mr. Klaber?”

“Yes,” Klaber said bitterly, “it does! Seems Danvers-Marshall’s wife has disappeared from her mother-in-law’s home in Britain . . . some time yesterday. The old lady was taken suddenly bad last night and the doctor contacted the police to find Katherine and it turned out she couldn’t be traced where she said she’d gone. Because of who she was, the police contacted security. Shaw, the Defence Intelligence operator over there, has vanished too. Because of that, the President has decided to treat this threat as real and imminent.” He put his head in his hands for a moment. “Well, maybe he’s right at that,” he went on quietly. “Maybe it’s just that I hate giving in—that’s all!” He looked up at Harry Lutz and placed his hands square on the blotter on his desk. “Ring mission control, tell them the orders, say I’ll be over right away.”

Lutz took up another telephone and spoke quietly into it. Putting it down again he looked anxiously at his chief. He said, “A point, Mr. Klaber.”

“Well?”

“The families, sir.”

“What about them, Harry?”

“Do we warn them?”

Klaber said, “No, we don’t warn them, Harry. This whole operation is to be kept quiet till the capsule’s down and the men are all aboard the carrier and heading for home. A prepared statement is being issued to the press. We even have to give the men themselves a phoney reason for the early splashdown.”

* * *

Shaw had no idea how long he had been in the shaft when the manhole cover came off and Horn’s voice came down hollowly. “Ready to talk, Mac?”

“I’m not talking.” He had to spin this out as long as possible; time was all he could hope to gain now, and time could be valuable.

“Okay.” The cover was pushed back into place. Shaw set his teeth, hard. The atmosphere was stilling; quite apart from the close, nauseating smell of the shaft, it was hot and he was sweating profusely, and the rope, with all his deadweight on it, cut into the flesh below his arms and constricted his chest. Ever since he’d been down there he had been straining away at the ropes binding his wrists, but he seemed to have achieved nothing except to make his wrists swell painfully. Moss had done an efficient job.

As the hours passed Shaw lost all awareness of time. His mind raced over what Thixey had told him. Thixey had talked of ‘intercepting’ the capsule . . . Shaw’s own thoughts had veered in the direction of some sort of radio interception during his interview with the earnest little space expert who had talked so crushingly of magic. Magic was about the right word . . . but it seemed Shaw had in fact been on more or less the right lines, for what that was worth now—though, if by ‘interception’ Thixey had indeed meant a radio interference signal, why wait for re-entry? That didn’t quite check. . . . Shaw pondered the facts of Danvers-Marshall’s activities, of the scientist’s forthcoming planned defection to the East. Why, in the circumstances, had the wife opened up to him in Long Melford about the daughter and the resultant pressures on her husband?
Why?
Was that because she believed Shaw would find out anyway once the heat was on, and she meant to do what she could to disarm the security probe in advance—or was it simply because it didn’t matter any more at that stage? She would have known she was due to be hooked away within hours . . . probably the whole excuse for her coming to England—the illness of Danvers-Marshall’s mother—had been trumped up. The old lady was probably bedridden anyway, a perpetually valid excuse for a trip to England.

* * *

The men in space had reacted badly when they were passed the first news that they were to be brought down. Schuster and Morris had been incredulous and blasphemous. Schuster exploded, “Why, they must be—nuts! Everything’s going so goddam
right!
Why in heck bring us down now? You know something? I just do not goddam believe it!” He swung round on Danvers-Marshall. “Hey—Professor! What do you think is eating them, down there?”

Danvers-Marshall’s face had gone grey and he seemed suddenly in a state of high nervous tension. Anxiously and with a touch of asperity he said, “Why, hell, I can’t say— how can I? We have just to wait for more information from mission control, that’s all.”

Schuster fumed. “That’s a heck of a lot of help. . . .” He flicked his radio viciously to transmit and then swore again, lengthily and to the point. When he let go the switch another tracking station came up at once. The station controller told him, “We’re sorry, but it’s no use getting sore over this, Schuster,” and Schuster, smiling grimly and with angry glee, flipped his transmit switch again and said, “Well, I’m goddam
glad
you boys down there heard that lot!”

“Maybe,” the station came back. “Listen, you want to know what’s wrong, now I can tell you as best I can. Someone’s picked up an indication in the computerized information that the stresses are not quite okay, not quite normal, in your metal. It’s nothing you can rectify from up there, Major. I repeat we are sorry, and that is an understatement, but you’re coming down. Okay?”

“Not okay. This is failure—and I do not care for that. What if we stay up?”

Patiently the disembodied voice said, “You are not staying up. You do not have to worry meanwhile, but you are coming down. We’re playing safe. That is final, Schuster.” There was a pause; Schuster muttered furiously into his mouthpiece. The voice went on, “Stand by to commence ditching procedure. I repeat, stand by to commence ditching procedure. Over.”

Once more Schuster flipped his switch. “Okay, control,” he said briefly, his face bleak and angry still, full of the disappointment and shock of failure of a mission. Behind him Danvers-Marshall’s hands were shaking; the Britisher’s face had a pinched look. Schuster glanced at Morris. “Okay, Wayne. We have to do as they say. Check list for ditching procedure. Stow away all loose gear. When that’s done, both of you get your spacesuits back on. And don’t forget the dexedrine tablets. We need to be right on the ball mentally . . . just in case.”

They sped on, with a worm of worry eating into Schuster’s mind as to how the stress fault would take reentry.

* * *

The recovery fleet, well out now from Key West, had passed under cover of the night through the Yucatan Channel between Cuba and Mexico into the Caribbean. They were steaming at something under forty knots into a calm sea, creating their own wind across their decks in an area where currently no wind blew, bow waves creaming back high along their stems. The conditions were ideal for splashdown and by now the men knew that splashdown was coming. The Commanding Officers, in accordance with radio-ed orders, had broken silence to their crews. In all the ships the tannoys had come alive as the Execs passed the information: “
Now hear this
. . . orders are received from Washington that Skyprobe IV is about to ditch ahead of schedule. A fault has developed and it is considered unsafe to continue the flight as programmed . . . there is currently no danger to the men in the capsule and it is expected that recovery will proceed entirely normally. . . all hands will stand by now and prepare for recovery operations within approximately the next two hours.”

Soon aircraft from the carrier, together with the ship-bound lookouts, would scan the skies for the heavy vehicle from space with its drogue parachute, the invisibly probing fingers of the radar of the ships and the ground tracking stations would plot its course and alert the frigates in advance as to the exact point where it should ditch. Meantime a watch was being kept from all the ships, and from aircraft equipped with Aga Thermovision, for any hostile submarines that might have crept into the area from points East.

The carrier’s speed was reduced as, a little later, the fleet began to enter the actual splashdown area; the frigates were fanning out widely ahead, maintaining their full speed as they diverged out of sight below the carrier’s horizon, to cover all the ocean around the spot where Skyprobe IV would prematurely end its life. Aboard the carrier herself the helicopters stood by to go out and pick up the capsule when it was sighted. Half an hour later the Captain of the carrier, after a close study of the chart, turned to his Communications Officer. Briskly he said, “Report to Washington, in position for pick-up.”

Inside the next fifteen minutes Washington’s acknowledgement of this signal had been received, together with the information that the capsule would be brought down on its next orbit. The retro-rockets would be fired when the capsule was still some 7,000 miles from the expected point of re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere, and, taking its present position on its current orbit into account, the capsule was expected to be sighted in 145 minutes from the time-of-origin of Washington’s signal.

Lookouts, as the time approached, became more alert, scanning the skies and the surface of the sea; below decks, specialist crew members in all the ships were silent and intent, as they watched the probing green fingers of the radar, watching for the blip that would first tell them that Skyprobe IV was back within their reach.

* * *

At Kennedy the fleet’s readiness had been reported to Klaber, who was now standing by in mission control. Tight-lipped, he watched the instruments that showed him the capsule’s course and position in space. The seconds ticked away; soon—all too soon it seemed to the men who were reluctant to see the flight come to a fruitless end—the spacecraft entered its final orbit and began to close the position 7,000 miles from the re-entry point, its crew waiting the moment when the retro-rockets would be fired at their five-second intervals to decelerate the colossal speed.

Klaber glanced at the clock, then looked again at the instrument banks. Schuster’s disembodied voice came out of the vast emptiness of space. “Check okay, check okay . . . ready to go. Over.”

For some reason Klaber smelt trouble, he didn’t know in the least why, it was just a sudden feeling, a premonition.

. . . Through a nasty drumming in his ears he became aware of the control chief speaking to him.

He started. “I’m sorry. What was that?”

“She’s in position. Ready now. Okay to go, Mr. Klaber?”

Klaber swallowed and said, “Yes. Give them the clear.” His feeling of unease increased, but there was nothing to be done about it now.

The operation swung right into gear. “Kennedy control calling Skyprobe, Kennedy control calling Skyprobe. Okay. Go into retro-sequence as soon as you like. You have a clear. We’re all ready for you down here. . . .”

* * *

“Am preparing for retro-sequence. Attitude correct. Zero yaw, twenty-five degrees nosedown.” Schuster paused. “I am about to fire off rockets . . . am firing—
now!
”

He reached for the button to send off the retro-rockets. As he did so, Danvers-Marshall moved. He’d had time now to get used to the idea of an early splashdown and he knew what he had to do. His movements were unseen by the two astronauts intent on bringing the capsule down safely through the heat barrier that would hit them as their descent speeded up, as it would after the initial deceleration of the retro-rockets. Danvers-Marshall didn’t, in fact, move far—he didn’t need to do more than reach down by his feet. In his hand he held a tiny metal cylinder which he now placed against a red lead, one of hundreds running all around the capsule’s interior. Once the cylinder was in position he flicked a switch in its base and that was all he needed to do. In front of him Schuster’s fingers activated the retro-rocket control, and Schuster and Morris tensed to take the tremendous backward pressure that would come on their bodies and build up agonizingly as the capsule went into its sudden and rapid deceleration.