“There’s no business like show business.”
“It’s a compliment in fact,” said Osborne. “They entrust it to you: the knowledge, the investment, the power.”
“Bigger fools they.”
But Osborne did not agree. After they had been round the memory cylinder, the whole group gathered in front of the control desk.
“Well?” said Ratcliff.
Fleming picked up a sheet of figures from the desk.
“These,” he said, so quietly that hardly anyone could hear him. “These are the end groups of the data found in the message.”
Reinhart repeated it for him, took the paper and explained, “We’re now going to pass these in through the input console and trigger the whole machine off.”
He passed the sheet to Christine who sat down at the teletype machine and started tapping the keys. She looked very deft and pretty: people admired. When she had finished, Fleming and Bridger threw switches and pressed buttons on the control desk and waited. The Minister waited. A steady hum came from the back of the computer, otherwise there was silence. Somebody coughed.
“All right, Dennis?” Fleming asked.
Then the display lamps began to flicker.
It was very effective at first. Explanations were given: it showed the progress of the data through the machine; as soon as it had finished its calculations it would print out its finding on that wide roll of paper there....
But nothing happened; an hour later they were still waiting. At five o’clock the Minister climbed unsmiling into his helicopter, rose into the sky and was carried southwards. At six o’clock the remaining visitors drove to the station to catch the evening train for Aberdeen, accompanied by a tight-lipped and crestfallen Reinhart. At eight o’clock Bridger and Christine went off duty.
Fleming stayed on in the empty control-room, listening to the hum of the equipment and gazing at the endlessly flashing panel. As soon as she could, Judy joined him and sat with him at the control desk. He didn’t speak, even to swear or complain, and she could think of nothing adequate to say.
The hands of the clock on the wall moved round to ten, and then the lamps on the panel stopped flickering. Fleming sighed and moved to get up to go. Judy touched his sleeve with her finger-tips to suggest some sort of comfort. He turned to kiss her, and as he did so the output printer clattered into life.
Reinhart stopped overnight in Aberdeen, where a Scottish Universities seminar was taking place. The seminar was an excuse; he did not want to spend the rest of the journey face to face with the politely condescending company from London. His one consolation was that he met an old friend, Madeleine Dawnay, professor of chemistry at Edinburgh. She was perhaps the best biochemist in the country, immensely capable and reassuring and with all the charm, her students said, of a test-tube-full of dried skin. They talked for a long time, and then he went off to his hotel bedroom and worried.
In the morning he had a telegram from Thorness: FULL HOUSE. ACES ON KINGS. COME QUICK. FLEMING. He cancelled his plane reservation to London, bought a new railway ticket and set off north-west again, taking Dawnay with him.
“What does it mean?” she asked.
“I hope to heaven it means something’s happened. The damn thing cost several million and I thought last night we were going to be the laughing-stock of Whitehall.”
He did not know quite why he was taking her. Possibly to give himself some moral support.
When he telephoned the camp from Thorness station to ask for a car and an extra pass, his call was put straight through to Quadring’s office.
“Damn scientists,” said Quadring to his orderly. “They’re in and out as if it were a fairground.”
He took the pass the orderly had written and walked down the corridor to Geers’s office. In the ordinary way he was a pleasant enough character, but Judy had been in to report the affair of the shooting and he was on edge and tetchy.
“I wonder if you’d sign this, sir?” He put the pass down on Geers’s desk.
“Who is it?”
“Someone Professor Reinhart’s bringing in.”
“Have you checked him?”
“It’s a ‘her’ actually.”
“What’s her name?” Geers squinted down at the card through his bifocals.
“Professor Dawnay.”
“Dawnay! Madeleine Dawnay?” He looked with new interest. “You don’t have to worry about her. I was at Manchester with her, before she moved on.”
He smiled reminiscently as he signed the pass. Quadring shuffled uneasily.
“It’s not easy keeping track of these Ministry of Science bods.”
“As long as they stick to their own building.” Geers handed the pass back.
“They don’t.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“Bridger for one. He goes out in his boat a lot to the island.”
“He’s a bird-watcher.”
“We think it’s something else. My own guess is he takes papers with him.”
“Papers?” Geers looked up sharply with a glint of spectacles. “Have you any proof?”
“No.”
“Well then—”
“Would it be possible to have him searched at the landing-jetty?”
“Suppose he hadn’t got anything?”
“I’d be surprised.”
“And we’d look pretty foolish, wouldn’t we?” Geers took off his glasses and stared discomfortingly at the major. “And if he was up to something we’d put him on his guard.”
“He is up to something.”
“Then get some facts to go on.”
“I don’t see how I can.”
“You’re responsible for the security of this establishment.”
“Yes, sir.”
Geers gave it his full attention for a moment.
“What about Miss Adamson?”
Quadring told him.
“Nothing since?”
“Not that we can see, sir.”
“Hm.” He closed the legs of his spectacles with a snap that dismissed the matter. “If you’re going over to the computer building you might give Professor Dawnay her pass.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Then send someone. And give her my regards. In fact, if they’re through at a reasonable hour they might look in for a sherry.”
“Very good, sir.” Quadring backed gingerly away from the desk.
“And Fleming, I suppose, if he’s with them.”
“Yes, sir.”
He got as far as the door. Geers was looking wistfully at the ceiling, thinking of Madeleine Dawnay.
“I wish we did more primary research ourselves. One gets tired of development work.”
Quadring made his escape.
In the end it was Judy who took the pass. Dawnay was in the computer control-room, being shown round by Reinhart and Bridger while Christine tried to raise Fleming on the camp phone. Judy handed over the pass and was introduced.
“Public Relations? Well, I’m glad they let girls do something,” said Dawnay in a brisk, male voice. She looked hard but not unkindly at everyone. Reinhart fluttered a little; he seemed unusually nervous.
“What did John want?”
“I don’t know,” Judy told him. “At least, I don’t quite follow it.”
“He sent me a telegram.”
After a minute Fleming hurried in.
“Ah, there you are.”
Reinhart pounced on him.
“What’s happened?”
“Are we alone?” Fleming asked, looking coolly at Dawnay.
Reinhart introduced them irritably and fidgeted from one tiny foot to the other while she quizzed Fleming about the computer.
“Madeleine’s fully in the picture.”
“She’s lucky. I wish I were.” Fleming fished from his pocket a folded sheet of paper and handed it to the Professor.