“Let’s explore.”
“If you like.”
“Is that a cave there?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go and look.”
“We’re not dressed for it.”
“Aren’t you formal?” She smiled at him and pulled on her sweater, then threw him his. “Here!”
“They go hellish deep into the cliff. You need caving gear, like pot-holers.”
“We won’t go far.”
“O.K.” He hoisted himself to his feet and shook off his bad temper. “Come on.”
The cave widened inside and then tapered off as it went deeper into the rock. The floor was sandy at first and strewn with stones. As they went further in they found themselves scrambling over boulders. It was cold and very quiet inside. Fleming brought a torch from the boat and shone it on the rock walls ahead of them; patches of seeping water glittered in its light. After a few dozen yards they came to another chamber with a large pool at the far end. Judy knelt down and gazed into the water.
“There’s a piece of cord here.”
“What?” Fleming crouched beside her and looked down over the pool’s lip. One end of a length of white cord was knotted and held down by a boulder at the edge while the rest of it ran down into the water. Fleming pulled on it: it was quite taut.
“Is it deep?” Judy peered down the beam of the torch but could see nothing but blackness beneath the pool’s surface.
“Hold the torch, will you?”
Fleming took both hands to the cord and pulled it slowly up. On the end was a large thermos-type canister weighted with stones. Judy shone the torch on to the lid.
“It’s Dennis’s!” Fleming exclaimed.
“Dennis Bridger’s?”
“Yes. He bought it for picnics. It has that mark like a zig-zag on it.”
“Why should he leave it?” Judy spoke more to herself than Fleming.
“I don’t know. Better ask him.”
Judy opened the lid and felt inside.
“For goodness sake!”
“It’s full of papers.” She pulled some out and held them under the torch. “Do you recognise them?”
“It’s our stuff.” Fleming looked at them incredulously. “Copied. We’d better take them back to him.”
“No.” Judy put the papers hack in the flask and fastened it.
“What are you going to do?”
“Leave it where we found it.”
“But that’s absurd.”
“Please, John. I know what I’m doing.” She picked up the canister and threw it back into the water, while he watched sulkily, holding the torch.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, but she would not tell him.
When they got back to camp they found Reinhart there. He buttonholed Fleming outside the office block.
“Can you spare me a minute, John?”
“I’m not here.”
“Look, John,” the Professor looked hurt. “We’re stuck.”
“Good.”
“Madeleine’s managed a D.N.A. synthesis. Cells have actually formed.”
“You must be proud of her.”
“Single cells. But they don’t live, or only a few minutes.”
“Then your luck’s in. If they did live they’d be under the control of the machine.”
“How?”
“I don’t know how. But they’d be no friends of ours.”
“A single cell can’t do much damage.” Judy had never heard Reinhart openly pleading before. “Come anyway.”
Fleming stuck his lower lip out obstinately.
“Go on, John.” Judy faced round to him. “Or are you afraid they’ll bite you?”
Fleming hunched up his shoulders and went with the Professor.
Judy walked straight into Quadring’s office and reported.
“Ah,” said Quadring. “That makes sense. Where is he now?”
They phoned the computer room, but Bridger had just left.
“Tell the F.S.P. boys to find him and tail him,” Quadring told his orderly. “But he’s not to see them.”
“Very good, sir.” The orderly swivelled his chair round to the switchboard.
“Who’s on cliff patrol?”
“B Section, sir.”
“Tell them to watch the path down to the jetty.”
“Are they to stop him?”
“No. They’re to let him go out if he wants to, and tell us.” Quadring turned to Judy. “His friend phoned him to-day. They must want something urgently to run a risk like that.”
“Why should they?”
“Maybe they’ve a deal on. We listened, of course. It was mostly pretty guarded, but they said something about the new route.”
Judy shrugged. This was beyond her. Quadring waited until the orderly had telephoned the field security corporal and gone out to deliver his message to the B Section commander. Then he led Judy over to a wall-map.
“The old route was via the island. Bridger could take stuff there and dump it without having to check out of camp. When needed it could be picked up by the yacht. One of Kaufmann’s colleagues probably has an ocean-going job that can anchor well off and send a boat in to rendezvous with Bridger.”
“The white one?”
“The one you saw.”
“Then that’s why—?” It was a long while since the shooting on the moor, but it came back clearly to her as she looked at the map.
“Kaufmann had to have someone to tip off Bridger and keep in touch with the yacht. He used his chauffeur, who used the car.”
“And shot at me?”
“It was probably he. It was a silly thing to do, but I expect he thought he could lose the body in the sea.”
Judy felt herself turn cold inside her thick sweater.
“And the new route?”
“What with the weather and us, they can’t use the yacht any more, so they can’t get to the island. Bridger still uses it as a hiding-place, as you’ve found out, but he’ll have to bring the stuff back and smuggle it out of the main gate, which is riskier.”
Judy looked out into the cold dusk that was falling on the warmth of the day. Low square roofs of research buildings jutted blackly from the darkening grass of the headland. Lights shone in a few hut windows, and above them the enormous arch of the sky began to dim and disappear. Somewhere Dawnay was working in a lighted underground room, dedicated and unaware of the consequences of what she was doing. Somewhere Fleming was arguing with Reinhart about the future. And somewhere, alone and miserable and perhaps shaking with hidden fear, Bridger was changing into oilskins, fisherman’s jersey and wading boots, to go out into the night.
“You’d better put on something thicker,” said Quadring. “I’m going too.”
It was warm in Dawnay’s laboratory. Lights and equipment had been on for weeks and were slowly beating the air-conditioning.
“It smells of biologist,” said Fleming as he and Reinhart walked in.
Dawnay was peering down the eyepiece of a microscope. She glanced up casually.
“Hallo, Dr. Fleming.” She spoke as though he had been out simply for a cup of tea. “It looks a bit like a witch’s soup-kitchen, I’m afraid.”
“Anything in the broth?” Reinhart asked.
“We’ve just been preparing a new batch. Like to stop and see?” The microscope had an electronic display tube, like a television screen. “You can watch on there if anything should happen.”
“New culture?” asked one of her assistants, fitting a needle to a hypodermic syringe.
“Take some from there, and watch the temperature of your needle.”
Dawnay explained her progress to Fleming while the assistant took a small bottle from a refrigerator.
“We do the synthesis round about freezing-point, and they come to life at normal temperature.” She seemed perfectly friendly and untouched by what Fleming thought.
The assistant pierced the rubber cap of the bottle with the hypodermic needle and drew up some fluid into the syringe.