“We’re all scared,” Reinhart said. “The more we find out about the universe the more frightening it is.”
“Look.” Fleming leaned forward earnestly. “Let’s use our heads. That machine—that brain-child of some other world—has written off its own one-eyed monster. It’s written off Christine. It’ll write me off if I get in its way.”
“Then get out of its way,” said Reinhart wearily. “If you’re in danger get out of its way now.”
“Danger!” Fleming snorted. “Do you think I want to die in some horrible way, like Dennis Bridger, for the sake of the government or Intel? But I’m only the next on the list. If I’m forced out, or if I’m killed, what comes afterwards?”
“It’s a question of what comes first at the moment.” Reinhart sounded like a doctor with a hopeless case. “I can’t help you, John.”
“What about Osborne?”
“He doesn’t hold the reins now.”
“He could get his Minister to go to the P.M.”
“The P.M.?”
“He’s paid, isn’t he?”
Reinhart shook his head. “You’ve nothing to show, John.”
“I’ve some arguments.”
“I doubt if any of them are in a mood to listen.” Reinhart waved a small hand towards the wall map. “That’s what we’re worried about at the moment.”
“What’s that all in aid of?”
Reinhart told him. Fleming sat listening, tense and miserable, his fingers crushing the matchbox out of shape.
“We can’t always be in front, can we?” He pushed away the Professor’s explanations. “At least we can come to terms with human beings.”
“What sort of terms?” Reinhart asked.
“It doesn’t matter what sort of terms—compared with what we’re likely to be up against. A bomb is a quick death for a civilisation, but the slow subjugation of a planet...” his voice trailed away.
The Prime Minister was in his oak-panelled room in the House of Commons. He was a sporty-looking old gentleman with twinkling blue eyes. He sat at the middle of one side of the big table that half-filled the room, listening to the Minister for Defence. Sunlight streamed gently in through the mullioned windows. There was a knock at the door and the Defence Minister frowned; he was a keen young man who did not like being interrupted.
“Ah, here comes the science form.” The Prime Minister smiled genially as Ratcliff and Osborne were shown in. “You haven’t met Osborne, have you Burdett?”
The Defence Minister rose and shook hands perfunctorily.
The Prime Minister motioned them to sit down.
“Isn’t it a splendid day, gentlemen? I remember it was like this at Dunkirk time. The sun always seems to smile on national adversity.” He turned to Burdett. “Would you bully-off for us, dear boy?”
“It’s about Thorness,” said Burdett to Ratcliff. “We want to take over the computer altogether—and everything associated with it. It’s been agreed in principle, hasn’t it? And the P.M. and I think the time has come.”
Ratcliff looked at him without love. “You’ve access to it already.”
“We need more than that now, don’t we, sir?” Burdett appealed to the Prime Minister.
“We need our new interceptor, gentlemen, and we need it quickly.” Behind the amiable, lazy, rather old-world manner lay more than a hint of firmness and grasp of business. “In nineteen-forty we had Spitfires, but at the moment neither we nor our allies in the West have anything to touch the stuff that’s coming over.”
“And no prospect of anything,” Burdett put in, “by conventional means.”
“We could co-operate, couldn’t we,” Ratcliff asked Osborne, “in developing something?”
Burdett was not one to waste time. “We can handle it ourselves if we take over your equipment at Thorness entirely, and the girl.”
“The creature?” Osborne raised a well-disciplined eyebrow, but the Prime Minister twinkled reassuringly at him.
“Dr. Geers is of the opinion that if we use this curiously derived young lady to interpret our requirements to the computer and to translate its calculations back to us we could solve a lot of our problems very quickly.”
“If you can trust its intentions.”
The Prime Minister looked interested. “I don’t quite follow you.”
“One or two of our people have doubts about its potential,” said Ratcliff, more in hope than conviction. No minister likes losing territory, even if he has to use dubious arguments to retain it.
The Prime Minister waved him aside. “Oh yes, I’ve heard about that.”
“Up to now, sir, this creature has been under examination by our team,” Osborne said. “Professor Dawnay—”
“Dawnay could stay.”
“In a consultative role,” Burdett added swiftly.
“And Dr. Fleming?” asked Ratcliff.
The Prime Minister turned again to Burdett. “Fleming would be useful, wouldn’t he?”
Burdett frowned. “We shall need complete control and very tight security.”
Ratcliff tried his last card. “Do you think she’s up to it, this girl?”
“I propose to ask her,” said the Prime Minister. He pressed a small bell-push on the table and a young gentleman appeared almost immediately in the doorway. “Ask Dr. Geers to bring his lady-friend in, will you?”
“You’ve got her here?” Ratcliff looked accusingly at Osborne as though it was his fault.
“Yes, dear boy.” The Prime Minister also looked at Osborne, inquiringly. “Is she, er—?”
“She looks quite normal.”
The Prime Minister gave a small sigh of relief and rose as the door reopened to admit Geers and Andromeda. “Come in, Dr. Geers. Come along in, my dear.”
Andromeda was given the chair facing him. She sat quietly with her head slightly bowed, her hands folded in her lap, like a typist coming for an interview.
“You must find this all rather strange,” said the Prime Minister soothingly.
She answered in slow, correct sentences. “Dr. Geers has explained it to me.”
“Did he explain why we brought you here?”
“No.”
“Burdett?” The Prime Minister handed over the questioning. Ratcliff looked on grumpily while Burdett sat forward on the edge of his chair, rested his elbows on the table, placed his fingers together and looked keenly at Andromeda over them.
“This country—you know about this country?”
“Yes.”
“This country is being threatened by orbital missiles.”
“We know about orbital missiles.”
“We?” Burdett looked at her even more sharply.
She remained as she was, her face empty of expression. “The computer and myself.”
“How does the computer know?”
“We share our information.”
“That is what we hoped,” said the Prime Minister.
Burdett continued. “We have interception missiles—rockets of various kinds—but nothing of the combined speed, range and accuracy to, er...” He searched around for the right piece of jargon.
“To hit them?” she asked simply.
“Exactly. We can give you full details of speed, height and course; in fact, we can give you a great deal of data, but we need it translated into practical mechanical terms.”
“Is that difficult?”
“For us, yes. What we’re after is a highly sophisticated interception weapon that can do its own instantaneous thinking.”
“I understand.”
“We should like you to work on this with us,” the Prime Minister said gently, as if asking a favour of a child. “Dr. Geers will tell you what is needed, and he will give you all facilities for actually designing weapons.”
“And Dr. Fleming,” added Ratcliff, “can help you with the computer.”
Andromeda looked up for the first time.
“We shall not need Dr. Fleming,” she said, and something about her calm, measured voice ran like a cold shadow across the sunlight.