Philip McCutchan
Bluebolt One
CHAPTER ONE
Julian Hartog walked across the utility-furnished office to the window, moving with his peculiarly characteristic loping stride, as quiet and purposeful as a tiger.
He said in a deep, grating voice, “It’s starting, Steve.”
Stephen Geisler didn’t seem to have heard; and Hartog looked out across the hard, dry earth between the control-station’s admin, buildings and the flagstaff where the naval ensigns of Britain and the United States drooped limply like butter muslin, side by side on a dead level, and looking oddly out of place among the lush, heavy trees which hemmed in the station. He looked away towards the cloud-bank forming, dark and menacing and yet welcome, along the top of the Naka Hills. All the night before he had lain awake, as he had lain awake for so many nights now. He had tossed and turned, haggard-eyed beneath the mosquito-netting, and listened to the mutter of Africa close at hand beyond the high-voltage cables and the barbed-wire mesh which formed the perimeter of the base. Like all else that lived and breathed and moved in the airless heat, he had waited for the blessed breaking of the rains which were now some weeks overdue.
But in Hartog’s case it hadn’t been just the stifling atmosphere. He’d had hardly any sleep ever since the strangers from Jinda had contacted him so casually, and yet at the same time so threateningly with their hints about a past which he had himself tried to forget…
Now, he said again more loudly, “It’s starting, Steve.” He brooded, black brows drawn together over a high-bridged nose and a saturnine face with clusters of tiny red veins over prominent cheek-bones. “And by God we need it!”
Geisler looked up then and nodded. He said, “Sure.” He stretched his stocky sailor’s body and sighed, puckering up the sunburned flesh of his round face so that the eyes, the eyes which lately had lost their normally cheerful twinkle, seemed almost to disappear. “Maybe the blacks’ll be more settled, once the rains come.”
He said that with more hope than belief.
Hartog turned impatiently. “Ah, stuff it!” His big, rubbery mouth twisted in contempt and he spoke brutally. “The bastards are used to their own stinking climate. That’s a damn silly thing to say.”
The American base commander stared at him. “Gee, I just made a remark, didn’t I, that’s all—”
Hartog took no notice. “Rain or shine, it’s made no difference to the rest of Africa, has it? Besides, it’s not just routine rioting, the kind we’re all used to these days. This thing’s directed against us—specifically us. You know that as well as I do. It’s a pity some people in high places haven’t hoisted it in yet!” He crossed the room again. Tall and enigmatic, he loomed over the Navy man like a restless evil genius. Dropping into a wickerwork chair and pushing his lanky body back with his feet, he lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “They won’t be satisfied — the blacks, I mean — till we’ve packed up and gone, Steve.” He gave a hard, jerky laugh. “Just don’t know what’s good for ’em, that’s the long and short of it.”
Geisler said mildly, “Can’t help seeing their point of view in some ways.”
“Perhaps you can’t. I can.” Hartog waved a powerful arm. “I can’t answer for you. All I know is, I’ve had a bellyful of this lot. And now I’ve got a bellyache.”
Stephen Geisler sighed and rubbed at his eyes, feeling the sting of sheer tiredness in them. He’d had almost two years now of unremitting work and worry and responsibility as base commander, an anxious period in which he had established the control post right from the bare earth upward, and waited, until just a few weeks earlier, for Bluebolt One to be put into orbit from Cape Canaveral, after which the station had taken over control of the new satellite and its load. It had been a responsibility borne in circumstances which were getting every one down, had worn their nerves to the final pitch when tempers could sometimes no longer be controlled and men did stupid things for no real reason. But Julian Hartog, Geisler’s chief civilian scientist from the British Ministry of Nuclear Development, and the real brains of the operations staff, had gone a little beyond that lately, and Geisler didn’t like the implications.
He said, “That kind of attitude doesn’t help, Julian.”
Hartog sneered. “I’m sick and tired of making the best of an impossible situation. People like you — well, you don’t notice things so much.” He broke off moodily, flicked ash off his cigarette, and then went on, “You’d think some one would be taking an interest in us… seeing what’s going on in the rest of Africa. I tell you, Steve, we’re forgotten men. Out of sight, out of mind. And I’m fed up to the teeth with waiting for some damn idiot in a safe Government office back in London or Washington to tick over, get off his fat, overpaid backside and act. One of these days… d’you know what’ll happen?”
He sat forward and leaned close to Geisler. The C.O. smelt whisky, strong on his breath. He suspected, not for the first time, that Hartog was drinking on duty now. He asked, “No. What?”
Hartog said, “I may get to hear of something that’ll shake ’em rigid. If I do I’ll let you know. Only it’ll probably be too late by then.”
Geisler felt a vague sense of fear. “What d’you mean by that, Julian?”
Hartog stuck out his lower lip and pulled at it with nicotine-stained fingers. There was a slight grin on his lips now. He said slowly, “Why, nothing, Steve. Just — nothing.”
Geisler studied him. He fancied there had been a subdued trace of something like hysteria in Hartog’s voice, a curious high note. He said, “If it was nothing you wouldn’t have spoken in the first place. Want to tell me anything else?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m just warning you. Don’t go and do anything stupid. I’ve done all I can by putting in my reports.”
Briefly, Hartog swore; he got up suddenly, lurching just a little. Then he turned away, away from Stephen Geisler’s eyes, and banged out of the office. Geisler heard the outer door slam, saw Hartog go out on to the veranda and walk across towards the control-tower.
A few minutes later Hartog heard the thunder rolling overhead. Then came the long-awaited cloud-burst and he saw the solid water sheeting down over the glass dome above him, making the control-room look like a tank submerged in the sea. Big shoulders thrown back and his hands on his hips, he stood there staring upward, his lips moving soundlessly. A few moments later he swung away and crossed the room, going over to a radar screen beside the main instrument panel. He looked moodily down at a small circle of brilliant green light, a circle which appeared to be moving but which in fact was stationary; it was the actual outlines of the world’s countries and oceans which moved behind the dot on the radar screen. That brilliant green circle represented Bluebolt One, so that at any given moment the position, relative to the earth, of the big satellite which was orbiting some two hundred miles up in space could be seen pictorially as well as being pin-pointed with deadly precision from the dials in front of the operator’s seat.
Hartog put down the instrument with which he had been carrying out a routine check of the mass of complicated electronic equipment and studied the moving map. There seemed to be something about it which was mesmerizing him. It was the sheer immensity of the power-potential which that small green circle of light, hanging over the world’s map, represented; the concentration of destruction, of misery and terror in the shining, cylindrical body of Bluebolt, as it sped round and round the world endlessly… endlessly, that was, until one day the balloon went up for ever and somebody got on the wire in London or Washington and the urgent, clamant message came through, the message which would order Julian Hartog into the operator’s seat to make a target setting from the cipher table and then press the first transmission key…