Gently, and without remorse, the pod moved away from the vast bulk of the ship and began the long descent to Earth.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Redpath awoke to a silence that was both external and internal, a blessed sense of his own personal humanity. He felt sane and untainted, privileged simply to be alive. The feeling, the modest joy, sustained him for the space of a dozen heartbeats, then he looked at his watch and saw there were only six minutes to midnight.
Where has everybody gone? Was the door too much for them? Have they gone away, or are they on the landing waiting for me to come out?
He sat up and looked around the quiet bedroom, and at that moment a blizzard of memory fragments imploded upon him, clicking into place, reassembling a terrible picture in his mind. Time was running out! Leila would be outside the house in Gilpinston at that very minute; the megadeaths were coming; and he had an appointment with something that waited in the cellar.
He stood up, almost retched and fought to control the quivering weakness of his limbs. Anvil blows were ringing through his temples. He looked down at the stripped wire lying beside the power point and realised he had been lucky not to electrocute himself or perhaps precipitate a full-scale grand mal which could have stretched him on the floor for hours. As it was, he was unable to decide if he had suffered a very minor epilepsy or had simply been shocked into unconsciousness. The physical aftereffects were ambiguous—but the vitally important result was that for the tune being he was his own man again, released from outside control, free to act and think independently. And precious seconds were flittering away into eternity.
The hold-all was still sitting on the chair where he had left it. Redpath opened the bag, took out one of the four bottles it contained and twisted the cap. It was moist with seeping petrol which combined with the sweat of his palms to reduce his grip, and the metal cap refused to turn. Swearing with Impatience, he glanced at the bedroom door, grateful for the fact that it had been strong enough to resist Wilbur Tennent’s efforts to burst it open. In that instant there was an appalling crash and an upper panel of the door was caved inwards by a massive metal object which revealed itself to be the head of a sledge-hammer.
Redpath stared at the door, momentarily paralysed, as the hammer was withdrawn from the gaping hole. Tennent’s hand appeared in its place and began groping for the lock.
Acting without conscious thought, Redpath snatched a handkerchief from his bag and used it to improve his grip on the bottle cap. This time it turned immediately. He removed the cap and wadded the handkerchief into the neck of the bottle with his forefinger. Holding the improvised bomb in the crook of his left arm, he reached into the bag and took out another bottle. Again he had to struggle to remove the cap, and had barely suceeded when the bolt on the door emitted a sharp metallic clack.
Tennent opened the door and sidled into the room. He was carrying the big hammer at the ready and his eyes were those of a corpse.
With him came Betty York and Miss Connie, both of whom were holding hand-picks, the type of tool used by masons to chip out mortar, sharp-pointed and easily capable of penetrating a man’s skull. One part of Redpath’s mind, escaping into irrelevancy, noted that all three tools were brand-new and thought, Good old Miss Connie—she always delivers the goods.
“Stay back,” he ordered, dry-mouthed, wondering if the three flesh-puppets before him could still be reached by human speech. “I don’t want to hurt you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Miss Connie bulged her eyes at him and said, “Slughhh, slughhh, slughhh.” And then, in spite of the fact that the bed was between her and Redpath, she came walking straight towards him, stepping up on to the mattress with unnatural litheness.
Tennent and Betty moved round the end of the bed. Redpath backed away, flailing the air with the opened bottle of petrol, hurling its contents across the room in wavering zigzags. The three paused for a moment as the volatile fluid splashed across their bodies, then resumed their advance. Tennent was shifting his grip on the sledge-hammer, preparing to commit murder with it, and the two women were making little clawing movements with their picks.
“I’m warning you,” Redpath breathed, dropping the empty bottle and dragging the cigarette lighter out of his jacket pocket. Betty hissed and darted forward. Redpath flicked the wheel of the lighter and his whole hand caught fire, sheathing itself in a gauntlet of pale yellow flame. He pushed Betty away from him, simultaneously igniting her clothing, and she staggered against Tennent. Miss Connie came swooping down on Redpath from the direction of the bed, like a falling scarecrow, and he felt a stabbing pain in his left shoulder. He hit her with his burning fist, saw her topple sideways, and sprang across the bed towards the door. He reached it in a single leap and hurled himself out onto the landing, peripherally aware that Tennent had already stripped himself of his jacket and was using it to extinguish Betty’s clothing. Miss Connie had bounded to her feet like a champion gymnast and was tearing at her black dress.
The comparatively cool petroleum flame which had enveloped Redpath’s hand had blown away in the rush of air, leaving a stinging sensation. Fearful that the bedroom was about to explode, he ran to the stairs and plunged down them, still cradling his firebomb. He reached the middle landing, sprinted along it and was half-way down the stairs to the hall when he saw something that brought him to a slithering, bumping halt. The door to the living-room was open, creating a foreshortened dark aperture, and projecting from the bottom of that aperture he could see the toe of a workman’s boot.
Albert’s waiting for me! I could get by him all right, but there are all kinds of bolts on that front door, and while I’m trying to get them open he’ll have lots of time to come up behind me. And with hands like his he doesn’t even need a hammer or a pickaxe…
“Slughhh, slughhh,” said a voice from above him, shockingly close, and a white-headed, skeletal figure, clad only in a silvery grey petticoat, lunged at him over the bannister of the landing. He warded off the clutching hands with a swing of his arm, heard footsteps thundering on the upper stairs, and launched himself to the bottom of the stairs in one dangerous bound. The newel post creaked as he swung round it and hurled himself towards the kitchen.
Nearly there, old son! Get the cellar door open, light the bottle and smash it on the steps, then sail out through that kitchen window. You’ve seen it in the flicks a hundred times, and if somebody like Randolph Scott can do it…
Redpath burst into the dark kitchen, turned to the right and pulled open the red door that led to the cellar. A greater darkness yawned at him from below, exhaling its warm breath. Ignoring the unmanning sense of dread that tried to buckle his knees, he raised the cigarette lighter and thumbed its rough-rimmed wheel. It failed to ignite. He tried again, aware of pounding footfalls in the hall, and again the flame was stillborn.
The valve! I forgot to hold down the frigging valve!
He thrust the lighter into the chilly wetness of the handkerchief-fuse and was in the act of spinning the wheel when somebody hit the kitchen door at speed from the other side. The door swatted Redpath on to the first of the cellar steps. He lost his footing and slid down several more steps in a sitting position. The bottle of petrol flew from his grasp and bounced down the steps into the blackness, with louder impacts each time.
Once, twice, thrice…silence.