Staunton lit a cigarette, offered Shaw one which the agent took. Shaw’s fingers were shaking a little as he lit up; he went on, “To put it in a nutshell, Major, if this fault isn’t corrected AFPU ONE will get like… like a hen that’s egg-bound.” He frowned. “I’m no expert, and that’s the best way I can put it.” He broke off, biting his lip, then leaned forward and went on grimly, “I’m not a physicist any more than you, and I’m only repeating what I’ve been told— which is this; when that fuel unit starts producing under excess heat there’ll be a build-up in the ejection duct.” His eyes were bright now, staring into Staunton’s face. “When that jam-up reaches, let’s call it, x proportions, and when the machine gets to y temperature — and obviously no one knows quite when that stage’ll be reached — the algalesium product will react on what I call the H-bomb automatic power unit inside AFPU ONE — and then it goes up. Unless it can be switched off meantime, of course.”
There was a silence, and then Staunton said briefly, “My God.”
He got up, walked about the office. Shaw watched him. There was a cold feeling running along Shaw’s spine; he’d had experience of explosives — ordinary explosives like T.N.T. — and he could visualize only too well what that explosion in a confined place almost in the dead centre of the Rock would do to the structure, to the very foundations upon which Gibraltar stood — to Gibraltar’s very stuff of existence itself. Split it asunder, send those millions of tons of rock and earth and stone and fortifications and big fortress-guns flinging down on that little, clustering, overcrowded town, on the inhabitants… and after that, if there was anyone left to know about it, the atomic mushroom-cloud and the fall-out, the radiation spreading over the Straits, over the gap where Gibraltar once had been. The end of the dockyard, of the fortress, of Project Sinker, of all that the fortress-rock — for so long the key defence outpost of the Commonwealth — had ever meant to England; the end of everything.
From Staunton’s expression Shaw could see that the Defence Security Officer had that picture in his mind as well. Staunton asked, “Is there any estimate of — how long?”
“I was told that if the fuel unit overheated it would probably be safe for about a week — not more — after starting to produce the AGL Six. Of course, then it was never dreamed that it wouldn’t be possible to switch the thing off, so the time-limit wasn’t really important — and anyhow no one really knows, probably not even Ackroyd.” Shaw rubbed the side of his nose with a brown forefinger and frowned. “Look, I’ve seen photos of Ackroyd and I’ve also heard quite a lot about him from my department. But I’d like to know how he struck you. Can you give me a word-picture of the man?”
“Yes, I can.” Staunton went back to his desk, perched on a corner of it, nervily hunched. “He’s a funny little geezer in appearance, rather like the popular idea of a pre-War foreman plumber but without the authority and assurance. You know — bowler hat, droopy moustache, off-the-peg blue serge suit, very shiny — till it rotted off him with the sweat, since when he’s gone into open-necked shirts. Actually arrived out here from England wearing the bowler. Yorkshire accent, quite pronounced. He’s rather pathetic, really — never quite found his level in a garrison like this. He’s not assured enough to mix with the brass away from the job, and he’s too brainy for his own sort — regular egg-head, though you mightn’t think it to look at him, and awfully standoffish — shy, really. He can be bloody pig-headed and awkward, and yet he’s an awful little coward too — oddly enough, considering his job. Runs a mile at any sudden noise, and is like a child if he cuts his finger.” Staunton drew deeply on his cigarette, stubbed it out, and lit another. “And how do I know all this? Simple. People talk, and anyway it’s my job to sort these chaps out. One thing I don’t know — how the devil did the Admiralty allow it to happen that he’s the only one who understands this damned machine, Shaw?”
Shaw shrugged. “We can’t disguise it, there’s been a first-class blunder somewhere. Blit it seems he showed a certain amount of astuteness in arranging his own training programme so that no one man knew too much and got into a position of being able to steal his thunder. It’s just one of those things that only get highlighted when a crisis happens — and it’s easy to be wise after the event.” Staunton scowled. “So England stands to lose the most important link in the chain of these bases, to say nothing of all our lives… in fact the chances are if this lot goes up the whole damn scheme’s done for, at least for a good many years. Without Ackroyd, they won’t be able to get any other bases going.”
Shaw sighed. Rather helplessly, he asked, “Has anything been done so far to try to stop the fuel unit?” He thought: It’s auto-powered, and the power-supply can’t be cut out independently of the normal stopping process, so there can’t be any question of turning off the juice from outside…
Staunton answered him impatiently. “I’ve had my hands full investigating the Ackroyd business and that body, and I’ve had very little information about the fuel unit, Shaw. The technicalities are nothing to do with me, and I don’t know anything about the damn thing — but so far as I gather they’re completely flummoxed and likely to remain so.”
“Unless we find Ackroyd,” Shaw said quietly.
“Exactly. Unless we find Ackroyd. All we know for certain is that he was seen to leave Dockyard Tunnel for his usual swim at Sandy Bay. That was last night, and to-day we found that body near Europa.” Staunton began getting himself ready for his meeting with the Governor. “My guess is that Ackroyd is in Spain right now, though, that that body’s just some poor bastard they knocked off in Spain and brought in as a red herring.”
That was Shaw’s guess too. He said, “They probably got Ackroyd off by sea, while he was swimming. That’d be easy enough.”
Staunton went off to the meeting of Gibraltar’s top brass after that, but Shaw didn’t go with him — instead, the D.S.O. gave him a car and a security policeman as driver, telling the latter to take the Commander to Dockyard Tunnel and then to the mortuary to have a look at the body.
The car swung into the dockyard’s Ragged Staff gate and turned left for the entrance to the tunnel, where it stopped. The driver said, “Might as well walk it, sir. It’s rough going for a car.”
Shaw nodded and the policeman led the way in beside the narrow-gauge railway track which ran right through the tunnel beneath the rock. Only dimly lit, the tunnel was eerie and cool; stores and workshops opened off it; down here, during the War, the North African landings — Operation Torch — had been planned and directed, the H.Q. operating within the living rock, safe from enemy bombs. Drips of water coming through the porous limestone fell on Shaw as he walked along; and after a while he heard a curious drumming sound, a kind of dum-da, dum-da in the now close air, a sound which seemed to echo through the rock and fill the tunnel with its low, regular note. A little after that the guide turned off into a side-tunnel to the right past two armed security guards who checked their passes; and they were issued with the radiation film badges. As they went along the narrow passageway Shaw heard that dum-da noise more loudly; and when they entered a compartment leading off the side tunnel and came into Ackroyd’s workshop he saw AFPU ONE, a vast structure seemingly shut in under a lead casing. Behind the dome-shaped pile the control panel on the rock-face showed a multiplicity of dials and lights which dimmed and rose again as Shaw watched. The air in this compartment, whose roof seemed lost in dimness, was musty and stale, and that pulsating in the air drummed uncomfortably on the ears. It gave Shaw the feeling of being under high pressure — a nasty, claustrophobic feeling which made his flesh tingle with a sudden desire to be out of the place and into the clean upper air again.