At least the CIA man had his doubts.'
Peace stirred in his deep cane chair. I wonder if you didn't overdo the business of the depth-charge mortar?'
There was that risk,' replied the DNI., But everyone had to see Geoffrey Peace go to his grave.'
It all looked very real and decorous on TV,' interjected Mam'zelle Adele.
Was the glass hatch a calculated part of the display?' I asked.
The DNI nodded. It was armour-plated, of course. Did you see anything publicly in the set-up to make you think it might be a fake?'
Nothing, except your flippant attitude on Loch Ven- nachar's bridge.'
He frowned at my tone. You're on the inside of this.' I wasn't then-I'm not sure now.'
Now,' he went on, having publicly disposed of Geoffrey
Peace, I bring him back because I-'
I interrupted him. It strikes me as peculiar the way you keep saying "I". You're retired. You're spending your declining days messing around with reptile fossil and learning Creole.'
I froze when I saw his eyes. I'm doing neither.'
He looked at me thoughtfully, calculating. It was the most frightening glance I have ever had directed at me. It struck me that he was assessing how, if he had to kill me, he would have done it. The gentle, slightly weary voice lent high drama to his words. Mam'zelle Adele sat very upright and still. Peace no longer lolled in his chair. Maybe he was, remembering his own excoriation by that same gentle, deadly voice.
The DNI rose and sat on the arm of his chair. I, of course, have a secret. Geoffrey, of course, has a mission.'
And some hellish weapon is involved,' I added grimly.
His smile was wintry. Ultimate-it softens the concept, somehow. A small handful of people share this secret. They include the Prime Minister of England and the President and Vice-President of the United States.'
I shot a glance at Mam'zelle Adele. The skin was stretched tight across her cheek-bones, as if someone had put hands over her ears and pulled it back. She pushed Nossi Be absently from her knee.
There was a long pause. The only sound was the swish of the trade wind through the broad leaves of the latanier trees.
The DNI placed the tips of his fingers together. In my heightened state of mind I saw the gesture as akin to the crablike pincers of the cannibal centipede of the islands when it throttles its victim. Their rasp was in his voice, too.
We are going to launch the Vice-President of the United States into space.'
4 LITTLE BEAR
Like the curtain suddenly going up on a startling and unfamiliar stage-set, the DNI'S words seemed to bring unreality with them. The room itself now looked unreal to me, like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. I felt almost clinically detached from the group-the lovely woman, the silver-haired Intelligence chief, the submarine ace, tough and alert as if he had undergone a resurrection rather than an immersion.
I repeated the Vice-President's name for want of anything better to say. Marvin K. Green!'
MKG,' corrected the DNI. Better get used to calling him that. You're to see a good deal of the man shortly.'
I looked at Peace, for it was with MKG that he had worked on the SNAP nuclear motor project.
He's a regular guy, as they say,' he replied.
The DNI's precise voice cut in. ' You and Geoffrey will see him launched safely into space. That is your assignment.'
Mam'zelle Adele spoke for the first time, more to me than to the others. ' I'm part of the assignment, too.'
I banged down my glass.! This sounds like science fiction'
On the contrary,' replied the DNI. There is no fiction. The Prime Minister has guaranteed to the President our full cooperation in launching MKG.'
MKG had emerged as product and leader of the American technocratic society which had grown up round nuclear science and missilery. He had graduated from the famous Naval Research Laboratory and, as the nation's top scientist, had been picked for the Vice-Presidency. As a result, an aura of glamour had developed round this office, which in the past had been regarded as rather a backwater, consonant with America's lead in the space race and MKG'S not inconsiderable part in it. The United States-and the world-had watched the youthful MKG (in his thirties) train as an astronaut and set the seal on his devotion to space exploration by actually making a trial orbit and splash-down. From that moment he was the darling of the nation. In brief, MKG personified the rule of science in the space age.
Peace said, as if following my line of thought, MKG is a Navy man, through and through. He has what the us. Navy calls " in-house capability ". But this isn't a simple orbiting job, like he has done before. It's the big thing. MKG will space-liaise and land on Santa Fe.'
The Americans had christened their principal skyport for Davis and Acton's moon-shot after the great trail of the Old West, which certainly sounded more homey than the official designation: Space Logistics, Maintenance and Rescue
Spacecraft.
Without my asking, Mam'zelle Adele took my glass and poured me a stiff shot from the brandy decanter. Peace also splashed more liquor into his rummer. He was very tense. All the world knew that Peace, a nuclear submarine commander and one of the bright stars of Britain's new Navy, had headed the top-flight SNAP team to the United States. After meeting Peace and the British team, MKG had been sold on the SNAP miniature power plant for missiles, and by virtue of his scientific status, had been designated by the President to head the maze of committees handling atomic energy projects. With MKG'S endorsement of SNAP, it looked as though the world was to benefit from a highly-successful AngloAmerican space project. Then Davis and Acton reached the moon in a Sirius, an Air Force liquid-fuelled rocket. The Americans went crazy over Sirius, despite the fact that it was hinted, although not officially admitted, that its failure to return safely to earth had been due to the erratic behaviour of the capsule's solarpowered batteries. The two astronauts had been unable, because of power failures, to re-enter the earth's atmosphere, and had been burned up with their space-ship. The built-in genius of SNAP, averred MKG and Peace, would prevent any similar recurrence in future.
A bitter controversy had arisen and the British public then became aware of the complicated system of checks and balances which operated in the American atomic programme. They learned that overall control of the atom in the United States was vested in the Atomic Energy Commission, a civilian body of five appointed by the President, but that the budget and legislative side was handled by the Joint Congres43 sional Committee on Atomic Energy, whose eighteen members, divided equally between the Senate and the House, were policy-makers and watchdogs. The Commission also relied '
On the advice of its own body of nuclear experts. This body, despite pressure by MKG and the President-who was known to favour SNAP-threw out the British project.
The British public became aware, at the same time, of a revival of the old rivalries between the American Services. MKG and SNAP stood for the Navy, Sirius for the Air Force. The Air Force rightly pointed to the successful moon landing and countered the Navy's claims by insisting that SNAP had never been tested in space, whereas Sirius had, and, moreover, SNAP was a non-American motor which should give way to American enterprise.
Peace had made himself very unpopular in the United
States because of his outspoken criticism of the dropping of SNAP. His remark that Sirius was no more than a land-based missile of little advanced strategic value had aroused a storm of resentment amongst the American populace, blinded by the success of their two astronauts in reaching the moon first. Peace had returned with the SNAP team to England, licking his wounds, still a target for American criticism.