‘What are you sniggering about, Joe?’ The captain’s voice cut in on his reverie.
‘Nothing in particular.’
‘Some broad you’re going to lay in London?’
‘I’m too much of a gentleman to answer that question.’ The first officer spoke over his shoulder. ‘How are we doing for time, Dick?’
The navigation officer, who was Britain’s contribution to the ferrying of the Moonraker, looked up from his plotter. Close inspection would have revealed a faint blush on his pink cheeks. He was not used to exchanges of the kind he had just heard between the captain and his first officer. ‘Not bad at all, sir. We’re fifteen minutes up on our E.T.A. already. If this tail wind keeps up we could be at Heathrow forty minutes ahead of schedule.’
‘Excellent,’ said the captain.
The navigation officer looked down at his charts. Somewhere, far below in the strange half-light between night and day, was the town of Champagne. What a name for a town at the northern end of the Rockies in the Yukon Territory of Canada. Perhaps there actually was champagne there once when the gold rush was in full spate and the word Yukon was synonymous with twenty-four carats. He thought of men wrapped in furs staggering out of a blizzard and kicking their snow shoes against the hitching rail of a saloon. The swing doors bursting open, the gust of warm air, the honky-tonk music in the background, the slaps on the back, the fire of the first shot of whisky hitting the back.of the throat, the satisfying pressure of the bag of gold dust wedged solidly against the underbelly.
Now the saloon had probably given way to Frank’s Fast Food Dinette, catering for truck drivers climbing down from the air-conditioned comfort of their cabs on the Alaska Highway. Half an ear on the local radio, half an eye on the girl behind the counter. The sizzling hot plate appearing through the hatch. Three eggs, sunny-side-up on rashers of bacon that overlapped the plate and were further anchored by a small mountain of crusty hash brown potatoes, the whole accompanied by a mug of steaming black coffee. The navigation officer could taste the saliva building up inside his mouth. He could almost feel the invisible knife in his hand breaking through the delicious, fatty, fried crust of the hash browns. With any luck, if there were no stacking problems at Heathrow and the Kingston By-pass was not throttled by returning commuters, he would be home in time to help the children with their homework and eat supper with the family. He had tried to ring Louise and let her know when he was likely to be back but there had been no reply. She must have been out at one of her yoga classes or helping clear up after a War on Want lunch. It did not really matter. It would be more of a surprise for them when they saw him.
Inside the lower deck of the Moonraker a trained ear could have heard a faint vibration. All was in darkness. The whole structure of the craft trembled. Then there was another sound. A muffled, fizzing noise like a firework in a tin can about to explode. But the noise went on and on and there was no explosion. The noise did not get louder but there slowly came a faint glow of light that showed itself like a tiny slit mouth at the extremity of one of the wall lockers. The glow concentrated itself about the locked securing catch, which slowly began to turn red and then white hot. A thin column of black smoke rose in the air and the Metal began to buckle. Fifteen seconds passed and then there was a sharp crack and the locker burst open. Immediately the bright light that was revealed extinguished itself and the glowing metal faded rapidly until it lost its identity in the darkness. The shuttle continued to vibrate through space and there was a rustle of clothing as a man’s legs swung from the locker. A thin torch beam probed the darkness and a laser welder was tossed on to one of the bunks. The light probed like an impatient finger and found what it wanted: the opening device on the opposite locker. This was swiftly pressed open and a second pair of legs swung into view.
The two figures that were revealed looked like hob-goblins in the quarter-light. Their tight-fitting black uniforms covered them from head to toe and were melded into pressurized oxygen masks with tubes that led from beneath the reinforced glass panels at eye level to two thin cylinders on their backs. They did not hesitate but moved instantly towards the foot of a spiral stairway. The first man to emerge led the way and began to climb. Above him was the control cabin of the Moonraker space shuttle.
In the cabin of the 747 the first officer rubbed his hands together ruminatively. ‘How we doing now, Dick?’
‘We just passed over Fairbanks.’
‘On schedule?’
‘Twenty minutes ahead.’
The first officer rubbed his hands some more and thought of how in a few hours’ time he would be walking his date back from the Italian restaurant. The winter fog would be fuzzing up the street lamps. He could hear their footsteps and see the breath in the cold air. He liked London in the winter. Most of all he liked the thought of what was going to happen once the prim counterpane had been stripped off the bed that was too small for sleeping but just the right size for everything else.
He felt the captain’s eyes on him.
‘I can read you like a book, Joe. I don’t think I ever flew with a —’
He broke off as he saw the first officer start forward in his seat.
‘What the —’
A light was flashing on the right-hand extremity of the control panel.
‘The shuttle ignition!’
‘There must be a fault in the system. Check the circuits!’
Before the first officer could obey the order there was a deafening roar and the 747 lurched as if swatted in mid-air by an invisible hand. The cabin trembled and the roar increased in intensity.
‘What the hell’s happening?’
‘The shuttle’s taking off!’
‘It can’t —’ The voice broke off as it was overtaken by the terrible reality. An eldritch wail nearly split their eardrums and a blinding light burned their staring eyes as if the door of a blast furnace had suddenly been wrenched open before their faces. The orbital engines of the Moonraker achieved full combustion and a ball of flame engulfed the cabin, scorching the screams out of the crew’s throats. Like an insect poised after delivering its deadly sting, the Moonraker shuddered in mid-air and the fiery exhaust from its tail continued to play on the cabin of the stricken 747.. Almost simultaneously it roared away in a steep climb. The nose of the 747 drooped and flames raced the length of the fuselage. Like a heavy cinder it started to fall out of the sky.
Admiral Sir Miles Messervy, K.C.M.G., alias M, gazed thoughtfully out of the window of his eighth floor office overlooking Regent’s Park. The office belonged to Trans-world Consortium but this was also an alias for an adjunct of the British Ministry of Defence which might have been termed—the Secret Service. ‘Might have been’ if M had nothing to do with the appellation. He would have found such terminology too showy and dramatic for his puritan, sea dog tastes. He preferred the obscurantism of Trans-world Consortium and had even regretted, though accepted the wisdom of, the change from the organization’s original title of Universal Export. He reached out across the redleather-topped desk and helped himself to a pipeful of tobacco from the polished brass fourteen-pounder shell base that served him as a memento of his naval days and a tobacco jar, in that order.
There was an atmosphere of brooding menace in the air that perhaps communicated itself from the clouds lowering over the park. Perhaps not. M was uneasy. He felt his eye drawn to the telephone on his desk as- if receiving some telepathic message that it was about to ring. Just below the receiver was a light that glowed red when a top secret call was being placed from the upper echelons of the Ministry of Defence. The light came on when kings died and presidents were assassinated.