‘I will,’ said Holly graciously. She glanced round. ‘And now I think we can be on our way. Jaws doesn’t appear to be a heavy eater.’
‘It depends who the heavy is,’ said Bond. He pressed a button marked ‘disposal’ and a flap in the centre gully opened as the tray and its contents tilted to slide into it. The table was now ready to receive more diners.
Bond rose and followed Holly to the door. With the movement towards the centre of the station the sensation of weightlessness became more marked. They turned down the gallery and were approaching the corridor to Satellite Two when Jaws appeared again. He was leaning forward and gazing moodily into the zero-gravity sphere that had contained the gymnasts. The expression on his face was almost wistful. He was positioned opposite the ‘Electronic Camouflage Unit’ sign.
Bond cursed to himself and led the way up a steel spiral staircase which gave on to another circular corridor with doorless rooms leading off it. He looked inside one and saw that it was a dormitory with beds arranged in twos, separated by curved partitions like the petals of a flower. A couple of astronauts were sleeping in one of the cubicles, their hands stretching out towards each other across the intersection, fingertips touching as they rested on the floor.
Bond looked round warily. ‘We might as well hang on here until the coast is clear.’ He entered the room and lay down on one of the beds. Holly followed more gingerly. ‘It brings back memories, doesn’t it?’ said Bond. Holly smiled. She turned her back and drew up her knees in a foetal position. There were no bedclothes, only a firm pillow. Bond rested his head on it and concentrated on staying awake. With his burns causing pain, this was not difficult.
Hardly had he stretched out when another couple came into the dormitory and entered the cubicle opposite with predatory eagerness. They kissed passionately and broke apart to scramble on to their individual beds. At once, the man stretched out his arm and lifted up the small table between the beds. As this hinged back against the wall the two beds moved together and the sides of the partition curved up from the floor to meet and form a screen that hid from prying eyes what was happening on the double bed. Bond could only see two forms interlocking behind the opaque material.
He was turning towards Holly for a reaction when Jaws appeared in the doorway. Bond quickly lifted his table and a startled Holly suddenly found his hand over her mouth as the partition panels closed above them. ‘Jaws!’ Bond whispered the word and Holly’s sharp nails withdrew from the flesh on the back of his hand. She lay still, looking with Bond towards the end of the beds. A huge dark outline showed that Jaws was standing in the middle of the dormitory. For seconds he did not move and then, as there was a gasp of pleasure from the beds opposite, the shadow withdrew. Bond waited a few more moments and then kissed Holly tenderly behind the ear before lowering the table. Noiselessly, the partitions slid back to their original position. There was no sign of Jaws. Bond swung his feet off the bed and made for the corridor. It was empty. Holly appeared beside him and they made their way back down the spiral staircase and along the gallery. There were few people about at this level, and they entered the tunnel leading to Satellite Two without passing anyone. Bond approached the door marked ‘Electric Camouflage Unit’ and peered through a glass panel. In the centre of a circular room was a bank of electrical circuits looking like a telephone exchange. Two technicians in white tunics were visible, seated before consoles at the far side of the room. They were watching monitors on which horizontal zig-zag lines chased each other from left to right. Bond turned to Holly and tapped his clenched fist against his palm. She nodded.
The tap on the door was so light that the first technician did not hear it above the noise of the equipment. His companion nudged him and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. Again, there was a discreet tap. The first technician sighed and stood up. Then he sighed again. Why should he always be the one to answer doors? He looked at his colleague and wondered whether to make an issue of it. Still, he was standing up now and it was hardly worth the trouble. Next time, Wilson could answer the door. He crossed the room and looked through the porthole. A handsome girl in a pilot’s uniform was standing outside. Her face looked vaguely familiar. The technician pressed the unlocking device and a buzzer sounded. Immediately the door swung open fast and the girl rushed past and headed for the consoles. The first technician turned to follow her. At that instant he heard another sound. He turned backs but too late. Bond’s fist caught him flush on the side of the jaw and he staggered backwards, his knees buckling. Another blow found the same target and he crashed against the centre stack, unconscious before he hit the ground.
The second technician turned as Holly burst into the room. He started to rise to his feet and reached beside him for his laser torch. Holly swung her arm and a vicious karate chop sank into his stretched neck muscles. Crying out in pain and surprise, he swung a right hook. Holly swayed outside it and struck again with the side of her hand. This time there was no sound save that of the man collapsing at her feet.
Bond looked down at the inert form with admiration. ‘Where did you learn to fight like that? NASA?’
‘No. Vassar.’ Holly moved swiftly to the centre stack and began pulling out banks of wires. Bond dropped to his knees and started trussing up the technicians. Holly took the laser torch and directed it at the circuit system. The thin ray of murderous green light played on the metal and smoke quickly rose into the air. The radar jamming system was melting into a foul-smelling glutinous mass. ‘Switched off?’ said Bond.
‘You could put it like that. Let’s say: non-operational.’
‘So now we can be seen from Earth?’
Holly nodded. ‘That’s right. Let’s hope that somebody is watching.’
16
CAN YOU SEE ME MOTHER EARTH?
Above Gregor Sverdlov’s head there was six feet of air, twelve feet of reinforced concrete and thirty feet of snow. At the Soviet army listening post in the Severnyy Anyuyskiy Khrebet the winters were long. Longer, it was said, than the intervals between the arrival of the samovars of lukewarm tea sweetened with the new state sweetener that left a taste of bitterness on the tongue akin to poison. It was rumoured that the aftertaste was due to a special ingredient added to eradicate anti-revolutionary sentiments, especially those that might be induced by contemplation of the vital parts of women. Gregor Sverdlov rubbed his hands together and looked round hopefully for sight of the creature, believed to be female, who brought the samovar. It was the tea that he was interested in, not the woman. To look upon her unwholesome appearance was merely to duplicate what the state was trying to achieve with its bromide. The woman not only discouraged amorous thoughts, she drove them before her like Gadarene swine eager to find any cliff to leap over.
It was cold in the bunker. Not as cold as outside, where the radio masts lifted above the pines and the snowy wastes reached to the frozen waters of the Chaunskaya Guba, but cold enough to pinch a man’s bones as if an undertaker with icy fingers was counting them. Gregor Sverdlov stood up, swung his arms across his body and strolled down the room. Another hour before he was off duty, free to trudge through the banked snow to the log cabin he shared with eleven other radar operatives. The stove would be nearly out and the airless fug only marginally preferable to asphyxiation, but it would be warm. It was something to look forward to. Something more immediate than the day eighteen months hence when he was due to be released from the army.
Gregor Sverdlov turned as he reached the end of the long console and cast a bored eye along the row of monitors. Immediately he started forward. Something was wrong. He pushed buttons. and twisted knobs. Something was still wrong. The satellite Kalinin was not due over for another twenty minutes. Why was he getting this signal? Surely he had not fallen asleep? The very thought of having committed a crime so heinous made him shiver with a fear that took over his body from the cold. But if he had not fallen asleep, how could he have avoided seeing this object enter his area? It could not suddenly appear in space. He operated the space tracker and the advance position spotter and waited nervously and impatiently whilst the machine churned and groaned over the information he had fed into it. Eventually there was the sound of mechanical spewing and a small print card entered his hand, covered in crisp perforations.