There were none.
‘Let’s do it.’
Mary Penrose nodded to the audio technician who threw a switch gently with thumb and forefinger and started turning a dial slowly. The four others in the gallery sat, eyes glued to the six little capsules on the TV screen, not daring to blink and suffering growing tightness of their stomach muscles.
Steven was hyper aware of the seconds ticking by, knowing that the technician must have moved away from one extreme on the dial and was probably drifting through the more normal frequencies. He sneaked a look at his fingers, but couldn’t tell anything. He could sense however, that the others were beginning to move in their seats.
The silence was broken by the audio technician saying, ‘That’s it all the way, do you want me to try again?’
‘What do you think, Steven?’ asked Mary Penrose.
Steven wondered whether an end to formality had been prompted by the stress they had all been under or her taking pleasure in thinking he had been wrong. ‘Not sure,’ he replied, ‘give me a minute.’
The others exchanged glances while Steven appeared to stare unseeingly at the window in front of him. At length, he said, ‘The people who made these capsules were brilliant; I’m sure they thought of everything, including the dangers of the capsules being triggered accidentally in a world full of wireless signals. When Tom Harland triggered them, he was holding a handful over a cut in his hand... and he was working with the transmitter, possibly in his other hand.’
‘You mean there was no glass container between the signal and the capsules?’ said Mary.
‘Exactly, for safety’s sake, the capsules would not only require a signal at a very unusual frequency... the signal would have to have a clear path.’
‘That’s a good point,’ said Macmillan.
‘Well, doing the experiment with the capsules in the open presents certain problems,’ said Burns, ‘we can’t release Marburg into the air so it will have to be carried out in an inoculation hood.’
For Macmillan’s benefit, Burns explained that this was a glass-fronted chamber with an extractor fan attached to its roof to ensure that air could be drawn into the chamber but none could flow out. The extracted air would be filtered for decontamination. There were two armholes in the front to enable the operator to work with dangerous material inside, but, in this case, the plan would be to use one of the armholes to allow unimpeded sound access to the capsules.
‘I could rig up a frequency generator,’ suggested the audio-technician, ‘it would be more accurate than playing around with the lab intercom and we could identify the exact frequency.’
‘Yes please,’ said Mary, before turning to the others and saying, ‘All this is going to take a bit of time to set up. I suggest we go downstairs and wait somewhere a little more comfortable.’
Eighteen
They rose and stretched their limbs. Steven looked down into the lab as his attention was caught by one of the bio-safety people coming in to disconnect the CCTV camera and deal with the glass capsule container. He was wearing boots and protective overalls, but had taken off his hood and visor. He looked up at the gallery, unable to communicate because there was no intercom; he was looking for guidance as to where the capsules should be taken. He pointed at the glass container and Mary signed to him with five fingers, which Steven presumed was a lab number. The man held up his hand to confirm the direction.
Unfortunately, he was holding a handful of cable in that hand and it caught the edge of the glass capsule container, knocking it clean off the bench. It hit the floor and smashed into several pieces, causing him to throw up his hands in dismay. He looked up at the gallery, making a gesture of apology and Mary held up hers, wearing an expression somewhere between resignation and reassurance. The man bent down to recover the capsules and start clearing up... before recoiling in horror and attempting to leap backwards — unsuccessfully as it turned out because of the boots he was wearing. He tumbled to the floor and was left sitting there, making signs repeatedly to indicate that things had burst open.
‘The capsules have ruptured!’ exclaimed Steven.
Burns turned away immediately and smashed the glass over an alarm button on the wall, using the small hammer attached and filling the air with whooping sounds.
‘How in God’s name did that happen?’ demanded Mary to no one in particular.
Steven looked to the audio technician who had turned pale and he stammered, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t switch it off... I’d finished going through the whole range of frequencies and nothing had happened so I thought it was all over and done with. I didn’t bother switching the transmitter off completely because I thought I would be re-setting the intercom: it would still be transmitting at the highest possible frequency in the range.’
‘We all thought it was over and done with,’ said Macmillan reassuringly to the man who was obviously stricken with guilt.
‘Can you get on with restoring the intercom?’ Mary asked. ‘I have to talk to the man down there.
‘Sure,’ said the technician, who immediately got to work, still muttering about how sorry he was. He had communications up and running within a matter of minutes.
Mary looked down at the man below, ‘Terry, isn’t it?’
The man nodded, unable to take his eyes off the gaping capsules on the floor.
‘Terry, did you touch anything or did you feel anything touch you when the capsules opened?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I wasn’t conscious of anything.’
‘Good, you have been exposed to Marburg virus, but it can’t harm you unless you touched it or anything contaminated with it touched your bare skin. Norman Burns is organising a decontamination team who will be with you shortly and they’ll deal with what’s on the floor. They’ll wash you down with strong disinfectant as you stand in your overalls and then you’ll remove all your clothing before going through to the exit shower and spending at least ten minutes scrubbing yourself thoroughly. I don’t know why I’m telling you this, I’m sure you know the routine.’
‘Sure.’
‘We’ll send you off to hospital where they’ll keep you in, just to keep an eye on you for few days, but the chances are, you’ll be as right as rain, all understood?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good man. This took all of us by surprise, but, if it’s any comfort, you’ve just saved us the trouble of setting up another experiment. We already know the answer.’
Terry, a man of very few words in his current situation, did not comment.
Mary turned to the audio technician and said, ‘Charlie, do you think you can get someone to turn off that bloody awful noise?’ She glanced up at the still-whooping siren.
‘You bet.’
Steven had been watching Mary Penrose deal with the emergency and was full of admiration for her. She had been calm, efficient, decisive and concerned throughout and he wanted to tell her that, but, like many men in 2018, he was unsure about what he should and shouldn’t say to women any more. He settled for, ‘Well done.’
‘I think that’s something I should be saying to you,’ said Mary. ‘You were absolutely right in your thinking... although the world is a sadder place for it.’
‘She is absolutely right,’ said Steven to Macmillan on the drive back to London.
‘Who? About what?’
‘Mary Penrose and what she said about the world being a sadder place. Think of all the money and talent that has been poured into creating these damned capsules, Jesus! It makes you despair of the human race.’