Bond had left Scotland Yard with the feeling that he had achieved Clausewitz’s first principle. He had made his base secure.
His visit to the Ministry of Supply had added nothing to his knowledge of the case. He had studied Tallon’s record and his reports. The former was quite straightforward—a lifetime in Army Intelligence and Field Security—and the latter painted a picture of a very lively and well-managed technical establishment—one or two cases of drunkenness, one of petty theft, several personal vendettas leading to fights and mild bloodshed but otherwise a loyal and hardworking team of men.
Then he had had an inadequate half-hour in the Operations Room of the Ministry with Professor Train, a fat, scruffy, undistinguished-looking man who had been runner-up for the Physics Division of the Nobel Prize the year before and who was one of the greatest experts on guided missiles in the world.
Professor Train had walked up to a row of huge wall maps and had pulled down the cord of one of them. Bond was faced with a ten-foot horizontal scale diagram of some thing that looked like a V2 with big fins.
«Now,» said Professor Train, «you know nothing about rockets so I’m going to put this in simple terms and not fill you up with a lot of stuff about Nozzle Expansion Ratios, Exhaust Velocity, and the Keplerian Ellipse. The Moonraker, as Drax chooses to call it, is a single-stage rocket. It uses up all its fuel shooting itself into the air and then it homes on to the objective. The V2’s trajectory was more like a shell fired from a gun. At the top of it’s 200-mile flight it had climbed to about 70 miles. It was fuelled with a very combustible mixture of alcohol and liquid oxygen which was watered down so as not to burn out the mild steel which was all they were allocated for the engine. There are far more powerful fuels available but until now we hadn’t been able to achieve very much with them for the same reason, their combustion temperature is so high that they would burn out the toughest engine.»
The professor paused and stuck a finger in Bond’s chest. «All you, my dear sir, have to remember about this rocket is that, thanks to Drax’s Columbite, which has a melting point of about 3500 degrees Centigrade, compared with 1300 in the V2 engines, we can use one of the super fuels without burning out the engine. In fact,» he looked at Bond as if Bond should be impressed, «we are using fluorine and hydrogen.»
«Oh, really,» said Bond reverently.
The Professor looked at him sharply. «So we hope to achieve a speed in the neighbourhood of 1500 miles an hour and a vertical range of about 1000 miles. This should produce an operational range of about 4000 miles, bringing every European capital within reach of England. Very useful,» he added drily, «in certain circumstances. But, for the scientists, chiefly desirable as a step towards escape from the earth. Any questions?»
«How does it work?» asked Bond dutifully.
The Professor gestured brusquely towards the diagram. «Let’s start from the nose,» he said. «First comes the warhead. For the practice shoot this will contain upper-atmosphere instruments, radar and suchlike. Then the gyro compasses to make it fly straight—pitch-and-yaw gyro and roll gyro. Then various minor instruments, servo motors, power supply. And then the big fuel tanks—30,000 pounds of the stuff.
«At the stern you get two small tanks to drive the turbine. Four hundred pounds of hydrogen peroxide mixes with forty pounds of potassium permanganate and makes steam which drives the turbines underneath them. These drive a set of centrifugal pumps which force the main fuel into the rocket motor. Under terrific pressure. Do you follow me?» He cocked a dubious eyebrow at Bond.
«Sounds much the same principle as a jet plane,» said Bond.
The Professor seemed pleased. «More or less,» he said, «but the rocket carries all its fuel inside it, instead of sucking in oxygen from outside like the Comet. Well then,» he continued, «the fuel gets ignited in the motor and squirts out at the end in a continuous blast. Rather like a continuous recoil from a gun. And this blast forces the rocket into the air like any other firework. Of course it’s at the stern that the Columbite comes in. It’s allowed us to make a motor that won’t be melted by the fantastic heat. And then,» he pointed, «those are the tail fins to keep it steady at the beginning of its flight. Also made of Columbite alloy or they’d break away with the colossal air pressure. Anything else?»
«How can you be certain it’ll come down where you mean it to?» asked Bond. «What’s to prevent it falling on The Hague next Friday?»
«The gyros will see to that. But as a matter of fact we’re taking no chances on Friday and we’re using a radar homing device on a raft in the middle of the sea. There’ll be a radar transmitter in the nose of the rocket which will pick up an echo from our gadget in the sea and home on to it automatically. Of course,» the Professor grinned, «if we ever had to use the thing in wartime it would be a great help to have a homing device transmitting energy from the middle of Moscow or Warsaw or Prague or Monte Carlo or wherever we might be shooting at. It’ll probably be up to you chaps to get one there. Good luck to you.»
Bond smiled non-committally. «One more question,» he said. «If you wanted to sabotage the rocket what would be the easiest way?»
«Any number,» said the Professor cheerfully. «Sand in the fuel. Grit in the pumps. A small hole anywhere on the fuselage or the fins. With that power and at those speeds the smallest fault would finish it.»
«Thanks very much,» said Bond. «It seems you’ve got fewer worries about the Moonraker than I have.»
«It’s a wonderful machine,» said the Professor. «She’ll fly all right if nobody interferes with her. Drax has done a sound job. Wonderful organizer. That’s a brilliant team he put together. And they’ll do anything for him. We’ve got a lot to thank him for.»
Bond did a racing change and swung the big car left at the Charing fork, preferring the clear road by Chilham and Canterbury to the bottlenecks of Ashford and Folkestone. The car howled up to eighty in third and he held it in the same gear to negotiate the hairpin at the top of the long gradient leading up to the Molash road.
And, he wondered, going back into top and listening with satisfaction to the relaxed thunder of the exhaust, and what about Drax? What sort of a reception was Drax going to give him this evening? According to M., when his name had been suggested over the telephone, Drax had paused for a moment and then said, «Oh yes. I know the fellow. Didn’t know he was mixed up in that racket. I’d be interested to have another look at him. Send him along. I’ll expect him in time for dinner.» Then he had rung off.
The people at the Ministry had their own view of Drax. In their dealings with him they had found him a dedicated man, completely bound up in the Moonraker, living for nothing but its success, driving his men to the limit, fighting for priorities in material with other departments, goading the Ministry of Supply into clearing his requirements at Cabinet level. They disliked his hectoring manners but they respected him for his know-how and his drive and his dedication. And, like the rest of England, they considered him a possible saviour of the country.
Well, thought Bond, accelerating down the straight stretch of road past Chilham Castle, he could see that picture too and if he was going to work with the man he must adjust himself to the heroic version. If Drax was willing, he would put the whole affair at Blades out of his mind and concentrate on protecting Drax and his wonderful project from their country’s enemies. There were only about three days to go. The security precautions were already minute and Drax might resent suggestions for increasing them. It was not going to be easy and a great deal of tact would have to be used. Tact. Not Bond’s long suit and not, he reflected, connected in any way with that he knew of Drax’s character.