Horn said, “Move closer to the shaft, mac.” He waited for obedience. When it didn’t come he snapped, “Goddam, you heard! If you don’t want a bullet in your bum, mac, do like I said.”
Shaw shrugged and obeyed. Moss now picked up the lighter rope and with this he tied Shaw’s hands tightly behind his back. Horn then passed his gun to the girl and he and Moss lined up on either side of Shaw, taking his arms and forcing him towards the lip of the shaft while Beatty, keeping the gun steady in her right hand, used her left to take up the slack of the rope over the gallows’ pulley, so that it led in a straight line from Shaw to the gallows-head. When it was taut, Beatty turned up the end around a cleat fixed to the standing part of the structure.
“All fast,” she reported.
“Okay, Beatty,” Horn said. “Now, mac. You’re going down till your feet are around six feet clear of the bottom.
You stay right there till you decide you’re going to sing. When you’ve reached that decision, you just yell out. That’s all you have to do — yell. We’ll hear you. There’ll be someone on watch up here from now on out and when you yell, you’ll be hoisted back up.” He paused, breathing hard in Shaw’s ear. “If you don’t sing then, mac, you go back in and you get dropped right down to the bottom for good an’ all.”
Shaw felt the men close in. He was hoisted helplessly over the lip of the shaft and Beatty took the turns off the cleat on the gallows, while Horn and Moss took Shaw’s weight. Then, with one turn still left on as a check, the girl lowered Shaw swiftly down and he slid into the shaft, into an almost tangible darkness and the sick, fetid smell of drains and decay.
Faintly above him he heard Beatty laugh at some remark of Horn’s and then the last of the electric fight vanished as the heavy manhole cover was slotted into place over the shaft.
ELEVEN
A telephone rang on Klaber’s desk at the NASA base. All rings sounded urgent now, and they exacerbated frayed nerves. Klaber’s PA took the call, then passed the telephone across the desk to his chief.
He said, “It’s the President, Mr. Klaber. In person.”
A vein began pumping in Klaber’s temple. He moistened his Ups with the tip of his tongue and said into the mouthpiece, “Klaber speaking… Yes, Mr. President. Yes, sir.” He listened, eyes staring into space, a hand nervously tapping a ball-point pen on a note pad. After a while his mouth thinned and he said sharply, “Why, Mr. President, I don’t agree at all, but… He stopped, his eyes angry now as the voice continued in his ear; then he said, “Very well,
if you give me the order, Mr. President.… Very good, sir. Yes, sir, that’s very fully understood. Yes, indeed.… About six hours as of now.”
He replaced the handset; his fingers shook. Again he moistened his lips. Then, with a visible effort to keep his voice level, he said, “The President has personally ordered the splashdown, Harry. The project is to be abandoned… for the time being, he says. For the time being… we all know what that means!” His fists clenched. “God damn it, Harry, we’re giving in as I said earlier… letting the Communists have a clear field to keep all our space projects grounded for the future—for all time!” He got to his feet and began pacing up and down the room. After a while he came back to his desk and said heavily, “The men up there are to be ordered to go into procedure for splashdown as soon as the recovery fleet signals it’s in position for the pick-up. That should be in around six hours as of now.”
Lutz asked, “Does this mean something new has come through from Britain, Mr. Klaber?”
“Yes,” Klaber said bitterly, “it does! Seems Danvers-Marshall’s wife has disappeared from her mother-in-law’s home in Britain… some time yesterday. The old lady was taken suddenly bad last night and the doctor contacted the police to find Katherine and it turned out she couldn’t be traced where she said she’d gone. Because of who she was, the police contacted security. Shaw, the Defence Intelligence operator over there, has vanished too. Because of that, the President has decided to treat this threat as real and imminent.” He put his head in his hands for a moment. “Well, maybe he’s right at that,” he went on quietly. “Maybe it’s just that I hate giving in — that’s all!” He looked up at Harry Lutz and placed his hands square on the blotter on his desk. “Ring mission control, tell them the orders, say I’ll be over right away.”
Lutz took up another telephone and spoke quietly into it. Putting it down again he looked anxiously at his chief. He said, “A point, Mr. Klaber.”
“Well?”
“The families, sir.”
“What about them, Harry?”
“Do we warn them?”
Klaber said, “No, we don’t warn them, Harry. This whole operation is to be kept quiet till the capsule’s down and the men are all aboard the carrier and heading for home. A prepared statement is being issued to the press. We even have to give the men themselves a phoney reason for the early splashdown.”
Shaw had no idea how long he had been in the shaft when the manhole cover came off and Horn’s voice came down hollowly. “Ready to talk, Mac?”
“I’m not talking.” He had to spin this out as long as possible; time was all he could hope to gain now, and time could be valuable.
“Okay.” The cover was pushed back into place. Shaw set his teeth, hard. The atmosphere was stilling; quite apart from the close, nauseating smell of the shaft, it was hot and he was sweating profusely, and the rope, with all his deadweight on it, cut into the flesh below his arms and constricted his chest. Ever since he’d been down there he had been straining away at the ropes binding his wrists, but he seemed to have achieved nothing except to make his wrists swell painfully. Moss had done an efficient job.
As the hours passed Shaw lost all awareness of time. His mind raced over what Thixey had told him. Thixey had talked of ‘intercepting’ the capsule… Shaw’s own thoughts had veered in the direction of some sort of radio interception during his interview with the earnest little space expert who had talked so crushingly of magic. Magic was about the right word… but it seemed Shaw had in fact been on more or less the right lines, for what that was worth now — though, if by ‘interception’ Thixey had indeed meant a radio interference signal, why wait for re-entry? That didn’t quite check.… Shaw pondered the facts of Danvers-Marshall’s activities, of the scientist’s forthcoming planned defection to the East. Why, in the circumstances, had the wife opened up to him in Long Melford about the daughter and the resultant pressures on her husband? Why? Was that because she believed Shaw would find out anyway once the heat was on, and she meant to do what she could to disarm the security probe in advance — or was it simply because it didn’t matter any more at that stage? She would have known she was due to be hooked away within hours… probably the whole excuse for her coming to England — the illness of Danvers-Marshall’s mother — had been trumped up. The old lady was probably bedridden anyway, a perpetually valid excuse for a trip to England.
The men in space had reacted badly when they were passed the first news that they were to be brought down. Schuster and Morris had been incredulous and blasphemous. Schuster exploded, “Why, they must be — nuts! Everything’s going so goddam right! Why in heck bring us down now? You know something? I just do not goddam believe it!” He swung round on Danvers-Marshall. “Hey — Professor! What do you think is eating them, down there?”