After a couple of seconds Schuster, with his ground communication switched to transmit, quietly said, “Christ.” Down below at Kennedy Klaber heard that. Schuster put his hand back on the retro-rocket control, pressed off and on, off and on again. Nothing happened. He tried the alternative system… still no result. They were way beyond their position now. Schuster poured sweat into his helmet. His heart pumping rapidly, he fought down a feeling of incipient panic… mission control had been right after all, in fact had maybe not acted fast enough. There was decidedly something wrong somewhere. They weren’t going to make it. He said harshly, “Something’s gone crazy.”
Then experience and training took over. “Skyprobe calling control… am unable to fire the retro-rockets. Repeat, am unable to fire the retro-rockets… on either system. I am negativing further attempts at splashdown on this orbit. Over.”
“Control to Skyprobe.” The voice was sharp with anxiety. “What is causing the trouble? Over.”
“Come up and tell me!” Schuster’s voice, too, was harsh and strained; his hands were shaking. “Could be it’s the metal stresses — couldn’t it? Whatever it is, there’s a fault We can’t ditch till I have located this. I’ll investigate while making another orbit.”
“You are okay to do this?”
“Sure. I find no other fault. Over and out.”
Behind Schuster, Danvers-Marshall straightened, switched off the metal cylinder and concealed it again in his gloved hand. He had a curious look in his eyes, a look of relief and hope and triumph. On the ground mission control went into immediate emergency routine and all over the world the telephone and cable and radio links got busy. Klaber himself called the Schuster and Morris homes.
TWELVE
Maybe, Shaw thought, he should do something, anything, before he became physically too weak to act at all.
He could have been in the shaft for almost any length of time. It could have been hours, it could equally well have been days for all he could tell. Swinging at the end of the rope in the pitch blackness, touching now one slimy, greasy wall and now another, knocking the crumbling brickwork, he was sick from the filthy smell in which he existed, tired and hungry and thirsty. His head ached and his eyes were stinging and his chest and armpits felt rubbed raw by the rope. Three times more the manhole cover had been opened up, three times he had answered that he wouldn’t talk. He was still playing for time because it was all he could do. Someone might get on the track of Katherine Danvers-Marshall… and the longer he could hang on, the greater the chances of her trail leading to this place.
But — chance was the right word! It was a hell of a long shot.…
And he wasn’t to be allowed it anyway. More hours, days or weeks passed and then he heard the cover above him coming off once again and he saw the bright light streaming down. Horn called, “You’re coming up.”
A moment later Shaw felt himself being pulled slowly up the shaft. It was a long haul and it took a long time before he was lifted right through into the cellar. He was lifted almost to the gallows-head, with his legs clear of the shaft. He was lifted into electric light and the dark behind the air grating told him it was night. He saw Beatty over by the steps with a gun in her hand. Horn gave a curious laugh and said, “You have to die, mac. This place is closing down, just in case of trouble. That being so, we’d rather make sure you’re really dead before we leave.”
Horn lifted his gun.
As he did so Shaw brought his legs up and lunged forward, swift as light.
His feet caught Horn a wicked, crunching blow in the under-side of the chin that shattered teeth and jaw and lifted the American backwards. Horn went over as if he’d been sandbagged — but from behind him Beatty opened up with the gun. Her aim wasn’t too bright; the lead sang over Shaw’s head but in doing so it sliced right through the rope holding him to the gallows. As the rope parted Shaw dropped, instinctively throwing his legs out sideways. He landed lightly, right astride the top of the shaft. Horn was still out cold on the floor. Beatty used her gun again but she was badly rattled, firing blinder than before. The bullets went wide. Shaw jumped away from the shaft towards where the coal was stored. He got his right foot behind a large lump and lifted it into the air, hard and fast and accurate. It got Beatty right on her gun arm and she dropped the gun, and before she could recover Shaw had thrown himself bodily at her and the two of them had crashed to the floor, Beatty underneath with the breath knocked clean out of her well-developed body and her head pouring blood at the back from where she had hit the stone.
Like Horn, she was out cold.
Shaw looked across at Horn. The man hadn’t moved a muscle and his head looked a trifle oddly set. Shaw began to think that kick in the jaw had broken his neck. Whether or not that was the case, Horn was undoubtedly immobile for quite a time to come. And Shaw knew the American had been carrying a knife.…
He got up from Beatty and ran across to where Horn was lying. Speed was everything now, but he had a necessarily long job ahead if he was to free his hands. Dropping down by Horn’s body — he could see now that the man had in fact broken his neck — Shaw pushed at the clothing with his feet, lifting the coat until he had contacted the knife in the trouser waistband. Slewing, he took the haft in his teeth and pulled it away from the corpse. Quickly he got to his feet and looked around for somewhere to fix the knife firmly enough for him to be able to saw the rope across its blade, and he found the place he wanted in one of the wooden uprights of the gallows, where a bullet from Beatty’s gun had slightly separated two continguous battens. With his teeth, painfully, Shaw slid the haft of the knife into the wood, then drove it home firmly with his foot, wedging it down on to a large nail. Losing no time he turned round, felt with his bound hands for the knife, and maneuvered the blade beneath the rope. He sawed away hard, helping to hold the knife in place with the tips of his fingers.
It took him only two minutes of painful effort and a good deal of blood and then he felt a strand of the rope give. He wrenched his wrists hard apart and the rope pulled away. He shrugged himself out of the loosened noose beneath his arms and then, breathing hard, he ran for Horn’s and Beatty’s guns, reloading the latter and taking some spare ammunition for both. He took a quick look at Beatty; she was pale and there was a lot of blood but she was breathing.
With a gun in each hand Shaw went fast up the cellar steps.
He paused at the door, listening out. There was no sound. Carefully he turned the handle and eased the door open, then stepped out into the passage, which was lit by a single electric bulb. Moving slowly on, he made his way quietly along the passage towards the room where he had breakfasted — how long ago? He still had some way to go when he heard footsteps. They were coming down the passage leading from the hall ahead. Between him and the hall, the passage took a right-angled corner. Shaw flattened against the wall and brought up both guns and he had hardly done this when Thixey and Moss and Kortweiler came round the corner, quietly but apparently without any suspicions at all — and then stopped dead.
Shaw fired point-blank with both guns.
The three men pressed back in a panic. Moss wasn’t quite quick enough to get clear and he died with a bullet in his chest, coughing up a good deal of lung before the end came. The other two vanished temporarily. Shaw moved along, carefully, not too fast, waiting for someone to show. The one that moved and showed was Thixey, behind a heavy Luger, but he hadn’t a chance to use it before Shaw’s bullet took him in the throat and he keeled over in a gush of blood. Kortweiler didn’t wait to carry on the battle. He turned and ran into the hall, dodging Shaw’s fire, and made for the front door. Here he turned and aimed his gun at Shaw, but Shaw got him with his next shot, through the chest like Moss.