Soon after breakfast Klaber arrived at the Schuster home and was given a cup of coffee by the coloured help while he waited for Mary to return from the school round. She was grateful for his visit and he was as reassuring as he felt he could be, but when he left he knew he had failed to convince Mary Schuster that her man was in anything but the gravest danger of a complete non-return to earth. He left her dry-eyed but tense with anxiety and wondering how she was to go on explaining things to the children as time, ran out. She knew very well that the newspapers would' never leave this thing alone and every time she picked one up she would be bombarded with palliatives from the official NASA spokesmen and pessimistic forecasts from the opinion columns.
Klaber found things much the same with Linda Morris when he drove over, and the best he was able to do, by an exchange of telephone calls, was to arrange for the two wives to live out the spell of waiting in each other’s company, both together in the Schuster home. This done, he drove flat out back for Kennedy.
Irritably Schuster said, “What the heck!” The radio had started crackling out Morse — from Washington of all places; Schuster had recognized the orginator’s code group. He listened a moment before giving the acknowledgement of his call-sign. “Coded groups… why in hell do they start sending messages all wrapped up at this stage of the flight? And what’s the Pentagon on about, for heaven’s sake? Let’s have the decode tables, Wayne.”
Up to this time both Schuster and Morris had still been busy trying to track down the fault on the retro-systems. Danvers-Marshall had made a pretence of helping. The checks and doublechecks had been endless, going on ever since the failure. All had seemed to be in perfect order on both systems; that indeed was the unnerving part of this business. There simply was no apparent fault. And they were quite unable to tie in the failure with the stress fault said to have been found by the ground computers. On the face of it there just was no reason in the world why the rockets shouldn’t fire next time Schuster pressed the button, but now, as the total outside dark of the space-night through which they were currently passing emphasized the utter alone-ness of their situation, Wayne Morris at any rate was convinced that they were doomed to remain orbiting the globe until their oxygen was exhausted and they died up there in space.
In an absent tone as Morris passed across the US decode tables Schuster said, “Thanks.…” The decoding took a little time. When Schuster had written down the first few words of the plain-language version he stiffened, rigid with shock and an utter disbelief that he could possibly be reading correctly… something must have gone haywire with the transcription. He went on to finish the decoding, then without a word he passed the sheet of paper to Morris, whose lips shaped a whistle that never came. The two men sat motionless, side by side, as the capsule headed on its high track around the world, passing once again out of the brief space-night into the brilliance of the day. Behind them Danvers-Marshall’s heart was pumping fast; neither of the astronauts had been able to see the tight, grey look that had come into the scientist’s face when he had heard about the message from Washington. He had assessed accurately and without much difficulty what that message contained. Now he slid a finger into a loop of material in his spacesuit, and ripped away some stitches in the lining. He brought out a small-calibre automatic and pointed it at Schuster’s back. Before Schuster could begin to collect his thoughts and react decisively, Danvers-Marshall said, “Greg, believe me, I’m terribly sorry, but this is where I take over.”
Schuster, feeling the blood drain from his face, but conscious now of no particular surprise, looked over his shoulder and saw the gun. Bleakly he said, “Is that so, Professor.”
“I’m afraid it is.…"
“You know what it says in the message?”
“I have a pretty good idea, Greg.”
“It’s right — what it says?”
“Yes… it’s right, if it says—”
“It says you’re a goddam traitor… a Red.” Danvers-Marshall didn’t react to that directly. He said, “I can’t explain now, Greg. It’s… because of my wife. They put pressure on me, and then later they were able to threaten me with — revealing certain things. I’m sorry, but from now on out you must do just as I say. Carry on flying, Greg. And remember, there’s nothing whatever they can do now, from the ground.”
“You’ll have to keep awake a godalmighty long time… you Red bastard. We have five days to go. The orders say we stay up after all… right through till the last possible minute.”
“Greg, that’s not going to be any problem,” Danvers-Marshall said quietly. He patted at a section of space-suit. “I have tablets that take care of that. I’ll have no difficulty at all keeping awake and on the ball right through to splashdown.”
Schuster said between his teeth, “Where do we splash down, then? The message said the Corns may interfere with our control system by radio, divert us on re-entry. If that’s true, where do they divert us to?”
“Greg, I can’t tell you that because I don’t know, and I wouldn’t say if I did, would I? That’s just what the people down below want to know, isn’t it? Don’t ask me any more questions, Greg, and don’t give any trouble, either you or Wayne. If I have to use this gun, you know what happens. The chances are we’d all die. But I want you to understand one thing very clearly, Greg, and that is, I’m quite ready myself to face that. No-one’s taking me back to America now.” He added, “You needn’t worry any more about the retro-rockets. They’ll fire next time, all right.”
“So Washington’s right you fixed that too?” Schuster asked. He felt profound relief on one point — at least the trouble hadn’t been due to any defect in the spacecraft. “All that worry… all the checking… all that was unnecessary?”
Danvers-Marshall said, “Yes, Greg. You see, I had orders not to allow the capsule to ditch too far ahead of schedule if there were any leaks — just to be sure they were all ready for us at the base… where we’re going to splash down.” He shifted his position, making himself more comfortable for keeping the gun covering the two men. “From now on out, Greg, there’s to be no more talk with mission control. I’m going to play this very safe, and I’m not taking any chances at all… even though, as I said, there’s nothing anyone can do now to stop the plan going through.”