He waited, listening out for some response from the capsule. His heart was pumping rapidly and his face streamed sweat. Everyone in mission control was watching him, waiting, as he was, for the men in space to answer. Three times more Klaber called the capsule — and then, miraculously as it seemed to the tense men at Kennedy, the response came through. Gregory Schuster’s voice said, “Okay, Mr. Klaber, I can now communicate. I have been receiving your messages loud and clear.”
Klaber gave a shout of sheer relief. “It’s good to hear you, Greg! What has been the trouble? Over.”
In the hurtling capsule Schuster met Morris’s eye, then looked over his shoulder at Danvers-Marshall. The scientist, alarmed now and wanting more information, had authorized him to reply to mission control but was censoring the transmission. Schuster said, “Why, I guess it was just a technical fault, that’s all. It’s okay now.” He sounded elaborately casual; Klaber wasn’t intended to be fooled, and he wasn’t.
Klaber said, “Well, good, that’s fine, Greg.” He asked the question all the world wanted to hear answered. “How are your retro-rockets, Greg?”
Schuster said, “The retro-system’ll be okay when the time comes.”
“Sure, Greg?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“All right, then, Greg. I’m going off the air now. I’ll call you up again before blast-off.”
Klaber let go the switch and went over to the mission control chief. Together they watched the technicians, intent on their banks of dials and buttons and flashing lights as they approached countdown. On the pad Skyprobe V waited, pointing like a giant finger into the heavens. Despite the tremendous risks attendant on the possible reaction of Danvers-Marshall, Klaber was looking happier than he’d done for many days past. At last they were actually achieving something positive. Nevertheless his face, still haggard and drawn from lack of sleep, showed the enormous strain he had been, and still was, under. At times, as the negative reports had been fed through from Washington, he had felt on the verge of total collapse. The signals from the fleet in the Far East, the messages from the searching land-based aircraft, had all reported complete lack of success and there had seemed to be no possible hope left. Shaw, known to be working from Hong Kong, hadn’t been heard of for the last forty-eight hours and the British were obviously extremely worried beneath the laconic phrasing of their messages. Washington, the CIA man had told Klaber, believed Shaw had most probably been flushed by the other side and was very likely dead.
By now Klaber, working on the hope that the rendezvous would be effected and Danvers-Marshall dealt with safely, had mentally written off the capsule itself; so long as the men could be got off that had to be good enough. The capsule would just have to go on orbiting the globe until it reached the natural limit of its life, and the resultant blow to American prestige, the loss of her position in the space race, would have to be accepted. Meantime the world situation was deteriorating fast, indeed with terrifying rapidity, and war was known to be close. The thing was on a knife-edge. If Skyprobe V failed to dock and Skyprobe IV ditched in a hostile area, war was ipso facto inevitable. The administration, whether or not they wanted to — and the mood in Washington was not exactly concilatory — would never hold the American people. Defensive measures had in fact already been put into effect by the Pentagon, and the nation was virtually in a state of emergency, ready for anything that might develop, though on the surface life proceeded normally.
Klaber mopped again at his face. The responsibility resting on him now was enormous.
Skyprobe IV continued on its time-and-again journey through space, passing over the helpless heads of the tracking stations dotted around the world, waiting now, interminably it seemed, for blast-off and the final docking orders from Kennedy. Danvers-Marshall’s hand was keeping the automatic pointed at Schuster and Morris, as, with his free hand, he reached once again into his spacesuit for the pills that would keep him awake for as long as necessary. Danvers-Marshall was showing signs of nerves now; his face was deathly white and drawn from lack of sleep, his eyes were sunken, red-rimmed pits. Until Klaber had come up with his promise of success, Danvers-Marshall hadn’t taken the likelihood of a second launch seriously. Now he had to. Schuster, risking the gun, had refused to call up mission control to say he would not need the second capsule. And Danvers-Marshall knew that when Skyprobe V tried to dock, he would have to kill Schuster and Morris if he couldn’t persuade them not to assist the docking. Then he would have to try to take over himself. He wasn’t a practical astronaut but he just might be able to pull it off. If he didn’t, then he would die too and he knew that as well. But he would have to go through with it; as he had told Schuster earlier, no-one was going to take him back to America to stand trial.…
Schuster and Morris were thinking about their families, wondering how they were taking all this, wondering — for they knew they hadn’t been told in full — just what the Press was making out of it all and what the effect of that would be on their wives as they waited helplessly for the pay-off. They knew quite well that the docking procedure was going to be touch-and-go and that the only real hope lay in Danvers-Marshall losing his nerve at the last moment and deciding that a treason charge was preferable to a fry-up, a cremation in space as the result of any shooting.
Klaber was on the air again, talking to Schuster. He said, “There has been a small delay, but everything is going fine now. Skyprobe V should rendezvous and dock on her third orbit after launch. You know the transfer drill, I guess. The only difference this time is the height you’re orbiting at, and that shouldn’t make too much difference. Okay, Greg?”
“Okay,” came Schuster’s voice.
“Good luck, then, Greg. I’m going off the air again, but I’ll be back. Remember, you ditch in the new capsule in the same place you would have done in Skyprobe IV. The recovery fleet is all ready for you.”
Klaber switched off and walked across to join the control chief once more. Countdown would soon begin now. Klaber tried not to keep on thinking that the whole operation depended for its success or failure on Danvers-Marshall’s reaction once he saw docking was imminent.
When the guards had opened up the cages Kalitzkin said, “In thirty-three hours, Commander, Skyprobe IV will reach the safe limit of her life in space. It is time for you to be instructed in what you are to say when we go into the diversion procedure.”
“You needn’t bother,” Shaw said calmly, watching the Russian’s face. “I’m not saying anything.”
Kalitzkin shrugged. “I shall pay no attention to that. I believe you will be only too anxious to meet our wishes Commander, when you realize the alternative — so you had better learn in the meantime.”
“If you think I’m going to help you out, you’re crazy.”
Rencke, who had been listening from Ingrid’s cage, came across the gangway. He murmured something in Kalitzkin’s ear and pushed his way towards Shaw. He reached for his whip and drew it from his belt, running the leather thong through his fingers suggestively. “You will do as Dr. Kalitzkin says,” he told Shaw.
“You’re wasting your time, Rencke.”
Four guns pointed at Shaw’s stomach. They could make a nasty mess of him; but Rencke wanted him alive. Rencke’s arm moved like lightning and the stock of the whip took Shaw hard across the face. Blood ran down his chin and dropped onto his chest. Anxiously Kalitzkin interceded. “Not again,” he said. “Please! He must speak clearly, and not with pain or injury that might become apparent when he talks. We had agreed to use the girl…