I looked around the tiny hut. It was no more than eight by eight, with racks along the walls and a tiny steel-meshed window above my head. I seemed to remember vaguely that someone had mentioned that it used to be the small arms and ammunition storage shed, but I couldn't be sure, I'd just dropped on to the canvas cot they'd brought in and gone to sleep instantly. I looked at Hargreaves again.
"What's been going on? Since this morning, I mean?"
"Questions," he said tiredly. "Questions all the time. They interviewed my colleagues, myself and the naval officers separately, then they split-us up and separated us from our wives. We're all over the place now, two or three to a hut."
LeClerc's psychology was easy to understand. With the scientists and naval officers broken into tiny groups, agreement on a concerted plan of resistance or revolt would be impossible: and with the scientists separated from their wives and in a consequent and continuous state of fear and anxiety over their welfare, their cooperation with LeClerc would be absolute.
"What did he want to see you about?" I asked.
"Lots of things." He hesitated and looked away. "Mainly about the rocket, how much did any of us know about the fusing. At least that's what he asked me. I can't speak for the others."
"Do you-do any of them know anything about it?"
"Only the general principles. Each one of us knows the general principles of the various components. We have to. But that doesn't even begin to be enough when it comes to the complex particulars." He smiled wanly. "Any of us could probably blow the whole thing to kingdom come."
"There's a chance of that?"
"No one has ever given a guarantee on an experimental rocket."
"Hence the blockhouse-that sunken concrete shelter to the north?"
"The test firing was to have been carried out from there. Just a first-time precaution. It's also why they placed the scientists' quonset so far away from the hangar."
"The sailors are expendable, but not the scientists? Is that it?" He didn't answer, so I went on: "Have you any idea where they're intending to take this rocket, the scientists and their wives. The naval officers and ratings, of course, won't be taken anywhere."
"What do you mean?"
"You know damn well what I mean. They're of no further use to LeClerc and will be eliminated." He shook his head in what was more an involuntary shudder than a shake and buried his face in his hands. "Did LeClerc make no mention of his ultimate destination?"
He shook his head again and turned away. He seemed badly upset about something, unwilling to meet my eye, but I couldn't find it in my heart to blame him.
"Russia, perhaps?"
"Not Russia." He stared at the floor. "Wherever it is, it's not Russia. They wouldn't look at this old steam-engine affair."
"They wouldn't-" It was my turn to stare. "I thought this was the most advanced-"
"In the Western world, yes. But in the last few months it's been an open secret among our scientists, but one they're all frightened to talk about, that Russia has developed-or is developing-the ultimate rocket. The photon rocket. Hints dropped by Professor Stanyukovich, the leading Soviet expert on the dynamics of gases, don't leave much room for doubt, I'm afraid. Somehow or other they've discovered the secret of harnessing and storing anti-protons. We know about this anti-matter but have no conception of how to store it. But the Russians have. A couple of ounces of it would take the Black Shrike to the moon."
The implications of this were beyond me: but I agreed that it was unlikely that the Soviets would want the rocket. Red China, Japan? The presence of Chinese workers and LeClerc's Sino-Japanese transmitting set seemed to point that way, but the possibility was that those pointers were far too obvious, there were other countries in Asia-and outside Asia-who would dearly love to lay hands on the Black Shrike. But even more important than the question of what nation could or would want such a rocket was the answer to the question how any nation in the world had known that we were building such a rocket. Far back in my mind the first beginnings of an answer were beginning to shape themselves towards an impossible solution… I became gradually aware that Hargreaves was speaking again.
"I want to apologise for my stupidity this morning," he was saying hesitantly. "Damn silly of me to persist in saying you were a solid fuel expert. I might have been putting a rope round your neck. I'm afraid I was too upset to think at all, far less think clearly. But I don't think the guard noticed."
"It's all right. I don't think either that the guard noticed."
"You're not going to cooperate with LeClerc?" Hargreaves asked. His hands were clasping and unclasping all the time, his nerves were no match for his brains. "I know you could do it if you wanted."
"Sure I could. A couple of hours with Fairfield's notes, diagrams, coding symbols and examining the actual layout, and I think I could. But time is on our side, Hargreaves- God knows it's the only thing on our side. As far as LeClerc is concerned, the fusing is the key. He won't leave till he gets the key. London knows I'm here, the 'Neckar' may get suspicious over the delay, anything can happen, and anything that can happen can only be to our advantage." I tried to think of anything that could be to our advantage but failed. "So I sit tight. LeClerc suspects I'm an expert on solid fuels: he cannot possibly know."
"Of course," Hargreaves muttered. "Of course. Time is on our side."
He sat down on an empty ammunition box and stared down silently at the floor. He seemed to have lost all inclination to talk. I didn't much feel like talking myself.
A key turned in the door and LeClerc and Hewell came in. LeClerc said: "Feeling better?"
"What do you want?"
"Just wondering whether you might have changed your mind about your alleged ignorance on the subject of solid fuel."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Of course not. Hewell?" The giant came forward and laid a squat leather-covered box on the floor-a tape recorder. "Perhaps you would care to hear the playback of a recent recording we made?"
I rose slowly to my feet and stared down at Hargreaves. His gaze was still fixed on the floor.
"Thank you, Hargreaves," I said. "Thank you very much indeed."
"I had to do it," he said dully. "LeClerc said he would shoot my wife through the back of the head."
"I'm sorry." I touched him on the shoulder. "It wasn't your fault. What now, LeClerc?"
"It's time you saw the Black Shrikes." He stood to one side to let me pass.
The doors of the hangar were wide open, the lights burning high up near the roof. The rails ran all the way to the back of the hangar.
They were there, all right, the Black Shrikes, stubby pencil-shaped cylinders with highly-polished steel sides and water-cooled porcelain noses above great scalloped air-scoops, the height of a two-storey house and perhaps four feet in diameter. They rested on flat eight-wheeled steel bogies, and on either side of each rocket was a gantry crane, almost as high as the rocket itself, each crane mounted on a four-wheeled bogie: from the top and bottom of the gantries protruding clamps reached out to hold the rockets firmly in position. Both rockets and all four gantries were resting on the same set of rails.
LeClerc wasted no time, no words. He led me straight to the nearest rocket and mounted an open-sided lift fitted to the inner side of the nearest gantry. Hewell jabbed me painfully in the spine with his gun: I got the idea and climbed up beside LeClerc. Hewell stayed where he was. LeClerc pressed a button, an electric motor whined and the lift slid easily upward for about five feet. LeClerc took a key from his pocket, slid it into a tiny hole in the side of the rocket, pulled out a flush-fitting handle and swung out a seven-foot high door in the casing of the Black Shrike: the door had been so meticulously machined, so beautifully fitted, that I hadn't even noticed its existence.