"Completely. Absolutely on target-after a thousand miles. Right, Bentall, finish off the other one."
"I want to see Miss Hopeman first."
He stopped being jovial.
"I said finish it off. I mean finish it off."
"I want to see Miss Hopeman first. Five minutes. No more, I promise you. Either that or wire up your own damn rocket. See how long it takes you."
"Why do you want to see her?"
"Mind your own damned business."
He looked at Hewell, who gave an all but imperceptible nod.
"Very well. But five minutes. Five minutes only. You understand?" He handed a guard the key and gestured us on our way.
The guard unlocked the door of the armoury and let me in. I closed the door behind me, not worrying whether I was hurting his feelings.
The room was in near darkness, with its shutters drawn. Marie was lying in a cot in the corner, the same cot as I had slept in that morning. I crossed over and sunk to my knees by the side of the cot.
"Marie," I said softly. I shook her shoulder with a gentle hand. "Marie. It's me. Johnny."
She must have been in deep sleep and she took some time to come out of it. Finally she stirred and twisted round under the blanket. All I could see was the pale blur of the face, the sheen of the eyes.
"Who-who is it?"
"It's me, Marie-it's Johnny."
She didn't answer so I repeated my words, my face and mouth and jaws were so stiff and sore that perhaps she couldn't catch my thick mumble.
"I'm tired," she murmured. "I'm so very tired. Please leave me."
"I'm terribly sorry, Marie. Honest to God, I could shoot myself. I thought they were bluffing Marie, I really thought they were bluffing." Again no answer, so I went on: "What did they do to you, Marie? For God's sake tell me what they did to you?"
She murmured something, I couldn't catch it, then said in a low voice: "I'm all right. Please go away."
"Marie! Look at me!"
She gave no sign that she had heard.
"Marie! Look at me. Johnny Bentall on his knees." I tried to laugh, but it was only a froglike croak, a frog with bronchitis at that. "I love you, Marie. That's why I fused up their damned rocket, that's why I'd fuse up a hundred rockets, that's why I'd do anything in the world, anything that's right, anything that's wrong, just so no harm would ever come to you again. I love you, Marie. I've been so long in seeing it but you should know by now what to expect from a fool like me. I love you and if we ever come home again I want to marry you. Would you marry me, Marie? When we get home?"
There was a long silence, then she said softly: "Marry you? After you let them-please leave me, Johnny. Please leave me now. I'll marry someone who loves me, not someone-" She broke off and then finished huskily: "Please. Now."
I rose heavily to my feet and went to the door. I opened it and let the light flood into the room. A shaft of light from the westering sun illuminated the bed, the fair shining hair spread on the rolled-up coat that serves as a pillow, the great hazel eyes in the pale and exhausted face. I looked at her for a long long moment, I looked until I couldn't bear to look any longer, I'd never more shed tears for the martyrs who went to the stake, it was all too easy. I looked at the only person I'd ever loved and as I turned away, Bentall the tough guy to the end, not wanting even his Marie to see the tears in his eyes, I heard her shocked whisper: "Dear God, oh, dear God! Your face!"
"It'll do," I said. "It won't have to last me a great deal longer. I'm sorry, Marie. I'm sorry."
I closed the door behind me. The guard took me straight to the hangar and luck was with me and LeClerc, for I did not meet him on the way. Hewell was waiting for me, with Hargreaves and Williams, both with their notebooks at the ready. I got onto the lift without being told, the other two followed and we started work.
First I opened the junction box on the inside of the outer casing and adjusted the timing devices on the rotary clock, then, checking that the hand-operated switch on the destruct box was locked at 'Safe', I took a quick look at the second break in the suicide circuit, the solenoid switch directly above the timing device. The solenoid, normally activated when its enveloping coil was energised, was held back by a fairly stout spring which required, as a quick tug informed me, about a pound and a half of pressure to close. I left the box open, the lid hanging downwards and secured by a couple of butterfly nuts, then again turned my attention to the destruct box: when pretending to check the action of the switch I did the same as I had done on the first Shrike, forced a small piece of wire between switch and cover. Then I called down to Hewell.
"Have you the key for the destruct box? Switch stuck."
I needn't have bothered with the wire. He said: "Yeah, I have it. Boss said we might expect trouble with this one too. Here, catch."
I opened the cover, unscrewed the switch, pretended to adjust it, replaced it and screwed home the rocker arm. But before I'd replaced it I'd turned it through 180°, so that the brass lugs were in a reversed position. The switch was so small, my hands so completely covered it that neither Hargreaves nor Williams saw what I was doing: nor had they any reason, to expect anything amiss, this was exactly, they thought, the same as they had seen me doing on the destruct box in the other rocket. I replaced the cover, shoved the lever to the safe position: and now the destruct box was armed and it only awaited the closing of the solenoid switch to complete the suicide circuit. Normally, the switch would be closed by radio signal, by pressing the EGADS button in the launch console. But it could also be done by hand…
I said to Hewelclass="underline" "Right, here's the key."
"Not quite so fast," he growled. He signalled for the lift to be brought down for him, rode up to the open door and took the key from me. Then he tried the destruct box switch, checked that it was impossible to move it more than half-way towards 'Armed', let it spring back to the 'Safe' position, nodded, pocketed the key and said: "How much longer?"
"Couple of minutes. Final clock settings and buttoning up."
The lift whined downwards again, Hewell stepped off, and on the way up I murmured to Hargreaves and Williams: "Stop writing, both of you." The hum of the electric motor covered my words and it wasn't any trick to speak without moving my lips, the left hand side of my mouth was now so puffed and swollen that movement was almost impossible anyway.
I leaned inside the door, the cord I'd torn from the blind concealed in my hand. To fasten one end of the cord to the solenoid should have taken maybe ten seconds but my hand was shaking so badly, my vision and coordination so poor that it took me almost two minutes. Then I straightened and started to close the door with my left hand while the cord ran out through the fingers of my right. When only a four-inch crack remained between the door and the outer casing of the rocket, I peered inside-the watching Hewell must have had the impression that I had one hand on either side of the door handle, trying to ease its stiffness. It took only three seconds for my right hand to drop a round turn and two half hitches round the inner handle, men the door was shut, the key turned and the job finished.
The first man to open that door more than four inches, with a pressure of more than a pound and a half, would trigger off the suicide charge and blow the rocket to pieces. If the solid fuel went up in sympathetic detonation, as Dr. Fairfield had suspected it would, he would also blow himself to pieces and everything within half a mile. In either case I hoped the man who would open it would be LeClerc himself.
The lift sank down and I climbed wearily to the ground. Through the open doors of the hangar I could see the scientists and some of the sailors sitting and lying about the shore, an armed guard walking up and down about fifty yards from them.