Finally they began to move forward, the engines surging below them, and at the same time the vehicle tilted backward sharply, at an angle of over 10°, as they climbed the exit ramp.
The air in the tractor became suddenly cooler, as if a powerful refrigerating unit had been switched on in the compartment. They appeared to be moving along a tunnel carved through an iceberg, and Maitland remembered someone at the base telling him that the surface air temperature was now falling by a full degree per day. The air stream moving over the oceans was forcing an enormous uptake of water by evaporation, and consequently cooling the surfaces below.
The Titan leveled off on the final exit shelf, then labored slowly up the last incline.
Immediately, as the huge vehicle slewed about unsteadily, its tracks searching for equilibrium in the ragged surface, the familiar tattoo of thousands of flying missiles rattled across the sides and roof around them like endless salvos of machine-gun fire. The noise was enervating, occasionally appearing to slacken off slightly, then resuming with even greater force as a cloud of higher-density particles drove across them.
Standing behind the driver, Halliday steered the Titan by looking through the periscope. Occasionally, when they moved across open country, he left the driver to follow the compass bearing pro. vided by the radio operator, and came back to the passengers, crouching down to exchange a few words.
"We're just passing through Biggin Hill," he told them after they had been under way for half an hour. "Used to be an RAP base here, but it was flooded out after the east wall of the main shelter collapsed. About five hundred people were trapped inside; only six got away.
"Can I take a look outside, Captain?" Patricia Olsen asked. "I've been underground so long I feel like a mole."
"Sure," Halliday agreed. "Not that there's a damn thing to see."
They all moved forward, swaying from side to side like straphangers on a rocking Underground train as the tractor slid and dragged under the impact of the wind.
Maitland waited until Lanyon and Patricia had finished, then pressed his eyes to the binocular viewpiece.
Sweeping the periscope around, he saw that they were moving along the remains of the M5 Motorway down to Portsmouth.
Little of the road was still intact. The soft shoulders and grass center pieces between the lanes had disappeared, leaving in their place a four-foot-deep hollow trough. Here and there the stump of a concrete telegraph pole protruded from the verge, or a battered. overpass, huge pieces chipped from its arches, spanned the roadway, but otherwise the landscape was completely blighted. Occasionally a dark shadow would flash by, the remains of some airborne structure-aircraft fuselage or motor car-bouncing and cartwheeling along the ground.
Maitland leaned against the periscope mounting. With the topsoil gone, and the root-system which held the surface together and provided a secure foothold for arable crops against the erosive forces of rain and wind, the entire surface of the globe would dust bowl in the way that the Oklahoma farmland had literally disappeared into the air in the 1920's.
As he turned away from the periscope, Halliday was right beside the radio operator. A signal was coming through from Brandon Hall, and the operator took off his headphones and passed them to the captain.
"Bad news, Doctor," the operator said. "Flash in from Brandon Hall about a friend of yours, Andrew Symington. Apparently the emergency intelligence unit in the Admiralty bunkers were attacked yesterday. Marshall and three of the others were shot."
Maitland gripped the strap over his head. "Andrew? Is he dead?"
"No, they don't think so. His body hasn't been found, anyway. Marshall managed to get an alert through before he died. The gunmen were working for someone called Hardoon. As far as I could make out he's supposed to have a private army operating from a secret base somewhere in the Guildford area."
"I've run into Hardoon before," Maitland cut in. " Marshall was also working for him." Quickly he recounted his discovery of the crates of paramilitary equipment in Marshall 's warehouse, the uniformed guards. "Hardoon must have decided to get rid of Marshall; probably he'd outlived his usefulness." He looked up at the strap in his hand, and jerked it roughly. "What the hell could have happened to Symington, though?"
Halliday lowered his head doubtfully. "Well, maybe he's O.K.," he said, managing a show of sympathy. "It's hard to say."
"Don't worry," Maitland said confidently. "Symington's a top electronics and communications man, far more valuable to Hardoon now than a TV mogul like Marshall. If his body wasn't found in the bunker he must still be alive. Hardoon's men wouldn't waste time carrying a corpse around." He paused, listening to the hail drive across the roof. "All those crates were labeled ' Hardoon Tower.' This secret base must be there."
Halliday shook his head. "Never heard of it. Though the name Hardoon is familiar. What is he, a political big shot?"
"Shipping and hotel magnate," Maitland told him. "Something of a power-crazy eccentric. ' Hardoon Tower '-God knows where, though."
"Sounds like a hotel," Halliday commented. "If it is, it won't be standing, that's for sure. Sorry about your friend, but as you say, he'll probably be O.K. there."
Maitland nodded, leaning on the radio set and searching his mind for where Hardoon Tower might be. He noticed the radio operator watching him pensively, was about to turn away and rejoin the trio at the rear of the compartment when the man said:
"The Hardoon place is just near here, sir. About ten miles away, at Leatherhead."
Maitland turned back. "Are you sure?"
"Well, I can't be certain," the operator said. "But we get a lot of interference from a station operating from Leatherhead. It's using a scrambled vhf beam, definitely not a government installation."
"Could be anyone, though," Maitland said. "Weather station, police unit, some VIP outfit."
The operator shook his head. "I don't think so, sir. They were trying to identify it back at Brandon Hall; there was even an MI5 signals expert there. I heard him refer to Hardoon."
Maitland turned to Halliday. "What about it, Captain? He's probably right. We could make a small detour out to Leatherhead."
Halliday shook his head curtly. "Sorry, Maitland. I'd like to, but our reserve tank only holds two hundred gallons, barely enough to get us back."
"Then what about uncoupling the rear section?" Maitland asked. "It's no damn use anyway."
"Maybe not. But what are we supposed to do, even if we find this character Hardoon? Put him under arrest?"
Halliday returned to the periscope, indicating that their argument was closed, and hunched over the eyepiece, scanning the road. Maitland stood behind him, undecided, watching the radio-compass beam on the navigator's screen. They followed the beam carefully, driving along a razor edge between a stream of dots-leftward error-and a stream of dashes-rightward error. At present they were deliberately three degrees off course, in order to take advantage of the motorway's firm foundations. Halliday was following a bend in the road, and the radio compass rotated steadily, from 145° to 150°, and then on around to 160°. Unoccupied for the moment, the operator was searching the waveband of the vhf set. He picked up a blurred staccato signal and gestured to Maitland.
"That's the Hardoon signal, sir."
Maitland nodded. He stepped over to the operator as if to hear the scrambled signal more clearly, and slowly eased his torch out of his hip pocket, clasping the heavy cylinder with its steel-encased reflector firmly in his right hand. He edged between the operator and the compass, which was still revolving. When he was satisfied that the operator would no longer remember the precise bearing, he raised the torch and with a quick backhand stroke tapped in the glass screen.