But that had been the situation half an hour ago.
Since then, Fortune had menaced Efimov with a lethal weapon, written off an official UNO vehicle, and was lying behind a rock defying the civil police to come near him. On receiving that sort of information by radio Major Baillie would be obliged to take some kind of immediate action.
All at once, Fortune could feel the crushing bulk of Nesster ship 1753 bearing down on his exposed back, and now it was very close indeed. Swearing desperately, he put the scope’s cross-hairs on the base of the radio mast. The mast was badly illuminated, he kept losing it in the darkness and his hands were numb with the cold. He fired four shots before the steel mast vanished, and he knew it had been too late anyway. His watch showed that there were still fifty minutes to go.
The sentient bulk of the cruiser remained motionless after the loss of its radio antenna. Fortune had half-expected some kind of retaliation and he lay still, feeling the ground gradually suck the heat from his body, and tried to picture the scene at the base. The rain was quite heavy and the added hazard of the powerful gusting made it a bad night for flying, but in Baillie’s shoes he would have sent a helicopter to land behind the fence. A copter would resolve the situation immediately.
At zero minus thirty a siren blew out at the end of the spit and he looked over his shoulder. The gun barrel was reared up into the night sky, which meant that the missile and propellant were safely loaded. All that remained was to wait for the proper instant to loft the glittering sculpture of the rocket into its proper element, far above the squalid human tangle which had conceived it. Christine and he were finished—that much seemed obvious, but what would he do about Peter? Was it possible that the boy might grow up with Efimov as his father? More minutes went by and he saw Efimov’s face move behind the cruiser’s windscreen. They must be getting impatient in the cruiser, Fortune thought, perhaps Baillie isn’t going to act on the radio message. It had been a long time….
He heard the copter in the distance at zero minus eighteen.
It came in from the east, travelling low, and banked sharply over the gate with its flails punishing the quivering air. Fortune waited for it to come down near him, planning how he could cause the greatest delay, but it hesitated and began to drift off in the direction of the gun. That was bad—he had expected them to come solely for him, not to stop the firing which, although illegal, was not a military matter. Perhaps they had not been able to take in the ground situation from up there in their rain-spattered bubble. Fortune got to his feet and the aircraft pulled up with almost comical abruptness then sank down on to the grass. At the same instant the police cruiser’s lights came on again and its engine roared.
There still was sufficient time for Efimov to reach the gun.
Fortune saw an officer and rifle-carrying troopers drop from the big machine. He could not fire at his own men, yet they would be on him in a matter of seconds. His numbed legs gave way as he began to run, instinctively heading away from the gun site. As he pounded through the grass he concentrated on trying to lock his knees for support at each step, but it was like a difficult party trick and at first he progressed by a grotesque combination of kneeling and running. By the time he reached the gate Fortune was moving almost normally but, swinging over the top bar, his hand slid on the smooth galvanised tubing and he felt himself go over off balance and with no hope of recovery. Falling, he caught a frozen movie frame glimpse of the police cruiser disgorging men and a fragment of unrelated audio track which sounded like a woman calling his name.
He landed face down, rose spitting blood and swung off the track, forcing his legs to reach for new ground. Behind him he heard the troopers clear the gate efficiently and tried to speed up. Efimov, coming out of nowhere, hit him with a shoulder charge from the left, and he was almost glad to go down. Then he felt the soldiers pull them apart.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” Efimov said politely. “Now if you will detain the colonel for a few minutes, I have some business with Mr. Geissler. There is not much time.”
The helmeted sergeant levelled his rifle at Efimov. “Stay where you are, friend.”
“Stand aside,” Efimov shouted incredulously. “I’ve got to get through that gate.”
“Don’t even think about it,” the sergeant advised, ‘until the major says it’s okay.” The rifle muzzle remained steady and the civil police stood back looking uncertain.
With one hand cupped over his shattered nose Fortune turned towards the gate and saw Major Baillie help a woman over. She was enveloped in an army greatcoat, but he recognised his wife. They skirted the fuming turbojeep and the cruiser then cut across the grass to join the group.
Baillie saluted Fortune smartly. “Everything all right, sir?”
Fortune nodded dumbly—everything was all wrong, completely crazy, and why was Christine there?
Efimov took the document from his overcoat pocket and waved it in Baillie’s face. “Major, you must instruct your goons to let me pass. In fact, they can probably help….”
“My goons, as you call them,” Baillie interrupted stiffly, ‘are obeying orders. Turn out your pockets.”
“You’re mad! Why should I?”
Baillie remained as imperturbable and correct as ever. ‘Because this afternoon you visited Colonel Fortune’s private residence and were seen by Mrs. Fortune removing from his telephone a recording device which you had placed there on a previous occasion for the apparent purpose of obtaining military information.”
Efimov looked ill. “All right. I admit planting the recorder, but what military secrets could I hope to get here? Did you not get my message? This man is illegally destroying a satellite belonging to …’
“Oh yes,” Baillie said affably. “I believe there was something about launching an unscheduled rocket. I’ll have the matter investigated at the earliest opportunity—probably at the beginning of the week.”
Fortune suddenly saw Baillie through new eyes. The emotionless major was unexpectedly but deliberately bending all kinds of regulations for his sake. Christine was right about me, he thought; I can’t communicate with people. Even more suddenly he remembered that Christine had come through on his side. He put his arm round her shoulders, wondering how soon the years of coldness could be bridged.
“You’ve made a hell of a mess of your face,” she said critically.
He grinned crookedly, painfully but contentedly. The communication business was not too difficult once you understood it.
Three hundred miles above the Earth’s north pole Geissler’s missile sought and found its mark.
The beautifully designed alien mechanism, which had been transmitting one millisecond pulses of intelligence every ninety-three minutes for five years, finally fell silent.
There was no disappointment on board Nesster ship 1753 as it changed course, for they had not known of the imminent landing and, in any case, had long since forgotten how they had lived before the Journey. Gently the great caravan of ships swung towards the next suitable star. The new leg of the Journey would take eight hundred years, but the Nessters were a patient race.
And they built very patient machines.
What Time Do You Call This?
Abe Short had locked his bedroom door, and was doing something he did not want anybody else to know about, when he received the worst shock of his life.
One moment he was absolutely alone—and a split-second later there was a mad scientist standing beside the tallboy, blinking at him through pebble-lensed glasses.
Although he had never seen a mad scientist before, Abe’s nimble wits enabled him to decide the little man’s profession almost immediately. The first clue was that the stranger was wearing an odd-looking metallic belt outside a shapeless tweed jacket, an adornment which lent a definite air of eccentricity to his untidy ensemble.