Quatermass (37 page)

Quatermass looked up past the antennas, almost willing it. Listen to them! You came yesterday . . . five thousand years ago . . . and tasted them and found them good and came again today. So come now! Come!

“Leh-leh-leheh—”

Kapp suddenly stiffened. This time it was not a reaction to the chant. He was pointing. “There’s somebody—”

A figure at the far end of the platform. For a moment before it moved out of sight. Then another showed, far down by the outbuildings.

Across the line, on the slope opposite, another one. They came inching in from the darkness. Caraway and Bee and other Planet People . . . a dreadlocked youth . . . the woman in the wedding dress . . . young soldiers . . . gang boys in ragged blue. They were chanting as they came. Their voices were like the false sound from the speakers and there was no telling the one from the other.

“Leh-leh-leheh-leh-leheh-leh—”

“Stop!”

Quatermass made a grab at the field telephone before realizing there was no point in it. He shouted out instead: “Get away from here! Go—get away!”

Kapp was running, waving. “That’s a bomb!” he shouted. But they came on.

Then Quatermass had the worst moment of his whole life.

It was her.

She was on the platform, moving towards him. No mistake about that face. It was his own face that she had taken.

“No,” he said. “Hettie.”

As if he was pleading with her not to be there. And then he took in what was walking with her, a grotesque creature wrapped in furs, with a submachine gun in his hand, who held it up now, held up both his arms.

“This is the place!” shouted Kickalong.

They were moving in all round, scores of them. And Quatermass could only stand, feeling his brain jerking, twisting in his head. He was on the brink of a stroke.

Kapp made a sudden start toward the control panel. Cancel—stop everything—!

Kickalong shot him through the heart.

Quatermass hardly saw it happen, hardly noticed the man die. Some tiny part of him felt concern and knew that Joe was on the ground, bleeding and thrashing. The rest of him saw only his grandchild.

She was unreal, as still and remote as the photograph. Or they had changed about, and the things in his pocket were the live child gathered in past moments, and the face in front of him was the photograph, a silver image.

Then it came upon them.

A thunderous crackle down out of the night sky. A blinding light blasted down all about Gratton Halt. Dazzling, burning the eyes. Pale shrieking creatures round him raised their hands and gloried.

He could no longer see her. His brain jerked alive.

He had instants only. He flung himself stumbling across Kapp’s body, crashing into metal.

The red button was just beyond his hand and quite unattainable.

There was a dew of crystal on his fingers.

Something clung to him. She clung to him. Her face close and the same crystal dew all over it: Eyes turning to glass. A last instant to feel human concern and terror.

She knew because he knew.

Her hand was on his old hand, hardening and crazing together.

She slammed it down on the red button.

Epilogue

T
he crater was one hundred and ninety metres deep.

After some weeks had elapsed a small investigation team was lowered to the bottom. It consisted of P. G. Gurov and others in the heaviest radiation-proof garments. They reported the crater to be unremarkable. The bomb had performed up to specification. There were rumours later that they had searched for some mysterious object that might have been down there. If so, they did not find it. It might have been destroyed in the explosion. Or was deeper yet.

What mattered was that the message had clearly been taken. From that moment the blasts ceased.

Gradually the sky and the land became clean. Dread remained but the phenomenon did not appear again. Perhaps it never would.

The crater was filled. It was covered over with a gigantic layer of concrete to make any lingering radiation safe.

Upon this a single stone was set to record what had taken place there. It was a massive sarsen, a megalith.

P. G. Gurov was one who came to visit.

He was reluctant to leave his beloved Republic of Russia, rejoicing in its new-found freedoms, but it gladdened him too to see England again, a recovering land with its soft green fields and quiet towns. Little children could play in safety and sing, as they had done for centuries, their innocent old nursery rhymes:

“Huffity, puffity, Ringstone Round,

If you lose your hat it will never be found,

So pull up your britches right up to your chin,

And fasten your cloak with a bright new pin,

And when you are ready, then we can begin,

Huffity, puffity, puff!”

Huffity . . . puffity . . . puff . . .