Quatermass (4 page)

Something was wrong.

Now the Project Control Centre showed on the screen. People were standing up in their places looking agitated. There was a buzz of voices.

“Some kind of transmission fault?”

“Hell, it’s certainly picked its time—”

A breakdown in the relay system, apparently, cutting off pictures from the camera-satellite that was covering the scene.

“We’re doing all we can, sir—”

“Just give a few seconds—”

“Better warn the President—”

Voices that were not meant to be heard, their very audibility marking the extent of the disorder. And somewhere along the line, the complaint of a weary technician who thought he was being blamed. “Listen, Herb, I’m doing my job. Just don’t ride me, okay?”

Then relief.

“It’s normalizing—”

“We’re getting the picture back—”

“Yes, here it comes—”

“I guess it was just some momentary kind of—”

“Hey, look at that!”

The voices died away into horrified whispers.

The Spacelab was back on the screen. Something was terribly wrong with it. The whole huge structure was on the move. Its main sections had separated from each other and were slowly, very slowly, twisting about.

“It’s gone out of control!” said Quatermass.

The babble of voices swept back. One of them seemed to be coming from the camera-satellite itself. “I don’t know what’s happening over there. I’ve lost contact—it looks serious—”

Then grinding, over-riding: “Project Control to Spacelab Ten. We no longer read you, Spacelab. Please come in, fast!”

Pieces were breaking away. Long spindly girders, strong enough in a weightless environment but not built for sudden strain, were snapping. A huge solar panel detached itself and spun solemnly away.

“My God,” said Kapp.

The voices burst through again.

“Project Control to Spacelab—are you able to locate the malfunction? Come in, Spacelab!”

“Tell the President—oh, hell!”

“Herb, this means checking section by section, so just let me get on with it, will you? I know what I’m doing—just let me do it, Herb—”

Then a cry, hoarse with horror, that must be from the camera-satellite: “It’s cracking open! I can see the inside—there’s stuff coming out of the inside! The seals must have gone! It’s coming to pieces, the whole thing’s coming to bits! All breaking up—everything—oh, my Christ, those guys—those poor guys! Oh, Christ!”

Those inside would be dead, thought Quatermass. They would have no protection. They were the lucky ones, dead in an instant. Like sailors in a shipwreck who drowned quickly and got it over. But those working outside in pressure suits—he could see some of them clearly on the screen, tiny plump figures now drifting helplessly—it might be worst of all to have an efficient life-support system. Flung out into space alone, till the oxygen finally ran out or one exhausted it in despair.

One pressure-suited man sailed, helplessly spread-eagled, past the satellite-camera. He was only yards away from it.

“That’s a cosmonaut, one of the Russians,” whispered Gough. Incurably professional.

To have to watch this and be able to do nothing! Quatermass wanted to shut his eyes, turn away. Yet it was impossible.

They were feeling the same thing at Project Control.

“Recovery procedure—what’s the status—?”

“We have initiated—”

“It’s too late—”

“Project Control to. Spacelab. Do you read me?”

“You got who, the President? So get him off the line!”

“Herb, as I see the problem—”

“Christ, those poor, poor guys!”

A sudden dazzle from the main section of the observatory, and then it seemed to shatter into fragments. It was like watching the final moments of a great ship.

The satellite picture shook violently. It broke up into wild zigzags and whited out.

Quatermass felt weak.

The screen kept on flickering. There were shots of stunned faces in the Control Centre, meaningless flashes of machinery and clocks. Then it was Marshall again, his face turned away, arguing hotly with unseen colleagues in the New York studio. It sounded as if he didn’t know what had happened. Perhaps the frantic work on the relays had cut him off.

“We lost them, what d’you mean we lost them? I know that! Something blew!” Then it seemed to get through to him at last. “You mean . . .
lost
? You mean dead? All of them?”

It was over and off the public air now.

The Big Show.

Quatermass turned to the others. There seemed to be nothing to say.

He detected a strange atmosphere in the studio. Shock, of course, but something else besides. People were looking at each other, cameramen, Gough, the makeup woman. There was a kind of embarrassment, as if they had been some somehow responsible.

Gough said: “Well, I think we—might as well wrap up—”

But the screens were flashing again. Marshall’s image burst upon them, raging.

“Are we still linked through to London? Are we?”

“Yes, Chuck,” Gough said into the nearest microphone.

“Who’s that talking?”

“Toby Gough.”

“Give me Quatermass!”

A camera panned to him. He faced the lens, hardly knowing what to say. “Chuck—this is the most appalling—”

He was given no chance to fumble on.

“Just what did you mean?” cried Marshall. “You said ‘It’ll come to nothing, sooner than they think’. That’s what you said, those exact words! We just ran them back!”

“Chuck, I wish now I hadn’t—”

“Come on, come on!”

“My personal feelings—”

“Was that all?”

“Of course.”

“Quatermass, did you
know
something?”

“I don’t think I—understand—”

The furious voice blasted at him from the loudspeakers. “That somebody was going to
do
it? Out there in that Third World you’re so busy joining?”

He could hardly take it in. He licked his lips.

“You mean—cause
that
?”

“Right, you got it. Well?”

He could only stand there shaking his head. It was possible, of course it was. There were half a dozen ways it might be attempted . . . on-board sabotage . . . beam radiation . . . but whoever would? And that he should be thought to have to known about it and said nothing?

The anger in Marshall’s voice was fractionally less. Perhaps he had burned some of it up, or perhaps it was the sight of Quatermass’s obvious stupefaction. But his words were still unforgiving.

“You dropped some big hints, my friend. Now you better have answers!”

He turned his head and muttered: “Okay, cut it.”

The screen went dark.

Nobody spoke after that. With the huge infuriated face gone, the studio felt suddenly empty. But the accusation seemed to linger and hang.

Cameras were switched off in silence. Lamps faded. Toby Gough murmured an inaudible excuse and went hurrying off towards the gallery. The makeup woman sidled out, along with the technicians. It was as if everyone wanted to get clear of Quatermass’s presence.

It was almost dark, but he could tell Kapp was still there.

“I didn’t mean anything, how could I?”

In a daze he started gathering up the spilled photographs from the table. It was hard to see. Kapp came to help.

“It was only about her,” Quatermass said.

“I know.”

“I wanted to show her picture. You see . . . she could be in any country by now . . . another continent, even. That’s why I—”

“Where’s your coat?” said Kapp.

He grabbed it from a chair and wrapped it round Quatermass’s shoulders.

“I’m getting you out of here,” he said.

He had to push the old man ahead of him. In the rubbish-clogged passage Quatermass resisted, turning confusedly round. “I really ought to go back and try to explain—”

“Listen,” said Kapp, “that hot line between the U.S. and Moscow is going to be
white
hot.”

“I expect it will—”

“A situation like this, stones get flung. So don’t be a
nebbech.
”

“A what?”

“
Nebbech.
Good old Yiddish word,” said Kapp. “For the one they can
all
fling stones at!”

2

I
n the dawn light two ragged figures were trying to prise open the rear door of Kapp’s waggon. The Alsatian was snarling and barking, but they did not seem discouraged.

“Looters!” A voice rang out with metallic clangour, echoing round the buildings. It sounded as if it came from an armoured car. Clipped and military. “Sergeant, take the one on the left! Fire at will!”

The figures did not hesitate. With oddly shrill squeals of fright they turned and ran, scrambling through gaps in the wire fence.

Kapp looked carefully round a corner. In his hand was a small box-shaped instrument. He raised it to his lips and again the stentorian voice clapped across the car park. “Sergeant, I want those two! Cut them off quick!”

He waited till he was sure. Then he switched off and turned to Quatermass. “All clear.”

“What is that thing?”

“Home-made,” Kapp said. “A bit heavy on batteries. You have to keep recharging them. It works, though.” They started towards the waggon. “Did you notice—those two were girls. They can be the worst.”

He unlocked the car. The great dog bounded forward to lick his face.

“Good Puppy. Meet our friend again.” He helped Quatermass aboard. “They were lucky not to get in. He’d have had their throats.”

“Why do you call him Puppy?”

Kapp smiled. “My kids, when he was young. I like it—the idea that he could still be growing.”

The back of the waggon, Quatermass saw now, was full. Crates, ropes, tools, lamps, towing gear. And half a dozen jerricans.

“Petrol,” said Kapp. “My meagre allocation. It’s like carrying gold.”

The waggon thumped into gear.

It would be bumpy, Kapp warned, on the back-lane route. But main roads too often turned out to have been used as recent battlegrounds, blocked by barricades and with their surfaces all torn up. The small streets were a better bet. It took longer but you usually got clear in the end.

Quatermass held on tight. Bounced out of his seat as the van thudded over broken ground, flung sideways as they skidded in rubble and lurched round shattered corners, he saw suburban London in startling flashes. Painted slogans threatened from one wall after another:
KILL H.M. THE KING
!
PAY COPS ARE PIG CRAPS
!
LONDON IS DEAD
!
KILL BADDERS
!

Kill Badders? That one had been painted in bright blue streaks.

“Blue Brigades,” said Kapp. “Haven’t you come across them? The Badders’ natural enemies.”

“Vigilantes?”

Kapp snorted. “They’re even worse. They shoot children to prove it.”

Some streets were still lined with cars. But for the heavy coating of grime on them and the rust breaking through everywhere on their bodies, they might have been waiting for their owners to jump in and drive off.

“They wouldn’t go now,” said Kapp, “even if you filled ’em up.”

All that carefully fashioned metal . . . the bitter labour disputes that had been fought over the fashioning of it . . . in another age.

“Remember the oil—”

“What oil?” said Kapp.

“The oil from under the North Sea that was going to make us rich and put everything right for us—”

Kapp swung the heavy waggon round another corner. Strong wrists, Quatermass had noticed. You could take a chance on being an intellectual but you had to be toughened up.

“Oil and water don’t mix,” said Kapp. “Who said that? They mix all right when you smash the pipelines. The gangs proved it.”

“What’s that ahead?”

Smoke or gas. A white cloud belching at the far end of the street. Quatermass instinctively covered his face. But as they got nearer he saw people moving about in it unperturbed.

“Flour,” Kapp said. “They’re looters.”

Men and women dragging sacks out through the smashed windows of a Food Dispensary and heaving them up on their shoulders. As the waggon passed them it was the target of instant abuse. The looters yelled and shook their fists.

The dog growled fiercely. “Quiet, Pup,” said Kapp. “They think we’re cops. Anything with petrol in it. Watch out when we hit the barter market.”

They drove right through it.

It was like a scene from Central America or Africa, an up-country village market. Marshall had been right in his sneer about joining the Third World.

Even at this early hour goods were being laid out. Sale or barter. Prized possessions brought in the hope of a swap for food, to keep alive. Frightened faces turned to them.

Kapp slowed down, picking his way between the ground-carpets and the rickety stalls. Now they were among the pros. A cat-fur seller, clad in his wares, screaming his slogan: “Genuine catskin, put it on yer chest!” A medicine-man waving colourful bottles: “When yer kids’ll catch the cough, you’ll bless my name to ’ave this stuff!” A charm stall with its grisly exhibit, a mummified corpse in a leather jacket and a German helmet with a bullet-hole in it. The charm seller screeched: “Hell’s Angels they called ’em! This one was Gutsucker, killed in the battle of Catterick Camp—and ’is power ’as never left ’im! Every envelope carries the magic of Gutsucker! Never known to fail!”