Westwind, Page 2

  Hepton lifted his coffee to his lips, gulped at it, then squirmed. Nick Christopher must have dropped a bag of sugar into it.

  ‘Sweet Jesus,’ he muttered, the fingers of one hand still busy on his keyboard.

  ‘Coded through.’

  ‘No response here.’

  ‘I’m getting nothing at all.’

  A voice came over the speaker system, replacing the electronic alarm.

  ‘This is not a test. Repeat, this is not a test.’

  They paused to look at each other, reading a fresh panic in eyes reflecting their own. Not a test! It had to be a test. Otherwise they’d just lost a thousand million pounds’ worth of tin and plastic. Lost it for how long? Hepton checked his watch. The system had been inoperative for over two minutes. That meant it really was serious. Another minute or so could spell disaster.

  Fagin, the operations manager, had appeared from nowhere and was sprinting from console to console as though taking part in some kind of party game. Two of the brass were in evidence too, looking as though they’d just stepped out of a meeting. They carried files under their arms and stood by the far door, knowing nothing of the system or how to be of help. That was typical. The people who held the purse strings and gave the orders knew nothing about anything. That was why the budgeting on Zephyr was so tight. Hepton glanced at the pair again. Grey, puzzled faces, trying to look interested and concerned, unsure what to be concerned about.

  Suddenly Fagin was at his shoulder.

  ‘Anything, Martin?’

  ‘Nothing, sir.’

  ‘What happened?’ Fagin trusted Hepton, and knew him to be fastidious.

  Hepton shrugged his shoulders, feeling more impotent than he could say. ‘It just started snowing,’ he said, gesturing towards the screen. ‘That’s all.’

  Fagin nodded and was gone, his reputation for competence on the edge of being wiped out. Like sticking a magnet on a floppy disk: it was that easy to lose it all in a moment.

  Then:

  ‘Wait a minute!’ It was Nick Christopher’s voice.

  ‘Yes,’ someone else called from further off. ‘I’m getting something now. We’ve regained radio contact.’ There was a pause. ‘No, lost it again.’

  The brass exchanged glances at this news, and both checked their watches. Hepton couldn’t believe what he was seeing. They seemed to be worrying about the time. All the while, a billion pounds’ worth of high-tech was whizzing about blindly, or crashing towards earth, and they were worrying about the time.

  ‘Are you sure you had it?’ yelled Fagin.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well then, get it back!’

  ‘Trying.’

  Despite the adrenaline gnawing at him, Hepton felt a sudden inner calm. All would be well. It was just a matter of trusting to fate and pushing the right buttons. Who was he kidding? Zephyr was lost for good.

  Someone was standing behind him. He glanced back and saw Paul Vincent watching intently over his shoulder. Vincent was the youngest of the controllers, and the least confident.

  ‘Come to see how the professional does it, Paul?’ Hepton said, grinning nervously at the screen. He saw Vincent’s reflection smile wanly back. Then he began pushing buttons again, trying every combination possible. He had used up all the rational choices. Now he was trying the irrational, asking the computer to do the impossible.

  Paul Vincent’s face was suddenly at his ear, though the young man’s eyes still appeared to be studying the monitor.

  ‘Listen, Martin, there’s something I want to show you.’

  ‘What?’

  Vincent’s gaze remained fixed to the screen. His voice was low, just audible over the noise all around.

  ‘I can’t be sure,’ he said, ‘not a hundred per cent, at any rate. But I think there’s something happening up there. Either that or I’ve been doing something wrong. I had it on my screen a little while back.’

  ‘What do you mean, “something happening”?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet. Foreign data.’

  ‘Have you reported it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Perhaps that was why the brass were on the scene, and why they had looked momentarily scared.

  ‘Are we talking about interference?’ Hepton’s voice was low too.

  ‘I don’t know. I could make a wild guess, but I’m not sure it would help. I’d like you to confirm the data.’

  ‘When did it start?’

  ‘About half an hour ago.’

  ‘Coincidence?’

  There was a sudden whoop, then cheers and some applause.

  ‘We’ve got her back!’

  Hepton’s eyes went to his screen. They had indeed got her back. He was staring at a fuzzy but identifiable picture of Britain, taken from all that unbelievable distance. The image was out of focus, but they could soon put that right. What mattered was that Zephyr was working again.

  ‘Panic over,’ he said, turning now to face Paul Vincent. ‘So what about this foreign data?’

  ‘I’ve saved the readout on disk. Come and see.’

  Paul spoke without blinking, and still softly, though the clamour around had grown. He was young but, Hepton knew, not an idiot. A first in astrophysics from Edinburgh, then research in Australia. No idiot, but not a hands-on expert either. It was his job – his sole responsibility and specialism – to monitor the space around Zephyr, seeking space trash, debris, meteorites, waves of interference. He’d never made a mistake when it had counted. Never.

  ‘Okay, Paul,’ Hepton said. ‘Give me a couple of minutes to put things right and I’ll come take a look.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Vincent looked relieved, like a man who needs reassuring that those pink elephants he can see really are there. Maybe they were, at that. He left Hepton’s side and returned to his distant console. Then again, maybe the kid was losing his touch. There had been a bout of sulking a week ago to do with some girlfriend or other. Hazard of the job. Shift work, odd hours, occasional days on end cooped up in the base. Sleeping four to a room in two sets of bunk beds. Hepton wasn’t sure he could take much more of it himself, despite the pleasures of earth-watching. Who ever thought to ask him if he were lonely? Nobody. He thought of Jilly, and wondered what she was doing while he sat here. He didn’t want to think what she was doing.

  The brass were looking pleased about something. Well, they’d got Zephyr back, hadn’t they? One said something to the other, and Hepton, watching the man’s lips move, caught the words ‘three minutes forty’. The other nodded and smiled again. So they were discussing the length of time the satellite had been lost to its ground base. Three minutes and forty seconds. Longer than ever before. Almost too long.

  Things were calming down all around. Fagin had gone to speak with the brass. They were in a huddle now, their eyes glinting. Hepton couldn’t see their lips any more. Well, it was none of his concern. He busied himself with putting his console right. He had pushed a few too many of the wrong buttons in the wrong sequences. Adjustments were needed. And then he would visit Paul Vincent on the other side of the room.

  ‘More coffee?’ It was Nick Christopher.

  ‘You put sugar in the first.’

  ‘An honest mistake. I’ll fetch you another.’

  ‘Don’t bother. What do you think went wrong back there?’

  ‘Put it down to a hiccup. Everything malfunctions from time to time. Between the two of us, I think Zephyr was cobbled together like its namesake, the old car. We’ll be lucky if it stays the course.’

  ‘It was out for three minutes forty seconds.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The brass were timing it.’

  ‘Then maybe it was an exercise.’

  ‘I don’t think Paul Vincent would agree.’

  ‘Martin, you’re talking in riddles.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Now what about that coffee?’

  ‘No sugar this time?’

  ‘Promise, no sugar.’

  ‘Oka
y then.’

  The brass had disappeared, and Fagin with them. Waving them off, probably. Hepton wondered what the weather was like outside. He could check by using the computer, but wouldn’t it be so much nicer just to walk outside and take a look? Sunny, showery, cool, breezy. Inside, the air conditioning kept things temperate, and the lighting was designed specially so as to be bright without giving glare. Same went for the screens. You could stare at them all day without getting a headache, which didn’t stop him succumbing to the occasional migraine. He pushed back into his chair. It, too, had been designed for maximum comfort and minimum stress. He stuck a thumb either side of his spine and pressed, feeling vertebrae click into place.

  ‘No sugar,’ said Nick Christopher, handing him the beaker.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Only another twenty minutes till break.’

  ‘Thank God.’

  ‘So what were you saying about Paul?’

  ‘Oh, just that he’s got some data he wants me to check.’

  ‘Data?’ Christopher sipped his own coffee. ‘What sort of data?’

  ‘I don’t know till I’ve looked. Probably nothing important. You know what Paul’s like.’

  Christopher smiled. ‘He’s like a kid with a train set.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Hepton.

  But by the time he wandered across to Paul Vincent’s console, Vincent himself had vanished. Hepton looked at the computer screen. It was blank. He tried coding in, but it remained blank.

  ‘Temporary fault,’ said Fagin from behind him. ‘Was there something you wanted?’

  ‘Just checking.’

  ‘Checking what?’

  ‘Oh, you know …’

  ‘Well you won’t get much joy. Part of the disk’s been wiped.’

  ‘You mean the hard disk?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because of the malfunction?’

  ‘Or more likely Vincent’s panicking.’ Fagin had it in for Paul Vincent, everybody knew that. It was whispered that Paul reminded him too much of his own son, who had left home at seventeen and never returned.

  ‘Where is Vincent, by the way?’

  Fagin shrugged. ‘I don’t know. The little boys’ room perhaps.’

  ‘What happened back there?’

  Fagin seemed to think about this. ‘I’m just glad we got her back,’ he said at last. ‘We’ll find out eventually.’

  ‘It wasn’t a test then, to impress our friends?’

  ‘Friends?’

  ‘Those two generals.’

  ‘Not at all. What makes you say that?’

  ‘Oh, they just seemed to be timing our response, that’s all. And they looked fairly happy with the outcome.’

  ‘Nobody likes to lose a satellite, Martin.’

  ‘Of course not, sir. If you’ll excuse me, it’s almost my break. I think I’ll try to find Paul.’

  ‘Fine.’ Fagin was picking up the internal telephone, pushing buttons. The panic was over; things had to go on.

  Three minutes and forty seconds. Usually a malfunction could be located and corrected within sixty seconds. There were backup systems, a computer locked into every function of the satellite, ready to pinpoint the failure and repair it. After sixty seconds, you could assume that the computers had failed to find the fault, and you began to worry. So you went to manual, checking everything yourself. At the two-minute mark, you panicked.

  Three minutes and forty seconds. The brass had seemed satisfied. Fagin seemed satisfied. Paul Vincent had reported his findings, but nobody seemed to want to know. What the hell was going on?

  Hepton went to the toilets, then checked the canteen, the recreation area and the TV room: nothing. The table tennis players hadn’t seen Paul Vincent, the guys watching a porn film hadn’t seen Paul Vincent, nobody had seen Paul Vincent. He had disappeared. Hepton sat down in the TV room to think. The porn film was in German, not that a degree in languages was necessary to understand the plot. The film was being beamed via satellite, probably from a mainland European station. One bored weekend they’d spent several hours using the base’s sophisticated communications technology to home in on a couple of television satellites. Now they could pick up just about any station they liked and decode any scrambled signal. The picture today wasn’t the sharpest, but the cameraman was in close enough so that this didn’t really matter …

  Zephyr. What did Paul Vincent know about Zephyr?

  Hepton caught up with Nick Christopher in the canteen, where he was scooping up chips and beans with a fork and holding open a book with his free hand.

  ‘What are you reading?’ Hepton asked.

  Christopher showed him the cover, ‘Albert Camus, The Fall. I found it in the library.’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nothing’s happened yet. What’s wrong?’

  Hepton realised that he was sitting with head in hands, elbows propped on the table.

  ‘I can’t find Paul,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps he doesn’t want to be found,’ said Christopher, scooping up another mouthful of beans.

  ‘Maybe you’re right at that,’ said Hepton, stealing a limp lukewarm chip from the plate.

  The afternoon drifted back into ordinariness. After the break, it was back to the consoles. The system, though, was failing to yield the source of the malfunction. Fagin walked from monitor to monitor, for all the world like a factory-line foreman. He stopped at Hepton’s desk.

  ‘It seems Paul Vincent has been taken ill,’ he said, scribbling something on his clipboard.

  ‘Ill? Can I go see him?’

  ‘He’s not in the rest room. They’ve had to take him to hospital.’

  ‘Christ, that was a bit sudden.’

  ‘The doctor thinks it might be simple exhaustion.’

  Exhaustion. Paul was not only the youngest of the crew, he was the fittest too. Twice a day he jogged around the perimeter fence, a haul of two and a half miles. He was the only one of them who used the multigym. He had the stamina of an athlete. Hepton sat at the console, his mind whirling. The nearest hospital was twenty miles away. He had to go there.

  Fagin had walked away now and was examining another monitor. Hepton looked across to where Paul Vincent’s monitor sat untended, the chair pushed in beneath the desk with the finality of a coffin lid being nailed down. He shivered. There was something very odd about this whole thing. A curious mind had brought him into the world of astronomy and astronautics, and that same mind was now needling him to look a little further into things. And yes, he would.

  2

  He tasted smoke in his nostrils and felt blood gouge its way along the creases in his spacesuit. The vibration in the shuttle intensified still further, becoming more than a roller coaster. A roller coaster had once terrified him as a child, and he had determined never to be afraid of anything again in his whole life, a decision that was ending here and now with the most complete terror he had ever felt.

  Through the glass he caught a quick glimpse of the ground crew; already the fire engines were racing forwards, but too late. Sparks flew from the seared undercarriage, and a final all-encompassing ball of flame sent him veering towards pale darkness.

  But then suddenly Adams was at his side, his head bloodied, and Adams’ hands slid around his throat, growing tight, and all the time he was shouting:

  ‘You sonofabitch! You sonofabitch! I won’t forget! Not ever! The burial’s what matters! Coffin’s got to be buried!’

  It was all so unnecessary, Dreyfuss thought. We’re dying anyway; why don’t you let me die in peace? The tarmac below was churning like the sea, as unsteady as a fairground ride. Adams’ hands were still there. Blood pounded in Dreyfuss’ ears, tortured metal, the whine of the uncontrollable engines. How could it have happened? Total malfunction. Absolute and total, just as they were starting the descent. How could it have happened? It was typical of his life that he should die with a question unanswered in his mind.

  And then, finally, he b
lacked out.

  The emergency team were ready. They’d been ready since the first warning that something was wrong on the space shuttle Argos. Now they started to jet, engulfing white foam over the stricken craft, snuffing out flames until the whole thing looked like a children’s toy in a bubble bath. The crew had come from the ground station to watch. There had been six men on board: five Americans and one Briton. Most of them were praying that the Americans, at least, would still be alive. They didn’t really give much thought to the only Briton, Major Michael Dreyfuss. These days, it was strictly a case of looking after number one.

  The few small fires were quickly put out. Thankfully, the Argos had little fuel left in its tanks to burn. Nevertheless, the surface metal of the shuttle was too hot to touch, even with asbestos gloves. But they managed at last to wrench open the doors. Inside, they could smell smoke, singed rubber and something less pleasant still. They expected to find corpses, but the last thing anyone expected to find was five of them, one of which had its hands embedded in the neck of the single crew member left alive …

  3

  General Ben Esterhazy sat in the back of his chauffeur-driven limo and wondered why there was no bourbon left in the drinks cabinet. He hoped there’d be some at the airbase. Not that there was much left of the base. They were dismantling and moving, shipping the boys back to the States. Lousy damned country anyway. He’d spent a few years in Germany just after the war. People starving. A mother really would lie down and open her legs for a tin of beef and some powdered

  whatever.

  The country didn’t seem to have changed that much. But now Europe had forgotten all about World War Two, had gotten eyes bigger than its belly. All the talk now was of Europe, a Europe that saw no place for the US forces lined up in a thin defensive wall against the East.

  ‘Well, fuck them.’

  ‘Sorry, General?’ Esterhazy’s aide, Lieutenant Jerry Bosio, sitting in front beside the driver, had turned his head to catch the words.

  ‘Never mind,’ growled Esterhazy. He picked up a bottle of Glenfiddich whisky and poured himself an inch. Esterhazy had a jutting, aggressive face ending in a nose like that of Punch. He’d put on weight since they’d given him a desk job, but not much weight. His tits didn’t sag the way some middle-aged men’s did, and he could wrestle marines half his age.