Project Hades

by Stephen Baxter

1

Sunday 30th October, 1960. 2210.

Clare Baines parked her motorcycle outside the Reiver’s Arms and climbed off. She took off her helmet, replacing it with her police cap. The October night was pitch black, and a wind moaned off the moor.

When she opened the pub door she was dazzled by the bright light. Sweaty, smoky air spilled out, and a jangle of overamplified guitar music: Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. She braced herself and walked in.

A punter, brimming pint in hand, lurched towards her, one arm outstretched. “Watch your family jewels, lads, it’s the lady copper!”

Clare said, “Bonny lad, that wandering hand is going to get shoved so far up your jacksie you’ll be picking your teeth from the inside.”

The drunk backed off. “All right, lass, no offence.”

Winston Stubbins approached her, tall, gangly, earnest, wearing a duffel coat and boots. “Clare. I don’t suppose you fancy a Newkie Brown.”

“I’m on—”

“Duty. Yes, we can all see that.”

“I hope you’re not going to give me any trouble, Winston. You and this lot of boozed-up non-conformists. I’m just here to keep the peace.”

“Peace? That’s a bit ironic, isn’t it? Considering that tonight the largest atomic weapon ever tested in western Europe is going to blow up not a mile from this bloody pub.”

“According to our briefings it’s all perfectly safe.”

“Safe? Clare, the geology around here—”

“ ‘—shows signs of instability.’ ”

“So you did read my letters.”

“My sergeant made me. Look, Winston, what makes you think you know better than all the boffins?”

“I’m here. They’re not. Clare, it’s an American base out there. Americans don’t tell us anything.”

A tall, slim man in an American army uniform worked through the crowd towards them. “Did somebody page me? Good evening, Clare.”

“WPC Baines to you, Buck.”

Winston goggled. “Buck? Sergeant Grady, you’re actually called Buck?”

“And you’re actually called Winston. You limeys slay me. Clare told me about you. The old boyfriend with a bug up his ass.”

Clare said, “He was never my boyfriend. I’ve been trying to tell him the test is perfectly safe.”

“So it is, Winston. Aldmoor may be an American base, but Hades is a British programme, as designed and managed. The chain of command is intertwined right to the top.”

“Cobblers.”

Clare said, “Sorry, Buck. He has issues about Americans. His mother was a GI bride—”

“That’s got nothing to do with it,” Winston said hotly.

Buck said, “Look, Winston, I have a sort of public liaison role. That’s why I’m here in the pub—not for the beer, believe me. Here, take my card. Give me a call in the morning.”

“What good’s that? By the morning the bomb will have gone off, won’t it?”

Buck said, “Single-minded sort, isn’t he?”

Clare said, “No. Strong-willed. There’s a difference.”

Buck said, “Quite a crowd you’ve gathered here anyhow, Winston. Who are they—CND?”

“Some. They’re mostly locals. All with valid concerns about the test.”

“Well, there’s a couple more waiting out the door. See, Clare, the old guy in the dodgy coat and the posh young lady? They don’t look local to me. Reporters, you think?”

Clare said, “Oh, great, that’s all I need.”

Chapman Jones closed the doors of the Ministry car. Somewhere an owl hooted. The car pulled away, disappearing into the night. Jones shivered and closed his trenchcoat tighter. “So this is Aldmoor. And Halloween! Always an eerie time.”

Thelma Bennet peered through the pub window. “They all seem to be wearing black in there. Do you think it’s a funeral, Jones?”

“No, no. It’s just the fashion. No offence, Thelma, but this is your age group—a whole generation doomed to wear black polo-neck jumpers. Makes me rather glad I’ve passed fifty.”

“So they’re followers of fashion even here in Northumberland. I hope we’re not wasting our time.”

“Well, the anomaly report cluster was credible enough to have dragged us all the way up here from London—”

A military jet roared overhead, flying remarkably low, startling them; Jones glanced up to see its lights receding.

“Something to do with that, perhaps,” he said. “This is a militarised countryside—a cockpit of the Cold War, Thelma. No wonder people are a bit paranoid—”

And another noise fled through the air overhead, like a shriek, and again they flinched. Looking up, Jones saw an odd light sliding across the sky, misty, a roughly spherical cloud.

Thelma said, “Look, do you see that? A sort of glow.”

“Yes. It seems to be tracking the aircraft.”

“Something to do with the aircraft’s wake?”

“Hmm. I doubt it,” Jones said. “But what was it? Ball lightning—or some other plasma effect? It had a fairly definite shape, didn’t it?”

“Yes. And denser towards the centre. Layered, like an onion—”

“Or like an eye in the sky. How odd. Well, it’s just as the reports described. At least we know we’ve got something to get our teeth into. Come on, let’s go inside.”

A young policewoman met them at the door. Not tall, with her black hair neatly tied back, brisk, evidently competent, she smiled at them. “Good evening. Can I help you?”

“Well, that’s the first time the police have helped me into a pub as opposed to out of one.”

Thelma said, “Don’t be childish, Jones. Good evening. My name’s Thelma Bennet, and this is Doctor Chapman Jones. And you are—”

“WPC Baines, 534. Are you here for the protest?”

Jones said, “No, no. We’re here from the Ministry of Defence. Following up anomalous sightings.”

Baines grinned. “Sightings of what? Flying saucers?”

Jones sighed.

Thelma asked quickly, “What protest?

A gangly young man approached, trailed by a US army soldier. “Against the bomb test,” said the youngster. His accent, like the WPC’s, was thick and local—Geordie. He struck Jones as earnest, agitated.

“They call it Hades,” said the American. “An international programme of thermonuclear detonations planted deep underground.”

The boy said, “And the one they’re about to blow up here is in an abandoned mine shaft at a place called Lucifer’s Tomb. Appropriate name, isn’t it?”

“We haven’t been introduced,” said Thelma.

The tall soldier bowed. “Sergeant Buck Grady, US Army. And this is Winston, ah—”

“Winston Stubbins.”

Thelma introduced herself and Jones.

Buck smiled. “So, Doctor Jones, you came all the way to northern England, in October, because—?”

“Fishing to see if we’re here to cause you trouble, are you, Sergeant?”

Winston said, “What trouble? All these people have turned out because they don’t want a megabomb going off underneath their homes. The farmers’ ewes are already pregnant with next year’s lambs. And the miners are worried about safety down the pit.”

Buck’s grin widened. “Oh, Winston here thinks if we set off the bomb the planet will go pop like a party balloon. Right, Winston?”

Winston scowled. “The geology’s unstable. They don’t know what they’re doing.”

Jones said, “And you do? Are you a geologist, Winston?”

“He’s a coal miner,” Clare said. “And a geologist. Self-taught. Buck, you leave him alone.”

Jones said, “There’s nothing wrong with self-taught. I’m self-taught in most subjects myself. Tell me, Winston—how far to this Tomb of Lucifer?”

“A short walk, west of here.”

“And until the test?”

“The detonation’s scheduled for midnight,” Buck said.

Jones checked his watch. “Good, we’ve got time. Winston, why don’t you show me this instability of yours?”

“Are you serious? You’ll listen to what I have to say?”

“Never more serious in my life. We are specifically here to investigate the out-of-the-ordinary.”

Thelma said, “I think I’d rather stay in the warm, if you don’t mind, Jones.”

Buck said, “In that case I would be delighted to buy you a drink.”

“I was hoping somebody would say that.”

Buried deep beneath the huts, training fields and runways of Aldmoor base, the Project Hades command centre was, tonight, a noisy place. Overlaid on the hum of fans and pumps and the echoes from the steel walls were the bleeps of oscilloscopes, the clatter of teletypes and static-laden radio voices. Aged fifty-seven, in his worn tweeds, John Tremayne knew he looked quite out of place in this pit of humming military tension, the rows of consoles manned by very young, very intelligent soldiers. And yet all this activity was a fulfilment of his dream, his design.

Air Commodore Alfred Godwin had to lean close to the monitor to hear what was being relayed by the hidden cameras in the pub. Godwin was tall, stiff, his handsome face severe, his black hair slicked back; he was a little younger than Tremayne. He said, “The picture’s clear enough, at least. Look at that clown in the trenchcoat, coming out of the pub.”

Tremayne said, “They’re only protesters, Commodore Godwin. People have a right to be concerned, you know. And is it legal for you to be spying on a British pub?”

“This may be an American base, but I’m the senior RAF officer here, and under the NATO command structures I’m in overall control. To ensure the safety of this base I can do what I like, Tremayne.”

Joseph Crowne walked in, a clipboard under his arm. “The protesters won’t get far, Commodore Godwin.” A US army major aged around thirty, Crowne was Godwin’s key liaison to the American command.

Godwin said, “But your troops aren’t patrolling beyond the fence, are they, Major?”

“No, sir. But we have a regular British army unit manning an outer perimeter. And there’s a civil police presence too.”

“I’ve seen the ‘civil police presence.’ A slip of a girl! Well, I’ve spoken to the British detachment’s captain, Phillips he’s called, young chap but sound. He’ll handle it.”

Tremayne said, “ ‘Handle it?’ Godwin, I didn’t get into this business for anybody to get harmed. If those protesters can’t be removed without resorting to force—”

“Then what? Postponement tonight would set us back months. This is your baby, Tremayne. Project Hades will end the Cold War and deliver vast new capabilities into human hands. So you said! I’m just trying to get the job done.”

Crowne said, “I’m sure nobody will come to any harm, gentlemen.”

Godwin pointed at the monitor. “Maybe not. But Trenchcoat is heading straight for Lucifer’s Tomb—and the bomb.”

The moorland ground was rough underfoot, and Jones was glad of Winston’s torch. They were walking west, towards a glow of sodium lights that must mark the position of the Aldmoor base, but there was a cluster of floods in the foreground that Jones assumed was Lucifer’s Tomb.

Jones essayed, “PC Baines seems fond of you. She stuck up for you, back there.”

“Clare? We grew up together. She’s a bonny lass. But we’re on opposite sides now, aren’t we?”

“I wouldn’t say that. You’re both trying to stop any harm being done, as far as I can see. You’re just coming at it from different directions. Tell me about this ‘Lucifer’s Tomb.’ ”

“See the floodlights? The American implanted their bomb right inside the Tomb, in an old mineshaft. The Tomb itself is a deep-cut valley full of broken rocks. The local legend is that it’s where Lucifer fell from heaven.”

“Hmmph. Sounds more like an Ice Age relic to me.”

“Exactly. And the basement geology is a junction between Scottish basalts and Northumbrian sandstones.”

“You know your stuff. A place of great geological violence, then, where Scotland once crashed into England. But what makes you think it’s unstable?”

“Seismology. I’ve been taking traces for years.”

Jones looked at him. “Years? But you’re only—what, twenty?”

“Nineteen. Geology’s been a sort of hobby since I was first took down the mine by my uncle, at fourteen.”

“Not your father.”

“Never knew my father.”

“And where did you get a seismometer from?”

“I made it.”

“You made it?”

“It wasn’t hard. A piezoelectric crystal to pick up the vibrations, an old alarm clock mechanism to drive the drum. I use toilet roll for the recording paper. I made a few, trying to get them more sensitive, like. And I had a go at setting them up in a network.”

“All this in between shifts down the mine.”

“My mum thinks I’m tapped. I mean I haven’t even got any O-levels.” He glanced at Jones uncertainly. “Are you laughing at me, Doctor Jones?”

“On the contrary. I’m starting to think you’re a very remarkable young man indeed. But what about Lucifer’s Tomb?”

“I found patterns in the seismic traces. All centered on this spot, the Tomb. Something’s stirring. But I don’t know what.”

“But you do think it would be wise to find out before setting off a ruddy great bomb in the middle of it.”

“Spot on, Doctor Jones.”

They reached the valley and stepped into the light of the floods—and a torch, even brighter, glared in their faces. “Halt!”

Jones shielded his eyes with a raised hand. “Who are you? Could you please get that light out of my eyes? And why is that squaddie pointing a gun at me?”

“I think you could probably risk putting aside the automatic, Sergeant. Sorry about that, sir. I’m Captain Robert Phillips, Coldstream Guards. The question is, who are you?”

In the Reiver’s Arms, the protesters were getting more raucous than ever.

Buck grinned. “Looks as if everybody’s oiled enough to get moving.”

Clare said, “So now we all walk to the base and sing ‘Blaydon Races’ to an H-Bomb.”

Thelma smiled. “I’m sure you’ll cope, PC Baines. Can I walk with you?”

“Please. It’ll be a pleasure not to have beery breath in my face and a miner’s big fat grubby hand on my bum.”

Once they had left the pub and were out in the unseasonably cold autumn air, the group calmed down, pulled on coats and hats, and formed up into a loose column. Their talk became a murmur as they began their walk, their breath steaming in the cool air.

Out on the moor, Jones could hear a tannoy sounding from the base’s distant cluster of lights.

Winston stirred, anxious. “It’s nearly time for the test. We need to—”

Captain Phillips blocked his way. “Thus far and no further, I’m afraid, gentlemen…” He looked up, distracted.

There was a wail, like the wind in the telegraph wires, and a shape like a human eye sketched in pale mist hovered overhead.

Winston breathed, “Doctor Jones. Can you see that?”

“I can indeed. I saw this before, you know. And heard it too. It seems to be hovering over the valley, doesn’t it? This is why I’m here, in fact. We had a cluster of reports of such things.” From members of the public—not specialists or cranks, ordinary folk, often reluctant and feeling foolish, describing strange visions to police stations or local papers because they thought it was their duty, reports then filtered through to Jones’s desk in Whitehall, to be plotted and correlated. “Can’t you see it too, Captain Bob?”

“Marsh gas, probably.”

Jones snorted. “You’ve been well coached in the official denials!”

Winston said, “You say you saw it before, Doctor Jones. When, exactly?”

“Soon after we arrived.” He glanced at his watch; midnight was approaching. “Ninety minutes ago, give or take?”

“I knew it.”

“You did? Don’t tell me. You’ve been monitoring these things too.”

“Lots of local legends about them. People call them Grendels.”

“Ah. Beowulf’s monster.”

“But the name’s older than the poem. These things have been seen for centuries. And when they show, there’s a definite period to them.”

“Is there, by Jove? And you found it. But why ninety minutes?”

Phillips said unexpectedly, “Spaceships.”

“What was that, Captain Bob?”

Phillips was no more than thirty, tall, languid, with an unwise handlebar moustache. Now he seemed to regret speaking at all. “It’s just that I’m something of a space buff. Sputnik and so forth. We used to eat up Dan Dare and Quatermass after lights-out at Cambridge—”

“Oh, good grief.”

“Anyway it’s the first thing that popped into my head when you said ninety minutes. Isn’t that how long it takes to orbit the Earth?”

“Quite right. That could be quite an insight.”

Winston said, “But what does it mean?”

“I don’t know—yet. But in the meantime I think you’re right, Winston Stubbins. Whatever’s going on here, this is a very foolish place to set off a thermonuclear weapon.”

Phillips said, “And talk like that will get you into trouble, Doctor Jones. I rather think it would be best if you went back the way you came, don’t you?”

But Jones could hear voices. He turned to see a crowd approaching, torch beams piercing the misty air.

Winston grinned. “Too late for that, Captain.”

The shouts of the protesters were tinny in the command centre’s speakers.

Godwin asked, “How’s the countdown proceeding, Tremayne?”

“Perfectly well, Commodore Godwin. But I do find myself somewhat distracted by what’s going on outside.”

“I’m sure the British authorities will be able to contain any incidents.”

“But that’s not the point, is it? It’s all very well for us. If anything were to go wrong with the test, we’d be fine. Whereas they—”

Godwin said, “They are not going to stand in the way of the test. After all—let me remind you, Tremayne, that our whole purpose here is to protect this rabble.”

“Rabble? Even if it means killing a few of them to do it?” Tremayne stood, pushing back his chair.

“What are you doing?”

“Maybe if I can make them see the value of the project, they’ll disperse peacefully.” He walked away. “Do what you have to do.”

“Kind of wilful, your prof,” he heard Crowne say.

“Boffins! Utopian fools, all of them. The sooner they’re all replaced by computers the better off we’ll be. Oh, let him out. But continue the countdown.”

“All right. But I think I’d better go after him…”

Out on the moor things seemed to be coming to a head, Jones thought. In the dark the shifting lights were confusing, but over the crowd’s murmur he heard the flap of a helicopter somewhere overhead—and, he thought, that distant tannoy voice counting down: “Ten minutes.”

Thelma found him, trailed by Clare Baines and Buck Grady. “Ah, Thelma. Run out of Babycham, did they?”

“Jones. I should have known I’d find you under arrest.”

“Not yet, Thelma, not yet. But the night is young.”

Clare said, “And you, Winston. I hope he hasn’t been giving you any trouble, Captain Phillips.”

Winston said, “So you all know each other. How cosy.”

“We just work together to keep the peace, that’s all,” Clare said. “And, cosy or not, this is as far as your boy’s-brigade protest march goes.”

Thelma asked, “Jones? What now?”

“Winston here has done a cracking job, but we need to know what’s really going on here—aboveground and below. And we certainly need to stop that wretched bomb going off, if we can.”

“And how do you propose to do that?”

“By going into that base and throwing my weight around.”

Phillips said, “Sir, I must warn you that if you step over the perimeter you’d be liable for arrest for trespassing on MOD property.”

“Trespassing! With an immense thermonuclear egg about to crack under our feet? Oh, isn’t that wonderfully British? And besides, I am the MOD.”

Buck said, “Yeah, well, if you get as far as that fence over there you’ll come up against the US army and you’ll get your ass shot off. And that won’t be so British, will it?”

Winston grinned. “Never mind him, Doctor Jones. You’re not alone. Haway the lads!” His rabble-rousing was rewarded by a ragged cheer, and the crowd behind him began to march towards the lights of the base.

Phillips said, “Well, that’s torn it. Oh, do put that automatic away, Sergeant, you wave it around like a magic wand. Look—tell the men to fall back to fifty yards from the fence and establish a perimeter. And you, PC Baines, I suggest you call for a bit of back-up. Right, you lot. Move!”

Crowne stood with Tremayne just outside the base fence. The crowd noise competed with the helicopter passes, and the tinny bellow of the tannoy. “Professor Tremayne, are you sure about this?”

“Major, a civilised society can only organise its affairs through reason and dialogue.”

“Okay, Professor, if you say so. Look, I want to leave all this to the British authorities if I can. But the first sign of trouble and my boys wade in. Is that clear, sir?”

“Perfectly, Major Crowne.”

“Here they come. And who the heck is this?”

Jones marched up to the fence boldly; he had never believed in timidity. “Who’s in charge here?”

An older man in civilian clothes stepped forward. “That’s an interesting question, philosophically.”

“Philosophically, eh? I’m Doctor Chapman Jones. And you are?”

“Professor John Tremayne. Attached to Advanced Concepts, Ministry of Defence.”

Thelma walked up. “Professor, we’re Ministry of Defence too—from Defence Secretariat 8.”

Tremayne stared. “DS8? Not the saucer-chasers!”

Jones, irritated, tried to be stern. “Is this your project, Tremayne, this great bomb in the Earth?”

“Project Hades was my conception, yes.”

“Then you have to stop it, man, if you still can.”

“May I ask why?”

“Because the geology here may be unstable in some way. There’s a focus of seismic activity right under our feet.”

“You have evidence for this, I suppose.”

“Winston! Come here.”

Winston trotted up, grinning, excited.

Tremayne asked, “And you are?”

“Winston Stubbins, sir.”

“Oh, I don’t care about your name, boy. What’s your affiliation? Cambridge, London, the Geophysical Survey?”

Jones said, “His affiliation is with me. He’s an independent scientist, and potentially a fine one, if I’m any judge. And he has strong evidence that—”

“Show me this evidence,” Tremayne snapped.

Winston said, “It’s at home. I have this trunk where I keep the toilet rolls.”

“Toilet rolls? Is this some kind of joke?

A wavering wail cut the air, and a shifting light fled overhead.

Thelma cried, “Another one! What are those things?”

Jones said, “Professor—look up at what’s buzzing your base! Have you any idea what that is?”

“Do you?”

“Well, no. Not yet. But I’m not the one about to let off a bomb, am I?”

“Oh, this is stuff and nonsense. Jabbering about seismic foci from a boy who’s probably been reading too much science fiction. And visions in the sky from you!”

Jones said, exasperated, “All right. But at least just wait a bit until we can find out more.”

“I’m afraid progress has its own timetable, Jones.”

“And will you risk all these people’s lives for the sake of that timetable? Ah, that got through to you, didn’t it? I can see you have a conscience, Tremayne. Men like you always do, oddly. Scientists who go to war: Archimedes, Leonardo, Oppenheimer. I’ve studied them, and the dilemma’s always the same.”

“I won’t stop the countdown, sir. I can see I’m wasting my time.” Tremayne, looking oddly disappointed, turned and walked back towards the open gate in the fence.

Winston was agitated and unhappy. The people who had marched up behind him were growing restless, their vague drunkenness turning sour. The squaddies hefted their weapons uncertainly.

“One minute commit point approaching. One minute go no-go. Committed. Committed—”

Jones checked his watch. “One minute to midnight! How appropriate that the Devil’s coffin should be blown open at the stroke of Halloween.”

Thelma said, “So what do we do, Jones?”

“We need more information. Where’s the nearest university library?”

“Newcastle, I imagine. Why?”

“Get over there. Take Winston. Dig up all you can. Seismic traces and the like. Winston has his own records going back several years—fetch those too. And anecdotes, folklore about these Grendels. Anything you can find.”

“And how exactly are we supposed to get into Newcastle at this time of night?”

Winston grinned. “I can think of a way.”

“My best bet is that if that wretched bomb goes off we’ll have ninety minutes of grace before—whatever it is—responds. If you can report back before then—”

Thelma murmured, “A full research project in ninety minutes, eh? And what are you going to do, Jones?”

“See what I can learn about what’s going on here. Which means, I’m afraid, getting into that wretched base.”

“Now, Jones—”

“Go, go, shoo!” And he ducked into the shadows and ran towards the fence, chasing after Tremayne.

He heard Clare Baines calling after him. “Doctor Jones! Doctor Jones!” She came running, moving rather more rapidly than he was.

“Tremayne! Surely it still isn’t too late to stop all this!”

“Zero.”

The explosion was like a door slamming deep in the Earth.

2

Monday 31st October. 0012.

Jones, with Clare Baines, was hurried in through the gate and past the surface buildings of the sprawling base—Jones thought he recognised a softball field—and then taken down a flight of steps into an underground facility, a steel cave that echoed with shouts and sirens, and a deeper mechanical groan, the aftershock of the detonation. It was pretty obviously a nuclear bunker, Jones thought. They were led down corridors and pushed at last into a blank-walled holding room. Buck Grady took up a position by the open door, his hand resting on his holstered revolver.

Jones sighed. “Well, this is turning out to be a jolly Halloween night. Anyone got a pumpkin?”

Grady said, “Don’t push your luck, Jones.”

A senior Air Force officer approached—a commodore, Jones recognised—accompanied by the tweedy figure of Tremayne, and an American officer.

“Ah, Tremayne!” Jones called. “So who’s this chap with the fruit salad all over his chest?”

“That is Air Commodore Godwin, who’s in command here, and you’d better rein in those jokes of yours, Jones.”

The American said, “And my name’s Joseph Crowne, Major, US Army. Senior American officer here. And you are, sir?”

Clare said, “This is Doctor Chapman Jones—”

“Of Defence Secretariat 8, Ministry of Defence.”

Godwin said, “And what are you doing here?”

“I’m going to find out exactly what you’re up to here, Commodore Godwin,” Jones said. “And, if necessary, put a stop to it.”

Tremayne bristled. “By what authority?”

And Godwin said calmly, “Sergeant Grady. Draw your weapon.”

Buck hesitated. “Sir, his credentials do check out.”

“Just do it, soldier.”

Buck glanced at Crowne.

“Do as he says, Sergeant.” Buck took his revolver from a holster.

Clare said, “Commodore Godwin. That’s not necessary. I’m a police officer. This man is in my custody.”

“I’ll tell you why it’s necessary. Here we have a man who has just declared his specific intent to disrupt the operations of my base.”

“And I am a copper who sees a gun being drawn.”

“Little girl, you are out of your depth. Stand aside now or share his fate.”

Jones said, “You don’t need to do this, Clare.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Clare stood her ground.

Godwin snapped, “Then take them both down to a holding cell.”

Again Buck hesitated. Crowne said, “It’s all right, Sergeant, do as he says.”

“I’m sorry, Doctor Jones, Clare,” Buck said. “Let’s go.”

Jones called over his shoulder, “I can see we’re going to have some interesting chats, you and I, Commodore!”

Tremayne was saying, “You’ve exceeded your authority, Commodore. I’m going to report this to my own superiors at the ministry.”

“Do what you like. I’ve got work to do.”

Thelma Bennet had never ridden a motorbike in her life. As they plummeted along a darkened road she clung to Winston’s back like a child to its mother.

Winston called over his shoulder, “Fifteen minutes to Newcastle. You all right back there, Thelma?

“Not really! How come you learned to handle a police motorcycle?”

“Clare’s given me a few joy rides. Mind you, she’ll kill me for pinching this.”

“You are close, you two, aren’t you?”

“Oh, she’s much too good for me.”

“Don’t ever think that. And did Clare teach you how to hot-wire it too?”

“Not exactly.”

“You’re a complicated person, Winston.”

“It’s life that’s complicated. Woah!”

The bike swerved drastically, avoiding an oncoming truck by inches, and Thelma gasped.

“Sorry.”

“Where are we going first?”

“Home. Gateshead, over the Tyne. I’ve got some toilet rolls to pick up. And you can meet my mum.”

Outside the base, there was little disorder. But the protesters had not dispersed, Phillips saw; gradually sobering up, they gathered in little knots, blowing on their hands.

Buck Grady approached, drawing on a cigarette.

“Ah, Sergeant Grady.”

“Sir. Everything under control out here?”

“After a fashion. Listen, I couldn’t scrounge a ciggie, could I?” Phillips took a cigarette from Buck’s pack, found a match, and lit up. “Ah, that’s good. Gave all mine away to pacify the locals. Just farmers, mostly, fuelled by the local witches’ brew. But they’ve a right to be concerned, haven’t they, Sergeant? It’s the sense of powerlessness, you see. Even though the project is under nominal British control.”

“Not everybody welcomes us Yanks over here.”

“Yes, well, I remember enough of Hitler’s war not to share that view. There is one thing, Sergeant. Those two civilians in there.”

Buck said, “I’ll make sure they come to no harm.”

“Well, that’s good of you. Good night, Sergeant.”

“Yeah. Let’s hope the rest of it is as peaceful as this.”

Jones paced, footsteps echoing. He and Clare were in a prison cell. There was no other word for it. “A neat aluminium cube. A very space-age prison. But the lock in that door wouldn’t have stopped Charlie Peace, I shouldn’t think.”

“You’re under arrest, you know. Try anything like that and I’ll cuff you.”

“You would, too, wouldn’t you? Look, I’m sorry about this, Constable Clare. You don’t deserve this. At least they ought to give you your own slopping-out bucket.”

“Try to relax. And stop pacing.”

“I’m all too aware of time draining away for that.”

A key rattled in the lock. Tremayne entered. The door was slammed shut behind him and locked.

“Ah, what’s this, room service?

“You know, you’re not as funny as you think you are, Jones. But I must apologise—especially to you, Constable. You were absolutely in the right to make your stand.” He sat on the edge of one of the room’s two bunks. “But you don’t understand what’s at stake here, Jones.”

Jones said, “And is it important that I do understand?”

“I don’t know, frankly. I don’t know what you’re doing here.”

“The man from the Ministry’s UFO desk, you mean?”

“Well, quite. I don’t understand how a man of science like you can be involved with such flim-flam.”

“I do regard myself as a man of science, regardless of my murky occupation.” He glanced at Clare, who clearly knew less than Tremayne did. “Yes, Defence Secretariat 8 is best known as the military’s front desk for UFO reports—which of course is how we came to hear of the present odd business. I’m a sort of consultant, but Miss Bennet is a career civil servant, you know, and I would prefer it if you showed her the appropriate respect, by the way, Tremayne; she was seconded to DS8, which you can imagine is something of a blot on your curriculum vitae—and yet, drawn by the lure of the truth, she is working hard.

“You say this is all flim-flam. But observations of anomalies outside the normal realm have a pedigree that long predates science itself—as I’m sure you know. There are what we might call UFO reports in the Bible—read Ezekiel, chapter one! This area itself has its own pedigree. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles noted sightings of ‘fiery dragons’ as far back as the eighth century—the activities of our ‘Grendels’ all those years ago, do you think?

“Even the great minds who founded the Royal Society in 1660, an institution devoted to ‘experimental philosophy,’ set up a secretive Section to deal with what they called paradoxes. You may not understand a thing, but at least you can list it. Consider Linnaeus, the father of modern biological taxonomy—all that business of kingdoms, classes, orders, genera, and species. Well, when he carved up the natural world he added an extra class, called the Paradoxa, for all those elusive creatures he couldn’t prove didn’t exist, such as unicorns, dragons, phoenixes, and satyrs—and pelicans! That was the spirit. Though he was wrong about the pelicans.

“Of course the priority now is national security. So DS8 has quietly tapped into the Royal Society’s archive, and other sources. But this is all hush-hush, for the view is that if a minister were ever to admit to the existence of UFOs or other spooky phenomena, the government would fall sharpish.”

“Hmm. And it is ‘spooky phenomena’ that has drawn you to Aldmoor, is it?”

“Yes. Specifically what Winston Stubbins calls ‘Grendels.’ But I have a sense that it’s no coincidence I’ve stumbled across this Project Hades of yours. Perhaps you’d better tell me about it, Tremayne.”

“A new generation of thermonuclear weapons,” Tremayne said simply. “More powerful, more compact—and cleaner. They are currently under test in underground facilities all around the free world.”

“Yet more bombs and bigger than ever? To what end?”

“First I want to demonstrate the utter horror of these weapons. The bigger the bang the better for that. But I also want to show the weapons’ potential for good. Have you heard of a man called Edward Teller?”

“Ah. Project Ploughshare?”

Clare said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Using atomic bombs for engineering purposes, Clare. You could blast out new canals. Blow oil reserves out of the ground. That the sort of thing you have in mind, Tremayne?”

“Geographical engineering, we call it. You could even ride into space, hurled to the planets by atomic fire. Men are fools who must be shown the destruction they are risking—and the power for good of the technology in their hands.”

“Oh, you’re the fool, Tremayne. Project Ploughshare is nothing but a grab for power and money by a cynical cabal of politicians and technologists. You’ve been seduced. And are you quite sure everybody down here shares your radioactive vision? Godwin, for instance?”

Tremayne stood. “I’m disappointed, Jones. Given your own exotic calling, is your mind really so closed? I can see I’m wasting my time. Guard!”

Once they were locked in and alone once more, Clare sighed. “Well, that went well.”

“Yes. He’s easily offended, isn’t he? We didn’t even get a cup of tea.”

“Now what?”

“Well, there’s no use sitting here. You and I need to have a serious chat, Constable Clare…”

Winston’s home was a nondescript city terrace. Winston unlocked the door. “Mum? It’s only me. I’ve got a visitor.”

A woman came downstairs, overweight, limping, in a faded print dress and worn slippers. She was no more than forty-five or fifty. “What time of night do you call this? And who’s this? Not your probation officer again.”

“Oh, Mum. This is Thelma Bennet. She’s a friend. We’re here on business.”

“Oh, aye. Nice to meet you, Thelma.”

“And you, Mrs. Stubbins.”

“Call me Hope. I bet you’re gagging for a cuppa. I’ll get the kettle on.”

“Can you manage?”

“I’m all right on me stick, love.” She went down the short corridor to the kitchen, leaning heavily on a metal Health Service walking stick.

Winston ran upstairs. “Mum, where’s my rucksack?”

“Where you put it. What do you want that for?”

“My toilet rolls.”

Hope sighed. “Him and his bog rolls. Once I went and used one. He raised the roof. And it left ink smudges on me bum cheeks.”

Thelma said, “He’s a remarkable boy.”

“Ay, he’s a good lad. Had a rough time of it. He never knew his father. Mind you, I only just did, if yer kna what I mean! A GI broke my heart for the price of a pair of silk stockings. Wouldn’t mind, but they were laddered. Never saw the bleeder again.”

“Oh, dear.”

“I had a funny old war, me. Lost me heart to the Americans and me left leg to the Germans, but gained a son. I had to fight to keep him from being taken off me for adoption, mind.”

Winston came clattering downstairs. “Right, got it. Sorry about Mum. She always tells my whole life story to whoever comes in the door. Do you mind wearing the rucksack, Thelma? Ta ta, Mum.” He kissed her on the cheek.

“What, you’re off? What about your tea? I’ve got some nice gateau.”

Thelma said, “I am sorry, Mrs. Stubbins. We are a bit short of time.”

Winston had already kick-started the motorbike. Thelma hurried to climb aboard.

Jones sat on a bunk, leaning against the cold, hard metal wall. “I was impressed by the way you stuck up for Winston when Buck Grady was teasing him. Then you tried to protect me, when Godwin’s toy soldiers waved their guns around.”

“It was the right thing to do.”

“But not everybody would have done it. Why did you become a police officer, Clare?”

“I was a prefect at school. I used to break up fights instead of start them. I always hated seeing harm done to people. And I hate seeing messes.”

“Messes?”

“Chaos. Things breaking down. That’s what crime is, isn’t it? Society breaking down, even just a little bit. I like putting things back together again.”

“Good for you.”

“You’re buttering me up.”

“Well, so I am. Look, Clare, you made one significant choice when you stood by me. Now I have to ask you to make another choice.”

“What choice?”

“You’ve seen how things are fixed here. Tremayne’s atomic landscape-gardening scheme is loony enough. But unfortunately it’s in the hands of Commodore Godwin, who, on first impression, I am finding difficult to trust.”

“I know what you mean.”

“And on top of that we have the peculiar danger Winston has highlighted. Something stirring in the Earth.”

“You’re asking me to help you break out of here, aren’t you?”

“I badly need to find out what’s going on here—and quickly.”

“You’re under arrest, you know.”

“Goes without saying. How long do you think it would take you to get through that door?

She grinned, drew something from her pocket, reached to the lock, and there was a click. “Not long.”

“Lead the way, Constable Clare!”

The university campus was deserted, a place of blocky buildings and long shadows. Thelma checked her watch: one a.m.

Winston said, “I think this is the library.” He wrapped his scarf around his fist and smashed a ground floor window.

“Winston!”

“Do you mind climbing in through the window?”

“I’ve done worse.”

He knocked out more glass, and they helped each other through. Winston said, “We need to find the geology section.”

Thelma looked around for signs. “Natural sciences—this way.” Their footsteps echoed on the polished wooden floor. “Now tell me where you learned to open windows like that.”

“Ay, well, my mum hasn’t always been proud of me.”

“I imagine you got picked on at school, not having a father around.”

“Ay. But I wasn’t the only one. My problem was I got bored.”

“Bored?”

“Always asked too many questions. Got put down in the bottom stream. Then I got expelled altogether. I got in with some bad lads. Ended up in borstal for a bit.”

“Oh, Winston.”

“I was too bright to let myself get put back in there. But I learned a canny few tricks inside. Now I work down the mines. I just switch me head off when I’m down there.”

“I don’t think the system has served you very well.”

“I’m not complaining. You make your own luck. Over here—geology.”

“All right. You get started here. I’ll see what I can dig up on the sightings around Lucifer’s Tomb. Professionally, I used to be a historian. I’ll be more use doing that. We’ve got half an hour before the next ninety minutes is up. We won’t make it back to the base, but we should at least call in before then.” She walked off, searching. “Mythology, mythology…”

Jones and Clare crept along steel-walled corridors, peering through windows and open doors. The bunker was filled with the sound of laughter, cartoonish music, and the click of pool balls.

Clare said, “I don’t believe it, Doctor Jones. They’ve actually got a cinema down here. It’s like a bit of America.”

“Who’d have thought it, eh? Well, I think we’re getting an impression of the layout of this bunker. Living quarters, stores, and facilities to the west. The central block is command, control, communications. Then there’s the tunnel to the east that seems to link to the old mine shafts under Lucifer’s Tomb.”

“Where they placed the bomb.”

“Quite. I imagine there’s a whole series of tunnels out to various sites… What I’m really interested in finding is their records. Tape reels and punched cards. Which I would imagine would be underneath the command centre, in their main computer room… This way, I should think.”

“I just can’t get over how big this place is. I mean, I’m a copper and I knew nothing about all this. Even the wire fence isn’t on the maps.”

“I’m afraid in this post-war world, Britain is neither as sovereign nor as free as its citizens would like to believe. Ah, now what’s down here?” He had found a hatch in the floor. He used a coin, a threepenny bit, to twist back a couple of bolts and lifted it to reveal metal stairs down to a brightly lit chamber. He led the way down.

Clare, following, said, “Crikey, it’s cold down here. Like a meat locker.”

“The computer centre. All atmospherically controlled. Look at all these great blocks, like Stonehenge monoliths.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Seismic records. And they’ll be in these tape cabinets. Come on, you start that end and I’ll start this.”

Thelma, her arms laden with books, found Winston working in a puddle of light at a table.

He looked up. “Wow, what a pile.”

She dropped the books on his table. “I wish I’d taken up your mother’s offer of a cup of tea. How are you getting on?”

“It’s brilliant, Thelma. I’ve never been let loose in a place like this. Full of books and learning. I’m like a pig in muck.”

She sat down. “You know, I had very few students with your promise.”

“You were a teacher?”

“I researched history at university. Oxford. Teaching was part of the job.”

“Do you live down there, Oxford?”

“Used to. I gave it all up to work with Doctor Jones. It was a rather unusual challenge. I don’t mind about the research. But the students—yes, I miss the students. Working with you is bringing it all back. Now come on, we’d better crack on. How do you work these little desk lights?”

In the computer centre, Jones pulled out wire-framed reading glasses and peered into a screen. “I knew it. I just knew it. Look at this, Clare.”

“Doctor Jones, I think you should see this—”

“No, no, whatever it is can wait. Look at that magnificent periodicity!”

Clare walked over. “All right, you win. What am I supposed to be looking at?”

“This! Can’t you see? It’s all quite clear. Look at the frequency spikes! There, do you see, and there?”

“Just tell me what it means.”

“The scientists here have been monitoring the Earth hereabouts—recording seismic echoes.”

“Just as Winston does.”

“Quite. And just as he has found anomalies, so have they. Here they are in their own records. But they haven’t recognised them for what they are.”

“What anomalies?”

“For a start, Winston’s right about that ninety-minute pulsing. See, here and here and here—the same pattern recurring, ninety minutes apart. Something really is orbiting through the basement rocks.”

“Orbiting?”

“But there is a deeper periodicity. See this peak here, here, and here?”

Clare counted the peaks. “If each of these is ninety minutes—that’s about a day.”

“Well done, Constable Clare. But it isn’t quite a day, and that’s significant. What do you know about the structure of the Earth?”

“It’s round.”

“Hmm. I suppose that’s a start. Look, Clare, Earth is a ball of rock—molten most of the way down—magma. The solid crust is only a shell, like the skin of an apple.”

“An apple?”

“Yes—with a worm at its centre! The Earth’s core is a ball of iron the size of the Moon. Like a planet within a planet. And it turns with its own ‘day.’ ”

“And the seismometers pick up these signals in line with the core day?”

“Precisely. Every core day, something comes swimming up from the heart of the Earth—and it noses around here. Almost curiously. Giving off seismic signals as it does so.”

“You make it sound alive. What can swim through rock?”

“Hmm? Oh, something made from denser rock, of course. The point is that these visitors from the abyss began coming here as soon as this base was dug out.”

“Do you know what these things are?”

“I have a very good idea, yes.”

“And now that the bomb has gone off—what will they do?”

“I suspect we’ll find out at the end of the current ninety-minute cycle.” He glanced at his watch. “In less than thirty minutes from now. What was it you wanted to show me?”

“I found something under the carpet. Another hatch.”

“A hidden hatch! Curiouser and curiouser!”

For Tremayne the galley point, with its small electric kettle, tea caddy, and unwashed army mugs, was a mercifully human island within Godwin’s command centre.

Godwin paced. “No, we haven’t found Jones and Baines, if you want to know.”

Tremayne sipped his tea. “Oh dear. Poor old Commodore.”

“It’s no joke, Tremayne.”

“Oh, have a cup and calm down. We’ve had a good night, haven’t we? The bomb test went well; we gathered good data. I’m actually thinking of taking forty winks.”

Godwin said, “The night isn’t over while those two are roaming around like rats.”

“Rats? Odd word to use about your fellow countrymen. You did grow up around here, didn’t you?”

Godwin glared at him. “What if I did?”

“There’s not a trace of it in your accent. I’ve been looking you up, Godwin.”

“Why?”

“Because we must work together. I’m notoriously incurious about people, you know. I focus on the job in hand. But you—well, you aren’t turning out to be the sort of chap I expected.”

“And what sort of ‘chap’ am I?”

“Grammar school boy, redbrick college, then the Air Force.”

Godwin sneered. “All very different for you, I imagine. What was it—Harrow and Oxford?”

“Winchester and Cambridge, actually, but that’s the idea. Never in the forces myself. Worked on radar research during the last lot.”

“What an easy ride you’ve had.”

“Hmmph. If you think a short-sighted, brainy kid has an easy ride at any English public school, you’re wrong. But is that what you’re all about, Godwin? Envy? Do you resent being posted up here to this backwater—especially as you’ve been sent home? You were quite high up in the War Office, weren’t you, before Suez? When I mention your name it’s that debacle that people talk of first.”

“Some of us call it a betrayal.”

“Ah, yes, our last imperial adventure, debagged when the Yanks wouldn’t back us. I suppose you quite enjoy lording it over a base full of Americans now, do you?”

“This is absurd. I’ve work to do.”

“You should talk more, Godwin. Then you wouldn’t explode as you do. Calm, calm, bang… calm, calm, bang. I’ve seen it in you, you know.”

Godwin walked away stiffly. “Call me if there are any developments.”

“Calm, calm, bang!”

Thelma closed her book. “I think that’s enough. Oh, my eyes. Well, I’ve found records of ghostly apparitions over Lucifer’s Tomb going back twelve hundred years, to Saxon times. What about you?”

Winston riffled through a heap of paper. “I’ve been cutting out the seismic records from these bound volumes. We can’t carry the whole books back. I feel like a vandal. But look at all the detail in these signals!”

“They almost look like speech traces.”

“Yes. There’s information in there. But it’s got more intense in the last few years.”

“While the Americans have been building the base.”

“Looks like it. What do you think it all means?”

Thelma said, “I don’t know. I hope Doctor Jones will be able to figure it out. Time’s nearly up anyhow. We’d better call him.”

The room shuddered, a deep rumble. Thelma heard windows crack, and books fell from the shelves.

Winston was wide-eyed. “I wasn’t expecting that—not here.”

“We’d better get out of here. Come on, let’s get packed up.”

The room hidden under the computer room was another metal-walled box, as brightly lit as those above, and cluttered with equipment.

Clare pointed. “Look at these pipes, Doctor Jones. And these cables.”

“Yes. It’s clearly tapping off the base’s circulation system, air, water. And the cables must hack into the computer suite. You could hide down here and take the place over, and nobody would know about it—until too late. A secret control centre. How predictable. How depressing.”

“Take the place over to do what?”

“Well, I’m not sure about that, Clare, not yet. But the fact that this is a nuclear base, and we have these rows of control consoles and that immense wall map of the world—these things do not fill me with a warm and fuzzy glow.” He glanced at his watch. “We’ve got ten minutes left of the ninety. Now listen to me, Clare. Just in case I don’t make it out of here.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“There are a lot of nervous people running around with guns, and anything could happen. I want you to remember a few things. Tell Winston he was right about the ninety-minute orbits—and all the rest, in fact. Maybe he’ll be able to get through to Tremayne. And tell Thelma one word. ‘Magmoids.’ ”

“What does that mean?”

“Thelma won’t know either. But she might, conceivably, be able to find out through DS8’s resources.”

“I don’t know what you’re on about. And you’re not dead yet. What now?”

“I don’t think we’ve got any choice.” He found an intercom microphone on a console, snapped a switch, and leaned forward. “Hello, hello? We surrender! Got that, Godwin? Come and find us. We need to talk!”

The next tremor came as Thelma and Winston, on the police motorbike, fled down a city street. Smashed glass and broken bricks rained around them.

Winston said, “Look at that, it’s stove in Fenwick’s shop window. There’ll be hell to pay for that. You all right?”

“This rucksack’s pulling my shoulders off. Look, don’t worry about me, just look for a phone. We have to talk to Jones.”

“There’s one down this alley, I think—”

“Look out!”

An avalanche of bricks and glass spilled over the road before them.

Buck Grady marched Jones and Clare into the Hades command centre. Godwin waited with Tremayne at his side. Major Crowne hovered in the background, looking as uncertain as ever. Jones tried to conceal his own nervousness.

Godwin snapped, “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t have your heads blown off right now.”

Crowne stepped forward. “Take it easy, sir.”

Jones said, “Yes, Commodore—take a deep breath and tell us all why you’ve installed some kind of secret control centre beneath the computer room!”

Tremayne said, “ ‘Secret control centre?’ What on Earth—”

“Why doesn’t it surprise me that you don’t know anything about it, Professor? I fear your wonderful dreams of ‘geographical engineering’ are in danger of being hijacked.”

Buck was watching the monitors, green traces flickering across cathode ray screens. “Sir. Major Crowne. Look at this. Seismic signals up all over the place.”

Tremayne pushed forward. “Let me see that. He’s right, by God.”

Godwin said, “Aftershocks from the detonation, that’s all.”

“Oh, don’t be absurd, man. Look here, and here. The timing’s all over the shop. This has nothing to do with aftershocks. It’s some different phenomenon entirely.”

“I told you to expect this,” Jones said. “We’ve had ninety minutes’ grace since your irresponsible nuclear detonation. Ninety minutes, granted us by orbital mechanics.”

Tremayne said, “Orbital mechanics? What are you talking about, man?”

“There’s something inside the Earth, Tremayne. Not just rock and iron—something more. Something alive. It was sleeping. Now you’ve woken it up. And it’s about to rise up—”

Without warning Godwin punched him in the mouth. Jones staggered back, the pain exploding.

Crowne cried, “Commodore Godwin!”

Tremayne said, “Calm, calm, bang, eh, Godwin?”

Jones gasped for breath, trembling, and he looked at the blood on his hand. “Well, Cassius Clay would have won the gold medal twice over with that one. Is that your only response, Commodore? Violence?”

Tremayne said, “But what would you have us do, Jones?”

“I’d evacuate the base, for a start—”

Godwin snapped, “This base stays manned if I have to lock the doors myself. All this is an irrelevance. The project is everything. And the project will continue.”

“Yes, but what project? Whose project?”

Buck said now, “Umm, actually—look at this. The seismic signals are dying away. Things are calming down.”

Godwin said, “Well, well. So much for your prophecies of doom, Jones?”

“That’s absurd. Let me see that. Oh, get your hands off me, Sergeant! Tremayne? What do you make of this?” He waved a heap of paper, summarising the seismic results he’d retrieved below.

Tremayne flicked through the sheets and compared them with the oscilloscope traces. “Locally, yes, the signal is dying. But look at this spike over here.”

“Yes, that’s it. There’s the ninety-minute response all right. But the epicentre isn’t here as I expected. It’s about thirty miles southeast.”

A telephone jangled. Grady picked it up and listened. “Doctor Jones. It’s for you!”

Godwin said, “Oh, good grief—”

Jones snatched the phone. “Hello? Hello!”

Thelma’s voice, relayed through a small speaker, was barely audible. “Jones? Is that you?”

“It’s a dreadful line. Where are you?”

“We’re in—” She was interrupted by a series of beeps. “Oh, for heaven’s sake—have you got another sixpence, Winston? We’re still in the city. We’ve got the data you wanted. It’s all kicking off here, Jones. Earth tremors, damage to the buildings, cracked roads—”

Tremayne said, “Jones. Look at this map. That epicentre. Thirty miles southeast. That’s the city. Newcastle.”

Jones said, “Oh, my word. That’s it. They aren’t targeting the base. They’re attacking the nearest population centre. Thelma, can you hear me? You’ve got to get out of there. Never mind the data. Just get out of the city, get out!”

There was a roar, distorted by the phone line. “Jones? I think—” The line went dead.

“Thelma? Thelma!”

3

0135.

“Winston!”

“Here, Thelma. I’m under a hod-load of bricks.”

“Wait, don’t move, I’m coming.” She dug into the heap of bricks with her bare hands until she had uncovered his face and shoulders. Winston stirred and at last was able to sit up. “Are you hurt?”

“It all sort of washed over me. What about you?”

“The telephone kiosk fell over on top of me. I think it saved me. The phone was cut off, though. There. Can you stand up?”

He struggled to his feet. “I’m a bit dusty—the bike! Clare’s going to kill me.”

“It’s still here, where we left it. And here’s the rucksack with the data.”

“That bike’s better off than we are.”

There was a distant explosion; they both flinched.

Winston said, “Look, Thelma, I know how important it is to get back to the base and report in to Doctor Jones. We’re on a sort of mission. But—”

“You’re worried about your mother.”

“You saw how she’s fixed. She’s not going to be able to cope with this lot by herself.”

“Then we’ll go and get her.”

“Are you sure? I thought you’d argue.”

Thelma smiled. “Not me. We’ll save your mother, then we’ll save the world. And besides, you’re the one with the bike. Now, come on, give me that rucksack. I suppose that ugly beast is going to start, is it?”

She was answered by a roar as the engine kicked in.

The Hades command centre hummed with tension; information poured in via the phone lines and teletypes.

Major Crowne said, “There’s no news coming out of Newcastle.”

Clare asked, “Have you got through to the police control centre?”

“Constable, the emergency services are trying to work their way in. There’s clearly a major human disaster unfolding in there.”

Jones cried, “I told you so!”

Godwin said, “Be silent, man. What’s going on further afield, Major Crowne?”

“It’s sketchy. Lots of disruptions to the comms globally. It’s going to take a while to put it all together.”

Tremayne said, “I suppose you’d say we have another ninety minutes’ grace, Jones.”

“Precisely. Ninety minutes until the next wave of attacks.”

Godwin said, “Attacks? We’re dealing with a geological phenomenon, not a purposeful foe.”

“Oh, you know that, do you?”

Tremayne said, “Godwin, he could be right, at least about some of this. It might be wise to suspend the programme until we’re absolutely sure we know what we’re dealing with. If there is a connection between the Hades detonations and these geological upheavals—”

“I rather think that’s my call, don’t you think?”

Jones said, “Then make the right call, man, for once in your life.”

Tremayne sighed. “And what would you have us do, Jones?”

“Do what good scientists always do. Gather data. First we need to establish just what has happened in Newcastle, and any other problem areas around the country—around the world, if necessary—I presume your communications here are capable of that. Second, Tremayne, you and I need to work on the seismic data you’ve got heaped up down in your computer centre, but never bothered to interpret properly, if I may say so. I hope to prove once and for all what we’re facing here. And finally I need Thelma and Winston brought back here safely. The data they are bringing back has a broader base than the monitoring you’ve done here.”

“All right, Jones, we’ll do things your way—for now.”

Godwin said, “Well, I won’t stop you, if you stay out of the way of the project. But I think you’re a pack of fools, wasting time and resources.”

Jones snapped back, “Yes, well, you would think that, wouldn’t you?”

Crowne put in, “About your friends, Doctor Jones. I’ll detail Sergeant Grady to bring them in.”

Tremayne nodded. “Good. Sergeant, hook up with Captain Phillips; the British forces outside will be able to help.”

Buck said, “Yes, sir. But how will I find them? Things sound kind of chaotic out there.”

Jones asked, “Clare, does Winston have any family?”

“Yes, his mother. She lives alone in Gateshead.”

“Give the details to Sergeant Grady. Then plot a straight-line course from there back to the base. Sergeant, they’ll be somewhere on that line. I know Thelma. Right, Tremayne, got your slide rule oiled?”

The door was half off its hinges, with loose bricks and tiles heaped up against it. In the distance, sirens wailed.

Winston scrambled over the rubble. “Mum. Mum! Thelma, the house is shaken to bits.”

“Where will your mother be?”

“It’s the small hours. She’d have been asleep, in the bedroom upstairs.”

“Winston, the roof’s gone. There is no upstairs.”

“Oh no, oh God—”

“Now take it easy. Think, Winston. Where was the bedroom?”

“Over the parlour. Through here.” He forced his way through heaps of plaster and timber. “Mum? Are you here?

Her voice was faint. “Winston? That you? Ee, man, what’s going on? Are the Jerries starting up again?”

“Mum, are you hurt?”

“Well, me leg got squashed. Good news is it’s me wooden one. And me bed came right through the ceiling. Soft landing, like. Always was a lucky bugger, me.”

Thelma said, “We’re going to get you out of here.”

Hope laughed. “How? On that motorbike, like Mods and Rockers? I don’t think so.”

Winston said, “Thelma, if you want to get back to the base, leave us—”

“Absolutely not. We’re going to take her with us, leg or no leg. We just need to work out how.”

Tremayne led Jones and Clare back to the computer centre. “All right, Jones, it’s your show. Where do we start?”

Jones glanced around. “Look, we want to get all the seismic data you have, fed through your main processor here, and plotted up as graphical displays on these screens. Clare, you know where the tapes are, you can help too.”

Tremayne said, “Suppose you tell me what kind of ‘graphical display’ you want.”

“A section of the Earth. Deep as you like—all the way to the core if you can. I want to be able to see where these disturbances you’ve been tracking are travelling.”

“That’s asking a lot. We’re only one observing point here; we need triangulation.”

“That’s what I’m hoping to get from Thelma’s data, among other things. But we can squeeze a lot out of this data set with a bit of ingenuity.”

Tremayne rubbed his chin and looked absent; he was obviously a man who relished a scientific puzzle. “Hmm. I suppose we could look for signal attenuation. Reflections from the mantle layers. That the sort of thing?”

“Precisely—”

Crowne bustled in. “Professor Tremayne, Doctor Jones. We’ve had some input from outside. The comms are still patchy. Newcastle’s been hit bad. Massive earthquakes and aftershocks, as far as the Cheviot hills. The geologists can’t make any sense of it.”

“I’m not surprised,” Jones said.

Tremayne said, “And further afield?”

“There are trouble spots all over—tremors, quakes, even volcanism. All over the world, I mean.”

Jones said, “Where, exactly? Show me, man. Clare, bring over that world map.”

“Bring the tapes, fetch the map, make a cup of tea. Just remember you’re still under arrest, Doctor Jones.”

“Now, now, Constable Clare.”

Crowne took the map and used a thick black pen to mark locations. “You have these sites across the continental US, here, here, here. And across western Europe, the south as far as Turkey, and in Australia, Japan—”

Jones said, “Well, there’s no obvious correlation with any patterns of seismic activity I know about. Tremayne?”

“I’m afraid it’s rather obvious to me. Major?”

Crowne said, “Doctor Jones, these are Project Hades emplacements. Like this one.”

“More buried bombs. Well, well. There’s your correlation, Tremayne!”

Tremayne stared. “Good Lord—now I don’t know what to believe.”

“Then let’s get on with this data analysis and wash away all your doubt.”

Buck Grady was waiting behind the wheel of the truck. Phillips climbed up beside him. “Right, let’s get going, Sergeant.”

Buck started the engine. “Yes, sir.” The truck pulled away. “You sure this is going to be enough, just the two of us?”

“I think so. Things are quiet for the moment and my men are getting a bit of shuteye. Leave them to it. Who knows what we’ll have to deal with in the morning? Besides this is just a quick in-and-out to retrieve those two civilians.”

“Turning into a long night, though, Captain Phillips.”

“You can say that again.”

“Here, take another smoke.”

“Thanks. Your Yankee drags are disgusting, though.”

“I’ll try to come better equipped next time. You have family yourself, Captain?”

“The missus and two little girls. Down in Sussex, a long way from the action here. I tried calling, but the lines are down. What about you?”

“Just my fiancée, in Long Beach, California. They say there’s problems out there too.”

“Really?”

“The scuttlebutt is this volcano stuff is bubbling up all over. But I haven’t had a chance to make a call.”

“Well, we’ll try to fix that when we get back from the city.”

“I’d appreciate that. Not that I’m worried. Tina is a take-it-on-the-chin kind of kid.”

“Hmm. Should think she’d have to be, attached to a chap like you.”

“Yeah, you got a point there. Hey, what’s that red glow up ahead? Sunrise, you think?”

“I’m afraid not, Sergeant. That’s Newcastle burning. See if you can get a bit more ummph out of this old banger.”

The engine roared and the truck surged ahead.

Winston said, “All right, Mum, let me get you lifted into this.”

“You’re joking me. That’s a bairn’s pram!”

Thelma smiled. “Well, now it’s a custom-built sidecar, Mrs. Stubbins. And we’ve strapped it onto the bike quite firmly with these broom handles—see? Anyway you’re small enough to fit in.”

“Oh, am I? Just as well I’ve left me other leg behind, isn’t it? Winston, you can go and raid old Porky Harris’s garden shed.”

“What for?”

“He keeps a can of petrol in there for his bubble car. He’s off on holiday at the minute, he won’t mind.”

Thelma said, “That’s very sensible, Mrs. Stubbins.”

“And while he’s out of the way, Thelma, you can give me a hand to the khazi. Best to spare the lad’s blushes. Come on. We only ever had an outside bog and with any luck it’s still standing. You lead the way, I’ll hop along after.”

After an hour’s work, Jones, Tremayne, and Clare made their way back to the command centre.

Godwin paced, glowering over his operators’ shoulders. “Still wasting time, gentlemen?”

Jones ignored him. “I think we’ve squeezed just about as much out of these fragments of data as we’re going to manage. Now we’re going to look at the results. Ready, Tremayne?”

“I have the computer output patched through to here.”

“Just remember—all of you,” Jones said, gazing around at them. “Open your eyes—and your mind.” He threw a switch. A cathode-ray monitor powered up with a heavy clunk.

Clare peered at the display. “It’s a big circle. Is that the Earth? Looks like a radar display. But what are those flying shapes?”

“This is the anatomy of the planet, Clare. A world within a world. This is the core. Here you can see the layers of the mantle surrounding it.”

“Where’s the crust, the continents?”

“Too thin to see on this projection. Remember, Clare—all the world you know is just a shell.”

“And those shapes, washing to and fro. What’s that, static? Echoes?”

Tremayne leaned to see. “They seem to be rising up from the surface of the core. Like rockets launching.”

Jones said, “That’s a very apt comparison, Tremayne. See how they sail all the way to the surface—I mean, our surface—and sniff around a bit before falling back. Of course this is a very time-accelerated view.”

Godwin laughed. “Rockets? Oh, this is all—”

Tremayne said, “They’re purposeful. There’s no doubt about it. Whatever they are—purposeful and intelligent.”

Jones slapped his back. “At last you see it.”

“And there’s a sort of seismic wake that precedes them.”

“Signals, Tremayne. They communicate through seismic waves passing through the rock, just as you and I talk using sound waves rippling through the air.”

Clare asked, “What are they, Doctor Jones?”

Jones said, “My department has evidence of these entities going back to the work of the first geologists. Charles Lyell himself came away from a trip to Sicily with suspicions, never confirmed… Evidently they inhabit the surface of the planetary core. To them the mantle rock, the magma, is as thin as air, a medium through which they fly. We call them Magmoids.”

Tremayne said, “Magmoids!”

“Well, we had to give them some sort of label. You understand they are firmly within the Linnaean Paradoxa class, Tremayne. We had no firm evidence of their existence—but no proof of their non-existence either. And our brief, as DS8 and its predecessors, was to keep a weather eye on them. They probably never even knew human beings were here. Not until you started letting off your bombs high in their rocky atmosphere—and with your Hades bombs, firecrackers finally big enough to get their attention.”

Tremayne said, “And that explains the ninety minutes.”

“Yes. I think the apparitions the local people called ‘Grendels’ are Magmoid probes—like space satellites—probably automated. They really are in orbit, Tremayne, literally orbiting through outer layers of rock so thin they may as well be vacuum. I wonder why they’re drawn here, and why they have been visible for so long. Something to do with the deep geological flaws hereabouts, no doubt. And in Lucifer’s Tomb you have a flaw on top of a flaw—as Winston Stubbins understood.”

Tremayne was staring at the images. “How extraordinary. We thought we were alone. We looked outward, to the stars. While all the time there was a civilisation, whole and entire, under our feet.”

“This is first contact, Tremayne. First contact.”

The motorbike roared down a street strewn with rubble and rapidly becoming clogged with traffic. The city was wide awake now, and everywhere people were moving, clambering through shattered properties. Overhead helicopters flapped, sirens wailed, and Thelma heard the ominous crackle of fire.

She said, “We’re lucky we’re on a bike. A car would never get through. It might get easier when we get back to the main road out of the city. But all the people—look at them. I wish there was something we could do for them.”

“Don’t fret, bonny lass,” Hope said. “You’re doing your best. Woah! Ee, Winston, if I knew I was going on a dodgems I’d have worn me kiss-me-quick hat.”

“Sorry, Mum.”

Thelma said, “Look, through that alley. I think that’s the way back to the main road.”

“It’ll be a squeeze. Hang on, Mum.”

They pushed through the alley and emerged onto the main road—but Winston slowed the bike and turned off the engine. “Oh, dear God.”

The road was crammed with people, a moving wall that blocked the exit from the alley.

Hope called, “What is it? I canna see back here in the cheap seats.”

Winston said, “People, Mum. Thousands and thousands of people.”

“Men, women,” Thelma said. “Kids on their parents’ backs. Old people in wheelchairs.” She pointed. “Those look like hospital beds being pushed along.”

Hope said, “It’s the city, isn’t it? The city emptying out.”

“I’m afraid so, Mrs. Stubbins.”

“It was like this in the last lot. When the bombs came a lot of people just walked out, in their bare feet some of them. You don’t see that in the war films.”

“Look, we’re just going to have to make our way through this crowd.”

Winston said, “It’s going to be awful.”

“I know. But we’ll hit clear road when we get ahead of the crowd. Are you ready, Mrs. Stubbins?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

Winston said, “Let’s do it.” He started the engine and pushed forward. Reluctantly people made space for the machine.

The ground shuddered.

Winston called, “Did you feel that?”

Thelma said, “I’m afraid I did. Another tremor.” She checked her watch; it was nearly three a.m. “And right on cue—another ninety minutes gone.”

“We aren’t going much faster than walking pace.”

Hope said, “You’d gan on faster if you dumped this stupid pram with me in it.”

Thelma said, “We’re not about to do that, Mrs. Stubbins.”

A voice came drifting from a loudhailer, distant but clear. “Thelma Bennet! Winston Stubbins! Thelma Bennet! Make yourself known…”

Winston said, “Did you hear that?”

“Yes. I think so. My name and yours. I think that’s Captain Phillips.”

“Come in, number seven, your time is up!”

Winston said, “Hush, Mum. I think it’s coming from that truck—see, it’s shining its headlights this way.”

Thelma said, “Stop the bike and I’ll run up and see.”

“Hurry back.”

She clambered off the bike and began to force her way through the crowd. “Excuse me. I’m sorry. Please, excuse me, I have to pass…”

Tremayne said, “The question is what to do about all this—I don’t know—I just don’t know.”

Godwin smiled. “I have no confusion in my mind. Men like you see only problems. I see an opportunity—if there’s anything at all in what you say.”

Jones said, “Now why does that make my hair stand on end?”

A phone rang and Crowne grabbed it. “Yes. Who? Oh. It’s for you again, Jones.”

“Give me that. Hello?”

“Jones?”

“Thelma! Goodness, I’m glad to hear your voice. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I’m with Captain Phillips. And so’s Winston—tell Clare. Although it seems to be starting up again.”

“I know. We felt it here.”

“We have the data you wanted.”

“Oh, well done, Thelma, well done.”

“I just hope it’s worth it. Have you worked out what we’re dealing with yet?”

Jones said, “Magmoids, I think. An infestation of the core of the Earth. Get back here, Thelma. Bring that information. Just be safe!”

He put the phone down, breathing hard. He was more relieved to have heard her voice than he wanted to admit. Gradually he became aware of his surroundings again—the command centre resounding to the noise of murmuring voices, the ringing telephones, the clattering teletypes, the sharp, warm smell of electronic valves. He was remarkably tired, yet he knew he couldn’t sleep even if he had the chance.

Once again the floor shuddered and metal walls creaked.

Crowne called, “More reports coming in. More damage in Newcastle. Tremors in other locations near Hades bases. Ankara, Turkey. Seville, Spain.”

Godwin said, “Fatalities?”

“It seems so, sir. But the comms are flaky, and the ground situation is kind of chaotic.”

Tremayne said, “What do you suggest, Jones?”

“There’s not much we can do until Thelma gets back here with her data. I’d certainly be trying to get a warning out through your chain of command. Tell those in charge to prepare for disturbances like this, probably worsening, coming every ninety minutes until further notice. We may still be able to get out of this without a great deal more damage being done. To the Magmoids humans are an irritation, at best. A bit of bad weather, high in the rocky sky. But any more bomb blasts and they will deal with us. You must ensure above all that no more of these monstrous fireworks of yours are let off.”

Crowne turned to Tremayne. “Professor? Do you endorse that?”

Tremayne said, “To be truthful, I am barely clinging on to the coattails of Doctor Jones’s analysis. But there is clearly a link between the Hades emplacements and our own detonation with the timings and locations of these tremors. It is only prudent to get Doctor Jones’s warning out.”

Crowne said, “Very well—”

Godwin drew his revolver. “Belay that, Major.”

“Commodore!”

Tremayne said, “What on Earth are you doing, Godwin?”

“Taking control. This is clearly a global crisis. If these ‘Magmoids’ exist at all, and I’m not ready to concede that yet, we ought to be thinking in terms of striking back.”

Jones said, “Striking back? By all that’s holy, man—”

Crowne said, “Commodore, I really think I should pass this up the command line—”

“To what end? This is the focus of the Magmoid attack. This is where the intelligence is gathered—here, in my hands. And nobody is better qualified to make the profound decisions that now face mankind. Crowne, obey my order. Step back from the console.”

Crowne took a deep breath. “Sir. With respect. No, sir. Commodore Godwin, I am the senior US officer on the base here. My commander-in-chief is President Eisenhower—not you. We work together, sir, we are allies. But in the final analysis I have to exercise my own judgement. And I won’t allow the base to be cut out of the chain of command. No, sir.”

And Godwin pulled the trigger. The noise of the revolver was shockingly loud in the enclosed space. Crowne fell back and lay still.

Clare cried, “Major!” She knelt down and felt for a pulse at Crowne’s neck. “Commodore Godwin—you killed him!”

Tremayne said, “For God’s sake, man! What about duty? What about the oaths you swore to serve Queen and country?”

“Oh, I serve a higher cause than that, Tremayne.”

All the operatives in the command centre—every one of them a soldier, Jones reminded himself—had turned, shocked, at the sound of the gunshot. But Godwin snarled, “Back to work, all of you.” They turned back to their consoles.

“Now to business,” Godwin said. “I am confident that the American troops within this base will continue to obey my commands. But I must decide what to do with you. For you’re either with me or against me, it’s as simple as that. You’ll be confined, Jones. Obviously. As for you, WPC Baines—”

“I won’t submit to your threats, Commodore.”

“I admire your spirit. Well, you’ll be confined too. And you, Professor Tremayne—I expect your cooperation. This is your baby, you know. The bombs of Project Hades are your design.”

“But I never wanted this killing.”

Jones said, “I might ask you what you expected when you devoted your life to weapons design, Professor.”

“But I have always believed in the power of reason. Oh, you can put your gun away as far as I’m concerned, Godwin. I’ll work with you. But I’ll be working to make you see sense!”

Godwin said, “Sergeant at arms, take these two away. And clear up this—umm, unfortunate incident. We have work to do. Come, Professor Tremayne.”

As Jones and Clare were led away, the room shuddered.

Clare muttered, “Here we go again.”

A blur of light washed over the crowded street, a noise like a shriek. People cowered, bewildered by such strangeness on this terrible night.

Buck said, “Woah. Anybody see that?”

Winston goggled. “Yes! Wow, that was fantastic, I’ve never seen a Grendel so close. It’s like an eye in the sky—it seems to watch you as it goes by. No wonder people thought they were living things.”

Phillips called, “Coming up to the bridge.”

Buck said, “And it’s still intact. Thank cripes for that—”

There was an explosion, somewhere ahead. People screamed.

“Holy smoke, that was bigger than ever. I can’t see the bridge. Is it down?”

Phillips said, “No. There, see, through the smoke? Hold on—”

The truck bounced and rattled onto the bridge. Another shriek rolled down from the sky.

Hope said, “What’s that up in the sky? Angels?”

Winston said, “Not angels, Mum. They’re called Grendels.”

“My word,” Phillips said, “they’re all along the length of the bridge.”

Thelma peered ahead, over his shoulder. The strange squashed-sphere shapes of the Grendels hovered over the bridge’s superstructure, like Christmas lights, illuminating the streams of refugees struggling to cross.

Buck said, “Can you smell sulphur?”

Hope grumbled, “Yeah. And I’m sweating fit to melt.”

Buck looked down, peering out of his window. “Gee, the water is glowing.”

Thelma peered down at a crimson, smoking river. “That’s not water, Sergeant. That’s lava. The valley of the Tyne is full of molten lava!”

4

0309.

Once again Jones and Clare found themselves in a cell. This time they were cuffed back to back and set on a bunk.

Jones said, “Charming ambience once again. Battleship grey must be in this year.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“No, I know. I’m sorry to have gotten you into this. An hour or two of this and our shoulders are going to ache like billy-o.”

“I wish I could have stopped Professor Tremayne working with Godwin. The Professor seemed—dazed.”

“Yes. Stunned by the implosion of his dreams. But it might be useful to have Tremayne out there with the Commodore rather than in here with us. He’s an ally, if a tentative one. After all Tremayne didn’t know about Godwin’s secret control room, you’ll remember.”

“So now what, Doctor Jones?”

“I would say the first priority is to get back to that secret room and find out what Godwin’s really up to.”

“And how are we going to do that? I can’t pick these locks. We were searched—our pockets emptied—”

“Perhaps we can improvise. Clare—if I scrunch around like this, can you get your hand into my jacket pocket?”

“It’s not easy lifting my hands behind my back.”

“I know. Just try. Now have a dig around.”

“They didn’t leave you much. Pack of cards. Match book. Reading glasses—”

“That’s it. A wire frame, you’ll see—it comes apart rather easily if you give it a tug.”

“It’s not an accident you have such a thing, is it, Doctor Jones?”

“Well, I have been in a few scrapes in the past. Now, if you can just use the pieces of the frame—”

“Done.” There was a double click, and the cuffs that joined their wrists opened. They fell away from each other with gasps of relief. Clare worked at the other cuff on her wrist. “Now what? It may be trickier getting through that door; it looked like a magnetic lock.”

“Ah. But I suspect we’re right next door to the computer room—if my sense of geography’s right. And those wall panels, with the bolts in the corner, look vulnerable to another souvenir they left me with.” He dug in his pocket and produced his threepenny bit. “Open sesame!”

Once out of the city, the refugee flow was foot traffic mixed up with cars, trucks, buses, ambulances—even tractors and bicycles. But the flow was always slow. Phillips, however, insisted they were better off sticking to the tarmac track rather than risk going off-road. Frustration and anxiety gnawed at Thelma.

Fifteen miles north of Newcastle the traffic ground to a crawl, not for the first time. People pressed around the truck; Thelma looked out over a sea of hunched shoulders and drawn faces.

Buck said, “My God. So many people, even this far out.”

“A whole city’s in flight,” Thelma said. “Who’s that waving up ahead?”

“We’re being flagged down. That’s a policeman.” Buck braked to a halt.

“We mustn’t stop. We have to get this scientific material back to Doctor Jones.”

“I fully understand that, Miss Bennet,” Phillips said. “But I don’t think we have a choice.”

They climbed out onto the road and waited while Phillips jogged off to talk to the policeman.

Winston said, “We’re wasting time. We should have been back at the base by now.”

“I know, I know,” said Thelma. “I’m as frustrated as you are. Are you all right, Mrs. Stubbins?”

“Oh, champion. This nice canvas seat Sergeant Grady gave me takes the weight off me stump—”

“Oh, thank heaven, here comes Captain Phillips.”

Phillips’s expression was grim. “It’s bad news, I’m afraid. It’s all rather a mess. There’s some kind of drama going on back at the base. The comms links are down, and nobody’s being let in or out.”

Thelma said, “So we can’t even talk to them?”

“Afraid not. And I wouldn’t advise striking out by yourselves; there are roadblocks everywhere. Could be tricky to resolve. There’s even talk of storming the fence.”

Buck said, “Hmm. With Americans inside, Brits outside?”

“Yes. But it is an atomic base, and we need to get a grip on events. I’ve told my chaps to do nothing until I get back. Which might be a while, unfortunately.”

Thelma said, “Why’s that?”

“Because of all this lot. Seems the Cheviot has blown its top. I mean the mountain itself. Rivers of lava pouring down the valleys. Quakes and tremors everywhere, the ground opening up, and so forth—quite a mess.”

Winston said, “That’s impossible. The volcanoes around here have been extinct for hundreds of millions of years.”

“Yes, well, tell that to the mountains. Anyhow the emergency services are getting their act together. But all these people can’t just keep walking. We need to set up refugee receiving centres—strung out along the roads, you see. And the first priority is to get the road cleared so traffic can pass. For now our duty is here. Right, come on, Sergeant Grady. You there, police constable! Start shifting these people.”

Thelma said, “Oh, how very frustrating.”

Hope said, “You’ll get to your Doctor Jones in the end.”

“Yes, but will we be in time?”

Jones let the metal wall panel fall to the floor, wincing at the noise. “Right, just climb through here and we’re in.”

Clare clambered through the hole. “You were right, Doctor Jones. This is the computer room.”

“And nobody around. Good. Now, that hatch down to the control room was under that bit of carpet over there as I recall.”

Clare lifted the carpet. “Got it. Now all we have to do—”

“Clare, wait. Think. You can’t just march in with your warrant card in your hand. If we lift that hatch and Godwin’s there, our welcome will be a bullet, like poor Major Crowne. We need to find a sneakier way in.”

“Like what?” She glanced up at a grille on the wall. “How about the ventilation shafts?”

He smiled. “You’ve been reading too many thrillers. Hear the hum of the fans? You’d be chopped liver before you got three yards. No, there’s a better way. What else must connect this room with Godwin’s centre?”

She looked around. “The computers?”

He snapped his fingers. “Exactly!”

“You’re not serious. You want us to crawl through the computers?”

Jones said, “But those big boxes are almost empty inside. Come here. Help me get the cover off this processor cabinet. Have you got that threepenny bit?” They hastily unscrewed the panel. “Oof. It’s heavy. Right, in we go. See—this thing’s the size of a wardrobe, and there’s not much inside but this rack of metallic cores, these bundles of wires—aha. And a hatch in the floor. See? It’s clearly connected to sister units down below.”

“I feel like a rat crawling behind a skirting board.”

“Sooner a humble rat than a great man like the Commodore, eh?” He started working on the hatch. “Come on, Constable Clare. And watch out for rat traps.”

In the command centre, Godwin loomed over Tremayne’s shoulder. “Ah, Tremayne. Good to see you back at work.”

“Just ensuring the seismometric systems are functioning. There’s rather a lot of data to be gathered tonight. Shame to waste the opportunity. But I remain concerned about Doctor Jones and that WPC.”

“They’re contained. They’ll come to no harm if they behave themselves.”

“I don’t believe I can trust you anymore, Godwin.”

“That’s rather melodramatic, Tremayne.”

“Melodramatic? I saw you kill a man—a fellow officer! And what is the purpose of this extra control room Doctor Jones spoke of?”

“You believe him about that, do you?”

“Implicitly.”

“Very well. I’ll escort you there for a look around. I suppose that will maximise your utility to the project, at this point. Look—you go ahead.” He handed over magnetic and manual keys, and a map. “I need to brief Captain Greengage, who’s now the senior American officer on the base. The perimeter must remain secured. Then I’ll meet you.”

Tremayne took the keys. “Good. We need to talk, above all else—and work together.”

The covert control room was unmanned, though relays clattered and tape decks whirred.

Clare said, “Look at all these flashing lights.”

“Yes. This computer suite seems to be working on something, doesn’t it? Let’s hope we can work out what. Righty-ho, let’s see what’s what.” From a deep pocket in his trenchcoat he pulled out a spare set of reading glasses and began to throw switches.

Clare paced around. “All those glowing points on the map. Are they the same as the Project Hades bomb sites? You remember, Major Crowne marked that map when the Magmoids first attacked.”

“I do indeed remember. You’re right, Clare. This room is obviously somehow central to the control of Project Hades as a whole.”

“Secret underground lairs. Wall maps of the world. It is like something out of a thriller, isn’t it?”

“Yes, there is something cartoonish about Godwin. Often is with men like that. Doesn’t make them any less dangerous, though… Aha! I thought so. Clare, come here. This control panel with the big red buttons.”

“Here?”

“When this lever is thrown, these computers—well, they take over the ones upstairs. Locking out any other commands.”

“So from down here you are in control of the base.”

Jones said, “Total control, yes. And through a few handy communications links, you’re in control of rather more than just Aldmoor. Watch the map when I implement this test.” He turned the switch.

“Blimey. All those bomb emplacements have turned green.”

“Green for primed, I presume. You see what this means, Clare. From within this room, you could control all of Project Hades—a worldwide suite of nuclear weapons of immense power.”

“My God. And Godwin has all this in his hands!”

“Yes. Well, I rather suspected something like this. The question is what Godwin intended to do with the power he was to grab—and what he intends now that the Magmoids have shown up. But there’s something I still haven’t worked out. See this display?” It was a bank of pulsing lamps. “I can tell that this computer suite is busily reprogramming itself. Which means, presumably, that the whole of Project Hades, the global network of bombs, is being reconfigured.”

“Reconfigured? To do what?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t imagine we’ll like the answer when we have it.”

“Here’s something I do recognise, on this screen. These numbers, ticking down.”

“A countdown clock. You’re right. Seems we’re not done with fireworks tonight. Godwin’s setting something off. But what?”

“Perhaps you should ask him,” said John Tremayne.

Jones whirled, startled. Neither he nor Clare had heard him come in. “All right, Tremayne, you caught us bang to rights. What are you going to do about it?”

Tremayne said, “As I said. We’ll ask the Commodore.”

“Don’t be a fool, man. This might be our only chance to stop him! If you can show me how to disable this system—”

“I gave my word that I would work with the man, and so I will. The presumption of innocence—eh, Jones?” He turned on an intercom. “This is John Tremayne in the control room. Could you hurry down, please, Commodore?”

The road was still jammed with people, despite the efforts of the police and troops to clear the carriageway. To the din of helicopters and truck engines and angry shouts was added the wail of babies crying.

Phillips led the party back into the truck. “Phew. It’s nice to get back in here for a break.”

Thelma said, “Tough going, is it, Captain?”

“Civilians! No matter how many times I implore them to be patient, how many times I tell them that supplies are on the way, but the lorries just can’t get through because half the bridges are down or the roads are swamped with molten lava—”

Hope said, “Ay, but you should be sorting it out yourself.”

“Now really, Mrs. Stubbins—”

Thelma said, “No, let her speak. What do you mean, Mrs. Stubbins?”

“I can hear babbies crying. What’s being done for them?”

Phillips said, “Nothing. I mean, we have nothing to give them.”

“Oh, cobblers, bonny lad. Look—where’s the nearest fresh water?”

“A tanker truck’s on the way.”

Hope said, “A tanker truck? What do you want that for?”

Winston said, “Actually, there’s a stream just down this bank.”

“Right, there you go. Get down there and set up some kind of shelter.”

Phillips said, “We don’t have any tents.”

“Then use your noggin.”

Buck said, “I guess we could use the tarpaulin off this truck.”

“Exactly. There’s a start. Now go down the line of people and pick out the most vulnerable. The old folk. The young mums with the bairns. Get them down to the shelter and start sharing out the powdered milk and Farley’s Rusks.”

Phillips asked, “What powdered milk?”

Hope said, “The tins they’ll all be carrying in their suitcases, that’s what. You’ve got a thousand people on the road out there with half their homes on their backs or in their cars. Set your tame coppers to asking. They’ll need some hot water, of course. Surely the British Army can manage to gather a bit of firewood.”

“Yes, all right, Mrs. Stubbins—”

“Next the doctors can take a look at them.”

“What doctors?”

“I’m willing to bet my best false teeth that somewhere in this mob there’s a GP. Just find him, man.”

“Well. Is that all?”

“No, that’s just the start. Then we’ve got to think about the soup kitchens. Ee, man, you wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in an air raid. Give me a hand, our Winston, I’ll get down and sort it out meself. Come on, Captain Phillips.”

Phillips followed, grumbling, “A remarkable woman, Miss Bennet.”

Thelma said, “Isn’t she just. With a heart as stout as England itself. Come on, Captain, as long as we’re stuck here I’ll help you get organised.”

Godwin entered the control room, revolver in hand. “So our mice escaped from their cage once again. I believe I’ve been tolerant enough of you two—”

Tremayne said, “Commodore. They’re not to be harmed. I called you here; I gave them up to you. I kept my word to you. Now you must behave honourably.”

Godwin laughed. “You really are an idealist, aren’t you, Tremayne?”

“An idealist who built your bombs for you. But I don’t recognise what you’ve done with my project. And I don’t know what you intend to do with it now. Godwin! Tell us the truth. What have you done with Project Hades?”

“Do you know, I rather doubt that even you are capable of understanding, Tremayne.”

“What? Oh, this is all—”

Clare said quickly, “Professor Tremayne. Why don’t you tell us what Project Hades is supposed to be?”

Tremayne took a deep breath. “A test programme. That’s all. A series of high-energy bombs to be set off underground, at locations scattered throughout the world.”

Jones indicated the world map. “And why these specific locations?”

“We’re testing different geological types. Where the bombs might be used for mining, for instance. Or—”

“Oh, I doubt that was the real intention of those who funded you. Tell me, Tremayne. Were these proposed sites screened at all?”

“Screened?”

“By, oh I don’t know, let’s say some cabal of military officers?”

“There was a high-level vetting process, yes. The sites had to be chosen for safety, of course, and so as not to set off our enemies’ warning systems.”

“Or so you were told.”

“Yes—so I was told. Now I find I’m rather suspicious about the military’s involvement. Godwin?”

Godwin said, “You’ll know soon anyhow. Project Hades, Professor, has evolved far beyond your petty dreams of mining and excavation. There is a committee of us who were always able to see a much greater potential.”

Jones said, “A committee, eh? Of more tin soldiers like you?”

“We’ve representatives from all the British forces, and others around the allied world—in the Pentagon, the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe, the French, the Japanese. Senior military officers, Professor Tremayne, hardened by experience of war—and deeply concerned by the current international situation.”

Tremayne said, “And who is this committee answerable to, Godwin? Which elected government?”

“Elected governments have proven themselves incapable of responding appropriately to the current emergency. Surely that’s clear to an intelligent man like you. Take the posture of Eisenhower himself, who will not even consider any plans for waging limited nuclear war—he will sanction nothing but an all-out assault, should the allies be attacked.”

“But there’s a logic to it, man,” Jones snapped. “And remember Eisenhower is a rather more senior soldier than you. Eisenhower knows you can’t win a nuclear war—but you can’t banish the weapons from existence. All you can do is design a system to ensure that the weapons are never used. Churchill talked of finding hope in the ‘universality of potential destruction.’ ”

“And you believe the weapons will never be used, do you? Jones, never in human history have we invented a weapon that wasn’t used to its fullest in the end.”

Tremayne said, “Apart from gas in the second war battlefields. Apart from—”

“Yes, yes. My point is that this policy of assured destruction can lead only to global catastrophe—or weakness in the face of an enemy stronger-willed than our own vacillating politicians.”

Tremayne said, “And so this military conspiracy is grabbing power.”

“Not a conspiracy. An international organisation of the informed and concerned.”

Jones said, “Which has now taken control of this bomb network—or rather you have, Godwin.”

“This wasn’t the intention. The emergency with your Magmoids, Jones, has forced this decisive action on me.”

Tremayne said, “Decisive? Treacherous, Godwin! Treacherous!”

Jones said, “And what are you going to do with your network of bombs? Tell us, Commodore!”

Out by the blocked road, fires had been lit and kettles whistled, and somewhere somebody had organised a sing-song.

Buck found Phillips. “Sir, you Brits never cease to amaze me.”

“Spirit of the Blitz, eh, Sergeant Grady?”

“Listen, Captain, there are some bits of good news. The aid convoys are getting through, at last.”

“Well, about time.”

“But the news from Aldmoor isn’t so good. Still that stand-off developing there.”

“All right. I know the roads have been cleared, more or less. We can afford to leave this lot for now, I think. You get the truck ready. I’ll find Miss Bennet.”

Clare murmured, “Doctor Jones. Look. This other clock has started clicking over.”

“Yes. Once again we’re in the middle of a countdown—with only minutes to go. But a countdown to what?”

Godwin said now, “It had to be done this way, Tremayne. The bombs had to be planted, the control network established, in utter secrecy—even before the first test explosion, tonight. Surely you can see that.”

Jones said, “And when the bombs detonate, Godwin? What then? What’s their true purpose? Hmm. Considering where the emplacements are—Tremayne. These bombs of yours deliver shaped explosions, don’t they?”

Tremayne said, “Yes. That’s a key part of their design. You can blast out a specific seam of mineral ore or shape a chamber to your design—with a single detonation.”

“But if you set off a whole network of the things, wrapped around the world—give me that bit of paper. Pen, Clare!”

“All right, all right!”

Jones sketched rapidly. “You see, Tremayne? If all the explosive pulses were coordinated like this, say, or like this—”

“My God. Yes. You could combine the pulses to create a single seismic wave, to strike anywhere in the world—a wave of extraordinary magnitude.”

Clare asked, “What are you talking about?”

Jones said, “A weapon, Clare. The whole of Hades is a single weapon, using coordinated pulses of seismic waves to deliver a devastating geological blow.”

Godwin said, “Do you know what a super-volcano is, Jones? There is the relic of one under Yellowstone Park in Wyoming. Others in Sumatra, New Zealand. A catastrophic explosion. Plumes poking right up into the stratosphere. Clouds of ash, gas, and rock that scrape the landscape bare for miles around.”

“There’s been nothing like it while humans have been on the Earth,” Jones said grimly. “And this monstrosity is what you plan to use as a weapon, is it, Godwin?”

“Think of it. If we could set off a supervolcano under Moscow—the end of the Communist threat, forever. The end of Russia!”

“The end of the world, more like!”

“We had no intention of using the bombs—at dawn this morning we would have announced their existence, and the test as a demonstration of their potency—and we would have pronounced our willingness to use them, regardless of political cowardice. The threat alone would have caused the Soviet Union to fold like a house of cards.”

Tremayne said, “No, no. No, no. This is all wrong. That wasn’t my intention at all.”

Jones said, “But you still haven’t told us it all, have you, Godwin? These computers are in the middle of being reprogrammed. You are somehow redirecting Project Hades, aren’t you? What are you up to?”

But Tremayne, growing ever more agitated, wouldn’t be quiet. “I meant my project to show the madness of war, and a way to a future of peaceful uses of the weapons. I have been betrayed. You, Godwin, and your cabal of conspirators, have used my technology for precisely the opposite purpose to that which I intended—to deliver a weapon of such insane potency that it could destroy mankind altogether. What have I done—oh, what have I done?” He stood over a control panel.

Godwin raised his revolver. “Get away from there.”

“It’s all my fault—all mine. I must put a stop to all this—” He raised a code book and smashed a glass screen.

Godwin held his arm out straight, pointing the weapon. “You asked for it, John.”

Jones yelled, “No!” He leapt at the Commodore, trying to get the gun. They fell together on top of Tremayne, who was knocked to the ground. The gun went off; Jones felt it as much as heard it. Gas hissed from a ruptured pipe and klaxons wailed. Jones rolled away from Tremayne and Godwin, seeking the cover of one of the console blocks.

Clare shouted, “Doctor Jones!”

“Stay down, Clare!”

“Tremayne—”

Jones saw Tremayne’s slumped form. “He’s out cold, but he’s not been hit. Poor old chap. His whole life’s work ruined in a moment of betrayal.”

Godwin called, “There’s no use hiding. I suggest you come out quietly.”

Clare whispered, “He can’t see us. All this gas.”

“Yes, I think he hit some kind of pneumatic feed. Look, Clare, get Tremayne out of here. Go that way. I’ll distract Godwin.”

“But Doctor Jones—”

“Listen to me. Get him to Winston and Thelma. All right? Tell them they must work together with Tremayne. Do as full an analysis of the data on the Magmoids as they can manage.”

“What for?”

“Well, if I’m to make the Magmoids see sense, I need to understand what they’re saying to each other, don’t I?”

“Saying to each other? But—oh, never mind. I’m not leaving you here.”

“Now don’t be a fool. Tremayne needs your protection, Constable Clare. I don’t.”

“But Godwin—”

“I’ll deal with him.”

“You’re still under arrest, Doctor Jones.”

“Naturally. Now go, go!” He heard her crawl away. “Now then—Godwin! Over here!”

The gun cracked. He ducked back. The klaxons still wailed, but the hiss of escaping gas stopped. “Thank heaven for that.”

Godwin called, “So, Jones, you smuggled out your friends. It’s of no consequence. Just you and me now.”

“Just you and me and a planetful of bombs—and a countdown clock. And you won’t shoot me, will you, which would be the logical thing to do? Men like you always need an audience before whom to strut and preen.”

“I would advise you not to goad me, Jones.”

“Ah, yes, you do have that short fuse. What is it Tremayne said about you? Calm, calm, bang? Are you prepared to tell me now what you’re planning?”

“As you observed, I’ve set in train a reprogramming sequence. I’m no technician, but it was a quite a simple procedure.”

“So you’re resequenced the explosions? Redirected the impulses? Is that what the clock is ticking down towards, some immense new bang? But what are you trying to blow up, Godwin? Not the Russians, surely.”

“The Russians are rather irrelevant now, don’t you think? For suddenly mankind faces a much greater enemy.”

“Godwin—you don’t mean—surely you can’t think—”

“You yourself showed me their origin, on the surface of Earth’s inner core. Jones, Hades is designed to strike right through the body of the Earth, to a remote point on the surface. It was a simple matter to redirect it to strike at the heart.”

An automated voice filled the room. “Ten seconds to Project Hades full synchronised initiation. Nine. Eight…”

“You intend to attack the Magmoids, don’t you? Are you quite mad? You’re declaring war on beings unutterably superior to humanity in every way—a war you can’t possibly win!”

“A war you might not win. I am made of different stuff. Can you think of a better way of proving the rightness of these mighty swords?”

“I can’t allow this—you’re insane—”

“Get back!”

“Three. Two.”

“Godwin! Stop this!”

“Welcome to hell, Jones.”

“Zero.”

A tremendous detonation lifted the whole room.

5

0436.

The truck drew to a halt. Buck called, “Aldmoor. This bus terminates here.”

They all climbed stiffly down from the truck. Buck ran off for “a recce.” Thelma blinked, trying to clear gritty eyes; a part of her longed for sleep. A faint dawn was seeping into the eastern sky. And to the west the military camp blazed with light from floodlights and flares that drifted in the air, and she thought she could hear a pop of gunfire. She was still perhaps a quarter of a mile from the fence.

Winston said, “What now, Thelma? Where’s Doctor Jones?”

“I don’t know, Winston. Perhaps he’s still inside the base. Captain, that big explosion—” It had nearly turned the truck over, as if the earth was a blanket being shaken out.

Phillips said, “No. It didn’t sound like volcanoes to me either.”

Winston said, “Another nuke. That’s what it felt like. But why would they set off another nuke? What’s going on in that base?”

“I don’t know. I just—God, will this long night never end?”

Thelma said, “It will, Captain Phillips. But not yet. Bear up.”

“The trouble is I may have some grave decisions to make before the end of it. Very grave.”

Buck jogged up. “Looks like a right mess, sir.”

Phillips said, “You don’t say.”

“No comms in or out of the base for hours. Your guys have got the place locked down. But the spotters say they see armed men looking back out at them through the fence.”

“Wonderful. Armed Britishers outside, armed Americans inside. So much for the special relationship, eh? Who’s in command in there, Sergeant Grady?”

“Unknown, sir.”

“What do you mean, unknown?”

“There’s some scuttlebutt that Major Crowne has been killed. Whispers heard by your squaddies through the fence.”

“But he’s the senior American officer. Well, that puts the tin lid on it.”

Thelma asked, “What will you do, Captain?”

“My orders are to find out what’s what and then sort it out—and the sooner the better if whoever’s in charge in there is going around setting off nuclear bombs. I have a horrible feeling that might mean storming the base. Or worse.”

Winston said, “Look! There’s somebody coming up through that hatch, outside the fence.”

Thelma, whirling, saw the hatch open in the grass, and two figures clambering stiffly out.

Phillips said, “By George. That’s Professor Tremayne. And that WPC!”

Thelma said, “They’ll know about Doctor Jones. Come on!”

“Do you smoke, Jones?”

“Smoke? No, Commodore, I don’t smoke.”

Godwin struck a match, lit a cigar, and took a deep inhale. “Ah. Cuban.”

“Isn’t that an illegal import?”

“Finest cigars in the world produced by one of the world’s most rotten states. Isn’t that a sign that the order of the world is all wrong, Jones?”

“ ‘Order of the world?’ Godwin—what are we doing here in this steel tomb? You’ve already set off your damn bombs. The Magmoids will strike back…” He glanced at his watch. “They seemed to have skipped the latest ninety-minute cycle, at least in terms of attacks here. I’d guess next time then, at about six. And this time they will target the base itself, believe me. So now what?”

“Oh, my work here isn’t finished yet.”

“What do you mean, Godwin?”

“Project Hades is rather extensive. Did you know that Britain spends three times as much on defence as on education? You’d be surprised how freely money sloshes around in a world that believes it is at war—and how easily it can be diverted.”

“There are more bombs. In addition to the ones you’ve detonated already. Is that what you’re telling me? In heaven’s name, man, you’ve already launched one assault on the Magmoids at the centre of the Earth. What more can you do?”

“I have a second strike capability. A reserve. It’s standard strategy. Your Magmoids have been stirred up by my first assault. Good. Let them rise up. In a short while I will be ready to strike again. The countdown has already started.”

“Good lord, man, can you not see what a storm you’ll reap? You don’t know the Magmoids. They could have the Earth shake off humanity as a dog shakes off water. Commodore, I urge you to reconsider. Let Captain Phillips into the base. Let Tremayne shut down these systems. Abandon this madness.”

Something exploded, not far away, perhaps a grenade; the room shook and glass crashed.

“Oh, do sit down, Jones. You are an excitable sort of chap, aren’t you? And this gun is loaded, you know. Are you sure you won’t take a cigar? They really are rather good.”

I must get a message out of this lunatic asylum, Jones thought. I must.

Clare and Tremayne limped away from the base lights.

Tremayne said, “All my fault. All this.”

Clare, panting, supporting him, said, “Come on, Professor, keep moving. We need to get away from the fence. There are too many guns pointing at us for my liking.”

“I only meant—you know—peaceful application—such power, such power, in the hands of good men—I should have known! I should have known!”

Winston ran up. “Clare! Clare!”

“Winston. Oh, thank God.” She grabbed him and hugged him.

Phillips, Grady, and Thelma followed close behind. Phillips said, “Come with us, Professor Tremayne, you’re all right now. Well done, Constable.”

“I found a tunnel—there is a whole set of them, actually. They must be for emplacing bombs for the tests. Lucky we didn’t crawl into a live one. What happened to you?”

Winston said, “Quite a lark. My mum’s running a refugee camp just off the A68.”

Clare laughed. “Well, that’s the first thing I’ve heard tonight that hasn’t surprised me.”

Thelma said, “Clare. What about Doctor Jones?”

“Still in there. With Godwin.”

“Who?”

“The base commander. Commodore Godwin? He’s gone rogue.”

Phillips said, “He’s what?”

“He’s setting off the bombs. Not just here, all over the world. We tried to stop him, but—”

Buck said, “Did he kill Major Crowne?”

“I’m afraid so, Buck.”

Phillips said, “Well, that explains a lot. You’re going to have to come with me for a debrief, young lady.”

“All right. But Thelma—”

“Yes?”

“Doctor Jones got us out. Me and the Professor. But he had a message for you. He was very insistent.”

“Tell me.”

“The stuff you’ve brought back. The data. You’re to work with the Professor. Analyse it all. Look for signals in the seis—seis—”

Winston said, “Seismometry?”

“That’s it. Something to do with talking to them.”

“Talking to who?”

“The Magmoids. The creatures that are attacking us.”

Phillips said, “Creatures?”

“From inside the Earth.”

“Oh, now really, Constable—”

Tremayne said, “It’s true. I saw the displays myself. Very plausible chap, Doctor Jones. Very plausible. I should have listened to him. What a fool I am!”

Clare said softly, “It’s going to be hard working with him, Thelma. He’s been through too much tonight, poor old boy.”

“We’ll just have to do what we can. Help me get him to that tent. Now come on, Professor, we’ve got work to do.”

More explosions and a rattle of gunfire. Jones tried to estimate if the fighting was getting closer.

“You look restless, Jones. Try to relax. You’re burning up energy for nothing.”

“I admit I’m not used to being unable to influence events.”

“We’re quite a contrast, aren’t we, Jones? You, utterly powerless. Me with all the power in the world. Literally, I suppose. Fancy that.”

“Yes, what an irony.” He muttered, “I just hope you’re on the ball, Captain Bob.”

Phillips and Grady huddled in foliage not far from the fence. Lights flared, and Phillips, feeling very exposed, could hear shouting coming from within the camp, and sporadic shooting from around the boundary.

“All right, Sergeant Grady, time for a spot of infil.”

“Got you, Captain.”

They crept forward, Phillips leading the way.

Phillips said, “Hm. Your GIs are dug in just behind the fence.”

“Machine gun positions?”

“Yes. Also snipers on the rooftops.”

“Probably more emplacements behind that first line of buildings, and inside too. Our guys are well trained, sir.”

“I can see that. And they’re going to be tough to root out. Well, let’s try a little transatlantic diplomacy. Pass me the loudhailer.” He clicked it on. “My name is Captain Robert Phillips, British Army. I’m speaking to c-in-c, Aldmoor base.” Light splashed over them, and they ducked into what cover the uneven ground offered. “Gosh, that’s blinding.”

An American voice came drifting from a tannoy. “Back away with your hands up. Any incursion within fifty yards of the fence will be met with lethal force.”

Phillips lifted the loudhailer. “Yes, but look here. I have orders from Brigadier General Deke Worthington of the Seventh US Army, who is at SHAPE, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe. Now, you know that name very well, don’t you?”

A single gunshot cracked.

Phillips ducked again. “Yikes.”

“If he’d wanted to take your head off he would have done so, sir.”

“Well, I’m aware of that, Sergeant. And I’m also aware that they are following standing orders precisely.”

“Yeah. If their comms go down they have to assume that they are isolated in enemy-held territory. For all they know Britain has been overrun by the Russkies.”

“In their shoes I’d be doing exactly the same thing. Which doesn’t help sort this mess out, does it, Sergeant? Come on. Let’s fall back and consider our options.”

Inside the army tent, Tremayne followed where he was led, as if stunned, his tweed jacket scuffed, a bruise developing on his forehead, his white hair a halo around his head. “I let everybody down, you see? Jones was right. My arrogance led me into this. I always was the smart little boy who knew better than everybody else…”

Winston said to Thelma, “Clare says he’s been like this since the bunker. Over and over. It’s frustrating. Well, the answer’s in this rucksack—I know it is.” He began pulling stuff out of the rucksack.

Tremayne was distracted. “Why have you got a bag full of toilet rolls, boy? What are you, some kind of spiv? Had enough of your type in wartime.”

Thelma said, “No, Professor. Nothing like that. Look. This is data. Seismometer output. All dated, labeled, and calibrated, see?”

Tremayne inspected it. “Good Lord. So it is. I’ve never seen anything like it. And you produced this—what was your name?”

“Winston, sir. Winston Stubbins. Do you remember—we met at the gate—?”

“You made some dire warnings, didn’t you? And I gave you rather short shrift.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“But it does. You were right, and I was wrong, in my foolish arrogance—”

Thelma said, “That’s enough of that. Professor Tremayne, we need your help.”

“My help. What use am I?”

“Jones wants us to analyse all this, together with the data from the base’s instruments—”

“Impossible. Look around you, woman. We’re in a tent! We’ve no computer. No power if we had one. How can we achieve any sort of meaningful analysis in these circumstances?”

Winston said, “Oh, it’s hopeless. He’s just giving up.”

Thelma said, “Hush, Winston. Ah, but that’s the challenge. Come on, Professor. Engage with the puzzle. Think about the prize—communicating with an alien life form! What’s the first step?”

Tremayne snapped, “Calculating machines.”

“Calculating machines?”

“Lots of them. And people to work them. That’s the way to do it. If you can sort that out for me, ah—”

“Thelma. Thelma Bennet.”

“Jones spoke well of you, Miss Bennet. Also we’ll need the data from the base, of course. You can fetch that from the backup record store outside the fence. Meanwhile you, boy, help me sort out all this data, by date and location to begin with. Well, come on! What are you waiting for?”

Winston said, “Yes, sir!”

Thelma said, “Glad to have you with us, Professor.”

“You still here? Get on with it, woman!”

“Godwin—have you thought this through? What if you do defeat the Magmoids? It’s absurd—but what if you did? What then?”

“Oh, there’s plenty more to do.”

“Like what?”

“A reordering of the Earth. Take China, for example. Vastly overpopulated, but all those warm bodies make it formidable. Immense industries, enormous armies, and so forth.”

“So?”

“So, a little radiological reconstruction would sort that out. A string of cobalt bombs, for example, across North China. A blanket of heavy-particle fallout. Two hundred megadeaths, maybe three.”

“ ‘Megadeaths.’ Millions of deaths?”

“And then there’s Russia.”

“Ah, of course.”

“Now with the Russians you have a different problem. There you have a highly industrialised nation. What you want to do with them is to take them back to the Middle Ages.”

“Cobalt bombs again?”

“Clinical strikes against the cities and the industrial belts. Let the next generation grow up knowing nothing but tools of stone and wood. They’d soon forget they were ever civilised. This isn’t warfare, Jones. It’s corrective surgery.”

“What a visionary you are.”

“But you see that vision. Jones, we’re alike, you and I—like it or not.”

Thelma found Clare at a field kitchen.

Clare said, “This army tea is worse than in a cop shop, and that’s saying something.”

“Phillips pumped you dry, I imagine.”

“Told them all I knew. Layout of Godwin’s command centre—all that was said in there. I think they’re getting ready for some kind of operation against the base.”

“Good. Well, finish your cuppa. We’ve got work to do.”

“Okay. What?”

“Calculating machines. It’s for this analysis project of Jones’s. We don’t have computers, but Tremayne says hand-cranked calculators will do.”

“Hmm. That’s not so hard. The post offices have them, for instance. I can put out a call. What’s trickier will be getting people to work them.”

“I hadn’t thought of that—oh.”

“What?”

“It so happens I know just where we can find plenty of office workers. The refugee camps on the main roads, where half the population of Newcastle is spending the night. We’ll find all the girls we need there. We’ll need a truck or two, I suppose.”

“I can organise that too.”

“Thank you…” Thelma studied Clare, who stood cradling her tea, her police uniform scuffed and stained, her face streaked with mud and blood. “You know, Clare—you don’t question, you don’t complain, you just get on with it, whatever’s thrown at you. I do so admire that.”

“Yes, well, you can write a letter to my sergeant when all this is over. Come on, let’s get cracking.”

Phillips assembled his team outside the camp.

“All right, gentlemen. Now remember your orders. Use pin-down fire if you can, and shoot to disable, not to kill. I’d much prefer to avoid casualties. They are our allies in there. All right, let’s go. Corporal Harris on the right, Chivers on the left, and I’ll lead the centre. Wire cutters at the ready. Go, go!”

They broke from cover and ran forward, to be greeted by an immediate rattle of machine-gun fire. Phillips had no choice but to throw himself to the ground.

Buck called, “Get down! Fall back!”

“How many down?”

Buck glanced around. “Three already. Wounded only. They’re shooting to disable too.”

“That’s not much comfort, Sergeant. We’ve only made, what, ten yards? And we’re pinned down by those machine-gun nests. It’s like the bloody Somme.”

“This isn’t going to work, is it, sir?”

“But we don’t have much choice. All right, men, get ready again—”

There was a tremendous explosion.

Phillips said, “What the—what’s that? Are they shelling us?”

“No. The base isn’t equipped for that. And look, sir, that’s not a shell crater.”

“Then what?”

Another huge explosion. Dirt showered over them.

Phillips said, “My God. That time it was inside the compound. That wasn’t our boys, for sure.”

Buck pointed. “I saw it that time, sir. It’s like it just burst up from under the ground.”

“Like a mine?”

“Something like that. But there are no mines around here.”

A blur of light shot overhead, shrieking.

Buck stared. “Doctor Jones called that a ‘Grendel,’ didn’t he?”

“I don’t like the look of this, Sergeant. Fall back, fall back!”

The detonations were like approaching footsteps.

Jones said, “Hear that, Godwin? The bangs getting bigger and bigger? That’s the Magmoids, man. They’re hitting back at the base—at you. So it begins.”

“Let them come. My strategy is panning out.”

“I actually believe you’re enjoying this, aren’t you, Godwin? Makes up for all your failures, does it?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You were involved in Suez, weren’t you? Tremayne told me. What a cock-up that was. The end of empire—and the end of your career too? You’re just a poor boy from the north of England, aren’t you, Godwin? Who had to make his way in an armed force ridden with class and privilege. Chip on your shoulder, have you? You’re just a sad little boy who wants to get back at the bullies who tormented you.”

“Oh, this is all—hot in here, isn’t it?”

“What?”

Godwin stood, pushing back his chair. “Will you join me in a drink, Jones?”

The air was full of Grendels now.

Phillips, dug in as best he could with his troops, said, “Up there, corporal. Two rounds if you please.”

The corporal obediently fired; the bullets sang through the Grendel without effect.

Buck ran up, breathless. “Sir.”

“Situation, Sergeant?”

“Well, the British are shooting at the Americans, and the Americans are shooting at the British, and we’re both shooting at these—ghosts. I’ve had word from SHAPE. All the other Project Hades bases, worldwide, are under attack. Just like this. From underneath. There’s no sign of ordinance. No shells or mines. Just explosions. Somehow they can make the ground just burst open under you.”

“I suspect Professor Tremayne or Doctor Jones would say these are seismic effects, Sergeant. You can feel it in your gut. And we can’t do anything about those Casper-the-Friendly-Ghosts up above. I suspect they are only spotters, anyhow. The explosions follow where they have been hovering about.”

“Yeah. But how do you strike at something that comes at you out of the ground?”

“This is war, isn’t it? Man against the Magmoids. Sounds like a bad B-Movie, doesn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t know, sir. I go for romantic comedies myself. Doris Day, Rock Hudson—”

“You have hidden depths, Sergeant.”

The Grendels screamed and swooped lower.

Orderlies hurried into the tent with boxes of gear.

“Ah, the calculators!” Tremayne opened a box, selected a specimen, and began happily turning its handle. “Ever used one of these beauties, Winston? Here are the registers, the carry key, and to perform the computation you turn the handle. Now, what we’re going to perform is a deconvolution integral.”

“Professor, I got kicked out of school long before O-level maths.”

“Well, that’s of no consequence to me, your mind seems more than adequate.”

“It does?” Winston felt unreasonably pleased. “So what’s a deconvolution integral?”

“The principle is simple. We’re going to take all this data and try to separate out the signal from the background noise. All right?”

“What do I do?”

“Just multiply this list of numbers by that list, and total up the products. All right?”

“I guess so.”

“The sooner our battery of clerks gets here the better, but we can make a start. Off you go!”

The truck rushed down the A-road to the refugee camp. It was a fast trip as the road was now being kept clear by police and military, though the refugees still clustered to either side.

When she got to the camp Thelma had identified, Clare wasn’t surprised to find Hope Stubbins, sitting on a canvas chair, at the centre of operations.

“Police Constable Baines. Fancy seeing you here.”

“Winston told me I’d find you.” Clare glanced around. This had evidently been an improvised soup kitchen, with big tureens, mobile gas stoves, and tin plates, but soldiers were now packing the stuff up. Outside, people milled around, picking up blankets from the ground and waking reluctant children. “They’re moving you?”

“Ay, well, they say we’re a bit too close to the fighting at Aldmoor. Clare—how’s the lad?”

“Winston’s fine.”

“He’s back at that base, is he?”

“Yes. There is fighting, but he’s well away from it. He’s working with a professor.”

“Is he now? He always was a bright lad.”

“Listen, Mrs. Stubbins, I need your help. The army wants office clerks who can work a calculating machine. There must be a few in this crowd.”

“Office lasses, eh? Well, there’s Mabel over there for a start. She works at the Baltic, don’t you, dear? And little Annie there works the turnstiles at Saint James’ Park. How do you fancy cuddling up to a few soldier boys?”

The girls laughed.

“Thanks, Mrs. Stubbins. What about the rest of you—where will they take you?”

“Oh, they’re not telling us that. Miserable business, like. To move once is all right, and you think you’re through with it, and you get settled, you know? Then you’ve got to do it all again. Hard for the bairns.”

“Will you be all right?”

“Oh, don’t worry about me. Listen. Just tell them buggers in the Army to get this lot put a stop to, all right?”

“I’ll get the trucks ready.”

“Clare.”

“Yes?”

“You couldn’t leave us a walkie-talkie? I’d like to know what’s going on with Winston.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Another crash rattled the room.

“Do you know, I think I’ll have another. You sure you won’t join me? You look like a G&T man to me.” Godwin walked to a cabinet at the back of the room. “I always keep a decanter. Visiting officers, you know.”

“Umm—actually, on second thought—fine. Make it a large one, will you?”

“Certainly.”

“Got any ice?” And now, while Godwin’s back was turned, Jones had a chance. He found a tannoy microphone and flicked a switch, and spoke urgently but quietly. “This is Doctor Chapman Jones. I’m speaking from the command centre. Godwin is planning a second strike against the Magmoids. Repeat, a second strike. The first strike will have provoked a limited Magmoid response against military facilities. The second response will be global. Repeat, global. The base must be breached. Godwin must be stopped. Repeat. This is Doctor Jones…”

Jones’s voice, relayed by a tannoy, floated out of the besieged base, above the crack of gunfire.

Phillips said, “Grady! Can you hear that?”

“Yeah. It’s that little guy in the trenchcoat—Doctor Jones.”

“A second strike, eh?”

“If the Magmoids strike at other cities as they’ve already struck at Newcastle—”

“We really have got to put a stop to this.”

“You can say that again, sir. But how? We just don’t have the manpower to storm the place building by building. And these damn Magmoid attacks are disrupting everything we try to do…”

“There is one option.”

“Sir?”

“Air strike. Just bomb the place to smithereens. That would put a stop to all these shenanigans. Messy, of course. Best avoided if possible. But still… All right, let’s fall back and regroup.”

Buck said, “Casper overhead!”

A Grendel wailed, and bullets tore through it.

Jones kept repeating his message. “The first strike will have provoked a limited Magmoid response against military facilities. The second response will be global. Repeat, global. The base must be breached. Godwin must be stopped—” A heavy glass smashed down on his hand, and the shards cut into his flesh. He cried out.

Godwin said, “I rather suspected you’d try something like that. How predictable you are.”

Jones clutched his hand, shivering, breathing hard. “Calm, calm, bang, Godwin?”

“Here, have a cloth. And wipe up that gin when you’re done, would you? What a waste.” He sipped his own drink. “Aah. That’s better. Wish I had more ice.”

Jones said, “Still enjoying yourself, Godwin, are you? Still enjoying smashing everything up? Listen to what’s going on out there! You’re risking global destruction!”

“But this is the logic of total war, Jones. Such wars must be won, whatever the cost. And I am ready to command an empire of ruins, if that’s what it takes to win.”

“You really are quite bananas, aren’t you?”

The tent was soon filled with the clatter and ringing of the calculating machines, operated by Winston and a team of drafted-in orderlies.

Thelma and Clare walked in. Thelma said, “Gentlemen. We’ve brought some help for you.” She beckoned and a dozen girls followed her. “Experienced machine operatives from the city. They’re a bit grubby and tired, but they’ll get the job done.”

Winston grinned. “Come on. I’ll help you girls get set up.”

Clare said, “Yes, and just you keep your mind on the job, Winston Stubbins.”

Tremayne beamed. “Thank you, Miss Bennet. Do you know the first atomic weapon of all, the Manhattan Project, was designed largely using teams of manual computators? You can solve the most complex mathematical problem in such a way, as long as you break it down correctly. We’ll soon have your Doctor Jones’s data analysed.”

“That’s wonderful. But none of it will be any use unless we can get to Jones himself. Keep working, Professor. I think I need a talk with the soldiers.”

“How long left until your ‘second strike,’ Godwin?”

“Half an hour, or less. It’s coincidental, but it’s roughly timed for the next of your Magmoids’ ninety-minute cycles, at about six. Maybe that’s for the best. Create the biggest bang we can—what?”

“Godwin, I implore you to reconsider what you’re doing.”

“Reconsider? But if such power as this exists, how can a man resist using it? ‘Hast thou, spirit, performed to point the tempest that I bade thee?’ ”

“The Tempest. Prospero to Ariel.”

“My favourite play at school.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake—”

“Our vigil will soon be over, Jones. ‘The hour’s now come, the very minute bids thee open thine ear; obey, and be attentive.’ Can’t you see the parallels, Jones? I am Prospero, exiled here in this island in the earth. Tremayne, of course, is my Ariel, my airy atomic spirit.”

Jones huddled over his wounded hand. “In that case, Godwin, I am your Caliban. I am your conscience.”

Thelma stood with Phillips, surveying the war zone that was the base perimeter.

“We simply have to find a way into that base, Captain Phillips. If we can’t get to Doctor Jones it may be the end of everything.”

Phillips said, “Look, Miss Bennet—I told you I might have some grave decisions to make tonight. As far as my commanders are concerned, my main priority is to stop any more nuclear weapons being used. I am authorised to call in an air strike.”

“But Doctor Jones would be killed!”

“Then give me another option.”

Buck said, “Look out, bogies above!”

Again the Grendels ducked low and were greeted by gunfire.

Thelma cried, “Oh, Jones, if only you could hear me!”

Phillips said, “Time’s up, I’m afraid. Give me that radio, Sergeant. This is Captain Phillips at Aldmoor calling RAF Boulmer. Code four eight fifteen. Send in the Vulcans. Repeat—send in the Vulcans!”

6

0610.

The deep-buried control room began to shudder, as explosions erupted from the bowels of the Earth once more. Another ninety-minute cycle was up, Jones realised; once again the Magmoids had come to attack their pinprick assailants. He wondered how much longer this battered base could last—and himself, in this metal tomb.

Then he heard jets howl overhead. “Ah. Hear that, Godwin?”

Godwin was still drinking, though the alcohol seemed to have no effect on him. “Vulcan bombers, if I’m not mistaken.”

“That’s the RAF. Your own colleagues, come to bomb you to bits. Give it up!”

“I am prepared to give my life. And if I die here, they will build a statue to me a thousand feet high.”

“I think they’re coming back. Brace yourself, Ozymandias.”

The transmissions from the Vulcans were relayed to Phillips, outside the base fence.

“V-1 to V-wing, V-1 to V-wing. Target in sight. Hard to miss with all those detonations going on down there. One recce pass then we’ll go in. Follow my lead. Out… Ground, this is V-1. Preparing for final pass.”

Phillips thumbed his radio. “Roger, Vulcan leader.” He glanced around. “I rather suggest we all take cover.”

Thelma felt anxiety twist her stomach. From within the fence, a series of deep throaty detonations could be heard—the Magmoids’ latest attack. And, somewhere in there, Chapman Jones was pinned between lethal peril from above and below. “Wave them off, Captain Phillips, I beg you.”

Buck said, “Listen, ma’am, they’re my buddies in that base too. But the Captain just hasn’t got the manpower to fight his way in—”

Hope Stubbins called, “He has now.”

Thelma turned, shocked to hear her voice. Hope was riding a wheelbarrow pushed by a sturdy-looking Geordie in a workman’s overalls and flat cap. Clare Baines was at her side, grinning. And behind them followed a loose column of people, all adults, grim and silent, that stretched back along the track that led from the A-road.

Phillips snapped, “What the blue blazes—who are you?”

“Mrs. Hope Edith Stubbins, 112 Inkerman Street, Gateshead.”

Clare said, “Hello, Thelma.”

Thelma asked, “What on Earth are you two doing here?”

“I left Mrs. Stubbins with a walkie-talkie. She called me and said she wanted to be here.”

Phillips said, “Why?”

Hope laughed. “To save your bacon, Dan Dare. Not enough manpower, you say? Will this lot do?”

“Good God,” Phillips said. “There must be a thousand civilians with you.”

“More than that, bonny lad. We got fed up sitting in a field. So we came to do something about it. We left the bairns and the old folk behind at the camps, of course. The Geordie Army at your service.”

“But you’re unarmed.”

Hope said, “So what? Let’s get this sorted out.” She stuck her fingers in her mouth and let out a piercing whistle. “Forward, march!” With Clare at her side she was rolled past Phillips’s party towards the base fence. The rest followed, in a loose column three or four abreast, their faces grey in the dawn light, and as they walked they began to sing softly.

Phillips gave no orders. His soldiers, at their loose perimeter around the base, fingered their weapons nervously, but fell back before the civilians’ advance.

Buck said, “They’re walking straight for the fence. They’ll be cut down.”

Thelma said, “And bombed flat. Captain Phillips—please—the Vulcans—”

“All right, damn it.” He lifted his radio. “Ground control to Vulcan 1. Phillips to V-1. Wave off. I say again, wave off.”

Thelma felt as much as heard the jets scream over. But there was gunfire from within the base as the civilians approached.

Buck said, “They’ll be picked off.”

“I think the Americans are firing in the air,” Phillips said, peering. “At least for now. But there are bound to be accidents.”

As if on cue somebody screamed, from the head of the column.

Grady said, “But they aren’t trying to run or hide. Not one of them.”

Thelma said, “Stern stuff, Sergeant.”

“And—my God. They’re singing!”

Phillips said, “That’s ‘Abide with Me,’ if I’m not mistaken.”

Thelma grabbed Phillips’s arm. “Captain. These people are doing their part. Grasp the opportunity.”

Phillips hesitated. “Damn it! Give me that loudhailer, Grady.” He raised it to his lips. “This is Captain Phillips. Soldiers of Aldmoor. Look—you are a long way from home. I understand you are doing your duty. But your base commander is committing a horrific crime. Now is the time for a higher judgement. If you keep firing you will gun down civilians who have come to smother your bullets with their lives. I urge you to surrender.” He lowered the hailer and waited.

His reply came from a distant tannoy. “Cease fire! This is Captain Greengage, acting base commander. Cease fire!”

Thelma grinned. “Hope did it!”

“Yes,” Phillips said grimly. “But how many fell? Right. Grady, take a squad, get through the fence and cut the power to that control room. Move!”

“Yes, sir!”

Jones said, “Hear that singing, Godwin? I rather think things are starting to unravel, don’t you?”

The light died, and the hum of the air circulation system faded away.

“And there goes the power. It’s all over, Commodore.”

“Not if I can get my hands around your neck.” Jones heard him lumbering in the dark.

Jones ducked behind a console. “More rage, Godwin? Well, you’ll have to find me first—”

There was a small explosion and a metallic creak as the door was blown in. Torchlight probed into the room.

“Jones? Commodore? Are you in here?”

Jones yelled, “Keep out of the light, Captain Bob. He’s armed!”

Buck Grady called, “I’m on him.” There was a crash of bodies and a gunshot. “No, you don’t. That’s enough killing for one night—” Jones heard a struggle and a single meaty punch. “Situation secured, Captain.”

Jones stood up. “Phew! About time, if I may say so!”

Phillips shone a light in his face. “Sorry about that.”

Thelma clambered through the smashed door. “Jones?”

Jones ran to her. “Thelma! Oh, Thelma! Are you all right?”

“Dirty, scared, lacking sleep—”

“You managed to retrieve the data I asked for?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s get cracking. Come on—”

“Jones. Jones! Calm down. Just for a minute. Get your breath. And let me look at that hand. You’ve cut it somehow.”

“I—oh, all right.”

Buck said, “First aid kit here, ma’am.”

“Thank you.” She opened the kit and, by torchlight, began to cut a bandage strip. “It seems you intend to speak to the Magmoids.”

“Well, I can try. But the Magmoids may not listen.”

“Why not?”

“They aren’t our sort of life, Thelma. A hundred different disasters could play out on Earth’s surface, it could even be made lifeless, and the Magmoids wouldn’t even notice. They are immune to history.”

“All you can do is try.”

“You know, the madman in here kept quoting Shakespeare at me. Called me Caliban!”

“Caliban? Well, you’ve got the face for it.”

“Oh, thanks very much.”

“How does that lovely speech of poor Caliban’s go—after he dreams—‘And then, in dreaming, the clouds, methought, would open—’ ”

“ ‘And show riches ready to drop upon me, that when I waked I cried to dream again.’ ”

“ ‘This will be a brave kingdom to me, where I shall have my music for nothing—’ ”

“ ‘When Prospero is destroyed.’ Come on, Thelma, we’ve got work to do.”

Phillips called the group to his command tent, outside the base gate. Jones, deeply weary, sat in a canvas chair, drinking tea and sucking in fresh air. Thelma was here, and Clare Baines with Hope Stubbins in her barrow.

“So,” Phillips began, “Sergeant Grady, we’ve got the base locked down at last.”

Buck said, “Yes, sir. But, Captain, we’ve now got a few hundred GIs expecting to be put into custody, and a few thousand civilians milling about the place—”

Clare Baines put in, “And some civilians down, Captain Phillips. Shot.”

Phillips said, “Yes, yes. Look here, Grady, you sort that lot out. Take Constable Baines. No doubt you’ll find a way. And take this old lady in the wheelbarrow with you.”

Hope said, “Old? Do you mind?”

Thelma stood up. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Stubbins, I’ll look after you.” She glanced back at Jones, who nodded. With Clare pushing Hope, they hurried out.

Tremayne bustled into the tent with Winston. “Captain Phillips! Where’s Doctor Jones? We’ve got the data analysis he wanted.”

Jones stood up. “I’m right here, gentlemen, fit and raring to go. These your results, are they?” Winston handed him a sheaf of paper, and he riffled through it. “You’ve done some jolly fine work here in the circumstances.”

“An awful lot of it was down to young Winston.”

“I’m not surprised.”

Winston said, “What are you going to do with all this, Doctor Jones?”

“Save the world. I hope! Captain Bob, have you any sappers handy?”

“We’ve a unit on detachment from the Royal Engineers. Why?”

“I’m going to want them to plant a network.”

“A network? Of what?”

“Of explosives, Captain Bob. Mines. Shells. Grenades will do if you can wire them up. Anything that can be set off remotely. A thousand should do it.”

“A thousand? We don’t have an infinite resource, Jones.”

Tremayne said, “Jones—what kind of network?”

“Now, that’s where you come in. Do you have a sketch pad? And, Tremayne—how’s your soldering?”

In an improvised medical centre, Clare and Thelma sat beside Hope in her barrow, which was now lined with army-issue pillows. They had worked for half an hour, trying to figure out the problems they had to deal with and the resources they could muster.

Buck marched in, competent and energetic as ever. “So what have we got?”

Clare looked down a list. “Well, we’ve got about thirty dead, fifty injured.”

Hope said, “The wounded need doctors. And everybody else needs to be took somewhere safe.”

“I’ve also got a division of GIs waiting to be clapped in irons.”

Thelma said, “Are there any medics among them?”

“Of course there are.”

Thelma said, “I think the solution’s staring us in the face, for the short term at least. Look, those soldiers were only doing their duty as they saw it. So let them atone. Have them help.”

Clare seized on that. “Yes. Buck, if you can point me to a senior medic—”

“All right. Makes sense. There’s plenty more work to do. We’re going to want stretcher parties. And to set up some kind of emergency field hospital. Then there’s water and food—”

Hope said, “And if you can pick out some hunky GI to push me wheelbarrow for me I’ll be forever in your debt.”

“So we’ve got a plan. Let’s get on with it.”

Jones selected a reasonably level, reasonably bare patch of land outside the base for his “signalling station.” He had Phillips assemble a hundred troops at the centre, each of them carrying rolls of wire and baskets of small ordinances and hastily copied sketch maps. Most of them looked bewildered, Jones thought, and well they might.

Tremayne stood with Jones, shivering a little in the dawn chill, and scratching his bare head.

Phillips came up to them. “Ready, Doctor Jones?”

Tremayne said, “I wish we could test this.”

Jones said, “No time for that. But it will all be over soon, one way or another. Go for it, Captain Bob!”

Phillips called, “All right, lads. Move out steadily! Keep the circle, keep your shape!”

The soldiers moved out from the centre, consulting their maps, talking to each other quietly. Following the sketches they planted ordinances in the soft ground, leaving wire trailing between them. Here and there a more complex junction box was established, which sappers wired up.

Jones said, “Good. Good.”

Phillips said, “Well, I hope it works, Jones; we’re draining our ammo like pink gin on ladies’ night.” He took off his hat and brushed back grimy hair. “And you say you’re going to talk to the Magmoids with this set-up?”

“Quite so,” Tremayne said. “But even I don’t quite understand what you’re going to say, Jones.”

Jones grinned. “Have you heard of Project Ozma, Tremayne?”

“Why, I don’t—”

“A young American radio astronomer called Frank Drake. Calculated that his new eighty-five-foot radio telescope in West Virginia could pick up the strongest terrestrial radio signals, if they were beamed from the nearer stars. So, back in the spring, he listened to the stars—simple as that—to Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani, if I’m not mistaken. Heard nothing, but it’s a start—and what a visionary experiment to try! Drake has ideas on how the telescopes could be used to signal to those distant cultures, and even what sort of signal to send. Anybody capable of building a radio telescope or some equivalent instrument must have a grasp of mathematics and physics, you see—and therefore ought to comprehend a message based on those principles. For mathematics is surely universal.”

“Ah,” Winston said. “And when the Professor and I analysed the Magmoids’ seismic signals, we did find traces of structure—sequences of repeating length, various correlations.”

“Exactly.” Jones dug a grubby bit of paper from his pocket; it was covered with a grid pattern. “I’ve sketched out a signal here that exploits the Magmoids’ own framing system, and I’ve included a sequence of prime numbers, counting up from two, three, five…”

Phillips nodded. “I think I see what you’re up to. If these Magmoid chaps pick up your signal, they might recognise us as intelligent, rather than as some sort of pest—”

“And permit us to survive. Exactly. My signal will be a balance, at least, to the aggression Godwin showed them.”

Phillips scratched his chin. “But we don’t have a radio telescope, Doctor Jones.”

“Nor do we need one! For the culture we are trying to contact is not up in the sky but down in the ground. We must improvise, Captain.”

A sapper ran up to Jones carrying a contact box, a simple Morse key with wires trailing to the network of ordinances on the ground. He saluted. “Ready, sir.”

“Jolly good—thank you, Sergeant!” Jones hefted the contact and glanced at his script. “Well, there’s no point in delaying this. There’s only going to be time for a brief signal—but that might be enough. Ready? Minefield clear? Hold onto your hats.” He started to tap the key.

In response small explosions clattered all across the ground.

Winston stared. “Oh, my word!”

Phillips said, “My giddy aunt, Jones, what are you doing?”

Jones, still working the key, shouted over the din, “My signal has to be turned into seismic waves, Captain—pulses in the rock—that’s how the Magmoids hear. And the only way to do that is through these blooming great bangs, courtesy of the Royal Engineers.”

Tremayne said, “Ah. It’s ingenious. And it should work. The ordinances will generate compressional acoustic waves—of course the attenuation will knock out anything much above a hundred Hertz—”

Jones said, irritated, “I compensated for that, obviously.”

The small explosions died away. Jones lowered his key.

Phillips said, “Well, that’s it. All the ordinances are used up. Now what?”

Jones said, “Now we wait to see if—”

A tremendous explosion erupted from the centre of Jones’s minefield. They all fell back; Jones found himself face down on the ground, and earth hailed around him. He heard the shriek of Grendels, and when he dared glance up he saw their quasi-spherical forms shoot up into the sky.

Winston crawled towards him, coughing, “Doctor Jones!”

“It’s all right, Winston, I’m intact.”

They stood, brushing dirt away, and peered into the fresh crater.

Tremayne said, “My God, Jones, call that a response?”

Phillips said, “It was a punch in the mouth, that’s what. We’re lucky to be alive.”

Jones was baffled. “I failed, then. I can’t understand it. They took my signal as more aggression. I was sure—”

Tremayne gripped his arm. “We’ll try again. We can re-establish the network.”

Winston said, “But what’s the point of doing the same thing over just to fail again?”

“Mister Stubbins! There’s always hope.”

Jones said, “No. He’s right. I was convinced this would work. I’m so terribly sorry.”

“Nonsense, man. Come on, let’s get back to work.”

Phillips scowled. “I’m not sure what was supposed to happen here, let alone what did happen. But I’ll keep the faith for one more try, Doctor Jones. I’ll see about establishing another minefield.”

Winston muttered, “We’re missing something. We have to be. Something obvious…”

Thelma approached Godwin. The Commodore had been manacled to a post inside a small green-canvas tent, with two uncomfortable-looking squaddies posted outside to guard him.

“Ah, Miss Bennet, isn’t it? Jones’s friend. Come to see the toppled tyrant, have you? Oh, don’t be cautious, you’re safe enough. I’m manacled quite securely.”

“I’m not here to make conversation. Here.” She handed him a metal cup of water.

“Thank you.” With his one free hand he sipped the water. “Why?”

“Not even a man like you deserves to die of thirst, Commodore.”

“How weak you are. I’d have had me killed.”

“Then I thank God I’m not like you.”

Jones appeared at the tent entrance. He looked crumpled, grimy, exhausted. “Thelma. They said I’d find you here. Should have known you’d be doing your bit, even for a man like this.”

Godwin said, “Ah, Caliban! You look a bit less cocksure. Plans not going well? But what of it? We humans are like rats, like fleas. The Magmoids can’t kill us all.”

Thelma walked out of the tent. “Ignore him, Jones. Come away.”

Jones said, “I let that man pollute my head for too long tonight.”

“Is there really no hope?”

“I can’t think why it didn’t work in the first place. Look, Thelma—we still have a choice to make. You and I.”

Thelma said, “You mean, we could go back to London.”

“This isn’t your fight—you’re a civil servant, not a soldier.”

“But we can’t simply leave, can we? Look—we came here by chance. We didn’t know any of these people two days ago—Clare, Winston, Mrs. Stubbins. But they are decent, brave folk. It’s like life, really.”

“Is it?”

“Certainly. When you’re born you’re dropped into a point of space and time, entirely at random, and you just have to do the best you can for the people around you.”

“Hmm. Well, you’re one decent, brave person yourself, Miss Bennet…”

She heard Tremayne calling. “Jones? Oh, confound the man—where are you?”

“Over here, Tremayne.”

Tremayne came bustling over, almost as grimy as Jones, but looking agitated.

Thelma asked, “What’s wrong?”

“What’s right—I hope. It’s Winston. He’s got something. Come on!”

Inside his tent, Godwin watched them go. He prised the handle off the metal cup Thelma had left with him, and began to saw at his cuffs.

They hurried back to Phillips’ command tent, where Winston Stubbins was looking very nervous.

Phillips said, “Right. This had better be worth it.”

Tremayne said, “It’s all right, Winston. Just tell it to Doctor Jones as you explained it all to me.”

“It just occurred to me. You said the Earth’s core is an inner planet.”

“Go on.”

“Then we’re like one tiny radio station trying to broadcast to the whole world. And there’s an awful lot of noise, isn’t there?”

“Yes. So my signal was drowned out.”

“What we have to do is target our signals.”

“Yes, yes. But how?”

Winston said, “Interference.”

Jones opened his mouth and closed it again. “Yes, of course. Winston, you’re a genius!”

Phillips said, “What are you talking about? Sound like the physics lessons I slept through at school.”

“We set up another source, Captain. Another field of explosives. We feed my signal to both of them simultaneously.”

Tremayne said, “So the seismic waves emanate from two sources at once—”

“And if we get the timing and position right, the two sound fields will reinforce, just where we want them to. The Magmoids won’t be able to miss that!”

Phillips said, “Ah. I see.”

“Really?”

“Well, no, but I have to trust you. But what about the practicalities? How far away does this ‘second source’ have to be?”

Jones said, “Umm—to penetrate deep into the mantle, I’d say two or three hundred miles. Have to be south of here, I suppose.”

Thelma put in, “How about the military range on Salisbury Plain?”

Phillips said, “Oh, is that all you want? And how soon do you want this?”

Jones glanced through the fence at the wreckage of Aldmoor base. “Well, how long can you stay here under the Magmoids’ assaults?”

Phillips said, “Now we’ve broken the stand-off I’m thinking of abandoning the base altogether. I don’t see how we can withstand another of their ninety-minute strikes.” He glanced at his big army watch. “The next is due at around 0730. Less than an hour—”

Jones said, “Then that’s our deadline.”

“I’ll tell you flat it’s impossible. Nationally we’re stretched thin—there isn’t a chance in hell I could get that through channels in time.”

Tremayne said, “Channels! Oh, you military types.”

Winston said, “Then that’s that.”

“Not at all.” Thelma linked her arm through Phillips’s and drew him away. “Come on, Captain. We in DS8 have some ‘channels’ of our own to exploit. Let’s see what we can sort out.”

Jones watched them go, grinning. “What an asset she is. And in the meantime we need to set up another signal minefield here—and work out a fresh message. Come on, Tremayne, Winston—there’s no time to lose!”

The hospital tent shook at the latest explosion.

Hope said, “Christ, that was a near one.”

Clare looked around, uneasy. “That’s the Magmoids. The ninety minutes isn’t even up yet. They’re getting closer again, aren’t they?”

Buck Grady approached. “Ladies.”

“Buck. What’s happening?”

“Well, we got everything set up pretty good. Everybody who needs it is getting food, hot drinks, medical attention. Um, we’ve set up a temporary morgue for the civilians who fell, and the soldiers. And there seem to be no hard feelings. The Geordies and the Yanks are talking about a soccer game—”

Hope snapped, “Come on, man. We’re not kids.”

Buck hesitated. Then he sat on a canvas stool beside her. “All right. Look, the wider news isn’t good. Whatever Doctor Jones’s trying doesn’t seem to be working. Locally the Magmoid attacks are intensifying, if anything. Won’t be much left of the base soon.”

Clare asked, “What about further afield?”

“All this volcanism is still going on. There seem to be secondary effects—destabilisations. Volcanoes spouting in Japan and Italy and Africa. Tremors in San Francisco. Like the whole planet’s hurting. Listening on the radio, you get the sense it’s all sort of unravelling.”

“My God.”

Hope said, “Sergeant. Do one thing for us.”

“Yeah?”

“Take us back to the base.”

Clare said, “Now, Mrs. Stubbins—”

“I want to be with the lad.”

Buck nodded. “Leave it with me.”

There was another explosion.

Hope said, “Hold me hand, Clare, eh?”

Once again a hundred soldiers worked their way out over a patch of cleared ground, implanting small ordinances and improvised junction boxes.

Phillips hovered at Tremayne’s shoulder. “How’s it going, Professor?”

“We’re all set. There should be an identical set-up in place on Salisbury Plain in a few minutes. Then Doctor Jones will be ready to talk to the Magmoids again.”

The ground shuddered to a fresh detonation, deep in the earth. “Well, he’d better make it soon,” Phillips said.

Godwin, hiding behind a field gun, heard all this. “A machine to talk to the Magmoids. But there is only one voice worth hearing. Mine…”

Jones came bustling up, a fresh paper scrap in his hand. Winston was at his side, looking excited, drawn, over-tired. Jones imagined the boy would sleep for a week—if they all survived the next few minutes and hours.

And Hope Stubbins was wheeled across the broken ground by a sheepish-looking Buck Grady. Clare and Thelma were at her side. Hope called, “Winston?”

Winston whirled. “Mum? What are you doing here? It’s not safe.”

Clare said, “Sorry, Winston. I couldn’t keep her away.”

Phillips took a deep sigh. “I suppose it doesn’t make things any more worse—or more ridiculous. I’m not looking forward to writing up my report on this night’s work, however.”

At that moment an explosion deep beneath their feet made the ground rise and shudder; Phillips tried not to stagger.

Jones hefted his key contact. “We’re ready, Captain. This gizmo is now rigged via the phone lines to fire the charges down at Salisbury simultaneously with those here.”

“Well, this had better work, Jones, for we’ve used up all our ammo, and we’ll be reduced to giving these Magmoid chaps frosty stares. All right, lads, let’s stand back and do it.”

They all took deliberate paces back from the firing field.

Jones said, “My cue, it seems.”

Thelma said, “First night nerves, Jones?”

“It will be first night closing if it doesn’t work this time.” He consulted his paper and pressed the key—and nothing happened. “The explosives! They’re not firing!”

Buck said, “That last Magmoid attack must have fouled up your connections—there, I can see it, that junction box is screwed.” He handed his rifle to Phillips. “Here, take this. I did some time in the bomb squad.”

Jones said, “Don’t be a fool, man. That’s effectively a minefield!”

But he was already running into the field. “Do you see a choice?” He crouched over the junction box and fiddled with the wires. “Got it—there. Fixed. Easy as pie.” He stepped back. “Looks like my luck is in—” An implanted grenade blew, turning the lower half of his body to a bloody mist.

Clare screamed. Winston grabbed her and pushed her face against his chest.

Phillips yelled, “Jones, never mind! You must get on! And make it worthwhile.”

Jones tapped his key. This time explosions rattled obediently.

Thelma said, “It’s working.”

Tremayne said, “Yes, but will the wretched beasties respond?”

A heavy fist slammed into Jones’s back. He fell forward—and Godwin grabbed the key contact. “Give that to me, you weakling.”

“Godwin! No, man!”

Godwin ran forward, onto the minefield and out of reach. Phillips and his soldiers raised their weapons uncertainly. Godwin clattered the key at random. “Magmoids! I challenge thee on behalf of all humanity—” A rattle of explosions.

Jones struggled to his feet. “No, no—they’ll take the randomness as simply another attack—”

Tremayne said, “Something’s happening. Around Godwin.”

It was a kind of rippling in the churned-up dirt, like a converging wave.

Jones yelled, “Godwin! You don’t know what you’re doing! Get back, man. Look at the ground!”

Godwin said, “Hear me! ‘I’ll make thee roar that beasts shall tremble at thy din—’ ”

A tremendous eruption burst from the ground, engulfing him. Once again Jones was knocked off his feet.

Thelma staggered through a cloud of dust. “Jones! Jones!”

Jones stood, winded, and grabbed her. “It’s all right. I’m here.”

“But that explosion—”

“It was the Magmoids. They destroyed him. They destroyed Godwin! I must have said just enough. Either that or they don’t like Shakespeare.”

Phillips found them. “Jones. The Magmoid attacks are subsiding—”

But Grendels shrieked, hovering overhead.

Clare, Tremayne, Winston with his mother, all emerged from the subsiding dust. Clare looked up. “The Grendels. What are they doing?”

Tremayne said, “I think they’re gathering over us.”

Phillips said grimly, “Not again.” He raised his rifle. “This will do little good, but—”

Jones cried, “No! No, Captain, it’s all right. Look. They are ascending.”

Winston said, “They’re leaving us alone.”

“Yes, they are, Winston.”

Tremayne said, “Then let’s hope it’s for good.”

7

1110.

When they opened the door, the Reiver’s Arms was crowded and noisy.

Jones said, “Well, Thelma, I don’t think I’ve ever been in a British pub at eleven in the morning before.”

“Don’t complain.”

Phillips came pushing out of the crowd. “Jones, old chap! And Miss Bennet. What are you drinking?”

Thelma said, “After a night like that I think I could risk a brandy.”

“Carrot juice for me, Captain Bob. Er, and that bottle of Newcastle Brown on the bar—”

“That’s for Buck Grady. He had a fiancée, in Long Beach. I phoned her.” He handed over their drinks.

“What selfless heroism he showed. You know, war brings out the best and the worst in us—the cruelty and madness of a man like Godwin, Buck’s astonishing laconic courage.”

“Yes. But ironically the example of men like Grady may be the reason why we humans will never give up war.”

Thelma raised her glass. “To Sergeant Grady.”

Tremayne came looming through the crowd, staggering slightly. “Jones, old bean! Quite a night!”

“You seem merry.”

Tremayne raised his glass. “This single malt is going down rather well—especially as it’s on the house. Look, there’s a couple of people who simply must see you.”

The crowd parted to let through a wheelchair.

Thelma said, “Mrs. Stubbins!”

“Hello, Thelma. What do you think of me new wheelchair? Courtesy of the US Army. About time they gave me something back.”

Winston said, “Oh, Mum—”

Jones said, “Winston. Quite a night for you—you did rather well.”

Tremayne said, “He did better than that. You know, after this grisly business I’ve decided to go back to university life. That’s enough of the military for me! Of course I’m going to need a batch of fresh students. Now then, Winston, are you free for the next three or four years?”

Winston goggled. “Professor—are you serious?”

“Never more, and I still will be when I’m sober.”

Thelma said, “Well done, Winston. You deserve it.”

“It’s unbelievable. The start of a whole new life.”

Clare Baines walked up, in a clean, fresh uniform. “In more ways than one.”

Jones said, “Constable Clare! I wondered when you’d show up.”

“Doctor Jones, I’ve got good news for you. In consideration of the fact that you saved the world, the local constabulary have decided to drop all charges.”

“Well, how jolly decent of them. But I’m surprised to see you joining in this festival of law-breaking.”

Thelma said, “I rather think she’s blinded by the diamond on her finger, Jones.”

Jones noticed the ring for the first time. “You don’t mean—you and Winston—well, well.”

Winston said, “After an experience like last night—”

“You don’t have to explain, dear,” Thelma said.

Jones said, “So, happy endings all round for once. Do you know, Thelma, I rather think that’s our cue to leave. Come on, drink up.”

He led Thelma out into the fresh air, where their Ministry car was waiting. Somewhere a bird was singing. “Look at that huge Northumberland sky,” Jones said. “I do love this part of the world.”

“It was an extraordinary night, wasn’t it, Jones?”

“One for the memoirs, I’d say. But what an extraordinary time we live in—when we don’t know if totalitarianism will triumph over democracy, or command economies will out-perform capitalism—a time of martial madness, when we’re probably as close to destroying ourselves utterly as we’ll ever be—and yet it’s a time when scientists like Frank Drake are making perhaps the most sublime gesture ever dreamed up by the human species.”

“Before you go, Doctor Jones—” Clare Baines had followed them out.

“Yes, Clare?”

“I need you both to sign these bits of paper.”

Jones took the forms. “What on Earth—this is the Official Secrets Act!”

“There’s a cover story being put together, about an industrial accident in Newcastle that provoked the evacuation.”

Jones said, “What? But how can you cover up all the volcanism?”

“Marsh gas.”

“Marsh gas? Oh please, not marsh gas! If you knew how many of our sightings have been explained away that way, and the files hidden or shredded—”

Thelma took his arm. “Come on, Jones. Maybe it’s better this way. We don’t want any awkwardness.”

“Oh, we can’t have that, can we? What a very British disaster in the end!”

But Clare wasn’t listening. She was looking up, into a bright blue sky, where Grendels were swooping and diving in a rosette formation, high above the tranquil land.

Content

Project Hades
by Stephen Baxter

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