Fred Hoyle - A for Andromeda

“I don’t know what the point of them is,” Reinhart admitted. He was obsessed by them. However unhappy he was at the way things had gone at Thorness, he was by now fully occupied with this new and terrifying turn of events.

Vandenberg had cogent and reasonable theories. “Their point is that someone in the East wants us to know they have the technical edge on us. They flaunt these over our heads to show the world we’ve no way of retaliating. A new form of sabre-rattling.”

“But why always over this country?”

Vandenberg looked slightly sorry for the Professor. “Because you’re small enough—and important enough—to be a kind of hostage. This island’s always been a good target.”

“Well,” Reinhart nodded to the map on the wall. “There’s your evidence. Aren’t the West going to take it to the Security Council?”

Vandenberg shook his head. “Not until we can negotiate from strength. They’d love us to run squealing to the U.N. and admit our weakness. Then they’d have us. What we need first is some means of defence.”

Reinhart looked sceptical. “What are you doing about it?”

“We’re going as fast as we can. Geers has a theory—”

“Oh, Geers!”

“Geers has a theory,” Vandenberg ignored the interruption, “that if we can work this girl creature in harness with your computer, we may get some pretty quick thinking.”

“What was my computer,” said Reinhart sourly. “I wish you joy.”

The night after Vandenberg left, Fleming appeared. Reinhart was working late, trying to fix the origin of ground signals which made the satellites change course in orbit, when he heard the exhaust crackle of Fleming’s car outside. It was a little like coming home for Fleming; the familiar room, Harvey at the control desk, the small neat father-figure of the Professor waiting for him. Of the three men, Fleming looked the most worn.

“It seems so sane here.” He gazed around the large, neat room. “Calm and clean.”

Reinhart smiled. “It’s not very sane at the moment.”

“Can we talk?”

Reinhart led him over to a couple of easy chairs which had been set for visitors, with a little table, in a back corner of the observatory.

“I told you on the phone, John, there’s nothing I can do. They’re going to use the creature as an aid to the computer for Geers’s missile work.”

“Which is just what it wants.”

Reinhart shrugged. “I’m out of it now.”

“We’re all out of it. I’m only hanging on by the skin of my teeth. All this about being able to pull out the plug—well, we can’t any more, can we?” Fleming fiddled nervously with a box of matches he had taken out to light their cigarettes. “It’s in control of itself now. It’s got its protectors—its allies. If this thing that looks like a woman had arrived by space-ship, it would have been annihilated by now. It would have been recognised for what it was. But because it’s been planted in a much subtler way, because it’s been given human form, it’s accepted on face value. And it’s a pretty face. It’s no use appealing to Geers or that lot: I’ve tried. Prof., I’m scared.”

“We’re all scared,” Reinhart said. “The more we find out about the universe the more frightening it is.”

“Look.” Fleming leaned forward earnestly. “Let’s use our heads. That machine—that brain-child of some other world—has written off its own one-eyed monster. It’s written off Christine. It’ll write me off if I get in its way.”

“Then get out of its way,” said Reinhart wearily. “If you’re in danger get out of its way now.”

“Danger!” Fleming snorted. “Do you think I want to die in some horrible way, like Dennis Bridger, for the sake of the government or Intel? But I’m only the next on the list. If I’m forced out, or if I’m killed, what comes afterwards?”

“It’s a question of what comes first at the moment.” Reinhart sounded like a doctor with a hopeless case. “I can’t help you, John.”

“What about Osborne?”

“He doesn’t hold the reins now.”

“He could get his Minister to go to the P.M.”

“The P.M.?”

“He’s paid, isn’t he?”

Reinhart shook his head. “You’ve nothing to show, John.”

“I’ve some arguments.”

“I doubt if any of them are in a mood to listen.” Reinhart waved a small hand towards the wall map. “That’s what we’re worried about at the moment.”

“What’s that all in aid of?”

Reinhart told him. Fleming sat listening, tense and miserable, his fingers crushing the matchbox out of shape.

“We can’t always be in front, can we?” He pushed away the Professor’s explanations. “At least we can come to terms with human beings.”

“What sort of terms?” Reinhart asked.

“It doesn’t matter what sort of terms—compared with what we’re likely to be up against. A bomb is a quick death for a civilisation, but the slow subjugation of a planet...” his voice trailed away.

The Prime Minister was in his oak-panelled room in the House of Commons. He was a sporty-looking old gentleman with twinkling blue eyes. He sat at the middle of one side of the big table that half-filled the room, listening to the Minister for Defence. Sunlight streamed gently in through the mullioned windows. There was a knock at the door and the Defence Minister frowned; he was a keen young man who did not like being interrupted.

“Ah, here comes the science form.” The Prime Minister smiled genially as Ratcliff and Osborne were shown in. “You haven’t met Osborne, have you Burdett?”

The Defence Minister rose and shook hands perfunctorily.

The Prime Minister motioned them to sit down.

“Isn’t it a splendid day, gentlemen? I remember it was like this at Dunkirk time. The sun always seems to smile on national adversity.” He turned to Burdett. “Would you bully-off for us, dear boy?”

“It’s about Thorness,” said Burdett to Ratcliff. “We want to take over the computer altogether—and everything associated with it. It’s been agreed in principle, hasn’t it? And the P.M. and I think the time has come.”

Ratcliff looked at him without love. “You’ve access to it already.”

“We need more than that now, don’t we, sir?” Burdett appealed to the Prime Minister.

“We need our new interceptor, gentlemen, and we need it quickly.” Behind the amiable, lazy, rather old-world manner lay more than a hint of firmness and grasp of business. “In nineteen-forty we had Spitfires, but at the moment neither we nor our allies in the West have anything to touch the stuff that’s coming over.”

“And no prospect of anything,” Burdett put in, “by conventional means.”

“We could co-operate, couldn’t we,” Ratcliff asked Osborne, “in developing something?”

Burdett was not one to waste time. “We can handle it ourselves if we take over your equipment at Thorness entirely, and the girl.”

“The creature?” Osborne raised a well-disciplined eyebrow, but the Prime Minister twinkled reassuringly at him.

“Dr. Geers is of the opinion that if we use this curiously derived young lady to interpret our requirements to the computer and to translate its calculations back to us we could solve a lot of our problems very quickly.”

“If you can trust its intentions.”

The Prime Minister looked interested. “I don’t quite follow you.”

“One or two of our people have doubts about its potential,” said Ratcliff, more in hope than conviction. No minister likes losing territory, even if he has to use dubious arguments to retain it.

The Prime Minister waved him aside. “Oh yes, I’ve heard about that.”

“Up to now, sir, this creature has been under examination by our team,” Osborne said. “Professor Dawnay—”