Fred Hoyle - A for Andromeda

Judy gave a tiny gasp, which was drowned by the hum of the computer, and Fleming’s grip tightened warningly on her arm. From where they stood they could see Andre close the door and walk slowly forward towards the control racks. The flashing and humming of the machine seemed to puzzle her, and a few feet short of the display panel she stood stock still. She was wearing an old grey anorak with the hood down, and she looked particularly beautiful and uncompromising under the stark lamps; but her face was strained and after a few moments the muscles round her mouth and temples began to work under the mounting tension of her nerves. She moved forward, slowly and reluctantly, towards the panel, and then stopped again, as if she could feel from there a premonition of some violent reaction—as though she knew the signs and yet was magnetised by the machine.

Her face now was glistening with sweat. She took another step forward and raised her hands slowly towards the terminals. Judy, for all her hatred, felt herself aching to go to her, but Fleming held her back. Before their eyes, the girl reached up slowly and fearfully and touched the contact plates.

Her first scream and Judy’s rang out together. Fleming clapped his hand over Judy’s mouth, but Andre’s screaming went on and on, falling to a whimper as the voltage needle dipped, then rising again when it peaked.

“For God’s sake,” Judy mouthed into Fleming’s hand. She struggled to break away, but he held her until Andre’s cries stopped and the machine, sensing possibly that she no longer responded, let go its grip and she slithered to the floor. Judy tore herself free and ran over to her, but this time there was no groaning, no breathing, no sign of life. The eyes she looked into were glazed and the mouth hung senselessly open.

“I think she’s dead,” Judy said inadequately.

“What did you expect?” Fleming came up behind her. “You saw the voltage. That was because she hadn’t got rid of me—because I was cancelling her out. Poor little devil.”

He looked down at the crumpled body in its grey, soiled covering, and his own eyes hardened. “It’ll do better next time. It’ll produce something we can’t get at at all.”

“Unless you find what’s wrong with it.” She turned away and picked up Fleming’s pad from the top of the input unit, and offered it him.

He pulled it out of her hand and threw it across the room.

“It’s too late for that! There’s nothing wrong with it.” He pointed to the girl’s huddled figure. “That’s the only answer I need. Tomorrow it will ask for another experiment, and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...”

He walked briskly across to the alarm and fuse terminals by the double doors, took the wiring in both hands and pulled. They gave but did not break, so he put a foot against the wall and heaved against it.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to finish it. This is the moment, probably the only moment.” He tugged again at the wires, and then gave up and reached for a fireman’s axe that hung on the wall beside them. Judy ran across to him.

“No!” She seized his arm but he swung her off and with the return movement slashed the axe across the wiring and severed it, then wheeled and looked around the room. The display panel was still blinking fast, and he went across and smashed it with the axe.

“Have you gone mad?” Judy ran after him again and, gripping the axe by the haft, tried to wrest it from him.

He twisted it away from her. “Let go! I told you to stay out of it.”

She stared at him and found she hardly knew him: his face was covered in sweat, as the girl’s had been, and suffused with anger and determination. She realised now what had been in his mind all the time.

“You always meant to do this.”

“If it came to it.”

He stood with the axe in his hands, looking speculatively around, and she knew that she had to get to the doors before him; but he beat her to it, and leant with his back against them with the same set expression and the mirthless hint of a grin at the corners of his mouth. She really did think he was mad now. She held out a hand for the axe and spoke as if to a child.

“Please give it to me, John.” She winced as he laughed. “You promised.”

“I promised nothing.” He held on to the haft tightly with one hand, and with the other locked the door behind him.

“I’ll scream,” she said.

“Try.” He slipped the key into his pocket. “They’ll never hear you.”

Pushing her aside, he strode through to the memory bay, opened the front of the nearest unit and struck at it. There was a small explosion as the vacuum collapsed.

“John!” She tried to stop him as he made for the next unit.

“I know what I’m doing,” he said, opening the front and swinging the axe in. Another small splintering explosion came from the equipment. “Do you think there’ll ever be another chance like this? Do you want to go and squeal? If you think I’m doing the wrong thing, go.

He looked straight at her, calmly and sensibly, and dug a hand into his pocket for the key. “Fetch the riot squad if you want to: that’s been your favourite occupation. Or has it struck you I might be doing the right thing? That’s what Osborne wanted, wasn’t it? ‘The right thing.’”

He held out the key to her, but for some reason impossible to express she could not take it. He gave her a long chance and then put the key back in his pocket and turned and started on the other units.

“The sentries will hear.” Knowing he was not mad after all made her feel committed to him. She stood by the doors and kept watch while he worked his way round the equipment, hacking and smashing and reducing the intricate engineering complex and the millions of cells of electronics to a tangled and shattered waste on the floor, on metal racks and behind the broken facias of cabinets. She could hardly bear to look, but she listened through the splintering and tearing for any sound in the corridor.

Nothing came to interrupt them. The storm of snow outside, unseen and unheard in the buried centre of the building, made its own commotion and hid theirs. Fleming worked methodically at first, but it was an enormous job and he began to go faster and faster as he felt himself tiring, until he was swinging desperately and pulling on his lungs for more breath, almost blinded by the perspiration that ran down from his forehead. He worked all round until he came back to the centre of the control unit, and then he smashed that.

“Take that, you bastard,” he half shouted at it. “And that, and that.”

He let the axe-head swing down to the floor and leant on the end of the haft to get his breath.

“What’ll happen now?” asked Judy.

“They’ll try to rebuild it, but they won’t know how to.”

“They’ll have the message.”

“It’s stopped.”

“They’ll have the original.”

“They won’t. They won’t have that or the broken code or any of it—because it’s in here.” He indicated a solid metal door in the wall behind the control desk, then he swung the axe again and went for the hinges. Blow after blow he battered at them, but made no impression. Judy stood by in a trauma of suspense as the ring of metal on metal seemed to shout through the whole building, but no-one heard. After a long time Fleming gave up and leant once more, panting, over his axe. The room was utterly silent now that the computer had stopped, and its stillness went with the motionless body of the girl in the middle of the floor.

“We’ll have to get a key,” Fleming said. “Where is one?”

“In Major Quadring’s duty room.”

“But that’s—”

She confirmed his fear. “It’s always manned,” she said. “And the key’s kept in a safe.”