Stephen Baxter: Project Hades

“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—”