Christopher Wood - James Bond and Moonraker

‘Good afternoon,’ said Bond. ‘I’m looking for Dr Goodhead.’

The girl advanced towards him. ‘You’ve just found her.’ The smile was a formality.

‘A woman.’ Bond reflected that he could have made more effort to keep the surprise out of his voice.

The girl inclined her head graciously. ‘Your powers of observation do you credit, Mr Bond. It is Mr Bond, isn’t it?’

‘James to my friends,’ said Bond.

The girl extended her hand briskly. ‘Holly Goodhead.’ The hand was firm and dry, but the pressure it exerted minimal. It was a very formal handshake.

‘Are you one of the astronaut trainees?’ asked Bond.

Holly parted her lips slightly as if she had experienced a twinge of pain. ‘I’m fully trained. By NASA, the Space Administration. They assigned me here.’ She looked at Bond levelly for an instant and then moved towards the door. ‘Come, Mr Bond. I’ll show you round. You don’t want to lose time as well as a space shuttle, do you?’

Bond shook his head ruefully as he followed his guide. It seemed that a good friend was hard to find at the Drax Corporation. His acquaintance with Dr H-olly Goodhead had not started off memorably.

The first hangar they visited was where a Moonraker was being assembled. Holly showed a pass and after two sound-proof doors had been opened they were in a gigantic workshop with the air full of the smell of welding equipment and the output of the light sources accentuated by the blaze of torches. The framework of the shuttle rose in the air like a rocket and at all levels men were working on the scaffolding that surrounded it, like bees crawling over a honeycomb.

‘Each of these men is a specialist technician,’ explained Holly above the noise. ‘They could be teaching at M.I.T. if they weren’t here.’

‘There seems to be an enormous amount of activity,’ said Bond. ‘Do they always work at this rate?’

‘Mr Drax has set some pretty tough completion dates. He wants to get a test programme into space by the end of next month.’

Bond gazed upwards and felt awe as he realized what he was looking at. A craft that when finished would be able to perform an almost limitless number of orbits of the earth and yet return to base and land like a conventional aircraft. No parachutes. No spheres plummeting into the ocean and relying on a fast destroyer to retrieve them. He watched a Medusa of coloured wires being hauled aloft and marvelled at man’s ingenuity. What he was seeing made him resolve to temper his dislike of Hugo Drax with respect for what he was doing. To place his resources at the service of mankind was an act of supreme generosity. It far outweighed any personal mannerisms that Bond might find objectionable. Bond thought again and frowned. There was the question of the bugging device in the bedroom. That he did find difficult to reconcile.

Holly recited a list of statistics that Bond tried to absorb and then led the way through another set of connecting doors to another vast hangar. An elevator took them up to a catwalk, and from there they could look down on a group of trainee astronauts clustered around what seemed like the cockpit of an aeroplane affixed to a transfusion system of wires and jointed rods. As Bond watched a trainee climbed into the cockpit and seated himself at the controls, which represented, Holly informed him, those of a Moonraker. Hardly was he in position than the cockpit began to buck and rock. Bond looked at Holly anxiously. She brushed a wisp of hair behind an ear calmly. ‘You’re watching a flight simulator,’ she told him. ‘It can replicate every possible problem contingency that might arise under actual flying conditions.’ The simulator suddenly shot forward and rose steeply into the air, with the metal rods bending grotesquely like the limbs of a stick-insect. A television camera moved in synchronism over a nearby panorama of the Earth’s surface. The fuselage slipped backwards and lurched sideways like the chamber of a revolver turning as the gun was fired. Bond was not sorry to be standing where he was. He looked across at the opposite catwalk and saw the oval bulk of Chang observing him balefully. The figure folded its arms as if in contemplation and then turned and disappeared through a shadowy doorway.

‘Technical competence is of course vital,’ said Holly, as if repeating a lecture she had given many times. ‘However, no subject can perform at optimum unless he or she is in a state of peak physical fitness.’ She looked at Bond pointedly as she said the last words and for a moment he wondered if she had read his medical report. ‘What we are going to see next covers this aspect of preparation.’

Bond said nothing but moved with Holly into the nearest elevator, which deposited them before a door with the word ‘Gymnasium’ emblazoned on it. Beyond the open door was a space which could have contained a football pitch and still left plenty of room for a couple of thousand spectators. It was equipped with vaulting horses, ropes, wooden bars and all the paraphernalia that Bond remembered from his schooldays. Half a dozen very pretty girls in the now familiar black leotards were working out on the parallel bars under the tuition of a barrel-chested instructor.

Bond looked at them appreciatively. ‘Astronaut trainees?’

Holly looked at him sharply. ‘Do I detect a note of disapproval?’

‘It was certainly not intentional,’ said Bond honestly. ‘Perhaps in the past I might have been guilty of thinking that there were enough heavenly bodies in space.’

The corners of Holly’s mouth pinched together disapprovingly. ‘Forgive me saying so, but I find that kind of schoolboy humour particularly obnoxious, Mr Bond. There is more to being an astronaut than the ability to wear heavy boots.’

‘Of course,’ said Bond.

Holly had not finished. ‘There are many ways in which women are better suited for space than men. They are more patient. Their ability to rationalize a situation is often far more highly developed than a man’s. Their aural-visual senses are in no way inferior. In the matter of smell —’

‘I know,’ said Bond. ‘Women smell better than men.’

Holly looked at him coldly. ‘I think your persistent recourse to bad jokes is a kind of defence mechanism. Let’s test your eyesight, Mr James Bond, 007, licensed to kill.’

Before Bond could reply, she had turned her back and was stalking towards a long narrow chamber not unlike a shooting gallery. At the far end Bond could see a number of charts bearing rows of letters in diminishing sizes. He sighed and walked towards the gallery.

Holly was waiting for him, bustling with eagerness. It was the first emotion she had shown since their meeting. ‘Let’s take the chart in the middle,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you have any trouble reading the top line?’

Bond tilted his head to one side. ‘X-H-Y -’

‘Good,’ said Holly briskly. ‘If you couldn’t read that you wouldn’t qualify for a driving licence. Now, read me out the bottom line of letters on that card.’

‘The bottom line?’ said Bond. His tone suggested that the task would be a challenge for any man.

‘That’s what I said.’ Holly’s eyes threw down the gauntlet.

Bond took a deep breath and leant forward, narrowing his eyes to slits. There was a long pause.

‘It’s not easy, is it?’ said Holly bossily.

Bond’s eyes screwed up some more and his neck imitated that of a tortoise tempted by a particularly succulent morsel of lettuce.

‘P-R-I —’ he began.

‘No!’ Holly’s cry of triumph was almost a shout. ‘You must be guessing, Mr Bond.’ She screwed up her eyes eagerly and started jotting letters down on a pad. ‘Now, let’s see how we compare.’ She advanced to the chart and looked back over her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry. The last line reads O-C-B-H-A-X.’