Christopher Wood - James Bond and Moonraker

Experience told him that this was the moment to get out and not push his luck, yet he could not resist looking back into the laboratory. The two scientists had returned to the second globe and were preparing to manoeuvre it towards the automatic doors. Damn! Bond nearly spoke the word as he realized that he had left the phial taken from the refrigerator on the globe’s centre section. The scientists could scarcely fail to see it. He was turning away when the trolley began to move and he heard a cry of alarm that penetrated even the thick glass of the observation panel. One of the scientists lunged forward desperately and the trolley lurched. Bond realized what must have happened. The first movement of the trolley had caused the phial to roll off the globe. What seemed like a puff of green smoke hung in the air and a bright red light in the ceiling of the laboratory started flashing at the same time as a piercing alarm bell began to ring. With a hissing noise, a green airtight seal appeared around the framework of the door by which Bond had entered the laboratory. As he watched, horrified, the scientists began to stumble towards the automatic doors. One collapsed against a rack of instruments and dragged them with him to the ground. The other reached the doors to find that they did not open. He beat at them with his fists and tried pathetically to prize them apart with his fingers. Within seconds he was clutching at his throat and then sliding down the doors to disappear from view. The air inside the laboratory was now tinged with green and a sinister coating of green appeared on the inner surface of the viewing panel like slime on the side of an aquarium. Only the rats seemed unaffected and still nosed inquisitively against the bars of their cages.

Bond took a wary breath and felt the outline of the phial against his chest. It would have been less dangerous had it contained nitro-glycerine. Eager to escape from the hellish scene before him, he pressed the switch that opened the door to the corridor and quickly retraced his steps to the flight of steps and the courtyard. Now the alarm bell was only a distant buzz and the wrought iron gate that led to safety was only a few paces away. Bond quickly crossed the courtyard and pulled open the gate. The gondola was not that. He looked towards the intersection that led to the main waterway and saw that it was drifting twenty yards from where he stood. He turned and found himself face to face with Chang. His hand moved for his gun, but it was still coming up to the firing position as the side of Chang’s hand caught him in the neck like the edge of a spade. The Walther PPK clattered to the cobbles and Bond fell after it, feeling as if every nerve in his body had been paralysed. A flailing foot swept the pistol aside and another glanced off his rib cage. Had the blow landed on target it would have stoved in his ribs like the planks of a rotten barrel. Some inner voice of self-preservation brought him to his senses, and he rolled aside and scrambled to his knees. Chang came in again with foot raised, but Bond ducked beneath it and ran for the door that he knew led into the showroom. He felt something damp against his chest and offered a quick prayer that it was only water. If the phial broke...

With his neck throbbing as if an electric current was being passed through it, Bond threw his shoulder against the door and turned the handle. Behind him he could hear Chang grunting in pursuit. The man moved like a great ponderous crab. The door opened and Bond darted amongst the darkened shelves. Moonlight flooded in above the drawn blinds that faced out on St Mark’s Square. Somewhere near by there was an orchestra playing. The acrid smell from the workshop permeated the room. Bond waited in the darkness, listening. He heard Chang panting and then the sound of his heavy breathing becoming fainter. A deadly game of hide and seek was about to begin. Bond considered the best course of action. The windows were too heavily stacked with merchandise to make diving through the sheet glass a healthy proposition. There was also the phial to think about. The main entrance would make the best point of escape, but that was probably where Chang was waiting.

Bond started to pick his way slowly between two rows of shelves groaning under the weight of the antique glass they had to bear. If he could just get to the — CRASH! Like a hurled bale of cloth, Chang launched himself through a shelf and on to Bond. Glassware shattered in all directions and Bond felt a piercing pain as he was borne backwards into another shelf and through that to the floor. The wind was crushed from his body. Chang’s breath against his face stank of the lust to kill. Bond scrabbled desperately for any weapon that came to hand and his fingers closed around a sliver of broken glass. He drove upwards and there was a shrill bellow of pain as the fingers burrowing into Bond’s windpipe loosened their grip. Bond struck again and wriggled sideways, feeling fragments of broken glass lacerating his shoulders. His right hand was slippery with blood. Chang struggled to hold him but Bond broke free and picked up a heavy glass vase shaped like an open-Mouthed fish. He swung it with all his force and connected with Chang’s temple as the Chinaman tried to rise. The vase shattered but Chang grunted and kept coming. There was a line of blood across his neck and upper shoulder where Bond had gashed him. Bond staggered backwards and found that the way to the front of the shop was cut off. Chang stood with the light behind him and his massive arms standing away from his body. If anything, his tortoise head seemed to be sunk deeper into his shoulders so that he looked Pike an unbreakable Humpty Dumpty. He came forward, his elbows brushing the shelves, and Bond shrank back towards the sullen heat of the workshops. Chang’s eyes glinted with impersonal hatred, like the slits in a gun turret, but his small, obscene mouth had opened to reveal two rows of tiny teeth parted like those of a predatory fish.

Bond felt the opening to the passageway behind him and quickly ducked inside. He was still numb from Chang’s first blow, but with every movement the chains that shackled his reflexes were loosening. He drove his feet forward and moved into the darkness of the workshops. Darkness illuminated by the glowing crucibles that were never extinguished. At the far side of the workshop was the outline of a wooden staircase. Bond ran towards it and collided with something that resounded like a gong being struck. He staggered back, feeling fresh pain, skirted the object and prepared to move forward. Click! A light flicked on behind him and he turned to see Chang grinning at him triumphantly. One blunt hand reached out and Bond stiffened as apprehension gave way to terror. Chang was grasping one of the glassblower’s rods that had been left at the mouth of a glowing crucible. It came away with its tip white-hot and Chang slashed at the air as if wielding a sword. He took a step forward and suddenly straightened his arm. Like a tracer bullet, the rod sped for Bond’s head. Such was the unexpected speed of the delivery that Bond had no time to duck. There was the sound of ice cracking and Bond’s vision fragmented. Before his sizzling eyelashes the white-hot tip of the poker turned to red and then a furious pink. Bond was standing behind a sheet of plate glass which had received the full impact of the rod. Its tip had been arrested inches from his face. Bond stepped back from the spider’s web of glass and completed his journey to the staircase.

Now Chang let out a bellow of frustrated rage that was terrible to hear. Chang’s foot was on the bottom tread of the staircase as Bond reached the first landing, and he could feel the structure shaking behind him as the Chinaman charged in pursuit. He dashed up the next flight and emerged in a small loft littered with packing cases. Some were open, and in them he glimpsed spheres like those he had seen being filled in the laboratory. There was a pulley system in the corner, suggesting that the loft was used as a store room.