Christopher Wood - James Bond and Moonraker

‘Four shuttles in space?’ queried Bond.

‘Six,’ said Drax shortly. He turned towards a technician sitting before a cathode-ray tube on which circles of light were converging towards a glowing centre which throbbed at one-second intervals. The technician spoke into a chest microphone. ‘Moonraker Five on pre-set launch programme. Minus ten.’

The countdown began to be projected on to the console in electronic script as another technician spoke into his microphone.

‘Moonraker Six on pre-set launch programme. Minus two zero.’

Bond turned to Drax. ‘Tell me one thing. The Moonraker that was on its way to London and disappeared over Alaska. You hijacked that, didn’t you?’

Drax’s eyes roamed the monitors. ‘You use the language of the tabloids, Mr Bond. Let us say I repossessed my own property. It was a regrettable necessity. One of the Moonrakers I was intending to use in this programme developed a technical fault. I was not prepared to put the timing of the operation back.’ He looked ‘at Bond and a quick dart of red flashed in his eyes. ‘As you know, I am not renowned for my patience.’

‘And what is the operation?’

Drax held Bond’s glance for a couple of seconds and then shook his head brusquely and dismissively. ‘No, Mr Bond. You have distracted me enough.’ He turned to Jaws. ‘Mr Bond must be cold after his swim. Place him where he can be assured of warmth.’

Jaws showed half an inch of grinning metal as if sharing a private joke and propelled Bond towards a ramp leading deeper into the pyramid. Bond turned to face his captor. ‘I’ll see you later, Drax.’

The voice was a razor wrapped in velvet. ‘Fleetingly perhaps, Mr Bond.’

At the end of the ramp was a network of dimly lit corridors, and Bond felt Jaws’s hand grasp his arm and force him towards a heavy. wooden door fortified by horizontal pieces of metal. The pressure of the grip told him that there was no point in trying to escape. Two bolts were slid back and the door opened just wide enough to receive Bond’s body. With a thrust of Jaws’s arm Bond was making acquaintance with the opposite wall while the door slammed behind him.

‘James!’

Bond turned to find Holly launching herself towards him. He caught her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. ‘Thank God you’re all right. You are all right?’

‘Apart from a few bruises. And you?’

‘The same.’ He looked around the high, vaulted chamber furnished with a large circular table, surrounded by chairs. It looked like an executive boardroom, but without windows. ‘Where the hell are we?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t moved since they brought me here.’

Bond looked up at the ceiling far above their heads. It was almost as if they were at the bottom of a well. ‘Drax is launching half a dozen Moonrakers. Four have gone already.’

‘Do you know why?’

‘I was going to ask you.’

Holly shook her head. ‘Where are the other two shuttles?’

Bond started to prowl round the room. ‘I think they must be near here somewhere. We’ve got to get out and locate them.’

‘Let me spare you the trouble, Mr Bond.’ The voice belonged to Drax and echoed down eerily from above. At the same instant, the ceiling above their heads split open and began to slide back. Bond sucked in his breath. He was looking into the menacing barrels of seven mighty rocket engines. A Moonraker space shuttle with its propellent tank and booster rockets was positioned vertically above their steep-walled prison supported by giant metal arms. Bond understood Drax’s remark to Jaws about putting him where he could be assured of warmth. Holly and he were inside the exhaust chamber for launch rockets. Enornious panels, in the roof of the pyramid, slid back to reveal the sky far above; distant as the hope of escape.

‘Even in death my munificence is boundless.’ Drax’s blunt silhouette loomed over the edge of the pit. His hands lathered air smugly. ‘When this rocket lifts off I shall be leaving you in your own private crematorium.’ He raised an arm and an elevator began to descend from the opening in the cabin of the Moonraker. ‘Dr Goodhead, Mr Bond, I bid you farewell.’ He delivered a mocking salute and climbed into the elevator. With a remote, whining whir it began to lift into the air. Bond looked at the rocket barrels of death, thinking of the billowing clouds of flame he had seen emerging from big rocket engines. When Moonraker Five lifted off with Drax in it they would be reduced to ashes within seconds.

‘Moonraker Five. Four minutes to lift-off.’ The technician’s voice rang out like that of a mortuary assistant.

Bond avoided Holly’s, desperate eyes and reverted to looking round the walls.of the chamber. The atmosphere was not stuffy despite the apparent lack of ventilation. He started to push a steel cabinet along the wall.

‘What is it?’ Holly looked at him keenly. ‘Do you think we can climb out?’

‘Not up that wall. I’m looking for an air shaft.’ He dropped to his knees as he found a square opening in the wall a foot from the floor. He squinted through a criss-cross of metal bars and saw that there was in fact a narrow shaft, perhaps thirty feet in length. Beyond it jungle foliage showed temptingly. Bond seized the bars and gritted his teeth. He strained until the sweat ran down his cheeks but the bars did not budge. Holly knelt beside him with hope dying in her eyes.

‘Three minutes to lift-off.’ Maybe it was Bond’s imagination, but there seemed to be an edge of mockery in the technician’s announcement over the public address system. The metal arms were drawing back one by one from the rocket and the elevator and its movable shaft had retreated out of view of the pit. Most sinister of all, thin wisps of gas were emerging from some of the rocket engines as if from the bowl of a pipe. The whole structure of the rockets began to hum with activity.

‘You can’t move it?’

Bond did not reply but pressed Holly back against the wall. His fingers fumbled with his watch and Holly saw what looked like the winding device being detached from its side. Behind it was drawn a thin thread as if a spider was descending from its web. Bond knelt and swiftly pressed the small circle of metal against the point at which one of the bars emerged from the wall. There was an almost imperceptible click. The metal roundel adhered. Bond waved Holly farther along the wall and moved to take up a position beside her. The watch was still playing out thread.

‘Two minutes to lift-off.’ The technician’s voice could now barely be heard above a low whining noise that was emanating from the rocket and increasing in intensity with every second. The stench of turbine exhaust fumes scraped at their throats.

Bond pressed his back against the wall and his hand moved to his watch.

Holly looked first at him with an ironic questioning in her eye, and then down to the thread. ‘Are we supposed to pull?’

‘Push.’ Bond’s finger jabbed against the watch and a pinpoint of red light flashed up the thread. There was a violent explosion and a cloud of smoke billowed from the mouth of the shaft. Bond started forward as the severed fuse retracted into his watch. The grille had been blasted aside. Only a few stubs of metal remained.

Bond gestured towards the opening. ‘Get in!’ His eyes were watering and he started to choke. Fumes swirled around him. The whole structure of the rocket was beginning to throb. The metal arms had swung back out of sight. The disembodied voices of the public address system intoned the critical stages of the countdown.

‘One minute to lift-off.’

The knell of doom rang in Bond’s ears as he scrambled into the shaft and started to crawl after Holly. In less than sixty seconds a merciless tongue of flame would be pursuing them, roasting them alive as if they were threaded on a spit. A stub of metal took a chunk out of his knee but he hardly noticed it. Behind him he could hear the noise building up towards ignition. The eldritch shriek developed into a giant roar. He blundered against Holly’s heels and shouted at her to go faster. His knuckles were bleeding. Holly’s body shut out air and light. He could see nothing before him. With a fresh pang of horror he realized that the shaft was narrowing. His shoulders brushed against rock on either side. There must be still another fifteen feet to go. At that moment he was convinced that they were never going to make it.