CHAPTER SIXTEEN
They were checked off the helicopter by armed security guards who examined Shaw’s papers critically and then handed him over to a lieutenant of the British Navy, who was carrying three large, many-coloured umbrellas. This officer escorted them to Commander Geisler’s office, and Shaw kept his eyes open on the way, saw the thick, barbed-wire perimeter fence surrounding the Bluebolt station and the heavy wires bearing large red-painted notices reading: Danger — LIVE HIGH-VOLTAGE CABLES.
That looked a good enough barrier; the only entry was guarded by an armed naval rating patrolling inside the tight-shut, steel-barred gates. Shaw walked beneath the beaming mast on the dome of the control-tower, past power-houses and stores towards a line of single-storey buildings which, the lieutenant told him, were the administrative offices and quarters for the single officers and men of the station staff. As Anne Hartog had said earlier, the whole compact little site was on fairly high ground which kept it free of floodwater; even so the high trees of the jungle pressing close gave excellent cover from the air. It would indeed be hard to pinpoint this tiny clearing in the hundreds of thousands of square miles of virgin jungle.
Stephen Geisler rubbed at his round red face with a handkerchief. He said, “It’s all a very great worry, Commander, I don’t mind telling you.”
“I can understand that,” Shaw murmured sympathetically. He’d already taken a liking to this unassuming, competent-looking American. “Now, Commander. I’m told all your men have been very carefully screened, in fact I’ve seen the papers myself and I do know there’s nothing to worry about in that direction. I mean, there’s not likely to be trouble from inside as it were.” Without appearing to do so, he was watching both Geisler and Hartog carefully as he spoke. “Does that check?”
“Why, yes, certainly, it does indeed. They’re all first-class men — all of them. They’re all hand-picked.”
Shaw nodded. “I gathered as much, What about the native labour, though?”
“They’re okay.” Geisler glanced across sharply at Hartog, who gave a heavy, sardonic nod.
Hartog said, “Check. Far as any nigger’s all right.”
Geisler shuffled through some papers and said, “Don’t get the wrong idea, Commander. Julian doesn’t like the blacks, but he handles ’em well.”
“Thanks, Steve!” Hartog grinned, rather slyly. He turned to Shaw. “They’re all unskilled hands, of course, can’t even read or write, most of ’em, but they’ve been screened too, in a kind of way.”
“Who by?”
“Me, mainly. I speak the language, you see. Of course, the niggers’ names have all been referred back to the Jinda authorities as well, for what that’s worth, and there’s nothing on any of ’em — nothing relevant, that is.”
“You mean?”
Hartog bit at a fingernail and said impatiently, “I mean what I say, Shaw. All Nogolians’ll pinch your last half-penny if you give ’em the chance, and they all tell lies as a matter of course. So do our nigs — that’s all.”
“Yes, I see.” Shaw tapped a pencil reflectively on the desk. “They don’t have anything to do with the technical side at all, I take it, any of them? I have in mind any — well, would you call them charge-hands, serangs, boss-boys — that kind of thing?”
Hartog shook his head slowly, but gave Shaw a curious look. He said, “Oh, heavens, no. They’re just sweepers, orderlies, and so on — cooks and stewards in the single men’s messes — you know. Can’t trust ’em with more than that on the whole.”
As though thinking aloud Shaw asked musingly, “So none of them could do anything… well, say, operate Bluebolt, send the load down on to a target? I have in mind some educated African, a technician, who could have been infiltrated?”
Geisler stared. After another odd glance at Shaw, Hartog burst into a peal of loud laughter, jeering laughter. He said, “God, what a bloody unlikely suggestion — eh, Steve? What the hell d’you mean anyway? They couldn’t possibly!”
“Uh-huh… it was just an idea passing through my mind, that’s all. I suppose it’s fairly obvious I’m no technician!” He grinned. “Thing is, my chief has an idea this Edo chap may try to start the ball rolling by direct methods, and that could mean he was expecting help from inside, I imagine.” He hesitated, watching Hartog covertly. “Both of you know, of course, that Edo’s objective is to get the missile control pact negated.” Shaw sat forward with his arms folded. “Well now — one way of doing that, if all else fails, as it seems to be doing — if Tshemambi won’t budge, I mean — would be to show the Africans what would happen if something went wrong with the works. Some accident, which might kill a lot of them, so that world attention would be focused on this station and world opinion would force its withdrawal. Say, an accidental firing, even. Follow?”
Geisler gave an uneasy laugh. “Sure I follow, or I think I do. But that’s quite impossible. Nothing can go wrong… not that wrong.”
“That’s quite definite, is it?”
“Yeah, sure it is!” The American stared at him in puzzlement. “The thing’s in orbit and she won’t send her load down till some one orders the tit to be pressed. The pressing of it… well, of course, it’s a darn sight more than just pressing a tit! And, come to that, the control-tower isn’t all that accessible, anyway, and I just don’t see how anybody could cause an accident without getting into the control-tower.” He frowned and shook his head. “No, that won’t wash… there’s only one or two of us could do it on his own.”
Shaw’s eyes narrowed slightly. “And they are?”
“Well, I’d say just me and Julian here, maybe one or two others, a few guys we’re training up. We’re only a small operating staff, you know. Most of the guys, they’re just here for defence and ordinary executive duties, working watches.”
“I see. And the defence system is…?”
“Perfectly adequate. I’m happy about it. You’ve seen the perimeter, I guess, and the gate guard can be reinforced at a moment’s notice by armed parties under the Duty Exec, when necessary. There’s an armed sentry on the control-tower itself. The telephone exchange is manned at all times, and we can contact Manalati or Jinda by direct lines. As you know, there’s a strict security check on all persons entering and that’s not just play-acting. The whole thing’s as good as we can make it. External defence, internationally I mean, that’s out of our hands. We’ve got long-range cover from the various anti-missile commands who’d be alerted by the Early Warning outfits.”
Shaw asked to be shown round the station and also to be given facilities to interview all African labour — just as a matter of routine, he said.
When he spoke to these men — who were numerically a small group — he couldn’t find anything in the least suspicious, although admittedly he had to rely to a large extent on Hartog as an interpreter. A few of the blacks were comparatively newly engaged, replacements for men off sick or for men who for one reason or another had simply packed up and gone back to their tribes. All the men shut up like clams the moment he touched on the Edo Cult, but that didn’t prove anything one way or the other. In the Cult or not, they naturally wouldn’t talk for fear of what would happen to them. None had the Cult marking, but again that was no indication, for obviously any men infiltrated into the station would be without the spider brand. By and large they were as surly and unhelpful as the men back in Jinda had been, but that was as far as it went.
Afterwards Stephen Geisler took him around the base, showed him the enormous generators which supplied the millions of volts needed to send out the impulses which, if ever the moment should come to bring Bluebolt’s load streaking down into the earth’s atmosphere, would beat out their diabolic electronic-brain messages from the bristling antennae of the beaming-mast in the centre of the station. He took the Britisher into the control-tower beneath that mast, showed him the complicated series of instrument-cluttered panels which would be operated during the transmission, pointed out the various checks and the method in which signals were received back initially from Bluebolt itself and then from the missile as, freed from its carrier-satellite, it began its controlled flight on to the target. Geisler explained the guiding procedure and pointed out the illuminated panel with its brilliant green dot indicating pictorially and at a glance the satellite’s exact positive relative to the earth.