He got out and checked the controls again. Then he made sure the output switch was off, and started up. The thing coughed into life and chugged solidly away. He let it run for a minute, then switched the output on. The bulbs lit up like a Christmas tree, and stayed lit. Okay. The engine now.
He switched the bobik’s lights off, reversed out, turned on the frozen river and backed in again. The light was well spread. He opened the rear of the car and hooked up the engine. They had bedded it on a felt pad in its lifting harness, and he hauled on the tackle chains and saw the pad begin to shift as the engine moved. The pad slid out and fell to the ground and the engine swung loose. He kept it hanging and guided it clear of the car and lowered it slowly to the ground.
Done.
He took the bobik outside and went back in for a final look. There was a lot of stuff now; almost everything. Tomorrow he’d pick up the remainder, take it to the house, sleep all day. At night back to the cave and start the assembly. He would work the whole night through.
He switched the generator off and drove back. He felt unsure of himself suddenly.
Something had changed. He didn’t know what. But all his life he had respected these feelings. He went over in his mind what it might be. Nothing. Yet something had changed.
He drove slowly, and it was six o’clock before he reached the house. There he learned something had changed. Tomorrow there would be no cave, but the herds. For now the time had come. Tomorrow night, if everything worked, he would be with Innokenty, the man who sent people to the research station.
He was unsure about this, too. The story they had concocted seemed now utterly childish. Earlier it had not seemed childish. Now it seemed childish. It was too late to think of another though, so they worked over it, far into the night; all the time his lowering feeling persisting.
He had no idea, still, what was expected of him at Tcherny Vodi, what activities went on there.
In China at this time they had no idea even of Tcherny Vodi’s existence. But they were aware of some activities. A very strange one had come to light.
36
The military commission met in Beijing: before them the reports on the test missiles — the missiles of October and of November.
The October missile had gone off course six minutes into its flight, so that the new guidance system had not operated. This system switched on only in the last kilometres of flight. A visual device then compared what it read below with a pre-stored computer image, correcting course and trajectory until the two images matched exactly. But so far off course, nothing had matched. A fault of the missile, not its terminal vision.
The second vehicle was of an older type, but with a totally reliable flight record. And it had been reliable. It had flown to Lop Nor, anyway, and hit it, but so wide of the mark that, again, the visual system had obviously not switched on.
However, it had switched on. It had reported itself switched on. And then it had switched off.
Between these two missiles, mere was an important difference. The one arriving at Lop Nor had been conventionally wired, all its networks connected by electrical cable. The other was optically wired; with fibre. The commission knew the reason for this, so their experts wasted no time — going immediately to the main problem.
Both missiles had been interfered with in flight.
The first had suffered interference after six minutes, when its signals had ceased. It had then been executing a fractional turn to the west; and it had stuck in this turn which by burn-out had taken it due south to Lanchow.
The second missile had reported an unidentifiable buzz, but it had reached Lop Nor. It had reached it with its video switched
off. Shortly before it had reported the video switched on.
The experts pointed to an obvious conclusion.
The missile diverted from its course was optically wired.
The missile not diverted was not optically wired, but its optical system had switched off. The interference was optical.
On this they offered two further comments.
The first was that they knew of no scientific explanation for such interference; and the second that it could only have come from an altitude much higher than the missiles.
At an altitude a quarter of the way to the moon, two satellites were at present in stationary orbit over China. They were electronic intelligence (ELINT) stations, one of them American and the other Russian. The American had been launched from Vandenberg Air Force base in California, and the Russian from Tyuratam in central Asia.
The experts’ recommendation was that Vandenberg and Tyuratam be targeted, urgently, for anything that could shed light on this development. This was possible for agents were available at both centres, and already much was known of events in these important vicinities.
Of events in the unimportant vicinity of Tchersky nothing was known.
37
Tchersky airport, so late in the season, had extended itself on to the river ice. A dozen or so fixed-wing planes of Polar Aviation were parked there, and also a huddle of helicopters, large and small.
Medical Officer Komarova and her Chukchee assistant boarded a small one, already warming up for them, and took off at once, heading south-east. The day was dark and grey, ominous with gusts and waiting snow. A blizzard was expected within hours.
The pilot chided Komarova on the fact as they rose above the town. ‘Couldn’t you have made it earlier? I still have to get you back.’
‘A rush of work all morning. I won’t stay long.’
‘You say that, but always you stay hours. What is it with those natives there? … Who’s this one?’
‘An employee of the transport company.’ They had taken care to let the pilot see the Chukchee driving the bobik and carrying the two heavy bags from it to the helicopter; Komarova herself was hobbling on a stick. ‘Pay attention to your own duties,’ she added coldly. ‘Just fly.’
The pilot grunted and flew, and Porter marvelled at the sternness of this creature who had last night so riotously straddled and caressed him.
They didn’t have to fly long, barely fifty minutes. But darkness was gathering fast as they spotted the weird cloud on the ground. The spectral shape rolled and tumbled there, shot through with silver — the breath of reindeer, an immense herd, crystallised in the air. They came down low over it, the pilot peering in all directions before he found the group of tents that housed the Evenk herders. He had to hover almost on top of them before deerskin-clad figures came peering out, running and waving. Then he put the helicopter down, and kept the rotors turning.
‘Aren’t you coming out?’ Komarova called, at the door.
‘No, I’ll keep her running. It’s cold out there and the wind is high — they couldn’t hear me.’ He was having to shout, listening to a weather report on his radio. ‘Remember — I don’t spend nights with a tribe of Evenks!’
‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’
Outside several women were among the huddle of Evenks, and they bear-hugged the medical officer, gazing curiously at her Chukchee assistant. The wind was indeed high and howling, all the ground below knee level shirting with flying snow and ice. They were hustled into a tent — a leather one, Porter saw, and double-skinned. Its entrance flaps opened into a heat-lock vestibule, and beyond it more flaps led to the circular living space, a big room, six or seven metres across, entirely carpeted with bushy reindeer robes. A sheet-metal stove roared in the middle of it, standing in a large tray piled with logs and cooking pots.