Webb returned the grin and bowed. “All right-thinking people agree with you. So, this is the famous Eagle Peak Observatory?”
“You’re just at Base Camp,” Kowalski said. “The telescopes are much higher up.” He pointed to a squat grey building fifty yards away, and just visible in the mist. Through its windows Webb could see a small silver cable car. A thin cable stretched up from the roof of the building like a giant metal beanstalk, disappearing into the grey mist overhead. He looked at the tinny death trap apprehensively before realizing that, as a theoretician, he would have no reason to go up in it.
He smiled in relief and said, “Eagle Peak is a private benefaction?”
“Yes, it was a gift to the nation from the Preston dynasty in the thirties. It was modernized a few years ago with NSF funding. We were swarming with Air Force personnel yesterday, putting in extras for our visitors.”
Leclerc and Whaler joined them, and they made for the building. Sculpted in red sandstone over the outer door was a circularly coiled snake swallowing its own taiclass="underline" the Pythagorean symbol of perfection and eternity. Inside, separating the atrium from the inner sanctum, was a double swing door made of glass framed in mahogany; each partition had the zodiacal signs engraved on it, six on each, in two columns. Through these doors and into the building proper, the warm air enveloped Webb like a hot bath towel. Kowalski led the way along a corridor lined with framed NASA photographs. Two doors led off to the left, and both were open.
The first of these revealed a large square kitchen with a long, cluttered farmhouse table. Then there was the common room, airy and spacious, with a panoramic window and a view of fog. In this room was a snooker table, and armchairs, and a bookcase full of paperbacks, and a coffee table with magazines and bowls of fresh fruit and sweets. Sacheverell and McNally were head to head in an animated discussion. As Judy passed the open door Sacheverell stopped in mid-conversation, adopted an angelic smile and said, “Well hi there,” and Webb hoped Nemesis would smash through the roof and turn Sacheverell into a red pulp.
The end of the corridor led into an open, glass-fronted area from which further doors led off. One led back into the common room. Kowalski pointed to a red door opposite it. “The nerve centre,” he said. “Later.”
Straight ahead of them was a flight of stairs, covered with a deep-piled blue carpet, so as not to disturb night observers sleeping by day. They went up these and found themselves in a long corridor. “The four rooms at the end are taken. If you like a desert view, take One or Two. If you like to look at mountains, take Seven or Eight.” The nearest door handle to Webb was attached to Number One and he took it. Leclerc took Number Two, while Judy Whaler presumably liked mountains and headed for Room Eight, directly opposite Webb’s.
The room had a log cabin feel to it and smelled of new pinewood although, again, a thick pile carpet covered the floor. A red, bloated sun was beginning to penetrate the fog.
Alone at last, Webb flopped on to the bed and tried to take stock:
(a) He’d been whisked off a remote Scottish mountain,
(b) told a tale of imminent Armageddon,
(c) transported to Iceland in a giant helicopter, in a blizzard,
(d) been flown over the roof of the world thence down almost to Mexico, and
(e) he was now on a remote mountain site surrounded by backwoodsmen.
(f) And he thought,
I don’t need this.
Money, Webb had learned soon after he joined the Institute, drove everything. Science was something you snatched in precious moments in between writing grant applications and publicity handouts. And in between meetings: the management loved meetings. The science, he had also learned, had to be Approved. The streetwise might aspire to soft carpets and executive desks, but the iconoclast stayed in an icy basement. The point of Buachaille Etive Mor had been to escape, get to work on real science. Webb wondered how they had found him, in that remote mountain setting.
What I do need is deep, dreamless, eight hours of sleep. He had a shower, washing away the camping and travel, and wrapped himself in a large white towel. The beautiful, climactic moment came when he approached the bed, weary muscles tingling in anticipation of flopping down on it. He savoured the moment, he flopped, and there was a sharp knock on the door.
Noordhof was in Command Mode. “The cable car. Five minutes. Observing suits in the dormitory cupboard.”
You’re in the army now, Webb thought.
The tiny silver cable car barely took four people and had the feel of something cobbled together by an enthusiast with a Meccano set. Noordhof, Sacheverell and Webb squeezed in, dressed like Eskimos, with Sacheverell taking up three quarters of Webb’s bench. A notice said
On no account stand up, change seats, shake the car or lean out of the window. Keep clear of the door handle in transit.
Kowalski marched over to a control panel, pressed a red button and pulled a lever. On the panel, a row of lights flashed on. There was a clash of engaging gears, a loud whining, and a large metal wheel started to turn. He trotted swiftly to the car and climbed in next to Webb, pulling the door shut just as the cable took up the slack and the car started to move. “It’s quite safe,” he said. “If you work it by yourself just remember to get in quickly.”
From about fifty yards up, the ground faded into the mist and they lost nearly all sense of motion; they were sitting in a gently swaying cable car, immersed in a co-moving grey bubble. After some minutes they cleared the mist. Far above, almost over their heads, was a pinnacle of rock, still in sunlight. On its summit Webb could barely make out a building. Near-vertical rock faces fell away from it in every direction; lines of ice filled the ridges and angles. Webb looked up at the dizzying height and thought Why not? What more can they throw at me? Below them, the receding cloud turned out to be fairly localized, and they could see the track they had taken in the Firebird, twisting through the forest. Beyond it, the desert was now dark.
Webb assumed that his hypothetical Meccano enthusiast had known all about wind-pumped resonances, and metal fatigue, and the tensile strength of tired old steel. He was delighted to see that Sacheverell was even more terrified than him. There was sweat on the man’s brow and his eyes were staring. He produced a handkerchief and wiped his face with it. Mischievously, Webb turned the screw a little. Trying to sound casual, he asked Kowalski: “Ever been an accident with this?”
Kowalski looked at him curiously and glanced quickly at Sacheverell. Then he nodded solemnly. “Once.”
The car began to sway, a long, slow oscillation as the cable vibrated like a bowstring. After some minutes the vibration died and the car’s upward climb slowed; the machinery seemed to be struggling. Only a few yards away was an icy, vertical rock face; the car was being hauled almost vertically up its cable. Sacheverell giggled, but it was a bit high-pitched. The car edged up and slotted into a gap in a concrete platform projecting into space. They piled out. There was a gap of nine inches between car and platform, and about three thousand feet of air below the gap.