This was the moment to express my regrets and tell him I had decided against joining his team and intended to return to London immediately. I did no such thing. Instead I crossed the floor to the computer and stood by while he explained the circuits. Professional pride, professional jealousy, if you will, coupled with intense curiosity to know why this particular apparatus was superior to the one we had built at A.E.L., proved too much for me.
'There are some overalls on the wall,' said MacLean. 'Put 'em on, and we'll fix the fault between us.'
From then onward I was lost, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that I was won. Not to his lunatic theories, not to any future experiment with life and death; I was conquered by the supreme beauty and efficiency of Charon 1 itself. Beauty may be an odd word to use where electronics are concerned. I did not find it so. Herein lay all my passion, all my feelings; from my boyhood I had been involved with the creation of these things. This was my life's work. I was not interested in the uses to which the machines I had helped to develop and perfect were ultimately put. My part was to see that they fulfilled the function for which they were designed. Until arriving at Saxmere I had had no other object, no other aim in life, but to do what I was fitted to do, and do it well.
Charon 1 awakened something else in me, an awareness of power. I had only to handle those controls to know that what I wanted now was to have detailed knowledge of all the working parts, and then be given charge of the whole lay-out. Nothing else mattered. But the end of that first morning I had not only located the fault, a minor one, but had set it right. MacLean had become Mac, the shortening of my name to Steve was something that no longer jarred, and the whole fantastic set-up had ceased to irritate or to dismay; I had become one of the team.
Robbie showed no surprise when I turned up at lunchtime, nor did he allude to our conversation at breakfast. In the late afternoon, with Mac's permission, I took my suggested walk with Ken. It was impossible to connect approaching death with this irrepressible youngster, and I put it from my mind. It could be that both Mac and Robbie were wrong about it. Anyway, it was not, thank God, my problem.
He showed no sign of fatigue and led the way, laughing and chatting, across the sand-dunes to the sea. The sun was shining, the air felt cold and clean, even the long stretch of shore that had seemed dreary the night before had now a latent charm. The heavy shingle gave place to sand, crisp under our feet; Cerberus, who accompanied us, bounded ahead. We threw sticks for him to retrieve from the pallid, almost effortless, sea, which gently, without menace, broke beside us as we walked. We did not discuss Saxmere, or anything connected with it; instead Ken regaled me with amusing gossip about the U.S. base at Thiriwall, where he had apparently worked as one of the ground staff before Mac arranged his transfer ten months before.
Suddenly Cerberus, barking puppy-fashion for another stick, turned and stood motionless, ears pricked, head to wind. Then he started loping back the way we had come, his lithe black-and-tan form soon lost to sight against the darker shingle and the dunes beyond.
'He's had a signal from Charon,' said Ken.
The night before, watching Mac at the controls, the dog's scratching at the door seemed natural. Here, some three miles distant on the lonely shore, his swift departure was uncanny.
'Effective, isn't it?' said Ken.
I nodded; but somehow, because of what I'd seen, my spirits left me. Enthusiasm for the walk had waned. It would have been different had I been alone. Now, with the boy beside me, I was, as it were, confronted with the future, the project Mac had in mind, the months ahead.
'Want to turn back?' he asked me.
His words reminded me of Robbie's at breakfast, though he meant them otherwise. 'Just as you like,' I said indifferently.
He swung left and we clambered, slipping and sliding with every step, up the steep slope to the cliffs above the beach. I was breathless when I reached the top. Not Ken. Smiling, he lent a hand to pull me up. Heather and scrub lay all about us, and the wind was in our faces, stronger than it had been below. About a quarter of a mile distant, stark and white against the skyline, stood a row of coastguard cottages, bleak windows all aflame with the setting sun.
'Come and pay your respects to Mrs J.,' suggested Ken.
Reluctantly I followed, detesting unpremeditated visits, no matter where. The unprepossessing Janus household did not attract me. As we drew near I saw that only the far cottage was inhabited. The others had the forlorn, lost look of buildings untenanted for years. Two had their windows broken. Gardens, untended, sprawled. Posts, sagging drunkenly from the damp earth, trailed pieces of barbed wire from their rotting stumps. A small girl was leaning over the gate of the occupied cottage. Dark, straight hair framed her pinched face, her eyes were lustreless, and she was wanting a front tooth.
'Hullo, Niki,' called Ken.
The child stared, then slowly removed herself from the gate. Morosely, she pointed at me. 'Who's that?' she asked.
'His name is Steve,' Ken answered her.
'I don't like his shoes,' said the child.
Ken laughed and opened the gate, and as he did so the child attempted to climb upon him. Gently he put her aside, and walking up the path to the open door called, 'Are you there, Mrs J.?'
A woman appeared, pallid and dark like her child. Her anxious face broke into a smile at the sight of Ken. She bade us enter, apologising for the disarray. I was introduced as Steve, and we hovered uncomfortably in the front room, where the child's toys were strewn about the floor.
'We've had tea,' Ken said, in reply to Mrs J.'s question, but, insisting that the kettle had just boiled, the woman vanished to the adjoining kitchen, to reappear at once with a large brown teapot and two cups and saucers. There was nothing for it but to swallow the stuff under her watchful eyes, while the child, edging against Ken all the while, stared balefully at my inoffensive canvas shoes.
I gave full marks to my young companion. He exchanged pleasantries with Mrs Janus, and patted the unendearing Niki. I remained silent throughout, and wondered why the child's likeness, framed in place of honour over the fireplace, should be so much more pleasing than the child herself.
'It's very cold here in the winter, but a bracing cold,' said Mrs Janus, fixing me with her own mournful eyes. 'I always say I prefer the frost to the damp.'
I agreed, and shook my head at the offer of more tea. At this moment the child stiffened. She stood rigid a moment, her eyes closed. I wondered if she were going to throw a fit. Then very calmly she announced, 'Mac wants me.'
Mrs Janus, with a murmur of apology, went into the hall and I heard her dial. Ken was watching the child, himself unmoved. I felt slightly sick. In a moment I heard Mrs Janus speaking over the telephone and she called, 'Niki, come here and speak to Mac.'
The child ran from the room, and for the first time since our arrival showed animation. She even laughed. Mrs Janus returned and smiled at Ken.
'I think Mac really wants a word with you,' she said.
Ken got up and went into the hall. Alone with the child's mother, I did not know what to say. At last, in desperation, nodding at the photograph above the fireplace, I said, 'What a good likeness of Niki. Taken a few years ago, I suppose?'
To my dismay, the woman's eyes filled with tears.
'That's not Niki, that's her twin,' she answered. 'That's our Penny. We lost her soon after they had both turned five.'
My awkward apology was cut short by the entrance of the child herself. Ignoring my shoes she came straight to me, put her hand on my knee and announced, 'Mac says Cerberus is back. And you and Ken can go home.'
'Thank you,' I said.
As we walked away from the cottages, over scrub and heather, and took a short cut back to Saxmere through the marsh, I asked Ken whether the call-signal from Charon invariably had the effect I had seen, that of awakening latent intelligence in the child.