‘Of course,’ said Victor, fumbling in his pocket. He produced the pass inserted behind the worn plastic window of his wallet. If the gorillas took it out and saw that it was a photocopy, then all would be lost.
‘I haven’t seen you around before, sir,’ said one of the men suspiciously.
‘No,’ replied Victor evenly, ‘you’ll see from my card that I belong to the Berwick-upon-Tweed spiral arm.’
The first man passed the wallet to his comrade.
‘We’ve been having problems with infiltrators, isn’t that so, Mr Europa?’
The second man grunted and passed the wallet back to Victor.
‘Name?’ asked the first, holding up a clipboard.
‘I probably won’t be on the list,’ said Victor slowly. ‘I’m a latecomer. I called Dr Mьller last night.’
‘I don’t know of any Dr Mьller,’ said the first, sucking in air through his teeth as he looked at Victor with narrowed eyes, ‘but if you are an Earthcrosser you will have no problem telling me which of the planets has the highest density.’
Victor looked from one to the other and laughed. They laughed with him.
‘Of course not.’
He took a step forward but the smile on the men’s faces dropped. One of them put out another massive hand to stop him.
‘Well?’
‘This is preposterous,’ said Victor indignantly. ‘I’ve been an Earthcrosser for thirty years and I’ve never had this sort of treatment before.’
‘We don’t like infiltrators,’ said the first man again. ‘They try to give us a bad name. Do you want to know what we do to bogus members? Now. Again. Which of the planets has the highest density?’
Victor looked at the two men, who looked back at him menacingly.
‘It’s Earth. The lowest is Pluto, okay?’
The two security men were not yet convinced.
‘Kindergarten stuff, mister. How long is a weekend on Saturn?’
Two miles away in Bowden’s car, Bowden and I were frantically calculating the answer and transmitting it down the line to the earpiece that Victor was wearing. The car was stuffed with all sorts of reference books on astronomy; all that we could hope was that none of the questions would be too obscure.
‘Twenty hours,’ said Bowden down the line to Victor.
‘About twenty hours,’ said Victor to the two men.
‘Orbital velocity of Mercury?’
‘Would that be aphelion or perihelion?’
‘Don’t get smart, pal. Average will do.’
‘Let me see now. Add the two together and—Ah, good Lord, is that a ringed chaffinch?’
The two men didn’t turn to look.
‘Well?’
‘It’s, um, 106,000 miles per hour.’
‘Uranus’s moons?’
‘Uranus?’ replied Victor, stalling for time. ‘Don’t you think it’s amusing that they changed the pronunciation?’
‘The moons, sir.’
‘Of course. Oberon, Titania, Umb—‘
‘Hold it! A real Earthcrosser would have logged the closest first!’
Victor sighed as Bowden reversed the order over the airwaves.
‘Cordelia, Ophelia, Bianca, Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, Rosalind, Belinda, Puck, Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon.’
The two men looked at Victor, nodded and then stepped back to let him pass, their manner changed abruptly to acute politeness.
‘Thank you, sir. Sorry about that but, as I’m sure you realise, there are very many people who would like to see us stopped. I’m sure you understand.’
‘Of course, and may I congratulate you on your thoroughness, gentlemen. Good-day.’
As Victor walked by they stopped him again.
‘Aren’t you forgetting something, sir?’
Victor turned. I had wondered about some sort of password, and if that was what they wanted now we were sunk. He decided to let them lead the situation.
‘Leave it in the car, sir?’ asked the first man after a pause. ‘Here, borrow mine.’
The security man reached inside his jacket and pulled out, not a gun as Victor expected, but a baseball catcher’s glove. He smiled and handed it over.
‘I dare say I won’t make it up there today.’
Victor slapped his own forehead with the ball of his hand.
‘Mind like a string bag. I must have left it at home. Imagine, coming to an Earthcrossers meet and forgetting my catcher’s glove!’
They all laughed with him dutifully; the first guard said:
‘Have a good time, sir. Earthstrike is at 14:32.’
He thanked them both and hopped into the waiting Land Rover before they changed their minds. He looked at the catcher’s glove uneasily. What on earth were they up to?
The Land Rover dropped him at the east entrance to the hill-fort. He could see about fifty people milling around, all wearing steel helmets. A large tent had been set up in the centre of the fort and it bristled with aerials and a large satellite dish. Farther up the hill was a radar scanner that revolved slowly. He had expected to see a large telescope or something, but no such apparatus seemed to have been set up.
‘Name?’
Victor turned to see a small man staring up at him. He was holding a clipboard and wearing a steel helmet and seemed to be taking full advantage of his limited authority.
Victor attempted a bluff.
That’s me there,’ he said, pointing at a name at the bottom of the list.
‘Mr Continued Overleaf, are you?’
‘Above that,’ Victor countered hurriedly.
‘Mrs Trotswell?’
‘Oh, er, no. Ceres. Augustus Ceres.’
The small man consulted his list carefully, running a steel ballpoint pen down the row of names.
‘No one of that name here,’ he said slowly, looking at Victor suspiciously.
‘I’m from Berwick-upon-Tweed,’ explained Victor. ‘Late entry. I don’t suppose the news filtered through. Dr Mьller said I could drop in any time.’
The small man jumped.
‘Mьller? There’s no one here of that name. You must mean Dr Cassiopeia.’ He winked and smiled broadly. ‘Okay. Now,’ he added, consulting his list and looking round the fort, ‘we’re a bit thin on the outer perimeter. You can take station 63. Do you have a glove? Good. What about a helmet? Never mind. Here, take mine; I’ll get another from stores. Earthstrike at 14:32. Good-day.’
Victor took the helmet and wandered off in the direction that the small man had indicated.
‘Hear that, Thursday?’ he hissed. ‘Dr Cassiopeia.’
‘I heard it,’ I replied. ‘We’re seeing what we’ve got on him.’
Bowden was already contacting Finisterre, who was waiting back at the LiteraTec office for just such a call.
Victor filled his briar pipe and was walking towards station 63 when a man in a Barbour jacket nearly marched straight into him. He recognised Dr Mьller’s face from the mugshot immediately. Victor raised his hat, apologised and walked on.
‘Wait!’ yelled Mьller. Victor turned. Mьller raised an eyebrow and stared at him.
‘Haven’t I seen your face somewhere else?’
‘No, it’s always been right here on the front of my head,’ replied Victor, attempting to make light of the situation. Mьller simply stared at him with a blank expression as Victor carried on filling his pipe.
‘I’ve seen you somewhere before,’ continued Mьller, but Victor was not so easily shaken.
‘I don’t think so,’ he announced, offering his hand. ‘Ceres,’ he added. ‘Berwick-upon-Tweed spiral arm.’
‘Berwick-upon-Tweed, eh?’ said Mьller. ‘Then you know my good friend and colleague Professor Barnes?’
‘Never heard of him,’ announced Victor, guessing that Mьller was suspicious. Mьller smiled and looked at his watch. ‘Earthstrike in seven minutes, Mr Ceres. Perhaps you’d better take your station.’
Victor lit his pipe, smiled and walked off in the direction he had been given earlier. There was a stake in the ground marked 63, and he stood around feeling slightly stupid. All the other Earthcrossers had donned their helmets and were scanning the sky to the west. Victor looked around and caught the eye of an attractive woman of about his own age a half-dozen paces away at 62.