A for Andromeda

Ten Achievements

The new missile was built and tested at Thorness. When it had been fired and recovered, and copies made, the Prime Minister sent Burdett to see Vandenberg.

The General was more than a little worried about the Thorness project. It seemed to him to be going too fast to be sound. Although his chiefs wanted action quickly, he had grave doubts about this piece of foreign technology and wanted it sent for testing to the U.S.A.; but Her Majesty’s Government unexpectedly dug its toes in.

Burdett confronted him in the underground ops room.

“Just for once we have the means to go it alone.” The young minister looked very sharp and dapper and keen in his neat blue suit and old school tie. “Of course we shall co-ordinate with you when we come to use it.”

Vandenberg grunted. “Can we know how you’ll use it?”

“We shall make an interception.”

“How?”

“Reinhart will give us our target information from Bouldershaw, and Geers’s outfit will do the firing.”

“And if it fails?”

“It won’t fail.”

The two men faced each other uncompromisingly: Burdett smooth and smiling, the General solid and tough. After a moment Vandenberg shrugged.

“This has become a very domestic affair all of a sudden.”

They left it at that, and Burdett told Geers and Reinhart to go ahead.

At Bouldershaw fresh traces were picked up nearly every day. Harvey sat behind the great window overlooking the Fell and logged them as they went over.

“...August 12th, 03.50 hrs., G.M.T. Ballistic vehicle number one-one-seven passed overhead on course 2697/451. Height 400 miles. Speed approx. 17,500 miles per hour...”

The huge bowl outside, which seemed empty and still under its tall superstructure, was all the time alive and full of the reflection of signals. Every vehicle that came over gave out its own call and could be heard approaching from the other side of the globe. There were electronic scanners in the observatory which showed the path of the targets on a cathode-ray screen, while an automatic plotting and range-finding system was coupled by land-line to Thorness.

At Thorness an array of rockets was set up on the cliff-top; a “first throw” as they called it and two reserves. The three pencil-shaped missiles, with tapering noses and finned tails, stood in a row on their launching pads, glinting silver in the cold, grey light. They were surprisingly small, and very slim and rather beautiful. They looked like arrows strung and ready to fly out from all the heavy and complicated harness of firing. Each one, tanked with fuel and crammed with precise equipment, carried a small nuclear charge in its tapered head.

The ground control was operated through the computer, which in turn was directed by Andromeda and her assistants. Target signals from Bouldershaw were fed in through the control room and instantaneously interpreted and passed on to the interceptor. The flight of interception could be directed to a hair’s breadth.

Only Geers and his operational staff were allowed in the control-room at this time. Fleming and Dawnay were given monitoring facilities, as a gesture of courtesy, in another building; Andromeda took over calmly at the computer and Geers fussed anxiously and self-importantly between the launching-site, the computer building and the fire control-room. This was a small operations centre where the mechanics of take-off were supervised. A direct telephone connected him with the Ministry of Defence. Judy was kept busy by Major Quadring, double-checking everyone who came and went.

On the last day of October, Burdett conferred with the Prime Minister, and then picked up a telephone to Geers and Reinhart.

“The next one,” he said.

Reinhart and Harvey stood to for thirty-six hours before they detected a new trace. Then, in the early light, they picked up a very faint signal and the automatic linking system was put into action.

The sleepy crew at Thorness pulled themselves together, and Andromeda, who showed no sign of effort, watched as they checked the information through the computer. The optimum launching time came out at once and was communicated to the fire control-centre, and the count-down began. Very soon a trace of the target could be seen on radar screens. There was a screen in the computer-room for Andromeda, another in fire control for Geers, a third in London in the Ministry of Defence Ops Room, and a master-check at Bouldershaw, watched by Reinhart. At Bouldershaw, too, the signal from the satellite could be heard: a steady blip-blip-blip-blip which was amplified and pushed out through the speakers until it filled the observatory.

At Thorness the speakers were carrying the count-down, and launching teams worked briskly round the bases of the rockets on the cliff-top. At zero the “first throw” was to be fired and, if that failed, the second, and, if necessary, the third, with fresh flight calculations made according to their take-off time. Andromeda had held that there was no need for this but the others were all too conscious of human fallibility. Neither Geers nor any of his superiors could afford a fiasco.

The count-down ran out to single figures and to nought. In the grey morning light of the promontory the take-off rockets of the first flight suddenly bloomed red. The air filled with noise, the earth shook, and the tall thin pencil slipped up into the sky. Within a few seconds it was gone beyond the clouds. In the control-rooms, the operations-room and the observatory, anxious faces watched its trace appear on the cathode screens. Only Andromeda seemed unconcerned and confident.

At Bouldershaw, Reinhart, Harvey and their team watched the two traces of target and interceptor slowly converging and heard the blip-blip-blip of the satellite ringing louder and clearer in their ears as it approached. Then the traces met and at the same moment the noise stopped.

Reinhart swung round to Harvey and thumped him, wildly and uncharacteristically, on the back.

“We’ve done it... !”

“A hit!” Geers picked up his telephone for London. Andromeda turned away from her control-room screen as though something quite unimportant were over. In London, Vandenberg turned to his British colleagues in the ops room.

“Well, what do you know?” he said.

That evening an official statement was made to the press:

“The Ministry of Defence has announced that an orbital missile has been intercepted by a new British rocket three hundred and seventy miles above this country. The remains of the missile, which is of unknown origin, and of the interceptor, were burnt out on re-entering the earth’s atmosphere, but the interception was followed on auto-radar equipment and can, say the Ministry, be verified in minute detail.”

An almost audible collective sigh of relief rose from Whitehall, accompanied by a glow of self-congratulation. The Cabinet held an unusually happy meeting and within a week the Prime Minister was sending again for Burdett.

The Minister of Defence presented himself neat and smiling, in an aura of confidence and after-shave lotion.

“Any new traces?” asked the Prime Minister.

“Not one.”

“Nothing in orbit?”

“Nothing’s been over this country, sir, since the interception.”

“Good.” The Prime Minister mused. “Reinhart was due for a knighthood anyway.”

“And Geers?”

“Oh yes. C.B.E. probably.”

Burdett prepared for business. “And the computer and its, er, agent, sir?”

“We might make the young lady a Dame,” said the Prime Minister with one of his camouflage twinkles.

“I mean,” asked Burdett, “what happens to them? The Ministry of Science want them to revert.”

The Prime Minister continued to look amused. “We can’t have that, can we?” he said.

“We’ve a heavy military programme for it.”

“Also a heavy economic one.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“I mean,” said the Prime Minister seriously, “that if this particular combination can achieve that for us, it can achieve a lot of other things. Of course it must still work on defence, but at the same time it has a very great industrial potential. We want to be rich, you know, as well as strong. The scientists have given us—and I’m very grateful to them—the most advanced thinking instrument in the world. It’s going to make it possible for us to leap forward, as a country, in a great many fields. And about time too.”

“Are you going to keep it in your own hands, sir?” Burdett spoke with a mixture of irritation and deference.

“Yes. I shall make a statement to the nation in the near future.”

“You’re not going to make it public?”

“Don’t flap, man.” The Prime Minister regarded him blandly. “I shall say something about the effects, but the means will remain top secret. That’ll be your responsibility.”

Burdett nodded. “What can I tell Vandenberg?”

“Tell him to rest his feet. No, you can say to him that we’re going to be a great little country again, but we’ll continue to co-operate with our allies. With any allies we can get, in fact.” He paused for a moment while Burdett waited politely. “I shall go to Thorness myself as soon as I can.”

The visit was arranged in a few days—it was obviously priority in the Prime Minister’s mind. Judy and Quadring had some difficulty in concealing it from the press, for public curiosity was at its height; but in the end it was laid on with due secrecy and the compound and its inhabitants were quietly and discreetly groomed. Geers had changed distinctly since his success. Confidence was something new to him. It was as though he had taken the chips off his shoulder and put them away. He was brisk but affable, and he not only allowed Dawnay and Fleming access to the computer again but urged them to be on parade for the Prime Minister’s tour. He wanted everyone, he said, to have their due.

Fleming had private doubts about this window-dressing but kept them to himself; at least there might be an opportunity to speak. He arrived in the computer building early on the day of the visit, and found Andromeda waiting there alone. She also appeared transformed. Her long hair had been brushed back from her face and, instead of her usual simple frock, she wore a sort of Grecian garment which clung to her breasts and thighs and floated away behind her.

“Phew!” he said. “Something human’ll happen to you if you go round like that.”

“You mean these clothes?” she asked with faint interest.

“You’ll make one hell of an impression, but then you already have. There’ll be no holding you now, will there?” he asked sourly. Andromeda glanced at him without replying. “He’ll probably ask you to take over Number Ten, and I suppose you think we’ll sleep easy in our beds, now we’ve seen how powerful you are. I suppose you think we’re all fools.”

“You are not a fool,” she said.

“If I weren’t a fool, you wouldn’t be here now! You shoot down a little bit of metal from the sky—chickenfecd when you know how—and suddenly you’re in a commanding position.”

“That was intended.” She faced him expressionlessly.

“And what’s intended next?”

“It depends on the programme.”

“Yes.” He advanced towards her. “You’re a slave, aren’t you?”

“Why don’t you go?” she asked.

“Go?”

“Now. While you can.”

“Make me!” He stared at her, hard and hostile, but she turned her head away.

“I may have to,” she said.

He stood, challenging her to go on, but she would not be drawn. After a few seconds he looked at his watch and grunted.

“I wish this diplomatic circus would come and get it over.”

When the Prime Minister did arrive, he was escorted by officials, politicians and Scotland Yard heavies. Geers led him in. They were followed by Burdett and Hunter and by a train of lesser beings, dwindling away to Judy, who came at the end and closed doors behind them. Geers indicated the control-room with a sweep of his arm.

“This is the actual computer, sir.”

“Quite incomprehensible to me,” said the Prime Minister, as if this were an advantage. He caught sight of Andromeda. “Hallo, young lady. Congratulations.”

He walked towards her with his hand outstretched, and she took and shook it stiffly.

“You understand all this?” he asked her.

She smiled politely.

“I’m sure you do, and we are all very beholden. It’s quite a change for us in this old country to be able to make a show of force. We shall have to take great care of you. Are they looking after you all right?”

“Yes, thank you.”

The visiting party stood round in a half circle, watching and admiring her, but she said nothing else.

Fleming caught Judy’s eye and nodded towards the Prime Minister. For a moment she could not think what he wanted, then she understood and edged in beside Geers.

“I don’t think the Prime Minister has met Dr. Fleming,” she whispered.

Geers frowned; his good fellowship seemed to be wearing a little thin in places.

“Good, good.” The Prime Minister could think of nothing more to say to Andromeda. He turned back to Geers.

“And where do you keep the rocketry?”

“I’ll show you, sir. And I’d like you to see the laboratory.”

They moved on, leaving Judy standing. “Dr. Fleming—” she tried unsuccessfully, but they did not hear her. Fleming stepped forward.

“Excuse me a moment—”

Geers turned to him with a scowl. “Not now, Fleming.”

“But—”

“What does the young man want?” the Prime Minister inquired mildly.

Geers switched on a smile.

“Nothing, sir. He doesn’t want anything.”

The Prime Minister walked on tactfully, and as Fleming moved forward again Hunter laid a hand on his arm.

“For goodness sake!” Hunter hissed.

At the door of the lab bay Geers turned back.

“You’d better come with us.” He spoke to Andromeda, ignoring the others.

“Come along, my dear,” said the Prime Minister, standing aside for her. “Brains and beauty first.”

The procession filed out into the laboratory, except for Judy.

“Coming?” she asked Fleming, who stood staring after them

He shook his head. “That was great, wasn’t it?”

“I did my best.”

“Great.”

Judy fidgeted with her handkerchief. “At least you should have been allowed to speak to him. I suppose he’s shrewd, though he looks a bit of an old woman.”

“Like another.”

“Who?”

“Of Riga.” He gave her a faint grin. “Who went for a ride on a tiger. They finished the ride with the lady inside, and a smile on the face of the tiger.”

She knew the limerick, and felt irritated. “We’re all going for a ride, except you?”

“You know what she said to me just now?”

“No.”

He changed his mind and looked away from Judy to the control panel. “I’ve an idea.”

“One I’d understand?”

“Look how beautifully he’s ticking over—how sleek and rhythmical he is.” The computer was working steadily, with a gentle hum and a regular flashing of lights. “Purring away with us inside him. Suppose I pulled out the plug now?”

“They wouldn’t let you.”

“Or got a crowbar and smashed him up.”

“You wouldn’t get far with the guards. Anyhow, they’d rebuild it.”

He took out a pad and some papers from a drawer in the control desk. “Then we’ll have to shake it intellectually, won’t we? I’ve shaken the young lady a bit. Now we’d better start on him.” He saw that she was looking at him doubtfully. “Don’t worry, you won’t have to blow your whistle. Are they coming back this way?”

“No. They’ll go out through the lab entrance.”

“Good.” He started copying numbers from the sheets on to the pad. “What is that?”

“A shortened formula for the creature.”

“Andromeda?”

“Call her whatever amuses you.” He scribbled on. “This is what the machine calls her. Not a formula, really—a naming tag.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Re-arrange it slightly.”

“You’re not going to do any damage?”

He laughed at her. “You’d better go on with your conducted tour; this’ll take time.”

“I shall warn the guards.”

“Warn whom you like.”

She hesitated, then gave it up and went to rejoin the party. When she had gone he checked the figures and walked over with the pad to the input unit.

“I’ll give you something to think about!” he said aloud to the machine, and sat down and started tapping the message in.

He had hardly finished when Andromeda came back.

“I thought you were going to see the rocketry.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “It is not interesting.”

The lamps on the display panel started to flash faster, and suddenly there was a fantastic clatter from the output unit as the printer began to work furiously.

Andromeda looked up in surprise. “What is happening?”

Fleming went quickly to the printer and read the figures as they were banged out on to the paper.

He smiled. “Your friend seems to have lost his temper.”

She crossed the room and looked over his shoulder.

“This is nonsense.”

“Exactly.”

The printer stopped as suddenly as it had begun, leaving them in silence.

“What have you been doing?” the girl asked. She read the figures through uncomprehendingly. “This doesn’t mean anything.”

Fleming grinned at her. “No. He’s flipped for a moment. I think he’s psychologically disturbed.”

“What have you done to it?” She started towards the terminals, but he stopped her.

“Come away from there.”

She halted uncertainly. “What have you done?”

“Only given him a little information.”

Looking around, she saw the pad on top of the input keys. She went slowly over to it and read it.

“That’s my name-tag—reversed!”

“Negatived,” said Fleming.

“It’ll think I’m dead!”

“That’s what I meant him to think.”

She looked up at him, puzzled. “Why?”

“I thought I’d let him know he couldn’t have it all his own way.”

“That was very foolish.”

“He seems to value you highly,” he said scornfully.

She turned away towards the terminals. “I must tell it I’m alive.”

“No!” He seized hold of her by the arms.

“I must. It thinks I’m dead, and I must tell it I’m not.”

“Then I shall tell it you are. I can play this game until it doesn’t know whether it’s coming or going.”

He let go one arm and picked up the pad from the keyboard.

“Give me that.” She pulled her other arm free. “You can’t win, you know.” She turned away again, and as Fleming moved to stop her she suddenly shouted at him. “Leave me alone! Go away! Go out of here!”

They stood facing each other, both trembling, as if neither could move. Then Fleming took hold of her firmly with both hands and drew her towards him.

He sniffed at her in surprise. “You’re wearing scent!”

“Let go of me. I shall call the guards.”

Fleming started to laugh. “Open your mouth, then.”

She parted her lips and he put a kiss on them. Then he held her at arms’ length and examined her.

“Nice or nasty?”

“Leave me alone, please.” Her voice was uncertain. She looked at him in a confused way, and then down, but he still held her.

“Who do you belong to?”

“I belong where my brain tells me.”

“Then tell it this—” He kissed her again, sensuously but dispassionately, for a long time.

“Don’t,” she begged, pulling her lips away. He held her close to him and spoke gently.

“Don’t you like the taste of lips? Or the taste of food, or the smell and feel of the fresh air outside, or the hills beyond the wire with sunshine and shadows on them and larks singing? And the company of human beings?”

She shook her head slowly. “They’re not important.”

“Aren’t they?” He spoke with his mouth close to her. “They weren’t allowed for by whatever disembodied intelligence up there you owe allegiance to, but they’re important to organic life, as you’ll find out.”

“Anything can be allowed for,” she said.

“But they weren’t in the calculations.”

“They can be put in.” She looked up at him. “You can’t beat us, Dr. Fleming. Stop trying before you get hurt.”

He let go of her. “Am I likely to get hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Why should you warn me?”

“Because I like you,” she said, and he half smiled at her.

“You’re talking like a human being.”

“Then it’s time I stopped. Please go now.”

He stood obstinately, but there was a note of pleading in her voice that had never been there before, and an expression of unhappiness on her face. “Please... Do you want me to be punished?”

“By whom?”

“Who do you think?” She glanced at the computer control racks.

Fleming was taken off-guard: this was something he had never thought of.

“Punished? That’s a new one.” He put the pad of figures in his pocket and went to the door. In the doorway he turned back to deliver a last shot. “Who do you belong to?”

She watched him go and then turned reluctantly towards the display panel, and walked slowly, compulsively, up to it. She raised her hands to communicate with the terminals, then hesitated. Her face was strained, but she raised them again and touched the plates. For a moment all that happened was that the lights blinked faster, as the machine digested the information she gave it. Then the voltage meter below the panel suddenly peaked.

Andromeda gave a cry of pain and tried to pull her hands away from the plates, but the current held her fast. The voltage needle dropped, only to swing up again, and she cried out again... And then a third time and a fourth and over and over and over...

Once more it was Judy who found her. She came in a few minutes later, looking for Fleming, and saw to her horror the girl lying crumpled on the floor, where Christine had been.

“Oh no!” The words jerked out of her, and she ran forward and turned the body over. Andromeda was still alive. She moaned as Judy touched her, and curled away, whimpering quietly and nursing her hands together. Judy raised the blonde head and rested it in her lap and then took the hands and opened them. They were black with burning, except where the red flesh lay bare down to the bone.

Judy let them go gently. “How did it happen?”

Andromeda groaned again and opened her eyes.

Judy said to her, “Your hands.”

“We can easily mend them.” The girl’s voice was hardly audible.

“What happened?”

“Something went wrong, that’s all.”

Judy left her and telephoned Dr. Hunter.

From that moment events moved with almost cataclysmic speed. Hunter put a temporary dressing on Andromeda’s hands and tried to persuade her to move into the station’s sick bay, but she refused to leave the computer until she had seen Madeleine Dawnay.

“It will be quicker in the end,” she told them. Although she was suffering from shock, she went sturdily through Dawnay’s papers until she found the section she was looking for. Hunter had given her local shots to ease the pain in her hands, and with these and the bandages she fumbled a good deal, but she pulled out the sheets she wanted and shuffled them across to Dawnay. They were concerned with enzyme production in the D.N.A. formula.

“What do we do with these?” Dawnay looked at them doubtfully.

“Get an isolated tissue formula,” said Andromeda, and took the papers back to the computer. She was weak and pale and could hardly walk. Dawnay, Hunter and Judy watched anxiously as she stood again between the terminals and put out her swathed hands; but this time there was no disaster, and after a little the machine started printing-out.

“It’s an enzyme formula. You can make it up quite easily.” She indicated the printer-paper to Dawnay and then turned to Hunter. “I should like to lie down now, please. The enzyme can be applied to my hands on a medicated base when Professor Dawnay has prepared it, but it should be as soon as possible.”

She was ill for several days, and Hunter dressed her hands with an ointment containing the formula, when Dawnay had made it up. The healing was miraculous: new tissue—soft natural flesh, not the hard tissue of scarring—filled in the wounds in a matter of hours, and formed a fresh layer of pale pink skin across her palms. By the time she recovered from the effects of the electric shocks, her hands were remade.

Hunter, meanwhile, had reported to Geers and Geers had sent for Fleming. The Director, not yet certain of the outcome of the accident, was sick and thin-lipped with worry, his brief season of fellowship gone.

“So you decide to throw it off balance!” He flung the words across his desk at Fleming and pounded his fist on the polished wood. “You don’t consult anyone—you’re too clever. So clever, the machine goes wrong and damn near kills the girl.”

“If you won’t even listen to what happened.” Fleming’s voice rose to match his, but Geers interrupted.

“I know what happened.”

“Were you there? She knew she was going to be punished. She should have had me thrown out, she should have wiped out what I’d put into the computer; but she didn’t—not soon enough. She hesitated and warned me and let me go, then she went and touched the communication terminals—”

“I thought you’d gone,” Geers reminded him.

“Of course I’d gone. I’m telling you what happened inevitably: she let the machine know that she was alive, that it had been given false information, that the source of the information was around and she hadn’t stopped it. So it punished her by giving her a series of electric shocks. It knows how to do that now; it learnt on Christine.”

The Director listened with thinly disguised impatience. “You’re guessing,” he said at the end.

“It’s not guesswork, Geers. It was bound to happen, only I didn’t realise in time.”

“Have you your pass?” Geers looked at him glintingly through his spectacles. “To the computer building.”

Fleming sniffed and rummaged in his pocket. “You can’t fault me on that one. It’s quite in order.”

He handed it across the desk. Geers took it, examined it, and slowly tore it up.

“What’s that in aid of?”

“We can’t afford you, Fleming. Not any more.”

Fleming banged the desk in his turn. “I’m staying on the station.”

“Stay where you like; but your association with the computer is over. I’m sorry.”

Geers felt better with Fleming out of the way, and better still when he heard of Andromeda’s recovery. He got all the facts he could from Dawnay and Hunter about the enzyme, and then got through on his direct line to Whitehall. The reaction was as he thought. He sent for Andromeda and questioned her and seemed well pleased.

Fleming a year or two back would have hit the bottle, but this time he had no appetite even for that. The same compulsion that had held him to the computer tied him to the compound; even though there was nothing he could now do, no part he could have in the project, he remained on the station, solitary and uncertain and given to long walks and lying on his bed. It was deep winter, but calm and grey, as though something dramatic were being withheld.

About a week after the accident—or punishment, as Fleming thought of it—he was returning from a walk on the moors when he saw an enormous and extravagantly shining car outside Geers’s office, and as he passed it a short, square man with a bald head got out.

“Dr. Fleming!” The bald man raised a hand to stop and greet him.

“What are you doing here?”

“I hope you do not mind,” said Kaufmann.

Fleming looked to see who was around. “Get out,” he said.

“Please Herr Doktor, do not be embarrassed.” Kaufmann smiled at him. “I am quite official. A.1 at Lloyds. I do not compromise you.”

“You didn’t compromise Bridger either, I suppose?” Fleming jerked his head towards the main gate. “That’s the exit.”

Kaufmann smiled again, and pulled out his case of cigarillos. “Smoking?”

“Slightly,” Fleming said, “at the edges. I am not interested in anything you have to offer. Try the next door house.”

“I do that.” Kaufmann laughed and stuck a small cigar between his teeth before they closed. “I do just that. I stop you, Herr Doktor, to tell you that I shall not bother you any more. I have other means, much better, much more honest.”

He smiled again, lit his cigar and walked without hesitation into the vestibule of Geers’s office.

Fleming ran over to the security block, but Quadring was out somewhere, and so was Judy. Finally he got hold of Judy on the telephone, but by the time she reached Geers’s office, the Director was just showing Kaufmann out. The two men seemed to be on most cordial terms, and Geers was smoking one of the cigarillos.

“Businesswise,” Kaufmann was saying, “the process is immaterial. We are not curious; it is the result, yes?”

“We deal in results here.” Geers had his number one smile switched on. He held out a hand. “Auf Wiedersehen.”

Judy watched while Kaufmann shook hands and walked back to his car. As the Director turned to go back into his office she said, “Can I speak to you for a minute?”

Geers flicked his smile off. “I’m rather busy.”

“This is important. You know who he is?”

“His name is Kaufmann.”

“Intel.”

“That’s right.” Geers’s fingers itched at the door handle.

“It was Kaufmann whom Dr. Bridger was selling—” Judy started, but Geers cut her short.

“I know all about the Bridger case.”

Behind his voice Judy could hear the car driving away. Somehow it made what she felt seem terribly urgent: she had to batter it into him.

“It was Intel. They were taking secrets...”

Geers edged into his doorway. “They’re not taking secrets from me,” he said haughtily.

“But—” She followed him in uninvited, and found Dawnay waiting quietly in the office. She felt suddenly thrown and mumbled an apology to the older woman.

“Don’t mind me, dear,” said Dawnay neutrally, and strolled away to the far corner of the room. Geers sat back at his desk and looked at Judy with an air of businesslike dismissal.

“We’re making a trade agreement.”

“With Intel?” The horrifying absurdity of the whole thing crowded in on her: a vision of the piled-up madness of the past months and years. She gaped at him across the polished desk, until she could find words. “I was put on this job because we didn’t trust them. Dr. Bridger was hounded to his death—by me among other people—because he...”

“The climate’s changed.”

She looked at his smug, prim face and lost her temper entirely. “Politicians enjoy such convenient weather!”

“That will be enough,” Geers snapped.

Dawnay rustled quietly in her corner. “The child’s right, you know, and we scientists get a bit jaundiced about it from time to time. We’re at the mercy of the elements. We can’t cheat.”

“I’m a scientist too,” Geers said pettishly.

“Was.” The word slipped out before Judy could stop it. She waited for the explosion, but Geers somehow kept it under control. He went icy.

“It isn’t, strictly speaking, your business. What the Government needs now is world markets. When the girl Andromeda burnt her hands, she worked out a synthesis for Professor Dawnay’s lab people. Have you seen her hands?”

“I saw them burnt.”

“There’s no sign of a burn now. No scar tissue, nothing. Overnight.”

“And that’s what you’re selling to Intel?”

“Through Intel. To anyone who needs it.”

She tried to think what was wrong with this, and then realised. “Why not through the World Health Organisation?”

“We’re not contemplating wholesale charity. We’re contemplating a reasonable trade balance.”

“So you don’t care who you shake hands with?” she asked with disgust. She felt completely reckless now, and turned on Dawnay. “Are you part of this?”

Dawnay hesitated. “The enzyme’s not quite in a state to market yet. We need a more refined formula. Andre—the girl—is preparing the data for computing.” They had all got into the habit of calling her Andre.

“So the whole station’s working for Intel?”

“I hope not,” said Dawnay, and it sounded as though perhaps she was on her side.

Geers cut in.

“Look, Madeleine, this is enough.”

“Then I won’t waste your time.” Judy moved to the door. “But I am not part of it, and nor is Dr. Fleming.”

“We know how Fleming stands,” said Geers sardonically.

“And you know where I stand too,” Judy told him, and banged out.

Her instinct was to go straight to Fleming, but she could not quite face the risk of another snub. In fact, it was Dawnay who went to see him, on her way from the office block to the computer at the end of the day. She found him in his chalet, watching the Prime Minister’s broadcast on television.

“Come in,” he said flatly, and made room for her on the foot of his bed.

She looked at the flickering blue screen and tried to believe in the confident, elderly, sportive, civilised face and the slow, drawling voice of the Prime Minister.

Fleming sat, and watched and listened with her.

“Not since the halcyon days of Queen Victoria,” the disembodied face announced, “has this country held such a clear lead in the fields of industry, technology and—above all—security as that which we now have within our grasp...”

She felt her attention wandering. “I’m sorry if I interrupted.”

“You didn’t.” He made a grimace at the television. “Turn the old idiot off.”

He rose and switched off the set himself and then mixed her a drink. “Social call?”

“I was just going across to the computer building when I saw a light in your window. Thanks.” She took the glass from him.

“Working overtime?” he asked.

She lifted her glass and looked at him over the top of it. “Dr. Fleming, I’ve said some pretty uncharitable things about you in the past.”

“You’re not the only one.”

“About your attitude.”

“I was wrong, wasn’t I? The Prime Minister says so. Wrong and out.” He spoke more in sorrow than anger, and poured himself a small drink.

“I wonder,” said Dawnay. “I’m beginning to wonder.”

He did not answer, and she added, “Judy Adamson’s beginning to wonder too.”

“That’ll be a big help,” he snorted.

“She put up quite a fight with Geers this afternoon. I must say it made me think.” She took a sip and swallowed it slowly, looking quietly across her glass and turning over the position in her mind. “It seems fair enough to make use of what we’ve got—of what you gave us.”

“Don’t rub that in.”

“And yet I don’t know. There’s something corrupting about that sort of power. You can see it acting on the folk here, and on the government.” She nodded to the television set. “As if perfectly ordinary, sensible people are being possessed by a determination that isn’t their own. I think we’ve both felt it. And yet, it all seems harmless enough.”

“Does it?”

She told him about the enzyme production. “It’s beneficial. It regenerates cells, simply. It’ll affect everything, from skin-grafting to ageing. It’ll be the biggest medical aid since antibiotics.”

“A godsend to millions.”

When she got on to the Intel proposition he hardly reacted. “Where is it all leading?” she asked. She did not really expect an answer, but she got one.

“A year ago that machine had no power outside its own building, and even there we were in charge of it.” He spoke without passion as if reiterating an old truth. “Now it has the whole country dependent on it. What happens next? You heard, didn’t you? We shall go ahead, become a major force in the world again, and who’s going to be the power behind that throne?”

He indicated the television, as she had done; then he seemed to tire of the conversation. He wandered across to his record-player and switched it on.

“Could you have controlled it?” Dawnay was unwilling to let the subject go.

“Not latterly.”

“What could you have done?”

“Fouled it up as much as possible.” He began to sort out a record among a pile of L.P.s. “It knows that, now it has its creature to inform on me. It had me pushed out. ‘You can’t win,’ she told me.”

“She said that?”

Fleming nodded, and Dawnay frowned into her half-empty glass. “I don’t know. Perhaps it’s inevitable. Perhaps it’s evolution.”

“Look—” he put down the record and swung round to her. “I can foresee a time when we’ll create a higher form of intelligence to which, in the end, we’ll hand over. And it’ll probably be an inorganic form, like that one. But it’ll be something we’ve created ourselves, and we can design it for our own good, or for good as we understand it. This machine hasn’t been programmed for our good; or, if it has, something’s gone wrong with it.”

She finished her drink. There was possibility in what he said—more than possibility, a sort of sane logic which she had missed lately. As an empirical scientist, she felt there must be some way in which it could be tested.

“Could anyone tell, except you?” she asked.

Fleming shook his head. “None of that lot.”

“Could I tell?”

“You?”

“I have access to it.”

He immediately lost interest in the record. His face lit up as if she had switched on some circuit inside him. “Yes—why not? We could try a little experiment.” He picked up from his table the pad with the negatived name-code on it. “Have you somebody over there can feed this in?”

“Andre?”

“No. Not her. Whatever you do, don’t take her into your confidence.”

Dawnay remembered the operator. She took the pad, and Fleming showed her the section to be fed in.

“I’m out of my depth, I’ll admit that,” she said. Then she put down her glass and went out.

As she walked across the compound, she could hear the beginning of some post-Schoenbergian piece of music from Fleming’s chalet; then she was in the computer building and heard nothing but the hum of equipment. Andre was in the control room, and a young operator. Andre kept herself even more to herself since the affair of her hands. She haunted the computer block like a pale shadow and seldom left it. She made no attempt to communicate with anyone, and although she was never hostile she was completely withdrawn. She looked with slight interest at Dawnay coming in.

“How’s it getting on?” Dawnay asked.

“We have put in all the data,” Andre said. “You should have the formula soon.”

Dawnay moved away and joined the operator at the input unit. He was a young man, a very fresh post-graduate, who asked no questions, but did as he was told.

“Input that too, will you?” Dawnay gave him the pad. He rested it above the keyboard and started tapping.

“What is that?” Andre asked, hearing the sound.

“Something I want calculated.” Dawnay kept her away from it, until the display panel suddenly broke out into wild flashing.

“What are you putting in?” Andre snatched at the pad and read from it. “Where did you get it?”

“That’s my business,” said Dawnay.

“Why don’t you keep out of this?”

“You’d better leave us,” Dawnay told the operator.

He rose obediently and wandered out of the room.

Andre waited until he had gone.

“I do not wish you any harm,” she said then and there was not passion but great strength in her voice. “Why don’t you keep out?”

“How dare you talk to me like that?” Dawnay heard herself sounding weak and ridiculous, but she could only answer as it took her. “I created you—I made you.”

“You made me?” Andre looked at her with contempt, then crossed to the control panel and put her hands on the terminals. Immediately the display lamps became less agitated, but they continued to flicker so long as the girl stood there, strong and positive like a young goddess. After a minute she moved away and stood looking at Dawnay.

“We are getting rather tired of this—this little joke,” she said calmly, as if delivering a message. “Neither you, nor Dr. Fleming, nor anyone else can come between us.”

“If you’re trying to frighten me—”

“I don’t know what you’ve begun now. I cannot be responsible.” Andromeda appeared to be looking through her into a space beyond. The output printer went noisily into action, and Dawnay started at the sound. She followed Andre over to it, and by the time she got there the message finished. Andre examined the paper, and then tore it off and gave it to her.

“Your enzyme formula.”

“Is that all?” Dawnay felt a sense of relief.

“Isn’t that enough for you?” asked Andre, and watched her go with a set, hostile face.

Dawnay had three assistants working for her at the time: a senior research chemist, a man, and two post-graduate helpers, a boy and a girl. Between them they made a chemical synthesis based on the new formula. It involved a good deal of handling in the laboratory, but none of them worried about it because it had no irritant effect. By the end of a day or two, however, they were all beginning to feel signs of lassitude and wasting. There seemed to be no reason, and they worked on, but by the end of the third day the girl collapsed, and by the following morning Dawnay and the man had keeled over as well.

Hunter packed them off to the sick-bay, where they were soon joined by the boy. Whatever the disease was, it accelerated fast; there was no fever or inflammation, its victims simply degenerated. Cells died, the basic processes of metabolism slowed or stopped, and one after another the four weakened and slid into a state of coma. Hunter was desperate and appealed to Geers, who put a screen of silence round the whole business.

Fleming did not hear details until the fourth day, when Judy broke security to tell him. He immediately phoned Reinhart and asked him to come from Bouldershaw, and he persuaded Judy to find a paper for him. When she gave it to him, he locked himself up in his room with it all night, emerging in the morning grim but satisfied. But by that time the girl assistant was dead.