Space Hostages, page 2
‘Most certainly not! I’m going to telephone the Ministry of Defence immediately. And the police.’
‘No, Padre. Please don’t!’ The young Flight Lieutenant seemed to pull himself together and become firmer and harder. ‘Don’t do that. I’ll tell you why. I’ll tell you all why.’ He touched a button on the throat microphone and his voice could be heard by everyone. ‘Listen! No telephoning or anything of that sort! I hope no one’s telephoned already?’
‘They couldn’t do that without me!’ said Miss Miggs. She was the postmistress. ‘I was in such a state when this thing came down out of the sky, I simply flew here, and all the lines …’
‘Good. No telephoning, then. Now I’ll tell you why. Have you been following the news? The trouble in Pian Tuk and so on?’
There was a low chorus of ‘Aaah!’ from the villagers.
‘Then you can guess what I’m going to say. This craft is secret. That’s putting it mildly. It’s a British secret – but more than that. You could say it’s part of world affairs. A very important part at this moment. So it’s no good telephoning the Ministry of Defence. It’s no good ringing up the Income Tax people, even …’ (there was some laughter) ‘… because what is happening here is bigger than all of them put together. And I’ll tell you this: THERE ARE PLENTY OF PEOPLE THROUGHOUT THE WORLD WHO WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THIS CRAFT! Not only where it is, but if it EXISTS, even! And not all those people are friends of ours. Understood?’
‘But surely someone ought to be told? The Government – ?’
‘The Vicar here says that someone ought to be told,’ said the Flight Lieutenant’s amplified voice. ‘Well, Padre, so they should. But not, I repeat not, by telephone. Surely you’ve heard of telephones being tapped, listened in to? And surely you can guess what’s already happened? No? Well, I’ll tell you!’ He paused and lit a cigarette. ‘Look at this craft!’ He flung out an arm and the villagers’ heads turned to stare at the vast saucer, black now against the sky. ‘Do you honestly think it’s got a telephone exchange inside? Dial 999 and ask for Mars? No such luck! No nice cosy postmistress for us!’
There was a general laugh and heads turned to Miss Miggs.
‘No, we don’t do things quite that way. Our communications are to do with satellites in space and scrambled codes and security piled on security piled on security! Now, I can make the ship sit up and beg, even from here – look, I’ll show you!’
They watched: and although the Flight Lieutenant seemed to touch nothing, they saw the cabin door open and close, a series of aerials emerged from the belly of the craft and then retract and – as a sort of encore – a single beam of light shoot from a hidden source on to the ground, along which it crawled until it ‘found’ and spotlit the Flight Lieutenant.
‘Down, Fido!’ said the Flight Lieutenant and the light went out. ‘No seriously,’ continued the Flight Lieutenant, ‘I can do a whole lot of things with this ship. But one of the things I can’t do is break its communications, its codes, its links with higher authority. That’s all built in and programmed and going like mad. Surely you realize that even before I touched down here, the ship had told the whole story to the only people who ought to know!’
‘Aaaah!’ said the villagers again. They understood.
‘Tell you what I’ll do!’ said the Flight Lieutenant. ‘I’ll let you hear it talking to our masters! Come on lad …’ he pulled Ashley, the nearest boy, forward. ‘You can press the button and we’ll all listen in! Go on, press it!’
He held out what looked like a particularly small transistor radio and indicated the right button. Ashley pressed it. The Flight Lieutenant put the little set to his throat microphone, and they heard a fluttering, whining chatter of electronic sounds – a gibberish that could have come from outer space.
‘Well, that’s the ship talking!’ said the Flight Lieutenant, switching the noise off. ‘And if anyone can translate, please let me know. I hope she’s saying what I want to hear …’
‘What’s that, Flight Lieutenant?’
‘Where I can get another packet of cigarettes. I’m out!’ He flung an empty packet away and everyone laughed. Farmer Gordon was the first to succeed in thrusting a pack of cigarettes into the Flight Lieutenant’s hand, but several packs were offered. It seemed that their terrifying visitor from the sky was not so terrible after all.
Chapter 4
A quarter of an hour later, the villagers and the Flight Lieutenant were old friends. He had arranged the microphone so that everyone within several yards of him could be heard and he could be heard by everyone. It was almost cosy sitting there in the warm summer night. The whole of the village had not felt much unity since the end of World War II. That had been wonderful. But this was staggering. A flying saucer in Little Mowlesbury!
‘No, I just can’t answer that sort of question,’ said the Flight Lieutenant. ‘Please don’t ask me too much about the ship. You’ll get me shot if I answer!’
‘That’s right!’ said Fred. ‘Play fair by the Lieut!’
‘Anyhow,’ said the Flight Lieutenant, ‘even if I gave you a complete answer to the sort of questions your shrewd Vicar has been popping at me, I don’t think you would understand me. Even if I showed you over the ship, you wouldn’t see a single thing you understood except the chairs and tables.’
‘Oh, mister!’ said the Tiddler. ‘You’d never let us see inside?’
‘Let’s see! Let’s see!’ the children pleaded. ‘Go on, mister! Just a quick look!’
‘The Flight Lieutenant has already explained,’ began the Vicar, but nothing would quieten the children. ‘Do let’s see!’ they begged.
The Flight Lieutenant shook his head steadily against the torrent of voices. Smiling, he lifted his hand. The chorus died down. ‘All you’d get by going aboard is a trip in that cabin lift …’ But he had said the wrong thing. Everyone wanted to go up in the lift. This time it was harder to silence the children.
‘Sorry, kids!’ said the Flight Lieutenant. ‘That ship isn’t mine. It’s not my property.’
‘Well, who does it belong to, then?’ shouted Tiddler and lots of people laughed.
‘Taxpayer’s property, sonny!’ said the Flight Lieutenant, smiling.
‘My dad’s a taxpayer!’ shouted the Tiddler.
‘Aye, all our dads are taxpayers!’ yelled the children. The laughter increased.
‘Our young friends would rather seem to have established their claim,’ the Vicar chuckled. The grown-ups chortled and nodded.
But the Flight Lieutenant suddenly changed the mood. ‘What’s the time? Half past? For heaven’s sake! Give me that radio!’ He snatched a transistor set from Tony’s hand, tuned it rapidly and listened, his face set hard. It was the news.
‘They’ve gone and done it!’ he said, a few moments later. ‘They’ve issued an ultimatum!’ He switched the radio off and gave it back to Tony without looking at him. Everyone was silent. The Flight Lieutenant stared straight ahead of himself. The silence lengthened.
‘Taxpayers’ money! TAXPAYER’S MONEY!’ he suddenly shouted.
‘My Lord, you’re right! You and me – we’ve all paid our money! Now we take our choice! You want to see inside the craft, sonny?’
‘Yes! Yes!’ said Tiddler.
‘Yes!’ cried the others.
‘Well, you might as well get some pleasure for all the money you paid!’ said the Flight Lieutenant viciously. ‘All right, then! All right! All aboard the Skylark! Taxpayers’ money! Come on, then! Children first, six at a time! Then the rest of you! All aboard the Skylark!’
Beauty, of course, found her royal way to the front. The others pushed and jostled and shoved. Beauty carefully placed her little slippered foot on the step of the ‘lift’, and smiled a polite and pearly smile at the Flight Lieutenant and entered. Once inside, she turned and waver to her parents and said, ‘Look at me! I’m in!’
‘Oh, Beauty, come back!’ cried her mother, suddenly afraid. But it was too late. ‘AND the next please!’ said the Flight Lieutenant, imitating a bus conductor.
Tiddler went next because he was small. His small body and big head, with its ‘Mowlesbury Massacre’ pudding basin haircut, were brilliantly lit as he went in. He blinked, smiled and blushed.
‘AND a lady, IF you please!’ said the Flight Lieutenant, still being a bus conductor.
Sandra Rumsey went in. She wore a fawn dressing-gown over her pyjamas and her very long, thick, brown plait swung as she bent down to take Beauty’s hand. ‘There’s our Sandra,’ said her mother wonderingly. And you knew what she meant. For Sandra’s wide, friendly, homely face and her nice old dressing-gown looked strange in the little metallic room, with its slick brushed-aluminium walls.
Brylo went in, his face solemn and his eyes wide. This was the entry to the world he knew was to be his – the world of the brain, an international world where the colour of your skin meant very much less than the size of your cranium. His parents watched him without expression. They understood. They had reason to: for his parents-by-adoption were ‘foreigners’ in the village – Mr Deniz, a South American, was an assistant in a biological laboratory. He worked in a nest of concrete buildings some miles from Little Mowlesbury. He knew the villagers had a vague and on the whole kindly contempt for him and for Brylo. He just felt the same distant contempt for them. Nothing ever happened in Little Mowlesbury: but things, real things, happened in the laboratories. He and Brylo talked about these things …
‘Flip!‘ said Tony Hoskings, and pushed past her into the lift. He stood there, a head taller than the others, throwing his lank yellow hair back impatiently and daring anyone to challenge him. No one did. He was in.
Diana went in. ‘Come back, Di!’ ‘Go on, Di!’ her friends shouted. There was so much screaming and excitement that she had to go in, really, she told herself. And Tony was there. Diana was tall and coltish like Tony. She was twelve and wished she were eighteen. She felt eighteen. She rolled her big, dark, bold eyes and smoothed her long black hair nervously and shouted to Tony, ‘Hey Tone! All these flipping kids …’
Spadger Garrett and Billy Bason went in together, before anyone could stop them. ‘You come out of that, you young limb!’ shouted Spadger’s father, but Spadger pretended not to understand and shouted back, ‘Yes, I’m all right, Dad!’ The two boys stood there beaming awkwardly – Billy all freckles and sandiness, Spadger mousy and plump. They did most things together, including ferreting, catapulting, attempting to ride cows, brewing gunpowder that didn’t explode and sloe gin that did.
‘Better than the fair!’ said Spadger.
‘That’s all for the first trip!’ said the Flight Lieutenant.
‘Really, these village children,’ said Mrs Mott, eyeing Diana. Diana caught the look. ‘Why, how simply divine, it’s Mrs Mott!’ she screeched, ‘How-jerdo, my deah!’
Mrs Mott was so shocked by this attack that she let go Ashley’s hand and put her own hands to her burning cheeks.
‘That’s all for the first trip!’ said the amplified voice of the Flight Lieutenant.
Disturbed as she was, Mrs Mott saw how ill he looked.
That horrible girl Diana and this horrible spaceship and now this man, this Flight Lieutenant. All of a sudden, she felt sick with fright, she knew there was something amiss, something not nice …
‘Ashley!’ she cried. He had slipped away!
‘Up we go, then!’ said the Flight Lieutenant.
‘What about me?’
‘And me!’
‘Back for another trip round the Skylark later – parents too!’ said the Flight Lieutenant.
‘Ashley!’ screamed Mrs Mott. Her red nails clawed at the throat of her velvet dress. The whining noise of the lift door and the sliding door shifted, and began to slide shut.
And she saw Ashley, clean and pink and white and neat in his warm dressing-gown, slip as cunningly as a stoat through the closing gap and into the lift. She saw the door close. And she knew as certainly as she knew the neatly brushed and parted hair – she could just glimpse it as the door shut – that her Ashley was going to be involved in some sort of dreadful trouble.
‘Back in half a minute for the next …’ said the Flight Lieutenant from inside the lift. Then there was a metallic click as if he had disconnected some vital plug. Then the whirring whine as the lift ascended, a little glimmer of light rising up into the belly of the ship. Then the closing of the underbelly doors so that one could no longer see that there had been a lift at all. Then another click, and the voice of the Flight Lieutenant, speaking through a louder, harsher amplifier and in a louder, harsher tone:
‘CLEAR THE GROUND. Get away from the ship. Clear the ground. GET WELL AWAY. CLEAR THE GROUND.’
Mrs Mott screamed first. There were more screams, then a roar of voices and a surging of the crowd under the ship. The four guns were raised, but the Flight Lieutenant’s voice said, ‘None of that!’ and the guns wavered and were brought down.
‘He must have TV in there,’ began Jim Knowles.
‘YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS,’ said the great metal voice, flatly. ‘NINE … EIGHT … SEVEN YOU’D BETTER MOVE AND MOVE FAST! – SIX – CLEAR THE GROUND, FIVE …’
Some people moved and one or two ran.
‘FOUR … THREE … TWO …’ A whole crowd ran for the edge of the meadow.
‘ONE! ALL RIGHT. I TOLD YOU TO MOVE …’
There was a thunderous bellow from the black shape above them – a sound so loud that people screamed from the pain of it and fell to the ground, their hands over their ears. The bellowing stopped. Slowly the figures rose and walked, dazed. The voice spoke again.
‘YOU HAVE A MATTER OF SECONDS. HELP EACH OTHER OFF THE GROUND. CLEAR THE GROUND. I AM GOING TO TAKE OFF.’
The Vicar looked up at the glinting metallic blackness, and whispered, ‘But you said you couldn’t! You lied!’ Next to him old Durden fell down and lay gasping.
‘CLEAR THE GROUND. CLEAR THE GROUND. YOU PEOPLE THERE AROUND THE OLD MAN – LIFT HIM UP AND GET HIM AWAY. DO IT NOW. CLEAR THE GROUND. I AM GOING TO TAKE OFF.’
‘Ashley!’ screamed Mrs Mott. She ran to one of the great legs of the ship and hit it with her fists.
‘CLEAR THE GROUND. GET THAT WOMAN AWAY. YOU TWO MEN, TAKE THAT WOMAN AWAY. CLEAR THE GROUND, YOU HAVE VERY LITTLE TIME.’
A new noise, a thin electronic scream, came from the ship. The scream rose higher and higher and settled to a single steady note. ‘THAT’S RIGHT, CLEAR THE GROUND. THAT’S GOOD. NOW KEEP WALKING. WALK AWAY. GET WELL CLEAR. KEEP WALKING. GET WELL CLEAR YOU HAVE ONLY SECONDS LEFT!’
Women were crying and stumbling. Knowles fired six shots from his rifle in quick succession. You could see the spark and glitter where the bullets hit the ship. The Flight Lieutenant’s voice, suddenly quiet and tired, said, ‘Don’t be a silly man.’ Then the voice came back, not so loud.
‘Now, listen. Your children are coming with me. As long as I last. They will find a way, somewhere, somehow. Away from this world.’ The voice faltered.
‘He’s ill,’ whispered the Vicar.
‘He’s mad,’ said Mr Knowles.
Almost as if he had heard him, the Flight Lieutenant said, ‘Perhaps you think I am mad. I think you are mad. Yes, all of you. The news – surely you must realize by now what is going to happen. War, destruction, everywhere. The whole world. And you do nothing, nothing. Someone must do …’ They could hear him coughing.
Then, ‘Hostages to fortune, that’s the sort of nonsense you understand. Your children are hostages to fortune. They can start again when you lot have destroyed yourself and your world. You should thank me You should …’
Silence for a few seconds. Then the voice spoke for the last time:
‘GET CLEAR. TURN YOUR HEADS. DO NOT WATCH. LIE DOWN. I AM GOING TO TAKE OFF NOW. I AM GOING TO TAKE OFF NOW. COVER YOUR HEADS AND GUARD YOUR EYES. THE CHILDREN ARE …’
There was the noise of an express train, then twenty express trains, then a tearing shriek of blasting jets. The great craft seemed bathed in fire. It rose slowly, slowly, and the legs entered the body. The fury of the noise increased. The people clutched their heads. Their mouths were O’s, but their screaming could not be heard above the huge outcry of the ship. It rose, still slowly, then faster. Then much faster.
People raised their heads and looked. They saw a dwindling point of fire in the sky, heard the rumbling express-train noise booming and re-echoing among their familiar little hills.
It was gone.
Chapter 5
The Flight Lieutenant hadn’t moved. He lay at full length on the floor, his head in Sandra’s lap. His face was glazed with sweat. His colour was red, yet bloodless.
‘You’re ill,’ said Sandra softly. She touched his forehead. It was moist and burning. She removed her finger quickly. She disliked the feeling of his skin. She could not help staring at the spots on his face: spots like tiny water blisters. She had never seen anything like them before.
He moved and spoke. ‘Stand clear! get well clear!’ he said, in the harsh, loud tone he head used only minutes before when the were still on Earth, still in Little Mowlesbury.
‘Get that old man away!’ said the Flight Lieutenant, loudly.
Tony came to. He blinked, shook his head, and got to his feet, staring. ‘What happened?’ he said. ‘Where – Oh! That Flight Lieutenant! He done it to us then!’ He said all this quite calmly, then looked dully at Sandra with his mouth open. He was still dazed.
The other children stirred, and one by one awakened. Spadger was quickly and tidily sick in a newspaper. The rest were silent and wide-eyed. They formed a ring round Sandra and the Flight Lieutenant. They stood silent, some of them pressing their hands against their ears.
‘If your ears hurt, open your mouth wide, said Brylo. ‘As if you were yawning. It’s the change of pressure.’ Some of them did, and Sandra thought to herself that their gaping faces above her made the whole thing even more mad and unbelievable and terrifying. They were in the sky, in space, rocketing further and further away from home. Yet all around her were the untidy, familiar faces of Tiddler and Spadger and Di and Tony and Brylo, all of them framed in the tidy, unfamiliar cabin of the spaceship or flying saucer – what was its proper name? What were they doing in it? Why? How long?
