Quatermass Read Free Page B

lifts ran from the basement and they worked well. He had heard them busy in the night, and he had heard the screams, high above. He had pulled the patched blankets over his head and shivered.
    “Then I went to Scotland Yard.”
    Kapp knew what would come next. “And you found the pay cops?”
    “Pay—?”
    “Contract Police. They took it over.”
    “They weren’t very helpful.”
    Kapp could imagine, since they included the most vicious bunch of mercenaries ever to come out of South Africa. But of course there were the better ones, who were merely shiftless, venal and thick. The old man might have encountered some of those.
    “So you got nowhere?”
    Quatermass sighed. “They put me on to an agency. But it turned out to be only a man in a cellar. He made the photographs but that was all.” He pointed to the one in Kapp’s hand. “Please keep it. I’ve written her name on the back, see? Hettie. Hester, but she was always Hettie to us. Hettie Carlson. If you should ever happen to—I mean, you might see her somewhere, pure chance, anything’s possible.”
    “I’ll remember,” Kapp promised.
    “Thank you. I’m afraid it’s become an obsession. Forgive me, Dr. Kapp.”
    “I’d feel the same,” said Kapp.
    There was some activity in the studio now. Lamps had been switched on and the disordered camera seemed to have been kicked back into life.
    “I did meet one or two people in the end,” said Quatermass. “People I’d known. Of course they couldn’t help me but they did suggest . . . well, that’s how I come to be here.”
    Two scene hands approached carrying a large model between them. It was a geometrical assembly of spindly girders and docking sections, with winglike solar panels. They set it down on a table without much regard. One of them knocked a fragile panel off. He picked it up and flicked it into a corner with other rubbish.
    “So that’s Spacelab Ten.” Kapp crouched beside the shiny model.
    Everything about it looked disappointingly familiar. Simplifications of previous enterprises, short cuts, lopped development. It was already old-fashioned. It smacked of compromise.
    “Political fakery,” said Quatermass.
    “Of course,” Kapp agreed. “Shop window stuff.”
    “It was out of date before they started,” Quatermass said. “But the amount they’ve wasted on it, the resources!” He turned to Kapp with suddenly sharpened interest. “What about you? Your radio telescope? Did you ever get it set up?”
    Kapp nodded. “And working.”
    The old man was genuinely, hugely pleased at that. “It’s good to hear of something that is. Where?”
    “Out in the wilds, the only possible. I just come to London to sing for my supper. Like tonight.”
    “You get government help? Still?”
    Kapp smiled. “A few pennies. Well, pounds, but they’ve turned into pennies anyway. I don’t need much. Just as well. Why don’t you come to see it?”
    “I might. Some day when—”
    He jumped. A grotesquely amplified voice was shaking the studio. An American voice calling him by name.
    “Bernard Quatermass!”
    He looked about in quick confusion, saw a camera pointing at him with its red lamp on. And now a monitor screen flashed up the image of an athletic man running to fat. He was grinning.
    “Chuck!” the old man cried. “Chuck Marshall, where are you?”
    “New York,” said the image. “I’ve got to link you into the big show tonight.”
    Quatermass turned to Kapp. “Chuck was an astronaut. The Apollo missions—”
    Marshall chuckled. “That really dates me. Say, who’s there with you? Joe Kapp, isn’t it? I’ve met Joe. Hi, Joe.”
    Kapp nodded and smiled as he found the camera on him. This man had been good once. Old astronauts never die, but just the same—the Big Show, said with capitals. Did he really believe it?
    “Five minutes, gentlemen,” called Toby Gough as he came towards them.
    The man on the monitor screen frowned. “Bernard, what have they been doing to you?