“Earthcrossers?” said Victor with more than his fair share of incredulity. “You’ve got no chance, Thursday. Weird lunatics doing strange things privately on deserted hillsides? Do you know what you have to go through to be admitted to their exclusive club?”
I smiled.
“It’s mostly distinguished and respected professional people of mature years.”
Victor looked at Bowden and me in turn.
“I don’t like that look you’re giving me.”
Bowden quickly scoured a copy of the current Astronomer’s Almanac.
“Bingo. It says here that they meet on Liddington Hill at two P.M. the day after tomorrow. That gives us fifty-five hours to prepare.”
“No way,” said Victor indignantly. “There is no way, I repeat, no way on God’s own earth that you are going to get me to pose as an Earthcrosser.”
26.
The Earthcrossers
An asteroid can be any size from a man’s fist to a mountain. They are the detritus of the solar system, the rubbish left over after the workmen have been and gone. Most of the asteroids around today occupy a space between Mars and Jupiter. There are millions of them, yet their combined mass is a fraction of the Earth’s. Every now and then an asteroid’s orbit coincides with that of Earth. An Earthcrosser. To the Earthcrossers Society the arrival of an asteroid at a planet is the return of a lost orphan, a prodigal son. It is a matter of some consequence.
MR.S.A.ORBITER
—The Earthcrossers
LIDDINGTON HILL overlooks the RAF and later Luftwaffe airfield of Wroughton. The low hill is also home to an Iron Age fort, one of several that ring the Marlborough and Lambourn downs. The antiquity of the site, however, was not what attracted the Earthcrossers. They had gathered in almost every country of the globe, following the peculiar predictions of their calling in an apparently random fashion. They always observed the same routine: name the site, do a very good deal with the owners for exclusivity, then move in the month before using either local security or more junior members of the group to ensure that no infiltrators find their way in. It was perhaps due to this extreme secrecy that the militant astronomical group managed to keep what they did absolutely quiet. It seemed an almost perfect hiding place for Dr. Müller, who co-devised the society in the early fifties with Samuel Orbiter, a notable television astronomer of the time.
Victor parked his car and walked nonchalantly up to two huge gorilla-sized men who were standing next to a Land Rover. Victor looked to the left and right. Every three hundred yards was a group of armed security men with walkie-talkies and dogs, keeping an eye out for trespassers. There was no way on earth that anyone could slip by unseen. The best means of entering anywhere you aren’t allowed to go is to walk in the front door as though you own the place.
“Afternoon,” said Victor, attempting to walk past. One of the gorillas stepped into his way and put a huge hand on his shoulder.
“Good afternoon, sir. Fine day. May I see your pass?”
“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. Müller last night.”
“I don’t know of any Dr. Müller,” 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, one hundred and six thousand miles per hour.”
“Uranus’ 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 realize, 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 center of the fo
rt 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. Müller said I could drop in any time.”
The small man jumped.
“Müller? 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 around the fort, “we’re a bit thin on the outer perimeter. You can take station B3. 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 Litera Tec office for just such a call.
Victor filled his briar pipe and was walking toward station B3 when a man in a Barbour jacket nearly marched straight into him. He recognized Dr. Müller’s face from the mugshot immediately. Victor raised his hat, apologized and walked on.
“Wait!” yelled Müller. Victor turned. Müller 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. Müller simply stared at him with a blank expression as Victor carried on filling his pipe.
“I’ve seen you somewhere before,” continued Müller, 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 Müller. “Then you know my good friend and colleague Professor Barnes?”
“Never heard of him,” announced Victor, guessing that Müller was suspicious. Müller 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 B3, 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 B2.
“Hello!” he said cheerfully, tipping his helmet.
The woman fluttered her eyelashes demurely.
“All well?” she asked.
“Top hole!” returned Victor elegantly, then added quickly: “Actually, not. This is my first time.”
The lady smiled at him and waved her catcher’s glove.
“Nothing to it. Catch away from the body and keep your eyes sharp. We may get a lot or none at all, and if you do catch one, be sure to put it down on the grass straight away. After deaccelerating through the Earth’s atmosphere, they tend to be a trifle hot.”
Victor stared at her.
“You mean, we aim to catch meteors?”
The lady laughed a delicious laugh.
“No, no, silly!—They’re called meteorites. Meteors are things that burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere. I’ve been to seventeen of these suspected Earthstrikes since ’64. I once nearly caught one in Tierra del Fuego in ’71. Of course,” she added more slowly, “that was when dear George was still alive . . .”
She caught his eye and smiled. Victor smiled back. She carried on:
“If we witness an Earthstrike today, it will be the first predicted strike in Europe to be successful. Imagine catching a meteorite! The rubble made during the creation of the universe over four and a half billion years ago! It’s like an orphan finally coming home!”
“Very . . . poetic,” responded Victor slowly as I started talking in his ear by way of the wire.
“There’s no one listed anywhere by the name of Dr. Cassiopeia,” I told him. “For goodness’ sake don’t let him out of your sight!”
“I won’t,” replied Victor, looking around for Müller.
“Pardon?” asked the lady at B2, who had being eyeing him up and not staring at the sky at all.
“I won’t, er, drop one if I catch one,” he replied hurriedly.
The Tannoy announced the Earthstrike in two minutes. There was a murmur from the expectant crowd.
“Good luck!” said the lady, giving him a broad wink and staring up into the cloudless sky.
There was a voice from close behind Victor.
“I do remember you.”
He turned to see the very unwelcome face of Dr. Müller staring at him. A little farther on stood a burly security guard, hand at the ready in his breast pocket.
“You’re SpecOps. Litera Tec. Victor Analogy, isn’t it?”
“No, the name’s Dr. Augustus Ceres, Berwick-upon-Tweed.” Victor laughed nervously and added: “What sort of a name is Victor Analogy?”
Müller beckoned to the henchman, who advanced on Victor drawing his automatic. He looked like the sort of person who was itching to use it.
“I’m sorry, my friend,” said Müller kindly, “but that’s not really good enough. If you are Analogy, you’re clearly meddling. If, however, you turn out to be Dr. Ceres from Berwick-upon-Tweed, then you have my sincerest apologies.”
“Now wait a moment—” began Victor, but Müller interrupted.
“I’ll let your family know where to find the body,” he said magnanimously.
Victor glanced around for possible help but all the other Earthcrossers were staring at the sky.
“Shoot him.”
The henchman smiled, his finger tightening on the trigger. Victor winced as a high-pitched scream filled the air and a fortuitous incoming meteorite shattered on the henchman’s helmet. He collapsed like a sack of potatoes. The gun went off and put a neat hole in Victor’s baseball glove. Suddenly, the air was full of red-hot meteorites screaming to earth in a localized shower. The assembled Earthcrossers were thrown into confusion by the sudden violence and couldn’t quite make up their minds whether to avoid the meteorites or try to catch them. Müller fumbled in his jacket pocket for his own pistol as someone yelled “Yours!” close at hand. They both turned, but it was Victor who caught the small meteorite. It was about the size of a cricket ball and was still glowing red hot; he tossed it to Müller, who instinctively caught it. Sadly, he did not have a catcher’s glove. There was a hiss and a yelp as he dropped it, then a cry of pain as Victor took the opportunity to thump him on the jaw with a speed that belied his seventy-five years. Müller went down like a ninepin and Victor leaped on the dropped gun. He thrust it against Müller’s neck, dragged him to his feet and started to march him out of the hill-fort. The meteorite shower was easing up as he backed out, my voice in his earpiece telling him to go easy.
“It is Analogy, isn’t it?” said Müller.
“It is. SpecOps-27 and you’re under arrest.”
Victor, Bowden and I had got Müller as far as interview room 3 befo
re Braxton and Schitt realized who we had captured. Victor had barely asked Müller to confirm his name before the interview room door burst open. It was Schitt flanked by two SO-9 operatives. None of them looked like they had a sense of humor.
“My prisoner, Analogy.”
“My prisoner, Mr. Schitt, I think,” replied Victor firmly. “My collar, my jurisdiction; I am interviewing Dr. Müller about the Chuzzlewit theft.”
Jack Schitt looked at Commander Hicks, who was standing behind him. The commander sighed and cleared his throat.
“I’m sorry to say this, Victor, but the Goliath Corporation and their representative have been granted jurisdiction over SO-27 and SO-9 in Swindon. Withholding material from Acting SpecOps Commander Schitt may result in criminal proceedings for concealment of vital information pertinent to an ongoing inquiry. Do you understand what this means?”
“It means Schitt does what he pleases,” returned Victor.
“Relinquish your prisoner, Victor. The Goliath Corporation takes precedence.”
Victor stared at him hotly, then pushed his way out of the interview room.
“I’d like to stay,” I requested.
“No chance,” said Schitt. “An SO-27 security clearance is not permissible.”
“It’s as well, then,” I replied, “that I still hold an SO-5 badge.”
Jack Schitt cursed but said nothing more. Bowden was ordered out and the two SO-9 operatives stood either side of the door; Schitt and Hicks sat down at the table behind which Müller nonchalantly smoked a cigarette. I leaned against the wall and impassively watched the proceedings.
“He’ll get me out, you know,” Müller said slowly as he smiled a rare smile.
“I don’t think so,” remarked Schitt. “Swindon SpecOps is currently surrounded by more SO-9 operatives and SWAT men than you can count in a month. Not even that madman Hades would try and get in here.”
The smile dropped from Müller’s lips.
“SO-9 is the finest antiterrorist squad on the planet,” continued Schitt. “We’ll get him, you know. It’s only a question of when. And if you help us, things might not look so bad in court for you.”
Müller wasn’t impressed.
“If your SO-9 operatives are the best on the planet, how come it takes a seventy-five-year-old Litera Tec to arrest me?”