A for Andromeda

by Fred Hoyle

  Vandenberg paid frequent visits to the telescope and had long and fruitless conferences with Reinhart. All they could really tell from their findings was that these were propelled vehicles launched from about forty degrees north by between a hundred and thirty and a hundred and fifty east, and that they travelled across Russia, Western Europe and the British Isles at a speed of about sixteen thousand miles an hour at a height between three hundred and fifty and four hundred miles. After crossing Britain they mostly passed over the North Atlantic and Greenland and the polar north of Canada, presumably joining up their trajectory in the same area of the North China Sea. Whatever route they took, they were deflected to pass over England or Scotland: they were obviously steerable and obviously aimed very deliberately at this small target. Although nothing certain was known of their size or shape, they emitted a tracking signal and they were clearly large enough to carry a nuclear charge.

  “I don’t know what the point of them is,” Reinhart admitted. He was obsessed by them. However unhappy he was at the way things had gone at Thorness, he was by now fully occupied with this new and terrifying turn of events.

  Vandenberg had cogent and reasonable theories. “Their point is that someone in the East wants us to know they have the technical edge on us. They flaunt these over our heads to show the world we’ve no way of retaliating. A new form of sabre-rattling.”

  “But why always over this country?”

  Vandenberg looked slightly sorry for the Professor. “Because you’re small enough — and important enough — to be a kind of hostage. This island’s always been a good target.”

  “Well,” Reinhart nodded to the map on the wall. “There’s your evidence. Aren’t the West going to take it to the Security Council?”

  Vandenberg shook his head. “Not until we can negotiate from strength. They’d love us to run squealing to the U.N. and admit our weakness. Then they’d have us. What we need first is some means of defence.”

  Reinhart looked sceptical. “What are you doing about it?”

  “We’re going as fast as we can. Geers has a theory —”

  “Oh, Geers!”

  “Geers has a theory,” Vandenberg ignored the interruption, “that if we can work this girl creature in harness with your computer, we may get some pretty quick thinking.”

  “What was my computer,” said Reinhart sourly. “I wish you joy.”

  The night after Vandenberg left, Fleming appeared. Reinhart was working late, trying to fix the origin of ground signals which made the satellites change course in orbit, when he heard the exhaust crackle of Fleming’s car outside. It was a little like coming home for Fleming; the familiar room, Harvey at the control desk, the small neat father-figure of the Professor waiting for him. Of the three men, Fleming looked the most worn.

  “It seems so sane here.” He gazed around the large, neat room. “Calm and clean.”

  Reinhart smiled. “It’s not very sane at the moment.”

  “Can we talk?”

  Reinhart led him over to a couple of easy chairs which had been set for visitors, with a little table, in a back corner of the observatory.

  “I told you on the phone, John, there’s nothing I can do. They’re going to use the creature as an aid to the computer for Geers’s missile work.”

  “Which is just what it wants.”

  Reinhart shrugged. “I’m out of it now.”

  “We’re all out of it. I’m only hanging on by the skin of my teeth. All this about being able to pull out the plug — well, we can’t any more, can we?” Fleming fiddled nervously with a box of matches he had taken out to light their cigarettes. “It’s in control of itself now. It’s got its protectors — its allies. If this thing that looks like a woman had arrived by space-ship, it would have been annihilated by now. It would have been recognised for what it was. But because it’s been planted in a much subtler way, because it’s been given human form, it’s accepted on face value. And it’s a pretty face. It’s no use appealing to Geers or that lot: I’ve tried. Prof., I’m scared.”

  “We’re all scared,” Reinhart said. “The more we find out about the universe the more frightening it is.”

  “Look.” Fleming leaned forward earnestly. “Let’s use our heads. That machine — that brain-child of some other world — has written off its own one-eyed monster. It’s written off Christine. It’ll write me off if I get in its way.”

  “Then get out of its way,” said Reinhart wearily. “If you’re in danger get out of its way now.”

  “Danger!” Fleming snorted. “Do you think I want to die in some horrible way, like Dennis Bridger, for the sake of the government or Intel? But I’m only the next on the list. If I’m forced out, or if I’m killed, what comes afterwards?”

  “It’s a question of what comes first at the moment.” Reinhart sounded like a doctor with a hopeless case. “I can’t help you, John.”

  “What about Osborne?”

  “He doesn’t hold the reins now.”

  “He could get his Minister to go to the P.M.”

  “The P.M.?”

  “He’s paid, isn’t he?”

  Reinhart shook his head. “You’ve nothing to show, John.”

  “I’ve some arguments.”

  “I doubt if any of them are in a mood to listen.” Reinhart waved a small hand towards the wall map. “That’s what we’re worried about at the moment.”

  “What’s that all in aid of?”

  Reinhart told him. Fleming sat listening, tense and miserable, his fingers crushing the matchbox out of shape.

  “We can’t always be in front, can we?” He pushed away the Professor’s explanations. “At least we can come to terms with human beings.”

  “What sort of terms?” Reinhart asked.

  “It doesn’t matter what sort of terms — compared with what we’re likely to be up against. A bomb is a quick death for a civilisation, but the slow subjugation of a planet...” his voice trailed away.

  The Prime Minister was in his oak-panelled room in the House of Commons. He was a sporty-looking old gentleman with twinkling blue eyes. He sat at the middle of one side of the big table that half-filled the room, listening to the Minister for Defence. Sunlight streamed gently in through the mullioned windows. There was a knock at the door and the Defence Minister frowned; he was a keen young man who did not like being interrupted.

  “Ah, here comes the science form.” The Prime Minister smiled genially as Ratcliff and Osborne were shown in. “You haven’t met Osborne, have you Burdett?”

  The Defence Minister rose and shook hands perfunctorily.

  The Prime Minister motioned them to sit down.

  “Isn’t it a splendid day, gentlemen? I remember it was like this at Dunkirk time. The sun always seems to smile on national adversity.” He turned to Burdett. “Would you bully-off for us, dear boy?”

  “It’s about Thorness,” said Burdett to Ratcliff. “We want to take over the computer altogether — and everything associated with it. It’s been agreed in principle, hasn’t it? And the P.M. and I think the time has come.”

  Ratcliff looked at him without love. “You’ve access to it already.”

  “We need more than that now, don’t we, sir?” Burdett appealed to the Prime Minister.

  “We need our new interceptor, gentlemen, and we need it quickly.” Behind the amiable, lazy, rather old-world manner lay more than a hint of firmness and grasp of business. “In nineteen-forty we had Spitfires, but at the moment neither we nor our allies in the West have anything to touch the stuff that’s coming over.”

  “And no prospect of anything,” Burdett put in, “by conventional means.”

  “We could co-operate, couldn’t we,” Ratcliff asked Osborne, “in developing something?”

  Burdett was not one to waste time. “We can handle it ourselves if we take over your equipment at Thorness entirely, and the girl.”

  “The creature?” Osborne raised a well-disciplined eyebrow, but the Prime Ministe
r twinkled reassuringly at him.

  “Dr. Geers is of the opinion that if we use this curiously derived young lady to interpret our requirements to the computer and to translate its calculations back to us we could solve a lot of our problems very quickly.”

  “If you can trust its intentions.”

  The Prime Minister looked interested. “I don’t quite follow you.”

  “One or two of our people have doubts about its potential,” said Ratcliff, more in hope than conviction. No minister likes losing territory, even if he has to use dubious arguments to retain it.

  The Prime Minister waved him aside. “Oh yes, I’ve heard about that.”

  “Up to now, sir, this creature has been under examination by our team,” Osborne said. “Professor Dawnay —”

  “Dawnay could stay.”

  “In a consultative role,” Burdett added swiftly.

  “And Dr. Fleming?” asked Ratcliff.

  The Prime Minister turned again to Burdett. “Fleming would be useful, wouldn’t he?”

  Burdett frowned. “We shall need complete control and very tight security.”

  Ratcliff tried his last card. “Do you think she’s up to it, this girl?”

  “I propose to ask her,” said the Prime Minister. He pressed a small bell-push on the table and a young gentleman appeared almost immediately in the doorway. “Ask Dr. Geers to bring his lady-friend in, will you?”

  “You’ve got her here?” Ratcliff looked accusingly at Osborne as though it was his fault.

  “Yes, dear boy.” The Prime Minister also looked at Osborne, inquiringly. “Is she, er —?”

  “She looks quite normal.”

  The Prime Minister gave a small sigh of relief and rose as the door reopened to admit Geers and Andromeda. “Come in, Dr. Geers. Come along in, my dear.”

  Andromeda was given the chair facing him. She sat quietly with her head slightly bowed, her hands folded in her lap, like a typist coming for an interview.

  “You must find this all rather strange,” said the Prime Minister soothingly.

  She answered in slow, correct sentences. “Dr. Geers has explained it to me.”

  “Did he explain why we brought you here?”

  “No.”

  “Burdett?” The Prime Minister handed over the questioning. Ratcliff looked on grumpily while Burdett sat forward on the edge of his chair, rested his elbows on the table, placed his fingers together and looked keenly at Andromeda over them.

  “This country — you know about this country?”

  “Yes.”

  “This country is being threatened by orbital missiles.”

  “We know about orbital missiles.”

  “We?” Burdett looked at her even more sharply.

  She remained as she was, her face empty of expression. “The computer and myself.”

  “How does the computer know?”

  “We share our information.”

  “That is what we hoped,” said the Prime Minister.

  Burdett continued. “We have interception missiles — rockets of various kinds — but nothing of the combined speed, range and accuracy to, er...” He searched around for the right piece of jargon.

  “To hit them?” she asked simply.

  “Exactly. We can give you full details of speed, height and course; in fact, we can give you a great deal of data, but we need it translated into practical mechanical terms.”

  “Is that difficult?”

  “For us, yes. What we’re after is a highly sophisticated interception weapon that can do its own instantaneous thinking.”

  “I understand.”

  “We should like you to work on this with us,” the Prime Minister said gently, as if asking a favour of a child. “Dr. Geers will tell you what is needed, and he will give you all facilities for actually designing weapons.”

  “And Dr. Fleming,” added Ratcliff, “can help you with the computer.”

  Andromeda looked up for the first time.

  “We shall not need Dr. Fleming,” she said, and something about her calm, measured voice ran like a cold shadow across the sunlight.

  After her return from London, Andromeda spent most of her time in the design office, a block or two away from the computer building, preparing data for the machine and sending it over for computation. Sometimes she came to communicate directly with it, with the result that long and complex calculations emerged later from the printer, which she would take away to translate into design terms. The outcome was all and more than Geers could have wished. A new guidance system and new ballistic formulas sprung ready-made from the drawing-board and when tested, they proved to come up to all specifications. The machine and the girl together could get through about a year’s development theory in a day. The results were not only elegant but obviously effective. In a very short time it would clearly be possible to construct an entirely new interceptive missile.

  During duty hours Andromeda had freedom of movement within the compound and, although she disappeared, under guard, into her own quarters after work, she was soon a familiar figure in the camp. Judy put it about that she was a research senior who had been seconded by the Ministry of Defence.

  The following week a communiqué was issued from 10 Downing Street:

  “Her Majesty’s Government has been aware for some time of the passage of an increasing number of orbital vehicles, possibly missiles, over these islands. Although the vehicles, which are of unknown but terrestrial origin, pass over at great speed and at great height, there is no immediate cause for alarm. Her Majesty’s Government points out, however, that they constitute a deliberate infringement of our national air space, and that steps are being taken to intercept and identify them.”

  Fleming listened to the telecast on the portable receiver in his hut at Thorness. He was no longer responsible for the computer, and Geers had suggested that he might be happier away from it. However, he stayed on, partly out of obstinacy and partly from a sense of impending emergency, watching the progress of Andromeda and the two young operators who had been enlisted to help her with the machine. He made no approaches to her, or to Judy, who continued to hang around with a sort of aimless watchfulness, acting as a liaison between Andromeda and the front office; but after he heard the broadcast he wandered over to the computer block with the vague idea that something ought to be done.

  Judy found him sitting brooding on the swivel chair by the control desk. She had not gone near him again since the last snub, but she had watched him with concern and with a feeling of latent affection that had never left her.

  She went up to the control desk and stood in front of him. “Why don’t you give it up, John?”

  “That would please you, wouldn’t it?”

  “It wouldn’t please me, but there’s nothing you can do here, eating your heart out.”

  “It’s a nice little three-handed game, isn’t it?” He looked sardonically up at her. “I watch her and you watch me.”

  “You’re not doing yourself any good.”

  “Jealous?” he asked.

  She shook her head impatiently. “Don’t be absurd.”

  “They’re all so damn sure.” He stared reflectively across to the control equipment. “There may be something I’ve missed, about this — or about her.”

  Andromeda came in to the computer room while Judy and Fleming were talking. She stood by the doorway holding a wad of papers, waiting until they had finished. She was quiet enough, but there was nothing modest about her. When she spoke to Judy and the others who worked with her she had an air of unquestioned and superior authority. She made no concessions even to Geers; she was perfectly polite but treated them all as intellectual inferiors.

  “I wish to speak to Dr. Geers about these, please,” she said from the doorway.

  “Now?” Judy tried to match her in quiet contempt.

  “Now.”

  “I’ll see if he’s free,” Judy said, and went out.

  Andromeda crossed slowly to the cont
rol panel, ignoring Fleming; but something prompted him to stop her.

  “Happy in your work?”

  She turned and looked at him, without speaking.

  He stretched back in the chair, suddenly alert.

  “You’re getting quite indispensable, aren’t you?” he asked in the tone he had used to Judy.

  She looked at him solemnly. She might have been a statue, with her fine carved face, her long hair, and her arms hanging limply down beside her simple, pale dress. “Please be careful what you talk about,” she said.

  “Is that a threat?”

  “Yes.” She spoke without emphasis, as if simply stating a fact.

  Fleming stood up.

  “Good grief! I’m not going to —” He stopped himself and smiled. “Perhaps I have missed something.”

  Whatever he had in mind was hidden from her. She turned to walk away.

  “Wait a minute!”

  “I am busy.” But she turned back to him and waited.

  He walked slowly to her and looked her up and down as though mocking her.

  “You want to make something of yourself, if you’re going to influence men.”

  She stood still. He lifted a hand to her hair and edged it back from one side of her face. “You should push your hair back, and then we could see what you look like. Very pretty.”

  She stepped away so that his hand fell from her, but she kept her eyes on him, intrigued and puzzled.

  “Or you could wear scent,” he said. “Like Judy does.”

  “Is that what smells?”

  He nodded. “Not very exotic. Lavender water or something. But nice.”

  “I do not understand you.” A small frown creased the smooth skin of her forehead. “Nice — nasty. Good — bad. There is no logical distinction.”

  He still smiled. “Come here.”

  She hesitated, then took a step towards him.

  Quietly and deliberately he pinched her arm.

  “Ow!” She stepped back with a sudden look of fear in her eyes and rubbed the place where he had hurt her.