The Egg-Shaped Thing

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

  She said: “I ought to be helping…Somehow, it’s all gone — the fight.”

  “For the moment.” I kissed her, watched her. “God, but you look beautiful!” — but also, my darling, so tragic.

  “James…Will it be all right?”

  “I don’t have any reassuring clichés.”

  She smiled warmly. “I remember! But I think…” She moved so as to lie flat, and seemed to stare up at the ceiling yet beyond it a great distance. “I think you can only fail if what you are trying is utterly impossible.”

  “Is anything?”

  She closed her eyes, and lay on the threshold of sleep. She said softly: “Perhaps not. Perhaps success doesn’t always come out quite the way you expect…” Her eyes flickered open, and they were loving. Then the lashes swept down as I joined hands with her. The hands were afraid.

  She seemed to fall asleep. I stayed by her bed as long as I dared, then left the room very quietly, ran down the stairs and the ramp and watched and gave what help I could to the men who were now loading the egg on board.

  Actually there was very little for me to do. I just made sure that the appropriate equipment was put aboard along with the egg and watched the three-pipper’s natural flair for organization swinging into action.

  One of the engineers he had co-opted came up to me after they had winched the egg, on an improvised trolley, up the ramp. He didn’t look at me as he spoke, watched instead the delicate operation of cradling the Structure under the hoist (this equipment had been found on the site) in preparation for swinging it into the hovercraft, whose superstructure had by now been sliced off unceremoniously with grievous results to what was not precisely beautiful in the first place.

  He said: “You ever touched that copper thing?”

  I said I hadn’t.

  “It’s a damn funny feeling,” he said. “Try it.”

  I felt hesitant about this, but I couldn’t very well back down.

  So I did.

  He looked at me oddly. “See what I mean?” Something in my perplexed expression made him laugh. “Go on! Have another go.”

  I did it again. Finally I commented: “My hand feels as if it goes right through the shell!”

  “Doesn’t it, though! Yet I reckon that copper must be nearly half an inch thick!”

  …Yes, no doubt.

  But it was only half there.

  *

  “Heading two-two-zero magnetic.”

  I checked this course against the map I had begged off the three-pipper before he had swung over the side on the shore-base and left us to slide into the blackness of the sea.

  The noise was terrific. We were flat out — doing well over the official maximum speed with the A.S.I. jiggering about at the seventy-knot mark. Immediately behind me was a four-bladed propeller mounted high just forward of the rudder. Slipstream blew the map all over the place and it wasn’t much use. Seldon saw this and shouted: “You won’t see much on there, old chap!”

  “What?”

  “We’ll be in contact with Portsmouth Radar any moment. Better than the map.”

  I nodded, folded the thing away. Seldon waved a signal to Alec, who picked up the mike and said something over the radio. Then we settled back and just let the craft lick up the miles.

  Ahead was almost total blackness. One or two stars were probably showing through the heavy cloud, but there was so much spray churned up at this speed that all you could see overhead was the back-reflected light from crystalline spume. We were soaked; and water beaded on to the menacing curvature of the egg-shaped thing behind me — which was odd because the intense force of the slipstream should have sprayed the water into a continuous trail. The shell behaved, in fact, as if it were stationary. I preferred not to look at the thing. We had no idea what would happen when we reached the farthest point possible and we were in the best possible position to find out the hard way.

  But at least we’d got away far sooner than I had thought possible when I was contemplating trying to organize it on my own. The time was now 0045 hours on Tuesday morning and we weren’t far off the Isle of Wight.

  Out front, a powerful searchlight drove a cone through the darkness and gave us some idea of what lay ahead in a ten degree arc. This had been fitted by the engineers at Seldon’s request back at base. They’d taken only ten minutes to mount it. Of course, you couldn’t do much if it happened to show the Queen Mary cutting across your bow; but it was conceivable that avoidance action could be taken against rather smaller fry.

  The lightbeam tossed up and down with us; and though the water wasn’t choppy there was a slight swell which at this speed made us follow an undulating groove as made by a deep organ note on a record. You got used to it after a while. But the fable was right — this was an everlasting take-off on a pitted runway. Seldon had found his niche.

  He bent round toward me and I twisted my head away from the frontal slipstream to hear better. “Of course, you realize we’ll be going towards at least one of the reactors before we go away from it?”

  “Yes!” I yelled. “Winfrith! You want to get some speed on!”

  He grinned back. “If we go any faster we’ll arrive before we set out!”

  I wondered for a second whether he knew just how close to the line that remark really was…

  And supposing I was wrong? Supposing the act of isolating the apparatus in this particular way was totally irrelevant? I’d gone by my own reasoning and I’m no scientist. Although a number of experts had studied the idea from afar, when notified by Sanger, they had not had more than a few hours to consider it and might well assume they were making an outside gamble. Others thought the whole crisis had been invented by me, that really the Pulse would amount to no more than its predecessors. Such people did not accept what I had experienced at Moorbridge. At the same time they hadn’t been able to account for the disappearance of the people concerned. I still didn’t know what had been said, in priority-type telegrams, to the families of those who in nineteen fifty-nine had been wiped across Time and taken from the normal scheme of things as we know it.

  Alec, on radio: “Roger, Portsmouth. Heading right on to two-six-zero.”

  Over his shoulder Seldon explained to me: “That’ll take us just south of the Lizard…”

  The other side of the balance sheet was the method of transport used. Given we might have somehow got the egg aboard an aircraft (and it would have needed a hell of a wide loading bay), and set course away from possibly active nuclear plants on the Continent, the instruments could have been rendered useless if something went wrong; and although the same thing applied here at least we could make a guess at the correct heading…

  Nick leaned over. “Message from Portsmouth: they confirm that Winfrith is definitely shut down.”

  Well that was something. But other news which came in later was far from reassuring. The ‘secret weapon’ scare had really started up in earnest. We weren’t given any details — for obvious reasons — but to say the least we were getting distinctly bad press…

  I tried to understand some of the instruments on the control equipment which went with the egg. There were a few dials, but with one exception none of them were calibrated on any scale I could recognize or understand.

  However, the illuminated meter that ran from minus fifteen on the left to a red mark on the right was unpleasantly suggestive. Right now the needle was still against the left-hand pin. It wouldn’t be…if a Pulse was going to build up.

  So that was the one to watch.

  *

  0336 hours.

  We’d had time, by now, to think about the consequences if anything went wrong. The jokes were over. Seldon was motionless at the controls and somehow he was making the unheard of speed of seventy-nine knots. He had decided at the outset not to attempt taking on fuel for the return journey. The plan was that we would be refuelled at a rendezvous by a flying boat when it was all over.

  I was beginning to feel confident. I got this from the exhilarati
ng speed and motion of the craft. Already I was seriously wondering how long we would be expected to endure the stale biscuits and emergency water flasks in the locker — all the consumer supplies there were. The only other contents were a transistorized loudhailer — one of those things like a megaphone only amplified — and a signal lamp. Understandably, the S.R.N.6 was hardly equipped for an Atlantic run.

  Starved of sleep as I was of food, I dozed off for a while. My last thoughts were of Nicola. I remember praying that she was all right…

  “What’s that?”

  I woke instantly, eyes flashing to my watch.

  0416…Fifteen minutes to Pulse. Only there wasn’t going to be one.

  It was Seldon who rapped the question, throttling back immediately as he did so.

  And as the engine-note dropped a few notes, I felt it myself.

  A sort of thrumming.

  In an awful, bladder-creeping dread, I looked back at the egg.

  No change.

  But hadn’t the needle of that instrument — the one dial that seemed to make some sort of sense — crept up a fraction?

  It had been hard against the pin. Now it was on the first figure.

  It was on fifteen!

  But why? I couldn’t be wrong! Not now! Not after we’d gambled everything!

  Despite the spray my Ups felt dry and rough, like carborundum. “Stop! Stop the craft!”

  Seldon shot me a look. He was a brave man, but there was terror in it. Then he eased the stick back for reverse thrust and closed the throttle sharply.

  We came to a rapid halt — surprising and final.

  “Can you stop the motor?”

  “Okay.”

  An uncanny silence, only the water slapping against the rubber skirt and the metal housing above it.

  I looked again at that dial.

  There could be no doubt this time. The pointer was creeping up.

  Alec now looked across at the Captain. Seldon averted his eyes. Death and desolation and the unknown joined hands, in that moment, to sicken our souls.

  There was Prayer in that hovercraft then.

  What had gone wrong?

  Suddenly: “Look!”

  It was Alec. He had leapt to his feet, pointing at something in the glare of our searchlight.

  Through his clenched teeth Seldon said, in rising fury: “By Christ…a nuclear submarine!”

  A nuclear submarine! — how exquisitely, diabolically neat of the Manhatten Project thus to twist its own tail!

  And probably its skipper had been plotting the interception for hours — for he had surfaced in exactly the right place, with a great roaring of air blown from his tanks, dead across our path.

  I managed to say, quite quietly: “The egg is getting power from their reactor.”

  Under his breath, Seldon said: “I see. And he’s a Russian!”

  As we watched, horrified and numbed because of all things we hadn’t calculated for this and it couldn’t have been worse if it tried.

  I said: “Try radio!”

  Seldon, quietly: “I am.” Down on his right, the switch for selecting the speech channels.

  Click…click…click…

  No good…no good…no good…

  Seldon: “No good! We only carry three crystals, just for local work around the harbour. I don’t even have the international emergency frequency on here.”

  I said: “You know what we’ve got to do, don’t you?”

  Seldon whipped round in his seat. “Get him to kill his reactor? — You know he’ll never do it!”

  “But all the same we have to try.”

  Tons of water were still sluicing off the back of the huge black mass which had now risen, conning-tower dwarfing us, to the fully-surfaced position. Fifty yards off now, its ancillary equipment — its pumps and its generators and all the intricate, complex things down below surface that kept it a living mass capable suddenly of ending all life — its ancillary equipment was clearly audible.

  I reached for the locker and got the loudhailer. “Does this thing work?”

  Seldon, with sudden, quickfire irony: “Yes, but it talks English.”

  I looked up at the thing before us. “Someone up there will. Not every nation is as helpless as we are when it comes to talking turkey.”

  Alec: “It’s worth a try.”

  I stood up, in our compact, chopped-up little unit, and addressed a floating community capable of existing, above surface or below, without aid for hundreds of days on end. And through the loudhailer I attempted to make contact.

  The words disseminated across the water, spiralling out like a dropped pebble in a pool, fading away into the distance.

  Not a sound back.

  I glanced briefly at that dial, but had no need to. I knew what to expect.

  Soon the first signs of the oncoming Pulse must inevitably show. Alec and Seldon absolutely motionless, just staring at that sub.

  Again. “We are British! We request you listen to what we have to say. We have little time. We have little time…”

  A light at the top of the tower.

  A hatch is opened.

  A man steps out, leans against the rails, looking in our direction.

  He, too, has a mike. It is connected to some powerful loudspeakers which now are turned toward us. They boom in battery: “We are going to board you. Do you object?”

  A hasty confab within our tiny craft. We bob up and down on the slight swell. The sub is motionless.

  Seldon: “Tell him to come ahead on condition we talk first. It might improve his mood.”

  “You’re right.” On the loudhailer: “We do not object to your boarding us. But will you first listen to what I have to say?”

  One, two, three more officers appear by those rails. They, too, conduct a conference. Then the deafening voice across the water: “You are a threat to peace. What you do is a crazy thing. We have heard of your weapon. Why have you brought it out to sea? Our brief is to see you do not test nuclear weapon in the Atlantic. If what you have is a weapon, whether explosive or whether anything else, we shall raise this in the Security Council, and we shall hold you here until we have our further instructions. Is this understood?”

  Seldon, softly: “Four-nineteen.”

  I acknowledge. And I know there is only one faint hope. One microcosmic chance.

  For fear has brought that submarine to these waters. Fear of a recognizable menace. Something tangible, warlike, quickly understood.

  I propose fully to satisfy that fear. I propose to fulfil a demand.

  The risk is appalling. For all I can do is to permit the submarine to witness the start of the Pulse…as if this were a deliberated act of aggression on my part. Then I will force the commander to kill his reactor, and thus surrender to the weapon he expects.

  To Seldon I said: “We have to take an almost impossible chance. Are you on?”

  Without hesitation: “Go ahead and do it your way.”

  It’s a brave man indeed who takes a back seat.

  What I was gambling on was simply the order of events.

  Without taking my eyes off that enormous black hulk ahead, I said: “Captain, what we have to do is to convince them that this thing really is a weapon, that what happens spontaneously, during the build-up to the Pulse, is actually a deliberate act of aggression on our part. Because the truth is something he just won’t be able to accept.”

  “I get it. What will be the effect of the Pulse on him?”

  Alec, the young co-pilot, turned around suddenly, his face petrified. “I felt something then! I felt it! It’s happening!”

  We all looked back fearfully at the egg, which even in the dim glow thrown back off the water by the spotlight seemed to glisten disproportionately.

  I clenched and unclenched my fists.

  The youngster said: “It’s all right. Go on.”

  Seldon exhaled slowly. I could see his eyes. They were steady. “So what will he feel?”

  I checked the dial
on the equipment, timing the move carefully. I had to give the submarine commander time to shut down, but not time to retaliate. My warning to the sub must come just before the significant part of the Pulse began.

  I said: “In that sub he’s got a fast reactor. If he gets a neutron surge he’ll know all about it. He’ll be forced to shut down. But it’s got to come before something else.”

  “And you don’t know?”

  I shook my head. But no time for explanations.

  Now was the time!

  I picked up the loudhailer. In as firm and as militant a voice as possible I said: “We are in a position to take action in our own defence. We propose to demonstrate what this weapon will do. When you have estimated its power, when you have recognized the dangers to yourselves, we require you to make non-critical your reactors. To shut them down immediately. Do you understand?”

  Another conference high up there on the tower.

  Then the voice boomed back. Singularly, spectacularly simple. “We will give you precisely one minute to reconsider your threat. Then, if you do not, we shall open fire. Is that understood?”

  It was. And I thought the commander was more than reasonable. I would have opened fire long before.

  Seldon: “Four twenty-three.”

  I looked at the dial. That, too, indicated that the countdown was kidding us not.

  But which would come first? Would we be as those other victims were?

  Or would the commander suddenly get a buzz on the intercom, an urgent message from below, thereafter to frenzy into quick decisions for the safety of his ship?

  The seconds ticked.

  And the thrumming started in my head…

  Evidently Seldon had felt something. For screwing up his face he said: “What is it?”

  I said: “It’s the elliptical nature of Space/Time.” I was watching that sub, noted how it began to shimmer before my eyes. Without taking my eyes off it, I said: “It repeats, you see. That’s why we became, in a sense, absorbed.”