Quatermass by Nigel Kneale Read Free Book Online

than pride in Kapp’s voice, a kind of husky relish, as if he were moved by the sight of them again.
    But as they approached closer it was what stood between the huge dishes that caught the eye. A comically ugly building with tall twisting chimneys and wrought-iron decoration. A tiny Victorian railway station, a relic of the great steam days, a scrap of flotsam washed up by a long-gone tide. A sign read: GRATTON HALT .
    Kapp pulled in beside the entrance, as gothically ornate as the doorway of a church. A blank noticeboard for train times. A paling fence kept neatly painted.
    Quatermass got out. Beyond the little station and the antennas there was nothing. Only a few rough shanties of tin and scrap a short way off.
    Kapp despatched the dog. “Home, Pup. Tell her I’m back.” The huge creature bounded off, Quatermass was surprised to note, in the direction of the shanties.
    “This way to the trains,” said Kapp. Quatermass followed him past an ancient ticket grille on to the platform.
    There was a single railway line. On it were mounted the massive bogeys that supported the two antennas. One stood each side of the little station, dwarfing it. Fifty feet in diameter, with the breeze humming through their lattices and fine mesh covering.
    “I can take them two miles apart,” said Kapp. “The line was almost dead straight. It wasn’t hard to make it exact.” He pointed. “That way up to Castle Compton. This way down to Frowminster.”
    “You go farther now.”
    “About seven hundred and fifty million light-years.” Kapp smiled. “Come and meet the station staff.”
    He turned across the platform. A faded sign read STATION MASTER , PRIVATE . As they passed through the doorway Quatermass noticed it was an air-lock.
    The whole inside had been cleared.
    Now it was a dust-free computer room. Gothic windows had been covered, the walls entirely clad with plastic screening material. Along one wall stood a row of tall correlation receivers. Monitor screens hung suspended.
    A hugely fat man was working at the control desk, his glasses perched on his forehead while he frowned at the small read-out screens in front of him. His head jerked up irritably. “That door again! Look, I distinctly said nobody—” He pulled his glasses down. “Oh, Joe. Already. I didn’t expect you—”
    “This is Tommy Roach,” said Kapp, “who runs us all as you notice.”
    “Professor Quatermass—” The fat man rose.
    He had seen the programme during the night, had realigned one of the dishes on the satellite link in order to eavesdrop. He had done it before. His two assistants had watched with him. He called them forward now. Alison Sharpe, a plain heavy girl in her twenties, and a young man who looked at least half Chinese and whose name confirmed it, Frank Chen.
    “You were right to say what you did,” the girl said.
    “Was I?” Quatermass felt less sure about it.
    “They were just playing politics up there! All these years, bidding each other up to waste resources, just for show. I agreed with every word.”
    “Nevertheless—”
    “Your timing was bad, that’s all,” Kapp said. “In the circumstances.”
    Trying to make him feel better.
    “How many died?” he asked.
    “Twenty-seven,” said Chen.
    The cause of the disaster was still unknown, it appeared. At least nothing was being admitted.
    Roach said cannily: “So until they stop yelling sabotage and looking for scapegoats, this gentleman is our guest?”
    Kapp grinned at Quatermass. He nodded at the fat man and said: “He’s my double. You wouldn’t think so but he is. In essentials.”
    “I think just possibly we can help,” said Roach. “We found something that . . . well, it’s not much but . . . Frank?”
    Chen was already busying himself with sliders and knobs.
    “It was between the two dishes,” Roach explained.
    “An anomaly?”
    “Don’t think so, Joe. Anomalies always make me itch and I didn’t itch. Now, we had one of them lined up on your