Quatermass by Nigel Kneale Read Free Book Online Page A

show.”
    “Dog Dish,” said Chen.
    “That’s right.” Roach turned to Quatermass. “We call them Dog Dish and Cat Dish—got to call them something. So, while we were sitting there being an attentive audience for you, Cat Dish was on duty elsewhere, watching that black hole in Cygnus Z. Oh, there we are—”
    Quatermass saw his own face flash up on a monitor screen. Impassioned, pop-eyed, ridiculous it looked to him now. He hated the recorded voice that came with it, foolishly shrill:
    “. . . diseases . . . and their infections are too strong for us, the small countries . . . !”
    “On a bit, Frank,” said Roach.
    Then they were further along the tape. As it had done last night, the image came back flickering, then holding the space observatory as it began its first stately movements into disintegration.
    “Any guesses?” asked Kapp.
    Roach seemed to have made up his mind. “Simple gross malfunction, too fast for the safety cutouts.”
    “That’s fast, Tommy.”
    Think small, think in picoseconds, in millionths of a millionth of a second. Or even minuter fractions, depending on the technology of the Spacelab, which they didn’t know, and what speed might beat it.
    “. . . It’s out of control! . . .” Quatermass heard his own horror again on the recording. And Kapp’s and Gough’s, overlaid on the tide of faint helpless distress from Houston. And the unseen cameraman jabbering into incoherence.
    “Oh, look at them! Look!” Alison peered closer at the drifting, spinning figures in pressure-suits. “Every time I watch it I wonder . . . were they still capable of . . . knowing?”
    “It wouldn’t take long,” said Kapp.
    “It might, Joe.” The girl seemed to be trying to make herself suffer on their behalf.
    The picture began to break up.
    “That’ll do, Frank,” said Roach. “Now, during the first twenty seconds or so—”
    “Twenty point two,” Chen said.
    “As he says. During that time we got indications of some heavy disturbance. Alison found it later, making routine checks. Show them, Alison.”
    Like a lot of the apparatus here, the oscillograph was old fashioned. Alison pointed out the inked track that went suddenly into a burst of wild scribbling.
    “A strong trace,” Kapp said. “Violent. I suppose that could be it.”
    “That is it, Joe. Think we haven’t checked times?”
    “All right,” said Kapp. “I’m not arguing. You’ve picked up a record of the worst stage of it, the primary bust, whatever it was. After that the thing just went on disintegrating. But I don’t see—okay, Tommy, it’s interesting, a lot stronger trace than I’d have thought, but in itself it doesn’t help to—”
    Roach’s hand was on his arm.
    “Joe, bear with me.”
    Kapp was impatient. “If there’s anything more, hurry it up. This man needs some rest. He’s just about out on his feet—”
    “Joe. No problem so far?”
    “No, none.”
    “Here it is, then. While Dog Dish was gathering all that faithfully in, Cat Dish—facing in a totally different direction, got the same trace. Identical!”
    Kapp was first to examine the other inked track.
    “I mean, we often get discrepancies,” said Roach. “But this time there should have been one and there isn’t!”
    Kapp’s face had sharpened.
    “Nasty, Joe,” Roach went on. “A thing like this, I don’t itch, I wheeze. It’s just not acceptable.”
    “Then we don’t accept it,” said Kapp. “It’s a fault. It must be.”
    He looked at Quatermass as if he needed confirmation.
    “Your apparatus,” said Quatermass. “A lot of it’s . . . far from new.”
    Kapp nodded. “Junk.”
    Tommy Roach worried on. “It’s not just the timing, it’s the sheer spread. If you study the arc the dishes were covering between them—”
    Kapp waved at the battered racks that surrounded them. “If you study the cracked PCBs and dud relays in there, Tommy! That’s what you’re getting—spurious signals, feedback, you name it.”
    He