Dimension Of Horror Part 10

"Richard," she said softly.

He did not stir.

She moved to his bedside and stood looking down at him. How many mornings had she stood like this in the quiet cottage in Dorset, listening to the distant booming of the sea? How many times had they played the poetry game, one of them quoting a line from a famous poem, then the other trying to quote another line from the same poem?

She thought of Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach."

"d.i.c.k?" she called gently.

He slept on.

She closed her eyes, trying to remember the poem exactly, word for word. Over the years it came back to her. She began, "The sea is calm tonight . . . " d.a.m.n! How did the next line go?

"The tide is full, the moon lies fair upon the straits," said Richard Blade.

With a startled cry she leaped back, opening her eyes, almost dropping her purse.

Richard was looking up at her, his dark eyes serious but sane. "Good morning, darling," he said in that cheerful well-spoken light baritone of his.

"Are you . . . are you all right?" she asked fearfully.

"Of course I'm all right. I had a d.a.m.nable nightmare, that's all. It was one of those b.l.o.o.d.y awful things that runs on and on, one disaster after another. It seems you married some silly accountant, and there was a machine in it that kept sending me into one h.e.l.l after another." He raised himself on his elbow and smiled. "No use talking about it. Nothing like that could really happen. Could it, Zoe?"

"No, no, nothing like that could happen."

Blade looked around, frowning with puzzlement. "Where am I? Is this some sort of hospital?"

"Yes. You've . . . you've had an accident." Impulsively she stepped toward him and patted his head.

"What kind of accident?" he demanded.

She tried to think of something plausible, but her mind had gone blank.

"Wait! I think I remember." His powerful fingers closed on her wrist. "A blue cloud. Fire. Pain. Oh my G.o.d, the Ngaa! The Ngaa!" His voice rose to a scream. "Oh my G.o.d, it's getting into my head!"

"Let me go, d.i.c.k." His grip tightened painfully. "Please. Please!"

He did not let go, but screamed wordlessly, thrashing from side to side, his face contorted into a mask of terror, pulling her off her balance. She fell on top of him, sprawling and struggling. "Help!" she screamed. "Help me someone!"

Abruptly he released her and fell back on his pillow, eyes open but blank, face expressionless. She staggered away, half-blinded by her own sudden tears.

"d.i.c.k?" she called.

He did not answer, or show in any way that he heard her.

The door burst open and the burly orderly rushed in, tranquilizer gun in hand.

"Is he havin' another of his fits?" the man asked, taking aim.

"Don't shoot him. He's quiet now." She groped her way into the hall.

Dimly she saw J, Lord Leighton and Dr. Ferguson coming toward her on the run. She threw herself into J's arms.

"What's going on here?" asked J.

"He spoke to me," she sobbed.

"Blade? He spoke to you?" J was astonished.

"He sounded perfectly normal, except that he thought he was back in the time when he and I . . . " She could not go on.

"What did he say?" Dr. Ferguson broke in.

"He recited a line of poetry, the same line I heard in my hotel room, the night of . . . the night of the fire." She was thinking, was it Richard Blade who'd spoken to her just now, or was it someone else?

Chapter 8.

Dr. Ferguson waved goodbye with an absurd enthusiasm, standing in front of the hangar in his black plastic raincoat. Lord Leighton, similarly clad, merely hunched his shoulders and glowered like a moody troll. The handshaking and well-wishing was over, and the little scientist was probably already back with his beloved KALI, in mind if not in body.

Then the plane swung around and Ferguson and Leighton were lost to view, though J continued to stare out the porthole-like window into the night. There was nothing to see but an occasional moving point of light as they taxied swiftly but smoothly out onto the field, but J, lost in thought, did not care.

J had been to the United States before, but not since the Fifties, when he and Richard Blade had tracked a defecting agent from New York to San Francisco in cooperation with the CIA, finally catching up with and killing the fellow in a gay bar in the North Beach district.

J smiled, thinking of the CIA euphemism that had appeared in their report on the action. "The operative was terminated with extreme prejudice." The Yanks were never squeamish about killing, but they were downright Victorian when it came to talking about it.

Some of the CIA men J and Blade had worked with were probably still posted to San Francisco, but J made a mental note not to visit these "old friends." He did not like the CIA, an organization more or less blueprinted by Kim Philby, a British agent who had turned out to be a Russian spy. In J's eyes the CIA still bore the triple mark of its birth: it was as ruthless and power hungry as the worst Russian communist, as stuffy and bureacratic as the worst Englishman, and, most annoying of all, as cra.s.s and businesslike as the worst Yank, with its network of secretly owned businesses, which included airlines, hotel chains, laboratories, munitions factories and even a few publishing companies in New York.

J had heard the rumors to the effect that the CIA had a.s.sa.s.sinated the Kennedy brothers to prevent an investigation of the agency's worldwide billion-dollar clandestine business operations. The general public had laughed at the idea. but J, who knew the CIA better, had not laughed at all. No, J concluded, the less I see of the CIA, the better.

The plane reached the end of the runway, wheeled about, tested its mighty jet engines, then, after a pause, hurtled down the gleaming wet pavement and was airborne.

J took out his tobacco pouch and began filling his pipe, though the sign above the c.o.c.kpit door still glowed "No Smoking" as well as "Fasten your seat belts." The plane banked steeply, and J could see, out of the corner of his eye, the pattern of landing lights spread out far below, rendered indistinct by a curtain of mist, then London came into view, glimmering like a heap of red coals spilled out over a vast black hearth.

J tamped down his tobacco.

The plane entered a cloud and London vanished. Drops of moving water appeared on the outer face of the window.

J took out his lighter.

"Do you mind if I smoke?"

Zoe, strapped into the seat next to him, glanced at the still glowing "No Smoking" sign, then shrugged. "Go ahead."

The aroma of sailor's rough-cut drifted on the air.

J tilted his seat back to be more comfortable, toying with the idea of going to sleep. He glanced at Zoe. She too had tilted back her seat and her eyes were closed. The lighting was dim.

Richard Blade, he knew, was asleep, strapped into a bunk at the rear of the cabin, under heavy sedation. With Blade was a male nurse and two muscular MI6 men armed with tranquilizer pistols: there were no other pa.s.sengers on board. Up front rode the crew of three; pilot, copilot and navigator. Though the craft bore the insignia of the Royal Air Force, everyone in it was a member of the Special Branch.

The door under the "No Smoking" sign opened and a tall man in a brown jumpsuit emerged and made his way back along the aisle between the unoccupied seats. It was Captain Ralston, the pilot. When he came to J, he leaned over Zoe and said softly, "Could you come up to the c.o.c.kpit for a moment, sir?"

J searched the man's impa.s.sive face for some clue as to what might be wrong, but there was nothing there. "Certainly, Captain," J said, unbuckling his seat belt.

"Trouble?" Zoe asked her eyes fluttering open.

"Nothing serious, madam," Ralston said.

J climbed over her feet into the aisle with a muttered apology and followed Captain Ralston forward. The c.o.c.kpit, when they entered it, was lit only by the many-colored lights on the control panel and navigation console. The navigator turned in his seat and said, "Good evening, sir." He was a slender, dapper fellow with a neat Vand.y.k.e beard. His name was Bob Hall.

"Good evening, Bob," J answered. "What's up?"

Bob hunched over his navigation table, his worried face green in the light from his radar screen. He gestured toward the screen. "A bit of a puzzle, sir. A blip on the radar. Something's following us."

J checked the scope. It was true.

Captain Ralston said, "The control tower picked it up, too, and warned us about it, so it can't be a fault in our equipment."

"How far away is it?" J asked.

"About two kilometers and closing," said Bob Hall. "It's fast, whatever it is, but it seems to be, as far as we can tell, smaller than most aircraft."

The copilot, Floyd Salas, a small dark wiry man, said, "It could be a ground-to-air homing missile."

"There's a cheerful thought," Hall said. "Trust Salas to look on the bright side."

"I don't think it's a missile," J said. He sucked on his pipe, but found it had gone out.

"Should we turn back, sir?" Captain Ralston asked.

"No. That's what the Thing is hoping we'll do," J replied.

"The Thing, sir?" the captain said, raising an eyebrow.

"Is there any way we can get a look at it? Direct visual contact?" J asked.

"Not as long as we stay in this overcast," Ralston answered, glancing at the c.o.c.kpit windows where nothing was visible but their own darkened and distorted reflections.

"Take her upstairs then," J commanded.

Captain Ralston sat down in the pilot's seat and strapped in. J strapped down in a jump seat directly behind him.

Bob Hall informed the control tower of their plans and got a clearance.

The plane began to climb steeply.

Ralston glanced at the altimeter and said, "We should break through any second."

They waited.

Hall said, "The blip's still on the radar. I think . . . yes, the Thing has changed course to follow us up. It's gaining on us. One and a half kilometers and closing."

"What did I tell you?" Salas said gloomily. "It's a homing missile."

No one answered him. The only sound was the rushing m.u.f.fled roar of the jets.

"One and a quarter kilometers and closing," said Bob Hall crisply, then added with a slight quaver in his voice, "The static is getting bad. I can't understand the control tower."

J muttered, "The Thing seems to have the ability to jam radio transmissions."

Hall reported: "One kilometer . . . I think."

"What do you mean you think?" The Captain glanced back at him, scowling. "You're supposed to know."

"Sorry, sir." Hall was staring at the scope in frustration. "The radar is malfunctioning, too."

J noted that a flock of blips had appeared on the screen, like fireflies, forming no consistent pattern.

At that instant the plane broke out of the cloud cover and soared up into the clear thin air of the lower stratosphere. The moon was full, the stars brighter and more numerous than they could ever be to the earthbound Londoners. The upper surface of the overcast spread out on all sides to the horizon like a vast white undulating desert.

J pressed his face against the window, trying to look back and down.

Hall said, "I don't think you'll be able to see the thing. "It'll come up behind us, in our blind spot."

"Bank then," J said. "I want to get a look at it."

Captain Ralston looked worried. "If we bank, we'll lose air speed."

J snapped, "I don't care. We can't seem to outrun the d.a.m.n thing anyway. It'll catch up a little sooner, that's all. Bank, Ralston!"

Ralston obeyed.

The area of clouds they had just left came into view. It had a pale red glow to it, but that was the glow of London. There were other areas of muted light across the face of the clouds, each indicating the location of some well-lit city. J knew them; he could have identified each of those cities by the shape and brightness of its glow. He was looking for something else.

And there it was!

A swift-moving sphere of bright blue-white flame burst from the overcast and rose toward him. The color was the same as he'd seen seeping from the seams of KALI's case the night of Richard Blade's return, but much brighter. The Ngaa-for this must be the Ngaa-seemed to fairly seethe and sizzle with energy.

"Beautiful," J whispered in awe.

The Ngaa was beautiful as a fallen star.

As the plane leveled out, the Ngaa swung out of sight in the blind spot.