The Insulators Read online

  “Sixty pence, sir, please.”

  Philip gave him a pound note, smiled quite normally, giving no sign that he was so deeply preoccupied, waved away the change, and went up to the front door. It had been freshly painted. The cab drove off and the street seemed deserted. As he stepped onto the small porch, the door opened, and the tallest man he had ever seen stood there, smiling, bending down a little so as to avoid the lintel.

  He had a huge face with beautifully shaped features; many had said he had the face of an angel. Now, there was an expression of deep pleasure on it as he extended his huge right hand.

  “Stefan!” Philip exclaimed, and let his hand be taken, although most men would fear that bones and fingers might be crushed. Instead the big Russian’s grip was firm but not too heavy or too tight. He drew Philip in, then closed the door.

  One thing struck Philip above all else as the freshly painted door caught the light, while closing.

  In this house was silence.

  The silence was disturbed only by their footsteps as they walked up a curved, wooden staircase with a smooth banister polished a deep red. There was carpet, muffling, but not killing the sound. At a square landing, Stefan Andromovitch turned into a room on the right. It was a drawing room attractively furnished and well kept. Out of one window Philip caught a glimpse of the river, deeper blue than the sky, and seen overaged and lichen-yellowed tiles which had once been red.

  “Sap will be here in a few minutes,” Stefan said. “Meanwhile would you like to wash and then have a drink?”

  “I’ll settle for a whisky and soda,” said Philip, dropping into a chair with yellow velvet or velour covering.

  Stefan poured his drink and a milder one for himself, passed it across and then sank down in the big couch, covered like the chair, which was just large enough; he would have overlapped most furniture, he was so big.

  “Cheers,” Philip said.

  “To your very good health,” toasted Stefan, “and very great success.” He sipped. “You know you were followed, don’t you?” When Philip nodded, he went on: “And we followed your followers. There were two groups: the three you saw and three others in a smaller car which approached from the other direction. They were communicating by radio-telephone, and we were listening in. No doubt they thought they had a wavelength we didn’t know, but we discovered it some days ago. Occasionally they reported to a man they called Parsons; is that name familiar?”

  “Yes,” Philip said. “He is one of the lesser VIPs.”

  “Yet not unimportant, I gather,” Andromovitch said drily.

  “The Project has an excellent communications system and many agents. It is clear, as Sap thought possible, that all main roads and all railway and bus terminals in London were kept under surveillance, and immediately you were found – as at Euston – agents were to trail you to wherever you went and then withdraw, leaving one man at every vantage point. No doubt they planned to raid us once they had our rendezvous. They may even think this the headquarters of Z5; it would be almost worthwhile letting them convince themselves!” The big man paused, only to go on: “But Sap thought it best to catch them all, so both car loads were taken prisoner, and he is seldom wrong.”

  Stefan Andromovitch paused again, his head on one side as if he were listening; then he heard a faint sound, leaned back and said: “He’s probably quite right this time, too. In any case, here he comes.”

  8: The Organisation: Z5

  Palfrey appeared in the doorway. He had shed his raincoat and cap, and was remarkably like his photograph, but taller and thinner than Philip recollected from earlier meetings. He moved quickly and gracefully, gripped Philip’s hand, then moved to the far end of Stefan’s couch and sat on the arm. His grey eyes, with a haze of blue, had searching directness.

  “Philip,” he said, “we can’t thank you enough.”

  Philip waved his hands, as if touched with embarrassment. “It just came off, that’s all.”

  “As I told you before you tried, we’ve sent four men to the Project before, and they all died.”

  “Yes,” said Philip. “I know.” He sat upright in his chair. “What I don’t understand is why I wasn’t prevented from reaching Euston, if I was followed.”

  “You weren’t followed from The Project,” Palfrey assured him, as Stefan had. “They watched Euston Station, one of the obvious places, and directly they started after you, we started after them. I can’t be sure, but I think they let you live so that they could find out where you were going. They’d like nothing more than to wipe out Z5’s headquarters, that we do know.” Palfrey stood up and went to the cabinet where the drinks were. “How’s your glass?”

  “Fine, thanks.”

  Palfrey poured himself what seemed a very weak whisky and soda, turned back and remarked: “So they didn’t drive you to drink!”

  “Not quite,” Philip said drily. “Talking of thanks – thank you. My cover from Euston was magnificent.”

  “You were watched from your hotel last night, at Wolverhampton Station and on the train,” Palfrey told him. “That’s how we’re so sure you weren’t followed from The Project.” He resumed his position on the arm of Stefan’s couch, and went on: “How did you escape?”

  “I’ve been watching for a chance for weeks,” Philip replied, “and I discovered that if any of the VIPs or the trusted employees went away, they always went east along the riverbank. I couldn’t stay close enough to see exactly where they went but suspected a boat. There were one or two things which spoke for themselves, too.” His lips turned down, and he looked droll and yet self-deprecating. “And they always came back from the same direction. The river is a stream which runs through the grounds of The Project, but it’s been widened, and I don’t know of any river in that area of the West Midlands.”

  Palfrey murmured understanding, and watched the other as closely as Stefan Andromovitch watched.

  “I came to the conclusion that the route ran underground,” went on Philip. “And I knew there was a yachting and boating pool, a little marina, on the eastern fringe of the recreation grounds. So when I got away I simply followed the course of the river. There were only two guards,” he added. “I watched when one of the VIPs came away from the main concourse: one of the guards took him in a small motorboat.” Philip finished his drink and stood up and began to pace up and down. His voice sharpened and the speed of his utterance quickened, he sounded almost angry. “It didn’t make a sound! I saw him start the engine and heard the ripple of the water but there was no engine noise at all. They seem to be able to muffle or insulate sound.”

  Stefan stirred, and spoke for the first time since Palfrey had arrived.

  “Anyone who can control sound can control sound waves,” Palfrey observed. “And while that could be invaluable as a cure for noise pollution, it could also conceal the sound of movements of big fleets of vehicles, or aircraft or ships. If an approaching army could muffle all sound of approach, then it could be very dangerous indeed. Or a flotilla of submarines or dreadnoughts – militarily, it could be devastating.”

  Almost reluctantly, Philip said: “I suppose it could be.”

  “In a hundred ways it could be,” Stefan asserted. “The most sophisticated rockets fly ten times the speed of sound, so do a lot of aircraft, but the vast majority of ships and aircraft are still conventional. A war between Russia and China would depend more on its conventional weapons than the sophisticated ones. So would any war between small nations. In the wrong hands the power of creating silence could be very grave indeed.”

  Philip said abruptly: “And in the right hands a great boon. Well, they can certainly control it sometimes. I don’t know exactly how except that it’s through crystals which are being produced synthetically by the million: it could be that the crystals, almost weightless, are in themselves an insulation against sound.” He stopped in the middle of a step and swung round so that he could see both of them; and his troubled face was vivid to them both. “But they’re doing mo
re: they’re experimenting with the use of crystals as an insulation against heat and against radioactivity. I don’t know how far they’ve succeeded. They’ve built up a screen of secrecy that’s almost beyond belief. There must be twenty laboratories there. Twenty. The only one I went into was the one I worked myself. But now and again I was able to glance into others which were off the same passage as mine. And I saw a lot of waste outlets and some telltale marks left by the waste of crystals and ore and plastics. I saw the warehouses where the raw materials are kept, too – enough for fifty labs, the size of mine. And if that isn’t enough,” he added in a bitter voice, “I talked to dozens of research physicists there, several men very well known by reputation. Every now and again a man I didn’t know from Adam would drop a remark about the value of controlling or insulating sound. Most of them seemed to take it for granted that the purpose was benevolent, and secrecy vital in case any discovery got into the wrong hands. They were all dedicated. You don’t have to be told a man’s credentials – or a woman’s, for that matter. As a breed, scientists of all kinds think in much the same way. Have the same reactions, use the same short cuts in language. There’s another thing: every conceivable kind of magazine and trade journal was kept in the common room and reading rooms, and in the library. But those which disappeared to the apartments first, and those which got dog-eared from use, were the scientific journals. I tell you those people hunger and thirst for more news of the world of physics and chemical research. All of them. None dared say so openly, but I sensed the cold hand of fear on many of them. I wish to God I could have stayed longer, to find out more.”

  “If you had, you might never have discovered what you did, and we might not have found out for months,” Palfrey said.

  Philip spun round again and strode to the window and stared down into a beautifully kept, red-walled garden. He thrust his hands into his pockets to try to hide the fact that they were shaking so.

  Palfrey and Stefan exchanged glances, but neither of them spoke and neither made any move to get up. Philip stayed at the window for what seemed a long time: two minutes, at least. When he turned to face them his expression was more controlled and his lips held the rather self-deprecatory curl which Janey knew so well. Still close to the window but with his back to it, he said: “Sorry. I didn’t realise what a strain it’s been. But I’ll get a grip on myself. If I talk it out of my system, I’ll be better.” Words spilled out again, very fast, so fast that they ran into each other and at moments were difficult to distinguish. “No doubt at all they are on the way to controlling sound. There would be as much din as in a dynamo shed, and it would stop suddenly although the vibration went on, the engines causing the noise didn’t stop – only the noise. It happened fairly often, but no period of silence lasted for long, which suggested to me that they were trial periods.” Abruptly, he asked: “Am I making sense?”

  “Very good sense,” Palfrey assured him.

  “And there’s more,” Philip went on in a taut voice. “They guarded the synthetic crystals as if they were diamonds. None was ever allowed out of a laboratory. I simply dared not chance smuggling any out. But I think they are trying to insulate more than sound. I think some laboratories are trying to insulate radioactivity. Today we need lead chambers, heavy manipulators, reactors, built in such a way that it costs hundreds of thousands of pounds to seal off one generating plant. And even when we do it, we live in fear of a leakage, of contamination. If The Project does succeed in that, then that will be the biggest breakthrough in the history of power – of fuel. It will make coal as useless as sand, gas as archaic as candles, and the oil from the wells of the Middle East, South America and the USA about as much good as water from a poisoned well.”

  Halfway through this diatribe he began to stride about again, driving his points home by stabbing his finger towards Palfrey, or thwacking one clenched fist into the palm of the other hand. Suddenly he stopped again, facing them, with his arms outstretched in desperate pleading.

  “Won’t these things be good?” he demanded. “Won’t they lead to a world of plenty? Won’t atomic fuel, cheap to make and easy to control, be what mankind’s been waiting for since civilisation began?” He went closer to Andromovitch and now appeared to concentrate on him. “Answer me!” he cried. “Isn’t that what man’s been longing for?”

  “Yes,” the Russian answered, quietly. “And it is what Sap and I are looking for, all the time.”

  “Then why are we fighting the people who can provide it? Why do we have war with them, instead of peace?”

  “Philip,” Palfrey interposed, “we told you a little of what we knew and suspected, but not all. We knew that the research workers who were lured by big money to The Project must be working on these things. They could do exactly the good you say, if the knowledge was in the right hands. In the wrong hands it can be used to take over the military, industrial and economic life of a nation, even of the world. We had to find out what was really happening, and thanks to you we can be sure that by our standards, the standards of Western culture and civilisation, any secret process will be in the wrong hands. You can’t possibly doubt that, can you? What would they have done to you had they stopped you from escaping?”

  Philip didn’t answer at once but great distress still showed in his manner. His arms dropped to his side, he moved towards the window as if he wanted to avoid the others’ eyes, but he turned back again, helpless, now, and undoubtedly despairing.

  “They would have battered me to death,” he said, “or they would have put me on the rack, they would have torn at my very vitals to make me talk.”

  When he stopped, there was silence, stillness, too, for neither of the men on the couch moved; and neither seemed to breathe until Palfrey asked in a soft but steely voice: “So how can you possibly doubt the use they will make of whatever they discover.”

  Philip, half-closing his eyes, muttered: “Oh, I suppose I know it as well as you do.”

  “What is distressing you so much, Philip?” asked Stefan, standing up. At his full height he was enormous but there was such kindliness on his face, such understanding, that he caused no fear and aroused no anger. He stood in front of Philip, some six or seven feet away, and asked with searching directness: “Did you leave behind you a woman whom you loved?”

  The colour drained from Philip’s face. His eyes misted over with tears as he fought to keep them back. Over his head Stefan Andromovitch looked at Palfrey, who nodded, sharing the Russian’s sensitive intuition. He moved away. Stefan put a hand on Philip’s shoulder and felt the quivering of his body, sensed the depth of his distress. Palfrey reappeared, wheeling a trolley, on which was hot soup, sandwiches with meat lapping over the sides, cheese and biscuits, beer and coffee. He spoke as if there was no tension in Philip, pushed small tables up to the couch and the chairs, and ladled soup from a silver-plated tureen. Quite naturally, Stefan and Palfrey began to eat, then Philip started, too quickly at first but soon with growing relish. Palfrey opened bottles of beer and poured out into tankards.

  As he ate, Philip began to talk again until slowly the whole story came out, everything about what had happened between him and Janey.

  “The astonishing thing is, I hardly noticed her at first, but as I began to I knew how she could help and I hated to use her. But it was no use, and – well, I’ve never felt remotely like it about a woman. It was agony to come away leaving her with those devils. And, just for a while I fooled myself that we could work together. Now I know we can’t, and there’s just one question in my mind: What will they do to her?” And then between clenched teeth he seemed to ask not the two men with him but the world: “What have I done to her?”

  “Philip,” Palfrey said.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have burst out like that. A fine Z5 man I’ve become.”

  “One of the best,” Palfrey said gruffly.

  “One of the very best, the rare ones,” said Stefan.

  Had they been different men he would have known th
at they were simply trying to soothe him, but neither of these would lie simply to place salve upon a raw and aching wound. They meant exactly what they said.

  “And Philip,” Palfrey went on. “You know she would have wanted you to do what you did, had she known the reason.”

  “I suppose so,” muttered Philip. “But don’t soft-soap me, Sap. It won’t make me feel better. I had to betray her, I really had no choice, but that doesn’t stop me from hating myself.”

  “If we can get her back, you’ll stop hating yourself,” said Palfrey.

  Philip went very still. In the few seconds that followed it was as if his heart stopped beating and that he stopped breathing; and a new light glowed in his eyes, the helplessness faded. He gulped, and then asked hoarsely: “You mean you think you can?”

  “I mean I know we’ll try.”

  “But how can you?” Philip cried.

  “We have a much better chance now that we know we have to prevent them from going on, and also know a secret way in,” said Palfrey. “And we’ve another chance, too.” He poured out what was left of his beer and raised the pewter tankard. “Here’s wishing Killinger luck,” he said, and drank.

  “Killinger?” gasped Philip. “Eric Killinger, the new man in Taylor’s place?”

  “Is one of our men,” Palfrey told him. “And we have at least one other there. Oh, there’s a chance for your Janey.” He did not add that if she were rescued it would be a miracle. Philip would know that, once he had recovered from the ordeal of escaping.

  Philip drained his tankard and put it down, he looked much younger than when he had paced the room – as if he really hoped.

  “Thank God for that!” He fell silent for a while, and then stifled a great yawn and went on speaking over it. “Now I think I can really sleep tonight.”