Steven appeared for Christmas dinner and joined in quite successfully, though he had allowed himself only two hours’ sleep.
‘I’ll rest tomorrow,’ he said apologetically to Lydia. ‘Time zones make it necessary sometimes to work these odd hours, you know that, don’t you? I mean – have you any idea what time it is now in Japan?’
‘Yesterday,’ said Lydia, ‘or, no, I suppose it must be tomorrow!’
He dozed off in his chair till tea time, but straight after tea he left the table and went off to see to more beastly calculations. Jacob made as if to accompany him, but he raised his hand and said, ‘Not this time, Jacob. You would be bored to tears. I know I am!’
Jacob went to bed at his usual time, set his travel alarm to go off at half-past one and tucked it under his pillow. That way it would be muffled to stop the sound carrying and he would hear it more quickly himself. He fell into so sound a sleep that when it did ring he did not know what was happening. The clock had found its way to the middle of his bed and was entangled in the sheet.
‘Gotcha!’ he whispered as he found it and pressed the stop button. Then he slipped on his dressing gown and went stealthily up the stairs to the computer room.
‘Anything happening?’ he asked.
‘Not yet,’ said Steven, ‘but it soon will. Then you’ll just have to watch and be completely silent. I’ve worked everything out, but it will still take concentration.’
‘Why do they need you?’ asked Jacob. ‘I mean, spaceships land and take off without your help, don’t they?’
‘They need me,’ said Steven, ‘because I know how to control the Brick. And this journey is different and difficult. Most of us who arrive here from Ormingat don’t manage to hit our destination spot on – and it doesn’t matter: mistakes are allowed for. But in this case, it does matter. That spaceship down there has to land in precisely the right place. The Brick is the only thing that can do that, and it needs careful, calculated manipulation to do it with total accuracy.’
They were looking at the split screen again. The larger view showed the base of the Scott Monument, surrounded by scaffolding and protective hoardings. By the law that governs such irritating coincidences, the Monument was in the throes of renovation. Vateelin had managed to cope with the problem of reaching his spaceship himself, for which, of course, Steven would give him no credit. The smaller view was a close-up of the inside of the ship, where Vateelin was already putting on his sheepskin coat.
‘Why is he doing that?’ said Jacob.
‘When he reaches Casselton,’ said Steven, ‘he will be leaving the ship for a while. It’s a cold night. He’ll need a coat. That’s all.’
Vateelin, totally unaware that he was being watched, strapped himself into his seat ready for take-off.
‘Now,’ said Steven, ‘not another word.’
He stared at the Brick and the screen till he could see nothing else in the room, not even Jacob. Carefully he manipulated the controls. The spaceship shot up out of the soil and hurtled high into the air. Steven sped with it over the hills of southern Scotland, across the border and down the coast of Northumberland, where the darkness of the night was occasionally interrupted by clusters of light from some small town decked out for Christmas. Within minutes it was in Casselton. Speedily, Steven switched the other view, which for a time had been almost redundant, to the street map of Casselton, homing in on the General Hospital and dragging the spaceship into line to reach it perfectly. It soft-landed in the hospital car park just as one or two heavy flakes of snow began to fall.
‘That’s the hardest bit done!’ said Steven. ‘What comes next is reasonably simple – more our usual line of business!’
The spaceship disgorged its passenger, rolling him out like a pill. Then he shot up to full size and walked quickly towards the brightly lit doors that led into the Accident and Emergency Department. Steven intensified the shield around Vateelin, making him not truly invisible, but totally unnoticeable.
The doors opened automatically to admit Vateelin and closed again after him. He now knew precisely what he must do. His faith in the shield lay in his own belief that he had produced it himself, of his own strong will. He did not question how he knew exactly where to find his son. He simply walked along the corridors in a direction he believed to be the right one and there, at the end of a long corridor, was the children’s ward. Inside the ward, he saw curtains round the bed in the corner nearest the window and he knew at once that his son was there.
For a time, the curtain around the boy’s bed interrupted their view. Steven gauged that it was not worth attempting to home in further and surmount this obstacle: they would be out soon enough. Then, as expected, father and son emerged hand in hand and walked quickly out of the ward, along the corridor, through the A&E waiting room and out into the snowy night.
‘Where has he left his coat?’ said Steven as he saw that Vateelin was in shirtsleeves. The logic said he must have left it on purpose. And if left on purpose it must be meant as some sort of message. ‘What a stupid, stupid thing to do! Here I am working my guts out to get him safely and inconspicuously away, and he does a daft thing like that!’
Jacob did not need to ask why. They were all, he realized, part of a secret service. Leaving the coat was a clear breach of security.
‘You’ll have to put that in the report,’ he said. Jacob by now knew all about Steven’s ‘reports’. They had to be made out for every action taken using the protection module. He kept them so brief that from time to time the word ‘ELUCIDATE’ would flash up on the screen.
Steven grimaced. ‘I suppose so,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Though it might be inviting trouble where none is needed.’
He did not know, of course, what trouble his own unguarded remarks to the cube had already set in motion. He should never have directed attention to Earth’s newspaper and television accounts of the crash, no matter how irritated he felt. It would have been much safer to leave the cube secure in its smugness.
Once outside the building, the lack of a coat clearly made Vateelin shiver.
‘Serves him right,’ said Steven.
Then Jacob saw an ambulance coming down the drive, its headlamps illuminating the flakes of snow. ‘They’re going to get run over,’ he said anxiously. ‘That wouldn’t serve them right!’
‘They’ve got more sense than that,’ said Steven. ‘And if they haven’t there’s nothing I can do about it. In fact, I’m worse than useless. That ambulance driver won’t even notice them if he mows them down. And it’s too late now to withdraw or modify the shield.’
So Jacob gave a sigh of relief as he saw Vateelin haul his son back out of harm. After the ambulance had passed them by, in total ignorance of their presence, they crossed to the corner of the car park near the gates where, on the ground, a distinct radiance could be seen against the white of the snow.
‘And he’ll think that was all his own work!’ said Steven. ‘They all do.’
‘Have they no powers then?’ said Jacob, thinking not only of Vateelin but of all the other agents he had seen.
‘Limited,’ said Steven. ‘Some have more than others, but not one of them could really do what the Brick does.’
Jacob had thoughts about that boy. Thomas/Tonitheen . . . ‘He’s like me,’ he said. ‘A boy with an Ormingat father.’
‘Not really,’ said Steven. He was still concentrating closely on the father and son as they went hand in hand towards the spaceship. His answer to his own son was less than thoughtful. ‘That boy had an Ormingat mother too. He is pure-bred. He was even born on Ormingat.’
Steven did not see his son’s eyes glisten. To be described as ‘pure-bred’ seemed in that instant something very different from his situation, and very enviable. I want to be . . . he thought, and did not know how to complete the sentence.
The man and boy shrank into the glow of the ship.
‘Thank goodness that’s over,’ said Steven. ‘I’ll get the report done tomorrow and that, hopefully, will be the end of it.’
‘You won’t forget to tell about the coat,’ said Jacob.
‘I won’t forget to tell about the coat,’ said Steven heavily. ‘Now get yourself to bed and go to sleep.’
Jacob paused a moment at the door, sorely tempted to speak. There was one final thought he was held back from uttering. Would his own father ever return to Ormingat? Who decides who goes home?