On November the 24th, 1979, Professor Bernard Quatermass perished in his most recent effort of saving the world from a threat from beyond the Earth for a fourth time.
"No," he whispered. "Hettie…"
He wished with all his heart that it was not she. That he had once again been mistaken. That the girl he was seeing at this place of all places…
"This is the place!" Kickalong shouted.
…was not his granddaughter, not the person he cared for most in the world.
Others came from all around, but he couldn't see them. He saw only her. He could only stand, brilliant mind frozen like a paralyzed limb, useless.
Then came a jerking, a twisting.
He did not see Kapp make a flying leap for the control, did not see Kickalong shoot him in the chest. As he tried to rise, Kickalong fired again, the clack of the sub-machine gun stitching across John's back, but Quatermass did not see that either.
Only her. For a man whose brilliant mind could encapsulate a universe, and bring all its myriad complexity down to simple statistics, now there was simply room for one single thing: an estranged granddaughter whom he thought long dead.
Her image wavered in his vision, like a fading photograph, a silvered image, much like the picture in his coat.
And then it descended from the sky.
It came with fire and with thunder, as all deities have done, but Professor Quatermass had blasphemed against all the gods at one time or another. What was one more? This was not even a god, but the instrument of one, a wind-up toy set in motion and put to a task for a master which might have finally died and its dreams of blood-soaked plunder ended.
The blinding light descended further, turning the night of Gratton Halt into day. The light burned the eyes, bedazzled the mind. Quatermass did not hear the ecstatic joy of the insane mob all around him.
On some level he knew what he was experiencing was a heart attack, but the only thing he could see was her face. There were moments left, and yet he could not do this...even with death certain for all, Quatermass would not consign his only granddaughter to one conflagration instead of another.
Quatermass's vision blurred, his senses whirled, coruscating, becoming a kaleidoscope.
He did not see her, but he felt as her hand reached out. Her young, unblemished hand guided his old hand toward the detonation trigger.
Kickalong looked surprised, the usual expression of confidence shattered briefly in the face of this. His mouth opened in a scream he never completed.
Gratton Halt was there for only a second more, before blackening into a silhouette, while the black pyramid hovering above whitened to an incandescence more blinding than the sun.
