Heat.
That was Helen's first thought. A stifling heat, pressing down on her like a smothering blanket. She felt as though she would suffocate in the intense depth of the heat, as if it had a physical presence, compressing her body. It was not the dry midday-sun heat of Sorrento that she had enjoyed, but a chest tightening, unbearable humidity, drenching her in sweat that stung and prickled and tormented her eyes and lips.
It was getting hard to breath and she tore at her t-shirt in a futile attempt to loosen the tightness round her neck. But it made no difference. She was suffocating, drowning in the weight of thick moist air, gasping and struggling to drag oxygen into her lungs as she leaned back against the spongy wall, mouth open, chest heaving. Her hands tore again at her throat as she began to lose consciousness.
With a wry flicker of amused humour, even as she prepared herself for death, she berated herself for having got into this mess, for having followed him, partly because she was concerned for him and it was her task to ensure his safety, but also out of curiosity to find out exactly what his enemies were like. So now she was here and now she knew.
She had herself to blame. If only the whole damned place would keep still for a moment, if only she could breathe, if only…
Straker regained consciousness as he was being dragged over a smooth surface, but exactly where he had no idea. There had been an earlier waking, to appalling heat and humidity, his hands and feet tied, and he'd tried escaping until something or someone hit him, a quite casual and nonchalant blow across the head but hard enough to stun him again. Now he was aware of thick material over his head, a hood, blinding him to his surroundings. His struggles were rewarded with yet another blow stunning him into insensibility.
The third time he was somewhere else, somewhere cool and quiet and motionless, and he was being held down by vice-like grips on his arms. Hands tore his shirt open, hot fingers feeling, pressing, over his body for the small tell-tale ridge beneath his skin, then the probing hands ripped the material up the length of his sleeve. He knew what they were going to do and he gritted his teeth, determined not to make a sound, not to give them even that small satisfaction. But it was impossible to stay silent as the knife cut, and cut again, and the sharp point probed into the flesh until it encountered the small metal implant. With callous indifference they deepened the incision and, heedless of any discomfort caused, dug the transponder out as one would shuck an oyster from its shell. Then they crushed it beneath the bloodied blade of the knife, tugged the tattered remnants of his shirt back over his shoulders and dragged him away.
***
Helen swore under her breath; judging by the cramp in her limbs, she had been unconscious for some time and the lack of movement had left her stiff and sore. Her head ached – and her spine and her neck and pretty much everything else – but at least it was easy to breathe, the previously thick atmosphere replaced by fresh clean air. She could have wept with the relief. And with each life-giving breath she drew deep into her lungs she began to relax, to become more aware of her surroundings, of the silence enclosing her, of the fact that she was a prisoner.
Damn. But at least there was no longer that terrible sense of movement, of hurling in an uncontrolled rush down a rollercoaster. The floor on which she was lying remained still, the wall behind her back rigid and smooth. There was no vibration and no sound apart from a faint thrumming in the background and she no longer felt sick. Her earlier nausea had vanished. She swallowed with care, knowing that even that simple action could reawaken the awful queasiness and with a sense of dread she realised that she needed to open her eyes, to see just where she was.
The merest sliver was enough to see she was lying on the floor in a small room. Dim lighting spread soft glows across the floor. She dared to open her eyes a little more. Modern minimalistic at best. A room – six foot wide and nine long and that was a generous estimate.
A narrow cabin-style bed, cupboards, and a tiny space to stand in. Or lie in as she was now doing. Walls, floor, ceiling, all coloured that peculiar shade of pale blue that only seemed to exist in government paint charts. 'Utility Sky Blue' it would probably be called. It reminded her of the cabin she had used once on a nuclear submarine, only that cabin had been slightly bigger. Some wardrobes were bigger than this. So, was she on a sub? But would a submarine have a door like that. A secure airlock? She swore again.
Where the hell was she? And, more to the point, what was she missing?
It was beginning to hit home now. Aliens. She'd known about the aliens and SHADO for a few months now, ever since the first concerns were mooted regarding Peter Fitzpatrick, but to actually meet one of them was something entirely different. Though technically she hadn't met one yet. She'd been captured by them, yes, and brought here – wherever 'here' was – but she hadn't had more than a glimpse of them. And at that moment she remembered Straker. A whirlwind of fear swept through her. Where the hell was he? Was he still alive? Without him, she stood no chance of getting out of here.
A brisk rub of her face and eyes cleared away the sweat and tears, then her training came to the fore and she pushed herself up until she was sitting with her back against the wall and ready to make a rapid assessment of her remaining resources. Her gun was gone as was her shoulder bag along with her camera, purse, and all those little essentials that every woman carries around in her bag; secure phone, knife, spare ammunition clips. All gone. But she still had her clothes, which was a bonus; trying to make an escape whilst in a state of undress was never a favourite pastime of hers. Her watch was on her wrist but no longer working, and her necklace still round her neck. So whoever had taken her had made at least one error. There was a sound outside and she narrowed her eyes to a tiny slit then slumped down, as if she was still unconscious. The door swung open and she saw them in the light for the first time. Red suited, green skinned, pulling something into the room and she held her breath, waiting.
Straker had abandoned the idea of trying to fight his captors – he could never beat them anyway, there were simply too many of them. But even though he was still hooded, he could still hear their voices, had listened to them laughing as the knife pierced his skin and sliced into muscles. And they were human voices, not the high-pitched sounds emitted by aliens. He shivered. Humans working with Earth's greatest enemies.
In a way it didn't surprise him; he had known that humans were collaborating with the aliens either by choice or coercion or through mind-control techniques. After all, how else were the aliens to communicate with their captives? No one in SHADO had ever heard an alien speak, or even make any attempt to communicate verbally.
So he let them drag him back along the corridor, blood tracking down his arm and leaving scarlet smears on the floor. He heard them spin the handle on the airlock door and closed his eyes as he waited for whatever was going to come next. But they just manhandled him inside the room, tugged of the hood with a quick jerk, dropped him face down onto the floor and left. He heard the door close, the clunk of the heavy airtight seals settling into place. There was silence.
He rolled over onto his back, holding his arm in a tight grip. Careful fingers explored the stickiness of cooling blood, the sharp pain of open flesh. "Damn and blast." The wound was still bleeding and more serious than he expected, which would hamper any attempt to escape.
"Mind your language, Ed Straker."
He pushed himself up and turned round, a wave of relief flooding through him at the sound of her voice. "Helen? I didn't think you'd…" His voice trailed into silence.
"What? Still be alive? Neither did I. I woke up somewhere stiflingly hot, and couldn't breathe and I convinced myself I was dying so it was a pleasant surprise to find myself here. Wherever here is. And I'm even more pleased to find you still alive. I didn't think I'd see you again."
He was holding his left arm, blood trickling between his knuckles, spreading down his fingers to drip on the floor. A hiss of pain. "Shit, this hurts." He swore again, and she looked closely at him, noting his ashen face and tight white lips.
She shuffled across the floor to sit next to him. "What did they do?"
He grimaced. "Cut out my transponder. SHADO won't be able to trace my position now. That is, if they were ever going to track me. They probably don't even know I've been taken." He moved his fingers slowly to reveal the vicious slash beneath, then leaning forward started to slide his arm out of the shirt.
"Let me do that." She eased the blood soaked shirt away from his shoulders and pulled it off. "Well, that's had it." She held it up for inspection. "Pity. It looked like quite a decent shirt as well."
He attempted a casual shrug then thought better of it. "I like the colour. Dark shades are better when trying to evade aliens at night."
His eyes glinted at hers in a conspiracy of amusement. There was no point in trying to be serious. Not now. The aliens had them, and, if humour could alleviate the last hours they had, then why not? The future was already bleak enough. He knew the aliens would use every means possible to get the codes from him and, with regard to the colonel – she was alive and healthy and however unwilling she might be she would end up donating her organs.
"Well, it may be a favourite but I'm going to tear it up and bandage that arm. Any objections?" It was her turn to glint.
"I don't have much choice do I?" He grinned at her, a small, almost shy grin, but she could see the pain behind the mask that hid his true feelings.
"Don't worry, I'll be gentle with you. Now, hold still, this may hurt. A lot." She tore the shirt into neat strips and started. "This really needs stitching. I'm afraid you'll have a nasty scar there."
He looked at her askance, eyes amused. "One more isn't going to make much difference." He was joking but his lips were tight with pain and she realised, with a sudden flash of clarity, that here was a man who had been hurt before, badly hurt, and his scars, were a constant reminder to him of painful incidents that he would rather forget. By the time she had finished he was pale and clammy and sweating, but the wound was covered and she helped him lean back against the wall, her hands on his bare shoulders.
Someone had left a thin thermal blanket on the narrow bed and she pulled it off and wrapped him in it, tucking it around him. He was shivering in the cool air. "Sorry."
"Lean back against me, you're too cold." He would have protested but she pulled him back against her, enfolding him in her arms, her warmth spreading through shaking muscles, until at last he began to relax.
"So, plans for this evening? Drinks, followed by a walk along the cliff top? What do you fancy?" Anything to keep the conversation away from the inevitable images of aliens coming to harvest their organs.
Straker shifted position, wrapping his arms around his body. "I mean to keep my promise and take you to Pompeii if possible. But first I need you to look round this room and tell me everything you can see. I have my suspicions as to where we are but I might be wrong." He shuffled away from her to sit against the wall and she could see the effort that it had cost him to move even that small amount. Standing up, a little shaky at first after being on the floor for what seemed an age, she too leaned against the wall as her legs regained their feeling and the pins and needles faded away.
"Well, it seems to be your average accommodation cubicle, though with some additional extras. Cabin bed with built in storage including a pull-out desk, though how anyone could be expected to write at a desk that small I don't know. Airtight door like they have on submarines, though I don't think we're in one of those. I'm guessing they won't have forgotten to lock it, will they. Closet…" She pushed herself away from the wall and stepped across to open the closet door. "Oh. It looks as if someone's used this room before. Whoever it was, they've left some clothes. There's a sweater here that might fit you."
A fine cashmere sweater, cream coloured and with a roll-neck, lay on the top of the pile and she lifted it out and put it aside on the narrow bed, before turning back to the desk. "And one more thing, a photograph. What a peculiar picture." She pulled it off the wall, looked at it for a moment with a quizzical expression, and handed it to Straker.
He took it, stared at it and started to laugh.
"So. Are you going to tell me what's funny, or do I have to guess?"
His companion was annoyed, he could tell, but he couldn't stop laughing. Perhaps it was light-headedness, or loss of blood, or perhaps it was sheer relief. He held out the photograph. "Do you know what this is?"
"It's a light aircraft, a Cessna I think, from the fifties? A high winged monoplane, possibly four-seater, British registration. Looks like a museum piece from what I can see, but it's in good condition. Though why anyone would have a photograph of an old aircraft in here, I don't know. So, Commander, enlighten me. Please." She was beginning to sound more than a little annoyed.
"It's not just an aircraft. That's Celine, Alec Freeman's personal aircraft, his Cessna 195, rebuilt by him and kept at the SHADAIR terminal. He spends every spare moment flying her or doing maintenance." Despite the pain in his arm, he managed a brief smile. "Which means this is FarSight and we're in Alec's room. That's why it was so hot and humid before, why there was that sense of uncontrolled motion. We were being transported in an alien craft, a UFO, heading for the Moon. If we can find a way to open that door, or overpower anyone who comes in, we might be able to get away, or at least get a message to SHADO through the satellite links. That is, if the aliens don't take us back to their homeworld first." He refused to mention the other possibility; that they might find it simpler to just kill her now, rather than go to the trouble of keeping her alive for longer than necessary.
"How can we escape let alone get back to Earth?"
He grasped her wrist, his voice serious but with a ring of truth. "It's just a case of finding a way out. We now have a chance Helen, a very slight one, but a chance nonetheless. We just have to wait for the opportunity."
She leaned against the wall. "So we just wait?"
"First I need to work out why we've been brought here." He paused. "FarSight isn't due to be come into operation for another month or so and there should be construction workers about. How a group of aliens can be here is anyone's guess." He wrapped his arms around his knees, concern creasing his forehead, the blanket slipping.
She reached behind his back and pulled it up, tucking it round his shoulders. "If Fitzpatrick's behind all this then maybe he's got something to do with it. Maybe he's handed FarSight over to the aliens as a staging post. A base camp. Ready for their attack on Earth?" She had meant the comment to be almost in jest, a throwaway remark, but he swore under his breath and stared at her.
"That's it. That's what he's done. It explains everything – why I could never get through to FarSight, why Alec never contacted me. I thought Alec couldn't be bothered getting in touch with me, thought he had – " He held his breath. "Is he still alive? I don't know."
"We had no reports from Keith Ford to say anything happened to Alec Freeman. He's probably back on Earth now, being watched by Fitzpatrick." Helen tried to reassure him but it was difficult. She was aware of the close friendship between the two men, and had read the background details in Alec Freeman's file file. If Freeman was dead, Ed Straker might lose any hope and and she wanted him to be alert and angry and ready to fight. She needed him to work out a way to escape this hell-hole, because she was not going to die in some god-forsaken sterile dome, thousands of miles from home. "I hope you know how to get us out of here, Commander."
"Alec kept a diary whenever he went to Moonbase." Straker frowned. "If his clothes are still here, his diary might also be here. It could give us an insight into what's been going on here. You'll need to search for it. Knowing Alec, he'll have hidden it out of sight."
"First, you put on that sweater and get warm. In fact, you should lie down for a while; even get some sleep if possible. You look dreadful." She folded her arms.
"I'll be fine. Just see if you can find Alec's diary." He fixed her with a stare of disapproval. "Well?"
But she was determined to win."No. You need to get some rest." She turned her back on him, moving away. She could hear his muttered complaints as he eased himself, unaided, off the floor, the blanket falling off his shoulders once more, before he sat down on the edge of the cabin bed. He picked Alec's cashmere sweater and looked at it, a grim look tinged with concern.
"Let me give you a hand." And before he could object she had slipped it over his head. It was too large, but that was no bad thing; it would make it easier to get it over the makeshift bandage. He gritted his teeth and she felt his muscles tense when she helped him lift his arm, but, once he had it on, he relaxed and lay back on the pillows, watching her as she started inspecting the small cubicle.
"What's this button? Oh." The door on the other wall slid open, startling her. The opening revealed a tiny bathroom serving the room on the other side as well. "Do you think we might be able to get out through the other room?"
"I doubt it. They'll have locked that door as well. There must be other ways to escape." He shivered as if recalling an unpleasant memory. "I think they might be back for me soon. They're going to need to access the defence systems so that they can close SHADO down. And I'm the only person who can give them the command codes."
"But why couldn't Fitzpatrick just give them the information himself? He could have sent it to them without involving you, without needing you to give your access codes. Surely that would be much easier for him?"
"He wouldn't be able to send them from SHADO, or use any SHADO communications link. Our systems are programmed to prevent that happening. The ultimate command codes are tuned to one person and only that person can use them, by voice activation. If Fitzpatrick tried to use mine, the system would simply freeze. He could have taken over the command framework himself, but he wants me out of the way and it's the perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Straker and the command codes. Just what the aliens have always wanted, and all packaged together in one neat parcel." He lay back, eyes closing of their own accord as his body responded to the welcome sensations of warmth and rest.
She continued her search, opening drawers and rummaging through the contents, moving quietly so as not to disturb him. A couple of shirts, undergarments, socks. Another sweater, a pair of trousers. Pyjamas. And then her fingers felt the hard leather cover of a book. She pulled it out, opened it and turned to him in triumph. He was asleep, restless but eyes closed, fingers twitching on top of the blanket, the cashmere sweater with a spreading crimson stain where blood was still oozing from the gash on his arm.
She sighed, and bent to tuck the thin thermal blanket around him, remembering his comment about her fussing. She settled down on the floor in the corner where she could keep an eye on the man dozing in the cabin bed, and then she began to flick through Alec Freeman's personal account.