different stages of rockets being prepared for take-off. Rockets that were clearly intended to propel something into space. Bond watched giant claws swing slowly back from the winged spacecraft and saw the familiar lettering on the hull: MOONRAKER. Fresh words and symbols continuously flooded on to the flickering screens and Bond realized that he was watching the pre-launch procedure not for one but for several space shuttles. He turned to Drax, who was looking about him like a bishop in a newly consecrated cathedral.
‘What the hell are you up to here, Drax?’
Drax did not deign to look at him. One of his brutish hands rose and plucked reflectively at the red fur on his face. ‘It is a convention of the fiction beloved by parlour maids that the villain explains all before disposing of his victims. I do not intend to follow that precedent.’
‘Not even the briefest elucidation, Drax?’
Drax turned away from the hustle and bustle of the control chamber and looked towards a domed glass case resting in an alcove. In Victorian days it would have contained an arrangement of small, brightly coloured stuffed birds. Now it held a beautiful black orchid, its flowers tipped with scarlet as if they had been dipped in blood. Bond recognized the slide he had been shown in Q’s workshop:
Under Jaw’s watchful eye, Bond moved to Drax’s side. ‘What about that orchid?’
Drax spoke as if to himself. ‘The curse of a civilization. It was neither pestilence nor war that wiped out the race who built the great city lying around us. It was their reverence for this lovely flower.’
Bond looked again at the bland face of the orchid. Behind its sheen of surface beauty there was an impression of evil conveyed more subtly than through its colour. The very shape of the flower suggested that of a praying mantis. ‘Come too near me and I will dev9ur you’ it seemed to say. Even within the heart of the flower there was a tiny foetal face crushed so tight that it seemed to be crying out in pain and despair, as if bemoaning a life it could never have.
‘The flower is poisonous,’ said Bond.
‘In the long term, yes,’ said Drax. ‘Exposure to its pollen causes sterility. The unfortunate Mayas never realized that. Through every crisis of their dwindling civilization they turned to worship the flower that was responsible for its destruction. Poignant, is it not?’
‘But you’ve improved on sterility haven’t you, Drax?’
Drax smiled. ‘If you choose to employ such quaint phraseology. Yes, I have. As you probably observed in Venice, those same seeds now yield death.’
‘Except to animals.’
‘And plant life as well.’ Drax spread his hands. ‘One must preserve the balance of nature. Let no one say that at heart I am not an ecologist.’ His smile was like a crack on a gravestone.
‘Moonraker launch programme now commencing.’ The voice coming over the public address system temporarily drowned the babble of voices flooding the chamber.
Drax raised his eyes to one of the screens and Bond followed them. ‘You have arrived at a propitious moment, Mr Bond.’ The voice was a contented purr. Bond saw a wide expanse of Arctic ice-cap. There was no sign of a human presence.
Another voice cut in. ‘Moonraker One. Lift off!’ Immediately the ice-cap shattered and the screen flooded with light. Through the light appeared the nose-cone of a rocket and attached to it a Moonraker shuttle. The assembly rose slowly into the air and then roared skywards, leaving a dense trail of smoke and flames. The picture changed instantly to a barren stretch of desert.
‘Moonraker Two. Lift off!’ A chatter of technicians’ voices orchestrated the appearance of a second rocket and shuttle. The final stages of the countdown flashed up on the screen, and monitors around the chamber fed back changing temperatures and pressures. Bond glanced towards Jaws. He was watching the scene, round-eyed and open-mouthed, like a child looking up at an illuminated Christmas tree.
‘Moonraker Three. Lift off!’ Now the picture changed to a range of mountains and a third rocket and Moonraker soared into the air.
Bond’s awe was nearly the equal of Jaws’s, and coupled with it was a growing sense of alarm. Why were these shuttles being put into orbit? What was Drax planning to do? All the time, at the back of Bond’s mind was the image of what he had seen at the glassworks. The two scientists sliding to the floor, their hands clutching at their throats.
The rats squeaking in their cages...
Bond glanced about him and saw that both Jaws and Drax were absorbed by what was happening on the screens. He started to edge sideways and felt something hard press into his ribs.? A guard with a sub-machine gun prodded him back banefully. Drax addressed Bond without turning his head. ‘I can understand your desire to leave us, Mr Bond. In fact, I endorse it. However, you will go when
Bond read the message on Jaws’s gleaming teeth and turned back to the screens. He was now looking at a Pacific atoll. Palm trees shuddered and then disappeared from view as a dazzling effulgence blazed across the monitors. Bond was reminded uneasily of another Pacific atoll. ‘We have lifted off,’ said a satisfied voice over the public address system, and the blazing tail of the rocket disappeared out of the top of the picture. A dense cloud of smoke began to clear and the agitated palms stopped having hysterics. The screen suddenly went blank.
‘Four shuttles in space?’ queried Bond.
‘Six,’ said Drax shortly. He turned towards a technician sitting before a cathode-ray tube on which circles of light were converging towards a glowing centre which throbbed at one-second intervals. The technician spoke into a chest microphone. ‘Moonraker Five on pre-set launch programme. Minus ten.’
The countdown began to be projected on to the console in electronic script as another technician spoke into his microphone.
‘Moonraker Six on pre-set launch programme. Minus two zero.’
Bond turned to Drax. ‘Tell me one thing. The Moonraker that was on its way to London and disappeared over Alaska. You hijacked that, didn’t you?’
