Quatermass by Nigel Kneale Page A

windscreen. His hands were clamped so hard on the wheel that the veins rose.
    It was a pleasant evening. In another time they might have been driving home after a drink with friends. The hour when wild creatures came out to feed, feeling the safety of dusk. Rabbits, hardly to be distinguished from stands of fat brown thistle.
    The cutout was nearly there . . .
    A screech of brakes as Kapp stamped. The waggon swerved. There was a frightened straggle of figures on the road.
    “Bloody glass, I can’t see a thing!” Kapp raged.
    Quatermass glanced back. More of them, yes, in their ragged ritual ponchos. Running. But they were too late.
    One or two of the Planet People stood staring after the waggon that had nearly hit them. Then they ran to catch up with the others.
    A small party of a dozen or so, they had only come together that day, the joining of two smaller groups. They had hardly spoken to each other, had not felt the need, their sense of purpose had been so strong. It had swelled to a kind of ecstasy, the certainty of a great wonder just ahead.
    Now it had left them.
    The fever had died. They looked in each other’s faces and found nothing.
    The girl who was leading them halted yet again. She swung her plumb-bob. They all stood watching it move in a slow circle, unchanging, offering no direction.
    One of the watchers was a girl of sixteen. Pretty to a degree, it was more a face of quirky determination that would never do what was expected of it, whether those who expected it were young or old.
    Even in her commitment she stayed uncommitted. Beneath her springy poncho she kept a small leather pouch. It hung between her breasts and in it were personal things. There was a lucky stone she had found as a child, a pebble that seemed to have something growing in it. She had kept it not for the luck but to remind her of the holiday when she had found it. There was a tiny photograph of her parents who were dead, killed in a car crash in the days when cars still ran on motorways. It had been in Germany and if she had been with them she would certainly have been killed too, she had been told. There was a ring with a tiger’s eye. It was better not to wear it. And a wadded letter she had kept less from affection than from canny sense that it might be needed some time. She had re-read it once or twice when she looked at the other things. “My dearest Hettie . . .” it began, and went on like that, an old man trying to show concern, choosing simple words in a way she had found patronising and hated him for. But then, in a low time she had cried over it, had taken it as it was meant and had forgiven the clumsiness, right down to “I remain, your loving Grandfather . . .”

6

    I t was turning full dark when Kapp pulled in by the huts. For a moment nobody spoke. It was as if they had not expected to get back here again, and were surprised.
    Scrambling out, Kapp almost fell. He was so stiff he had to jerk himself free of it. The waggon was in a bad state. The collision with the stones had buckled the whole front, forcing protective bars loose and springing welds. One mudguard was missing.
    Frank Chen came running from the hut.
    “Alison’s gone!”
    It seemed important to Frank but Kapp could hardly focus his mind. “What?”
    “I came over just now. She’s taken off.”
    It got through then.
    “The kids?”
    “They’re inside. They’re okay. But—Joe—”
    Kapp had stopped listening. The quick anxious flash was over. He was moving round to the back of the waggon to help with the injured girl. She gave a little disordered cry as she was lifted out. She clung to Clare.
    “Who’s that?” asked Chen. “Who is she?” But there was no way to begin explanations now. “You go in first,” Kapp said to his wife. “Talk to the kids. Alison’s cleared off, Frank says.”
    They could guess why.
    The children seemed to detect a strangeness in Clare as she approached them. They had been eating, she could see. Debbie’s face