SF TITLES SPECIALLY SELECTED TO APPE,2. IN


CORGI

SF COLLECTOR'S

LIBRARY


THE SHAPE OF FURTHER THINGS by Brian W. Aldiss*

BAREFOOT IN THE HEAD by Brian W. Aldiss*

BILLION YEAR SPREE by Brian W. Aldiss*

INTANGIBLES INC. by Brian W. Aldiss'

FANTASTIC VOYAGE by Isaac Asimov*

FAHRENHEIT 4-5 by Ray Bradbury*

THE GOLDEN APPLES OF THE SUN by Ray Bradbury*

THE ILLUSTRATED MAN by Ray Bradbury*

DANDELION WINE by Ray Bradbury'

THE SILVER LOCUSTS by Ray Bradbury*

I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC by Ray Bradbury?

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES by Ray Bradburyt

REPORT O PLANET THREE by Arthur C. Clarke*

THE CITY Ax'WD THE STARS by Arthur C. Clarke*

THE WIND FROM THE SUN by Arthur C. Clarke*

REACH FOR TOMORROW by Arthur C. Clarke*

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SKY by Arthur C. Clarke*

TALES OF TEN WORLDS by Arthur C. Clarke*

THE LION OF COMARRE by Arthur C. ClarkeJ'

THE MENACE FROM EARTH by Robert Heinlein*

A FOR ANDROMEDA by Fred Hoyle and John Elliot*

A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ by Walter Miller*

DRAGONFLIGHT by Anne McCaffrey*

THE INNER LANDSCAPE by Peake/Ballard/Aldiss*

EAP, TH ABIDES by George Stcwart*

MORE THAN HUMAN by Theodore Sturgeon*

THE DREAMING JEWEL,S by Theodorc Smrgcon*

oo,ooo LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA by Jules VerneJ'

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME
	by H. G. Wells*


* and published by Corgi Books

J' to be published by Corgi Books

Fred Hoyle &
John Elliot


Andromeda Breakthrough


CGRGI BOOKS

A DIVISION, OF TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS LTD

ANDROMEDA BREAKTHROUGH
A CORGI BOOK o 5509939

Originally published in Great Britain
by Souvenir Press

PRINTING HISTORY
Souvenir Press Edition published x 964
Corgi Edition published 1966
Corgi Edition reissued x975

The events and characters
described in this book
are entire&fictitious

This book is based on the
BBC Television serial of the
same name and is published by
arrangement with the
British Broadcasting Corporation

© Copyright 1964 by Professor Fred Hoyle
and John Elliot. All rights reserved

Conditions of sale
: This book is sold subject to the condition that it
shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold,
hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than
that in which it is published and without a similar
condition icluding this condition being imposed on
the subsequent purchaser. e: This book is sold subject to the Standard Conditions of
Sale of Net Books and may not be re-sold in the U.K.
below the net price fxed by the publishers for the book.

This book is set in o/x x pt Baskerville (Intertype)

Corgi Books are published by Transworld Publishers Ltd.,
Cavendish House, 57-59 Uxbridge Road,
Eating, London, W.5.
Made and printed in Great Britain by
Hunt Barnard Printing Ltd., Aylesbury, Bucks.

Contents


Outlook Unsettled 7
Cold Front 3°

Gale Warning 48
Squall Lines 65
Sunny and Warm 80
Cyclone 92


	Storm Centre
	xo7


	Forecast 22


Depression 37
Vortex I53
Tornado 68
Clear Sky x89

CHAPTER ONE

OUTLOOK UNSETTLED

Ta, alarm signal buzzed quietly but insistently above Captain
Pennington's head, a discreet echo of the bell jangling
outside the guard room across the parade ground of the
headquarters unit No. 173 Marine Commando.
Pennington groped for the bedlight switch and sat up. He
stared uncomprehendingly at the vibrating clapper arm.
In every officer's room were these little buzzers. They
were painted red; they existed for No. I alert. It was
accepted that a No. I would in reality mean only one thing:
notification of the seven minutes the ballistics people had worked out as the breathing space before World War Three
came and went.
Captain Pennington heaved himself out of bed. He was
conscious of running feet as the Marine Commandos
observed their long-taught procedure. The bedside phone
rang as he was struggling into his denims.
'Major Quadring,' came the abrupt, clipped voice. 'Sorry
about the panic measures. Orders from Whitehall. It's not
the big thing, so ease up. But it's bad enough. Thorness.
Major fire. Probably sabotage. Can't be sure that the trouble
isn't sea-borne. Hence the S.O.S. to your boys.'
'Thorness!' Pennington repeatet. 'But that's the kingpin

'Exactly. Save your mental reactions till later. Get over
here within an hour. Four groups, with amphibians and
frogmen, of course. I'll be at the gates to get you through.
Tell your men not to fool around. The guards here won't be
waiting to ask questions.'
The phone clicked dead. Pennington checked his assault
kit and ran from the officers' barrack hut into a night of
soft-falling snow. He could make out shadowy figures of the
men already standing to by their trucks and amphibious
vehicles, the engines ticking over. Not a light showed.
7


'Right,' he called loudly through the darkness. 'You'll be
glad to know that this isn't it. Nor is it just a dummy run.
Some real bother at the rocket station down at Thorness. I
know no More than you, though we're going because there's
probably a sea job to do. You can, of course, use headlights.
I'll set the rate; we ought to average fifty. Keep the intercom
channel open till I order otherwise. Carry on!'
A Land-Rover wheeled round and stopped beside him. He
got in. Orders snapped out and the Marines got aboard their
trucks. Pennington nodded to his driver and they roared
through the gates.
They had a forty-five mile run from their base to the
lonely promontory nosing into the Atlantic on which Thorness
had been built as the nerve centre of Britain's rocket
testing range. The whole area had been cleared of civilians,
and the twisting, undulating road straightened and levelled
for the articulated rocket carriers and fuel tankers. Penning-ton
made the trip in precisely 55 minutes.
The main gates between the barbed-wire-festooned chain
link fencing were shut. Guards with automatic guns stood
under the floodlights. Dobermann Pincher dogs sat, immovable
and alert, beside them. At the sound of the convoy
Major Quadring came out of the concrete guard post with
an N.C.O. Quadring was a lithe officer of middle-age,
smartly dressed and unruffled. After a glimpse at the Commando
identity marks on Pennington's vehicle he gave
orders for the gates to be opened.
'Pull into the parking bay to the left,' he said as Penning-ton
jumped down. 'Tell your chaps to relax, but to remain
with the vehicles. Then come on in here. I'll put you in the
picture. Over a cup of char - laced, of course.'
Beyond the floodlights at the entrance a double necklace
of lamps edging the main road of the camp strung away into
the misty night. The snow had stopped and what had fallen
was melting into slush, so that the ground was dark, and the
shapes of the camp buildings were dark, too, except where
emergency lights were shining at windows.
Faintly inside the compound there was another smudge of
light, where mobile lamps were trained on the main computer
building, and a heavier pall - which was smoke - hung, 8

smelling sulphurous, among the mist. Quadring led Penning-ton
across the concrete into the guard hut.
Only in the light of the unshaded bulb of the guard room
was it evident that Quadring was a worried man. His face
was grey with fatigue and strain, and he tipped an over-liberal
portion of rmn into his own mug of tea.
'I'm sorry about a sortie on a night like this to this Godforsaken
place. I think Whitehall and Highland Zone overdid
it a bit with that No. I alarm and excursion, but then
I'm only a simple soldier. They know better than I what's
involved, though even to my un-technical mind this is a
bloody business.'
He refused Pennington's offer of a cigarette and began
ramming tobacco into a blackened pipe. 'The sea mist has
closed in like a blanket down on the coastline. You drop
from the station right into cotton wool. Not a damned inch
in front of your nose. It'll lift with dawn, probably with rain
or sleet. I tell you, it's a nice place.
'Someone or something attacked this place about four
hours ago, and destroyed its brain. Which means, if my job
here is as vital as they tell me, that old Lady Britannia is
stripped of power, wealth, and about everything the politicians
were banking on.'
Pennington looked at him sceptically. 'Frankly sir, you're
over-dramatising things, aren't you ? I mean, everyone knows Thorness is a rocket testing base, and where they run the
computers which made those I.B.M. interceptions such a
wow. Surely the machines aren't unique. The Yanks and
the rest of N.A.T.O .... '
'The machines were unique,' Quadring answered. 'If you
commandeered every computer in commercial or Government
use in the country they wouldn't amount to More than
a cash register compared with the scientific toy that's now a
tangled mess of valves and wires and smouldering insulation.
Nor does the rocket side matter all that much.'
Pennington drained his rum and tea, easing himself on the
hard wooden chair. 'Of course, I've heard stone pretty
bizarre accounts of the sidelines here,' he said with a grin.
'It's pub gossip. That sort of thing was bound to start
rumours.'
9

'But nothing as good as the truth,' Quadring said. 'I've

had an okay from G.D.1 to put you vaguely in the picture.
Your boozing pals in the bar parlour haven't burbled anything
about the Daw-nay Experiment in their cups, have
they ?'

'The Dawnay Experiment?' Pennington repeated. 'No sir.'

'I'd never have believed my security was so good,' the
Major grinned.

He re-lit his pipe and sucked gratefully at it a while.
'This Dawnay woman's a sort of de-sexed biochemical
genius from Edinburgh, though I admit I found her
pleasant person before she fell ill, through some infection
from her own work, poor old girl. And so far as I can understand
it, the computer helped her to synthesise cttromosomes,
which you no doubt learned when you were told about the
birds and the bees being the seeds of life.

'She obviously hadn't much of a clue as to what it was all
about, beyond the fact that the formulae spewed from the

computer made sense. But the upshot was a human embryo.'
'Human ?'

'That's what they say. I agree it's a nice point. It grew

like fun - or rather she did, for the organs of sex were there
- and in four months she was 5 ft 7 ins tall and weighed
123 lb. The report is good on pointless and harmless facts.'

Pennington tried to look amused. 'Was this zombie, robot,

or whatever she was, still in some sort of enlarged test tube,

fixed in a clamp, or what?'

'Not a zombie by any means,' Quadrlng retorted. 'They
called her human, because she looked human, behaved like
a human, had human intelligence and human physical
abilities. Though not, I gather, human instincts or emotions
until she was taught them. In fact a rather pretty girl. I
know. I've met her dozens of times.'

'The people who know abott all this and have to look

after her must have a feeling of revulsion,' Pennington said
thoughtfully. 'I mean, a thing produced in a lab... '

'Don't kid yourself, and don't just take my word for it.
Everyone accepts her as an attractive girl. But a very special
girl. Dawnay built her, but she was only the artisan. The
design came from the computer, and it saw to it that she was

10

tailor-made for its purpose. She absorbs knowledge from the
computer, and the machine needs her to programme it, or
rather, did do so.'
'Did?'
'She's gone.'
'You mean she's disappeared?'
Quadring looked into the dark congealed mess in the
bowl of his pipe. 'That's exactly what I do mean.'
Pennington laughed, a little too loudly. 'Perhaps she didn't
exist! I mean, I don't think one can really believe in a manufactured
human being with a mental rapport with a computer.'
'We service types aren't paid to think,' said Quadring.
'Right now our job is to find her, and whoever destroyed the
computer. It could hardly have been an outside job. It was
done too expertly and quickly. The building was burning
nicely by the time the patrols called me and had bashed
through the locked doors and plied their extinguishers. Anyway,
there wasn't a lot of point. The computer had been well
and truly damaged with an axe before the arson. Security
checks have told us one thing so far: the girl - she's called
Andre, after Andromeda, the star or whatever it is that's
alleged to have transmitted the dope for the computer - is
missing, along, with a scientist named John Fleming.'
'Anything known about him ?'
'He's marked with a query on the files.' Nothing definite.
But he's the usual sort of bright young genius who thinks he
knows better than the Establishment. The story is that he'd
fallen for the girl. And she sort, of depended on him for
advice the computer didn't or wouldn't give. They were
certainly always together - at work and off it.'
'So they might be together now?'
'Exactly. At first light, if the mist clears, you and your
boys start looking. Some half-asleep guard down at the. jetty
thinks he saw a man and a woman get in a boat and head out
to sea just before the alarm siren started.'
'They could have landed anywhere along the coast by
now,' Pennington said.
'Not in that boat. It's known it hadn't More than a gallon
of petrol. It's just a little outboard effort for pottering along
11

the promontory to check the defences. They'd make one of
the islets off the coast, no farther.'
'What about a rendezvous out at sea?'
Quadring glanced at his companion. 'A snatch by our old
friend a Foreign Power?' He shrugged. 'It could be. The
Navy got the alarm along with you. Destroyers and aircraft
by now will have started combing the Western approaches
and away up North for two innocent-looking fishing trawlers
and blatantly neutral tramps. But our radar watch would
have picked up anything bigger than a rowing boat.
'My bet is they'll find nothing. Maybe you won't either.
But with this sort of weather a little open boat isn't exactly
healthy. The island makes the best of some poor bets.'
Quadring stood up and looked through the window.
'Time to get moving,' he said. 'And I've a tricky report to
write onmy incompetence to date.'
There was an almost imperceptible lifting of the blackness
of the sky when Pennington walked across to the parking lot.
The men were smoking and talking in undertones. Penning-ton
told them briefly that a couple of suspected saboteurs, a
man and a girl, were believed to have escaped by boat either
to land farther up the coast or on one of the islands in the
vicinity.
'They're wanted alive - not dead,' he finished. 'So no
rough stuff. They're not believed to be armed, and there's no
real reason why they should be unpleasant. The girl is - er a
particularly vital witness. We'll get down to the jetty and
arrange sweep and search routine from there.'
They had to hang around at the water's edge for another
half hour for daylight. The mist began slowly to lift tike a
vast curtain, exposing first the grey sullen sea and then, a
couple of miles out, the lower slopes of the nearest island
with patches of snow still smudged against the northern
sides.
Their landing was an anti-climax. Pennington was in the
leading amphibian when he saw the figure of a man standing
motionless on the shingle beach of the island. He didn't move
when the vehicle lumbered out of the water and pulled up
beside him.
12

'My name's Fleming,' he muttered. 'I expected you.'
He was a tallish, well-built man in his early thirties with a
handsome but haggard face. His hair was wet and matted
with sand, and his clothes torn and muddy. He stood quite
still, as if exhausted.
'You must consider yourself under arrest,' Pennington
said. 'And the girl who came with you?'
Fleming continued to stare out to sea. 'I lost contact with
her when I was looking for shelter. She wandered off. There
are footmarks. They end at a cave entrance. There's a deep
pool inside.'
'She - she's killed herself?' Pennington demanded, mystified.
Fleming rounded on him. 'They killed her. The whole
damned circus which used her.' He became calmer. 'She was
hurt, badly hurt. If she slipped into that water she wouldn't
have had a chance. Her hands - well, her hands were '
'We'll dive in the pool; drag it,' said Pennington.
Fleming looked at him with something like pity. 'You do
that,' he said. 'Your bosses will demand their pound of flesh,
drowned if they can't have it alive.'
Pennington called to a Marine. 'Take Dr Fleming back to
the mainland. Hand him over to Major Quadring. Tell the
Major we're staying here to search the island.'
The direct line between Thorness and the Ministry of
Science in Whitehall had been busy since the news of the
disaster to the computer had been flashed to the duty officer
just after midnight. :
The Minister himself had arrived at his office at the
unheard-of hour of 9 a.m. He used a side door in case some
observant reporter got the idea of a crisis. Rather to his
annoyance, he found his Personal and Private Secretary,
Brian Fothergill, already there, looking his usual calm and
elegant self.
'Good morning, Minister,' he said affably. 'A nasty morning.
The roads were quite icy.'
'To hell with the icy roads,' the Minister muttered pettishly.
'What I want is some information about this Thorness
business. Defence woke me at five. I didn't worry the P.M.
13

for an hour. He took it badly, very badly. He's arranging a
Cabinet for eleven. We must have useful material for him,
Fothergill. If not a solution. I suppose we're still in as much
of a fog as that bloody place in the Highland mists?
Fothergill delicately laid a neatly typed sheet of quarto
on the Minister's desk. 'Not completely, sir,' he murmured,
'as you will gather from this precis of the position. It's a preliminary,
of course, all that I've been able to compile in the' - he glanced at his wafer-thin wrist watch - 'seventy-five
minutes since I inaugurated an investigation.'
'For God's sake,' snapped the Minister irritably, 'drop that
ghastly jargon. What you mean is that you've been nagging
everyone for something to put down here. I hope you got the
whole crew out of their beds.'
The Minister read quickly through the report. 'Good,
good,' he nodded, 'as far as it goes. Which actually means
bad, bad. Not your fault, Brian,' he added hurriedly. 'You
are to be congratulated on the energy with which you have
gone round in circles. But there are features of interest.'
He re-read the report.
'The computer's gone. The girl's gone. The months of
recording of the Andromeda equations by the radio-telescope
at Bouldershaw Fell have gone. Somebody named Fleming
whom I recall as an untidy and self-opinionated upstart has
gone too. He gave me the impression when I met him that he
drank. Which probably means he womanises too. I suspect
that there's the usual tawdry sexual undercurrent in this
debacle. However, that's a matter for M.I.6 and their confreres
at the Yard. They must find them. More interesting is
this note that our colleague Osborne visited Thorness yesterday
evening.'
He looked up and glanced blandly at Fothergill. 'Where is
Osborne? Missing, I presume?'
Fothergill permitted himself a moment's hesitation before
he replied. 'No, sir, I have located hkn. He caught the overnight
sleeper which arrived at Euston half an hour ago. I
took it upon myself to request his immediate presence here in
your name.'
'Quite right. And I'll put him through the hoop. These
civil servants in the permanent jobs think themselves unan-
14

swerable to anyone.' The Minister cleared his throat. He
realised he was infringing convention in openly criticising
the Department's Permanent Under Secretary to a junior.
'That will be all, Fothergill, for the moment. Show
Osborne in as soon as he arrives. And don't let me be late
for that 11 o'clock Cabinet. I shall need you at 10.30 to take
my memorandum.'
Fothergill faded noiselessly away. The Minister had time
to ascertain a few More facts before Osborne was announced.
As a senior civil servant the Under Secretary was permitted,
even encouraged, to keep in personal contact with the
Thorness project. But why this visit on the previous day?
And why, as the Thorness guard room record book showed,
had he signed in a visitor, name not given?
The thought of some espionage scandal directly affecting
the Ministry of Science built up his fury to a zenith by the
time Osborne entered immediately after he had knocked.
The Minister glowered at him. 'Who was this chap you
took to Thorness with you?' he asked without preamble.
'An assistant,' Osborne answered shortly.
The Minister was determined to keep his temper if he
could. 'Why did you take him?' he demanded. 'What did you
need an assistant for on this nocturnal visit?'
Osborne seemed to discover something of tremendous
interest on the Minister's desk. 'It is essential for him to be in
the picture,' he murmured.
The Minister got up from his chair and crossed to the
window. He felt uneasy at the calmness of this man, and
knew that there would be little chance of getting at the truth
unless he could disturb his calm. Right now the only person
in danger of losing his temper was himself.
'He didn't leave a bomb, I suppose?'
He knew it was the wrong approach. Whatever unethical
views Osborne might hold, he wasn't the kind to help in
violence. 'All right, of course he didn't,' he went on hastily.
'But you know what this means, don't you?'
He moved from the window and confronted Osborne.
'We've lost our national capital, all of it. The computer's
gone. The girl's gone. Even the original message which the
Bouldershaw telescope picked up has gone. There's no
15

chance of starting again. From being a first class power, with
the know-how for unassailable defence plus all the potential
for industrial supremacy we're now relegated to a second-rate
power; third-rate in fact.'
Osborne turned his gaze from the desk and looked mildly
at his inquisitor. His silence infuriated the Minister still More .
'Once in a million years,' he pointed out, 'or probably
longer, a planet gets a Christmas present from another
planet. And what does some dam' fool do? They go and
burn it.'
Once again he crossed to the window and looked down on
the traffic in Whitehall.
'Were they fools?'
Osborne's comment was not More than a murmured question.
'We'll be back on American aid by the end of the year,'
the Minister retorted.
'At least America's a boss you can understand,' Osborne
suggested. 'This Andromeda infmxnation we had to take on
its face value. The results seemed splendid. But who understood
what it was all about? From somewhere in that dying
and half-dead spiral nebula of Andromeda comes a briefing
that makes no sense to anyone but a computer - and a freak
girl; and maybe one honest-to-God human scientist.'
'You mean Fleming,' the Minister said.
Osborne ignored him. 'Given that an intelligence in some
recess of space sends us a stream of technical data which
enables us obediently to make an anthromorphic creature to
run its machine, who's honestly going to believe that the
whole business is for our benefit and not theirs?'
The Minister lighted a cigarette. He could not help but be
a little impressed with the argument. 'Is that what Fleming
thought?' he asked.
'That it was an attempted take-over? Yes. I'm not saying
he did blow the computer to pieces, but if he did I for one
don't blame him. I thank God it didn't fall into anyone else's
hands.'
The Minister was a simple-minded man. He disliked arguments
about ethics. People were better off when they only
16

did what they were told. 'My country right or wrong, my
mother drunk or sober' was a motto he had heard when he
was a boy. He thought it rather good..
'Whose side are you on, Osborne ?'
Osborne gave him a bland smile. 'The losing one, usually,
Minister.'
His chief snorted in disgust. 'I had hoped you would have
had something useful to contribute. I was wrong. Perhaps
Geers has bestirred himself enough to discover what the
hell's been going on at the place he's supposed to be the
director of.'
The Minister switched on his intercom and told a secretary
to get Thorness on the line. Osborne took it as a gesture
of dismissal. He walked slowly from the office. He was privatdy
rather surprised that he was still a free man. Never
before in his precisely-planned and sedate career as a civil
servant had he allowed his feelings to colour his sense of
duty. Yet, in view of what had happened, he felt no regret
whatever. He had, in fact, helped Fleming, and he was only
concerned that no one should be able to prove it.
As he returned down the corridor to his own office he
permitted himself a smile of amusement at a mental picture
of Geers on this morning of crisis.
Geers was a careerist. As Director of Thorness he was the
fair-haired glory boy of the Ministries of Defence and
Science. He had adroitly swung over to enthusiasm for the
Dawnay Experiment after several days of obstinate obstruction
in favour of rocketry. Geers was a man who knew which
side his bread was buttered. He had virtually achieved the
pleasurable miracle of having it buttered on both sides.
But away up in Scotland Geers was now presenting the
picture of a victimlsed and harassed autocrat. Despite the
frantic messages to his quarters during the night he had
dressed as slowly and as carefully as usual, his shirt collar
uncomfortably stiff and his tie pulled tight into a small neat
knot. But the impression of dignified pomposity which he
considered essential for a key man in the nation's scientific
technocracy was marred by the hunted look in his tired eyes
behind their glasses, the black sheen of an inadequate shave,
and the nervous tautness of his mouth.
17

He sat at his vast stainless steel desk, bereft of papers, but
festooned with telephones, and glared at the visitors he had
smnmoned - Fleming and Dawnay.
Madeleine Dawnay sat in the one easy chair near the window.
Her rather mannish face was parchment yellow and her
eyes were dull with fatigue and illness. She had pulled her
dressing gown tightly round her emaciated body, missing the
even warmth of the sick bay. Gratefully she sipped from a
cup of coffee Greers' secretary had brought her.
Her eyes moved thoughtfully from Geers to Fleming, who
lolled against the office partition. She said nothing, despite
the glance of appeal Geers made to her.
'I've got the whole of Whitehall round my neck,Geers
said plaintively. 'The Minister of Defence is on the blower
every five minutes, and half the senior staff at Science are
badgerin me, and I don't even know what happened.'
Dawnay put her coffee carefully on the window sill. The
slight physical action seemed an effort. 'I don't know what's
happened either,' she said quietly.
'Osborne arrived at the station just after ten. With someone
else. The public relations girl took them to the computer
room. God knows why, but then I'm only the Director here.
Afterwards, when Osborne and his guest had booked out, the
duty operator locked up for the night.'
'And Osborne went back to London?' Fleming looked
better now; he had had a shave and a bath, and his usual
casual slacks and wool shirt and sweater were at least moderately
clean. He seemed now More despondent than tired, but
there were strain marks around his eyes and at the corners of
his mouth.
'Yes,' said Geers. 'No one else went in to the computer
block after that, except the girl, Andromeda. After she'd
been there some time the guard corporal thought he smelt
burning. He went into the main control room and found the
place a perfect shambles and full of smoke.'
'And where was Andre?' Dawnay asked.
'Got out through the emergency exit, according to the
corporal. Anyway, she or someone dropped a glove. A man's
glove.'
18

He turned and looked at Fleming, suddenly displaying a
leather gauntlet taken from the desk drawer. 'Yours?'
Fleming did not trouble to look.
'So you know it all,' Geers said. 'Only two people know,
you and the girl. The girl's dead.'
Fleming nodded. With maddening slowness he repeated:
'The girl's dead. So that's that.'
'Not quite,' said Geers angrily. 'You have some questions
to answer. You're the only person, Fleming, who wanted the
computer destroyed. You always have. I can tell you that
your security file is full of instances when you've shot off
your mouth about it. In that I'm glad to say you're unique.
Others have a better sense of loyalty, More vision.'
Dawnay protested. 'I think some of us were beginning to
have doubts.'
Geers turned and stared at her unbelievingly. He was
about to speak when the intercom buzzed.
'Major Quadring is here, sir,' came his secretary's voice.
'He has the Marine Commando report on the island search.'
'Right,' Geers told her. 'I'll see him in his office.'
He rose and crossed to the door. 'You're to stay here,
Fleming,' he ordered. Less brusquely he told Dawnay that he
would try not to keep her much longer.
When the door closed Fleming moved across the office and
stood close to Dawnay, looking out of the window.
'He's no business to drag you into all this,' he said. 'You're
not well enough yet.'
She laughed shortly. 'I'm all right. I'm a tough old bird. I
must be, or I wouldn't be here. Bu tell me, John, what really
happened? You did it, didn't you?'
He kept on looking out of the window. 'You don't want
to be saddled with this.'
'I don't,' she agreed, 'but as I'm involved whether I like it
or not I'll just say that you can trust me if you want to trust
anyone. Osborne must have smuggled you in. Then you and
the girl destroyed it.'
'The girl's dead.'
There was a break in his voice which surprised her. In her
experience John Fleming easily got emotional about principles,
ideals, wrongs. But seldom about people.
19

'Anyway,' she said quietly. 'There's no one, no one, to give
evidence against you.'
Before he could answer Geers returned. He was grim but
pleased with himself. Major Quadring had brought useful
information.
Deliberately he took time to seat himself at his desk before
he spoke.
'Right, Fleming; right,' he barked.
'Right what?' enquired Fleming lazily.
'What happened when you got to the island?'
Fleming ambled around the desk. 'Why ask me when
obviously the snoops have told you? But I'll confirm what
they have undoubtedly said. We got into the caves and I lost
her. They're big caves. We had no torch. She blundered into
a dead-end with a deep pool. That was it. Poor bloody kid.'
Dawnay noted the break in his voice again. 'I thought you
held Andre wasn't human,' she observed.
'Human enough to drown.'
'Are you sure she fell in?' Geers asked susplciously.
'Of course I'm sure,' Fleming snapped. 'Quadring told
you that they'd found the bandages off her hands, didn't he?
Or was that one bit of his smug little report he forgot to
give? Or were those jolly Marines so dumb they didn't think
them worth picking up ?'
Geers studied Fleming in silence, taking his time so that he
could be certain of noting any reaction. 'I have news for
you, Fleming, if it is news in your case. They've both dived
and dragged the pool. There's no body.'
There was no doubt about Fleming's surprise. 'She must
be in there,' he shouted. 'I traced her into that part of the caves. They've not dragged properly. There's no other way
out. I searched thoroughly.'
'So Quadring says,' Geers murmured. His briskness had
gone. He had hoped to bluster a confession from Fleming.
But Fleming was obviously dumbfounded.
'She can't get off the island, and as it's been under constant
survey since daylight that mean's she's somewhere in
the caves. I'm going to look for myself. It's the only way to
get things done in this damned situation.'
'I'll take you,' said Fleming firmly.
20

'No, that won't do,' Geers retorted. 'You're under arrest.'
'Only on your instructions.'
'Let him,' Dawnay interrupted. 'He knows the place. He
wants to find Andre far More even than you.'
With bad grace Geers agreed and the two men went off to
get into warm clothes and seaboots.
Fleming was authorised to draw torches and a high-pressure
lamp, and to fuel an outboard motor boat. Within
half an hour they were crossing the two mile of angry water
to the island. Neither said a word on the trip. Geers sat
hunched in the middle of the boat staring at the silhouette of
the rocky islet rising out of the mist. Fleming sat at the stem
holding the tiller.
He beached the boat on the shingle right opposite the
mouth of the cave.
Geers waded through the surf while Fleming heaved the
boat clear of deep water. They clambered through the steep
shingle at high tide mark and moved to the mouth of the
cave. Gulls wheeled and called at this invasion of their
private kingdom, but the silence inside the cavern made a
weird contrast to the screaming birds and the rhythmic hiss
of the breaking waves.
'Sure this is the way you came?' Geers asked, moving
cautiously forward in the wavering light of the lamp and
Fleming's torch.
'Sure,' grunted Fleming. 'You automatically memorise this
sort of thing just to make sure you don't forget the way out.'
He directed his beam of torchlight along a narrow sloping.
passage which curved to the right. 'There's the way to the
chamber with the pool. You can see the Commando's footsteps
in the sand.'
Geers began to move forward, shining the lamp on the
disturbed sand. He stopped abruptly when he sensed that
Fleming was not following. 'Where are you going?' he called.
Fleming was moving to the left. 'I'm taking a look down
this passage. There's another pool in here too.'
'You think they dragged the wrong one?' Geers asked.
'No. Even Quadring and that Marine Officer aren't that
stupid.'
21

Geers turned back. 'I don't know what your idea is, but I'm coming to see. We'll look at the other pool afterwards.'
The passage dropped steeply, and the aperture became
smaller. Fleming crouched low and moved steadily ahead.
Geers, trying to keep up with him, caught his boot on a
boulder and fell headlong. He grunted with pain as a jagged
rock caught his shoulder.
-Fleming turned and shone his torch on him. 'Hurt yourself?
It's tricky if you haven't done much caving. Wait here
while I take a look at the pool. I won't be long.'
Geers got up awkwardly and took a few steps back to the
wider part of the passage. Fleming's footsteps echoed softly
but clearly along the cave walls, getting fainter and fainter.
For a full minute there was the cold, dead silence of a
lifeless world. Then, to his right in the direction of the main
cavern, came the hard, clear sound of a stone moving across
the rock face. It dropped with a dull plop into water. Geers
froze into immobility, instinctively holding his breath.
Another stone fell into the water, and then the rasp of several
pebbles.
Geers' reaction was a mixture of excitement and fear. The
fear won. He dared not move by himself. He yelled for
Fleming.
His voice was a falsetto, and the urgency brought Fleming
back as fast as he could clamber up the slope.
'Hi I' he said. 'What's up?'
'Didn't you hear anything? Find anything?' Geers demanded.
'It's a deep pool, like the other. I think it's just behind the
rock face of the main cavern. When you get deep pools like
these in cave holes they are sometimes connected at the base
- like a U-tube. What goes in one may come out of the
other.'
'But nothing has?'
Fleming shook his head.
'No, but a body could be caught at the bottom. They'd
better drag the second pool as well.'
Geers shivered, though it was not as cold in the cave as
outside. 'Not a nice death, even for a creature,' he muttered. More loudly he asked, 'Did you throw stones into the pool.
22

Fleming shone his torch on the other's face. 'No,' he
answered. 'Why do you ask?'

At that moment there again came the faint noise of moving
pebbles. In the echoing and re-echoing of the tiniest
sound it was almost impossible to identify the direction of the
noise.

'There it is again. The noise. Stones moving,' whispered
Geers.
'Dislodged by me, and still not settled. It always happens.'
Geers wasn't satisfied. He moved a step or so along the
right hand passage, the light from his lamp swinging along
the sides of the pool cavern. The rocks were wet and grey,
with here and there pyrites glistening as the light caught
them.

Fleming also switched on his torch and the beam reached
right across the pool where the rock face curved gently into a
rounded surface at the edge of the water. In a recess the light
caught and held a blob of white.

'What is it?' whispered Geers, clutching at his companion's

ariTl.

Fleming shook off Geers' hand and moved forward. The
torch beam probed into the crevice.

'What is it?' Geers repeated urgently.

'Her, of course. Give me a hand to get her out.'

Fleming eased forward, cautiously seeking a foothold on
the slimy rock. Geers did not follow.

'At least play the light so I can see,' Fleming shouted
angrily.

When he reached Andre he thought she was dead. Her
dress was saturated and clinging to her body. She felt stone
cold as Fleming put his hands under the waist and shoulders
to half-lift half-drag her back.

Difficult as the job was, he realised how little she weighed,
how fragile this man-made [emina sapiens was.

Gently he laid her on the dry sand at Geers' feet, leaning
against the rock face while he gasped for air. Geers stood
transfixed.

'Is she... ?' he whispered, placing the lamp on the ground
so it illuminated the girl's face. She looked like the death-figure
of a young goddess, slim and fair and palely beautiful.

23

Fleming squatted down and pulled up an eyelid. The blue
iris seemed sightless. There was no visible contraction as the
light caught it. He groped on the ice-cold wrist for the sign of
pulsation. There was a tremor of movement. He could not be
sure whether it was in his own fingers or proof that Andre
still lived.
'I'm not a doctor, so I can't be sure. But I think there's a
flicker. She once said she had a better constructed heart than
humans.'
Fleming once More put his hands under her shoulders and
pulled her to a sitting position. When the upper part of her
body was upright her head fell forward. And she moaned.
'She is alive,' shouted Geers exultantly.
'Just.' With his free hand Fleming fumbled in his jacket
pocket and pulled out a flask.
'Try a drop of the hard stuff, duckie,' he said. With his
teeth he unscrewed the cap.
'You shouldn't force her to drink alcohol. It's a fallacy
that - '
'To hell with your boy scouts' first aid rules! Here, my
sweet,' he murmured to the girl, 'it's the real McCoy.'
He let a few drops of whisky seep through Andre's pale,
clenched lips.
Not daring to move, both men waited for the reaction. It
came gradually. The lips relaxed and parted a little. The
tongue tip emerged and moved across them.
Fleming gently brushed the matted blonde hair from her
face. He was rewarded by a momentary flickering of the eyelids.
'That's it,' he murmured close to her ear. 'Now try to
swallow a mouthful.' He forced the mouth of the flask between
her lips and against her teeth, tipping in a spoonful of
spirit.
Andre gulped, spluttered, and then swallowed it. Fleming
could feel her body relaxing against his encircling arm.
'How did she get here?' Geers demanded.
'There must be a syphon between the two pools. She'd sink
on one side and come up on the other. God knows how she
managed to hang on the side and pull herself up. Not with
those injuries.'
24

He nodded towards Andre's hands, lying close together in
her'lap. They were grotesquely swollen and discoloured, the
bloated whiteness of the back and knuckles contrasting horribly
with the seared flesh of the fingers where the computer
had burnt them.
Geers shuddered. 'Can we carry her out of here?' he asked
doubtfully. 'We must get her to the mainland as soon as we
can. Then perhaps we'll find out the truth about this business.'
The impatience in Geers' tone infuriated Fleming. 'Give it
a rest, can't you? The girl's half dead and all you can think
of is putting her in thumbscrews.'
He believed that Andre half understood what was being.
said. Her body tautened in his arms and she made a pathetic
attempt to shift away.
Awkwardly Fleming struggled out of his duffle coat without
releasing his hold on her and draped it around her
shoulders. 'You're okay,' he reassured her. 'It's all over now.
We'll go away for a nice long holiday. You know who I am,
don't you?'
Her clouded eyes opened wider and stared at his face. She
nodded almost imperceptibly.
He felt ridiculously pleased. 'Fine! I'm going to lift you
up. Keep your hands just where they are and they won't get
rubbed. Here we go!'
Geers made no attempt to help. He watched Fleming grasp
Andre and lift her like a baby, shifting the weight until he
had her held securely, her head against his shoulder.
Satisfied that they were leaving at last, Cleers bent down to
pick up the torch. Fleming was just behind him. With a quick
shove from his boot he sent Geers sprawling. Then he kicked
the lamp away. There was a tinkle of glass as it hit the rock-face
and the light went out.
Fleming laughed aloud. 'Hold tight, darling, we're taking
off,' he whispered to Andre. Half crouching to avoid bumping
the cave roof, he loped ahead helped by the fitful, jerking
light from his own torch. Cleers' wails of fright and fury
echoed behind him.
Fleming reached the cave entrance with no More than one
25

bad bump on his shoulder. There was a stretch of thirty yards
to the boat. He noted with satisfaction that the tide had
turned and the stern was already afloat.
He was wading in deep water before Geers stumbled from
the cave entrance, bawling Fleming's name and alternately
threatening punishment and appealing for him to wait.
Fleming lowered Andre into the bottom of the boat. She
groaned pitifully as her hand struck a rowlock.
Fleming crouched over the motor. If only the damned
thing would fire first time. Outboard engines were temperamental
until they got heated up. He forced himself methodically
to check choke and fuel control before he wrenched at
the starter cord. He whipped it out with all his strength. The
engine fired with a staccato burst of noise, spluttered, and
then settled into a steady rhythm.
With a kick over the side that filled his boot with sea water
Fleming pushed off stern first. A couple of yards and there
was room to veer. He gave the engine full throttle and the
boat swung seawards. Geers was standing impotently up to
his knees in water, shaking his arms and burbling incoherent
imprecations. Fleming didn't trouble to turn round to look at
him.
The sea was pretty calm while the island protected it from
the ocean swell. He grabbed the chance to check the petrol
reserve and to wrap his coat More tightly around Andre. She
was either asleep or had lapsed into unconsciousness again.
The boat moved crabwise because of the current running
through the narrows between' the island and the mainland.
On this course he was merely making a return trip right up to
the jetty at Thorness.
His headlong flight had been without much reason. His
objective had simply been to get Andres away from Geers
and all that he represented in cold, efficient care and ruthless
questioning.
Now he had time to think up a plan. But not much time.
The sea was getting perceptibly rougher. They were hitting a
swell. Foam frothed here and there on the crescents of the
heaving water ahead. He made up his mind.
He turned the rudder to port and headed straight into the
26

current. Emergency made his memory crystal clear. He could
see this grey, misty waste of angry water as it was in the rare
calm of a summer's day. He remembered the haphazard pattern
of shoals, rocks, and islets which had made the area
forbidden territory to any sailor except a few crab fishermen
even before the Admi-ralty cordoned it off as a rocket range.
Fleming was not unduly worried about crashing the boat.
It wasn't capable of More than ten knots and was as
manoeuvrable as a coracle. Though the half-hearted light of
a winter's day was already lessening he felt sure that the noise
of breaking waves and the swirl of foam would give him all
the warning he needed of danger.
What he wanted was something a bit larger than a collection
of rocks where maybe a long-deserted crofter's cottage
or bird-watcher's eyrie existed. Such places were built to
resist wind and cold; they were as strong as the rocks from
which they were made. They would give him a breathing
space while he thought out the next move. Not for the first
time in his life he half-regretted acting precipitately.
A flurry of sleet hit him in the face. The gust of wind
which accompanied it shook the boat, and a little water burst
over the side, wetting Andre's face. She cried out and lifted
her hand to brush away her matted hair. The touch of her
hand on her forehead made her moan again.
Fleming opened the throttle still More. There was no point
in conserving petrol. He had got to get her out of the boat
before the storm grew worse or before nightfall. He wasn't
certain which would come first.
For a full hour he sped northwards, straining his eyes and
ears for a sign of land. There was nothing but the howl of the
increasing wind and the expanse of the spume-flecked sea.
Then, unmistakably, he heard the uneven roar of water
crashing on to rocks and shingle. The sea became less broken,
turning into a sullen, greenish swell. Beyond the broken mist
a dark grey bulk loomed up - much darker than the twilight
grey of the sky.
He throttled down and veered to starboard. With the
currents and sporadic gale-force winds he had no real idea
where he was. He had no intention, even now, of landing on
27

the mainland, right into the arms of some official or meek
and law-abiding citizen.
He steered a course a generous forty feet from the breaking
waves. He tried to tell himself that he recognised the
coast as one of the islands he had visited for recreation back
in the smnmer, but he knew it was just self-persuasion. In
such conditions all these islands looked much the same. All
he could be certain of was that it was an island, a small one.
Many gulls, disturbed by the noise of the boat as they settled
down to roost for the night, wheeled around, with their
piteous calling. Gulls preferred islands.
The rock face sloped abruptly downwards at the point
where the boat veered round until it was almost east of the
land. Where the rocks met the water was a tiny beach, or
rather a steep stretch of rounded stones, not More than
twenty feet wide.
Without hesitation Fleming steered straight for it, running
the boat half out of the water. There was a vicious jerk and
the sound of tearing timber. The lower section of the boat
had been stove in.
Fleming jumped over the side, feeling for a foothold. Then
he caught hold of Andre and lifted her out. He laid' her
gently down on the stones above the water line and returned
to the boat. He manhandled it round until it pointed seawards.
Water was gurgling in fast. Tying the tiller midway,
he set the throttle at full. The boat shot crazily away, the
nose already down and the thrashing screw almost out of the
water. He did not wait to see the boat go under; he lifted
Andre once More and clambered as fast as he could to the
higher ground beyond the stones.
There was a distinct track where the ground provided
some shallow soil where coarse grass and stunted heather
struggled to live.
Fleming was not surprised about this. He had expected it.
For just at the moment the boat had swung towards the
beach he had seen a dull yellow light a few hundred yards
behind and above the landfall.
From the track the light had shape. It was a narrow
vertical chink between some patterned curtains.
He did not care who lived there. Coastguard, radar opera28

tor, rocket trajectory observer, recluse. The main thing was
to get warmth and help for the girl. She was now as lifeless in
his arms as when he had first grabbed hold of her at the edge
of the cavern pool.


29

CHAPTER TWO

COLD FRONT

TH Azaran Embassy was easily identified in the long row of
Edwardian houses whose bed-sitter occupants liked to claim
that they lived in Belgravia, while in fact the postal number
was Pimlico. It was noticeable because its decaying and
crumbling stucco had been repaired and given a coat of
glossy cream paint. It also displayed a gaudy flag and a
highly polished brass nameplate.
The interior was luxurious. The Ambassador's study was
furnished with that refinement of taste and air of luxury possible
only when money hardly matters. And Azaran, over the
past few years, had floated to superficial and temporary
prosperity on the small lake of oil British geologists had
tapped beneath the desert.
Colonel Salim, Azaran's accredited representative to the
Court of St James's, had been the military strong man of his
country's revolution. He had worked hard to make himself
indispensable to the idealist whom fate and intrigue had
made President, and his reward had been the best diplomatic
post the President could offer. As a matter of fact, Azaran
did not bother about the status of embassy in any other European
country, but Britain, for the time being, was master of
Azaran's economy.
Salim enjoyed living in the West More than he enjoyed
switching from force to diplomacy. He was a hard man and
something of a genuine idealist, but he had forgotten his religious
precepts sufficiently to enjoy alcohol and he had
tempered his fierce racial beliefs enough to develop a taste
for Western women. Much More, he had been impressed
with the practical uses to which Europeans put their wealth.
In his country, wealth had to be gaudily displayed. But in
the West it was exploited to buy something infinitely More
desirable: power.
$0

It was the prospect of unlimited power which kept Salim
restlessly walking around his study on this grey winter's evening.
He was getting rather soft with good living and a desk
job. Fat was growing at his hips and in the jowl of his
swarthy, handsome face, But he was still reasonably young.
It was not merely vanity which told him that he was still
impressive.

He turned eagerly when a manservant entered and announced,
with a bow, that a Herr Kaufman wished to see
him.

'Show him in,' Salim ordered. Quickly he sat down at his
desk and opened a file of papers.

The servant returned with the visitor. Kaufman was tall,
and rigidly erect. Salim recognised him as a soldier; probably
.a Nazi junior ex-officer or N.C.O., possibly in a crack S.S.
regiment. Salim did not mind that. There had been the
occasion, ' back in 1943, when he had confidently assured
Rommel's emissary that, when the time was ripe, he would
bring the Azaran army over to the German side.

'Herr Kaufman,' he exclaimed, extending his hand. 'Take
a, pew.' He was rather proud of his mastery of the English
vernacular. It inspired a friendly attitude he had found,

Kaufman bowed slightly from the waist and smiled. His
light blue eyes, enlarged by the thick lenses of his r/mless gold
spectacles, were appraising everything on the desk and
around the room.

He continued smiling as he deferentially murmured that he
had been ordered by his superiors to wait on the Ambassador.
'By Intel,' nodded Salim. What else were you told?'

Kaufman stared back unblinking. 'Nothing else, your
'excellency.'
Salim offered him a box of heavily chased silver. 'Smoke?'
The other withdrew a case from his inner breast po&et.
'These, if you don't mind.' He selected a small, almost black
cheroot and lit it.

Salim got up and walked across the room to a table where
some photographs of Azaran were displayed.

'Interested in archaelogy, Herr Kaufman?' he asked. 'We
are particularly rich in relics: Greek temples, Roman arenas,
Turkish mosques, Crusader's castles, British anti-tank traps.
31

They've all had a go at us.' He turned and eyed Kaufman.
'And now Intel. Your employers are taking a deep interest in
my small and harmless little country.'
Kaufman puffed out a cloud of smoke. It eddied over
Salim, who made a gesture of distaste. 'And if my employers
are indeed keeping their commercial information up to date?
As routine, of course. Is this important to you?'
Salim lowered his voice. 'It's not unheard of for business
interests to finance a breakaway state. And we propose to
break with the British oil interests, Herr Kaufman. Their
field has not been a very exciting one. We believe you will
have More to offer than oil.'
Kaufman thoughtfully shook the ash from his cigarello.
'Our collateral?' he enquired.
Salim rubbed his hands together. 'Let's be frank. You're a
trading organisation. Probably the biggest commercial undertaking ever known. Jus-t what cartels and groups are involved
no Western government has been able to discover. Holding
companies, secret understandings, private agreements, patent
monopolies, offices registered in small and tolerant countries.
But why need I tell you all this? You know it. You also
know that with the Common Market and the increasing
tendency for Governments to co-operate, the Intel organisation
will find it harder to pursue its private way. Nobody
very much likes such a successful enterprise.'
'This may be true,' Kaufman agreed.
'Your registered offices are in Switzerland,' Salim went on.
'I read with interest the other day that both the Canton and
Federal Governments are getting impatient over income tax
matters. They hint at laws enforcing investigation of accounts
and so forth. Your directors seem usually to meet
in Vienna, capital of a tolerant and non-committed country.
But Austria would not, could not, afford to ignore pressure
from her powerful neighbours. You are, in fact, an organisation
without a home.'
Kaufman seemed unimpressed. 'We have offices in at least
sixty countries. And influence in as many.'
'The offices are merely trading posts, innocuous and
politically negligible. Your influence is in jeopardy.'
Salim crossed to the map of the Middle East which was
32

spread across half the rear wall of the study. 'That little area
painted red is my country. It could be the home sweet home
for the headquarters of Intel. No interference. In return just
some expert help for our own plans.'
Once More alim sat down. 'What do you know of
Thorness?'
Kaufman pondered for a moment.
'Thorness?' he repeated, as if the word meant nothing.
Satire made a gesture of impatience. 'I have information
that you have long been in touch with the British Government's
experimental station at Thorness. Unofficially, of
course. I believe that you could even explain an unfortunate
fatality to one of the scientists there, named Bridger, but no
matter. I mention it to show that I am not without knowledge
of your current activities.'
'They are no longer current,' growled Kaufman. 'The
station has been virtually destroyed. The computer and
everything associated with it were blown up and burned.
That, at any rate, is what I have so far ascertained.'
'Blown up ?'
'That is correct.'
Salim was nonplussed. His Court of St James's manners
disappeared as he waved away the cloud of Kaufinan's cigar
smoke. It was as if some latent violence in him had exploded.
'Please refrain from burning those filthy things in here. If
you wish, go to the toilet and smoke there.'
His visitor obediently stubbed out his cigarello. He seemed
impervious to insults. 'No thank you,' said Kaufman after he
had carefully extinguished all the burning remains. 'But if
you wish the interview to end... ?'
Salim glanced at the file on his table. Everything had suddenly
changed and what was expected of him now was something
which he understood. Action. He re-read the copy of
the appreciation of the situation he had dictated a few days
earlier. A smile hovered round his mouth. The gods might
after all be working in their mysterious way for his benefit,
even with this Thorness debacle.
'There's a Professor Madeleine Dawnay at the station,' he
said. 'I am offering her a post with our Government's bio-

and half-collapsing easy chair. 'Can we stay for a bit?' he
asked.
The man hovered around helplessly. 'I suppose so,' he said
without enthusiasm. 'Where have you come from?'
Fleming was occupied in removing Andre's coat, pulling
gently at the sleeves so as not to touch 'her hands. 'The sea,'
he said shortly. 'By boat. It's gone now. Smashed, I hope.'
The man poked at the logs, sending up a cascade of
sparks. 'I must confess I find you difficult to understand,' he
observed.
Fleming straightened up and grinned. 'I'm sorry. We're a
bit flaked. Tough weather for a sea trip.'
The other man was looking at Andre. He sort of shivered
as he saw the shapeless, purplish flesh around her fingers.
'What has happened to your friend's hands?' he enquired
diffidently, as if ashamed of ungracious curiosity.
'She burnt them. Touched some high voltage wiring. You
haven't anything hot, have you? Soup?'
'Only out of a tin.' The man drew a deep breath, ashamed
of his attitude. 'I'll get it. You must fogive me,' he went on,
smiling almost boyishly. 'It's just you were so unexpected.
My name's Preen. Adrian Preen. I - er - write.' He
glanced longingly at the table with the sheets of large, scrawl-lng
writing. 'I'll get the soup.' He went through the rear
door, closing it carefully behind him.
Andre shuddered, moaned, and opened her eyes. Fleming
knelt down beside her. 'How do you feel?' he whispered.
Her eyes were vacant, but she was able to turn her head
and look at him. She even smiled. 'I'm better now,' she murmured.
'My hands throb. What has happened?'
'We're running away,' he said, caressing her hair. 'We
started running two nights ago when we bust up the computer.
Remember?'
She frowned and shook her head. 'Computer? What computer?
I can't remember anything.'
'It'll come back,' he assured her. 'Don't worry your head
about it.' He got up and crossed to the table, glancing at the
manuscript. 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,' he read
aloud. 'This is a rum do. I hoped for a shepherd, but we've
6

found a sheep. Wonder how he manages to make a living
with this stuff?'
He was interrupted by the click of the latch and he stood
away from the table. Preen returned with a couple of steaming
bowls on a tray. He grabbed a stool and placed the tray
on it alongside Andre. 'Condensed tomato, I'm afraid,' he
said apologetically.
'That'll be fine,' Fleming said. He took a spoon and began
feeding Andre, who sipped hungrily at the thick, red liquid.
'What's the name of this island?' Fleming went on to Preen.
'Soay?'
'It's just off Soay and very much smaller.'
'Then you're on your own ?'
Preen nodded. 'And at your mercy.' Hastily he apologised.
'That was crude of me. But you were a surprise, you know.
Anyway, I'll leave you and your friend to enjoy the soup.
Might I enquire your name?'
'Fleming, John Fleming.' He did not volunteer Andre's.
'I ask only out of courtesy,' said Preen mildly. 'Since
I'm your host. You'll have to stay here, naturally. There's
nowhere else to go. That's why I chose this island.'
'But why isn't really answered, is it?' Fleming suggested.
Preen hesitated, looking embarrassed. 'I came because it's
safe, or comparatively so. I used to protest against the Bomb
and so forth, but I got tired of exposing lunacy and decided
it was More sensible to opt out.'
Fleming gulped down the last of his own soup. 'That
makes three of us,' he grinned. 'But when the bombs drop
and you're the last oasis of life ;nd learning how are you
going to ward off the pirates, all frightened, starving, and
full of radiation sickness?'
With an air of conspiratorial triumph Preen walked over
to a heavy old chest which served as a window seat. From it
he removed a short automatic rifle.
'Splendid,' laughed Fleming. 'We'll sleep safe tonight. I
take it that we can all class down somehow and get some
sleep? It's been a busy day.'
Preen showed unexpected resources. He had his own bed
in the shelf alcove beside the fire. From another cupboard he
produced heavy wool rugs. Andre was tucked in, the fire was
37

made up, and Fleming wrapped himself up and lay down on
the floor beside the sofa. Preen shot the bolts on the door and
turned out the paraffin lamp. Fleming vaguely heard the
indeterminate noises of his host undressing and going to bed
before a sleep of utter exhaustion swept over his brain and
body.

It had been three hours before the continued absence of

Geers and Fleming aroused misgivings, and a Marine Com
mando launch went to the islet to investigate.

By the time action could be taken to locate the fugitives

night had fallen and the weather had become almost impos
sible.

Geers, ill with his miserable wait on the island and sick

with apprehension about the repercussions in London, sat

at his desk drinking a hot toddy and blusteringly ordering

Quadring and Pennington to do something. But he could

not put off for very long the unpleasant task of phoning

Whitehall with the news of the latest debacle.

The Minister of Science took the call himself. He remained
	I

completely silent while Geers babbled on about the bad luck

of the whole business in general and the unforgivable treach
ery of Fleming in particular. The great man's silky comments

before he hung up were worse than the most sarcastic repri
mand.

'Most unfortunate,' he said softly. 'You have my complete

sympathy in a situation where you seemed to be surrounded

by incompetents and traitors. You may leave it to me to put

the best construction on it to the Old Man. He's unusually

disturbed about all this, which is so uncharacteristic. Not

going to Chequers. Staying at No. 10. And you know how

he loathes the place since it's been done up. I do hope I can

get his P.A. Such an excellent buffer when the P.M.'s in one

of his captious moods. Well, goodbye. Keep in touch.'

The Minister did get the P.A. He could be More forth
right with him. 'Just had a call from Thorness, Willie,' he

said. 'They found the girl, and then the bloody fools

promptly lost her. Now Flerning appears to have abducted

her. So romantic, isn't it? Geers has bawled futile orders to

every R.A.F. and Navy station from Carlisle to Scapa. I

	38

suppose masses of ships and planes and little men with radar
sets are now rushing about like mad. Met. reports Gale Force
9, and storms of both the moisturised and electrical variety.
The pursuers won't have much luck, and I don't feel this is a
situation where praying for miracles would be listened to.
But officially, Willie, I'm asking that you'll tell the Old Man
that we're leaving no stone unturned, exploring every
avenue. You know, the usual pap. Oh, I've decided to send
Osborne back to Thorness so we get some coherent facts, and
also to broach something else that's cropped up. He put up a
bit of a black so he'll be all the More anxious to please. He's
a sound chap at heart.'
Osborne was sent for in the early hours of the morning
and despatched to Thorness at first light by air. He was in
Geers' office by noon. The Director had grabbed a few hours'
sleep on a make-shift bed in the night duty officer's room.
For the first time in his life he was conscious of looking
dishevelled and grubby. He had disliked Osborne from the
start. The fact that the man was still entrusted with a job
which was nothing less than a check-up on his own efficiency
made him dislike him still More.
'No news from the searchers, of course,' questioned
Osborne, taking a chair without invitation.
Geers shook his head. 'We'll just have to wait and hope.
It's my fault,' he mumbled. 'I should never '
'It doesn't really matter whose fault it is,' said Osborne
kindly. 'It's happened. How's Madeleine Dawnay?'
Geers looked at him suspiciously, wondering about this
new topic. 'Much better,' he replied. 'The electrical burns she
got from the computer weren't in themselves particularly
bad. It was using that damned enzyme fonmulated from the
machine. Or rather some error her morons made in compounding
it. Fortunately Madeleine had the mental power to
check and see the mistake. From then it was easy: a miracle
cure which will revolutionise our burns units and indeed all
plastic surgery. One last priceless benefit from that machine
the vandals have smashed.'
'I'm glad - about Madeleine, I mean,' said Osborne. He
paused thoughtfully. 'Tt/ere's nothing More for her to do
here, is there? Now the computer's wrecked?'
39

Geers shrugged. 'Nothing much left for any of us,' he said.-'I
wonder where the devil Quadring's got to? He should have
some news of what's happening. Good or bad.'
Osborne ignored this. 'We've had a request for her from
the Azaran Government.'
'Who?'
'From Colonel Sallm, in fact. The Azarani ambassador.'
'No, I mean who have they asked for?'
'Dawnay, whom we've been talking about,' said Osborne
impatiently. 'A formal request passed to us last night via the
Foreign'Office. They want a biochemist.'
'What the hell for?' Geers demanded. Then, resignedly:
'It's up to her, if she wants to go. I've other things to worry
about.'
'Ask her,' Osborne replied. 'And either you or she can
phone the Ministry. Don't defer a decision too long. These
little oil states have protocol. Mustn't suggest discourtesy by
ignoring their enquiry.'
'All right,' grunted Geers.
The phone rang and he snatched it from the cradle. He
listened to the brief message and then replaced the receiver,
smiling with relief and satisfaction.
'They've located some wreckage. Splintered wood and so
on. Registration number on one piece. It's the boat Fleming
took; no doubt of that. No sign of bodies so far. Take some
time for them to come up, of course. They hadn't a hope in
hell.' There was no tinge of regret in his voice. Geers was not
mourning the presumed death of two colleagues.
'Whereabouts was the wreckage?' Osborne enquired.
Geers glanced at some figures he had jotted on his memo
pad during the phone call. 'They give Victor Sugar 7458 as
the approximation.' He went to the wall map of the Thorness
rocket lanes and prodded with a finger at a spot on the grid
lines.
'About there. A little south from Barra and east from
South Uist. Shoal water. Only someone as crazy as Fleming
would have risked it in such bad visibility. But the Navy will
go on looking, just as a routine formality.'
The two men sat in silence for a time. 'I'll see if the can40


teen can manage some lunch,' said Osborne. Geers nodded.
He made no move to accompany him.

It was a day of abnormally high temperature for so early in
the year. The air was saturated with moisture and the mist
turned to a steady rain over the land. Out at sea visibility
went from bad to worse. Even for Western Scotland, the
weather was breaking every kind of record. Fleming normally
ignored the climate, but now he found it oddly in tune
with the melodrama of the crisis at Thorness.
Clambering around the island, he heard the occasional
impatient whoop-whoop of a destroyer's siren and the regular
throb of dieseled launches cruising slowly. Once or twice
raucous voices cursed cheerily as the search parties tried to
find some humour on their boring, pointless task.
He had told Preen he needed exercise and would collect
firewood. He had said nothing about the possibility of a
major search for Andre and himself. Preen was patently
anxious not to enquire too closely into what the whole escape
was about, though Fleming suspected that a man who had
been a C.N.D. marcher would not have ignored Thorness or
the possibility that a man and a girl fleeing for their lives on
a winter's evening might be connected with the place and
with nefarious reasons for getting away from it.
But Fleming was not really worried about Preen. The
streak of anarchy in the man's make-up Practically guaranteed
that he would not pompously blether about a citizen's
duty and so forth. By almost fantastic good fortune they had
found a well-nigh perfect ally.
Fleming was far More preoccupied about Andre. He suspected
that even her formulated constitution, free from the
defects of heredity which were the birth-wrong of every
human being, could not battle against the poisonous sepsis in
her hands. Somehow he would have to get skilled help for
her.
All that day the patrol boats cruised off the island. Late in
the afternoon the mist thinned sufficiently for a couple of
R.A.F. helicopters to nose around. Fleming was outside
when he heard them. Alarmed, he ran back to the cottage.
He grabbed a couple of green logs which were smoking on
41

the fire and doused them in a rainwater butt at the back door.
'The choppers may sweep over here,' he explained quickly
to Preen. 'Though I doubt it; a bit tricky to mess around in lousy visibility at zero feet with this hunk of granite in the
way. Still, there's no future in arousing their curiosity with
a smoking chimney.'
Preen mumbled something incoherent and retired to the
ingle nook with an obscure volume of Middle English texts
to annotate. He had done his best to suppress his misgivings
about the continued presence of his visitors, but he left Fleming
in no doubt that he would be glad when they were gone.
Andre was sitting placidly on the sofa. She had gone out
with Fleming after the makeshift lunch Preen had devised
and walked a few steps. The effort had quickly tired her, and
she seemed afraid of the loneliness. Fleming carried her back
to the cottage.
He was getting More and More worried about her; not
only was she physically exhausted and in severe pain but her
mind seemed to be More or less a blank. He had noted how
she seemed to be unable to make any spontaneous effort
except for the basic ones of walking, drinking, and eating.
Preen had rustled up some boiled sweets and when he
had offered her the tin she had simply stared at it, not recognising
their purpose. Fleming had put one in his own mouth
and sucked it noisily before she got the idea.
Now, with one ear alert for the sound of the helicopters,
Fleming sat beside her, his arm protectively along the back
of the sofa and his hand touching her shoulders. 'What do
you remember of all that's happened?' he asked gently.
She gave him the look of a bewildered child. 'It's all
jumbled,' she murmured. 'I ran. Then I fell. In water.'
She tried to clasp her hands and drew in her breath
sharply at the stab of agony.
Fleming got up, rummaging on the mantelshelf above the
half-dead fire for some scissors Preen kept there among a
conglomeration of useful articles. 'I don't think these rags I
put round your hands last night were a very good idea.
There's a lot of suppuration. I'll have to cut them away.'
With almost feminine gentleness he began to cut into the
42

material, trying to ease it off. He bent over her hands so she
could not see them, and he talked quickly to help her ignore
the pain.
'Before the running - you remember nothing?' he asked.
She spoke hesitantly, not only because she was searching
for memories but in the effort to prevent herself crying out
at the throbbing darts of agony. 'There was a camp, a kind
of camp, with low concrete buildings and huts. We were
there, and lots of other people.'
Fleming had got most of the matted linen off one hand.
What was revealed wasn't pretty. 'The machine?' he asked.
'Do you remember a machine?'
'Yes,' she said, nodding to herself. 'It was big and grey.
There was always a low hum, and often a lot of clicking.
Those were the figures emerging. Everything was in numbers.'
She frowned and her mouth puckered, as if she was
going to cry with frustration. 'It's the numbers I can't
remember.'
'Good,' said Fleming. 'We can get along without the
numbers. They don't mean anything any More to you or
anyone. Those numbers were evil; they '
He stopped abruptly. The bandage on the other hand had
come away easily - too easily. A whole crust of matter came
with it. Underneath there wasn't pink, healing flesh, but the
ominous purple of necrosis. He could not recognise gangrene,
but he had some idea about septicaemia. He bared Andre's
arm past her elbow. The sleeve of her dress could not be
pushed further up. The arm was swollen, and the main
artery stood out dark on the white skin.
'Preen,' he said quietly. 'Just come over and look at this,
will you?'
Their host unwillingly laid down his book and walked
across. He glanced down and then abruptly shut his eyes,
swaying a little with nausea.
'My dear!' he whispered, 'how can you stand it?'
Fleming got up and took Preen across the room to the
window. It was quiet outside, with the familiar mist eddying
back in whorls from the sea. No helicopter engine marred the
silence.
43

'I hate asking you for another favour,' he said, 'but could I
borrow your boat?'
'Why?' Preen demanded suspiciously. 'Where do you want
to go with it?'
'To the mainland.'
'It isn't seaworthy enough.'
'All right, to Skye then,' said Fleming impatiently. 'I could
arrange a meeting on Skye.'
'You want to find a doctor, I suppose? Bring him here?
That poor girl's hand 	'
He swallowed down another
surge
of nausea.
'Not
a doctor, something better. I'll not bring anyone here; I
promise you.'
Preen
rather sullenly agreed to loan the boat. Once the decision
was made he was anxious for Fleming to go. The sooner
he went the sooner he'd be back. And then perhaps he
could see some possibility of getting rid of his visitors so that
he could be left alone in peace.
He
accompanied Fleming down to the little beach where his
launch was kept under the shelter of a leaning rock. A jerry-can
of petrol stood close by. While they prepared the boat
for sea Preen tried to apologise once More for his attitude.
He said he would do his best to look after the girl.
'Fine,'
said Fleming with More optimism than he actually felt.
'I shouldn't be gone More than twenty-four hours at the very
most. Now, if you can brief me on the course for Skye.'
Preen
gave a landsman's vague instructions. 'The current and
what wind there is are always north-west. If you keep heading
that way you'll pick up the light buoys at the entry to
Loch Harport in under half an hour. I always beach at the end
of the loch, where there's a little hamlet with a general shop.'
'How
far from there to Portree?'
'Over
the hills not above ten miles; much longer if you manage
to go by road, but you might get a lift in dayli
,ht.'
Fleming glanced at his watch. 'I'll walk,'
he said. 'My torch still has plenty of life in it. Should
make
it well before dawn.'
He did. He hung around the outskirts
of the little town until people were moving around and it was safe
to
go
to
the
44

airport without attracting attention. He got a snack there
after checking that the next flight for Oban wasn't due to
take off for half an hour.
Then he went to a phone booth. Thorness was an unlisted
number and the local exchange was manually operated. He
thought he noticed a hesitancy when the operator repeated
the number and asked what number he was calling from. It
was a risk he had to take. Unless the local police were very
quick off the mark and unless Quadring was even quicker in
alerting them he'd be away on the plane before anything
happened.
He knew, of course, that calls to Thorness were monitored
at the station as a matter of routine. In the present crisis this
was doubly certain. He had to hope that the tapping was just
the usual tape recording for checking later, and not some
super snoop who sat in a cubicle eavesdropping on everyone.
Rather to his surprise the call went through in under a
minute. He recognised the P.B.X. operator at the station.
'Professor Dawnay,' he murmured as quietly as he could.
'Professor Madeleine Dawnay. Sick quarters.'
'She may be in her room. I'll check.'
The operator's voice was in the usual impersonal and efficient
tone. Fleming listened closely for any tell-tale click of
an extension coming into circuit. There was none.
'Dawnay.'
He was surprised how mannish her voice sounded as she
gave her name. But he recognised her all fight.
'How are you, Madeleine?' he asked.
He heard her intake of breath,and half-speak exclamation
his name. It was no More than the J sound. She repressed it
instantly. Fleming smiled.
'I phoned to say I hope you're in the pink as it leaves me
at present,' he said lightly. More slowly and distinctly he
went on, 'but I'm worried about one health matter. What
does one do for burns? You are so expert on them. Not for
me, you understand.'
For a second or two he thought she had hung up. But
eventually she said quietly. 'Where?'
'Oban. Solo by B.E.A. I shan't have too much time before
I must catch a return plane.'
45

'You're a fool,' she said calmly. 'But as soon as I can. In
the airport building.'

His flight took barely twenty minutes. He had to wait
nearly an hour before Dawnay arrived. He saw her get out
of a taxi while he stood looking out of the window in the
men's lavatory. He noticed a second car behind hers, and he
waited to see who alighted from it. There were three passengers:
a middle-aged couple and a small boy, with a couple
of suitcases. So that was all right. She hadn't been followed.

He walked leisurely into the foyer and studied a travel
poster.

'You're mad to come,' he heard her whisper behind him.
'But I've got the stuff.'

He half turned round and nodded to a hot drink machine
in a deserted corner. They walked over to it.

'Tea, coffee, or cocoa?' he asked, handing her a drinking
carton, while he fished in his pocket for coins.

'It all tastes the same,' she smiled. She took the carton and
at the same time passed a little white cardboard box to him.
He slipped it in his pocket before he pushed the coin into the
slot.

'Thanks,' he said. 'It's the healing enzyme this time, I
hope. Not the one that nearly polished you off.'

Dawnay sipped her drink and made a wry face. 'They call
it coffee .... Yes, this lot is all right, I'll guarantee that. It's
the original formula the computer gave when she was burned
the first time. You remember how perfectly it worked. Sepsis
overcome in hours;' renewal of the nerve fibrils and lymphatics
complete in under three days. How is she?'

Fleming got himself a drink. 'Not too bad, except for her
hands. I must get back. I don't want a dead girl on the
premises.'

She glanced at him, amused. 'So you think of her as a girl
now, do you? But you were mad to come here,' she repeated.
'I don't know exactly what's doing back at the station, but
the search is certainly still on.'

He glanced at his watch. 'Got to be going,' he apologlsed.
'And thanks for the stuff. Talking about madness, you're
pretty crazy to be doing this for me; I'm an enemy, or didn't
you know?'

'No, I didn't,' she answered. 'As for doing it for you, I'm
doing it for her. She's mine too, don't forget. I made her!'

They walked together towards the departure bay when
the public address system announced the flight for Skye and
Lewis.

'I don't expect I'll be seeing you again,' she said. 'I've been
offered a new job. No point in staying at Thorness now this
Andromeda project is over. It should be quite an experience,

new faces, new tasks.'

'Where?' he asked.

'In the Middle East, one of those places all sand and oil,
but little else.'

Fleming wasn't particularly interested. 'Best of luck,' he
said vaguely. He impulsively bent down and kissed her on
the cheek. She seemed girlishly pleased.

Fleming passed through the doors to the airport apron.
There seemed to be only four or five other passengers - all
entirely innocent looking.

He was unaware of a middle-aged man, discreet in. black
homburg and tweed overcoat, who had been standing beside
the magazine kiosk, reading The Times. He lowered the
paper when Fleming handed his ticket to the B.E.A. girl for
checking. Once Fleming had passed from the building the
man hurried towards the road exit. The chauffeur in the car
parked there immediately started the engine ....


47

CHAPTER THREE

GALE WARNING

FLMzvo did not get back to the island until late that
evening. He had to wait until darkness before he dared
launch the boat which he had heaved up on to the shingle in
a small inlet of the loch. The rain poured down remorselessly
all the way back, but he was in high spirits and drove the
little boat full out. The speed wasn't much, but the noise was
considerable. He was so excited about getting back that he
did not care whether any search vessels were around to hear
him and investigate.
He burst into the cottage with a yell of greeting. Preen
x. was sitting talking to Andre. Her appearance alarmed Fleming.
Her face, even in the lamplight, was almost putty
coloured. But at the sight of him she stood up and stumbled
across to him, throwing herself against him, her arms held
high to protect her swollen hands.
'Easy, easy,' he whispered to her, clasping her gently. 'I've
got the repair kit. You'll soon be okay.' Over her head he
grinned at Preen. 'Everything in order. Not arrested or even
questioned. And I didn't tell anyone about you I'
Preen was visibly relieved. 'I'll get you something to eat
while you do whatever you can with her hands... An ointment,
is it?'
'I suppose you could call it that,' Flemlng agreed, helping
Andre to the sofa. 'But a special kind. The only good thing I
know of that came out of our inter-galactial tuition. But the
less you know about that the better, in case your honest soul
should ever be taxed by our lords and masters. You can take
it from me that your forebodings about a pretty corpse are
over.'
He took the little box from his pocket. 'Enzymes - a
glorious little ferment of living cells, all ready and willing to
build anew.'
48

Preen shook his head, bewildered. He went to the kitchen
and opened yet another tin of soup. Fleming began immediately
on the treatment.
The almost transparent jelly-like material spread quickly
when it came in contact with Andre's unnaturally hot, mutilated
flesh.
She watched him carefully, without any vestige of a
memory that it was she who had programmed the computer
to produce the formula, or had interpreted the stream of
figures on the output recorders.
Fleming removed her shoes and carefully tucked a blanket
around her, placing her hands on a folded towel. 'Sleep if
you can, my pretty,' he murmured. 'The pain will ease,
slowly but steadily. And in the morning. No pain. You'll
see?
She wriggled lower on the sofa and smiled at him like a
trusting child. Obediently she closed her eyes.

All the way back to Thorness, Madeleine Dawnay brooded
on the offer of a job in Azaran. Essentially a lonely woman,
she had always immersed herself in work as an anodyne for
the sub-conscious unhappiness she felt about her lack of
sociability and attractiveness. Her synthesis of living cells,
culminating in the development of a female organism which
vied with, and in some ways surpassed, natural womanhood
had been a triumph which she believed justified her life and
held out entrancing promise for the future.
Then came the burns she suffered from the computer and
the terrible mistake in the compounding of the healing
enzyme formula so that the injections destroyed instead of
constructed. Not only did this experience show her the
dangers of believing that the half-understood equations from
the computer were benign and valuable, but the hovering of
death had frightened her More than sh would have believed
possible.
It was wonderful, of course, to discover that the fault in
the enzyme had been entirely in human minds, and that the
formula was literally the gift of life. But there remained the
nagging suspicion that John Fleming was right. The intelligence
which actuated the computer was not impersonal and
4 49

objective. It had its own purposes, and they did not seem to
include the welfare of man.
In any case all the work was over. The glittering prospect
of building a scientific technocracy for Britain had evaporated
in the smoke from the computer building. She even felt
relieved that the great binary code which had reached them
out of space, and on which it was all built, had gone up too.
She would be glad to get away from it all, to return to
ordinary research.
Azaran appealed to her idealism and her curiosity. Here
was a little country, temporarily and superficially wealthy on
its subterranean E1 Dorado of oil, but poverty-stricken in
the basic needs of fertile land and adequate food for its
people.
As soon as she got back to Thorness, she asked for leave to
visit the Foreign Office and set off at once for London.
The minor official in the Middle East Department was
inclined to dismiss Azaran as a comic opera state. He
described the President as a man of dying fire. The revolution
which had put him in power and ousted the dynastic
ruler just after the war had been a bloodless affair of little
international consequence. The President had hastily assured
the British oil interests that he would maintain agreements
provided some slight adjustment of the royalty arrangement
could be made. This was done after the usual haggling. The
President had announced that the revenue would be used to
improve the lot of his people.
The desert would blossom through irrigation. Schools
would be built. Roads would open up trade. Hospitals would
stamp out the diseases which killed one child in five and cut
the expectation of life to thirty-two years. The schools, the
roads, and the hospitals had gone up. But the desert
remained desert, and now the oil was giving out.
'There's water,' the official went on; 'a French company
sank artesian wells. To the north there's a subterranean lake
with More water than the oil deposits to the south. Trouble is
the surface. Not even sand; mostly stones and rock. You can
irrigate it but it won't grow crops.'
'The erosion of several thousand years can't be put right
50

with a bit of water,' said Dawnay quietly. 'There'd be no
official objection to my going?'
'None,' the official said, 'so far as the F.O. is concerned,
that is. We're anxious to maintain our friendly relations with
these people. They're a smalI nation, but any friends are
valuable nowadays. The terIns of your engagement are
naturally not officially our pidgin. You'd be interviewed by
Colonel Salim, the ambassador here. He's a slippery customer,
though probably it's largely Arab love of intrigue. Anyway,
he's probably just the go-between for the President.'
Dawnay left the interview, her mind made up. She would
take the job if the terms were reasonable. A taxi deposited
her at the Azaran Embassy fifteen minutes later.
She was ushered into Salim's office without delay. Rather
to her surprise, he seemed to know all about her career and
he discussed her work with considerable intelligence. More
or less as an afterthought he mentioned the salary. It was
fantastically large and he heard her slight gasp.
'By British standards the income is high,' he smiled, 'but
this is Azaran, and one commodity/we have in plenty at
present is money. The Europeans - doctors, engineers, and so
on - who work for us need some compensation for absence
from their homeland and the fact that of necessity the job is
not for life. In your case we had in mind a contract for five
years, renewable by mutual arrangement.
'But it's the work which would interest you. We are an
ancient nation stepping late into the twentieth century, Miss
Dawnay. Eighty per cent of our food has to be imported. We
need to have a programme of vision and scientific validity to
make our country as fertile as it is rich.' He hesitated. 'For
reasons that will become clear shortly this will become More
and More vital for our future, even for our very existence.'
Dawnay hardly heard his final words. The old excitement
about a problem of nature which challenged the ingenuity
of the mind had taken hold of her.
'Colonel Salim,' she said quietly, 'I'll be proud to help. I
am free to go as soon as you wish.' She smiled a little ruefully.
'As you may know from what seems to be a comprehensive
survey of my background, I have no private ties, no relatives,
51

to hold me here. And for reasons I can't go into, my recent
work is now completed.'

Salim gave her a large, warm smile. 'I shall telephone my
President immediately,' he said. 'I know he will be deeply
grateful. Meantime, there are the usual international formalities
to be seen to - inoculations, vaccination, passport,
and so forth. Shall we say the day after tomorrow - about
10 a.m. - to complete the arrangements? I can then discuss
the actual time of your departure.'

Dawnay agreed. The decision made, she was anxious to be
gone. She telephoned Thorness and had her batwoman pack
her few belongings and put the cases on the train. Ruefully
she told herself that apart from a mass of books in her old
room at Edinburgh University she owned nothing else in the
world. Nor was there a close friend to whom she had to say
goodbye.

She went shopping the following morning, getting a
Knightsbridge departure store to fit her out with tropical
kit. She reduced the salesgirl to despair by approving the first
offer of everything she was shown. It was all done in a couple
of hours. The store agreed to deliver the purchases, packed
in cases, to London Airport when instructed.

Next morning she found a doctor and had her inoculations.
They made her a little feverish and she rested in her
hotel room that afternoon and evening. Promptly at 10 a.m.
on the following day she presented herself at the Azaran
Embassy.

Salim greeted her courteously, but he was ill at ease, half
listening to a powerful short-wave radio from which, amid
considerable static, a stream of Arabic spluttered quietly.

'Splendid, Professor Dawnay,' he said eventually, after
glancing cursorily at the passport and inoculation certificates.
'Here are your visa and air tickets. I have provisionally
booked you on the 9.45 flight the day after tomorrow. Will
that be suitable?'

Before she could reply he sprang up, rushing to the radio
and turning up the volume. He listened attentively for a
couple of minutes and then snapped off the switch.

'That was the announcement of our freedom,' he said
dreamily.

52

'But you are free!' Dawnay looked at him in surprise.
He turned to her. 'Political freedom is a matter of paper
ideals. Real freedom is a matter of business. We have at last'
broken off our ties with your country; we have renounced all
our oil and trade agreements.' He indicated the radio. 'That
is what you heard.' He smiled at her again. 'You can see why
we need the right people to help us. I shall be returning to
Azaran myself as soon as diplomtic affairs are cleared up
here. We want to remain on friendly terms with Britain;
with all countries. But we need to be independent in the best
sense of the word. 'So you will help us I'
Dawnay felt slightly disturbed at this sudden turn of
events. Throughout her career she had studiously avoided
politics, believing that scientists were above party and
national factions, their duty being to the welfare of mankind.
'I hope I can do something,' she murmured politely.
Salim did not appear to be listening. He began frowning
over the documents she had handed to him. 'No yellow fever
inoculation?' he queried. 'Surely you were notified that it's
necessary?'
'I don't think so,' she replied. 'But I can have it done
today.'
He stood up and smiled ingratiatingly. 'I can do better
than that. It so happens that the embassy doctor is here this
morning.'
He pressed a switch on his intercom. 'Ask Miss Gamboul
if she can manage another yellow fever inoculation,' he told
a secretary.
There was a pause and then a man's voice replied that
Miss Gamboul could do so. :
Again the sense of misgiving prodded Dawnay's brain. For
a moment she could not identify the reason. Then she found
it. A woman doctor was not usually described as Miss. She
dismissed the suspicion as trivial, putting it down to Salim's
incomplete knowledge of English.
While they awaited the doctor's arrival he came round
and leaned against the desk, close to Dawnay. 'Tell me about
a colleague of yours, a Dr John Fleming. I believe he worked
with you at that Scottish research station. Is he still there?'
'I can't say,' she answered shortly.
53

'I heard one report that he was dead.'
'I'm afraid I can't tell you anything about him.' Her tone
was all he needed to tell him that Fleming was alive, but he did not react to it. He looked up instead at the opening
door.
'Ah, Miss Gamboul!'
A woman in a white coat had entered without knocking.
She was dark-haired and rather attractive and - one could
put it no closer than that - somewhere in her thirties. She
had a flawless skin, and a good brow above fine dark eyes;
but she did not look in the least like a doctor. Even in her
white coat she gave an impression of sensuousness and haute
couture; Dawnay felt sure that she was More used to being
called Mademoiselle than Miss.
And yet there was a surprising degree of professional
intelligence and seriousness in her face. Dawnay did not like
the hardness in her eyes nor the thin red-pencilled line of her
mouth, but most of all Dawnay did not like people to be
enigmatic. She noticed that the nails on the hand which
clutched a napkin-covered white dish from which the base of
a hypodermic protruded were varnished bright red and the
ends were pointed. Dawnay glanced automatically at her
own stubby, close-cut nails. Neither doctors nor scientists,
she felt, should allow themselves such unhygienic luxuries as
long nails and lacquer.
'Now, Professor Dawnay, which arm would you like punctured?'
Her voice was business-like; she had a strong French
accent, Daw-nay realised with satisfaction.
Stifling her instant dislike of the woman, she said she
would prefer to be injected in the right arm. She removed
her coat and pushed up the sleeve of her blouse.
Mademoiselle Gambout dabbed her upper arm with a wad
of spirit-soaked cotton wool. Dawnay looked away when the
needle went in. It was badly done and the clumsy jab made
her wince.
Salim had not moved away. He watched the inoculation
as if fascinated. He began to talk rapidly. 'You'll have evet,'y
facility for your work when you get to our capital, which is
called Baleb. We have recently completed building the
laboratories. Anything you need '
54

His voice seemed to thicken, and his swarthy face, looking down at her still bared arm, became hazy.
She tried to fight off the sense of dizziness.
'Can - can I have a glass of water?' she faltered. 'I can't
be as fit yet as I thought... '
Her head slumped forward. She felt the hardness of the
rim of a glass pressed against her lips and she drank some
water:Her vision cleared a little, and she saw the red fingernails
around the glass.
From an immeasurable distance, yet clear and menacing,
came Salim's voice again.
'Now, where is Dr Fleming? If you know, you will tell us
every detail. Now, I repeat, where is he?'
As if it were some other woman talking, Dawnay heard
herself meticulously describing her meeting at Oban airport.
Word for word she repeated her conversation with John as if
she were reading from a play script. Her memory was crystal
clear. And she could not stop until she had explained every
deail of the meeting.
Salim laughed. 'So that is how a truth drug works.' He
looked at Dawnay with interest.
Janine Gamboul nodded. 'Sodium amytal. It'll work off in
five or ten minutes. She'll remember nothing. Tell her she
fainted with the yellow fever injection or whatever it was.
And see you get her on that plane.'
She took off her white coat, revealing a dress which had
indeed come from Paris, and a good deal of herself as well.
Although she was no longer a girl, the skin of her throat and
the upper curves of her bosom looked as young and smooth
as her face. She seemed completely relaxed and at ease. She
perched on a corner of the table and looked at Salim with a
mixture of malice and amusement as she lit a cigarette and
slowly and delicately inhaled and exhaled. Salim watched her with something like admiration until she spoke again.
'Repeat what you've heard to our man Kaufman,' she told
him without any effort at grace. 'He is unimaginative but
resourceful. Tell him that speed is vital. And this girl Fleming
has with him. The one he got the medicament for. Tell
Kaufman to bring her too.'
'But she is nothing,' protested Salim. 'The man's mistress,
55

one presumes. What do we need with her? We can supply
reliable girls once Fleming's out in Baleb. They'll help to
keep him happy.'
'Nevertheless.' said Gamboul, 'we will have her.'
Salim obediently lifted the receiver of the telephone. It
took some time to locate Kaufman. The hotel where he had
reported he was staying said that their guest was out tramping;
the receptionist volunteered the information that Mr
Kaufman was a great one for the open air and the rolling
hills of Scotland. Satim cut her short and grunted that he
would ring again. He had no wish to leave his number.
When eventually he got through and Kaufman's guttural
voice answered the extension to his bedroom Salim talked
rapidly. 'We have reliable news. An island off an island near
an island.' He stopped, aware of the ridiculousness of his
words. 'A moment, I have written down the names of these
places which I have never before heard. Ah yes, there is a
place called Skye?'
'Of course,' grunted Kaufman. 'I have been. Our friend
was seen taking a plane there. But no infomaation.'
'And near this Skye is Soay,' Kaufman opened a map and
located the word which he could pronounce no better than
the Ambassador.
'Good, you have it,' said Salim. 'Near this Soay there is
perhaps a smaller island?'
'I'll need a More detailed map,' came Kaufman's voice. 'I
know there are several. We had better end this call, I think.
You may leave things to me.'
'I hope so. I have done my part. Now it is up to you.' Salim
replaced the phone. Kaufman folded up the map and considered.
First he made his plans for a discreet survey of the offshore
islands around Skye. He put in a couple of calls to
Glasgow to enrol some assistants whose co-operation for
adequate reward had been tested on some previous matters.
Then he moved to Portree. There he hired a powerful little
launch on the pretext of photographing seabirds. The well-paid
owner did not question Kaufman's statement that he
specialised in taking flashlight photos by night of their roost56


ing habits. Bird watchers were all queer - but profitable.

The lonely peace of Preen's island pushed time into the
background. Fleming mentally noted the fact that it took two
days for Andre's hands to start building new flesh; on the
third there was no need for bandages.
Life by then had settled down into a rather pointless round
of waking, preparing scratch meals from Preen's store of
canned and dehydrated food laid down in quantifies literally
to outlast a war, arguing over a game of chess, and gently
helping Andre's memory to re-discover the threads of life.
There was little opportunity to go 9ut even to check the
fish nets Preen had laid down in rock inlets, but one still,
misty day Andromeda went down alone to the small beach
and when she came back to the croft she was looking
puzzled.
'The mist is going back into the sea,' she said in her slow,
vacant way.
Fleming did not believe her and she never had an opportunity
of proving it, for the weather changed again to an
interminable frenzy of storm and gale. There seemed to be no
end to the restlessness of the sky and sea. When they listened
in on Preen's transistor the forecast invariably included gale
warnings, and the weather was so wild throughout the north-em
hemisphere that it was usually mentioned in the news
bulletins. Andre continued to look vacant and confused and
began to grow a little clumsy.
But there was a sense of impregnable security within the
cottage while the wind howled and battered outside. The
tension which Fleming had left at first whenever the door
rattled violently or something banged outside had eased to a
pleasant fatalistic calm.
Consequently he was quite unprepared one night when, as
he was quietly playing chess with Preen and Andre was half-lying
on the sofa staring at nothing, the door cracked loudly
and immediately burst open. He sprang to his feet, knocking
over the chessboard. Three men were grouped in the doorway.
They were thickset, brutal and wild-looking. The water
streamed from their oilskins and their tousled heads.
The tallest of them took a step inside, jerking his head to
57

the other two to back him up. He never took his eyes off
Fleming, so that he did not see Preen open the chest, grabbing
his automatic rifle from inside it.
'Get out! Get out of here!' Preen bleated, prancing from
side to side. His anger at this new invasion of his isolation
made him oblivious of danger.
Fleming had moved back to protect Andre. She clung close
to him, watching wide-eyed. 'Better do what the gentleman
says,' Fleming advised the intruders.
The leading man stepped backwards, bumping into the two
behind him. They half-stmnbled as they hit the doorposts.
Suddenly the leader dug into his oilskin pocket. In a flash he
was pointing the snout of a Luger at Preen.
'Look out I' yelled Fleming.
Without taking aim, Preen fired a burst. Five or six explosions
of high velocity bullets reverberated round the room.
Glass from the window tinkled on the floor. The man with
the gun collapsed without a sound, his mouth agape, his eyes
still fixed straight ahead. One of the others screamed like a
child and staggered drunkenly into the darkness, collapsing
outside. The third simply fled, his footsteps crashing along
the stony track to the sea.
Preen had dropped the gun at the force of the recoil. But
he started to charge after the third intruder, his mouth working
in frenzy of anger. 'Hold it, Preen,' Fleming yelled. 'Don't
go outside. There may be More.'
Preen did not seem to hear. He was still in the light from
the open door when a gun barked from the darkness. Preen
stopped dead in his tracks, spun round, and fell to his knees,
groaning.
'Take ths,' said Fleming, picking up the rifle and thrusting
it into Andre's hands. 'If you see anyone, point it at him
and pull this.' He crooked her finger round the trigger.
Then, crouching low, he ran outside and sprawled beside
Preen. He waited for a moment for bullets to come spurting
out of the dark at him, but nothing happened. All he could
hear was Preen's agonised breathing. 'All right,' he said,
'you're not dead. I'll get you inside and patch you up.'
He started dragging him towards the door. He paused
while he heaved the body on the path out of the way. The
58

man was quite dead, like the one outside the cottage. He
motioned Andre to put down the gun and she helped him to
get Preen on to the couch.
Fleming dragged the other body out o,:er the step and then
shut the door. The bolt was useless but the catch still held. He
paused to get his breath before he examined Preen.
Blood was spreading through his sweater below the armpit.
Fleming cut the material away and pulled the shirt aside.
The blood was not spurting. But there was a neat hole at the
side of the chest and another More ragged one below the
shoulder blade where the bullet had come out.
No blood was coming from Preen's mouth, so Fleming felt
sure that the lung had not been pierced; the worst was a
chipped or broken rib.
'You're not badly hurt, Adrian,' he said. 'I'll put on a pad
to staunch the bleeding; and then we'll use the old magic
treatment. Just leave it to your old Professor?
He made Preen as comfortable as possible, talking optimistically
about the enzyme. His optimism seemed to convince
the watching, worried Andre, though he himself did
not really believe in it. The little whicl was left after Andre's
treatment would doubtless tackle sepsis and re-create the surface
skin. It could not deal with splintered or broken bone,
nor with any internal injury.
He resigned himself to the fact that in the morning he
would have to go over to Skye and get a doctor. And he
would have to let the police know that a couple of corpses
were lying around.
Meantime there was the puzzle of who the thugs were.
When Preen fell asleep and Andre was dozing in the easy
chair he cautiously crept outside and looked over the dead
men with the aid of a flashlight. They looked even uglier in
death than they had in life. Both carried wallets, but the
contents were money only; no driving licence, no envelopes
or letters. The absence of identifying items was in itself
suspicious. His mind went back to the time he and Bridger
had been shot at when they had taken a day off from building
the computer. Bridger had clearly known what the attack
was all about, and badgered by Fleming he had impatiently
59

snapped out the word 'Intel', regretting it as if he had said
too much.
It had seemed ridiculous at the time to link a secretive but
perfectly legitimate world-wide trading cartel with gunmen
lurking on a Scottish moor. But after Bridger's murder the
word had always had a sinister fiavour in Fleming's mind.
That a commercial enterprise should use strong-arm tactics to obtain secrets of the kind Thorness could provide did not
really, surprise Fleming once he had accepted the situation. It
was n accord with his conception of the rat race of individuals
and nations to amass wealth and exert power. That
was why he did not find it difficult to accept a theory that
Intel was behind this abortive attack, though the motive
remained a mystery. If the information they had obtained
from Bridger had been even superficially right the brains behind
Intel must be aware that the individuals counted for
nothing without the machine they served. Not even Andre
could provide saleable information.
Not even Andre - Fleming very rarely displayed fear,
but like any intelligent man he often felt it. He felt it now,
and Andre was the reason. One of the assailants had got
away. He would no doubt be back sometime with reinforcements,
and they would come prepared for a shooting battle.
He had no wish to die himself; but he dreaded far More the
plan Intel might have for the girl. It was another reason why
he would get help.
He took Preen's boat for Skye at dawn. He phoned for a
doctor from the first house he found with a telephone, explaining
that the patient was suffering from a shot wound
and adding that there were also two corpses to be picked up.
The doctor informed the police before he set out. By then
Fleming was well on the way back.
Fleming had the mischievous pleasure of shouting out, 'I'll
come quietly!' as a boat-load of police arrived at the cottage
door later in the day.
It was all very sedate and polite. They treated Andre and
him with deference, hardly knowing what it was all about.
They let him remain beside Preen until the doctor had made
his examination and reported that there was little wrong, but
an X-ray would be needed to check for bone injuries. Flem6O


ing noted with amusement that the doctor could not get
his eyes off the tiny circles of young healthy flesh already
growing around the bullet wounds.
'And this happened only last night?' he kept muttering.
They were taken down to a police launch where Preen was
laid in the stern, comfortably wrapped in blankets. A constable
was left behind to watch over the two bodies, which
would be picked up later when the C.I.D. from Inverness had
made their usual on-the-spot checks.
Fleming and Andre said goodbye to Preen when they
disembarked on Skye. Their involuntary host seemed almost
distraught at the parting. 'You must come again,' he said.
'If we ever get out of the Tower, we certainly will,' Fleming
grinned.
Expressing soft Highland apologies, the station police sergeant
said that he would have to put his prisoners in a cell
when they got to Portree.
'It's forbye a murder case, ye'll be understanding,' he said.
'But it'll be the Inspector to decide on a charge, if there's to
be one. I'm going to permit the young lady to be with you.
I'll have your word of no trouble, sir?'
'Of course,' said Fleming. 'We're grateful for your hospitality.'
They had to wait in the cells for a couple of hours. The
sergeant's wife sent in two steaming plates of mutton stew.
Both ate ravenously. It was good to eat a proper meal after
Preen's diet of soup and vegetables.
Then Quadrlng arrived. He was smiling. But not with any
touch of triumph. He seemed reli..eved to see them both alive
and well.
'You've given us one hell of a chase, Fleming,' he said.
'You are all right, my dear?' he added, looking hard at
Andre. 'Well, as you may imagine, your bosses are very excited
at the way you've both turned up, particularly Dr
Geers. I'm afraid I have instructions to take you to London
right away. There'll be a Transport Command plane touching
down presently.'
'I expected that,' Fleming replied. 'But I hope you'll get
your sleuthing powers working on just who the gentlemen
were who visited us last night.'
61

'Any ideas?' Quadring asked.

Fleming hesitated. 'Nothing definite,' he answered.

The failure of Intel's atempt to kidnap Fleming and Andre
had caused consternation as much as anger in Kaufman's
mind. He had learned to be completely unprincipled in the
service of whoever paid him, but he had a distaste for personal
violence. He had tried to explain this to a war crimes
court back in 1947 when he sat in the dock along with the
riff-raft from one of the minor camps. He had vehemently
protested that he had never laid a hand on a single Jew or
gipsy prisoner; his only connexion with the extermination
section had been to supply them with his carefully tabulated
lists of outworked and over-age prisoners. The court had been
obtuse; they had sentenced him to seven years, reduced by
his perfect behaviour to five.

The charming man who had then offered him a confidential
post with Intel had been the first person to appreciate
the virtues of Herr Kaufman's life. 'We like to use men
like you,' he had said.

And now he had badly let down these considerate and
generous employers. Two men shot dead and a third getting
out of the country as fast as he could. His frantic report over
the phone to Salim had not been an experience he would like
repeated. Unkind things had been said; even threats. Salim
had appeared to be repeating the words of someone else in
the room, judging from the way he constantly paused.
Finally Kaufman had been told to be at Oban airport and
await a caller. A director of Intel coming from Vienna, Kauf-man
had never previously met any executive above district
manager.

Nervously he hung around the airport building. An hour
passed, then another. Beads of sweat glistened on his close-cropped
head despite the coldness of the day. He wanted to
run away. But he knew he dared not. For one thing it would
be disobedience of orders; for another he was Intel's employee
for life; there had been so many things he had done
on their behalf which were in the crime dossiers of the police

of a dozen countries ....

'So you are here ....

It was a woman's voice. Kaufman spun around a;d saw

62

Janine Gamboul. He grinned with relief. So they were going
to use the old trick of feminine allure to get hold of Fleming.
But he had to be cautious. 'Excuse?' he said gutturally.
'You are... ?'
She ignored his question 'You are Kaufman. Where is
Fleming?'
'But Colonel Salim said a director from Vienna .... '
Kaufman mumbled.
She cut him short. 'So naturally you imagined a man.'
'You are... ?' he stuttered. Then he was all deference and
politeness. 'I am sorry, I did not realise.'
'I repeat, where is Dr Fleming? Or have you frightened
him off?'
'He is at the same place. The little island. It was not my
fault. Two men were killed. And I am not a gunman.'
She walked towards the airport cafe, not troubling to see
whether he followed. He rushed ahead to open the door for
her. When they were seated at a table in a quiet corner she
lighted a cigarette and drew in a deep lungful of smoke.
'We shall arrange things better this time,' she murmured.
'We must have Fleming quickly. Nothing is More vital.'
'May I ask why?' he muttered.
She gazed at him with impatient contempt. 'To help us
with some equipment. He has some special knowledge we
need.' She gave him a cold smile. 'It's really the result of
your commendable activities on behalf of the company.
Stupid you may be, but you are loyal and energetic. I think
you should have been told before.'
She dropped her voice to a murmur. 'When we heard that
a message had been received from space you recall that you
were told to make contact with Dr Denis Bridger, Fleming's
partner. You did well, Kaufman. From Bridger you got the
specification for making a computer to interpret the message.'
'Nothing ever came of it,' said Kaufman mournfully.
'Bridger - er- got himself killed.'
'So you think nothing came of it?' she laughed. 'We have
been building a copy of that computer; in Azaran. Only now
we need a little expert advice. Salim has got Professor
63

Dawnay, but she was only indirectly involved. She'll possibly
be useful. But Fleming will be essential.'

Kaufman felt relieved. Even happy. He ventured to light a
cigarello.

'So you see, Herr Kaufman,' Janine Gamboul finished,
stubbing out Iner cigarette, 'this time there nust be no mistake
in enrolling Doctor Fleming on our staff.'


64

CHAPTER POUR

SQUALL LINES

TH. attendants in the Palais des Nations at Geneva told one
another that there had not been such a smoothly running
international conference for years. Russians nodded cheerfully
as their interpreters repeated the heart-felt views of an
American delegate. Even the French were inviting ideas for
co-operative effort. In fact, the whole thing was almost
boring.
The reason was that the subject under discussion was the
weather. Everyone could agree that it was undeniably bad.
As gales blew indiscriminately over East and West, and
abnormally heavy rainfall was prevalent throughout the
Northern hemisphere, no sensitive nationalist could find an
excuse for blaming his neighbour.
A few nations, imaginative enough to realise that weather
control was within the realms of possibility, had sent scientists
as well as meteorologists to Geneva in the hopes of getting
some agreement about methods and policy before haphazard
experiments began. Britain was among them. That was why
the Ministry of Science had despatched Osborne as an ex
olcio delegate.
Osborne had gone, disturbed, in mind. Despite interdepartmental
briefs which had been circulated to draw attention
to climatic phenomena for which there was no precedent,
this weather conference seemed really of just academic
interest - one of those United Nations' activities which kept a
lot of people happy and did no one any harm. Osborne
wondered whether the trip had been arranged as a preliminary
to a transfer to some innocuous department like Met.
as the result of the suspicions of his complicity in the Thorness
business.
The minister had been remarkably considerate about the
whole thing. Security officers were still interviewing per5

	65

sonnel, and Osborne's assistant had become very nervous and
timid. Osborne had brightly insisted that if they both stuck to
the story that the assistant had accompanied him to Thorness
on that momentous night all would be well. It was perfectly
normal for a senior official to go around with his P.A. Rather
unwillingly the assistant agreed to stick to his story. Osborne
suspected that real pressure by the sleuths, or the simpler
method of putting the young man on oath, would exact the
truth. It was another reason why he would have preferred to
remain in Whitehall to watch for a weakening of his assistant's
resolution and to give moral support.
Once in Geneva, he decided to make the best of it. Whatever
foulness the winter was producing elsewhere, in the Alps
it just meant More than the usual amount of snow. Heavy
night falls were followed by brilliant sunshine with clockwork
regularity. The lake lay ice-blue in the brightness; the
famous fountain spurted high in the sky, its spray in rainbow
colours. The clean, snow-cleared streets were alive with
delegates and their relatives enjoying themselves between
sessions.
When he looked through the tall windows of the rooftop
caf at this pleasant scene he thoroughly regretted the time
spent in the close and over-heated conference room. But
Professor Neilson's paper had not been without interest.
These Americans certainly got down to bedrock when there
was a problem to be solved.
Osborne had left before the discussion began - with its inevitable
pointless questions which were really statements. He
was lazily watching his caf filtre drip into the glass when a
woman approached his table. She was not young, but looked
intelligent and pleasant.
'Mr Osborne?' Her accent was American.
Osborne stood up. 'Yes,' he answered. 'I don't think I
know - '
She smiled. 'I'm Professor Neilson's wife.' They shook
hands and Osborne pulled out the adjoining chair. She sat
down.
I'm afraid you've missed your husband's paper,' he began.
'He's just finished reading it. Everyone was most impressed.
He'll be out soon; the discussion should be almost over.'
66

She did not seem to be heeding what he said. 'Mr
Osborne,' she said quietly, 'I think my husband would like to
talk to you. Not about the conference.' She glanced towards
the door where a crowd of delegates were moving around the
foyer. 'If you could possibly wait till he comes. I'd rather let
him tell you what it's about.'
'Of course,' Osborne said. 'Meantime, may I order you
something?'
She nodded. 'Some coffee, please.'
When Neilson arrived he looked round carefully, then sat
down and addressed himself without any preamble to
Osborne.
'I suppose my wife has left it to me to tell you. I badly
want to talk. I'll come to the point. How much do you know
about an outfit called Intel?'
Osborne took time to decide on his answer. 'They're a big
international trading consortium. Very big.'
'Sure,' agreed Neilson, 'they're big. The thing is: are they
reputable ?'
'I don't really know,' Osborne said cautiously.
'Mr Osborne,' said Mrs Neilson. 'This morning we had a
cable from our son. We haven't seen him for two years. All
the cable said was "Will meet you at the caf Nicole in
Geneva one evening this week, Intel permitting." It's the first
clue that he was even alive we've gotten since the Christmas
before last.'
'But you knew More or less where he was and what he was
doing?' Osborne suggested.
Neilson gave a short laugh. 'He went after a job in Vienna
two years back. A postcard said he was okay and not to
worry. That's all.'
'What sort of job?' Osborne asked.
'Well, I guess that as he graduated from the Massachussetts
Institute with a Ph.D. in electronics, it'd be a job in that
line.'
'I believe Intel have an office here, or certainly in Zurich.
Have you enquired?'
'Of course,' Mrs Neilson replied. 'They said they knew
nothing about the staffs at the firm's offices outside Switzer-
67

land. That's why I persuaded my husband to ask you for
information.'
'But why?' Osborne demanded.
'Because you're a friend of a friend of my son's,' Neilson
said. 'John Fleming. Jan brought him home a couple of times
when Fleming came to the Institute on an exchange setup
with the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge. They were
great buddies. And, of course, we know Fleming became a
key man in your Ministry's programme.'
'I don't think there's anything I can do to help you,' said
Osborne woodenly. 'We've lost touch with Professor Fleming
.... ' He paused, embarrassed, and then went on hurriedly,
'but I'm not returning to London till the day after
tomorrow. Perhaps I could meet your son? If he says in his
cable that he's coming this week it must mean either this
evening or tomorrow.'
The Neilsons were grateful. They invited him to have
dinner with them at the cafe that evening, and, if Jan didn't
turn up then, the following evening as well.
That evening Mrs Neilson insisted on going to the cafe by
seven. 'I'll sit in the front part,' she told her husband; 'then
he'll be sure to see me. We can go into the dining room
later.'
She ordered a kirsch and was taking the first sip when he
materlalised out of the dusk and sat down beside her without
speaking; a pale, serious young man, very much on edge. She
was shocked by the way he had aged and got so lean; and by
how nervous he seemed. He kissed her on the cheek, but he
pulled his hand away when she tried to clasp it.
'Please don't make us conspicuous, Mom,' he muttered.
'I'm sorry if that hurts you. But - well, you see, I've good
reasons,' He stubbed out a half-smoked cigarette.
'Surely, son,' his mother said, trying to smile. 'I understand.
But at least you're here. I can look at you. It's been so
long.'
The love in her eyes hurt him. 'Mom,' he began, hunching
towards her across the table. 'I've got to talk, and I may not
have much time. You see, I'm on the run. No,' he tried to
smile, 'I'm not a criminal. The shoe's on the other foot. The crooks are after me.'
68

He paused when a waiter came for his order. He sent the
man away for a large Scotch, and then started to talk,
hurriedly and a little incoherently, as if time was rmming
out.
Soon Neilson arrived with Osborne. The two men had met
just outside the caf& Neilson greeted his son with delight,
thumping him on the back and grinning happily. 'We'll
celebrate this with the biggest steak the Swiss can think up.
And champagne.' He renembered Osborne was standing
quietly beside them.
'My apologies, Osborne,' he said. 'I'd like you to meet my
son . . . Jan, Mr Osborne is a friend of Professor Fleming.'
Osborne had just extended his hand when a youth with a
flashgun and a cumbersome plate camera came up.
'Professor Neilson,' he shouted at them. 'Un moment, si'l
vous plait. A picture, please. For the American press.'
He bustled around, pushing all four into position he
wanted for the photograph. Jan he had standing between his
seated mother and father, Osborne well to one side. Satisfied,
he backed towards the cafd entrance, peering into the range-finder.
'Bon I' he exclaimed. The flash momentarily blinded everyone
with its burst of white light.
Simultaneously Jan fell sideways against his father, moaning.
The photographer disappeared into the street, and a
gentleman who had been reading a newspaper at a table
beside the door put on his hat, slid something black and shiny
into the breast pocket of his overcoat and walked quite unhurriedly
after the photographer.
The Neilson's were bent over their son, but Osborne had
seen the careful and methodical movements of the man near
the door. He had seen what that black thing shoved inside the
coat was, noticing the squat round cylinder of a silencer on
the muzzle of the gun. He loped through the door - in time
to see a Citroen, its number plate covered in frozen slush,
pick up photographer and gunman and cruise away along the
lakeside road which led to Vevey and the frontier.
He returned to the Neilsons. 'It's no good,' he said gently.
'They got away.'
The Neilsons took no notice. They were isolated by their
69

grief as they awkwardly nursed the body of their dead son,
one on each side.
Mrs Neilson looked helplessly at her husband. 'He - he
told me he feared this,' she moaned. 'They've been hunting
him for months. They kept him prisoner before that, but he
escaped. They made him work.'
'Who did?' her husband exclaimed. 'Where could he have
been imprisoned?'
She began caressing Jan's hair, touching his eyelids. 'He
said it was in a country called Azaran.'

In a discreet house on the outskirts of Berne Kaufman was
compiling the details of the report he had to send his employers.
The gunman stood at the side of the bureau desk,
eyeing the bundle of American dollars which he had earned.
'So the plctureman was late,' Kaufman said; 'he will be
reprimanded in due course. But you are sure you killed the
Neilson boy before he could talk?'
'He wouldn't talk much after he was hit,' the gunman
laughed. 'But he talked plenty before. To his mother. And
she can talk to her husband - and to some Englishman the
old man brought with him. He was introduced to the boy as
Osborne.'
Kaufman sighed. 'Osborne. It would have to be. All this
killing. I dislike it. One death - and you have to organise
another. So it goes on.'
He pushed the money to the corner of the desk. The gunman
stuck it inside his coat, a cushion for the revolver which
lay there.
'Get out of the country right away,' Kaufman told him.
'As for me, I shall have to return to England.'

Andre and Fleming were flown to the R.A.F. station at
Northolt to avoid ,publicity problems at London Airport. A
Government car awaited them on the apron and they were
driven straight to the Ministry of Science.
The Minister had decided to handle the interview personally,
with Geers sitting in to brief on the technical side.
He had a foreboding about questions in the House some time
or other about this business if the secret leaked, and he had
TO

no intention of having to admit inefficiency. He was also a
just man, which was why he had called a solicitor from the
Attorney General's office to sit in and watch over the normal
rights of a British citizen. His worried mind found a touch of
humour there. Was the girl a British citizen? She had no
birth certificate; no parents. So far as Somerset House was
concerned she did not exist. It was an interesting point if this
affair ever came to a legal trial. He fervently hoped it
wouldn't.
The Minister greeted his visitors coldly. But he went out of
his way to stress that this was in no sense a trial; it was an
informal enquiry.
Fleming, untidy and doing his best to disguise the strain he
felt, laughed sardonically. 'Very informal,' he said. 'I noticed
the informally dressed plain clothes nark hanging around the
dogr just in case I might make a run for it. Ah, and my dear
Geers is here as well.'
The Minister ignored him and turned to Andre. 'Sit down,
my dear,' he said gently. 'You must be very tired. But this is
unfortunately necessary.'
He sat at his desk and re-read the brief report of the preliminary
questioning Quadring had sent by teletype.
I'm informed that you are suffering from amnesia,' he
began, and motioned to Geers.
Geers rose from his chair to the Minister's right and confronted
the girl. 'Andromeda,' he said harshly. 'Surely you
haven't forgotten the factors involved in the synthesis of living tissue? Do you really mean to tell us you know nothing
about the fact that one of the formulae obtained from the
computer on which you worked enable Professor Dawnay
to construct living matter in the laboratory? And that the
outcome of that work was you yourself?'
Andre looked back at him, wide-eyed but quite calm, with
the placidity of a child. She slowly shook her head.
Geer's face flushed with frustration and anger. 'You're not
going to insist that you can't remember your work with the
computer?'
The solicitor coughed discreetly. 'I think that is enough,
Dr Geers,' he said mildly. To Andre he murmured, 'Don't
worry to answer all these questions just now.'
71

'I agree,' said the Minister, glaring at Geers. 'The girl's
unfit and distraught. Perhaps we can have her history properly
explained to her in a calmer atmosphere.'
Fleming strode forward to the desk. 'That's the last thing I,'
he shouted.
The Minister looked at him coldly. 'I beg your pardon.'
Hurriedly the solicitor interposed. 'I think that my professional
advice would be that tiffs lady must testify once she
is medically fit and has been properly informed of the past.
Her evidence would, of course, have to be before a properly
constituted Board of Enqu, iry.'
'I could brief her,' Geers said eagerly.
The Minister looked at him with hardly concealed distaste.
'I would have preferred Osborne if circumstances had been
different. In any case, he cannot be brought back from
Geneva until tomorrow.' He smiled at Andre. 'Perhaps you'll
wait in the ante-room while we talk to Dr Fleming?'
Fleming crossed to the door and opened it. He smiled reassuringly
at her as she went out.
'Now, Dr Fleming, why did you abduct this woman?' The
Minister's gentle tone had changed.
'That's beside the point,' Fleming retorted truculently.
'Then what is the point?'
'That the message from the Andromeda nebulae, and all
that derived from it, was evil.' Deliberately he forced himself
to speak calmly and quietly. 'It was sent by a superior intelligence
that would subjugate us, and would have, if necessary,
destroyed us.'
'And because you thought that, you destroyed the computer.'
The Minister's tone was grim, though the inflexion
suggested he was posing a question rather than making a
statement. 'Yet you seem to be ready to do anything to protect
the girl who worked it. Your contention surely involves
her in your condemnation.'
'The girl is nothing without the computer. The will, the
memory, the knowledge - they were all in the machine. You
can see there's something lacking in her now that the computer
no longer exists - thank God. Something missing in her
character. Ask Geers; he knows what she was like... '
The Minister ignored the invitation. He had no intention
72

of getting involved in by-ways of ethics when he believed the
issue was far simpler.
'I put it to you, Dr Fleming, that you destroyed the computer
and you abducted the girl because she might have told
· us what happened.'
'I took her because she needed to be protected from the
people around her.' Fleming looked at Geers.
The Minister picked up a sheet of paper tucked into the
bulky file before him. 'Perhaps. you'd care to comment on the
fact that Mr Osborne's assistant, the man supposed to have
accompanied him to Thorness on the night of the fire, admitted
when questioned late this afternoon that he did not go
there.'
'You'll have to ask Osborne who he did take, won't you?'
said Fleming.
'We shall,' the Minister glowered. 'In the meantime, Dr
Fleming, you must consider yourself under surveillance. To
avoid the necessity of formal arrest and indictment at Bow
Street, with all the unpleasant sensationalism affecting both
ourselves and you and the girl, I hope you will cooperate
sensibly. I cannot force you to be our guest without a charge.
But we can arrange very pleasant accommodation.'
'So Magna Carta still operates?' said Fleming sarcastically.
'If I insist on being arrested, on what grounds could you cook
up a charge?'
'Defence Regulations,' murmured the solicitor. 'The relevant
Acts would be '
'Spare me the details,' Fleming interrupted. 'I'll come
quietly. And where is this'- er - hotel for unwelcome guests
of the Government?'
'Not too far away,' said the Minister vaguely. 'It will do
you good, or at least the girl will benefit. A glimpse of More
spacious days of the kind one pays 2s. 6d. on Sundays to
inspect. I'm afraid I can't be More specific than that. The
army's been using part of it ever since 1942. It would be best,
I think, if you went there right away and both got a good
night's rest. You may see things More dearly, even sensibly,
in the morning.'
The car journey took a couple of hours. Even Fleming
could find no fault with the accommodation or service.
73

Someone used to this sort of thing had arranged for every
comfort - drinks, clean clothes, books, baths, everything.
Andre was as lavishly provided. Fleming was, however, not
over-enamoured with the solid-looking maidservants who
hovered around. Their white overalls did not disguise their
regulation hair styles and their khaki nylon stockings and
sturdy black shoes. Fleming had never approved of women in
the armed services.

But he found the clumsiness of the 6 ft. waiter who served
their excellent dinner amusing. There was something about a
policeman which could never be disguised, not even when he
was a member of the Special Branch.

Otherwise they were left to themselves in the days that
followed. They could walk as much as they liked around the
vast parkland. Fleming noticed that Andre seemed to be
growing increasingly vacant and that she stumbled quite
often even on the smooth grass. He also noted that the chain
link fence was the usual Government type, precisely like that
round Thorness. The old gatehouse at the entrance to the
main drive had been visibly transformed into a guard room.
The guard carried an automatic rifle.

One afternoon Andre was taken away. Geers had arrived
and wanted to talk with her. She spent many hours of the
ensuing day with the scientist. He did his work well. Andre
emerged thoughtful though still curiously unmoved. She
told Fleming that she accepted that all Geers had said was
true, but it was like the life outline of some other person. It
struck no strong chord in her own memory, although she
realised that she had been involved in the destruction of the
computer.

'What will they do to us?' she asked when they sat in
the lounge, idly watching some inanity on T.V. late that
evening.

Fleming was quiet for a time, marvelling that the moronic
woman simpering at the camera had just won a spin dryer
for confirming that the Amazon was a large river. 'I imagine
they'll wait until poor old Osborne joins us here,' he said
eventually. 'Then they'll have a trial in camera. He and I
will be beheaded at the Tower, Osborne a perfect gentleman
to the very end. As for you' - he found he could not go on,
74

and they sat without speaking for a long while in the flickering
half-light of the telly.
Suddenly there were footsteps outside, heavy ones, on the
parquet flooring.
'Who's that?' Andre asked. Both had grown accustomed to
the flannel-footed silence of the minions who watched over
them.
'Could be Osborne,' Fleming suggested. 'It's about time he
joined the party. Nice if they let us all spend our last days
together.
But it wasn't Osborne. It was Kaufman. He was dressed in
an over-long black overcoat. In one hand he held a black
homburg, in the other a briefcase. He was momentarily taken
aback at the sight of Fleming and Andre.
'Excuse please,' he murmured, shutting the door quietly. 'I
had expected to meet Mr Osborne .... ' He nervously licked
his lips and then put on a big smile. 'I was informed he was
due here this evening. Instead I have the honour of greeting
Dr Fleming.' He advanced, podgy hand outstretched.
'Mein frend Kaufman,' mimicked Fleming, ignoring the
handshake. 'How did you flannel your way into this place?'
Kaufman drew himself up. 'I am representing Mr
Osborne's lawyer. It is all so difficult, this matter. But now I
have the good luck. I meet you.'
He peered myopically through his spectacles at Andre, still
sitting in her easy chair. 'And this is the famous young lady!'
He crossed to her, bowed, and took her hand, brushing the
back of it with his lips.
'You see, my dear, how charming these Viennese are,' said
Fleming.
Kaufman scowled. 'I do not come from Vienna, but from
Dusseldorf, mein liebe Doktor I'
'It's not so long since you were taking pot shots at your
liebe doctor,' Fleming pointed out. 'Not you, of course. You
get other people to pull triggers and make uncomfortable
trips to small private islands.'
Kaufman seemed genuinely embarrassed. 'I am not a free
agent,' he said. 'I do not act as I would wish.'
'Only as your bosses in Intel wish.'
There was something unexpectedly sad and bitter in Kauf-
75

man's answer. 'Some of us are not lucky enough to do the
things we would choose.'
Fleming nodded. 'Why did they send you after us?'
'You have something my directors want.' Kaufman was
restless. He tip-toed to the window and pulled aside the
heavy chintz curtains. Momentarily light swept over his face
from moving lamps. At the same time there was the quiet
throb of an idling engine and the faint swish of wheels
braking on gravel.
'Your client, Mr Osborne, maybe,' suggested Fleming.
Kaufman shook his head. No, Dr Fleming, this is a van. It
will stop round the back, in the stable yard.' His voice grew
clipped and stern. 'Now, please, you wll both come with me.'
He partially drew the curtains and pushed open the long,
low window.
'Don't take any notice of what he says,' Fleming muttered
quietly to Andre. 'Just go on sitting there.'
'Please,' beseeched Kaufman. 'Last week I have a young
man shot dead. A nice young man. I did not even know him.
I do not like such things.'
There was some noise outside and a trench-coated figure
sprang lightly over the sill. He was a thin, sallow-faced
youngster hardly out of his teens. His narrowed eyes darted
round the room. The gun in his hand was held rock-steady.
'Come on,' he ordered in a small morose voice, 'it's bloody
cold and wet hanging around out there. Let's get going.'
Kaufman moved behind the gunman. 'We wish to have
you alive, Herr Doktor,' he said, 'but we should be prepared
to stretch a point with the young lady.' The man in the
trench coat pointed the revolver towards Andre. There was a
studied movement of his thumb as he spun the bullet chamber.
Fleming knew it was a crude theatrical gesture, but
a purposeful one. He beckoned to Andre. With her hand in
his they crossed to the window.
Kaufman climbed through the window first, turning to
hdp Andre. The gunman brought up the rear, his pistol close
to Fleming's back, but suddenly whirled round as he heard
the door into the lounge opening. The others were already
on the terrace. Fleming stopped dead and looked back.
Osborne was standing in the doorway, gaping at the gun76


man. Just behind him was a soldier, wearing the scarlet armband
of the Military Police.
'What the dickens, Who the devil... ?' Osborne managed
to say as the soldier pushed him roughly out of the way. But
it was too late. The gunman fired - once. Osborne crashed
back against the door from the impact of the bullet. The
gunrnan leaped to the window and fired again wildly as he
clambered through. The bullet missed the soldier, who had
started to rush forward, but sent him sprawling for cover.
From where he lay he blew his whistle for aid, while
Osborne collapsed slowly to the ground with his left hand
clasped to his right shoulder and a frozen look of surprise on
his face.
'What a damned ridiculous thing to happen,' he said
slowly and distinctly, and then slumped forward.
Outside, in the darkness and the gusty rain, unseen hands
grabbed Fleming and Andre. They were picked up bodily
and pushed into the back of a van. The rear doors were
slammed shut, and the engine started. Then with a scream of
protesting tyres the van shot away, rocking so violently that
it was impossible for Fleming to get to his feet. The vehicle
gathered More speed on the long straight drive to the gates.
Fleming heard confused shouts as they roared past the
guard room and on to the highway. Time after time they
almost overturned as the driver took sharp turns at full
speed, the sideways skids forcing Andre and Fleming to lie
flat, bracing their feet against the steel sides.
After a while they settled down to a fast, steady speed.
Fleming guessed that they were Qn a motorwy. He cursed
the fact that he had no watch, But he estimated that this
stretch lasted for half an hour - say forty miles since they had
started.
The van slowed, swerved to the right and again there
came bursts of speed alternating with abrupt turns. The
bumpiness suggested a badly made road or lane.
Gingerly he stood up and with the aid of the futile flame
from his cigarette lighter looked quickly round the van. He
knew it was just a gesture. The interior was solid metal. The
door was secured by the usual lock bars from the outside.
There was no aperture beyond a small wire-meshed peep
77

hole at the front near the driver. This was covered.
The van slowed down to a crawl, cruising slowly over
uneven ground. It began to bump badly and the tyres made
no More noise. They were obviously on grass. Then the van
stopped.
There was a pause before the rear doors were opened.
Rain was pouring down. Kaufman stood there smiling in the
glimmer of a shaded flash light held by someone to the rear.
Beside Kaufman stood the gunman.
'Well, Doctor,' said Kaufman, 'will you be so good as to
get out; the young lady as well ?'
Taking his time, Fleming jumped down. He lifted Andre
out. 'Your friend has rubbed out the perfectly harmless
Osborne,' he told Kaufman. 'I wouldn't say that we're harmless,
so what's your programme in our case? And where are
we?
'On a disused airfield of our great American allies,' Kauf-man
said. 'The runways are enormous and still excellent. We
are saving you the unpleasantness of a trial and imprisonment
for sabotage. I am sure your Government consider you
a traitor.' He removed his glasses and cleaned off the globules
of rain. 'No More time for talking.' He seemed almost regretful.
'The plane must leave immediately. Come I'
The gunman moved behind Fleming, and Kaufman led
the way. Soon Fleming could see the wet, shining surface of
an aircraft fuselage.
'Welcome aboard madame - and you, sir,' said a woman's
VOiCe.
Fleming laughed at the madness of it. The girl at the top
of the aircraft's steps was neatly dressed in a dark blue
uniform. She was the usual type of air stewardess, trim, neat,
and pretty. In the glowing red of the night emergency lights
in the cabin Fleming saw that she was oriental. Swiftly she
directed her guests to a couple of seats forward, helping them
to fasten their safety belts. She completely ignored the man
with the gun, who went to the seat across the gangway and
sat there, half turned towards them, the gun still in his
hands.
Kaufman disappeared through the crew door. The starter
motor whirred. First one engine whined, then a second.
78

'Jets!' muttered Fleming to himself. 'Trust. Intel to do
things properly. No expense spared.'
There was no run-up of power. The jets were given full
throttle with the brakes on; they sighed down from their
crescendo, and then began to whine once More. The aircraft
moved smoothly down the runway.
As soon as they were airborne they climbed steeply. The
pilot obviously intended to get well clear of the commercial
air lanes with their inquisitive radar controls. Soon they were
through the clouds and bathed in cold moonlight. Fleming
estimated from the stars he could identify that they were
heading in a southerly direction.
When Kaufman emerged from the cabin he confirmed
this. 'We have just crossed the English coast,' he beamed.
'We are now over international waters. All is well. I suggest
you try to get some sleep after the hostess has served refreshments.
We shall be landing in about four hours in North
Africa.'
'Whereabouts in North Africa?' Fleming enquired.
'Of no importance,' said the German. 'Just for refuelling.
The major part of the journey follows. To Azaran.'

79

CHAPTER FIVE

SUNNY AND WARM

DAYLIGHT came long before the aircraft slowly lost height
and crossed the Azaran frontier. Fleming, gloonily looking
through the aircraft window, found nothing to arouse his
interest. The brown-grey land, flat and interminably dreary,
stretched towards the horizon where low hills drew an
uneven contour. Now and then he saw a blur of dust where a
camel train moved along the dark threads which marked the
age-old desert tracks. Apart from a few ragged shaped blobs
of lighter contours, the pattern of a few miserable houses
round a water hole, the place seemed lifeless.
The jet's whine sunk to a hum and the port wing dipped.
Below Fleming saw the discs of the top of oil tanks, and not
far from them the tracery of derricks. The ground slid closer
and a town came into focus, its white buildings brilliant in
the morning sun. The aircraft swung the other way, and the
horizon dropped past Fleming's window. When the machine
levelled off he just had time to note a long grey building, flat
roofed and modern. It stood isolated some five miles 'from
the town.
The jet engines picked up power, eased, and faded. They
were landing.
A soft heat struck their faces like a muffled blow when
they emerged from the cabin. Arab soldiers, in battledress
and American-style steel helmets, lounged around with sten
guns at the ready. An ancient British limousine, the camouflage
paint peeling from its body, drew up beside the aircraft.
Kaufman, sweating profusely, hustled Fleming and Andre
into the rear seat. He himself sat beside the army driver.
A good concrete road led straight into the town. As soon
as they reached the slummy outskirts, where huts roofed
with battered corrugated iron clashed obscenely with
decrepit but still lovely houses of traditional Arabic architec-
80

ture the road widened into a badly maintained highway,
packed with people. Women, veiled and graceful, led donkeys
half hidden under huge panniers. Some men were in
Arab costume, but most wore cheap, shabby Western clothes.

The Azaran flag hung from every building. Here and there
loud speakers blared Oriental music, the discord heightened
by distortion. The driver went full tilt into the mob, his hand
continually on the horn ring. Past the huge market place,
where hundreds were standing around, aimless yet animated,
the car swung through the narrow entrance to a large house.
Two sentries looked poker faced at the car's passengers as
the driver carefully steered the car into the cool, shady courtyard
round which the house was built.

Kaufman alighted and spoke some words to an Arab in a
neat Western-style suit. Then he disappeared through a
doorless entrance. The Arab came across to the car and in
careful English ordered Andre and Fleming to follow him.
He took them across the courtyard, up some stone steps and
through a beautifully ornamented door.

'Wait here, please,' he said. He closed the door behind
him.

Fleming strolled round the room. It was small but high
ceilinged. A series of narrow slits, fitted with modern glass,
allowed panels of sunlight to pattern the stone floor. Persian
carpets hung on the walls. There were comfortable modern
chairs as well as fragile little oriental tables. On one of the
latter stood a brass tray with a silver jug and tiny cups. Fleming
picked up the jug. It was hot; the aroma of coffee smelt
good. He poured some of the thick, syrupy liquid into the
cups and handed one to Andre.

'What is this place?' she asked as she sipped the coffee.
Fleming took off his sports jacket and unbuttoned his
shirt. 'A very hot country,' he grinned. 'A place called
Azaran which seems to be small but likely to be notorious.
This is doubtless some pasha's desirable residence. Unless it's
Kaufman's.'

'He is not a bad man,' said Andre.

Fleming glanced at her with surprise. 'You sense that?
Basically you're right, I'm sure. The trouble is the hard
veneer stuck on that lovdy, harmless soul of his.'

6 81

But Andre's attention had drifted away again.
There was a rustle of the hangings in the far corner of the
roorn. Janine Gamboul came towards them. She was wearing
a silk sheath dress and managed to look both cool and eye-catching.
'Doctor Fleming?' she murmured, pausing in front of him,
unsmiling.
'Who are you?' Fleming asked ruddy.
'My name is Gamboul,' she answered, turning from him
and studying Andre.
'The lady of the house?' he asked.
She did not take her eyes off Andre. 'This is the home of
Colonel Salim, a member of the Azaran Government. He
could not come himself. He is extremely busy. Today is the
anniversary of Azaran's independence, and this year the
celebrations have a special meaning because the Government
has terminated the oil agreements. In case of interference the
frontier has been closed.'
'A great day, as you say,' Fleming said. 'And this Salim
had us brought here?'
She turned then and looked him over slowly. 'I - that is to
say, we - had you brought.'
'I see. And you - singular or plural - are the flowers-by-wire
service, the great Intel ?'
'I represent Intel,' she said coldly. She looked once More at
Andre. 'And you are '
'A colleague,' Fleming said quickly.
Janine Gamboul let the ghost of a smile play round her
sensuous lips. 'You are - ?' She asked Andre again.
'We are what is popularly known as "just friends", in the
rather old fashioned and More exact sense of the term Fleming
said. 'Her name is Andre. Just Andre.'
'Please sit down, ma petite,' she said pleasantly to Andre.
'I hope you're not too tired from your journey; that you were
well treated.'
'Not particularly,' Fleming answered for her.
'I'm sorry,' she said formally. 'We brought you here
because we think we can help each other. You're on the run
from the British Government. They won't get you here, this
is a closed country. No extradition.'
82

'That's your version of helping us. Now suppose you
explain how we're to be forced to help you?'

She was saved from losing her temper by the arrival of
Salim.

The late ex-Ambassador was in a perfectly tailored uniform,
with two rows of medals on his breast. He clearly
found life very good indeed.

'Ah, Dr Fleming,' he exclaimed, flashing his white teeth
and extending his hand. Fleming turned his back on him. Not

put out at all, Salim went to Andre. 'And you are Miss - '
'Andre,' Janine said.
'Just- ?'

Gamboul shrugged. 'Si. So the locquacious Dr Fleming
says.'

Salim took Andre's hand in both of his. 'I'm charmed,' he
murmured admiringly.

Andre smiled a little. 'How do you do,' she said politely.
Salim released her hands and threw himself in a chair,
stretching his long legs in their immaculately polished boots.
'Well, to explanations. Dr Fleming, we are now a new
country. Except for our oil we are under-developed. Not
since two thousand years ago, when we were a province with
our own rights under the old Persian Empire of Xerxes, have
we been anything but a slave state of other people. We need
help now we are independent.'

'You go about hiring help in a curious way,' said Fleming.
Salim waved his hand expressively. 'How else could we
have got you? The Intel organisation has sunk a great deal
of capital here, in the form of industrial and research
developments. As the host government we shall benefit. We
have engaged a great many progressive and brilliant people
- scientists.'

'Collected in the same way?' Fleming enquired.

'In different ways. Once they are here they find it worth
while. We treat them well. They don't usually wish to give it


'Do they have any option?'

'Let us have a drink,' Janine Gamboul interrupted. Sallm
nodded and pulled a bell cord.

'You're a physicist,' Dr Fleming, and a mathematician

83

specialislng in cryrogenics,' she went on.
'Sometimes,' Fleming agreed.
Salim motioned to the manservant who brought a bottle-laden
tray to put it down. 'What will you have, Janine?' he
asked. 'We had another young scientist working here - Nell-son
.... What would the young lady and you like to drink?
Whisky, or something soft?'
'This is very un-Moslem of you,' said Fleming with a small
smile.
Salim turned to him slowly and seriously. 'I am a modern
man,' he said without affectation and turned away.
'In that case,' said Fleming, 'Andre would like some fruit
juice if it isn't laced. I'll have a Scotch, neat.' Fleming
regarded his impassive back. 'So Jan Neilson was here? I
suppose your intelligence service knows that Jan, Denis
Bridger, and I were at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology
for a spell? It all begins to fit .... '
Salim handed Andre and Fleming their drinks. He busied
himself with two glasses for Gamboul and himself. 'We
thought a lot of Neilson; he was very brilliant.' His voice was
detached, as if he were quoting a handout.
'But dead?' Fleming asked.
Salim turned again and stared calmly at him. 'Neilson did
all the real organisation of our main research project. But he
failed to complete it. Even if he had stayed I think he was in
a blind alley.' He looked thoughtfully at the ice bobbing
about in his glass. 'So, of course, we had to find a better
man.'
'To do what?' Fleming found his hand was shaking with
anger and fear.
Salim came close to him. 'You worked on the Thorness
computer. We have one.'
'What sort?' Fleming asked, dreading the answer.
Gamboul gave a short laugh. 'You ought to know, Dr
Fleming. Your late colleague Neilson built it.'
Fleming fought to keep calm. 'I suppose you don't really
know what you've got hold of,' he said at last. 'I'll give you
the best advice I can: blow it up.'
'As you blew up the other?' Gamboul's eyes were dancing
84

with amused triumph. 'I'm afraid you won't have the same
chances here.'
'How do you know that we, that I - '
She waited before she answered, savouring the pleasure of
the impact to come. 'Professor Dawnay told us.'
'Dawnay!' Fleming could only stare at her.
'She came here of her own free will,' Salim interposed.
'With you and the lady professor we feel we have the needful
set-up. The computer Neilson built is to be the basis of all
the technology Mam'selle Gamboul's organisation has placed
here.'
He crossed to the window slit and peered out. The noise of
the crowd was an incoherent accompaniment to the still
booming public address system. 'Those people out there are
emerging from a long sleep,' he said with sincerity. 'You're a
liberal-minded man, Fleming. You will help them to awake
and take their place in the modern world.'
'Where is Madeleine Dawnay?' Fleming demanded.
'At the Intel research station,' Salim explained, 'where you
will be taken. It is very comfortable, up to the best oil company
standards. We may be poor, but we are not barbarians.'
He drew himself up proudly. 'But I must nevertheless point
out that you are in no position to refuse to co-operate.' He
looked thoughtfully at Andre, sitting quietly, complete
puzzlement on her face, as she glanced from Salim to Fleming
and back again. 'We will keep the young lady here to
ensure your cooperation.'
Fleming sprang to his feet. 'No I'
Salim hesitated. He looked towards Gamboul, who
nodded. 'All right,' he said. 'We'li leave the young lady with
you .'
Janine Oamboul put down her empty glass. 'We have
talked long enough. I'll take them to the research station,'
she told Salim. 'My car is waiting.'

When Fleming, his hand on Andre's elbow, passed through
the swing doors of the computer building which Oamboul
held open, he stopped almost as if he had been hit in the
stomach.
The hall was uncannily like that at Thorness, except that
85

the khaki-clad armed guard inside had a swarthy face
instead of the cheerful ruddiness of the sentries he had got to
know so well in Scotland.
The air was the same - the cool lifelessness of air-conditioning.
Through the grey painted door to the computer
section the similarity was accentuated. Here was the heavy,
indefinable smell of electricity, the pervading hum of a
myriad active circuits, the inhuman personality of a room
built entirely of control panels.
And there, down two steps it stood - the familiar rec~
tangular mass of steel panelling with its control desk and
cathode ray screens.
He moved forward slowly, still holding Andre's elbow.
Several young Arabs were working on the machine. In an
odd, outlandish way they reminded him of the British technicians
he had supervised two years back at Thorness. They
were even talking to one another in English - as if it were the
natural language for science.
Gamboul called one of them.
'This is Abu Zeki,' she said. 'Dr Fleming.'
Abu Zeki's eyes gleamed with pleasure. He seemed a sensitive
and likeable young man, with delicate Arab features and
crew-cut which gave him a curiously beat-generation look.
He too was obviously a 'modern man'. 'How do you do sir?'
he said. 'I've heard much about you, of course. I am to be
your senior assistant. I hope I shall be of use; anyway I can
pass on your instructions to the staff.' He looked proudly
along the control panel of the computer. 'We are going to do
great things with this.'
'You believe that, do you?' Fleming said quietly.
'I'll show you around,' Gamboul interrupted, and led
them along the endless bays of wiring.
She knew her way remarkably well. She accurately identified
every section of the hue machine, though Fleming
noted that it was the second-hand knowledge of the layman
who was concerned with what things did rather than how
they did them. The layout was slightly different from what
he had built at Thorness, but the input, the output and the
huge memory circuits were basically the same.
They returned to the wide gangway in front of the control
86

unit. 'Construction was completed some time back. It was
fully programmed. But nothing happened. That is why we
need you. It presents no problems to you so far as operation
is concerned?'

'Probably not,' Fleming admitted. 'The layout is superficially
different. But in essence it is identical.' He gave a
mirthless laugh. 'It should be. It has been built from instructions
in the same message. You know what happened to the
Thorness job?'

Gamboul shrugged her shoulders. 'We're not interested in
what went wrong there. We want this one to go right. We
want to build up a centre of production unsurpassed in the
world and free from interference, political or otherwise. This
machine is to be Intel's brain.'

Fleming felt mesmerised by the baleful quietness. He
dreaded to see once again the ominous section which made
this computer unlike any other man-made brain - the heavy
brass terminals nestling in their plastic insulation guards.

He turned to Abu, standing deferentially nearby. 'Where
is your high voltage output?'

Janine Gamboul looked at him suspiciously. 'Why do you
ask? What is its purpose?'

'There are two high tension leads extraneous to your control
panel. Or there should be.'

Abu nodded. 'There were, yes,' he agreed. 'We led them
into the end compartment. We did not understand their purpose.'
He led them down the passageway and slid the grey
panel on its smooth runners. Fleming stared at the harmless
looking metal shapes. Hateful memories crowded into his
brain. He turned to Andre, but to/his relief she seemed quiet
and unstirred by interest.

'Dr Neilson considered they were for sensory communication
with the memory circuits,' Abu said. 'So that the operator
could have direct contact with the computer's positive
calculator relays. He worked out that it should be done
visually through this display.' He nodded towards a battery
of aluminium-sprayed cathode ray screens which were

ranged above the terminals.

'I remember!'

Fleming turned at the sound of Andre's voice.

87

Her eyes were alight with excitement. Fleming felt suddenly
sick. Things seemed to be moving remorselessly and
inevitably beyond control.
He moved close to her. 'You know what this is?' he whispered.
'It's what we were running away from.'
She did not turn to him. She seemed transported and her
eyes remained on the control panel. 'Don't be afraid,' she
murmured. Fleming could not decide to whom she was talking.
He whipped round on Gamboul. 'Just blow the whole
thing up. Now.'
She looked at Andre, and then at Fleming. She began to
smile, not concealing her contempt. 'Destroy it?' she exclaimed.
'We shall control it.' Her tone changed. 'Now I will
show you to your quarters. They are very comfortable. Your
old colleague is most anxious to meet you once More - Professor
Dawnay.'
She led them from the computer building into the cruel
heat outside. A soldier immediately came forward and in
obedience to a few words in Arabic from Gamboul, escorted
Fleming and Andre to a row of bungalows shaded by a few
palm trees. Andre was still dazed and walked without speakng.
Madeleine Dawnay was sitting in a deck chair on a tiny,
browned patch of grass. Her face was already tanned though
she looked gaunt and thin in her tropical clothes. She greeted
them both with unaffected joy.
'My dear,' she said taking both of Andre's hands in hers,
'I'm so happy to see you. Your maidservant has been told
exactly how to look after you.' She turned to John. 'So
you're here.'
He did not offer any greeting. 'I'm here because I was
hijacked,' he said quietly. 'I shan't try to get out yet awhile
because of what I've just been shown. But as for you,
Madelelne, I'm damned if I can see how you can voluntarily
work for this lot.'
Dawnay refused to be offended. 'It's no use sticking labels
on them, my dear. The circumstances are so different. I must
say I was alarmed at first. I suspect Salim drugged me in
London. I don't know why.'
88

'To find out where I was. You were the only person I told,
and they turned up immediately.' .

She was deeply upset. 'I'm sorry,' she said miserably, 'I'd
no idea.'

'How did they get you?' Fleming asked.

'By asking me nicely. They've got a most interesting agricultural
problem. They want to be self-supporting with
food. They've tried all the usual ways of fertilising barren
land. But they realise they need a really new, wholly scientific
conception. I hope- I think- I can help.'

Her unquestioning faith in the goodness of science had
always worried him. Their easy comradeship had been
strained when she had seen no risks in the first success with
her life-synthesis experiments. She was caught in the same
unbalanced enthusiasm now.

'Madeleine,' he said gently, 'if we can't get away from this
place without finishing up abruptly dead then surely I can at
least warn - '

She looked at Andre, sitting quietly near them, dreaming
in the comforting dappled shade from the palm trees. 'Who
can you warn, John?' she asked. 'Who'll listen to you now
that they know what you did back at Thorness?'

'So we just stay here and do the thing's filthy work?' he
asked bitterly.

She frowned. 'My work isn't dirty. I'm trying to help
ordinary, mortal people, a good many of them starving at
this moment. Salim may be ruthless, but his motives are
good. He wants to do something for his country.

Fleming reached for a cigarette box which an orderly had
silently placed on a table at the side of his chair, along with
some iced fruit. The service, as Gamboul had promised, was
very good. He lit a cigarette and then thoughtfully watched
the smoke spiralling from the glowing end. 'There's one
possibility,' he said at last. 'I can probably get the circuitry
right pretty easily. Neilson obviously did a fairly good job,
and young Abu Zeki knows his stuff. The computer will
work, but it'll depend partially on the information we feed
into it. If I make it think I'm for it .... '

He paused to sip his drink. 'That was my mistake last time.
I attacked it, and I couldn't really win. But if I inform its

89

memory circuits that they- Intel and Co. - are really against
it, its logical processes will come up with something to defeat
them.'
'Perhaps by destroying them - and the whole country?'
Dawnay suggested.
Fleming nodded. 'That would be better than the alternative.
Which would be that it would lay down the law wholesale
through Gamboul, Salim and the rest of the crooks
they're working for.'
Dawnay looked thoughtfully across at Andre, who had
relaxed in a day-dreaming half sleep. She looked very lovely
and feminine.
'And the girl?' she asked.
'I've stopped thinking of her as anyone from, well, outside
this planet. She's a virtually normal piece of human
chemistry. The danger is when the machine gets her and
uses her. I want to stop that whatever else I do or don't do.
I've grown rather fond of her.'
'Don't sound so sad about it!' Dawnay laughed.
He glanced to make sure that Andre was not trying to
listen. 'There's More to it than that. Her co-ordination's
going. She spends too much time like she is now. And when
she moves around it's jerky, like a mild spastic case. I
thought at first it was shock or the after effects of her experience,
physical after effects of her injuries. But it's getting
worse. There's something wrong with the way she was
made.'
'You mean I made a mistake .... '
'Not necessarily you,' he reassured her. 'Something wrong
with the programming for the calculations.'
He stopped talking. Andre opened her eyes, stretched
lazily, and sat up. 'What gorgeous sunshine,' she said smiling.
She walked, rather jerkily, out of the shade and began to
look around. Fleming and Dawnay saw her move near the
doors to the computer building. The sentry, lolling against
the wall, stepped forward, thought better of it, and let her
pass inside.
Fleming jumped up out of his chair. 'Why don't they stop
her?'
90

He started to move away, but Dawnay put out a hand to
stop him.
'She'll be all right.'
'With that?' Fleming asked her. 'You're mad.'
'I'm not mad. Leave her there.'
Reluctantly Fleming stayed. They waited tense and alert
as the minutes ticked by.
Abruptly the vague vibrationary hum which came all
the time from the building grew louder, and there was a
rhythmic clicking.
'What the hell's that?' shouted Fleming, jumping to his
feet.
Dawnay's exclamation, 'It's the computer, it's working,'
was needless. Both of them rushed across to the swing doors
and down the corridor.
Abu Zeki came running towards them.
'What's happened?' Fleming asked.
'I can't say, Dr Fleming,' Abu replied. 'The young woman
came in, stood looking around, and then sat down before the
control panel in the sensory bay.'
Fleming pushed past him. The master screen was quivering
with wavy bands of light; crazy geometrical patterns
shifted across, faded, and changed their shapes.
Seated in the chair at the panel was Andre.
'Andre,' Fleming called, pausing in the face of some force
which he did not understand but which seemed to paralyse
his legs. She did not turn. 'Andromeda,' he yelled.
Very slowly she turned her head. Her pale face was glowing
with joy.
'It speaks to me I' she cried. 'It speaks I'
'Oh my God,' Fleming groaned.
Abu coughed. 'I must go and inform Mam'selle Gamboul
of what has happened,' he said.

91

I-IAPTER SIX
CYCLONE

IF .4 o watched with misgiving the transformation which
came over Andre. The lethargy and almost childlike innocence
disappeared. She was alert and avid for activity; yet
she seemed unexcited. Fleming knew that the change was
due to the computer, yet this was a different Andre from the
robot of Thorness - the changes were indefinable but nevertheless
they were there.
He was a little comforted by the frankness and trust which
she showed towards him. He thought about it all night,
alternately lying on his narrow, comfortable bed and then
pacing about the small, neat, air-conditioned room which
had been allotted him. By the morning he had made a decision.
If he was to cancel out the evil which he felt in the
machine he must somehow trick it into working in the way
he wanted. This he had already decided to do - it was his
only possible ally against his hosts. But he could not trick it if
it was working through Andre; he could not trick her. He
had to gamble on making an ally of her too. In the morning
he told her all he felt about it.
When he had finished she laughed almost gaily. 'It is very
easy,' she insisted. 'We must tell it what to do.'
He did not share her confidence. I can't see how it's a
practical policy.'
She became thoughtful. 'I think the facts are these. All the
real complexity is in the calculating and memory sections.
The memory is enormous. But when a calcnlation has been
made it has to be presented for assessment in a very simple
forlTl?
'You mean like a company's brief balance sheet summarises
all the complex activities of a year's trading?'
She nodded. 'I expect so. But if the balance is weighted '
'I get it I' he interrupted. 'The decision circuits act like the
92

shareholders reading that balance sheet. On the basis of what
they read into it they decide future company policy.' He
frowned. 'But I'm dead sure that our balance sheet, produced
by the computer's memory section, is nicely tricked up
via the programme formulated by the original message, the
stuff from Andromeda. So the decision circuits will execute
its orders, not ours.'

'Unless we change them.'

He got up and paced around the room. 'Our changes
would just be deletions. The result would be a glorified
adding machine. Neither enemy or ally. There'd be no sense
of purpose.'

'But it could be given our purpose,' she said urgently. 'One
that we communicated to it. Or at least, one I communicated.
I can do it, John.'

'I suspect you can. That's why I've tried to keep you
away from it.'

'You can't,' she said quietly. 'It is the reason why - I'm
here.' She stretched her hand and brushed it against his. 'If
you want to use the computer you'll have to trust me.'

He turned to look at her, his eyes searching into hers. 'I
think I'll go for a stroll around the compound,' he said
abruptly. 'You get some rest. You aren't fit yet. And don't
think too much about all this.'

He went past the sentry and paced up and down the sandy
waste ground which lay around the buildings. Then he made
for Dawnay's quarters.

Madeleine was surrounded by maps of the country, making
notes of the geological factors. She seemed glad to
abandon her work and gossip.

He told her of Andre's confidence and how he believed
that she was just deceiving herself; the computer would
dominate her as before.

She regarded him thoughtfully. 'I don't think so, John,'
she said. 'At least, not unless you drive her back under its
spell. If you're hostile and suspicious you'll alienate her.
You've built up ties between the two of you - ordinary
human emotional ties. Those are strong influences.'

He looked away. 'What I want to know, Madeleine, is
what's happening to her - physically?'

93

'What you've seen for yourself. Some sort of deterioration
of muscle control. I'll have her examined if you like. But if,
as I suspect, it's some motor deficiency in her nervous system
there's nothing we can do about it.'

'Oh my God,' he said harshly. 'The poor kid.' He was
silent for a moment. 'It may be part of the programme which
planned her: to chuck her aside when her job's over.'

'There's the possibility that it's my fault,' Dawnay said. 'I
made her - seemingly with built-in deterioration.' She controlled
herself and smiled. 'Really you have no choice, John.
You'll have to trust her as she has trusted you over these
past weeks. Let her alter the computer in the way she plans
and let her work with it.' She hurriedly bent over her maps
so he could not see her uncharacteristic tears. 'From what
I've seen of her muscular movements it won't be for very
long. Let her final days be happy and useful. She may even
get you out of here.'


Fleming went to see Andre in her quarters - another small,
neat air-conditioned room like this. She was sitting eating a
meal off a tray. He was as appalled by the way she talked
about her work as by the difficulty she found in conveying
food to her mouth; but he was relieved that her speech had
not so far become disjointed. The deterioration was not
affecting her vocal muscles nor, thank God, her brain.

When she had eaten he took her arm and they walked the
short distance to the computer building. Despite the fact that
they were on a smooth path she stumbled once or twice.

Once before the computer console she seemed to regain all
her powers. Automatically she took control and the computer
immediately came to life, the clicking of relays providing
an accompaniment to the ceaseless sullen hum.
Oscillographs were soon pulsating and the main screen portraying
a coherent pattern.

Fleming stood in the background with Abu Zeki, watching
Andre seated at the console, her head tilted to watch the
screen above her. At last, satisfied, she swivelled round on
her chair and smiled triumphantly.

'It is done,' she said. 'The computer is fully operational.'
Abu turned to Fleming incredulously. 'This girl, Dr Flem-

94

ing. She has done this? Just in a matter of minutes?'
Fleming took him back to the duty office. He sat down at
the desk. 'I'm going to ask you to accept that what I'm telling
you now are facts,' he began. 'The gift can communicate
with the computer, picking up the electro-magnetic waves
and interpreting them, re-transmitting her orders in the
same way.' He paused, 'You don't believe me, of course?'
'Perhaps I must believe; but I do not understand,' Abu
confessed. Fleming liked the young Arab scientist. There was
honesty, inherent decency, about him. He believed that the
man could be an ally. He told him that Andre was a man-fabricated
being, constructed in order to forge a link with
the computer, even if that had not been the intention of her
human mentors.
Abu listened attentively, but he politely protested that the
method of communication between her and the machine was
still inexplicable.
'Look,' Fleming said, 'we have eyes and ears and noses
because they're the best instruments for picking up information
in our sort of world. But they're not the only ones even
ordinary humans like you and I have. There are senses we
haven't developed and senses we've let atrophy. The girl has
another sense we haven't - and that's what she is using. To
give information to the machine and to receive it.'
'How will she use it?' Abu asked.
Fleming shrugged. 'God knows, Abu Zeki, God alone
knows.'
Both men started at a slight sound by the door. They had
not noticed that Andre had come uietly into the office.
'How do you want me to use it?' she demanded.
She did not wait for their answer. With hesitant steps,
growing quicker as she progressed, she returned to the sensory
consule.
Abu, when he had time to digest the information Fleming
had given him, was immediately anxious to use it. A young
man like thousands of others in Azaran, he had been More
fortunate than most in that his father had worked on the oil
plant. The company had provided educational facilities for
the workers' children. Abu had grabbed the opportunity. An
imaginative English teacher had realised the boy's poten-
95

tialities, helping him with spare time tuition.
When Abu was sixteen the new regime had emerged and
the idealistic President had announced a state scholarship
programme. Abu Zeki had been among the first twenty
youths selected. He had emerged the only real success of the
scheme.
Naturally Abu was grateful. He was also patriotic. The
chance to work on the construction of a computer which
surpassed any in the world had thrilled him. The presence of
Europeans to direct his activities had not seemed anything
but reasonable. He had been told that Intel was sponsoring
the enterprise. W'hat Intel was he neither knew nor cared.
The basic fact was that this was an Azaranian project to
better the country. Abu believed that not only was his own
career rosy with promise but that he was working to ensure
that life for his baby son would be even More wonderful.
He had been in despair when the computer failed to work,
feeling that he was somehow to blame since Neilson had
disappeared. Now, all that was in the past. In cooperation
with this cynical yet likeable Englishman and his girl friend,
the product of some weird and wonderful scientific gimmickry,
he could repay the trust his President had put in
him.
From the files in the records office Abu took several sheets
of calculations. They had been passed over to him by
Dawnay for processing by the computer. There had been
nothing to do but file them until it was operational.
He mentioned what they were to Fleming.
'Give them to the girl,' Fleming said wearily. 'Let her feed
the data in her own way.'
Abu gave Andre the sheers of fig-ures and busied himself
in the office. He went through blue prints and circuit
diagrams. His brain did not register any detail. He was forcing
himself to do something while he listened anxiously to
the rapid clicking of the machine.
It was twenty minutes before the output printer motor
whirred and the circuit light glowed red. From the slot the
print began to emerge, jerking slowly to the left and then
abruptly to the rlght as line after line of equations was typed.
Abu stood mesmerlsed, reading the figures on the jerking
96

paper. The motor sighed to silence and the circuit light went
out. The calculations were complete. He tore off the paper
and rushed to Fleming in the record office.
'Some of Professor Dawnay's calculations,' Abu said. 'This
is the result Of handing the project to Miss Andre. It's quite
extraordinary I'
He crossed to another filing cabinet, a locked one. He
withdrew a bulky file of papers, sorted through them, and
went off to talk to Andre. By the time he returned the output
printer was beginning to work again.
Fleming, still lounging at the desk, occupied with his
thoughts, looked up lazily. 'More stuff,' he said. 'What is
it?'
Abu kept his back to Fleming. 'I'm afraid I'm not allowed
to tell you, Dr Fleming.'
'Look!' Fleming paused, trying to curb his anger. 'What
am I supposed to be here? In charge, or what?'
'I'm sorry,' Abu said with sincerity. 'But I have my
orders.'
Fleming looked at him levelly. 'What have you given it?'
he asked again. But Abu stared back at him with gentle
obstinacy.
'It is work which Mam'selle Gamboul wishes done. I am
not at liberty to discuss it.'
'Then I'll stop it.'
'I'm afraid you won't, Dr Fleming.'
Abu nodded towards the nearest sentry, who was watching
them with a sour, bored interest. Fleming turned on his heel
and stalked out.
Outside the office another sentry was leaning against the
pillar, shading himself from the glaring sun. The soldier
abruptly stepped forward and snapped to attention.
Fleming glanced across the compound and saw Janine
Gamboul walking beside an elderly bearded man and talking
quickly and brightly. Abu came out and stood beside
him.
'Who's that with the glamorous Gamboul ?' Fleming asked.
'That is our President.' Abu's eyes were alight with pride.
'He must have been visiting Professor Dawnay's laboratory.
Her assistant told me that she's working on something quite
7 97

new: a protective membrane to prevent water evaporating
from the soil, but letting the oxygen and nitrogen molecules
through so the land could breathe. It's a marvellous idea. It
will make the desert blossom.'

'And no doubt about to take a leap forward.' Fleming
nodded to the record sheets from the computer which Abu
still held.

'I wonder if the President will be coming here,' said Abu
hopefully.

But the President did not visit them. He glanced across to
the computer. Gamboul said something. He nodded and disappeared
into the headquarters building.


The afternoon siesta had put the town to sleep when
Gamboul drove to Satim's residence. She found him taking
his ease on the stone balcony, looking out over the quiet
square and the acres of shabby roofs with a few minarets
which made a dun-coloured pattern into the shimmering
haze. He was in uniform, as he liked to be.

She threw down her wide-brimmed hat and crossed to the
table where bottles and a bowl of ice stood.

Salim did not trouble to get up. 'Been doing your duty?' he
murmured.

'I've taken the old fool round the establishment,' she
answered, busy mixing her drink. 'That will keep him quiet
for a bit. He was most impressed with the Dawnay woman.
Naturally,' - she gave a brittle laugh - 'I didn't take him into
the computer building, though he asked what was happening
there.' She sipped her drink, frowning as Salim made no
effort to offer her a chair. 'I'm going inside; it's cooler, and
there may be somewhere to sit.'

He heaved himself to his feet and followed her through the
bead screen to the spacious room he used as an office. Across
one wall was a detailed map of Azaran. Little flags of various
colours were pinned here and there. Gamboul glanced at it
with lazy curiosity and then stretched herself on a sofa. She
was growihg tired of Salim.

He came close, looking at her body in its thin and too tight
dress. 'Who's the girl you had brought over with Fleming?'
he demanded.

98

Gamboul hunched her shoulders. 'I don't know. Abu says
she is highly intelligent. Kaufman's report merely says she
was connected with the Thorness computer. They used quite
a number of females up there. Dawnay for example. Kauf-man
thinks the girl was connected with the destruction of the
machine and Fleming's shielding her. Presumably they're
lovers.'

Salim was disturbed. 'Have her watched closely,' he
ordered. 'We don't want to risk sabotage. And you'd better
get out of Fleming who she is. I'm sure you could manage
that.'

She smiled at him, running her hand down her hip and
thigh. 'I don't think I fancy Dr Fleming.' As if the subject
bored her she got up and crossed to the map.

'What is all this playing around with little flags?'

Salim stuck his thumbs in his belt and stood solid and sure
in front of the map. 'The flags mark troops I can rely on.
Roughly, an infantry battalion here, in Baleb, and a squadron
of armoured cars. Some motorised units on the frontiers
and the main army barracks at Quattara. Also the majority
of the air force units.'

'To do what?' she asked.

'To support me. Us.' He corrected himself. 'The computer
must be safe. It belongs to Intel, and Intel holds the concession
from the President. And I am not yet the President.'

Gamboul studied his face. 'Is that what you want?' she
asked.

Salim returned to the balcony to look over the city. His
eyes lifted to the lovely old palace which stood on a slight
eminence to the right. 'The President is a soft man,' he murmured.
'A tired man. He fought for independence, but now
he thinks he can rest. He could be influenced - by any liberal-minded
bumbler.'

Gamboul was close beside him, her body touching his.
'Like the Dawnay woman ?' she suggested.

'Dawnay?' The idea seemed new to him and of no consequence.
'Anyone could persuade him to interfere with
your work, and then you and I would lose control. We must
prepare for that eventuality. Why do you think I came
back?'

99

'You're planning a coup d'etat!' she said, surprise and
admiration in her expression. 'And I didn't know.'
He turned and put his hands on her shoulders. 'You're
with me, aren't you, Janine?'
She leaned forward until her body was pressed hard
against him. 'I thought you knew,' she whispered. 'When will
it be?'
He looked out across her shoulder to the rooftops. 'For
Arabs time is a servant. When the time is right I shall act.
Perhaps two days; a week. Not More.'

At Fleming's insistent request Madeleine Dawnay asked for
a doctor to come and see Andre. The efficient and smooth-running
staff organisation of Intel said that they would
have a neurologist in the compound within twenty-four
hours.
He arrived the following morning. He was an Arab, who
diffidently mentioned to Dawnay that he held a degree in
neuro-surgery from the Radcliffe Infirmary at Oxford and
had continued his studies at Johns Hopkins.
His examination of Andre was long and thorough and
Dawnay was impressed.
She answered the knock on the door of the neat little sick
bay and found Fleming outside. You can't see her yet,' she
said, coming out to join him on the verandah. 'The doctor's
still busy. Taking a lumbar puncture of a spinal fluid check.
But his preliminary diagnosis is much the same as ours. Her
muscular system's going More and More wrong. Maybe some
gland has packed up, or her nerve set-up is different from
ours, needing a blood nutrient that was there when she was
built but is now depleted.'
'You mean it wasn't in the blueprint?' he suggested.
Dawnay shrugged. 'It isn't being made now,' she said
shortly.
'Could we synthesise it?'
'I wouldn't know where to start. Back home I might get
advice and help .... '
'So what happens ?' he asked harshly.
'She'll lose the use of her muscles progressively. It'll show
in her limbs most obviously, but one day it'll be the pectoral
100

muscles and then the heart.' She turned to look at the dosed
door. 'That's what the doctor is explaining to her now. I
asked him to. Her calmness broke quite suddenly. 'I made
her! I made her to suffer this!'
He gripped her arm. 'Madeleine. You didn't do it deliberately.
And what about me? Who started it all with the
design of the computer? Who prevented her dying More or
less peacefully in that cave?'
Dawnay did not respond. She went on staring at the closed
door. Presently the doctor came out. He looked across at the
two of them, and then away as he crossed to the visitors'
block.
'She ought to be properly nursed; sent away,' Fleming
said.
Dawnay gave a mirthless laugh. 'You can see them allowing
her to leave here. She's produced my crop formula. They
know how useful that will be. There will be other things for
her to do for them.'
'There is another thing, already,' said Fleming, remembering
what Abu Zeki had told him at the computer.
'What?'
'I don't know exactly,' he said thoughtfully. 'I only hope
what I think it is is wrong.'
As if to contradict him, six jet fighters abruptly screamed
across the sky, climbing fast from the airfield. They ,watched
the machines become dots in the blueness of the shimmering
canopy of sky. Dawnay wiped her face. 'I'd better talk to the
doctor, John. You have a word with Andre. Be gentle with
her.'
He knocked softly on Andre's door, waiting for an answer,
almost dreading to go in. A pretty little Arab nurse came and
opened the door, silently standing aside to permit him to
enter.
Andre was sitting beside the austere iron bedstead, wearing
a housecoat. The brightly coloured flowers of the pattern
accentuated her extreme pallor. She was leaning back with
her head turned sideways so that her long fair hair hung
across her cheek. Fleming guessed that she had been crying.
The nurse brought a small, hard chair, and Fleming sat
down.
101

'Andre; Andromeda,' he murmured. 'There nay be some
answer.' He saw the hair move as she gave a shght shake of
the head. 'We've done so much together,' he insisted.
He put his fingers gently on her chin and pulled her face
round. She reacted weakly, jerking away and covering her
face with her hands. 'Don't!' she begged. 'Do you think I
want to die? That it's nice to know I'm doing what you
want? To end existence just like you ended the existence of
the other computer?'
The words hurt him badly. 'It's not what I want,' he said,
trying to keep his voice under control. 'I'm frightened for
you. And sorry for what I've done. I want to get you away
from here, and all it means.'
'Away?' she repeated, wonderingly. 'But why? I've done
what Dawnay asked; she has her data. And I've done what
you asked; I've changed the computer's decision circuits...'
Her voice tailed away. Fleming felt a stab of real alarm; he
knew that she had been on the point of saying More.
He went closer to her. 'What else have you done, Andre?
What else? At least be honest with me.'
Her manner changed. She moved her head, pushed the
hair from her face. She tried to smile at him. 'I have seen
what is the purpose of the message from out there.'
He fought down the feeling of primitive terror that was
sending the blood pounding in his temples. 'You've what?'
he whispered.
'It's hard to explain,' she said uneasily. 'I'm a bad translator.
But I know it's all right. We must put ourselves in the
hands of the people who will protect us.'
He let the words sink in, grappling with the fact that once
again he had lost a battle. In his over-confidence he had believed
he had persuaded Andre to do as he believed right, to
make the computer her slave. But she was quietly stating that
she wanted to serve 'people who would protect us'. People,
she called them - this intelligence across the time-space of the
universe - as if they were her brothers.
Before he could find words she sat up, smiling and confident
despite the difficulty of the physical movement.
'Now I have seen the message I understand,' she said.
'You are frightened because you know only that the com102

purer can have power over us; not why it has.'
'You are what I'm frightened of,' he said. 'Now the computer's
been doctored, the only way the message can enforce
its will is through you. That's why I want you to get away
from it! Live while you can, peacefully I'
She shook her head. 'You think it's evil,' she protested. 'It
isn't. It's giving us a solution, a power. If you are to survive
you need that power. All that is happening in the country is
only a symptom of what's happening all over the world. It's
unhnportant. We can take it all out of their hands and use as
we want!'
He marvelled at her faith and feared her assurance; it was
as if she pitied his limited imagination.
Abruptly she fell back on the sofa. The enthusiasm was
spent; all it left was a frail, rather timorous young girl. 'It
drains me,' she whispered. 'It takes all my strength. It will
kill me even quicker than you thought.'
'Then leave it alone!'
She passed her forearm wearily over her head and gripped
the back of the head-rest. 'I can't,' she said. 'I've something
to do before I die. But I can't do it alone.' Her lower lip
trembled and she began to cry.
He crouched down and put his arm protectively around
her waist. 'If I'm to help; if I'm to trust you, you must tell
me. In words - simple words - what is the real core of the
message?'
For a time she lay with her eyes closed. Fleming did not
interrupt her reverie. Then she gave a slight shudder and
tried to move. He helped her sit up.
'You must take me to the console,' she said. 'I don't think
I can explain in words. But I can show you.'
He helped her to stand and held her by the arm as she
walked with jerky, staggering steps the short distance to the
computer building. Once inside, she seemed as usual to draw
on hidden strength. She needed no assistance to sit before the
sensory panel. Almost instantly the machine began operating,
the master screen producing the familiar pattern of wave
forms which the output printer translated into figures.
Fleming stood behind her as she gazed enthralled at the
interminable pattern. 'It's the high speed information be103


tween the equation groups which contains the real message,'
she said. 'It tells about the planet from which the data came.'

Fleming watched the screen. He could identify the wave
forms which were the electronic versions of figures, but the
occasional surges of angular blobs of light which intervened
were meaningless to him. He had always imagined them to
be the normal pick-up by the sensitive selenium cells of stray
currents in the machine's framework.

'What does all this gibberish tell you?' he asked.

Andre's eyes never left the screen while she began to explain.
'That it has been through all this. It knows what must
happen, what has happened in other planets where intelligences
have only developed as far as yours. You endlessly
repeat a pattern until it wipes itself out.'

'Or the world gets too hot and does the job for us?' he
suggested.

Andre nodded. 'Life of a biological creature begins very
simply.' She talked slowly as if paraphrasing a complicated
mass of information. 'But after a few thousand centuries it
all becomes so complicated that the human animal can no
longer cope. One crack - a war perhaps - and the whole
fabric crashes down. Millions are killed or die off. Very few
survive.'

'Who start again,' he finished for her.

She swung round to look straight at him. 'In about one
hundred and thirty years from now there will be a war. Your
civilisation will be destroyed. It's all exactly predictable. So
can the period before recovery be calculated. Just over a
thousand years. The cycle will then repeat itself. Unless
something better happens.'

'As has happened on some planet in Andromeda?'

'Yes,' she replied. 'The species changed, adapted itself in
time. Now it can intervene for earth people.'

He had to take his eyes off her; off the dazzling, ever-faster
moving patterns on the screen. He felt sick at the way she
talked about 'earth people' as if she was some alien creature.

He walked down the aisle, the whole length of the computer,
and back again. Its cloying warmth reached out to
him despite the air conditioning. Then he made his decision.

'All right,' he said firmly. 'Let's try to learn from it. Let's

104

discover what we can and then tell people so they can decide
what they think best.'
She made a gesture of impatience. 'That's not enough,' she
said. 'We've got to take power. That's how we're meant to
use the message to help us. Not to destroy the people here but
to help them, and in the end they will hand the power over to
us. It's all been calculated.'
The simple directness of her faith exasperated him because
he knew it was an emotion too strong for him to destroy.
Nevertheless, he determined to fight it.
'Every dictator in history has argued like that - to force
people into actions for their own good,' he said. 'And I'm
supposed to think that it will be all right if we help impose
the will coming from somewhere in Andromeda through
Intel or these people in Azaran or any other dirty little
power-drunk agency you choose. It's ridiculous I'
'That's only the means,' she said. 'What's important is the
end.'
He crashed his fist on the console desk, making her flinch.
'No,' he shouted. 'I fought it before at Thorness, and I
fought you at first - because the world must be free to make
its own mistakes or save itself.' He looked at her with a
mixture of remorse and fury. 'That's why I trusted you to
handle this.'
'I only did what was logical.'
"I should have left you - left you to die,' he whispered.
She turned back to the console. The screen had darkened,
its aluminlum coating grey and lifeless. 'I shall die very soon
anyway,' she said.
All his fears for her returned and he could only stand in
silence with his hand on her shoulder. Neither of them
moved. Then he heard the printer in the output bay tapping
rapidly once More.
He strode across and read the figures appearing on the
steadily emerging roll. The equations were terribly familiar,
taking him back to an afternoon at Thorness More than two
years before.
Mesmerised, he read the stream of figures which continued
to emerge. He sensed that Andre had come across and was
standing beside him.
105

%ghat is this?' he demanded.

'Basic calculations for a missile interceptor,' she said in a
matter-of-fact voice. 'Surely you remember the Thorness
project? There are a few minor modifications in this one.'

He whirled on her. 'Why have you programmed the
machine for this?'

'Abu Zeki wanted the calculatlons,' she said. 'They need
means.of defence. It's all part of the plan.'

He ripped the paper from the ejector and crumpled it in
his hand. 'For God's sake, stop,' he begged her. 'I didn't save
you to work for them, to obey every filthy order they give
you. You still have freedom to choose what you'll do.'

She made some reply, but the roar of jet engines screaming
at high speed over the building drowned her words.

'What?' he said when the racket had died away.

'I said it's too late,' she repeated. 'I have chosen. It's
already started.'

Fleming turned away from her and walked quickly down
the corridor to the main doors. The pallid heat struck him in
the face as he ran into the open space clear of the buildings.

The compound gates were closed. A light tank stood in
front of them. On the main road a convoy of army lorries
was roaring at high speed towards Baleb.

Slowly he returned to the residential area, hoping to find
Dawnay. He badly needed some kind of normality among all
this madness.

Dawnay wasn't in her room, and he went to her laboratory.
A white-overalled Arab girl assistant was bending over
a microscope.

'Professor Dawnay?' she said in answer to his enquiry.
'She is not here. She went to see the President half an hour
ago,' she added calmly. 'Now there is revolution.'

CHAPTER SEVEN

STORM CENTRE

MADELEINE DAWNAY'S visit to the President was an impulsive
action, resulting from an argument with Kaufman.
The German was constantly roaming around the establishment,
keeping himself informed of any tit-bit of information
which might help to ingratiate himself with his superiors.
Although all senior staff were in theory employees of the
Azaranian Government, in practice it was Intel which made
the decisions. Consequently Kaufman, as the senior Intel
representative regularly available, was regarded as a liaison
officer by the directors.
Dawnay's bio-chemical experiments had progressed far
enough for field-testing. Study of the terrain suggested that a
coastal area near the Persian Gulf would be a good one. But
she wanted to analyse the tidal strip to ascertain what effect
wind and sea had had on the soil. On one of Kaufman's
visits to her laboratory she asked for him to arrange transport
for her to make a series of trips, imagining it would be a
routine matter.
The German immediately became suspicious. He demanded
to know the reason, and her natural retort that he
would not understand seemed to anger him.
But Dawnay could be very obstinate when she chose. She
insisted that if she ;vas to carry out her work the arrangements
must be made. Kaufman muttered that he would have
to get a government permit.
'Fine,' Dawnay said. 'You can jump in your car and get it
right away, can't you ?'
He frowned. 'At this moment, almost impossible.'
This was More than Dawnay was inclined to take. She
removed her overall and picked up her sun hat. 'If you enjoy
putting up ridiculous obstacles then I'll see the President
myself.'
107

'I wouldn't count too much on the President,' he said, 'but
by all means go if you want.' He went to the reception desk
to call her a staff car. When it came he opened the door for
her with a studied flourish.
On the short journey to the Presidential palace Dawnay's
anger seethed and she reminded herself of Fleming's pessimistic
views on the whole set-up. She deteTnined to discuss More than a trip to the coast with the President. After all,
she told herself, he was head of State and if a challenge came
Intel could no More win than mammoth oil companies in half a dozen little states had been able to do.
The streets seemed very empty, although this did not particularly
arouse her interest. She had visited the capital so
rarely that she had no means of comparison.
The car slowed at the palace gates until it was waved on
by a lounging sentry. The man showed no interest in it.
Dawnay alighted and passed through the doorless portico.
A bearded Arab in native costume bowed and put his
hands to his forehead in greeting. The palace was beautiful
and very old, unspoiled by any attempt to repair the crescent
arches or the filigree stonework with plaster.
A little incongruously, the old Arab picked up a house
telephone fixed to the wall behind a pillar. After some
murmured words he returned to Dawnay and said in halting
English that his master would see her.
A little negro boy tripped down the stairs, greeted her with
a dazzling smile and in his soft soprano voice asked her to
follow him. They went to the first floor and along a labyrinth
of passages, silent with age-long peace. The boy knocked on
big double doors and threw them open.
The president advanced towards Dawnay, his hand extended.
His creased face, she thought, was that of a very old
man - older than she knew he actually was. But his eyes were
bright and intelligent, and he was meticulously neat and tidy,
his beard trimmed short, and his large sensitive fingers soft
and gentle when they shook hands. The jarring note was his
Western dress - an old-fashioned though well-cut tweed
jacket and breeches of the kind English aristocrats wore On
week-ends fifty years before. Dawnay envisaged some Lon-108

don tailor carefully repeating a bespoke order originally given
in the spacious age of pre-1914.
His courtesy was as genteely old-fashioned as his appearance.
Delighted to be entertaining an English lady, he explained
that he had been looking through his film slides and
hoped she would be interested in seeing some of them.
'Photography is my hobby,' he said. 'A way to have
mementoes of my country - it's people, its valuable archaeological
and historical features, and of course the improvements
which, with Allah's help, I have been able to make.'
The negro boy was already standing beside the projector.
At a nod from his master he switched off the ceiling lights
and began the screening. Dawnay hid her impatience and
made polite and appropriate remarks as her host carefully
explained each picture. The show ended at last. The boy
switched on the lights and was told to leave.
The President took a chair facing her and folded his arms
in his lap. 'And now, why did you want to see me?' he asked.
Urgently Dawnay recited the words she had been rehearsing
to herself .as she watched the slides. She hoped she was
cogent, objective, and fair. She told him of the origin of the
computer design, of the bio-chemical experiments which culminated
in the creation of the girl, and finally of the reasons
why Fleming had contrived the destruction of the machine in
Scotland.
The President was quiet for some moments when she had
finished. 'I have only your word for all this,' he said quietly.
'It is, as you will understand, somewhat difficult to accept, or,
perhaps I should say, understand.'
'I'm sorry it can't be made mot& clear, your excellency. We
don't understand a great deal of it ourselves. Dr Fleming has
always suspected its purpose.'
'And do you?'
She pondered on her reply. 'I think there are right ways
and wrong ways of using it,' she eventually said.
He darted a glance at her. 'And we are using it in the
wrong way?'
'Not you, but Intel.'
'We are in their hands,' he sighed, like a weary old man.
'This is a difficult tine.'
109

He stood up and crossed to the window, pulling the heavy
draperies aside and letting an almost blinding shaft of sunlight
into the dim room. For a time he looked out on the city
which dropped away below the palace. 'When one is in my
position, a government has to show results or it does not
survive. Intel gives results.'
He returned to the middle of the room but remained standing.
'I am a moderate,' he smiled. 'There are factions here
which are fiery, youthful, impatient. They are also powerful.
I need all the help I can get to retain the people's loyalty.'
The door had opened, and the little negro boy had appeared.
In his hand he held a telephone. He plugged it into
a wail jack and then stood before the President, holding the
instrument free of the cradle. The President took the phone
and listened. He said a few words in Arabic and then gave
the phone back to the boy.
He walked across the room and stood once More before the
window. A soft thud, a long way off, sent a tiny vibration
through the old building. It was followed by the harsh reverberation
of automatic fire. The President pulled the curtain
back across the window and looked at his guest.
'I do not think, Professor, that I shall be in a position to
help you. The telephone call was from Colonel Salim, an
efficient and ambitious of Bcer.' He paused to listen to the
distant rumble of heavy engines and the racket of caterpillar
tracks which rapidly grew in volume on the roadway below
the palace. 'That, I imagine, is the proof of what he told me.'
Only half understanding, Dawnay stood up and hesitantly
moved to the door, thanking him for his patience in listening.
She remembered too late that she had not asked for a permit
to visit the coast.
'Goodbye, Professor,' the old man said. He did not look at
her. He had sat down, very erect, very still, in an oid-fashioned
high backed chair. Dawnay had the impression of
a king who had only his dignity left to sustain him.
The negro boy was standing in the passage outside. His
eyes were big with fear or perhaps excitement. He almost ran
in his anxiety to escort her to the courtyard.
The car she had come in had gone. Instead, two soldiers
came across and stood on either side of her. They motioned
110

with their guns that she was to wait near the doorway. Presently
an axmy scout car came to a halt beyond the portico.
The soldiers jerked their heads to show she was to enter it.
A young officer saluted her. 'We take you back, Miss,' he
said in halting English.
The driver had frequently to pull out of the way as mobile
columns roared towards Baleb. There were a few half-tracks
and some light tanks. Their crews were in war kit but they
were standing in their vehicles. They obviously did not expect
serious shooting.
The gates to the Intel compound were open but an armoured
car was stationed outside, and there were groups of
helmeted troops everywhere. Dawnay was driven straight to
her quarters, where More guards were patrolling. The young
officer who had accompanied her indicated courteously but
fiTnly that she was to remain in her room until further
orders.

The military coup organised by Salim had been based on
three actions - to close all frontier roads and ports, take over
control of the capital, and to secure the Intel establishment.
The Intel action, was, of course, a formality, thanks to
Janine Gamboul.
The first clue Fleming had as to what was happening came
from Abu Zeki. The two men had quarrelled for the second
time. Abu had proudly told Fleming that the destruction of
the missile equation sheets had been futile becanse the
punched master tape was intact. He had gone on to boast of
the power and might his counttx would have with the defence
devices the computer could design.
'Already we are grasping that power. Even now Colonel
Salim's troops are taking over our protection.'
'From the President?' Fleming asked.
'The President's a tired, senile old man. He's finished.'
'And Intd?'
'They're taking over with Intel,' Abu Zeki replied. He saw
Fleming glance towards the empty sensory bay. 'If you're
looking for the girl she's not in the building. She is in our
custody.'
Fleming hurried from the building and ran across to the
111

residential area. Two armed guards stood before the door of
Andre's quarters. He tried to push between them but they
did not budge.
'They'll not let you in; I'm afraid they no longer trust you,
Dr Fleming,' said a familiar voice.
He wheeled round. Kaufman was walking slowly towards
him, grinning. 'Anyway, the girl is not here,' the German
went on. 'She is being cared for. Meanwhile Mademoiselle
Gamboul wishes to see you.'
'Where?' Fleming grunted. 'And when?'
Kaufman's smile disappeared. 'Now,' he said. 'You will
come with me.' He led the way to his car.
They drove to Salim's house. There were no soldiers there
and no srvants met them as they went upstairs. Kaufman
opened a door and motioned to Fleming to enter. The door
closed and he was left alone.
He walked round the familiar room where he had first met
Salim, and then wandered out on the balcony. It was a few
moments before he moved to the far end where some cane
furniture stood around a table. On the table were bottles of
whisky and glasses. He felt he needed a drink.
His approach to the table took him past a sun screen and
alongside a chaise-longue. He let out an involuntary shocked
gasp.
Janine Gamboul was sprawled on her side, her head
drooped over the edge and her arm hanging limply to the
floor. Her face looked pale as wax, except for the red line of
her lipstick and dark pencilling of her eyebrows, and her eyes
were half open and glazed.
Fleming's immediate reaction was that she was dead. He
bent down and put his hand under her head, lifting it back on
to the chaise-longue. She moaned.
Then, as he pulled her arm against her body he saw the
glass on the floor. He sniffed it: it smelt of whisky.
He was just about to leave her when she opened her
eyes fully and laughed. She hauled herself up with difficulty
into a half-sittlng position and waved clumsily at him.
'You thought I was dead?' she giggled. 'I'm not, as you
see. I told Kaufman to ask you here. I wanted to talk.' With
studied effort she put her feet on the ground and stood un112


steadily. 'Lemme get you a drink.' She staggered the few
paces to the table.
She slopped some whisky into two glasses and then gaped
around. 'No syphon,' she muttered thickly. 'Been drinking it
neat, but you like soda - yes? Salim must have it in his
room.' She managed to pick up the two glasses and waveringly
started for the door from the balcony. Fleming stood
motionless, watching her.
She stopped and half turned. 'What are you looking at me
like that for?' she said thickly. Then, with an arch smile, 'It's
no use getting ideas about me; not till I've learned More
about the other woman, your woman .... '
She started off once More, putting the two glasses down on
a heavy sideboard while she swayed over the cupboard beneath.
There were two syphons there but apparently it was
too great an effort to lift one out. Instead she bent down with
the glasses in turn and squirted in the soda. Fleming, who
had moved no nearer than the doorway, did not see how
deliberately and accurately she half-filled one glass from
each.
She was humming a little French love song as she swayed
towards him. She gave him one glass, and fei1 into an easy
chair with the other.
'Tell me all about your girl friends,' she murmured, looking
at him over her drink.
'Hasn't Abu Zeki told you all you need to know?' he said
sullenly.
She giggled. 'Oh, something quite fantastic. So absurd that
of course I believe it - and want to know More. A votre
sant I' She raised her glass.
Fleming hesitated and then sipped h{s drink. The bite of
the whisky on his palate made him feel better. He decided to
play along for a little while. She was still acting drunkenly,
her speech slurred and her body limp. It made her More
atraetive than usual.
'What have you against us?' she asked. 'The smell of commerce?
The dirt that's supposed to stick to money?'
'Partly,' he grunted.
'We haven't such a bad record in this country,' she continued.
'There was nothing here till we came. Now that
8 113

Sallm's taken over we can progress still More.' Her eyes were
bright with excitement. 'Perhaps we shall become fabulous
and great, like medieval Venice or the East India Company.
Anyway soon no one will be able to compete with us. The
whole world will be at our feet.'
'Or at hers,' he observed, sipping again from his glass.
She leaned forward. 'Hers?' she repeated. 'Why don't you
tell me about her? There is something she alone knows?
Something she will do?'
Her eyes were fixed on him, unblinking, malevolent. He
had a ridiculous feeling that she was mesmerising him. To
break it he looked away and gulped the rest of the whisky.
As he put the glass down he knew the drink had been
drugged. His legs felt weak and he couldn't stop his mind
wandering purposelessly into vagaries about the past. He
groped for a chair he couldn't properly see and slumped in it.
Immediately Gamboul was across and standing over him.
'Now you'll tell me,' she ordered.
He talked hesitantly at first, sentences unfinished, subjects
trMal and unconnected; but by the end of half an hour she
had learned the whole story.
She sat looking at the half-conscious Fleming sprawled
awkwardly in his chair for a long time after the questioning.
She wondered if this enirnatic but highly desirable Englishman
had somehow outwitted her and faked his reaction to
the truth drug. She dismissed the idea as absurd; she knew
all there was to know about its effects.
She picked up the house phone on Salim's cleared desk and
gave an order for Fleming to be taken back to his quarters.
For herself she called for a car to be brought round.
Twenty minutes later she arrived at Andre's quarters. The
door was open and only one ,guard was near. She asked him
in Arabic where the white girl was, and the man answered
that she had come out and gone to the building opposite.
Frightened, he added that they had not been ordered to use
force to prevent her moving withln the station.
Gamboul went to the computer building. Abu Zeki was
not there; only two mrds walked ceaselessly up and down
the main corridor. She saw Andre sitting quietly before the
sensory screen in the communication section.
114

'What are you doing here?' Gamboul asked suspiciously.
Andre smiled at her. 'I am waiting,' she said tonelessly.
'For you. You are the logical choice.' She looked intently at
the darkened screen. 'What have you forced Dr Fleming to
tell you ?'
'You -you know about that?' Gamboul exclaimed.
Andre nodded. 'It is all predictable. No doubt you could
not believe all he said. But I will show you. Sit beside me. Do
not be frightened. There is no need.'
Gamboul pulled across a chair. Andre gave her a reassuring
nod and then placed her hands on the sensory controls.
The screen produced a dot of light which expanded and
faded. Then came a vague, misty imagery in halftones.
'What is that?' Gamboul whispered.
Andre's voice was flat and mechanical. 'Watch,' she said.
'I will explain. It is where the message comes from. Soon you
will know what has been calculated for you to do.'
Far into the night the two women sat before the screen, the
frail, slight figure of Andre taut and somehow proud; Gam-boul,
motionless, transfixed, as her eyes tried to assimilate the
strange figurations which hovered, cleared and grew misty on
the screen, while her brain absorbed the low murmur of
Andre's interpretation.
Abu Zeki was the only person, apart from the uninterested
guards, who saw them there. Recognising Gamboul, he
turned away. The woman intimidated him, and he disliked
her. In any event, he had heard of her intimacy with Colonel
Salim. It would not be wise to get involved with the new
dictator's mistress.
He went to his quarters and lay on his bed. He knew he
would not be able to sleep properly, the time was too
momentous. He thought happily about the brave new world
that had been born at the moment the state radio announced
the change of government. Yet there was a niggling premonition
of disaster at the back of his mind. He recognised that
this was the result of his talk with Fleming. He liked Fleming;
liked the way he saw through the trappings of a problem to
the heart of it. Abu wanted to learn to be like that.
Deliberately he forced his mind to shift to pleasanter things - Ins wife, his baby son. But it was no good. The low hum of
115

the computer seemed to permeate the very air. He dozed

The hum. So it was still operating. He sat up and looked at
his watch. The luminous hands showed 3.30. If the women
were still there they had been working for at least eight
hours.
He got up. Already the eastern sky had a pinkish tinge. He
ran across the compound to the computer block. A guard,
asleep on his feet, started with fright. Abu identified himself
and the man lolled back against the wall.
Inside the block the lights were bright, and the air was
heavy and warm after the sharpness of the night air from the
desert. Abu crept forward slowly. The two women were still
there, staring at the screen. Andre's voice was so low that he
could not make out what she was saying even when he
stopped a few feet behind them.
'Mm'selle Gamboul,' he said. 'What is happening? Miss
Andre, it is I - Abu Zeki.'
For all the notice they took he might have been a voiceless
ghost. He felt a prickle of fear and crept quietly away.
Outside he stopped and breathed deeply the fresh, lovely
air. He felt better and it cleared his mind. He realised what
he must do next.
He ran to Fleming's quarters. A ,guard outside, qde awake,
barred his way. The soldier called over his shoulder and the
door opened. Kaufman came out.
'I must see Dr Fleming,' Abu said.
Kaufman grunted that he could come in. Fleming was
sprawled, fully clothed, on his bed. A couple of chairs facing
each other showed where Kaufman had been resting while
watching him.
Abu shook Fleming roughly by the shoulder. 'Doctor
Fleming,' he begged, 'you must come right away!'
Fleming groaned, opened his eyes, and screwed up his
face. 'What time is it?' he mumbled.
'Nearly four.'
Fleming sat up with a start. He fought off a bout of dizziness.
'The doctor has had a little drug,' Kaufman explained.
'He will be all fight presently.'
116

Fleming got gingerly to his feet. 'What's the matter, Abu?'
he asked, ignoring the German.

'I do not understand what is happening,' Abu said:
'Mm'selle Gamboul came to the computer yesterday evening.
She was with the girl. I went to bed. They are still there - in
the communication unit. I spoke to them, but they took no
notice. They did not seem to know I was with them. They
were watching the display tube.'

Fleming ran his fingers through his hair. 'Oh my God! I
should have guessed.' He crossed to the door. Kaufman

moved in front of it, his plump hand round the handle.

'I have orders,' he said uneasily.

Fleming braced himself for a show-doxrn. Hastily Abu
intervened. 'He must come,' he shouted at Kaufman; 'he is
needed for the computer.'

Kaufman looked doubtfully from one to the other. He was
bewildered. The computer was everything. His job was above
all else to serve it.

'If he must, he must,' he grumbled. 'But I will escort you,'
he said to Fleming. 'My orders are to watch you.'

'Hold my bloody hand if you want,' snarled Fleming; 'but
for God's sake let's go.' He turned to Abu. 'Go and wake
Professor Dawnay,' he ordered. 'Tell her to come over to the
computer block right away.'

The air and the short walk did him good. The fuzziness in
his brain cleared and he soon felt he had proper control of
his limbs. He slammed through the swing doors and loped
towards the computer section. Immediately a guard pointed
his automatic rifle at him. Kaufman took a step to one side.

Fleming stopped, the muzzle against his chest. Down the
lighted corridor he could see Gamboul rising from her chair.
A different Gamboul. She was meekly listening to something
Andre was saying. Then she nodded and came towards
them.

Kaufman moved behind Fleming and gripped his arms,
pinioning them against his body. Gamboul passed them all as
if they did not exist. Her head was tilted back and there was
a vaue smile on her lips.

Fleming struggled to free himself. 'Stop her,' he yelled.
'For God's sake don't let her get out of here.'

117

He struggled violently, but Kaufman held him. 'You will
stay with me!'

Gamboul had passed through the entrance hall and there
was the sound of her car moving off before Madeleine
Dawnay came hurrying in.

Kaufman released his grip on Fleming and nodded to the
guard. 'They may pass.'

Fleming ran to the console and bent over Andre. She
glanced at him and then leaned back, lost in reverie. Dawnay
came up. She Was alarmed at the death-like pallor of the
girl.

'What is it, John?' she asked. 'What's happened?'

Fleming grasped the back of the swivel chair and pulled

Andre round so that she could not avoid his gaze.

'What have you done?' he whispered.

She smiled serenely. 'What had to be done,' she murmured.
'Mademoiselle Gamboul knows what to do.' Her lip curled
almost contemptuously. 'She was not afraid when I showed
her the meaning.'

Suddenly her strength and assurance left her and she
crumpled up like a sick, helpless child.

Dawnay bent over her. 'She's desperately ill, John,' she
said gently. 'Let's get her to the sick bay.'

Fleming snapped an order to Kaufman. Frightened and
servile, the German came forward, lifting Andre by the
shoulders while Fleming took her feet. They carried her to
the sick bay, where Dawnay ordered them outside while she
and the nurse got the glrl to bed.

Kaufman tried to talk to Fleming, anxious for reassurance;
he sensed that he was somehow involved in a disaster
and would be blamed for it. Fleming ignored him and the
German walked away disconsolately.

When Dawnay came out she drew Fleming away from the
door. 'She's weak, terribly weak,' she whispered, 'as if she'd
been making some enormous effort. But she's falling asleep.
The nurse will tell us if there's any change. Come across to
my room and I'll make some coffee.'

While the percolator was heating Dawnay asked if there
was any news from outside. 'Colonel Salim's taken over
completely, I suppose?'

118

'I don't know much,' said Fleming wearily. 'I was drugged
last night - by the Gamboul woman. Made me tell her about
Andre. Probably the same drug as they used on you in
London. Afterwards she must have come straight here to the

computer and found Andre waiting for her.'

'But why?' Dawnay demanded.

Fleming sighed. 'The computer has selected Gamboul as
the boss. I thought it would choose Salim, but this is cleverer.

Through her the machine will take power.'

'How?'

'I don't know. Somehow the machine communicated to
her what Andre couldn't put into words for me. I suppose it
managed to give Gamboul the sort of appalling, momentary
flash of revelation saints and prophets are said to have. It's
all so damnably logical and inevitable. Like Andre's always
saying, the whole thing's predictable.'

The coffee was bubbling. Dawnay poured out two cups
and handed one to Fleming. 'I've never had quite this feeling
before,' she said. 'Of everything closing in.'

He laughed shortly. 'You know I have. And I also proved
that appealing to someone, Osborne for instance, or taking
destructive action, didn't really help.' He stirred his coffee
violently, splashing it in the saucer. 'Now the computer's
won. The whole thing's out of our hands - for good. We're
finished.'

Appropriately, as if for effect, a gust of wind moaned
across the compound and scratched grittily against the outside
walls. Dawnay went to shut the door while sand spattered
against the window. :

She stopped, seeing Abu Zeki running across to them. He
stood panting when he arrived, getting his breath. 'Dr Fleming,'
he got out at last. 'Colonel Salim is dead.'

Fleming nodded, as if he felt no surprise. 'And all his
army stooges?'

Abu licked his lips. 'I don't know,' he said. 'I don't really
understand. The army guards have gone from here. There
are just the Intel wardens and orderlies. But they are now
armed. I cannot understand.'

Fleming stood up and stared out of the door. 'I'll tell you
what's happened,' he said. 'Gamboul's taken control. She

119

either had Salim murdered or did it herself. She is perfectly
capable of killing, even if an exterior force didn't tell her to.
There can't be hitches in this plan, so if Salim's coup has
failed it isn't a mishap but a stage in the general scheme.
What about the old man?'

'The President, you mean?' Abu asked. 'He is still in his
palace. The message announcing Colonel Salim's death came
from him, personally.'

Another gust of wind swept through the compound. Fleming
bent his head and sand stung his eyes. He turned and
shut the door. 'The President will be the lady's front man.
She'll pull the strings and he'll twitch. We'll all be her
puppets soon.'

Dawnay slowly drained the last of her coffee. 'John,' she
said thoughtfully, 'it's very strange.'

'Strange? What's strange about it? Gamboul's doing just
what she's compelled to do. Part of the programme.'

She shook her head impatiently. 'I don't mean the political
thing. But the wind. Here it doesn't normally blow like this,
not at this time of the year.'

'Doesn't it?' he answered absent-mindedly. 'A nice reminder
of Thorness. The weather was hell when Andre and I
were hiding up on that island.'

'Yes,' she agreed. 'Conditions were abnormal there as well.
I think I'll do some work in the lab.' She looked already
preoccupied, as if she were working. 'I wish I could get those
sea samples I wanted.'

'Lucky to have something to do,' Fleming said. 'I don't
feel anxious to report as an obedient serf to that electronic
dictator across the way.' He looked at Abu. 'But someone had
better be there, Abu. Go over and hang around for instructions.
I've no doubt Gamboul will be sending her Teutonic
stooge with some orders.'

Fleming wandered back to his own quarters. The wind
still blew, sweeping momentarily stinging gust of sand and
then subsiding as quickly as it had come.

He glanced at his watch. It was early, just after 6.30. He
switched on his short-wave radio, tuned to the B.B.C. Middle
East service. He wondered how long they'd be left with even
this one-way link with anywhere else.

120

The static was bad, the voice from London fading and
distorted so that it was sometimes inaudible.
' . . . No further news has come in about the situation in
Azaran. The frontiers remain dosed, and during the night
the government station at Baleb has merely continued to retransmit
the President's announcement that a military junta
has been set up... '
The spluttering drowned the bulletin for a few minutes.
When it eased the newsreader was saying ' . . . similar conditions
are reported from all over Western Europe and from
countries bordering the Mediterranean. Gales of unusual
force are being recorded as far afield as the East coast of
Africa, in the vicinity of Aden, and from weather stations in
Iceland and Newfoundland.'
Fleming switched off the set. He found it almost natural
that the world's weather should have gone mad at a time
when the world itself was moving irrevocably to a crisis.

121

CHAPTER EIGHT

FORECAST

ON the following day Janine Gamboul summoned Kaufman
to her office. Instead of one of her usual chic frocks she was
wearing a plain tailored suit, but he noticed at once that
there was something else different about her; she had a
dedicated and, at the same time, unnaturally exalted air.
She did not look up from her desk when Kaufman entered,
and he stood stiffly at attention a little distance away from
her.
When she had finished writing, she glanced up at him
coldly, not inviting him to sit down.
'The situation is perfectly quiet,' she said in decisive tones.
'I suggest you inform your department of this fact, together
with a report of what happened. Explain that we are in control
and will remain so.'
'And Colonel Salim,' he asked diffidently, 'what shall I say
about him? He was well regarded by the Vienna office.'
She shrugged. 'Tell them the facts. That I - that he was
shot because he was in the way. He was a petty nationalist
and if he had got power he would have used the computer
for his own stupid little ends. You can explain that?'
She dismissed the matter and picked up the sheet of paper
on which she had been writing. 'This morning the President
is giving audience to his Council. Poor little man. He's very
bewildered, and frightened. But he realises that he must cooperate.
He is perfectly amenable, particularly since Sallm
was dealt with. He will ensure the loyalty of all these old men
of the government. You will attend the meeting to represent
Intel. I have outlined proposals so far as we are involved.'
She handed him a document.
Kaufman took it and read it slowly. Occasionally he
nodded, as if pleased. 'I have always done my best,' he
murmure& 'You may rely on me in the future°'
122

'Good,' she said, with a gesture of dismissal. 'Now go to
the palace and instruct the President's secretary.'
The councillors were seated around the Presidential dais:
a dozen proud, elderly Arabs in traditional dress. True to
their race they concealed whatever emotions they felt as the
President, with a kind of tired dignity, gave them a carefully
doctored version of what had happened and told them that
he himself was taking personal control. The traitor Salim,
the way of his death unexplained, was to be buried without
military honours; all officers who had taken part in the revolt
were already suspended and would be court-martialled. The
troops and all civil branches of the Government would be
answerable only to the President's personal edict. In due
course there would be elections, but in the meantime the
existing Parliament would not be called into session.
At a nod from the President these edicts were translated
by his secretary into English, out of courtesy to Kaufman.
One Councillor half rose to his feet. 'And who will the
President be responsible to?' he demanded, deliberately
speaking in English and glaring at Kaufman.
'To himself,' Kaufman answered sharply.
The President remained impassive, and the Councillor sat
down, muttering into his beard.
'Gentlemen,' said Kaufman, rising proudly to his feet. 'The
President, and therefore the country, can rely on a continuance
of help on an increasing scale by the mercantile
consortium, Intel, which I represent. To further the welfare
of Azaran without interference, it is the wish of my superiors
that the country should not renew diplomatic relations with
other nations.'
The words were translated and caused a low hubbub of
conversation.
'You should say More about the kind of help you are to
give,' said the President uneasily.
Kaufman beamed. 'The Consortium is producing new instruments
of defence and technical value. It will shortly be
making available a new process, perfected in our laboratories
here, to turn the desert into fertile agricultural land.'
He waited while the secretary translated, and a wizened
old Arab whispered urgently to the secretary.
123

'The Sheik Azi ben Ardu wishes to know what the process

'It is a spray,' said Kaufman shortly. 'In a short while it
will be demonstrated.'
The Councillor who had asked the question about Presidential
responsibility glowered at Kaufman. 'And the wind
that has come out of season and blows our soil away, what
can your laboratories do for that?'
Kaufman had no prepared answer. He looked to the
President for help.
'What can they do?' the President replied mildly. 'The
wind is the servant of Allah. We must not question it.'

Fleming had never been under any illusion about his situation.
He knew that he was virtually a prisoner, but only on
this first morning of the new regime did he feel the reality of
it. There was no work he wanted to do, or could be persuaded
to do, knowing what it would be. There was no one to
talk to; even Abu had disappeared into the executive building,
in answer to a summons from Gamboul. Guards were
patrolling everywhere. Before breakfast they had forbidden
Fleming to approach the sick quarters where Andre lay. The
best he had managed was to insist on seeing the nurse who
had come out and reported that her patient was a little worse,
but was sleeping.
He sat a long time over a late breakfast, ignoring the
coarse brown bread, fruit and olives they always served, and
drinking cup after cup of sweet, thick coffee.
Then he strolled across to Dawnay's laboratory. The
mrds eyed him suspiciously but did not prevent him from
entering the building.
Dawnay was busy at a laboratory bench. She greeted him
absent-mindedly and did not react very much to his worried
talk about Andre.
'There's nothing we can do for her,' she muttered. She
paused and then picked up one of a row of large test tubes.
'I'd like you to look at these, John,' she said.
He glanced at the one in her hand. It was full of a semitransparent,
greyish fluid which clung to the glass when she
shook it. The other tubes seemed to be identical.
124

'What are they?' he asked.
'Sea water samples they got for me.' She gave a short
laugh. 'I must admit that Intel are efficient. They wouldn't
let me go and take my own specimens, but they did much More than I asked. Not only are these from the Persian Gulf, which I wanted, but they've had samples flown in from the
Mediterranean and Indian Ocean and even the Western
Atlantic. So that there should be samples from other areas
for comparison, I suppose.'
'And is there anything to compare ?' he asked.
She shook the tube vigorously. The fluid inside went completely
opaque.
'See?' she said. 'Now, normal sea water should be like this
one. You'll see it's clear.' She handed him another test tube.
Fleming picked up some of the other tubes. They all went
opaque when he shook them. 'Sure Kaufman didn't fool you
and get them all from the same place?' he grinned.
She shook her head. 'Not he. He got his orders from Intel,
not from me. You know what he's like. If they told him to
fetch water from the Antarctic he'd get it. But I want you to
watch what happens when this milky sea water mixes with
the dear sample.'
She took a clean test tube, poured in some of the clear
water and then added two minute drops of the opaque fluid.
The milky droplets dissolved and disappeared. Dawnay
damped the tube in a holder with a light reflector behind it.
'Now watch,' she said.
Slowly the water clouded near the bottom of the tube; the
cloudiness spread upwards until the water was as opaque as
the others.
'I wonder how the fish like it,' murmured Fleming. 'Any
idea what it is?'
'A bacterium,' she said. 'Come over here.'
He followed her to the table where she switched on a light
and focused a microscope. 'Look at this slide,' she'told him.
Fleming peered into the microscope, adjusted the focus,
and gave a low whistle. A globular organism was palpitating;
as he watched, it divided and swelled. Thirty seconds later
the division ;vas repeated. He straightened up from the
microscope. 'Know where it comes from?'
125

Dawnay made no reply. She picked up a slide from a small
cabinet and slid it into a second microscope. 'This one's dead.
It conforms to no bacterium group I've heard of. It's a very
simple organism, as you'll see if you look at this one which
I've stained. It doesn't appear to have More than one remarkable
property - the ability to reproduce fantastically. If
it wasn't shut in the test tubes - ' She hesitated. 'If it had
the whole ocean in which to breed .... ' Again she stopped.
Fleming walked back to the bench, thoughtfully looking at
the neatly labelled test tubes. 'The areas marked on these
specimens,' he said, 'rather coincide with those I keep hearing
in the B.B.C. shipping forecasts and weather reports storms,
gales, and so forth.'
'Yes,' she agreed, 'and one of them we know quite well. A
very rich mixture.'
She lifted a test tube labelled 'Minch' gingerly, as if she
were half afraid of it. 'The channel between Scotland and
the Hebrides.'
'With Thorness on the east side,' he finished for her. 'So
what?'
'It must have all started somewhere,' she said. 'In the
originating area it would have a higher density of bacteria
than the More newly infected zones.'
He stared at her. 'You've no proof for saying that this one
from the Minch .... '
She shook her head. eno. All these samples were populated
to capacity when I got them. There's no telling the percentage
of bacteria when they were drawn from the sea.
To make a proper check I'd have to get accurate and localised
storm centre reports and then make on-the-spot checks
of sea water samples in the same zones. There just might
emerge a correlation between these little beasts and the
weather.'
'Or again you might not,' he said with a rather badly-contrived
heartiness. 'Look here, Madeleine, we don't want
to get too imaginative or maudlin about all this. Collate the
data, sift out the facts, draw the inferences - that's the
routine. And incarcerated here we haven't got a chance of
doing much, though I guess you can do a break-up on the
bacterial structure.
126

'But it's pretty obvious, the smart way they got you all this
ocean, that Intel have some notions along your lines - that
the weather is More than naturally upset. My guess is that
you can put in a chit for samples from here to Timbuktu, or
at least wherever there's a bit of sea, and the resourceful
Kaufman will send off his minions with their little buckets
and bottles to get them for you. All you can do to inject some
sense and order into the sources you need is for us to glue our
ears to the B.B.C. bulletins.'
They agreed that one or other of them should try to listen
in to every bulletin and weather report, making notes of the
areas mentioned.
There was no dearth of information. The midday bulletin
gave priority to weather news. The first hurricanes ever recorded
in Britain had caused death and destruction on a
major scale from Penzance to Wick. The electric grid had
broken down because of smashed pylons. Huge areas of
Lancashire and East Anglia were flooded. The Air Ministry
could hold out no hope of improvement. The barometric
pressure remained the lowest ever known outside tropical
areas.
Fleming and Dawnay heard that bulletin together. Neither
had any'need to write down the details, and neither felt inclined
to talk about it. But when a boisterous gust of wind
abruptly surged in from the desert, whirling up little spirals
of sand and making a clatter as open doors banged and
windows crashed, they both felt the burden of something
sinister with More force than the distant wavering voices
from London had caused. The ind was hot and dry, but
Dawnay shivered as it buffeted her.
Fleming moved the tuning dial on the short-wave set,
searching for More news. Words, music, and More words
flicked in and faded - meaningless to occidental ears. Then
he found what he was looking for: the Voice of America.
A beat record clamoured abruptly to its close and the
announcer came on with his station identification. The news
Jhich followed had no political significance. As in London,
ideologies and flag-waving had been shelved. The news was
solely of the weather.
127

'The United States Weather Bureau,' said the newsreader,
'today gave warning of further gales approaching the
Eastern seaboard of the United States. They are expected to
be on a similar scale to those which swept across Western
Europe during the night. American scientists are speaking of
a shift of the world weather patterns comparable to those at
the beginning of the Ice Age .... '
Fleming snapped off the switch. Dawnay got up. 'I'll be in
the lab if you have any ideas,' she said.
More or less deliberately they avoided one another in the
next couple of days. They both felt completely helpless, but
they listened meticulously to every bulletin, noting down the
areas where the storms were worst.
The wind scale fig-ares were the best guide. On the third
morning, after the early morning bulletin had reported More
havoc in Britain, the Netherlands, France, and Spain, Fleming
went back to Dawnay's lab. He was impressed by what
she had been doing. One end of the laboratory had been
cleared. A huge map of the Northern hemisphere had been
pinned up on the wall.' Coloured pins were dotted about it,
thickest in a strip from Gibraltar to the Orkneys, with a big
cluster east of the Hebrides.
'Hello, John,' she greeted him. 'You see, a pattern's emerging
all right. And that's not all.' She beckoned him across to
a Long bench against the wall on which several dozen test
tubes stood in a long row.
'Kaufman hasn't had time to get all the samples I asked
for, of course, but ten More arrived late last night. From offshore
spots in Britain. I told him that all samples were to be
boiled as soon as possible after they were taken. This bug is
killed at 100 degrees Fahrenheit; that way there wasn't any
chance of a bacterial increase during transit.'
She stubbed a finger on one test tube. 'That's the thickest.
It comes from the coast of Obanshlre. The evidence is circumstantial
of course, but I think we must accept it. I've
arranged for Andre to be brought here this morning.'
Fleming started. 'But she's sick,' he protested. 'She can't
help.'
'She is sick, and getting sicker,' Dawnay answered. 'That's
128

why we must see her quickly. Please, John, you know I'm
not callous - but she must help if she can and I believe it's
possible.'
Fleming sighed. 'You're the boss. But I don't like it.'
A nurse pushed Andre to the laboratory in a wheel chair.
Fleming managed a welcoming smile as he clasped her
hands. It was not easy; she looked desperately fragile and
her eyes stared out of her drawn, pale face.
He was appalled by how much she had deteriorated since
he had last been allowed to see her.
The nurse made her comfortable and then Dawnay explained
the situation, showing her the test tubes and pointing
out that the most opaque sample came from the Minch.
'What is the Minch?' Andre asked.
'The channel off Thorness, where all this started,' Dawnay
said harshly.
'It is impossible. It does not make sense. It has nothing to
do with the message.' She looked from Dawnay to Fleming,
bewildered and wary. 'The message has a different plan.'
Dawnay snorted. 'There won't be any different plan if this
engulfs us. Think, girl; think I'
'There is nothing about it in the computer,' Andre
insisted.
Fleming took a step forward. 'Not now, maybe,' he said
thoughtfully. 'But there's something vaguely familiar about
this bug. I'm sure there is. How far have you got with your
analysis, Madeleine?'
Dawnay said nothing, but went. to her desk and picked up
a file. 'As far as I've got has been coded in blnary Is that of
any help ?' she asked.
He took the file, walked to the window, and sat on the sill
while he studied the figures. He laid the file aside. 'It confirms
my hunch, memory, or whatever it is. It reads terribly
like something I already know.'
'Then it's something you started,' Andre interrupted.
He looked round in surprise. 'That I started?'
'At Thorness. That's why this machine has no memory of
it.' She paused and lay back, as if trying to summon up some
strength. 'How many times did you try to destroy the other

9
	129

computer before you succeeded?' she asked.
'Several.'
'After one of those times the computer decided to hit back.
With this bacterium.' Her eyes became cold and hostile,
giving Fleming an empty feeling of despair. 'You have a
great force sent to help you and you turn it against you. You
won't listen to me. You won't listen to anyone. You condemn
your whole race because you won't accept. There is
nothing you can do now. It will engulf you I'
There was a sort of inhuman resignation in her tone.
Fleming turned away, making for the door. He felt sick to
his soul.
For a day or so afterwards he avoided everyone. Intel had
provided its internees with a first class library and subscriptions
had been taken out for the world's technical journals.
He read in a desultory sort of way, his brain hardly registering
the information. The iournals were all back numbers;
interference with communications since the storm cycle had
increased had cut off all but essential supplies, although
some Intel transports still plied between Azaran and Europe.
He heard the hum from the computer and guessed that
the thing had drawn Andre to it, no doubt on orders from
Gamboul. He could imagine what the machine was working
on - rocket interceptors of the kind that had been its first
official triumph at Thorness. There was a ghastly this-iswhereIcame-in
flavour about the whole thing. He wondered
a little how the formulae were being handled once the
output printer had produced the equations. Without proper
interpretation they were just gibberish even for skilled
electronic engineers. But, of course, there was Abu Zeki.
Fleming readily accepted that the young man was as good
as any highly-paid boffin in his particular line of country; it
wasn't surprising really. The Arabs had invented the whole
basis of mathematics as modern civilisation knew it.
Fleming pondered a lot on Abu, not just Abu the first-rate
product of a technological age, but Abu the man. He
was innately decent, kindly and blessed with imagination.
His patriotism was fiery and nationalistic, but he did not let
his emotions completely stifle his reasoning.
Fleming swung off the bed where he had been sprawling,
150

his mind made up, and picked up his room telephone. In a
losing battle one ally was better than none at all. He would
ask Abu to fix some time when they could talk without interruption.
The operator told him Dr Abu Zeki was in the computer
block. Fleming had no wish to go there and see Andre slowly
dying as the machine sucked the last use out of her. He asked
to be put through, not caring that the call would probably
be monitored.
'Hello, Abu. Fleming. I wondered, with the weekend
coming up, whether we could have a chat? Maybe I could
meet your family? I'm afraid my tame guard would probably
have to come too.'
'Why yes, Dr Fleming, I'd be honoured to be your host.'
Abu sounded guarded. 'It will be good for you to meet the
ordinary people of Azaran. My home is very simp/e, I'm
afraid, but you will be welcome. Please stay overnight.'
They fixed a time to leave on Saturday at midday, when
Abu was off duty till Monday morning. Deliberately Fleming
phoned through to Kaufman's office to request permission
for a social visit. The German was out but a secretary
took the details. The pass was brought to Fleming's quarters
that evening. No one queried the reason.
Abu was the proud possessor of a little Italian car, and his
home was only twenty-five miles from the Intel station. But,
as he explained while they sped along the highway past the
airport, his contract demanded that he live on the site except
at weekends.
'My wife doesn't like that, but she has her mother with
her,' Abu went on. 'With the baby to look after, Saturday
soon comes round.'
It was as though he were talking about Surbiton, Surrey,
or White Plains, New York. But the similarity soon ended.
The road pe}ered out into a wide track of rolled stones
and then to a little More than a sandy track. Abu dropped
his speed when the little car laboured with its unaccustomed
load of three men. The guard, sitting in the occasional seat
at the back, cursed in Arabic about the bumps, but he
seemed glad to be away from the compound, even though
the wind sent sand whirling grittily into the car.

131

The track began to wind with a gradual gradient. The
terrain became More stony. Ahead the low range of mountains,
rocky hills really, grew More defined despite the
sporadic sandstorm. Fleming had often looked at them
because of their fascinating, ever-changing colours at different
times of the day. In early morning they were pink,
changing to white when the sun climbed higher. By midday
they were always blurred by heat haze; in the evening they
towered black and vast.
Abu pointed to a small collection of rectangular, flat-roofed
dwellings lying on a tiny plateau immediately below
a fault in the range.
'That is my village,' he said, 'or at least the one where I
have made my home. People have lived here since long
before your Christ. Look I'
Fleming followed the direction of Abu's glance. The rock
face bore traces of enormous bas-reliefs - formalised animals
and serried ranks of bearded warriors. None was perfect,
rock falls jagging into the sculpture.
'Persian,' Abu explained. 'English archaeologists were here
many years ago; More recently the Americans. All have
gone now, of course. What they were really interested in was
the temple. You'll see it round the next bend.'
Dwarfed by the rock face, the temple was just a ruin, a
few pillars still standing amid a mass of rubble. Abu said
that the pillars were Roman, but the site had yielded remains
of several civilisations and religions - Assyrian, Persian, and
a few tablets of Egyptian origin. 'As you know, Azaran has
been a vassal of many empires,' Abu said. 'Now of none!'
He bumped off the track and down what was little More
than a donkey path. His wife was standing outside the tiny
house, a pretty woman, little More than a girl. Although, she
wore Arab costume she was unveiled.
She lowered her eyes when Abu introduced Fleming, but
her welcome was warm, and in perfect English. 'Lemka was
at Cairo University, among the first girl students under
Colonel Nasser's new scheme,' Abu said proudly.
'You are hot,' Lemka said to Fleming. 'Please come inside
out of the terrible wind. It is cooler. Perhaps you will have
some of our ;vine.' She glanced towards the car and saw the
132

soldier leaning against the shady side of the vehicle.
'What is the man doing?' she asked, clutching her husband's
arm. 'You are now under guard ?'
'He is an escort for Dr Fleming,' Abu told her, but she
was not completely satisfied.
'There is much trouble in the city?' she asked. 'On the
radio they say so little. Just that the coup is over and all is
peace again. Is it so?'
'Yes,' Abu said. 'Everything is normal. Now get us something
to drink and then see about a meal. I have told my
friend he will have to take what the English call pot luck.'
Lemka passed through the curtained opening to the tiny
kitchen at the rear.
'My wife is Christian,' Abu said; 'that is why she is not so
effacing as most Arab wives.'
'B'ut you are Moslem?' Fleming asked. 'Yours is a Moslem
name.'
'I'm a scientist,' he retorted. 'And I am also for my
country.'
Fleming eased himself down on the low backless settee.
'And I'm for the whole human race - More or less. Look,
Abu, you didn't believe me about the computer, did you?
Well, now believe me about the girl.'
Lemka returned with a jug of wine and some glasses. She
poured some out and handed a glass to Fleming. The wine
was sweet and thin, but refreshing.
'It's a pretty simple set-up,' Fleming began, not caring
that Lemka was listening. 'Intel built the computer and
employed you to help operate it. As you know, after Neilson
got away it wouldn't work, so. they hi-jacked me and I
brought the girl. Intel's aim was to get a technical edge on
all their competitors and a well-protected base from which
to operate. Hence the missile designs you've been working
on. Your President was agreeable to the arrangements. This
suited the intelligence behind the computer. But it didn't
suit Salim. He was an intelligent and ambitious man. He
wanted to have absolute control of the whole setup.'
'He was a patriot,' said Abu defiantly.
Fleming shrugged. 'He certainly wasn't a man to play
second fiddle to another influence. Andromeda knew it, or at
133

least she learned it from the computer which could calculate
such an eventuality. So Andre made the decision: to put the
power into the hands of Intel, in fact. Our handsome boss
was shown the message, or part of it, and had the meaning
of it explained to her by Andre the night they were together
in the computer.'
'And that could influence her?' Abu was doubtful.
'Influence her?' Fleming retorted. 'Obsess her completely.
She had Salim killed or probably shot him herself. She's a
convert who suddenly saw a vision. It made her fanatical.'
'Like St Paul?'
Both men started. They had forgotten Lemka. 'But how
could a vision be put into words?' she asked.
'St Paul managed it,' Fleming suggested.
'He only described it in your Bible,' Abu said. 'He couldn't
pass it on as he really knew it.'
'You're right,' Fleming agreed. 'You can't pass such
things on, but you can impose them. That was the intention
of the computer, then of Andromeda, and now of Gamboul.
You can also describe the inferences. I myself have had a
glimpse of that description.'
Abu thoughtfully examined his empty glass. 'You believe
what you say? How would you describe this vision?'
'It says that mankind goes round by a long road, and it
may be too long. We may destroy ourselves before we take
the next step.'
'But if we can have the help of a higher intelligence and
avoid that mistake? Abu protested.
'It's the handshake of death. The friend who knows better
than you what's good for you.' Fleming pointed towards the
tiny window, at the vista of desert they had crossed in the
car.
'You've heard of the Pax Romana,' he said, 'the calm of
desolation the Roman legions left after they had forced their
idea of right on the barbarians. That's the sort of peace
you're working for, Abu my friend. Personally I'd rather we
muddled our way along.'
'And destroy ourselves?'
'No I' Fleming shouted. 'If anything destroys us it will be
something sent from outside. Via the computer.'
134

'You have no proof,' said Abu obstinately.
Lemka looked from one man to the other. 'You should
know when a man is right,' she told her husband. 'And help
him.'
Abu glared at her but she held his gaze, and slowly he
smiled. Awkwardly he slid his hand into hers. 'I will try,' he
said quietly. He turned to Fleming. 'On Monday, Doctor, I
will seek an interview with M'mselle Gamboul.'
Fleming thanked him, doubting whether this futile little
manoeuvre would make any difference. With an effort he
stirred himself. 'Fine,' he said. 'We'll work out the sort of
thing to say, to appeal to her conscience, if any. But alt this
is unfair on your wife. It's the weekend.'
The friendship between the two men grew warmer in the
few hours away from the strain of the Intel establishment.
Abu took Fleming exploring among the temple ruins on the
Sunday morning. They had to cut the visit short because the
wind was much stronger than on the previous day, bringing
small but dangerous cascades of stones and rocks from the
precipitous heights behind the temple. Fleming explained
Dawnay's and his theory about the origin of the abnormal
weather. Abu could accept this because he had seen some of
the results of the computer's calculations on the sea water
bacteria. He promised to try to explain it to Gamboul.
The two men and the guard drove back to the station at
dawn on Monday, choosing an early start because they had
already learned that sunrise and sunset brought a short
period of calm. As they zig-zagged down the mountainside
towards the plain they heard a roaring in the distance and
saw a sudden rush of flame up into the sky.

Abu applied for an interview with Gamboul as soon as he
went on duty. He was told to report to the executive suite at
11.
She greeted him almost effusively. 'Well, Dr Zeki,' she
said. 'You'll be the first here to know that this morning we
tested the missile prototype. It was a complete success. We
are now as good as Britain in that field.' She smiled expectantly.
'And you have other good things on the way for us?'
135

'Yes, Mm'selle,' he said. 'But I wish to ask your permission

to speak on another matter.'

'What is it you want?' she asked, her friendliness vanished,

quickly replaced by suspicion.

'I come on behalf of Dr Fleming. He thinks that the

weather cond"-.tions in Europe and America, and even here,

arise in some way from the computer. From the message.' He

stopped, momentarily intimidated by her look of implacable

hostility. 'Dr Fleming would like permission for Professor

Dawnay to contact the International Weather Bureau.'

'No!' she banged her fist on the desk like a man. 'What he

says is nonsense.'
	'But if the message 	'
'I
know the message! What it tells us to do is perfectly
clear. And the weather is not part of the mission the message
has given to us.'
Abu shifted a little. 'If you would just see Dr Fleming
-' he began.
She half shouted her answer at him. 'He doesn't interest
me. He has nothing to say which interests me. Do you understand?'
Abu backed to the door. 'Thank you, Mm'selle,' he muttered.
When the door closed Gamboul bent over the intercom
microphone on her desk. The red switch was already
depressed.
"Herr Kaufman,' she called quietly. 'You heard what
Doctor Abu Zeki had to sly? Good! You will have him
watched now, all the time.'

136

CHAPTER MINE

DEPRESSION

OSSORNE stared out of the carr/age window at the sprawl
of South London. His left arm was still in a sling to take the
strain off the pectoral muscle which Kaufman's gunman had
shot through. Otherwise he was very little hurt, and the
wound itself was healing rapidly.
If he had had a miraculous escape, so had London.
Damage from the previous night's hurricane was not as great
as he had feared, so far as he could see from the slowly moving
train. TV aerials were bent grotesquely and a lot of roofs
had gaping holes where chimney stacks had toppled. He was
jammed against the glass by the pressure of the other standing
passengers. The journey from his home at Orpington
had taken More than two hours already. He could not complain
the train was late; it was unscheduled. With the power
lines out of action only diesel trains from the coast were getting
through. His train eased forward in stops and starts,
passed from section to section by manual signalling.
Being a cautious man, he had started out early, knowing
that after a night like the past one travel would be difficult.
But he was beginning to worry. The Ministry meeting was
scheduled for 10.30. The others; living around Whitehall,
would doubtless be there on time.
The train stopped for ten minutes south of the river.
Osborne saw a Battersea power station, as vast and solid as
ever, the usual plume of white smoke from the stack whipped
away by the still boisterous wind. Almost imperceptibly they
started again, and kept going. The electric signalling system
was working here and they swung over the points and
cruised gently into Charing Cross. Hastily scrawled notices
gave warnings about falling glass from the roof; they were
ignored by the rush of exasperated commuters making for
the exits.
187

Out in the Strand life seemed fairly normal. A hoarding
had blown down, but traffic was moving, though slowly. The
centre of Trafalgar Square was roped off. Nelson still looked
across London from his column, but presumably the authorities
were taking precautions.
Osborne turned into Whitehall. A barricade or two where
windows had been blown out, nothing More. Big Ben stood
unharmed, its clock proclaiming that it was 10.21. Osborne
quickened his steps. He would be just in time after all.
The Minister was already in his office when he arrived. He
grunted a perfunctory greeting and returned to his reading.
'Neilson sent a message he'd be on time,' he said without
looking up.
The American arrived a moment later. Osborne cut short
his attempt at a cheerful greeting at the sight of the black
band on Neilson's arm. The man looked older; the death of
his son had hit him hard.
Without preliminaries the Minister opened the meeting.
'No time or reason for formalities,' he said. 'Professor Nell-son
wants your help, Osborne.' He paused and gave a quizzical
look. 'As Neilson's in the picture as regards your
position over the Thorness debacle, you won't mind my
referring to it. To put your mind at rest, the enquiry's
shelved. It's pretty pointless with the two main witnesses,
Fleming and the girl, missing. So put that business out of
your mind for the time being. This is what you might call a
national emergency. An international commission's being
set up under Professor Neilson, and we want someone to run
the secretariat.'
'Preferably you,' said Neilson. The words were unnaturally
hoarse and loud.
Osborne turned to him. 'You're feeling it too, are you?' he
asked. 'The breathing?'
Neilson nodded. 'It's pretty general, and worse in the
hills.'
'They're evacuating the Highlands,' said the Minister.
'We haven't announced it yet, but it's all part of a general
pattern. The air at any altitude is getting too thin to be able
to breathe.'
Neilson got up and walked to a table where a weather
138

map had been spread out, held in position by drawing pins.
'The Alps and the Pyrenees are now depopulated,' he said.
'Would you just come over here, Minister, and you,
Osborne? I can show you what we've so far ascertained.'
The two men stood on either side of the American. 'The
atmospheric pressure's falling rapidly all around here' - he
swept his hand in a wide curve from the Shetlands to
Brittany - 'as well as in all spots where we have weather
ships or Navy vessels able to make careful checks. In other
words, the pressure's lowest over the sea in the Northern
Atlantic and into the Mediterranean. The indications are
slighter in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, but they are
there. Naturally, air rushes from the land masses to compensate,
and so you have your storms and this thin atmosphere.'
'What do you want me to do?' Osborne asked.
'If you're fit enough?' interposed the Minister. 'Not getting
any trouble from your injury?'
'I'm all right, Minister.'
'Good,' said Neilson. 'Now, as you can imagine, the data
I've been able to collect is too vague, too sporadic. We want
all the news we can get, properly collated, and then rationalised.
That takes some organising.'
The Minister moved to Osborne and put his hand on his
shoulder. 'With this regrettable sabotage business hanging
over you, the security people are rather agin your continuing
to have access to - well, you understand, old boy? But we
can second you to this weather job and faces are saved all
round. Specious but practical.'
Osborne gave a wry smile. Before he could say anything,
Neilson began explaining what he wanted. 'We've got to
work back through the weather records for the past month
or six weeks. Your Air Ministry has got out some preliminary
data. There's no doubt in my mind that this abnormally low
pressure began in one area.'
The Minister returned to the map. 'And I expect you can
guess where that was, Osborne,' he said. 'It was here.' He
stabbed with his index finger into a cluster of spirals. Beside
his finger point the dotted lines of the prohibited maritime
area fanned westwards - the Thorness rocket testing range.
139

Osborne felt no surprise. There was a sort of inevitability
about the whole thing.
'So now you have some idea of the channels into which
your work may lead,' said the Minister resignedly. 'But I
would impress on you that you must remain objective. For a
good while your work must be organising a reporting system
from all countries. The U.N. people in New York have
pushed through a general agreement for co-operation with
the committee. You'll get no niet's or non's.'
A mass of wind surged against the building, the modern
steel windows protesting but not rattling. It died away as
suddenly as it had come. Somewhere in the street glass was
tinkling. 'The great thing is speed,' said the Minister.
For the rest of the day Osborne and Neilson worked on
setting up an organisation. Largely it was a matter of
instructing clerical staff and setting up communications. The
Meteorological people at Bracknell would service the information.
They installed a radio link. Land lines were no
longer reliable.
Before the spring night had fallen the wind began to
increase again. There was every sign of a far worse storm
even than during the previous night. Osborne gave up all
idea of going home.
Neilson went off to his hotel to get some dinner and
Osborne was left alone. He took time off to relax and think.
The way every nation, large and small, had signified its
eagerness to co-operate had been encouraging and stimulating. One tiny blank appeared in the long list of countries
listed as willing to help. Osborne felt it peculiar that in the
face of such danger from a natural phenomenon internal
politics should be so jealously regarded in Azaran.
He picked up the phone and asked for the communications
duty officer in the Middle East Section at the Foreign
Office. The phone was answered immediately, but it was
difficult to hear. The air had chosen that moment to whirl
itself into a frenzy. Osborne had to shout his request, the
effort making him gasp for breath.
Equally laboured came the reply: 'We'll try, sir, but things
are difficult. Line communications have gone to hell, and
radio is no More reliable. We'll be lucky to get any message
140

out of this building tonight, let alone overseas. And as you
know, sir, there's been an upheaval there. Azaran's officially
sealed itself off.' A crash drowned out the rest of the words.
'Window's just blown in,' came the voice, 'God, what a
night!'

It was mid-afternoon when Fleming heaved himself off his
bed and went to his shower. Lethargy was insidiously enveloping
him, making it possible to lie for hours doing nothing,
sometimes hardly thinking. He had not really imagined
that Abu would have any success in getting him an interview
with Gamboul, any More than he had a definite idea of what
he could say to her if he got the chance. Yet, in the frustration
of his existence, he had played a sort of game ever since
Abu had gone, pretending that the next ten minutes, or the
ten minutes after those, would bring a summons.
It hadn't come, of course. Showered and refreshed in
body, if not in mind, he made his way to the computer building.
Andre was seated at the console, Kaufman close by.
She looked desperately ill. Fleming hesitated beside her, but
she took no notice of him and he moved away along the
corridor.
The output printer was working and Abu was studying
the figures emerging.
'I could do nothing,' murmured the Arab, without looking
up. 'I'm suspected now.'
Fleming bent down as if to read the figures. 'I don't think
there's anything any of us can do Z except warn people.'
Abu tore off the newly completed sheet and stood up. 'Go
to my home this evening,' he whispered. 'Give the guards a
slip. I can't come. I'm being watched. Lemka will tell you.'
Before Fleming could question him further Abu had
walked quickly away to the filing office. Fleming watched his
retreating back thoughtfully.
Dawnay came from the other end of the corridor. 'I saw
Abu Zeki all conspiratorial with you through the glass
doors,' she said, 'so I held back. What was it all about?'
'I don't know,' Fleming admitted. 'A trap perhaps; he had
a session with La Gamboul this morning. Or it may be a wild
141

goose chase. But we may as well go down fighting. And what
happy tidings have you got?'
'I know what the little beast is.'
'What is it?'
'An artificially synthesised bacterium. If we knew how it
acts we'd have an idea of what we're up against.'
'Can Andre... ?' He hesitated.
Dawnay gave a rueful smile. 'I tried. She says the computer
can't help. It knows nothing about the bacterium.'
They walked towards the door, to get away from a guard
who had paused near them. 'I'm reduced to straw-clutching,'
he continued. 'So I'll try walking into our friend Abu's trap
if that's what it is.'
She clutched at his arm. 'Be careful, John,' she begged.
'With you gone '
'I always turn up,' he grinned.
Getting away from the compound wasn't easy. Fleming
had to wait until nightfall, and he was not too certain of the
place where Abu said he had left his car. But he was helped
by the weather. The winds after sporadic bursts of boisterousness
throughout the day, was developing into a major gale.
The guards had all sought shelter against pillars and walls
from the stinging sand.
His eyes adjusted to the moonless darkness after he had
walked from the main compound into the service area. Abu's
car was parked among several others. The ignition key was
in position as Abu had promised. He drove away, not too
fast, in case the speed aroused some hidden sentry.
Following the route was tricky. He wished he had taken More careful note of landmarks on the weekend trip. Twice
he ran off the track during a particularly violent gust of
wind when dense clouds of sand hit him, but the rear-engined
Italian car was ideal for the terrain. He got to Abu's
house in a couple of hours.
The door opened an inch when he knocked. He identified
himself and Lemka told him to come in quickly.
An old woman in Arab costume was sitting in one corner.
She pulled her veil over the lower part of her face but her
eyes were friendly. On her lap she nursed a baby.
Fleming looked at the child. 'Your son?' he asked Lemka.
142

'Yes; Jan,' she said proudly. 'Dr Neilson was his godfather.
You have children?'

'No.' He felt awkward with this very direct young woman.
'You would like some coffee?' Lemka said. She spoke to
her mother in Arabic. The woman laid the child down in its
cot and went to the kitchen.

'What's all this about?' Fleming asked when they had both
sat down, Lemka beside the cot which she gently rocked.
'Abu couldn't tell me anything.'

'I made him ask you to come,' Lemka said quietly. 'You
see, I have a cousin who is radio navigator of Intel's air

transports. He's on the Europe run.'

'They're still flying there?'

She nodded. 'It's difficult, but they get through. It would
help if you could get in touch with English scientists? My
cousin is not allowed to carry messages. All crews are
searched before take-off. But he has promised me he will
try.'

Fleming became thoughtful. It all seemed like a trap.
'Why should he?' he asked.

Lemka's mother came in with the coffee, poured out t'o
cups and stole silently away, squatting on the floor in the far
corner. Lemka glanced at her, then at the baby. 'He'd do it
for me, for his family; for our little Jan.'

It was something simple, human - the sort of human
value which shone out in this nightmare world. Fleming
believed her.

'He's going to London; fine. What could he take? A
letter?'

She nodded. 'It is dangerous, y)u understand. People are
locked up for such things. Even shot.'

'Thank you,' was all Fleming could find to say. 'I will ask
Professor Dawnay what the message could usefully include.'
He stood up to go.

Lemka came beside him. 'What is going to happen?' she
whispered.

He drew the curtains back from the tiny window. Sheltered
by the precipitous hill, the air was clear of sand and
the stars sprinkled the black vault of the sky with a myriad
pinpoints of light.'

141

'There are two things,' he said half to himself. 'First, the
intelligence out there in Andromeda that sent the message
wanted to make contact with whatever forms of life it could
find anywhere in the galaxy - in a sort of evangelical way.'
He looked down at Lemka and smiled. 'Remember how we
mentioned St Paul?'
Lemka nodded.
'The intelligence is a sort of missionary in space,' he continued.
'When it finds life which responds, it converts it;
takes it over. It's tried before, maybe over several million
years on different worlds - maybe with success - and now
it's tried here, through the girl Andromeda, for what she
calls our own good. That's one thing.'
'And the other?'
'Where it finds an intellect hostile to it, it destroys it and
possibly substitutes something else. That's what's happening
now, because we fought. Or rather, because I fought. And
lost.' His voice faltered. 'That's why, Lemka, you might say
that I've condemned the whole human race.'
'Not yet,' she whispered.
'No,' he agreed, 'not quite yet. There's just a chance that
Professor Dawnay will have something for your cousin.'
It was early morning when Fleming got back to the compound.
He simply drove openly through the main gates
under the flood lamps, waving cheerfully to the sentry. The
man grinned back. It was clear that so far as the Western
people were concerned the guards were instructed to stop
them getting out, not to prevent them coming in.
Fleming waited till the working day had be,un before he
went to see Dawnay. Whatever they put in the message it
had to be terse, factual and conveying something More than
an appeal for help.
Abu Zeki was in the laboratory with Dawnay. He looked
relieved to see Fleming but said nothing.
Dawnay was bending over a big tank she had had installed
below the low long window. The glass top was screwed down.
Several robber tubes and wires passed through seals in the
top. They were connected to recording instnments, one of
which Fleming recognised as a barograph. In the bottom
were two or three inches of an opaque fluid.
144

She greeted him perfunctorily. 'No luck with Andre,' she
said, busy with notes on the instrument recordings. 'She was
trying to be helpful, I think, but she hasn't the will to do
much. Still, I got some of the data I wanted, thanks to Abu.'
'Found anything?' Fleming asked.
'Not much. I now know what it does.' She removed a test
tube clamped vertically with its mouth over one of the tubes
from the tank. 'It absorbs nitrogen. You'd find less than 3 per
cent in this sample from the air just above water surface. It
also takes up some oxygen, not much - but see for yourself.'
She turned to a filing cabinet and withdrew an untidy
sheaf of papers. 'Just glance over those formulae, will you,
John? Tell me if you've seen anything like them before.'
He studied the data in silence. 'I said it looked familiar. It
still does.' He handed the papers back.
'It's another synthesis,' she murmured.
He was really alarmed. 'Not another one starting?' he
exclaimed.
'No,' she reassured him. 'We worked back to this a long
way. Yesterday evening I was on familiar stuff. It came out
of the computer at Thorness - oh, it must have been More
than a year ago, when I began the D.N.A. synthesis.'
'It's part of that?' he asked in a low voice. 'Part of the
programme which constructed the girl ?'
'No. It came up quite separately.' Dawnay was firm about
it. 'I based an experiment on it; one had to at that stage
when we were still groping in the dark, really,' She moved
to the tank and looked with despair down at the opaque,
sullen fluid at the bottom.
'I actually made some of these bacteria.'
'What happened to them?'
She answered with an obvious effort. 'They seemed harmless,
pointless, Another failure. I kept them in a whole range
of cultures for a week. They did not die, but they did not
develop. Just multiplied. So the tubes were washed out and
sterilised.'
He started towards her. 'Don't you realise... ?'
'Of course I do,' she said sharply. 'The bacteria went
down the sink, into the drain, from the drain to the sewer,
and into the sea.'
145

'Which is precisely what that bloody machine intended
should happen! But an ounce or so is the most it can have
been. It can't have spread the way it has.'
'Not impossible,' she said. 'I've tried to fix the date More
or less exactly when I abandoned that line of research. It's
an academic point really. But I'm certain it is a year ago at
least. With this tank fixed up I have been able to calculate
the rate of growth. It's fantastic. No virus or bacteria so far
known has a rate even comparable to it. And now the buildup's
greater. You can envisage the sort of progression now
that it's invaded all the main oceans.'
'How long,' he asked, 'will it take... ?'
She looked up at him. 'Possibly another year. Probably
less. All sea water will then reach maximum saturation.'
Fleming studied the wall-graph which recorded hour by
hour the nitrogen content in the air of the tank. 'It does
nothing but absorb nitrogen and some oxygen?' he asked.
'Not so far as I've discovered,' she replied. 'But the sea
normally absorbs nitrogen very, very slowly. Plankton and
so on. Any artificial fertiliser manufacturing plant takes out
in a week as much as the sea absorbs in a year. It hasn't
mattered. There's plenty. But this bacteria could easily
absorb all the nitrogen in the world's atmosphere. That's
what's happening now. It's bringing down air pressure. In
the end there'll be no nitrogen and therefore no plants.
When the pressure really drops off the scale there won't be
any way for us to absorb oxygen, and then there'll be no More animals.'
'Unless - ' Fleming began.
'There's no unless.'
Fleming glanced at Abu Zeki, standing quiet and expectant
in the background. 'Madeleine,' he said, 'thanks to
Abu there's a chance of us getting a letter to London.'
She showed little interest. 'To say what?' she demanded.
'What it is.'
'There's no point.' She shrugged. 'But all right, if you
wish. It will be a gesture, though it's too late.' She bent once More over the tank, staring clown into the fluid. 'The girl was
right,' she muttered. 'The computer made life. This tLme it's
146

made death. So far as we're concerned that's Finis - dom in
that water.'
'We'll write, all the same,' Fleming insisted. 'Lemka's
cousin is ready to take the risk. Keep it short but put in
every fact you know.' His voice was decisive. It stirred
Dawnay a little out of her despair.
'All right, John,' she agreed.
Abu smiled, 'I'll wait till the note is ready, Professor,' he
told Dawnay. 'I'll go into town for a meal. It's my normal
practice. My cousin goes to the same caf&'
Fleming moved to the door. 'Good luck, both of you,' he
said with forced cheerfulness. 'Maybe we can all meet back
here later this evening?'

He strode out into the hot wind, making for his own quarters.
He was glad to be by himself. It was difficult for him
to play the role of optimist. And he wanted time to think.
He always thought best by himself, with a bottle of Scotch
by his side.
He sent an orderly to the comissariat for a new bottle.
The boy returned in five minutes. Intel did not stint the
creature comforts, the mental and spiritual dope, for its
prisoners.
He skipped dinner and so he was a little drunk when he
returned to the laboratory. The wind was as wild as ever,
and it was already dark. There had not even been the usual
brief twilight. Abu was already there with Dawnay. 'I saw
my cousin,' he told Fleming. 'He took the note. I don't
know, of course, how he got on at the airport, but I heard
the transport take off on schedule. Just on an hour back.'
Fleming thanked him. 'It may not get through; it may be
ignored at the other end, and even if it isn't we don't know
what they can do if they study it and accept the truth of it.
It would take a lot of swallowing.' He flexed his arms. 'So
we're still really on our own. Which means we need the girl.
Go across to sick quarters, Abu, and tell the nurse to bring
her over.'
'Now?' Abu asked doubtfully.
'Now,' Fleming repeated. 'Kaufman has her dragged out
147

whenever they want a computing job done. The nurse has to
obey, poor lass.'
'What do you propose to do with her?' Dawnay asked
disapprovingly.
'Use her as an ally.'
'She won't play. Anyway, she's too weak.'
'She'll have to try, won't she? She's the only thing we've
got. If the computer at Thorness made a bacterium there
must be an anti-bacterium. I'm not expert in your line,
Madeleine, but surely that's a basic fact of biology?'
'Do you happen to know of this bug which will conveniently
act in the opposite direction ?' she asked.
'The computer must.' He waved away her sarcasm. 'I
realise it's not the same computer, but it managed to reconstruct
the formula for the original one, or at least we and
Andre made it work. We can do it again, for an antidote.'
Before Dawnay could reply Abu returned. He held the
door open while the nurse brought Andre inside in her
wheelchair. Fleming was accustomed to see the girl a little
weaker, a little More wraithlike, every time he saw her. But
he had not got used to the way she now glared at him, her
eyes smouldering with resentment.
'All right, nurse,' he said without looking at Andre, 'leave
her. We'll call you when it's time to take her back.'
The girl stood her ground. 'She should not be here, sir; I
had just got her to sleep.'
Abu interposed. 'Please be sure it's all right.'
The nurse patted the rug around Andre's legs and reluctantly
left. When the door had closed Andre asked what they
wanted her for; she did little More than whisper, even that
was jerky and hard to understand.
'We need another formula from the computer,' Fleming
explained. 'Another bacterium or perhaps a virus. It's got to
kill the first one and then work the other way round. It
would have to release nitrogen held in the water.'
'And it would have to breed faster than the first one,'
Dawnay added. 'It would be another tricky piece of biosynthesis,
another life-creating process. For that I need a
formula.'
Andre had listened with almost horrifying intensity, look148

ing from one to the other, hanging on every word.
'But why?' she protested.
Fleming lost his temper. 'For God's sake!' he shouted.
Dawnay uttered a word of warning and with difficulty he
calmed down. Then, crouching beside Andre, he slowly and
patiently explained how the existing bacteria were changing
the world's weather and making it impossible to breathe, the
preliminary to complete destruction of all life. 'So we need
just one small bug to start breeding on an even greater scale
to counteract it,' he finished.
Once More sim shook her head. 'It is not possible,' she
whispered.
'Look,' he said urgently, 'if you can come up with one sort
you can come up with another - and save us all.'
Her big eyes looked back into his. Imperceptibly they softened,
the hostility lessening. 'Save you?' she managed to say
aloud. 'What about me?' She tried to move her hands over
her breasts and touch her face. The effort was too much and
.she lay back.
'If you had the strength - you'd try.' It was Dawnay who
was begging her now.
'I don't know.' She shook her head weakly. 'It would take
too long.'
Fleming looked over Andre's head at Dawnay. 'Would it?'
he muttered.
Involuntarily Dawnay glanced at the girl. 'I don't know,'
she said. 'She's... ' She got a grip on herself. 'If you mean
would I take too long with the actual lab work, that's
another matter. There are still twenty-four hours in however
many days we've got left, and I don't like sleeping much.'
Both of them looked at Andre again. They were two
people willing her to obey, to do the seemingly impossible.
The ghost of a smile flickered over her mouth, and she
nodded.
Fleming turned to Abu. 'Get the nurse to take her back,'
he said. 'She's the only ally we've got, poor kid. Tell the
nurse to have her ready for duty at the computer at 9 tomorrow
morning. Try to explain that we're not sadists. Tell her
how necessary it is. Frighten her a bit if you like by hinting
how she'll also die if she fails us.'
149

Abu's persuasion - or intimidation - worked. The nurse
obediently wheeled Andre into the computer block shortly
after nine the next morning. The girl said her patient was
too weak to move, and she would have to use the wheelchair
to work while interpreting the screen.
Only Fleming was present. Dawnay felt too little hope to
be able to bear to watch, and Abu remained in the main
office so that he could report any approach by Kaufman or
the mysteriously silent Gamboul. One of the things which
would have been disquieting, if Fleming had not been so preoccupied
with a greater problem, was the way Entel seemed
to be leaving them to their own devices.
Andre put her hands unsteadily on the sensory controls.
The computer had hummed to activity as soon as she entered
the building. But the screen brightened very slowly. Its
imagery was blurred, and even when Fleming pulled the
curtains over the windows across the hall the pattern was
almost indistinguishable. He watched Andre raise her head
to the screen; he saw how she seemed to be gripping the controls as if they yielded some supply of strength. Her
effort to concentrate was pathetic. Presently she relaxed her
hold. Her body slumped and her head bowed to her breast.
She began to talk thickly, sobs shaking her shoulders.
Fleming bent over her. 'I can't follow them,' he heard her
say. 'Take me away from it.' And then she added, as if to
herself, 'I don't want to die.'
The nurse came forward, pushing Fleming away. 'She has
done enough; too much, you must not ask... ' Abruptly she
grasped the chair and wheeled Andre away from the screen.
Fleming refused to move out of the way. 'Andre,' he said
quietly, 'none of us wants to die, but we all will, unless some
miracle starts sucking the air back out of the sea.'
She raised her head with an effort. 'You will die together.
I'll die alone.' He put out his hand to comfort her, touching
hers. She moved her arm away. 'Don't touch me,' she whispered.
'I must seem horrible to you.'
'No I' he said urgently. 'You have always seemed beautiful
to me. Ever since.., ever since we ran away from Thorness.
But try to think, please! Only you can help us now. I don't
150

even know what this is doing. Is the power still with Gam-boul
?'
He indicated the mass of the computer ranged all around
him and she nodded her head. 'Then why does she never
come here?' he demanded.
Andre remained quiet, gathering her strength. 'There is
no need. She has seen the message. The computer has set her
on a path. She will not turn back. Nor will she come here.
She needs no More. I could not show her anything. I can
hardly see it any More.' Her eyes looked askance towards the
blank screen. 'I will come back when I have rested.'
Without asking permission, the nurse started to push the
chair away. Fleming did not stop her this time. He watched
them disappear through the exit doors and for a full minute
he remained where he was, in the heavy silence of the
deserted building.
Suddenly he jumped. The output printer was working. It
clicked rapidly, then stopped. Once More it started. This
time the keys moved slowly but they kept on. He went to the
section and took hold of the short length of paper already
typed.
'Pretty ropey,' he decided as he looked through it, 'but
some sort of biological data, all right.'
He went to tell Dawnay. It was a triviality in itself - this
preliminary analysis. But in its inference it was trenendous.
It showed that after all Andre would help, and maybe
Dawnay could still achieve a miracle - if they had time.
As he stepped out of doors the fury of the wind swept
over him, making him stagger. He began panting, and there
was no help in the gulps of air he took. With head down and
body leaning into a dry, suffocating gale, he plodded through
the swirling sand to the laboratory doors. His zest and
optimism had gone. Time was something they couldn't buy.
Three thousand miles away dawn was breaking over London
- a London stricken with disaster. A few tin-hatted policemen
stood in the middle of the wider streets well away from
the buildings. The jangle of an ambulance bell occasionally
penetrated the howling of the wind. Lights burned weakly
on the first floor of the Ministry of Science building from
151

the few windows which had not been blown out and

boarded.

The grey light of early morning accentuated the weariness

of the four men sitting around the littered table. For several

hours they had not contributed a constructive idea. Discus
sion had really become argument, the futile criticism of over-

exhausted men.

Neilson, normally reticent and co-operative, had given

away to exasperation when Osborne and the Prime Minis
ter's secretary launched into an interminable argument

about departmental responsibility and finance for the

expanded activity agreed upon the previous evening.

'You have a wonderful talent here,' observed Neilson, 'for

plodding through routine while the heavens are falling.'

'We're tired, Professor Neilson,' said the Minister sharply.

'We can only do what we feel is best.'

'I'm sorry,' Neilson said.

The Prime Minister's secretary reached for a cigarette,

found the packet empty, and hurled it into a corner. 'There's

no power over half the country, and the rest is under water,

or snowed up or blown down. People are dying faster than

the army can bury them. If you could only give us some sort
of forecast how long it's going on 	'
Neilson
was on the point of answering when a secretary came
in, tip-toeing to Osborne.
'Something
urgent for you, sir,' he said. 'Brought by a despatch
rider from London airport.'
Osborne
took the buff-coloured envelope and slit it open. With
deliberate slowness he unfolded the flimsy paper, and read
it.
At
last he looked up. 'It's from Azaran,' he said, 'from Madeleine
Dawnay.' He handed it to the Minister.
'You
two had better see this together,' the Minister said to Neilson
and the Prime Minister's secretary. 'It will save time. the
Cabinet must be informed right away, of course.' He waited
impatiently while the two men read the note. 'Any proposals,
Neilson?' he asked.
Neilson
nodded. 'Can you get me to Azaran - today?' he demanded.
152

CHAPTER TEN


VOKTEX


T E four-engined aircraft cruised to the apron, slewed round
and stopped. Electric trolleys moved forward to unload the
cargo. The crew, tired from a non-stop flight from London
during which they had never topped 6,000 feet and had been
buffeted for seven hours without respite, clambered down
the ladder and made their way to the flight office. A uniformed
Arab and a bullet-headed European greeted them
perfunctorily as the Captain handed over the aircraft papers.
The European flicked through them and passed them to the
Arab, and then extended his pudgY hand for the crew's
personal documents. He let the Captain go through immediately,
but when he looked up at the next two men standing
before him he referred again to the papers in his hand.

'Who is this?' he asked in German. The two air crew
members looked blankly at him. He repeated his question in
halting Arabic.

Yusel, Lemka's cousin, the younger of the two, smiled
ingratiatingly. 'My second navigator. He not understand
Arabic or the language you use first.'

The Intel man scowled. 'I've not been notified of any
change in crew plans. Why are you carrying a second navigator?'

Yusel explained. 'For route familiarisation. We have to fly
so low; no air pressure up top.'

Not really satisfied, the Intel man re-read the documents.
When he could find no fault in them, he threw them across
the desk. Yusel picked them up and led his companion into
the crew room where they got out of their flying kit. His
companion was Neilson.

'That's the worst over,' Yusel told him. 'Now I'll take you
to my cousin's house. It'll be quite safe. Her husband, Doctor
Abu Zeki, will contact you as soon as he can.'

153

Neilson nodded. 'The sooner the better.'

Yusel drove him to Abu's home and then returned to
Baleb. It was late afternoon when he got to the cafe, and he
had to wait an hour before his cousin arrived. When he did
come Abu Zeki had the furtive air of a man who knows he is
watched. Quietly, over two bottles of locally-made Azarani
Cola, Yusel told him about Neilson's arrival.

'He wants to see Doctor Fleming and Professor Dawnay,'
he finished.

Abu Zeki glanced anxiously around the bare little caf&

'I don't know if they can both get away,' he said. 'But I
will tell him.'

As soon as he heard that Neilson senior was safely in the
country, Fleming decided to throw caution to the winds and
go and see him. He told Dawnay to be ready to leave as
soon as it was dark, if she was willing to take the risk.

The weather helped them. A violent storm broke with
nightfall, sheet lightning illuminating the sky and short bursts
of rain lashing the buildings and swirling sand. The guards
crept, frightened and shivering, into any shelter they could
find. Fleming and Dawnay plodded through the cascades of
rain without once being challenged.

The drive was appalling, Abu's little car slithering in the
thick scum of mud on the desert sand. But the rain had been
local. After forty minutes they were driving on dry terrain,
the storm providing an accompaniment of reverberating
thunder and almost continuous flashes of lightning.

Fleming felt a sense of quite unreasonable relief when
Lenka opened the door and he saw Neilson standing behind
her. The American's wordless greeting, the way he gripped
his hand, was absurdly reassuring.

To Dawnay, Neilson was someone who signified a gleam
of hope that she had refused to admit existed, but she was
still not sure why he had come. They both sat quietly, suppressing
their excitement, while the big calm man ate his way
methodically through a bunch of grapes and told them what
had been happening in London. They learnt for the first time
how Osborne had survived the shooting at their country-house
prison, how Neilson had been called in to 'head a
probe into this weather thing', as he put it, and how they also

15'}

had put two and two together and traced the source to
Thorness. And how they had then come to a dead stop until
they had received the message from Dawnay.
'Is there really any hope?' he asked her.
'About as much as a grain of sand in a desert.'
She pushed aside the little tray on which Lemka had set
Neilson's supper and spread out the bundle of papers she had
crammed into the waistband of her skirt.
She impatiently flattened out the creases. 'These are most
of the figures for the D.N.A. helix,' she began. 'The computer
has worked out what I think you'll agree is a feasible
analysis. So far as I can judge, it's a potential bacterium. But
the molecular structure is one thing. Getting the components
and synthesising them another, but it might, possibly, produce
the anti-bacterium we need.'
Neilson studied the figures. 'And this is the work of the
machine Jan built?'
She nodded.
'I can't help wondering... ' A tremor made his words tail
off.
Fleming was sitting beside the cot, absent-mindedly revolving
a toy suspended for the child's amusement. 'What
would have happened if your son had stayed,' he finished.
Neilson turned to him. 'They shot him in cold blood,' he
said. 'In front of our eyes. If I could find the man .... '
'I can't tell you who pulled the trigger,' Fleming said. 'But
I know who told him to. A man named Kaufman, who is
"looking after" us here.'
'I should like to meet him,' saidNeilson.
'Maybe you will.'
Dawnay began gathering the papers together. 'At least
your son's death was quick,' she said with compassion.
'Which is More than ours will be. Unless these work.' She
stuffed the papers back in her skirt band. 'There's a 10t More
to come if only the girl can get it for us.'
'How is she?' Neilson asked.
Dawnay looked down at the baby; the child was wide
awake, smiling at the sight of so many faces around him.
'She was an artificial sort of life,' she muttered. 'Not like... '
She turned abruptly away from the baby. 'There's some con155


stituent lacking in her blood; something I didn't know about
and something the computer didn't allow for.'
'Can't she get some help from the machine for herself?'
NeiIson asked.
'No time,' Fleming replied. 'She might have done, I suppose,
but there was this anti-bacterium job. She elected to
work on it .... '
Neilson eyed Fleming speculatively. 'That was a hard decision,'
he said.
Fleming paused to light a cigarette. He inhaled deeply.
'Yes,' he said at last. 'It was a hard thing, as you say.'
Fleming rose and turned away from the others. He crossed
to the window and stared out into the night. Hastily, to ease
the tension, Dawnay began asking if Neilson wanted copies
of the computer data. Neilson shook his head. He explained
that the only practical thing would be a test tube of the anti-bacterium.
'If the girl can complete the analysis,' he started,
but Fleming interrupted.
'Shush I' They stared at him. 'Lemka's coming.'
Lemka, who had been keeping watch on the road, came
running across the courtyard to the house. They could hear
her sandals on the rough paving.
'We're watched all the time,' Dawnay said. 'We thought
we'd ven them the slip tonight.'
Lemka burst into the room, her eyes large and round with
excitement. 'They're coming,' she exclaimed. 'Soldiers. A
whole truck load I'
All of them stood motionless for a few seconds. Then
Dawnay took the papers she had put in her waistband. 'Hide
these,' she said, thrusting them into Lemka's hand. 'Your
husband can pick them up later and give them back.'
Lemka took them and turned to Neilson. 'My mother's
room,' she said firmly. 'They won't go in there.'
'I hope you're right,' he smiled as he followed her.
There was a knock on the door, not violent or very- loud.
Lemka emerged from the rear room and opened the door. A
corporal saluted and spoke in Arabic; two soldiers stood beside
him. Their guns were still slung on their shoulders.
'He says they have come to fetch you and Dr Fleming,'
Lemka interpreted, addressing Dawnay.
156

'Tell them we'll come right away,' Dawnay said, with
what she hoped was a bright but casual smile. 'We'll be all
right, so don't worry. But you'll have to find a safer place for
Dr Neilson. We'll keep in touch somehow.'
Lemka extended her hand and clasped Dawnay's affectionately.
'My cousin will think of something. We had better
not talk More, or the soldiers will suspect us.'
One soldier insisted on coming in the car, and the corporal
made signs to Fleming to drive close behind the army truck.
The weather had cleared a little, the wind blox,4ng strongly
but steadily.
Back in the compound the computer block was a blaze of
light. Two soldiers took over from the escort and led Fleming
and Dawnay into the building. Kaufman was sitting at a
desk in the office, his face a mask of suppressed anger. Abu
was standing uneasily to one side.
'Now what's all this about?' the German barked at them as
they entered. 'Why were you outside without permission?'
'Permission from whom?' Dawnay demanded. 'And why
permission to visit friends; the family of a colleague?'
Kaufman tried to meet her look and failed. 'You know
you are not supposed to be without an escort,' he blustered.
Fleming stepped forward, his fists clenched. 'Now look
here, you Teutonic gauleiter .... ' he began, but Abu Zeki
stepped in front of him. 'They sent for you because it was
urgent. The girl collapsed while she was working in the
sensory bay.'
'Andre?' Fleming was already at the door. 'I'll go to her,'
he called over his shoulder.
'How bad is she?' Dawnay asked Abu.
'She is very weak,' he replied. 'But there was a little More
data from the printer before she collapsed.' He picked up a
sheaf of record sheets from the desk and gave them to
Dawnay.
Kaufman cleared his throat. 'You will be More carefully
watched in future,' he warned, but he seemed uncertain and
worr/ed. 'How important is the girl to us?'
'About as important as your smwival. You won't go on
living for long if she doesn't finish this.' Dawnay could
hardly bear to speak to him, but when she saw the fear come
157

into his eyes she realised for the first time that he was not
invulnerable; that he might be able to be worked upon. 'So
for God's sake - and your own - try not to interfere More
than you have to.'
He looked at her doubtfully and went away without
speaking.

Andre's corner of the sick bay was in darkness. The nurse,
sitting beside a screened light, stood up when Fleming tiptoed
in. She protested at the intrusion.
'It's all right,' he told her. 'I just want to see her. I shan't
wake }ler.'
The girl gave an annoyed sigh and walked across to the bed
with him. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he could make
out the shape of Andre's emaciated body underneath the
thin coverlet. Her head and hair were a vague shape in the
centre of the white pillow. He bent down closer and saw that
her eyes were open, watching him.
'I should have been here,' he whispered, gently touching
her hair. }tis fingers brushed her forehead. It was damp and
cold.
Very faintly her voice came to him, slow and hesitant. I
have done what you wanted. Professor Dawnay has all she
will need now.'
His mind hardly registered what she had said. 'I ought to
have been with you,' he said again.
He found her hand. It lay lifeless and unnaturally flexed
on the coverlet. His thumb and forefinger felt for the pulse in
her wrist. He could detect nothing.
'I am finished,' she whispered, guessing what he was doing.
He withdrew his hand. 'No, you're not,' he said loudly.
'We've a trick or two left. Neilson is here. The father of the
man who built this computer. He made me realise what I
ought to be doing. What r,e ought to be doing. We need some
help from it for you as well as us.'
He stood up. 'Put yourself in my hands,' he ordered. 'You
did before. Tonight you will sleep. Tomorrow I shall come
for you. I will take you to the computer. Yes, I know,' he
exclaimed when he saw her attempt to protest. 'You're weak.
158

You collapsed this evening. But this time I'll be beside you,
helping you.'
He had very little belief that he could really do anything,
but he hoped that some fresh strength had passed from him
to her. She moved a little, as if relaxing and getting More
comfortable Her eyelids fluttered and closed. Her face took
on the serenity of natural sleep.
Fleming went to the door, beckoning the nurse to follow.
Outside he talked quietly to her, telling her that she was not
to be frightened, and not to talk. 'We're all in danger,' he
explained to her. 'Your patient is trying to save us. It's up to
us to save her. Trust me and we shall do it.'
Half-heartedly the girl nodded that she understood. Fleming
wished he could convince himself as easily.
He slept little 'that night, but lay trying to make a new plan
of action for the little time they had left. With the light of
morning he deliberately followed his usual routine of a
shower, shave, and breakfast to give Andre every precious
minute to recuperate from her collapse the night before.
Even then he was early. Sleepy guards, resigned to another
couple of hours before the day reliefs took over, eyed him
warily when, accompanied by the nurse, he pushed Andre in
her wheelchair to the computer building.
After the boisterous, still stormy, weather outside the air
inside the building seemed heavy and lifeless. Despite the air
conditioning the familiar aroma of Kaufman's cigarellos
hung around. Fleming half expected the man to come bustling
up, demanding to know what was happening. But the
offices were empty. Presumably the German had hung
around for hours, thinking. Fleming hoped that whatever
conscience he might still have had been at work.
Andre had said nothing when he had fetched her. Beyond
a smile in answer to his greeting she might have been in a
trance. After he had dismissed the nurse and had Andre
sitting in front of the screen he resigned himself to the fact
that he would just have to hope to instil his ideas in her
mind, without getting a sign of reaction.
And so it was. He talked of what Dawnay believed was
wrong with her, how guilty they both felt because of it. He
painted a picture unreally optimistic, of what her life could
159

be if she could help Dawnay to help her. In the end he
simulated something very near anger, challenging her to
prove her power.
She sat with her head drooped, her hands folded listlessly
in her lap. Only the occasional fluttering of her eyelids
showed that she was awake and listening. He stopped talking
after a while, not knowing what else to say. He saw her try to
brace herself. One hand was lifted with agonising slowness to
the sensory control. The machine began to hum. A pinpoint
of light glowed in the centre of the screen; it dulled and
expanded. Fleming stepped away, not taking his eyes off her,
until he was against the wall. There he stood, tense, motionless,
watching. The impossible was happening.
After a time he felt a pull on his sleeve. Abu was standing
beside him looking puzzled and expectant. Fleming jerked
his head towards the office and they walked quietly to it.
'What?' Abu began. 'Is she... ?'
'I think so,' Fleming replied, not really knowing what Abu
was asking. He tugged his thoughts unwillingly away from
Andre. 'What's the news from you?'
'I went home after xnidnight,' he said. 'I had to pass
through the guard room. But the officer seemed to think it
was okay for me to go unescorted. My cousin Yusel got
home just before me. We've fixed tip Professor Neilson where
he'll be safe enough. A cave high above the temple, where
that rock fault is. He'll be comfortable enough there as he
hasn't to move around much. It was hard going for him; the
air is thinning here just as Yusel says it is even at sea level in
England.'
'He's got food and water?'
Aim nodded. 'Lemka will visit him regularly, or her
mother.'
Fleming nodded, satisfied. 'It's good of you all,' he muttered.
'Young Doctor Neilson was kind to me,' Abu said. 'We
liked him very much.'
Both men stopped abruptly. The output printer had
started to work. Fleming's thoughts raced back to Andre.
'Get the nurse to take her back to bed,' he ordered. He
walked across to her and put his arm around her shoulders.
160

'Good I' he said. 'Now rest - and hang on.'
He grabbed the paper coming from the printer, running
down the short lines of figures. The details meant little to
him, but the general purport was clear enough. It concerned
the constituents in plasma. For ten minutes he stood watching
the figures emerge. At last the motor died and the computer
sank into silence.
Dawnay was working at her laboratory bench in her usual
bewildering and seemingly haphazard array of apparatus.
Fleming thrust the sheets of paper before her.
'What are those?' she asked, continuing to watch some
fluid drip through a filter. 'More bacterial formulae?'
'No,' said Fleming. 'Formulae for Andromeda.'
She stopped her work and looked at him wonderingly.
'Who programmed it?'
'She did. I More or less forced her. So far as I can judge it's
a progression of figures that stands for the missing chemical
constituents in her blood. Get it into chemical terms, and we
can use it on her.'
She took the paper and slumped in a chair. 'It would take
weeks of work,' she muttered, running her eye over the data.
'And I have this bigger job.' She waved her hand almost
helplessly at the jumble of retorts and test tubes on the bench.
'Which Andre got for us,' he reminded her.
She was exasperated at the implied reproof. 'Let's get this
straight, John,' she began in level tones. 'First you were
against me creating her. Then you wanted me to kill her
when she was first made. Next you demanded that she was
kept away from the computer. Now-'
'I want her to live.'
'And the rest of us?' she asked him. 'Do you want us to
live? How much can I take on, do you imagine? My energy's
limited. There's only one of me and I'm dead tired. Sometimes
I think my brain is softening.' She pulled herself together
and smiled at him. 'Do you think I wouldn't try to
save her if I could? But there are millions of us, John, and
our lives are in the balance. I don't even know if this is going
to work. Still less that, even if it does, I'll have it made in
quantity in time.'
161

She leaned forward and held out the sheets of paper to
him. He kept his hands deep in his trouser pockets, refusing
to accept them. She let them fall to the floor.
tie bent to pick them up and put them carefully on a
clear corner of the bench. 'You'll have to talk to Gamboul,'
he said quietly. 'She won't see me and doesn't trust Abu
Zeki any More. But she might listen to you. If you could
persuade her to give us More freedom and More ontside
help .... '
Dawnay was lost in her own thoughts. 'I don't know, I just
don't know,' she mmTmlred.
Without warning there was a tremendous crack of
thunder. It shook the building, making the apparatus on the
bench shake and jangle. Immediately the noise died away
there came the scream of wind.
'Even Gamboul must know that this weather thing isn't
something she can handle, that it wasn't part of her damned
pro?,'ramme,' Fleming said when the racket died down.
'All right,' Dawnay agreed; 'I'll try to explain to her.'

An intepziew was not granted until the following morning.
Gambonl sent an order for Dawnay to come to her private
residence, the house which Salim had owned. From all
accounts, Gamboul rarely visited the Presidential Palace any More , not even too through the foTnalities of reporting, the
country's day-to-day activities. The President was kept a
virtual prisoner. He did not seem greatly to mind; he was
sick. The comparatively slight thinning of the atmosphere
over Azaran was already affecting the older people. The
President was suffering from bronchitis.
The Salim residence looked shabby and dilapidated. There
had been some minor stma'n damage. No one had troubled to
sweep up the rubble. The palm trees which had grown in the
courtyard for More than fifty years had been broken by the
wind.
An armed guard escorted Dawnay to Gamboul's office.
She could see at once how the other woman had changed.
The sensnality seemed to have drained out of GambouI. Her
face had become More beautiful in a haggard, almost
aesthetic way, and there was something fanatical about her
162

bright dark eyes. Something terrifyingly self-possessed and
dedicated.
She was surprisingly friendly, asking what she could do,
'You have everything you need for our work?' she enquired.
'For yours; not for mine,' Dawnay corrected her. Then,
without preamble she gaYe a factual and restrained report on
the reasons for the state of the weather.
Gamboul listened quietly, without interrupting. She
walked to the window and looked out across the city to the
towering masses of cumulus beyond it over the desert.
She was quiet for a time after Dawnay had finished. 'How
shall we die?' she murmured, walking back to her desk and
sitting down. Dawnay explained.
Gamboul waved an expressive hand. 'That wasn't the
meaning in the message,' she protested. 'It wasn't meant to
happen. Everything was clear and logical. What I saw was
- desolation, but not like this. And there was power too.'
'What did you learn you had to do?' Dawnay prompted.
Gamboul's mind was far away, reviving that night in front
of the computer screen. 'Govern,' she muttered. 'Everyone
knows that it has to be, but nobody will make the real effort.
A few have tried .... '
'Hitler? Napoleon?' Dawnay suggested.
Gamboul was not insulted. 'Yes,' she agreed. CBut they
were not brilliant enough, or rather they did not have the
help of the brain from out there. It will be necessary to sacrifice
almost everything. But not like this! Not now! We're
not ready I'
'How much power have you ?' Dawnay asked.
'Enough here. But this was to be only a beginning.'
'It still could be,' said Dawnay. She could see now a way of
appealing to the other woman's greed and fear.
Gamboul turned sharply to her. 'What do you mean?' she
demanded.
'It's possible,' Dawnay explained, 'that we may be able to
find a way to save the atmosphere. Not probable, but just a
chance. We're getting some help from the computer with a
formula that looks like an anti-bacterium. We may be able to
synthesise it. But I shall need help and equipment. If we
163

succeed we shall have to mass produce it and then pump it
into the sea all over the world.'
Gamboul gave her a look of suspicion. 'How can you
produce so much?'
Carefully Dawnay explained that with organisation the
serum, once made, would increase naturally, possibly at a
rate faster than the bacteria already in the sea. 'Once we've
bred bulk supplies we should have to send batches to all
countries, where their own installations could all handle it
simultaneously.'
Gamboul began laughing. It was not a pleasant sound for
there was no joy in it, only overweening exultation. 'We will
do it,' she said, 'but we shall not allow other governments to
co-operate. Intel will build all the plant you need. Intel will
offer the serum at its own price. This will give us the power
I was told about. It is part of the message after all. I didn't
understand. Now the world will be ours, held to ransom.'
Dawnay rose, staring at her. 'It's not for you!' she found
herself shouting, too deeply shocked to care what risk she
ran. 'You're mad! It isn't part of the plan I'
But Gamboul seemed not to notice; only stared back at her
with glazed eyes and spoke as if to a minion receiving orders.
'Indent for all the equipment you need, Professor. I assure
you that there will be no restrictions about that.'

A portable projector had been rigged up in the Cabinet
Room at 10, Downing Street. The Prime Minister, a few of
his senior colleag-ues including the Minister of Science, and
Osborne were sitting at one end of the table watching the
screen.
The Prime Minister raised his hand. 'That's enough,' he
said wearily. 'Put the lights on, will you?' The scene of a
waste of water over what had once been Holland's most
fertile farmland faded.
'The point is, sir, do we release it to the T.V. nets?' The
Home Secretary enquired.
'Why not?' asked the Premier. 'People who can do so,
might as well see. Perhaps there'll be some sort of wry comfort
in knowing that Europe's even worse off than we are.
Anyway, not many will see them. I doubt whether a tenth of
164

the country now has any electricity.'

He fingered his pipe, then laid it down; smoking was
almost impossible with breathing so difficult. 'Any news from
Neilson?' he enquired.

'Not yet, sir,' Osborne replied. 'Another report from Professor
Dawnay brought on an Intel transport. It's a technical
message the Director of Research is studying. But briefly,
she claims that the bacterium is a bio-chemical thing put out

by the Thorness computer.'

'Is she doing anything?'

'She says she's working on it, sir. We're hoping she will
give Neilson a lead and he can help her.'

'Couldn't this Arab aviator or whatever he is smuggle
Neilson back once there are some facts to work on?'

Osborne coughed deferentially. 'I'm afraid the calculations
would have to be done there, sir; they have the computer.'

The Prime Minister gave Osborne a keen glance. 'Thank
you for reminding me of that,' he snapped with uncharacteristic
sharpness. 'And what about the computer's minions,
the fellow Fleming, and the girl?'

'They're both there,' the Minister of Science told him.
'They're under guard.'

The Prime Minister got up and walked to the head of the
great table. 'Perhaps it's time we moved in,' he said quietly.
'This isn't a Suez. We would have support from other
quarters.'

The Minister of Science shifted uneasily. 'My experts have
made an appreciation of the eventuality, sir. They advise
against it. You will understand, sir, that the computer... '

'... Has built them the sort of defence set-up it built us,'
the Prime Minister finished for him. 'So we'll have to try
appealing to their better nature, won't we?'

'Yes, sir,' muttered the Minister of Science.

'Not a very profitable policy, I suspect,' said the Premier.
'But I doubt whether we or the Opposition can think up any
other. I'll get the C.O.I. to draft something for the B.B.C. I
suppose there's still some transmitter or other which can
pump it out?'

'Daventry is still on the air, sir,' the Minister of Science
said. 'The arm¥'s there with a group of mobile power units.

165

We can reach Azaran on short-wave all right.'


The special bulletin was broadcast in English and Arabic at
hourly intervals throughout the night. Most of the first
transmission got through to'Azaran. After that, on Gam-boul's
personal orders, it was jammed.

She summoned Kaufman to her ofi3ce to hear a tape
transcription. The German sat impassively while the tape
was played.

'This is London calling the government and people of
Azaran,' came the far-off, static-distorted voice. 'We need
your help. The continent of Europe has been devastated. The
whole world is threatened by a series of climatic disturbances
which have already begun to reach your own country. The
air we breathe is being sucked into the sea. Within the next
few weeks millions will die unless by some enormous effort it
can be arrested. Tens of thousands are dying now. This
country has been badly hit. Three quarters of Holland are
inundated. Venice has been largely destroyed by a tidal
wave. The cities of Rouen, Hamburg, and Dusseldorf no
longer exist.'

'Dusseldorf.' Kaufman repeated the one word and the
muscles of his face tightened.

Gamboul ignored him, listening to the tape. 'At this
moment great storms are raging over the Atlantic, sweeping
towards Europe. We need your help to check the course of
events.'

The voice was drowned in a welter of noise. Gamboul
switched off the recorder. 'That's where we began jamming,'
she explained.

'What I want to hear from you, Kaufman, is how they
know that we are concerned with it.'

Kaufman looked blankly at her. 'Dusseldorf,' he repeated.
'It was my home. My old father... '

'We are supposed to have a good security service,' snapped
Gamboul. 'And you are in charge of security, Herr Kauf-man.'

He roused himself as if from a dream. 'We have done our
best,' he said stubbornly.
Gamboul shrugged. 'It's no matter now. As soon as
166

Dawnay has the new strain of bacteria we will make ourselves
safe here. After that we will make it available to others
- on our own terms.'

'And meanwhile,' said the German slowly, 'the rest of the
world wait and die? You do not care? You think other
people are not caring?'

She failed to notice the hatred in his eyes. 'The world must
wait,' she agreed. 'I know what has to be done. Others don't.'

Kaufman was still looking fixedly at her. At long last she
felt a little uneasy under his gaze.

'Remember, Herr Kaufman,' she said. 'You and I are not
other people.'


167

CHAPTER ELEVEN
TORNADO

TRu to her word, Janine Gamboul arranged priority for
any order Dawnay gave. The resources of Intel were such
that even in the chaotic conditions of Europe the materials
were located, purchased and brought to Azaran by air. Even More remarkable was the speed with which young and brilliant
chemists were found, specialists in bacteriology or the
molecular construction of nucleic acids. Two were newly
graduated students from Zurich, one a girl chemist from the
research department of Germany's biggest drug firm. Questioning
by Dawnay showed that they had come quite voluntarily,
tempted not merely by the lavish salary but for the
chance of doing what they had been told was an exciting new
channel of research, in what they hoped was a less tempestuous
part of the world. They had no idea of the true
purposes of Intel, or of the potential nightmare that lay behind
the weather disaster. The public everywhere still hoped
that the worst would soon blow over.
Daway told her helpers the facts of the situation as it
was; but she omitted the theories about the origin of the
bacteria.
She worked them to the limit of endurance. They caught
the sense of urgency and became her devoted servants. She
was at work when they turned up in the morning, and was
still there when they wearily went to their rest in the evening.
Results began to show sooner than Dawnay had dared hope.
Precisely ten days after they had begun in earnest the first
droplet of synthetic bacterium was sprayed on a minute
copper screen and placed in the electronic microscope. It was
a dramatic moment as Dawnay adjusted the magnification,
her assistants standing around her. Up to 500,000; then to a
million. One and a quarter million. It was there: a many168


sided formation, spiked, symmetrical. And it wasn't an inert
crystal. It lived.
Silently she motioned to her staff to look. One after the
other they shared in the triumph. Life, infinitely tiny, had
been created.
Almost diffidently Dawnay had to bring herself and her
assistants back to reality. This was really no More than a
scientific curiosity. The real test lay ahead. The bacterium
had to be bred in its billions - enough to fill a test tube. And
then it had to be sent into battle against the organism which
was its pre-destined enemy.
The precious and all too few droplets were sprayed into a
dozen different culture soups. For six long hours there was
nothing to do but wait. Tests showed dead bacteria in nine
of the tubes; the other three had reached maximum saturation.
From these three, larger cultures were started. They all
flourished. It was past midnight when Dawnay decided the
real test could begin.
Dawnay drew a test tube of opaque bacteria-sodden sea
water from the tank. It was sealed with a sterile rubber
stopper. An assistant filled a hypodermic from the culture
and handed it to Dawnay. The needle pierced the rubber
stopper and the fluid produced a tiny swirl as it flowed into
the opacity.
'Now another wait,' said Dawnay. Only a slight tremor in
her voice indicated the tension she felt. 'So let's have some
coffee.'
She had not told anyone outside the laboratory how close
she believed she was to success, dreading the risk of anticlimax.
But Abu Zeki, drawn by the blaze of light from the
laboratory windows, came over when the waiting period was
almost over.
'Come in,' Dawnay said, 'you're in time to share in a
success or help us find excuses for a failure.'
'It's working?' he asked hopefully.
Dawnay laughed uncertainly. 'In theory, yes. In practice
- well, we'll know in a moment.'
She crossed to the bench where the test tube had been
clamped inside a sterile cabinet. Gingerly she withdrew it
169

and held it to the light as the others grouped around her.
Two-thirds of the water was clear and sparkling. She kept it
aloft, staring, and even as they watched a few tiny heads of
freed gas rose jauntily to the top of the tube.

Dawnay shook herself, bringing herself back to reality.
'It's been in the tube for precisely sixty-three minutes,' she
murmured. 'Now we will test it in the tank.'

No need for sterility precautions or niceties of measurement
now. Two tubes of culture were poured into the tank,
and they alt gathered round again to watch. Gradually little
pools of clear water appeared, while fat, lazy bubbles appeared
on the surface, burst, and were replaced by new
bubbles.

'That's the nitrogen being released,' Dawnay said. 'The
air pressure's altering.'

It was true. The barograph needle was moving up slowly
but steadily.

'You haf done it!' exclaimed the girl from Zurich.
'We've done it,' Dawnay corrected. 'The rest is simply
mechanics. Producing on a large enough scale. We must get
an hour or so's rest and then check growth rates, the effects
of temperature and salinity.' She turned to Abu. 'They'd
better start planning mass production. Go and see Gamboul
or Kaufman. Tell them I must have an interview as soon as
possible tomorrow - I mean - this morning.'

She had no need to go into Baleb to see Gamboul. The
Intel chief came to her, arriving at Dawnay's quarters while
she was snatching a hurried breakfast. Garnboul asked merely
for instructions, as if she were a secretary.

The result was that an hour later the Intel short-wave
radio system was transmitting a long stream of orders to the
cartel's headquarters in Vienna. Bulk chemical supplies of
phosphates, proteins, and amino acids were to be sent by
plane and ship irrespective of cost or country of origin.
Engineers were to be recruited to work on the Azaran oil
installations, clearing the tanks of petroleum and making
them ready as breeding tanks. Old pipelines were to be
adapted, and new ones laid, to pump the anti-bacteria
straight into the Persian Gulf.

The message was merely acknowledged. There were no

170

queries, no promises nor excuses. That night the first squadron
of transports flew to Baleb with engineers and cargoes
of chemicals. Two of them had crashed in a violent air storm
over the eastern Mediterranean and a third blew up when
a miniature whirlwind caught it just as it was touching
down. The rest got through.

The air lift went on the next day without respite, and the
first ocean freighter, hurriedly loaded at Capetown, radioed
her estimated time of arrival.

A week after the original test the first bulk supplies of anti-bacteria
were poured into the sea at ten points on the Azaran
coast, carefully selected after a study of tidal currents. The
effect was noticeable within twelve hours.

Fleming, who had been allowed to go with Dawnay to the
coast, stood at the edge of the water, where the desert sloped
down to make long golden beaches, and watched fascinated
as the great nitrogen bubbles came bursting to the surface of
the waves. Even the storminess of the sea could not hide
them, and in his lungs he could feel a tingling freshness of
regenerated air.

He and Dawnay drove back on the third day. 'Now we
must try to smuggle out some of the stuff with Neilson,' she
said. 'This is all very fine, but it's merely local, and as you
see, the weather remains quite unaffected by such a minor
activity.'

'No hope of Intel sending it?' Fleming peered through a
windscreen opaque from a sudden downpour of hail and
storm rain.

'Not a chance,' Dawnay replied. 'They won't rdease it to
anyone except on their own terms. And what those terms are
they haven't yet said. But I can imagine.' Her words were
drowned in a scream of wind which made the car shudder.
'The weather's worse,' she said, and there was a streak of
alarm in her voice. 'I wonder if we're doing right, after all.
You see what's happening, John?'

He nodded, leaning forward to see the blurred image of
the road. 'We're treating the sea around here and nowhere
else. Millions of cubic feet of nitrogen are being released. It's
building up a cone of high pressure in a localised zone;
everywhere else the pressure's dam' nigh a vacuum, and the
171

original bacteria will be sucking in the nitrogen as fast as we
can pump it out. We'll never win this way, all we'll do is
breed hurricanes.'

'God, how futile and helpless it all makes one feel,' muttered
Dawnay.

For an hour Fleming drove on in silence, concentrating on
keeping the car going in a land which'was just a kaleidoscope
of rain, mud, and wind.

Some ten miles from Baleb the wind dropped, though the
rain continued. The air was abnormally clear, giving an
illusion that objects were nearer than in fact they were.

'Look at that!' Fleming jerked his head towards the mountains
along the horizon.

They stood out sharp and clear, lighter in colour than the
purplish black clouds swirling above the crests. And right
above them rose an immense spiral of greyish cloud, the top
mushrooming and changing shape all the time.

'Tornado centre,' said Dawnay. 'We're in the calm area
around it. Let's hope to God it doesn't move this way.'

'That funnel is right over Abu's village, I think,' muttered
Fleming. 'His family must be getting it badly, unless they
saw the clouds building up and got to the caves where Nell-son
is.'


But only Lemka had reached the cave when the tornado
struck. She had clambered up the mountain with her daily
basket of food for Neilson. He refused to let her go back
when he noticed the abnormal calm and saw the clouds
racing together towards the south.

At first Lemka protested. Her mother and the baby would
be terrified by the storm. Besides, Yusel had promised to
come with information about getting Neilson out with some
contraband bacteria. But when the full fury of the tornado
drove them into the recess of the cave she subsided into
frightened silence.

'He'll be all right, and your family,' Neilson insisted with a
cheerfulness he did not feel.

But things were not all right with any of them. Yusel had
arrived at Abu's house shortly after Lemka had left with the
172

food for Neilson. He had intended to set out earlier, hoping
to accompany his sister because he had some good news for
the American: he could smuggle a message to London the
next day.
In his excitement he had not been very careful about his
trip. He had not seen, through the rain and sandstorms, a car
following a mile behind his.
Consequently he was absolutely unprepared when the
door of Abu's house burst open and Kaufman pushed in with
a couple of soldiers. Without orders, the soldiers pinioned
Yusel and soon had him gagged and trussed in a chair, his
arms and legs tied to it with rope.
While Lemka's mother cringed against the wall, holding
the baby, Kaufman began methodically slapping Ynsel's face
with the back of his hand. The blows were not unduly
severe, but they were relentlessly repeated, first on one side
of the head, then on the other. Yusel grew dizzy, then half-conscious.
Kaufman stepped back, breathing heavily. The look on
the old woman's eyes above her veil made him uneasy. There
had been people many years before who had looked like that
- people who had perhaps cringed a little but whose spirit
had still defied him. 'Take the old woman and the child out
of here,' he growled.
As soon as a soldier had pushed the woman and baby into
the kitchen Kaufman ungagged Yusel. 'Now for some sense
from you,' he said, giving him another slap across the face to
restore his senses. 'I'm a reasonable man and I do not like to
use force, but you must realise the unpleasant things which
could happen. They won't if you answer a simple question.
Who have you brought into the country?'
Yusel looked up at him with glazed eyes. He ulped and
hesitated; Kaufman hit him again. Yusel's brain reeled. His
head slumped forward and began to lose consciousness. One
of the guards revived him with a small, painful jab with a
bayonet and Kaufman repeated his question.
'Professor Neilson,' Yusel muttered.
Kaufman drew in his breath sharply. 'Neilson I'
'The father,' mumbled Yusel. 'The father of the young
scientist .... '
173

Kaufman dosed his eyes in relief. For a split second he
had had a vision of a ghost. 'Why have you brought him ?' he
snarled. 'Where is heP'
Yusel sat silent. He watched Kaufman's hands clench into
fists and slowly rise to shoulder height. He bent his head in
shame and fear. 'He's in a cave above the temple,' he
whispered.
'More,' ordered Kaufman.
Once he started talking, Yusel found it easy to go on.
When he faltered Kaufman hit him again or a soldier
prodded him with his bayonet, until they had the whole
story.
Kaufman grunted with satisfaction and turned to the
soldiers. 'One of you take him down to the car. Keep him
tied up. And you' - he turned to the second guard - 'come
with me. We'll get this American.'
He walked outside, accompanied by the soldier. It was
still calm, but there was a weird humming sound to the right,
its note dropping steadily into a roar of wind. Eager to get to
his quarry, Kaufman did no More than glance towards the
spiralling mass of blackness sweeping along the distant mountain
crests at the far end of the range.
The tornado hit them when they were within sight of the
temple. Half drowned by an avalanche of water, unable to
stand erect in the wind, they slithered fom, ards to the slight
shelter the great fallen marble columns provided. And there
they both lay shivering and in mortal fear, until the storm
passed as abruptly as it had started.
'We'll get back,' panted Kaufman, 'before another storm.
See if our comrade and the prisoner are still all right. I will
go and see what's happened to the old woman and the child.'
He had some vag-ue idea of holding them as hostages, but
when he got back to the village the house no longer existed.
the flat stone roof had shifted in the wind and brought the
walls down. Kaufman looked through the gaping hole where
the window had been. He turned away abruptly: the crushed
body of a woman was not a pleasant sight ....
He found the soldier tinkering with the car. Water had
got on the ignition leads and it was half an hour before they
got the engine started. Yusel lay gagged and bound at the
174

back. Kaufman spent the time standing around, looking up
at the temple, then at the ruined house which was the tomb
of the old woman and presumably the child. His mind was
filled with fear and, though he would not let himself admit
it, something like remorse.
The engine of the car coughed to life and began to run
smoothly, Kaufman got in beside the driver. 'As fast as you
can go,' he ordered, 'before another storm catches us out in
the desert. And drive straight to the residence of Mm'selle
Gamboul. I'll take our prisoner. Mm'selle Gamboul will
want to question him herself.'
They made it just as the sky again darkened to the blackness
of night. As he alighted he could hear the scream of a
second tornado approaching from the far side of the city. He
ran for the shelter of the house, leaving Yusel in the car.
Gamboul was seated at her desk as usual. Her face was a
blur in the gloom. The electricity had failed, and the heavy
curtains had been torn away from the windows where the
little intricately shaped panes had been blown out.
She looked up as Kaufman came close to the desk. 'Ah,
there you are,' she said impatiently. 'I want you to get out to
the compound as soon as the storm eases and phone Vienna.
Tell them that we're in charge now and they must take
orders from us.'
He showed no surprise. 'I shall not phone Vienna,' he said
slowly and deliberately. 'There are some things you can't
make a deal in, and this is one of them. I have been out in
it. And I've important news.'
She stood up and approached the window, moving to the
side in case More glass was blown out. 'You're afraid, you
too, are you?' she sneered. 'Everyone is afraid of responsibility,
of taking risks. This afternoon I visited the girl. She is
dying, that one. And raving as she dies. She told me that the
computer was wrong, that the message did not tell me this.
But I know, Herr Kaufman, I know! The power and the
knowledge are all in my hands. No one else's.'
Kaufman crossed the room and stood beside her. Somewhere
in the town a fire had started. Despite the rain, the
wind was whipping it into a small holocaust.
'Reports of everything you have done for the past month
175

have been smuggled out of the country,' he said. 'There is a
man who has been here for some time. He is waiting to take
a specimen of the bacteria to London.'
She wheeled on him. 'You will stop him, of course,' she
warned.
He shook his head. 'I shall not.' His voice was almost
gentle as he went on, 'You are not sane. You would lead us
all into destruction.'
'You poor little man.' She showed no anger, only contempt.
'You are like all the rest. You have not the imagination
to see. Come here!'
Abruptly she walked to the glass door leading to the
balcony and turued the handle. She had to lean against it
with all her weight to force it open against the wind.
'Come I' she repeated. 'Come and see the elements at work.
Working for me!' He stayed stubbornly where he was.
'You are frightened?' she laughed. 'There is no need. It will not touch us. It cannot.'
She walked majestically on to the balcony, her hair blowing
back from her forehead, and paused at the balustrade,
stretching her arms towards the sky. Kaufman caught the
sound of her ecstatic laughter in the howling wind.
On an impulse he crossed to the door and pulled it shut.
The bedlam outside lessened as if it had moved away. Suddenly
there was a crescendo of noise and the great old house
shook. A piece of coping crashed on the balcony, smashing
into a score of pieces.
He saw Gamboul stare down at a lump of jagged marble
just as a cascade of sand struck her. She bent quickly, rubbing
her fists in her eyes. Blindly she stumbled to the door and
began beating on it. The thick, decorative glass broke. Her
fist ran with blood. He could see her mouth opening and
shutting as she screamed at him.
He backed into the gloom of the room, watching impassively.
The bursts of wind were coming faster now, until
one merged into another. The house groaned and trembled.
At last it came: a roaring, crumbling mass of stone which
crashed on to the balcony and, tearing it out by its concrete
roots, hurled it down into the courtyard below. The dust of
176

debris mixed with the sand like eddying smoke. Kaufman
walked forward, pressing his face myopically against the
glass to see what had happened.

It was all very indistinct, but he thought he could see a
twisted body among the rubble below. He kept on looking
for a minute or so. He felt none of the disquiet that the sight
of the old Arab woman had given him. Eventually he sought
a chair well away from the crumbling walls. With a completely
steady hand he lighted a cigarello.

'When the storm is past,' he said aloud to the empty
room, 'I shall make myself a call to London. There is the
matter of relations with the English.'

He frowned, hoping that this would not be too great a
problem. Professor Dawnay might be amenable; but Fleming
was a formidable adversary. There had, after all, been so
many unfortunate incidents between them in the past. The
English mentality when it got obstinate ideas was something
he had never understood.


The storm weakened, the clouds thinned and light returned
though the wind blew nearly as hard as before. He went
down to the courtyard. Yusel had been taken into the cellars,
a guard reported. Kaufman heard himself giving orders for
him to be kept under guard but decently treated, and then
went and looked at Gamboul's body. It lay, twisted and
broken, among the fallen stonework, and her dark eyes,
rimmed with blood, stared lifelessly up at him.

One of her cars was undamaged, and Kaufman ordered
the driver to take him to the computer compound. Damage
on the route through the town's outskirts was appalling. A
scattering of Arabs were looting destroyed shops; they fled
at the sight of the car with the Intel insignia. There were
no troops or police anywhere.

The squat, solid buildings inside the compound seemed
reasonably intact; a few windows were blown in, and some
of the garish, modernistic fripperies at the entrance to the
executive building had toppled. Kaufman drove past them,
straight to the laboratories.

Dawnay was alone, injecting bacteria into rows of test
tubes. The disorderly array of apparatus occupying every
177

bench and table she had been able to commandeer was
strangely reassuring after the desolation outside.

'Ah, Professor Dawnay,' Kaufman beamed, 'you were not

damaged by the storm, I trust?'

'No,' she said shortly.

'I have to inform you,' he went on, 'that Fraulein Gam-boul
is dead.' He enjoyed her look of amazement. 'She was
killed by the tornado. I am now the senior representative of
Intel in this country. I ask you to help me. Our measures
against the bacteria causing the storms: they are successful,
yes?'

'It looks tike it, now, and in the sea here,' she replied.

'Wonderbar?' he said. 'Everywhere else things go from bad

to worse - unless we give them your cure.'

'And quickly.'

Kaufman nodded. !That is what i have thought.' He
dropped his voice. 'You know, Professor, Fraulein Gamboul
;vas prepared to let it go on until the world accepted her
terms, outrageous terms. She was insane, of course. Did you
know that she killed Salim, shot him dead herself? She was a
woman possessed. She would have left everything too late.
We should all have perished.'

Dawnay looked at him coldly. 'We may still.'

He licked his lips nervously and removed 'his glasses,
polishing the lenses over and over again. 'There has been an
appeal from London over the radio. I shall answer it when
communications are restored. And I shall prove we can help
by sending your own personal report on the anti-bacterium.

Professor Neilson shall take it on the first available plane.'
He saw her startled look.

'Oh yes,' he said triumphantly, replacing his glasses and
staring at her. 'I know all about Professor Neilson being here.
He will not wish to trust me. He does not yet understand that
I am just a business man, and a good business man sees
through calamity to brighter things.'

Dawnay could not disguise her relief. 'So Neilson will
explain how you can give bulk supplies to the world?'

He shook his head impatiently. 'Not at once,' he said.
'People will be prepared to pay a great deal. I told you I am
a business man.' He turned to the door. His smile had gone.

178

'You will have a typed report ready for despatch in an hour.'
For a while Dawnay went on with her work like an
automaton. She had not counted on Kaufman haggling over
the price of life.
She crossed to the computer building in search of someone
to talk to; there was superficial damage to the entrance bay
and the cooling tower, but the computer appeared unharmed,
No guards were left, but an electrician appeared
from the staff rest room. He said he had no idea where Dr
Fleming was. Abu Zeki, he believed, had left immediately
after the first of the afternoon's storms to visit his family.
Dawnay thanked him and made her way to the sick
quarters.
The nurse put up makeshift barricades of screens over
the broken windows. The girl smiled with relief at seeing
someone at last.
'Miss Andre has slept through it all,' she whispered. 'I
think she is a little stronger.'
Dawnay sat down by the bed. The nurse was right. Bad
as the light was, Dawnay could see a better colour in Andre's
cheeks.
'Is it - is it working?' Andre had not opened her eyes or
moved when she whispered her question.
Dawnay clasped the fragile hand. 'Yes, it's working,' she
murmured. 'The barograph in the lab is still going up. How
long it will last I don't know.'
Andre struggled to sit up. 'It was not in the message that
we must... ' She stopped and lay back, exhausted. 'I tried
to tell her. She would not listen. She came last night. I told
her to listen to me, not to the computer. But - '
'Gamboul, you mean?' said Dawnay gently. 'She's dead,
Andre. Kaufman is now in charge.'
Andre nodded slowly, as if she knew. Her fingers tried to
find Dawnay's. 'Do you believe me?' she asked. She saw
Dawnay nod. The fingers relaxed and she lay back with her
eyes closed once More. 'Tell me all that has happened and I
will tell you what to do.'
As rapidly as she could, Dawnay gave a survey of the
situation as far as she knew it. Before she had finished she
thought Andre had fallen asleep or had lapsed into a coma,
179

she was so utterly motionless. But after a full two minutes,
the girl began speaking in a level monotone.
Dawnay listened intently. The responsibility Andre was
thrusting on her shoulders was tremendous. It was intimidating;
yet it was inspiring too. The rational, reasoned motives
were all that her scientific mind needed. When Andre
finished Dawnay made just one brief answer.
'I'll go right away,' she said.
Half an hour later she was ordering a servant at the
Presidential palace to take her immediately to his master.
She had driven herself in a car she had found undamaged in
the Intel parking lot. It was the first time she had been
behind a car wheel since her young days as a student. Her
erratic course did not matter. Flood water had destroyed the
road in many places. Rubble from tottering houses had to be
avoided or driven over. No guards stood outside the palace.
The President saw her immediately. He was seated in his
high-backed chair, looking years older than when she had
last taken her leave of him.
His ritualistic courtesy had not deserted him. He rose and
bent over her hand, and indicated a chair. The faithful little
negro boy was still there. The President told him to go and
see if he could find someone to make coffee. Then he returned
to his seat.
'The country is dying, Professor Dawnay,' he said simply.
'The whole world may be,' Dawnay replied. 'That is why
I have come. It is in your power to help.-You have been informed
that Miss Gamboul is dead?' The President nodded.
'So you are free.'
'Free!' he said bitterly. 'It is a little late.'
'It may not be,' she insisted. 'It partly depends on you,
your Excellency. If the anti-bacteria I have made is handled
by Intel, and if it works, then it will be Intel's world. Kauf-man
will fix their price for them.'
'I have been told very little, but I can gather the trend of
events. And what can I do to stop this man Kaufman? He is
like the others - Salim, Mm'stile Gamboul .... '
'We will deal with Kaufman,' Dawnay promised. 'While
you send out the bacteria as a gift from Azaran. It will be the
first action of a free nation.'
180

He gazed at her with his sad, intelligent eyes.' 'Or the last,'
he suggested.
'Not if every laboratory in the world receives a supply.
Then we've got a chance. If we can do it in the right way,
through the right people.' She thought back to their long
battles with the authorities at Thorness. 'Ever since the
message was first picked up and a computer built to handle
it, a few people have been struggling to keep this power out
of the wrong hands and put it into the right ones.'
'And what are mine?' he asked mildly.
'What we will make them for you I'
The boy entered with a tray. The President poured out
some coffee and handed Dawnay a cup. He slowly sipped his
own before he spoke again.
'So you are right?' he murmured, eyeing her keenly. 'And
to whom will you be responsible? Hundreds of thousands of
people have died because - you will forgive me - of these
experiments of yours.'
Dawnay felt blood flooding into her neck and cheeks: a
visible sign of her feding of enmTnous guilt. 'It was an
accident,' she said inadequately. 'It could have happened
with any experiment. I made a mistake.'
Some of the fire of the revolutionary of years before
flamed briefly in the President's face as he stood up and
confronted her.
'Hundreds of thousands More may have to die correcting
your mistake,' he said. 'The errors of politicians are sometimes
expensive, and business men sometimes do their best to
profit from them. But you scientists, you kill half the world.
And the other half cannot live without you.'
His anger faded. He sighed and permitted himself a slight
smile. 'I am in your hands, Professor Dawnay. You will
forgive me if I add that I wish I were not.'
Dawnay drove back to the compound determined to mould
events the way she knew they had to be; but the responsibility
appalled her. She badly needed the catharsis of Fleming's
critical mind.
She found him in the servicing bay behind the computer.
He was working at the desk, which was a litter of papers.
181

'Hello,' he said lazily. 'I holed up here - safe from the
desert breezes and from interruption.' He glanced at his
wrist watch. 'God, is that the time? I've been trying to work
out this thing for Andre. I've done most of the chemical
conversions. They don't make a hell of a lot of sense.'
He threw across some calculations. She read them cursorily.
'It would be lethal if it's wrong,' she said shortly.
'She's dying anyway, isn't she? I've been trying all
ways ....
She interrupted him impatiently..'John, there isn't time
for that.'
He looked up at her. 'Make 'em and break 'em, eh?'
Dawnay flushed. 'There's something else that comes first.
Or have you forgotten what's still raging over the greater
part of the world?'
'No, I haven't forgotten,' he said.
'We've made a lot of mistakes,' she went on. 'Both of us.
I'm trying to get things right because it's the only hope we
have. What happens to the world depends on us, on whether
we take over or whether Kaufman does.'
His grin was sardonic. 'Have you been having the treatment,
like Gamboul ?'
'Gamboul is dead,' she said evenly.
'Dead?' Fleming jumped to his feet. 'Then the machine
misfired I It's had a go at us and it's failed.'
Dawnay shook her head.
'It hasn't done either. Gamboul was only supposed to
protect us until we were in a position to use our own judgement.'
He nodded towards the massive panels of the computer.
'Or its... '
'Our own judgement, John,' she repeated. 'We make the
decisions now. Don't you see that this can be the beginning
of a new life?'
He gathered the papers on the desk into an untidy pile.
'Except for Andre,' he said harshly.
'She'll have to wait. There are other people dying besides
her.'
He had to accept the logic of the statement. It did not
make him dislike it less. He admired and was fond of
182

Madeleine Dawnay, and was all the More nauseated by the
familiar, corrupting scent of power which he now sensed
around her.
'To hell with everything,' he said. 'I can't think any More
tonight. We may as well try to get a little sleep before the
wind decides to blow the roof off.'
They walked from the building together. The residential
area was a shambles of mud and rubble. But their quarters
provided makeshift shelter. Fleming wished Dawnay goodnight
and went to his own chalet. The windows had gone
and he could look past the shattered palm trees to the building
opposite where the sick quarters were. The nurse had
found a hurricane lamp from somewhere. It was the only
light in the pitch black darkness - a dull yellow blob which
drew his eyes like a magnet, mesmerising his mind. He fell
into a half sleep, thinking of the life that still flickered near
that puny flame.
He was roused by Abu Zeki.
'Much has happened,' Abu said, struggling to control his
emotions. 'The storm, yesterday, it was very bad in the
mountains. My home has gone.'
Your family?' Fleming sat up.
'Lemka and Jan - they are alive. My mother-in-law. She
is dead.' Abu's voice faltered. 'She had laid down with little
Jan in her arms, beneath her. When I arrived - I, I thought
they were both dead. Then Jan began crying. He was
saturated in blood, his grandmother's blood.'
'Where is Lemka?'
'She was in a cave with Professor Neilson. She'd gone up
with food. Neilson made her stay when the storm came.
They came down just after I'd rescued Jan. I'm afraid
Lemka is very bitter - about all that Professor Dawnay and
you - all that we have been doing here.'
'Not bitter, Abu; just right.' Fleming felt the familiar
hopelessness closing down on him. 'It's no use saying I'm
sorry. What about Yusel and Neilson?'
'Yusel is safe, so far. He had gone to my house to talk to
Neilson about taking out the bacteria on his next flight. But
Kaufman followed him. Yusel was beaten up. Then they
took him back to Baleb. I suppose he'd have been killed in
183

the house if they hadn't. Then in the early hours, while we
were getting my wife and the child settled in a neighbour's
house, he arrived in an Intel car. Kaufman had sent him
back, with a note for Neilson. Yusel gave us the news that
Mm'selle Gamboul was dead.'
'A note for Neilson!' Fleming exclaimed. 'What did it
say?'
'Kaufman wanted to see him. He promised there would be
no danger. Yusel insisted it was a trap, but Mr Neilson said
he wanted to go. I brought him down with me. He's waiting
in the reception building now for Kaufman to come from
town.'
Fleming sprang off the bed. 'I'll get over there. You'd
better come too, Abu. If it's one of Kaufman's usual pistol
and dagger efforts I want to be around.'
Both men hurried to the executive building. In the keen
light of dawn the damaged facade looked cheap and tawdry.
There had also been considerable damage in the vast
entrance hall, some of it the obvious results of looting by the
demoralised guards.
'Kaufman will be sitting in the seat of the mighty - in
Gamboul's office. You'd better wait' down here, Abu. Warn
us if anyone arrives,' Fleming ordered.
He ran lightly up the staircase. One of the double doors of
the director's office was slightly ajar, and he sidled along the
wall until he could listen.
Kaufman's guttural voice was unctuous and polite. 'The
plane is coming from Vienna, I hope, Herr Neilson,' he was
saying. 'It should arrive very soon. It will be loaded immediately.
You must expect an uncomfortable flight. Conditions
are still bad everywhere.'
'And some written proof of your proposals?' Neilson asked
coldly.
'I have obtained a letter from the President,' said Kauf-man.
'That makes this matter official, but of course, everything
will be done by us.'
It was the. comment Fleming had expected; had been
waiting for. He pushed open the door and walked in. Kauf-man
looked up, startled, and then went on talking as if he
had seen no one.
184

'We, that is to say Intel, will make the anti-bacteria and
market it, though we will not hold our fellow human beings
to ransom. That was Fraulein Gamboul's idea. I stopped it.'
Fleming strode forward. 'You're not in a position to dispense
charity., Kaufman.'
'And you are not entitled to be in this office without permission,'
retorted Kaufman.
'There are no Azaran guards to protect you now,' Fleming
said, 'not even a receptionist.' He moved closer to Neilson so
that they both faced the German.
Kaufman picked up his case and extracted a cigarello. He
kept the match against the glowing end for longer than
necessary. His hand was shaking a little.
'It is no use bearing old grudges,' he said, removing the
cigarello. 'One does what one has to do for the superiors one
works for. One does as they order. But at the same time one
tries to do good.' There was a whine in his voice as he
uneasily watched his visitors.
Neilson stood up, clenching the edge of the desk. His
knuckles were white with the presure he put into the grip.
'You killed my son,' he said with deceptive quietness. 'He
was shot before the eyes of his mother and myself at your
order. If I'd had the means and if you weren't still essential
to fly me out I'd have killed you the moment I entered this
office.'
'Please? said Kaufman.
'How did Gamboul die?' Fleming snapped.
'The balcony of her house. It fell. I was there. I saw it. She
was mad, completely mad. I couldn't save her.'
'Did you try?'
'No,' the German yelled. 'I could have dragged her inside
when the building started to fall. But I didn't. I chose to
save - '
' -Your own skin?
'The world I' Kaufman stood up and faced them defiantly
across the desk. He saw a faint derisive smile on Fleming's
face and no smile at all on Neilson's, and before either man
could move he had dodged round the chair and darted to a
small door that led to a private staircase. He tore it open and
then backed away. Yusel was standing there, expressionless,
185

with a small curved Bedouin knife in his hand. Kaufman
moved back to the desk. 'You cannot get in my way like
this!' His voice rose. 'I am doing business fairly. I'm trying to
help you all!'
Fleming moved nearer the window. 'The weather is holding
up,' he said. 'The plane should get through on time.
Before it arrives, you'll provide the help you talk about.
You'll confirm your orders for Professor Neilson's flight.
You'll make quite certain that it flies to London. That's the
last thing you'll organise here. Get on with it.'
Kaufman hesitated, then nodded. He picked up a pen and
reached to a side drawer in the desk as if to take a note-heading.
He moved amazingly quickly. In a split second he had
leaped up, a gun in his hand, and moved backwards to the
outer door.
'This is not your game, gentlemen,' he taunted them. 'You
should not try it.' Then he turned and ran for the stairs.
Fleming and Neilson were close on his heels, but he gained
his lead as he leaped recklessly downstairs. Fleming saw Abu
look up and start running towards the foot of the staircase.
Fleming's shout of warning coincided with the bark of the
pistol shot. Abu crumpled in a heap. Such was the onrush
of Kaufman's flight that he was unable to stop in time, and he fell headlong over his victim's body.
Before he could rise Neilson was on him, quickly followed
by Yusel. Flemlng's thought were for Abu and he knelt
down and lifted the Arab in his arms. The head fell backwards,
blood vomiting from the mouth. Fleming could not
be certain whether the staring eyes were sightless or trying to
send him a message. Very gently he let the body rest prone
on the floor.
Neilson was insanely pummelling into Kaufman. 'Leave
him,' Fleming shouted. He went up to the weeping, yammering
German. 'We're not going to kill you,' he said. 'There's a
murder charge for you to answer in Geneva and in other
places, if the courts aren't all destroyed.'
'I do not make these things happen,' Kaufman whined. 'I
have to obey.'
Fleming turned away, unable to stomach any More. 'Keep
186

hold of him, YuseI,' he ordered. 'Get him down to the airport.
Take his gun. He'll give you no trouble.'
'Wait I'
They spun around and saw Dawnay standing in the
entrance.
'What are you all doing here?' she asked. Then she saw
Abu's body. Fleming explained, and then allowed her to lead
him back upstairs to the main offices.
'You come too,' she commanded Neilson and Kaufman.
Yusel had gone out and now returned with a white robe with
which he covered the body of his dead cousin. They all went
into Gamboul's room and Dawnay sat at Gamboul's desk
with Kaufman facing her and guarded by Yusel. Fleming
wandered uneasily over to the window, but she called him
back.
'John,' she said. 'It's not as simple as you may think: we
haven't finished with Herr Kaufman yet.'
She looked up into Kaufman's bruised and dejected face.
'To whom did you report in Vienna?'
Kaufman did not answer at once, but when Dawnay
shifted her gaze from him to Yusel he changed his mind.
'The Board of Directors,' he said sulkily.
'To whom you reported Gamboul's death?'
'Yes.'
'And who is taking over here?'
Kaufman glanced away for a moment. 'I am.'
'But you are not a director.'
He drew himself up with a return of assurance: 'I am
temporarily in charge.'
'Until?' Dawnay asked. There was another pause.
'You'd better tell us the easy way,' said Fleming.
'Or perhaps,' Neilson added, 'you'd rather I broke your
neck.'
'There are three directors coming on the plane today,
from Vienna,' Kaufman addressed himself entirely to
Dawnay, as if to a judge whom he might expect to be lenient.
Dawnay looked only mildly surprised.
'Three?'
'They should have come before!' He began to speak
quickly, with mounting passion. 'Fraulein Gamboul was not
187

equal to it. It deranged her, but she would not have anyone
else. We have been ridiculously understaffed for so great a
project; but she had considerable influence with the Chairman.'
He gave a knowing, leering wink. 'She was an attractive
woman. But now it is different; I have put it all on
proper business footings. We will have directors, and executives
and assistants - they are bringing many today.'
'Are they ?' said Dawnay with interest.
'Oh yes. And any kind of reinforcements we need. So - '
He turned triumphantly to Fleming and Neilson, but
Dawnay cut him short.
'So we shall have to put you all under guard,' she said
calmly. 'That can be arranged for. Meanwhile, as soon as the
aircraft is in, you'll help us send a Telex in your own code to
Vienna.'
'To say what?'
'That they have arrived safely and that all is well and you
need no further help. You will also give us the names and
full particulars of your chairman and other directors in
Europe, and all addresses and telephone numbers you can
find here in the office.' She turned to her American colleague. I'll give you a report to take to London, Professor
Neilson, and as much of the anti-bacterium as I can. They
should be able to get you there by nightfall.'

188

HA]PTER TVILVE

CLEAR SKY

THE Prime Minister received the emergency committee in
his private study on the first floor of 10 Downing Street.
Although he had insisted on the fact being kept secret, he
had been in bed for tTo days. His doctors diagnosed the
trouble as cardiac asthma, which was as good a description
as any for the strain felt by everyone of More than middle
age as breathing became More and More difficult. The news
of Dawnay's miracle in Azaran had now reached Whitehall,
but its effects were still unfelt.
However, he insisted on rising to greet the Minister of
Science and Osborne when they arrived.
'Glad you made it,' he wheezed. 'Are things still bad?'
'A nightmare, sir,' said the Minister. 'All the low ground
beyond Hammersmith is flooded; the roads are under water.'
He began coughing.
'It's no good for us, this business,' said the Prime Minister.
'We'll be the first to succumb. Which will solve many a
political problem. We shall soon have the youngest cabinet
in history, called The Survivors.'
The Minister of Science managed a polite laugh. 'One
worrying matter, sir, is that London Airport is flooded out.
Gatwick's been unserviceable for some time, of course. And
Civil Aviation isn't too happy about Hurn. I'd like your
authority to get the R.A.F. to clear Lyneham for a priority
landing. With at least two helicopters standing by for a run
direct to us here. Hyde Park is still fairly clear despite the
feeding centres and casualty stations.'
'This means you have More news, Bertie,' said the Prime
Minister. 'I do wish you could restrain your sense of melodrama.'
'We've picked up a signal from Azaran sir,' Osborne
interposed. 'Professor Neilson's on his way. He and Professor
189

Dawnay have taken over from a Herr Kaufman, who we
believe was involved in the security leak at Thorness.'
'Quite so, Osborne,' said the Prime Minister with an
amused smile. That was an old wound now and, like
Osborne's other wounds, it was healing over and being forgotten.
Osborne had More than redeemed himself since then.
'Thorness. But the anti-bacterium?'
'He's bringing all he can carry, sir. Not much because of
the flight difficulties these days, but enough to distribute to
about a thousand breeding centres.'
'Through the international organisation ?'
'Yes, said the Minister of Science. 'I may say, Prime
Minister, that the will to co-operate has been magnificent.
Japan suggested moving every oil tanker still afloat into mid-ocean,
straddling marine currents like the Gulf Stream. The
Soviet Union has completely cleared five state chemical
plants. Fifty per cent of the United States oil refineries are
now cleaned and waiting. Here the Royal Engineers expect
to have every gasometer on the coast patched up and ready
by Saturday; the dairy and petroleum finns have had all
their road tankers commandeered and marshalled at the
various centres we decided on.'
'Good,' wheezed the Prime Minister. 'Let's hope, dear boy,
that it's happening in time for some of us. You will want to
confer with Neilson, of course, when he gets here. Afterwards,
send him round here. I shall want to discuss his plans.
Then a broadcast, the people deserve a few words of
encouragement and hope.'

But it was not until the following night that the Prime
Minister felt justified in telling the world that hope was
returning. Throughout the previous twenty-four hours there
had been frantic activity. The thousand activated test tubes
Neilson brought seemed pathetically few when allocation
began. A hundred of them were first distributed to British
breeding centres. To save time the chemists concerned were
briefed verbally by Neilson. Multi-language instructions
were then prepared while Army Signals contacted all nations concerned
to report details of samples and estimated time of
arrival.
190

The R.A.F. and the United States Air Force handled
transportation. A little slice of history was made as a U.S.
long-range reconnaissance jet dropped towards Moscow's
military airfield with Russian fighters doing welcoming victory
rolls around her.
In a gesture to the almost unknown man who had had the
titular responsibility of saving the world thrust upon him the
Prime Minister insisted that the broadcast should open with
the statement by the President of Azaran.
The radio link was difficult and tenuous, but over most of
the globe it held.
'For many centuries we of Azaran have been considered a
backward people,' came the soft sing-song tones of the
President. 'But now, if we can bring salvation to the rest of
the world it will be our privilege and joy. Already over our
own country the weather is improving, and the air once More satisfies our lungs. This, we pray and believe, will
spread to all the stricken peoples of the earth.'
A resourceful radio station operator had dug up a recording
of the Azarani national anthem. Its plaintive discord
surged out and faded.
Then the Prime Minister made his historic broadcast,! from
London. 'Strains of a newly synthesised bacterium, which we
have received from Azaran, can be the means of banishing
the evil which has inflicted itself on mankind. With the help
of the scientists, in whose hands our fate now lies, the
governments of all nations are doing all they can. Already
strains of the bacterium are being bred in the United Kingdom
and pumped into the sea. First batches have arrived in
the laboratories of our sister nations in the crusade against
annihilation. More are coming from Azaran and will be distributed
as fast as is humanly possible. With a concerted
· effort in every quarter of the globe we may hope the content
of the sea will change, and we will breathe our native air
again.'
The Prime Minister leaned back in his chair, exhausted.
Speaking had been a great effort and he rested while translations
of his speech were broadcast in the five working
languages of the United Nations. Then he called for his car.
He turned to the officials gathered around him and spoke in
191

a voice which was hardly More than a whisper. 'I would like
to see, gentlemen, if those promises I've made are reasonable.
They tell me there's a breeding plant down at the London
docks.'
A police car escorted the Prime Minister's limousine
through the darkened City past Tower Bridge. It nosed a
way through piles of debris, detouring round many a barricaded
street, until it pulled up on an old shabby wharf.
A sullen drizzle was falling, a respite from the interminable
storms and gales. Two raincoated men were standing at
the water's edge, watching a man in a police launch. They
started when they recognised the bent elderly man beside
them as the Prime Minister.
'We're testing for nitrogen content, sir,' one of the men
explained. 'Anti-bacteria were pumped into this water six
hours ago.'
'How's it doing?' asked the Prime Minister.
'Fine, sir. Come and look.'
In the headlight of the police launch the filthy river water
looked black and sullen. But while they watched a bubble
formed and burst. Nearby two More bubbles formed.
'It's happening right across the river, sir. Been noticeable
for the last two and a half hours. It's the nitrogen being
released as the new bacterium kills off the old one.'
Another car drew up on the wharf. Osborne, alerted by
the Premier's P.A., had brought Neilson to the site. The
Prime Minister greeted them quietly with a smile and a half-raised
hand.
'The cure is not, I hope, as bad as the disease,' he enquired
of the American.
Neilson shook his head. 'No sir. The anti-bacterium does
not survive the conditions it creates; Professor Dawnay has
tested this fact very thoroughly. It has only one enemy, one
source of food, the bacteria emerging from Thorness. Once it
has exhausted the supply of those it languishes and dies
itself.'
'Just as an antibiotic destroys germs and then is itself
destroyed,' put in Osborne.
'Except that in this case we think that the end will be More
complete - '
192

The' Prime Minister interrupted Neilson with another
smile'. 'I see you have it under control.'

He stood a little longer, watching the bubbles come and
go. 'Thank God! Thank God!' he whispered as he returned
to his car.

Conditions in Azaran were completely transformed within
twenty-four hours of Neilson's arrival in Britain. Aircraft
from a dozen nations flew in scientists and technicians to
help Dawnay and to organise transportation and communications.
A U.N. stand-by force was put on call but, by the
President's wish, was only to enter Azaran in the event of a
threat from Intel. Dawnay had engineered herself complete
freedom.

But the whole entity of Intel was collapsing quietly and
completely. The N.K.V.D., Interpol, and the F.B.I., working
together on the report which Neilson had taken to London,
raided and closed the main offices in Vienna and in Zurich
and Hong Kong; and the names revealed in the documents
they captured caused consternation in a dozen chancelleries.
By general agreement among the great powers, no pressure
was brought to force dismissal and arrest, but all the consortium's
trading licences were withdrawn. There were a
couple of suicides and a whole series of resignations on
health grounds, hardly noticed in the world-wide drama of
retreat from chaos, and what was left came rapidly to a
standstill, leaving empty trading posts all over the world
without credentials or trade, and useless unclaimed millions
in safe deposits in Swiss banks. In Azaran, the main centre
of anti-bacteria production and the computer which had
evolved it were left respectively in the hands of Madeleine
Dawnay and her associate, John Fleming, who had both
become world-famous characters overnight.

The atmosphere of super-effidency and the constant fiat-tery
bestowed on Dawnay and himself repelled Fleming. He
wanted no part of it; nor, indeed, was there anything for him
usefully to do. He avoided the eager, enthusiastic groups who
gathered in the makeshift canteen. He evaded invitations to
parties which were soon organised in Baleb.

Soon after he had seen Kaufman into Interpol's custody,
Fleming had suffered an experience which he found he
193

could not dismiss from his mind. He had collected the handful
of personal things in Abu's desk and driven to Lemka's
village, glad that an officer of the President's personal staff
had gone earlier to break the news of Abu's death to her.
It was very quiet inside the ruined courtyard of the house.
A line of washing fluttered in the wind. The baby's cot stood
in the shade of a crumbling wall. A spiral of smoke eddied
away from a cluster of faggots in a makeshift grate. He
called and waited until Lemka appeared at the shattered
doorway at the sound of footsteps.
'I came to say -' Fleming began.
'Do not tell me that you are sorry,' she interrupted, moving
to the clothes line and keeping her face averted. 'And do
not tell me it was not your fault.'
'I didn't want to involve your husband,' he muttered.
She turned round angrily. 'You involved us all.'
'I liked him, you know. Very much. I came to see what I
could do,' he pleaded.
She was fighting back her tears. 'You've done enough.
You've saved the world - from your own muddle. So now
you think it is all right. How can you - all of you - be so
arrogant? You don't believe in God. You don't accept life
as His gift. You want to change it because you think you're
greater than God.'
'I tried to stop... ' His voice trailed away.
'You tried, and we suffer. The girl - your girl - was right
when she said you condemn us. Why don't you go back and
listen to her?'
'She is dying.'
'You kill her too?' She looked at him More with pity than
with hatred. He could not answer. He laid the little parcel of
Abu's possessions at the foot of the child's cot and walked
away.
Back at the compound, he stole like an interloper by a
roundabout route to his own quarters. He took out the computer
print-out and his own calculations from a drawer and
began studying them.
He had put them away when Dawnay had refused to help
him, because he felt that he could not possibly do them himself.
He simply did not know enough bio-chemistry. For what
194

seemed a lifetime he had avoided Andre's room, because he
could no longer face the fact of her dying, and by now he
had given up all hope of Dawnay having the time, energy,
or will to be able to help him.

Dawnay now was installed in the executive block, at the
centre of a quickly-spun web of radio and cable communications,
directing and advising struggling scientists all round
the world. He did not know how she managed it, or whether
she ever slept; he didn't even see her.

He sat in his little room and stared glumly at the mass of
figures. Then he opened a fresh bottle of whisky and started
to try. to make head or tail of them. It was close on midnight
when he walked a little unsteadily across the deserted clearing
to the laboratory.

With the experimental work over, the master breeding
tanks had been transferred to the executive building where
there was room for the regiments of assistants Dawnay
could now direct. The laboratory where it had all begun was
neat and lifeless. He groped for a switch. The light came on.
Most of the circuits had been restored during the previous
day.

Hardly knowing from what recesses of memory of his
student days they came, or how much was inspired by the
neat Scotch, he began to find the facts he needed arranging
themselves in his mind. Slowly and laboriously, and a little
drunkenly, he started to make a chemical synthesis out of the
mass of calculation he had written down.

His own training kept him roughly on the right pat.h, but
he ruefully had to face the fact that the ordinary, plebeian
routine of practical chemistry was really beyond him. He
lacked patience and accuracy; but obstinacy, and the
memory of Lemka's pitying eyes, drove him on. He did not
notice that morning sunlight was outshining the bare electric
bulbs, nor did he hear the door open.

'What a hell of a mess!' said Dawnay's voice. 'Look at my
laboratory. What do you think you're doing?'

He dropped off the high stool at the bench and stretched.
'Hello, Madeleine,' he said. 'I've been trying to synthesise
this thing for Andre. Most of the main chain seems to have
195

jelled. But the side chains are all to hell.'

Dawnay ran an expert eye over his work amid the litter
spread across bench and desks. 'I'm not surprised,' she
exclaimed. 'You've achieved a glorious mess. Better leave it
to me.'

'I thought you hadn't time. I thought you were too busy
setting the world to rights.'

She ignored what he was saying and went on looking at
the equations he had writtgn down.

'Admittedly,' she said slowly, 'if there's a chemical deficiency
in her blood or endocrine glands there must be a
chemical answer, but we can't know whether this is it.'

'It has to be, doesn't it?' he suggested. 'Our electronic boss
says so.'

She considered for a time. 'Why do you want to do this,
John?' she enquired. 'You've always been afraid of her.

Always wanted her out of the way.'

'Now I want her to live!'

She eyed him speculatively, a smile hovering around her
mouth. 'Because you're a scientist and you want to know
what the message is really all about? You can't bear to think
that Gamboul knew and you don't? That's really the reason,
isn't it?'

'You've some funny old ideas,' he smiled.

'Maybe,' she answered, 'maybe.' She reached for an
overall on the wall hook. 'Go and get some breakfast, John.
Then come back here. I'll have some work for you to do.'


The two of them worked in perfect, almost instinctive
co-operation, carefully avoiding any kind of moral or emotional
argument. They were like enemies who were forced
to live in the same cell. They talked of nothing but the
enormous complication of the job, and for ten solid days,
and most of the nights, they carried on. Messages about the
world-wide improvements in barometric pressure, news
bulletins reporting a noticeable lessening of wind violence,
were just noted and then forgotten.

Because of her own forebodings or failure, Dawnay did
not even tell Fleming that even before the checking was
complete she had started injections on Andre. The ethics did
196

not bother her. Andre's life was hovering near its end in any
case.
Fleming still avoided the girl's sick room. He told himself
that he would not see her until he could give her hope. He
knew Dawnay was visiting her regularly, but he deliberately
refrained from asking how she was.
And Dawnay, noting the slow improvement in her patient,
hardly dared to believe that she had succeeded. Only when
the doctor came and made prolonged and successful tests of
muscular reflexes did she admit even to herself that the near-impossible
had happened.
It was Andre herself who settled the matter. 'I am getting
well,' she said one morning as she waited for another injection.
'You have saved my life.'
'You have saved yourself,' Dawnay said gently. CYou and
John and the computer calculations.'
'What will he do now - now that I'm to go on?' Andre
asked.
'I don't know.' Dawnay had wondered so much herself
that she had been awaiting and dreading this question. 'He's
divided. One part wants to go on. The other is frightened.
We're all like that. But fear doesn't entirely stop us going
forward.'
'And I stand for going forward?' Andre asked.
'For much More. Down here on our cosy little earth we
used to think we were protected from the outside by sheer
distance. Now we see that intelligence - pure, raw intelligence
- can cross great gulfs of space and threaten us.'
'You still think of me as a threat from outside?'
'No,' Dawnay answered. 'No, I don't.'
Andre smiled. 'Thank you for that. Can't'I see him soon?'
'You're strong enough to get-up,' Dawnay agreed. 'He
should see you. Yes,' she went on after a pause. 'We'll go
together when you can walk.'
One evening the following week Fleming went back to the
computer block. Partly to ease his conscience, and partly
because he needed some fairly unskilled help, he had invited
Yusel to work on the computer. The salary was good, which
would help Lamka and the child.
197

When Dawnay found them there, the Arab excused himself
and she was left alone with Fleming.
'John,' she said, 'Andre's here.'
'Where ?'
'Outside.' She smiled a little grimly at Fleming's amazement.
'She's cured, John. We've done it. She'll be all right
now.'
At first she thought he was not going to say anything at
all. Then he asked, in a hurt voice. 'Why couldn't you have
told me?'
	'I wasn't sure which way it was going.'
He stared at her with amazement. 'So you've repaired her,
and the first thing you do is to bring her here - back to the
machine! It's all so easy, so planned, just as if we're being
used.' He turned away with a frown. 'How can we go on
competing with her, with this ?'
	'That depends on you,' Dawnay replied. 'I can't help you.
My job here is finished. I'm flying home tomorrow.'
	'You can't!' he exclaimed.
'You wanted her well,' she reminded him, but he looked at
her and through at a ghost.
'You can't leave me like this,' he implored. 'Not with her here.'
She had never before seen him plead for help. 'Look,
John,' she said kindly. 'You're not a child that hides behind
its mother's skirts. You're supposed to be a scientist. Andre
didn't use you or me. It was we who turned the world upside
down. It was Andre who saved it.' She moved to the door,
beckoning to the waiting girl. 'I'll see you before I go.'
Andre walked quickly towards Fleming, stopping before
him and smiling like a happy schoolgirl. She was still thin
and pale, and her eyes looked very big above her high, sharp
cheek-bones; but she no longer looked ill. She was alive and
vibrant, with a kind of fined-down beauty which touched
him in spite of himself.
	'I can hardly believe that you're like this,' he said.

	'You're not glad?'
	'Of course I'm glad 	'
	'Are
you afraid of me?'
	'So long as you're a puppet, a mechanical doll.'
198

Colour suffused her cheeks and she tossed her hair away
from her face. 'And you're not? You still think of yourself
as a divine, unique creation. Three thousand millions of you
on this earth alone. They - we - are all puppets, dancing on
strings.'
'Let's dance then.' He kept his hands in his pockets, his
body motionless.
'I will do whatever you wish,' she told him. 'All I know
is one certain thing. We cannot go separate ways.'
He put out his hand and brushed it against hers. 'Then
let's leave here,' he said. He turned and looked at the grey
bulk of the computer. 'After we've destroyed this. We'll
make a real job of it this time. Then we'll find somewhere
with peace, like that island we,were on with old what-washis-name
- Preen.'
'All right,' she said. 'We will do as you want. I have often
told you that. But have you .thought? Have you really
thought? Do you think we'd be allowed to live in peace any More than Preen was? The only safe place for us is here. If
we accept this and its protection we accept what is planned.'
'Planned! That damned word. And what is planned?'
'What you want. It will be done here and in the rest of the
world.'
'I'm afraid I'm not cut out to be a dictator.'
'The only possible sort of dictator is someone who is not
cut out for it,' she said. 'Someone who knows.'
'Knows what?' he asked.
She took hold of his arm and began to lead him across to
the observation bay of the computer.
'I'll show you what I showed Mm'selle Gamboul,' she said.
'Stand close beside me.'
Obediently he stood by the panel and brought in the phase
switches as she called the numbers. She sat down, alert and
expectant, with a hand on his.
The computer began to purr. Relays snicked into operation,
the screen glowed. Like a film coming into focus the
shadows grew smaller and sharper as they took form and
perspective.
'It looks like the moon,' Fleming murmured. 'Dead mountains,
dust-filled valleys.'
199

'It isn't,' Andre whispered, without looking away from the
screen. 'It isn't the moon. It's the planet from which the
message came.'
'You mean they're showing us themselves?' Fleming stared
at the bizarre shadows and reflections. 'The lighting's completely
weird.'
'Because of the source,' she explained, 'the light from their
sun is blue.'
She concentrated on the tube and the picture began to
shift. The scenery moved horizontally at increasing speed
until the screen became a blur of dazzling light. Again the
scene slowed down and became stationary. There was a terrible
stillness about it this time, the absolute rigidity of timeless
age.
An enormous plain stretched into the background where it
merged with the dark sky. In the foreground stood monstrous
elongated shapes, placed haphazardly and apparently
half buried in the level, soft-looking surface.
Fleming felt the skin on the back of his neck prickling.
'My God,' he whispered, 'what are they?'
'They are the ones,' said Andre. 'The ones who sent it.
The ones I'm suppose to be like.'
'But they're lifeless.' He corrected himself. 'They're immobile.'
She nodded, her eyes wide and fixed on the screen. 'Of
course,' she said. 'Really big brains cannot move around any More than this computer. There's no need.'
'The surface of them seems solid. How do they see?'
'Eyes would be useless. The blue light would destroy all
tissue and nerve fibre as you know them. They see by other
means, just as their other senses are different from those
people' - she hesitated - 'people like us - have developed.'
The picture began to crumble. Sections detached themselves
and spun off the screen. Quickly everything faded.
'Is that all there is?' Fleming felt deprived of something.
Andre turned her face to him. It glistened with perspiration;
her eyes were enormous, the pupils distended. 'Yes,'
she smiled. 'That's all. They are the ones. They wanted us to
see their planet. They believed it would be enough. Perhaps
200

as a warning. Perhaps to show what time brings and how to

survive. How we could do the same.'

Fleming glanced back at the dark screen. To him those

shapes still stood dear and definite in their piteous immo
bility against the glass. 'No,' he said.

'Is it so much worse than the human race?' she asked him.

'Which lives and reproduces the works and struggles by

animal instinct. That's all human beings are - animals who

spend their time competing for existence, keeping their

bodies alive. And when the earth gets too crowded there is a

holocaust and the survivors begin the cycle over again, and

the brain never develops.'

'Oh no?'

'Not really. Not fast enough. By the time the earth

becomes no longer fit to live on, the human race will still be

little struggling animals who die out.'

'Unless we change?'

She nodded. 'The brain from out there can guide us, and

we can guide others. So long as we keep hold of the authority

it gives us.'

'And impose what it wants us to on the rest of the world?'

'We can only start to point a possible way,' Andre
answered. 'It will be millions of years before the earth 	'
	'We
haven't the right,' he said.
'To use knowledge of what could be?' They argued for a
long while, but in the end she said, 'All right, then you're
quite dear in your mind? You want to destroy all this?' She
waved an expressive hand along the machine.
	'Yes,' he said firmly. 'That's what I want.'
She got up and crossed to th record cabinets. From the
rear of a drawer she took a small roll of film and held it out
to him.
	What's that?' he demanded, refusing to touch it.
'It's a roll of input negative. It writes zeros throughout the
whole of the memory section. The computer has no will to
stop it now. Feed this film in and in a few minutes it will be
nothing but a mass of metal and glass.'
He followed her to the programming console. He watched
her slip the film on the spool holder and snap the flange shut.
His eyes travelled upwards to the red button on the control
201

panel. He was moving his hand to press it when Andre
gently but firmly clasped his fingers.

'I'd rather that it wasn't you who did that,' she said. 'You
see, I know it's a mistake. And I'd rather it wasn't yours.'

He let his arm drop and stepped away from the panel.
Andre bent over the operating desk and began writing on the
memo pad damped to one side.

'We'll leave a note,' she explained. 'But who for?'

He grinned happily. 'For Yusel.'

'Yes,' she agreed. 'Yusel. He'll start the input motor quite
innocently when he sees this.' In big capitals she wrote
Yusel's name. 'Now take me away please,' she whispered, 'if
that's what you really want.'

He did not move as she came close to him. Then very
lightly he bent his head and kissed her, full on the mouth.

As he felt her lips warm and full against his, he sensed
suddenly her full humanity. All the fear and strain of the
past months fell away from him and he was simply alone at
last with the woman he wanted.

He withdrew his mouth gently from hers and held her
away from him at arms' length, and smiled at her. When she
smiled back the grey panels of the computer cabinets became
dim, unimportant shadows. He laughed out loud and took
one of her hands in his.

'Now, let's go. I can get Kaufman's car. There's a place
I'd like you to see.'

She followed him unquestioningly. Outside it was dark
and cool. The wind was just the night breeze of the desert.
No clouds marred the serenity of the pale, peaceful light
from an almost full moon.

In the car she snuggled against him. He drove steadily
along the route which held such memories for him. When he
neared the mountains he drove off the road, anxious to avoid
arousing the sleeping people in Lemka's village. He stopped
the car in the shadow of a great boulder.

Hand in hand they clambered up a goat track, making for
the white mass of the temple ruins. The air became colder.
Both of them panted with effort, and the blood tingled in
their faces and hands.

In silence Fleming stopped when his feet were on the great

202

flight of steps which led up to the ruined pornco. He kept his

grip firmly on Andre's hand, making her stop too.

'Why have we come here?' she whispered.

'To breathe,' he said, tilting his head back and inhaling
deeply.

She looked upwards, too - into the vault of the sky,
darkening at the edge of the mountain crest where the moonshine
weakened. The Pole Star hung there like a brilliant
lamp. Not far from it another star twinkled.

'Beta Cassiopeiae, it's called,' said Fleming, knowing that
their minds were so attuned that there was no need to doubt
that she was looking just where he was. 'A nicer name is the
Lady in the Chair. Can you make out the shape?'

She laughed. 'No, I can't.' She continued looking upwards.
'But now I know why you brought me here. That
glimmer between the Pole Star and your Chair Lady.'

'Yes,' he said, putting his arm protectively around her.
'Andromeda,' she whispered, 'my namesake.'

'The place where they are, the creatures without movement,
without eyes; just with brains.' He deliberately turned
his head away from the stars. 'It doesn't make sense. Think
of the machine they made us build at Thorness. Remember
what it did to you? Your hands?'

She nodded. 'I remember. But if it had been very reasonable,
very wise, would you have opposed it?' She saw him
shake his head. 'Then you'd have really fallen under its spell.

You and everybody else. Just like Mademoiselle Gamboul.'
'I suppose so.'

'Therefore what are you afra}d of? By making it brutal
and savage they forced you to take the control yourself.
That's why we changed the decision circuits in this Azaran

model. And that was intended too. It was all predictable.'
'The nitrogen bug too?'

'Of course. That was to make absolutely sure that the control
would be changed. That the decisions would not be the
machine's.'

Fleming was almost convinced. 'But why run so close? It
nearly did for us.'

'That was a miscalculation.'

205

'Don't kid yourself,' he grinned. 'That thing never made
a mistake.'
'They made just one; they hadn't reckoned on someone
like you. They never thought that the first computer would
be destroyed, only that it would be changed. If you hadn't
done what you did that night in Scotland the marine bacteria
could have been coped with much sooner.'
'You've no proof,' he protested lamely.
'I do know,' she said softly. 'I know you destroyed the
only means of saving everything. At least that's what would
have happened if your friend Bridger hadn't sold the design
to Intel.'
He was delighted with that. 'Good old Denis,' he exclaimed.
'They ought to bury him in Westminster Abbey.'
He turned and put his hands on her shoulders. 'And you,
what was your purpose? To establish it here in a position of
absolute power?'
'No. My job was to find someone who would understand
how to use it.' She fingered the button on his coat. 'You
wouldn't trust me. And yet - you ex. pected a breakthrough
into new knowledge.'
Abruptly she stepped away.
'This is it, John. It's in your hands now.'
'And you?' he asked, keeping his distance.
'I'm in your hands too.'
'But what are you?'
She came back to him. 'Flesh and blood,' she said happily.
'Dawnay's mixture.'
He put his hands on either side of her face and tilted it so
that the waning moon shone full on her. 'It's the nearest
thing to a miracle I've ever seen,' he said.
They turned and walked down the mountain path, hand
in hand. 'I remember the night the message first came
through,' Fleming said thoughtfully. 'I started burbling
about a New Renaissance. I was a bit tight. Old Bridger
wasn't so cocky about it as I was. He said, "When all the
railings are down you have to have something to hang on
to'.'
His arm went round her waist, pulling her body close
204

against his. 'I'd better get used to hanging on to you, hadn't
I?'

She smiled up at him, but she was not quite content.
'And the message?' she asked.

They had reached level ground, and he quickened his
pace, once again taking her hand and pulling her along as he
took long strides towards the car.

'Where are we going now?' she asked.

He looked back to her and laughed out loud again.

'To save it!' He shouted so that the hillside rang with his
voice. 'We've just about time to beat Yusl in to work. The
new Renaissance begins in about an hour from now - if we
get cracking.'

He bundled Andre into the car. After he had walked
round to the driving seat he paused for a second, looking up
to the sky, already paling with the false dawn. The stars were
going out. Very dimly, bem,een the Lady in the Chair and
the Pole Star he could make out the hazy light of the great
Andromeda galaxy across the immensity of space.


THE END


2O5

Here, for the connoisseur, for the devotee of the SF genre, and '
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A FOR ANDROMEDA by FRED HOYLE and JOHN
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Far away, from the constellation of Andromeda came a message
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