Part 2

As I boarded the _Constellation_ I was confident that the chase was coming to an end. I was feverish with a sense of an approaching climax. For a long time I sat in quiet, optimistic thought, staring out the window port at a blue monotone of sky.

After lunch served by a stately blonde stewardess, the Englishman across the aisle struck up a conversation with me. He knew Africa very well, having served there many years for the Unilever enterprises.

He tried to teach me Swahili in one easy lesson, a sort of Esperanto devised by the Arab slave-traders and the _lingua franca_ throughout Africa. I was interested, but a poor student. When I finally crawled into my berth at day's end, it was to dream of tangled jungles of African cedar and wild rubber trees, with limbs festooned with great, wrist-thick vines and monkeys scolding from the tree tops; and through it all the steady chatter of natives saying over and over again, "Simba," "Mungo," "N'Gana," "Bwana," stray bits of Swahili floating in my mind.

When I awoke, we were three hours out of Santa Maria in the Azores after refuelling. I took out my pocket calendar and checked off another day. Only twelve more remained to Chetzisky's deadline.

The plane swung down over the west African coast and then turned inland. Thirty-two hours after leaving Washington, it touched down on the runway at N'Dolo airfield in Leopoldville, Belgian Congo.

"Zero hour," I thought with a quiver of excitement as I stooped through the cabin door onto the landing ramp. On hand to meet me was George Disney, head of the commission, who drove me to the Hotel Albert where I was to put up. He was the leisurely type. Pilon, he said, was up country. He could be called down, or I might go up, just as I wished. In any case I was to consider myself a welcome guest of the Disneys. Disney's conversation had a soft, easy charm. He sipped his aperitif without any sense of urgency, an affable victim of the tropical languor.

I proposed leaving right away to meet Pilon. His eyes took on the hurt look of a polite host whose suggestions have been refused. I pressed my point and he reluctantly consented to arrange transport. He left without finishing his drink, a silent rebuke for what he felt was my unseemly haste, I suppose.

In half an hour I was flying over the wooded savanahs of Kwango towards the mountains of Lualaba Kasai. The plane set down at Katanga eight hours later, where I fretted for twenty minutes before the commission jeep picked me up for the bumpy ride along a _piste_ through a forest of giant trees.

3

I found Pilon at camp, sitting in his tent in the middle of a jungle clearing, making coffee over a Primus stove. I introduced myself. He said he knew I was coming; had received a message a few hours before from Disney. I accepted his coffee and eased into a casual interrogation.

I wove my opening questions around bits of information I had gleaned of Pilon's movements from Disney and the jeep driver. I wanted to test his straightforwardness.

But I had to be careful about my questions. Having no official credentials, I dare not overstep my mark and draw a challenge for them. Disney had accepted me, without question, solely on the strength of Armstrong's cable.

"Just think," I said with the proper air of wonderment, "last Tuesday I was lecturing quietly in a classroom and here I am sitting in the jungle. What were you doing last Tuesday?"

His blue eyes narrowed. "Tuesday?" He paused. "Yes, I was checking ore samples up in the Lake Mwera region."

That was true, I knew. Pilon continued to answer me truthfully and with apparent frankness. But I was not satisfied; his eyes had a sly, mocking look to them as if he were really aware of the purpose of my visit and enjoyed this verbal sparring. I distrusted him.

Suddenly he broke in vehemently on one of my queries, "Why all these questions? Am I suspected of subversive activities?"

I said nothing, scrutinizing him closely. I felt he was acting, his anger a mere pretense to force me to the point of my visit. I stalled for time to think, refilling my cup from the pot on the Primus.

"May I see your credentials, sir?"

I froze in the act of stirring my coffee. Was Pilon just being nasty? Or had the timidity of my questioning given me away?

I couldn't afford to be trapped. Not only would my trip to the Congo be fruitless, but worse, Armstrong would be hauled on the carpet for his part in it and severely disciplined. I myself would probably face ugly disloyalty charges. A bold bluff was my only way out.

I laughed good-naturedly. "After having seen Mr. Disney I didn't expect to have to carry my papers around with me. They're a down-right nuisance to carry around in this outfit I'm wearing." I gestured to the khaki shorts and short-sleeved shirt I had on.

He laughed, a forced, hollow laugh. He was uncertain of his ground.

"Of course," I went on, "if you wish, we could go to Leopoldville and...."

"No, that won't be necessary. I'm sorry. I lost my temper. Living alone in this jungle wears a person's nerves a little thin."

I nodded understandingly.

"Dr. Pilon, I really came down here to make inquiries about Doctor Chetzisky."

"Yes?" His eyes took on that cunning look again. He knew something, I was sure. I wondered how much.

"You knew him, I believe."

"I did. In fact, I visited him once, you know." He looked at me, a suppressed grin trembling in the corners of his thin mouth, with the air of a mouse that has deftly side-stepped the swiping paw of a cat.

"A peculiar man, wasn't he? Had some strange ideas."

"Peculiar, yes. In the same sense that Mahatma Ghandi was peculiar," he snapped at me, the blue eyes gleaming with a fanatic's adoration. "As for strange ideas, bringing peace to this fear-ridden planet can hardly be called one."

* * * * *

Ah, so Pilon knew! He realized immediately he had given himself away and became morosely truculent; I had reached the end of the line with him. But I had one card left: Pilon's diary.

While talking to him, I had spotted the marble-edged ledger on the crate-improvised table in the corner of the tent. I was sure it was his journal; I hoped earnestly that it was.

We drank a final cup of coffee in silence while I ransacked my brain for some subterfuge to get Pilon out of the tent. In the end the whole thing was very simple. I asked him if the jeep was ready to take me back to Katanga. He went outside to see.

I went quickly over to the table, slipped the ledger from under two other books, technical journals, and leafed swiftly through the pages. They were dated. I was in luck; it was a diary.

I turned to the date of Pilon's reported visit with Chetzisky and there I found the entry:

_JUNE 21:--Visited Doctor Chetzisky today. A brilliant man, deeply concerned for the world. His words moved me as he spoke of policing the world into peace. His hopes, he told me in strictest confidence, rest on an ore discovery by Ian MacRoberts of British Columbia, a university geologist, who seems to have found a new radioactive element easily controlled. The Doctor has received a sample from MacRoberts today to verify the preliminary spectroscopic analysis. When I left, Doctor Chetzisky shook my hand warmly. I wished him success and promised secrecy. He is one of the obscure great men of our times._

I barely finished reading when Pilon's footsteps sounded outside. I closed the book quickly and greeted him when he entered. The jeep was ready, he said, and wished me a pleasant and safe trip to Katanga.

The jeep was just starting off when a native ran up, shouting that Bwana Pilon wanted to see the driver. I sat in the car, waiting uneasily, remembering that I hadn't slipped the ledger back in place; I hoped Pilon hadn't noticed.

Fifteen minutes went by. I climbed out of the jeep and went in search of the driver, who was sitting in Pilon's tent, regarding his watch from time to time.

"Doctor Pilon asked me to wait here for twenty minutes before going," the driver explained. "He said something about he might have a package."

My eyes wandered to the corner table. I drew a deep breath. The ledger was gone.

"I guess we can go now, sir." The driver left the tent.

I followed him and got into the jeep with a growing foreboding. The sun was low in the sky, fading rays dissolving into twilight. I hunched low in my seat, the flesh creeping on the back of my neck as if a gun was sighted on it. Now that Pilon knew I had read his diary, there was good chance he might try to keep me from getting back alive to Katanga. With the ruthlessness of the fanatic Pilon might feel he owed that much to "the great man" Chetzisky.

A mile from camp the trail broke out of the jungle onto a swaying suspension bridge across a deep gorge. The driver inched the jeep across. Looking down I felt nauseous; a fall and a man was a shredded pulp.

Half way across the span it happened. A rifle cracked. The air whined at my ear. The driver slumped stupidly against me and the jeep swerved crazily out of control. I leaped out on the bridge just as the jeep dropped into the gorge. I ran a few yards and hurled myself to the boards; a bullet whistled over me.

I was on my feet again. Another shot rang over. I thanked God for the sway of the bridge; it put the crimp in anyone's marksmanship.

I disappeared into the shelter of the jungle on the other side. The battle was joined; it was Pilon's life or mine. He couldn't let me live, and I couldn't let him. If I got away, he would get in touch with Chetzisky who probably wouldn't wait till the deadline to pull the switch.

* * * * *

Crouched in the brush, panting and slightly dizzy from unaccustomed exertion, I watched Pilon stalking across the bridge, rifle at the ready. My breath began to come easier and my head cleared.

He was across now. He moved into the trail, eyes straining into the shadows. For a moment I had the mad notion of rushing him until I realized in what poor condition my academic life had left me for any wrestling with an outdoor type like Pilon.

Instead I would lure him to the edge of the gorge. Disturbing the undergrowth to look for a stone would be suicide; the noise would attract his attention and fire. As a substitute missile I slipped off my wrist-watch, clipped my pen on the band, and lofted them across the trail into the brush near the gorge, praying they would make enough noise.

They did.

Pilon turned sharply. For a moment he listened. I was certain he would hear my heart pounding wildly. Cat-like he made his way to the spot where my missile fell, probing the leafy undergrowth with the rifle. Then, calling on four years as blocking back at Princeton, I raced out of hiding. Pilon half twisted in surprise as I smashed into him with a rolling hip block that sent him teetering backwards over into the gorge. I can still hear that long shrill scream of terror echoing in my ear.

The impetus of my drive carried me into the bush. I disentangled myself and looked over into the dry, rocky bed of the gorge. Two forms lay motionless there, in dark spreading splotches.

Thoroughly shaken, I stumbled over the bridge and back along the darkening trail to Pilon's camp, where I collapsed in a stupor on the dead man's cot, too exhausted for superstitious misgivings, and fell into a deep sleep.

In the morning a native runner went into Katanga to notify the authorities of the deaths and to have another jeep sent out for me. For two days I was held up in Katanga during the inquest and inquiry. Disney flew down to talk with me, angry that I should upset the leisurely routine of his existence. My explanations, from which I omitted any mention of Chetzisky, didn't satisfy him, but he let matters rest rather than perturb himself by probing further.

_EXTRACTS, HOSPITAL CASE HISTORY NO. 3007_:

_6:35 P.M. Thrombopenia very far advanced. Blood bubbling at patient's lips. Lab reports heparin in blood stream.... 6:50 P.M. Noted radiologist flown in by jet bomber from Los Angeles. Says there is no hope. Radioactive element absorbed through lacerations in patient's body and is now fixed irrevocably in bone marrow. Patient seemed to smile at radiologist._

I wonder who that serious looking gentleman is who was just examining me. I couldn't help smiling at his pompousness; you'd think he was a judge reading out a death sentence.

Where was I? Oh, yes, back in Katanga. From there I wired the University that I would be unable to give my last two lectures of the semester. The Congo dateline on the telegram must have raised the shaggy brows of the venerable Chancellor who till then thought I was no farther away than my rooms at the opposite end of the campus.

Armstrong I had cabled immediately with the information about MacRoberts. I was sure that while I marked time in Africa he would be Starting the chase in far-off British Columbia. Still, the waiting made me restive, and more so when after leaving Leopoldville I lost another day. Engine trouble forced the _Constellation_ down at Accra, where foul weather closed in to keep us grounded.

Finally back in Washington, I ticked off another day on the pocket calendar. Only seven days more.

I went directly to the _Statler_ where Armstrong had his rooms. He greeted me enthusiastically, ordered up some drinks, and plunged right into business. "Arnold, thanks to the lead you picked up in the Congo, we have a good idea where Chetzisky is."

Armstrong unfolded a map with places circled in red and notations scribbled in. "He is somewhere in this area north of Ootsa and Burns lakes. Trappers in the region have identified his photograph. Also we've traced some significant shipments into the area. Paraffin, boron-steel, graphite among other things."

They were significant; they were all materials that could be used in an atomic reactor, principally as moderators to control the neutron irradiation.

"Any word of MacRoberts?" I asked.

Armstrong gave me a quick briefing on the Canadian geologist. Single, fairly well off, Ian MacRoberts spent his summers away from his teaching chores at the University prospecting for minerals, chiefly in one of the least explored portions of the continent, the Rocky Mountain Trench. A transport lost there in 1940 has never been found.

Notes found in MacRoberts' lodgings in the Vancouver suburb of Kerrisdale revealed he had discovered a strange new mineral of marked radioactivity. He made his first find near Lake Babine and traced outcroppings of it as far south as lower California. From his fragmentary data MacRoberts was convinced that a vein of this mineral dipped through the earth's crust at an inclination of 27.6°. Six months ago he had been given a leave of absence from the University; since then he had been seen twice in the company of a man fitting Doctor Chetzisky's description. Information indicated both had headed for the Interior.

"Well, Jim, what are your plans?"

"I have arranged already for groups of searchers to move secretly out of Prince George and Hazelton." His pencil slid over the map. "But you're the key man, Arnold; these groups will only close in on the word from you.

"You're going to fly into Tweedsmuir Park, ostensibly as a tired business man on vacation. It's not unusual up there. Even Hollywood stars like Crosby have escaped into the Tweedsmuir reserve for rest and a new horizon."

* * * * *

I nodded that I understood and rubbed my day old stubble thoughtfully.

"And yes, don't bother shaving. A bit of a beard might be as good a disguise as any if you meet Chetzisky. He may still remember you."

"By the way, Jim, how did you manage to get government support for your idea?"

"I didn't."

"You didn't," I said slowly, "Then how--"

"I'm using my assignment to track down the leakage of our troop movements to the Orient as the apparent reason for my maneuvers. What more likely than such a spy ring should have its headquarters on the Pacific Coast and perhaps a transmitter deep in the mountains." He grinned like a pleased cat.

"You mean none of the Canadian authorities knows you're really after Chetzisky!" The man's gall flabbergasted me.

"That's right."

The bell-hop knocked on the door and entered with our drinks. I gulped mine down and sagged back in a chair, hoping for my brain to clear and find all this was happening only in a nightmare, the result of overindulging in my favorite onion soup.

But it wasn't just a bad dream. "... above all you must creep up on Chetzisky," I heard Armstrong saying.

"Seven days doesn't leave much time for creeping."

"I know." Armstrong was grim. "But the Indian should help."

"What Indian?" I exclaimed. The nightmare feeling deepened.

"I forgot, Arnold. When Chetzisky and MacRoberts disappeared into the wilds, they took two Indians along that had been with MacRoberts on previous trips. Fortunately there was a third Indian, a young boy, who went out once before with MacRoberts. We're counting on him to guide you to wherever the Doctor is."

I mulled over that while Armstrong got on the phone and booked us on the next flight to the coast.

Fifteen hours we were in Vancouver conferring with Major Burley of Canadian Military Intelligence, a precisely neat man who made me painfully self-conscious of my unshaven face. I met Johnny Eagle for the first time. He bore little resemblance to the lithe, stern-eyed Red man of the movies. A dumpy boy of fifteen, dressed in baggy pants and a pullover, he escaped the classification of nondescript only by his eyes; they shone with a quiet luminosity, like lights through a mist. They gave me a feeling of confidence in him.

According to Johnny Eagle, the place we wanted was north of Burns Lake. He didn't know the exact spot, but he remembered two things nearby: a rain-rotted cross on a mountain grave and two peaks that MacRoberts had christened the Twins because of their identical appearance.

It wasn't much to go on, but it was something to keep alive our hopes of getting Chetzisky before it was too late.

"Good luck," Major Burley said, "I hope it won't be a wild goose chase."

"It better not be," Armstrong said tersely. "You better get going, Arnold. I'll keep in touch with you by radio from Burns Lake."

* * * * *

Outside the Major's office I almost collided with a code clerk hurrying in with a message. I thought nothing of it till I was on the street climbing into the car that would take me to the airport and a voice called sharply after me.

"Sir, Major Burley wishes to see you in his office right away."

I went back upstairs, cold with foreboding, suddenly recalling the excited look on the code clerk's face.

Armstrong was standing by the window, looking disconsolate, when I entered. The Canadian said nothing but handed me a decoded message.

ATTENTION CANADIAN INTELLIGENCE: COLONEL ARMSTRONG SUSPENDED FROM FURTHER DUTIES FOR OVERSTEPPING HIS AUTHORITY. WILL REPORT BACK TO WASHINGTON AT ONCE TO FACE CHARGES.

"Now," explained Major Burley sternly, "you will understand why I must cancel your plans, sir."

I blew sky-high.

"Go ahead. Let the world blow up behind their stuffed-shirtism and quintuplicate file copies and pedantic memos and see how well that will protect them when the earth goes 'puff'."

The Major stared at me in frank bewilderment. This "puff" business was something entirely new to him.

I felt a strong grip on my arm.

"Easy, Arnold," Armstrong was saying, a warning look in his eyes. "This is one moment when we have to keep our heads, or more than just us will lose them. Hold tight here for a day. Washington probably got Disney's report on your trip to the Congo. I think I can talk my way out of the mess. If I don't," he shrugged hopelessly, "it's all up to you."

* * * * *

All next day I sweated for a word from Armstrong. About five o'clock a call came from one of his friends in Washington. He was under house arrest but still striving desperately to wake the government up to Chetzisky's threat.

I drink lightly but if at that moment I had a bottle I would have emptied it at one swift sitting. Instead, I took an ice cold shower to calm myself. Half-way through the shower I ran out and picked up the phone to put in a long-distance call. I had an idea.

Nevil Oxford answered. I poured out my story. His voice shook as he talked with me. I had him on the ropes and I kept pouring it on. The earth had only six days to live unless the nation did something about it. We were just a stone's throw, so to speak, from catching up with Chetzisky. What was needed was to rouse public opinion and force the complacent hand of the swivel-chair bureaucrat. As a crusher I told him that the world-wide radioactive count had gone up five roentgens. If only he knew how absurd that was ... but it turned the trick.

"All right, Arnold, I'll go on the air tonight with the story," he said wearily with the tone of a man acquiescing in an inevitable surrender.

I dressed, arranged for a plane to take me and Johnny Eagle into Tweedsmuir early next morning, and settled back with a drink for Nevil Oxford's broadcast. The commercial came on. I gritted my teeth and waited. Then Nevil broke in, his voice tense and pregnant with fear: "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Tonight I am breaking the biggest story of my career. It has taken me a long time to decide on telling it. But it must be told."

There was a pause. I sat bolt-upright. Had he lost his courage again? Then Nevil was speaking again, his tone almost inaudible. "If a letter that went out to the governments of the world a month ago is true--and I fear horribly that it is--you and I have only six days to live. The world will end next Monday. Yet nothing is being...."

The voice was cut off and organ music filled the air waves. I stood up and flung my glass at the wall. You warn them and they throttle you; the ostrich hadn't a thing on them.

I went down to the lobby and bought a few magazines to read myself to sleep with, but at two in the morning I was still awake. I put on the radio to get some slumber music. Instead there was a deluge of breathless newscasts and special bulletins. Nevil had started things popping all right, despite being cut off the air. Curious, angry newsmen had dug up the story and spread it in the headlines of _Extras_ from coast to coast. At this moment it was being shortwaved to every part of the world. Already public opinion was beginning to simmer. A special dawn meeting of the cabinet was called. I fell off to sleep smiling; there was hope.

4

In the morning when I read the newspapers on the way to Lulu Island airport, my mood darkened. While public opinion shrieked for action, successive conferences on what was to be done ended in decisions to hold other conferences on what was to be done. Horn-rimmed intellectuals argued hotly whether the Chetzisky question was not one for United Nations discussion. And we make fun of Nero who fiddled while Rome burned!

The day was clear, ideal for flying. It was the fifth day before the end of Time. I bit my lips and looked out at the earth falling away under us.

Four o'clock that afternoon our pontoon-equipped plane swept low over the spruce and jack pine and meadows of wild hay for a smooth landing on Burns Lake, our approach scattering a brood of mallard ducks. We refuelled and were off again. I intended to fly on, watching for the Twin peaks and when darkness fell, to land on one of the mountain tarns and make camp.

Below us the somber stands of evergreen were being swallowed up in the vast shadow spreading out from the western ridges. Turning up a valley corridor I saw the peaks towering above us, summits capped with white and the forested flanks gashed with couloirs in which the snow gleamed.