Текст книги "Natotevaal. War Chronicle"

When the sun touched the mountain tops, Dybal who along with Mackliff has been hauling an unbearably heavy von Conrad, stumbled and fell on his face.

Having lost his balance from the jerk, Mackliff also fell down. They tried to get up by scooping the flowing sand, wishing to move forward for an inch.

All in vain.

From the top of a dune, slowly, like in a dream, a landslide came down on their heads and a helpless colonel has almost been buried underneath.

But they fought, spending all strength they had; they were climbing up, further. Not seeing that his friends have stopped, Whitehouse has been going on for a while, head on his chest, stubbornly dragging Aydem, wrapped in a parachute as if it were a shroud.

Having climbed onto the next dune, he suddenly realized he did not hear the hoarse breathing of Dybal and Mackliff behind him.

He turned his stiff neck with great effort:

– Hey, guys… – a soundless whisper came out of his cracked lips.

He lost his balance and tumbled down.

Aydem was left on the other side of the ridge in a white bundle.

It took Whitehouse forty minutes to be back on the three-meter height of a continuously crumbling slope.

The sun had set.

The outskirts of the Great Desert slowly came to life; writhing lizards minced on the still-hot sand, large beetles scurried about their business, arrogant fat flies busily began exploring the wet sweaty faces of the astronauts which were covered with dust.

A desert jerboa galloped somewhere, wagging a fluffy brush tail and twisting its eared head. Right after it a viper flowed next to the face of Whitehouse. It was uninterested in people it wanted something that could be swallowed.

The wind became stronger and assertive.

Now it was blowing from the depths of the desert.

It was getting cold.

Myriads of grains moved along the crests of dunes, getting into the nostrils, eyes and ears; streamed into the collars, penetrated the tightly laced hiking boots, pockets, seams, hatchet sheath.

But Whitehouse was not paying any attention to it, he was falling asleep.

The desert drank all the strength of his powerful inexhaustible body, coupled by a handful of tonic pills.

The effect of anabolic steroids and acclimatization drugs taken after landing; was also over, and the invisible pressure of the Earth's gravity came over every cell of his body, which after three months of flight has become unaccustomed to gravity.

All at once the body was in agony, bruises and abrasions received in orbital collisions burned like fire, the sun burnt skin was stinging, and his head was aching.

Woozy from nonhuman overloads his brain filled with blurred colored pictures of the past: he is going to see «Star Boy» with his first girlfriend at 24th Avenue, then he is taking a test at the Academy and does not know how to calculate the RC characteristics, then he is playing tennis with Mackliff, ten dollars a game…

The wind force increased.

Heavy flies crawling on the face of a man as if he was already dead have been carried away by its blow; large grains of sand rattled like rain on the cloth of the overalls and the dunes started their invisible movement.

Whitehouse did not feel any heat or pain, or sandy rain on his skin, only the whistling and howling of a storm still penetrated his consciousness.

But something has subtly changed in a voice of the Great Desert, a faint vibrating sound, approaching and then moving away, mingled with the roar of the wind.

No, the desert could not make such sounds.

There, in a snowstorm, something was moving, and this something was mechanical.

Could that be people?

The SAU commandos might have finally tracked them down.

Whitehouse slowly pulled up a worn «Viking Combat» Colt to his chest, the only thing he had not thrown out on the road.

The sound was nearing.

An engine.

It was a sound of a car engine, strenuously wailing on the rise.

So be it – two clips of exploding 38 caliber bullets – it is all that was left for a dying crew of «Independence.»

So be it, let them come…

An antique «Jeep» with faded canvas top came out of the dusty mist. It was gnashing, jarring and dangling.

Battered hood jumped at every road-bump. A broken wiper was hanging at the windshield, clearing the view for a driver, the right wing was aloof, the left wing was missing; the shabby sides were painted with intricate ornament.

Whitehouse thought that this monster was a plot of his imagination; and that it was actually a patrol vehicle of the SAU commandos.

He pulled the gun from the sand installed the handle by the cheek and then realized that he could not even push the fuse.

His fingers did not move.

Meanwhile the jeep stopped not turning off the engine, but it did not hold on the crest of the dunes and slid down.

Two stocky men fell out of it: both wore wide-brimmed straw hats, shapeless shirts and pants of indefinite color and sandals without socks.

– There are just the two of them – the astronaut tried to get the fuse with his teeth.

His turban fell from his head and rolled, unfolding in the wind.

The teeth clenched the icy metal of barrel housing.

It was useless.

The strange people stopped holding their hats, which immediately flew over and hung on the back straps, and began loading the still astronauts in the car.

When it came to Whitehouse, they effortlessly tried to take the gun from his hand, but they did not succeed.

The astronaut was holding it tightly.

Muttering some curses they took out the clip, and dragged Whitehouse to the car…

He tried to oppose them, but it was a pathetic attempt. Astronaut found himself on a pile of smelly, oily rags, lying near von Conrad and Dybal.

A minute later Mackliff and Aydem were laid over them.

They covered the astronauts with pieces of parachute fabric, slammed the flimsy doors and the «Jeep» disappeared in the dark.

Digital coded telegram VHN 43

Confidential level: A

Yagd colonel!

I bring to your notice that on 28th Marr a.c., in the sector A17N44 a patrol boat discovered an enemy raider type «Tsvohgum» at high speed leaving the place of a crash of YAG-42.

Cruisers «Kang» and «Medel» caught up with it in the sector 033N09 and, after a brief fire contact, disabled it. The crew of the raider, however, managed to evacuate on the rescue bots, went through mine fields and hid in the Sixth belt of asteroids.

Before the raider collapsed in the process of self-destruction, an external examination has been done by the automated intelligence.

Here is an excerpt from the experts’ conclusion:

– This battle ship was made in 4700, at the Dyulta dockyards;

– The quantity and quality of weapons: corresponds with the «Tsvohgum» class;

– The number and power of propulsion: matches

– Quality of armor plating and the structure of the protective field: matches;

– The amount of external communication energy, sustainability of a central computer: matches;

– The configuration of the body: does not match; 4 powerful claws located along the aft, which were open at the time of inspection.

Presumably, the raider was used as a scanner cover for a ship of unknown functions and configuration. Based on the claws location, an unknown ship can be the size of 4.5 – 5 Ker, and have a shape of a flat, saucer-like aircraft.

– Residual megrazine fields: match;

– Other fields: anomalous perturbation of the gravitational field, laminar nature of disturbances.

Type of perturbations is linear in the direction of the "Terhoma” Swerts base.

The track of disturbances lies in two Tohs -back course of the captured raider.

All things mentioned above suggest that «Tsvohgum» came from the place of the YAG-42 crash, in which he was involved in some way, covering a new ship of the Swerts.

Being discovered by our ships, the raider tried to escape but failed. However, the craft it had been covering effortlessly teleported to the area of its bases.

We continue scanning the areas adjacent to A16N44.

Natote!

22-00. 28 Marr 4725.

From the beginnings of Natotevaal.

Executive Captain of the “Capture” operation,

Yagd Audun Eydlah.

***

Digital coded telegram AHO 101

Confidential level: A

To all military vessels of the 156 squadron of 1U Fleet.

I order:

– stop carrying out the «Capture» operation.

-set the minefields in the area limited by the navigational buoys VA333 and VA105.

-all ships must immediately return to the Stigmarkont Base.

-set analyzers of gravitational perturbations GA-22 at the escape route with compilers tuned to CP fleet.

– degree of alertness: 1A.

23-15. 28 Marr 4725.

From the beginnings of Natotevaal.

Commander of the 156th squadron,

Colonel Yagd Kokum Yohoud.

***

Digital coded telegram 00A

Confidential level: A

The Metropolis.

29 Marr 4725 f.b.N

The SS Coordinator of Natotevaal.

To: the Special Department Coordinator

Foreign Intelligence Board

Of Natotevaal Security Service.

An order:

– cancel the arrest of Colonel yagd Kahum Yohoud.

– stop the internal investigation regarding the third scan watch of Stigmarkont FB, return personal weapons and military awards to the personnel and restore their posts.

-create a special group for the collection and analysis of all the information regarding the YAG-42, endow the commander of the crew with the authorities of the second Commander of the 1U Fleet.

The Natotevaal SS Coordinator

Marshall commander

Yagd Tote Yashemgart

***

Digital Coded telegram VHV50

Confidential level: 3

To: Commander of the 156th squadron, 1U Fleet

Colonel Yagd Kokum Yohoud.

Yagd Colonel!

I bring to your notice that at 16-13 A-time the 211 patrol boat of patrol division, in sphere– sector V13N40, has detected a rescue boat from the transport ship «Loerda-44», with part of the crew on board.

Those who were alive have been sent to the «Tetvut Noor» raider hospital, the dead were buried according to the Fleet Charter.

The place of destruction of «Loerda-44» vehicle has significant gravitational perturbations of laminar character.

Natote!

33 Marr 4725.

From the beginnings of Natotevaal.

Commander of the patrol boat ‘Ropin-33’

211 PSD,

Lieutenant Okt Arber.

8.

Whitehouse did not know how much time he spent lying on a hard straw mat, he could not remember.

He lay there, staring at the intersection of crooked roof rafters: cracked, of dark wood, with constantly steaming smoke near the fire.

But he remembered well those horrible moments when his mouth was filled with mixtures of some bitter herbs, powdered muck, with a smell of rotten eggs, pieces of bark, plant stems, and even objects in a form of buttons. And he could not even move his arm.

He just lay there and cursed that ceiling of guava leaves, the acrid smoke, thin dry hands that smelled of the sun and treated him with nauseous drugs, took out pots of his plentiful shit, where the potions went right after he took them…

But one day he got up.

At once.

One morning he just jumped to his feet, like in ancient times, in the Boy Scout camp at the sound of a wake-up.

He was healthy.

He was ready to run a marathon, climb without hooks and anchors on the steep cliff, bent nails, dive without a scuba in underground lakes.

He stood there, smiling from ear to ear, looking around.

In a mud hut with narrow unglazed windows and low entrance, curtained with a motley cloth, he noticed the presence of another person – an old woman: gray-haired, wrinkled, but agile and quick in her movements with a weathered bony face.

For a while she studied the smiling giant, whose head reached the roof beams, with quiet, intelligent eyes, and then took from the shabby shelves, the only furniture in the room – a light gray suit with traces of coarse darning, hiking boots of the twenty-ninth size and threw it at the feet of Whitehouse.

– Who are you? Where am I? – The astronaut hesitantly stepped forward, but the old woman shook her head and pointed to the exit. Whitehouse picked up his things and climbed out, covering up the loins with his hand.

The first thing he saw was the navigator Alexander Dybal all covered with exotic trinkets, in short shorts made of overalls and a stunning straw hat. A thick cigar in his mouth, he was squinting from the smoke and lively chatting in Spanish with a boy of seven years, who like Whitehouse had totally no clothes on.

A cliff with several shades of rock caves hang over to their right; dense swaying jungle tangled with vines stretched ahead to the left, and behind a dozen huts, was a steep slope, that turned into a rocky plateau, which abruptly ended behind the stone pillars.

These basalt stelae resembled petrified giants, deformed by time.

The desert stretched behind them.

Dybal turned and the cigar nearly fell out from his mouth:

-Ronald damn it are you crawling about on your own?

They clapped their hands, and having walked around a rusty skeleton of a Ford truck, sat on a crumpled barrel of gasoline.

Dybal joyfully patted Whitehouse on the strong shoulder:

– Ronny, I'm so glad to see you safe and sound.

-So am I, Al.

-Can you imagine how lucky we are! So damn lucky! May all of us be that fortunate in the future – The navigator hit three times with his knuckle on the crown of his sombrero, spat over his left shoulder and grinned at the Indian boy, who was puzzled by these gestures:

-This is Magdalena, a village of Kichai Indians. There are two clans. Seven miles away is the Thierry village. Three small tribes live there. This is all that is left of the Kichai tribe: harsh climate change, the war with the Matilones tribe because of living space; the jungle that spreads from the Sintar Pass to the Canyon of Aborning Rocks.

There is one old man – Aguilar, a sort of an elder. We had a long conversation with him while you were resting. You know, many strange things are happening here. Some ghosts are flying in the sky, transparent and silent. Alien tracks in the jungle. They do not belong to Indians or Buenaventura soldiers. On the whole, they have their ears pricked up. Hunter Saurno had noticed our capsule before the disclosure of parachutes. What good eyesight, can you imagine? Hawk eyesight doubled by an eightfold magnification of Zeiss binoculars.

This shaggy boy, by the way, is one of the sons of Saurno. He also has three daughters. And what beauties! Oh, I almost forgot. Ponce! Ponce, bring me that thing, which you were boasting about yesterday.

The boy hesitated for a while, first glancing at his calloused fingers, then at the huge Whitehouse, and getting up, ran to the last hut.

Looking at the construction on the roof of the hut, Whitehouse was surprised to see a saucer of a home satellite dish.

Melodious female voices competing in a kindly squabble could be heard nearby. Two young girls carrying water in toxic-orange buckets came from behind the granite block plastered with moss. Having suddenly remembered that he was completely naked, Whitehouse started to dress frantically. Subtle gurgling of a spring somewhere behind the block, coolness of stones, twitter and trills of hooting birds in the jungle, short slender girls, merrily grinning Al – all this in addition to burning sighs of the Great Desert seemed surreal, almost fairy-tale. Girls, continuing to descend quickly, crossing over the scattered stones sonorously laughed, seeing Whitehouse get entangled in his pants and blush in embarrassment. The echo responded to them. Dybal waved to them, and making a conspiratorial face, whispered:

-Field notes: the higher girl is Saurno's second daughter, that hunter that drove us in the storm, and whose mother nursed us. Unfortunately, I do not know the Guajiro dialect, but they somehow connect you to her in their conversations. So…

Tying the shoelaces, Whitehouse with interest stared at the elastic hips of the girl, covered by embroidered with bright beads blue jeans:

-She is cute…

-Jesus, Ronald! Did you forget how you whined in the capsule: the wife, the children are the dearest for me, will I ever see them and all that stuff. What a Casanova. – Acidly said someone right above his ear. Only Mackliff could speak like that!

John Makliff, hands on his hips, stood there as if nothing had happened, dressed in overalls with metallic shimmer as if he had just got them from the McClellan indent depot. A rapid M16A1 fire rifle and a grenade launcher, stuffed with forest litter hung on his neck; two colored jays and a small animal, looking like a rabbit were fastened to his belt. He wore a uniform NASA cap, and scratched sunglasses on his nose.

Whitehouse tightly hugged the flight engineer. He showed displeasure but then laughed happily:

– Well, well, be careful, old chap, or you will break my bones again. I should have told Unsule not to finish your treatment totally, because you're too dangerous for other people – he nodded to the two Indians that folowed him out of the jungle, and they silently marched to the huts, carrying away a shot mountain goat on the pole.

We will have meat for dinner, with cassava juice and pepper topping; Dybal licked his lips. Everything is good. I am sorry for the guys though. Nice fellows they were. Dick, Colonel Eichberger… Salvation was so close and real: – sighed Whitehouse, suddenly stern.

All were silent for a while. The navigator was intently smoking a cigar, puffing sweet tobacco and scattering a few mosquitoes in the sun; Makliff was rummaging with a sprig in the rifle sight slot, which was plugged with brown clay. Somewhere the fire was kindled and a blue-gray wisp of smoke drifted above them. A dog barked. The other one responded. On the roof of the hut decorated with satellite, climbed an old Indian and began tying fresh guava leaves to the rafters instead of those that were torn by the wind.

Finally Makliff cleared the sight slot and said quietly:

– Yeah, I feel sorry for the guys, Ronni. But as for Aydem and Colonel, you were mistaken.

– Strike me dead! Are they alive? Where are they, I want to hug them!

– They are not here at the moment. The irony is, they got better before us and rushed into action.

A week ago the colonel left with the hunters to the Santar Pass to banish matilones soldiers who seized the pass. By their mercy the Kichak have been sitting in isolation for three months already. No mail, no whiskey, no fuel, no batteries for radios. And the generator, which powers their TV's does not work without fuel. We still have no idea whether a new war with the Islamists broke out or not.

As for Aydem, he has been rushing about in the sands with Saurno Santo for three days now. He wants to collect those belongings that we have thrown away on our way to the mountains: first of all, the logbook, the transmitter and cadmium absorber. But there has been a snowstorm twice since then.

It is unlikely that they will find anything. All has been long covered with sand. – Sighed Mackliff. Whitehouse just shook his head in shock:

– Gee.

Dybal, throwing away his cigar and making a gulp of orange juice from a pumpkin jar continued Mackliff's story:

– Now it is very important for us to find out whether the war had started. And whose side took the SAU and if we could go to Buenoventura. Kichak know nothing. There is no contact with the outer world. We cannot find out anything from indirect observations as this area is completely cut off, isolated.

It lies at the center of a vast area that remains uncontrolled after the approach of the Desert and the destruction of Ecuador and Colombia. They have no government here. Those who did not want to evacuate, are now on their own: hunting, fishing in Braziliera that flows over this ridge, some kind of craft – figurines of black wood, woven tapestries, beads of rock crystal – all of this is changed for cartridges, alcohol and gasoline in Buenoventura, the SAU Naval Base which lies in two hundred miles from here.

The matiliones warriors boss the show here along with something that kills the Kichak hunters who come too close to the Canyon of Aborning Rocks. And it is killing them in a weird way, as if pouring napalm over them. As for the SAU fighters who shot down Eichberger’s container, they mainly patrol the coastline from Barranquilla to Cayenne, without delving into this wilderness for more than twenty miles.

Ponce returned, holding something heavy under his arm.

He nodded to Mackliff with the importance of an adult and handed to Dybal his burden, wrapped in a piece of advertising poster «Panasonic» – the real world in your home".

– Rodriguez brought this thing and gave it to Santo for adjusting the sound head. Rodriguez says that he took that stone from the Canyon of Aborning Rocks. But no one believes him. – Navigator held in his palm a strange oblong stone: smooth, shiny, as if polished, studded with many thin streaks, forming a dense network:

– So, what do you think about this?

Whitehouse cautiously took the stone, turned it over in his hands, scratched it with his fingernail and even smelled it:

-It’s confusing…

-Okay, let's go to Aguilar, drink a sip of maize and have a bite, I have had nothing more than Malaga in my mouth since morning. There we will talk.  We won’t be able to make it out without booze – said Mackliff, rising.

They went past the corral, where in piles of half-baked eggplants pigs were languid with the heat; past wicker baskets with fading in the sun tobacco leaves, which two children were hanging out to dry; passed the canopy under which three very old men knocked the dominoes, bypassed the adobe building that resembled a miniature fort with loopholes facing the jungle, where sat a thin bored young man in a mangy sombrero, with an aged Brazilian IMBEL rifle in his hands.

Astronauts walked round a pile of empty boxes from sardines, instant coffee, cigarettes, and stew, and plunged into the narrow entrance of one of the huts, screened by a mosquito net.

The host was not home.

Without much ado Mackliff opened the doors of a coarse buffet and pulled out a bowl of guava, a bottle with a worn label «Amoretti» and sat down on the floor:

– I think old Aguilar will not mind if I leave him a fat rabbit instead of this sour stuff.

Dybal and Whitehouse also sat on the mud floor, legs folded, and Ponce settled near a small window and started snapping the rifle trigger, out of which Mackliff has prudently taken the magazine.

Having made a sip from a bottle of corn vodka, Dybal perched on a hammock, causing it to sag almost to the floor and said dreamily:

-It’s nice here. Maybe I should stay… Marry some fawn with brown eyes and a passionate spirit. I would shoot parrots in the forest and write memoirs.

-Look at him. Do not relax. You will come with us.

-Where to, John?

-We’ll find a way. – Mackliff, wincing had half a cup of vodka with sweet guava and took the stone from Whitehouse:

Let us return to our muttons. I would say it's a piece of basalt, exposed to extremely high temperatures, combined with some chemical catalyst. Look, it is porous like a sponge, as if it boiled.

– Maybe it is a result of volcano activity. – The navigator asked uncertainly.

– Well, if we consider that the nearest Rouse volcano is a hundred miles to the south. No. It is too far. And the magma does not have such texture. Hey, Al, do you have more of these stones?

-As much as you like. The canyon is full of them.

– I think that this is the work of a man. I'm sure of it. It is some kind of experiment. This must be a proving ground for testing new weapons. It’s either that or the SAU’s or Islamists, or all of them together. The place is suitable. Whitehouse moved the jaw muscles and shook his fist at blank space:

– So, it is the base. Now I understand why they kill hunters at the canyon. Once I had to deal with an Islamist base in the Turkish Eskshihone. We must do away with them. I'm going. What about you? John, Al?

Mackliff frowned:

– If the war is on, then it is logical. And what if there’s no war? Imagine what hell the BIG’s will raise: a terrorist group of Americans, a German and a Russian attacked their military object. What if they're producing a fertilizer instead of guns? So do not get excited. We should wait for Aydem and the Colonel to talk things over. I think we should gather more information about the Canyon, try to communicate with Central Office get the instructions and find out the situation in the world.

Whitehouse angrily waved:

– When did you become such a formalist? -

Flight engineer scowled and with one gulp drank a second helping of maize.

Swaying in a hammock and driving away the flies from perspiring face, Dybal quietly talked to Ponce about something.

When Whitehouse finished squabbling with Mackliff, Dybal said: – All we know about the Canyon at this point is what the hunters who managed to get back out of there alive told us. The Canyon is fifteen miles from the village, in the south-west it winds from the Buendia Mountain to Braziliera River. It is deep. In some places, stone flies to the bottom in fifteen seconds, but there are shallow areas with gentle slopes. At the bottom there is a stream – El Coyote.

Almost nothing grows there. But on the slopes there is a lot of Malaga and yams, that wild pigs like so much.

The name: Canyon of Aborning Rocks emerged long before the Kichak came here from the coast of Lake Maracaibo. This is the name they have adopted from Chiapas, now extinct. They say that at night an underground buzz can be heard in the valley, someone is tinkering there and rattling with stones.

And every morning new heaps of porous rocks appear. Chiapas had a legend that an evil spirit of mountains Uamiyasos lives there, devouring stones and sending terrible storms, from which the rocks collapse. Before the beginning of the dry season all Kichak collect blood-red iris flowers, and the elder of the tribe goes to the Canyon and drops down a basket with flowers, tobacco, biscuits.

He also throws chickens, best fighting roosters, pigs. And then he jumps there himself.

Otherwise Uamioyasos will get angry, and the land will not bear fruit, the game will leave this place, springs will dry up, women will not be able to conceive and only boys-warriors will be born in the matilones' tribe. That's your proving ground.

-The fact that Kichak still do sacrifice, does not exclude the presence of a base, – Mackliff said grimly.

Dybal shrugged and pulled out another cigar from his shorts.

Mackliff pinched his nose:

– Would you please stop smoking this stuff? That smell is killing me.

Navigator just grinned, lighting a cigarette. An elderly Indian with a face carved with deep wrinkles; long, flowing hair, captured with a colored ribbon, faded army-type shirt, splashed with fresh blood and a sharpened Navajo in his mighty hand quietly entered the room.

Whitehouse instinctively reached for the bottleneck and hauled off.

But the Indian exchanged a few words with Dybal and left.

Ponce gave up playing with a rifle and followed him, not forgetting, however, to grab his stone.

-Drop the bottle, Ronnie. This is Aguilar. He had just killed a pig. He returned from the desert with Saurno and Aydem and the Colonel sent some good news. They were finally able to banish the matilones from the pass. We are going to have a celebration tonight.

Commander of the destroyed «Independence» Shuttle – Dick Aydem – stood leaning against the door of a «Jeep» and watched Saurno Santo cleaning battery terminals with a shabby piece of sandpaper.

The battery has been hopelessly dead long ago, but with a strange persistence the Indian tried to squeeze at least a couple amps out of it, apparently not believing that a loosened engine could be started with a handle.

-All right, Saurno, this is a bad job. Look – Aydem gently pushed the Indian away from the dusty motor, slammed the hood, sat behind the wheel and pressed the brake.

Saurno stood in a ridiculous pose with eyes widening with terror, watching the car rush down a narrow, winding road at high speed.

When the «Jeep» was out of sight, he crossed himself and clenched an amulet with an image blurred from sweat in his fist:

-This is not the most decent way to die.

As if in an answer, he heard a roar of the started engine from the bottom and the car began to slowly but confidently climb the hill.

People had already fled from the side of the village as the patrol reported that Saurno and Aydem got stuck in two hundred meters from the village.

Once the car had drifted smartly onto a small patch between the houses, with a bunch of kids shaking in it and the dust dispersed; Aydem saw three figures standing in poses of the Wild West pioneers.

These were Mackliff, Whitehouse and Dybal.

They were smiling.

Aydem shook their hands for a long time as if he had not seen them for many years, although four days ago he drank maisbrand with Mackliff and Dybal for the return.

He touchingly kissed the giant Whitehouse, asking whether it was hard to pull his hulk in the desert, to what the pilot replied that he had never hauled semi-corpses in 50-degree heat.

Then they all moved to Aguilar.

On the way back Aydem showed the transformations of reactive water from the recovered flask to kids squealing with delight; and Whitehouse received his «Viking combat» from shy Saurno. The reason of his embarrassment soon became clear: the Indian, trying the gun, had spent almost all the bullets.

Except for the half-emptied flask Aydem and Saurno could not find anything else.

No logbook tapes or transmitter or cadmium absorber.

They were even unable to find the container itself. All they discovered was just a strangely broad dune in place of its fall, and a few cellophane wrappers, in which the SAU commandos got their packed meal biscuits.

Aguilar put maisbrand to use, a few shots of which made Saurno show his missing front tooth and claim that it was done by the hands or rather feet of Whitehouse, who at the time of his salvation being unconscious, started waving his limbs, nearly causing the car to turn over; which would have been fatal in the sandstorm, and thus knocked out his tooth.

The Indian then drank some more and sat down near Whitehouse. With the help of Dybal he started asking questions about his well-being, mood, future plans.

The hunter finally became more specific, although he spoke in a roundabout way.