Of course he'd go straight into signals again with London and ten minutes from now they'd have a full-scale emergency meeting in session at the Bureau and I hoped it'd keep fine for them.

No one else could have got here first. We knew there were at least two other networks with a crash-priority interest in Tango Victor but there hadn't been time for them to get here and anyway we'd have had a flash about it from Control: if the opposition beats another cell to the post in the end-phase of a mission then everyone gets to know about it, don't worry. And theycouldn't have taken the wreck away, even by a concerted chopper lift, without making so much noise and leaving so much mess that the rest of us would have just taken a look and gone off home.

Stuttering. They were quite big things, heavy when they ran although they ran like a flash. They bothered me, wouldn't let me alone, the sound of the sand pattering against the side of the box, the low wind slowly covering the nylon 'chute, a mental note, the desert hides things, beware.

Someone was saying oh… my… Christ… in a kind of measured tone, perhaps not aloud, just inside my head, and I opened my eyes and looked through the scratched sunglasses to the blaze of the dunes out there. Then I hit the transmit.

Tango.

She answered straight away so I knew he couldn't be in signals with London and I suppose it made sense because this problem wasn't for Control, it was strictly local. He'd been using his time thinking.

He came on and I said

Can you get hold of a met.record for this area covering the last three days?

He didn't ask why, so perhaps he'd been thinking on much the same lines as I had. He just said he'd contact the airfield at Kaifra. The phone was obviously working now because he was back in a few minutes and said yes, there'd been a sandstorm two days ago, particularly severe.

13: OBJECTIVE

The tube went in and I pushed, leaning on it.

When I pulled it out the sand ran into the hole it had made, filling it. There wasn't anything pointed I could use: the end of the tube was blunt and therefore not very efficient as a boring tool but it was all I had. It was one of the sections of telescopic tubing among the survival gear, meant to hold up fabric and make it a shelter.

I pushed it in again, six feet away, and leaned on it.

Skin perfectly dry. Cooling had stopped.

I'd have to watch that because heat stroke develops quite rapidly: the body temperature starts rising soon after the stage where the sweat evaporates without having time to cool the skin. Quickened pulse, loss of consciousness, death.

I drank again to replace some of the sweat but the water was hot and gave no sensation of quenching the thirst: it was just liquid going into the organism. I was having to calculate now and we were running it close: one more litre was left for working with, and one reserve litre for staying alive during sleep. I could go another ninety minutes at this rate on a litre but that didn't have anything to do with it because the heat explosion would begin a long time before then unless I could take some rest.

They had come back and their shadows drifted across the flank of the dune as I pushed the tube in and struck nothing. Pull it out. Two paces and try again.

It must be this one, this dune, or the one on the far side of my No. 2 camp. I'd brought a canopy and three lengths of tubing to make shade, and the 200 °CA had been left on receive. In the last two hours I'd taken four equally-spaced rest periods of fifteen minutes. Loman had come on the air to tell me 1: that the Algerian squadrons would refuel west of here and disperse to their home stations without making a return sweep and 2: that Chirac had confirmed that even a medium sandstorm could bury an aircraft the size of Tango Victor.

Chirac had pointed out that the freighter had probably hit the sand with the undercarriage up to avoid flipping over and in any case would have gouged a deep trough until the aerofoil had started planing. This would leave the tip of the rudder only two metres or so from the ground and the main structure considerably lower. The 35mm Nikons hadn't been able to register this because they'd been almost vertically above, but from ground level it couldn't have been easy to see even before the sandstorm had blotted it out.

Probe and try again, two paces.

The chance of hitting the rudder or the aerial mast was remote. According to Chime's reckoning the mainplanes, tailplane and fuselage would be at least two metres from the surface. I'd once been in Arizona when the wind had reached seventy and the whole desert had got up and blown across the sky and it had taken us a day to dig out the half-tracks.

Push and lean and pull out.

I didn't know anything about falling over till my shoulder began blazing. I couldn't seem to get up because the whole weight of the sky was pressing on me. Heart hammering a lot, throbbing behind my eyes, get in the shade, crawl there if it's all you can do, but get there.

Sand in the teeth, gritty, and my hands burning, using them as forefeet, clumsy, going too slow, have to hurry, pool of shade, prone.

He called up at 16.31 hours, waking me.

No, I said.

Slight moisture on the skin and the pulse back to normal but I knew it'd start again within ten minutes of going back into that furnace.

He wanted details.

I'm using a metal probe, area focus the same as before.

It seemed to have taken me a long time to say it and now I was out of breath. He didn't answer straight away.

How much longer can you go on working there?

I don't know.

My hand just reached for the flask: I hadn't actually decided to drink.

I am only asking for an approximate idea, of course.

He had to say it again before I registered.

There's water for about an hour's work. But I'm starting get — starting to get — heat stroke symptoms.

Quite a long pause.

Would you be able to remain under shade until nightfall?

My head swung up suddenly and my' eyes opened.

You mean you could drop more provisions?

No.

The pulse had quickened and there was an almost immediate increase in sweating. But he'd said no and it was the first time it had actually been admitted that this was a strictly shut-ended mission unless I could find the objective.

I propped the mike on my knee, heavy to hold, cost water.

Take all — it'd take all the water I've got, waiting till dark.

It would be cooler then. You could work

No go. Thing is to press on. Tango out.

Only way to shut him up. Not a thing he could do, not even drop more water. He'd have to signal Control and tell them the score: the executive in the field has a limited number of hours to live, am I to abandon?

I got up and went out and the slam of the direct heat nearly knocked me down and I staggered a bit and then got some kind of rhythm going. The tube was stuck in the sand where I'd left it, too hot now, blister your hand, so I kicked it over and got hold of the other end and began walking to the part of the dune where I'd halted operations. About halfway there I tripped over his foot.

It took a little time because he might be able to tell me things by the way he was lying, face down and with his feet towards the end of the dune. I worked slowly, trying to get all the data the situation could provide. My tracks had a slight curvein them: I'd made a detour on my way from the canopy without meaning to, and this was why I hadn't tripped over him when I'd gone in to rest. I turned him over.

He had died in terror.

The hands flung out as he'd fallen, perhaps running too hard, running like hell away from the wreck of the freighter, running in terror. His face showed that much. He had died screaming.