Blackout sensations, possible onset of coma, try to keep cerebration clear and coherent: the gas was heavier than air and the residue had stayed in the fuselage, pooling in the trough of the freight section, and that was why I'd been all right till I'd had to crouch over the fallen cylinders to read the tabs. The initial psycho-shock had made me think of a creature, something that had to be fought off, classic reaction: terror is ancient and animistic, fear of a predator, of being eaten.

Check time I'd been unconscious between ten and thirteen minutes blackout still threatening, secondary stage of the syndrome in some nerve-target agents is coma: muscular trembling, coma, death. Finger not good, bone exposed,how can I tell extent of blood loss and its contribution to syndrome, other injuries, the thing had pecked at lot, the dunes beginning to float and the dark aeroplane increasing at the rim of the vision-field and I got up because they were drifting lower and I didn't want that again, couldn't stand that again, the surrealistic clarity darkening now and things becoming confused and the memory going, what was tango, who was tango,get up and hide, can't stay out here. The dunes beginning to roar and I was running, falling, running again.

Tango. Tango.

Voice faint whose voice get up or they'll have you, eyes out.

It was different this time because the terror was less. The maelstrom was whirling round me and the birds grew monstrous, cackling overhead and one of them making a dive at me and going away and trying again, but the coma was blunting the nightmare and there was room for an area of almost rational thought: I was trying to run as far as the group of rocks because if I fell again and couldn't get up they'd come and squabble over me.

The rocks grew enormous and I thought I'd reached them but they floated away and I had to run in a curve because the desert was a vortex, circling round me, then one of the birds was suddenly right against my face with its hooked beak screeching and I felt the draught of its wings and caught the acrid farmyard stench of the thing as it came for me red-eyed with the talons spread from the stiffened legs and the screeching didn't stop but when my hands went into the storm of feathers it beat frantically and there was blue-black plumage in my clenched fingers as it rose out of my reach, my legs trying to buckle but I stopped them because I had to run, go on running, the sky was murderous.

Rocks loomed again and I tripped and crashed down and slid across loose shale, really here, really home, a dark cloud floating under me, the spread of fabric rumpling into folds as I crawled deeper, deeper into the niche where the lizards lived, where I would live, safe from the cackling sky.

But theycame nearer and I couldn't move any more, their wings thundering close as they hooked and pecked and I tried to move but they knew I couldn't, the ether smell and the pain digging, I don't know, I haven't met this kind of a thing in Europe, their green gowns and the flutter of their hands, we'll just hope for luck, I guess, and she said yes, They didn't screech any more, where are they, where are what, leaning over me, wanting to hear what I was saying.

'It's very fast-acting.'

Some of them had gone away and the smell of ether was strong. I hadn't seen him before. I tried to say Diane.

'Diane.'

Her head turned to look down at me and she said my God, whatis that stuff?

'The brand name is Theratal and I gave him 30mg IM, a bit more than the normal dose. I've used it for pulling kids out of trips, though not with a dose that size.' He was putting some instruments away. 'This is nothing to do with ergot, you know — he'd be dead by this time.'

My left hand felt like a boxing-glove and I told them to take the stuff off but he just leaned over me again and lifted my eye-lids in turn, nodding to her.

'Get this stuff off my hand.'

'You feeling okay now?'

'I want to use my hand.'

'You have the other one, don't you?'

He looked at her and laughed comfortably, pressing the two brass locks and picking up the bag. She seemedworried by this.

'Are you going now?'

'There isn't anything else I can do until tomorrow. He just has to rest and I’ll leave instructions with the ward nurse: they have Diazon-3 here and it's the same thing with a Belgian brand name. He'll be okay.'

She went to the door with him and I'd got half the bandage off by the time she came back and tried to stop me. She was wearing a zipped windcheater and her hair was in some kind of bandeau.

'Is it night?'

She said it was.

There seemed to be odd periods of blackout between periods of lucidity but they didn't worry me. I wanted to know things and she could tell me, and the lucid periods lasted longer than the blanks. 'Is base intact?'

'Yes.'

'Chirac pull me out?'

'What?'

'Did Chirac pull me out?'

'Yes.'

There was still three cylinders I hadn't reported on but London must have got enough or they wouldn't have ordered Loman to pull me out. He'd sent Chirac with a helicopter, the only way: that was why I'd heard their wings thundering.

'Get this off, will you?'

She said it had to stay like that and I told her to shut up and get it done. I don't like being one-handed even when there's nothing particular to do. She fetched one of the nurses who'd been here before. The nurse said the bandage had to stay on and I managed to swing my legs off the bed and sit up, nearly flaked out again and said to Dianelisten I mean it and she talked some persuasive French, them'sieur was feeling very frustrated because of his accident and it would be better to do what he asked, so forth, worked in the end because in any case I was in a rotten mood and they could see I was going to tear the bloody thing off if they didn't co-operate. But the whole wall kept coming and going and I had to sit still for a minute while it stopped.

Finger looked a mess. I told them how I wanted things, just a No. 1 dressing on it and the others left free, especially the thumb, lose three fingers and you can still grip things, lose the thumb and all you've got left is a hook and a hammer.

'How is the mad Arab?'

'Comment?'

'L'Arabe fou, comment va-t-il?'

She spoke English perfectly well: she was the girl who'd fixed me up here yesterday and she'd talked to Vickers, the, big oil-driller; but she was annoyed because I wanted my hand done differently.

'Je ne comprends pas, m'sieur. Ecartez les doigts, s'il vous plait.'

And she didn't want to talk about the mad Arab, either. That was all right but there were one or two things beginning to needle me and I didn't like it: the American said just now that it wasn't anything to do with ergot and I could believe him. They were checking the bread supplies as a formality while a more specialized medical team was trying to find out the real cause of the trouble. There'd been other Arabs, Vickers had told me, and what I wanted to know is how they'd got anywhere near that aeroplane without first knowing it was there, and how they'd survived and reached Kaifra without broadcasting the fact, because even in delirium they'd surely mention the plane, and that would have initiated an immediate air search.

But it hadn't. The Arab had been here in Kaifra at 15.00 hours yesterday raving about the 'mountains' and 'great birds' out there but he couldn't have mentioned the freighter or the Algerian squadrons would have overflown the area much sooner.

Blank period and someone held me suddenly, tried hard to surface, no go. Memory throwing images for me but no sequence, the dazzle of the headlights blinding and fading and the trays on the waiters' hands and the storm of dark plumage against my face, keeping me upright, holding me steady, could hear my breathing, its rhythm slowing, a cold compress on my forehead, her eyes worried, Diane's, poor little bitch, been sitting prettily in the British Embassy ordering buns for the Queen's Birthday and then the bastards had shanghaied her and now she was having to wet-nurse something the vultures had left, not at all nice.