Protected against the gas, she went into the hut and came out a few minutes later with the radio and some papers. They ventured into the jungle for twenty or thirty yards, then destroyed the radio by pulling out its vitals and twisting the dials so that even if the radio were found no one would know what wavelength it was on. They buried it and burned the documents beside it. Then they care fully covered everything with dirt and leaves and headed towards the beach.
When they got there, April's guide lay slumped over a gunwale, his head almost separated from his body by a vicious machete blow, and the bottom of the boat had been stove in with heavy stones.
April Dancer ran down the beach to a point where the island cut sharply inland. As they rounded a point they stopped abruptly and spied a sailboat guarded by another oriental.
"I knew this is where it would be," she whispered, drawing out a gun and slipping a silencer over the muzzle. She aimed it at the man guarding the boat, and as the gun hissed he dropped.
"I knew they'd place their boat here to sneak up on yours," she explained once they'd shoved off and were making for open sea, "and the footsteps in the sand showed that I was right."
Napoleon took out his communicator and signaled the ship off shore to send a launch to pick them up. The cool leeward breeze carried them quickly to their destination.
TWO
THE GOVERNMENT of Singapore had read Sarabando's letter with barely stifled amusement. The dictator of the almost invisible little federation of islands to the south was extending to one of the primary centers of trade in the Asian complex an "invitation" to join, in exchange for certain privileges and prerogatives.
With elaborate oriental politeness the government had declined the invitation, explaining that its commitments to other interests made it more feasible to keep its hands untied.
Under any other circumstances such a rejection would have satisfied an insolent petty tyrant like Sarabando. But a week later he issued another invitation to Singapore. This time, cheerfully and patiently, he explained that the honorable governors of the city must have misunderstood his first note. That initial invitation was not so much a cordial expression of good will as it was a subtle suggestion of the unpleasant consequences that might follow if Singapore held out.
So, in case Singapore did not clearly get the implied message, Sarabando spelled it out a little more explicitly.
This note too provoked mirth in the cabinet of this queen of Southeast Asia, except for the response of one minister, who was convinced that Sarabando had a weapon of grave potential, and believed that the dreadful spectacle of Tapwana's volcanic destruction had been no accident.
But his pleas were rejected by his colleagues, and though Sarabando's final message—an undisguisedly severe warning—caused some serious discussion in the higher echelons of the government, no serious measures were considered to defend against, let alone look into, Sarabando's "ravings."
A few days after the diplomatic positions jelled Kae Soong made his appearance in the secret Singapore laboratory of Edward Dacian. Dacian, who had never carried much meat on his bones, had become gaunt and stringy. His hands shook and his muscles twitched, and he had begun to blink frequently.
"I understand you are in the final stage of preparing the liquid reflectors," the chunky, tall THRUSH agent said to him.
"Y—yes, if my hands will stop trembling long enough."
"Why are you so nervous?"
"Hungry, tired."
"You're being mistreated?"
The scientists nodded jerkily.
"You know why, don't you?"
Again Dacian nodded.
"Would it not be easier, then, simply to let us have the formula for the reflectors? Then we would require no further work from you, and we would send you some place pleasant where you would dine well and sleep and never trouble with formulas."
"Heaven," Dacian said.
"You must realize that we are on the verge of deducing your formula anyway. We know what materials you have been using, we even know their measurements and combinations, and it is only a matter of time before we put together our own."
It was sheer bluff, for in spite of all attempts to assess the work Dr. Dacian was doing, his captors hadn't the slightest idea where to begin. Once they had entered the laboratory after Dacian left it for the night, and taken samples of the material he had created, by the next morning Dacian told them that by so tampering with it they had altered its nature, and he would have to start all over. Whether it was true or not, Dacian knew how to play the game of bluff as well as they.
"Why are you letting them kill you by inches?" Kae Soong asked as if "they" were on one side and Soong was on Dacian's. "If you would only be reasonable they would release you from this torture and roil."
"I'm down, not out," said Dacian in one of those American phrases which made little sense to the Oriental mind.
"You mean you will not alter your course?"
"I agreed—one device at a time," Dacian droned, his eyes shutting involuntarily, then snapping open.
"I don't know if they will tolerate such tardy progress any longer. There is too much at stake."
"Learn my formula, then kill me. But you won't learn any more from me."
Trembling almost as if palsied, the scientist returned to his worktable where, crouching over his formulas to prevent televised eavesdropping, he continued his painstaking development of the key device for the next volcano box.
The location for the next eruption had been tentatively settled on the week before. The island of Singapore is for the most part a low and of twenty or thirty feet above sea level, but the central portion is a granite formation dominated by a mountain called Bukit Timah.
It is not high as mountains go, and is really more of a hill than anything else, being less than 600 feet high. Nevertheless its position is enough to radiate destruction in all directions, and a volcanic eruption there would have at least disruptive, and probably critical, effects on rail, shipping and air traffic. And if the eruption were of greater intensity than calculations predicted, the effects would carry into the city itself, with its magnificent skyline and superb harbor facilities.
Bukit Timah, then, was the location of THRUSH'S next display and possibly its last. It was beginning to look dubious that Dacian would ever reveal his formula, and even less likely that he would survive to make the reflectors for even one more box. The threat of suicide became a consideration now. Though Dacian was a coward, his suffering could reach the point where he would be performing a kindness to himself to take his life.
And to his physical suffering must be added the mental torture of realizing that his device was responsible for countless lives lost and an unimaginable number of lives threatened.
But THRUSH was not as disturbed over the prospect of losing or killing Dacian as it could have been. It was planning to use the destruction of Singapore as the key chess piece in its game of world domination. Kae Soong and his colleagues had hoped that the destruction of Tapwana would be a broad enough hint to the nations of the planet that failure to heed a THRUSH warning would result in a spasm of volcanic fury.
But obviously the hint hadn't been broad enough. Some people were convinced that Tapwana's destruction, after rebelling against the Boruvian Federation, was strictly a coincidence. A similar event on Singapore, however, would leave no doubt in anyone's mind. Nor would anyone wonder how far THRUSH would go in its bid for conquest.