Their mass had been thrust upwards from the earth's crust to leave them standing reared and angular against the sky, their strata sloping at twenty or so degrees from the horizontal and their base littered with brittle fragments that had broken off. In several places a whole shoulder of rock had foundered, making an angled arch and giving shade, and under one of these I made my camp.
The flooring was the canopy of the supply 'chute and the roof was provided by my own, propped and draped with the help of the telescopic tubing that was part of the survival gear.
Lizards had run from the area of shade, skittering so fast across the sand that they seemed to float on its surface. I watched them, encouraged by the evidence of life in this region where I'd thought that nothing could hope to live.
For an hour I slept, in the heat of the noon. The distance had been nearer two miles than one and I'd had to make two trips, each time bringing a parachute and half the gear and provisions: four hours' work including rests in the shade of the rocks before I set up camp. Earlier, even when it had been cooler, this degree of effort would have been beyond me: it had been the sight of the tip of rock, the knowledge that it was there, that had given me the strength.
At 12.34 hours I made a signal.
He had to be told, before I decided what kind of effort was needed. Effort used up water and it used it up very fast. He had to be told, although there wasn't much he could do about it. The first thing was to get him to believe it.
Can I have that bearing again, from the rocks to the freighter?
Two hundred.
I checked the compass. The bearing was lined up directly with the tracks I'd left.
What's the distance from the rocks to the plane?
Four hundred and eighty-five yards.
He wasn't going to like it.
Loman, I'm at the rock outcrop now. I've pitched camp.
I had to wait for him to re-check the annotations on the hotograph. No change of tone.
Your heading was twenty degrees?
Yes.
You must have passed close to the aeroplane.
Not close enough to see it.
Then the poor bastard shut up for a bit.
I looked across the blazing sands to the point where my tracks vanished. There were big areas between the dunes and they didn't have the regular formation I'd seen at the point of drop: the rocks would deflect the wind here, setting up turbulence. But I had a clear view for more than five hundred yards and the bearing was correct and I ought to be looking straight at the wreck of the freighter. I was looking at an unbroken waste of sand.
Loman came in.
Quiller.
Hear you.
Do these rocks show any signs of ferrous oxidization?
He was dead scared but he didn't show it in his voice. He showed it in his thinking: he'd got the blown-up photograph m front of him with the distances marked and he should have worked this one out for himself and instead of that he was panicking. I told him:
No. And it wouldn't make any difference, Loman. The compass could be affected up to fifteen degrees and I'd still be able to see a twin-engined freighter less than five hundred yards away.Pause.
You are quite sure.
Christ, d'you think I'm just guessing?
I was bloody annoyed because they'd said it was a picture of a plane that had crash-landed at Longitude 8°3′ by Latitude 30°4′ and now I was here on the spot and I couldn't help thinking how much effort we'd all made just to prove they were wrong.
Even Loman was thrown.
I don't understand.
Join the club.
After a while he said: How was the drop?
Routine.
I knew what he was driving at but I wasn't in the mood to give him any help: let him stay on this tack and I'd blast his head off, that was all.
Did you bring all your provisions with you from the point of drop?
Yes.
And both parachutes?
Yes.
It was exhausting work.
A bit thirst-making.
There's been no kind of accident? No water-spillage?
No.
He saw I wasn't going to co-operate so he just put it on the line, didn't like having to do it, wasn't his way.
How would you describe your general condition, physical and mental?
Not too bad. Bit of sunburn.
His tone went dulclass="underline" over-correction.
I would appreciate a more precise answer.
So I thought he ought to have one.
Listen, Loman, the drop was a right bastard and I've just shifted a hundred and seventy kilos through two miles of soft sand in the direct sun but if you think I'm too far gone to be able to see a whole bloody aeroplane against a neutral background at five hundred yards you're wasting your time. Who was the executive you were running last — Dewhurst or someone?
Quite a long time went by. I don't think he was sulking or anything: he'd got a damn sight too much on his plate and he was going to have a lot more unless he could do something about it and that didn't leave any time for making mental notes to the Bureau to the effect that certain executives appeared to require supplementary refresher courses in Norfolk.
Quiller.
Hear you.
Can you give me an approximate configuration?
Of these rocks?
Yes.
Stand by.
I switched off to save the batteries.
He'd begun thinking straight but it was going to be a nasty five minutes because there weren't many answers to the question and this was the one with the built-in dead-end to the mission.
The compass gave 14° — 194° for the elongation and I noted it and took the pad with me and it was like walking out of the shade into a molten gold wall. This was the eastern face and a lot of heat was coming off it because of seven or eight hours' pre-zenith absorption. I could feel the sweat drying on me as fast it came through the pores: there was no moisture when I passed a hand across my face.
I made my way clockwise.
Lizards scuttled across the broken shale on the ground they were quite big, a foot long, one of theIguanidae, and they didn't go far from where I passed, but froze with their angular heads lifted to watch me. Possibly they had never seen man before and their caution was primitively learned, the mistrust of an alien creature so large that it blotted out the sun.
South face and turning west.
The general configuration was oblong and the angles were clearly defined: the material was so hard that erosion hadn't rounded it. The sun and the night frosts had loosened the strata into laminations and the wind had worked at the result; in places the weathering force had left horizontal necks and the weight of the unsupported rock had brought it down so that now it leaned on the main structure in irregular buttresses, making shade. In these areas there were more lizards than nearer the open and I supposed their one enemy was the vulture.
No. 2 Fighter-Reconnaissance had said there weren't any other rocks within seven miles of this group. I thought about that for a minute and then gave it up.
West to north.
They watched me with their gold-ringed eyes. A pair of them turned their heads slowly as I passed, only one of them flashing into the crevice behind them with its long tail scattering the group of snail-shells in the hollow where they fed. At night there would sometimes be moisture here.