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.
Not far away there was something black showing in the sand: my feet had brought it to the surface; it lay at the edge of my tracks. It was plumage and as I pulled it upwards the wing rose, scattering sand, and then the gross black body with its bald head dangling, the hooked beak agape. The bird, like the man, had died screaming.
There was another, so near the man that in moving his body, turning it over, I had exposed part of its wing. The heat didn't seem so bad now and I was moving more quickly, a sense of purpose reviving the organism. I made a direct line to the end of the dune where his feet had pointed, and tripped again, dislodging a peaked cap from a man's head. His body was in the same attitude: he'd been running away from the freighter. His face had the same expression.
A third vulture was lying at the foot of the dune. I was kicking into the thing before I knew it. I didn't stop to examine it because the renewed strength in me was pushing me onwards and the fourth time I drove the tube into the sand it struck metal.
Distance 485 yards. Bearing 200°. Longitude 8°3′ by Latitude 30°4′.
Tango Victor.
I used the tubing like an oar, bringing the sand away but only enough to guide me. This was the leading edge of the tailplane and I moved across the flank of the dune and began probing again. It was already clear that the bodies had been lying only just below the surface because they were to the north of the freighter, in the lee of the dune: it had been the south wind that had done this, theGhibli.
The sand fell away as I worked at the area aft of the trailing edge, port mainplane. It was where the door of the cabin was likely to be. For a while I missed it because it had been left wide open and I was actually digging through the drift of sand that had formed in the cabin itself between the pilot's compartment and the freight section. The heat was intense because the fuselage had become a quartz-coated oven and I gave it a couple of minutes and came away.
It seemed twice as far to the canopy and I drank some water and dropped prone and let the muscles go but the hammering didn't stop, must do better than this, body had to keep going because there was work for the mind, still had a mission running and we'd found the objective, not long now. The hammering shook me, colours throbbing behind the eyes and the skin perfectly dry, rather worrying, the bout of renewed energy had been dangerous, keep still, just keep still.
Tango.
I didn't answer, didn't move, you want to live, you've got to keep still. Breathing difficult, the weight of the shoulders compressing the lungs, roll over, over and lie still, a thin cackling from somewhere, unearthly sound, coming again, a high cackling above the canopy, they'd seen the two bodies.
Tango.
Don't move. Don't even think, brain function heat-productive.
The spread nylon bluish above me and motionless, the air totally calm, my arms melting into the sand, my legs dissolving, the nerves inert, the pain of the bruises ebbing, the body cradled in euphoria, control it, stay just this side of unconsciousness, the hammering fainter and less insistent, the lungs filling of their own accord, the healing process taking over from the stress syndrome, lie still and all will be well.
Moisture gathering on the skin, the skin cooling, the heart-rhythm slowing, the colours receding from the optic nerve, order restored.
Tango.
I opened up the transmit.
Hear you.
A sound from someone farther away, obviously Diane, a soft intake of breath. I suppose they'd been getting edgy because I hadn't answered for a while.
Loman asked:
Have you a problem?
Not now. I've found the plane.
Three or four seconds.
Congratulations.
Poor little bastard, saved by the bell, the whole bloody mission back in his hands, quite overcome. He was asking me for a report.
1 can't tell you much yet; I've only just started. Thing's covered with sand. Both crew were running away from it when they died.
Please take photographs.