A Cleft Of Stars

CHAPTER SIX

The buzzing in my ears woke me.

I came to with a start of guilt at having overslept, perhaps at having slept at all. It was broad daylight outside the shelter and I caught the sound of a faint, disappearing drone. My right eye was swollen and full of pus; my leg muscles stiff and aching. I became aware of my physical discomforts but it was the humming which made me wide awake and tense. My snap diagnosis, as I became fully conscious, made me feel sick and depressed. I had heard that faint sound once before when I had collapsed during the scientific expedition and I knew that it portended an attack of malaria.

Before getting round to considering its effects on my campaign against Rankin, I concentrated on its immediate implications which were negative and ominous: illness made me a sitting duck for him. Thirst and inevitable delirium could drive me out into the open once the attack got under way. There either Rankin or heat-stroke would get me. I sat up quickly, determined to try and sidetrack those consequences as much as I could before my senses started to slip away. In a kind of panic I got out the diamond pencil and started to hack myself a supply of the baobab's acidsweet pith as an insurance against the days ahead, at the same time cramming my mouth with it and chewing to obtain as much liquid as I could. I also gathered together flaked bark, leaves and other veld rubbish into a corner to make a rough sick-bed for myself. I tried to focus my thoughts on the attractive smell of my den's concealed moisture as a kind of mental gimmick to keep myself hidden and not venture out when I became irrational. Whatever happened, I drummed into myself over and over, I must remain inside the humpbacked walls and low gnarled roof. My testing-time came quicker than I expected when the hum returned, still distant but deep inside my head. I went to the entrance and spat out the chewed pith, meaning to recharge my mouth immediately with a fresh supply. As my head emerged so did the sound grow and I realized with a surge of thankfulness that it was nothing to do with me but that it came from overhead in the sky — a plane.

For a moment I forgot all about Rankin and made my way beyond the tree's thick shade to try and spot the aircraft. Its echo struck back from the koppies and the way it waxed and waned led me to think it must be circling out of sight on the river side of The Hill.

I was automatically suspicious of its movements, a carryover from my first instinct, after emerging from jail, to duck at the sight of a policeman. There were several harmless explanations of the plane's presence: it might be on a crossborder flight to Rhodesia and was simply checking its bearings on the most prominent landmark in the area; or it might be a sportsman taking an innocent look-see on his way to a shooting safari in neighbouring Botswana.

On the other hand, it could be the official plane returning to pick up the guard whose body I had seen. If so, once again Rankin became the key to my innocence. If I were picked up near The Hill's forbidden area in suspicious circumstances, how could I prove that I had not been involved in the burning of the hut, the ashes of which no doubt contained a charred skull? Circumstantial evidence alone was strong enough to bring me to trial — for murder this time.

I was not able to pinpoint the sound because of the hills'

double echo, so I left the baobab altogether and went a few yards to the edge of the rock outcrop where K2 fell several hundred feet in a steep slope to the wadi below. It afforded me a grand view and almost at once I sighted the bright flash of a spinning airscrew in the strange hard light away to the north, near the confluence of the Shashi and Limpopo rivers; in other words, by the pool near which I had hidden my boat. I felt exposed and naked on the coverless cliff-top despite the fact that the pilot could not possibly see me, and I sank to one knee to watch the plane's movements. It was very low, making towards The Hill. After a few minutes it crossed the confluence. Then it swung wide in order to avoid The Hill and headed towards the valley between the fortress and K2 whose floor consisted of the wadi. At the same time the machine dropped very low — no more than sixty feet, I judged. This ruled out my first thought of a bearings check or casual joyride. The pilot was risking his neck now flying through the valley with its updraughts of superheated air. What made me doubly sure that it was a guard-plane was the fact that I identified it as a Tiger Moth of the type the Air Force had used as trainers during the war and had later sold. It was just the sort of light, highly manoeuvrable machine for a bush landing-strip.

The plane ducked and dropped and for a moment I thought it was about to sideslip into a jagged mass of rocks which seemed mere feet below the wheels. But it pulled clear and began an erratic course over my camping-site. At that height the pilot could not fail to spot the remains of my fire and other things scattered about. He banked, as if scrutinizing them closely, then edged in perilously close to the cliffs. He completed a tight circle and retraced his flight-path, slowing almost to stalling speed. Then two heads craned out peering down at what lay below. I kept low and motionless; when the plane turned back yet again after passing over the tabletop I became convinced that the pilots were carrying out a methodical search of The Hill and its surroundings. Whatever their reason, I decided I'd be wise to keep well out of sight. I dismissed the only possible reason which might involve me, namely, that Dr Sands had revealed to someone my presence at The Hill. But it seemed scarcely likely that my collecting hyena fossils was considered important enough to warrant a plane search.

As I watched, the plane, its business with The Hill apparently finished, headed towards the western hills, the hills from which I'd started towards K2 the previous night.

I knew I should get back at once into my hide-out, but curiosity overcame my caution for a moment and I decided to see quickly if anything below me on K2 could have attracted the plane.

I craned over the drop and below me in a kind of natural strongpoint projecting from the steeply sloping face I saw Rankin, aiming his rifle at the aircraft.

My first thought was that he had cleaned my fire's ash off his barrel — there was a helio-shot of light off it which dazzled me momentarily.

My second was an irrational, revenge-fired satisfaction that despite my lack of weapons, I was at last close to the man. whom above anyone else I wanted.

The third was that he must be mad: the night before he had tried to kill me though he thought I was a stranger, and now he was about to open up on an innocent aircraft.

'You bloody unspeakable bastard Rankin!' I said softly, as if already I had my hands on him.

I started to quiver and found my shirt drenched with sweat when I realized that to get where he was Rankin must have passed close by my tree shelter during the night. In fact, after he had fired the last shot I had heard from The Hill he and I must have been on a collision course, he crossing the mile wide wadi towards K2 and I heading towards the tree on its top from inside the bowl of hills. It had only been the intervening rim with its chain of small peaks which had prevented our seeing one another in the bright moonlight. I blessed the quirk of chance which had taken me to the tree, enabling me once again to look down upon my prey; bush-hatted, tense shouldered, the same predatory stance of man and gun I'd seen and recoiled from in the light of my fire.

I lay prone, with as little as possible of my head showing against the skyline in case he should glance my way, though all his attention seemed to be on the plane fussing over the defiles where I had been the night before.

He would have been a sitting duck for me if I had had a gun of any sort, even a small pistol. He was kneeling, with his rifle resting on a stone breastwork, following the machine with his sights. The plane was following a west-east course above the line of the wadi; K2 faced towards The Hill at right-angles to its route, in other words due north. Rankin's command-post-created by a natural fall of sandstone but fortified by man — was about twenty feet wide and five deep. It dominated the whole wadi area. A partially ruined wall across the cliff slope ended short of a barred entrance. I decided to rush this entrance while Rankin was preoccupied with the plane and slid full-length into a V-shaped cleft which led down to the old wall. But it petered out about halfway to my objective and I clung precariously to the rotten rock at full stretch until it gave way and I was pitched onwards in a kind of short-step toddling glissade with my knees hunched up to my chest. In the final few feet, however, my heels started to slide from under me and I jack-knifed upright into an out-of-control run, my arms windmilling. This constituted a gesture to the searching aircraft; as the pilot spotted me he at once gunned his engine.

I lurched on and hit the wall with a bone-jarring thud but had sense enough to drag myself through a gap to the far side out of Rankin's sight. I knew that if I didn't act right away the plane would be overhead and lay itself wide open to Rankin's gun. So I worked my way painfully along the wall on my knees with the haphazard idea of getting at Rankin. Where the wall ended I looked out: the rock within six inches of my face seemed to dissolve and I yelled as much from shock as surprise when fragments of hot lead sprayed the side of my neck. The plane was so near now that I didn't even hear the shot above its roar.

In a flash I flung myself at the doorway across an exposed gap, where a single misstep would have sent me crashing to my death below. I leapt at the stone coping above the barricaded entrance and my momentum sent me up the overhang with my feet scrabbling for holds in minute fissures. And all of a sudden I was over and seemed to look straight into a roaring propeller, a goggled face and the walled enclosure with Rankin kneeling rifle to shoulder. The range was down to point-blank; there was nothing I could do any more. The engine drowned the sound of Rankin's shot but I knew that he had fired: from the bitter _smell of cordite and the slight tilt one wing gave as the plane swept over, so low that I could have stood up and grabbed its wheels as it passed. Rankin had got it.

He knew, however, that he had missed me for I saw him lay out within quick reach of his hand a nickel-plated derringer: a short-range pistol with twin heavy-calibre barrels. The plane's slipstream tore the bush hat from his head but there was no need for me to confirm my identification.

'Rankin! You bloody murdering bastard!'

My words were swamped by a tearing crash as the plane hit the side of K2.

I launched myself at him feet first with the idea of mulekicking him in the chest but he moved with remarkable speed and fired the derringer. The heavy-duty slug tore into the heel of my right boot; it was like being hit by an iron bar. As a result only my left boot struck him, ineffectually, and as I crashed to the ground against the breastwork a second shot screamed off it near my shoulder without touching me. With a surge of alarm I realized that I was up against a man who, though in his sixties, was iron-hard from a tough life and was quite capable of hammering me in a straight fight. I half got to my feet as he came on at me, holding the derringer low. There was a sharp click and a flick-knife blade shot out under the weapon's lower barrel. I jerked upright and for a split second we faced one another.

Then with my right hand I whipped the diamond pencil from my pocket.

I saw recognition start into his eyes at the sight and he swerved as I feinted at his belly with it, laying himself wide open, as I intended, for my real coup de grace. He saw murder in my eyes.

'Rankin!'. I scarcely heard my own whisper.

They were cut diamonds!'

Anything he had said or done then would have been too late to save him from my karate elbow-chop to the heart. It travelled only the distance of my elbow's arc and I felt his rib-cage splinter.

He gave a shallow cough and stood swaying in slow motion even after the light of consciousness had gone from his eyes. I caught him by the shirt front before he fell, and laid him down.

My immediate concern was for the occupants of the plane because at any moment I expected to see the wreck go up in flames. The pilot had almost cleared the top of K2, but not quite. There was a cloud of dust among the torn scrub and what looked like smoke.

It required a great effort of will to master the reaction after the fight and force myself across the dangerous unprotected gap near the command-post's entrance. Then I sprinted to the crash. I was goaded by the fear of fire although when I reached it there was more dust than smoke — and no sign of life. The tail section had been ripped off and lay about thirty y ards behind the main wreck. Littering the crash path were small branches which had been torn off by the wing struts. Finally the wings and landing wheels had come adrift; the fuselage lay with the airscrew tangled round a boulder.

I went first to free the figure I could see slumped against the windscreen of the rear cockpit. This was difficult to reach because the wreck had finished up as high as my head across a group of rocks. So I mounted the fuselage at the smashed tail end and wormed my way forward. When I reached the cockpit I bent forward and loosed the safety straps, still unable to see who it was. In doing so my arm partly brushed aside the flying helmet.

The long black hair fell heavily, tiredly almost, — across the plane's yellow paintwork.

I reached over and turned the face, my heart pounding. It was Nadine.